Mennyms Under Siege Page 17

  “She’s a beautiful bride,” said Vinetta. “I didn’t realise how nice-looking she was.”

  “All brides are beautiful,” said Tulip, “and at this distance you can hardly judge.”

  There was always something waspish about Tulip. And Anthea was a beautiful bride, at any distance.

  The Casdedean Gazette came out twice a week. Miss Quigley brought home the next issue and was in the lounge trying to find an account of the wedding in Brocklehurst Grove.

  “It’s bound to be here somewhere,” she said. She peered myopically at the print.

  “Let me find it for you,” said Pilbeam, and Miss Quigley, feeling embarrassed at how long it might take her to find the report, or even to be sure that there was none, was glad to hand the paper over.

  Pilbeam turned the pages rapidly till she caught sight of the blurred photograph of an unrecognisable bride and groom cutting a wedding cake. Even by the Gazette’s standards it was indistinct.

  Pilbeam read aloud the paragraphs relating to the Brocklehurst Grove wedding. The usual flat account of who, where and when ended with the information that the bride and groom would be setting up home in Huddersfield.

  “It’s not the other side of the world,” said Soobie, “but it’s far enough way to serve our purpose.”

  “A pity the rest of the family wouldn’t move away too,” said Tulip when they told her. “She might still come back and visit.”

  “And if she does,” said Vinetta, “we will know. We must never assume that she is the only danger. The watch must still be kept.”

  38

  Pilbeam’s Birthday

  THE ATTIC WAS now a place to be remembered, never again to be seen. The remaining material in the wicker chest would never be made up into dresses or shirts. The books, the rocking-chair, and all the other jumble would be left to gather dust. And Pilbeam’s mirror was left there, too. It was an oval mirror in a wooden frame and it hung on a matching stand. Pilbeam’s mirror? Yes, for it was through that glass that Pilbeam had first seen her own face four years ago. At that time she had been wearing her hair in two long plaits. So had Aunt Kate made her. Pilbeam had looked at herself and immediately decided that the plaits were not to her liking.

  “Do you know,” she said to Wimpey, “it will be four years tomorrow since I first looked at myself in the mirror in the attic.”

  They were sitting in the lounge at the round table, fortunately removed from the attic when Pilbeam joined the family. They were looking at the calendar, counting the days left till Christmas. Tomorrow was the twenty-eighth of October.

  “St Jude’s day,” said Pilbeam. “Patron saint of lost causes.”

  Wimpey ignored an allusion she did not understand, but came up with a different idea.

  “Why don’t we call it your birthday?” she said. “You and Soobie could have a party.”

  Till then, Appleby had been the only member of the family to celebrate her birthday. The younger twins had a “birthday” that for some unknown reason coincided with Christmas. The grown-ups were too old for birthdays. And as for Soobie, he as ever was unwilling to be part of any elaborate pretend.

  Pilbeam smiled at Wimpey’s words.

  “I can’t imagine Soobie celebrating a birthday or anything else. Still, the lost causes bit might appeal to him.”

  “Well, you can have the party” said Wimpey, “and Soobie can have St Jude.”

  Then, as an afterthought, she added, “And you can both be seventeen. I don’t like the sound of eighteen at all. I never did. Appleby hates you to be eighteen.”

  Wimpey thought of her sister as being still alive though hidden in the bedroom she must never enter. The pretend was not yet over. What else could she think?

  Pilbeam sighed. Any reference to Appleby hurt deeply. But Pilbeam loved Wimpey too much to give way to grief in front of her. She would not, however, agree to have a party, but to please Wimpey she promised to call the next day her birthday and to take a year off her age. It made little difference. She had added two years on, now she took one year off. Soobie would be asked to do the same.

  In a mood as blue as his face, Soobie agreed to be seventeen and to accept St Jude as a patron. To his way of thinking, nothing good had happened for a long time and nothing good seemed likely to happen. Theirs was doomed to be a hopeless case.

