Moominpappa at Sea (16 page)

ONE night just before dawn, Moominmamma was awakened by the silence round the lighthouse. It had suddenly become calm, as it can do when the wind is changing.

She lay for a long time listening.

Far out over the sea in the darkness a new wind started to blow very gently. Moominmamma could hear it approaching just like somebody walking over the water. It got stronger all the time, until it finally reached the island. The open window moved on its hooks.

Moominmamma felt very small as she lay there. She buried her nose in the pillow and tried to think of an apple tree. But she could only see the sea with its driving winds, a sea that swept the island when it lay all in the darkness, that was always everywhere, taking possession of the beach, the lighthouse and the whole
island. She imagined that the whole world was smooth, gliding water and that very slowly the room itself was beginning to sail away.

‘Imagine if the island came loose, and suddenly one morning was splashing in the water by the jetty back there at home. Or imagine if it glided further and further out and drifted for years and years until it fell over the edge of the world like a coffee cup on a slippery tray…’

‘Little My would appreciate that,’ thought Moominmamma, giggling to herself. ‘I wonder where she sleeps. And Moomintroll, too… What a pity mothers can’t go off when they want to and sleep out of doors. Mothers, particularly, could do with it sometimes.’ She smiled to herself, and in an absent-minded way she sent Moomintroll a silent, loving greeting in the way trolls do. Moomintroll, lying awake in his glade, felt that she had done this, and, as he usually did, wiggled his ears by way of answer.

No moon was shining, and it was very dark.

No one had made any fuss at all about his leaving home, and he wasn’t quite sure whether he was relieved or disappointed.

Every evening after they had had tea, Moominmamma lit two candles and put them on the table and he took the hurricane lamp with him. Moominpappa said just for the sake of saying something: ‘Be careful not to set light to the thicket and make sure you put the lamp out before you go to sleep.’

It was always the same. They hadn’t understood one little bit.

Moomintroll lay listening to the wind, and thought: ‘The moon is on the wane. The sea-horse won’t be here again for a long time.’

But perhaps this was more of a relief than a disappointment. Now he could lie there just imagining lovely conversations with her and trying to remember what she looked like. And there was no need to be angry with the Groke any longer. She could stare at the lamp as much as she wanted to. Moomintroll told himself that it was purely for practical reasons that he went to the beach every night with the lamp: to stop the Groke going right up to the lighthouse and ruining Moominmamma’s roses. And so that the family shouldn’t discover that she was there, too. To say nothing of stopping her howling. He didn’t do it for any other reason.

Every night Moomintroll put the lamp on the beach and stood there yawning while the Groke gazed her fill.

She stared at the lamp, following a ritual of her own. After looking at it for a while she would begin to sing, or something that sounded like singing to her. It was a thin sound, something like humming and whistling together, and it penetrated everywhere, so that after a while Moomintroll felt that it was inside his head, behind his eyes, and even in his tummy. At the same time she swayed slowly and heavily from side to side, waving her skirts up and down until they looked like dry, wrinkled bats’ wings. The Groke was dancing!

She was quite obviously very pleased, and somehow this absurd ritual became very important to Moomintroll. He could see no reason why it should stop at all, whether the island wanted it or not.

But the island seemed to be getting more and more uneasy. The trees whispered and trembled, and great shudders went through the low-hanging branches, like the waves of the sea. The sea-grass on the beach shook and lay flat, trying to pull itself up by the roots in order to escape. One night Moomintroll saw something that made him feel afraid.

It was the sand. It had started to move. He could see it quite clearly, creeping slowly away from the Groke. There it was, a sparkling, glittering mass moving away from her great flat feet that were stamping the ground to ice as they danced.

Moomintroll grabbed the lamp and rushed as fast as he could into the thicket through the emergency tunnel. He got into his sleeping-bag, pulled the zip-fastener right up and tried to go to sleep. But however tightly he kept his eyes closed he could see nothing but sand creeping down the beach and into the water.

On the following day Moominmamma dug up four wild rose-bushes. They had twined their roots in among the stones in an almost terrifyingly patient way, and spread their leaves over the rock like an obedient carpet.

