Goblin Music 

Joan Aiken 

 

Joan Aiken was one of the great English fantasists. Born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge, Aiken worked for the BBC and the UNIC, before she started writing professionally, mainly children's books and thrillers including classics like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts in Battersea, and many, many others. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972). Aiken died in 2004. Her most recent book is the posthumously published, The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories.

 

The Armitage family had been to Cornwall for a week at the end of April. They did this every year, for April 30 was old Miss Thunderhurst's birthday. Miss Thunderhurst lived next door to the Armitages and the celebrations of her birthday grew louder and wilder every year. This year was her hundredth birthday and, as Mr. Armitage said, staying at home through the festivities was not to be thought of. So the Armitages went off to their usual rented seaside cottage in the little port of Gwendreavy where, if you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, you had to row across the estuary to South-the-Water on the other side. There was a wonderful secondhand bookshop in South-the-Water; when they were sent across for the bread Mark and Harriet put in a lot of time browsing there and came back with battered copies of treasures such as What Katie Knew, The Herr of Poynton, Eric or Little Women, More About Rebecca of Manderley Farm, and Simple Peter Rabbit. The family took their cat Walrus along with them on these holidays and he had a fine time catching fish.

So it was decidedly puzzling, when the family returned home after a five-hour drive, arriving in the middle of the night, to find a line of muddy cat footprints on the white paint of the front door, leading straight upwards, from the doorstep to the lintel.

"Cats don't walk up vertical walls," said Mr. Armitage indignantly, rummaging for the front door key.

"Here it is," said his wife, getting it out of her handbag. And she added, "I have seen Walrus bounce upwards off a wall when the jump to the top was a bit more than he reckoned he could manage."

"Granted, but not walk up the whole wall."

Walrus was sniffing suspiciously at the lowest of the footprints, and he let out a loud and disapproving noise between a hiss and a growl.

"Let's go in," said Mrs. Armitage hastily in case Walrus's challenge received an answer. "They are only kitten prints. And I'm dying for a cup of tea and bed."

"I'm surprised to see that marquee still there," grumbled her husband, carrying bags into the house.

Since Miss Thunderhurst's party had been planned for an extra big one this year, she had rented a marquee for the occasion, and got permission to put it in farmer Beezeley's field across the road. The car's headlights had caught the great grey-white canvas shape as the Armitages turned into their own driveway.

"So we still have all that nuisance ahead, poles clanking and trucks blocking the road while they take it down," growled Mr. Armitage, as ruffled as Walrus.

"Oh I expect they do that tomorrow while we're still getting unpacked," said his wife. "Here's your tea, dear. I'm going up."

But when Mrs. Armitage was halfway up the stairs, the most amazing noise started up outside the house. It seemed to be piano music played by giants. It was a fugue—the same tune played again and again, overlapping like tiles on a roof, in different keys, some high, some low.

"It's rather terrific," said Mark, impressed in spite of himself.

"Terrific? It's the most ear-splitting racket I ever heard! At three minutes to one a.m.? Are they out of their flagrant minds? I'm going across to give them what-for!"

"Oh, Gilbert! Do you think that's neighbourly? We don't want to be on bad terms with Miss Thunderhurst."

"How long does she expect her birthday to last? It's the fourth of May, dammit."

Mr. Armitage strode out of the front door, down the steps, across the road, and Mark followed him, curious to see what instruments produced that astonishing sound.

The door-flaps of the marquee were folded back. A dim glow inside was just enough to show that the big tent was completely packed with people—far more, surely, than even Miss Thunderhurst would have invited to her birthday celebrations—and Miss Thunderhurst knew every soul in the village.

"Where is Miss Thunderhurst? I want to speak to her," Mr. Armitage said to a shortish, stoutish person who met him in the entrance.

"Miss Thunderhurst has long since departed to her own place of residence."

"Oh, indeed!—well, who's in charge here? You are making a devilish rumpus and it has to stop. At once!"

