Mennyms in the Wilderness Read online

  Upstairs, Granpa Mennym was writing a rather contentious article on the English Civil War. He was deeply engrossed. His purple foot, the one that could always be seen flopping over the side of his bed, felt as if it were booted and spurred. Books and magazines were strewn over his counterpane and tipping onto the floor.

  Pilbeam and Appleby, the teenage daughters, were up in the latter’s bedroom listening to pop music and looking at magazines. Appleby’s room was much bigger than Pilbeam’s and the two often used it as a retreat. That was where they kept the stereo.

  In the lounge, Soobie, the blue Mennym, was feeling even sadder than usual. Soobie was Pilbeam’s twin brother, but unlike her, or any other member of the clan, he had a face that was entirely blue. His clothing was blue, his hands were blue and his feet were blue. Goodness knows why Kate made him that way. For, just like the rest of his family, he had been created by Kate Penshaw, a very clever needlewoman who had filled her home and the last years of her life with ‘people’ of her own making. A gloomy sense of foreboding hovered over Soobie. And that was even before the letter was opened.

  Miss Quigley, the nanny, came up the front path with baby Googles in the pram. She let herself in with the key Vinetta had given her, a proud possession on an old key-ring with a picture of a cathedral embossed in the leather.

  “You’d better have this, Hortensia,” Vinetta had said. “It’s not as if you were a visitor anymore. You live here now.”

  On this particular Wednesday morning as Miss Quigley pushed the pram into the hall and carefully removed her key from the lock, she looked down and saw the letter on the doormat.

  She picked it up.

  She looked at the address.

  She sniffed.

  “There’s a letter here, Vinetta,” she called.

  “Who is it for?” asked Vinetta as she came out of the kitchen.

  “Everybody,” said Miss Quigley. “Everybody but me.”

  The letter was in fact addressed to ‘The Mennym Family’. It was in a long white envelope, but the address was handwritten.

  “A personal letter,” said Vinetta and then she shuddered. Mennyms never received personal letters. The only time they had ever done so was when Appleby had invented a character she called Albert Pond and had sneaked in letters supposed to come all the way from Australia.

  “It’s not from Australia,” said Miss Quigley tactlessly.

  “No, it’s not,” said Vinetta. She turned her back on Hortensia and didn’t even bother to look at Googles.

  I know my place, thought Miss Quigley. She’s my friend when it suits her, but it doesn’t suit her to open that letter in front of me. It’s not even as if I am nosy. Let them keep their letters. I have more to think about.

  “Come along, baby,” she said to Googles as she lifted her out of the pram. “We’ll go into the back garden this afternoon and you can watch me paint.”

  Vinetta looked at Hortensia and smiled a bit nervously. She did not want to upset her, but she needed to be alone to open that envelope.

  “It’s a lovely day,” she said. “If I get the time I might just come out there and join you. I have worked quite hard this morning. I deserve a lazy afternoon.”

  Hortensia smiled back, totally undeceived. Googles wriggled about in her arms impatiently. She was always changed and fed and burped like any other baby, but it was all a pretend. There was never any milk in the bottle, and her nappy was always clean and dry. But she was a lively little one, well-loved and well-cared-for.

  “I’d better go and settle her down,” said Miss Quigley. “She probably needs changing. We’ve had a very long walk. The park was beautiful today.”

  3

  Who?

  “I DON’T KNOW what to do about it,” said Vinetta weakly as she sat with Granny Tulip in the breakfast-room. Both women had read the letter two or three times over.

  “It sounds genuine,” said Tulip.

  “Anything Appleby writes sounds genuine. When it comes to fabricating lies she has no equal. It’s almost as if she doesn’t recognise the difference between fact and fiction.”

  “Put it this way,” said Tulip, “if Appleby had not made up all that rubbish about Albert Pond coming on a visit from Australia, what would you have thought of this letter?”

  “I’d have believed it. Naturally I would. That’s why I really don’t know what we should do.”

  “Besides,” said Tulip shrewdly, “Appleby is very clever. I think she is too clever to play the same trick twice.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Vinetta conceded, “but it could be a double bluff. I mean, if she did manage to fool us again that would be even more of a triumph.”

