The Borrowers Afield (12 page)

Chapter Sixteen

"Every tide has its ebb."
Burning of the Tower of London, 1841

[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, October 30th]

N
EXT MORNING
early Pod, on the edge of the alcove, summoned Arrietty from the boot. "Come on out," he called, "and see this."

Arrietty, shivering, pulled on a few clothes and, wrapping the piece of red blanket around her shoulders, she crept out beside him. The sun was up and the landscape shimmered, dusted over with what, to Arrietty, looked like powdered sugar.

"This is it," said Pod, after a moment, "the first frost."

Arrietty pushed her numbed fingers under her armpits, hugging the blanket closer. "Yes," she said soberly, and they stared in silence.

After a bit, Pod cleared his throat. "There's no call to wake your mother," he said huskily. "Like as not, with this sun, it'll be clear in less than an hour." He became silent again, thinking deeply. "Thought you'd like to see it," he said at last.

"Yes," said Arrietty again and added politely, "it's pretty...."

"What we better do," said Pod, "is get the breakfast quietly and leave your mother sleeping. She's all right," he went on. "She's deep in that fleece."

"I'm perished," grumbled Homily at breakfast, her hands wrapped round a half hazel shell filled with piping hot tea. There was less need, now they had Spiller, to economize on candles. "It strikes right through to the marrow. You know what?" she went on.

"No," said Pod—it was the only reply. "What?"

"Say we went down to the caravan site and had a look round? There won't be no gypsies: when Spiller goes, it means they moved off. Might find something," she added, "and in this kind of weather, there ain't no sense in sitting around. What about it, Pod? We could wrap up warm."

Arrietty was silent, watching their faces: she had learned not to urge.

Pod hesitated. Would it be poaching, he wondered—was this Spiller's preserve? "All right," he said uncertainly, after a moment.

It was not a simple expedition. Spiller having hidden his boat, they had to ferry themselves across the water on a flat piece of bark and it was rough going when, once in the wood, they tried to follow the stream by land: both banks were thickly grown with brambles, ghastly forests of living barbed wire which tore at their hair and clothes; by the time they had scrambled through the hedge onto the stretch of grass beside the lane, they were all three disheveled and bleeding.

Arrietty looked about her at the camping site and was depressed by what she-saw: this wood through which they had scrambled now shut off the last pale gleams of sun; the shadowed grass was bruised and yellow; here and there were odd bones, drifting feathers, bits of rag, and every now and again a stained newspaper flapped in the hedge.

"Oh dear," muttered Homily, glancing from side to side. "Somehow, now, I don't seem to fancy that bit o' red blanket."

"Well," said Pod after a pause, "come on. We may as well take a look round...." And he led the way down the bank.

They poked about rather distastefully and Homily thought of fleas. Pod found an old iron saucepan without a bottom: he felt it might do for something but could not think for what; he walked around it speculatingly and, once or twice, he tapped it sharply with the head of his hat pin which made a dull clang. Anyway, he decided at last as he moved away, it was no good to him here and was far too heavy to move away.

Arrietty found a disused cooking stove: it was flung into the bank below the hedge—so sunk it was in the grasses and so thickly engrained with rust that it must have been there for years. "You know," she remarked to her mother, after studying it in silence, "you could live in a stove like this."

Homily stared. "In that?" she exclaimed disgustedly. The stove lay tilted, partially sunk in earth; as stoves went it was a very small one, with a barred grate and a miniature oven of the kind which are built into caravans. Beside it, they noticed a pile of whitish bones.

"Not sure she isn't right," agreed Pod, tapping the bars of the grate. "You could have a fire in here, say, and live in the oven like."

"Live!" exclaimed Homily. "Be roasted alive, you mean."

"No," explained Pod. "Needn't be a big fire. Just enough to warm the place through like. And there you'd be"—he looked at the brass latch on the door of the oven—"safe as houses. Iron, that is." He rapped the stove with his hat pin. "Nothing couldn't gnaw through that."

"Field mice could slip through them bars," said Homily.

"Maybe," said Pod, "but I wasn't thinking so much about field mice as about"—he paused uneasily—"stoats and foxes and them kind of cattle."

