Mennyms Alone

by Sylvia Waugh

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Foreword: The Birth of the Mennyms

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  1. A Premonition

  2. They Don’t Add Up

  3. Appleby’s Visitors

  4. An Impertinent Request

  5. Telling Tulip

  6. Jennifer

  7. Pilbeam

  8. Real Cake

  9. A Real Tree

  10. A Real Christmas Day

  11. Coming to Terms

  12. Snow on the Moor

  13. A Quiet Spring

  14. Preparations

  15. Problems

  16. The Thirtieth of September

  17. Tuesday Morning

  18. Waiting

  PART TWO

  19. News for Jennifer

  20. Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove

  21. Dead Bodies!

  22. A Problem to Solve

  23. Greater Dolls

  24. Consulting Mr Dobb

  25. A Sunday Survey

  26. Lesser Dolls

  27. Daisy

  28. Settling Up

  29. The Dolls’ House

  30. Billy

  31. Just a Memory

  32. The Empty House

  33. Where’s the Blue One?

  34. Soobie

  35. Saturday Evening

  Read on

  About the Author

  Also by Sylvia Waugh

  Praise for the Mennyms Squence

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Mennyms are only just beginning to come to terms with the death of their beloved Appleby, when Sir Magnus starts predicting an end of their own strange mortality. Tulip and the rest of the Mennyms find it impossible to believe him – all except for Scoobie. . .

  Mennyms Alone

  Sylvia Waugh

  The Birth of the Mennyms

  How it all began

  The house at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove gave a long sigh of relief. The funeral of Kate Penshaw was over and the few, indifferent mourners had left. In the attic, the dolls were safe. No unworthy intruder had discovered them. Yet the house could not quite ease back into silence. It sighed again, so deeply that boards creaked and curtains gently trembled. The house was profoundly lonely without Kate, the maker of the dolls, who had lived there all her life. Perhaps it was that second, melancholy sigh that called her back, unless it was the dolls themselves, yearning for their maker. . .

  In the attic at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove, a baby was whimpering. It was the first sign of life. A baby cradled in its grandmother’s lap began to cry and to put a tiny, knitted thumb in its newly-opened mouth.

  The doll with the name Lady Tulip fastened to her apron patted the baby with that automatic soothing action of any woman holding any weeping child.

  “There, there,” she said. “There, there.”

  They were the first words uttered by the rag doll, the first words uttered by any rag doll anywhere in the universe.

  After that everything happened in a rush.

  Appleby flung an arm in the air, a long gangly arm. Joshua reached over to Vinetta and grasped her hand. Sir Magnus eased himself up and groaned as if old bones inside of him had become arthritic. Poopie and Wimpey looked at one another and twitched their heads as if they could not believe what their button eyes were seeing. Miss Quigley shrank back into the shadows, watched carefully, and waited for what would happen next. They must lead. She knew that. They were all Mennyms. She was a Quigley, the only one of her family in …what were they in? …what was it all about? Better not ask, thought Miss Quigley, and then she wondered whether she even had the right to think.

  On the other side of the attic, out of sight beyond the curtain, the blue doll in the rocking chair looked down at the floor, caught sight of his blue face in the hanging mirror, and sighed. I believe there are others, he thought. I don’t believe that I am entirely alone in the world. But the others, it seems to me, cannot look as strange as I do.

  It was Appleby who flung aside the curtain, Appleby who was first to the attic door, first down the stairs into the house. The others quickly followed. Granny Tulip and Baby Googles, Poopie and Wimpey, then Vinetta and Joshua who helped Sir Magnus to his feet and shuffled him along, forwards, then sideways through the narrow door.

  Joshua and Vinetta needed no cue to tell them what to do with Sir Magnus. Instinctively they took him to the big front bedroom on the top floor of the house. They helped him into bed and covered him with the counterpane. He had not spoken a word. Now, established in his proper place, he came fully to life and irritably thrust one purple foot out of the counterpane.

  His black eyes glared at the man he suddenly recognized as his son.

  “What sort of game is this?” he growled. “Why do I know so much and remember so little?”

  “Remembering will take a bit of practice, Father,” said Vinetta, but not quite sure what she meant. “But you know that already. You are the wisest of us. You are the cleverest.”

  That was soothing, that was what Magnus needed to hear. He lay back on the pillows and instantly recalled lying there some time before. It was not going to be easy, but perhaps it had something to offer. He looked up at his son and his daughter-in-law.

  “So this is what it means to live,” he said - and promptly fell asleep.

  “Let’s leave him,” said Joshua. “What he is doing is probably wisest. It will take us time to get used to living. We can live quite slowly whilst we learn the rules.”

  “There are rules?” said Soobie softly. His father turned round and looked at him. Amber lozenge eyes met the silver gaze and a feeling of deep friendship passed between father and son.

  “There has to be,” said Joshua. “This is a game after all. And not such a bad game. I think I can learn to enjoy it.”

  “But you’re not blue,” said Soobie, smiling wryly.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being blue,” said Vinetta. “You are a very handsome young man and I am proud to be your mother.”

