The Mennyms

by Sylvia Waugh

“I agree,” said Pilbeam. “It’s the best possible solution. Googles would like it. She might even learn to talk.”

  Vinetta looked guilty.

  “She’s not meant to talk. She’s only six months old.”

  “She could get to be nine months old. She doesn’t have to stand absolutely still. I’m sometimes fourteen and sometimes fifteen,” put in Appleby with unusual honesty.

  The chink in Vinetta’s armour was that she had always thought herself the perfect mother – protective, efficient and, above all, fair and reasonable. It was embarrassing to face up to the fact that she was not perfect for Googles, but the fair and reasonable side of her character forced her to listen to their arguments. She gave in and set herself to the usual business of reconciling the rest of the household to the inevitable. They were all surprisingly gracious when it came to the point.

  “I have often thought she shouldn’t be living where she lives,” said Granny Tulip without specifying whether she meant Trevethick Street or the cupboard, “and you have always been fond of her, Vinetta. She’s just like one of the family.”

  “If she lived here,” reasoned Poopie, “we wouldn’t have to be quiet all the time. She wouldn’t be a visitor, would she?”

  “I like her anyway,” said Wimpey. “I never said I didn’t, did I?”

  Soobie satisfied himself with saying bluntly, “It’s about time. Pretending that cupboard is Trevethick Street is the daftest pretend I’ve ever had to put up with.”

  Granpa Mennym had some reservations, but he expressed them tactfully. “I think she’s a bit afraid of me, but she needn’t come into my room at all. Conferences are few and far between now.”

  Joshua’s was the one openly dissenting voice.

  “She’s too fussy, Vinetta. And she talks too much.”

  Joshua was the only one in the family who would not have minded spending weeks in the hall cupboard, so it was harder to make him feel guilty.

  “She won’t need to talk so much,” argued Vinetta, “if she doesn’t spend so much time on her own. And she’s coming anyway. So you might as well get used to the idea.”

  38

  * * *

  Miss Quigley Settles In

  MISS QUIGLEY TOOK over Soobie’s room.

  “You are sure you don’t mind, dear?” Vinetta had asked anxiously.

  “Of course I don’t mind. I offered, didn’t I? It was obvious we couldn’t put her on the same landing as the twins. There’d have been ructions. And you couldn’t ask Appleby or Pilbeam to move downstairs. I’m the only one you could move.”

  “But you’ve always had that room,” persisted Vinetta.

  “Mother, Mother, you are beginning to sound like Miss Quigley yourself. A room is just a room. I honestly don’t care which room I have. Besides, it’s one less flight of stairs,” he joked.

  Miss Quigley was grateful, but, surprisingly, not overgrateful. If they had expected her to gush and flutter, they would have been disappointed.

  “I won’t be a visitor here anymore,” she had said with satisfaction. “If I wish to return to Trevethick Street, it will be for a short vacation. I will be entitled to holidays, you know. All employees are.”

  Vinetta was surprised at her businesslike way of dealing with her new situation. She and Tulip agreed on a reasonable live-in wage, to be paid into Miss Quigley’s own bank account every month.

  “And I shall need time off for myself,” she added, “in which I can follow my own pursuits and recreations.”

  When Sir Magnus was told about how the worm had turned, he said simply, “Good for her. About time she stuck up for herself.”

  When she first took up her post, at the beginning of June, Appleby and Pilbeam put a vase full of roses in her room.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said. “Thank you very much for being so thoughtful. But you must remember I am not a guest anymore. I am an employee of your mother’s.”

  The girls looked disappointed. She was their protégée. They had been responsible for bringing her into the house and they had assumed that they would go on protecting her interests and generally looking after her.

  Miss Quigley saw the disappointment in their faces and gave them the smile a grown-up gives to children.

  “I’m delighted at the welcome you have given me,” she said. “You are both very good girls. Your mother must be proud of you.”

  “Can we help you to . . .”

  Whatever help Appleby was going to offer, she was cut short.

