Mennyms Under Siege

by Sylvia Waugh

  “I’m fed up with being buried alive,” said Appleby. “We go nowhere. We do nothing. We might as well not exist.”

  “So where were you going with the motor scooter?” Pilbeam insisted.

  Appleby kicked her foot against the leg of the table making two plates and a jug rattle.

  “Enough of that,” said Pilbeam.

  Soobie looked angry but stayed silent.

  Poopie looked virtuous, but dared not speak. He loved Pilbeam. They all loved Pilbeam, but she could be almost as intimidating as Granpa.

  Appleby looked from one to another, then spoke grudgingly.

  “If you must know,” she said, “I intended to return the scooter to its rightful owner.”

  Soobie gave her a sharp glance. That was the truth. It smelt like the truth. But how had she planned to do it?

  “How?” he said.

  Having come clean, Appleby began to regain her wits and her composure. It had been a good plan. She felt quite proud of it.

  “I’d have taken the scooter back to Comus House. I’d have followed the same route as I did when I brought it here in the first place. Going back would be no harder than coming here. In fact, now I know the way, it would be easier.”

  “Comus House would be empty. What would be the point of going there?” asked Pilbeam. “It would be all locked up.”

  “I know that,” said Appleby. “I’m not stupid. I’d have climbed in through the library window. Then in the morning I’d have gone down the road to the nearest phone box and rung Albert in Durham. I’d have explained where I was and why. He’d have collected me and brought me home and sorted out Anthea Fryer as he did the last time. I could have had an exciting birthday and have solved the whole family’s problems at the same time. And you have spoilt it all.”

  Soobie, older, wiser and much more sensitive than his sister, gave a sigh before speaking.

  “Impossible,” he said. “Impossible for all sorts of reasons. We must never contact Albert Pond again. You should have realised that.”

  “Just because Granpa doesn’t like him . . .” began Appleby.

  “It’s not only Granpa,” said Soobie. “Do you understand nothing? Have you no finer feelings, no sense of what is proper?”

  Appleby was so far from having finer feelings that she did not even know what he was talking about. There might have been an argument, but the kitchen door opened. They all jumped to hear Tulip’s voice say, “What are you all doing here at this time of night?”

  Appleby recovered first and said, “We’re having a mid-night feast. We’re celebrating my birthday. After all, nobody’s bought me any presents.”

  She picked up one of the plates and thrust it at Pilbeam.

  “Have a jam doughnut,” she said.

  Pilbeam lifted an imaginary cake from the plate and took a bite of it. Whatever she might think of pretends, she was certainly not going to give the game away to her grandmother.

  Tulip looked at them suspiciously.

  “Midnight feast!” she said. “It’s well past midnight now. Get yourselves off to bed.”

  22

  A Vintage Motor Scooter

  IT WAS PILBEAM’S turn to be look-out. She moved her high-backed chair into the centre of the bay window. To her right, in his armchair, sat Soobie doing an old Guardian crossword puzzle that had somehow escaped everyone’s notice. Newspapers from Granpa’s room usually filtered round the house before the dustbin claimed them. But for the past weeks there had been no newspapers at all. An unblemished crossword was a real find.

  “I think we should do something about the scooter,” said Pilbeam, keeping her gaze firmly on the street. It was two weeks since they had caught Appleby attempting to abscond.

  Soobie looked up from the newspaper.

  “I’ve thought about that myself,” he said. “We can’t trust her. It’ll only be a matter of time before she tries the same stunt again.”

  “We could hide the shed key.”

  “Hardly,” said Soobie. “Dad and Poopie are always needing it – and, remember, Dad doesn’t know about the latest escapade. The fewer who know, the better.”

  “All right, then,” said Pilbeam. “What do you suggest?”

  “I could do what she claimed to be doing when I caught her. I could take the scooter out somewhere late at night and dump it.”

