The Borrowers Afloat (3 page)

"Get on with the furniture, I suppose."

"But they're going to lend us that."

"Lend us!" hissed Homily. "Everything they've got was ours!"

"Now, Homily—" began Pod.

Homily dropped her voice, speaking in a breathless whisper. "Every single blessed thing. That red velvet chair, the dresser with the painted plates, all that stuff the boy brought us from the dollhouse..."

"Not the keyhole stove," put in Pod, "not that dining table they've made from a doorplate. Not the—"

"The imitation leg of mutton, that was ours," interrupted Homily, "and the dish of plaster tarts. All the beds were ours, and the sofa. And the palm in a pot....
And
they got your hatpin, over behind the stove. Been poking the fire with it most likely. I wouldn't put it past them...."

"Now listen, Homily," pleaded Pod, "we've been into all that, remember. I'll take back the hatpin—that I will take—but findings keepings, as they say. Far as they knew we was dead and gone—like as we might be lost at sea. The things all came to them in a plain white pillowcase delivered to the door. See what I mean? It's like as if they was left them in a will."

"I would never have left anything to Lupy," remarked Homily.

"Now, Homily, you've got to say they've been kind."

"Yes," agreed Homily, "you've got to say it."

Unhappily she gazed about her. The cardboard floor was scattered with lumps of fallen plaster. Absent-mindedly she began to push these toward the gaps where the floor, being straight-edged, did not fit against the rough plaster. They clattered hollowly down the hidden shaft into Lupy's kitchen.

"Now you've done it," said Pod. "And that's the kind of noise we mustn't make, not if we value our lives. To human beings," he went on, "droppings and rollings means rats or squirrels. You know that as well as I do."

"Sorry," said Homily.

"Wait a minute," said Pod. He had been gazing upwards toward the crack of light, and now in a flash he was on the laths and climbing up toward it.

"Careful, Pod," whispered Homily. He seemed to be pulling at some object that was hidden from Homily by the line of his body. She heard him grunting with the effort.

"It's all right," said Pod in his normal voice, beginning to climb down again. "There isn't no one up there. Here you are," he went on as he landed on the floor and handed her an old bone toothbrush, slightly taller than herself. "The first borrowing," he announced modestly, and she saw that he was pleased. "Someone must have dropped it up there in the bedroom, and it wedged itself in this crack between the floorboards and the wall. We can borrow from up there," he went on, "easy; the wall's fallen away like or the floorboards have shrunk. Farther along it gets even wider.... And here you are again," he said and handed her a fair-sized cockleshell he had pulled out from the rough plaster. "You go on sweeping," he told her, "and I'll pop up again, might as well, while it's free of human beings...."

"Now, Pod, go careful..." Homily urged him, with a mixture of pride and anxiety. She watched him climb the laths and watched him disappear before, using the cockleshell as a dustpan, she began to sweep the floor. When Arrietty arrived to tell them a meal was ready, a fair-sized haul was laid out on the floor; the bottom of a china soap dish for baths, a crocheted table mat in red and yellow that would do as a carpet, a worn sliver of pale green soap with gray veins in it, a large darning needle—slightly rusted—three aspirin tablets, a packet of pipe cleaners, and a fair length of tarred string.

"I'm kind of hungry," said Pod.

Chapter Three

They climbed down the laths onto the platform, keeping well away from the edge, through Lupy's drawing room, into the kitchen.

"Ah, here you are," cried Lupy, in her loud, rich, aunt-like voice—very plump she looked in her dress of purple silk, and flushed from the heat of the stove. Homily, beside her, looked as thin and angular as a clothes peg. "We were just going to start without you."

The doorplate table was lit by a single lamp; it was made from a silver salt shaker with a hole in the top, out of which protruded a wick. The flame burned stilly in that airless room, and the porcelain table top, icily white, swam in a sea of shadow.

