Mennyms Alone

by Sylvia Waugh

  Albert looked at one of the lists.

  “The carpets fetched a good price,” he said. “That’s a surprise.”

  “They were very good quality,” said Daisy. “I almost bought them myself, but recarpeting would have been wasteful.”

  Neither Lorna nor Albert thought to ask what she meant.

  “You’ve bought rather a lot of the furniture yourself,” said Lorna, looking doubtfully at another sheet, “and you’ve given us a very good price. Are you sure it’s worth as much as that?”

  Lorna’s insistence on a fair deal worked both ways. She was rigorous about not being cheated, but equally determined not to cheat.

  “Yes,” said Daisy firmly. “I paid exactly what it would be expected to fetch if I sold it in the shop, minus commission as shown. So I’m happy if you are.”

  Lorna looked at the final total, the amount she would be taking home for her mother. It was much larger than either she or Albert had expected.

  “It’s a lot,” said Lorna. “You’ve done very well.”

  “I’ve not been the loser,” said Daisy. “But I can’t make the cheque out yet – not until I know you approve of my provision for the dolls.”

  Albert gave her a quizzical look.

  Daisy smiled.

  “I’m a hard-headed businesswoman,” she said. “If I don’t get to keep the dolls, I won’t be paying for their clothing, now will I?”

  Albert wasn’t sure whether she was joking or not.

  Lorna looked at her shrewdly and said, “In that case, Daisy, our next step must be to see the dolls again. Where have you taken them?”

  She looked round the shop. Apart from the little kitchen which had been built onto the back, there appeared to be no other room in the shop, not even a stockroom. The floor space extended the full width and depth of the building.

  Daisy stood up and went to the coat-stand in the corner. She put on a short outdoor jacket and buttoned it up as if ready for an outing. She grasped her stick and began to walk towards the doorway.

  “Have we far to go?” said Albert. “The car’s just up the lane. I thought it best not to park in front of the shop in case it caused an obstruction.”

  Daisy laughed.

  “We’re going next door,” she said. “No further than that. But if I leave the shop, I like to look as if I’m going out, be it ever so short a trip.”

  They went out and Daisy carefully locked up, then led them along the street past the window where Lily Waggons was seated at her sewing machine. There, between the window of the antique shop and the brown-painted window of a printers’ merchant’s, was an ordinary house door with an aged doorstep trodden hollow in the middle. Painted in gilt figures on the fanlight was the number 39. Daisy selected the right key on her key-ring and opened the door.

  “This time,” she said, “it’s me to go first. It might not be good manners, and it’s not good sense – you’ll have to be patient as you follow me up the stairs – but I’ve a surprise for you and I want to enjoy it!”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Dolls’ House

  THEY STOOD AT the foot of a steep staircase. About twenty stairs led up to the floor above the shop. A dark-coloured, narrow carpet was held in place by thick wooden stair-rods. The wood to either side of it was painted deep cream.

  “You see what I mean,” said Daisy. “It’s no easy climb.”

  She led the way nonetheless, holding onto the highly-polished handrail that was bolted to the side wall. Lorna and Albert followed. Daisy trod on each stair with both feet like a young child. It was, as she had warned them, painfully slow.

  When they reached the top they found themselves on a square landing from which another equally long and steep staircase led to a floor above. Daisy paused for breath, then walked into the hallway to the right of the landing. She looked nervous.

  “This way,” she said, in tones that sounded almost hushed. “Look at everything as we go, but say nothing. Save your words till we go down again.”

  The first room they went into was amazing. A living-room, quite large, with two long windows facing over the river. And, apart from the carpet, every item in the room had come from the lounge at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. Seated at the round table in the corner were two figures that looked as if they were sharing a magazine, elbows on the table, heads bent to look at the page. Pilbeam and Appleby were posed as in life, like real teenagers spending an afternoon at home. Daisy had dressed them in some of the teenage clothes that had come from the wardrobes in Brocklehurst Grove. It was wonderful how good a fit they were! Nearly all of the clothes there had proved useful, one way or another. Only the clothes that had once belonged to Sir Magnus had eventually found a place in the shop-window’s theatrical display. The naval uniform had been snapped up almost immediately.

