by Sylvia Waugh
At this thought, Appleby brightened.
“And if I hadn’t run away,” she reasoned, “Miss Quigley would still be living a half-life in the cupboard in the hall. It was only my time in the airing cupboard that made me realise how awful her life must have been.”
At the other end of the garden, sheltered by the yew hedge, Miss Quigley was seated at her easel painting a lone, white cloud that drifted slowly along, very high up, in the silky blue sky. In the carrycot by her side, Googles was lying kicking her feet and rattling a pink plastic bear with considerable enthusiasm.
As Appleby watched them, a little humility crept in. She looked shyly at her sister.
“And I needed you, Nuova Pilbeam,” she said softly. “You’ll never know how much I needed you.”
Read on for the first chapter of Mennyms in the Wilderness . . .
1
The Letter
22 Calder Park
Gillygate
Durham
10th August
Dear Family
This is the strangest and most difficult letter I have ever had to write. It flies in the face of common sense. If you are real people living at 5 Brocklehurst Grove, you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about. My waste-paper bin is full of discarded efforts. More than once, I decided to give up trying. But a promise to a ghost is very compelling, even in the light of common day. I have to keep telling myself that I did see a ghost and I did make a promise.
I am an ordinary human being. In no way am I special. But, if the things I have been told are true, you will recognise my name. I was called after my father. My name is Albert Pond. But I am not a mythical Australian. I am English – and completely real! All of which takes a fair bit of explaining.
It began one day last week . . .
I was sitting on a bench by the river just above Prebends Bridge. I had been down in the depths of the library all morning, catching up on unfinished work. So it was a relief to come out for a breath of fresh air.
You must picture a steep grassy bank above me rising right up to the walls of the Cathedral. Beneath me there is a gritty path, more grass, and trees everywhere. The river below is barely visible. I am alone.
Then suddenly I am not alone. For the first time in my thirty years of life, I am about to see a ghost. It is a very weird experience. I have never even believed in ghosts before. First, I have the sense of there being someone close beside me. I look around. The path either side is deserted. The nearest human beings are on the bridge away to my left, not even within hailing distance. I look along the seat and there, hovering on my right, is what I can only describe as a swathe of grey smoke.
Everything around me becomes totally still. The leaves are not moving on the trees. There is no movement on the bridge. Everything is silent.
“Don’t worry,” says a firm voice out of the mist. “I won’t take long.”
Within seconds, there is no mist any more, just a real, very solid, elderly lady wearing a heather-coloured tweed jacket and skirt and a deep pink jumper. From her wiry grey hair, neatly bobbed, to her brown brogue shoes, she looks rather old-fashioned, but completely alive. Her sharp brown eyes are youthful. Her broad, downy cheeks are the colour of ripe peaches, the lines on her face are faint and pleasant-looking.
“You won’t know me,” she says briskly, “but I know who you are. Your grandfather was my nephew. I am Kate Penshaw.”
Then I realise with a shock that I have seen her before. She is in the family photograph album, holding my father on her knee when he was just two years old. I know it is the same woman, but if she were alive today she would have to be at least a hundred and ten.
“Why am I not afraid of you?” I ask. I feel genuinely puzzled and out of my depth.
“Why should you be?” asks Kate with just the glimmer of a smile.
“You are a ghost, aren’t you?”
“If you say so,” says Kate. “I am not at all sure what I am. I do know what I am here for.”
Then she tells me all about the Mennyms, down to the last detail. She knows much more than you might think. She claims to have lived with you and through you since the day she died. She makes me believe her, even though the things she says are totally fantastic.
“And now,” she says as she brings the story up to the present, “they are in danger of losing their home. For the first time in all these years, they are threatened from outside in a way that could lead to their destruction. The danger is, as yet, no bigger than a speck on the horizon. But I have been warned of it. And, to put it very simply, I am here because we need your help.”
She clasps her hands together in her lap and leans towards me with a look of real anxiety.
“Do you understand?”
I don’t. But, from habit, I nod as if I do. People explain things much better if you don’t insist upon understanding every word they say.
“Plans are being made,” she continues, “to pull down Brocklehurst Grove and to drive a motorway right through the house. And there’s not a thing I can do about it. I haven’t the power, not the power it would need to stop something as big as that.”
I suddenly realise what she wants me for. And it chills me to the bone. I don’t ask her any of the obvious questions as to where she has come from and what it is like there, or how she has managed to come back, or even how you people are so alive. Instead, I say, “I can’t see what use I would be. I’m not in town-planning or anything like that. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Aunt Kate looks relieved.
“That’s no problem, Albert. I can tell you where to start. I didn’t come here without considering what could be done. Write to them. Meet them. Give them a new home if need be. There is Comus House, remember. You hardly ever go there yourself. You might as well put it to some good use.”
She fixes me with those sharp brown eyes and makes me promise to do all I can.
“You won’t be alone,” she says. “I’ll be there in the background keeping an eye on things.”
Then she gets up and walks quickly away along the river bank. She doesn’t even dematerialise like a proper ghost. As for me, I just sit stunned as the leaves rustle in the breeze again and faint sounds of distant people and traffic reach my ears.
So now I am writing to warn you of what is going to happen, and, goodness knows how I’ll do it, to offer you whatever help I can give. I still feel very unsure of some of the things Aunt Kate told me, but I’ll be in an even worse muddle if I have to decide whether ghosts can tell lies. So all I can do is try to believe everything and act accordingly.
As far as I can make out, the motorway must still be in its very early planning stage. None of your neighbours will know anything about it yet. There is no desperate hurry. I have Kate’s word for that. I already have a holiday arranged and she says it will be perfectly safe for me to go. I shall write again as soon as there is anything more to tell.
Take your time. Learn to live with the idea that there is one living human being who knows all about you but who will share that knowledge with no one. Aunt Kate was very firm on that point.
Yours sincerely,
Albert Pond
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
Mennyms in the Wilderness
Mennyms Under Siege
Mennyms Alone
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
‘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)
THE MENNYMS
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19537 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 1993
First Published by Julia MacRae, 1993
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.
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