The Borrowers Afield (14 page)

"Quiet, Homily!" implored Pod.

"Why? For heavens' sakes—they know we're here: quiet or noisy—what's the difference?"

Mild Eye swore suddenly as though the cat had scratched him. "Cart him right out," said the boy again, "and see she holds him."

"Don't fret," said Mild Eye. "We can shut the door."

"That b'ain't no good," said the boy. "We can't shut the top half; we got to have light."

On the threshold Mild Eye hesitated. "Don't you touch nothin'," he said, and stood there a moment, waiting before he clumped off down the steps. On the bottom rung he seemed to slip: the borrowers could hear him swearing. "This blamed boot," they heard him say and something about the heel.

"You all right?" called out the boy carelessly. The answer was an oath.

"Block your ears," whispered Homily to Arrietty. "Oh, my goodness me, did you hear what he said?"

"Yes," began Arrietty obligingly, "he said—"

"Oh, you wicked, heathen girl," cried Homily angrily. "Shame on yourself for listening!"

"Quiet, Homily," begged Pod again.

"But you know what happened, Pod?" whispered Homily excitedly. "The heel came off the boot! What did I tell you, up in the ditch, when you would take out them nails?" For one brief moment she forgot her fears and gave a tiny giggle.

"Look," breathed Arrietty suddenly and reached for her mother's hand. They looked.

The boy, leaning toward them on one elbow, his steady gaze fixed on the slit of darkness between the locker and floor, was feeling stealthily in the right hand pocket of his coat—it was the deep, pouched pocket common to gamekeepers.

"Oh, my..." muttered Homily as Pod took her hand.

"Shut your eyes," said Pod. "No use running and you won't know nothing: a ferret strikes quick."

There was a pause, tense and solemn, while three small hearts beat quickly. Homily broke it.

"I've tried to be a good wife to you, Pod," she announced tearfully, one eye screwed obediently shut, the other cautiously open.

"You've been first-rate," said Pod, his eyes on the boy: against the light, it was hard to see, but something moved in his hand: a creature he had taken from his pocket.

"A bit sharp sometimes," went on Homily.

"It doesn't matter now," said Pod.

"I'm sorry, Pod," said Homily.

"I forgive you," said Pod absently; a deeper shadow now had fallen across the carpet: Mild Eye had come back up the steps. Pod saw the woman had sneaked up behind him, clasping the cat in her shawl.

The boy did not start or turn. "Make for my pocket..." he said steadily, his eyes on the gap.

"What's that?" asked Mild Eye, surprised.

"Make for my pocket," repeated the boy. "Do you hear what I say?" And suddenly he loosed on the carpet the thing he had held in his hand.

"Oh, my goodness—" cried Homily, clutching on to Pod.

"Whatever is it?" she went on, after a moment, both eyes suddenly open: some kind of living creature it was, but certainly not a ferret ... too slow ... too angular ... too upright ... too—

Arrietty let out a glad cry. "It's Spiller!"

"What?" exclaimed Homily, almost crossly—tricked she felt, when she thought of those splendid "last words."

"It's Spiller," Arrietty sang out again. "Spiller ... Spiller ... Spiller!"

"Looking quite ridiculous," remarked Homily: and indeed he did look rather odd and sausage-like, stuffed out in his stiff new clothes. He would render them down gradually to a wearable suppleness.

"What are you waiting for?" asked Spiller. "You heard what he said. Come on now. Get moving, can't you?"

"That boy?" exclaimed Homily. "Was he speaking to us?"

"Who else?" snapped Spiller. "He don't want Mild Eye in his pocket. Come on—"

"His pocket!" exclaimed Homily in a frantic whisper; •she turned to Pod. "Now let's get this right: young Tom Goodenough wants me"—she touched her own chest—"to run out there, right in the open, get meself over his trouser-leg, across his middle, up to his hip, and potter down all meek and mild into his pocket?"

"Not you only," explained Pod; "all of us."

"He's crazy," announced Homily firmly, tightening her lips.

"Now, see here, Homily," began Pod.

"I'd sooner perish," Homily asserted.

"That's just what you will do," said Pod.

"Remember that peg-bag?" she reminded him. "I couldn't face it, Pod. And where's he going to take us? Tell me that?"

"How should I know?" exclaimed Pod. "Now, come on, Homily, you do what he says, there's me brave old girl ... Take her by the wrist, Spiller, she's got to come ... Ready Arrietty? Now for it—" and suddenly there they were, the whole group of them—out in the open.

