The Borrowers Afloat (5 page)

Chapter Seven

"But where are we going to?" asked Homily for about the twentieth time. It was two days later, and they were up in Arrietty's room sorting things for the journey, discarding and selecting from oddments spread round on the floor. They could only take—Pod had been very firm about this—what Lupy described as hand luggage. She had given them for this purpose the rubberized sleeve of the waterproof raincoat, which they had neatly cut up into squares.

"I thought," said Pod, "we'd try first to make for that hole in the bank...."

"I don't think I'd relish that hole in the bank," said Homily. "Not without the boot."

"Now, Homily, we've got to go somewhere ... and it's getting on for spring."

Homily turned and looked at him. "Do you know the way?"

"No," said Pod and went on folding the length of tarred string. "We've got to ask."

"What's the weather like now?" asked Homily.

"That's one of the things," said Pod, "I've told Arrietty to find out."

With some misgivings, but in a spirit of "needs must," they had sent her down the matchstick ladder to interview young Tom. "You've got to ask him to leave us some loophole," Pod had instructed her, "no matter how small, so long as we can get out of doors. If need be, we can undo the luggage and pass the pieces through one by one. If the worst came to the worst, I wouldn't say no to a ground-floor window and something below to break the drop. But like as not, they'll latch those tight and shutter them across. And tell him to leave the wood box well pulled out from the skirting. None of us can move it, not even when it's empty. A nice pickle we'd be in, and all the Hendrearys too, if he trundles off to Leighton Buzzard and leaves us shut in the wall. And tell him where we're making for—that field called Perkin's Beck—but don't tell him nothing about the hole in the bank—and get him to give you a few landmarks, something to put us on our way. It's been a bit chilly indoors lately, for March: ask him if there's snow. If there's snow, we're done: we've got to wait...."

But could they wait, he wondered now as he hung the coil of tarred string on a nail in the lath and thoughtfully took up his hatpin. Hendreary had said in a burst of generosity, "We're all in this together." But Lupy had remarked afterwards, discussing their departure with Homily, "I don't want to seem hard, Homily, but in times like these, it's each one for his own. And in our place you'd say the same." She had been very kind about giving them things—the mackintosh sleeve was a case in point—but the store shelves, they noticed, were suddenly bare: all the food had been whisked away and hidden out of sight, and Lupy had doled out fifteen dried peas that she had said she hoped would "last them." These they kept upstairs, soaking in the soap dish, and Homily would take them down three at a time to boil them on Lupy's stove.

To "last them" for how long, Pod wondered now, as he rubbed a speck of rust off his hatpin. Good as new, he thought, as he tested the point, pure steel and longer than he was. No, they would have to get off, he realized, the minute the coast was clear, snow or no snow....

"Here's someone now," exclaimed Homily. "It must be Arrietty." They went to the hole and helped her onto the floor. The child looked pleased, they noticed, and flushed with the heat of the fire. In one hand she carried a long steel nail, in the other a sliver of cheese. "We can eat this now," she said excitedly. "There's a lot more downstairs: he pushed it through the hole behind the log box. There's a slice of dry bread, some more cheese, six roasted chestnuts, and an egg."

"Not a hen's egg?" said Pod.

"Yes."

"Oh, my," exclaimed Homily, "how are we going to get it up the laths?"

"And how are we going to cook it?" asked Pod.

Homily tossed her head. "I'll boil it with the peas on Lupy's stove. It's our egg; no one can say a word."

"It's boiled already," Arrietty told them, "hard boiled."

"Thank goodness for that," exclaimed Pod. "I'll take down the razor blade—we can bring it up in slices. What's the news?" he asked Arrietty.

"Well, the weather's not bad at all," she said. "Springlike, he says, when the sun's out, and pretty warm."

"Never mind that," said Pod. "What about the loophole?"

"That's all right too. There's a worn-out place at the bottom of the door—the front door—where feet have been kicking it open, like Tom does when his arms are full of sticks. It's shaped like an arch. But they've nailed a piece of wood across it now to keep the field mice out. Two nails it's got, one on either side. This is one of them; young Tom pulled it out," and she showed them the nail she had brought. "Now all we've got to do, he says, is to swing the bit of wood up on the other nail and prop it safely, and we can all go through—underneath. After we've gone, Hendreary and the cousins can knock it in again, that is if they want to."

"Good," said Pod. "Good." He seemed very pleased. "They'll want to all right, because of the field mice. And when did he say they were leaving, him and his grandpa, I mean?"

"What he said before: the day after tomorrow. But he hasn't found his ferret."

