The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories

by Joan Aiken

  "I'll try again tomorrow,” thought Harriet, and went to bed, for she was tired.

  In the morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Mark and Harriet raced across the road to inspect the new occupants of Farmer Beezeley's meadow.

  The Gloam Goblins were packing up their work materials and preparing their evening meal. They were evidently smiths and potters. They had portable kilns and forges.

  "They seem to use solar heat,” said Mark. “It's very adaptable of them! If they lived underground up to now they must have changed their habits very quickly."

  "Oh look,” said Harriet. “There are stalls with things for sale."

  The things for sale were lace made of filigree iron, exquisitely fine and light; also iron jewelry, and pottery—bowls, plates, cups, jugs, also very light and delicate, ornamented with a dark-green and white glazed pattern resembling the foam on a wave crest.

  "Ma would like these,” said Harriet. Mrs. Armitage collected china and had brought back from Cornwall an enormous blue-and-white platter with a romantic landscape on it which she had found in a junk shop in South-the-Water.

  "I'll come back later with some money and buy one of these,” Harriet told the little woman behind the stall, who smiled and nodded.

  The goblins were about half the size of humans. Their skin was brown and weather-worn as if at sometime they had lived out of doors for centuries. Their faces were rugged, rather plain but friendly and honest-looking. Their manners were somewhat abrupt, as if all they wanted was to be left alone to get on with what they were doing. Mark and Harriet now felt rather embarrassed and apologetic at their plan to inspect the new arrivals like creatures in a zoo. They retreated from the doorway, taking in as quickly and unobtrusively as possible all the activities that were going on: pots of vegetable stew being stirred over small fires, bedding rolls pulled out of sacks and spread on the ground, children's faces being washed in basins of water. There were cats and dogs, too, of a size to match their owners.

  "You don't mind us just looking?” Mark said to Albrick, the man who had talked to his father. Albrick was evidently a smith; he was packing up a small anvil and a portable forge and cooling off his tools in a pail of water.

  "Very well cannot stop you, can I?” said Albrick gruffly. But he added, “You are alright. But some folk do more than just look—they want us to go. Where we stopped before here, we needed guards with swords and pistols. And the young ones needed to go out with guards. Folk in this village not bad—but not welcoming. What can we expect?"

  "I expect—if it weren't for the music at night—"

  "Ah, the music. It is our must.” Albrick glanced toward the interior of the tent and Mark and Harriet, following the direction of his eyes, had a glimpse of a massive structure—a portable organ?—which a party of goblins were wrapping up in layers of thick felt.

  "Our must,” Albrick repeated. “Work and music."

  "Oh!” said Mark. “Is it an organ? Oh, I'd love to play it. Could I? Could I?"

  Mark had piano lessons from Professor Johansen in the village and was understood to show promise. He was certainly very keen and practised a great deal.

  "You wish to play our keyboard?” Albrick said doubtfully. “You do nothing foolish?"

  "Oh no!"

  "He does play quite well,” Harriet put in hopefully.

  "We see. We see. Not now. I put my child to bed. Good-bye. We talk again."

  Albrick nodded in a dismissive manner and called, “Dwine! Dwiney! Bedtime!"

  "Here, father!” A small tousle-headed goblin child came rushing towards him followed by a goblin kitten. “Come, Fryxse!” she called to the cat. But Fryxse was small, wayward, and playful. He clawed and scampered his way up the side of the marquee and disappeared. On his way, no doubt, to go and tease Walrus.

  Mark and Harriet strolled along the village street to find how the rest of the neighbours were reacting to having a community of Gloam Goblins deposited on their doorstep.

  Mr. Budd the blacksmith said, “They're not bad. Decent enough. The chairperson, that Albrick, he's a sensible chap. Good workman, too. Knows what's what. He comes round to my forge for a chat now and then. There's not much I can tell him about iron."

  "But what about their music?"

  Mr. Budd gave a half grin, rubbing his bristly jaw.

