The Umbrella Mouse

by Anna Fargher

  ‘No,’ Pip snapped, defiantly scowling into the rat’s empty black eyes. But inside, she felt more frightened than ever and she held her arms tightly by her sides to control her trembling limbs. She was an umbrella mouse and she wasn’t letting anyone take her home, her history and her last piece of Mama and Papa. It was all she had left.

  Dot and Joe shivered with fear beside her and began carefully edging away from the rat and sparrow, who were baring their teeth at Pip like wild animals about to pounce on their prey.

  ‘What did you just say?’ the sparrow said, feathers ruffling furiously all over its body.

  ‘Careful, mate,’ the rat growled. ‘St Giles can be a very dangerous place, especially for little ’uns.’

  Pip stood on her tiptoes and glared into the sparrow’s cold, black eyes.

  ‘I said – NO!’

  Instantly, the rat snapped its claws around her neck and lifted her off the ground. Seeing their chance for escape, Joe snatched Dot’s paw in his and they bolted back towards the market, vanishing in the gloom like spectres into shadows. Gasping desperately for air, Pip thrashed wildly in the rat’s grasp and managed to free herself. She dropped to the ground on all fours, breathless, and dashed to the umbrella at once. She guarded it, feeling the fur along her spine bristle with terror and fury.

  ‘You wriggly little blighter!’ the rat said in astonishment.

  ‘Look at her!’ the sparrow sniggered. ‘Do you really think a little mouse like you can stop us taking what we want?’

  ‘I’ll never let you take my umbrella away from me!’ Pip growled. ‘You stay away from us!’

  ‘We’ll see about that!’ the rat said, stalking forward beside the sparrow and curling its lips around its long yellow teeth in a snarl. Holding her breath, Pip clenched her paws into fists.

  It was then that a great flash of fur burst headlong into the fray. A fearful growl sounded, the sounds of a scuffle, then a splash, closely followed by a second. Pip watched the rat and sparrow caught in the swirl of the water, desperately scrapping with one another as they struggled to keep their heads above the fetid surface. Gasping, they bobbed and ducked under, the inky black water swallowing them whole. Suddenly the tunnel was quiet, save for the sounds of the underground river flowing into the gloom.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Dickin asked, rushing to Pip and affectionately touching his furry forehead to her own with relief.

  ‘Yes,’ Pip said, wobbling to her hind paws, trying to ignore the fear still pulsing through her little body. ‘I think I’m OK.’

  ‘You ninny!’ he growled, gently cuffing the back of her ears. Wincing, she hung her head in shame. ‘Where are yer mates? I told ya to stay with them and not leave the tea stall. You’re lucky those crooks didn’t skin ya alive!’

  ‘What friends? They ran away to save their own skins, just like they’ve done before! And what was I supposed to do?’ she snapped. She felt stupid enough without Dickin telling her off. ‘That rat and sparrow told me you lied about Mr King and your Jack to get me to come to St Giles.’

  ‘What?’ Dickin said, his ears drooping on his head.

  ‘They said I was in trouble for not signing a form telling them I was an orphan and I’d have to pay a fine. They told me that you weren’t coming back for me and that they were going to help me instead.’ She paused, feeling her chest swell with anger. ‘How was I supposed to know they were going to trick me? I don’t know this place and I don’t know you! How do I know you won’t try to hurt me too? Or steal the umbrella as well! Or run away to save your own skin! I never should have come here with you.’

  ‘Shhh, Pip,’ he said softly, sitting on his haunches and drawing her close to him with his paw. She buried her face in his soft belly fur and whimpered. ‘It’s all right, love, you’re safe now. There are real friends in this world and then there are those that hurt ya after they seemed to be on yer side. They’re there to teach us who to trust and when to stand alone and it ain’t ever an easy lesson to learn. But I promise ya, I’m yer mate. I always will be and I’m sorry, I never should have left ya like I did.’

  At that moment, Pip’s insides leaped with surprise, as she felt a warm, bony paw rest heavily on her shoulder.

  ‘Worry not, little one,’ said a voice that she knew was not from Britain. ‘Without mistakes, your life will never know adventure.’

