The Borrowers Afield (3 page)

"They found the badger's set all right," said old Tom. "Now, don't 'ee cry, my maiden, not no more."

"I'll stop in a minute," Kate assured him in a stifled voice, blowing her nose.

"Now look 'ee here," the old man went on—very upset he sounded. "You dry your eyes and stop your weeping and old Tom'll show you summat." Awkwardly he got up off his stool and hovered over her, drooping his shoulders like some great protective bird. "Something you'd like. How's that, eh?"

"It's all right," Kate said, giving a final scrub. She stuffed away her handkerchief and smiled up at him. "I've stopped."

Old Tom put his hand in his pocket and then, throwing a cautious glance toward the ceiling, he seemed to change his mind: for a moment it had sounded as though the footsteps had been moving toward the stairs. "It's all right," whispered Kate, after listening; and he fumbled again and drew out a battered tin box, the kind in which pipe-smokers keep tobacco, and with his knotted fingers fumbled awkwardly with the lid. At last, it was open, and breathing heavily, he turned it over and slid something out. "There—" he said, and on his calloused palm Kate saw the tiny book.

"Oh—" she breathed, staring incredulously.

"Take it up," said old Tom, "it won't bite you." And, as gingerly Kate put out her hand, he added, smiling, "'Tis Arrietty's diary."

But Kate knew this, even before she saw the faded gilt lettering,
Diary and Proverb Book,
and in spite of the fact that it was weather-stained and time-worn, that when she opened it the bulk of its pages slipped out from between the covers, and the ink or pencil or sap—or whatever Arrietty had used to write with—had faded to various shades of brown and sepia and a curious sickly yellow. It had opened at August the 31st, and the proverb, Kate saw, was "Better to suffer ill, than do ill," and below this the bald statement "Disastrous Earthquake at Charleston, U. S., 1866" and on the page itself, in Arrietty's scratchy handwriting, were three entries for the three successive years:

Spiders in storeroom.

Mrs. D. dropped pan. Soup—leak in ceiling.

Talked to Spiller.

Who was Spiller, Kate wondered? August 31st? That was after they left the big house. Spiller, she realized, must be part of the new life, the life out-of-doors. At random, she turned back a few pages:

Mother bilious.

Threaded green beads.

Climbed hedge. Eggs bad.

Climbed hedge? Arrietty must have gone bird's-nesting—and the eggs would be bad in (Kate glanced at the date)...yes, it was still August, and the motto for that day was "Grasp all, lose all."

"Where did you get this book?" Kate asked aloud in a stunned voice.

"I found it," said old Tom.

"But where?" cried Kate.

"Here," said old Tom, and Kate saw his eyes stray in the direction of the fireplace.

"In this house," she exclaimed in an unbelieving voice and, staring up at his mysterious old face, Mr. Beguid's unkind words came back to her suddenly, "the biggest liar in five counties." But here, in her hand, was the actual book: she stared down at it, trying to sort out her thoughts.

"You want I should show you summat else?" he asked her, suddenly and a little pathetically, as though aware of her secret doubts. "Come you here," and getting up slowly from her chair, Kate followed like a sleep walker as he went toward the fireplace.

Old Tom stooped down and, panting a little, he tugged at the heavy wood-box. As it shifted a board fell forward with a slight clatter and the old man, alarmed by the clatter, glanced at the ceiling; but Kate, leaning forward, saw the board had covered a sizeable rat-hole gouged out of the skirting and gothic in shape, like an opened church door.

"See?" said old Tom, after listening a moment—a little breathless from tugging he sounded. "Goes right through to the scullery: they'd got fire this side and water t'other. Years, they lived here."

Kate knelt down, staring into the hole. "Here? In your house?" Her voice became more and more scared and unbelieving. "You mean ... Pod? And Homily ... and little Arrietty?"

"Them, too," said old Tom, "in the end, as it were."

"But didn't they live out-of-doors? That's what Arrietty was longing to do—"

"They lived out-of-doors all right"—he gave a short laugh—"if you can call it living. Or come to that, if you can call it outdoors! But you take a look at this," he went on softly with a note in his voice of thinly disguised pride, "...goes right up inside the wall, stairs they got and all betwixt the lath and the plaster. Proper tenement, they got here—six floors—and water on every floor. See that?" he asked, laying his hand on a rusty pipe. "Comes down from the cistern in the roof, that does, and goes on through to the scullery. Tapped it, they did, in six different places ... and never a drop or a leak!"

He was silent a moment, lost in thought, before he propped back the board again and shoved the wood-box back into place. "Years they lived here," he said affectionately and he sighed a little as he straightened up, dusting his hands together.

"But
who
lived here?" Kate whispered hurriedly (the footsteps above had crossed the landing and were now heard approaching the head of the stairs). "You don't mean my ones? You said they found the badger's set."

