The Land of Neverendings Read online

  ‘He’s a popular bear today,’ Ruth said. ‘Everyone wants to wave to him!’

  ‘And while I’m in here, could I look at the candlesticks in the window?’

  Ruth and the customer went over to the window, turning their backs on the buggy. The toddler chuckled and waved and tried to say ‘Bear!’

  And then Emily saw something that made her squeak aloud with shock.

  Up on his shelf, Notty was waving back.

  Seven

  RESEARCH

  ‘WAVING?’ RUTH STARED AT the disintegrating old bear. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘He waved both his arms,’ Emily said. ‘And then he stood up and did a little dance – I was so scared the lady would turn round and see him!’

  The three working clocks had chimed five and the shop was now closed.

  ‘Well, that explains a lot,’ Ruth said. ‘I was wondering why I’ve been visited by every toddler in town, and it’s because my mother’s old bear is waving and dancing and generally showing off to them!’ She patted Notty’s head. ‘What’s going on, old bear?’

  The old bear was a toy again, a heap of stitches and sawdust.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Emily. ‘But his body’s still here. Does that mean he can choose when he comes to life? Or does the aliveness just come and go by itself?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea! And when I try to think about it my brain turns to mush. My guess would be that the power – or whatever – sort of flickers on and off for no reason, like the dodgy light on my upstairs landing. There’s some sort of interference. I wish I could talk to Danny – his imagination was so good when it came to this sort of thing. He did once tell me a story about Hugo and Smiffy suddenly coming to life at his school, after a freak explosion in the science lab.’

  Emily asked, ‘What was your discovery?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Ruth was deep in thought.

  ‘You said you’d made a discovery.’

  ‘Oh, yes – I don’t think it’s particularly important, just something rather interesting.’ She gave Emily a searching look. ‘But I thought you’d be at the Autumn Fair.’

  ‘Mum couldn’t face it.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Ruth took her bread, milk and teabags out of the shopping bag. ‘It’s too soon for her. Poor thing, she looks absolutely lost sometimes. She had fifteen years of looking after Holly twenty-four hours a day, and now she doesn’t know what to do with herself.’

  ‘She says she’s forgotten how to sleep,’ said Emily. ‘She keeps waking up because she thinks Holly’s calling to her.’

  ‘Mothers get used to being needed.’ Ruth let out a long sigh. ‘When Danny died, it broke my heart that nobody needed me like that any more. I wasn’t anybody’s mother – it was like being made redundant.’

  ‘But you’ll always be Danny’s mother.’ Emily remembered what Ms Robinson had said about Holly always being her sister. ‘Nothing can take that away.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right, and it’s a much better way of looking at things.’ She was smiling again. ‘Anyway, I hope you don’t mind too much about missing the fair.’

  ‘Not really,’ Emily said. ‘It was only fun when Holly was there. And I’m sort of avoiding my former best friend.’

  ‘You mean Maze Miller? Don’t tell me you two have fallen out!’

  ‘We haven’t argued, or anything. She just acts as if she didn’t know me. It’s really weird.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Ruth said. ‘But don’t take it personally. People can be very strange when you’ve had a death in the family. One of my closest friends stopped speaking to me when I lost Daniel. If she saw me in the street she ran away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think my sadness frightened her. She got over it eventually, and so will Ms Miller – she’ll have to notice you when you’re both in the school play, won’t she?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Emily hoped this was true. She missed having someone of her own age to tell things to.

  Ruth took the ancient bear down from his shelf. ‘I’ll keep this guy where I can see him this evening – if I leave him in the shop I’ll worry that he’s cavorting about in the window. Are you sure you saw him moving?’

  ‘Yes, and the baby definitely saw him too.’

  ‘Is the magic somehow leaking out of Smockeroon?’ Ruth absently tidied a loose thread on one of Notty’s wonky old ears. ‘I can’t stop wondering why this is happening to us – you and me in particular, I mean.’ She gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘Good old Hugo – it’s so nice to meet him properly after all these years! Tell you what, since you’re not at the hospital fair, give your dad his bag of rice and then come back here.’

