Mennyms Under Siege Page 18

  Mennyms Alone . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  A Premonition

  SIR MAGNUS MENNYM lay listless in his bed in the best front bedroom on the second floor of the house at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. The window was open and sounds of distant traffic drifted in. It was a warm September morning, bright enough to make most folk feel cheerful. But Magnus was weighed down with a nameless misery. It had penetrated into the deepest fibre of his being. One purple foot dangled over the side of the bed. His white moustache drooped and his black button eyes had faded to a leaden grey.

  Tulip came in and opened the curtains. She moved briskly round the room straightening this and tidying that. She knew only too well her husband’s moods and she was sure that before long he would be telling her what he had on his mind.

  Magnus’s eyes followed Tulip’s movements without any real interest in what she was doing.

  “What are we?” he said at last in a voice slow and sonorous. “What are we?”

  Tulip gave him a sharp, no nonsense look.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said. “I know exactly what I am. A wife, a mother, a grandmother, and, suppose I say it myself, a very good businesswoman. Did I tell you I’d written to New York? There’s this shop called Bloomingdales . . .”

  Sir Magnus sat up straighter in his bed. His left foot touched the floor. He looked thoroughly annoyed.

  “That is not what I mean,” he snapped. “You know perfectly well what I mean. We are nothing but a family of rag dolls living for no other reason than that the spirit of Kate Penshaw could not rest easy in her grave.”

  Tulip sighed and sat down in the armchair by the bed. It would not be the first time she had lifted her husband out of a totally unnecessary fit of depression. It would probably not be the last.

  “It does not matter why we are living,” she said. “Just accept it. We are alive. We are lucky to be alive. And life is good to us.”

  “Not for much longer,” said her husband. “Every day that passes brings us nearer to death. Did you think we were immortal?”

  Tulip looked at him sharply, crystal eyes glittering. In the room across the landing, their granddaughter, Appleby, had lain lifeless for a whole year. In that time, Tulip had looked after her, kept her clean and neat and free from dust. The room had become a shrine and was a constant reminder to all of them that even rag dolls can die.

  “The spirit left Appleby,” said Tulip. “I am not so stupid as to think that it could not leave any one of us. But that is true of any living being, be it man, doll or dinosaur.”

  Magnus leaned forward, some vigour returning with the need to argue.

  “Dinosaur is near the mark,” he said. “We are about to become extinct. That is what worries me. The death of any one of us, even Appleby, is nothing compared to that. If the spirit should leave me, quietly in the night, that would be no tragedy. What I am speaking of now is something different. I have a premonition, a dreadful premonition, that we are all about to die, all of us at one fell swoop.”

  Tulip looked shocked and angry as if her husband had uttered some blasphemy.

  “What a dreadful thing to say! You shouldn’t even think it.”

  “Send Soobie to me,” said Magnus. “I must see Soobie. He will understand.”

  Tulip was surprised. Soobie, the only blue Mennym, blue from head to foot, was not usually a favoured grandchild. Magnus regarded him with suspicion as one who was much too clever for his years. Soobie, like his twin Pilbeam, was doomed to perpetual adolescence. But not all adolescents are alike. Soobie’s character was full of complexities. Old head on young shoulders, maybe, but with a heart forever innocent and caring. The rest of the family had all sorts of pretends to establish themselves as real people, but Soobie would never enter into them. He looked facts solidly in the face and was dogged in his acceptance.

  “I’m not sure that seeing Soobie will improve matters,” said Tulip. “The mood you’re in, the two of you together could cast a gloom over the whole house. Just look what a lovely day it is. I’ll open the curtains wider. Lie back and enjoy the sunshine.”

  “Fetch Soobie,” said Magnus, grinding out the words, “and stop twittering on about the weather.”

  “It’s the end of summer,” Tulip persisted. “There won’t be many more days like this for a long time.”

  “There may not be many more days at all,” growled Magnus. “Do as you’re told, will you? Go now and fetch Soobie.”

  The tone of her husband’s voice warned Tulip not to argue. Without another word, she left him and went down the two flights of stairs to the lounge where she knew Soobie would be sitting at the bay window, watching the world outside.

  The house where the Mennyms lived was not much different from the other houses in Brocklehurst Grove. Their neighbours were ordinary human beings, insofar as any human being can be described as ordinary. They never knew that Number 5 was home to an extraordinary family of life-sized rag dolls who had sprung into life after their maker, Kate Penshaw, breathed her last in a side ward at Castledean Infirmary. That was over forty-six years ago. The Mennyms, from seventy-year-old Sir Magnus down to the baby, Googles, had lived just like other people, but, unlike other people, they had never been any younger than their years, and they had never grown any older. Their origins had been a mystery to them for most of the time, but not one that they had ever questioned. Only in recent years had it become apparent that there was more to their lives than the trivial round and common task stretching on and on into eternity. For the first forty years of their existence they had thought that their life was permanent and that Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove was the safest place on earth.

  Soobie sat down in Granny Tulip’s armchair by the side of his grandfather’s bed. His grandmother looked from one to another, hesitating, but then left the two closeted together like conspirators.

  Soobie felt uncomfortable. He had been summoned to Granpa’s room, he alone, and he did not know what to make of it. It was unusual. It was unheard of. Soobie was suspicious.

