Moominvalley in November Page 8

  word! She whispered it over and over again to herself.

  In the silence of the night Fillyjonk took her kitchen lamp and went to hunt for the decorations in the cupboard above Moominmamma’s wardrobe. The cardboard box with the Japanese lanterns and the ribbon was in its usual place on top on the right, they were all jumbled up and covered in candlewax. The Easter ornaments, old birthday wrapping-papers with rose patterns, still had greetings on them: ‘To my darling Pappa,’ ‘Happy Birthday dear Hem-ulen,’ ‘With love and kisses this we send, To Little My our own dear Friend.’ ‘To Gaffsie, with best wishes.’ They hadn’t liked Gaffsie as much.

  Then she came across the paper streamers. Fillyjonk carried everything down to the kitchen and spread it all out on the draining-board. She wet her hair and put in the curlers, whistling softly all the time, quite in tune and much better than she was aware of herself.

  *

  Toft had heard them all talking about a party, although the Hemulen had called it ‘an evening at home’. He knew that everyone had to contribute a turn to the programme to entertain the others and he suspected that at ‘an evening at home’ one had to be talkative and jolly. He didn’t feel jolly. He wanted to be alone to try and work out why he had been so terribly angry at that Sunday dinner. It frightened him to realize that there was a completely different toft in him, a toft he didn’t know and who might come back and disgrace him in front of all the others. After that Sunday, the Hemulen had been building his house all alone. He didn’t call for Toft any longer. They were both embarrassed.

  How could I have been so angry with him? Toft brooded. There was nothing to be angry about and I’ve never been angry before. It just came over me, like something rising and overflowing, like a waterfall! And I’m so good-natured, too.

  The good-natured Toft went down to the river for water. He filled the bucket and put it down outside the tent. Snufkin was sitting inside making a wooden-spoon, or perhaps nothing at all, just keeping quiet and knowing about things better than anyone else. Everything Snufkin said sounded so good, so right, and when you were alone again you didn’t understand what he meant and felt too shy to go back and ask. Or sometimes he didn’t answer your questions at all but talked about tea or the weather and chewed his pipe and made that awful vague noise, making you feel you’d asked something quite dreadful.

  I wonder why they all admire him, Toft thought seriously. Of course, it’s stylish to smoke a pipe. Perhaps they admire him because he walks away and shuts himself up. But I do the same and nobody thinks anything of it. What’s wrong is that I’m too small. Toft strolled farther down the garden, right down to the big pool, and thought: I don’t want friends who are kind without really liking me and I don’t want anybody who is kind just so as not to be unpleasant. And I don’t want anybody who is scared. I want somebody who is never scared and who really likes me. I want a mamma!

  The big pool was a gloomy place in the autumn, a place to hide oneself and wait. But Toft had a feeling that the Creature wasn’t there any longer. It had gone. It had gnashed its new teeth and made off. And it was he, Toft, who had given the Creature its teeth.

  Grandpa-Grumble sat dozing on the bridge. As Toft passed him, he roused himself and shouted: ‘We’re having a party! A big party in my honour!’

  Toft tried to slip past him, but Grandpa-Grumble caught hold of him with his stick. ‘You must listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’ve told the Hemulen that the Ancestor is my best friend and hadn’t had a party for a hundred years, and he must be invited! As guest of honour! “Yes, yes, yes,” the Hemulen says. But I’m telling all of you that I shan’t come to the party without the Ancestor! Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ muttered Toft. ‘I understand.’ But he was thinking about the Creature.

  Mymble was sitting on the veranda combing her hair in the pale sunshine. ‘Hallo, Toft,’ she said. ‘Have you got your turn ready?’

  ‘I can’t do anything,’ answered Toft, turning away.

  ‘Come here,’ said Mymble. ‘Your hair needs combing.’

  Toft placed himself in front of her obediently and Mymble started to comb his scruffy hair. ‘If only you combed it for ten minutes every day it wouldn’t be so bad,’ she said. ‘It falls well, and it’s a nice colour. So you can’t do anything? Well, you were angry, weren’t you? But then you crept under the table and spoilt it all.’

  Toft stood still, he liked having his hair combed. ‘Mymble,’ he said shyly. ‘Where would you go if you were a great big angry animal?’

