The Borrowers (5 page)

"Against the mice?" said Arrietty.

"Yes," agreed Pod uncertainly, as though he gave her half a mark, "but mice never hurt no one. What else?"

"Rats?" suggested Arrietty.

"We don't have rats," said Pod. "What about cats?"

"Cats?" echoed Arrietty, surprised.

"Or to keep you in?" suggested Pod.

"To keep me in?" repeated Arrietty, dismayed.

"Upstairs is a dangerous place," said Pod. "And you, Arrietty, you're all we've got, see? It isn't like Hendreary —he still has two of his own and two of hers. Once," said Pod, "Hendreary had three—three of his own."

"Your father's thinking of Eggletina," said Homily.

"Yes," said Pod, "Eggletina. They never told her about upstairs. And they hadn't got no grating. They told her the sky was nailed up, like, with cracks in it—"

"A foolish way to bring up a child," murmured Homily. She sniffed slightly and touched Arrietty's hair.

"But Eggletina was no fool," said Pod; "she didn't believe them. So one day," he went on, "she went upstairs to see for herself."

"How did she get out?" asked Arrietty, interested.

"Well, we didn't have so many gates then. Just the one under the clock. Hendreary must have left it unlocked or something. Anyway, Eggletina went out..."

"In a blue dress," said Homily, "and a pair of button-boots your father made her, yellow kid with jet beads for buttons. Lovely they were."

"Well," said Pod, "any other time it might have been all right. She'd have gone out, had a look around, had a bit of a fright, maybe, and come back—none the worse and no one the wiser..."

"But things had been happening," said Homily.

"Yes," said Pod, "she didn't know, as they never told her, that her father had been 'seen' and that upstairs they had got in the cat and—"

"They waited a week," said Homily, "and they waited a month and they hoped for a year but no one ever saw Eggletina no more."

"And that," said Pod after a pause and eyeing Arrietty, "is what happened to Eggletina."

There was silence except for Pod's breathing and the faint bubble of the soup.

"It just broke up your Uncle Hendreary," said Homily at last. "He never went upstairs again—in case, he said, he found the button-boots. Their only future was to emigrate."

Arrietty was silent a moment, then she raised her head. "Why did you tell me?" she asked. "Now? Tonight?"

Homily got up. She moved restlessly toward the stove. "We don't never talk of it," she said, "at least, not much, but, tonight, we felt—" She turned suddenly. "Well, we'll just say it straight out: your father's been 'seen,' Arrietty!"

"Oh," said Arrietty, "who by?"

"Well, by a—something you've never heard of. But that's not the point: the point is—"

"You think they'll get a cat?"

"They may," said Homily.

Arrietty set down the soup for a moment; she stared into the cup as it stood beside her almost knee high on the floor; there was a dreamy, secret something about her lowered face. "Couldn't we emigrate?" she ventured at last, very softly.

Homily gasped and clasped her hands and swung away toward the wall. "You don't know what you're talking about," she cried, addressing a frying pan which hung there. "Worms and weasels and cold and damp and—"

"But supposing," said Arrietty, "that
I
went out, like Eggletina did, and the cat ate
me.
Then you and Papa would emigrate. Wouldn't you?" she asked, and her voice faltered. "Wouldn't you?"

Homily swung round again, this time toward Arrietty; her face looked very angry. "I shall smack you, Arrietty Clock, if you don't behave yourself this minute!"

Arrietty's eyes filled with tears. "I was only thinking," she said, "that I'd like to be there—to emigrate too. Uneaten," she added softly and the tears fell.

"Now," said Pod, "this is enough! You get off to bed, Arrietty, uneaten and unbeaten both—and we'll talk about it in the morning."

"It's not that I'm afraid," cried Arrietty angrily; "I like cats. I bet the cat didn't eat Eggletina. I bet she just ran away because she hated being cooped up ... day after day ... week after week ... year after year.... Like I do!" she added on a sob.

"Cooped up!" repeated Homily, astounded.

Arrietty put her face into her hands. "Gates..." she gasped, "gates, gates, gates...."