Eggletina, by the stove, was ladling out soup, which Timmus, the younger boy, unsteadily carried round in yellow snail shells—very pretty they looked, scoured and polished. They were rather alike—Eggletina and Timmus—Arrietty thought, quiet and pale and watchful-seeming. Hendreary and the two elder boys were already seated, tucking into their food.

"Get up, get up," cried Lupy archly, "when your aunt comes in," and her two elder sons rose reluctantly and quickly sat down again. "Harpsichord manners..." their expressions seemed to say. They were too young to remember those gracious days in the drawing room of the big house—the Madeira cake, little sips of China tea, and music of an evening. Churlish and shy, they hardly ever spoke. "They don't much like us," Arrietty decided as she took her place at the table. Little Timmus, his hands in a cloth, brought her a shell of soup. The thin shell was piping hot, and she found it hard to hold.

It was a plain meal, but wholesome: soup, and boiled butter beans with a trace of dripping—one bean each. There was none of that first evening's lavishness when Lupy had raided her store cupboards. It was as though she and Hendreary had talked things over, setting more modest standards. "We must begin," she had imagined Lupy saying to Hendreary in a firm, self-righteous voice, "as we mean to go on."

There was, however, a sparrow's egg omelette, fried in a tin lid, for Hendreary and the two boys. Lupy saw to it herself. Seasoned with thyme and a trace of wild garlic, it smelled very savory and sizzled on the plate. "They've been borrowing, you see," Lupy explained, "out of doors all morning. They can only get out when the front door's

open, and on some days they can't get back. Three nights Hendreary spent once in the woodshed before he got his chance."

Homily glanced at Pod, who had finished his bean and whose eyes had become strangely round. "Pod's done a bit, too, this morning," she remarked carelessly, "more high than far; but it does give you an appetite...."

"Borrowing?" asked Uncle Hendreary. He seemed amazed, and his thin beard had ceased the" up-and-down movement that went with his eating.

"One or two things," said Pod modestly.

"From where?" asked Hendreary, staring.

"The old man's bedroom. It's just above us...

Hendreary was silent a moment and then he said, "That's all right, Pod," but as though it wasn't all right at all. "But we've got to go steady. There isn't much in this house, not to spare like. We can't all go at it like bulls at gates." He took another mouthful of omelette and consumed it slowly while Arrietty, fascinated, watched his beard and the shadow it threw on the wall. When he had swallowed, he said, "I'd take it as a favor, Pod, if you'd just leave borrowing for a while. We know the territory, as you might say, and we work to our own methods. Better we lend you things, for the time being. And there's food for all, if you don't mind it plain."

There was a long silence. The two elder boys, Arrietty noticed, shoveling up their food, kept their eyes on their plates. Lupy clattered about at the stove. Eggletina sat looking at her hands, and little Timmus stared wonderingly from one to another, eyes wide in his small pale face.

"As you wish," said Pod slowly, as Lupy bustled back to the table.

"Homily," said Lupy brightly, breaking the awkward silence, "this afternoon, if you've got a moment to spare, I'd be much obliged if you'd give me a hand with Spiller's summer clothes...."

Homily thought of the comfortless rooms upstairs and of all she longed to do to them. "But of course," she told Lupy, trying to smile.

"I always get them finished," Lupy explained, "by early spring. Time's getting on now: the hawthorn's out—or so they tell me." And she began to clear the table; they all jumped up to help her.

"Where
is
Spiller?" asked Homily, trying to stack the snail shells.

"Goodness knows," said Lupy, "off on some wild goose chase. No one knows where Spiller is. Nor what he does for that matter. All I know is," she went on, taking the plug out of the pipe (as they used to do at home Arrietty remembered) to release a trickle of water, "that I make his moleskin suits each autumn and his white kid ones each spring and that he always comes to fetch them."

"It's very kind of you to make his suits," said Arrietty, watching Lupy rinse the snail shells in a small crystal salt cellar and standing by to dry them.