  “I don’t need any help, my dears. Though it’s kind of you to offer.”

  To Vinetta, she was still Hortensia, and her new employer insisted upon Miss Quigley calling her Vinetta, as she had always done.

  “Wouldn’t ‘ma’am’ be more appropriate?” Hortensia had asked doubtfully.

  “No, it would not, Hortensia. We aren’t living in the nineteenth century. You do a job. I pay you for it. But outside of that, we are still friends.”

  And they were. They were better friends than ever, sitting together and chatting and making all sorts of plans.

  On her days off, Miss Quigley went out. It soon became apparent that she was as keen on going out as Appleby had ever been. Not only that, she was brilliant at passing by unnoticed. Nobody pays much attention to a dowdy, frumpish, middle-aged woman, but, over and above that, Hortensia Quigley had some strange power of deflecting attention from her person. Nobody ever really saw her, because she made sure that nobody ever looked.

  She went shopping. She joined the public library. And one day she brought home some very large rectangular packages.

  “They look interesting,” Vinetta had said when she met her at the door and helped her in with them. Yet that was all she ventured to say. The new Miss Quigley brooked no intrusion. She had lived too long in the hall cupboard to feel any need to confide in anyone, or to permit anyone to question her.

  “They’re my art things,” she said briefly. “I’ll be able to paint again.”

  And, naturally, Vinetta said no more.

  Even when she set up her easel in the back garden one warm, sunny afternoon, it was some time before anyone approached to look at what she was doing. She sat there on her folding stool in her voile flowered dress and pale green cardigan, her thin brown hair tied back neatly into an absurdly small bun. The sun shone down on her hunched shoulders and her grey-mittened hands as she deftly held her palette and changed from one brush to another in a very expert-looking way.

  She was painting a picture of the sky. Low down in the foreground it was staring blankly through the leafy branches of a tree. But the sky that stretched far, far up above the tree, dwarfing it, was full of emotion, gleams of hopeful light and shadows like frowning faces. It was a curious picture, top-heavy and vaguely oppressive.

  When Pilbeam ventured to look over her shoulder at last, she said, “It’s lovely, Miss Quigley, but a bit frightening. You have made the sky look so much more . . .” she looked for the right word – “important than the tree.”

  “The sky is more important than the tree. Quite clever of you to notice, Pilbeam. I’m what you might call a symbolist painter. A little symbolism never comes in wrong, does it?” Hortensia Quigley’s plain face was brightened by something that came as near to a grin as a lady of her age and temperament could produce. Pilbeam did not quite understand, was slightly startled by the grin, and said no more.

  No one ever asked Miss Quigley how she had learned to paint. In their household it was an unnecessary question. It was obviously something she had been born knowing.

  As nurse to Googles, she showed another side to her nature. Routine was important, as one would expect even of the old Miss Quigley, but no one could have expected her to concern herself so much with the baby’s happiness. She took her to the park. Vinetta had never dared to do that because she was afraid strangers might look into the pram. No such fears beset Miss Quigley, She bought the baby interesting toys, prisms and mobiles, tops that hummed and clocks that ticked a
nd sang. Googles became more real. True, she cried more, but she laughed more too, a hearty, chortly laugh that made you want to join in.

  “I don’t know how we ever managed without Hortensia,” Vinetta said to Joshua as they sat in the lounge early one evening. Hortensia and the baby only ever appeared for five minutes, just before Joshua went out to work, so that Googles could say, “Dada . . . Dada” and wave him goodbye.

  “She’s good with the baby,” agreed Joshua. “I’ll grant you that.” It was reluctant approval. Joshua, you remember, had opposed bringing that silly woman into the house, but even he had to admit it had turned out better than expected.

  Tulip soon became reconciled to having Miss Quigley on the pay-roll, as it were. She did a very good job. If the grandmother felt a twinge of jealousy that a stranger should so obviously have captured the baby’s heart, she knew to suppress such an unworthy thought.

