Bogwoppit

by Ursula Williams

‘Why not?’ snapped Lady Clandorris.

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Samantha. ‘But if I could have forgotten you I would not have come all this way to rescue you, would I?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I think you are drowning!’ said Samantha.

  ‘Nobody would care if I did!’ said Lady Clandorris bitterly.

  ‘You can’t expect them to care, can you? Why should they?’ cried Samantha. ‘You’ve never done anything nice for anyone else; why should they come and rescue you? You’ve always been horrible to me!’ she shouted over her shoulder, beginning to wade back into the tunnel. ‘I wanted to be your long-lost niece and make life more enjoyable for you. After all, I am your sister Gertie’s child!’ she yelled as she retreated, stumbling in the water and nearly losing her lamp. ‘But you didn’t want me and I don’t want you either! You can stay with the bogwoppit and drown! The bogwoppit can swim but I don’t know if you can! Goodbye! I’m going home!’

  ‘Fetch the plumber!’ shouted Lady Clandorris angrily.

  ‘He’s over at Chopley. I cycled all the way over there in the rain to tell him, but he won’t come till he’s finished the vicarage sink. That won’t be till teatime!’ called Samantha at the top of her voice, retreating all the time in the direction of the tunnel. ‘I’m going home anyway,’ she repeated.

  There was an agonized cry as the One-and-Only leapt from Lady Clandorris’s lap on to Samantha’s shoulders, nearly choking her with its flapping wings, and almost putting out the lamp. Then with a splash it swam the short distance back to Lady Clandorris, before once again chasing Samantha with cries of distress. At last it seized Lady Clandorris by the sodden hem of her dressing gown and tried to drag her into the water after Samantha.

  ‘I’m only coming as far as the kitchen, to dry my stockings while you fetch the plumber!’ Aunt Daisy said, splashing through the flood, but Samantha was well ahead and out of hearing.

  Far up the second fork of the drain she had heard the ominous murmur of voices she knew too well. The bogwoppits were returning from the marsh pools, and she put all the effort she could muster into reaching the grid before they came.

  Lady Clandorris seemed to realize the threat and its consequences.

  Suddenly she ceased to scold and grumble, but hurried after Samantha looking fearfully backwards across her shoulder as she came to the fork in the drain. The One-and-Only was urging her on with little whimpering cries, swimming between her and Samantha, who was forced to slow down, quite against her will, rather than abandon her, once she knew her aunt was really coming. She began to be really frightened. The noises behind her were getting louder. The bogwoppits were returning to their home, but as yet they had no idea that their prisoner was escaping.

  ‘Can’t you hurry, Aunt Daisy?’ she urged her in the echoing passage.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been necessary to hurry if you had done as I asked and fetched the plumber!’ grumbled Lady Clandorris, but she too looked uneasily backwards into the solid darkness, and splashed on a little more noisily than before.

  The One-and-Only was mewing with anxiety. Samantha tried to catch it, but she only had one free hand, and it slipped out of her grasp, swimming back towards Aunt Daisy and frantically tugging at her clothes.

  Suddenly Lady Clandorris tripped and pitched over, falling on her face in the water. It took the combined powers of Samantha and the bogwoppit to set her on her feet again.

  A curve in the drain muffled the squeaking and babbling behind them, or perhaps the bogwoppits had arrived at the fork and turned back into the great chamber in which they had left their prisoner.

  Sure enough, indignant screams and protests rose suddenly from the shadows behind them. The next moment a sound like a pack of hounds in full cry reverberated down the drain, echoed by the splashing and the plashing of a hundred swimming furry bodies.

  19. Out of the Drain

  Lady Clandorris stumbled again in sudden fear. The noise was so appalling and so close behind them. To rescue her from the water Samantha was forced to use both hands, or her aunt would have sunk underneath the flood. The lamp went out with a hiss as it touched the water, and the chimney cracked with the snap of a bullet.

  Now they were in pitch darkness, but the only way was forwards with the stream. Fortunately the sides of the passage gave them a guide and they could only stumble on and on. Samantha supported her aunt, dragging her along and encouraging her. She surprised herself by all the brave and courageous things she found to say.

