The Borrowers Afield (15 page)

Chapter Twenty

"Long looked for comes at last."
Vasco da Gama rounded Cape of Good Hope, 1497

[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, November 20th]

T
HEY FILED IN
through the gothic-shaped hole in the wainscot, a little nervous, a little shy. It was shadowy inside, like a cave; disappointingly it felt uninhabited and smelled of dust and mice. "Oh, dear," muttered Homily incredulously, "is this how they live...?" She stopped suddenly and picked up some object from the floor. "My goodness," she whispered aside excitedly to Pod. "Do you know what this is?" and she brandished something whiteish under his nose.

"Yes," said Pod, "it's a bit of quill pipe-cleaner. Put it down, Homily, and come on, do. Spiller's waiting."

"It's the spout of our old oak-apple teapot," persisted Homily, "that's what it is. I'd know it anywhere and it's no good telling me any different. So they
are
here..." she mused wonderingly as she followed Pod into the shadows to where Spiller with Arrietty stood waiting.

"We go up here," said Spiller, and Homily saw that he stood with his hand on a ladder. Glancing up to where the rungs soared away above them into dimness, she gave a slight shudder: the ladder was made of match-sticks, neatly glued and spliced to two lengths of split cane, such as florists use to support potted plants.

"I'll go first," said Pod. "We better take it one at a time."

Homily watched fearfully until she heard his voice from above.

"It's all right," he whispered from some invisible eyrie. "Come on up."

Homily followed, her knees trembling, and emerged at last on to the dim-lit platform beside Pod: an aerial landing stage, that was what it seemed like—which creaked a little when she stepped on it and almost seemed to sway. Below lay hollow darkness; ahead an open door. "Oh, my goodness," she muttered. "I do hope it's safe ... Don't look down," she advised Arrietty who came up next.

But Arrietty had no temptation to look down: her eyes were on the lighted doorway and the moving shadows within; she heard the faint sound of voices and a sudden high-pitched laugh.

"Come on," said Spiller, slipping past her, and making toward the door.

Arrietty never forgot her first sight of that upstairs room: the warmth, the sudden cleanliness, the winking candlelight and the smell of home-cooked food.

And so many voices ... so many people...

Gradually, in a dazed way, she began to sort them out. that must be Aunt Lupy embracing her mother—Aunt Lupy so round and glowing, her mother so smudged and lean. Why did they cling and weep, she wondered, and squeeze each other's hands? They had never liked each other—all the world knew that. Homily had thought Lupy stuck-up because, back in the big house, Lupy had lived in the drawing room and (she had heard it rumored) changed for dinner at night. And Lupy despised Homily for living under the kitchen and for pronouncing parquet—"Parkett."

And here was Uncle Hendreary, his beard grown thinner, telling her father that this could not be Arrietty and her father, with pride, telling Uncle Hendreary it could. Those must be the three boy cousins—whose names she had not caught—graduated in size but as like as peas in a pod. And this thin, tall, fairylike creature, neither old nor young, who hovered shyly in the background with a faint uneasy smile, who was she?

Homily screamed when she saw her and clapped her hand to her mouth. "It can't be Eggletina!"

It evidently could. Arrietty stared too, wondering if she had heard aright: Eggletina, that long lost cousin who one fine day escaped from under the floor and was never seen again? A kind of legend she had been to Arrietty and a lifelong cautionary tale. Well, here she was, safe and sound, unless they all were dreaming.

And well they might be.

There was something strangely unreal about this room—

furnished with doll's house furniture of every shape and size, none of it matching or in proportion. There were chairs upholstered in rep or velvet, some of them too small to sit in and some too steep and large; there were chiffoniers which were too tall and occasional tables far too low; and a toy fireplace with color plaster coals and its fire irons stuck down all-of-a-piece with the finder; there were two make-believe windows with curved pelmets and red satin curtains, each hand-painted with an imitation view—one looked out on a Swiss mountain scene, the other a Highland glen (Eggletina did them, Aunt Lupy boasted in her rich society voice. "We're going to have a third when we get the curtains—a view of Lake Como from Monte S. Primo"); there were table lamps and standard lamps, flounced, festooned and tasseled, but the light in the room, Arrietty noticed, came from the humble, familiar dips like those they had made at home.