"Oh, no, sir. That is not quite possible."

"Not possible? I should just about think it is possible! You are making an ear-splitting row. It has to stop. At once!"

"No, sir. To make music is our right."

"Right? Who the deuce do you think you are?"

"We are the Niffel people. Our own place of residence—Niffelheim-under-Lyme—has been rendered unfit for occupation. They set light to an opencast coal mine on top of our cave habitation, and the roof collapsed. Luckily there was no loss of life, but many were injured. Much damage. So we appealed to the County Council and they have found us this dwelling for the time. We are sadly cramped but it must serve until we find a more suitable home."

"Oh! I see! Very well. If the Council settled you here, that's different. I suppose you don't know how long you'll be here? . . . But you must, immediately, stop making that atrocious row. People need to sleep."

"No, sir. To make the music is our right. Is our need."

"Not at this time of night, dammit!"

"Sir, we are nocturnal people. Earthfolk. Gloam Goblins. Our work is done at nighttime. By day we sleep. Dark is our day. Day is our dark. Music is our stay."

"Who is in charge here? Who is your president—or whatever you have? Your head person?"

"I am the Spokesman. My name is Albrick," The small man said with dignity. "Our First Lady—our Sovereign—is the Lady Holdargh."

"Well let me speak to her."

"She is not here at this time. She travels. She seeks a place for us."

"Oh. Well—won't you, in the meantime, please stop making this hideous din!"

"No, sir. That we cannot do. It is our must." And as Mr. Armitage looked at him in incredulous outrage, he repeated with dignity, "It is our must."

"Come on, Dad." Mark plucked his father's arm. "We can't make a fuss if they are here by permission of the Council. I'll lend you a pair of earplugs."

Very unwillingly and reluctantly Mr. Armitage allowed himself to be led back across the road to his own house. There he was supplied with earplugs by Mark (who used them when practising with his Group) and a sleeping-pill by his wife.

Harriet, during this interval, had opened a tin of sardines for Walrus, who was upset and nervous at the traces of an intruder around his home. Mark and his father came back just as she was about to go out in search of them. Mr. Armitage stomped off gloomily upstairs, muttering, "Niffel people indeed!"

"What's going on?" Harriet asked Mark. "Couldn't Dad get them to stop?"

"No, he couldn't. They aren't Miss Thunderhurst's guests at all. They are goblins—displaced goblins."

"Goblins? I've never met a goblin. Who displaced them?"

"A burning coal mine. Coal is burned underground these days to make gas. The goblins were obliged to shift. They didn't seem unfriendly. Their spokesman was quite reasonable. They are nocturnal. They work at night. And they need music to work."

"I wonder what sort of work they do? Could you see? Were they doing it?"

"No, I couldn't see. There were a whole lot of them in the tent—several hundred at least. All crammed together in a very dim light."

"Well!" said Harriet. "Fancy having a group of hardworking goblins across the road. I can't wait to see what they make. I'll go across after breakfast."

"They'll all be asleep," her brother pointed out.

"Bother! So they will. But I suppose they start to get active after sunset, about half past seven. I'll go and call on them then. Now I'm off to bed. Come on, Walrus."

But Walrus was going out, to watch for Goblin cats, and, if necessary, beat them up.

The full moon had just worked its way round the corner of the house, and was blazing in at Harriet's bedroom window, throwing a great square of white light across her bedroom wall.—Harriet had once sat in a train opposite two women who were evidently sisters in some religious order. They wore black habits and white wimples. They were laughing a great deal and talking to each other nonstop in some foreign language that was full of s's and k's. Harriet could not at all understand what they were saying, but she somehow took a great liking to them and, when she got home, drew a picture of them from memory and hung it up on her bedroom wall. Two or three months later she noticed an interesting phenomenon: when the moon shone on her picture, she could see the two women's hands move about and sometimes catch a little of what they were saying. Now, too, she could partly understand the language, but one of the two women, the spectacled one, had a bad stammer, and Harriet only caught a word here and a word there.