  “You sent for me,” he said abruptly.

  “You’re my grandson,” said Magnus. “If I wish to see you, I send for you.”

  They were like two fighters circling, each very wary of the other.

  “So now I am here,” said Soobie, “what is it that you want?”

  Magnus sighed. To say what he wanted to say was not easy. The words nearly choked him.

  “I want your opinion, your honest opinion.”

  Soobie was astonished but irritated.

  “In nearly half a century,” he said, “you have never listened to any opinion of mine without pouring scorn on it. What value can my opinion have to anyone who is so bursting with pearls of wisdom?”

  Magnus reached out his hand and laid it on Soobie’s arm.

  “I have never believed in giving you too high an idea of yourself,” he said, “but deep down, you must know, I have always had a respect for your honesty and your sound intelligence.”

  Soobie looked him straight in the eye.

  “There have been times in the past when I would have been glad to hear those words,” he said. “I am not sure that I care what you say about me now. What advice can I possibly give you?”

  Magnus did not give a direct answer. He shifted on his pillows and said, “I feel old, Soobie. Sometimes I feel older than the hills.”

  Soobie suddenly saw his grandfather’s agedness. His hostility melted and he was filled with pity. He is old, he thought, old and helpless.

  “What do you want to know, Granpa?” he said more gently. “If I can help, I will.”

  Magnus tightened his grip on Soobie’s arm. Urgently he told him of the foreboding that had been troubling him for days.

  “Something deep inside me says that our time is coming to an end. We are all going to die. I haven’t invented it,” he said. “It is a real and powerful conviction. I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Soobie looked at him, searching, que
stioning. How true was it? How true could it be? Since Appleby’s death, he had wondered about life on earth and when and how it might end. There had been one close call, but that had told him nothing. He could not envisage dying as something that could happen to him. To come close to death was one thing, to pass beyond it was incomprehensible.

  What was he to say to his grandfather now?

  Magnus waited in anxious silence. The clock on the wall ticked loudly.

  “We did nearly all die last year, remember,” said Soobie. “Appleby almost destroyed us by opening the door in the attic. That could be what is preying on your mind. It preys on mine.”

  “No!” said Magnus vigorously. “No! No! I wish I hadn’t bothered to ask you. You are no use at all.”

  “I am sorry,” said Soobie. “I really am. You asked for my opinion. I am just searching around for ideas. You would not want me to rush in with a half-baked theory. Maybe it is a genuine premonition. And if it is, it must have some purpose. If we had all died last year, without any warning, it would have been a terrible disaster.”

  “What disaster could be more terrible than all of us dying now?” said Magnus. “Our extinction would have been no worse then than now. Death is death.”

  “That death would have been total disorder. My hair caught fire. The blaze could have spread. The house might have burnt down. Father would have been found lifeless at work. The outside world would have asked question upon question, and never accepted any of the answers.”

  “That would surely apply at any time,” his grandfather pointed out. “I will die in my bed, but there’s no telling where the rest of you will be when it happens, or what you will each be doing. You all gad about too much for my liking. It could be a repeat performance.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Soobie. “If we are all to die, a premonition could help. We could try to leave no trace of ever having lived. We could sever all contact with the outside world. If what you feel is really true, we might at least have time to prepare for an orderly end to things.”

  “So what do we do now?” asked Magnus as he considered these wider implications.

  “We wait for stronger proof,” said Soobie. “If your intuition is correct, there are bound to be further signs. A vague premonition is no use to us. When we have a better idea of what it all means, then will be time enough to prepare.”

  “For that, we would need to know the day and the hour,” said Magnus, clutching the counterpane with both gloved hands. “That knowledge is given to no man.”

  “But we are different,” Soobie reminded him. “We are the creations of Kate Penshaw. Her day and her hour have been and are gone. It may be that she wants us to prepare. If she does, we shall need to be told at least the day if not the hour. We can’t stop living and sit around idle for days or even months waiting for something that might never happen.”

  “So you do believe me?” said Magnus.

  “I’m not sure,” said Soobie. “It’s not impossible. I can’t say more than that.”

  About the Author

  Sylvia Waugh lives in Gateshead. She taught English at a local school for many years but has now given up teaching to devote her time to writing. She has three grown up children and two grandsons.

  Also by Sylvia Waugh

  The Mennyms

  Mennyms in the Wilderness

  Mennyms Alone

  Mennyms Alive

  The Ormingat series:

  Space Race

  Earthborn

  Who goes Home?

  Praise for the Mennyms Sequence

  ‘Brilliant’ Independent

  ‘An extraordinary book, quite unlike anything that has been written for years . . . a classic’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Wise, witty . . . fantastic’ Financial Times

  ‘Wonderfully original’ Guardian

  ‘Remarkable’ TES

  ‘All the ingredients of a classic fantasy on the lines of The Borrowers’ The Bookseller

  The Mennyms won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award (1994)

  MENNYMS UNDER SIEGE

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19539 8

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

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  This ebook edition published 2014

  Copyright © Sylvia Waugh 1995

  First Published in Great Britain by Julia MacRae, 1995

  The right of Sylvia Waugh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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