20. Today and Tomorrow
‘Give what a bath?’ said Sir Ernest Clandorris when Samantha had gone upstairs.
‘The bogwoppit,’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘It is an exceptionally intelligent and affectionate animal and Samantha is very attached to it. The bogwoppit cares for me too. It cares for me very much indeed.’
‘A bogwoppit!’ exclaimed Sir Ernest, looking completely amazed and incredulous. ‘But bogwoppits have been extinct for the last two centuries or more, until …’
‘They are certainly not extinct!’ said Lady Clandorris tartly. ‘There is a whole colony of them living in the drains of this house! And a whole colony of preservationists camped out in the Park taking pictures of them. And a whole colony of television and broadcasting people taking pictures of the other people taking pictures of the bogwoppits. Or so the bogwoppits tell me!’ she added.
Sir Ernest looked at her closely. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you can understand their language?’ he said.
‘Of course I do!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘You couldn’t live with them for six or seven weeks without picking some of it up!’
‘You astonish me!’ said Sir Ernest.
‘You may well be astonished,’ his wife agreed. ‘You didn’t know I had been kidnapped, did you? I might have been left down the drain there for ever, for all you cared!’
‘But I did care!’ said Sir Ernest, reproachfully. ‘I came all the way home from the heart of the Amazonian jungle in South America to find you. I want you to come back with me to study the bogwoppits.’
‘The what?’ said Lady Clandorris.
‘I found some in a marsh pool in the jungle!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘I even watched them hatching. But I want to find out a whole lot more about them before I report it to the British Museum. I’ve built a little hut there, far away from anywhere, just the sort of little place you would like. I know you never liked living in the Park. You know you could have come with me before, when I first went. I asked you to. You know I did!’
‘I thought you were going with a party!’ snapped Lady Clandorris.
‘Well, I soon left them. Too much chatter!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘But what about it, old girl? We used to get along quite nicely once. I rather missed our yelling matches when there was nothing to shout at but the bogwoppits.’
‘Probably you can’t speak their language,’ said Lady Clandorris smugly.
‘Well if you can, Daisy, I can’t do without you!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘You have got to come back to the Amazonian jungle with me.’
‘But what about Samantha?’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘She wants me too.’
‘Samantha can come with us!’ said Sir Ernest expansively.
‘No I can’t!’ said Samantha, coming downstairs with the bogwoppit wrapped in a towel and looking happier. She had been listening to the conversation. ‘I have got to go to school, and I wouldn’t want to drop behind all my friends in education. Besides, I like living at the Park. Why have you got to go all the way to South America when you can study all the bogwoppits you want to in the marsh pools? It doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you both just live here with me and the bogwoppit?’
‘The bogwoppit can come to South America with us,’ said Lady Clandorris.
‘No it can’t,’ said Samantha firmly. ‘It is a British bogwoppit and the South American ones might kill it. Besides, I’m not going to South America!’
‘You are!’ said Lady Clandorris.
‘I’m not!’ said Samantha.
At that moment there was a loud and very rusty ringing of the front door bell. Samantha deposited the bogwoppit on a chair and went to answer the door.
It was Mr Price to say that the sluice gate was open and should have emptied all the water out of the cellar by now. Also that the bogwoppits seemed to be as lively as ever in the marsh pools, and should he dowse them all with disinfectant.
‘NO,’ said Sir Ernest and Samantha together very loudly.
While Samantha and Lady Clandorris went on arguing about the One-and-Only and going or not going to South America Mr Price and Sir Ernest went to investigate the state of the cellar below.
When they came back it appeared that Sir Ernest had asked Mr Price to build a solid cement partition at the cellar entrance to the drain, with no bars and no gate and no lock to it, so that the bogwoppits could not come in and it could never be opened again.
‘Then you can go and study them in the Park!’ said Samantha hopefully to her Uncle Ernest.
‘What? With all those perishing amateurs and the Press breathing down my neck?’ scoffed Sir Ernest. ‘Not me! Not likely! No privacy in England, not even in my own Park. I’m going back to South America to study them in peace.’
‘And so am I!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘And Samantha and the bogwoppit can come with us.’
‘No!’ said Samantha, and it began all over again. Mr Price slipped tactfully away to work out plans for the Great Wall inside the drain.
The argument went on and on, not very bitterly – in fact the longer it lasted the more Samantha felt that she was in the middle of a family row, and it was happening because nobody wanted to leave anybody behind. This was such a new sensation for Samantha that she hoped the argument would go on for ever. Even the bogwoppit seemed to be enjoying it.
Everyone paused for breath, but Lady Clandorris recovered first, and the solution that she offered was much the same as she had suggested to Samantha down in the great chamber of the drain.
‘Samantha shall have the Park!’ she announced. ‘She loves it, and we don’t. So she shall stay and look after it while we are in South America and she can be educated at the same time. We’ll ask her Mr and Mrs Price to come and be caretakers. The grounds can be a safari park for bogwoppits. It will have to be properly run and the public must be charged for entrance. Mrs Price can give them tea. Samantha can show them round the house. They’ll have to pay of course.’
Sir Ernest looked round the shabby walls with some disapproval.
‘What are they going to see?’ he asked discouragingly.
‘It shall be redecorated and done up!’ said Lady Clandorris grandly. ‘And there are all those fascinating antiques in the upstairs bedrooms. Samantha can choose the wallpapers. And we’ll come back at Christmas and at Easter and Samantha can come out to us in the summer holidays. Or else we’ll come back and shut up the safari park and just be ourselves!’