"It's only human," said Lupy.

"Human!" exclaimed Homily, startled by die choice of word.

"Human—just short like that—means kind," explained Lupy, remembering that Homily, poor dear, had had no education, being dragged up as you might say under a kitchen floor. "It's got nothing at all to do with human beings. How could it have?"

"That's what I was wondering..." said Homily.

"Besides," Lupy went on, "he brings us things in exchange."

"Oh, I see," said Homily.

"He goes hunting, you see, and I smoke his meat for him—there in the chimney. Some we keep and some he takes away. What's over I make into paste with butter on the top—keeps for months that way. Birds' eggs, he brings, and berries and nuts ... fish from the stream. I smoke the fish, too, or pickle it. Some things I put down in salt.... And if you want anything special, you tell Spiller—ahead of time, of course—and he borrows it from the gypsies. That old stove he lives in is just by their camping site. Give him time and he can get almost anything you want from the gypsies. We have a whole arm of a waterproof raincoat, got by Spiller, and very useful it was when the bees swarmed one summer—we all crawled inside it."

"What bees?" asked Homily.

"Haven't I told you about the bees in the thatch? They've gone now. But that's how we got the honey, all we'd ever want, and a good, lasting wax for the candles...."

Homily was silent a moment—enviously silent, dazzled by Lupy's riches. Then she said, as she stacked up the last snail shell, "Where do these go, Lupy?"

"Into that wickerwork hair-tidy in the corner. They won't break—just take them on the tin lid and drop them in...."

"I must say, Lupy," Homily remarked wonderingly as she dropped the shells one by one into the hair-tidy (it was horn-shaped with a loop to hang it on and a faded blue bow on the top), "that you've become what I'd call a very good manager...."

"For one," agreed Lupy, laughing, "who was brought up in a drawing room and never raised a hand."

"You weren't
brought up
in a drawing room," Homily reminded her.

"Oh, I don't remember those Rain-pipe days," said Lupy blithely. "I married so young. Just a child..." and she turned suddenly to Arrietty. "Now, what are you dreaming about, Miss-butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth?"

"I was thinking of Spiller," said Arrietty.

"A-ha!" cried Aunt Lupy. "She was thinking of Spiller!" And she laughed again. "You don't want to waste precious thoughts on a ragamuffin like Spiller. You'll meet lots of nice borrowers, all in good time. Maybe, one day, you'll meet one brought up in a library: they're the best, so they say, gentlemen all, and a good cultural background."

"I was thinking," continued Arrietty evenly, trying to keep her temper, "that I couldn't imagine Spiller dressed up in white kid."

"It doesn't stay white long," cried Lupy. "Of that I can assure you! It has to be white to start with because it's made from an evening glove. A ball glove, shoulder length—it's one of the few things I salvaged from the drawing room. But he will have kid, says it's hard-wearing. It stiffens up, of course, directly he gets it wet, but he soon wears it soft again. And by that time," she added, "it's all colors of the rainbow."

Arrietty could imagine the colors; they would not be "all colors of the rainbow"; they would be colors without real color, the shades that made Spiller invisible—soft fawns, pale browns, dull greens, and a kind of shadowy gun-metal. Spiller took care about "seasoning" his clothes: he brought them to a stage where he could melt into the landscape, where one could stand beside him, almost within touching distance, and yet not see him. Spiller deceived animals as well as gypsies. Spiller deceived hawks, and stoats, and foxes.... Spiller might not wash but he had no Spiller scent: he smelled of hedgerows, and bark, and grasses, and of wet sun-warmed earth; he smelled of buttercups, dried cow dung, and early morning dew....

"When will he come?" Arrietty asked, but ran away upstairs before anyone could tell her. She wept a little in the upstairs room, crouched beside the soap dish.

To talk of Spiller reminded her of out-of-doors and of a wild, free life she might never know again. This new-found haven among the lath and plaster had all too soon become another prison....

