Moominpappa at Sea (15 page)

He looked first this way and then that in order to avoid her critical gaze. There was her raincoat hanging on a twig. And a cup with prunes and raisins in it. A bottle of fruit juice…

Moomintroll jumped up and leant forward. Further in under the branches the ground was flat with smooth pine-needles, and as far as his eyes could reach in the fog he saw rows of tiny little crosses. They were made of broken sticks and bound together with twine. ‘What
have
you done?’ he cried.

‘Do you think this is where I bury all my enemies?’ said Little My, much amused. ‘Those are birds’ graves. Someone’s buried dozens of them in there.’

‘How do you know?’ Moomintroll asked.

‘I’ve looked,’ said Little My. ‘Small white skeletons, just like the one we found by the lighthouse the first day we were here. You remember, “The Revenge of the Forgotten Bones”.’

‘It must have been the lighthouse-keeper,’ said Moomintroll.

Little My nodded, and her tight little knot of hair shook.

‘They must have flown into the light,’ Moomintroll said slowly. ‘It’s what birds do… And killed themselves. Perhaps the lighthouse-keeper picked them up every morning. And then one day he got fed up with it, put the light out and went away. How frightful!’ he cried.

‘It’s a long time ago,’ said Little My, yawning. ‘The light’s out now anyway.’

Moomintroll looked at her and wrinkled his nose.

‘You shouldn’t feel so sorry for everything,’ she said. ‘Now run away. I’m going to take a nap.’

When Moomintroll emerged from the thicket he opened his paw and looked at the horseshoe. He had said nothing about the little sea-horse. She was still his own.

There was no moon and the hurricane lamp wasn’t lit, but all the same Moomintroll went down to the beach. He couldn’t stop himself somehow. He had the horseshoe and the presents with him.

His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and he saw the sea-horse as she came out of the fog like an unreal creature in a story. He put the horseshoe down on the beach, hardly daring to breathe.

The shadowy form came nearer with small prancing steps. She stepped into her shoe in the absent-minded sort of way that ladies do, and stood there waiting for the shoe to fix itself firmly and start growing to her again with her head turned away from him.

‘I like your fringe,’ said Moomintroll softly. ‘A friend of mine has got one too. Perhaps she’ll come and stay some day… I think you’d like lots of my friends.’

The little sea-horse’s silence showed she wasn’t interested.

Moomintroll tried again. ‘Islands at night are so beautiful. This is Pappa’s island, but I don’t know if we shall live here all our lives. Sometimes I think that the island doesn’t like us. The most important thing is that it should like Pappa…’

She wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to know about his family.

Then Moomintroll spread out his presents for her on the sand. The sea-horse came a little closer and sniffed them, but still she said nothing.

At last he found something to say. ‘You dance beautifully.’

‘Do you think so? Do you?’ she said. ‘Have you been waiting for me? Have you really? You didn’t expect me, did you?’

‘Have I waited for you!’ exclaimed Moomintroll. ‘I waited and waited and was so worried when it was so rough out there… I want to protect you from all danger! I have my own little nest and I have hung up your picture there. It’s the only thing that I shall hang there…’

The sea-horse listened attentively.

‘You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ Moomintroll went on, and just then the Groke began to howl.

There she was, sitting out there in the fog, howling for the lamp.

The little horse reared, and was gone, leaving behind her little pearls of laughter. A whole string of pearls followed her as she capered into the sea again.

The Groke came shuffling out of the fog towards where Moomintroll was standing. He turned and ran. But tonight the Groke didn’t stop on the beach. She followed Moomintroll over the island, through the heather and right up to the lighthouse-rock. He could see her moving like a great grey shadow and then stop and crouch under the rock to wait.

Moomintroll slammed the door behind him and ran up the winding staircase with his heart in his stomach – it had happened: the Groke had come right on to the island!

Moominmamma and Moominpappa hadn’t woken up and the room was quite quiet. But he could feel an uneasy feeling coming through the window as the island murmured in its sleep and turned over. He heard the poplar leaves rustle with fright and the gulls started to screech.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ Moominmamma asked.

Moomintroll closed the window.

‘I woke up,’ he said, and crept into bed. His nose was stiff with cold.

‘It’s getting colder,’ said Moominmamma. ‘It’s a good thing I sawed up all those logs. Are you cold?’

‘No,’ said Moomintroll.

She was sitting there freezing just below the
lighthouse. She was so cold that the ground under her turned to ice… There it was again. It crept up and he couldn’t shake it off. It was so easy to imagine somebody who could never get warm, somebody nobody liked, who destroyed everything wherever she went. It wasn’t fair. Why should he have the Groke round his neck all the time, no one else had? You just
couldn’t
help her to get warm!

‘Are you unhappy about something?’ Moominmamma asked.

‘No,’ answered Moomintroll.

‘Well, it’ll be another nice long day tomorrow,’ said Moominmamma. ‘And it’s all yours from beginning to end. Now isn’t that a lovely thought!’

After a while Moomintroll knew that Moominmamma had gone to sleep. He brushed all thoughts aside and started to play the game he played every night. At first he couldn’t make up his mind whether to play the ‘Adventure’ game or the ‘Rescue’ game. Finally he decided on the ‘Rescue’ game, it felt more real somehow. He shut his eyes and made his mind a blank. And then he started to think of a storm.

