The Borrowers Collection

by Mary Norton

  Mr. Platter was really smiling now, as he went off to the nether regions in search of Parkinson (Miss Parkinson to him), and it was as he feared. She had found a hundred extra jobs for him besides the windows and the door of the attic. Well, perhaps not a hundred, but that’s what it seemed like. Would he ever get home to his luncheon? He knew Mrs. Platter was preparing Lancashire hot pot, one of his favorites.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Arrietty had risen very early on that same Saturday morning. Aunt Lupy had impressed upon her that she must take Timmus off with plenty of time to spare before all the flower-arranging ladies invaded the church. “The whole place gets awash with them,” Aunt Lupy had explained the night before. “Not just the ones we know: all sorts come—and they run about every which way, gabbling and arguing, strewing the place with petals and leaves, coats and picnic baskets all over the pews. Calling out to one another as if they were in their own houses. What the good Lord thinks about it, I just can’t imagine. And it’s a dreadful day for us: not a step dare we venture outside the harmonium. Food, water . . . everything has to be got in. And there we’re stuck, hour after hour, in almost pitch darkness—you dare not light a candle—until at last they decide to go. And even then you don’t feel safe. Someone or other is bound to come back with an extra bunch of flowers or to collect some belonging or other they’ve carelessly left behind. So you must take Timmus off early, dear, and don’t bring him back until late . . .”

  The vestry was indeed a wonderful sight when Arrietty entered through the hole that morning. Flowers in buckets, in tin baths, in great vases, in jam jars—all over the floor, on the table, on the desk . . . everywhere. The curtains that led into the church proper were drawn back, and even beyond these she could see pots of flowering shrubs and tall, budding branches of greenery. The scent was overpowering.

  Timmus was waiting for her at the entrance to his home, his round little face alight with happiness: he had a treasure! Spiller had made him a miniature bow and a tiny quiver full of miniature arrows. “And he’s going to teach me to shoot,” he told her ecstatically, “and how to make my own arrows!”

  “What are you going to shoot at?” Arrietty asked him. Her arm was round his shoulders, and she couldn’t resist giving him a hug.

  “Sunflowers. That’s how you start—” he said, “the nearest you can get to the heart of a sunflower!”

  Aunt Lupy came out then and drove them off. “Get along, you two—I’ve just heard a carriage drive up to the lychgate.”

  And, indeed, the evening before, Arrietty, having supper with her parents, had heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as pony carts and carriages, one after another, had driven up to the church, delivering these flowers—flowers from every garden in the parish, she thought, as she and Timmus picked their way through the jungle of scented blooms. Suddenly the day began to feel like a holiday.

  “Do you know what?” Arrietty said when once they were out and hurrying along the path—at the same time keeping an eye out for whoever might have arrived in the carriage.

  “No. What?” asked Timmus.

  “After we’ve been to the vegetable garden, we’re going to have lunch with Peagreen!”

  “Oh, goody,” said Timmus. Peagreen had been giving him reading lessons and teaching him to write. Twice a week, Peagreen would go to Homily’s parlor with sharpened pencil stubs and odd bits of paper, and being a poet and an artist, he could make these lessons a delight. He would always stay to tea, and sometimes he would read aloud to them afterwards. But Timmus had never been invited into any of Peagreen’s nesting boxes: these Peagreen kept strictly for working in solitude at his painting or writing.

  “Oh, goody!” said Timmus again, and gave a little skip: he had always longed to climb the ivy. And this sunny Easter Saturday, minute by minute, began to seem more and more like a holiday. He had not even brought a borrowing bag because his mother (as she had explained to Arrietty) had “got everything in.”

  So there was not very much to do in the kitchen garden but to play games and explore and tease the ants and earwigs and see who could get closest to a resting butterfly. The sunflowers were not out yet, so Timmus shot at a bumblebee, which made Arrietty very cross, not only because she loved bumblebees but because, as she told him, “You have got only six arrows, and now you’ve lost one!” She made him promise not to start shooting again until Spiller had given him a lesson.

