Mennyms Under Siege Read online

  It was less than a month since their one and only contact with a human being had been finally severed. Albert Pond, Kate Penshaw’s great-nephew, had been called upon by the ghost of Kate to save the Mennym family when their home at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove had been threatened with demolition to make room for a motorway. With the exception of Sir Magnus, everyone in the family came to look on Albert Pond as one of themselves, an honorary rag doll, but his departure became essential when he seemed to be falling in love with Pilbeam, and she with him.

  Pilbeam smiled at her mother, poor, worried Vinetta, whose sensibilities made it difficult for her to find the right words.

  “It’s all right, Mum,” said Pilbeam. “I know I’ll never have a boyfriend. I don’t think Granny could knit me one! Growing up, being mature, means accepting what you are and making the most of it. Soobie has changed too, you know, Mother. He has learnt to enjoy life more, even as a blue rag doll, jogging secretly through the dark streets. Maybe it’s the tracksuit that’s done it!”

  Soobie, Pilbeam’s twin, was unlike every other member of the family, for he was completely blue from head to foot and his eyes were bright, shining, intelligent silver buttons.

  Vinetta looked pleased at Pilbeam’s words about the tracksuit. Vinetta had bought it at Peachum’s, the town’s biggest department store, when Soobie’s old, striped blue linen suit was in tatters and he had at last agreed to wear a more modern, more human, style of clothing.

  “I think you’re right,” said Vinetta. “Soobie really does look smart in a tracksuit.”

  Pilbeam laughed.

  “That was a joke, Mum. Why do you always have to take everything so literally?”

  Vinetta smiled.

  “Part of my nature, I suppose. I am a bit too set in my ways to move on very far.”

  “Well, I’m not,” said Pilbeam. “So take it as a fact. I am eighteen years old. And so is Soobie. We are not children.”

  “Where does that leave Appleby?” asked Granny Tulip.

  At that moment, Appleby appeared in the doorway. The fifteen-year-old was very vivacious, with red hair and green eyes. She was the most volatile member of the family, a perennial teenager who never told the truth when a lie would do.

  “What about Appleby?” she asked, sounding cross and suspicious.

  “Appleby is Appleby,” said Pilbeam. “She’ll never be any different.”

  “I don’t want to be,” said Appleby. “That fringe has gone right to your head!”

  Pilbeam held her breath and did not laugh. Vinetta got up to go.

  “Let’s leave Granny in peace now. She has her work to do, and so have I.”

  After they were all gone, Tulip, following the careful directions Pilbeam had given her earlier, rang the booking office at the Theatre Royal. She had felt a bit unsure at first of the wisdom of the venture, but Pilbeam was so certain and so determined that her grandmother had not argued.

  “I’d like one seat in the stalls for The Merchant of Venice on Thursday, the twenty-seventh of January,” said Tulip when her call was answered.

  “One moment, please,” said the girl on the other end of the line. Voices could be heard talking to each other in the office. Then the girl returned to the telephone and began, “We have . . .”

  “It must be on a side aisle, near an exit,” Tulip interrupted.

  “No problem,” said the girl. “Seat 33N is exactly what you require. We’ll post the ticket out to you, if you would like to give me particulars of your credit card . . .”

  So it was all arranged. Pilbeam, a week come Thursday, was to have her first ever visit to the theatre. A real, happening-now thing, not a fictional memory.

  2

  Dear Bunty

  IN THE UPSTAIRS sitting-room at Number 9 Brocklehurst Grove, Anthea Fryer sat in the armchair by the bay window. It was two months since her campaign to save Brocklehurst Grove had ended with a triumphant appearance on the roof. It had been exhilarating to be up there with the television cameras trained on her, zoom lenses giving a close-up of her smiling face as she fixed one end of the victory banner to the chimney pot . . . And now, having risen to so great a height, she had descended to the depths. Flu, foul weather, and a letter from her brother had reduced her to a state of total misery. She bit her lip as she read his words again.

  Dear Bunty,

  What on earth possessed you to make such an exhibition of yourself? We saw it on TV even down here in Cornwall. It was one of those programmes about the people versus the planners. When you came on we couldn’t believe our eyes.