  Poopie and Wimpey ignored Miss Quigley’s existence, and she ignored theirs. She was not being paid to look after them. They were not part of her duties and she had no intention of being exploited.

  She never saw Sir Magnus, even though her room was on the same landing. What the old man heard of her these days, he liked. But he was still happy enough not to see her. She couldn’t have changed that much, was his thought. He was content to admire her new achievements from afar. Her ‘Clouds before a Storm’ hung over his mantelpiece, paid for by cheque and a neat note expressing approval and appreciation.

  39

  * * *

  The Last Chapter

  “I MADE UP Albert Pond. Did they tell you?” Appleby nodded towards the house.

  She and Pilbeam were sitting on the white bench in the back garden on an idyllic afternoon. It was June again and warm and sunny. The lawn had just been trimmed that morning by Poopie. The flower borders were blooming with pansies, sweet peas and a profusion of other soft, small-petalled flowers, all whites and pale pinks and blues. The only other person out there was Miss Quigley, and she was seated in a spot well away from the girls.

  Appleby’s remark was made quite out of the blue. Albert Pond’s name had not been mentioned for more than a year.

  “Of course they told me,” replied Pilbeam with just the merest toss of the head. “They tell me everything. They still think I have such a lot of catching up to do.”

  Appleby thought for a moment that Pilbeam was going to be cross with her again. Pilbeam was such a stickler for getting the record straight, and she wouldn’t put up with any nonsense.

  “I didn’t mean to do it, really,” she went on hastily. “At least, I didn’t mean it to snowball the way it did. But once I’d started and they all believed it, I didn’t know how to stop. I even began to believe in him myself. If Chesney Loftus hadn’t died, I probably would have got away with it.”

  Pilbeam considered this. She herself would never have been in that predicament. She would never have thought of inventing Albert Pond. It was as much as she could do to pretend to be eating Sunday lunch. She would sit across the table from Soobie and exchange sympathetic glances as they dutifully held knives and forks above empty plates.

  “I’ll never understand you properly,” she said, “but they should. Except for me and Soobie, they all have their own pretends of one sort or another.”

  Appleby shrugged but said nothing.

  “Where did you get the name from?” asked Pilbeam. “Albert Pond is not what I would call charismatic.”

  “Well, I like it,” Appleby bristled. “I have always liked it. As a matter of fact, it is a real name. It was written ten times over inside the front cover of a book I found years ago in the cupboard under the windowseat in my room. I’ve still got the book. It’s called Greenmantle. I reckon Albert Pond was bored silly some day and decided to doodle on it. His name list ends with three anagrams: Bold Parent, Planet Drob and Bored Plant.”

  Pilbeam looked intrigued and Appleby, who was beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable under questioning, tried to play the advantage.

  “I had a go with my name,” she went on, “but all I could manage was ‘Be my penny lamp’. Not enough vowels, you see. Yours might be better.”

  But Pilbeam was not so easily distracted.

  “What about the letters?” she persisted. “Why Australia? And how did you manage the postmarks?”

  “Easy,” answered Appleby triumphantly. This was not the question she feared. “I had some foreign covers I bought from a catalogue. And I had loads of used stamps to choose from. The covers had airmail stickers on them. At first, I just wondered if I could fake up a cover with our address on it. I used ink-pad ink to continue the postmark off the stamp onto the envelope. Then I steamed a sticker off one of my Australian covers and gummed it on. When I’d finished it looked so convincing I couldn’t resist the temptation to use it.”

  Pilbeam gave this some thought. She could see how one thing had led to another.

  “And when it all came out, you ran away. What good did you think running away would do?”

  Appleby looked frightened.

  “You’re not supposed to ask me anything about that. Mother said nobody was to mention it.”

  Pilbeam got up from the bench angrily.

  “You started talking about Albert Pond, not me. You want to make your mind up. But I’ll tell you this, Appleby Mennym, if there are things I can’t ask you, I am not going to be your friend. I can’t help being your sister, but there’s nothing says I have to be friends with you.”

