Mennyms in the Wilderness Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Foreword: The Birth of the Mennyms

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Letter

  2. Not Again!

  3. Who?

  4. Soobie

  5. Another Conference

  6. Albert Comes Home

  7. A Letter from Albert

  8. Some Truth, Some Lies

  9. Albert Speaks

  10. Waiting for Albert

  11. First Encounter

  12. The First Salvo

  13. The Purple Foot

  14. The Family Conference

  15. The Move

  16. Comus House

  17. The Stables

  18. Using Albert

  19. Miss Quigley

  20. The Hundred Steps

  21. The Night Rider

  22. Humiliation

  23. Poopie

  24. Allenbridge Market

  25. Sir Magnus

  26. The Sorrows of Soobie

  27. Saving the Grove

  28. Where’s the Scooter?

  29. On the Road

  30. Waiting

  31. Albert and Kate

  32. Tuesday – Appleby at Home

  33. The Clouty Doll

  34. The Chase

  35. The Burglars

  36. Failure

  37. A Mennym and a Maughan

  38. Albert’s Marathon

  39. Holmes and Watson

  40. Home

  41. Friday

  42. Albert Returns

  43. Poopie and the Rabbit

  44. Return to Comus House

  45. The Christmas Presents

  46. Paddy Black

  47. Magnus Speaks to Albert

  48. Tulip Talks to Albert

  49. The Departure

  50. The Last Word

  Read on

  About the Author

  Also by Sylvia Waugh

  Praise for the Mennyms Sequence

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Mennyms are faced with a crisis when plans to build a motorway straight through their home are announced. They’ve successfully survived living on Brocklehurst Road for forty years, carefully keeping the secret of their rag doll identity under wraps. But news of the motorway forces them to confront a cruel ultimatum: they can be destroyed with the house, or they can move out into the countryside. Either way the consequences will be devastating . . .

  Mennyms in the Wilderness

  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 David, Peter and Vicky

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

  The Wind Among the Reeds, W.B. Yeats

  1

  The Letter

  22 Calder Park

  Gillygate

  Durham

  10th August

  Dear Family

  This is the strangest and most difficult letter I have ever had to write. It flies in the face of common sense. If you are real people living at 5 Brocklehurst Grove, you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about. My waste-paper bin is full of discarded efforts. More than once, I decided to give up trying. But a promise to a ghost is very compelling, even in the light of common day. I have to keep telling myself that I did see a ghost and I did make a promise.

  I am an ordinary human being. In no way am I special. But, if the things I have been told are true, you will recognise my name. I was called after my father. My name is Albert Pond. But I am not a mythical Australian. I am English – and completely real! All of which takes a fair bit of explaining.

  It began one day last week . . .

  I was sitting on a bench by the river just above Prebends Bridge. I had been down in the depths of the library all morning, catching up on unfinished work. So it was a relief to come out for a breath of fresh air.

  You must picture a steep grassy bank above me rising right up to the walls of the Cathedral. Beneath me there is a gritty path, more grass, and trees everywhere. The river below is barely visible. I am alone.

  Then suddenly I am not alone. For the first time in my thirty years of life, I am about to see a ghost. It is a very weird experience. I have never even believed in ghosts before. First, I have the sense of there being someone close beside me. I look around. The path either side is deserted. The nearest human beings are on the bridge away to my left, not even within hailing distance. I look along the seat and there, hovering on my right, is what I can only describe as a swathe of grey smoke.

  Everything around me becomes totally still. The leaves are not moving on the trees. There is no movement on the bridge. Everything is silent.

  “Don’t worry,” says a firm voice out of the mist. “I won’t take long.”

  Within seconds, there is no mist any more, just a real, very solid, elderly lady wearing a heather-coloured tweed jacket and skirt and a deep pink jumper. From her wiry grey hair, neatly bobbed, to her brown brogue shoes, she looks rather old-fashioned, but completely alive. Her sharp brown eyes are youthful. Her broad, downy cheeks are the colour of ripe peaches, the lines on her face are faint and pleasant-looking.

  “You won’t know me,” she says briskly, “but I know who you are. Your grandfather was my nephew. I am Kate Penshaw.”

  Then I realise with a shock that I have seen her before. She is in the family photograph album, holding my father on her knee when he was just two years old. I know it is the same woman, but if she were alive today she would have to be at least a hundred and ten.

  “Why am I not afraid of you?” I ask. I feel genuinely puzzled and out of my depth.

  “Why should you be?” asks Kate with just the glimmer of a smile.

  “You are a ghost, aren’t you?”

  “If you say so,” says Kate. “I am not at all sure what I am. I do know what I am here for.”