  “No,” said Tulip, “I don’t think she ever thought of it that way, Vinetta. You know she didn’t. It was a game.”

  Vinetta turned the letter over helplessly. It was so difficult to know the truth. It would be so easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. That there should be two Albert Ponds, one fiction and Australian, the other fact and living not so very far away, was hard to swallow. And this new Albert Pond had a father who was also Albert Pond! It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Well,” said Tulip, ready as ever to push for a decision, “as I see it, we have various options open to us. We can tear the letter up and not even bother telling the others about it. But we can only do that if you feel absolutely sure that Appleby wrote it. Or we can confront Appleby in a quiet way and try to find out if she is guilty. Or we can hold a meeting and read the letter to all of them. Given the seriousness of the supposed threat, I think the last course is the safest. Let Magnus read it first and then we can have a conference in his room.”

  “Not a conference,” said Vinetta sharply. “Remember what happened last time. I won’t have it. If Appleby walks out, so do I. If she really wrote this letter, she must be sick.”

  “What do you mean to do then? Ignore the letter?” said Tulip. “Throw it away and forget about it? She’s your daughter. Are you so sure that she is the culprit?”

  “Let me have another look at the envelope,” said Vinetta. “It might give us some clue.”

  They both looked at the stamp and the smudged circular postmark. The letter had been franked in Durham on Tuesday morning.

  “Are you sure?” asked Tulip, peering closely through her little round spectacles.

  “Of course I’m sure,” said Vinetta. “You can make it out quite clearly.”

  “Then Appleby can’t have posted it. It must be genuine.”

  “Unless she’s forged the postmark,” Vinetta pointed out.

  “If she can produce airmail letters from anywhere in the world, a letter from Durham would be simple.”

  “So we are back to where we started,” said Tulip. “We must simply weigh the probabilities.”

  “The only thing I do know,” said Vinetta, “is that there is to be no confrontation. I won’t have it.”

  Tulip looked annoyed.

  “If it is genuine, and I tend to think it is, then we have more to worry about than upsetting Appleby. Honestly, Vinetta, we can’t just leave it. We have to get at the truth.”

  At that moment, Pilbeam came into the breakfast-room.

  “Are you two arguing again?” she asked, looking from her mother to her grandmother. She was never as impertinent as Appleby but she tended to regard her elders with a certain amusement that just stopped short of insolence.

  Tulip looked haughty and Lady-Mennymish. Vinetta, ever peaceable, said, “Not exactly. Maybe you can help us out.”

  She handed Pilbeam the letter.

  “She shouldn’t read it before Magnus and Joshua,” said Tulip. “It’s not right.”

  The other two ignored her and Pilbeam read on with growing surprise.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s the oddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Who wrote it?” demanded Tulip.

  “Who?” queried Pilbeam, her black eyes turned sharply on her grandmother. “Albert Pond, of course. Th
at is what it says in the letter.”

  “Not Appleby?” Vinetta. asked, looking hopefully at the daughter who had done so much for the delinquent Appleby over the past year. Pilbeam smiled back.

  “No,” she said, “not Appleby.”

  “Are you sure?” her mother insisted.

  “Ninety-nine per cent sure,” said Pilbeam.

  “Not a hundred per cent?”

  “It is hard to be a hundred per cent sure. Though really, we’d be better off if it were Appleby. You have odd priorities, Mum. We’re going to lose this house. We look like making our first direct contact with a human being who knows all about us. And all you’re worried about is whether Appleby is at the bottom of it. I’m sure she’s not, but I wish she were.”

  Tulip gave Pilbeam a look of approval.

  “Besides,” said Pilbeam, light dawning as she recalled things Appleby had told to her and her alone, “I remember Appleby telling me where she found the name Albert Pond.”

  “She didn’t invent it?” asked Vinetta.

  “No,” said Pilbeam. “She found it written inside the cover of an old book in her room. There definitely has been a real Albert Pond at some time. There could well be one now.”