"They found the badger's set all right," said old Tom, and gave his short laugh.

"But how do you know? Who told you?" Twittering with anxiety she followed behind him as he limped to his stool.

Old Tom sat down, selected a stick and, with maddening deliberation, tested the edge of his knife. "She told me," he said at last, and he cut the stick in three lengths.

"You mean you talked to Arrietty!"

He made a warning sign at her raised voice, lifting his eyebrows and jerking his head. The footsteps, Kate heard, were clumping now down the wooden treads of the stairs. "You don't talk to that one," he whispered, "not while she's got a tongue to wag."

Kate went on staring: if he had hit her on the head with a log from the log box, she could not have appeared more stunned. "Then she must have told you everything!" she gasped.

"Hush!" said the old man, his eye on the door. Mrs. May and Mr. Beguid, it seemed, had reached the bottom of the stairs, and from the sound of their voices had turned again into the scullery for a last look round. "Two fitted basins, at least," Mrs. May was heard saying, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Pretty nigh on everything, I reckon," whispered old Tom. "She'd creep out most evenings, pretty regular." He smiled as he spoke, glancing toward the hearth. And Kate, watching his face, suddenly saw the picture: the firelit cottage, the lonely boy at his whittling and, almost invisible in the shadows this tiny creature, seated maybe on a matchbox: the flute-y, monotonous voice going on and on and on ... after a while, Kate thought, he would hardly have heard it: it would merge and become part of the room's living stillness, like the simmer of the kettle or the ticking of the clock. Night after night; week after week; month after month; year, perhaps, after year ... Yes, Kate realized (staring in the same stunned way even though, at this minute, Mrs. May and Mr. Beguid came back to the room still talking loudly of wash-basins), Arrietty must indeed have told Tom everything!

Chapter Four

"No tale loses in the telling."
Longfellow, American Poet, died 1882; also
Walt Whitman, 1892

[Extract from Arrtetty's Diary and
Proverb Book, March 26th]

A
ND ALL
that was needed now, she thought (as she lay that night in bed, listening to the constant gurgle in the pipes of the constant H and C), was for old Tom to tell
her
everything in as full detail—as Arrietty must have told it to him. And, having already said so much, he might—she felt—go this much farther, in spite of his fear of things put down in writing. And she wouldn't tell either, she resolved staunchly—at any rate, not during his lifetime, although why he should mind so much she couldn't understand, seeing that he was known already as "the biggest liar in five counties." But what seemed still more hopeful was that, having shown her the little book, he had not even asked for it back. She had it now in bed with her, stuffed beneath her pillow and it was full of "things in writing." Not that she could understand them quite: the entries were too short, little headings, they seemed like, jotted down by Arrietty to remind herself of dates. But some of them sounded extraordinarily weird and mysterious ... Yes, she decided, suddenly inspired, that was the way to work it: she would ask old Tom to explain the headings: what could Arrietty have meant (she would ask) by "Black men—mother saved."?

And this was, more or less, what did happen: while Mrs. May talked business each day with Messrs. Jobson, Thring, Beguid and Beguid, or argued with builders and plumbers and plumber's mates, Kate would wander off alone across the fields and find her own way to the cottage, seeking out old Tom.

On some days (as Kate, in later years, would explain to her children) he would seem a bit "cagey" and disinterested, but on other days a particular heading in the diary would seem to inspire him and his imagination would take wings and sail away on such swirls and eddies of vivid memory that Kate, spellbound, could hardly believe that he had not at some time (in some other life, perhaps) been a borrower himself. Mrs. May, Kate remembered, had said just this of her younger brother: this brother who, although three years his junior, must have known old Tom (Had not old Tom himself admitted this much?). Had they been friends—great friends, perhaps? They certainly seemed birds of a feather—one famous for telling tall stories because "he was such a tease"; the other, more simply described as "the biggest liar in five counties." And it was this thought which, long after she was grown up, decided Kate to tell the world what was said to have happened to Pod and Homily and little Arrietty after that dreadful day when, smoked out of their house under the kitchen, they sought for refuge in the wild outdoors.

Here is her story—all "put down in writing." Let us sift the evidence ourselves.

Chapter Five

"Step by step climbs The Hill."
Victoria Tubular Bridge, Montreal, opened 1866

[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, August 25th]

W
ELL, AT FIRST
, it seems they just ran, but they ran in the right direction—up the azalea bank, where (so many months ago now) Arrietty had first met the boy and through the Jong grass at the top. How they got through that, Homily used to say afterwards, she never knew—nothing but stalks, close set. And insects: Homily had never dreamed there could be so many different kinds of insects—slow ones, hanging on things; fast, scuttling ones, and ones (these were the worst) which stared at you and did not move at once and then backed slowly, still staring (it was as though, Homily said, they had made up their mind to bite you and then, still malicious, changed it out of caution). "Wicked," she said, "that's what they were; oh, wicked, wicked, wicked..."