Chapter Nineteen

"Fortune favors the brave."
Sherman's March to the Coast began, 1864

[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, November 13th]

T
HE WOMAN
screeched when she saw them: she dropped the cat, and ran for her life making hell-for-leather toward the main road. Mild Eye, too, was taken aback: he sat down on the bed with his feet in the air as though a contaminated flood were swirling across the carpet: the cat, unnerved by the general uproar, made a frantic leap for the overmantel, bringing down two mugs, a framed photograph and a spray of paper rosebuds.

Pod and Arrietty made their own slithering way across the folds of trouser-leg to the rising slope of hip; but poor Spiller, pulling and pushing a protesting Homily, was picked up and dropped in. For one awful moment, attached by the wrist to Spiller, Homily dangled in air, before the boy's quick fingers gathered her up and tidied her neatly away. Only just in time—for Mild Eye, recovering, had made a sudden grab, missing her by inches ("Torn us apart, he would have," she said later, "like a couple of bananas!"): deep in the pocket, she heard his angry shout of "Four of 'em you got there. Come on: fair's fair—hand over them first two!"

They did not know what happened next: all was darkness and jumble. Some sort of struggle was going on—there was the sound of heavy breathing, muttered swear words and the pocket swayed and bounced. Then, by the bumping, they knew the boy was running and Mild Eye, shouting behind him, was cursing his heel-less boot. They heard these shouts grow fainter; and the crackle of breaking branches as the boy crashed through a hedge.

There was no conversation in the pocket: all four of them felt too dazed. At last Pod, wedged upside down in a corner, freed his mouth from fluff. "You all right, Homily?" he gasped. Homily, tightly interwoven with Spiller and Arrietty, could not quite tell. Pod heard a slight squeak. "Me leg's gone numb," said Homily unhappily.

"Not broken, is it?" asked Pod anxiously.

"Can't feel nothing in it," said Homily.

"Can you move it?" asked Pod.

There was a sharp exclamation from Spiller as Homily said, "No."

"If it's the leg you're pinching," remarked Spiller, "stands to reason you can't move it."

"How do you know?" asked Homily.

"Because it's mine," he said.

The boy's steps became slower: he seemed to be going uphill; after a while he sat down. The great hand came down amongst them. Homily began to whimper but the fingers slid past her: they were feeling for Spiller. The coat was pulled round and the pocket flap held open, so the boy could peer at them. "You all right, Spiller?" he asked.

Spiller grunted.

"Which is Homily?" asked the boy.

"The noisy one," said Spiller. "I told you."

"You all right, Homily?" asked the boy.

Homily, terrified, was silent.

The great fingers came down again, sliding their way into the pocket.

Spiller, standing now with legs apart and back supported against the upright seam called out tersely, "Leave 'em be."

The fingers stopped moving. "I wanted to see if they were all right," said the boy.

"They're all right," said Spiller.

"I'd like to have 'em out," the boy went on. "I'd like to have a look at 'em." He peered downwards at the open pocket. "You're not dead, are you?" he inquired anxiously. "You b'ain't none of you dead?"

"How could we say, if we was?" muttered Homily irritably.

"You leave 'em be," said Spiller again. "It's warm in here: you don't want to bring 'em out sudden into the cold. You'll see 'em often enough," he consoled the boy, "once we get indoors."

The fingers withdrew and they were in the dark again: there was a rocking and the boy stood up. Pod, Homily and Arrietty slid the length of the bottom seam of the pocket, fetching up against the opposite corner: it was full of dried bread crumbs, jagged and hard as concrete. "Ouch!" cried Homily unhappily. Spiller, Arrietty noticed, though he swayed on his feet, managed to keep upright: Spiller, she guessed, had traveled by pocket before: the boy was walking again now, and the coat swayed with a more predictable rhythm. "After a while," Arrietty thought, "I'll have a go at standing myself."

Pod experimentally broke off a jagged piece of breadcrumb which, after patient sucking, slowly began to dissolve. "I'll try a bit of that," said Homily, holding out her hand; she had revived a little and was feeling peckish.

"Where's he taking us?" she asked Spiller after a while.

"Round the wood and over the hill."

"Where he lives with his grandpa?"

"That's right," admitted Spiller.

