Mennyms Alive

by Sylvia Waugh

  Googles carefully placed the ball in the centre of the playpen, sat with her back against the corner post and let her arms go stiff to either side of her. Her little face beneath its kiss-curl became a perfect blank.

  “There,” said Miss Quigley, looking very smugly at Tulip, “that should be satisfactory.”

  “Most impressive,” said Tulip. “How do you unfreeze her again?”

  “I pick her up and cuddle her,” said Hortensia. “She knows that. It’s part of the game.”

  Hortensia bent over the side of the playpen, lifted her charge up in her arms, and Googles came delightfully and gleefully back to life.

  “Let me try,” said Tulip, taking the baby from her nanny’s arms and sitting her down in the playpen again. Googles beat the ball with the flat of her hands and cooed.

  “Play dead,” said Tulip.

  Googles looked up at her, laughed, and rolled the ball across the playpen floor.

  Tulip gave Miss Quigley a mocking look.

  “That’s not much good,” she said. “This new trick of yours will have to work every time.”

  “Play dead,” said Hortensia quite gently. Googles repeated her earlier performance to perfection.

  “It does work – every single time,” said her nanny, “but only when I say the words. She returns to life only when I lift her up. She is just a baby after all. I think she has done brilliantly well to have learnt so much.”

  Soobie, standing in the doorway applauded, though naturally cloth hands clapping make little noise. Still, his expression of approval was clearly visible and Miss Quigley, suddenly noticing for the first time that he was of their company, appreciated it. She gave him a glad smile, but said nothing. To ask too many questions was not in her nature. It would, indeed, have seemed to her impertinent.

  “Now,” said Soobie, when they returned to the living room, “I will have to go back to the Grove. Ring me tomorrow evening, Father, and bring me up to date with whatever happens in the morning. I’ll be here again tomorrow night unless there is some strong reason why I cannot come.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Upstairs . . .

  EVENTUALLY, ALL OF the Mennyms retired to bed. It was a way of passing the time till morning came. But they were up and ready long before it was necessary. It was Joshua who decided that it should be a six o’clock start.

  “The big cupboard next to the kitchen is full of stuff,” he said, “and the attics are crammed with furniture and crates and boxes.”

  “So?” said Vinetta. “Whoever owns this house must have stored them away.”

  “There’s far too much for it to be ordinary household lumber. The shop downstairs is some sort of antique dealer’s. Those rooms must be store-rooms. We don’t know what time the shop opens. What is worse, we don’t know whether the owner will be coming up here before opening time for more stock.”

  So it was action stations, check everything, and be ready to freeze at a moment’s notice. But seven, eight and nine o’clock arrived and nothing happened. Vehicles passed along the street. Pedestrians came in ones and twos. But no one even paused at the shop.

  Then, at a quarter to ten . . . activity. Two men came to the shop front, removed the shutters and carried them round the corner to the back of the building with an adroitness and speed that showed that this must be the customary beginning to the working day.

  At five to ten a taxi drew up. Its driver got out and opened the door for his passenger, which gave her the air of being a Very Important Person.

  The watchers in the room above saw the top of an elderly woman’s head with its neat grey hair. Even the foreshortened view they had of her left them in no doubt that she was an unusually short woman with broad shoulders. As she stepped from the taxi onto the pavement they observed that she was supporting herself with a stick.

  The taxi driver was paid and drove away. The men who had removed the shutters returned to the front of the shop where they held a short conversation with the newcomer before walking off in the direction of the bridges.

  “See you at tea-time then,” one of them called as he waved his hand. That was all the Mennyms heard, but it was enough to give them some idea of the pattern of the day. The woman disappeared into the shop and the watchers were aware of the faint tinkle of the bell over the door.

  From time to time that morning they heard the telephone ringing in the shop below and they heard the occupant moving around; not that she was noisy or that the phone was allowed to ring for long, but the listeners were silent and very attentive. When they spoke to each other they did so in whispers. When they themselves moved it was with breathless caution.