  “So what do we do next?” said Tulip, a question addressed more to herself than to either of the others, but it was Pilbeam who answered.

  “We have a meeting, of course. Don’t we always?”

  Tulip was not sure whether this was meant as sarcasm or not, but she let it pass.

  “We’ll have to answer Albert Pond’s letter,” continued Pilbeam, “and we’ll have to face up to everything he’s told us. There’s not much choice.”

  Vinetta stood up and made for the door.

  “If there is a meeting to be held,” she said coldly, “I am going to make sure that Appleby is not upset by it. Give me the letter.”

  “And when do Magnus and Joshua get to read it, I’d like to know,” said Tulip. “You’ll be asking Miss Quigley to read it to Googles next! Pilbeam is right, Vinetta. You have very odd priorities.”

  Vinetta took the letter from Pilbeam and went out, slamming the door behind her in a most uncharacteristic manner.

  Vinetta knocked gently, almost timidly, at Appleby’s door and waited to be invited in.

  “What are you waiting outside for? The door’s open. Do you want a red carpet or something?”

  Vinetta sighed. When Appleby was irritable, she was very, very irritable. Vinetta went in and closed the door behind her.

  “We’ve had a letter,” she began, wondering how to avoid sounding suspicious.

  “What’s that to me?” asked her daughter in a sulky voice. Pop music was still blaring from the stereo. Vinetta, taking her life in her hands, went and turned it off before seating herself in the chair beside the bed where Appleby lay sprawled out and surrounded by magazines.

  “I sent Pilbeam down for a pair of scissors. Where is she? It shouldn’t have taken her all this long!”

  “Pilbeam is in the breakfast-room with your grandmother. And I doubt very much if you sent her there,” said Vinetta. “It’s Pilbeam you’re talking about, remember. She’s not at your beck and call, and well you know it.”

  Appleby drew a strand of red hair across her mouth, looked cheeky and said nothing.

  “This letter,” Vinetta continued. “It is from one of Aunt Kate’s relatives – a distant relative who, I suppose, must possess some psychic powers.”

  That struck the right chord. Appleby looked more interested. She and Pilbeam were into psychic powers at the moment, having a go at telepathy, and trying to move concrete objects by mental effort. They had not met with success in either field, but they hadn’t given up yet.

  “He must be psychic if he knows about us,” she said with her usual acuteness.

  “Well, he does,” said her mother emphatically. “He knows all about us, every single thing.”

  Appleby looked even more interested.

  “And you mean to say he’s a real human being?”

  “I’ve just told you. What else could he be? He’s Kate’s nephew. I don’t know how far removed, but that’s what he is. She has spoken to him.”

  “But she’s dead,” said Appleby. “She’s been dead for over forty years. We all know that.”

  “You have heard of ghosts,” said her mother. “Why do you think I said he must be psychic?”

  Appleby’s eyebrows rose an inch. Her green eyes looked larger and wider.

  “Wow!” she said. “This man’s seen Aunt Kate’s ghost? I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d seen her. Give me that letter.”

  Appleby snatched the pages from Vinetta’s hand and began to read. Vinetta watched her anxiously. She had hoped to prepare her for the young man’s name before handing over the letter.

  “Albert Pond!” shrieked her daughter as she came to the dreaded name. “Albert Pond! How dare you? What a horrible joke! Get out of my room. I never want to see you again. You’re twisted.”

  Indignation from Appleby on this scale was rich. She should have been the last person to be so disgusted at a hoax, even if it was a hoax.

  Vinetta didn’t rise from her chair, though for a minute it even looked as if Appleby might hit her. It was not something that Appleby had ever done before. It would have been totally out of character. But the temptation was there. She was truly furious.

  “You didn’t give me time to warn you,” said her mother in as soothing a voice as she could manage. “But the young man puts it clearly enough. He can’t help his name.”

  Appleby still looked wild. Vinetta took hold of her wrist and gripped it tightly.

  “Read the letter, Appleby,” she said gently, “all of it. You’re cleverer than the rest of us. We’re hoping you’ll be able to help us decide what to do.”

  Appleby looked at her unbelievingly.