  ‘OK.’ Emily was longing to talk more about the magic – what else could you call it? And if Ruth had met Hugo, perhaps she could somehow climb through that broken door and meet Bluey, who would lead her to Holly. She hurried back to her house, shoved the bag of rice at Dad and told him she would be next door.

  ‘At Maze’s?’ Dad was reading the paper at the kitchen table, with a strangely sleepy look in his eyes.

  ‘No, Dad – Maze doesn’t live next door! I’m at Ruth’s.’

  Ruth was in her kitchen when Emily got back. There was a pile of tattered old books on the table, and Notty, Hugo and Smiffy sat at one end of the dresser.

  Emily patted each toy’s head affectionately. ‘They’re like grubby cushions now – it’s really weird to think of them moving and talking.’

  ‘And yet we both know what we saw.’ Ruth sat down at the table, moving most of the book pile to the floor so that she and Emily could see each other properly. ‘For some reason, you and I are having the same hallucinations – if that’s what they are. And after you’d gone home last night, I found out something very interesting.’

  ‘Did you see something? Did they move again?’

  ‘You might not like this,’ Ruth said, ‘but I suddenly remembered where I’d heard the word “Smockeroon”.’

  ‘You must’ve heard me telling stories to Holly.’ Emily’s pulse quickened with a strange sense of mingled dread and excitement. ‘I made up that word.’

  ‘You didn’t make it up.’ Ruth picked up the thick book at the top of the pile. ‘John Staples did.’ ‘But—’ This couldn’t be true; Smockeroon belonged to her and to Holly, not some old writer from history.

  ‘It’s not in any of his novels,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s from his childhood.’ The book was called Dreamer of Dreams: A Life of John Staples. She opened it to show Emily a black-and-white photograph of three children – two boys in sailor suits, and a little girl in a white lace dress. ‘John, William and Mary Staples, taken in 1908, under that famous tree. “Smockeroon” was the name John invented for the stories they told each other about their toys.’

  She turned the page to another old photograph of three antique toys – a tin monkey, a donkey and a small, light-coloured bear. The caption underneath said, ‘Blokey, Mokey and Figinda Faraway.’

  ‘But I don’t understand!’ Emily was bewildered, and a little scared. ‘I’ve never heard of those toys, so how did I hear about Smockeroon?’

  ‘It’s perfectly possible that you heard the word somewhere,’ Ruth said. ‘But it doesn’t explain how you met Hugo and Smiffy. It doesn’t explain half of what we’ve seen – it only increases the mystery. I wanted to do some serious research, so I began by collecting every book I had about people who enter imaginary worlds.’

  Emily looked properly at the pile of books.

  Some were familiar – Alice in Wonderland. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Winnie-the-Pooh. And some were strange, like the tatty old volume called At the Back of the North Wind, by someone called George MacDonald.

  ‘But I didn’t get anywhere,’ Ruth went on, ‘until I remembered the Staples connection, and the very sad story of his childhood. As you know, the family lived in the house that’s now next door to the house of your ex-friend Maze. In those days, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was su
rrounded by fields. Their father was a stern old Victorian type with grey whiskers, and their mother died when Mary was born – that happened more often in those days. They weren’t allowed to see other children and they didn’t go to school.’

  ‘Wasn’t that illegal?’ Emily often wished she didn’t have to go to school.

  ‘Not in those days. They had a teacher who came in every morning and made them shout their times tables while doing Swedish exercises.’

  ‘Ugh!’ Even Hatty Catty was preferable to that.

  ‘The children escaped into their invented world of Smockeroon, telling each other elaborate stories about the adventures of their toys. Just like you and Holly.’

  ‘And you and Daniel, with the Land of Neverendings.’ Emily had got over being dismayed and was now very curious. ‘You didn’t have the same name for it, but it’s obviously the same place, and it’s like our imaginations are leaking into each other and getting mixed up.’

  ‘It gets stranger,’ Ruth said, ‘and sadder. When he was only nine, John was sent off to boarding school. Before he left, he and his brother invented a spell so that they could meet every night in their dreams.’ She added, ‘In Smockeroon.’