  ‘We are nearly at the grid!’ she told Aunt Daisy a dozen times. ‘We only have to lock the gate behind us to keep them out! I have the key safe in my pocket! Come on – hurry! Hurry! Oh hurry! You’re doing fine!’ The bogwoppit swam close behind them, whimpering under its breath. It sounded very frightened.

  ‘They’ll kill Boggy for letting me out!’ Lady Clandorris snuffled. ‘They never really trusted him because he was fond of you. They knew you were trying to rescue me. I must say, you did take a lot of trouble, Samantha!’

  It was the first time she had ever had a word of praise from her aunt, but there was no time to be lost in talking. The grid could not be far away, but how could they tell in the inky blackness? On the other hand the bogwoppits were coming closer and closer, while the One-and-Only’s whimpers had turned into shrieks of fear. It pressed closer and closer to Samantha’s legs, clawing at her sodden jeans and finally jumping on to her shoulders. The joint burden of carrying the bogwoppit and at the same time supporting her Aunt Daisy was almost more than Samantha could manage alone.

  All in a minute the bogwoppits were around her, in a swirling snatching heap, their wet furry bodies encircling her, diving between her legs, leaping over her shoulders. There was nothing she could do but keep a firm clasp of Lady Clandorris and struggle on as best she could, with the One-and-Only half choking her and shrieking blue murder. Suddenly they stumbled against the grid with such an impact that the One-and-Only was thrown against the bars, knocking its head and setting up a howl of pain.

  With her own face battered and bruised by a dozen resentful bogwoppits Samantha let go of her aunt to snatch the key from her wet pocket and fumble for the lock. It seemed a long time before she felt the keyhole under her fingers, but it was there, and the key fitted.

  Putting her shoulder firmly against the bars, Samantha opened the gate a chink and lowered her head. Then she pushed the cringing One-and-Only through the grid to the far side.

  ‘Now you! … Quickly!’ she told Lady Clandorris, pushing her after it.

  Her Aunt Daisy had suddenly come to life and was fighting a rearguard action with the swimming bogwoppits who were trying to drag her backwards along the drain. She showed very much the kind of spirit she must have contributed when she was fighting for her freedom when she was kidnapped. Shouting and scolding she banged their heads together, resisted the flailing of their wings and claws, and seemed actually to be enjoying the battle.

  ‘GO ON!’ shouted Samantha, holding open the gate, and trying to push her aunt towards the bars while at the same time preventing the bogwoppits from getting through.

  Finally Aunt Daisy fell through backwards, leaving Samantha struggling in the darkness against the army of bogwoppits who were trying in vain to get past her and up the passage to the kitchen.

  How long she resisted and struggled she never knew, but suddenly it was over, and she was down in the stream with her head only just above water and a bogwoppit sitting on her chest, while half a dozen more dragged her rapidly backwards through the water along the drain towards the great chamber and the marsh pools.

  Samantha heard their triumphant cries, and then came a clang! from the direction of the grid, with more splashing and a furious shouting as the One-and-Only and Lady Clandorris came to her rescue. She was almost dragged in pieces between them all as they joined in the battle, and the struggle in the darkness began all over again.

  But above all the shouting and the clamour a strange, new element
came stealing down the drain, growing stronger and stronger. It was the smell of disinfectant.

  Dropping their prisoner like a hot potato the bogwoppits swam for their lives; in half a minute they were gone, and even the surge of their flight was out of hearing.

  Samantha struggled to her feet in time to pick up the One-and-Only and hold it high above the water. It was already gasping for breath as the smell grew stronger.

  It flopped panting into her arms, its wings extended, its claws hanging useless. There was nothing Samantha could do but cradle it and murmur helpful promises and endearments while, free at last, she followed her aunt back through the grid, towards the unknown source of their rescue. When a distant beam of a torch could be seen reflected in the water ahead, Samantha fully expected to see Mr Price at the end of it, but instead, a perfectly strange and unknown voice echoed down the drain and the voice said:

  ‘And what the hell is going on down there?’