  “It’s not a joke then?”

  “Of course it’s not,” said Vinetta. “Do you seriously think I’d be party to a cruel, nasty joke like that? I thought at first that you – well, you did do it before . . .” she faltered.

  Appleby read the whole of the letter.

  “Has Granpa seen it yet?” she asked when she had finished reading.

  “No,” said Vinetta firmly. Now that the storm was over she felt more sure of what to say. “I wanted you to see it first. After all, he is going to think that you wrote it. No good getting uppity! It’s what they’ll all think, given your past record.”

  “Do you think I wrote it?” asked Appleby suspiciously.

  “I did at first. Anybody would.”

  “And you are sure now that it wasn’t me?” Appleby repeated looking at her closely.

  “Ninety-nine per cent sure,” said her mother, using Pilbeam’s words.

  “And when will you be a hundred per cent sure?” demanded Appleby.

  Vinetta hadn’t considered this.

  “When we meet the real Albert Pond, I suppose. Till then we don’t really know anything for certain.”

  “Of course,” said Appleby, “it could be one of the others.It could be somebody’s idea of a joke, even if it wasn’t yours.”

  “Whose?”

  Appleby considered carefully. The older Mennyms were out of the question. Poopie might be guilty, but he wasn’t clever enough. Neither was Wimpey, but she wouldn’t want to be so mischievous. Pilbeam and Soobie were both clever but neither of them would indulge in such a fanciful pretend.

  “What about Miss Quigley?” asked Appleby at last. “She’s always been jealous, you know, because she is not a Mennym. There are lots of stories about evil nannies.”

  “Appleby Mennym! That’s a dreadful thing to say,” said Vinetta. “Hortensia Quigley wouldn’t harm anybody. She is too much of a lady. You change your tune when it suits you. Remember how indignant you and Pilbeam were when Hortensia was living in the cupboard and pretending to have a house in Trevethick Street?”

  “That was different,” said Appleby. “We thought she
was helpless and pathetic. But she’s not.”

  “I should think not,” said Vinetta. “She is the best nanny anyone could wish for.”

  4

  Soobie

  THE FAMILY CONFERENCE was delayed. Sir Magnus decided to have ‘the gout’. This was a grandiose pretend that affected his right foot, the one that was always well hidden under the counterpane. When ‘the gout’ came on, Tulip would place a wicker frame under the top sheet to protect the inflamed big toe that was presumably becoming uncomfortably distended.

  The letter from Albert Pond was the cause of it all. Granpa Mennym had not a single pearl of wisdom to fit this occasion. It was no good saying “Least said, soonest mended,” or “Everything comes to him who waits.” It did occur to him that “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” might be vaguely applicable, but only as a witty reference to Appleby who, even after all her mischief, was still the old man’s favourite. (It was some time since Appleby had indulged her idle fancy by inventing the Australian Albert Pond. The pain of all that followed was beginning to dim. Old men forget.) Then again, this new Albert Pond, whoever he was, had told them to take their time. That was one piece of advice Magnus felt free to follow.

  August gave way to September. Everyone in the house, including Miss Quigley, knew about the letter and had had time to think about it. Poopie stopped speaking to Appleby. Appleby tossed her head whenever she passed Miss Quigley in the hall or on the stairs. Tulip even found herself looking suspiciously at her husband and wondering if elderly rag dolls could, to put it kindly, become mentally unbalanced. Magnus was easily as clever as Appleby, so she thought. He could have coaxed Joshua to be his accomplice. No! Don’t be stupid! Joshua would run a mile from anything as fanciful as that!

  Soobie was only eighty per cent sure that Appleby had not written the letter. No further letters had arrived. But then this Albert Pond, if indeed it were Albert Pond, had said they should take their time. Nor had he said how long his holiday would be.

  “Do you think there really is an Albert Pond?” Wimpey asked Soobie one sunny afternoon. She had played all morning in the garden and had decided to come into the lounge and sit by the fire, pretending it was winter again. Soobie did not need to pretend. All seasons were alike and daytime was chair-time and night-time was bedtime. He looked up from the book he was reading.