  ‘Did it work?’ Emily was still waiting, and longing, to dream about Holly.

  ‘John always swore that it worked beautifully,’ Ruth said. ‘Even when he was old and famous. Night after night, the two lonely boys comforted their sad hearts by dreaming that they were together in their own enchanted forest.’

  Emily suddenly knew why the boys had been so sad; it dropped into her mind all at once, though she had no idea where it came from. ‘Mary died, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, poor little thing,’ Ruth said. ‘They all had scarlet fever and Mary died of it. She was only six.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘How small a part of time they share, that are so wondrous sweet and fair.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s a poem,’ Ruth said. ‘Death makes you understand all the famous poems about death and dying. It’s the same when you fall in love.’

  ‘I’m glad I had Holly for longer than six years,’ Emily said. ‘I wouldn’t have nearly so much to remember.’

  ‘I must admit, the story made me cry, though it happened so long ago. After the fever, the Staples house had to be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. A lot of things had to be burned – including all the children’s toys.’

  Like Bluey.

  Dead sisters and burnt toys.

  ‘But there was a story a few years ago,’ Ruth said. ‘Someone found a letter from John Staples when he was an old man, in which he claimed that he’d saved his chief toys from the fire and hidden them somewhere safe. He didn’t say where.’

  ‘Do you think he’s the reason this is all happening?’

  ‘Well, apart from the fact that both our houses are close to his, there is one very obvious connection between us. We’ve all lost our darlings. And we’d all give the world to see them again, in the place where we were happiest.’

  Emily felt a prickle of excitement.

  John and his brother found a way into Smockeroon.

  ‘We need that spell!’

  The days wouldn’t be nearly so bad, if I knew I could dream of Holly and Bluey every night.

  There was a loud knock on the back door. Dad had come to fetch Emily for supper. ‘It’s waiting on the table. And I must say, I’m rather proud of it.’

  ‘Hi, Rob,’ Ruth said. ‘What’s all that stuff coming out of your sleeve?’

  Emily saw that one sleeve of Dad’s denim jacket was coated with little coloured specks that scattered every time he moved. She picked one off the table and tasted it. ‘Hundreds and thousands? I thought you were cooking vegetarian chilli.’

  ‘Was I?’ Dad was smiling, with a strange, faraway look in his eyes. ‘Chilli? No, I’ve made a big red jelly with custard and cream and hundreds and thousands.’

  ‘Jelly?’ Emily hadn’t eaten jelly for years, but jelly had featured in many of her stories about Smockeroon. The toys had a sport called jelly jumping; Bluey had been the world champion.

  ‘I don’t know what got into me,’ Dad said. ‘I forgot to make anything else.’

  Ruth looked at him sharply. ‘You made pudding, but you forgot the dinner?’ She raised her eyebrows at Emily; it was obvious to them both that this had to be more of what could only be called magic.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ He blinked several times. ‘We’d better get a takeaway – why on earth did I do that? I don’t even like jelly!’

  Dad took Emily’s hand on the way home, something he hadn’t done for a long time. His fingers were warm and strong.

  In the darkness she heard him laughing softly. ‘Nothing but jelly for supper – she would’ve loved that, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emily said. ‘You’d have to give her jelly wobbles.’ This was the special, wobbly kind of tickling he had invented to make Holly smile.

  ‘Sometimes, when I’m cooking,’ Dad said, ‘I pretend she’s still here. I pretend that she’s behind me and I only have to turn round to see her.’

  He gave her hand a squeeze, and Emily squeezed back.

  Eight

  BATTLE OF THE BEDROOM

  ‘WILLIES AND BALLS,’ the silvery voice said. ‘All over my back, in black marker pen that won’t wash off.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk to me about willies!’ exclaimed another high voice. ‘My owner’s brother drew a willy on me – in bright purple ink!’

  ‘My scars are in words, not pictures,’ a deeper voice said. ‘“Milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner chocolate’s made.” Well, you all know it. My owner thought it was hilarious.’