  The suite arranged around the fireplace was the one where the older Mennyms used to sit when it occupied the same spot in Brocklehurst Grove. On the hearth-rug in front of the fire knelt a doll with fair curls tied in bunches, apparently playing with a smaller doll. But Wimpey was in no condition now to pull the string that would make Polly talk.

  The next room they went into was the kitchen. It was a very old-fashioned kitchen with a deep chipped sink in one corner. There was a single brass-tap, cold water only, and a draining board of grooved wood, which had been scrubbed till it was almost white. There was an old iron range: a fireplace with a side oven and, beneath it, a water boiler. The range was well blackened and the tap to the boiler was of shiny brass. On the hob in front of the fire stood a big old kettle, the sort that a pot could fairly call black. No fire, of course. Daisy still lit one occasionally, and would certainly be tempted to do so again. But, for now, no fire. In this room too, all of the furniture had been brought from Brocklehurst Grove. Beside the kitchen table, at the ironing board, stood the doll that had once been Vinetta, her right hand resting heavily on the iron as she appeared to press a shirt. On a kitchen chair sat Joshua, a brush in one hand, a shoe perched on the other, and on a stool beside him was a tin of Cherry Blossom Boot Polish.

  There were two more rooms on this floor, a small bedroom next to the kitchen (for the nanny), and a larger room next to the living-room, which Daisy had decided should be the nursery, complete with Googles’s own cot and play-pen. In there, Miss Quigley was seated in a large armchair holding the baby over her shoulder and appearing to be in the act of patting its back. The play-pen was folded up against the wall and in a pile beside it were various toys, including the floppy-eared rabbit that had once belonged to Poopie.

  “Now for the next floor,” said Daisy and they were the first words spoken since they entered the flat. She was eyeing both of them anxiously, but, obedient to her wish, they remained silent.

  They went back to the landing and climbed the next flight of stairs. On this landing too, there were four rooms. No bathroom, of course. Just four plain rooms, two large, one medium and one very small. In the large front bedroom, arranged with wonderful insight, Sir Magnus lay in his bed propped up by pillows and apparently reading a book. His purple feet were both well hidden under the counterpane. Apart from that, he might well have been at home. In the armchair beside him, holding a pair of knitting needles, as if in the middle of making a little pink garment, was Tulip. The knitting itself was, of course, Daisy’s own work. She was not a skilled knitter and goodness knows how Tulip would have felt if she had been able to look down at it!

  The large back bedroom was filled with all of the things from the room that Vinetta and Joshua had shared for half a century or more. In the medium-sized bedroom next to it were three beds and an assortment of girls’ things gathered from Pilbeam’s, Appleby’s and Wimpey’s old rooms. Not everything had been kept. There wasn’t space. Number 39 North Shore Road was a large flat with high-ceilinged old-fashioned rooms, but it was nowhere near the size of the house in Brocklehurst Grove.

  In the small bedroom next to Granpa’s room, Poopie, dressed in sweatshirt and jeans, was o
n the floor playing with Action Men. Daisy thought she had given the toys of an unknown child, now far away, to a doll the right shape and size. He reminded her of her brother. The whole place, filled with figures, brought back memories of happy days gone by. The only thing that did not quite fit its setting was Miss Quigley. The Maughans had never employed anyone to look after their children.

  “It’s just like old times. Though we’d never have had a nanny,” said Daisy with a laugh, when she returned with Albert and Lorna to the shop below. “My mother would have had a fit at the very thought. Strangers in the house! Knowing your business! Talking about you to folk outside! I remember when I was about eight years old, I was outside the shop and a neighbour stopped and spoke to me. Do you know what my mam did? She came to the window, rapped hard at me, and shooed the poor woman away. She was a character, my mam!”