  Comforted by his words, she looked up to meet his gaze, but at once she turned her eyes away with a shiver. The rat was tall and lean with rich, dark fur. His ears were scratched to ribbons and jagged scars were torn across his face and body.

  ‘Pip, this is Hans,’ Dickin said, reading the fear in Pip’s eyes. ‘He’s German but you can trust him. He’s on our side and he’s fought bravely for the Allied cause.’

  ‘Introductions can wait,’ Hans said, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. ‘Where there’s one crook there are many and I don’t intend to be here when they come scavenging for a fight.’

  ‘Climb up, Pip,’ Dickin said, standing on four paws and dipping his head to the ground with a wag of his tail. ‘And make sure you get a good hold.’

  She clutched the dog’s fur in both front paws and clambered to Dickin’s collar, taking a firm grip of his wiry, black coat behind his neck. Hans followed, agilely climbing up beside her. Pip shied away, feeling a prickly uneasiness being so close to him, but what happened next made her forget he even existed.

  Dickin picked up the umbrella in his teeth and cast it into the rushing black water.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BERNARD BOOTH

  Dickin sprang after the umbrella, soaring though the air and plunging into the cold underground canal. Instantly the current carried them through the gloom. Panting with effort, Dickin caught the umbrella between his teeth and began awkwardly paddling across the rushing water.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d chuck this beauty away, did ya?’ he said, his muffled voice echoing off the walls. Pip breathed a sigh of relief.

  A few minutes brought them to a junction where the tunnel split, going in two directions. To the right, the water increased in speed, gushing downwards into the shadows. Feeling it tug at his paws, Dickin swam hard to the left. Treading water for a moment at the point of no return, he struggled out of its grasp and entered a brick tunnel off to the left. The water quickly grew calm and soon he no longer needed to swim. Wading through the murky water, they arrived in a large, square chamber with a domed ceiling and a pair of enormous rusty doors fixed to the furthest wall. Dragging his dripping wet body on to two stone steps above the water, Dickin gently dropped the umbrella at the foot of the doors as Pip and Hans dismounted beside him.

  ‘What is this place?’ Pip said, staring wide-eyed at the chamber.

  ‘This is a part of the ancient River Fleet,’ Dickin said. ‘It runs from Hampstead in North London and flows south, underground, until it reaches the River Thames.’

  ‘Why did I never know it was here?’

  ‘Not many do since London was built over it and it was turned into a sewer, but it ain’t all bad that it’s been forgotten. You’ll see.’

  The rat stepped forward and thumped the door with a loud, hollow clang. A moment later, a tiny peephole slid open.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a deep voice boomed from the other side of the door. A solitary eye stared through the hole, suspiciously flicking between Pip, Dickin and Hans. ‘State your name and purpose.’

  ‘It’s Hans,’ the rat said, rolling his eyes with an impatient sigh. ‘We have come with a friend to see Bernard Booth.’

  The peephole snapped shut. A click followed, then a long groan as the huge door opened just enough for Dickin, Pip, Hans and the umbrella carried above their heads to step inside. Astonished, Pip saw the porter was not a giant creature at all, but a tiny field mouse looking through the peephole by means of a ladder, his booming voice having come from a long, black speaking trumpet he held by his side. The field mouse jumped to a rope hanging nearby and slowly slid down it to the ground. A
moment later, water cascaded over a vast timber wheel that stood against the inner wall. As it turned, the enormous door closed with a deep, metallic thud.

  ‘Good evening,’ the tiny field mouse said with great authority, especially for one so small. ‘Bernard is in his office. You know where to go.’

  Still sopping wet, Dickin gave Pip a nudge with his nose.

  ‘Watch this.’

  The dog stood next to the field mouse and gleefully shook himself from head to tail.

  ‘Dickin! You rotten mongrel!’ squealed the field mouse. His sodden fur hung from his skinny little body and obscured his eyes, making his ears look as big as balloons on top of his head. Pip giggled for the first time since the bomb had hit. It felt strange and unfamiliar, as if she was laughing inside a different body.

  ‘That never gets old!’ Dickin laughed, triumphantly trotting forward with his head held high and his tail wagging from side to side.