As they shoved their way through the long grass, they were choked with pollen loosened in clouds from above; there were sharp-edged leaves, deceptively sappy and swaying, which cut their hands, gliding across the skin like the soft-drawn bow of a violin but leaving blood behind: there were straw-dry, knotted stems, which caught them round the shins and ankles and which made them stumble and trip forward; often they would land on that cushiony plant with silvery, hairlike spines—spines which pricked and stung. Long grass ... long grass ... for ever afterwards it was Homily's nightmare.

Then, to get to the orchard, came a scramble through the privet hedge: dead leaves, below the blackened boughs of privet ... dead leaves and rotting, dried-up berries which rose waist-high as they swam their way through them, and, below the leaves, a rustling dampness. And here again were insects: things which turned over on their backs, or hopped suddenly, or slyly slid away.

Across the orchard—easier going this, because the hens had fed there achieving their usual "blasted heath" effect—a flattened surface of lava-colored earth: the visibility was excellent. But, if they could see, they could also be seen: the fruit trees were widely spaced, giving little cover: anyone glancing from a first-floor window in the house might well exclaim curiously, "What's that, do you think, moving across the orchard? There by the second tree on the right—like leaves blowing. But there isn't a wind. More like something being drawn along on a thread—too steady to be birds..." This was the thought in Pod's mind as he urged Homily onwards. "Oh, I can't," she would cry. "I must sit down. Just a moment, Pod—please!"

But he was adamant. "You can sit down," he'd say, gripping her below the elbow and spinning her forward across the rubble, "once we get to the spinney. You take her other arm, Arrietty, but keep her moving!"

Once within the wood, they sank down on the side of the well-worn path, too exhausted to seek further cover. "Oh, dear ... oh, dear ... oh, dear..." Homily kept saying (mechanically, because she always said it) but behind her bright dark eyes in her smudged face, they could see her brain was busy: and she was not hysterical, they could see that too; they could see, in other words, that Homily was "trying." "There's no call for all this running," she said after a moment, when she could get her breath. "Nobody didn't see us go: fer all they know we're still there, trapped-like—under the floor."

"I wouldn't be so sure," said Arrietty. "There was a face at the kitchen window. I saw it as we were going up the bank. A boy it looked like, with a cat or something."

"If anyone'd seen us," remarked Homily, "they'd have been after us, that's what I say."

"That's a fact," said Pod.

"Well, which way do we go from here?" asked Homily, gazing about among the tree trunks. There was a long scratch across her cheek and her hair hung down in wisps.

"Well, we better be getting these loads sorted out first," said Pod. "Let's see what we've brought. What have you got in that borrowing-bag, Arrietty?"

Arrietty opened the bag she had packed so hurriedly two days before against just this emergency. She laid out the contents on the hardened mud of the path and they looked an odd collection. There were three tin lids off varying sizes of pill bottles which fitted neatly one inside the other; a sizeable piece of candle and seven wax-matches; a change of underclothes and an extra jersey knitted by Homily on blunted darning needles from a much-washed, unraveled sock, and last (but most treasured) her pencil from a dance program and her
Diary and Proverb Book.

"Now why did you want to cart that along?" grumbled Pod, glancing sideways at this massive tome as he laid out his own belongings. For the same reason, Arrietty thought to herself as she glanced at Pod's unpacking, that you brought along your shoemaker's needle, your hammer made from an electric bell-clapper, and a stout ball of twine: each to his hobby and the tools of the craft he loves (and hers she felt to be literature).

Besides his shoemaking equipment, Pod had brought the half nail scissor, a thin sliver of razor blade, ditto of child's fret-saw, an aspirin bottle with screw lid filled with water, a small twist of fuse wire and two steel hat pins, the shorter of which he gave to Homily. "It'll help you up the hill," he told her. "We may have a bit of a climb."

Homily had brought her knitting needles, the rest of the raveled sock, three pieces of lump sugar, the finger of a lady's kid glove filled with salt and pepper mixed, tied up at the neck with cotton, some broken pieces of digestive biscuit, a small tin box made for phonograph needles which now contained dry tea, a chip of soap and her hair curlers.

Pod gazed glumly at the curious collection. "Like as not we brought the wrong things," he said, "but it can't be helped now. Better pack 'em up again," he went on, suiting the action to the word, "and let's get going. Good idea of yours, Arrietty, the way you fitted together them tin lids. Not sure, though, we couldn't have done with a couple more..."