"Oh, Pod," exclaimed Homily, clapping her hands flat to her cheeks and making her eyes tragic, "the things you do bring up! Why do you do it?" she implored him tearfully. "Why? You know what it does to me!"

"Well, there are such things," Pod pointed out stolidly. "In this life," he went on, "you got to see what
is,
as you might say, and then face up to what you wish there wasn't."

"But foxes, Pod," protested Homily.

"Yes," agreed Pod, "but there they are; you can't deny 'em. See what I mean?"

"I see all right," said Homily, eyeing the stove more kindly, "but say you lit it, the gypsies would see the smoke."

"And not only the gypsies," admitted Pod, glancing aside at the lane, "anyone passing would see it. No," he sighed, as he turned to go, "this stove ain't feasible. Pity—because of the iron."

The only really comforting find of the day was a piping-hot blackened potato: Arrietty found it on the site of the gypsies' fire. The embers were still warm, and, when stirred with a stick, a line of scarlet sparks ran snakewise through the ash. The potato steamed when they broke it open and, comforted, they ate their fill, sitting as close as they dared to the perilous warmth.

"Wish we could take a bit of this ash home," Homily remarked. "This is how Spiller cooks, I shouldn't wonder-borrows a bit of the gypsies' fire. What do you think, Pod?"

Pod blew on his crumb of hot potato. "No," he said, taking a bite and speaking with his mouth full, "Spiller cooks regular-like whether the gypsies are here or not. Spiller's got his own method. Wish I knew what it was."

Homily leaned forward, stirring the embers with a charred stick. "Say we kept this fire alight?" she suggested, "and brought the boot down here?"

Pod glanced about uneasily. "Too public," he said.

"Say, we put it in the hedge," went on Homily, "alongside that stove. What about that? Say we put it
in
the stove?" she added suddenly, inspired but fearful.

Pod turned slowly and looked at her. "Homily—" he began, and paused, as though stumped for words. After a moment, he laid a hand on his wife's arm and looked with some pride toward his daughter. "Your mother's a wonderful woman," he said in a moved voice. "And never you forget it, Arrietty."

Then it was "all hands to the plow": they gathered sticks like maniacs, and wet leaves to keep up the smolder. Backwards and forwards they ran, up into the hedges, along the banks, into the spinney ... they tugged, and wrenched, and tripped and stumbled ... and, soon, a white column of smoke spiraled up into the leaden sky.

"Oh, my," panted Homily, distressed, "folks'll see this for miles!"

"No matter," gasped Pod, as he pushed on a lichen-covered branch, "they'll think it's the gypsies. Pile on some more of them leaves, Arrietty, we got to keep this going till morning."

A sudden puff of wind blew the smoke into Homily's eyes and the tears ran down her cheeks. "Oh, my," she exclaimed—again distressed. "This is what we'll be doing all winter, day in, day out, till we're wore to the bone and run out of fuel. It ain't no good, Pod. See what I mean?"

And she sat down suddenly on a blackened tin lid and wept in earnest. "You can't spend the rest of your life," she whimpered, "tending an open fire."

Pod and Arrietty had nothing to say: they knew suddenly that Homily was right: borrowers were too little and weak to create a full-sized blaze. The light was fading and the wind sharpening, a leaden wind which presaged snow.

"Better we start for home," said Pod, at last. "We tried anyway. Come on, now," he urged Homily, "dry your eyes; we'll think of something else...."

But they didn't think of anything else. And the weather became colder. There was no sign of Spiller and, after ten days, they ran out of meat and started (their sole source of warmth) on the last bit of candle.

"I don't know," Homily would moan unhappily, as at night they crept under the fleece, "what we're going to do I'm sure. We won't see Spiller again, that's one thing certain. Dare say he's met with an accident."

Then came the snow. Homily, tucked up in the boot, would not get up to see it. To her, it meant the end. "I'll die here," she announced, "tucked up comfortable. You and Father," she told Arrietty, "can die where you like."

It was no good Arrietty assuring her that the field looked very pretty, that the cold seemed less severe, and that she had made a sled of the blackened tin lid which Pod had retrieved from the ashes: she had made her grave and was determined to lie in it.