"Refugees—immigrants—l-l-look after them somehow—p-p-poor d-d-dears—"

Tonight the moonlight was fully on the picture, and the two women were deeply engrossed in what they were saying.

"Hardworking—industrious—deserving."

"No place for them here—"

"Only l-l-lead to t-t-trouble—"

Harriet went and stood in front of the picture. "Excuse me—" she began politely. Then she realised that she was blocking off the moonlight from the picture and the ladies stopped talking and moving their hands.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt," said Harriet, and stepped to one side. But now a cloud had drifted across the moon and the ladies remained silent. Harriet waited for ten minutes, but by the time the cloud had floated away, the moon had moved also, and no longer shone in at the window.

"I'll try again tomorrow," thought Harriet, and went to bed, for she was tired.

In the morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Mark and Harriet raced across the road to inspect the new occupants of farmer Beezeley's meadow.

The Gloam Goblins were packing up their work materials and preparing their evening meal. They were evidently smiths and potters. They had portable kilns and forges.

"They seem to use solar heat," said Mark. "It's very adaptable of them! If they lived underground up to now they must have changed their habits very quickly."

"Oh look," said Harriet. "There are stalls with things for sale."

The things for sale were lace made of filigree iron, exquisitely fine and light; also iron jewellry, and pottery—bowls, plates, cups, jugs, also very light and delicate, ornamented with a dark-green and white glazed pattern resembling the foam on a wave crest.

"Ma would like these," said Harriet. Mrs. Armitage collected china and had brought back from Cornwall an enormous blue-and-white platter with a romantic landscape on it which she had found in a junk shop in South-the-Water.

"I'll come back later with some money and buy one of these," Harriet told the little woman behind the stall, who smiled and nodded.

The Goblins were about half the size of humans. Their skin was brown and weather-worn as if at sometime they had lived out of doors for centuries. Their faces were rugged, rather plain but friendly and honest-looking. Their manners were somewhat abrupt, as if all they wanted was to be left alone to get on with what they were doing. Mark and Harriet now felt rather embarrassed and apologetic at their plan to inspect the new arrivals like creatures in a zoo. They retreated from the doorway, taking in as quickly and unobtrusively as possible all the activities that were going on: pots of vegetable stew being stirred over small fires, bedding rolls pulled out of sacks and spread on the ground, children's faces being washed in basins of water. There were cats and dogs, too, of a size to match their owners.

"You don't mind us just looking?" Mark said to Albrick, the man who had talked to his father. Albrick was evidently a smith; he was packing up a small anvil and a portable forge and cooling off his tools in a pail of water.

"Very well cannot stop you, can I?" said Albrick gruffly. But he added, "You are alright. But some folk do more than just look—they want us to go. Where we stopped before here, we needed guards with swords and pistols. And the young ones needed to go out with guards. Folk in this village not bad—but not welcoming. What can we expect?"

"I expect—if it weren't for the music at night—"

"Ah, the music. It is our must." Albrick glanced toward the interior of the tent and Mark and Harriet, following the direction of his eyes, had a glimpse of a massive structure—a portable organ?—which a party of Goblins were wrapping up in layers of thick felt.

"Our must," Albrick repeated. "Work and music."

"Oh!" said Mark. "Is it an organ? Oh, I'd love to play it. Could I? Could I?"

Mark had piano lessons from Professor Johansen in the village and was understood to show promise. He was certainly very keen and practised a great deal.

"You wish to play our keyboard?" Albrick said doubtfully. "You do nothing foolish?"

"Oh no!"

"He does play quite well," Harriet put in hopefully.

"We see. We see. Not now. I put my child to bed. Goodbye. We talk again."

Albrick nodded in a dismissive manner and called, "Dwine! Dwiney! Bedtime!"