  It was all very worthy, I know, and I’m glad you succeeded, but don’t you think that climb onto the roof was taking it a bit too far? You’d already won by then. I bet Dad put you up to it.

  Enough said.

  What is happening at the gallery? I tried ringing you there but the line was dead. Bills not paid? I still think you should pack it all in and go to college. It’s not too late. There are plenty of mature students these days. Don’t let Dad talk you into any more mad schemes. I honestly wouldn’t trust him with little Gemma’s money box. He’s well-meaning, but he hasn’t a clue.

  And what’s this about Mother doing a concert tour in Lanarkshire whilst Dad goes house-hunting in Hong Kong? Or is it the other way round? Garbled version from Michael after Dad rang here from a payphone in the wilds somewhere. I tried ringing the studio, but a young woman there said something about Perth. When I asked whether she meant in Scotland or in Australia, she took offence for some reason and rang off.

  So how about giving us a ring or, better still, send us one of your nice long letters. We all love to hear from you. Linda and the kids send their love. Take care, sis, and don’t do anything else daft. Trying to outdo Father is really a dead loss. You’re worth ten of him, if you would only wake up to the fact.

  Love,

  Tristram

  Anthea put the letter down. It should have made her feel angry, but she was at too low an ebb to make such a spirited response. She sighed and turned her attention half-heartedly to the street below. There were no net curtains at Number 9, so her view was totally unimpeded.

  A dark green Bentley came out of the drive at Number 3 on the other side of the square. In the dull quiet of the early afternoon even that was an event. Then Anthea looked across at Number 5. Activity there. A girl in a red winter coat coming out of the gate with another, possibly younger, girl, dressed in a pale blue anorak and jeans.

  Anthea began to wonder, in an aimless way, about the family who lived there. Those girls didn’t look odd. They looked no different from any other girls. But that chap Arnold or Albert something, who represented them when everyone in the street was trying to save their homes from being demolished, had warned her against troubling the family at Number 5. He had said that they were all reclusive and excessively nervous of speaking to outsiders.

  I’ll become a recluse, thought Anthea, wincing as she thought of Tristram’s letter. I’ll never go out again. Tristram was right. I did make a fool of myself. It makes me burn to think of it now. And Tris was right about the money, too. The gallery had failed and all the money Granma had left her was lost. The gallery had been Dad’s idea of a good investment.

  Now he was prowling round Scotland, house-hunting and filming some saga for the small screen. And Mother was in Hong Kong with the London Sinfonia.

  And here was their only daughter, stuck in Brocklehurst Grove, with no immediate aim in life, nursing a cold and feeling extremely sorry for herself. She felt drained of energy. She had minded terribly the failure of the gallery and the way Stephen had simply faded from her life in the midst of all her troubles. Why had he bothered to get to know her? Why had he ever pretended to care for her in the first place? No wonder her mother had called him ‘the wavering wimp’. On a better day, Anthea would have been healthily angry with her ex-boyfriend. But today, all she could feel was that everything in her life was doomed to failure.

  Even the weather was not c
heering. Outside it was cold and bleak, though dry at last after days of rain. From the gateway of Number 5, a frumpish lady wheeled out a large green perambulator.

  Another recluse, thought Anthea. Arnold, Albert, or whatever his name was, must surely have been exaggerating. There was more coming and going at Number 5 than at any other house in the street – though that wouldn’t have been difficult.

  Connie Witherton came into the room, breaking in on these thoughts. She was the only other person living in the house at that time. For twenty years, in various places, she had been a sort of housekeeper for the Fryers. By now they all regarded her as a member of the family. A blunt-spoken Yorkshirewoman, she could honestly claim to have been almost a mother to Anthea, and whenever she did so, Loretta, Anthea’s real mother, would simply smile vaguely and agree.

  Anthea looked up when she heard Connie come in.

  “Tristram’s been nagging at me again,” she said, handing Connie the letter. “But he’s right this time. That’s the worst of it.”

