Mennyms Alone Read online

  Tulip stood up and resolutely took her husband by the arm. Then she turned to her eldest grandson, the one who might well be blamed for all this. Bringing Sir Magnus down from his room had clearly been a mistake.

  “Come, Soobie,” she said with ice in her voice. “Your grandfather is not himself. We must get him back to bed.”

  Magnus had had his say. He had given them something to think about. Now, exhausted, he allowed Tulip and Soobie to shuffle him away. The door closed behind them and those that were left in the room looked at one another anxiously.

  “Did Granpa mean what he said?” asked Wimpey, still clinging to her mother and speaking in a trembling voice.

  “No!” said Vinetta, “He doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is very old. He has strange ideas. We’ll take no notice of him.”

  “How old is he?” asked Wimpey, unsure of what ‘very old’ might mean.

  “Ninety,” said Vinetta caustically. “When he behaves like that I feel he must be at least ninety, if not older.”

  But age had nothing to do with it. Age is often no more than an excuse. Sir Magnus Mennym had never been other than cantankerous, even in his fictional past. A middle-aged Magnus would have been a tyrant at work. A young Magnus would have been a spoilt, though glorious, brat.

  CHAPTER 11

  Coming to Terms

  “I HAVE HAD no premonition,” said Soobie. “This meeting is not really about anything as abstract or mystical as inner voices predicting death. We are at the beginning of a new year and before this year is out we will encounter problems that we have never had before. We don’t need a premonition to tell us that. It is simple logic.”

  Soobie was sitting straddled across the high-backed chair in Granpa’s room, his arms supporting his chin on the backrest. The expression on his face was intensely thoughtful.

  The women were watching him, waiting for what he would say next. Sir Magnus looked from Tulip to Vinetta to Miss Quigley, then to Pilbeam. He felt a pang of jealousy as he realised that all four of them would give more weight to Soobie’s words than to anything he might say.

  The Christmas outburst had not been mentioned again, but the silence, the failure to argue, signified to Magnus a sort of disrespect. They were treating him as if he were an old fool, best ignored. Even this meeting, held in his own room, shades of past conferences, had been called not by him but by his grandson. Soobie had deliberately chosen an evening when Joshua would be at work. He knew how much his father hated conferences. He was also unwilling to have the issue clouded by an argument over when and whether Joshua should give up his job at Sydenham’s.

  “Well?” said Magnus sharply. “Get on with it. What is it you wanted to say? What problems has your superior intellect encountered? And what solutions do you offer?”

  Soobie looked at Magnus, understanding his irritation.

  “I have thought for months about your premonitions, Granpa. I have to be honest – I am no nearer believing you, or disbelieving you, than I was at first. But I do accept that there is danger. It seems to me that we have not paid sufficient attention to Jennifer Gladstone’s request to see birth certificates.”

  “We don’t need to,” said Tulip emphatically. “We have resolved that one. We say that they are unobtainable and just leave it at that. That woman has no right to ask for them.”

  “You’re missing the point,” said Soobie. “Think of why she asked for them. She must be suspicious. She probably knows how long we have been tenants in this house. I’ve told you before. We don’t add up. It is a problem that won’t go away. The Gladstones, or some legal representative of theirs, will arrive on our doorstep some day, demanding to see either Granpa or Dad. Time has stood still for us. It does not stand still in the world outside.”

  Vinetta realised more quickly than the others what he meant. There could be a link between his logic and Magnus’s mysticism.

  “So Granpa’s premonitions could be true?” she said. “I half-believed they were. It was so like my own experience of Kate.”

  “I don’t believe,” said Soobie, sticking rigidly to the truth as he saw it, “not in the way you mean. I have thought and thought, and I have reached what I hope is a logical conclusion. If we are really nearing the end of our time here, it seems very probable that Aunt Kate would want us to make preparations, like Noah building the ark.”

  “There can be no ark for us,” said Pilbeam. “We can’t exist without this house. We can’t pack up our bags and go. Where would we go to?”