"Here, Father!" A small tousle-headed Goblin child came rushing towards him followed by a Goblin kitten. "Come, Fryxse!" she called to the cat. But Fryxse was small, wayward, and playful. He clawed and scampered his way up the side of the marquee and disappeared. On his way, no doubt, to go and tease Walrus.

Mark and Harriet strolled along the village street to find how the rest of the neighbours were reacting to having a community of Gloam Goblins deposited on their doorstep.

Mr. Budd the blacksmith said, "They're not bad. Decent enough. The chairperson, that Albrick, he's a sensible chap. Good workman too. Knows what's what. He comes round to my forge for a chat now and then. There's not much I can tell him about iron."

"But what about their music?"

Mr. Budd gave a half grin, rubbing his bristly jaw.

"Don't worrit me none. I'm deaf, see? All blacksmiths are deaf, 'count of the hammering. I pulls the covers over me head, nights, and sleep through the lot. And little Dwiney, his kid, she'd be in here all evening long, with her cat, if I didn't chase her home to bed. Taken a fair shine to her, I have. Sharp as a tack, she be."

Mrs. Case, at the village shop, was not so enthusiastic.

"Only middling customers, see? Grow a lot of their own stuff, they do, in pots and trays. Vegetarians, like. I will say, they pay up promptly for what they do buy—but at first they wanted to pay in gold coins. 'Gold?' I say to them, 'I'm not having any of that fancy stuff. You'll have to go and change it at Mr. Watson's bank.' Which they did, I'm bound to say. A lot of them never heard of a bank before. The music? Drives me up the wall, that do. Shouldn't be allowed."

"They need it for their work," Mark said.

"Well, they oughta do their work somewhere else, where they won't drive honest day-biding folk clean balmy. That's what I say! And so do lots of neighbours."

Half the village shared Mrs. Case's feelings. If the newcomers had to make such an ear-splitting row in order to do their work, why then they must move to a place where nobody could hear them. Else why couldn't they alter their habits to fit in with their new neighbours?

Mrs. Owlet, a witch, the Chair Person of the Parish Council, threatened to stage a protest about the new arrivals.

"And it will be terribly inconvenient if she does," worried Mrs. Armitage, who was secretary to the Council. "Last time she protested it was about the plan for a bypass running through Titania Copse; never shall I forget the trouble."

"The cows were all giving sour milk for eight weeks," remembered Mr. Armitage. "Mind, she was quite right about the bypass. What is she threatening to do this time?"

"Put up a pillar in the middle of the village green and stand on it till somebody gives way. Like Saint Simeon the Stylites."

"I should think the pillar would collapse. Mrs. Owlet must weigh as much as the Statue of Liberty. Ask her round for a drink, and I'll see if I can't persuade her to think of some other form of protest."

"What in the world can we offer her to drink?"

"She likes low-calorie poison," Harriet said. "Sue Case told me her mother orders it specially for Mrs. Owlet and they deliver four cases a week.

"Oh well, we'd better get some. And some wolfsbane-flavoured cheese straws."

"I'll make those," Harriet offered. "And little Dwiney Albrick can help."

Little Dwiney Albrick, that sociable child, had taken a great fancy to the Armitage family and spent a lot of time in their house, unless her father came and fetched her.

"Don't let her be a nuisance to ye, ma'am," he said to Mrs. Armitage.

"No, we're very fond of her, Mr. Albrick. Her and that crazy kitten of hers . . . "

The Armitage house contained a room which was simply known as the Top Room. In it were kept all the things that members of the family had acquired in one way or another, but had no plans for just at present: the huge blue-and-white platter that Mrs. Armitage had bought in Cornwall; a spinning-wheel for llama's wool that was waiting for Harriet to collect enough wool from Hebdons' llama farm; a fishing-rod for when Mr. Armitage had a spare day from the office to visit his carp pools; several thousand empty egg-boxes stacked against the wall which Mark intended to make into a launching-pad for the flint-powered space-craft that he was in the process of constructing.