  Ahead was the strangest room Pip had ever seen. Electric Christmas lights were again hung from the arched ceiling and brick walls, but it was the hub of activity they illuminated on the concrete floor below that amazed her. The huge square room was divided into quarters, each part using a section of wall. In the front half, a map of the world covered with pins dominated the space to the left and rows of desks made up the section to the right. A mixture of mice, rats, blackbirds, robins, sparrows and blue tits sat at the desks, intensely focusing on scribbling notes while wearing little black headphones and pressing little rectangular triggers, making strange ditting and dahhing sounds.

  An albino rat moved about them collecting their papers before briskly walking to the rear half of the room. A map of Europe was fixed above a large table, where twelve more small animals sat on chairs made from matchboxes. As the white rat delivered the messages and returned to the other side of the room, the animals at the large table pored over the notes with their brows furrowed in thought. Next to this section was a tall metal house with ‘BREAD’ printed on its outside wall, and smoke trickled from a chimney that had the word ‘SPAM’ just visible under a layer of soot. Behind it stood a row of four blue and brown smaller houses, each with a pigeon roosting inside and ‘HUNTLEY & PALMER’S BREAKFAST BISCUITS’ written in blue on each wall.

  As Pip, Dickin and Hans approached, only one animal looked up. Standing between the metal house and the animals working feverishly under the map of Europe, an elderly pigeon with pale grey feathers, a round purple belly and a double chin lowered a document from his gaze and quizzically cocked his head in their direction. Tapping the ground with his walking stick, he tottered towards them, tucking the papers under his wing.

  ‘Good afternoon, Dickin, Hans.’ He smiled, pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles up his beak as he watched the rat and Pip lower the umbrella to the ground. ‘Gosh. Who have we here?’

  ‘This is Pip Hanway,’ Dickin said, sitting down. ‘She needs your help, sir. We’ve just come from St Giles.’

  ‘Well, I will help as best I can,’ the pigeon said, hobbling towards her. He took her little paw in his wing and firmly shook it. Pip stared into his intelligent amber eyes and quickly looked away. The bird had an air of wisdom and authority that made her nervous. ‘I am Bernard Booth. Sit, rest – you’re looking awfully peaky, I must say. Don’t be shy. Here –’ he walked over to the house and pulled a white dice with black spots from under a small table on the porch – ‘sit.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Pip said timidly, and wearily clambered on to the dice. Dickin sat on the ground next to her, while Hans slumped on to an old cotton reel on her other side with a sigh of relaxation and stretched his legs out before him.

  Pip looked around the room with growing curiosity. Seeing the animals frown and stick the tips of their tongues out of the corners of their mouths in concentration, she was sure the strange ‘ditdit-dit-dah’ sounds punctuating the silence meant something very important. So must the multicoloured pins dotted all over the two maps. She longed to have a closer look but at that moment, a rattle turned her head. Standing in the doorway to his metal house, clutching the doorframe with one wing, Bernard held a tray with a china teapot, cups and saucers, and a dish with a lid that did not match. A glorious, sweet smell wafted from it.

  ‘Lucky for you . . .’ Bernard cooed with a wobble. At once the rat jumped from his stool, took the tray from him and placed it gently on the table. The pigeon’s joints creaked with effort as he hobbled towards them, leaning on his walking stick. When comfortably seated between Pip and Hans, he lifted the lid of the dish. ‘You’re just in time for afternoon tea.’

  ‘Victoria sponge!’ cried Pip with a broad smile that popped her whiskers upright on her cheeks. ‘We only have cake at Christmas!’

  ‘Like so many of us – wartime rationing makes cake a rare sight for us all,’ Bernard cooed, pouring tea into a cup and handing it to her. ‘As you would have seen, St Giles is the gathering ground for every creature in trouble, no matter where they are from. But sadly, desperate times attract crooks and thieves, who profit from stolen goods and black market trading – selling snatched rations at ridiculously unfair prices. But here we’re not far from the Savoy Hotel and they have marvellous food in their cupboards – unrationed tea, sugar, meat and wine – that they sell to legally paying customers, so if we’re careful and have a little bit of luck, we get some good scraps from time to time.’ He took a bite of the cake and sighed with contentment. ‘And when the world seems mad, sometimes it takes just one simple pleasure for it to make sense again. Eat, eat!’