  But the very next day, something potentially good did happen. Soobie was sitting at the lounge window when he saw a huge furniture van pass the front gate. It turned the corner, passed Number 7, then Number 8, and drew to a halt at Number 9. This had to be interesting. The daughter was married. Were the parents leaving too? Soobie, with an unwonted display of energy, went quickly up the stairs to his parents’ room to get a better view. Pilbeam was there already, doing her official turn on watch.

  “I think the Fryers must be moving,” she said. “That can’t be bad. Anthea will have no reason to return to Castledean. We can regard that as a good omen on our birthday.”

  The grand piano had been the last piece of furniture to arrive at Number 9. Soobie remembered it very clearly. Now it was to be the first to leave. Three removal men took enormous pains to put the instrument into the van. The whole job took them all of an hour and a half.

  “I wonder when the rest of their furniture will be going?” said Pilbeam as the van drew away.

  “They might just have got rid of the piano,” said Soobie. “It could be Anthea’s piano being sent to Huddersfield. The parents may not be leaving at all.”

  In the past weeks, the Mennyms had seen Loretta Fryer drifting round her garden, weeding the borders and pruning the roses. They had seen her jogging occasionally in a bright pink tracksuit. That disturbed Soobie, but only slightly. A middle-aged woman was not likely to go jogging late at night in the middle of winter. And Soobie had already decided not to risk jogging again before the end of November.

  Alec was rather more menacing than his wife. He carried binoculars round his neck and kept picking them up to look at the birds. So far as they could tell, he was not directly nosy, but he had been seen talking to the man from Number 3, and he had actually given a lift to the older Jarman one day, after the son had gone off to work.

  “Ours is a lost cause,” said Soobie to Pilbeam when St Jude was mentioned. “Do you realise that? People are becoming more and more inquisitive. They seem to think they have some sort of right to know everybody’s business. You just have to look at the newspapers. There is no privacy any more. Computers are taking over the world. They can relate facts in ways that no human can. We may not be able to confuse them for much longer. As a family, we just don’t add up.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Wimpey, not fully understanding but knowing that her brother’s words were pessimistic. “It’s your birthday. You’re seventeen again. The siege is over and we can all be happy.”

  “Yes,” said Pilbeam with determination, though she understood only too well what Soobie meant, “we can. Let’s go down to the lounge and have a birthday game of charades. Let’s play music. Let’s talk and laugh. That’s what birthdays are for, aren’t they?”

  Soobie recognised the traces of desperation in her brittle voice and decided once more that sometimes pretends are a necessity. If we don’t keep on pretending, he thought, we might not survive. It was a doctrine difficult to accept but impossible to ignore.

  So they did have a party of sorts and as the afternoon went on they even became noisy and happy as if no threat loomed over them and they even managed to forget that Appleby was not there. Soobie worked harder at being happy than any of them. The older members of the family joined in. And Miss Quigley, bringing Googles to enjoy the fun, conjured up another talent – no, not a rabbit out of a hat – a sketch pad and pastels with which she drew portraits of all of them as they played. Then she pleased Poopie and Wimpey by sketching Disneyland characters, and letting the youngsters have turns at drawing too.

  “That’s very good,” she said when Wimpey drew a teddy-bear. And s
he admired Poopie’s graceful aeroplane.

  Tulip sat knitting and looking unusually benign. No one is ever too old to learn. The process is just a little bit more difficult as one grows older.

  “We could do with more days like this,” said Vinetta. “It seems such a long time since my children were happy.”

  Vinetta was no longer pretending. That phase had passed. She had finally accepted the reality of her daughter’s death and was coming gradually to believe in life again. Her grief for Appleby was something only Joshua had been allowed to share. It was as he had foretold. One day Vinetta had suddenly collapsed in his arms and sobbed out the pain of a broken heart. Only then did she begin to understand that to remember her lost daughter, without any desperate pretending, was in some way a celebration of Appleby’s own life. The healing was slow, very slow, but sure.