  Then she tells me all about the Mennyms, down to the last detail. She knows much more than you might think. She claims to have lived with you and through you since the day she died. She makes me believe her, even though the things she says are totally fantastic.

  “And now,” she says as she brings the story up to the present, “they are in danger of losing their home. For the first time in all these years, they are threatened from outside in a way that could lead to their destruction. The danger is, as yet, no bigger than a speck on the horizon. But I have been warned of it. And, to put it very simply, I am here because we need your help.”

  She clasps her hands together in her lap and leans towards me with a look of real anxiety.

  “Do you understand?”

  I don’t. But, from habit, I nod as if I do. People explain things much better if you don’t insist upon understanding every word they say.

  “Plans are being made,” she continues, “to pull down Brocklehurst Grove and to drive a motorway right through the house. And there’s not a thing I can do about it. I haven’t the power, not the power it would need to stop something as big as that.”

  I suddenly realise what she wants me for. And it chills me to the bone. I don’t ask her any of the obvious questions as to where she has come from and what it is like there, or how she has managed to come back, or even how you people are so alive. Instead, I say, “I can’t see what use I would be. I’m not in town-planning or anything like that. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Aunt Kate looks relieved.

  “That’s no problem, Albert. I can tell you where to start. I didn’t come here without considering what could be done. Write to them. Meet them. Give them a new home if need be. There is Comus House, remember. You hardly ever go there yourself. You might as well put it to some good use.”

  She fixes me with those sharp brown eyes and makes me promise to do all I can.

  “You won’t be alone,” she says. “I’ll be there in the background keeping an eye on things.”

  Then she gets up and walks quickly away along the river bank. She doesn’t even dematerialise like a proper ghost. As for me, I just sit stunned as the leaves rustle in the breeze again and faint sounds of distant people and traffic reach my ears.

  So now I am writing to warn you of what is going to happen, and, goodness knows how I’ll do it, to offer you whatever help I can give. I still feel very unsure of some of the things Aunt Kate told me, but I’ll be in an even worse muddle if I have to decide whether ghosts can tell lies. So all I can do is try to believe everything and act accordingly.

  As far as I can make out, the motorway must still be in its very early planning stage. None of your neighbours will know anything about it yet. There is no desperate hurry. I have Kate’s word for that. I already have a holiday arranged and she says it will be perfectly safe for me to go. I shall write again as soon as there is anything more to tell.

  Take your time. Learn to live with the idea that there is one living human being who knows all about you but who will share that knowledge with no one. Aunt Kate was very firm on that point.

  Yours sincerely,

  Albert Pond

  2

  Not Again!

  ALBERT POND’S LETTER arrived by the second delivery on Wednesday.

  Life was being beautifully normal. Joshua Mennym was in the garden tidying the weeds and stopping occasionally to place one hand in the middle of his back as if it were beginning to ache. Th
is backache was no more real than that of many another man, but the motives were not those of a malingerer. It was a nice simple pretend. It looked good. It felt good. Then he would take his large handkerchief out to wipe some non-existent sweat from his brow. Seen from the neighbouring houses which, thank goodness, were a decent distance away, he would look the genuine article – a middle-aged man keeping the garden in order. No one would suspect, no one had ever suspected, that the Mennyms were not human beings but living, intelligent, life-sized rag dolls. Of necessity, they kept themselves very strictly to themselves.

  For over forty years the Mennyms had lived unknown and unnoticed at 5 Brocklehurst Grove. In all that time they had never grown any older; they had never been any younger. They had come mysteriously to life after their maker died, and they had managed miraculously to live together like any other family. All direct contact with the outside world was done by telephone, or by post. In the street, they kept their heads down and avoided being noticed with a skill that bordered on genius. Never in all those years had they spoken a word to the neighbours or even looked at them. To have done so would have been disastrous.

  Poopie, Joshua’s ten-year-old son, wheeled the barrow round the corner to gather up the rubbish. He enjoyed leaning heavily on the handles and taking a swift curving path to wherever he wanted to be. His twin sister, Wimpey, was sitting on the swing, watching them in a dreamy fashion, the swing barely moving. The sun shone on her golden curls and blue satin ribbons. She made a pretty picture that would grace any family album. So thought Granny Tulip, as she looked out of the breakfast-room window. She had the window wide open today and was busy sewing ‘tulipmennym’ labels into three jumpers that were just about ready for dispatch to the London store where they would be sold to the rich and the famous.

  Joshua’s wife, Vinetta, ever the busy mother, was in the kitchen putting sheets into the washing machine. It was not a job she enjoyed. The machine being a twin-tub, she had to transfer the wet load from one cylinder to the other. An automatic machine would have been more practical but that would have meant employing a plumber to instal it.