by A. N. Wilson
The first time she had seen the mice in the kitchen, dancing on her food packet and making a riot, she had felt angry. She felt they were stealing her food, making a mess in her kitchen. But after they had scuttled behind the dresser and life was quiet again, she found that she missed the mice. There had been several conversations with them since then. In fact, the mice came each evening. The younger ones were still cheeky – and silly too. A couple of them bit a hole in a bag of flour in the food cupboard and rolled about in it. Then they had a game which was like the kind of game Chum had watched the Giant and her friends have when the world became very cold one day and was covered with thick white stuff they called snow. The Giant and her friends had thrown their white stuff at one another just as the young mice were now prancing in the flour, which spread from the cupboard shelves to the kitchen floor.
‘Said I’d come,’ said Mokey Moke.
Chum yawned and began to take in the strangeness of the situation.
‘Mokey,’ she said, ‘Good morning, good evening – whatever time it is. What – what are you doing in my cage?’
‘Said I’d get. Said I’d get yer. Said I’d get yer outta stir.’
Chum looked about her cage. It was quite a roomy cage, made from plastic-lined metal wire. It had an upper and a lower storey, but, to add variety to life and to give her the chance to exercise, there was a system of transparent plastic tubes, which ran both inside and outside the cage. To make them easier to clean, these tubes were made in detachable segments held together by bright blue and orange rings.
Once a week or so the Giant would clean these tubes and give Chum new straw, sawdust and newspaper on her cage floor. Sometimes, when the Giant was away, it was left to the grown-ups to put the tubes back together. This must have happened now. The Giant had gone for a sleepover with her friends and Dad had attempted the complicated puzzle of putting the tubes back together. Clearly one of the rings hadn’t been connected properly. The tubing had collapsed and the resourceful mouse Mokey Moke had crept through the gaping hole. Mokey Moke nuzzled against Chum’s side and repeated, ‘Wotcha.’
Chum looked at her tube. Instead of being an enclosed transparent tunnel through which she could run down to the basement floor of the cage, up a side, through the dining area, down to the basement, and up the side over and over again, the tube was now an open window.
‘You’re free, Furba, ole girl. Free as the mokes.’
Chum looked at Mokey Moke and, for a moment, she said nothing. Then she put one cautious pink paw forward, then another. She walked slowly towards the hole. The young mice playing in the flour on the other side of the kitchen paused to look up at her. Two older mice who were standing beside the gap in the skirting board were also staring up at the cage. Chum stepped out through the hole, followed by Mokey Moke. The mice in the kitchen gave a big cheer.
‘Furb. Good on yer, Furball!’
The squeaks and whistles had much of the old mockery. Chum was beginning to get used to this. Even when speaking or squeaking to one another the mice mocked and teased. It was their way of speaking. But they were genuinely pleased and friendly as they welcomed her into the kitchen.
The first time she had seen them in that room – a few weeks ago – Chum had felt indignation that these invaders were in her kitchen, eating her seeds. She didn’t feel like that any more. She had stopped thinking that the kitchen or the seeds or indeed anything, except perhaps the comfortable cashmere sock, exactly belonged to her. At first, the mice had scared her and annoyed her. They still did a little bit, but much less than they had done at first. Now she had come to like Mokey Moke and the antics of the younger mice – yes, they could be annoying, but they were also funny.
With pink claws attached to the outside of the cage, Chum climbed down and scuttled across the kitchen to the mice beside the dresser.
‘You’ll byable to store it good,’ said one of the mice by the skirting board.
‘Thank you,’ said Chum – she was sure that he had meant a compliment since his sentence ended with the word ‘good’ – but she hadn’t quite understood the rest.
‘Well then,’ said Mokey Moke, ‘let’s set to – sumin yer appy, Furba?’
‘Oh, very,’ said Chum.
‘Git on wivvit ven,’ said the second of the two mice beside the skirting board. ‘Parck.’
‘Parck?’ She was puzzled.
‘That fing wot you do with your marfy,’ said Mokey Moke.
‘I don’t do anything with my marfy – in fact I don’t know what marfy is.’
