Mennyms Alive

by Sylvia Waugh

  “The year?” said Vinetta.

  “Yes,” said Tulip. “For all we know we might have slept for a century. Though I doubt it. It is my hope and belief that not even one year has passed.”

  “And if it has?” said Pilbeam, looking at her grandmother shrewdly, knowing that something must hinge upon this question of time. Appleby, who had lost two years before all this ever happened, or so they said, listened anxiously for the answer. Did being inanimate for more than a year do some irreparable damage? She looked furtively down at herself, clenching her fists and curling her toes inside her shoes. She didn’t feel any different . . .

  Tulip’s reply set her mind at rest on that score.

  “If our absence from life has lasted for more than a year and a day,” she said, “we will be much poorer. In fact, we will be virtually penniless. That, if you remember my telling you, is the arrangement I made with the bank and the building societies. They all have letters to be opened after that time has elapsed, and the letters instruct them to close our accounts and give all of our money to various charities.”

  Her words made Joshua aware of a small difficulty. Pounds were not his immediate concern. But he would need pence.

  “I am penniless now,” he said. “How do you expect me to buy a newspaper?”

  “No problem,” said Tulip. “Virtually does not mean absolutely. There is a little ready cash at our disposal. If I may borrow one of your hairgrips, Hortensia . . .”

  They all gave her a look of puzzlement. Miss Quigley was as puzzled as any of them, but she would not have had the temerity to ask why, and, besides, she always felt disarmed when Tulip called her ‘Hortensia’. She handed Googles over to Vinetta and immediately removed a long, thin hairgrip from her bun.

  “Will that do?” she said.

  “That’s fine,” said Tulip, feeling the sharp end of the hairgrip. “Now I’m going to see Magnus. I won’t be more than a few minutes. I’ll bring your coat down for you, Joshua. There’s no need for any of you to come up.”

  Magnus had dozed off again. This new situation was exhausting, a very bad, bewildering dream. If he must go on living, he wanted to be Sir Magnus Mennym again, lodged in his own room at Brocklehurst Grove. He wanted to be free of all these dreadful uncertainties.

  “Rouse yourself, Magnus,” said Tulip. “Sleeping will get us nowhere. I have work to do.”

  “Work?” said Magnus, coming sharply to attention. “What work?”

  Tulip drew a stool up to the side of the bed.

  “Rest your foot on this,” she said, “and keep it still.”

  Magnus glared at her but did as he was told. Then he remembered. In his foot, his precious purple foot, the left one, Tulip had hidden the family fortune. It was a thought, an up thought rather than a down thought, but not ‘up’ enough to cure his despondency.

  “Much good money will do us now,” he growled. “We’re stuck here. No amount of money will get us out of this mess.”

  Tulip said nothing. Only she knew exactly how much there was in the bank and the building societies. Only she knew how the money might some day be used. She drew the curtains and switched on the light. Then she sat down and, taking the hairgrip between finger and thumb, began carefully to unpick the stitching of a seam that ran along the edge of Magnus’s foot, from the base of the heel to where his little toe would be, if he had toes.

  Bits of kapok fluttered like feathers from the hole she made. Then, when the opening was wide enough, she put in her hand and drew out a brown paper parcel. It was well-sealed and tightly packed.

  “Now,” she said, “you must not let your foot hang over the side of the bed till I have repaired it. Keep it on the stool, or on the bed if that’s more comfortable. It shouldn’t be hard to find some material to stuff it with. But first I must see to this parcel.”

  Tulip undid the package, unrolling it across the top of the bedside table from which she first removed the bowl of fruit.

  The parcel lay in a straight line with a variety of things in pouches, a bit like a toolkit. Only these pouches held bank books, credit cards and a bank card that could give access to money from the cash machine. Of more importance at the moment, however, was the small purse that contained coins of various denominations and a couple of five pound notes.

  “That will do,” said Tulip removing some of the cash. Then, on a thought, she also picked up the bank card. “I’m just popping downstairs, Magnus. I won’t be long.”