‘No we won’t!’ said Sir Ernest. ‘We’ll have everybody in and Samantha can have a birthday party whenever she likes, and we’ll show the public our slides of South America. There are lots of things in the jungle besides extinct bogwoppits. In my hut, for instance, I have a baby molypiddle.’
‘A what?’ exclaimed Samantha and Lady Clandorris together.
‘A molypiddle. Furry, soft, batlike. But they only have one ear. Much cleaner than bogwoppits but very affectionate once they are tamed.’
‘If you have a molypiddle you won’t need the bogwoppit,’ said Samantha.
‘Yes I shall,’ Lady Clandorris argued.
‘You had better let the bogwoppit decide for itself,’ said Sir Ernest Clandorris. He prodded the One-and-Only awake.
Samantha and Lady Clandorris stood with their arms opened wide, beseeching it. The bogwoppit shook the towel away, and stretched its wings, now fluffy and dry again. Then it stood on the tips of its toes, rose rapidly into the air with its familiar whirring flight, and dropped straight into Samantha’s triumphant arms.
‘Oh well!’ said Lady Clandorris, stamping her foot and turning her back. But at that moment Sir Ernest took out of his pocket book a picture to show her of the lonely hut in the far off Amazonian jungles of South America. There was a molypiddle sitting on the roof.
Sir Ernest and Lady Clandorris (she had changed her clothes and was dressed quite smartly) with Samantha and the bogwoppit, went to discuss their plans with the Prices.
At first Mr and Mrs Price were unwilling to commit themselves, but by the next morning Jeff Price met Samantha in some excitement, saying he thought his parents were about to give in.
‘Dad’s got all worked up about having those drains to do as he likes with!’ said Jeff. ‘And Mum, well she quite likes the idea of putting the house to rights.’
‘What about you and Deb and Timothy?’ Samantha asked. ‘Shall you mind leaving number fifty-four?’
‘You bet we don’t!’ said Jeff enthusiastically. ‘We haven’t got room for a pianola!’
Mr Beaumont was called in and papers were signed. Builders and decorators were summoned, and Mr Price found himself directing quite a battalion of plumbers.
A postcard arrived from Aunt Lily and Duggie hoping that Samantha was getting on fine, because they were. If she ever wanted to join them she could. They wouldn’t mind.
Samantha wrote back: ‘My Aunt Daisy and my Uncle Ernest Clandorris say that I can live at the Park for the rest of my life.’
‘It’s no good expecting me to send you a postcard from South America!’ Aunt Daisy said. ‘And you needn’t bother to send me one either. There are no post offices in the jungle, and as you know, I never look inside a mail box.’
At the thought that they would not be able to send each other postcards the most extraordinary thing happened. Lady Clandorris and Samantha both burst into tears and flew into each other’s arms.
‘We’ve made over the Park to you, Samantha!’ hiccuped Lady Clandorris, extricating herself from Samantha and the bogwoppit, who wanted to be wept over too. ‘Just in case something happens to your uncle or me while we are in South America. Mr Beaumont has it in writing. You are our heiress. It is all, every bit of it, yours!’
‘Mine?’ said Samantha. ‘The house and the Park and the cellars and the woods? All of it?’
‘All of it!’ nodded Lady Clandorris.
‘Even the bogwoppits?’ said Samantha.
‘And the bogwoppits!’ agreed Lady Clandorris. ‘Except the …’
‘All the bogwoppits!’ cried Samantha with her eyes shining. ‘Especially the One-and-Only! He’s the only one that really counts! Oh how good you are to me, Aunt Daisy!’
Sir Ernest and Lady Clandorris drove away on a day in early September, amid tears from Samantha and the One-and-Only.
The tears soon dried, for life turned out as Samantha had always dreamed and plotted that it would and ought to do.
The Park really belonged to her. She had birthday parties there, for herself, and for the Prices, and even for the bogwoppit. The house became beautiful under the decorators and clean and shining under Mrs Price. The drains were completely reorganized giving no more trouble.
The One-and-Only forgot how much it had liked dirt, and became quite fond of soap and water. It never showed the slightest interest in the bogwoppits in the marsh pools, but followed Samantha when she was at home, and Mrs Price when Samantha was at school.
The other bogwoppits remained the centre of scientific research for some time, and then Miss Mellor’s Project was finished, while the Preservation Society and the Press and the television company faded away.
By this time the marsh pools had been turned into a safari park so the bogwoppits still had plenty of people to show off to. Mrs Price made and served most delicious teas to the visitors in the stables, helped by Samantha and Deborah. Samantha showed parties of twenty round the house.
Every holiday Sir Ernest and Lady Clandorris came back to stay with Samantha at the Park, and her uncle insisted that the local Flower Show and Garden Fête should be held there. It was opened by Lady Clandorris, and everybody clapped her which to her surprise she enjoyed very much indeed. The One-and-Only presented her with a bouquet and everybody clapped it.
One summer Samantha went to stay in the Amazonian jungle with her aunt and uncle, leaving the bogwoppit behind for fear of reprisal. She found the South American bogwoppits fascinating (their eyes were green, not blue), though quite a bit different, and also the molypiddles, the clunkers, the dibs and debs, and all the other creatures that her Uncle Ernest was studying.
And she knew that, for all her aunt’s odd manners and her tartness, she was Lady Clandorris’s favourite niece (or why would she have left her the Park?) and her uncle’s sweet Samantha, and they were her nearest and dearest and her own real and proper blood relations. But for true companionship and devotion and sympathy and affection she had (besides Mr and Mrs Price and Deborah, Jeff and Timothy), the everlasting loyalty and affection of the One-and-Only-Bogwoppit-in-the-World.