Mennyms Under Siege Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Foreword: The Birth of the Mennyms

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Fringe

  2. Dear Bunty

  3. Going to the Theatre

  4. A Close Encounter

  5. A Family Conference

  6. Miss Quigley On Call

  7. Sounds Easy

  8. A Clandestine Courtship

  9. The Errand-girl

  10. The Family at Number 9

  11. A Stormy Conference

  12. The Invitation

  13. The Visitor

  14. The Disco

  15. A Trip to the Park

  16. The Neighbours

  17. In the Nursery

  18. Intruders

  19. Back to Square One

  20. Some Birthday!

  21. Questions and Answers

  22. A Vintage Motor Scooter

  23. Reading the Gazette

  24. A Constable Calls

  25. Then There Was One

  26. Letters to Albert

  27. In the Lounge

  28. In the Attic

  29. Poopie and Wimpey

  30. Appleby and Pilbeam

  31. The Forbidden Door

  32. Statues

  33. A Battle for Life

  34. Pretending to the Family

  35. Pretending to Joshua

  36. The Confrontation

  37. Watching

  38. Pilbeam’s Birthday

  39. The Last Chapter

  Read on

  About the Author

  Also by Sylvia Waugh

  Praise for the Mennyms Sequence

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Mennyms are once again in hiding, terrified of being discovered by their friendly neighbours. Strict rules have been laid down about who can leave the house and when, and Appleby can’t stand it: she’s going mad with boredom!

  As tempers fray, and patience wears thin, the Mennyms realise that the greatest danger comes not from outside – but from within.

  Mennyms Under Siege

  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 Quig
ley 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 Julia, my publisher, who gave me great encouragement.

  And for Karen, who gave me good advice.

  . . . Life piled on life

  Were all too little, and of one to me

  Little remains; but every hour is saved

  From that eternal silence, something more,

  A bringer of new things . . .

  Ulysses, Tennyson

  1

  The Fringe

  “I NEED A fringe.”

  Pilbeam was gazing at herself critically in a mirror propped up on the kitchen table. Her long black hair was combed back from her broad forehead. Her mother, busy ironing, looked up from her work and smiled.

  “Need? Surely you mean ‘want’ or ‘would like’?”

  “No,” said Pilbeam. “I do mean need.”

  Vinetta stood the iron on its heel and went and sat down beside her eldest daughter.

  “Well, come on. Explain yourself,” she said. “It’s not like you to use the word ‘need’ so carelessly.”

  “I need a fringe,” said Pilbeam, “to hide my brow and to act as a sort of disguise for the outside world.”

  That was a fair enough reason, but obviously not the complete story.

  “You’ve managed well enough so far,” said her mother. “What is different now?”

  “I want to go to the theatre,” said Pilbeam. “Really go to a real theatre. I will be sitting next to people. I need my face to be as veiled as possible by my hair.”

  Her hair reached nearly to her waist. It was thick and heavy and looked completely genuine. Pilbeam was the family beauty, like the princess out of a fairytale. And the Mennyms were a strange family, a family of life-sized rag dolls created forty-four years before by Kate Penshaw, a lonely old lady whose hobby became her passion in life. After her death, the dolls had come mysteriously to life and taken over Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove, living there almost as if they were human. Except for Pilbeam. She was the last of Kate’s creations and had lain unfinished in the attic for forty years. Soobie, her twin, had found her in a wicker chest and Vinetta, her loving mother, had finished the work that Kate had long ago begun.

  The taking over of Kate’s house had been surprisingly easy. Her heir, Chesney Loftus, had failed to come from Australia to claim, or even inspect, his inheritance. Among Kate’s papers the Mennyms had found the name of an agent to whom they had written claiming to have been Kate’s paying guests, and asking to be allowed to remain on as tenants of the property. Chesney himself had died three years ago, leaving the house he had never seen to what he must have assumed to be his aging tenants, for however long Sir Magnus and/or his son Joshua should reside there. He would clearly not have expected them to live forever. On their demise, the property was to go to an English branch of Kate’s family.

  In the forty-four years of their residence, the Mennyms had never found it difficult to come and go to the shops and the market and the park. It was simply a matter of wearing clothes to cover cloth, and dark glasses of various styles to hide button eyes. But this going to a theatre was different. How different, Vinetta was not sure. She was startled at the thought of her daughter being in such close proximity to people, but she respected Pilbeam’s wishes and trusted her judgment. It was her deeply held belief that one should not be constantly frustrating the young.

  She looked closely at Pilbeam’s hairline.

  “If I combed your hair forward,” she said, “I suppose I could cut some of it into a deep fringe for you.”

  “No,” said Pilbeam, “that wouldn’t do. It might make a line across the top and it would thin the hair down. I want more hair on top, not less. You could try making a fringe and stitching it into place. Then if ever I didn’t want it we could unpick it, like Dad’s beard when he was Santa Claus at Peachum’s.”

  “What would I use to make it?” said Vinetta. “Your hair is so beautiful and silky. It would have to be an exact match. There’s nothing suitable in my workbox. I know there’s not.”