"We've only got to get to the badger's set," Arrietty excused herself. "I mean Aunt Lupy will have most things, won't she—like cooking utensils and such?"

"I don't know anyone as couldn't do with a few more," remarked Homily, stuffing in the remains of the sock and lashing up the neck of her bag with a length of blue embroidery silk, "especially when they live in a badger's set. And who's to say your Aunt Lupy's there at all?" she went on. "I thought she got lost or something, crossing them fields out walking."

"Well, she may be found again by now," said Pod. "Over a year ago, wasn't it, when she set out walking?"

"And anyway," Arrietty pointed out, "she wouldn't go walking with the cooking pots."

"I never could see," said Homily, standing up and trying out the weight of her bag, "no never will, no matter what nobody tells me, what your Uncle Hendreary saw fit to marry in a stuck-up thing like that Lupy."

"That's enough," said Pod. "We don't want none of that now."

He stood up and slung his borrowing-bag on his steel hat pin, swinging it over his shoulder. "Now," he asked, looking them up and down, "sure you're both all right?"

"Not that, when put to it," persisted Homily, "she isn't good-hearted at bottom but it's the kind of way she does it..."

"What about your boots?" asked Pod. "They quite comfortable?"

"Yes," said Homily. "For the moment," she added.

"What about you, Arrietty?"

"I'm all right," said Arrietty.

"Because," said Pod, "it's going to be a long pull. We're going to take it steady. No need to rush. But we don't want no stopping. Nor no grumbling. Understand?"

"Yes," said Arrietty.

"And keep your eyes skinned," Pod went on as they all moved off along the path. "If you see anything, do as I do—and sharp, mind. We don't want no running every which way. We don't want no screaming."

"I know," said Arrietty irritably, adjusting her pack: she moved ahead as though trying to get out of earshot.

"You
think
you know," called Pod after her. "But you don't know nothing really: you don't know nothing about cover, nor does your mother: cover's a trained job, and art—like—"

"I know," repeated Arrietty. "You told me." She glanced sideways into the shadowy depths of the brambles beside the path. She saw a great spider, hanging in space. His web was invisible: he seemed to be staring at her—she saw his eyes. Defiantly, Arrietty stared back.

"You can't tell no one in five minutes," persisted Pod, "things you got to learn from experience. What I told you, my girl, that day I took you out borrowing, wasn't even the A.B.C. I tried my best, because your mother asked me. And see where it's got us!"

"Now, Pod," panted Homily (they were walking too fast for her), "no need to bring up the past."

"That's what I mean," said Pod, "the past
is
experience: that's all you got to learn from. You see, when it comes to borrowing—"

"But you had a lifetime of it, Pod: you was in training—Arrietty'd only been out that once—"

"That's what I
mean
" cried Pod and, in stubborn desperation, he stopped in his tracks for Homily to catch up, "about cover. If only she'd known the A.B.C.—"

"Look out!" sang Arrietty shrilly, now some way ahead.

There was a rushing clatter, a dropped shadow and a hoarse, harsh cry: and, suddenly, there was Pod—alone on the path—face to face with a large black crow.

The bird stared wickedly, but a little distrustfully, his cramped toes turned in slightly, his great beak just open. Frozen to stillness Pod stared back: something growing in the path—that's what he looked like, a rather peculiar kind of chunky toadstool. The great bird, very curious, turned his head sideways and tried Pod with his other eye. Pod, motionless, stared back. The crow made a murmur in its throat—a tiny bleat and, puzzled, it moved forward. Pod let it come, a couple of sideways steps, and then—out of a still face—he spoke: "Get back to where you was," he said evenly, almost conversationally, and the bird seemed to hesitate. "We don't want no nonsense from you," Pod went on steadily. "Pigeon-toed, that's what you are! Crows is pigeon-toed; first time it struck me. Staring away like that, with one eye, and your head turned sideways ... think it pretty, no doubt..." Pod spoke quite pleasantly "...but it ain't, not with
that
kind of beak..."

The bird became still, its expression no longer curious: there was stark amazement in every line of its rigid body and, in its eye, a kind of ghastly disbelief. "Go on! Get off with you!" shouted Pod suddenly, moving toward it. "Shoo...!" And, with a distraught glance and panicstricken croak, the great bird flapped away. Pod wiped his brow with his sleeve as Homily, white-faced and still trembling, crawled out from under a fox-glove leaf. "Oh, Pod," she gasped, "you were brave—you were wonderful!"

"It's nothing," said Pod. "It's a question of keeping your nerve."

"But the size of it!" said Homily. "You'd never think seeing them flying they was that size!"

"Size is nothing," said Pod. "It's the talk that gets them." He watched Arrietty climb out from a hollow stump and begin to brush herself down. When she looked up, he looked away. "Well," he said, after a moment, "we'd better keep moving..."