Chapter Four

It was Hendreary and the boys who carried the furniture up the laths with Pod standing by to receive it. In this way, Lupy lent them just what she wished to lend and nothing they would have chosen. Homily did not grumble, however. She had become very quiet lately as slowly she realized their position.

Sometimes they stayed downstairs after meals, helping generally or talking to Lupy. But they gauged the length of these visits according to Lupy's mood: when she became flustered, blaming them for some small mishap brought on by herself, they knew it was time to go. "We couldn't do right today," they would say, sitting empty-handed upstairs on Homily's old champagne corks that Lupy had unearthed for stools. They would sit by the chimney casing in the inner room to get the heat from the stones. Here Pod and Homily had a double bed, one of those from the dollhouse. Arrietty slept in the outer room, close beside the entrance hole. She slept on a thickish piece of wadding, borrowed in the old days from a box of artist's pastels, and they had given her most of the bedclothes.

"We shouldn't have come, Pod," Homily said one evening as they sat alone upstairs.

"We had no choice," said Pod.

"And we got to go," she added and sat there watching him as he stitched the sole of a boot.

"To where?" asked Pod.

Things had become a little better for Pod lately: he had filed down the rusted needle and was back at his cobbling. Hendreary had brought him the skin of a weasel, one of those nailed up by the gamekeeper to dry on the outhouse door, and he was making them all new shoes. This pleased Lupy very much, and she had become a little less bossy.

"Where's Arrietty?" asked Homily one evening.

"Downstairs, I shouldn't wonder," said Pod.

"What does she do downstairs?"

"Tells Timmus a story and puts him to bed."

"I know that," said Homily, "but why does she stay so long? I'd nearly dropped off last night when we heard her come up the laths...."

"I suppose they get talking," said Pod.

Homily was silent a moment and then she said, "I don't feel easy. I've got my feeling...." This was the feeling borrowers get when human beings are near; with Homily it started at the knees.

Pod glanced up toward the floorboards above them from whence came a haze of candlelight. "It's the old man going to bed."

"No," said Homily, getting up. "I'm used to that. We hear that every night." She began to walk about. "I think," she said at last, "that I'll just pop downstairs...."

"What for?" asked Pod.

"To see if she's there."

"It's late," said Pod.

"All the more reason," said Homily.

"Where else would she be?" asked Pod.

"I don't know, Pod. I've got my feeling and I've had it once or twice lately," she said.

Homily had grown more used to the laths: she had become more agile, even in the dark. But tonight it was very dark indeed. When she reached the landing below, she felt a sense of yawning space and a kind of draft from the depth, which eddied hollowly around her: feeling her way to the drawing-room door, she kept well back from the edge of the platform.

The drawing room, too, was strangely dark and so was the kitchen beyond: there was a faint glow from the keyhole fire and a rhythmic sound of breathing.

"Arrietty?" she called softly from the doorway, just above a whisper.

Hendreary gave a snort and mumbled in his sleep: she heard him turning over.

"Arrietty..." whispered Homily again.

"What's that?" cried Lupy, suddenly and sharply.

"It's me ... Homily."

"What do you want? We were all asleep. Hendreary's had a hard day...."

"Nothing," faltered Homily, "it's all right. I was looking for Arrietty...

"Arrietty went upstairs hours ago," said Lupy.

"Oh," said Homily, and was silent a moment: the air was full of breathing. "All right," she said at last, "thank you ... I'm sorry..."

"And shut the drawing-room door onto the landing as you go out. There's a howling draft," said Lupy.

As she felt her way back across the cluttered room, Homily saw a faint light ahead, a dim reflection from the landing. Could it come from above, she wondered, where Pod, two rooms away, was stitching? Yet it had not been there before....