In spite of this and rather heartlessly, Arrietty still en joyed her toboggan runs down the bank with a wide sweep into the ditch at the bottom. And Pod, brave soul, still went out to forage—though there was little left to eat in the hedgerows and for this little, a few remaining berries, they had to compete with the birds. Though appreciably thinner, none of them felt ill and Arrietty's snow-tanned cheeks glowed with a healthy color.

But five days later, it was a different story: intense cold and a second fall of snow—snow which piled up in air-filled drifts, too light and feathery to support a matchstick, let alone a borrower. They became house-bound and, for most of the time, joined Homily in the boot. The fleece was warm but, lying there in semi-darkness, the time passed slowly and the days were very boring. Homily would revive occasionally and tell them stories of her childhood: she could be as long-winded as she liked with this audience which could not get away.

They came to an end of the food. "There's nothing left," announced Pod, one evening, "but one lump of sugar and a quarter inch of candle."

"I couldn't never eat that," complained Homily, "not paraffin wax."

"No one's asking you to," said Pod. "And we've still that drop of elderberry wine."

Homily sat up in bed. "Ah!" she said, "put the sugar in the wine and heat it up over the quarter inch of candle."

"But, Homily," protested Pod, surprised. "I thought you was teetotal."

"Grog's different," explained Homily. "Call me when it's ready," and she lay down again, piously closing her eyes.

"She will have her way," muttered Pod, aside to Arrietty. He eyed the bottle dubiously. "There's more there than I thought there was. I hope she'll be all right...."

It was quite a party, so long it had been since they had lit the candle, and it was pleasant to gather round it and feel its warmth.

When at last, warmed and befuddled, they snuggled down in the fleece, a curious contentment filled Arrietty—a calmness akin to hope. Pod, she noticed, drowsed with wine, had forgotten to lace up the boot ... well, perhaps it didn't matter—if it was their last night on earth.

Chapter Seventeen

"What Heaven will, no frost can kill."
Great Earthquake at Lisbon, 50,000 killed, 1755

[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, November 1st]

I
T WAS NOT
their last night on earth: it seldom is, somehow, it was, however, their last night
in
earth.

Arrietty was the first to wake. She woke tired, as though she had slept badly, but it was only later, as she told Tom, that she remembered her dream of the earthquake. She not only woke tired but she woke cramped, and in a most uncomfortable position. There seemed more light than was usual and then she remembered the unlaced opening. But why, she wondered, as she roused a little, did the daylight seem to come in from above, as from a half-concealed skylight? And suddenly she understood—the boot, which lay always on its side, for some extraordinary reason was standing upright. Her first thought—and it made her heart beat faster—was that her dream of an earthquake had been fact. She glanced at Pod and Homily: from what she could see of them, so enmeshed they were in fleece, they appeared to be sleeping soundly but not, she thought, quite in the same positions as when they had gone to bed. Something had happened—she was sure of it—unless she still was dreaming.

Stealthily Arrietty sat up; although the boot was open, the air felt surprisingly warm—almost stuffy; it smelt of woodsmoke and onions and of something else—a smell she could not define—could it be the scent of a human being?

Arrietty crept along the sole of the boot until she stood under the opening. Staring up she saw, instead of the sandy roof of the annex, a curious network of wire springs and some kind of striped ceiling. They must be under some bed, she realized—she had seen this view of beds back home-but what bed? And where?

Trembling a little but too curious not to be brave, she put her foot as high as she could into an eyelet hole and pulled herself erect on a loop of shoelace; another step up, a harder pull—and she found she could see out: the first thing she saw, standing close beside her—so close that she could see into it—was a second boot exactly like their own.

That was about all she could see from her present position: the bed was low, stretching up she could almost touch the springs with her hands. But she could hear things—the liquid purr of a simmering kettle, the crack of a fire and a deeper more rhythmic sound—the sound of a human snore.

Arrietty hesitated: she was in half a mind to wake her parents, but, on second thoughts, she decided against it. First to find out a bit more. She unloosed a couple of lace-holes and eased out through the gap and, via the boot's instep, she walked out to the toe. Now she could really see.