Mark spent more time than the rest of the family in this pleasant attic, with its skylight looking out over the village green, and little Dwiney and her kitten liked to come and keep him company. Dwiney was a quiet and untroublesome companion; she drew pictures, using a box of crayons that Harriet had given her, arranged little chips of flint into patterns, and sang to herself in a soft, true little voice while Mark played on the shallow, tinkling old piano that also lived up there.

Dwiney's kitten was something else. It was not that he was badly behaved—after a tendency to tease Walrus had been firmly dealt with by that character—but he was so interested in everything and so inquisitive that it was not safe to leave him unobserved for more than a very few minutes.

On the evening that Mrs. Owlet was invited for a drink, Mark was working on his space-craft and chose to stay upstairs; he was never particularly fond of adult company and he thought Mrs. Owlet was an old bore anyway; always carrying on about the human race and their habit of hurting and killing one another.

"Can't we persuade you to try some other form of protest?" suggested Mr. Armitage hopefully when the lady guest had been provided with a plateful of wolfsbane cheese straws and a brimming beaker of low-calorie poison.

"Why, pray?" snapped Mrs. Owlet. She was a large, commanding lady; Harriet imagined her on top of an eighty-foot column on the village green and decided that it would be an impressive sight.

"Well—I don't want to discourage you—but those young tearaways on their motorbikes—not from our village, I'm thankful to say, they come over from Trottenworth—I don't like to think what they might get up to if they arrived one evening and saw you on your column—what's it going to be made of, by the way?"

"Fuel containers," snapped Mrs. Owlet, "threaded together on a ship's mast I purchased from the United Sorcerer's Supply Stores; they are erecting it now, on the green. It will be a most superior addition to the village—I expect photographers from the national press, and our Member of Parliament has been sent an invitation; he has half promised to come down on Sunday—and of course representatives from the National Trust and Downlands Heritage will certainly come—I expect a sculpture award, it will certainly put our village on the map."

"But it is on the map already," said Mrs. Armitage plaintively. "We surely don't want a lot of tourists and day-trippers coming and rubbernecking—do we?—and I'm sure the poor Goblins don't either. They hate being stared at. It would probably be at times when they would be asleep—"

Mr. Armitage saw that their guest was displeased by these remarks, and made haste to change the subject.

"How do you plan to get to the top of the pillar?" he inquired, thinking of cranes and hoists.

Mrs. Owlet was affronted.

"To someone with my qualifications that presents no problem at all," she said shortly. "I merely levitate. In fact"—she looked at her watch—"I should be on my way now."

And, nodding perfunctory thanks, she drained her glass and left the room and the house.

At this moment, upstairs, little Dwiney's kitten Fryxse was sitting in the middle of the Top Room, eying Mark's massive rampart of egg-boxes stacked against the wall. Mark, at the piano, was playing a tune which he had christened "Dwiney's Night Song." He hoped to play it to Mr. Albrick, to persuade him to let Mark have a try on the organ.

Dwiney was listening with total attention. When Mark had finished she gave a sigh of pure happiness. "Oh, that was nice, Mark! Play it again!"

But, at that moment, Fryxse finished his calculations, and sprang to the top of the egg-box mountain, bouncing lightly halfway to give himself extra launching-power.

Mark and his father argued for years afterwards about whether the fact that, by sheer unfortunate accident, one of the egg-boxes was not empty but contained six eggs and a use-by label that was five years old made any difference to the ultimate outcome.

There was a thunderous crash, followed by the slithering sound of a torrent of egg-boxes cascading down the attic stairs to the bedroom floor. This was accompanied, simultaneously, by the powerful smell of six five-year-old eggs, which poured through the house like poison gas and caused the Armitage parents to run into the garden in case it was poison gas.