  Emily opened her eyes. Though the lamp was off, her room was filled with that pale, unearthly light that the toys brought with them into the hard world, and she felt a surge of happiness.

  ‘Hugo? Smiffy?’ She sat up.

  ‘They’re not here today.’ Sister Pretty popped out from behind a fold in the duvet. ‘This is the new self-help group I’ve started, for toys who have been scribbled on. Soft bears and penguins couldn’t possibly understand – it makes us so dreadfully sad!’

  ‘Sad, in Smockeroon? But that’s not possible!’

  Emily switched on the lamp to get a better view of the knobbly, grubby crowd at the end of her bed – the two nuns, plus seven more Barbies, and two military action figures. She was starting to get used to the oddness of it all, but it was still incredibly odd to see these strange toys turning their plastic heads to look at her.

  One of the Barbies asked, ‘What’s the human doing here?’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know,’ said Sister Pretty. ‘It’s all very puzzling – try to ignore her.’

  There was a muffled shriek and someone fell off the bed.

  ‘Not again!’ Sister Pretty rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘Sister Toop, stop fooling about! You’re supposed to be handing round the refreshments!’

  ‘Maybe you should let her take the bag off her head,’ Emily suggested. ‘She can’t see anything.’

  ‘Oh, all right! But I’ll have to ask the group, in case she makes them jealous.’

  ‘You’re the only one who gets jealous,’ one of the other Barbies said. ‘We’re all fine with it.’

  The unfairly beautiful Toop lay on the rug, surrounded by little dots like the lights on a Christmas tree; Emily leaned out of bed to look more closely, and saw that they were tiny cakes that vanished in a puff of glitter when she tried to touch them. She picked up Toop, put her back on the duvet and pulled the bag off her head.

  ‘Thanks, Emily!’ gasped Sister Toop.

  ‘Look, what’s going on?’ One of the action figures stood up angrily. ‘I thought we were in your back garden in Pointed End, not some human’s bedroom!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about Emily,’ Sister Pretty said breezily. ‘She’s the nice sort of human.’

  ‘If she’s so nice, why is her room full of empty toys?’ He pointed to
the top shelf where Emily kept all the old soft toys that people had given her since she was a baby.

  She looked up at them with a stab of guilt; she’d liked them but never really played with them. The scribbled-on soldier called them ‘empty’ and she knew what he meant. They were just so much fur and stuffing, without a spark of magic.

  ‘Lots of humans have empty toys,’ said Sister Pretty. ‘It only means they haven’t been imagined yet. But Emily imagined Bluey.’

  ‘Bluey? That’s different.’ He sat down again.

  ‘Is he a friend of yours?’ Emily had a sudden, painful longing to see Bluey in his old place on Holly’s wheelchair.

  ‘Yes, he gave me a cheery wave this morning, in the queue at the post office.’

  Emily didn’t remember any post offices in Smockeroon – but before she could ask more questions, there was a sudden loud POP, like a large balloon bursting, and a cloud of thick pink candyfloss smoke appeared on the carpet. The smoke melted away to reveal the little striped tent – and Hugo and Smiffy.

  ‘This is the last straw,’ said Sister Pretty, her plastic face denting into a scowl. ‘What are they doing here?’

  ‘Come along, everybody!’ Hugo shouted importantly. ‘Find your partners!’

  The tent flap opened and out came two soft penguins – followed by two more, and then two more, until Emily’s bedroom floor was crowded with toy penguins, all honking and shouting and milling about, their long beaks busily opening and shutting.

  ‘Shhh – you’ll wake up my parents!’ She jumped out of bed, with a vague idea of cutting Mum and Dad off on the landing before they could get into her room and see the toys; she hadn’t a clue how she would explain the racket.

  The landing was empty, however, and her parents were still securely asleep behind their bedroom door. Emily stepped carefully across a carpet of soft penguins and climbed back into bed to enjoy the entertainment.

  Oh, how silly this is – and how I’ve missed silliness!

  ‘We’ll start with a Penguin Polka. Smiffy, switch the music on when I wave my flipper.’