  Mymble answered immediately: ‘To the bottom of the back garden in those horrid trees behind the kitchen. That’s where they went to when they were angry.’ She went on combing, and Toft said: ‘You mean when you are angry.’

  ‘No. The family,’ Mymble said. ‘They went to the back garden when they were fed up and angry and wanted a bit of peace and quiet.’

  Toft took a step backwards and cried: ‘It’s not true! They were never angry!’

  ‘Stand still,’ said Mymble. ‘How do you think I can comb your hair if you jump about like that? And I can tell you that both Moominpappa and Moominmamma got terribly tired of one another from time to time. Come here.’

  ‘I won’t!’ exclaimed Toft. ‘Moominmamma was never like that! She was the same all the time!’ He pulled open the drawing-room door and slammed it behind him. Mymble was lying. She didn’t know anything about Moominmamma. She didn’t know that it was impossible for a mamma to behave badly.

  *

  Fillyjonk hung up the last streamer, a blue one. She stepped backwards and looked at her kitchen. It was the dirtiest and dustiest in the whole world, but oh! how artistically itwas decorated! They were to have an early dinner on the veranda, a heated-up fish soup, and after seven o’clock there were to be Welsh rarebits and cider. She had found the cider in Moominpappa’s wardrobe and the tin with the cheese rinds on the top shelf in the pantry. It was labelled ‘for field mice’.

  Fillyjonk put the napkins on the table with great elegance, each napkin was shaped like a swan (not for Snufkin of course, he always refused to use a napkin). She whistled softly, her forehead was covered with a mass of tight little curls and it was easy to see that she had put make-up on her eyebrows. Nothing was crawling behind the wallpaper, nothing was scuttling along the wainscot, the death-watch beetle had stopped ticking. She had no time for them just now, she had to think of her number on the programme. A shadow-play: ‘The Returning Family’. It’ll be very dramatic, Fillyjonk thought calmly. They’ll love it. She latched the kitchen door and the drawing-room door. She laid out some cartridge-paper on the draining-board and started to draw. The picture was to show four people in a boat. Two big people, one smaller and one quite tiny. The tiny one sat in the prow of the boat. The drawing didn’t turn out quite as Fillyjonk had imagined it and she hadn’t got a rubber. But the idea was the important thing. When the picture was ready she cut it out and nailed the boat to the broom handle. She worked quickly and deliberately, whistling all the time, not Snufkin’s songs but her own. Actually, Fillyjonk whistled much better than she could draw or knock in nails.

  Then she lit the kitchen lamp, it was dusk. But today it wasn’t a melancholy twilight, it was full of promise. The lamp threw a faint light on the wall, she lifted up the broom with the silhouette of the family in the boat and the shadow appeared on the wallpaper. Now she must get a sheet, the white surface on which they were going to sail out across the sea…

  ‘Open the door!’ shouted Grandpa-Grumble outside the drawing-room. Fillyjonk opened it a crack and said: ‘Too early!’

  ‘Things are happening here!’ Grandpa-Grumble whispered. ‘He’s been invited and got an invitation card! In the clothes-cupboard. And you must put this in the place of honour.’ He shoved in a big wet bouquet tied up with leaves and moss. Fillyjonk looked at the withered plants and wrinkled her nose. ‘No bacteria in my kitchen,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s maple! They’ve all been washed in the brook,’ objected Gra
ndpa-Grumble.

  ‘Bacteria love water,’ Fillyjonk pointed out. ‘Have you taken your medicines?’

  ‘Do you think that one needs to take medicine at a party?’ said Grandpa-Grumble scornfully. ‘I have forgotten them. And do you know what has happened? I’ve lost all my glasses again!’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Fillyjonk dryly. ‘I suggest you send this bouquet straight to the clothes-cupboard. It would be politer.’ She shut the door with a bang.

  CHAPTER 18

  Absent Friends

  THE lanterns were all lit, red ones, yellow ones and green ones, all admiring their soft reflections in the dark window-panes. The guests came into the kitchen, greeted each other solemnly and sat down. But the Hemulen remained standing behind his chair. He said: ‘This is “an evening at home” held in the spirit of the family. I beg to be allowed to commence this evening with a poem I have written particularly for this unique occasion and which I have dedicated to Moominpappa.’ He took out a piece of paper and began to declaim, he was very moved:

  ‘Oh say, where lies true lasting happiness?

