Mennyms Alive Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Foreword: The Birth of the Mennyms

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Where are We?

  2. The Search

  3. What Do I Know?

  4. All of Us

  5. The Conference

  6. Soobie

  7. What to Do Next

  8. Joshua

  9. Meanwhile . . .

  10. Deductions and Decisions

  11. Hello?

  12. Reunion

  13. Play Dead

  14. Upstairs . . .

  15. . . . And Downstairs

  16. First Encounter

  17. Puzzles

  18. News for Daisy

  19. Early Closing

  20. Thursday

  21. Friday

  22. Saturday

  23. Wednesdays and Fridays

  24. The Rest of the Week

  25. Tulip Makes Plans

  26. Househunting

  27. Magnus

  28. Billy

  29. Recognition

  30. The Robot

  31. The Green Rover

  32. A Different Pact

  33. The Ideal Home

  34. Trusting Mr Dobb

  35. The House on the Hill

  36. December

  37. Preparations

  38. The Letter

  39. Packing

  40. Taxis

  41. Slowly, Very Slowly

  42. Mrs Cooper

  43. Albert and Lorna

  44. Billy Returns

  45. The Last Chapter

  About the Author

  Also by Sylvia Waugh

  Praise for the Mennyms Sequence

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Mennyms are alive. ALIVE! Soobie’s life force was too strong to die – it just couldn’t leave him. And so now, because of Soobie, the Mennyms are all together again. But their new life is full of bewildering uncertainties and baffling questions. Where on earth are they? What has happened to them? And, probably the most terrifying unknown of all . . . what are they going to do now?

  Mennyms Alive

  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.
r />   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 my mother, Alice Richardson

  and my sister, Joan Porteous

  He thought he saw an Albatross

  That fluttered round the lamp:

  He looked again and found it was

  A penny postage stamp.

  “You’d best be getting home,” he said,

  “The nights are very damp.”

  Sylvie and Bruno, Lewis Carroll

  CHAPTER 1

  Where are We?

  “MUM! DAD! WHAT’S happened? Where am I? Where am I?”

  The voice was high-pitched with terror.

  After months in limbo, Poopie Mennym had sprung to life. His arms flayed the air in movements as yet uncontrolled. The training tower that rose in front of him crashed to the floor. Pieces of rigid plastic scattered like matches spilt from a box.

  Poopie had been sitting doll-still and lifeless with his back resting against the side of the bed, his feet tucked under him out of harm’s way – not interfering at all with the orange plastic tower. That was how Billy Maughan had left him after building the model assault course of which the tower was the focal point. Action Men figures were carefully arranged on it and beneath it, to appear as if on manoeuvres . . .

  Poopie stared, startled, at the devastation he had caused. His yellow hair was tousled. His bright blue button eyes could almost see again, but he saw as one learning to see, focussing imperfectly and feeling terror.

  The room was one he had never seen before, with walls, a door and a window that had no place in his memory. The ceiling was much higher than any of the ceilings he had ever known. Poopie stood up shakily, stumbled to the door with what haste he could muster, and flung it wide open.

  Outside was a narrow passage lit only by fanlight windows above each bedroom door. There was no one in sight, but someone was speaking, quite loudly.

  “Magnus! Magnus! Wake up! Wake up!”

  Poopie was relieved to recognise his grandmother’s voice calling urgently in the room next door. He dashed in. There was Granny Tulip bending over Granpa and shaking his arm. His purple foot dangled over the side of the bed. His mittened hands were beginning frantically to clutch the air.

  “What? What, what what?” he muttered.

  Poopie ran to Tulip’s side.

  “Where are we, Granny?” he cried. “How did we get here?”

  Granny Tulip looked round the room, bewildered, yes, but already gaining self-control and beginning to take a measure of the situation. The last thing she could remember was being at home in Brocklehurst Grove, huddled in one room with the rest of the family and feeling irritated, waiting for something that she knew was not going to happen. But it had! My goodness it had!

  For here she was, in a different house, but surrounded by many of her own belongings. She had no idea how the change had come about. It seemed impossible. To be in one place one minute, and somewhere entirely different the next. What had happened to the time between? Who had brought them here?

  It would need to be accounted for somehow. Tulip, whose cheque-books were always correct to the last penny, whose skilful knitting never had the least unevenness, was quite prepared to take on the task of finding explanations. To her way of thinking, there was no question to which the answer could not be found if one looked methodically.

  “I don’t know how we got here,” she said, looking down at her grandson, crystal eyes glittering behind her little spectacles. “But we’ll soon find out.”

  Her appearance was the same as ever. Her blue and white checked apron was clean and neat. Above it, the little lace collar was crisp, and her dark blue dress was one Poopie had been used to see her wearing at any time in the past forty-odd years. That was tremendously reassuring.

  “Where are Mum and Dad?” said Poopie, clutching Tulip’s hand as if he were an infant and not a boy of ten. Poopie had always been ten. His tenth birthday came round every Christmas.