As she had guessed, they were in a caravan. The boots stood under a collapsible bed which ran along one side of its length; and facing her on the opposite side, parallel to this bed she saw a miniature coal range very like the one in the hedge, and a light-grained overmantel. The shelves of the overmantel, she saw, were set with pieces of looking glass and adorned with painted vases, old coronation mugs and trails of paper flowers. Below and on each side were set-in drawers and cupboards. A kettle simmered gently on the flat of the stove and a fire glowed redly through the bars.

At right angles, across the rear end of the caravan, she saw a second bunk, built in more permanently above a locker, and the locker she noted, thinking of cover, was not set in flush with the floor: there was space below into which, if crouching, a borrower might creep. In the bunk above the locker, she saw a heaving mountain of patchwork which she knew must contain, by the sound of the snoring, a human being asleep. Beside the head of the bunk stood a watering can, a tin mug balanced on the spout. Elder-flower wine, she thought—that last night had been their undoing.

To her left, also at right angles, was the door of the caravan, the top half open to the winter sunshine; it faced, she knew, toward the shafts. A crack of sunlight ran down the latch side of this door—a crack through which, if she dared approach it, she might perhaps see out.

She hesitated. It was only a step to the crack—a yard and a half at most: the human mountain was still heaving, filling the air with sound. Lightly, Arrietty slid from the toe of the boot to the worn piece of carpet and, soundless in her stockinged feet, she tiptoed to the door. For a moment, the sunlight striking almost brightly through the crack seemed to blind her, then she made out a stretch of dirty grass, sodden with melting snow, a fire smoking sulkily between two stones, and beyond that, some way distant below the hedge, she saw a familiar object—the remains of a disused stove. Her spirits rose: so they were still at the same old caravan site—they had not, as she had feared at first, been traveling in the night.

As, her nose in the crack, she stood there staring, a sudden silence behind her caused her to turn; and, having turned, she froze: the human being was sitting up in bed. He was a huge man, fully dressed, dark-skinned, and with a mass of curling hair; his eyes were screwed up, his fists stretched and his mouth wide open in a long-drawn, groaning yawn.

Panic-stricken, she thought about cover. She glanced at the bed to her right—the bed under which she had awakened. Three strides would do it: but better to be still, that's what Pod would say: the shadowed part of the door against which she stood would seem still darker because of that opened half above, filled so brightly with winter sun shine. All Arrietty did was to move aside from the crack of light against whose brightness she might be outlined.

The human being stopped yawning and swung his legs down from the bunk and sat there a moment, pensively, admiring his stockinged feet. One of his eyes, Arrietty noticed, was dark and twinkling, the other paler, hazel-yellow, with a strangely drooping lid. This must be Mild Eye—this great, fat, terrifying man, who sat so quietly smiling at his feet.

As Arrietty watched, the strange eyes lifted a little and the smile broadened: Mild Eye, Arrietty saw, was looking at the boots.

She caught her breath as she saw him lean forward and (a stretch of the long arm was enough) snatch them up from below the other bed. He examined them lovingly, holding them together as a pair, and then, as though struck by some discrepancy in the weight, he set one down on the floor. He shook the other gently, turning its opening toward his palm and, as nothing fell out, he put his hand inside.

The shout he gave, Arrietty thought afterwards, must have been heard for miles. He dropped the boot, which fell on its side and Arrietty, in an anguish of terror, saw Homily and Pod run out and disappear between his legs (but not, she realized, before he had glimpsed them) into the shallow space between his bunk and the floor.

There was a horrified pause.

Arrietty was scared enough, but Mild Eye seemed even

more so: his two strange eyes bulged in a face which had turned the color of putty. Two tiny words hung in the silence, a thread-thin echo, incredible to Mild Eye: someone ... something ... somewhere ... on a note of anguish, had stammered out, "Oh dear!"

And that was controlled enough, Arrietty thought, for what Homily must be feeling: to be woken from a deep sleep and shaken out of the boot; to have seen those two strange eyes staring down at her; to have heard that thunderous shout. The space between the locker and the floor, Arrietty calculated, could not be more than a couple of inches; it would be impossible to stand up in there and, although safe enough for the moment, there they would have to stay: there seemed no possible way out.