  Magnus looked at his tattered foot.

  “Then what?” he said tersely.

  “I’ll repair your foot,” said Tulip, “and I’ll find somewhere more convenient to hide our worldly wealth.”

  “You have needle and thread all to hand?” said Magnus in a heavily sarcastic voice.

  “Naturally,” said his wife, picking up a card of purple cotton from the parcel. Two needles of different sizes were slotted into it. “It’s not much use thinking at all, if you don’t think of everything!”

  She took Joshua’s coat from the wardrobe and went downstairs.

  CHAPTER 8

  Joshua

  IT WAS DARK when Joshua opened the front door and slipped out into the silent street. He looked about him, saw the broad walkway the other side of the road, beyond which was the river. Downstream were the lights on the bridges and in the city, but here was darkness that the lamps were too weak to conquer. Even the globes on the promenade did no more than give a fairy glow.

  Joshua made sure that the street was really deserted. Then he stepped out of the doorway of Number 39 and turned left to see who or what occupied the ground floor.

  It was a shop. Shutters of heavy wire mesh covered the glass. Joshua peered through into a space that was lit only faintly by the street lamp on the corner. He stepped back sharply as he saw someone sitting there at what looked like a sewing machine. But in an instant he realised that the figure was some sort of dummy. His eyes became accustomed to the gloom and he made out other things – tables, chairs and an assortment of small furniture.

  A secondhand shop, he thought, or maybe an antique dealer’s. More than likely, something in between. The owner could be some sort of collector. And rag dolls, he thought wryly, might well be considered collectable.

  He crossed to the other side of the road and looked up at the shop sign. It was very difficult to make out by lamplight, but it looked like “I”, or maybe “L”, “& P. Waggons”. The shop had a broad frontage with a big window either side of the doorway. To the right hand side of it, a short lane ran steeply up towards the town. It was a cobbled street with a narrow pavement either side.

  Joshua turned up the lane. The riverside was left behind him and, walking quickly, he soon found himself on more familiar ground. Cutting through an alleyway, he rejoined the main road again and came to the railway viaduct. Half way up the hill, he turned right, onto a steep flight of steps between high buildings that led up to the Market Place. From there he crossed into the High Street where the shop of a Shell Station was open late and had, thank goodness, a rack of newspapers near the pay window. Joshua selected two of them and handed over the right money.

  “Not a bad night,” said the man in the kiosk. “Quite summery.”

  “Not bad for May,” said Joshua, his head down looking at the date on the newspaper. He hurried away, well pleased that much less than a year had passed since last he had walked the streets of Castledean. He was eager to get back to North Shore Road to let his mother know, but his mission was not yet complete. There was still very important work to do. He left the garage, crossed the High Street and walked down to Brocklehurst Grove.

  When he came to the front gate he looked in at the garden. Even at this hour of the night he could tell that no gardener was tending it. The hedge was reaching over the wall into the street. Weeds were growing up the gate-posts. The house beyond was in total darkness. There was surely nobody living there. But was Soobie still inside?

  Joshua stepped back onto the green and craned
his neck to inspect the windows in the roof of Number 5, in case there might be a light there. A light in the attic, he reasoned, and nowhere else in the house, would surely mean that Soobie was still up there. Vain hope! The windows in the roof were invisible in the darkness.

  He went back to the gate and, with some hesitation, he opened it and walked slowly up the familiar path. He found himself longing for a return to the old order. I was so content with things as they were, he thought. If only I could be back in my old nightwatchman’s job at Sydenham’s, pretending to drink chocolate from my Port Vale mug . . . that would be happiness.

  He looked at the front of the house and had not the faintest idea what to do next. Without keys, he could not enter. To ring the doorbell would be pointless if no one answered, perhaps disastrous if anyone did! But suppose Soobie was still inside, just Soobie?

  Joshua went close to the lounge window and put his face against the glass. The curtains were not closed. That must mean something. But to see anything through the nets in such darkness was impossible.