  "Don't worrit me none. I'm deaf, see? All blacksmiths are deaf, ‘count of the hammering. I pulls the covers over me head, nights, and sleep through the lot. And little Dwiney, his kid, she'd be in here all evening long, with her cat, if I didn't chase her home to bed. Taken a fair shine to her, I have. Sharp as a tack, she be."

  Mrs. Case, at the village shop, was not so enthusiastic.

  "Only middling customers, see? Grow a lot of their own stuff, they do, in pots and trays. Vegetarians, like. I will say, they pay up promptly for what they do buy—but at first they wanted to pay in gold coins. ‘Gold?’ I say to them, ‘I'm not having any of that fancy stuff. You'll have to go and change it at Mr. Watson's bank.’ Which they did, I'm bound to say. A lot of them never heard of a bank before. The music? Drives me up the wall, that do. Shouldn't be allowed."

  "They need it for their work,” Mark said.

  "Well, they oughta do their work somewhere else, where they won't drive honest day-biding folk clean balmy. That's what I say! And so do lots of neighbours."

  Half the village shared Mrs. Case's feelings. If the newcomers had to make such an ear-splitting row in order to do their work, why then they must move to a place where nobody could hear them. Else why couldn't they alter their habits to fit in with their new neighbours?

  Mrs. Owlet, a witch, the Chair Person of the Parish Council, threatened to stage a protest about the new arrivals.

  "And it will be terribly inconvenient if she does,” worried Mrs. Armitage, who was secretary to the Council. “Last time she protested it was about the plan for a bypass running through Titania Copse; never shall I forget the trouble."

  "The cows were all giving sour milk for eight weeks,” remembered Mr. Armitage. “—Mind, she was quite right about the bypass. What is she threatening to do this time?"

  "Put up a pillar in the middle of the village green and stand on it till somebody gives way. Like Saint Simeon Stylites."

  "I should think the pillar would collapse. Mrs. Owlet must weigh as much as the Statue of Liberty. Ask her round for a drink, and I'll see if I can't persuade her to think of some other form of protest."

  "What in the world can we offer her to drink?"

  "She likes low-calorie poison,” Harriet said. “Sue Case told me her mother orders it specially for Mrs. Owlet and they deliver four cases a week."

  "Oh, well, we'd better get some. And some Wolfsbane-flavoured cheese straws."

  "I'll make those,” Harriet offered. “And little Dwiney Albrick can help."

  Little Dwiney Albrick, that sociable child, had taken a great fancy to the Armitage family and spent a lot of time in their house, unless her father came and fetched her.

  "Don't let her be a nuisance to ye, ma'am,” he said to Mrs. Armitage.

  "No, we're very fond of her, Mr. Albrick. Her and that crazy kitten of hers...."

  The Armitage house contained a room which was simply known as the Top Room. In it were kept all the things that members of the family had acquired in one way or another, but had no plans for just at present: the huge blue-and-white platter that Mrs. Armitage had bought in Cornwall; a spinning-wheel for llama's wool that was waiting for Harriet to collect enough wool from Hebdons’ Llama Farm; a fishing-rod for when Mr. Armitage had a spare day from the office to visit his carp pools; several thousand empty egg-boxes stacked against the wall, which Mark intended to make into a launching-pad for the flint-powered spacecraft that he was in the process of constructing.

  Mark spent more time than the rest of the family in this pleasant attic, with its skylight looking out over the village green, and little Dwiney and her kitten liked to come and keep him company. Dwiney was
a quiet and untroublesome companion; she drew pictures, using a box of crayons that Harriet had given her, arranged little chips of flint into patterns, and sang to herself in a soft, true little voice while Mark played on the shallow, tinkling old piano that also lived up there.

  Dwiney's kitten was something else. It was not that he was badly behaved—after a tendency to tease Walrus had been firmly dealt with by that character—but he was so interested in everything and so inquisitive that it was not safe to leave him unobserved for more than a very few minutes.

  On the evening that Mrs. Owlet was invited for a drink, Mark was working on his spacecraft and chose to stay upstairs; he was never particularly fond of adult company and he thought Mrs. Owlet was an old bore anyway; always carrying on about the human race and their habit of hurting and killing one another.