Pod and Homily stared at each other across Arrietty's bowed shoulders. "You didn't ought to have brought it up," he said unhappily, "not so late at night..."

Arrietty raised her tear-streaked face. "Late or early, what's the difference?" she cried. "Oh, I know Papa is a wonderful borrower. I know we've managed to stay when all the others have gone. But what has it done for us, in the end? I don't think it's so clever to live on alone, for ever and ever, in a great, big, half-empty house; under the floor, with no one to talk to, no one to play with, nothing to see but dust and passages, no light but candlelight and firelight and what comes through the cracks. Eggletina had brothers and Eggletina had half-brothers; Eggletina had a tame mouse; Eggletina had yellow boots with jet buttons, and Eggletina did get out—just once!"

"Shush," said Pod gently, "not so loud." Above their heads the floor creaked and heavy footfalls heaved deliberately to and fro. They heard Mrs. Driver's grumbling voice and the clatter of the fire-irons. "Drat this stove," they heard her say, "wind's in the east again." Then they heard her raise her voice and call, "Crampfurl!"

Pod sat staring glumly at the floor; Arrietty shivered a little and hugged herself more tightly into the knitted quilt and Homily drew a long, slow breath. Suddenly she raised her head.

"The child is right," she announced firmly.

Arrietty's eyes grew big. "Oh, no—" she began. It shocked her to be right. Parents were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arrietty knew, and enjoy saying it—knowing always they were safe and wrong.

"You see, Pod," went on Homily, "it was different for you and me. There was other families, other children ... the Sinks in the scullery, you remember? And those people who lived behind the knife machine—I forget their names now. And the Broom-Cupboard boys. And there was that underground passage from the stables—you know, that the Rain-Pipes used. We had more, as you might say, freedom."

"Ah, yes," said Pod, "in a way. But where does freedom take you?" He looked up uncertainly. "Where are they all now?"

"Some of them may have bettered themselves, I shouldn't wonder," said Homily sharply. "Times have changed in the whole house. Pickings aren't what they were. There were those that went, you remember, when they dug a trench for the gas-pipe.' Over the fields, and through the wood, and all. A kind of tunnel it gave them, all the way to Leighton Buzzard."

"And what did they find there?" said Pod unkindly. "A mountain of coke!"'

Homily turned away. "Arrietty," she said, in the same firm voice, "supposing one day—we'd pick a special day when there was no one about, and providing they don't get a cat which I have my reasons for thinking they won't—supposing, one day, your father took you out borrowing, you'd be a good girl, wouldn't you? You'd do just what he said, quickly and quietly and no arguing?"

Arrietty turned quite pink; she clasped her hands together. "Oh—" she began in an ecstatic voice, but Pod cut in quickly:

"Now, Homily, we got to think. You can't just say things like that without thinking it out proper. I been 'seen,' remember. This is no kind of time for taking a child upstairs."

"There won't be no cat," said Homily; "there wasn't no screeching. It's not like that time with Rosa Pickhatchet."

"All the same," said Pod uncertainly, "the risk's there. I never heard of no
girl
going borrowing before."

"The way I look at it," said Homily, "and it's only now it's come to me: if you had a son, you'd take him borrowing, now wouldn't you? Well, you haven't got no son—only Arrietty. Suppose anything happened to you or me, where would Arrietty be—if she hadn't learned to borrow?"

Pod stared down at his knees. "Yes," he said after a moment, "I see what you mean."

"And it'll give her a bit of interest like and stop her hankering."

"Hankering for what?"

"For blue sky and grass and suchlike." Arrietty caught her breath and Homily turned on her swiftly: "It's no good, Arrietty, I'm not going to emigrate—not for you nor any one else!"

"Ah," said Pod and began to laugh, "so that's it!"

"Shush!" said Homily, annoyed, and glanced quickly at the ceiling. "Not so loud! Now kiss your father, Arrietty," she went on briskly, "and pop off back to bed."