Mokey Moke put a seed in her mouth and did a rather bad imitation of a hamster pouching food in her cheeks.
‘You want me to pouch food for you? Marfy means mouth?’
‘Comprenny at larsto – plarsto,’ said one of the mice by the skirting board. They scampered forward to a piece of bread which had either fallen or been dragged by them to the kitchen floor.
‘If yer woody,’ said Mokey Moke politely.
‘If I would – chew and pouch?’
‘And liver arpliss.’
‘Deliver to your place.’
She was beginning to twig. ‘Where exactly?’
‘If you’d park a load I’ll show yer, Furba, ole girl,’ said the mouse by the skirting board. Chum later learned his name was Nobby, and his brother was Buster.
Chum advanced towards the hunk of bread and set to. The mice were evidently impressed by the speed with which she managed to store so much bread in her cheek pouches. Soon her hamster-head and neck and even her shoulders had changed shape, and she resembled (as the Giant had once said) a hammer-headed shark.
‘Ready, Furball-mite?’
Chum nodded.
‘Good on yer.’
Mokey Moke ran – almost danced – under the dresser and Chum followed. Here the gap between the skirting board was even wider. Mokey Moke managed to squeeze through this gap quite easily. For Chum, it was a bit of a challenge, but she did it.
She dropped down in the darkness.
‘Yer could leave it ere and go back fer more?’ asked Mokey Moke.
Glad to help her new friends, Chum de-pouched the bread, or nearly all of it, keeping back a little in her pouch. In case. You never knew.
‘Ven if you was ter. Ever so much obleege-oh!’ said Mokey Moke, with one of her strange squeaky laughs.
Chum had landed on a soft, dark, dusty patch of flour. She could only dimly make out the hole at the top of the skirting board. She tried to climb towards it, but at the first attempt she only slithered to the ground again. Not to be outdone by a mouse, she made another attempt, and by great effort she was able to hold on to a brick surface with her claws and clamber towards the gap. Getting back into the kitchen was harder than it had been to get out. But she managed it and was soon munching at the hunk of loaf on the floor, filling her pouch once more. It was satisfying to hear the mice below admiring how she did it.
‘Cor – see how fast she done that? Cor – ow she done that? Cor – see that? Vanished like magic that did.’
She made three difficult journeys to and fro, and in quite a short time she had shifted more bread than a mouse could have carried in ten journeys. It was when she was sitting on the kitchen floor and filling her pouch for a fourth time that two of the younger mice began to shout. ‘Ooms! Ooms!’
They heard a door open, footsteps on the stairs. The mice scampered under the dresser and Chum followed. By the time human feet had appeared in the kitchen, two of the leaner mice had scuttered with the greatest of ease behind the skirting board.
From where she hovered under the dresser, Chum could see the Giant’s school shoes. She could hear a tap being turned as the Giant helped herself to a glass of water.
Then the Giant called out loudly, ‘Mum – have you seen Chum’s cage?’
Another pair of shoes came into the kitchen: Mum’s stylish olive-green Converse.
‘C’mon, Furb – come on,’ urged Mokey Moke.
Chum hesitated a m
oment. A bit of her wanted to run out to the Giant. Probably the Giant would pick her up and stroke her; possibly she would give her a piece of parsley or half a cherry. But another part of Chum caught the panic felt by the mokes. It was not, quite, that she saw the Giant and her mum as enemies – as Mokey and the other mice did. But she felt the fear of the mokes. When Mokey Moke ran, Chum ran. Mokey Moke scuttered up the wall; Chum followed. Once more she squeezed through that tight gap at the top of the skirting board. This time, rather than sitting down at once and de-pouching two cheeks full of bread, she followed Mokey Moke who was running, running, running through long tunnels into deeper and deeper blackness.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Terrible Emptiness
Kitty was trying not to cry, and trying not to be furious. Four hours had now passed since she came back from school. The previous night she had been for a sleepover with a friend. She had left her mum and dad with the very simple task of looking after one small hamster in a cage. She had not asked them to take a dog for a walk, or exercise a monkey or go swimming with a dolphin. Just look after one hamster. And what had they done? They had somehow not noticed that the plastic tubing at the side of Chum’s cage had come to bits. Someone (Kitty refused to believe it was herself – she suspected her dad), someone had been stupid enough not to fix the plastic rings tightly. She had once caught her dad, when he was meant to be helping her clean out Chum’s cage, putting the tubes back together in such a way that the hamster could not get from the top floor of her cage to the sock bed at the bottom without jumping half a metre or clambering down the side of the cage.
