The Borrowers (8 page)

"I helped him a bit," said the boy, "with the tea cup. He was shivering all over. I suppose he was frightened."

"My father frightened!" exclaimed Arrietty angrily. "Frightened of you!" she added.

"Perhaps he doesn't like heights," said the boy.

"He loves heights," said Arrietty. "The thing he doesn't like is curtains. I've told you. Curtains make him tired."

The boy sat thoughtfully on his haunches, chewing a blade of grass. "Borrowing," he said after a while. "Is that what you call it?"

"What else could you call it?" asked Arrietty.

"I'd call it stealing."

Arrietty laughed. She really laughed. "But we
are
Borrowers," she explained, "like you're a—a human bean or whatever it's called. We're part of the house. You might as well say that the fire grate steals the coal from the coal scuttle."

"Then what is stealing?"

Arrietty looked grave. "Don't you know?" she asked. "Stealing is—well, supposing my Uncle Hendreary borrowed an emerald watch from Her dressing-table and my father took it and hung it up on our wall. That's stealing."

"An emerald watch!" exclaimed the boy.

"Well, I just said that because we have one on the wall at home, but my father borrowed it himself. It needn't be a watch. It could be anything. A lump of sugar even. But Borrowers don't steal."

"Except from human beings," said the boy.

Arrietty burst out laughing; she laughed so much that she had to hide her face in the primrose. "Oh dear," she gasped with tears in her eyes, "you are funny!" She stared upward at his puzzled face. "Human beans are
for
Borrowers—like bread's for butter!"

The boy was silent awhile. A sigh of wind rustled the cherry tree and shivered among the blossoms.

"Well, I don't believe it," he said at last, watching the falling petals. "I don't believe that's what we're for at all and I don't believe we're dying out!"

"Oh, goodness!" exclaimed Arrietty impatiently, staring up at his chin. "Just use your common sense: you're the only real human bean I ever saw (although I do just know of three more—Crampfurl, Her, and Mrs. Driver). But I know lots and lots of Borrowers: the Overmantels and the Harpsichords and the Rain-Barrels and the Linen-Presses and the Boot-Racks and the Hon. John Studdingtons and—"

He looked down. "John Studdington? But he was our grand-uncle—"

"Well, this family lived behind a picture," went on Arrietty, hardly listening, "and there were the Stove-Pipes and the Bell-Pulls and the—"

"Yes," he interrupted, "but did you see them?"

"I saw the Harpsichords. And my mother was a Bell-Pull. The others were before I was born...."

He leaned closer. "Then where are they now? Tell me that."

"My Uncle Hendreary has a house in the country," said Arrietty coldly, edging away from his great lowering face; it was misted over, she noticed, with hairs of palest gold. "And four children, Harpsichords and Clocks."

"But where are the others?"

"Oh," said Arrietty, "they're somewhere." But where? she wondered. And she shivered slightly in the boy's cold shadow which lay about her, slant-wise, on the grass.

He drew back again, his fair head blocking out a great piece of sky. "Well," he said deliberately after a moment, and his eyes were cold, "I've only seen two Borrowers but I've seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds—"

"Oh no—" whispered Arrietty.

"Of human beings." And he sat back.

Arrietty stood very still. She did not look at him. After a while she said: "I don't believe you."

"All right," he said, "then I'll tell you—"

"I still won't believe you," murmured Arrietty.

"Listen!" he said. And he told her about railway stations and football matches and racecourses and royal processions and Albert Hall concerts. He told her about India and China and North America and the British Commonwealth. He told her about the July sales. "Not hundreds," he said, "but thousands and millions and billions and trillions of great, big, enormous people. Now do you believe me?"

Arrietty stared up at him with frightened eyes: it gave her a crick in the neck. "I don't know," she whispered.

"As for you," he went on, leaning closer again, "I don't believe that there are any more Borrowers anywhere in the world. I believe you're the last three," he said.

Arrietty dropped her face into the primrose. "We're not. There's Aunt Lupy and Uncle Hendreary and all the cousins."

"I bet they're dead," said the boy. "And what's more," he went on, "no one will ever believe I've seen
you.
And you'll be the very last because you're the youngest. One day," he told her, smiling triumphantly, "you'll be the only Borrower left in the world!"

He sat still, waiting, but she did not look up. "Now you're crying," he remarked after a moment.

"They're not dead," said Arrietty in a muffled voice; she was feeling in her little pocket for a handkerchief. "They live in a badger's set two fields away, beyond the spinney. We don't see them because it's too far. There are weasels and things and cows and foxes ... and crows...."

"Which spinney?" he asked.

"I don't
KNOW
!" Arrietty almost shouted. "It's along by the gas-pipe—a field called Parkin's Beck." She blew her nose. "I'm going home," she said.

"Don't go," he said, "not yet."

"Yes, I'm going," said Arrietty.

His face turned pink. "Let me just get the book," he pleaded.

"I'm not going to read to you now," said Arrietty.

"Why not?"

She looked at him with angry eyes. "Because—"

"Listen," he said, "I'll go to that field. I'll go and find Uncle Hendreary. And the cousins. And Aunt Whatever-she-is. And, if they're alive, I'll tell you. What about that? You could write them a letter and I'd put it down the hole—"

Arrietty gazed up at him. "Would you?" she breathed.

"Yes, I would. Really I would. Now can I go and get the book? I'll go in by the side door."

"All right," said Arrietty absently. Her eyes were shining. "When can I give you the letter?"

"Any time," he said, standing above her. "Where in the house do you live?"

"Well—" began Arrietty and stopped. Why once again did she feel this chill? Could it only be his shadow ... towering above her, blotting out the sun? "I'll put it somewhere," she said hurriedly, "I'll put it under the hall mat."

"Which one? The one by the front door?"

"Yes, that one."

He was gone. And she stood there alone in the sunshine, shoulder deep in grass. What had happened seemed too big for thought; she felt unable to believe it really had happened: not only had she been "seen" but she had been talked to; not only had she been talked to but she had—

"Arrietty!" said a voice.

She stood up startled and spun round: there was Pod, moon-faced, on the path looking up at her. "Come on down!" he whispered.

She stared at him for a moment as though she did not recognize him; how round his face was, how kind, how familiar!

"Come on!" he said again, more urgently; and obediently because he sounded worried, she slithered quickly toward him off the bank, balancing her primrose. "Put that thing down," he said sharply, when she stood at last beside him on the path. "You can't lug great flowers about—you got to carry a bag. What you want to go up there for?" he grumbled as they moved off across the stones. "I might never have seen you. Hurry up now. Your mother'll have tea waiting!"

H
OMILY
was there, at the last gate, to meet them. She had tidied her hair and smelled of coal-tar soap. She looked younger and somehow excited. "Well—!" she kept saying. "Well!" taking the bag from Arrietty and helping Pod to fasten the gate. "Well, was it nice? Were you a good girl? Was the cherry tree out? Did the clock strike?" She seemed, in the dim light, to be trying to read the expression on Arrietty's face. "Come along now. Tea's all ready. Give me your hand...."

Tea was indeed ready, laid on the round table in the sitting room with a bright fire burning in the cogwheel. How familiar the room seemed, and homely, but, suddenly, somehow strange: the firelight flickering on the wallpaper—the line which read: "...it would be so charming if—" If what? Arrietty always wondered. If our house were less dark, she thought, that would be charming. She looked at the homemade dips set in upturned drawing pins which Homily had placed as candle-holders among the tea things; the old teapot, a hollow oak-apple, with its quill spout and wired-on handle—burnished it was now and hard with age; there were two roast sliced chestnuts which they would eat like toast with butter and a cold boiled chestnut which Pod would cut like bread; there was a plate of hot dried currants, well plumped before the fire; there were cinnamon breadcrumbs, crispy golden, and lightly dredged with sugar, and in front of each place, oh, delight of delights, a single potted shrimp. Homily had put out the silver plates—the florin ones for herself and Arrietty and the half-crown one for Pod.

"Come along, Arrietty, if you've washed your hands," exclaimed Homily, taking up the teapot, "don't dream!"

Arrietty drew up a cotton spool and sat down slowly. She watched her mother pulling on the spout of the teapot; this was always an interesting moment. The thicker end of the quill being inside the teapot, a slight pull just before pouring would draw it tightly into the hole and thus prevent a leak. If, as sometimes happened, a trace of dampness appeared about the join, it only meant a rather harder pull and a sudden gentle twist.

"Well?" said Homily, gingerly pouring. "Tell us what you saw!"

"She didn't see so much," said Pod, cutting himself a slice of boiled chestnut to eat with his shrimp.

"Didn't she see the overmantel?"

"No," said Pod, "we never went in the morning room."

"What about my blotting paper?"

"I never got it," said Pod.

"Now that's a nice thing—" began Homily.

"Maybe," said Pod, munching steadily, "but I had me feeling. I had it bad."

"What's that?" asked Arrietty. "His feeling?"

"Up the back of his head and in his fingers," said Homily. "It's a feeling your father gets when"—she dropped her voice—"there's someone about."

"Oh," said Arrietty and seemed to shrink.

"That's why I brought her along home," said Pod.

"And was there anyone?" asked Homily anxiously.

Pod took a mouthful of shrimp. "Must have been," he said, "but I didn't see nothing."

Homily leaned across the table. "Did you have any feeling, Arrietty?"

Arrietty started. "Oh," she said, "do we all have it?"

"Well, not in the same place," said Homily. "Mine starts at the back of me ankles and then me knees go. My mother —hers used to start just under her chin and run right round her neck—"

"And tied in a bow at the back," said Pod, munching.

"No, Pod," protested Homily, "it's a fact. No need to be sarcastic. All the Bell-Pulls were like that. Like a collar, she said it was—"

"Pity it didn't choke her," said Pod.

"Now, Pod, be fair; she had her points."

"Points!" said Pod. "She was all points!"

Arrietty moistened her lips; she glanced nervously from Pod to Homily. "I didn't feel anything," she said.

"Well," said Homily, "perhaps it was a false alarm."

"Oh no," began Arrietty, "it wasn't—" and, as Homily glanced at her sharply, she faltered: "I mean if Papa felt something—I mean— Perhaps," she went on, "I don't have it."

"Well," said Homily, "you're young. It'll come, all in good rime. You go and stand in our kitchen, just under the chute, when Mrs. Driver's raking out the stove upstairs. Stand right up on a stool or something—so's you're fairly near the ceiling. It'll come—with practice."

After tea, when Pod had gone to his workbench and Homily was washing up, Arrietty rushed to her diary: "I'll just open it," she thought, trembling with haste, "anywhere." It fell open at the 9th and 10th of July: "Talk of Camps but Stay at Home. Old Cameronian Colors in Glasgow Cathedral, 1885"—that's what it said for the 9th. And on the 10th the page was headed: "Make Hay while the Sun Shines. Snowdon Peak sold for £5,750, 1889." Arrietty tore out this last page. Turning it over she read on the reverse side: "July 11th: Make Not a Toil of your Pleasure. Niagara passed by C. D. Graham in a cask, 1886." No, she thought, I'll choose the 10th, "Make Hay while the Sun Shines," and, crossing out her last entry ("Mother out of sorts"), she wrote below it:

Dear Uncle Hendreary,

I hope you are quite well and the cousins are well and Aunt Lupy. We are very well and I am learning to borrow,

your loving neice,

Arrietty Clock

Write a letter on the back please

"What are you doing, Arrietty?" called Homily from the kitchen.

"Writing in my diary."

"Oh," said Homily shortly.

"Anything you want?" asked Arrietty.

"It'll do later," said Homily.

Arrietty folded the letter and placed it carefully between the pages of Bryce's
Tom Thumb Gazetteer of the World
and, in the diary, she wrote: "Went borrowing. Wrote to H. Talked to B." After that Arrietty sat for a long time staring into the fire, and thinking and thinking and thinking....