Mennyms in the Wilderness

by Sylvia Waugh

  “Sir Magnus, Lady Tulip, family,” Albert began, trying briefly to match his host’s formality, “we’ve all read this letter that came yesterday morning. Every household in the street will have received one. I’ve no doubt we’ll be hearing from the neighbours. Whenever anything like this happens people tend to get together to see what they can do to stop it.”

  “We never have anything to do with the neighbours,” said Vinetta. “It’s impossible. You must know it is, Albert.”

  “That at least is where I can help. For as long as I am here, I will answer the door. I will talk to the neighbours. I will tell them that we feel that resistance would achieve nothing and that we are moving immediately to our house in the country.”

  His hearers had very mixed feelings.

  “Are we really?” asked Wimpey, her eyes filled with wonder.

  Albert looked down at her and smiled.

  “That’s the next bit,” he said. “If you want to, there is a house in the country – the one I mentioned in my first letter to you. It has been in the Penshaw family for generations. It is mine now, and you are all welcome to stay there.”

  “You were going to sell it,” put in Soobie, trying to protect his new friend from foolish generosity. It was one of the many things they had talked about the day before. “You’re not rich enough to give it away.”

  Albert looked uncomfortable.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nobody wants to buy it anyway. And it is the family’s house. Kate wants you to have it.”

  “Ghosts can’t own property,” argued Soobie, “but rag dolls can. We own this house, don’t we? If we take over your house, we should pay for it.”

  It was true. They did own the house. It had been left to them by Chesney Loftus, Aunt Kate’s real nephew who really had lived, and died, in Australia. He had thought they were real tenants, staying on in the house after his aunt’s death. They had paid him rent for the past forty-odd years, perfect tenants, punctual in their payments and never asking for any repairs to be done. Chesney’s bequest had been an acknowledgement of this. There was a codicil, but not one likely to trouble them. It just meant that every year, on the first of October, either Sir Magnus or Joshua had to sign an assertion that they were still in residence. This document had to be sent special delivery to their own solicitor who would pass it on to Cromarty, Varley and Thynne, the solicitors for the estate of the deceased.

  Sir Magnus nodded agreement with Soobie’s proposal that they should consider buying a second home.

  Lady Tulip, however, looked businesslike and doubtful.

  “If no one else is rushing to buy it, perhaps we should take our time before making any rash decisions. It may not be suitable for us. We would certainly have to look at it first. That’s the very least we should do.”

  “Look before we leap,” said Magnus, deciding that, after all, discretion might be the better part of valour. Tulip, he knew, was no fool when it came to business transactions. The words about being wary of buying a pig in a poke drifted into his mind, but he had just enough tact not to use them!

  “He who hesitates is lost,” said Appleby.

  “A stitch in time saves nine,” said Poopie, recognising the game.

  “Stop it, all of you,” said Vinetta. “This is much too serious for silly jokes. We need as many details as you can give us, Albert. Tell us where this house is, whether it is big enough for all of us, and how soon we would have to move. The rest of you sit still and listen.”

  “Comus House,” said Albert, “is bigger than this one, but it is a bit older and it hasn’t had much done to it for the last sixty years or so. It was one of the first houses in the area to be lit by electricity, but after that time stood still. My grandparents both lived in the past. They seemed to think it would have been better if the twentieth century had never happened. No one has really lived there since my grandfather died. It was left to my father, but my mother refused to live in it. Still, it is quite strongly built. If you decided to settle there and could put a few thousand into renovating it, I think you would find it homely enough.”

  There was a united, instinctive opposition to the idea of moving. The complications were terrifying.

  “I have my job to think about,” said Joshua. “I don’t want to move away from here.”

  “Nobody does,” said Vinetta, “but it looks as if we may not have much choice.”

  “How long can you stay with us, Albert?” asked Appleby. Pilbeam looked sharply at her sister. She knew how inventive Appleby could be and Appleby definitely had an inventive expression on her face.