  “That doesn’t sound too safe,” said Pilbeam. “It’s not something you could carry in your pocket and throw into a litter bin.”

  Soobie was thinking. Pilbeam watched Mrs England taking her old collie out for a walk. The dog stopped to sniff at their gatepost and was pulled away.

  “I wouldn’t want the bike to be destroyed or vandalised,” said Soobie. “It’s a beautiful vehicle and in wonderful condition for its age. It might even be worth something.”

  “We could hardly go out and sell it!” said Pilbeam.

  “But we could try giving it away,” said Soobie, “. . . anonymously, to some deserving cause.”

  It was an attractive idea, but it still posed the problem of how and where.

  “I’d have to leave it where the right people would find it and I’d put a note in the saddlebag explaining that it was a gift.”

  “But which right people,” said Pilbeam, “and where?”

  Soobie saw in his mind’s eye a whole map of Castledean. There was the Oxfam shop on Albion Street. But if it were left there in the middle of the night, anyone might take it. Some youngster might smash it up and kill himself or someone else. That was a risk Soobie would not take.

  “St Oswald’s,” he said at last. “I’ll leave it in the passageway between the house and the church. Then I’ll ring the doorbell and hurry away.”

  “Risky,” said Pilbeam.

  “Not really,” said Soobie. “The passageway is dark and I can be out of sight around two corners before anyone comes to the door.”

  So that night, at twelve-thirty, Soobie went to the shed and wheeled out the scooter. He put on the gloves and the helmet and crammed his own goggles into his pocket for the return journey. He waited till he had left the Grove before he started up the engine. There was very little fuel left but that was an easy problem to solve. A few yards up the High Street was a Shell Station, one of the smaller ones, but still open all night for petrol. The shop door was closed and payment had to be made at a small window on the corner. Easy!

  As Soobie came out onto the main road again, he was tempted. It would be his last ride on the scooter, and there was enough fuel to spare. So, very carefully, he rode to the Victoria Bridge, crossed it and then recrossed the river by the Low Bridge. The lights on the river looked lonely. The streets were almost dead. Few cars passed. A police car came along, going in the opposite direction. Soobie, seeing it, decided to take no more risks. He went back onto the High Street and rode down towards the church where he had once prayed for help when Appleby was lost. As he came to the first of the three churches, the one boarded-up and awaiting a verdict on its fate, he stopped the engine, jumped off the scooter and pushed it the rest of the way along a dimly-lit, deserted road.

  He turned into the passageway between the church and the presbytery. After taking off the helmet and gloves, he pulled on the hood of his tracksuit and replaced his goggles. To reach the house door he had to go through a wooden gate into a little garden. Soobie planned to put the scooter just outside and to leave the gate wide open.

  He rang the doorbell. Then – panic! For the youngest priest was on his way out to make an emergency sick visit. He had been about to open the door when the bell rang. Soobie ducked his head, turned and ran.

  “Here!” shouted the priest. “What are you up to?”

  But Soobie was well away. The puzzled young curate came out into the alley and saw the scooter. In a hurry to be on his way, he went back into the house and called, “Father Joseph, Father Joseph, there’s something peculiar going on down here. Come and see.”

  It was not till the next morning that the priests foun
d Soobie’s note in the saddlebag.

  This old scooter needs a good home. It is a gift to the parish of St Oswald’s, to be used or sold, whichever you think best.

  “That’s all very well,” said Father Patrick, the oldest and most practical of the priests, “but we don’t know our legal rights, nor do we know the rights of the giver. We could be accepting stolen property.”

  “I’d quite fancy riding it,” said Father Leo. “It’s almost an antique, but a real beauty. Imagine riding round the parish on that!”

  The old priest raised his eyebrows.

  “We must tell the police,” he said, “and let them decide.”

  It was an unusual case and the local police, who had more important things to do, would much rather have turned a blind eye. Two of them had in fact seen the scooter the night before.

