Bogwoppit

by Ursula Williams

  ‘They have all gone home. And they have taken it with them,’ said Samantha, wondering if she dared pour the pail of disinfectant over her Aunt Daisy. After all she had nothing now to lose.

  Instead, she found herself saying hoarsely: ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry Aunt Daisy for doing what I did in your house.’ She was nearly in tears.

  ‘Indeed!’ said Lady Clandorris coldly. ‘I am not the slightest bit interested in whether you are sorry or not.’ Samantha lost her temper.

  ‘You are a perfectly horrible woman! You are horrible to children, and to helpless animals. I hope I shall never see you again!’ she screamed.

  ‘And you are a particularly horrible child!’ returned Lady Clandorris. ‘I knew I wouldn’t like you, and I don’t and I never will. Besides, look what happened when I am kind to children! I take you in and give you a good home and you fill it up with a crowd of screaming brats as unpleasant as yourself! My home! My food! My pianola! And what do I get by being kind to animals? My house overrun with bogwoppits! Vermin! Worse than rats! The only peace and quiet I can hope for is by being horrible, and I infinitely prefer it, whatever you may like to say.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Samantha.

  ‘We haven’t parted yet. I shall take you, now, to your new home,’ said Lady Clandorris.

  ‘All right,’ said Samantha, ‘but I’ve said goodbye and I’m never going to speak to you again.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ said Lady Clandorris, ‘but I had better explain a few things to you before you go. My lawyer, Mr Beaumont, will pay your board direct to Mrs Bassett. And for your pocket money, clothes and travel I am opening a Post Office account for you. Mr Beaumont will give you the book and explain how much you will be able to spend each month or quarter. You will have to keep within that amount or go without.’

  Samantha’s drooping spirits rose a little. She had never had any regular pocket money given her in her life, and Aunt Lily had always bought and chosen her clothes, to the tune of some of their fiercest arguments. She still said nothing.

  ‘I expect you will soon be joining your Aunt Lily in America,’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘Mr Beaumont will arrange it, once I get her address. And I will be obliged if in future you will keep away from the Park.’

  Samantha’s heart sank again. She was very very sorry indeed to leave the Park. In a sudden spurt of rage she kicked over the pail of disinfectant, and saw its contents spreading ruthlessly across the hall before turning her back on her aunt and climbing the stairs towards her bedroom on the second floor.

  She was glad she had arranged the party. It was quite obvious that her Aunt Daisy had already made up her mind to get rid of her when she left the house that same morning. So she had scored a point there, Samantha thought.

  She packed her suitcase slowly, to keep her aunt waiting as long as possible, and left the room, casting one sorrowful glance behind her at the gilt mirrors, the card tables, the flowers under glass domes, the china dogs, the samplers and lace fans, all the bits and pieces she had collected together to make her own room look elegant and splendid. To be turned out of it like this and dismissed in front of all her friends! To be exiled for ever from the house to which she had almost the claim of a blood-relationship! Had her aunt any right to disown her? Should she appeal to the police? Perhaps America with Aunt Lily and Uncle Duggie would be the best place after all.

  But the thought of leaving the bogwoppit distracted her. Somehow or other she must get it removed to, and accepted by, her new home, and with this in mind Samantha deliberately scattered all her bedclothes on the floor and went downstairs to join her Aunt Daisy.

  Outside the front door Lady Clandorris was waiting with the car engine running, buzzing the accelerator now and then rather impatiently. Samantha slowed her pace, and, to be still more annoying, paused to examine the contents of the letter box, which hung underneath a torn curtain inside the hall door.

  Lady Clandorris had spoken quite truthfully when she said she never took the letters out of the box or looked at them. Samantha removed the uppermost, which happened to be a picture postcard from America featuring the Statue of Liberty, signed by Aunt Lily. It was addressed to Lady Clandorris, informing her that she and Duggie had found an apartment, and Duggie’s friend had found Duggie a good job, and if Daisy couldn’t stand Samantha it was all right, she could send her over. She enclosed an address.

  Samantha deliberately stuffed the postcard back in the bottom of the crowded box and dawdled down the front steps to join her aunt.