  Lady Clandorris, ablaze with fury and indignation at the conduct of the bogwoppits, was holding the remnants of her dressing gown round the shreds of all her other garments, put on like layers in a sandwich. She was also muttering: ‘Savages! Scallywags! Hooligans! Vandals! Dirty, delinquent, devilish little beasts!’ But at the sound of the voice she stopped short in her tracks so suddenly that Samantha and the bogwoppit bumped their noses into her back.

  ‘Sorry!’ said Samantha automatically.

  The bogwoppit gave a feeble moan.

  ‘That,’ said Lady Clandorris with the utmost conviction, ‘that is the voice of your Uncle Ernest!’

  The beam of a powerful torch blinded them as the holder came nearer. When he focused it on the water immediately in front of them Samantha saw, first a large pair of safari boots, then the rising curves of a fairly big stomach, covered in a tweed suit, and finally a round face, pinkish red, even in the shadows, topped by a deerstalker’s hat. Behind him, carrying another torch, but rather shrouded by Uncle Ernest’s large figure, was, sure enough, the welcome shape of Mr Price.

  ‘What are you doing down here in your dressing gown, Daisy?’ Uncle Ernest demanded, standing aside so that Lady Clandorris and Samantha could pass in front of him on their way back to the cellar. ‘And who is this wet person with the cat?’

  ‘This is your niece Samantha, Ernest,’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘My sister Gertie’s child. She cares about me. And it is not a cat.’

  ‘It’s one of them perishing rats out of the drain the Press are making such a fuss about!’ said Mr Price. He was dumbfounded to find that Samantha had been speaking the truth after all.

  When she had left him after telling her garbled tale, he found he could not work, nor even finish his sandwich, suspecting that something was going on up at the Park that concerned his beloved drains. He left the plumbing at the vicarage and went home on his moped, only to find that nobody had seen Samantha since dinner time, in spite of a party given to the children by the film people in the afternoon that might have been particularly likely to attract her.

  So Mr Price chugged up the drive in the rain to the Park, arriving at the same moment as a large Range Rover which was drawing up at the steps. Sir Ernest Clandorris was busy getting out of it.

  Sir Ernest did not waste too much time in deploring the state of disrepair into which his house had sunk during his absence. Doors were wide open, and the footprints of at least one person were crossing the hall, traversing the kitchen, and disappearing down the cellar stairs. The cellar was full of water, and the door into the drain was wide open.

  ‘The drain’s flooded!’ pronounced Mr Price, not without certain satisfaction. ‘Her ladyship never let me repair it proper. It’s six weeks now since she’s been gone and nobody has heard a word from her wherever she took herself to. She’s maybe gone abroad.’

  Sir Ernest’s reply was to hurry back to the car for a powerful torch. The footprints went down the steps, but they did not come back again. Hardly listening to the last part of Mr Price’s information he felt sure that the footprints must belong to his wife, and without wasting another word he plunged into the stream and entered the drain at the same moment when the piercing yells of the bogwoppits, combined with Lady Clandorris’s shouts and Samantha’s screams, came echoing back out of the darkness.

  Mr Price instinctively filled a couple of buckets that were floating about the cellar, dashed in some generous measures of disinfectant, and sent it swirling down the drain. The marsh water was just beginning to flow backwards as the rain had ceased. It carried the disinfectant down the current as it receded, pursuing the bogwoppits, who swam for their lives to safety.

  The One-and-Only had actually suffered very little damage from the first flow that reached him, for the mixture was already much diluted by the flood water. But the smell and the possible consequences had so affected the bogwoppit’s nerves that it fainted quite genuinely from sheer hysteria.

  When they had all arrived back in the kitchen Mr Price went straight off to open the sluice gate below the marsh pools that would carry the extra flood water away.

  Samantha with her aunt and her uncle waded out of the cellar into the hall, the bogwoppit hanging like a sodden leech on Samantha’s arm.

  ‘Who did you say this girl is?’ Uncle Ernest said, puzzled, staring at Samantha.

  ‘My niece. Our niece. My sister Gertie’s girl, Samantha. She is the bravest child I have ever met and she cares for me very much indeed!’ said Lady Clandorris.

