Moominsummer Madness (4 page)

Whomper waited a while for a suitable tree to come floating nearer with its roots in the air. He caught hold of it with his tail and asked: 'Anybody else coming?'

'Thanks, no,' replied the mousewife. 'That's not to my taste. Looks like a messy household.'

'Nobody's invited me,' said Misabel sullenly.

She saw Whomper put off. The tree trunk glided away. Suddenly Misabel felt very deserted and took a desperate jump. She managed to cling to the branches, and Whomper helped her aboard without comment.

Slowly they sailed on and landed at the veranda roof. They climbed in through the nearest window.

'Glad to meet you,' said Moominpappa. 'May I introduce: My wife; my son; the Snork Maiden; the Mymble's daughter; Little My.'

'Misabel,' said Misabel.

'Whomper,' said Whomper.

'You're cracked!' said Little My.

'This is an introduction,' explained the Mymble's daughter. 'You'd better keep quiet now, because this is a real visit.'

'It's a bit untidy here today,' said Moominmamma apologetically. 'And I'm afraid the drawing-room's under water.'

'Oh, don't mention it,' replied Misabel. 'What a splendid view you've got. And what wonderful weather we're having.'

'Think so?' asked Whomper with some surprise.

Misabel blushed deeply. 'I didn't mean to tell a fib,' she said. 'It just sounded so nice.'

There was a pause.

'We're a bit crowded as it is,' continued Moominmamma shyly. 'Still, I think it's nice for a change. Do you

know, I've been looking at my kitchen in quite a new way recently... especially when the chairs are upside-down. And how warm the water's become all of a sudden. We like swimming very much in our family.'

'You do, do you,' replied Misabel politely.

There was a pause again.

A faint trickling sound was heard.

'My!' said the Mymble's daughter sternly.

'It wasn't me,' said Little My. 'It's the sea coming in through our window.'

She was right. The water was rising again. A ripple rolled over the window-sill. And then another.

Suddenly quite a breaker drenched the carpet.

The Mymble's daughter quickly pocketed her little sister and exclaimed: 'What great luck that we like swimming so much in our family!'

CHAPTER 3
About learning to live in a haunted house

MOOMINMAMMA
was sitting on the roof with her handbag, work-basket, coffee-pot, and the family photograph-album in her lap. Now and again she had to move a little higher away from the rising sea, as she didn't like to trail her tail in the water. Especially not when there were callers.

'We simply can't take the whole drawing-room suite,' said Moominpappa.

'Dearest,' replied Moominmamma. 'What's the use of tables without chairs and chairs without tables? And of beds if there's no linen cupboard?'

'You're right,' Moominpappa admitted.

'And a mirror-door's very useful,' said Moominmamma blandly, 'You know yourself how nice it is to take a look in the glass in the morning. And,' she continued after a while, 'the couch is so nice for a quiet spell of thinking in the afternoon.'

'No, not the couch,' Moominpappa said determinedly.

'As you think best, dear,' she replied.

Uprooted bushes and trees came floating along. Carts and kneading troughs, prams, fish-chests, landing-stages and fences sailed on, empty or thronged with house-wrecked people. They were all too small, however, as rafts for a drawing-room suite.

But after a while Moominpappa pushed his hat back and looked sharply out over the sea. Something strange was on its way, carried by the inward current. Moominpappa had the sun straight in his eyes and couldn't tell if it was anything dangerous, but anyway it looked like a big thing, big enough to hold ten drawing-rooms and an even larger family than his.

Far out the thing had looked just like a large tin, ready to sink. Now it resembled a sea-shell raised on edge.

Moominpappa turned to his family and remarked 'I think we'll manage.'

'Of course we'll manage,' replied Moominmamma. 'We're only waiting for our new home. Only bad people fare badly.'

'Not always,' said Whomper. 'I know villains who have never even fallen in the water.'

'What a poor life,' said Moominmamma, wonderingly.

Now the strange thing had drifted closer. It was quite clearly a kind of house. Two golden faces were painted on its roof; one was crying and the other one laughing at the Moomins. Beneath the grinning faces gaped a kind of large rounded cave filled with darkness and cobwebs. Obviously the great wave had carried away one of the walls of the house. On either side of the yawning gap drooped velvet curtains sadly trailing in the water.