  Mrs Bassett’s house, Lady Clandorris explained to the perfectly silent Samantha, was on a bus route, so she would be able to catch the bus to school every day. That is all the conversation that took place between them during the three-and-a-half miles of their reluctant journey. Lady Clandorris could not wait to be rid of Samantha, and left the car engine running at the gate.

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your auntie goodbye?’ Mrs Bassett asked Samantha, taking the suitcase and opening the door of ‘Woodside’ to show a comfortable and up-to-date interior that could not have been more of a contrast to the Park. But, before Samantha could openly refuse, Lady Clandorris hurried off down the garden path to argue with a policeman, who had arrived to admonish her for leaving her car engine running unattended while the car was stationary in the main road. While she was trying to justify her licence and insurance being out of date, and the car being on the road without a certificate of roadworthiness, Mrs Bassett quietly and tactfully drew Samantha inside and shut the door.

  It was the beginning of a new life for Samantha, and a very agreeable life, that lasted exactly one week.

  At the end of that week Mrs Bassett’s mother had a stroke and could no longer be left to live alone. The only other place for her to live was with Mrs Bassett, and since the only spare bedroom that Mrs Bassett had was being slept in by Samantha, Mrs Bassett’s mother had to have it, and Samantha had to go.

  Everybody was very sorry to turn Samantha out, even Mrs Bassett’s mother, but there was no help for it, and Lady Clandorris’s lawyer, Mr Beaumont, was summoned to deal with the situation.

  Meanwhile quite a number of other events had taken place. The bogwoppit had been fetched from the Prices, and was living in a large empty drainpipe with bars jammed tightly against it at either end in Mrs Bassett’s yard.

  ‘Of course you can keep a pet, dear!’ Mrs Bassett had warmly agreed when Samantha had explained the situation to her. ‘It is nice for children to have pets. My boys always had them.’

  And she suggested the drainpipe herself. She was ready to admire the bogwoppit, but found it very curious. She had never seen anything like it before.

  ‘Children have such odd pets nowadays!’ she said to her next-door neighbour. ‘With Trevor and Les it was hamsters and mice, but now it’s all gerbils and mynah birds and things like this funny old rat of Sammy’s. Still, it’s nice for a child to have a pet.’ And she put up with the bogwoppit’s moaning and grumbling while Samantha was at school.

  This time the Prices had faithfully carried out their responsibilities and kept the bogwoppit safe the whole night long after the party. In fact, they had sat up in turns to make sure it did not escape. And when Mrs Price knew for certain that Samantha meant to come and fetch it after school she allowed them to lock it up in the wash house where it could not possibly gnaw through the tin plating at the bottom of the door, though it chewed, bit and worried at a great many other things, including Mr Price’s trousers, which were hanging from the ceiling. The bogwoppit just rose in the air like a helicopter and fetched them down.

  But even Mr Price was sorry for Samantha and her troubles, and he was very tolerant about the trousers. At the end of the week when Mrs Bassett could no longer give her a room and Lady Clandorris still refused to have Samantha back at the Park, Mr and Mrs Price had a long talk together and agreed to offer Samantha a home.

  Lady Clandorris’s lawyer, Mr Beaumont, who was at his wits’ end to know what to do with her, was mo
re than happy to fall in with the arrangement. Lady Clandorris, when referred to, said Mr Price was an excellent plumber, and anyway, when her Aunt Lily sent her address, Samantha would soon be joining her in America. Deborah, Jeff and Timothy Price were delighted, and Mrs Bassett, who had become very fond of Samantha, was much relieved.

  But Samantha said she would not go anywhere without the bogwoppit.

  She had the good sense to put the whole position in front of Mr and Mrs Price, explaining how the little creatures in the park pools had suffered a miserable death through Mr Price’s inadvertent recommendation to use disinfectant in the drains. She explained that they were not rats at all, but a very rare and almost extinct form of animal life called a bogwoppit, which was about to become a Project for the school to study, and would almost certainly attain nationwide importance, and appear on television. She explained that it was quite impossible to put the bogwoppit back in the marsh pools while the remains of disinfectant still lurked there, and putting it into a Pets’ Home or boarding kennels was quite out of the question, because they would not have the right kind of food for it.