  On the floor below, Poopie and Wimpey had already begun to play like any other ten-year-olds. And Appleby, the teenager, had found a bedroom with a dressing-table and was sitting in front of the mirror brushing her long red hair.

  Tulip laid Googles down in her cot in the day-nursery and then went to the breakfast room. She looked round, taking things in, tuning into the memories her maker had imparted, and she was more aware than any of the others of just how complex life would be.

  They’ve no idea, she thought. It’s a wonderful undertaking and we’ll make something of it. But it’s going to need ingenuity and a lot of hard work.

  Magnus knew, of course. When Tulip went to sit beside her husband he woke up and looked at her with an odd, sad smile.

  “Those men in the legend who sprang fully-grown from dragon’s teeth,” he said, “I wonder how they felt. I wonder how each one of them coped with coming so strangely into the world?”

  “That was just a story,” said Tulip brusquely. “Nothing like living in an ordinary English town in the middle of the twentieth century. We’ll just have to take it a step at a time.”

  Magnus nodded approval.

  “Mustn’t try to run before we can walk,” he said, though the purple foot that dangled from the counterpane did not look capable of performing either of those actions.

  Miss Quigley left last. She turned very deliberately and closed the door behind her. I must go home, she thought, I must get back to Trevethick Street. I am just a visitor here. So she made her way down three flights of stairs and found herself in the hall. It was difficult. It was very, very difficult. But she knew her part.
She was wearing her outdoor clothes and carrying her handbag. Where on earth was Trevethick Street? It was hard to be born middle-aged with such a crowd of undigested memories and compulsory pretends.

  She looked along the hall. There was a cupboard under the stairs with a high door. She opened it. Inside was a cane-backed chair. Miss Quigley sat on it. For now, she thought, just for now, this can be home. I’ll visit the Mennyms next Friday. By then they will know what we should be doing and how we should live.

  For my aunts, Grace and Elizabeth Little

  I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;

  My master calls me, I must not say no.

  The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  A Premonition

  SIR MAGNUS MENNYM lay listless in his bed in the best front bedroom on the second floor of the house at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. The window was open and sounds of distant traffic drifted in. It was a warm September morning, bright enough to make most folk feel cheerful. But Magnus was weighed down with a nameless misery. It had penetrated into the deepest fibre of his being. One purple foot dangled over the side of the bed. His white moustache drooped and his black button eyes had faded to a leaden grey.

  Tulip came in and opened the curtains. She moved briskly round the room straightening this and tidying that. She knew only too well her husband’s moods and she was sure that before long he would be telling her what he had on his mind.

  Magnus’s eyes followed Tulip’s movements without any real interest in what she was doing.

  “What are we?” he said at last in a voice slow and sonorous. “What are we?”

  Tulip gave him a sharp, no nonsense look.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said. “I know exactly what I am. A wife, a mother, a grandmother, and, suppose I say it myself, a very good businesswoman. Did I tell you I’d written to New York? There’s this shop called Bloomingdales . . .”

  Sir Magnus sat up straighter in his bed. His left foot touched the floor. He looked thoroughly annoyed.

  “That is not what I mean,” he snapped. “You know perfectly well what I mean. We are nothing but a family of rag dolls living for no other reason than that the spirit of Kate Penshaw could not rest easy in her grave.”

  Tulip sighed and sat down in the armchair by the bed. It would not be the first time she had lifted her husband out of a totally unnecessary fit of depression. It would probably not be the last.

  “It does not matter why we are living,” she said. “Just accept it. We are alive. We are lucky to be alive. And life is good to us.”

  “Not for much longer,” said her husband. “Every day that passes brings us nearer to death. Did you think we were immortal?”

  Tulip looked at him sharply, crystal eyes glittering. In the room across the landing, their granddaughter, Appleby, had lain lifeless for a whole year. In that time, Tulip had looked after her, kept her clean and neat and free from dust. The room had become a shrine and was a constant reminder to all of them that even rag dolls can die.

  “The spirit left Appleby,” said Tulip. “I am not so stupid as to think that it could not leave any one of us. But that is true of any living being, be it man, doll or dinosaur.”

  Magnus leaned forward, some vigour returning with the need to argue.

  “Dinosaur is near the mark,” he said. “We are about to become extinct. That is what worries me. The death of any one of us, even Appleby, is nothing compared to that. If the spirit should leave me, quietly in the night, that would be no tragedy. What I am speaking of now is something different. I have a premonition, a dreadful premonition, that we are all about to die, all of us at one fell swoop.”

  Tulip looked shocked and angry as if her husband had uttered some blasphemy.

  “What a dreadful thing to say! You shouldn’t even think it.”

  “Send Soobie to me,” said Magnus. “I must see Soobie. He will understand.”