  “I don’t think he’s fair on you, Anthea,” said Connie after she had read it. “What right has he to criticise what you do? He’s away in Cornwall with his wife and kids. We don’t hear from him from one month’s end to the next. What you do is none of his business.”

  Anthea still looked miserable.

  “But he is right, Connie,” she said. “I do some stupid things, and I never seem to learn. I’m always jumping in with both feet.”

  Connie looked at her more closely. Anthea’s eyes were red-rimmed and her mouth was set in misery. People who had seen the smiling blonde on the rooftop did not know the half of it. She had looked and sounded so confident. That was her face for the world outside. But any member of her family, including Connie, could say a word or raise an eyebrow and knock her confidence to smithereens. Since Stephen had left and the gallery had closed, she felt more vulnerable than ever.

  “Come on,” said Connie, “tea’s ready. You’re coming downstairs with me and we’ll have a nice meal and a long chat. You’re on your own far too much these days. You should get yourself out and about more.”

  “I’m going out on Thursday,” said Anthea defensively. “I’m going to the theatre with Bobby Barras. A belated celebration for saving the Grove.”

  “Him at Number 1?”

  “Yes,” said Anthea.

  “He’s too old for you. A widower with a teenage son. He must be at least forty.”

  Anthea laughed self-consciously. “Not quite,” she said. “Besides, we’re just having a civilised night out. I’m not going to marry him!”

  “That’s better,” said Connie. “Keep laughing. Now let’s go down for some tea.

  The unsuspecting residents of Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove were going about their lives that day without the least idea that anyone was observing their movements.

  Pilbeam and Appleby decided to go shopping.

  “I need a new pair of dark glasses,” said Pilbeam. “Some that I can wear indoors without looking too odd. A pair with black rims and smoky glass should do it. You can pop into Mr Sutton’s and see what he’s got. Failing that, we’ll go to Boots and you can help me choose a pair.”

  The strong, loving friendship that had grown between the two sisters had been strained since Pilbeam had acquired a new hairstyle and added two important years to her age.

  “I don’t like you being grown up,” said Appleby. “It’s a rotten idea. There’ll be no more fun. You’ll be too old. You’ll start telling me what to do, like all the others.”

  “I’m not that much older,” Pilbeam protested. “I am grown up, as grown up as I’ll ever be. It honestly won’t make very much difference.”

  But Pilbeam had already started to do all sorts of irritating things. She helped Vinetta with the household chores, making a very constructive contribution to tidying the cupboards. She typed manuscripts for Sir Magnus and gave him a genuine filing system based upon the alphabet, of all things. And, worst of all, she began to wear skirts instead of jeans. Vinetta had just bought her a very stylish red coat with a fur-lined hood and a belt round the waist. It was intended for her visit to the theatre, but Pilbeam wanted to try it before then.

  “I’ll wear my new coat today,” she said. “Then it won’t feel strange when I wear it for the theatre.”

  Appleby grimaced.

  “I don’t know what you want to go there for,” she said. “It’ll be dead boring. Shakespeare might as well be on another planet as far as I care. I’d have come with you if it had been a pop concert. But Shakespeare! I wouldn’t go if you begged me to.”

  “I’m not asking you to go,” said Pilbeam. “I don’t even want you to go. I don’t mean that in any nasty way. I just know that if you were sitting there not enjoying yourself and looking bored it would spoil it for me, too. Next time there’s a pop concert, we’ll go together. We can both enjoy that.”

  The words were kindly meant, the tone was friendly, but it was too much for Appleby.

  “Don’t you talk down to me, Pilbeam,” she fumed. “I don’t need you to go anywhere with me. I was sneaking off to the pictures and even to the odd disco before ever you . . .”

  Her voice froze as she realised what she had been about to say. There was a shocked silence. It was such a cruel way to refer to Pilbeam’s long, lifeless years in a trunk in the attic. That period of Pilbeam’s life was known to exist, but was seldom mentioned. Other memories had been superimposed and had almost, but not quite, wiped it out.

  Pilbeam tied the belt on her new coat and looked at herself in the hall mirror. She was deeply hurt and trying not to show it.