  “Look at that,” Mick Storey had said as they turned to go down Sandy Bank. “I haven’t seen a bike like that for years.”

  “I’ve never seen one in my life,” said his younger colleague.

  “Pity we’re not going in his direction,” said Mick. “We could have stopped him and asked him about its history.”

  That was all. But they both remembered the driver. Stockily built, late teens, early twenties, dark tracksuit, trainers, helmet, big gloves.

  The reporter on the Castledean Gazette called in at the police station next morning, looking for a story. But the criminals had had a quiet night. The scooter story was the best his friends in the force could manage. Human interest there, and local people. It would fill up a few paragraphs . . .

  Just after one o’clock this morning, a mysterious rider left an old motor scooter outside the presbytery of St Oswald’s Church in Moor Street. Father Leo McDonald, curate at St Oswald’s, caught a glimpse of the driver before he ran away. He described him as a young man wearing a dark blue tracksuit with the hood pulled well down over his face, his eyes hidden behind large, dark goggles. He may have been wearing a stocking mask.

  “He ran off as soon as I opened the door,” said Father McDonald. “This morning we checked the scooter thoroughly and found a note in the saddlebag offering it as a gift to the church. But the strange way in which it was delivered makes us dubious about our right to keep it.”

  Two policemen, patrolling in their panda car, saw the same scooter half an hour earlier. Their description of the youth agrees with that given by the priest.

  In the absence of any number-plate on the vehicle, the police have decided to list it as a piece of lost property. If it is not claimed within the next six months, St Oswald’s will be the richer by one vintage motor scooter in perfect working order.

  One other person had seen the scooter that night. Anthea Fryer was just drawing her bedroom curtains as Soobie pushed the bike out of the gate. Anthea was sleepy, but not too sleepy to ask herself what the Mennym boy was up to this time.

  “I know they’re an odd lot,” she said to herself, “but nobody will listen to me. I always end up seeming to be completely in the wrong.”

  23

  Reading the Gazette

  WHEN SOOBIE RETURNED from ditching the scooter, Pilbeam was waiting for him.

  “You’ve been a long time,” she said. “I was getting worried. I thought something must’ve happened.”

  “Sorry,” said Soobie. “I didn’t realise you’d be waiting. I had a last ride on it for old times’ sake. But things went quite smoothly. No real problems.”

  “Quite smoothly?” said Pilbeam, guessing that something must not have gone exactly according to plan.

  Soobie told her about the young priest opening the door too soon.

  “That’s all,” he said. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  Soobie might be cynical about pretends, but when it came to the ways of the world he was more naive than either of his sisters.

  The next day the whole family was told that the scooter was gone.

  “It seemed wrong to leave it to rust,” said Soobie, sparing Appleby the truth, “and there is no way we could have returned it to Albert Pond. He’s probably forgotten all about it.”

  No one ever went out to buy a newspaper these days. So the Mennyms never read the story in the Castledean Gazette. But there were those who did.

  “There!” said Anthea to Connie, pointing to the report in the Gazette. “What did I tell you? There is something fishy about those Mennyms.”

  Connie read the story, but looked puzzled.

  “I don’t see the connection,” she said.

  “The youth on the scooter was that boy from Number 5 who goes out jogging at all hours.”

  Connie smiled.

  “He won’t be the only young man wearing a dark tracksuit. That description could fit any number of people.”

  “Ah!” said Anthea, “but I saw him. I saw him wheeling a bike of some sort out of the gate of Number 5 very late, the night before last – just about the right time. That’s too much of a coincidence.”

  Connie read the report again, very carefully.

  “It seems to me,” she said, “that the boy in this story hasn’t done anything wrong. The reverse if anything.”

  “So far as we know,” said Anthea. “Those priests don’t seem too sure – and the police obviously don’t know what to make of it.”

  Connie gave Anthea a look of exasperation.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she said. “It’s none of our business. If your father weren’t off to Scotland again, playing with his new house, I would really feel like having a word with him about your Mennym-fixation.”