  ‘How do you do, Samantha!’ said her Uncle Ernest. ‘Very pleased to meet you!’

  ‘How do you do!’ replied Samantha. ‘Please, if you will excuse me I will just go upstairs and give the bogwoppit a bath.’

  20. Today and Tomorrow

  ‘Give what a bath?’ said Sir Ernest Clandorris when Samantha had gone upstairs.

  ‘The bogwoppit,’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘It is an exceptionally intelligent and affectionate animal and Samantha is very attached to it. The bogwoppit cares for me too. It cares for me very much indeed.’

  ‘A bogwoppit!’ exclaimed Sir Ernest, looking completely amazed and incredulous. ‘But bogwoppits have been extinct for the last two centuries or more, until …’

  ‘They are certainly not extinct!’ said Lady Clandorris tartly. ‘There is a whole colony of them living in the drains of this house! And a whole colony of preservationists camped out in the Park taking pictures of them. And a whole colony of television and broadcasting people taking pictures of the other people taking pictures of the bogwoppits. Or so the bogwoppits tell me!’ she added.

  Sir Ernest looked at her closely. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you can understand their language?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I do!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘You couldn’t live with them for six or seven weeks without picking some of it up!’

  ‘You astonish me!’ said Sir Ernest.

  ‘You may well be astonished,’ his wife agreed. ‘You didn’t know I had been kidnapped, did you? I might have been left down the drain there for ever, for all you cared!’

  ‘But I did care!’ said Sir Ernest, reproachfully. ‘I came all the way home from the heart of the Amazonian jungle in South America to find you. I want you to come back with me to study the bogwoppits.’

  ‘The what?’ said Lady Clandorris.

  ‘I found some in a marsh pool in the jungle!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘I even watched them hatching. But I want to find out a whole lot more about them before I report it to the British Museum. I’ve built a little hut there, far away from anywhere, just the sort of little place you would like. I know you never liked living in the Park. You know you could have come with me before, when I first went. I asked you to. You know I did!’

  ‘I thought you were going with a party!’ snapped Lady Clandorris.

  ‘Well, I soon left them. Too much chatter!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘But what about it, old girl? We used to get along quite nicely once. I rather missed our yelling matches when there was nothing to shout at but the bogwoppits.’<
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  ‘Probably you can’t speak their language,’ said Lady Clandorris smugly.

  ‘Well if you can, Daisy, I can’t do without you!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘You have got to come back to the Amazonian jungle with me.’

  ‘But what about Samantha?’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘She wants me too.’

  ‘Samantha can come with us!’ said Sir Ernest expansively.

  ‘No I can’t!’ said Samantha, coming downstairs with the bogwoppit wrapped in a towel and looking happier. She had been listening to the conversation. ‘I have got to go to school, and I wouldn’t want to drop behind all my friends in education. Besides, I like living at the Park. Why have you got to go all the way to South America when you can study all the bogwoppits you want to in the marsh pools? It doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you both just live here with me and the bogwoppit?’

  ‘The bogwoppit can come to South America with us,’ said Lady Clandorris.

  ‘No it can’t,’ said Samantha firmly. ‘It is a British bogwoppit and the South American ones might kill it. Besides, I’m not going to South America!’

  ‘You are!’ said Lady Clandorris.

  ‘I’m not!’ said Samantha.

  At that moment there was a loud and very rusty ringing of the front door bell. Samantha deposited the bogwoppit on a chair and went to answer the door.

  It was Mr Price to say that the sluice gate was open and should have emptied all the water out of the cellar by now. Also that the bogwoppits seemed to be as lively as ever in the marsh pools, and should he dowse them all with disinfectant.

  ‘NO,’ said Sir Ernest and Samantha together very loudly.

  While Samantha and Lady Clandorris went on arguing about the One-and-Only and going or not going to South America Mr Price and Sir Ernest went to investigate the state of the cellar below.

  When they came back it appeared that Sir Ernest had asked Mr Price to build a solid cement partition at the cellar entrance to the drain, with no bars and no gate and no lock to it, so that the bogwoppits could not come in and it could never be opened again.