  "Can't we persuade you to try some other form of protest?” suggested Mr. Armitage hopefully when the lady guest had been provided with a plateful of Wolfsbane cheese straws and a brimming beaker of low-calorie poison.

  "Why, pray?” snapped Mrs. Owlet. She was a large, commanding lady; Harriet imagined her on top of an eighty-foot column on the village green and decided that it would be an impressive sight.

  "Well—I don't want to discourage you—but those young tearaways on their motorbikes—not from our village, I'm thankful to say, they come over from Trottenworth—I don't like to think what they might get up to if they arrived one evening and saw you on your column—what's it going to be made of, by the way?"

  "Fuel containers,” snapped Mrs. Owlet, “threaded together on a ship's mast I purchased from the United Sorcerer's Supply Stores; they are erecting it now, on the green. It will be a most superior addition to the village—I expect photographers from the national press, and our Member of Parliament has been sent an invitation; he has half promised to come down on Sunday—and of course representatives from the National Trust and Downlands Heritage will certainly come—I expect a sculpture award, it will certainly put our village on the map."

  "But it is on the map already,” said Mrs. Armitage plaintively. “We surely don't want a lot of tourists and day-trippers coming and rubbernecking—do we?—and I'm sure the poor goblins don't either. They hate being stared at. It would probably be at times when they would be asleep—"

  Mr. Armitage saw that their guest was displeased by these remarks, and made haste to change the subject.

  "How do you plan to get to the top of the pillar?” he inquired, thinking of cranes and hoists.

  Mrs. Owlet was affronted.

  "To someone with my qualifications that presents no problem at all,” she said shortly. “I merely levitate. In fact"—she looked at her watch—"I should be on my way now."

  And, nodding perfunctory thanks, she drained her glass and left the room and the house.

  At this moment, upstairs, little Dwiney's kitten, Fryxse, was sitting in the middle of the Top Room, eying Mark's massive rampart of egg-boxes stacked against the wall. Mark, at the piano, was playing a tune which he had christened “Dwiney's Night Song.” He hoped to play it to Mr. Albrick, to persuade him to let Mark have a try on the organ.

  Dwiney was listening with total attention. When Mark had finished she gave a sigh of pure happiness. “Oh, that was nice, Mark! Play it again!"

  But, at that moment, Fryxse finished his calculations, and sprang to the top of the egg-box mountain, bouncing lightly halfway to give himself extra launching-power.

  Mark and his father argued for years afterwards about whether the fact that, by sheer unfortunate accident, one of the egg-boxes was not empty but contained six eggs and a use-by label that was five years old made any difference to the ultimate outcome.

  There was a thunderous crash, followed by the slithering sound of a torrent of egg-boxes cascading down the attic stairs to the bedroom floor. This was accompanied, simultaneously, by the powerful smell of six five-year-old eggs, which poured through the house like poison gas and caused the Armitage parents to run into the garden in case it was poison gas.

  Poor Fryxse, the cause of this cataclysm, was terrified, and rushed from the room, down the stairs, and out through the front door, which Mrs. Owlet had left open behind her.

  "Fryxse! Come back! It's alright! Come back!"

  Dwiney rushed after him—out the front door, through the garden, across the road—straight into the path of the young tearaways from Trottenworth on their motor-bikes come to laugh at the lady balancing on top of her pillar.

  Both Dwiney and her kitten were killed instantly.

  * * * *

  That night, when the square of moonlight slipped round the wall to the picture of the two Sisters, Harriet addressed them.

  "Please listen! Things are in a very bad way here. The goblins are terribly unhappy. Mrs. Owlet is threatening to jump down off her pillar in protest at the goblins being here if they don't leave and go somewhere else. They say they don't care if she does jump. But they have nowhere to go...."

  A black cloud drifted across the sky and blotted out the picture of the Sisters.

  Harriet went unhappily to bed. Since the house still reeked of five-year-old eggs, she packed a lavender-bag under her pillow. But it made very little difference.

  Next day was little Dwiney's funeral.

  One or two people (including Mrs. Owlet from her pillar) raised objections to little Dwiney being buried in the village churchyard, but the vicar responded so fiercely that they soon backed down.