  “They’ll be about here somewhere,” said Tulip firmly. “As soon as Granpa’s properly awake, we’ll go and look for them. Unless you’d like to go on ahead yourself?”

  “No,” said Poopie in alarm. “I’ll just wait here for you.”

  At that moment, Magnus sat bolt upright and settled his trembling hands firmly on the counterpane, defying them to make another wobbly move. But his white moustache quivered, betraying the emotions he was trying to hide. He looked from Tulip to Poopie. He glanced round the room, the alien room that his black button eyes had never looked upon before.

  The window was long and narrow with crimson curtains trailing the floor. The high ceiling had plaster all rucked up like icing on a cake. A dark floral paper covered the walls, its petals and stems closely entwined so that the pattern showed no background colour. But the unfamiliar room was not what most distressed Magnus.

  Magnus the academic, Magnus who had written screeds about battles long ago, had a sudden grasp of what had happened. They had all been dead, as he had predicted. Now they were alive again. But where were they? And what had happened to bring this all about? To live again, anywhere on this earth, was so profoundly unexpected and, to him at least, unwelcome.

  “What’s she playing at?” he growled, as consciousness came in uncomfortable waves. “This is not how it was meant to be . . . This should never have happened . . .”

  “Well it has,” said Tulip. “So you might as well get used to the idea.”

  “New problems,” said Magnus weakly as another wave of weariness flowed over him. He was alive. He knew he was alive. But he was very, very tired.

  “Fresh opportunities,” said Tulip, squeezing Poopie’s hand. “We have managed before, we can manage again.”

  “Find the others,” said Magnus with no enthusiasm. “I suppose we’ll have to see what must be done.”

  In the living-room on the floor below, Vinetta and Joshua Mennym were coming back to life, like patients emerging dozily from an anaesthetic. As their eyes became able to see again, they looked round and tried to make sense of their new and unexpected environment. Each was seated in a large armchair facing the television set.

  “That’s our TV set,” said Vinetta. They were the first words she had uttered in many months. She looked down at the arm of her chair.

  “These are our chairs,” she said. Her eyes searched the room, seeing more and more familiar pieces of furniture.

  “But I have never seen this room before,” she concluded. The high ceiling had an ornate rose in the centre and a deep cornice round the edge. The wall-paper was dark green, embossed with faint gilt garlands. The carpet on the floor was thin and old, its pattern long-faded.

  What this all meant was impossible to know in those first waking moments, but Vinetta’s immediate concern was not to look for explanations but to see whether the others were there with her, and living. She glanced round at Joshua, who nodded and then shrugged his shoulders in a manner that said, what are we to make of all this?

  Vinetta then looked across to where her eldest daughter, Pilbeam, was sitting in a carver chair that had come from the dining room at Brocklehurst Grove. She too was beginning to revive. She raised one arm and placed it behind her back as if to relieve stiffness. Her head turned on her neck, causing her long blac
k hair to move from side to side, but she was still not fully conscious of her surroundings.

  Next to Pilbeam, on a matching chair, sat Appleby. The red-headed fifteen-year-old was sitting stiffly upright with one hand on each chair-arm, her legs stretched out in front of her, her feet crossed at the ankles. She was wearing jeans and a brightly-patterned shirt. She showed no sign of any movement. Vinetta saw how still she was, and sighed.

  When Vinetta had last seen Appleby, she had been dressed in a pink nightdress, lying in bed at Brocklehurst Grove, her long red hair brushed down onto her shoulders. She had lain like that for two whole years, no longer a personality, just a lifeless doll. And, though differently dressed now, there was no indication that her state had changed.

  She has been dead longer than the rest of us, thought Vinetta sadly. Her death was different. To expect her to live again is just too much to hope for.

  On the floor in front of Vinetta, Wimpey, Poopie’s twin sister, began to stir, rocking backwards and resting her shoulders against her mother’s knee. Awareness came slowly as she craned round to look at her parents. The expression in her pale blue eyes was dazed and wondering. She remembered the last moments in Brocklehurst Grove. She remembered the fear she had felt. Now she was in a room she could not recognise.

  “Where have I been? Where am I?” she said, after struggling to find the question she wanted to ask. She was wearing her gingham dress and her hair was tied in bunches. Nothing about her had changed, but she felt different. Her mother looked the same – black curly hair, gentle features and speckled blue eyes. Her father looked the same, his brown hair peppered with grey, his amber lozenge eyes reserved and serious.

  Joshua, ever practical, stood up and walked to the nearest window. It was nothing like the windows in Brocklehurst Grove. It was a long sash window, reaching nearly to the lofty ceiling, one of a pair on the same wall. From it, in the light of a clear evening, Joshua saw the road and the river and, far away to his left, downstream, the familiar bridges that linked Castledean and Rimstead.

  “Well,” he said, “it may not be much comfort, but at least we’re not very far from home.”