  “I suppose I could stretch to three weeks,” said Albert, “but I’ll have to be back for the start of term.”

  “Right,” said Appleby. “This is what we do. You, Albert, will go to the neighbours with a petition which we will all sign. You can sign too, Albert, as an interested party. You’ll tell everybody how upset we are, but that we don’t want to talk about it. You can say something like, ‘They’re a funny family, distant cousins of mine. They don’t mix with strangers – eccentric, but harmless you know. All this is hitting them very hard.’ That should work, I think.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you’ll have started the ball rolling. They’ll take over the petition and they won’t bother us. We’ll just be the cranky lot that live at Number 5.”

  “The best form of defence is attack,” commented Sir Magnus.

  Albert was impressed with Appleby’s reasoning, but then he started to think ahead.

  “What if the petition fails? It probably will fail. Then what?”

  “We’ll have bought time,” said Appleby. “At this moment all we need to worry about are nosy neighbours. It will be ages and ages before the council officials get any further. Before then we can try Comus House to see if it will do.”

  “Thank you,” said Albert wryly.

  “I don’t mean it like that,” said Appleby. “What I mean is that when your summer vacation comes, we can hire a minibus and you can take us there. Father’s annual holiday is the last week in June and the first in July. How about it?”

  Sir Magnus gave his granddaughter a look of admiration.

  “How on earth do you know about hiring – what was it you said? – a minibus?”

  “I know loads of things, Granpa. What I wasn’t born knowing, I make it my business to find out.”

  Pilbeam said doubtfully, “I don’t see what good it would do to spend a holiday at Comus House if we are not going to settle there. It might be fun for us, but it would be a dreadful upheaval for Granny and Granpa. They are old, you know.”

  Appleby knew this already, but she also knew that there was far more chance of persuading her father to go away for two weeks than there was of getting him to hand in his notice at Sydenham’s. Once they got him there, it might be just possible to persuade him to stay.

  Tulip and Magnus were so offended at being called old that they remained silent.

  “We must go,” said Appleby, wishing she were sitting near enough to give Pilbeam a sly dig. “Once people start making a fuss about preserving Brocklehurst Grove, this place will be in the spotlight. There will be protesters and reporters all over the place. Not to mention council officials. We can’t risk living in this house if the street becomes the focus of attention. We go away. If the petition succeeds, we sneak quietly back. If it fails, we settle elsewhere.”

  Joshua looked at her suspiciously. There was double-talk in there somewhere. A two-week holiday, whilst things were being sorted out, was one thing. An extended stay in the country was out of the question. Joshua remained silent, but he thought the more.

  Vinetta watched him and knew what he was thinking.

  “We may not need to stay long,” she said. “The petition sounds a good idea. Our own house might be saved.”

  “It should be,” said Miss Quigley. “It might not be as old as Comus House, but it has been standing for over a hundred years. This street has character. I
t should be protected.”

  Joshua had been quietly considering all they said.

  “It strikes me,” he said, “that all we need concern ourselves with for now is the petition. We’ll just take the rest as it comes.”

  That was the final word. They filed out of the room leaving Tulip to straighten the chairs and put them back where they belonged. Granpa’s foot slid comfortably out of its cover.

  “Glad that’s over,” he said, but his black button eyes looked glazed and his fine white moustache drooped. He was losing heart, even with conferences. His pearls of wisdom now seemed like pygmies in a land of giants.

  Tulip too felt despondent.

  “Life used not to be like this,” she said. “Once it was quiet and humdrum. Now it is just one crisis after another. Maybe Appleby sowed the wind when she invented the Australian. Now we are reaping the whirlwind.”

  “A pearl of wisdom,” said her husband with a sad smile, “a terrifying pearl of wisdom.”