Everybody looked extraordinarily clean and Arrietty became even shyer: she threw a quick glance at her father and mother and was not reassured: none of their clothes had been washed for weeks nor, for some days, had their hands and faces. Pod's trousers had a tear in one knee and Homily's hair hung down in snakes. And here was Aunt Lupy, plump and polite, begging Homily please to take off her things, in the kind of voice, Arrietty imagined, usually reserved for feather boas, opera cloaks and freshly-cleaned white kid gloves.

But Homily, who back at home had so dreaded being "caught out" in a soiled apron, knew one worth two of that. She had, Pod and Arrietty noticed with pride, adopted her woman-tried-beyond-endurance role backed up by one called yes-I've-suffered-but-don't-let's-speak-of-it-now; she had invented a new smile, wan but brave, and had—in the same good cause—plucked the two last hairpins out of her dust-filled hair. "Poor dear Lupy," she was saying, glancing wearily about, "what a lot of furniture! Whoever helps you with the dusting?" And swaying a little, she sank on a chair.

They rushed to support her, as she hoped they might. Water was brought and they bathed her face and hands. Hendreary stood with the tears in his brotherly eyes. "Poor valiant soul," he muttered, shaking his head. "Your mind kind of reels when you think of what she's been through...."

Then, after quick wash and brush-up all round and a brisk bit of eye-wiping, they all sat down to supper. This they ate in the kitchen which was rather a come-down except that, in here, the fire was real: a splendid cooking range made of a large, black door-lock; they poked the fire through the key-hole, which glowed handsomely, and the smoke, they were told, went out through a series of pipes to the cottage chimney behind.

The long, white table was richly spread: it was an eighteenth century finger-plate off some old drawing-room door —white-enameled and painted with forget-me-nots, supported firmly on four stout pencil stubs where once the screws had been; the points of the pencils emerged slightly through the top of the table; one was copying ink and they were warned not to touch it in case it stained their hands.

There was every kind of dish and preserve—both real and false; pies, puddings, and bottled fruits out of season—all cooked by Lupy—and an imitation leg of mutton and a desk of plaster tarts borrowed from the dolls' house. There were three real tumblers as well as acorn cups and a couple of green glass decanters.

Talk, talk, talk ... Arrietty, listening, felt dazed. She saw, now, why they had been expected. Spiller, she gathered, having found the alcove bootless and its inmates flown, had salvaged their few possessions and had run and told young Tom. Lupy felt a little faint suddenly when they mentioned this person by name and had to leave the table. She sat awhile in the next room on a frail gilt chair placed just inside the doorway—"between drafts" as she put it—fanning her round red face with a lark's feather.

"Mother's like this about humans," explained the eldest cousin. "It's no good telling her he's tame as anything and wouldn't hurt a fly!"

"You never know," said Lupy darkly, from her seat in the doorway. "He's nearly full grown! And that, they say, is when they start to be dangerous...."

"Lupy's right," agreed Pod. "I'd never trust 'em meself."

"Oh, how can you say that?" cried Arrietty. "Look at the way he snatched us up right out of the jaws of death!"

"Snatched you up?" screamed Lupy from the next room. "You mean—
WITH HIS HANDS?
"

Homily gave her brave little laugh, listlessly chasing a globule of raspberry around her too slippery plate. "Naturally..." She shrugged. "It was nothing, really."

"Oh dear..." stammered Lupy faintly. "Oh, you poor thing ... imagine it! I think," she went on, "if you'll excuse me a moment, I'll just go and lie down..." And she heaved her weight off the tiny chair, which rocked as she left it.

"Where did you get all this furniture, Hendreary?" asked Homily, recovering suddenly now that Lupy had gone.