  “That is why I believe that when the final danger comes, Kate will have to leave us,” said Soobie. “She will have no other choice. Without her, we will cease to live, and it would be much better if we could do so in such a way that no one seeing us lifeless will suspect what we have been.”

  “That,” said Magnus, rapping his cane on the floor at the side of his bed, “is precisely what I have said all along.”

  Tulip nudged her husband to be silent and removed the cane from his grip. Soobie was speaking and it was Soobie they all wanted to hear. He in turn gave an apologetic look at his grandfather before going on.

  “If Kate wants us to have an orderly departure,” he said, “it is perfectly obvious that she would have to give us a time. Otherwise we would leave loose threads all around. I am no mystic. Kate has never spoken to me or through me in any way that I can recognise. But, for the want of any other day or time, I am prepared to accept Granpa’s word that the day will be October the first. In the months left to us, we must disentangle ourselves from the outside world. And when the time draws near, we will have to decide where we should be when Kate leaves us.”

  It was only then that the full horror of what might happen struck home.

  The women looked shocked. It was possible to ignore Sir Magnus, but Soobie was a different matter altogether. He seemed to be presenting them with cold fact.

  Vinetta squeezed Hortensia’s hand, knowing how intensely her friend feared death. Tulip looked at her grandson aggressively.

  “And what if you’re wrong?” she said. “What if we make all sorts of preparations and the day passes just like any other day?”

  “If I am wrong,” said Soobie. “I shall look foolish, and so will Granpa. But would we mind? If we looked out of the window on the second of October and saw the dawn of another day, we would just go on living, and hoping that some other solution to our problems might be found.”

  Pilbeam gave her twin a long, searching look.

  “That’s not what you believe will happen?” she said.

  “No,” said Soobie, “it’s not. That is why we must prepare. We have plenty of time. October is a long way off.”

  “What if Kate decides to leave us before this time that only Granpa knows?” said Pilbeam, suddenly realising that anything was possible.

  “I don’t know,” said Soobie wearily. “We can only do our best with the little we do know. We are not in charge of the future. But then nobody is.”

  “I have been as close to Kate as anyone could be,” said Vinetta, adding her word. “For a very short time, the whole of her spirit was in me. I believe that she really has told your grandfather the truth. Why should he lie? Why should she?”

  Hortensia shuddered.

  Tulip drew herself up sternly and said, “I can see I’m outnumbered. All I can say is, I’ll believe it when it happens.”

  “You won’t be here to believe it,” said Magnus. “You’ll be as dead as the rest of us.”

  “That is enough,” said Vinetta. “More than enough. We will go along with your prediction that the first of October will be the end of everything, but it is just January now. October is a long way off. We will not refer to it again till much, much nearer the time. And, especially, you will say nothing at all in front of the children. There is no need for them to know anything.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Snow on the Moor

  AT THE END of February, after weeks of dry, cold weather, it began to snow in real ear
nest. It snowed all day and all night, large flakes falling and lying. When Soobie looked out of the window early one morning, he saw the garden covered with a lumpy white blanket, shrubs and plants sleeping under a thick, thick quilt of snow.

  Joshua came trudging up the drive in his stout gumboots, the hood of his old parka crisped with icy flakes. The journey from Sydenham’s had taken him twice as long as usual. Soobie heard Vinetta greet him in the hall.

  “There’ll be no going out for any of you today,” said Joshua as he removed his boots and shook his coat. “If I didn’t have to go out in that, nothing would make me.”

  And the snow went on falling.

  Poopie and Wimpey thought it was wonderful and wanted to get all wrapped up to go out. “Just in the back garden, just in the back garden. Please, please, please, Mum.”

  “If it stops,” said Vinetta. “If it really stops. But I can’t let you go out whilst it’s still falling. Getting you both dry again would be terrible. It would go down your sleeves and everywhere.”

  She shuddered as she involuntarily remembered the time Appleby had been drenched right through. Memory is a joker, but the comedy is often black.