  “Ready?” she said to Appleby.

  “Yes,” said her sister in a voice so subdued it was barely audible.

  It was an uneasy outing. Pilbeam felt self-conscious in her new coat. Appleby felt shabby in her old anorak. But the feeling went beyond the clothes they wore, These were just an outward symbol of an inner truth.

  “Things are different, Pilbeam,” said Appleby as they trudged back home late in the afternoon, their umbrellas held up against the rain that had begun to fall. “I don’t care what you say. Things will never be the same again.”

  Pilbeam gave her a look of sympathy.

  “You may be right,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that things have to be worse. I can’t help being grown-up. It just happened.”

  3

  Going to the Theatre

  JOSHUA’S ROUTE TO work was along three miles of back streets behind the main road. He would hurry there each evening with his head deep in his coat collar, or even covered by a hood, looking directly at no one but always aware of everybody and everything within sight or sound. He was quick, quiet and cautious as a soldier on enemy terrain.

  “You will have to take Pilbeam to the theatre,” said Vinetta. “It is on your way to work, and even the timing will be just about right.”

  They were in the kitchen, late afternoon, pretending to drink tea. Joshua looked up over the rim of his cup, but said nothing. Vinetta recognised that look.

  “Somebody has to take her,” she said. “I can’t have her going out as late as that on her own.”

  “She says she’s eighteen now,” said Joshua, looking truculent. “She’s used to going out on her own. She won’t want to go along the back streets with me, and there’s no way I am going to go along the main road. I know where I feel safe and I know where I don’t.”

  “What Pilbeam wants or doesn’t want has nothing to do with it,” said Vinetta, smiling but firm. “What you will or won’t do has nothing to do with it. She is not going alone. You are taking her, Josh. I have made up my mind.”

  “And who will be bringing her back?” asked Joshua. “It’ll be much later then. And I won’t be available as an escort. I’ll be at work.”

  “I have considered that,” said Vinetta. “Soobie goes jogging at all hours. He can jog up the High Street in time to meet Pilbeam as she comes out.”

  Joshua was about
to say something else, but he decided not to. There was no point in arguing with Vinetta when her mind was made up. He would have much preferred Pilbeam not to go to the theatre at all. He thought it a very risky undertaking. To have sounded other than surly about taking her there might have been taken to mean that he approved!

  Sir Magnus was more outspoken in his disapproval.

  “Of all the tomfoolery,” he said to Tulip when she told him of it. “What does she want to go gadding there for? Have we not had enough trouble? Is she on the look-out for another young man? We’ve never had this bother with Appleby.”

  Tulip looked very severe.

  “That is unfair, Magnus,” she said. “Pilbeam was very fond of Albert. They had got to know one another. When he had to go, she felt it very deeply, but she accepted the inevitable. There is no way she would go out looking for more trouble. Our grandchildren have a right to some freedom. You know Pilbeam well enough. She will be very cautious.”

  “She may be cautious,” said Magnus, “and she might not go looking for trouble, but trouble can find her all the same.”

  He leant forward in his bed so that his purple foot, escaping the counterpane, touched the floor. His black beady eyes were his youngest feature, giving the impression of a vigorous mind. His white walrus moustache and bushy eyebrows made him look, if anything, older than the seventy years to which he laid claim.

  The occasions when Sir Magnus left his bed were very rare and special. Last year’s enforced trip to the country had been traumatic. The intrusion of Albert Pond, a flesh-and-blood human being, into their life had been terrible to him, whatever the rest of the family might think. Sir Magnus was a scholar. Editors of the journals to which he contributed learned articles never knew that the writer was other than a very distinguished man. In the past forty years the pretend had grown and developed. It is quite probable that Sir Magnus Mennym M.A. (Oxon) knew at least as much as anybody in the English-speaking world about Roundheads and Cavaliers. The pretend degree, conferred upon him by Kate, was well-supported by genuine scholarship. Yet the events of the past few years had left their mark. Time, he had begun to realise, could not really stand still forever. He feared what might come next with a dread that was becoming paranoid.