Moominpappa wonderingly stared in among the shadows.

'Anybody home?' he shouted cautiously.

No answer. They could hear an open door banging with the roll of the sea, and curls of dust scurried to and fro over the empty floor.

'I hope they were saved,' said Moominmamma worriedly. 'Poor family. I wonder what they looked like. It's really quite terrible to take their home away from them like this...'

'Dearest,' said Moominpappa. 'The water's rising.'

'I know, I know,' answered Moominmamma. 'I suppose we'd better move over then.'

She climbed over to her new home and looked around her. These people had been just a little untidy, she could see. But then, who isn't. They had saved a lot of old disused things. Pity that the wall had fallen out, but now in summertime it wasn't so very important.

'Where'll we put the drawing-room table?' asked Moomintroll.

'Here, in the middle of the floor,' replied his mother. She felt very much more at ease when the beautiful drawing-room chairs with their dark-red plush and dangling tassels were assembled around her. The strange room became cosy at once, and Moominmamma happily seated herself in the rocking-chair and started to dream of curtains and sky-blue wallpaper.

'Now there's only the flag-pole left above water,' said Moominpappa sadly. Moominmamma patted his paw. 'It was such a nice house,' she replied. 'Far better than this one. But after a while you'll see that everything feels just as usual.'

(Dear reader, Moominmamma was totally wrong. Nothing was going to be quite as usual, because the house wasn't an ordinary house at all, nor had any ordinary family lived there. I won't tell you more now.)

'Shall I rescue the flag?' asked Whomper.

'No; leave it,' said Moominpappa. 'It looks so proud.'

Slowly they drifted further up the Moomin Valley. When they arrived at the first pass to the Lonely Mountains they could still see the flag waving a merry farewell over the water.

*

Moominmamma had laid the table for supper in her new home.

The table looked a little lonely in the large and unfamiliar room. The chairs, the looking-glass cabinet, and the linen cupboard kept watch around it, but behind them lurked an expanse of darkness, silence and dust. The ceiling, from which the drawing-room lamp should have hung securely with its fringe of red tassels, the ceiling was the strangest of all. It was lost in mysterious, moving and fluttering shadows, while something large and vague kept slowly rocking to and fro with the house's movements in the water.

'There's a lot of things one can't understand,' Moominmamma said to herself. 'But why should everything be exactly as one is used to having it?'

She counted the teacups on the table, and then she saw that they had forgotten to bring the marmalade over to their new home.

'What a shame,' said Moominmamma. 'As if I hadn't known that Moomintroll loves marmalade with his tea. How could I forget.'

'Perhaps those people who lived here before also forgot to take their marmalade with them?' Whomper suggested helpfully. 'Perhaps it was difficult to pack? Or if there was so little left in the pot it didn't matter?'

'Well, if one could find it,' Moominmamma replied doubtfully.

'I'll have a look,' said Whomper. 'There must be a pantry somewhere.'

He made his way into the darkness.

In the middle of the floor a door stood alone by itself. Whomper stepped through it just for form's sake and was surprised to find that it was made of plywood, and had a tiled stove painted on its backside. Then he ascended a staircase and found that it ended in mid-air.

'Somebody's pulling my leg,' Whomper thought. 'Only I don't think he's funny. A door should lead somewhere and a staircase, too. What would life be like if a Misabel suddenly behaved like a Mymble, or a Whomper like a Hemulen?'

Further on he found heaps of rubbish. Curious frames of plaster, plywood and canvas, evidently broken things that the former family hadn't cared to carry up to the attic or had started to make but never finished.

'What are you looking for?' asked the Mymble's daughter, coming out of a cupboard that had neither shelves nor back to it.

'Marmalade,' replied Whomper.

'Seems to be all kinds of things here,' said the Mymble's daughter, 'so why not marmalade. It must have been a funny family.'

'We saw one of them,' said Little My importantly. 'One who didn't want to be seen himself!'

'Where?' asked Whomper.

The Mumble's daughter pointed towards a dark corner where a lot of rubbish was piled up to the ceiling. A palm was leaning against the wall nearby and melancholically rustling its paper leaves.