Mennyms Alone

by Sylvia Waugh

  Lorna and Albert said little about the attic and nothing at all about the blue doll, except that there was another small job that needed doing. Jennifer changed the subject immediately, but did not look displeased. Albert, suspecting the truth, gave his mother-in-law a smile that was almost conspiratorial.

  Somewhere upstairs, Ian and Keith could be heard having an argument. Anna was playing her recorder, the same set of notes, over and over again. When Matthew began to cry, Lorna decided it was time to go home. The house in Calder Park was so beautifully quiet.

  All in all, it was an ordinary, unremarkable evening.

  But in the attic at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove, something was about to happen. Something wonderful.

  Through the two grimy skylight windows, the evening sunlight filtered in onto the dust and the cobwebs. Perfect stillness, total silence. Then, oh then, the chair began to rock with a slow and gentle motion. And Soobie, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, sat up straight, and turned his wrist to look at his watch. It was seven-thirty p.m. on Saturday the tenth of May.

  At Number 39 North Shore Road, at that precise moment, a more vigorous action broke the stillness. A purple foot kicked its way irascibly out of the counterpane.

  Kate Penshaw was returning to her people . . .

  Read on for the first chapter of

  Mennyms Alive . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  Where are We?

  “MUM! DAD! WHAT’S happened? Where am I? Where am I?”

  The voice was high-pitched with terror.

  After months in limbo, Poopie Mennym had sprung to life. His arms flayed the air in movements as yet uncontrolled. The training tower that rose in front of him crashed to the floor. Pieces of rigid plastic scattered like matches spilt from a box.

  Poopie had been sitting doll-still and lifeless with his back resting against the side of the bed, his feet tucked under him out of harm’s way – not interfering at all with the orange plastic tower. That was how Billy Maughan had left him after building the model assault course of which the tower was the focal point. Action Men figures were carefully arranged on it and beneath it, to appear as if on manoeuvres . . .

  Poopie stared, startled, at the devastation he had caused. His yellow hair was tousled. His bright blue button eyes could almost see again, but he saw as one learning to see, focussing imperfectly and feeling terror.

  The room was one he had never seen before, with walls, a door and a window that had no place in his memory. The ceiling was much higher than any of the ceilings he had ever known. Poopie stood up shakily, stumbled to the door with what haste he could muster, and flung it wide open.

  Outside was a narrow passage lit only by fanlight windows above each bedroom door. There was no one in sight, but someone was speaking, quite loudly.

  “Magnus! Magnus! Wake up! Wake up!”

  Poopie was relieved to recognise his grandmother’s voice calling urgently in the room next door. He dashed in. There was Granny Tulip bending over Granpa and shaking his arm. His purple foot dangled over the side of the bed. His mittened hands were beginning frantically to clutch the air.

  “What? What, what what?” he muttered.

  Poopie ran to Tulip’s side.

  “Where are we, Granny?” he cried. “How did we get here?”

  Granny Tulip looked round the room, bewildered, yes, but already gaining self-control and beginning to take a measure of the situation. The last thing she could remember was being at home in Brocklehurst Grove, huddled in one room with the rest of the family and feeling irritated, waiting for something that she knew was not going to happen. But it had! My goodness it had!

  For here she was, in a different house, but surrounded by many of her own belongings. She had no idea how the change had come about. It seemed impossible. To be in one place one minute, and somewhere entirely different the next. What had happened to the time between? Who had brought them here?

  It would need to be accounted for somehow. Tulip, whose cheque-books were always correct to the last penny, whose skilful knitting never had the least unevenness, was quite prepared to take on the task of finding explanations. To her way of thinking, there was no question to which the answer could not be found if one looked methodically.

  “I don’t know how we got here,” she said, looking down at her grandson, crystal eyes glittering behind her little spectacles. “But we’ll soon find out.”

  Her appearance was the same as ever. Her blue and white checked apron was clean and neat. Above it, the little lace collar was crisp, and her dark blue dress was one Poopie had been used to see her wearing at any time in the past forty-odd years. That was tremendously reassuring.

  “Where are Mum and Dad?” said Poopie, clutching Tulip’s hand as if he were an infant and not a boy of ten. Poopie had always been ten. His tenth birthday came round every Christmas.

  “They’ll be about here somewhere,” said Tulip firmly. “As soon as Granpa’s properly awake, we’ll go and look for them. Unless you’d like to go on ahead yourself?”

  “No,” said Poopie in alarm. “I’ll just wait here for you.”

  At that moment, Magnus sat bolt upright and settled his trembling hands firmly on the counterpane, defying them to make another wobbly move. But his white moustache quivered, betraying the emotions he was trying to hide. He looked from Tulip to Poopie. He glanced round the room, the alien room that his black button eyes had never looked upon before.

  The window was long and narrow with crimson curtains trailing the floor. The high ceiling had plaster all rucked up like icing on a cake. A dark floral paper covered the walls, its petals and stems closely entwined so that the pattern showed no background colour. But the unfamiliar room was not what most distressed Magnus.

