17. Fame at Last!

Suddenly the park became the centre of a great deal of interest, from a great many different sources.

Miss Mellor reported her Project to the Society for the Protection of Rare and Rural Species, who told her at once that bogwoppits were extinct, and that even if they were not, they were a protected animal and nobody was allowed to kill them.

This was a great relief to Samantha, but she was very much afraid that it would not prevent her aunt from sluicing the cellar out with disinfectant just whenever she felt like it, once she was free and in her own territory again.

There had been no message since the hat incident, and everything seemed quiet down the drain. Samantha kept the two thousand black beetles in a box in her bedroom, and pondered on the best moment to offer up the ransom.

Overnight, it seemed, the Park became crowded with people. It was all coming true, just as Samantha had dreamed it; first the Preservation Society in a van, then a television company. They put up tents and hides in the Park all round the marsh pools, and kept coming up to the house to ask Lady Clandorris’s permission for being there at all.

Slowly it was appreciated that Lady Clandorris was not in residence, and had not been there, in fact, for a long time. Bills were unpaid, letters from months back lay in the letter box, and all rateable amenities had been cut off by the appropriate authorities.

Samantha was asked all kinds of questions, but pretended to know nothing at all about her aunt. She agreed that she had been up at the Park, but thought her aunt had gone away on a visit. No, she didn’t know when she would be back again. She explained that she herself was staying with the Prices, and just went up now and again to have a look round the place.

When the Preservation Society heard that it was Samantha who had discovered the bogwoppits they took her photograph, which appeared in the national press, and it looked very much as if she and the Prices, as well as Miss Mellor, might all appear on television.

Samantha and the Prices said nothing about the cellar or the grid, or Lady Clandorris being kept as a prisoner down there somewhere underneath their feet. Even Timothy realized that once the truth came out there would soon be an end to the tents in the Park and the television appearance and all the fame and the fun. It would very likely be the end of the bogwoppits as well.

But Samantha’s usually robust conscience was for once uneasy, and she began to plan the right moment for offering her black beetles and driving a bargain at the same time with her aunt that would keep everybody satisfied, if not exactly happy.

When Mrs Price realized that Lady Clandorris was no longer at the Park she was quite upset, and refused to let Samantha sleep up there alone. Samantha missed living in the house and playing at being lady-of-the-manor to all the new arrivals, but she went up every evening after tea. Sometimes she went down the drain and looked for the One-and-Only, and one unforgettable evening she actually saw it and was able to kiss it through the bars, but it was not safe to let it out with so many strangers about.

The other bogwoppits were becoming much more friendly. They began to come to the grid and make cheerful little noises as if they were glad to see her. Sometimes she fed them with black beetles, to sharpen their appreciation. But of her aunt she neither heard nor saw a sign.

Once she wrote a note and sent it by the One-and-Only.

DEAR AUNT DAISY. ARE YOU STILL ALL RIGHT?

Nothing happened. But two days later an empty cereal carton floated on the surface of the marsh pool. Written across it was the one word: YES. It did not mean anything to anybody except Samantha.

Meanwhile, the Society for the Preservation of Rare and Rural Species and the television people were kept excited and happy by occasional glimpses of bogwoppits in the pools, usually just underneath the surface, and usually when the sun went down. Once they were filmed actually eating aruncus wopitus, much to the envy of Miss Mellor, who still had only the muddy flurry of a bogwoppit diving under the water recorded on her instamatic camera.

The time was drawing near, Samantha reluctantly admitted to herself, when she must make a definite move. She hoped to be able to turn it to her own advantage, but meanwhile she sent a further message down the drain: RANSOM READY. WHAT NOW?

Nothing happened. She tried again, less tersely: DEAR AUNT DAISY. THE RANSOM IS READY. WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE RESCUED?

‘When she says when,’ Samantha told the Prices, ‘I shall tell her my terms. She has got to let me live with her again. I like living with you and I love your mum, but the Park is my home.’

The Prices agreed that this was true, but they were really thinking about the pianola.

To their astonishment a note came back by way of the grid. Written on it in firm black letters were two words only:

TOO LATE.

Samantha stared and stared, so did the Prices. What could it possibly mean?

‘Do you think she can be dead?’ asked Deborah.

‘It’s her writing! She wrote it!’ said Samantha sturdily. ‘There’s something else up and we’ll have to find out what it is.’

A further proof of Aunt Daisy’s aliveness were the number of cans and empty cereal packets floating about on the surface of the marsh pools, with which the bogwoppits played a kind of water polo, to the great delight of the television and film company. The Preservation Society accused them of leaving their litter about, and were very caustic about vandalism.

