Mennyms Under Siege

by Sylvia Waugh

  “Maybe he’s just having a long weekend for the Bank Holiday then,” said Pilbeam. “Let’s hope so. I wish to goodness you’d never spoken to him.”

  That evening, Appleby went eagerly to look out of the landing window at seven o’clock. With a tingle of excitement she saw a light flash on and off three times at Number 1. Tony was still at home, and he had sent her a letter. Now that the rules were relaxed, going to the front gate was no problem. The excuse that she wanted to breathe in the evening air would hold again if any were needed. And to take the note from the wall was no great task for Appleby with whom the hand could always be relied upon to be swifter than the eye.

  It was over three weeks since she had last heard from Tony. He honourably destroyed all her letters. She kept his in a small cardboard box in the bottom of her wardrobe. This new missive would join the others as soon as she had read it half a dozen times.

  Dear Appleby, said Tony, I wish your sister had not been with you today. It would have been such a good chance to talk. I am home for a week because the school is holding some sort of conference for teachers. What is more, I have tickets for the under-eighteens disco at the Plaza on Saturday. There’s a live group playing – The Empty Vessels. They call themselves that because they reckon they can make more noise than any other band. Surely there’s some way you could manage to go? Sneak away. I can meet you at the end of the street, or anywhere you like. It’s too good a chance to miss. When I go back to Harrogate again I’ll be away till the end of July. They’re putting an extra week onto the term to make up for missing this one. Please come to the disco. We can have a marvellous time. Leave a message in the wall. Love, Tony

  It would not be Appleby’s first disco. She had even been to a disco at the Plaza. It was one of the challenges she had set herself after watching the pop programme on TV. The first time she went she had been very nervous. She had nearly turned back at the entrance when she saw two tuxedo-suited doormen standing there looking menacing, but the music drifting out was loud, familiar and friendly. She had paid at the door on that occasion. Once in the crowd, she was a careful watcher, leaning on the chrome rail near the bar at first so that she could look down on the whole hall. Young people danced alone and ignored each other. Smoke swirled and rainbow lights flickered. A glitter ball made up of hundreds of pieces of mirror rotated up above, catching the lights and making patterns on the dance floor. Appleby had taken courage and danced just like everybody else. It was possible to be a stranger in a crowd like that and never be noticed. But to go there with Tony was surely too great a risk. Then she would not be alone in the crowd. It was impossible. For any normal rag doll it was impossible. But Appleby? Well . . . maybe not.

  If I arranged to see him inside, she thought, I could ask him to leave my ticket in the wall. I’d tell him I’d see him beside the pinball machine to the left of the bar. That way he’d know I’d been there before. He wouldn’t be suspicious. Then, if things should become difficult after we met inside, I could easily slip away in the crowd and beat a safe retreat behind the pillars.

  So there was a warm letter of acceptance in the cleft in the wall. Tony smiled when he read it. Just as his father had a loving tolerance of Anthea’s foibles, so Tony could see that there was something about Appleby that did not ring true, but it did not make him like her any the less. She was like no other girl he had ever known. Her secrecy, whether necessary or not, added a piquancy to their friendship.

  Appleby took the ticket from the wall and hid it in the pocket of her shoulder bag. The next day she sneaked off alone to Seconds Galore, a shop in Rothwell Close, just off the High Street, which specialised in secondhand clothing for young people. Rummaging round, she managed to find a long black skirt with a deep fringe round the hem, a shocking pink top with long sleeves that ended in a point, and a richly-patterned tapestry waistcoat. They were considerably cheaper than they would have been anywhere else, but it still took every penny she had with her, and a bit of haggling, for her to buy them. The assistant paid no attention at all to the butterfly sunglasses and the candy-striped gloves that Appleby did not remove even to pay for her purchases. The assistant had purple hair, a small tattoo on her chin, a ring through her nose, and very strict views about people being free to do their own thing.

  Appleby’s next task would be to think up some stratagem for escaping from the house, and, more specifically, from Pilbeam when Saturday came.