  The cake melted in their mouths. Every bite took Pip far away from where she was, where she had been that day and where she had to go. For the first time, she felt a twinge of excitement for the journey ahead. Mama and Papa would have been pleased she was going to find her mother’s family at the umbrella museum. But thinking of them immediately brought tears to her eyes and she fiercely wished they were with her, eating cake and getting ready to go to Gignese too.

  ‘How can this be happening?’ she said, ignoring her last bite of sponge and feeling a hot anger rising inside her. ‘I thought we were winning the war now America has joined us and the Soviet Union as allies. Everyone who came into the shop was saying after we stormed the Normandy beaches on D-Day that the war could be over soon. But now it feels like the bombs are falling more than ever and nobody is safe.’ The fur along her spine bristled with furious sorrow. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘These new V-1 rockets are Hitler’s vengeance weapons,’ Dickin said. ‘Now that we have a foothold in France, the Allies have a chance of crossing the continent and closin’ in on Germany and he’s as mad as a hatter about it.’

  ‘The lull is over, my friends,’ Bernard cooed seriously after a sip of tea. ‘And sadly I believe it will become worse before it gets better. We must be more vigilant than ever.’

  ‘D-Day has paved the way,’ Dickin said, seeing Pip’s ears flatten anxiously on her head. ‘The Allies will succeed, you’ll see – so don’tcha worry a whisker, love. We’ve got a hell of a lot of good souls on our team fightin’ and resisting the enemy in countries all over the world. With their help and a bit of time, we’ll end this stinkin’ war.’

  ‘But how do you know that?’ Pip said. ‘Who knows who’s going to win the war now?’

  ‘Because we will never tire in our quest for victory,’ Bernard said firmly, sitting tall with his chest feathers plumping confidently. ‘As Churchill says, we shall have victory in spite of all terror, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival, young Pip.’ His wise orange eyes stared deeply into hers. ‘Each of us must strive without failing in faith or in duty. Only then will the dark curse of war be lifted from our age.’

  ‘Both humans and animals are battlin’ on the frontlines but we’re fightin’ on home soil too, mate,’ Dickin said, and his eyes gleamed with pride. ‘All day and all night right under your nose. Listen.’

  ‘What is that?’ Pip said, hearing the dit-dit-dah
noises in the room.

  ‘It’s Morse code,’ said Bernard. ‘We’re delivering secret messages to the human and animal French Resistance by sending different pulses of electric current they then pick up on hidden crystal radios throughout France. Each combination of dit-dah and the silence between them represents a number or a letter of the alphabet. Each message they receive gives instructions on how to weaken enemy power.’

  ‘And what do the messages say?’ Pip asked, riveted to his every word.

  ‘Many secret things – sometimes they give instructions to sabotage electrical equipment or transport lines by road or rail so the enemy can’t use them for advancing forward or for carrying food or weapons. Other times they give locations to rescue another fighter or deliver supplies to those that need them nearby.’

  ‘So what you’re talking about are spy missions?’ Pip said excitedly, sitting bolt upright, remembering the man wearing the fedora hat who had come into the shop and asked Mr Smith to make him the secret weapon umbrellas. ‘For Churchill’s Secret Army?’

  ‘Or in our case – Churchill’s Secret Animal Army.’ Bernard smiled. ‘Since the first wars were fought among men, animals have been secretly helping war efforts in ways humans would never believe, even if they saw it with their own eyes. After all, the world is as much ours as it is theirs. But the humans don’t know we’re doing it, which puts the “Secret” into Churchill’s Secret Animal Army,’ Bernard said. ‘As with all wars, there are two sides. We are helping the Allied forces while the Axis animals fight to preserve Hitler’s rule. And our network spreads far and wide, young Pip. From ordinary mice eavesdropping on human spies in hotel rooms, to the bravest dogs sniffing for mines alongside men in combat. And let us not forget our friends like Dickin here, rescuing people and animals from bomb blasts with his nose.’ The terrier gave Pip a wink. ‘Furthermore, there’s Hans – a German rat who has risked his life resisting the Nazis on his home soil.’