  Joshua decided to make his way to the back of the house. He stayed close to the wall and followed the path up the lefthand side, past the windows of the nursery and the breakfast-room, coming at length to the kitchen and the back door. He looked up at the back of the house. There was even less to see than at the front because there was no light from anywhere. The curtains, as far as he could see, were just as the Mennyms had left them – not too wide open, but not closed enough to look odd in daytime.

  Joshua walked right round the building, returning to the front door from the opposite direction. He stood a while longer. Then he made up his mind. He gave two sharp rings on the doorbell, heard them echo through the empty house and trembled. For a minute he waited. Nothing happened. He rang again, more boldly, and stepped back to look up at the windows. No one came.

  Joshua left the garden and walked quickly out of the street. His heart was weighed down with sadness because he had not found Soobie and he did not know what more he could do.

  He was making his way back to the riverside when he remembered one other thing Tulip had asked him to undertake. In his pocket was the bank card. “If the year is not up,” she had said, “find a cash machine. Take out two hundred pounds. That will serve so many purposes. I will know that everything is in working order. The bank will know that I am still using my account. And we shall have more cash in hand.”

  He went to the machine outside the bank in Deacon Street, pressed all the right buttons, and was given a handful of notes. Tulip would be pleased. But Vinetta? Vinetta would be heartbroken. Her husband was returning home with no word of their son.

  CHAPTER 9

  Meanwhile . . .

  WHEN JOSHUA LEFT the house, the others began to disperse. Poopie was the first to go. He made a brief foray into the nursery and then went back to his own room with his prize. No matter what any of them might say about leaving everything as they found it, there was no way he was going to let Googles keep his rabbit. He had spotted it in the playpen whilst they were searching the house for Soobie and had been silently indignant. That rabbit was his. It was not a toy! It was part of an elaborate pretend – a real, pretend rabbit called Paddy Black who was Poopie’s own pet. Poopie stroked its head, smoothed back its long ears and gave it a good talking to.

  “I can’t turn my back on you,” he said. “What d’you want to go and get in the playpen for? Googles could pull you to bits. She wouldn’t mean it. She’s just a baby. But you can’t trust babies with animals. You should have the sense to know that.”

  Miss Quigley knew all about the limitations of babies.

  “I don’t know how I’ll manage to get Googles to stay still and be quiet if anyone comes,” she said with a worried look at Vinetta and Tulip.

  “I could stitch her lips together,” said Tulip in a voice that sounded as if she meant it, though of course she didn’t. “I have got a needle and thread.”

  Vinetta and Hortensia looked horrified.

  “You can’t mean that, Tulip,” said Vinetta. “It would be barbaric.”

  “Well,” said Tulip, “what I do mean is that you have a problem and you will have to solve it somehow. There’s no ‘if’ about it. Somebody will come. And when they do, Googles will have to be as stiff and as silent as the rest of us. You’ll have to manage it – one way, or another. Now, I must go back to Magnus. You can both stay down here and start training the baby to stay still in your arms.”

  “She wasn’t in my arms,” said Miss Quigley with growing consternation. “She was in the playpen.”

  “Difficult,” said Tulip, “but if it takes you all the hours between now and Monday morning, you’ll have to do it.”

  “But the baby needs her sleep,” said Miss Quigley, unable so easily to abandon a deeply-ingrained pretend.

  “Not that baby,” said Tulip maliciously. “You must not allow her to sleep till she understands fully what is expected of her. Otherwise, well otherwise, who knows what I might have to do!”

  Miss Quigley drew herself up to her full height and clutched Googles protectively. When she spoke her words were brief but definite.

  “By tomorrow,” she said, “Googles will have learnt a new trick. I shall say the word and she will be totally still and silent.”

  With that she swept off to the nursery. How she was going to manage to do it, she did not know, but do it she would. No one, no one, could be allowed to harm the most precious baby on the planet!

  Vinetta followed her.