As Arrietty snuggled down under the bedclothes she felt, creeping up from her toes, a glow of happiness like a glow of warmth. She heard their voices rising and falling in the next room: Homily's went on and on, measured and confident—there was, Arrietty felt, a kind of conviction behind it; it was the winning voice. Once she heard Pod get up and the scrape of a chair. "I don't like it!" she heard him say. And she heard Homily whisper "Hush!" and there were tremulous footfalls on the floor above and the sudden clash of pans.

Arrietty, half dozing, gazed up at her painted ceiling. "
FLOR DE HAVANA
," proclaimed the banners proudly.
"Garantizados ... Superiores ... Non Plus Ultra ... Esquisitos..." and the lovely gauzy ladies blew their trumpets, silently, triumphantly, on soundless notes of glee....

F
OR
the next three weeks Arrietty was especially "good": she helped her mother tidy the storerooms; she swept and watered the passages and trod them down: she sorted and graded the beads (which they used as buttons) into the screw tops of aspirin bottles; she cut old kid gloves into squares for Pod's shoemaking; she filed fish-bone needles to a bee-sting sharpness; she hung up the washing to dry by the grating so that it blew in the soft air; and at last the day came—that dreadful, wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten day —when Homily, scrubbing the kitchen table, straightened her back and called "Pod!"

He came in from his workroom, last in hand.

"Look at this brush!" cried Homily. It was a fiber brush with a plaited, fiber back.

"Aye," said Pod, "worn down."

"Gets me knuckles now," said Homily, "every time I scrub."

Pod looked worried. Since he had been "seen," they had stuck to kitchen borrowing, the bare essentials of fuel and food. There was an old mousehole under the kitchen stove upstairs which, at night when the fire was out or very low, Pod could use as a chute to save carrying. Since the window-curtain incident they had pushed a match-box chest of drawers below the mousehole, and had stood a wooden stool on the chest of drawers; and Pod, with much help and shoving from Homily, had learned to squeeze up the chute instead of down. In this way he need not venture into the great hall and passages; he could just nip out, from under the vast black stove in the kitchen, for a clove or a carrot or a tasty piece of ham. But it was not a satisfactory arrangement: even when the fire was out, often there was hot ash and cinders under the stove and once as he emerged, a great brush came at him wielded by Mrs. Driver; and he slithered back on tot) of Homily singed shaken' and coughing dust. Another time for some reason the fire had been in full blaze and Pod had arrived suddenly beneath a glowing inferno dropping white-hot coals But usually at night, the fire was out, and Pod could pick his through the cinders into the kitchen proper.

"Mrs. Driver's out," Homily went on. "It's her day off. And She"—they always spoke of Aunt Sophy as "She"—"is safe enough in bed."

"It's not them that worries me," said Pod.

"Why," exclaimed Homily sharply, "the boy's not still here?"

"I don't know," said Pod; "there's always a risk," he added.

"And there always will be," retorted Homily, "like when you was in the coal cellar and the coal cart came."

"But the other two," said Pod, "Mrs. Driver and Her, I always know where they are, like."

"As for that," exclaimed Homily, "a boy's even better. You can hear a boy a mile off. Well," she went on after a moment, "please yourself. But it's not like you to talk of risks...."

Pod sighed. "All right," he said and turned away to fetch his borrowing-bag.

"Take the child," called Homily after him.

Pod turned. "Now, Homily," he began in an alarmed voice.

"Why not?" asked Homily sharply. "It's just the day. You aren't going no farther than the front door. If you're nervous you can leave her by the clock, ready to nip underneath and down the hole. Let her just
see
at any rate. Arrietty!"

As Arrietty came running in, Pod tried again. "Now listen, Homily—" he protested.

Homily ignored him. "Arrietty," she said brightly, "would you like to go along with your father and borrow me some brush fiber from the doormat in the hall?"

Arrietty gave a little skip. "Oh," she cried, "could I?"

"Well, take your apron off," said Homily, "and change your boots. You want light shoes for borrowing—better wear the red kid." And then as Arrietty spun away Homily turned to Pod: "She'll be all right," she said; "you'll see."