Moominmamma thought that pink roses against the grey of the rock would be perfectly lovely, but perhaps she hadn’t given it enough thought when she planted
them in her garden of brown seaweed. There they were, standing in a row looking most uncomfortable. She gave each of them a handful of the soil she had brought from home, watered them and then sat down beside them for a little while.

It was just then that Moominpappa came up to her, his eyes wide with excitement, and shouted: ‘It’s the black pool! It’s alive! Come and look, quickly!’ Then he turned and ran back towards it. Moominmamma got up and followed him, not understanding a word he had said. But Moominpappa was right.

The dark water was rising and falling again – heaving itself up and then sinking down again as if it was sighing deeply. The black pool was breathing – it was alive.

Little My appeared, running over the rock. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘now something’s going to happen. The island’s coming to life! I always thought it would.’

‘Don’t be so childish,’ said Moominpappa. ‘An island can’t come to life. It’s the sea that’s alive…’ He became silent and held his nose with both paws.

‘Whatever is the matter?’ Moominmamma asked anxiously.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I haven’t really thought it out yet. I had an idea just now, but I can’t remember what it was.’ He picked up the exercise-book and wandered off over the rock, deep in thought.

Moominmamma stared at the black pool with a look of extreme disapproval on her face.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that this is the right moment for us all to go on a nice picnic.’

And she went straight back to the lighthouse and started to pack.

When she had got everything together that they would need for a picnic, she opened the window and started to bang the gong. She watched them all running towards the lighthouse, not feeling the slightest bit guilty, although she knew that the gong was only supposed to be used in cases of extreme urgency.

She saw both Moominpappa and Moomintroll standing beneath her and looking up. From where she was they looked like two big pears. She held on to the window-sill and leaned out.

‘Keep quite calm,’ she cried. ‘There’s no fire! We’re going on a picnic as soon as we possibly can.’

‘A picnic?’ exclaimed Moominpappa. ‘How could you ring the bell just for a picnic?’

‘There’s danger in the air,’ Moominmamma shouted back. ‘If we don’t go for a picnic this very instant,
anything
might happen to us!’

And they went for a picnic. With much effort the whole family hauled the
Adventure
out of the black pool. Then, rowing against the wind, they made for the largest of the outlying rocks on the north-west side of the island. Shivering, they pulled themselves up the wet rock and sat down. Moominmamma made a fire between some stones and began to get coffee ready. She did everything in exactly the same way as she had always done years and years ago. A table-cloth with four stones to hold it down, the butter-dish with its lid, their mugs, their bathing-towels looking like bright flowers spread out on the rock, and, of course, the sunshade too. Just as the coffee was ready it started to drizzle.

Moominmamma was in a very good mood. She talked all the time about ordinary everyday things, rummaged in the picnic basket and made sandwiches. It was the first time that she had got her handbag with her.

The rock they had come to was small and bare; there was nothing growing there at all, and no sign of seaweed or driftwood. It was merely a bit of grey nothingness that just happened to be there in the water.

As they sat there drinking their coffee it seemed as if suddenly everything was perfectly natural and right. They began chatting about all sorts of things, but not
about the sea, not about the island and not about Moominvalley.

From where they were, the island and the enormous lighthouse looked very strange, a remote grey shadow in the rain.

When they had finished their coffee, Moominmamma washed their mugs in the sea and put everything back in the basket. Moominpappa went to the water’s-edge and started to sniff into the wind. ‘I think we ought to go back home now before the wind gets up,’ he said. It was what he always said when they went anywhere for a picnic. They bundled into the boat and Little My crept into the bows. On the way home the wind was behind them.

They pulled the
Adventure
up the beach.

Somehow the island was quite different once they were home again. They all felt it, but they said nothing. They didn’t really know in what way it was different. Perhaps it was because they had left it for a while and then come back again. They went straight to the lighthouse, and that evening they did the jigsaw puzzle, and Moominpappa made a little kitchen shelf and nailed it up beside the stove.

The picnic had done the family a lot of good, but somehow it had made Moominmamma a little sad. During the night she had dreamed that they had gone to see the Hatti-fatteners on an island off the coast near their old home, a green and friendly island, and when she had woken up in the morning she had felt sad.

When she was alone after breakfast, she sat quietly at the table looking at the honeysuckle growing over the window-sill. The indelible pencil had almost all gone, and what there was left of it Moominpappa needed for making crosses on the calendar and writing his notes.