  Tulip had gone upstairs to sit in the chair by Sir Magnus’s bed as soon as the men arrived to take down the shutters. Joshua had placed himself strategically on the landing keeping his eyes fixed on the front door, waiting for the knob to turn on the lock, poised to return to his seat in the living room the minute it did. Neither he nor his mother saw the shopkeeper arrive in her taxi, but other members of the family kept them informed, moving as swiftly and silently as possible, then returning to their proper positions.

  After an hour or so, they all began to suspect that the danger of someone coming up to see them was not so imminent. They relaxed, but only slightly. Tulip came downstairs again. Joshua took a stool out onto the landing, feeling confident that he would be able to return it in good time should the door eventually be opened.

  “If the woman in the shop downstairs needs a stick to walk with,” said Tulip, “she won’t be able to run up those stairs in a hurry. It’ll be a wonder to me if she can manage it at all. I hope this ten o’clock start is routine and not just a Monday morning effort. It will simplify my job if I can count on being able to go out early one of these days.”

  She was sitting close to Vinetta on a dining chair that would have to be returned to its proper place at the table should the warning come.

  “What do you mean?” said Vinetta with a puzzled look at the sharp crystal eyes of her mother-in-law.

  “There’s the bank to see to, for a start, and the building societies. Though perhaps I should contact our solicitor first.”

  Vinetta gasped. She knew that Tulip had plans to regain the family’s money, but she had no idea that her mother-in-law intended to make expeditions into the outside world. Money from the machine, yes, obtained by Joshua. Sending letters was also possible. But for Tulip to go out in broad daylight seemed a risk too great to contemplate.

  “As soon as it seems feasible to do so, I shall go to the phone box some morning and ring Rothwell and Ramshaw,” continued Tulip. “Their Mr Dobb is the soul of discretion. I will be able to make all sorts of arrangements with him.”

  She kept her voice down and spoke only to Vinetta. “That will be the first step. I’m not saying it will be possible this week or even next week, but I do have five months in hand. It is only seven months since I deposited the letters.”

  “But what’s the use?” asked Vinetta. “We’re stuck here. The money wouldn’t help even if we could get our hands on it. I can’t see any way out.”

  “I can,” said Tulip firmly. “It may seem like a pinpoint of light at the end of an amazingly long tunnel. But keep faith, Vinetta. It is there.”

  CHAPTER 15

  . . . And Downstairs

  THE WOMAN IN the shop below was Daisy Maughan, the owner of an antique business and the guardian of a newly acquired family of life-sized rag dolls. She called them ‘the Mennyms’, for that was the name of the people who claimed to have cared for them, the people who for more than forty years had been the tenants of Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove.

  Daisy had been asked to take on the task of emptying the house after ‘the Mennyms’ had apparently departed with mysterious and unexplained speed, leaving behind all their possessions and a room full of rag dolls. A letter found with the dolls consigned their care to whoever owned the house. It claimed to be a directive given by Kate Penshaw and faithfully observed for fo
rty-seven years by her ‘tenants’, who now passed on both the letter and the responsibility.

  The new owner was Jennifer Gladstone, Lorna’s mother – and Albert’s mother-in-law. Jennifer, alarmed at the dolls’ lifelike appearance, refused to have anything to do with them. So Lorna took over and promised to find a solution to the problem.

  It was Albert who remembered the shop by the riverside. After that everything fell into place. Daisy inspected the house she was to empty, saw the dolls, loved them, and made a home for them in the flat above her shop.

  Daisy Maughan ran the shop called L & P WAGGONS all on her own. It was principally an antique shop but it also sold theatrical costumes and various curiosities that could not quite carry the label ‘antique’. She had inherited the business from her father; it was a living thing that had changed with the years.