  Albert knew that Daisy was talking nervously. She had shown them her work, her wonderful work, and she was terrified that they wouldn’t approve. She had had helpers, naturally, in moving the furniture about, but she had given hours and hours of thought to what should go where. She had arranged and rearranged the dolls in various positions, in various rooms. And every time she moved a doll she became more and more attached to it. If these young people turned round and said it wasn’t what they had in mind, Daisy would be heartbroken.

  Albert looked at her kindly and knew what she was thinking.

  “It’s tremendous,” he said, “almost miraculous. You’ve brought that flat up there to life. It’s a museum, a living museum.”

  “Not quite that,” said Daisy modestly, and she still looked anxiously at Lorna.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  Lorna gave Daisy a hug before answering.

  “If I had searched the length and breadth of England, I could not have found a more beautiful home, or a better carer, for Aunt Kate’s People. Thank you.”

  Daisy gave a sigh of relief and said, “I’ll go and get my cheque book.”

  “What will you do with them?” said Lorna when Daisy returned.

  “Do with them?” said Daisy, looking up from the paperwork.

  “Will you show them? That flat up there could be a show house, a theme museum. You could charge people to come and look round. It would be one way of getting some return on the money you’ve invested.”

  Daisy’s eyes twinkled.

  “I’m a fairly wealthy woman, by my standards,” she said. “I’m sixty-eight years old and still working. I don’t need to look for an extra source of income.”

  “So what will you do?” said Albert, genuinely interested and suspecting that the answer might be surprising.

  “I’ll spend a lot of time there, especially in the summer evenings,” said Daisy. “What was once my first home will be my second home now. I’ll bring the dolls into the living-room to watch the television with me. I’ll sit them round the table and pretend we’re having a meal together. I’m even planning to install a chair-lift on those stairs to make my visiting easier. It will be my dolls’ house. I’ll be set for my second childhood.”

  Lorna, taking her literally, looked worried.

  “No,” said Daisy, seeing the expression on Lorna’s face. “I’m not in my dotage or anywhere near it! It’ll be my game. Old men play golf, or sit in the park over huge games of draughts or chess. Even the games young people play are only just this side of daft, if you think about it. Playing with dolls is no worse than kicking a ball about.”

  “Still,” said Albert, “it seems a shame if no one ever sees what you’ve done.”

  “Kate Penshaw was the real artist,” said Daisy. “I am just the window-dresser. But I didn’t say no one would ever see the dolls in their new home. I will show them to friends and old customers and children. But I couldn’t turn it into a business anymore than I could sell the wooden betty dolls out of my shop window.”

  After that, the business side was soon completed.

  “We’ll see ourselves out,” said Albert. “You just sit and rest.”

  As they were leaving, a couple with a young boy started to come in.

  “The shop’s closed,” said Lorna. “We’re not customers.”

  “Neither are we,” said the man with a smile that reminded her of Daisy. “We’re family. We’ve come to see Aunt Daisy.”

  The Ponds returned with the good news to Elmtree Road, taking with them the cheque which Jennifer had perversely insisted should be made out to Lorna. When they got there, they found the reason why.

  “I’ll pay this into the bank tomorrow,” said Lorna, “and have it transferred to your account as soon as it clears.”

  “No,” said Jennifer, “you won’t do that. You must keep it. You and Albert have done all the work, and I did say that I had no wish to benefit from the things that family left behind.”

  “Mother!” said Lorna. “That’s a large sum of money. We couldn’t possibly keep it.”

  “You could, you can and you will,” said Jennifer. “If I can’t give money to my own daughter, who can I give it to? And don’t say you and Albert don’t need it. University salaries don’t leave much over after you’ve paid the bills, especially now you have a baby to keep.”

  “What about the others?” said Lorna, trying as always to be fair.