"Good," said Pod again. He wasn't interested in ferrets. "And now we'd better nip down quick and get that food up the laths, or someone might see it first."

Homily and Arrietty climbed down with him to lend a hand. They brought up the bread and cheese and the roasted chestnuts, but the egg they decided to leave. "There's a lot of good food in a hen's egg," Pod pointed out, "and it's all wrapped up already, as you might say, clean and neat in its shell. We'll take that egg along with us and we'll take it just as it is." So, they rolled the egg along inside the wainscot to a shadowy corner in which they had seen shavings. "It can wait for us there," said Pod.

Chapter Eight

On the day the human beings moved out, the borrowers kept very quiet. Sitting round the doorplate table, they listened to the hangings, the bumpings, the runnings up and downstairs with interest and anxiety. They heard voices they had not heard before and sounds that they could not put a name to. They went on keeping quiet ... long after the final bang of the front door had echoed into silence.

"You never know," Hendreary whispered to Pod. "They might come back for something." But after a while the emptiness of the house below seemed to steal in upon them, seeping mysteriously through the lath and plaster—and it seemed to Pod a final kind of emptiness. "I think it's all right now," he ventured at last. "Suppose one of us went down to reconnoitre?"

"I'll go," said Hendreary, rising to his feet. "None of you move until I give the word. I want the air clear for sound...."

They sat in silence while he was gone. Homily stared at their three modest bundles lying by the door, strapped by Pod to his hatpin. Lupy had lent Homily a little moleskin jacket—for which Lupy had grown too stout. Arrietty wore a scarf of Eggletina's; the tall, willowy creature had placed it round her neck, wound it three times about, but had said not a word. "Doesn't she ever speak?" Homily had asked once, on a day when she and Lupy had been more friendly. "Hardly ever," Lupy had admitted, "and never smiles. She's been like that for years, ever since that rime when as a child she ran away from home...."

After a while Hendreary returned and confirmed that the coast was clear. "But better light your dips; it's later than I thought...."

One after another they scrambled down the matchstick ladder, careless now of noise. The wood box had been pulled well back from the hole, and they flowed out into the room—cathedral-high, it seemed to them, vast and still and echoing, but suddenly all their own. They could do anything, go anywhere. The main window was shuttered as Pod had foreseen, but a smaller, cell-like window, sunk low and deep in the wall, let in a last pale reflection of the sunset. The younger cousins and Arrietty went quite wild, running in and out of the shadows among the chair legs, exploring the cavern below the table top, the underside of which, cobweb hung, danced in the light of their dips. Discoveries were made and treasures found—under rugs, down cracks in the floor, between loose hearth stones—here a pin, there a matchstick, a button, an old collar-stud, a blackened farthing, a coral bead, a hook without its eye, and a broken piece of lead from a lead pencil. (Arrietty pounced on this last and pushed it into her pocket; she had had to leave her diary behind, with other nonessentials, but one never knew....) Then dips were set down and everybody started climbing—except Lupy, who was too stout; and Pod and Homily who watched silently, standing beside the door. Hendreary tried an overcoat on a nail for the sake of what he might find in the pockets, but he had not Pod's gift for climbing fabric and had to be rescued by one of his sons from where he hung, perspiring and breathing hard, clinging to a sleeve button.

"He should have gone up by the front buttonholes," Pod whispered to Homily. "You can get your toes in and pull the pocket toward you like by folding in the stuff. You never want to make direct for a pocket...."

"I wish," Homily whispered back, "they'd stop this until we're gone." It was the kind of occasion she would have enjoyed in an ordinary way—a glorious bargain hunt—findings keepings with no holds barred; but the shadow of their ordeal hung over her and made such antics seem foolish.

"Now," exclaimed Hendreary suddenly, straightening his clothes and coming toward them as though he had guessed her thought, "we'd better test out this escape route."

He called up his two elder sons, and together the three

of them, after spitting on their hands, laid hold of the piece of wood that covered the hole in the door.

"One, two, three—hup!" intoned Hendreary, ending on a grunt. They gave a mighty heave and the slab of wood pivoted slowly, squeaking on its one nail, revealing the arch below.

Pod took his dip and peered through. Grass and stones he saw for a moment and some kind of shadowy movement before a draft caught the flame and nearly blew it out. He sheltered the flame with his hand and tried again.

"Quick, Pod," gasped Hendreary, "this wood's heavy...."

Pod peered through again. No grass now, no stones—a rippling blackness, the faintest snuffle of breath, and two sudden pin points of fire, unblinking and deadly still.

