18. The Rescuing of Lady Clandorris

In the end Mr Price gave the key to Samantha to quieten her, she was getting so hysterical. Privately he had always thought her a little mad, though he liked her well enough.

She could not persuade him to leave his job and help her. Her excitement was so intense that he simply did not believe her story. He couldn’t leave the vicarage sink half done, he said stubbornly, and even her tears did not wholly move him. Whatever was wrong up at the Park he would come and have a look at it in the evening, and this was the best that she could get out of him. Thankful that at least she had possession of the key, she pedalled homewards as fast as she could go.

‘You take young Jeff with you if you are going down that mucky cellar!’ Mr Price called after her, taking his last sandwich back into the pub.

‘Oh I will! I will!’ cried Samantha, but by the time she had pedalled back to the Park with the wind in her face she did not feel inclined to ride another half mile to the village in search of Jeff. She had been such a long time away, and the cry for help had been so despairing.

Propping Mrs Price’s bicycle against the front door steps she entered the house and squelched noisily down the steps towards the rising water in the cellar.

Before she went into the drain she discovered and lit a small paraffin hand lamp, so she put the torch into her pocket as a second string, and paddled into the tunnel, trying not to splash too much for fear the glass chimney should crack.

The water was deeper now, and felt very cold. It took much longer to wade along the flooded passage than to walk down it on dry feet. The flood seemed to drag at her ankles and nibble at the calves of her legs. It swirled at her as if telling her to go home.

Presently she came to the grid. Everything was quiet now, but she began to realize that once the gate was open she would be at the mercy, not only of the flood, but of the bogwoppits. Would they be gentle and friendly as they had been of late, or rough and boisterous as on the Day of the Hat? She wished she had brought the bag of black beetles from her bedroom in Mrs Price’s house. And she wished she had taken Mr Price’s advice and gone to fetch Jeff first.

Who would ever find out if something happened to her down here in this dreadful place? Would Aunt Daisy know? And would she care if she did?

Samantha listened. No sound at all. Had the noise of her splashing made no echo?

Before putting the key in the lock she called again, gently at first and then much louder:

‘Aunt Daisy! Are you there?’

Far, far away came the piteous reply:

‘SAMANTHA! OH, SAMANTHA! HELP!’

It was enough. With her left hand Samantha put the key in the lock and turned it, holding the lamp aloft in her right. Then carefully opening the barred gate in the grid, she bent her head and scrambled through the entrance. This time she kept the key tightly clasped in her hand until she had deposited it safely inside her pocket. The water came swirling towards her. Samantha splashed through it, round one bend after another, till she came to a fork in the drain. The left-hand tunnel seemed to flow slightly uphill, with the water pumping and gurgling round her legs, but some of it flowed back into the right-hand fork, over a broken and jagged step, as if somewhere, once, there had been a retaining wall, but far ahead along this passage Samantha could see a reflection on the distant walls, as if some way beyond her, round some bend or another, there was a light.

Towards this light Samantha advanced, the water growing deeper and deeper round her calves as the passage appeared to slope downhill and then suddenly she turned a corner and was in a large round chamber whose only illumination was a small brass handlamp like her own, perched on the top of a pile of boxes that she immediately recognized as stores from Lady Clandorris’s cupboards at the Park. The whole room was lined with boxes, against which the flood water lapped greedily, as if licking its lips at the sight of the labels and their contents.

In the very middle of the room, on a pile of boxes shaped very much like a throne, dressed in her dressing gown, with a feather boa round her shoulders and several jumpers and dresses underneath, sat her Aunt Daisy, Lady Clandorris, with her toes drawn up tightly to avoid the water, and the One-and-Only-Bogwoppit curled up fast asleep in her lap.

‘Aunt Daisy!’ said Samantha faintly. Her throat felt suddenly tight and constricted as if she were going to cry, and she had a surprising urge to rush forward and put her arms around Lady Clandorris’s neck. She had hardly taken in the fact that there were no other bogwoppits to be seen.

‘Aunt Daisy!’ she said again in a quavering voice. ‘I’ve come to rescue you!’

‘Well you might have come sooner!’ snapped Lady Clandorris. ‘All my pillows are wet! The water is still rising! I want you to go and tell that plumber man to come straight up here and cement up the wall between here and the main drain so the water can’t get in.’

‘But then you can’t get out!’ said Samantha in amazement.

‘Out! I don’t want to get out!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘And nobody can get in either. All those other little monsters can stay out too. They think of nothing these days but having their photographs taken and fooling about in the marsh pools.’

‘Do you know about the photographers?’ asked Samantha, astonished.

‘Well what do you think?’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘One can’t live in the company of bogwoppits day in, day out all these weeks without learning something of their language. Besides, Boggy tells me everything, don’t you, Boggy?’

The One-and-Only woke up and gave a tremendous yawn. It stretched out a foot and shrieked as its toe touched the water. One would have thought it had never met cold water in the whole of its life before.

Then it saw Samantha, gave an outsize leap that nearly dashed the handlamp from her hand, landed on her shoulder, embraced her, licked her face all over, rubbed its beak and wet feathers all over her neck and chin, and returned like a feathered torpedo to Lady Clandorris’s lap.

‘It seems to like you!’ said Lady Clandorris with some displeasure. ‘I can’t think why!’ Samantha was silent.

‘Well – say something!’ said her aunt impatiently. ‘I suppose you are hungry and want some dinner. I’ve had mine. You will have to help yourself. The can opener is down there somewhere in the water.’

‘You called me!’ said Samantha accusingly.

‘Yes, of course I did! I was afraid of being drowned,’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘And I wanted you to fetch the plumber.’

‘I’ve come to rescue you!’ said Samantha. All the conditions of rescue she had been going to present seeped away. There was something about her Aunt Daisy that precluded bargaining. ‘If you come now you’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve unlocked the gate.’