  In fact the bogwoppit’s food had become a crucial problem, because Samantha no longer had access to the aruncus wopitus leaves that grew in Lady Clandorris’s herb garden. She already had plans for making a raid on the garden, aided by the Prices, for she was actually a little nervous of going alone. Meanwhile the bogwoppit lived on a diet of cornflakes and milk, which suited its digestion very badly indeed.

  When Mr Price realized that it was in fact the Only-Bogwoppit-in-the-World he reluctantly agreed to Samantha keeping it until the marsh pools were free enough of disinfectant for it to go back and live there again.

  ‘But it can’t go back until you have put a grid between the pool and the house, so it isn’t able to get back into the kitchen,’ Samantha pursued, ‘because if my Aunt Daisy catches sight of it she will throw more disinfectant down the drain and kill it, and that will be the end of every bogwoppit that ever was. It would be criminal!’

  Samantha’s arguments were forceful, and Mr Price began to think that perhaps she was right. He stipulated that the bogwoppit should be contained in a drain pipe, as at Mrs Bassett’s, and Mrs Bassett was only too glad for Samantha to take the drain pipe away with her. Mr Price fetched it in his van when he collected Samantha and her luggage and the bogwoppit. Then he went straight up to the Park and fixed an iron-barred grid with a gate, in the big drain half way between the marsh and the house. The gate was locked with a key. Lady Clandorris insisted on having a key of her own, while Mr Price kept a second.

  Samantha begged him to go into her aunt’s herb garden while he was up at the house, and bring back some leaves of aruncus wopitus for the bogwoppit. Being a kind-hearted man, Mr Price made an excuse about finding the route of the watercourse, and opened the door into the little courtyard that led out of the hall. He picked what he guessed to be the right leaves and put them into his toolbag.

  But when Samantha received them for the hungry bogwoppit she found that Mr Price had picked some quite different leaves that made the bogwoppit sick, and for two days it would not eat anything at all.

  Mrs Price nursed it like a baby, bringing it back to health with alternate spoons of egg custard and spinach, but it grew weak and listless. Samantha began to realize that something would have to be done before it died.

  10. A Dangerous Mission

  Samantha took Jeff Price into her confidence. He was the smaller and braver of the twins, and the less likely to betray a secret.

  ‘I’m going up to the Park tonight to get some aruncus leaves,’ she told him. ‘After dark. Long after we all go to bed. Will you help me?’

  Jeff needed no persuading. ‘How’ll we get in?’ he asked at once.

  ‘I know a window that doesn’t shut,’ said Samantha, ‘and the key is always left in the garden door that leads out of the hall.’

  ‘Great!’ said Jeff. ‘How’ll we wake up?’

  ‘I shan’t go to sleep,’ said Samantha. ‘You can, because it doesn’t matter … I’ll wake you. Have you got a torch?’

  He had. ‘And it’s full moon!’ Jeff added.

  ‘Bring one of your father’s toolbags! The biggest you can find. We’ll bring back some roots and plant them in your mother’s garden. And we’ll pick enough leaves to put in the freezer!’ said Samantha.

  ‘Can’t Tim come too?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘No. Two is plenty. Besides, Deb wouldn’t want to be the only one left out. Just you and me,’ said Samantha.

  Jeff was persuaded, and felt rather proud to be chosen. All the same he slept with his usual soundness, and had almost forgotten the whole mission when Samantha crept into the twins’ bedroom soon after midnight to shake him awake.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged him in a whisper. ‘Don’t you remember? We’re going up to the Park to get leaves for the bogwoppit!’

  He struggled awake, staring at her, and to her dismay Samantha realized that she had awakened not Jeff, but Timothy.

  ‘Ssh! Go to sleep! It’s Jeff I want!’ she said, pushing him back in the pillows. ‘Jeff! Wake up! It’s time to go! Don’t you say a word!’ she threatened Tim, who bounced up in his bed again and appeared much more ready than his brother was to get up and go out with Samantha.