  39

  The Last Chapter

  DESPITE THE LULL, there was still no real peace of mind. The Fryers had become a symbol. Till they had gone from the street completely, the watch must be maintained, the feeling of unease must be nurtured so that danger would not have a chance to creep up on them unawares. Yet what happened next was totally unexpected.

  Early one November morning, a furniture van drew up at the gate of Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. The removers got out, opened the double gates, signalled to the driver who backed into the Mennyms’ drive. It was eight-thirty in the morning. The workers had arrived on site, they had lowered the van’s tailboard and were ready to begin. Then, in accordance with the custom of the company, the four of them settled down in the back of the van and ate their breakfast.

  Granpa Mennym, hearing the unusual noise outside, carefully placed his lap-desk on the bedside cabinet and eased himself over to the side of his bed nearest to the window. He could just reach the net curtain. He raised it and was horrified at what he saw.

  “Tulip!” he shouted. “Tulip!”

  But Tulip was two floors down in the breakfast-room at the back of the house.

  Vinetta, putting clothes away in the airing cupboard on the first floor, heard the old man’s voice and hurried up to see him.

  “It’s happened,” said Magnus as she entered the room. “They’ve found out about us and they’re coming to take us away.”

  Vinetta looked out of the window, saw the van, and could think of no better explanation than her father-in-law’s. Who had betrayed them? What should they do?

  “We’ll fight,” said Magnus, grabbing his walking-stick. “We won’t give in easily. Get the others. Tell them to be prepared.”

  Vinetta hesitated, wondering if it was safe to leave Magnus in this state. Then she hurried down to the dining room where Joshua was already lying asleep on the sofa.

  “Josh,” she said. “I think you’d better wake up. There’s a big van in the front drive and we don’t know what it’s there for.”

  “Mmm,” said Joshua as he turned to make himself more comfortable.

  “Josh,” said Vinetta more emphatically. “Wake up. Can’t you hear what I’m telling you?”

  Soobie had just come down from his bedroom. He went into the lounge and sat in his usual seat by the window, picked up the newspaper he had left there the night before and glanced out of the . . . What is that? He jumped up from his chair and drew closer to the net curtain. Clearly identified now, the object blocking his view was a very big furniture van and it was parked in the drive.

  “Mother!” he called. “Granny!”

  Tulip came from the breakfast-room. She followed Soobie’s horrified gaze.

  “Why on earth is that there?” she said. “I wonder what they think they’re doing.”

  Vinetta and Joshua came in behind her.

  “Magnus thinks they have been sent here to take us away.”

  Poopie had the room next to his parents. It too faced the front. He got out of bed and looked out of his window. What he saw made him come dashing down the stairs, telling them all very noisily what they already knew.

  “There’s a van outside,” he said, “and it’s parked in our path.”

  Pilbeam, still in her dressing gown, came into the lounge. The commotion had roused her. Morning tiredness hung about her. In the deep of the night, she would lie awake wishing that Appleby would burst in and be cheeky, tell lies, do anything, but live again. So morning often found Pilbeam more ready for sleep than for rising. She saw the van in the driveway outside the window and was bewildered.

  Miss Quigley was sitting in the day nursery in her big armchair. Its back was to the window and Miss Quigley was busy changing Googles into her day clothes. Whatever the noise in the lounge was about would have to wait. The nanny had very strict priorities. Baby first, anything else later.

  In the van, the men had finished their first break of the day and prepared for the job ahead.

  “Come on then,” said Alfie Cave. “It’s time we got started.”

  “It’s a wonder nobody’s come out yet. They’re usually quick off the mark when they see the van,” said Ted the driver.

  “Mebbe they’ve slept in,” said George, the youngest member of the crew.

  “Well,” said Alfie, “it’s nine o’clock. We can’t hang around waiting. If they’re still asleep, too bad. Just watch me wake them up!”

  He went to the door and pressed hard on the bell once, twice, three times. Then he waited.

  Inside the house, the Mennyms in the lounge had decided that no one should answer the door. Obviously that would not be the end of the matter, but answering the door would certainly be the wrong thing to do, whatever the right thing was. They tried to stay calm.