  Tulip was surprised. Soobie, the only blue Mennym, blue from head to foot, was not usually a favoured grandchild. Magnus regarded him with suspicion as one who was much too clever for his years. Soobie, like his twin Pilbeam, was doomed to perpetual adolescence. But not all adolescents are alike. Soobie’s character was full of complexities. Old head on young shoulders, maybe, but with a heart forever innocent and caring. The rest of the family had all sorts of pretends to establish themselves as real people, but Soobie would never enter into them. He looked facts solidly in the face and was dogged in his acceptance.

  “I’m not sure that seeing Soobie will improve matters,” said Tulip. “The mood you’re in, the two of you together could cast a gloom over the whole house. Just look what a lovely day it is. I’ll open the curtains wider. Lie back and enjoy the sunshine.”

  “Fetch Soobie,” said Magnus, grinding out the words, “and stop twittering on about the weather.”

  “It’s the end of summer,” Tulip persisted. “There won’t be many more days like this for a long time.”

  “There may not be many more days at all,” growled Magnus. “Do as you’re told, will you? Go now and fetch Soobie.”

  The tone of her husband’s voice warned Tulip not to argue. Without another word, she left him and went down the two flights of stairs to the lounge where she knew Soobie would be sitting at the bay window, watching the world outside.

  The house where the Mennyms lived was not much different from the other houses in Brocklehurst Grove. Their neighbours were ordinary human beings, insofar as any human being can be described as ordinary. They never knew that Number 5 was home to an extraordinary family of life-sized rag dolls who had sprung into life after their maker, Kate Penshaw, breathed her last in a side ward at Castledean Infirmary. That was over forty-six years ago. The Mennyms, from seventy-year-old Sir Magnus down to the baby, Googles, had lived just like other people, but, unlike other people, they had never been any younger than their years, and they had never grown any older. Their origins had been a mystery to them for most of the time, but not one that they had ever questioned. Only in recent years had it become apparent that there was more to their lives than the trivial round and common task stretching on and on into eternity. For the first forty years of their existence they had thought that their life was permanent and that Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove was the safest place on earth.

  Soobie sat down in Granny Tulip’s armchair by the side of his grandfather’s bed. His grandmother looked from one to another, hesitating, but then left the two closeted together like conspirators.

  Soobie felt uncomfortable. He had been summoned to Granpa’s room, he alone, and he did not know what to make of it. It was unusual. It was unheard of. Soobie was suspicious.

  “You sent for me,” he said abruptly.

  “You’re my grandson,” said Magnus. “If I wish to see you, I send for you.”

  They were like two fighters circling, each very wary of the other.

  “So now I am here,” said Soobie, “what is it that you want?”

  Magnus sighed. To say what he wanted to say was not easy. The words nearly choked him.

  “I want your opinion, your honest opinion.”

  Soobie was astonished but irritated.

  “In nearly half a century,” he said, “you have never listened to any opinion of mine without pouring scorn on it. What value can my opinion have to anyone who is so bursting with pearls of wisdom?”

  Magnus reached out his hand and laid it on Soobie’s arm.

  “I have never believed in giving you too high an idea of yourself,” he said, “but deep down, you must know, I have always had a respect for your honesty and your sound intelligence.”

  Soobie looked him straight in the eye.

  “There have been times in the past when I would have been glad to hear those words,” he said. “I am not sure that I care what you say about me now. What advice can I possibly give you?”

  Magnus did not give a direct answer. He shifted on his pillows and
said, “I feel old, Soobie. Sometimes I feel older than the hills.”

  Soobie suddenly saw his grandfather’s agedness. His hostility melted and he was filled with pity. He is old, he thought, old and helpless.

  “What do you want to know, Granpa?” he said more gently. “If I can help, I will.”

  Magnus tightened his grip on Soobie’s arm. Urgently he told him of the foreboding that had been troubling him for days.

  “Something deep inside me says that our time is coming to an end. We are all going to die. I haven’t invented it,” he said. “It is a real and powerful conviction. I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Soobie looked at him, searching, questioning. How true was it? How true could it be? Since Appleby’s death, he had wondered about life on earth and when and how it might end. There had been one close call, but that had told him nothing. He could not envisage dying as something that could happen to him. To come close to death was one thing, to pass beyond it was incomprehensible.

  What was he to say to his grandfather now?

  Magnus waited in anxious silence. The clock on the wall ticked loudly.

  “We did nearly all die last year, remember,” said Soobie. “Appleby almost destroyed us by opening the door in the attic. That could be what is preying on your mind. It preys on mine.”

  “No!” said Magnus vigorously. “No! No! I wish I hadn’t bothered to ask you. You are no use at all.”

  “I am sorry,” said Soobie. “I really am. You asked for my opinion. I am just searching around for ideas. You would not want me to rush in with a half-baked theory. Maybe it is a genuine premonition. And if it is, it must have some purpose. If we had all died last year, without any warning, it would have been a terrible disaster.”

  “What disaster could be more terrible than all of us dying now?” said Magnus. “Our extinction would have been no worse then than now. Death is death.”

  “That death would have been total disorder. My hair caught fire. The blaze could have spread. The house might have burnt down. Father would have been found lifeless at work. The outside world would have asked question upon question, and never accepted any of the answers.”