  15

  The Move

  ALBERT STAYED THREE weeks and, considering his natural lack of confidence, he put on a magnificent performance. He went to see all of the neighbours. He wrote to the local newspaper protesting against the vandalism of knocking down the statue of Matthew James Brocklehurst and the terrible shame of demolishing a street of such gracious, well-proportioned houses. Research had given him the information that the said Matthew James had been a leader in the Methodist Movement, a great supporter of Sunday Schools and Workers’ Institutes. It was promising material.

  It was only after Albert had made the acquaintance of the family at Number 9 that he felt able to pass the baton. The Fryers were wonderful. If anyone could save Brocklehurst Grove, they were the ones to do it.

  Loretta Fryer was a concert pianist. Her husband, Alexander, was a television producer. Their only daughter, Anthea, owned and ran a small picture gallery.

  “I’m sorry, Albert,” she said with a shake of her head, “you just won’t do. It will take real salesmanship to put over the idea of saving the Grove. I don’t wish to be unkind, but you’re not the type to argue with That Lot. You’d have to be a sight more brash.”

  Albert smiled at her. He might not be brash, but he did have a sense of humour. Anthea, standing there with her firm chin and vividly blue eyes, looked so self-consciously determined. Her blonde hair was cut in a short, neat bob with a half-fringe that licked her right eyebrow. Her shoulders were broad and she was about four inches taller than Albert.

  “You’re an Amazon,” he said, smiling. “I’ll leave the whole protest in your capable hands. I have to be back in Durham in three days’ time whatever. I’ll try to keep in touch. But do remember to leave the Mennyms in peace. I don’t want to be faced with an epidemic of nervous breakdowns in the family. They can’t help the way they are.”

  Anthea was quite pleased to be called an Amazon. It agreed with her own opinion of herself. But she knew how to pity the weak. Number 5, with its bunch of reclusive residents, would be out of bounds to everybody. She regarded them as an endangered species. “If you want to know how things are going,” she said, “just pop in some time or ring me at work.” Albert’s first objective was safely achieved.

  When Albert returned at the end of June with the minibus, evidence of Anthea’s determination greeted him as he drove down the main road. There, on a banner nine foot deep, strung from the roof of Number 1 right across the front of the Grove to the roof of Number 9, were the words

  SAVE BROCKLEHURST GROVE!

  The letters were brilliant red on a white background.

  “Did you see the banner?” asked Wimpey excitedly before Albert had even crossed the doorstep.

  “It would be hard to miss it,” said Albert. “The Amazon doesn’t do things by halves!”

  “Are we going in that bus?” asked Poopie, wide-eyed. “When can we go? Can we have a ride in it now?”

  Vinetta chased Poopie and Wimpey off to the playroom.

  “Come into the lounge, Albert,” she said, “and sit down. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and some sandwiches. Then, when you’re ready, we’ll go up and see Magnus.”

  The hardest bit would be getting Sir Magnus unobtrusively on to the bus. Albert had managed, with only inches to spare, to park it in the drive. But a minibus, even in this very private street, was liable to arouse curiosity.

  “I shall have to get dressed, I suppose,” said Magnus with no great enthusiasm.

  Tulip looked doubtful, wondering what her husband was going to wear.

  Albert was more concerned about the old man’s ability to walk down two flights of stairs and out into the drive. A chair lift? He and Soobie might be able to do it, but he wasn’t at all sure.

  “How will you manage the stairs?” he asked tentatively.

  The white moustache quivered, the black beady eyes bulged.

  “How do you think I’ll manage them?” he said. “Like anybody else of course. What do you think I am?”

  Albert felt flustered, but he found himself looking almost spitefully at the purple foot that Sir Magnus’s rage had uncovered again. It certainly did not look serviceable for walking on.

  Sir Magnus dismissed them from his room for twenty minutes. When they were allowed to return, the sight amazed them. Sir Magnus was standing centre stage as it were, dressed in a Norfolk jacket, plusfours and a deerstalker hat. The purple feet were hidden in diamond-patterned socks and crammed into a huge pair of country brogues.

  “Well?” he said, raising his white bushy eyebrows.

  Albert did not know what to say.