  When the church clock struck twelve, Arrietty pulled up three tiny radishes and a lettuce seedling, and they began to make their way towards Peagreen’s home. They had to hide once when they saw Whitlace trundling a wheelbarrow filled with rhododendrons along the path: he was heading for the church. Arrietty felt a sad little pang because she realized that her beloved Miss Menzies might be at the church by now but that she, Arrietty, would not be there—even to watch her from a distance.

  Peagreen soon managed to cheer her up, however: he was delighted with the radishes, which Arrietty had washed in the birdbath, and the tiny lettuce went beautifully with the delicious cold food he had borrowed from the larder. The spring sunshine was so warm that they were tempted to eat out of doors but decided, in the end, that they would feel more at ease eating in Peagreen’s dining room, with the lid of the nesting box propped open by a stick. Peagreen’s dining table was made from the round lid of a pillbox, like the one Arrietty remembered at Firbank, but Peagreen had painted it carmine. For plates he had set out small-leaved nasturtiums, the roundest he could find, with a larger one in the center of the table on which he had arranged the food. “You can eat the plates, too,” he told Timmus. “Nasturtium goes well with salad.” Timmus thought this a great joke.

  After luncheon, Timmus was allowed to go climbing among the ivy, with orders to freeze should anyone come along the path, and strictly forbidden to put even one foot inside the opened larder window. Peagreen and Arrietty just talked.

  Arrietty described to Peagreen how sometimes she and Timmus would watch church services from the rood screen. Timmus, being small, had his own comfortable little perch on the carved vine leaf, with the solemn face of a mitered bishop to lean back against, and how, from below, he looked exactly like part of the carving. She herself, not wanting to brown her face, usually climbed up into the gallery, which ran across the top. Here she could squat down behind the dove and peer from out below the spread wings. Weddings she liked best: weddings were beautiful. Funerals they had liked next best: sad, but beautiful, too—except for that dreadful one at which Mr. Platter had officiated as undertaker, and her heart had gone cold at the sight of that hated face. On that occasion, having raised her face once, she had never dared raise it again. In fact, it had almost cured her of funerals.

  At one point, she asked Peagreen why he never went down to the church. “Well, it’s a bit of a step for me,” he told her, smiling. “I used to go more often before . . .” He hesitated.

  “Before the Hendrearys came?”

  “Perhaps you could say that,” he admitted rather sheepishly. “And there are times when one prefers to be alone.”

  “Yes,” said Arrietty. After a moment, she added, “Don’t you like the Hendrearys?”

  “I hardly know them,” he said.

  “But you like Timmus?”

  His face lit up. “How could anybody not like Timmus?” He laughed amusedly. “Oh, Timmus could go far—”

  Arrietty jumped up. “I hope he hasn’t gone too far already!” She thrust her head out through the round hole in the nesting box and looked along the ivy. At last she saw him: he was hanging upside down just above the larder window, trying to peer inside. She did not call out to him: his position looked too perilous. And, after all, she realized, he was obeying her to the letter: he had not set a foot inside. She watched him anxiously until, with a snakelike twist, he reversed his position and made his way upwards among the trembling leaves. She drew in her head again. There was no need to worry. For one who could climb a bell rope with such speed and confidence, iv
y would be child’s play.

  When at last Timmus rejoined them, the clock was striking five. He looked very hot and dirty. Arrietty thought she had better take him home. “But the church is full of ladies,” protested Peagreen.

  “I mean to my home. I’ll have to clean him up a bit before his mother sees him.” She sighed happily. “It’s been a lovely afternoon.”

  “How long will those women stay in the church?” asked Peagreen.

  “I’ve no idea. Until they’ve finished the flowers, I suppose. I thought that, at about six o’clock, I’d climb that high box tree. You can see everything from there. All the comings and goings . . .”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes. I’ll feel like a climb by then.”