  Daisy went into the shop and hung her coat on its usual peg. Then she took a duster to the furniture, beginning with the octagonal table that served as her desk and then checking methodically on all of her wares in the left-hand window, finishing with a visit to the large wooden betty doll seated at the treadle sewing machine in the corner. It was as big as a dummy in a clothes shop window, but there the resemblance ended. The doll with its grained wood face and painted-on lips and eyes was so familiar to Daisy that it had become like an old friend. She was dressed in Victorian clothes and her hair, as wooden as the rest of her, was drawn back into a bun.

  “Well, Lily,” said Daisy to the doll, “it should be an interesting day today. Soon as the shop’s closed, I’ll be up to see my new family. Not that I care any the less for you, mind, but you can never have too many friends.”

  When the articles in the right-hand window had been freshened up and the theatrical costumes there checked for dust, Daisy spoke in like fashion to another doll, sister to the first, who sat at an ancient typewriter with her spindly fingers on the keyboard.

  “It looks like being another fine day, Polly,” she said. “I might even have to pull down the sunblind. It’s a wonderful May we’re having, isn’t it?”

  These dolls were called Lily and Polly because Daisy thought of them as being the L & P Waggons named on the board above the shopfront, for no one knew who the original Waggons were and when, if ever, they had been the owners of the shop. And no one knew where the wooden dolls had come from.

  At ten-thirty the shop was open to the public. Daisy had collected her mail from the doormat and was sitting at the octagonal table sorting through it, ready for any customers who might arrive. On a shelf behind her, in easy reach, was the telephone. It rang two or three times in the course of the next hour. Many of Daisy’s customers came by arrangement with specific purchases in mind. Hers was a well-respected business run with great care and efficiency.

  Daisy had only three real customers before lunch and two or three who were ‘just looking’. At lunchtime, she shut up shop, went into the little kitchen at the back and made herself a pot of tea to go with the sandwiches she had brought from home.

  “It’s not been a bad morning,” she said, talking to herself again. “I’m glad Mrs Woodhouse eventually took the candlesticks. I have never known a woman take so long to make up her mind!”

  In the afternoon one customer bought a carved sideboard. That was the major sale of the day, but the major sales were what kept the minor ones going.

  “I think I’ll close early,” said Daisy, looking at her watch. It was a quarter to five. “Nobody comes in this late without ringing up first. And I daresay Ted and Michael will not mind being a bit prompt with the shutters.”

  She rang her helpers and they came straight along. Theirs was an odd-job and small-removal business. Daisy had for years been their favourite customer. They did her deliveries, helped with her storage, and took care of the shutters that were now an obligatory part of running a shop in Castledean, a sad sign of the times.

  “Had enough for one day?” said Ted.

  “Or made enough?” joked Michael.

  “A bit of both,” laughed Daisy. “I won’t be going out of business yet! Neither will you – there’s a sideboard to deliver this week.”

  CHAPTER 16

  First Encounter

  STEP . . . CLUMP. STEP . . . clump. Step . . . clump. Step . . . clump.

  The sound of the halting footsteps on the stairs reached every room in the flat.

  The Mennyms had heard the door below open. By the time it closed again, each one of them was back in place. It was as if they had never come to life at all. Poopie was in the bedroom, sitting with his back against the bed, looking fixedly at the rebuilt training tower. In the room next door, Magnus was resting against his pillows, reading his one and only book. Tulip, in her armchair, sat with her elbows correctly bent holding the needles with the pink knitting.

  In the room below, Joshua, Vinetta, Pilbeam and Appleby were in their proper chairs looking blankly at the blank screen of the television set. Wimpey sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her mother, nursing her doll and feeling very apprehensive.

  Miss Quigley, in the nursery, had lifted a finger to her lips as a first indication to Googles that silence and stillness were about to begin. Googles smiled, put one hand over her mouth, then reached out for the ball. Her nanny shook her head vigorously and Googles sat up straight again.