  “That’s up to you,” said Jennifer. “Entirely up to you.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Billy

  THE STREET THAT ran alongside the marketplace in Castledean was full of small, practical shops, shabby but serviceable. Among them were two or three cafés, ranging from a newly-built Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant at the top end of the street to a very run-down sandwich bar at the bottom. When the Maughans, Jamie and Molly and their son Billy, came in from the country, they always went to the curtained little café where there were waitresses serving at the tables and each table had a proper tablecloth with a small bunch of flowers in a silver vase in the centre.

  Billy was sitting with his mam and dad at a table near the window. His shoulder kept brushing against a rubber plant that looked as if it might like to join in the conversation. It certainly looked more talkative than Billy.

  “You’re very quiet today, Billy,” said his mother as she poured another cup of tea for each of them. “Is something upsetting you?”

  Billy looked awkward. At thirteen, he was beginning to feel too old to think that a day out in town with his mother and father was much of a treat. It had been at one time. It had been a treat for years and years. But now he felt as if he was getting too old to be taken out shopping.

  “Would you like anything else?” said the waitress, smiling down at Billy.

  “A knickerbocker glory?” said his mother, looking at her son hopefully.

  “I suppose so,” said Billy. Then, unable to break the good habits of a lifetime, he added, “Yes, please.”

  He would rather have refused the treat, but it is very hard to say no to a knickerbocker glory.

  “Well, cheer up then,” said his mother. She smiled at the waitress, a plump middle-aged woman who knew what kids were like.

  “There’s no pleasing them sometimes,” she said and went off to fetch the order.

  Jamie and Molly drank more tea whilst Billy made his way down the glass of ice-cream, trying his hardest to look as if he were not particularly enjoying it.

  “Can we go home now?” he said as soon as he had finished. “If we’re back quick I can call on Joe and see if he wants to go for a ride.”

  Jamie Maughan looked grim. He did not like Joe Dorward. He had never liked Joe Dorward. The lad was two years older than Billy and though not quite a criminal, certainly what Jamie would call ‘a slippery customer’. And Jamie did not know the half of it! Joe had led Billy into a variety of sticky situations that included spending the hours meant for sleep prowling round the countryside playing at detectives. And on one memorable night, three years ago, Joe and Billy had seen something they would never forget. They had gone spying around a country
house. There they had seen a life-sized blue rag doll which they kidnapped to burn on the bonfire for Guy Fawkes. Then they had discovered that the doll could walk and talk and run and jump and . . . wave goodbye! No one knew about it, of course. It was a secret never to be told.

  “I wish you’d stop away from that lad,” said Jamie. “He’s bad news. One day he’ll get himself into real trouble – and you’n all, if you let him.”

  Molly looked at the two of them. Billy was small for his age but wiry. His ginger hair had been sleeked down that morning but was looking tousled as ever by now. Jamie had the same colouring as his son but his hair was a darker ginger, thicker and cut close to the scalp. He was short and stocky. He was usually full of fun, enjoying a joke, even a feeble one, but his rules of behaviour were never a joking matter. He could be very strict when he felt that the occasion called for it.

  “We’ll not have any arguments about Joe Dorward,” said Molly firmly. “We’ve been over it all again and again. And we aren’t going straight home anyway, Billy. You know we aren’t. We’re going to see Aunt Daisy, like we usually do. You like Aunt Daisy, don’t you? She’s always very kind to you, and very pleased to see you.”

  It was impossible to deny that. Billy shrugged his shoulders. He did like Aunt Daisy and he knew she was always nice to him. But he was thirteen and he wanted to grow up and they just wouldn’t let him. How could he grow up without being nasty to people? It was a hard problem. Sometimes he thought it was one he’d never solve. Joe Dorward was always arguing with his mam and dad. Sometimes he even walked out on them and slammed the door. Then he’d go back and they’d all be friends again, just as if nothing had happened.

  Billy wasn’t made that way. He was as brave as the next lad, but he couldn’t bring himself to be out and out cheeky. He was too worried about upsetting his mam. So he said no more and walked with his parents down from the marketplace into the long street that led under the railway viaduct to the road that ran by the river. They arrived at the door of Aunt Daisy’s shop just as Albert and Lorna were leaving.