  The young twins had to settle for watching from the window and waiting for the sky to turn winter blue. Brief interludes with fewer flakes flying raised their hopes, but they were dashed again when the storm came on as hard as ever. By four in the afternoon the snow was glittering under the street-lamps and that, they both thought, would be that.

  “Tomorrow, maybe,” said Vinetta. “It will surely have stopped falling by then, and there is too much of it lying for it all to disappear over night.”

  “It has stopped,” said Poopie, his face flat against the window-pane. “It’s completely stopped.”

  “But it’s too late now,” said Vinetta. “It’s already dark.”

  Dark it was, but not late. Soobie looked at their disappointed faces and made up his mind to give them an adventure, an experience culled from his memory of times that never were. He went to look for Pilbeam, found her listening to music in her room.

  “I’ve had an idea,” he said. “Let’s take Poopie and Wimpey sledging on the moor.”

  Pilbeam looked doubtful.

  “There’ll be people there. Early evening, home from work. It could be quite busy with other folk having the same idea as you.”

  Soobie thought fast. It was a difficulty. He recognised that. But there was a way round it.

  “We’ll take them much later, when most children are in bed. Then it will be quiet. We should have the place to ourselves.”

  Pilbeam faltered.

  Soobie said, “Well, what about it? Shall we go?”

  “Mother would never permit it,” she said.

  “She would,” said Soobie, “if we convince her that we can be trusted to take care. It could be our last chance of a real adventure.”

  That was their winning card. Vinetta fussed but finally agreed. As quietly as possible, they went to the cloakroom and dragged out two large and ancient sledges, part of their inheritance, too big for the garden and never used by the Mennyms. Their metal runners were dull. Soobie greased them with a little rancid butter left over from the famous Christmas cake. Tulip was in the breakfast-room. The conspirators sighed with relief when the preparations were over and the front door was furtively opened. Granny Tulip did not know a thing!

  “Take care,” said Vinetta in a whisper as she stood ready to close the door behind them, “and don’t be too long.”

  Poopie and Wimpey sat one on each sledge, scarves criss-crossed over their hooded anoraks, their feet shod in wellingtons, their faces covered with animal masks, made of stiff plastic, that Vinetta had bought for them years ago. Poopie’s was a tawny yellow lion’s face with a flat brown snout and springy whiskers. Wimpey’s mask was that of a misty-blue kitten with grey whiskers and a little black button of a nose. Soobie had his hood pulled right over his brow with the drawstrings pulled tight. The rest of his face was almost completely hidden by goggles. Pilbeam was similarly attired but her hooded anorak was lined with thick grey fur.

  They dragged the sledges along the snow onto the main road. Then, turning south towards Town Moor, they began to jog. Behind them, the younger twins sang Jingle Bells. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The snow on the Great North Road had been tossed to the side by snowploughs lumbering through the darkness. A few cars passed at cautious speeds. None of their drivers took the slightest notice of the family party on the pavement, pulling their sledges over deep snow.

  Before they reached their destination there was just one moment of fear. A police car stopped.

  “Where’re you off to this time of night?” said the policeman nearest them in a friendly voice. “You must be mad as hatters.”

  Pilbeam, taking her tone from his, said, “Yes, we are! We’re having a midnight sledging party. Only it’s not midnight, you know. Just half-past nine. We’ll have these two home in bed well before the witching hour!”

  The policeman looked down at the young ones, masked and hooded on their sleds.

  “Mad as hatters,” he said again, and the car drove away.

  The police car was well out of sight before the Mennyms passed the three churches and the road that led down to the park. Then, looking carefully to left and right, they crossed the main road and went up the path that led onto the moor. The moon was not full, but the whiteness of the snow increased its light. On the horizon were two hills. That was their destination.

  When they drew nearer, they found to their dismay that they were not the only mad hatters in town. On the long southern slope of the hill to the left were about half a dozen skiers, some gliding down, others trudging back up. The hill to the right, shorter and steeper, seemed deserted. Soobie led the way to it. Poopie and Wimpey got off to walk. Then they all pulled the sledges to the top of the hill.