Kitty had only had Chum a few months but already she loved her very much. In fact all three of them loved Chum – Dad, Mum and Kitty – which was why they all felt so very sad without her.
Kitty sat on the sofa watching TV, but not really paying any attention to what was happening on the screen. Mum, who had put a few pieces of Chum’s favourite cheese near a hole at the bottom of the stairs, had said there was no point in searching. The animal could be anywhere. Dad was lying on the floor beside the cooker. He thought she might be there. He was holding out a bit of carrot and calling ‘Chum! Chum!’ in piteous tones.
Kitty knew it was by accident that Chum had got lost, but she couldn’t help being angry with both her father and her mother.
‘She’ll come back when she’s hungry,’ said Mum.
‘Unless she meets a rat,’ said Dad.
‘We don’t have rats,’ said Mum.
‘There might be rats – where she’s gone,’ said Dad.
‘And where’s that, I’d like to know.’
Kitty, silent, thought, they have lost my hamster. Now they are going to embarrass me by having a quarrel.
But they held back – just – from a row. This didn’t stop Dad from talking about it all in a way that was both annoying and alarming. He was only thinking aloud, but he sounded like a teacher – telling them things they knew already.
‘Chum wasn’t born in the wild,’ he said. ‘She was born in a pet shop. All hamsters in the Western world descend from one pair that bred in captivity in the year 1930. I know we have all sorts of jokes and fantasies about Chum coming from Syria, and knowing about life in the desert. The truth is, though, she was born in captivity. She’s learned absolutely no survival skills. She was fed by her mother in a cage. Then she was fed by the pet-shop people. Then we bought her. Apart from the rare occasions when we let her out for a run on the carpet, she has never been anywhere, never had to forage for her own food, never had to find her own water to drink. Even if she doesn’t meet a rat, it’s hard to think she stands much chance of surviving—’
‘Thanks, Dad!’ Kitty had by now heard more than she could bear. ‘It’s bad enough Chum going missing – without you spelling out what’s so obvious!’ And she stormed out of the room, slamming the door.
‘Kitty – I didn’t mean…’
She was half aware of her dad’s voice, saying he was sorry.
A bit later – maybe a lot later – she could hear her mum and dad outside her bedroom door.
‘She’ll be OK. Leave her. She needs some space.’
Were Mum and Dad talking about her, or her hamster?
‘I wasn’t fussing.’
‘She needs to be alone for a bit.’
Later still, Mum – by now in her pyjamas – came into Kitty’s bedroom. Normally, Kitty would bring Chum upstairs with her. While she lay in bed, drifting off to sleep, she would be comforted by the sound of the small animal moving about in her cage. Tonight, the room seemed horribly silent. Outside, in the London night, cars and buses passed by, trains rumbled. Inside, there was only a bleak silence, a terrible emptiness.
‘Come on, Kitty. Come on, Stinker.’ Mum wasn’t being rude – it was a joke name she sometimes used. Kitty sat up in bed and let Mum hug her. Blearily – for it was late – she went to the bathroom, put on pyjamas, cleaned her teeth. Tomorrow was another school day. Mum had reminded her of this, and into Kitty’s mind came the comforting thought of her friends. She thought of lessons she had not prepared for. She thought of the netball game they would play in the afternoon. But every now and then, like a stab of toothache returning, she would remember the empty cage downstairs and wonder whether Chum was alive or dead.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Edge of Lundine
Chum, or Furball as she now half-thought of herself, ran faster than the mokes. She ran and ran. Sometimes the going underfoot was made of fluff and dust and it was a bit like running first through soft sand, then through feathers. Then it became much rougher – loose stones, rubble, hunks of brick and plaster much bigger than herself to be climbed or avoided. Because it was so dark, she couldn’t make out a path. She simply charged ahead.