  Anthea was indignant.

  “I haven’t got a Mennym-fixation, or any other sort, and I don’t want to share Dad’s psychiatrist, thank you.”

  “Listen to me then,” said Connie. “Your mother will be home for good in September. You’ll be married in October and off to Huddersfield. And in November the rest of us will be going to live in Scotland. Brocklehurst Grove will be a bit of the past and these mysterious Mennyms will be a memory. Don’t get involved.”

  “Get involved?”

  “I know you, Anthea Fryer. I should by now. You’ll be off down to that police station making allegations and signing statements. There could be investigations and court cases with you as a witness. Your father would be annoyed and your mother would be embarrassed.”

  Anthea drew herself up haughtily.

  “So what?” she said. “It’s my life, isn’t it, not theirs?”

  “What about civil liberties?” said Connie, trying to get Anthea onto one of her safer hobby-horses. “The Mennyms have their rights, too.”

  “No one has the right to steal a motor scooter and give it away,” said Anthea.

  “You did see him pushing it out of his own drive,” said Connie. “We don’t know that he stole it.”

  “We can have a pretty good idea. He may even have stolen it from his parents. It is a vintage model, by all accounts.”

  “All right,” said Connie. “His parents may have asked him to dispose of it for that matter. It may not be open, but it could still be perfectly above board. Let’s change the subject. Bobby will be here in half-an-hour.”

  “Don’t you dare mention this to him,” said Anthea. “He’s worse than you are.”

  “A good job, too!”

  Anthea was on her best behaviour for the next two days. But then, after a late night out, she came home, drew her curtains again, and saw Soobie jogging past her front gate.

  He could be any sort of felon, thought Anthea. I have my public duty and I am being talked into neglecting it.

  So early next morning, Anthea went out to the nearest telephone box and gave her information to the police. She did not tell them her own name and address. That way she could keep out of it. But she would watch for developments. She was sure there would be some.

  Mick Storey glanced over the day’s briefing sheet. The phone call about the scooter was low priority as far as the police were concerned, but Mick was interested.r />
  “We’ll be passing that way this morning,” he said. “I think I’ll call in and check it out.”

  “Waste of time,” said his partner.

  “Maybe,” said Mick, “but I’d love to know more about that bike.”

  24

  A Constable Calls

  POOPIE AND WIMPEY were in the back garden on the wooden chute. To be more accurate, Wimpey was playing on the chute and Poopie was having an occasional turn in between weeding the flower-beds. It was a day out of a fairytale, a jewel of a day, warm and sunny but fresh as a lily.

  Joshua was resting on the sofa in the dining-room. The window was open, as were the windows in the kitchen and the breakfast-room. Pilbeam was helping her mother rearrange the top shelves. Granny Tulip was knitting a waistcoat, one of a batch she would be sending to Harrods when the siege was deemed to be over. In the day nursery, Miss Quigley was busily ‘bathing’ Googles and looking forward to a few hours’ painting in a sheltered corner of the garden. The back garden, of course. Nobody was allowed to work or play at the front of the house.

  At 10.37 a.m. a police patrol car drew up at the front gate of Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. Mrs England, walking her dog, saw it arrive and wondered briefly and vaguely why it was there. Anthea, out shopping, missed it.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll be long,” said Mick as he got out of the car. He stood a moment with one hand on the front gate and looked around. They could do with a gardener, he thought, observing the long grass and the generous scatter of weeds.

  It was Soobie’s turn on watch. His books and papers were laid aside and he was being attentive to the world outside the window. Seeing the policeman standing by the gate, Soobie sensed imminent disaster. Words might not be enough to keep this one at the door.

  The gate opened. The policeman walked up the drive.

  Soobie dashed into the kitchen.

  “The doorbell’s going to ring, Mother, but whatever you do, DON’T ANSWER. Close that window. Close all of the windows. Everybody must be told to lie low.”