For herself—glued motionless against the shadows—she was less afraid: true enough she stood face to face with Mild Eye; but he would not see her, of this she felt quite sure, providing she did not move: he seemed too shaken by those half-glimpsed creatures which so inexplicably had appeared between his feet.

Stupefied, he stared for a moment longer; then awkwardly he got down on all fours and peered under the locker; as though disappointed, he got up again, found a box of matches, struck a light and once again explored the shadows as far as the light would carry. Arrietty took advantage of his turned back to take her three strides and slip back under the bed. There was a cardboard box under here, which she could use as cover, some ends of rope, a bundle of rabbit snares and a slimy saucer which once had contained milk.

She made her way between these objects until she reached the far end—the junction of the bed with the locker below the bunk. Peering out through the tangle of rabbit snares, she saw that Mild Eye—despairing of matchlight—had armed himself with a hefty knob-kerrystick which he was now running back and forth in a business-like manner along the space between the bunk and the floor. Arrietty, her hands pressed tight against her heart, once thought she heard a strangled squeak and a muttered "Oh, my gracious...!"

At that moment, the door of the caravan opened, there was a draft of cold air, and a wild-eyed woman looked in. Wrapped in a heavy shawl against the cold, she was carrying a basket of clothes pegs. Arrietty, crouching among the rabbit snares, saw the wild eyes open still more wildly and a flood of questions in some foreign tongue was aimed at Mild Eye's behind. Arrietty saw the woman's breath smoke in the clear sunshine and could hear her earrings jangle.

Mild Eye, a little shame-faced, rose to his feet; he looked very big to Arrietty and, though she could no longer see his face, his hanging hands looked helpless. He replied to the woman in the same language: he said quite a lot; sometimes his voice rose on a curious squeak of dismayed excitement.

He picked up the boot, showed it to the woman, said a lot about it and—somewhat nervously, Arrietty noticed—he put his hand inside; he pulled out the wad of fleece, the unraveled sock, and—with some surprise because it had once been his—the strip of colored blanket. As he showed these to the woman, who continued to jeer, his voice became almost tearful. The woman laughed then—a thin, high peal of raucous laughter. Completely heartless, Arrietty thought, completely unkind. She wanted almost for Mild Eye's sake to run out and show this doubting creature that there were such things as borrowers ("It's so awful and sad," she once admitted to Tom Goodenough, "to belong to a race that no sane person believes in"). But tempting as this thought was, she thought better of it and instead she edged herself out from the end of the bed into the darker space below the bunk.

And only just in time: there was a faint thud on the carpet, and there, not a foot from where she had stood, she saw the four paws of a cat—three black and one white; she saw him stretch, roll over and rub his whiskered face on the sun-warmed carpet: he was black, she saw, with a white belly and a white patch over one eye. He or she? Arrietty did not know: a fine beast, anyway, sleek and heavy as cats are who hunt for themselves out-of-doors.

Sidling crab-wise into the shadows, her eyes on the basking cat, she felt her hand taken suddenly, held and squeezed tight. "Oh, thank goodness..." Homily breathed in her ear, "thank heavens you're safe."

Arrietty put a finger to her lips. "Hush," she whispered barely above her breath, staring toward the cat.

"It can't get under here," whispered Homily. Her face, Arrietty saw, looked pallid in the half-light, gray and streaked with dust. "We're in a caravan," she went on, determined to tell the news.

"I know," said Arrietty, and pleaded, "Mother, we'd better be quiet."

Homily was silent a moment, then she said, "He caught your father's back with that stick. The soft part," she added reassuringly.

"Hush," whispered Arrietty again. She could not see much from where she was but Mild Eye, she gathered, was struggling into a coat; after a moment, he stooped and his hand came near when he felt under the settee for the bundle of rabbit snares; the woman was still out-of-doors busy about the fire.

After a while, her eyes growing used to the dimness, Arrietty saw her father sitting some way back, leaning against the wall. She crawled across to him, and Homily followed.

"Well, here we are," said Pod, barely moving his lips, "and not dead yet," he added, with a glance at Homily.