  Jeff did get out of bed at last, yawning widely. He put his clothes on over his pyjamas. Tim began to get up too.

  ‘No! Not you!’ Samantha insisted. ‘Only the two of us. We might get caught or seen. Three of us would be dangerous. Come on, Jeffy, let’s go!’

  They slipped out of the door, carrying Mr Price’s largest toolbag that had been hidden underneath Jeff’s side of the mattress.

  Timothy lay back listening to their feet quietly tiptoeing down the stairs. He felt very uneasy, and wondered whether he ought to go and tell his father. In the end the silence overcame him and he went back to sleep. He only slept for just over an hour. Then shortly after two o’clock he woke again.

  Samantha and Jeff ran up the silent Park drive in the moonlight, their footsteps on the night grass making quite a different sound from daylight noises. The moon was so bright it was like being on a pantomime stage, only the footlights came from above, not below.

  The Park seemed strangely different, partly because of the moonlight and partly because, instead of belonging to it as she had done so recently, Samantha now felt herself to be an outlaw and a stranger … even at this moment … a thief! Not a breath of summer night air stirred the branches. A pheasant moved in a tree. A twig fell, and a far-off clock chimed the quarter hour, but by far the loudest sounds were their guilty footfalls that they tried to muffle by running on the dry and rustling grass.

  Jeff accidentally knocked the toolbag against Samantha’s legs and she cried out, startled. But there was no one to hear her, and they came to the Park, standing gaunt and grey in the moonlight, not so much forbidding as disapproving of their mission and all that it entailed.

  The gravel on the drive in front of the house was so ancient and weed-ridden that their footsteps made little impression. They stole across the gravel on tiptoe to the ribbon of shaggy grass underneath the downstairs window.

  ‘This way!’ said Samantha. They tiptoed past the stone portico, round the corner of the house, where, sure enough, a few feet above their heads a sash window stood open at the top, almost wide enough for a child’s body to squeeze inside.

  Samantha stood on Jeff’s back to reach the sill. Then she grasped the open edge of the window and pulled it downwards. With a horrible jerk and scream it opened.

  Samantha leapt off the sill and together they ran for the nearest bush, a laurel whose branches trailed across the corner of the house and provided some shelter. Side by side they crouched shivering, while the toolbag like a long black slug stood out large and clear on the gravel facing the open window, through which at any minute they expected Lady Clandorris to poke her head.

  They waited until the far clock chimed another quarter
, but all was silent within.

  ‘She must be very sound asleep! I expect she is snoring!’ said Samantha. ‘Her bedroom is up there somewhere. Come on! Let’s get inside!’

  But Jeff’s nerve was shaken, and it was another five minutes before he dared to help Samantha on to the sill again. When she was safely through the gap in the window and had dropped inside the room he jumped for the sill, pulled himself up by his hands, and clambered in after her. His teeth were still chattering with fear.

  They were in the old dining room which Lady Clandorris never used, preferring to eat her meals in the kitchen. But Samantha had given her party here, and had sometimes carried in her own meals on a tray and dined in state at the long table. She could still see some of the party crumbs lying on the surface in the moonlight.

  New courage inspired her, now that she was back in familiar surroundings … surroundings to which she had a personal right, she told herself defiantly, and with Jeff a small, timid shadow at her heels, carrying the toolbag, she quietly opened the door into the moonlit hall.

  She half expected to find her Aunt Daisy waiting for her there, standing in silent accusation at the foot of the stairs as she had stood on the evening of the party, but tonight there was nobody in the hall or on either of the staircases.

  They ran across the stone flags to the door leading into the herb garden, and sure enough, the key was in the door. Samantha turned it. There came another creak, but not so loud this time, and the door opened.

  The aromatic scent of green-growing herbs met their noses as they closed the door behind them and crept out into the garden. The shadow of the house covered the overgrown beds, edged with box. Round the outside of the garden high walls supported strands of old-fashioned climbing roses, that clawed at Samantha’s hair with spiteful thorns.

  ‘Got the torch?’ she whispered to Jeff. He found it in the bottom of the bag. The battery was running out, and the pale, restricted beam searched faintly among the herbage for the plant they had come to find.