  I can pretend to be tired and say I am going to bed early. I can quarrel with her about something and go in the sulks. Appleby lay on her bed late into the night just wondering what to tell Pilbeam. Nobody else mattered. Nobody else watched her the way Pilbeam did. Nobody else was as suspicious.

  “Drat it!” said Appleby out loud and she dug a fist into her pillow. What can I tell her? Her mind came back with a surprising answer. Tell her the truth. A lie won’t do this time. Tell her a half-truth anyway.

  “Pilbeam,” said Appleby in a little, secret voice, “if I tell you something will you promise not to tell the others?”

  She was sitting on the chair in Pilbeam’s room, having disturbed her sister’s sleep at a quarter past midnight. One rule for Appleby, another for everybody else!

  “I’m making no promises,” said. Pilbeam, trying to wake up. “For all I know you might be deciding to run off somewhere. And if you are, I will tell! Simple as that.”

  “No!” said Appleby. “It’s nothing like that. Do you think I’m stupid or something? Everything’s back to normal. We go out shopping. We could even go to the pictures if we wanted to, or the theatre, or a concert like you said we could. There’s no reason to run away.”

  Pilbeam thought Appleby’s idea that they would be free to lead a richer, fuller life than ever was a bit optimistic, but the argument served its purpose. It minimised what Appleby really intended to do and it put Pilbeam off her guard.

  “Very well then,” said Pilbeam. “Tell me your secret. I won’t tell the others, but I will give you my opinion.”

  “Do you think it’s possible,” said Appleby, “for me to go out somewhere after dark, like Soobie does? Well, not quite dark, more like dusk really? I mean to say Soobie goes out at times when I just wouldn’t dare. But then he’s a boy. Girls can’t expect to have as much freedom.”

  Appleby cleverly mentioned the one thing calculated to make Pilbeam’s hackles rise. Boys and girls, men and women, should be treated equally in all respects. To quote Granpa, who sometimes said things he did not strictly mean, what was sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.

  “I can’t imagine you wanting to go jogging,” said Pilbeam, “but I suppose if you did you should have as much right to do so as Soobie. Though, of course, Soobie is rather special, being blue. He can’t go out during the day.”

  “Of course I don’t want to go jogging,” said Appleby derisively. “That would be far too dangerous for me. I don’t know how Soobie dares do it.”

  “All right then, what do you want to do?”

  “Well, you remember the other day I bought a new pair of boots at that little shop in the High Street?”

  Pilbeam nodded but wondered where this side-track was leading. She remembered her sister coming back with the boots. She knew the little shop well. It was one they often used, being not too well lit. The assistants were two fussy but rather nice old women who thought that all teenagers looked weird with their punky clothes and hairdos, and goodness knows where they got the money from! Still, Florrie used to say to Joyce, they spend it here and that’s the main thing – and them boots aren’t so bad, you know, better than the winkle-pickers we wore when we were young.

  “You’ll never guess what those two in the shop are doing now,” said Appleby. “They’ve got a promotion on, giving away tickets for the disco at the Plaza. I could hardly believe it. Everybody who spent more then ten pounds on boots last week was given a ticket. And I got one.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Pilbeam.

  “It’s true,�
� said Appleby, “absolutely true. Look, here’s the ticket.”

  Pilbeam looked at the ticket and then said, “But you’re not going.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Appleby. “Just for a short time. I’ve done it before. You know I have.”

  “That was a long time ago,” said Pilbeam.

  “Not more than five years. It won’t have changed much. It’s just like I told you – lights and smoke and heavy-metal music. You wouldn’t like it. But I don’t have to like everything you like. I wouldn’t have gone to see The Merchant of Venice. You did. And I’ll only stay for an hour. You can be my ally. You can make sure nobody here finds out I’ve gone. And you can be on the look out for me coming back. It’s harmless, honestly it is.”

  Pilbeam looked uncertain. Now was the right time for Appleby to lose her temper. It was an old technique she had for pushing people to her side of the fence.