Samantha wrote another letter, putting it into the now friendly beak of a bogwoppit at the grid. WHAT SHALL WE DO NOW? she wrote.

The reply was even more surprising than the last:

YOU CAN LEAVE ME ALONE AND GO AWAY.

Samantha and the Prices simply did not know what to make of it. That night it began to rain.

It must have been very disagreeable for the people camping in the Park. For a while they braved the weather, taking endless films of the bogwoppits splashing and sporting in the marsh pools, enjoying their favourite weather, but first Miss Mellor and then the rest of the Preservation Society abandoned their projects, and sat it out in their tents waiting for finer weather. The film people took what pictures they could in the rain, but there was a limit to shots of bubbling mud and wallowing bogwoppits, whose antics became a little monotonous. They too retired to their tents, while the rain went on and on and on.

Samantha, just a little worried by the turn things had taken, slopped up to the Park in gumboots, keeping an eye on the cellar, but no bogwoppits came to the grid, and a message she sent to her aunt asking after her health remained uncollected between the bars. Then it really became too wet to go up to the Park at all, so she stayed away.

It rained for nearly a week. On the seventh day she found a little piece of paper floating on the marsh pools. It might have been there for days. The word on it was nearly washed out. It just said: HELP!

Samantha’s heart stood still. Her first thought was to run straight up to the Park, and her next was to find Jeff Price and ask him to go with her. But the film company were showing the films they had taken, in the village hall, and Samantha had been on her way to join them when she had digressed by way of the marsh pools, hoping, but hardly expecting, to catch a glimpse of the One-and-Only, who had been invisible for so long that she was very much afraid it had forgotten all about her.

When she looked in at the village hall door, Jeff Price was sitting in the front row with his mouth open, staring at the screen. In fact everybody was sitting there perfectly absorbed, and nobody noticed Samantha peep in and then turn round and run away.

She did not wait to fetch her gumboots, but splashed up the muddy drive, soaking herself to her knees, and never stopped until she reached the door of the house. She pushed it open, ran across the hall into the kitchen, and down the cellar steps.

And here her worst fears were realized. Bitterly now she blamed herself for neglecting to pay her previous daily visits to the Park. The heavy rain had swollen the stream and the gulleys and the culverts. It had flooded the passage, and the cellar was inches deep in water.

Samantha seized the torch, more feeble now as the battery was wearing out. She wrenched open the door to the long tunnel, up which the water flowed in a sinister flood. Regretting her gumboots she braved the darkness, feeling the cold lapping of the water creeping up her ankles like icy fingers. The way was familiar or she would have been too frightened for such a venture, but she felt she knew every inch as far as the grid, so battled gallantly on, till the light from the cellar stairs had long since faded out behind her, and at long long last the beam of her torch shone on the bars of Mr Price’s gate.

It was at this moment that she realized that she no longer had the key in her pocket. Where and when she had lost it she did not know but it certainly was not with her now.

In the moment of shock everything seemed to stand still, even the water lapping at her feet. And then Samantha seized the bars in both hands, dropping the torch in her agony, so that it sank beneath the water and gleamed up at her like the watchful eyes of bogwoppits. Samantha shook and shook the bars, but Mr Price’s grid stood firm.

‘Aunt Daisy!’ shouted Samantha. The cry rang along the wet, dark drain ahead, as if miles beyond the bend it was passed along from echo to echo.

‘Aunt Daisy!’ she called again, and yet again. The echo carried her cry farther and farther into the darkness, and from far, far away in the remoteness beyond came back an answer.

Samantha had to strain her ears to hear it, and even then she hardly believed the words that she heard. But they were repeated again and again, and there was such a note of pleading and despair in the voice that she seized the bars and shook them until she was dizzy with the effort.

‘SAMANTHA! OH, DO PLEASE COME, SAMANTHA!’

And before the voice died away a new sound joined the sad duet, a sound of water flopping, flapping, coming nearer and nearer. The next moment a familiar black wing was thrust through the grid.

Samantha had rescued her torch, and the feeble beam was reflected in the round blue eyes of the One-and-Only, its rubbery beak offering frantic kisses through the bars, its wet, webbed feet trying to reach and embrace her.

It was such a long time since she had seen it that Samantha’s frantic anxiety turned to joy. She fondled and kissed such damp feathers as she could reach, trying to explain that she was unable to get through the gate and take it into her arms. The bogwoppit grew excited and seemed to be getting impatient with her. When at last it realized that all its efforts were useless, and Samantha was not going to open the gate and cuddle it, it splashed away, giving her one long, last reproachful look over its shoulder. And once again out of the darkness came the cry:

SAMANTHA! OH, SAMANTHA, DO COME!