"It was delivered," her brother told her, "in a plain white pillowcase. Someone from the big house brought it down."

"From our house?" asked Pod.

"Stands to reason," said Hendreary. "It's all stuff from that doll's house, remember, they had upstairs in the schoolroom. Top shelf of the toy cupboard, on the right hand side of the door."

"Naturally I remember," said Homily, "seeing that some of it's mine. Pity," she remarked aside to Arrietty, "that we didn't keep that inventory"—she lowered her voice—"the one you made on blotting paper, remember?"

Arrietty nodded: there were going to be fireworks later—she could see that. She felt very tired suddenly; there seemed too much talk and the crowded room felt hot.

"Who brought it down?" Pod was asking in a surprised voice. "Some kind of human being?"

"We reckon so," agreed Hendreary. "It was lying there t'other side of the bank—soon after we got turned out of the badger's set and had set up house in the stove...."

"What stove was that?" asked Pod. "Not the one by the camping site?"

"That's right," Hendreary told him. "Two years we lived there, off and on."

"A bit too close to the gypsies for my liking," said Pod! He cut himself a generous slice of hot boiled chestnut and spread it thickly with butter.

"You got to be close," Hendreary explained, "like it or not, when you got to borrow."

Pod, about to bite, withdrew the chestnut: he seemed amazed. "You borrowed from caravans?" he exclaimed. "At your age!"

Hendreary shrugged slightly and was modestly silent.

"Well, I never," said Homily admiringly. "There's a brother for you! You think what that means, Pod—"

"I am thinking," said Pod. He raised his head. "What did you do about smoke?"

"You don't have none," Hendreary told him, "not when you cook on gas."

"On gas!" exclaimed Homily.

"That's right. We borrowed a bit o' gas from the gas company: they got a pipe laid all along that bank. The stove was resting on its back, like, you remember? We dug down behind through a flue—a good six weeks we spent in that tunnel. Worth it in the end, though: three pin-hole burners we had down there."

"How did you turn 'em on and off?" asked Pod.

"We didn't—once lit, we never let them out. Still burning they are to this day."

"You mean that you still go back there?"

Hendreary, yawning slightly, shook his head (they had eaten well and the room felt very close). "Spiller lives there," he said.

"Oh," exclaimed Homily, "so that's how Spiller cooked! So that's what those bones were! He might have told us," she went on, looking about in a hurt way, "or, at any rate, asked us in—"

"He wouldn't do that," said Hendreary, "once bitten, twice shy, as you might say."

"How do you mean?" asked Homily.

"After we left the badger's set—" began Hendreary and broke off—slightly shamefaced, he seemed, in spite of his smile. "Well, that stove was one of his places: he asked us in for a bite and a sup and we stayed a couple o' years...."

"Once you'd struck gas, you mean," said Pod.

"That's right," said Hendreary. "We cooked and Spiller borrowed."

"Ah—" said Pod. "Spiller borrowed? Now I understand.... You and me, Hendreary, we got to face up to it—we're not as young as we was. Not by a long chalk."

"Where is Spiller now?" asked Arrietty suddenly.

"Oh, he's gone off," said Hendreary vaguely; he seemed a little embarrassed and sat there frowning and tapping the table with a pewter spoon (one of a set of six, Homily remembered angrily: she wondered how many were left).

"Gone off where?" asked Arrietty.

"Home, I reckon," Hendreary told her.

"But we haven't thanked him," cried Arrietty. "Spiller saved our lives!"

Hendreary threw off his gloom. "Have a drop of blackberry cordial," he suggested suddenly to Pod. "Lupy's own make. Cheer us all up...."

"Not for me," said Homily firmly, before Pod could speak. "No good never comes of it as we've found out to our cost."

"But what will Spiller think," persisted Arrietty, and there were tears in her eyes. "We haven't even thanked him?"

Hendreary looked at her, surprised. "Spiller? He don't hold with thanks. He's all right..." and he patted Arrietty's arm.