  She stood up and said, “All right, all right. I won’t go. I’ll tear the ticket up. I never get anywhere. And I don’t even get dressed up in posh clothes like you do. I’ve got no life at all. I wish I’d been a boy.”

  “Sit down,” said Pilbeam. “We’ll talk about it.”

  “What’s the point?” said Appleby, but she sat down all the same. “You don’t want me to go. So I won’t go. End of subject.”

  “It’s not up to me,” said Pilbeam. It was late and she was tired.

  “Yes it is,” said Appleby. “If you go and tell Mum or Granny, I’ll be in trouble. It’s easy for you to stop me doing anything.”

  “All right,” said Pilbeam. “Go to the disco for an hour, if that’s what you want. But if you are not back by half past ten I’ll have to tell Mum. If you’re not back by eleven o’clock we’ll all be petrified. And that wouldn’t be fair.”

  Appleby rose from her seat and went over and hugged her sister.

  “You’re fantastic,” she said. “You’re the best sister anybody could have. And I promise you faithfully I’ll be back in this house by twenty past ten, if not sooner. It’s no big thing, you know. Just a little jaunt.”

  13

  The Visitor

  VINETTA HAD TOO much respect for Hortensia to dash straight to the hall cupboard and tell her the outcome of the conference. Her sense of decorum demanded that she should wait till Miss Quigley in kid gloves, felt hat and neat brown suit, should, of her own accord, decide to pay her friend a visit.

  It was on Wednesday morning after the Bank Holiday that the cupboard door opened and Miss Quigley stepped out, closed the door quietly behind her and made her way through the kitchen to the back of the house.

  Joshua had just come in from the garden and was removing the gloves he always wore for weeding. He spread out a sheet of newspaper and carefully brushed the soil off them. Very deliberately, he kept his back to Miss Quigley and gave not the slightest hint that he had seen her pass by. That was the way it had always been done in the old days, before the visitor had become the nanny. In those days, everyone in the family had supported this pretend. Between the cupboard and the back door, the visitor must be invisible and all who might see her must keep their eyes averted.

  The front doorbell rang and Soobie, seeing the visitor through the window, called in the friendliest of voices, “Miss Quigley’s at the door, Mother.”

  This was not Soobie’s usual way. In the old days, as he sat in the chair by the window, he would have been very scathing about the pretend visit from the woman who really lived in the cupboard. But the wise blue Mennym, old head on young shoulders, knew that this visit was a first and a last. Things would return to normal. Miss Quigley would once again make her home in Brocklehurst Grove and resume her duties as nanny to Googles.

  “What a lovely surprise!” said Vinetta as she opened the front door. “We have all missed you, especially the baby. If I weren’t such a sensible woman, it would have made me quite jealous. She looks so pathetic, poor lamb, and keeps asking for her ‘nanna’.”

  Miss Quigley smiled politely, but there was frost in the air.

  “And how are things in Trevethick Street?” asked Vinetta as they settled in the lounge with the tray, as of old, on the coffee table in front of them. Vinetta poured imaginary liquid into the willow-patterned tea cups.

  “Trevethick Street never changes,” said Miss Quigley. “Life goes on as usual. My neighbour, Miss Whiteley, has been keeping an eye on things. And, of course, you will remember my telling you that little Lotus Turner adopted my cat. The windows needed cleaning, but that was all.”

  Miss Quigley then slipped into another pretend which Vinetta accepted without a murmur. In the world of the Mennyms, contradiction was considered to be in very bad taste.

  “It is not as if I have been away so very long,” said Miss Quigley. “The occasional weekends I have spent there, and my summer holidays, have kept the house lived in.”

  “Still,” said Vinetta, “I do think you should have let it to someone. It would have been the practical thing to do. Maybe this time you will give it serious thought.”

  “This time?” Miss Quigley’s voice was charged with meaning. Unfriendly, suspicious meaning, tinged with outrage at what might be coming next.

  Vinetta understood.

  “It’s not what you might think, Hortensia,” she said. “If you agree to come back, to come home, to your own room in this house, no one will ever ask you to do the shopping again. You will be nanny to Googles and that will be the sum total of your duties. This house is no longer under siege. That silly, distressing pretend is over.”