‘Then lock it up again, you stupid child!’ shrieked Lady Clandorris. ‘All those little nasties will be swimming up into the Park! I want the plumber to build up the wall just as it used to be, and then they’ll have to stay in the marsh pools and Boggy and I will be all dry and comfortable in here. Won’t we, Boggy?’

The One-and-Only twisted on to its back like a cat and stretched its wings. Samantha felt a sharp stab of jealousy.

‘You don’t really want to stay here, Aunt Daisy?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Why not? I like it. I didn’t at first when those little pests captured me and were so rough and wild. But they’re different now. They are fond of me, only there are far too many of them. And Boggy loves me, don’t you, Boggy?’

The One-and-Only burrowed its beak into her neck. Then it turned towards Samantha and blinked its pale blue eyes fondly at her. She thought it was trying to say: ‘I love you too!’

‘Nobody loves me up there!’ said Lady Clandorris, suddenly plaintive. ‘Only my sister Gertie and she never did anything for me and gave all our mother’s jewellery to Lily, when I ought to have had it, being the eldest. Your Uncle Ernest, he didn’t love me either, he went off to South America all by himself and left me in that dreary old Park.’

‘I love the Park!’ said Samantha.

‘You can have it!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘I’ll make it over to you lock, stock and barrel, and you needn’t worry – I shan’t ask for it back. I’ve had enough of being asked to have garden fêtes and Boy Scout camps and Rolls Royce rallies and all that paraphernalia in my private home and garden. No peace anywhere, except down here. I like it.’

‘I can’t live up in the Park while you are living down here in the drain!’ said Samantha, appalled at the prospect.

‘Why not? You can ask your Mr and Mrs Price to come and caretake the place and open it to the National Trust on Sundays. You can rent out the grounds to all those film people and the campers and the Preservation Trusts, and that will pay for the upkeep. You can charge them to come and look at the bogwoppits. Make it a safari park, or a bogwoppitry, call it anything you like as long as I don’t have to look at it. Forget me!’

‘I can’t forget you!’ said Samantha slowly.

The glass shade of the lamp in her hand was blackening in the smoke of the flame, and she could see it was because her hand was trembling.

‘Why not?’ snapped Lady Clandorris.

‘I don’t know!’ said Samantha. ‘But if I could have forgotten you I would not have come all this way to rescue you, would I?’

There was a long silence.

‘I think you are drowning!’ said Samantha.

‘Nobody would care if I did!’ said Lady Clandorris bitterly.

‘You can’t expect them to care, can you? Why should they?’ cried Samantha. ‘You’ve never done anything nice for anyone else; why should they come and rescue you? You’ve always been horrible to me!’ she shouted over her shoulder, beginning to wade back into the tunnel. ‘I wanted to be your long-lost niece and make life more enjoyable for you. After all, I am your sister Gertie’s child!’ she yelled as she retreated, stumbling in the water and nearly losing her lamp. ‘But you didn’t want me and I don’t want you either! You can stay with the bogwoppit and drown! The bogwoppit can swim but I don’t know if you can! Goodbye! I’m going home!’

‘Fetch the plumber!’ shouted Lady Clandorris angrily.

‘He’s over at Chopley. I cycled all the way over there in the rain to tell him, but he won’t come till he’s finished the vicarage sink. That won’t be till teatime!’ called Samantha at the top of her voice, retreating all the time in the direction of the tunnel. ‘I’m going home anyway,’ she repeated.

There was an agonized cry as the One-and-Only leapt from Lady Clandorris’s lap on to Samantha’s shoulders, nearly choking her with its flapping wings, and almost putting out the lamp. Then with a splash it swam the short distance back to Lady Clandorris, before once again chasing Samantha with cries of distress. At last it seized Lady Clandorris by the sodden hem of her dressing gown and tried to drag her into the water after Samantha.

‘I’m only coming as far as the kitchen, to dry my stockings while you fetch the plumber!’ Aunt Daisy said, splashing through the flood, but Samantha was well ahead and out of hearing.

Far up the second fork of the drain she had heard the ominous murmur of voices she knew too well. The bogwoppits were returning from the marsh pools, and she put all the effort she could muster into reaching the grid before they came.

Lady Clandorris seemed to realize the threat and its consequences.

Suddenly she ceased to scold and grumble, but hurried after Samantha looking fearfully backwards across her shoulder as she came to the fork in the drain. The One-and-Only was urging her on with little whimpering cries, swimming between her and Samantha, who was forced to slow down, quite against her will, rather than abandon her, once she knew her aunt was really coming. She began to be really frightened. The noises behind her were getting louder. The bogwoppits were returning to their home, but as yet they had no idea that their prisoner was escaping.

‘Can’t you hurry, Aunt Daisy?’ she urged her in the echoing passage.

‘It wouldn’t have been necessary to hurry if you had done as I asked and fetched the plumber!’ grumbled Lady Clandorris, but she too looked uneasily backwards into the solid darkness, and splashed on a little more noisily than before.

The One-and-Only was mewing with anxiety. Samantha tried to catch it, but she only had one free hand, and it slipped out of her grasp, swimming back towards Aunt Daisy and frantically tugging at her clothes.

Suddenly Lady Clandorris tripped and pitched over, falling on her face in the water. It took the combined powers of Samantha and the bogwoppit to set her on her feet again.

A curve in the drain muffled the squeaking and babbling behind them, or perhaps the bogwoppits had arrived at the fork and turned back into the great chamber in which they had left their prisoner.

Sure enough, indignant screams and protests rose suddenly from the shadows behind them. The next moment a sound like a pack of hounds in full cry reverberated down the drain, echoed by the splashing and the plashing of a hundred swimming furry bodies.