  In evening rest? In friendly glance? ‘Tis more:

  In sailing from the mire, the reeds, the mass,

  The mighty ocean’s vastness to adore.

  Oh what is life? ‘tis nothing but a dream,

  A vast and enigmatic flowing stream.

  Such tender feelings fill my heaving breast

  I know not how or where they’ll come to rest;

  My cares are multitudinous and sore,

  I long to feel the friendly rudder in my paw.’

  They all clapped.

  ‘Multitudinous,’ Grandpa-Grumble repeated. ‘That’s nice. Just the way people used to talk when I was young.’

  ‘Wait!’ the Hemulen said. ‘It’s not me you should applaud. Let us observe half-a-minute’s silence to show our appreciation of the Moomin family. We are eating their food – or rather, what is left of it – we walk beneath their trees, it is in the spirit of tolerance, companionship and joie de vivre created by them that we are living. A minute’s silence!’

  ‘You said half-a-minute,’ Grandpa-Grumble muttered and began to count the seconds. They all stood up and raised their glasses, it was a solemn moment. ‘Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six…’ Grandpa-Grumble counted, his legs felt a little tired today. They ought to have been his seconds, it was his party and not the family’s after all. They hadn’t had a stomach-ache. And he was annoyed with the Ancestor for not coming on time.

  While the guests were honouring the Moomin family in silence, a faint thumping sound could be heard outside somewhere near the kitchen steps. It sounded as though something was groping its way up the wall. Fillyjonk shot a glance at the door – it was latched. She caught Toft’s eye. They both lifted their noses and sniffed, but said nothing.

  ‘Cheers!’ the Hemulen exclaimed. ‘Here’s to good companionship!’ They all drank. The glasses were the smallest and the best ones, the ones with decorated rims. Then they sat down.

  ‘And now,’ said the Hemulen, ‘the programme will continue with the least significant of us. It’s only fair that the last shall be first, eh, Toft?’

  Toft opened his book somewhere towards the end. He read, rather quietly, pausing every time before a long word: ‘Page two hundred and twenty-seven. It is exceptional that a form of life of this species we have attempted to reconstruct has retained its graminivorous nature in a purely physiological sense simultaneously with a continuing ag-gressivity of attitude towards its environment. No changes occurred with regard to the sharpening of its reflexes, its speed, its strength, or any of the other aspects of the predatory instincts normally associated with the development of carnivores. The teeth show blunt mastication surfaces, the claws are completely rudimentary and vision negligible. On the other hand, the total volume of the individual of this species has increased to an astonishing extent, which must, quite simply, have subjected it to certain inconveniences, bearing in mind the fact that it had for millennia dreamed away its life in concealed cracks and crevices. In this case we are faced with the astonishing phenomenon of a form of development which unites all the identifiable characteristics of the indolent graminivorous species with an ineffective and completely inexplicable aggressivity.’

  ‘What was that last word?’ Grandpa-Grumble asked, having been sitting with his paw to his ear the whole time. There was nothing wrong with his hearing as long as he knew what people were going to say. One almost knows what people are going to say.

  ‘Aggressivity,’ Mymble answered rather loudly.

  ‘Don’t shout at me, I’m not deaf,’ Grandpa-Grumble said automatically. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘It’s what one shows when one is angry,’ explained Fillyjonk.

  ‘Aha,’ said Grandpa-Grumble, ‘then I understand the whole thing. Has anyone else written anything or are we going to start the programme soon?’ He started to feel uneasy about the Ancestor. Perhaps he, too, was tired and stiff, perhaps he hadn’t managed the stairs. Perhaps he felt insulted, or perhaps he had fallen asleep. Anyway, something must be wrong, Grandpa-Grumble thought, somewhat vexed. They’re always impossible when they pass a hundred. Rude, too…

  ‘Mymble!’ the Hemulen announced loudly. ‘Allow me to present Mymble!’