  Miss Quigley looked doubtful.

  “Please say yes,” said Vinetta. “The family feels incomplete without you. I know you have your friends in Trevethick Street. I know that the little house there has been dear to you. But we need you here, Hortensia. Googles needs you. And we all miss you.”

  Suddenly, embarrassingly, Miss Quigley began to sob. Her narrow shoulders heaved and fell.

  “What is it?” said Vinetta anxiously. “What’s wrong, Hortensia?”

  Miss Quigley pulled herself together and sat up straight. With a woebegone look she said, “It’s just that I thought nobody wanted me. I thought you were all glad to see the back of me. I waited so long for a message inviting me to tea or something. And none came. I thought, maybe they’ve forgotten me completely.”

  Vinetta was conscience-stricken.

  “How little we understand others!” she said. “I thought you wanted to be alone for a while, to spend some time on your own in Trevethick Street. I didn’t want to intrude. Not for the world would I have hurt you like this if I’d known.”

  Miss Quigley looked at Vinetta and knew that this was the truth.

  “I’ll come back,” she said, regaining her usual composure, “but they must all clearly understand that I am not a servant. I am Googles’s nanny, nothing else. I think I would be happier with it written into my contract this time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not,” said Vinetta. “I can’t say I blame you. Sir Magnus might think he’s a gentleman, but he has no idea of what is meant by a gentleman’s agreement.”

  Miss Quigley nodded. She was well pleased with the way things were turning out, but she felt that there was no need for her to express anything that might sound like gratitude.

  “Now,” said Vinetta, “do let me pour you another cup of tea. Then perhaps you would like to come and see Googles. I know she will be delighted to see you.”

  Throughout this conversation, Soobie had sat unnoticed in his armchair. He still found the silly pretends very irritating, but he was pleased with the conclusion to this one. Rag dolls, he thought, have enough to suffer without causing pain to one of their own kind.

  14

  The Disco

  FREE-DOM ~ ~

  Freedom-calling, freedom-calling, freedom-calling YOU

  COME-OUT ~ ~

  In the moonlight, in the starlight, dance the whole night through

  THE GROUP PRODUCED more decibels per cubic inch tha
n any scientific study of the subject could have promulgated as a hypothesis. In other words, they were whoosh!

  “Like it?” asked Tony, shouting down into the red hair that hid Appleby’s cloth ear.

  Appleby did not not attempt an answer but nodded vigorously and clapped to the rhythm. The crowd were not dancing at that moment, just swaying en masse as they stood round the band on the stage. Appleby felt impatient. If they did not return to the floor soon, her chance to dance, really dance, might be missed.

  One by one the dancers moved out onto the floor dancing to the rhythm with their own steps in their own private world. And each one danced alone. Appleby reached the centre of the floor and, oh, how she danced! First stepping gracefully and then twisting into a jive before returning to the swaying motion of the people round the stage. Then again, step as in a gavotte, twist, jive, bend the music to the steps or the steps to the music, throw in the occasional jesting movement that might have come straight from the ballet. A history of the dance in one lithe dancer. And above her the glitter ball gleamed. Tony danced beside her, a little apart, more simply, with less originality. But he watched his partner and he admired what he saw. Other dancers looked on and some even tried to imitate the red-head in the swirling black skirt who could outdance any dancer on the floor. She was really something!

  At a pause in the music, she went with Tony to a table by the bar to rest. People were drinking various soft drinks. Tony asked Appleby what she would like, but she shook her head.

  “I never drink anything here,” she said. “I am allergic to additives and they don’t sell anything that is additive-free. Besides, to be truthful, I am not really thirsty. But don’t let me stop you having a drink.”

  Appleby, like many a Cinderella before her, did not notice the time. The group left the stage for a break and the disc-jockey put on an old record, a really old record, soft and dreamy and sentimental. The lights were lowered to a mere whisper. Tony put out a hand to grasp Appleby’s for the first time that evening.