  Magnus the academic, Magnus who had written screeds about battles long ago, had a sudden grasp of what had happened. They had all been dead, as he had predicted. Now they were alive again. But where were they? And what had happened to bring this all about? To live again, anywhere on this earth, was so profoundly unexpected and, to him at least, unwelcome.

  “What’s she playing at?” he growled, as consciousness came in uncomfortable waves. “This is not how it was meant to be . . . This should never have happened . . .”

  “Well it has,” said Tulip. “So you might as well get used to the idea.”

  “New problems,” said Magnus weakly as another wave of weariness flowed over him. He was alive. He knew he was alive. But he was very, very tired.

  “Fresh opportunities,” said Tulip, squeezing Poopie’s hand. “We have managed before, we can manage again.”

  “Find the others,” said Magnus with no enthusiasm. “I suppose we’ll have to see what must be done.”

  In the living-room on the floor below, Vinetta and Joshua Mennym were coming back to life, like patients emerging dozily from an anaesthetic. As their eyes became able to see again, they looked round and tried to make sense of their new and unexpected environment. Each was seated in a large armchair facing the television set.

  “That’s our TV set,” said Vinetta. They were the first words she had uttered in many months. She looked down at the arm of her chair.

  “These are our chairs,” she said. Her eyes searched the room, seeing more and more familiar pieces of furniture.

  “But I have never seen this room before,” she concluded. The high ceiling had an ornate rose in the centre and a deep cornice round the edge. The wall-paper was dark green, embossed with faint gilt garlands. The carpet on the floor was thin and old, its pattern long-faded.

  What this all meant was impossible to know in those first waking moments, but Vinetta’s immediate concern was not to look for explanations but to see whether the others were there with her, and living. She glanced round at Joshua, who nodded and then shrugged his shoulders in a manner that said, what are we to make of all this?

  Vinetta then looked across to where her eldest daughter, Pilbeam, was sitting in a carver chair that had come from the d
ining room at Brocklehurst Grove. She too was beginning to revive. She raised one arm and placed it behind her back as if to relieve stiffness. Her head turned on her neck, causing her long black hair to move from side to side, but she was still not fully conscious of her surroundings.

  Next to Pilbeam, on a matching chair, sat Appleby. The red-headed fifteen-year-old was sitting stiffly upright with one hand on each chair-arm, her legs stretched out in front of her, her feet crossed at the ankles. She was wearing jeans and a brightly-patterned shirt. She showed no sign of any movement. Vinetta saw how still she was, and sighed.

  When Vinetta had last seen Appleby, she had been dressed in a pink nightdress, lying in bed at Brocklehurst Grove, her long red hair brushed down onto her shoulders. She had lain like that for two whole years, no longer a personality, just a lifeless doll. And, though differently dressed now, there was no indication that her state had changed.

  She has been dead longer than the rest of us, thought Vinetta sadly. Her death was different. To expect her to live again is just too much to hope for.

  On the floor in front of Vinetta, Wimpey, Poopie’s twin sister, began to stir, rocking backwards and resting her shoulders against her mother’s knee. Awareness came slowly as she craned round to look at her parents. The expression in her pale blue eyes was dazed and wondering. She remembered the last moments in Brocklehurst Grove. She remembered the fear she had felt. Now she was in a room she could not recognise.

  “Where have I been? Where am I?” she said, after struggling to find the question she wanted to ask. She was wearing her gingham dress and her hair was tied in bunches. Nothing about her had changed, but she felt different. Her mother looked the same – black curly hair, gentle features and speckled blue eyes. Her father looked the same, his brown hair peppered with grey, his amber lozenge eyes reserved and serious.

  Joshua, ever practical, stood up and walked to the nearest window. It was nothing like the windows in Brocklehurst Grove. It was a long sash window, reaching nearly to the lofty ceiling, one of a pair on the same wall. From it, in the light of a clear evening, Joshua saw the road and the river and, far away to his left, downstream, the familiar bridges that linked Castledean and Rimstead.

  “Well,” he said, “it may not be much comfort, but at least we’re not very far from home.”

  About the Author

  Sylvia Waugh lives in Gateshead. She taught English at a local school for many years but has now given up teaching to devote her time to writing. She has three grown up children and two grandsons.

  Also by Sylvia Waugh

  The Mennyms

  Mennyms in the Wilderness

  Mennyms Under Siege

  Mennyms Alive

  The Ormingat series:

  Space Race

  Earthborn

  Who goes Home?

  Praise for the Mennyms Sequence

  ‘Brilliant’ Independent

  ‘An extraordinary book, quite unlike anything that has been written for years . . . a classic’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Wise, witty . . . fantastic’ Financial Times

  ‘Wonderfully original’ Guardian

  ‘Remarkable’ TES

  ‘All the ingredients of a classic fantasy on the lines of The Borrowers’ The Bookseller

  The Mennyms won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award (1994)

  MENNYMS ALONE

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19540 4

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2014

  Copyright © Sylvia Waugh 1996

  First Published in Great Britain by Julia MacRae, 1996

  The right of Sylvia Waugh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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