On a deserted rocky coast, rather like the island, the Storm was Raging. They were running up and down the beach, wringing their hands – someone was in Distress out there… Nobody dared to go out, it was quite impossible. Any boat would be Smashed to Pieces in an instant.

It wasn’t Moominmamma that Moomintroll saved now, but the sea-horse.

Who was struggling out there? Was it the little Sea-horse with the Silver Shoe battling with a sea-serpent? No, that was too much. The Storm was quite enough.

The sky was all yellow, a real Storm-sky. And then he came along the beach himself. With great Determination he ran up to one of the boats… everybody started shouting: ‘Stop him! Stop him! He’ll never do it! Lay hold of him!’ He brushed them aside, got the boat out, rowed like mad. The Rocks stood out of the Sea like Great Black Teeth… but he felt no Fear. Little My was shouting something on the beach: ‘I didn’t know he was so Brave! Oh, how sorry I am for everything. But it’s Too Late!… Snufkin chewed his old pipe and murmured: ‘Farewell Old Pal.’ But he struggled on and on to where the little Sea-horse was just about to go down for the Third Time. He lifted her into the boat, and she lay there in a Heap, her wet Golden Hair round her. He took her safely to the beach, and it was remote and deserted. She whispered: ‘You have risked your Life to save mine. How Brave you are!’ He smiled distantly and said: ‘I must leave you here. Our ways must part. My Destiny calls me, Farewell!’ The sea-horse stared at him in amazement as he walked away. She was Impressed. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Would you leave me?’ He waved to her as he walked on, Alone, over the rocks in the Storm, getting smaller and smaller… All those standing on the beach were astonished and started to say to one another…

But at this point Moomintroll went to sleep. He
sighed happily and curled up like a ball under the warm, red blanket.

‘Where’s the calendar gone to?’ Moominpappa asked. ‘I must make a cross on it, it’s very important.’

‘Why?’ said Little My as she climbed in the window.

‘Well, we have to know what day it is,’ Moominpappa explained. ‘We forgot to bring the clock with us, which was a mistake. But things are impossible if one doesn’t know whether it’s Sunday or Wednesday. No one can live like that.’

Little My drew in her breath through her nose and breathed out through her teeth in that awful way of hers which said ‘I’ve never heard anything so stupid in all my life.’

Moominpappa understood what she meant. So he was already feeling good and angry when Moomintroll said: ‘Actually, I borrowed it for a while.’

‘There are certain things which are extremely important on an island like this,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Particularly keeping the proper observations recorded in a log-book. One must observe everything – nothing must be neglected. The time, the direction of the wind, the level of the water, everything. You must hang up the calendar again immediately.’

‘All right! All right!’ said Moomintroll loudly. He swallowed his coffee and stamped down the stairs and out into the chilly autumn morning. The fog was still there. The lighthouse vanished into it like a huge pillar and the top of it was invisible. Up there, somewhere in
the billowing fog, sat his family, just not understanding him. He was angry and sleepy, and just at the moment not the slightest bit interested in the Groke, the sea-horses, or his family either for that matter.

Just below the lighthouse-rock he woke up a bit. One might have thought it would happen – the Groke had chosen of all places to sit in Moominmamma’s garden. He wondered whether she had sat there for longer than an hour. He hoped not. The rosebush was quite brown. For a moment Moomintroll’s conscience hit him with its tail, but he was soon feeling angry and sleepy again. ‘Huh! Calendars indeed! Making crosses! What next!’ How could an old troll like Moominpappa possibly understand that the picture of the sea-horse was a picture of Beauty itself that only he could see.

Moomintroll crept into the thicket and took the calendar off its twig. The fog had made it all crinkled.
He threw away the frame of flowers and sat down for a while, his head full of half-formed thoughts.

And suddenly he thought: ‘Why, I’ll move here! They can live in that rotten old lighthouse with its awful stairs and count the days as they go by.’

It was an exciting prospect, new, dangerous and wonderful. It changed everything. It seemed as though he was suddenly surrounded by a new melancholy, by strange possibilities.

He was stiff and cold when he got home. He put the calendar back on top of the desk. Moominpappa immediately went and made a cross in the top corner.

Moomintroll took a deep breath and said as boldly as he could: ‘I’m thinking of living somewhere else on the island by myself.’

‘Out of doors? Why, of course,’ said Moominmamma, not really paying much attention. She was sitting in the north window drawing a creeper. ‘That’s all right. You can take your sleeping-bag with you as usual.’ Now she was drawing honeysuckle, and it was very complicated. Moominmamma hoped she had remembered what it was really like. Honeysuckle doesn’t grow by the sea. It needs a warm and sheltered spot.

‘Mamma,’ said Moomintroll, and his throat felt very dry, ‘this isn’t “as usual”.’

But Moominmamma wasn’t listening. She made an encouraging sound and went on drawing.

Moominpappa was counting the crosses he had made. There was a Friday he wasn’t quite sure about. He might have made two crosses that day because he
had forgotten to make one on the Thursday. Something had disturbed him so that he wasn’t quite sure about it. What had he done that day? The days floated together and went round and round in his head. It was like going round an island, walking for ever along the same beach without getting anywhere.

‘All right!’ said Moomintroll. ‘I’ll take my sleeping-bag and the hurricane lamp.’

Outside the window the fog swirled past. It seemed as though they were moving somewhere with the room.

‘I really need a little blue,’ said Moominmamma to herself. She had made the honeysuckle grow out of the window and in again on the white wall, where it boldly opened out into a very carefully drawn flower.