  Appleby gave a sigh of relief after they had gone. Wimpey was sitting on the window ledge, hidden by the curtain, looking out onto the street and watching for her father to return. Appleby and Pilbeam were left virtually alone together. It was the chance that Appleby had been waiting for. She moved her chair closer to Pilbeam’s and, in a quiet voice, began to ask all the questions she had been bottling up for the past few hours.

  “Now tell me everything,” she said. “I want to know everything that has happened from the moment the door in the attic closed again.”

  “That was well over two years ago,” said Pilbeam. “There’s a lot to tell. You were dead for two years.”

  “And you were not living for forty,” said Appleby irritably, reminding her sister that she had remained an unfinished doll in the attic at Brocklehurst Grove till Soobie discovered her and Vinetta brought her to life. It was something that was mostly forgotten and that Pilbeam preferred to pretend had never happened.

  It was a hurtful thing to say, but Pilbeam glossed over it. She understood Appleby better than any of them and usually she knew how to keep her in check. But this was different. Pilbeam was simply overjoyed that her sister, who was also her best friend, was living again, faults and all.

  All the while they were talking in low tones, Wimpey sat behind the curtain and gazed down at the street. It was interesting, even though the place was deserted. It was almost exciting. Looking straight ahead, she could see on the other side of the dark road the globes that lit the promenade. To her left, she could see the lights on the bridges, especially the Dean Bridge with its elegant arch. At intervals, she saw trains cross the upper level of the Victoria Bridge, and across the black sky came the occasional flicker of an aeroplane’s lights as it headed for the airport. It was, she thought guiltily, much more interesting than Brocklehurst Grove!

  The hours crept by, but Wimpey remained awake and attentive. Then, just as her interest was beginning to flag, she looked along the street and gave a great gasp as she saw something, someone . . .

  “Soobie!” she yelled. “Mum! Granny! Everybody! Look! Look! Look!”

  Under the streetlamp on the corner, she had seen her brother in his blue tracksuit, jogging along, looking swiftly to his left and right. It was him, she knew it was.

  But by the time her sisters came to the window, carefully pulling the curtains round their shoulders, the runner was out of sight.

  “There’s no one there,” said Appleby, irritate
d at being disturbed. “You’ve imagined it.”

  “I didn’t. Honest I didn’t,” said Wimpey, turning to Pilbeam for support. They went back into the room. Vinetta came in from the nursery to see what the shouting was about. Wimpey was upset at not being believed, and overwrought and overtired. Vinetta took her on her knee and gently stroked her hair. Ten is definitely not too old to be nursed, if the occasion calls for nursing.

  “You did see someone running,” said Vinetta. “I’m sure you did. But it might have been anyone. Soobie is not the only one who goes jogging at night.”

  “It was Soobie,” Wimpey persisted. “I know it was.”

  “It might have been,” sighed her mother. “We have no way of knowing.”

  At that moment there was a tap at the front door. Joshua had returned with the newspapers, the money and the news that Soobie was nowhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER 10

  Deductions and Decisions

  “WHAT ARE WE going to do?” said Vinetta. “He must be somewhere.”

  All the business of newspapers and money was just so much trivia compared with her anxiety over Soobie. Vinetta was not so easily distracted from what to her was the main issue.

  Wimpey snuggled up to her. She listened without understanding to Tulip’s plans for putting all things in motion to retrieve the family’s savings. She heard Pilbeam and Appleby commenting on articles in the newspapers, scattering sheets across the furniture. New knowledge came in a jumbled heap. But Wimpey knew what was most important to her mother, and Wimpey knew that she really had seen Soobie.

  “He was outside, Mum,” she said. “I know he was. I saw him. He was jogging.”

  The word “jogging” acted as an inspiration for Appleby.

  “He would be,” she said, looking up from the page she was reading. “He always goes jogging late at night. That will be why he wasn’t in when Dad rang the bell.”

  “You really think that?” said Vinetta eagerly. Joshua also considered this idea, and nodded.