  “No problem,” said her daughter. “Just cut a few inches off the bottom. I have often thought it was a bit too long at the back.”

  The transplant was performed that very afternoon. Poopie and Wimpey, the ten-year-old twins, came and watched, fascinated. It was a frosty January day with lowering clouds threatening snow. The twins were bored enough to welcome the distraction of seeing their elder sister suffer. It was not painful, of course, just irritating and restricting. Pilbeam was not at all pleased that her two younger siblings were such earnest spectators.

  “It must feel funny,” said Wimpey as she watched the needle going in and out on Pilbeam’s brow. She stood with her head on one side, looking up at her mother and sister. Wimpey’s pale blue button eyes were always full of wonder. Her golden curls, tied in bunches with satin ribbon, made her look old-fashioned and even more doll-like than the rest of them.

  “Hold still,” said Vinetta when Pilbeam turned her head to look at her sister. “I don’t want to get the thread in a tangle.”

  Joshua, their father, coming into the kitchen after his nap, raised his eyebrows and then took refuge in the brown teapot, pretending to brew tea in it and pour it out into his old mug. He was a quiet man, his dollness well hidden beneath a gruff manner. Like all the family, his life was a mixture of reality and pretence. He really did work as a nightwatchman at Sydenham’s Warehouse. He really did tend the garden at home, helped by his son Poopie. But the pipe he ‘smoked’ was a pretend. The ‘tea’ he brewed was make-believe. There really is a football team called Port Vale, one of the oldest in the English League, but Joshua, their lifelong supporter, had never been to see them play.

  When she had finished fixing the fringe in place, Vinetta stood back to admire her work. Then she held one mirror in front of Pilbeam and another behind to let her daughter see her hair from every angle. The twins watched her.

  Poopie looked up from under his own yellow fringe, cut straight across his brow, bright blue eyes glinting. “I don’t like you with a fringe,” he said. “I liked you better before.”

  Pilbeam looked at herself anxiously.

  “What do you think, Dad?” she asked Joshua.

  “Not much different,” said her father, barely raising his eyes from the newspaper he had begun to read.

  “Well, I think it looks lovely,” said Wimpey.

  Miss Quigley came in to collect a bottle for Googles, the baby. For the past three years, she had been nanny to Vinetta’s youngest child. Before that she had ‘lived’ in the hall cupboard, appearing in the Mennym house at intervals as a visitor and Vinetta’s friend. Her own home was supposed to be in Trevethick Street, but that was just a pretend. She was a lady of uncertain age with a plain but pleasant face and thin hair tied in a tight-little bun on the back of her neck. Since moving properly into the house, she had developed talents, not only as a nanny but also as an artist painting pictures that, had she been human and not a rag doll, would surely have led to her work receiving wide acclaim. She took one look at Pilbeam and smiled a tight little smile.

  “Snow White has turned into Cleopatra,” she said as she passed by.

  Pilbeam looked annoyed, and Vinetta, seeing the expression on her daughter’s face, knew just what wa
s coming next.

  “It must look odd,” said Pilbeam. “We’ll have to unpick it.”

  “Take your time,” said her mother. “Think about it. Get used to it. Remember, it was your idea in the first place. And you did say you needed a fringe.”

  Vinetta was reluctant that her work of the past two hours should be completely wasted. She wished dear Hortensia had been a little more tactful. It was nothing to say really, no insult to be likened to the Queen of Egypt, but young people do take things so seriously. Pilbeam suited her new hairstyle. Anyone with any taste could see that. And after a day or two they all did.

  “It makes you look older,” said Granny Tulip. “More grown up.”

  “I am more grown up,” said Pilbeam.

  It was Tuesday, and she and Tulip and Vinetta were sitting in the breakfast-room, which was Tulip’s office in this house that was home to three generations. Lady Tulip Mennym was an amazing woman. With her white hair and her blue-checked apron, she looked a typical, housewifely granny. She was small and neat and quick in speech and movement. But in addition to this, she was an excellent businesswoman. And, as if that were not enough, she was so skilled at knitting that the most famous store in London sold the garments she designed and made. Harrods, naturally, was never aware that the firm of ‘tulipmennym’ was so different from any of their other suppliers.

  There was something in the tone of Pilbeam’s voice that made her grandmother look up, shrewd crystal eyes showing an awareness that Pilbeam was making a real statement and not just uttering empty words.

  “In fact,” Pilbeam went on, “I have decided to be eighteen instead of sixteen. Soobie agrees. Since last year, we have moved on. The whole family has. But, in our case, it meant more. We were adolescents. Now we are grown up.”

  Vinetta said anxiously, “Eighteen or sixteen – there’s little difference. We are as we are. And, whether we like it or not, our circle is complete. In the human world, change is constant. Children grow up and get married and grow old. That sort of cycle is not possible for us. We wouldn’t want it anyway. We do well enough as we are. In more than forty years we have never grown any older. There are many in the world outside this house who would envy us.”