Fearfully she stepped out on the platform. The glow, she realized, did not come from above but from somewhere far below. The matchstick ladder was still in place, and she saw the top rungs quiver. After a moment's pause she summoned up the courage to peer over. Her startled eyes met those of Arrietty, who was climbing up the ladder and had nearly reached the top. Far below Homily could see the Gothic shape of the hole in the skirting: it seemed a blaze of light.

"Arrietty!" she gasped.

Arrietty did not speak. She climbed off the last rung of the ladder, put her finger to her lips, and whispered. "I've got to draw it up. Move back." And Homily, as though in a trance, moved out of the way as Arrietty drew the ladder up rung over rung until it teetered above her into the darkness, and then, trembling a little with the effort, she eased it along and laid it against the laths.

"Well—" began Homily in a sort of gasp. In the half-light from below they could see each other's faces: Homily's aghast with her mouth hanging open; Arrietty's grave, her finger to her lips. "One minute," she whispered and went back to the edge. "All right," she called out softly into the space beneath; Homily heard a muffled thud, a scraping sound, the clap of wood on wood, and light below went out.

"He's pushed back the log box," Arrietty whispered across the sudden darkness. "Here, give me your hand.... Don't worry," she beseeched in a whisper, "and don't take on! I was going to tell you anyway." And supporting her shaking mother by the elbow, she helped her up the laths.

Pod looked up startled. "What's the matter?" he said as Homily sank down on the bed.

"Let me get her feet up first," said Arrietty. She did so gently and covered her mother's legs with a folded silk handkerchief, yellowed with washing and stained with marking ink, which Lupy had given them for a bedcover.

Homily lay with her eyes closed and spoke through pale lips. "She's been at it again," she said.

"At what?" asked Pod. He had laid down his boot and had risen to his feet.

"Talking to humans," said Homily.

Pod moved across and sat on the end of the bed. Homily opened her eyes. They both stared at Arrietty.

"Which ones?" asked Pod.

"Young Tom, of course," said Homily. "I caught her in the act. That's where she's been most evenings, I shouldn't wonder. Downstairs, they think she's up, and upstairs, we think she's down."

"Well, you know where that gets us," said Pod. He became very grave. "That, my girl, back at Firbank was the start of all our troubles."

"Talking to humans..." moaned Homily, and a quiver passed over her face. Suddenly she sat up on one elbow and glared at Arrietty. "You wicked, thoughtless girl, how
could
you do it again!"

Arrietty stared back at them, not defiantly exactly, but as though she were unimpressed. "But with this one downstairs," she protested, "I can't see why it matters. He knows we're here anyway, because he put us here himself! He could get at us any minute if he really wanted to...."

"How could he get at us," said Homily, "right up here?"

"By breaking down the wall; it's only plaster."

"Don't say such things, Arrietty," shuddered Homily.

"But they're true," said Arrietty. "Anyway," she added, "he's going."

"Going?" said Pod sharply.

"They're both going," said Arrietty, "he and his grandfather; the grandfather's going to a place called Hospital, and the boy is going to a place called Leighton Buzzard to stay with his uncle who is an ostler. What's an ostler?" she asked.

But neither of her parents replied: they were staring blankly, struck dumb by a sudden thought.

"We've got to tell Hendreary," said Pod at last, "and quickly."

Homily nodded. She had swung her legs down from the bed.

"No good waking them now," said Pod. "I'll go down first thing in the morning."

"Oh, my goodness," breathed Homily, "all those poor children..."

"What's the matter?" asked Arrietty. "What have I said?" She felt scared suddenly and gazed uncertainly from one parent to the other.

"Arrietty," said Pod, turning toward her. His face had become very grave. "All we've told you about human beings is true; but what we haven't told you, or haven't stressed enough, is that we, the borrowers, cannot survive without them." He drew a long deep breath. "When they close up a house and go away, it usually means we're done for...."

"No food, no fire, no clothes, no heat, no water..." chanted Homily, almost as though she were quoting.

"Famine..." said Pod.