  “Play dead,” said Miss Quigley, and Googles obediently set her back against the post of the playpen and stretched out her arms to either side as if they were incapable of bending. She did it so wonderfully well that it was all her nanny could do to stop herself picking the baby up in her arms and giving her the cuddle she surely deserved.

  The footsteps stopped. There was a tap at the living-room door followed by a slight pause before it opened. Then their visitor stood in the doorway, smiling at all of them in friendly fashion.

  “Hello, everybody,” she said to a startled though rigid audience. “Daisy’s come to see you at long last. How did you enjoy the weekend?”

  So this was Daisy!

  The Mennyms were flabbergasted. The room became charged as if they had all screamed out in a voice whose pitch was too high to be heard. This newcomer, this newcomer, was talking to them! Talking to them as if she knew they could hear! The thrill of it was enough to paralyse. So it was not difficult to remain outwardly passive. That first moment was the danger point and sheer terror took them through it.

  Daisy came right into the room. In one hand she held her walking stick which she stood in the corner by the door. Under her arm she was carrying a shallow, rectangular cardboard box. She put it down till she removed her coat, then she took it to the television set.

  “I thought we might watch the telly for a while,” she said, “but that circular aerial is impossible. I’ve brought a horizontal one that might improve things.”

  She bent down and switched on the set, shaking her head as the picture appeared shot with snowy streaks. Five pairs of button eyes bored into the back of her neck.

  “Impossible,” she said again. Then she unpacked the new aerial, unplugged the old one, sat down gingerly on the floor beside Wimpey, and set about fine-tuning the stations. The image on the screen became clearer and the sound became crisper.

  “There,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Joshua. “I bet you thought I couldn’t do that! I’m sixty-eight you know, and I’ve never been one of the fittest. But they do say cracked pots last the longest!”

  She got up awkwardly, using an arm of Appleby’s chair for support. Then she pulled forward a dining chair from the table and sat next to Vinetta.

  “No,” she said, again looking at Joshua, “don’t get up. I really prefer a hard-backed chair. It gives me more support.”

  They all sat through a programme about cacti. It told the strange, almost sad story of the Century Plant, Agave Americana, cherished by gardeners who feel privileged to see it bloom just once in a lifetime.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” said Daisy. “Imagine a plant that takes a hundred years
to produce a flower! And it’s not even an oak tree, just a cactus no more than three feet high!”

  Wimpey, in momentary forgetfulness, tilted her head back to look more closely at the picture. Her mother, observing, was alarmed, but Daisy did not move her eyes from the screen.

  As they all sat there, the Mennyms passed from fear to bafflement to the glimmer of understanding. Vinetta began to realise that Daisy did not, could not, know that her companions were hearing every word she said. Appleby, coming to a similar conclusion, had to hold back a giggle.

  The aerial needed adjusting slightly when Daisy changed channels for the news.

  “Still,” she said, this time looking at Appleby and Pilbeam, “it’s not too bad. A roof aerial would be better, but this’ll do for now.”

  She sat back in her chair again and then did a very ‘Mennym’ thing. She ignored the newsreader’s efforts to make known the events of the world, and began to talk.

  “I used to live in this flat, you know,” she said, looking at Vinetta and talking woman to woman. “That was years and years ago, when my mam and dad were alive. We didn’t have TV then. That’s why there’s no outside aerial. We got our first set when we moved to Glenthorn Drive.”

  Scientists in Nova Scotia are testing out a new theory to explain the temperature changes that have given rise to worries about global warming . . . said the newsreader.

  “Of course, I don’t live in Glenthorn Drive now,” went on Daisy after she had welcomed the reassurance that global warming was no more than a recurrent phase in the world’s climatic system. “I moved to Hartside Gardens ten years ago. It’s a bungalow, better size for me on my own and much easier to run.”

  After Wimpey’s one tiny slip, the listeners remained impressively impassive. Joshua was proud of them.

  It was when the local news came on that Daisy thought of the dolls upstairs. She had rested long enough to face another climb.