"I ain't ever heard tell much about gamekeepers," said Homily, "nor what they'd be apt to do with—a borrower, say. Nor what sort of boy this is neither. I mean," she went on in a worried voice, "my mother-in-law had an uncle once who was kept in a tin box with four holes in the lid and fed twice a day by an eye-dropper..."

"He ain't that sort of boy," said Spiller.

"Whatever's an eye-dropper?" asked Pod: he took it to be some strange sort of craft or profession.

"Then there was Lupy's cousin, Oggin, you remember," went on Homily. "They made a regular kind of world for him in the bottom of an old tin bath in the out-house, grass, pond and all. And they gave him a cart to ride in and a lizard for company. But the sides of the bath were good and slippery: they knew he couldn't get out..."

"Lupy?" repeated Spiller wonderingly. "Wouldn't be two called that?"

"This one married my brother Hendreary," said Homily. "Why," she exclaimed with sudden excitement, "you don't say you know her!"

The pocket had stopped swaying: they heard some metallic sound and the sliding squeak of a latch.

"I know her all right," whispered Spiller. "She makes my winter clothes."

"Quiet," urged Pod, "we've arrived." He had heard the sound of an opening door and could smell an indoor smell.

"You know
LUPY
?" Homily persisted, unaware that even the pocket had become darker. "But what are they doing? And where are they living—she and Hendreary? We thought they was eaten by foxes, children and all..."

"Quiet, Homily," implored Pod. Strange movements seemed to be going on, doors were opening and shutting; so stealthily the boy was walking the pocket now hung still.

"Tell us, Spiller, quick," went on Homily; but she dropped her voice to an obedient whisper. "You must know! Where are they living now?"

Spiller hesitated—in the semi-darkness he seemed to smile.

"They're living here," he said.

The boy now seemed to be kneeling.

As the fingers came down again feeling amongst them, Homily let out a cry. "It's all right," whispered Pod as she burrowed back among the crumbs. "Keep your head—we got to come out sometime."

Spiller went first; he sailed away from them—nonchalantly astride a finger, without even bothering to glance back. Then it was Arrietty's turn. "Oh, my goodness me..." muttered Homily, "where ever will they put her?"

Pod's turn next; but Homily went with him. She scrambled aboard at the last moment by creeping under the thumb. There was hardly time to feel sick (it was the swoosh through the empty air which Homily always dreaded) so deftly and gently they found themselves set down.

A gleam of firelight struck the tiny group as they stood beside the hearth, against a high, wooden wall: it was, they discovered later, the side of the log-box. They stood together—close and scared, controlling their longing to run. Spiller, they noticed, had disappeared.

The boy, on one knee, towered above them—a terrifying mountain of flesh. The firelight flickered on his downturned face: they could feel the draught of his breathing.

"It's all right," he assured them, "you'll be all right now." He was staring with great interest, as a collector would stare at a new-found specimen. His hand hovered

above them as though he longed to touch them, to pick one of them up, to examine each more closely.

Nervously Pod cleared his throat. "Where's Spiller?" he asked.

"He'll be back," said the boy. After a moment, he added, "I got six altogether in there."

"Six what?" asked Homily nervously.

"Six borrowers," said the boy, "I reckon I got the best collection of borrowers in two counties. And—" he added, "me grand-dad ain't seen one, though his eyes is sharp enough. Yet he ain't ever seen a borrower."

Pod cleared his throat again. "He ain't supposed to," he said.

"Some I got in there—" the boy jerked his head toward the log-box, "I never sees neither. Scared. Some folks say you can't never tame 'em. You can give 'em the earth, 'tis said, but they'll never come out and be civil."

"I would," said Arrietty.

"Now you behave yourself," snapped Homily, alarmed.

"Spiller would, too," said Arrietty.

"Spiller's different," replied Homily with a nervous glance toward the boy—Spiller, she felt, was the boy's curator: the go-between of this rare collection. "Gets so much a head, I wouldn't wonder?"

"Here he is," said Arrietty, looking toward the corner of the log-box.

Noiselessly, he had come upon them.

"She won't come out," said Spiller to the boy.

"Oh," exclaimed Homily, "does he mean Lupy?"

No one answered: Spiller stood silent, looking up at the boy. The boy frowned thoughtfully; he seemed disappointed. He looked them over once more, examining each of them from head to foot as though loath to see them go; he sighed a little. "Then, take 'em in," he said.