‘Cor – you’re some runner, Furball, ole matey,’ called Mokey Moke from behind.
It seemed the right moment to pause.
Chum was very glad that she hadn’t de-pouched the final load before the mice sounded the alarm in the kitchen. She de-pouched now, and Mokey, Buster and Nobby shared the feast of crumbs and seeds.
‘Close one,’ said Nobby.
‘Reckon you’re safe wiv us, eh, Furba?’ said Buster.
Furball, as she was now in the process of thinking herself, had never felt less safe in her life, but she felt very excited.
The mokes, talking with their mouths full, exclaimed about the excellence of the provisions.
‘Vese seeds from your pocket ven.’
‘Luvva nice bitta bread.’
Chum called the chief mouse, her special friend, Mokey Moke, just as they called her Furb, Furba or sometimes Furball. But she was beginning to realise that all the mice called themselves mokes.
While they stopped to get their breath back and eat Chum’s food supplies, the mokes told her more about the world outside her cage.
The mokes called their world Lundine – at least that was the name of the house where they lived, and the spaces just beside it. They explained it was made up of endless tunnels, holes, puddles, burrows and dark places. Its chief inhabitants were the mokes, of course, but there were also narks (who were to be dreaded). The narks, whith their big teeth and long thick tails – called rats by the ooms – were the mokes’ chief enemies in Lundine itself. They told Chum: if you hear or – worse still – if you see a nark, scarper. That’s the only thing for it. Just run. You’ll never be able to fight a nark, and you’ll never be able to outwit him.
Chum shivered when she heard that outside Lundine there were hundreds of enemies – it was all enemies. There were the snarks, who were like narks, only their tails were grey and bushy not pink and moist. They lived in the trees but they’d fight mokes for their food. So would most fevvas – the bigger fevvas that the ooms called pigeons, gulls, starlings. Even the little fevvas (sparrers, robins and such) wanted watching. ‘And,’ one of them added, ‘then there are the real killers, the snarls, what ooms call their little friends the doggies, and the claws what
ooms call cats.’
There were hundreds of moke stories – the ones their parents had told them and the scary ones they told each other as they huddled in their makeshift dusty nests under floorboards and stairs, about snarls and claws. Claws were the worst of the two, of course. They’d wait hours to catch a moke. ‘And when a claws has caught you it won’t just kill outright, like a snarl might,’ they said. ‘Not claws. He’ll play with you and worrit you and hold you pincered and kebabbed on his claws, he will.’
But the mokes told Chum there was a funny thing about snarls and claws. They’re not just doing it for themselves. They are working for the ooms. It’s the ooms who control the whole world inside and outside Lundine – that bright, noisy, cold, often wet world outdoors away from the shadows where the mokes felt safest. As far as the mokes could tell, the ooms devoted their entire existence to fighting, killing, exterminating mokes, and they enlisted every friend they could. Mokey Moke had heard it said the ooms could make the fevvas catch mokes for them, and though she’d never seen it done, she could believe it. Ooms did not eat mokes – at least she didn’t think they ate them – not like claws or snarls will eat a moke. It seemed as though they just wanted to kill mokes for the fun of it. Ooms – they were like the claws, only worse. It was just killing, not eating, that ooms liked.
Furball didn’t learn all this at once. She picked it up little by little, chiefly from Mokey Moke, but also from the other mokes. Sometimes – as when they told her what the claws like to do if they catch a fevva or a moke – it was a long explanation. Mostly, though, Furball picked it all up from odd remarks made by one or other of the mokes.
‘Good bread this, Furball ole girl,’ Nobby, one of the young mokes, had said between mouthfuls. ‘You don’t always know with food what’s on the floor.’
‘But there’s usually food on the floor of my cage.’
‘My case rests,’ said Nobby with a strange laugh.