  When Arrietty and Timmus reached home, they found Homily bustling towards the kitchen. As they walked across it, Arrietty noticed that the long dark hearth looked curiously neat. “Somebody’s restacked the woodpile,” she said to her mother as they entered the bright kitchen.

  “Yes, I did,” said Homily.

  “All by yourself?”

  “No, your father helped me. I got an idea in my head about black beetles . . .”

  “Were there any?”

  “No, only a couple of wood lice. They’re all right—clean as whistles, wood lice are. But your father’s thrown them out of doors—we don’t want a whole family. Timmus, just look at your face!”

  This was something Timmus could not do. So Homily washed it gently, and his little hands as well. She had always had a soft spot for Timmus. She brushed down his clothes and smoothed back his hair. There was nothing she could do about the walnut juice.

  At six o’clock, when Arrietty had climbed up the tall bush, she found Peagreen already there. “I think they’ve all gone now,” he told her. “They’ve been coming out in twos and threes. I’ve been watching for ages . . .”

  Arrietty put herself in a sidesaddle position on a slender branch, and they both stared down at the empty path in silence. Nothing stirred in the churchyard. After about twenty minutes, both became a little bored. “I think I’d better get Timmus now,” Arrietty said at last. “He’s waiting just beside the grating. I don’t want him running out.” She was disentangling her skirt, which had caught on a twig. “Thank you for watching, Peagreen.”

  “I’ve rather enjoyed it,” he said. “I like to get a good look at a human being now and again. You never know what they’re going to do next. Can you manage?” he asked as she started to climb down.

  “Of course I can manage.” She sounded a little nettled. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I think I’ll stay here and see you both safely in.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When Arrietty and Timmus reached the vestry, they found it tidy and clean. The tablecloth was back on the table and the ledger on the desk, and the curtains leading into the church were demurely drawn to. But instead of the smell of stale cassocks, there was a lingering fragrance of flowers. It drew Arrietty to part the curtains slightly and peer into the church. She caught her breath.

  “Come and look, Timmus,” she whispered urgently. “It’s lovely!”

  Every window sill was a bower. But the sills being high and she so far below, she could see only the tops of the flowers—all the same, they were a riot of scent and color. Timmus pushed past her, dashed straight through the curtains, and ran sharply to the right. “You can’t see from where you are,” he called back at her. He was making for his perch on the rood screen. Of course! Arrietty stepped forwards, about to follow him, when something or someone touched her on the arm. She swung round swiftly. It was Aunt Lupy, a finger to her lips, and looking very alarmed. “Don’t let him shout,” she whispered hurriedly. “There are people still here!”

  Arrietty looked down the seemingly empty church. “Where?” she gasped.

  “In the porch at the moment. Another whole handcart of flowers has arrived. They’ll be bringing them in in a moment. You’d better come inside with me . . .” She was pulling rather urgently at Arrietty’s arm.

  “What about Timmus? He’s on the rood screen.”

  “He’ll be all right so long as he keeps still. And he will, because he’ll see them from there.”

  Arrietty turned unwillingly and followed her aunt under the table, whose hanging cloth gave them good cover. It was the Hendrearys’ usual route when any kind of danger threatened and meant only one quick dash at the far end.

  “Did Miss Menzies come?” Arrietty whispered as they passed under the table.

  “She’s here now. And so’s Lady Mullings. Come on, Arrietty, we’d better hurry. They may be coming in here for water.”

  But Arrietty stood firm in her tracks. “I must see Miss Menzies!” She tore her arm away from her aunt’s urgent grasp and disappeared under the hanging folds of the tablecloth, but not without having noticed her aunt’s expression of dismay and astonishment. But there was no time to lose. As she sped along beside the foot of the rood screen, she was aware of the great bank of flowers edging the chancel. Plenty of cover there! She glanced up at Timmus’s perch. That was all right: to all intents and purposes, he had become invisible. But even as, breathlessly, she climbed up the side of the rood screen towards the little gallery, she could hear Lady Mullings’s voice (really annoyed for once) saying, “Twelve huge pots of pelargonium! What on earth does she think we can do with them at this hour?”