The key! Oh, the key! In vain Samantha searched her pockets. There was no key, and she could not even remember the last time she had handled it. Perhaps there was a file in the kitchen at the Park and she could saw through the bars? But filing was a man’s job rather than a girl’s. If only she had made Jeff come with her – two pairs of hands were better than one. He would have known, for instance, what his father did to open iron bars when a key was lost. And thinking of Mr Price reminded Samantha that of course there was another key! Mr Price had one too, and she must find him and get it from him just as quickly as she possibly could.

It was the half-term holiday week. All the children were free, but of course Mr Price was working just as usual. Mrs Price, less calm than was her habit due to washing and the wet weather, was thankful for the village hall film show which kept the four wet children from getting under her feet all the morning. She was anything but pleased to see Samantha come flying into the house quite plastered with mud, and apparently soaked to the skin from the ankles upwards.

‘The keys!’ she panted. ‘Where does Mr Price keep his keys?’

Mrs Price stared at her, dustpan and brush in hand. ‘The keys!’ repeated Samantha, speaking more vigorously than she had ever spoken to Mrs Price before.

When children shouted at her, Mrs Price did not shout back like Aunt Lily did. She merely became remote and distant. This time she went on brushing the hearthrug and said nothing at all to Samantha.

‘Where are the keys?’ wailed Samantha, with such agony in her voice that Mrs Price took notice of her at last.

‘What keys?’ she asked stiffly.

‘The keys of the cellar! Mr Price’s keys!’ wailed Samantha.

‘Mr Price’s keys are with Mr Price, where they belong!’ said Mrs Price, brushing smartly.

‘Where’s Mr Price? Oh do please tell me where he is!’ pleaded Samantha. Mrs Price had never seen her so excitable and upset. She stopped brushing the hearthrug.

‘Now don’t get yourself into such a state!’ she said in some surprise. ‘You can’t go running off after him in all this rain. He’s gone over to the vicarage at Chopley, and he won’t be back till teatime. You go and change yourself out of those wet clothes, Sammy, and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

But Samantha’s agitation became even greater.

‘Please will you lend me your bicycle, Mrs Price? Oh please do,’ she urged, almost clasping Mrs Price in her arms as she pleaded.

‘You don’t want to bicycle all that way with the rain coming down like this!’ said Mrs Price in astonishment, but as she did not directly refuse, Samantha took her hesitation as permission, and charged out of the house, snatched Mrs Price’s bicycle from the shed, and pedalled away furiously on the five mile ride to Chopley.

The rain poured down her face, her neck and shoulders and down her back. It splashed off the road until her legs were just as wet as if she had still been paddling down the drain. Every car that passed her deluged her with water, while a finer spray from oncoming vehicles was just as disagreeable and unpleasant.

In Chopley she had to ask her way twice to the vicarage, only to find that Mr Price had broken off work for the lunch hour and had taken his sandwiches off to eat at the Green Dragon.

He was washing them down with a pint of beer in company with some mates when the door opened and in came Samantha. She was dripping from head to foot and spattered all over with mud.

‘Mr Price! I want the key of the drain!’ she said without preamble.

Mr Price stared at her, a bite taken out of his second sandwich and suspended as it were in mid air.

‘What drain?’ he asked, to gain time. He was so completely flabbergasted by the sight of Samantha.

‘You aren’t allowed in here, you know!’ the barman told Samantha quite severely. ‘Children aren’t allowed in the public bar!’

Mr Price followed Samantha outside. She was so obviously distressed, but he could not fathom what it was she really wanted.

She pulled herself together and tried to speak to him coherently.

‘Please will you give me the key to the grid you made in my aunt, Lady Clandorris’s, cellar, in the Park?’ she said. ‘The one that unlocks the gate in the great drain? I’ve lost mine and I’ve simply got to open the drain as quickly as possible!’

‘And what have you got to open my grid for, young Samantha?’ said Mr Price, slowly and suspiciously. ‘That gate wasn’t made to be opened, only for repairs, and you never had a key that I know of. I gave one to her Ladyship, not to you. I can’t see any reason for you having a key to open the gate in my grid. There isn’t any call for it!’

‘But there is! There is!’ cried Samantha in desperation. ‘My Aunt Daisy is down there at the bottom of the drain, and the bogwoppits are holding her for ransom!’