  Tulip did.

  She smiled at her husband sweetly and said, “Perfect, Magnus. Quite perfect.”

  Her mind did rapid, anxious calculations. If they left in mid-afternoon the street should be quiet. There should be no one around to notice. Dusk would have been better, but dusk comes too late in June.

  “When do we have to leave?” asked Joshua. “It can’t be before Friday. Remember I’m at work on Thursday night.”

  “We’ll leave on Friday afternoon at two-thirty,” said his mother with precision.

  The bus journey was brilliant. The things the Mennyms were born knowing included many a bus-trip, of course. But this! This was a happening-now thing, a heightened reality.

  They sang. Appleby led the singing, putting her own words to a tune she remembered from her days in the Brownies. (It was part of her built-in memory that she had once been a Brownie. It was only half a memory, dimly related to the children’s books she had, or maybe had not, read.)

  “Here we go like sparrows in the wilderness,

  Sparrows in the wilderness

  Sparrows in the wilderness.

  Here we go like sparrows in the wilderness,

  Looking for a place to hide.

  Looking for a place to

  Looking for a place to

  Looking for a place to

  HIDE!”

  Albert, in the driving seat, smiled at the words, recognising Appleby’s acuteness of perception in their sentiments. Soobie, in the corner of the back seat, scowled at the back of Appleby’s head. Pilbeam joined in the singing, and swayed to the rhythm, but kept her voice well-modulated. Poopie and Wimpey became very excited and sang loudly and tunelessly, belting out the last word vigorously, then starting all over again.

  Googles began to grizzle. Not even the best baby ever invented could sleep through that row. Miss Quigley jiggled the baby on her knee. She looked back over her shoulder and said, “Can’t you keep those two a bit quieter, Appleby? They’re upsetting Googles. The poor lamb doesn’t know what’s happening.”

  Appleby pulled a face, but at the same time she was flattered that Miss Quigley had given her the responsibility for calming down the twins. With a sly look at Pilbeam, she said in a sugary voice, “Yes, Miss Quigley. I’ll see to them.”

  Pilbeam said helpfully, “Tell them a story, Appleby. They always enjoy your stories.”

  Appleby felt insp
ired.

  “Do you want to know what Comus House is like?” she said.

  “You don’t know,” said Poopie scornfully. “You haven’t been there either.”

  “Not in this life,” said Appleby, looking solemn, “but I have been on this earth before. I have lived other lives.”

  Soobie groaned.

  The twins looked at their sister wide-eyed. Even the grown-ups began to listen. Only Sir Magnus, asleep in the left-hand side front seat, and Albert, busy with his driving, took no notice.

  “In a previous existence,” went on Appleby, “I was a lady, a proper lady, married to a lord, not just a knight’s wife.”

  Tulip was offended but said nothing.

  “I lived in the manor that is now called Comus House. I can see it now, built of rugged stone with turrets at each corner. And inside there is the great hall, the wide, sweeping staircase, corridors with family portraits on their walls, a music gallery above the refectory, and bedroom after bedroom after bedroom. It was built in the time of James the First. Some parts of it are even older.”

  She paused and slumped forward with a deep, musical sigh as if the effort had been too great.

  “What else, Appleby?” asked Poopie, eagerly shaking her arm.

  Appleby looked up, startled.

  “There’s a well in the courtyard where a child once drowned.”

  “That’s horrible,” said Wimpey. “You’re making it all up.”

  “Stop it, Appleby,” said Pilbeam sharply. “It’s not fair to frighten them.”

  At first the bus was travelling along a winding road through green and yellow fields. Tracks led up to isolated farmhouses and their outbuildings. There were no villages along this road. Once they saw a group of houses with a church steeple, miles away on the horizon. Then the fields ceased and the road skirted a steep, rough hillside. Far to the west of them was acre upon acre of brushy moorland.

  There were stakes along this roadway. They must have been about ten or twelve foot high and rose from the moor-side every few yards.