  Mymble walked to the middle of the floor, looking very shy and self-conscious. Her hair reached to her knees, and it was obvious that the hair-washing had been a success. She nodded briefly to Snufkin and he started to play. He played very softly. Mymble raised her arms and circled with short, hesitant steps. Shoo, shoo, tiddledidoo, said the mouth-organ; imperceptibly the music moved into a tune, became more and more lively and Mymble quickened her steps, the kitchen was full of music and movement and her long red hair looked like flying sunshine. It was all so

  beautiful and jolly! No one heard the Creature, huge and heavy, creeping round and round the house without knowing what it wanted. The guests beat time with their feet and sang tiddledidi, tiddledidoo, Mymble kicked off her boots, threw her scarf on the floor, the paper streamers fluttered in the warmth from the stove, everybody clapped their paws and Snufkin stopped playing with a loud cry! Mymble laughed with self-satisfied pride.

  Everybody shouted: ‘Bravo! bravo!’ and the Hemulen said with genuine admiration: ‘Thank you ever so much.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ Mymble answered. ‘I can’t stop myself. You ought to do the same thing!’

  Fillyjonk stood up and said: ‘Not being able to stop doing something and having to do it don’t go together. I don’t think that what one should do is the same thing as not being able to stop oneself doing it…’ They all reached for their glasses, thinking that Fillyjonk was going to make a speech. When nothing came of it they all started to shout for more music. But Grandpa-Grumble was no longer interested, he sat fiddling with his napkin, rolling it up until it became thicker and smaller. The most likely thing was that the Ancestor felt hurt. A guest of honour ought to be escorted to a party, as people used to do in the old days. They had all behaved very badly.

  Suddenly Grandpa-Grumble stood up and banged on the table. ‘We have behaved very badly,’ he said. ‘We’ve started the party without our guest of honour and we haven’t escorted him down the stairs. You’re all too young and know nothing about style. You haven’t even seen a charade once in your lives! What is a programme without a charade? I’m merely asking you. Now listen to what I have to say to you! Taking part in a programme means giving one’s best and now I propose to show my friend the Ancestor. He is not tired. He’s not weak at the knees. He’s angry!’

  While Grandpa-Grumble was talking, Fillyjonk was seeing to the serving of the Welsh rarebits, discreetly, but doing it all the same. Grandpa-Grumble followed each Welsh rarebit as it arrived with his eyes, saw them land up on their plates and then yelled: ‘You’re spoiling my turn!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Fillyjonk, ‘but they’re hot, they’ve just come out of the oven…’
>
  ‘Bring them with you, bring them with you,’ said Grandpa-Grumble impatiently. ‘But hide them behind your backs so that he won’t feel even more hurt. And take your glasses, too, so that you can drink his health.’

  *

  Fillyjonk held up a paper lantern and Grandpa-Grumble opened the clothes-cupboard. He bowed deeply. The Ancestor bowed, too.

  ‘I can’t be bothered to introduce them all to you,’ Grandpa-Grumble said. ‘You’d forget their names, and it’s not all that important anyway.’ He held out his glass towards the Ancestor and it clinked as they drank each other’s health.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ exclaimed the Hemulen.

  Mymble kicked him in the leg.

  ‘You must all drink his health,’ said Grandpa-Grumble, and stepped to one side. ‘Where did he go to?’

  ‘We’re much too young to drink with him,’ said Fillyjonk hastily, ‘he might be angry…’

  ‘Three cheers for the Ancestor!’ the Hemulen exclaimed. ‘One, two, three, hip hip hooray!’

  As they were going back to the kitchen, Grandpa-Grumble turned to Fillyjonk and said: ‘You’re not all that young…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Fillyjonk absently, and lifted her nose and sniffed. There was a musty smell, a nasty smell of decay. She looked at Toft. He turned away and thought: electricity.

  It was nice to be back in the warm kitchen again.

  ‘Now I want to see some conjuring tricks,’ Grandpa-Grumble declared. ‘Can anyone produce a rabbit out of my hat?’

  ‘No, it’s my turn now,’ said Fillyjonk with dignity.

  ‘I know what it is,’ cried Mymble. ‘It’s going to be that awful business of hers where one of the guests goes out of the room and is eaten up, and then another goes outside and is eaten up…’

  ‘It’s a shadow-play,’ said Fillyjonk unmoved. She went up to the stove and turned and faced them. ‘It is a shadow-play, called “The Return”.’ She hung the sheet over the bread-rack in the ceiling. Then she placed the kitchen lamp on the log-basket behind the sheet and went round blowing out the lanterns one after the other.