Poor Fryxse, the cause of this cataclysm, was terrified, and rushed from the room, down the stairs, and out through the front door, which Mrs. Owlet had left open behind her.

"Fryxse! Come back! It's alright! Come back!"

Dwiney rushed after him—out the front door, through the garden, across the road—straight into the path of the young tearaways from Trottenworth on their motor-bikes come to laugh at the lady balancing on top of her pillar.

Both Dwiney and her kitten were killed instantly.

 

That night, when the square of moonlight slipped round the wall to the picture of the two Sisters, Harriet addressed them.

"Please listen! Things are in a very bad way here. The Goblins are terribly unhappy. Mrs. Owlet is threatening to jump down off her pillar in protest at the Goblins being here if they don't leave and go somewhere else. They say they don't care if she does jump. But they have nowhere to go . . . "

A black cloud drifted across the sky and blotted out the picture of the Sisters.

Harriet went unhappily to bed. Since the house still reeked of five-year-old eggs she packed a lavender-bag under her pillow. But it made very little difference.

Next day was little Dwiney's funeral.

One or two people (including Mrs. Owlet from her pillar) raised objections to little Dwiney being buried in the village churchyard, but the Vicar responded so fiercely that they soon backed down.

Everybody was at the ceremony except Mrs. Owlet. The funeral had been held at twilight so as not to interfere with anybody's habits. The villagers were just coming home from work, the Goblins just waking up. A huge mass of flowers had been brought by different people and laid in the corner of the churchyard where the new small grave had been dug for Dwiney and her kitten.

Harriet arrived just as the service was about to begin. An enormous Hunter's Moon had recently risen and was floating above the churchyard wall, competing with the setting sun. Harriet had been in her bedroom, consulting with the pictured Sisters.

And this time she had obtained a reply.

The Vicar, ending his short sad talk by the small grave said:

"And I'm sure that none of us would wish or expect our good neighbours the Goblins to move away from our village now, since they must leave this sad token behind them. We were all fond of little Dwiney—she was like our own child—we would never dream of asking them to leave—"

"Yes we would!" shouted Mrs. Owlet from the top of her pillar. "If they don't agree to get away from here by the end of this week, I'm going to jump from my pillar! And that will make a heap of trouble for them!"

"So jump, you old bag!" shouted one of the Goblins—not Albrick, who was standing wrapped in silence by the grave.

Mrs. Owlet jumped.

Her landing was not at all spectacular, for Mark and some of his friends had piled all the empty egg-boxes under the column in a massive, rustling heap which also contained the fragments of Mrs. Armitage's blue platter and Harriet's spinning wheel. And smelt of five-year-old eggs. So the landing was soft, if untidy.

But meanwhile, at the graveside, Harriet had come forward, and was saying, "I have a message for the Goblin people from their Lady Holdargh. She has talked to the two Sisters who live on my bedroom wall, and she wishes to tell you that she has found a good place underground for you all to live, in a cave in southern Tasmania. Plenty of room for all, and there will be no problem about the music. She will be expecting you there tomorrow by E-Travel.

"Tasmania!" whispered some of the crowd. "That be a long way sure-lye!"

"Don't worry about little Dwiney's grave, Mr. Albrick," whispered Harriet to the man beside her. "Mark and I will look after it very carefully, I promise!"

 

Next day the Goblins were gone and there was no trace of them left. The huge tent was clean and tidy as if it had just been put up. Only on the Armitages' door-step were two parcels, containing a very beautiful iron lace-work necklace and an elegant green-and-white bowl.

Mark said sadly, "I never did get a chance to play on their organ." And Harriet sighed as they looked at the last book saved from their Cornish trip—Elizabeth and Her Secret German Garden—somehow at the moment she had no wish to read it.

Every year on Dwiney's grave they found a very uncommon flower, a beautiful white star, not like any product of English fields or gardens. "Actinotus helianthi," the Vicar said. It could only have come from Tasmania.