  That was a terrible threat. By now it seemed as if they had been friends for years and years, going out together arm in arm, giggling and joking, reading the same magazines, following the same fashions, lazing in the garden when the sun shone down. To quarrel with Pilbeam would be dreadful, and she might mean what she said, they might never be friends again. The thought was unbearable.

  Appleby reached up and tugged Pilbeam by the arm before she could stomp off.

  “Please sit down again. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but you must promise faithfully never to tell them.”

  Again Appleby nodded towards the house. Inside, the reals and the pretends were all in progress – real accounts, pretend invitations which would have to be reluctantly refused, real ironing, pretend cakes being mixed quite vigorously in the earthenware bowl, real rest and the pretend smoking of a beloved pipe and a long, Havana cigar, real toys and pretend games of cowboys and Indians.

  “They tell me everything,” repeated Pilbeam as she sat down again, “but I tell them nothing unless it suits me. And I wouldn’t dream of telling them anything you didn’t want them to know. And we are friends, now and for always.”

  Appleby started a bit incoherently, but Pilbeam understood.

  “They would have gone on and on at me, about all the expense I’d put them to for darker curtains and low-watt light bulbs, and they would have made a meal of how terrified Miss Quigley had been, as if they cared two hoots about Miss Quigley. I couldn’t stand it. They’d have expected me to say sorry. I never say sorry.”

  “You say sorry to me,” said Pilbeam.

  “You’re different. You’re my friend. And you never try to make me say sorry, like telling me to sit up and beg. When I say sorry to you, it’s because I want to say sorry.”

  “And because you know you are in the wrong,” insisted Pilbeam, anxious as always to stick to the absolute truth.

  “I know I am in the wrong with them too,” admitted Appleby. “That makes it harder if anything. I know what I did was terrible, but I wouldn’t tell them that. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.”

  “Running away was worse than all the lies,” put in Pilbeam, determined to get Appleby back to her original question.

  “I know,” sighed Appleby. “It was a nightmare. I remember standing in Granpa’s room with them all looking at me, wondering what was coming next, and I just ran out.”

  “What did you mean to do?”

  “I don’t know. Probably sneak back l
ater, the way Miss Quigley used to. But then I got further and further away from the house. The rain was lashing down. I went into the park and hid in a shelter.”

  The memory of that night made Appleby shudder.

  “You needn’t tell me any more if you don’t want to,” said Pilbeam gently.

  “I do,” said Appleby. “I suppose that’s why I mentioned Albert Pond to you in the first place. A bit of me wants to forget all about it, but another bit needs to talk. It was so terrible, Pilbeam, you can’t imagine how terrible. Three skin-heads in studded leather jackets came into the shelter. They were livid when they saw me sitting there. They had obviously been up to no good. They swore at me and I ran out into the dark. I was terrified and I couldn’t see where I was going. I kept my head down against the rain and the next thing I knew I’d tripped over a little iron railing into the lake. I crawled out, wet through. I couldn’t move properly. I wriggled into some bushes and I must have gone to sleep. I knew vaguely that day came and the church bells were ringing. Then night came again and then another day. And, do you know, Pilbeam, there comes a time when if you are not going to die, you begin to make some attempt to get back to living.

  “I crawled out of the bushes as soon as the park closed and made my way towards the lights on the path. I skirted the green and got up to the old shop where they used to sell pop and sweets in summer, before they built the new place. By then I was exhausted again. So I lay on a seat to rest, and that is where Soobie found me.”

  Pilbeam was silent.

  Appleby waited for her to speak, but when the silence became uncomfortable she added aggressively, “So now you know. I hope you’re satisfied.”

  Pilbeam put one arm round Appleby’s shoulders in a hug.

  “I was just thinking,” she said. “If you hadn’t told all those lies in the first place, I wouldn’t be here. I would still be asleep in the trunk in the attic. I could have been left there for another forty years.”