  Arrietty ran along the gallery and took cover under the spreading wings of the dove. She stared down. The great west door was wide open, and the sun was streaming in from the porch. She saw Lady Mullings come in and move a little aside to let two men pass her, each carrying a large pot filled with a bushlike plant, which, to Arrietty’s eyes, resembled a striped geranium.

  “Twelve, you say!” cried Lady Mullings despairingly. (How human voices echoed when the church was empty!)

  “Yes, ma’am. We grew them special for the church. Where would you like them put?”

  Lady Mullings looked round desperately. “Where do you suggest, Miss Menzies?” Arrietty craned forwards over the edge of the gallery. Yes, there at last was her dear Miss Menzies, standing rather listlessly in the doorway to the porch. She looked somewhat pale and tired, and though very slim at the best of times, she seemed to have got a good deal thinner. “Somewhere right at the back, don’t you think?” she said faintly.

  Then Kitty Whitlace entered in a rush, looking equally aghast. “Whoever sent all these?” she exclaimed. She must have seen the cartload outside.

  “Mrs. Crabtree . . . Wasn’t it kind of her?” said Lady Mullings weakly. Then, pulling herself together, she added in a more normal voice, “I think you know Mr. Bullivant, Mrs. Crabtree’s head gardener?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Kitty. She made as though to put out her hand but, looking down at it, saw it was far from clean. “I won’t shake hands,” she added. “I’ve just been carting all the leftover leaves and dirt and things away in the wheelbarrow.”

  As the men went out for more pots, Kitty wheeled round to Lady Mullings. “Now, you two ladies sit down. You’ve done quite enough for one day. I’ve got the wheelbarrow outside and can give the man a hand with the pots. We’ll have them all in in no time.”

  “We thought we’d put them all at the back by the belfry,” said Miss Menzies as she and Lady Mullings slipped gratefully into the nearest pew, “and sort of mass them all up against the curtains.”

  “Mass them!” exclaimed Lady Mullings enthusiastically. “What a wonderful idea! Build them up into a kind of pyramid of glorious pink against those dark curtains . . .” She jumped to her feet, very agile for a lady of her somewhat generous proportions. “Now, that is what I call a real inspiration!”

  Miss Menzies rose, too, though a little more reluctantly, but Lady Mullings, now in the aisle, turned eagerly towards her. “No, my dear, stay where you are. You’ve been overdoing things—anyone can see that—what with the mod
el village and now the decorations. We ought not to have let you come. And yet we all know that you are the only one, the only truly artistic one, who can make such a show of the window sills. Now, my dear”—she leaned over the edge of the pew, her face alight with the prospect of her own turn at creation—“take my bag, if you wouldn’t mind, and sit back there quietly in your corner. I know exactly what to do!”

  Miss Menzies was not reluctant to obey. As she sank back into her corner of the pew, her head against the wall, she heard Lady Mullings, hurrying towards the back of the church, say to Kitty Whitlace, “Now, Kitty dear, the next thing is to find something to prop them up on . . .” Miss Menzies closed her eyes.

  Arrietty, from her perch on the top of the rood screen, stared down at her pityingly. How wicked it had been of those Platters to destroy those little houses and give her so much work! Perhaps she and Mr. Pott had been up all night in their desperate attempt to be ready for Easter Monday? Then she turned her gaze towards Miss Menzies’s window sills and saw (as she had not been able to see from below) what Lady Mullings had meant. Each sill had been lined with moss (perhaps with earth below?) out of which the spring flowers seemed to be growing naturally. All in their right groups and colors: grape hyacinths, narcissus, late primroses, some bluebells, clumps of primulas . . . Each window sill was a little garden in itself. And what was even better, Arrietty realized, was that sprayed occasionally with water, Miss Menzies’s little borders would last all week. How glad she was to have torn herself away from Aunt Lupy and reached the rood screen just in time!