"Drop the wood," breathed Pod—he spoke without moving his lips. "Quick," he added under his breath as Hendreary seemed to hesitate, "can't you hear the bell?" And he stood there as though frozen, holding his dip steadily before him.

Down came the wood with a clap, and Homily screamed. "You saw it?" said Pod, turning. He set down his dip and wiped his brow on his sleeve; he was breathing rather heavily.

"Saw it?" cried Homily. "In another second it would have been in here amongst us."

Timmus began to cry and Arrietty ran to him. "It's all right, Timmus, it's gone now. It was only an old ferret, an old tame ferret. Come, I'll tell you a story." She took him under a rough wooden desk where she had seen an old account book; setting it up on its outer leaves, she made it into a tent. They crept inside, just the two of them, and between the sheltering pages they soon felt very cozy.

"Whatever was it?" cried Lupy, who had missed the whole occurrence.

"Like she said—a ferret," announced Pod. "That boy's ferret I shouldn't wonder. If so, it'll be all round the house from now on seeking a way to get in...." He turned to Homily. "There'll be no leaving here tonight."

Lupy, standing in the hearth where the ashes were still warm, sat down suddenly on an empty matchbox that gave an ominous crack. "...nearly in amongst us," she repeated faintly, closing her eyes against the ghastly vision. A faint cloud of wood ash rose slowly around her, which she fanned away with her hand.

"Well, Pod," said Hendreary after a pause, "that's that."

"How do you mean?" said Pod.

"You can't go that way. That ferret'll be round the house for weeks...."

"Yes..." said Pod, and was silent a moment. "We'll have to think again." He gazed in a worried way at the shuttered window; the smaller one was a wall aperture, glazed to give light but with the glass built in—no possibility there.

"Let's have a look at the washhouse," he said. This door luckily had been left ajar, and, dip in hand, he slid through the crack. Hendreary and Homily slid through after him, and after a while Arrietty followed. Filled with curiosity, she longed to see the washhouse, as she longed to see every corner of this vast human edifice now that they had it to themselves. The chimney she saw, in the flickering light of the dip, stood back to back with the one in the living room; in it there stood a dingy cooking stove. Flagstones covered the floor. An old mangle stood in one corner, in the other a copper for boiling clothes. Against the wall, below the window, towered a stone sink. The window above the sink was heavily shuttered and rather high. The door, which led outside, was bolted in two places and had a zinc panel across the bottom, reinforcing the wood.

"Nothing doing here," said Hendreary.

"No," agreed Pod.

They went back to the living room. Lupy had recovered somewhat and had risen from the matchbox, leaving it slightly askew. She had brushed herself down and was packing up the borrowings preparatory to going upstairs. "Come along, chicks," she called to her children. "It's nearly midnight and we'll have all day tomorrow...." When she saw Hendreary, she said, "I thought we might go up now and have a bite of supper." She gave a little laugh. "I'm a wee bit tired—what with ferrets and so on and so forth."

Hendreary looked at Pod. "What about you?" he said, and as Pod hesitated, Hendreary turned to Lupy. "They've had a hard day too—what with ferrets and so on and so forth—and they can't leave here tonight...."

"Oh?" said Lupy, and stared. She seemed slightly taken aback.

"What have we got for supper?" Hendreary asked her.

"Six boiled chestnuts"—she hesitated—"and a smoked minnow each for you and the boys."

"Well, perhaps we could open something," suggested Hendreary after a moment. Again Lupy hesitated, and the pause became too long. "Why, of course—" she began in a flustered voice, but Homily interrupted.

"Thank you very much. It's very kind of you, but we've got three roast chestnuts ourselves ... and an egg"

"An egg," echoed Lupy, amazed. "What kind of an egg?"

"A hen's egg..."

"A
hen's
egg," echoed Lupy again, as though a hen were a pterodactyl or a fabulous bird like the phoenix. "Wherever did you get it?"

"Oh," said Homily, "it's just an egg we had."

"And we'd like to stay down here a bit," put in Pod, "if that's all right with you."

"Quite all right," said Lupy stiffly. She still looked amazed about the egg. "Come, Timmus."

It took some minutes to round them all up. There was a lot of running back for things, chatter at the foot of the ladder, callings, scoldings, giggles, and "take-cares." "One at a time," Lupy kept saying, "one at a time, my lambs." But at last they were all up and their voices became more muffled as they left the echoing landing for the inner rooms beyond. Light running sounds were heard, small rollings, and the faintest of distant squeakings.

"How like mice we must sound to humans," Arrietty realized as she listened from below. But after a while even these small patterings ceased and all became quiet and still. Arrietty turned and looked at her parents: at last they were alone.