  Everybody was at the ceremony except Mrs. Owlet. The funeral had been held at twilight so as not to interfere with anybody's habits. The villagers were just coming home from work, the goblins just waking up. A huge mass of flowers had been brought by different people and laid in the corner of the churchyard where the new small grave had been dug for Dwiney and her kitten.

  Harriet arrived just as the service was about to begin. An enormous Hunter's Moon had recently risen and was floating above the churchyard wall, competing with the setting sun. Harriet had been in her bedroom, consulting with the pictured Sisters.

  And this time she had obtained a reply.

  The vicar, ending his short sad talk by the small grave, said:

  "And I'm sure that none of us would wish or expect our good neighbours the goblins to move away from our village now, since they must leave this sad token behind them. We were all fond of little Dwiney—she was like our own child—we would never dream of asking them to leave—"

  "Yes, we would!” shouted Mrs. Owlet from the top of her pillar. “If they don't agree to get away from here by the end of this week, I'm going to jump from my pillar! And that will make a heap of trouble for them!"

  "So jump, you old bag!” shouted one of the goblins—not Albrick, who was standing wrapped in silence by the grave.

  Mrs. Owlet jumped.

  Her landing was not at all spectacular, for Mark and some of his friends had piled all the empty egg-boxes under the column in a massive, rustling heap which also contained the fragments of Mrs. Armitage's blue platter and Harriet's spinning wheel. And smelt of five-year-old eggs. So the landing was soft, if untidy.

  But meanwhile, at the graveside, Harriet had come forward, and was saying, “I have a message for the goblin people from their Lady Holdargh. She has talked to the two Sisters who live on my bedroom wall, and she wishes to tell you that she has found a good place underground for you all to live, in a cave in southern Tasmania. Plenty of room for all, and there will be no problem about the music. She will be expecting you there tomorrow by E-Travel."

  "Tasmania!” whispered some of the crowd. “That be a long way sure-lye!"

  "Don't worry about little Dwiney's grave, Mr. Albrick,” whispered Harriet to the man beside her. “Mark and I will look after it very carefully, I promise!"

  * * * *

  Next day the goblins were gone and there was no trace of them left. The huge tent was clean and tidy as if it had just been put up. Only, on the Armitages’ doorstep were two parcels, containing a ve
ry beautiful iron lacework necklace and an elegant green-and-white bowl.

  Mark said sadly, “I never did get a chance to play on their organ.” And Harriet sighed as they looked at the last book saved from their Cornish trip—Elizabeth and Her Secret German Garden—somehow at the moment she had no wish to read it.

  Every year on Dwiney's grave they found a very uncommon flower, a beautiful white star, not like any product of English fields or gardens. “Actinotus helianthi,” the vicar said. It could only have come from Tasmania.

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  The Chinese Dragon

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Harriet and her parents were having tea when a robin flew in through the open window and started circling madly around the kitchen at a speed far greater than was safe or sensible.

  "Drat that bird!” exclaimed Mrs. Armitage. “It is so intrusive! If I leave the back door open for three minutes he's in, and drinking out of the cat's water bowl. And he has no excuse. I fill the bird bath every day."

  "She may be a hen,” said her husband. “Female robins look just like the males."

  "Robins are very pugnacious,” Harriet read, looking them up in the bird book. “'In winter females have separate estates.’ I wonder why?"

  "Never mind its estate,” said Mrs. Armitage. “Show it the door!"

  Harriet opened both door and window as wide as they would go, and showed them to the robin, who took not the slightest notice, but did another circuit of the kitchen, then whizzed through the inner door, and made its way to the sitting-room.

  "Oh, don't let it go in there, stop it, stop it!” wailed Mrs. Armitage. “All my patience cards are laid out on the sewing-table and the patience was beginning to look as if it would come out—there was a blocking queen, but if I could manage to shift her—"

  Too late! A loud fluttering, scattering sound from the next room suggested that the robin had found the cards, and disorganized them. Harriet, who had snatched up the tea-cosy and followed the robin, called through the open door: