The Borrowers Afloat Read online

  "Borrow what?" asked Hendreary. "No, it isn't borrowers we want; on the contrary"—he glanced across the table, and Homily, meeting his eye, suddenly turned pink— "it's something left to borrow. They won't leave a crumb behind, those two, not if I know 'em. We'll have to live, from now on, on just what we've saved..."

  "For as long as it lasts," said Lupy grimly.

  "For as long as it lasts," repeated Hendreary, "and such as it is." All their eyes grew wider.

  "Which it won't do forever," said Lupy. She glanced up at her store shelves and quickly away again. She too had become rather red.

  "About borrowing..." ventured Homily. "I was meaning out-of-doors ... the vegetable patch ... beans and peas ... and suchlike."

  "The birds will have them," said Hendreary, "with this house closed and the human beings gone. The birds always know in a trice.... And what's more," he went on, "there's more wild things and vermin in these woods than in all the rest of the county put together ... weasels, stoats, foxes, badgers, shrikes, magpies, sparrow hawks, crows..."

  "That's enough, Hendreary," Pod put in quickly. "Homily's feeling faint...."

  "It's all right..." murmured Homily. She took a sip of water out of the acorn cup, and staring down at the table, she rested her head on her hand.

  Hendreary, carried away by the length of his list, seemed not to notice. "...owls and buzzards," he concluded in a satisfied voice. "You've seen the skins for yourselves nailed up on the outhouse door, and the birds strung up on a thornbush, gamekeeper's gibbet they call it. He keeps them down all right, when he's well and about. And the boy, too, takes a hand. But with them two gone—!" Hendreary raised his gaunt arms and cast his eyes toward the ceiling.

  No one spoke. Arrietty stoke a look at Timmus, whose face had become very pale.

  "And when the house is closed and shuttered," Hendreary went on again suddenly, "how do you propose to get out?" He looked round the table triumphantly as one who had made a point. Homily, her head on her hand, was silent. She had begun to regret having spoken.

  "There's always ways," murmured Pod.

  Hendreary pounced on him. "Such as?" When Pod did not reply at once, Hendreary thundered on, "The last time they went away we had a plague of field mice ... the whole house awash with them, upstairs and down. Now when they lock up, they lock up proper. Not so much as a spider could get in!"

  "Nor out," said Lupy, nodding.

  "Nor out," agreed Hendreary, and as though exhausted by his own eloquence, he took a sip from the cup.

  For a moment or two no one spoke. Then Pod cleared his throat. "They won't be gone forever," he said.

  Hendreary shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows?"

  "Looks to me," said Pod, "that they'll always need a gamekeeper. Say this one goes, another moves in like. Won't be empty long—a good house like this on the edge of the coverts, with water laid on in the washhouse...."

  "Who knows?" said Hendreary again.

  "Your problem, as I see it," went on Pod, "is to hold out over a period."

  "That's it," agreed Hendreary.

  "But you don't know for how long; that's your problem."

  "That's it," agreed Hendreary.

  "The farther you can stretch your food," Pod elaborated, "the longer you'll be able to wait...."

  "Stands to reason," said Lupy.

  "And," Pod went on, "the fewer mouths you have to feed, the farther the food will stretch."

  "That's right," agreed Hendreary.

  "Now," went on Pod, "say there are six of you..."

  "Nine," said Hendreary, looking round the table, "to be exact."

  "You don't count us," said Pod. "Homily, Arrietty, and me—we're moving out." There was a stunned silence round the table as Pod, very calm, turned to Homily. "That's right, isn't it?" he asked her.

  Homily stared back at him as though he were crazy, and, in despair, he nudged her with his foot. At that she swallowed hastily and began to nod her head. "That's right..." she managed to stammer, blinking her eye-lids.

  Then pandemonium broke out: questions, suggestions, protestations, and arguments.... "You don't know what you're saying, Pod," Hendreary kept repeating, and Lupy kept on asking, "Moving out where to?"

  "No good being hasty, Pod," Hendreary said at last. "The choice of course is yours. But we're all in this together, and for as long as it lasts"—he glanced around the table as though putting the words on record—"and such as it is, what is ours is yours."

  "That's very kind of you, Hendreary," said Pod.

  "Not at all," said Hendreary, speaking rather too smoothly, "it stands to reason."

  "It's only human," put in Lupy: she was very fond of this word.

  "But," went on Hendreary, as Pod remained silent, "I see you've made up your mind."

  "That's right," said Pod.

  "In which case," said Hendreary, "there's nothing we can do but adjourn the meeting and wish you all good luck!"

  "That's right," said Pod.

  "Good luck, Pod," said Hendreary.

  "Thanks, Hendreary," said Pod.

  "And to all three valiant souls—Pod, Homily, and little Arrietty—good luck and good borrowing!"

  Homily murmured something and then there was silence: an awkward silence while eyes avoided eyes. "Come on, me old girl," said Pod at last, and turning to Homily, he helped her to her feet. "If you'll excuse us," he said to Lupy, who had become rather red in the face again, "we got one or two plans to discuss."

  They all rose, and Hendreary, looking worried, followed Pod to the door. "When do you think of leaving, Pod?"

  "In a day or two's time," said Pod, "when the coast's clear down below."

  "No hurry, you know," said Hendreary. "And any tackle you want—"

  "Thanks," said Pod.

  "...just say the word."

  "I will," said Pod. He gave a half-smile, rather shy, and went on through the door.

  Chapter Six

  Homily went up the laths without speaking; she went straight to the inner room and sat down on the bed. She sat there shivering slightly and staring at her hands.

  "I had to say it," said Pod, "and we have to do it, what's more."

  Homily nodded.

  "You see how we're placed?" said Pod.

  Homily nodded again.

  "Any suggestions?" said Pod. "Anything else we could do?"

  "No," said Homily, "we've got to go. And what's more," she added, "we'd have had to anyway."

  "How do you make that out?" said Pod.

  "I wouldn't stay here with Lupy," declared Homily, "not if she bribed me with molten gold, which she isn't likely to. I kept quiet, Pod, for the child's sake. A bit of young company, I thought, and a family background. I even kept quiet about the furniture...."

  "Yes, you did," said Pod.

  "It's only—" said Homily, and again she began to shiver, "that he went on so about the vermin...."

  "Yes, he did go on," said Pod.

  "Better a place of our own," said Homily.

  "Yes," agreed Pod, "better a place of our own..." But he gazed round the room in a hunted kind of way, and his flat round face looked blank.

  When Arrietty arrived upstairs with Timmus, she looked both scared and elated.

  "Oh," said Homily, "here you are." And she stared rather blankly at Timmus.

  "He would come," Arrietty told her, holding him tight by the hand.

  "Well, take him along to your room. And tell him a story or something...."

  "AH right. I will in a minute. But, first, I just wanted to ask you—"

  "Later," said Pod, "there'll be plenty of time: we'll talk about everything later."

  "That's right," said Homily. "You tell Timmus a story."

  "Not about owls?" pleaded Timmus; he still looked rather wide-eyed.

  "No," agreed Homily, "not about owls. You ask her to tell you about the dollhouse"—she glanced at Arrietty—"or that other place—what's it called now?—that place with the plaster borrowers?"


  But Arrietty seemed not to be listening. "You did mean it, didn't you?" she burst out suddenly.

  Homily and Pod stared back at her, startled by her tone. "Of course, we meant it," said Pod.

  "Oh," cried Arrietty, "thank goodness ... thank goodness," and her eyes filled suddenly with tears. "To be out of doors again ... to see the sun, to..." Running forward, she embraced them each in turn. "It will be all right—I know it will!" Aglow with relief and joy, she turned back to Timmus. "Come, Timmus, I know a lovely story—better than the dollhouse—about a whole town of houses: a place called Little Fordham...."

  This place, of recent years, had become a kind of legend to borrowers. How they got to know it no one could remember—perhaps a conversation overheard in some kitchen and corroborated later through dining room or nursery—but know of it they did. Little Fordham, it appeared, was a complete model village. Solidly built, it stood out of doors in all weather in the garden of the man who had designed it, and it covered half an acre. It had a church, with organ music laid on, a school, a row of shops, and—because it lay by a stream—its own port, shipping and custom houses. It was inhabited—or so they had heard—by a race of plaster figures, borrower-size, who stood about in frozen positions, or who, wooden-faced and hopeless, traveled interminably in trains. They also knew that from early morning until dusk troops of human beings wound around and about it, removed on asphalt paths and safely enclosed by chains. They knew—as the birds knew—that these human beings would drop litter—sandwich crusts, nuts, buns, half-eaten apples, ("Not that you can live on that sort of stuff," Homily would remark. "I mean, you'd want a change....") But what fascinated them most about the place was the number of empty houses—houses to suit every taste and every size of family: detached, semidetached, stuck together in a row, or standing comfortably each in its separate garden—houses that were solidly built and solidly roofed, set firmly in the ground, and that no human being, however curious, could carelessly wrench open—as they could with dollhouses—and poke about inside. In fact, as Arrietty had heard, doors and windows were one with the structure—there were no kinds of openings at all. But this was a drawback easily remedied. "Not that they'd open up the front doors—" she explained in whispers to Timmus as they lay curled up on Arrietty's bed. "Borrowers wouldn't be so silly: they'd burrow through the soft earth and get in underneath ... and no human being would know they were there."

  "Go on about the trains," whispered Timmus.

  And Arrietty went on, and on—explaining and inventing, creating another kind of life. Deep in this world she forgot the present crisis, her parents' worries and her uncle's fears, she forgot the dusty drabness of the rooms between the laths, the hidden dangers of the woods outside and that already she was feeling rather hungry.

  Chapter Seven

  "But where are we going to?" asked Homily for about the twentieth time. It was two days later, and they were up in Arrietty's room sorting things for the journey, discarding and selecting from oddments spread round on the floor. They could only take—Pod had been very firm about this—what Lupy described as hand luggage. She had given them for this purpose the rubberized sleeve of the waterproof raincoat, which they had neatly cut up into squares.

  "I thought," said Pod, "we'd try first to make for that hole in the bank...."

  "I don't think I'd relish that hole in the bank," said Homily. "Not without the boot."

  "Now, Homily, we've got to go somewhere ... and it's getting on for spring."

  Homily turned and looked at him. "Do you know the way?"

  "No," said Pod and went on folding the length of tarred string. "We've got to ask."

  "What's the weather like now?" asked Homily.

  "That's one of the things," said Pod, "I've told Arrietty to find out."

  With some misgivings, but in a spirit of "needs must," they had sent her down the matchstick ladder to interview young Tom. "You've got to ask him to leave us some loophole," Pod had instructed her, "no matter how small, so long as we can get out of doors. If need be, we can undo the luggage and pass the pieces through one by one. If the worst came to the worst, I wouldn't say no to a ground-floor window and something below to break the drop. But like as not, they'll latch those tight and shutter them across. And tell him to leave the wood box well pulled out from the skirting. None of us can move it, not even when it's empty. A nice pickle we'd be in, and all the Hendrearys too, if he trundles off to Leighton Buzzard and leaves us shut in the wall. And tell him where we're making for—that field called Perkin's Beck—but don't tell him nothing about the hole in the bank—and get him to give you a few landmarks, something to put us on our way. It's been a bit chilly indoors lately, for March: ask him if there's snow. If there's snow, we're done: we've got to wait...."

  But could they wait, he wondered now as he hung the coil of tarred string on a nail in the lath and thoughtfully took up his hatpin. Hendreary had said in a burst of generosity, "We're all in this together." But Lupy had remarked afterwards, discussing their departure with Homily, "I don't want to seem hard, Homily, but in times like these, it's each one for his own. And in our place you'd say the same." She had been very kind about giving them things—the mackintosh sleeve was a case in point—but the store shelves, they noticed, were suddenly bare: all the food had been whisked away and hidden out of sight, and Lupy had doled out fifteen dried peas that she had said she hoped would "last them." These they kept upstairs, soaking in the soap dish, and Homily would take them down three at a time to boil them on Lupy's stove.

  To "last them" for how long, Pod wondered now, as he rubbed a speck of rust off his hatpin. Good as new, he thought, as he tested the point, pure steel and longer than he was. No, they would have to get off, he realized, the minute the coast was clear, snow or no snow....

  "Here's someone now," exclaimed Homily. "It must be Arrietty." They went to the hole and helped her onto the floor. The child looked pleased, they noticed, and flushed with the heat of the fire. In one hand she carried a long steel nail, in the other a sliver of cheese. "We can eat this now," she said excitedly. "There's a lot more downstairs: he pushed it through the hole behind the log box. There's a slice of dry bread, some more cheese, six roasted chestnuts, and an egg."

  "Not a hen's egg?" said Pod.

  "Yes."

  "Oh, my," exclaimed Homily, "how are we going to get it up the laths?"

  "And how are we going to cook it?" asked Pod.

  Homily tossed her head. "I'll boil it with the peas on Lupy's stove. It's our egg; no one can say a word."

  "It's boiled already," Arrietty told them, "hard boiled."

  "Thank goodness for that," exclaimed Pod. "I'll take down the razor blade—we can bring it up in slices. What's the news?" he asked Arrietty.

  "Well, the weather's not bad at all," she said. "Springlike, he says, when the sun's out, and pretty warm."

  "Never mind that," said Pod. "What about the loophole?"

  "That's all right too. There's a worn-out place at the bottom of the door—the front door—where feet have been kicking it open, like Tom does when his arms are full of sticks. It's shaped like an arch. But they've nailed a piece of wood across it now to keep the field mice out. Two nails it's got, one on either side. This is one of them; young Tom pulled it out," and she showed them the nail she had brought. "Now all we've got to do, he says, is to swing the bit of wood up on the other nail and prop it safely, and we can all go through—underneath. After we've gone, Hendreary and the cousins can knock it in again, that is if they want to."

  "Good," said Pod. "Good." He seemed very pleased. "They'll want to all right, because of the field mice. And when did he say they were leaving, him and his grandpa, I mean?"

  "What he said before: the day after tomorrow. But he hasn't found his ferret."

  "Good," said Pod again. He wasn't interested in ferrets. "And now we'd better nip down quick and get that food up the laths, or someone might see it first."

  Homily and Arrietty climbed down w
ith him to lend a hand. They brought up the bread and cheese and the roasted chestnuts, but the egg they decided to leave. "There's a lot of good food in a hen's egg," Pod pointed out, "and it's all wrapped up already, as you might say, clean and neat in its shell. We'll take that egg along with us and we'll take it just as it is." So, they rolled the egg along inside the wainscot to a shadowy corner in which they had seen shavings. "It can wait for us there," said Pod.

  Chapter Eight

  On the day the human beings moved out, the borrowers kept very quiet. Sitting round the doorplate table, they listened to the hangings, the bumpings, the runnings up and downstairs with interest and anxiety. They heard voices they had not heard before and sounds that they could not put a name to. They went on keeping quiet ... long after the final bang of the front door had echoed into silence.

  "You never know," Hendreary whispered to Pod. "They might come back for something." But after a while the emptiness of the house below seemed to steal in upon them, seeping mysteriously through the lath and plaster—and it seemed to Pod a final kind of emptiness. "I think it's all right now," he ventured at last. "Suppose one of us went down to reconnoitre?"

  "I'll go," said Hendreary, rising to his feet. "None of you move until I give the word. I want the air clear for sound...."

  They sat in silence while he was gone. Homily stared at their three modest bundles lying by the door, strapped by Pod to his hatpin. Lupy had lent Homily a little moleskin jacket—for which Lupy had grown too stout. Arrietty wore a scarf of Eggletina's; the tall, willowy creature had placed it round her neck, wound it three times about, but had said not a word. "Doesn't she ever speak?" Homily had asked once, on a day when she and Lupy had been more friendly. "Hardly ever," Lupy had admitted, "and never smiles. She's been like that for years, ever since that rime when as a child she ran away from home...."

  After a while Hendreary returned and confirmed that the coast was clear. "But better light your dips; it's later than I thought...."