  “Mebbe the bell’s not working,” said George, after a minute had passed.

  Alfie knocked vigorously on the rapper.

  Inside the lounge, the Mennyms began to be seriously worried. Upstairs, Granpa, feeling very old and frail, trembled in his bed. Miss Quigley looked round at the window, saw the men outside the front door and shrank back in her big armchair, cuddling Googles for comfort.

  Wimpey, holding her American doll, came running down the stairs. Vinetta heard her, dashed out into the hall and pulled her into the lounge.

  “What’s that knocking?” said Wimpey quite loudly.

  Vinetta said, “Sh . . . we must be very quiet. There are some people outside trying to get in.”

  “My-name-is-Polly,” said the doll. “What-is-your-name?”

  “Shh,” said Vinetta again.

  “I couldn’t help it, Mum,” whispered Wimpey and she nursed Polly close to her chest to make sure that the noise wouldn’t happen again.

  “I wonder what the devil they’re up to?” said Alfie. “They definitely said November the tenth. We don’t make mistakes about things like that.”

  He banged on the door panel with his fist.

  Inside, the Mennyms quaked with fear. Would these strangers break the door down and burst in? Wimpey clung to her mother.

  “Unless there’s nobody here. They might just be leaving us to get on with the job. I wonder if they’ve left the keys at the office?” said Freddie Topham. “It would be like that Jean to forget them.”

  “Nobody’s ever left keys before, not in my time,” said Alfie. “They’re too worried in case anything goes wrong.”

  Alfie looked at the name, address and date on the worksheet, came close to the door again, raised the letter-box and peered in. The lobby and the hall beyond were in near darkness. Alfie strained to see any sign of life.

  “There’s not even a crate in sight,” he called back over his shoulder. “Sammy Little said he left eleven crates here yesterday.”

  Inside the house, the Mennyms heard Alfie’s words and were petrified. Eleven crates? Eleven rag dolls. What were they planning to do? Where were they planning to take them? The Mennyms looked at one another and scarcely dared to breath.

  Alfie looked down at the worksheet again. Then he shouted up at the window, “Mr Fryer, Mrs Fryer, are you there?”

  Then the Mennyms
suddenly knew what had happened. The van had come to the wrong address. But there was no way they could tell the removal men this vital fact. They sat still and waited.

  The men outside were just deciding to “try round the back” when a voice called to them and feet could be heard pounding the quiet morning pavement.

  Alec Fryer was running towards the Mennym house.

  “Hey,” he said, beckoning to the men as he edged past the van in the drive. “What do you think you’re up to? Acropolis Removers?”

  “That’s us,” said Alfie.

  “You were supposed to be at my house half-an-hour ago.”

  “Mr Fryer?”

  “That’s the name,” said Alec, exasperated.

  “Well, where’s the keys then?” said Alfie, still not grasping what had happened.

  “Good grief, man,” said Alec, “do you not know what you’ve done? You’ve come to the wrong house. Did the people in there not tell you?”

  Alec nodded towards Number 5’s door.

  “No answer,” said Alfie. “It says Number 5 on the sheet. We’re not mind readers.”

  “Well, try to be lip-readers,” said Alec angrily. “Number 9. That’s where you should be. Get into that van and move it along to my house . . . now.”

  “It’s not our mistake,” said Alfie. “We only go by what’s on the sheet.”

  The Mennyms gave a corporate sigh of relief as the van left their driveway. From upstairs and downstairs, they watched it being loaded with all the goods and chattels from Number 9.

  Then the Acropolis pantechnicon was driven away. The Mennyms watched it rounding the corner out of sight as if it were the proverbial load of hay.

  “I think,” said Vinetta, “that we have been given another chance, another lease of life.” She straightened the net curtain and came away from the window.

  “But what is life?” said Soobie.

  “Life is sweet,” said Vinetta. “That is all we need to know.”

  Read on for the first chapter of