  Fear again when they got there. On the other side of the hill, at its base, a group of revellers had lit a barbecue and were shouting and laughing and tossing snowballs.

  “It’s no use,” said Pilbeam. “We’ll have to go. If they see us, goodness knows what they might do.”

  “They’re not interested in us,” said Soobie. “They’re enjoying themselves. I doubt if they can even see us. We can only see them because they have lights with them and they’ve made some sort of fire. And they’re noisy.”

  So they decided to slide down the opposite slope, Soobie and Poopie on one sledge, Pilbeam and Wimpey on the other. Three times they went up and down. Then, on the third time, disaster! The revellers behind them had spread out. They had spotted the sledgers and they saw the chance of some fun. Snowballs came flying in their direction.

  “Run,” said Soobie to the younger ones. “Pilbeam and I will bring the sledges.”

  But running was the worst thing they could have done. The revellers were a rowdy bunch, happy to torment others. They chased after the family with the big old sledges. Snowballs caught them in the back and on the head. The way out seemed miles off. The Great North Road with its tall orange lights looked like a mirage.

  “Let’s get ’em,” shouted the leader of the following pack. “Let’s grab their sledges.”

  “We can’t outrun them all. I think we’ll have to turn and fight,” said Soobie, struggling for breath and too frantic to think straight.

  Pilbeam was horrified.

  “Oh, no we won’t. We can’t. There is only one thing we can do – offer booty. Leave the sledges behind and keep running.”

  They did just that. Their pursuers pounced on the abandoned sledges and dragged them away, jeering and yelling like hooligans.

  The Mennyms ran on, not even checking what was happening behind them. They came to the road and pelted across, not looking at all and just lucky that no vehicle was there to charge into them.

  “That,” said Soobie, once they were in the safety of their own quiet street, “is our last adventure.”

  Wimpey, bright as her own blue bu
tton eyes, looked at him sharply. She still remembered Granpa’s words on Christmas Day. She still wondered what they might mean.

  “Why last?” she said suspiciously.

  Soobie took a grip on himself and said, “Well, we’ve lost the sledges for a start. And I wouldn’t go through that again for anything.”

  CHAPTER 13

  A Quiet Spring

  THE EARTH TILTED and the snow ran away. Leaves popped back onto the trees, the sun winked and blinked in a changing sky, and then it was spring. The residents of Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove went on living their quiet lives and trying to forget Granpa’s prognostications.

  Except for Granpa, of course. He could not and would not dismiss them from his mind, and it was Tulip who had to bear the brunt of it. She was the one he saw most frequently, and she was the one he trusted least. Like Noah, he was willing to build his ark, but Tulip was a veritable Noah’s wife, unable and unwilling to believe her husband’s ominous predictions.

  “Don’t write back to those people in New York,” Magnus said firmly. “There is no point in further complicating our life. It will be over soon enough.”

  Tulip glared at him but contented herself with saying, “Very well, very well. I’ll file the letter for future use.”

  Then he told her to end her business arrangement with Harrods. And not to buy any more wool. And to simplify the family’s finances so that their money could be disposed of in some suitable way before the final hour. And to . . .

  “You’re driving me mad, Magnus. I never come into this room but you tell me to do something different,” Tulip exploded one day. “I do what you ask, even though I am not convinced of the need, but it is wearing me down.”

  In the past forty-seven years, Tulip had, like the prudent servant in the parable, carefully invested the family’s income so that it had become a sizeable amount of money. She did not believe in burying their talents in the ground. When she perused the columns of the Financial Times it was pleasure and business combined. Forty-seven years is a very long time. Their wealth had accumulated, and only Tulip ever knew how much the family was worth. And it was part of her careful nature to ensure that fail-safe devices were in place to cope with her husband’s demands that they should settle their affairs on earth. No step was taken that could not be retrieved when his wild imaginings proved to be just that.