The Willows in Winter Read online

  It was as he was mournfully pondering on this, and staring out of the window at the gardens and outhouses below, that he saw somebody and something that made him sit up, clap his hand to his brow and say, “That’s it! Not only a means of speedy escape, but of disguise as well! But wait! He’s leaving!’ I must act!”

  Without more ado Toad took up that morning’s copy of The Times, screwed it into a ball and stuffed it up the chimney, which immediately began to smoke and send forth choking fumes.

  Coughing and spluttering, Toad staggered to the bedroom door and called for help, which soon came.

  He needed do no more than point mutely at the smoking chimney before there was a shout down the corridors of, “Sweep! Stop the sweep! Send him to the Most Honoured Guest’s bedroom.”

  “Cunning and brilliant,” said Toad to himself, retreating to the bed and hiding beneath the sheets, coughing and spluttering for show.

  Moments later the chimney sweep, the same he had just seen leaving the grounds and who no doubt had been at work in some other part of the House, appeared, broom-laden and sooty. Others appeared with him, but Toad ordered them out.

  “Leave him to help me alone,” he croaked. “Too many people distress me.

  The sweep took a slow look at Toad, then at the chimney, and then at Toad again. “Bad, very bad,” said he, “and dirty too. Be an extra sixpence on the job as was, Yer Ludship.”

  “The silly fellow thinks I am His Lordship,” said Toad gleefully to himself, “or one of them. I can see he’s not just a sweep, but a foolish sweep. All the better for me then!”

  Without another glance at the bed where Toad lay malingering and letting out an occasional cough or wheeze for good measure, the chimney sweep quickly set to work. Toad watched covertly as he produced from the voluminous sack he had carried, some very pliable canes, and a number of pieces of cloth. With a “beggin’ yer pardon, sir” he took the water jug from the closet and doused the fire. Then, bending the canes into the awkward corners of the huge fireplace, he used them to fix the cloths in place so that anything falling down the chimney would be caught in their folds.

  “Won’t be so much as a speck of dust inside or out when I’ve finished,” he said, largely to himself, “for I am renowned throughout the shire for my cleanliness.”

  Toad marvelled that this was so, seeing as the sweep was as grubby and sooty a person as he had ever seen.

  “Do you mind if I watch?” said Toad. “For I rarely see such a master craftsman as yourself at work.”

  “Why, sir,” said the sweep, who was just in the act of screwing on the first length of cane to the head and thrusting it up the chimney through a fold in the cloths, “I should be honoured.”

  Toad crept nearer.

  “It must,” he said in a sympathetic way “be a thirsty job.”

  “It is, sir,” said the sweep, screwing another length onto the bottom of that already going up the chimney, “and though I’m not a drinking man by nature I will say it is my habit to end the day with a small drink.”

  Toad eyed the bottle of wine left from the night before.

  “I daresay you can afford only common beer,” said he, grasping the vintage wine and jiggling the bottle a little, and then clinking it against the glass.

  “Beer’s enough for the common man,” said the sweep.

  “And wine for the Lord, eh?” said Toad laughing loudly “Here my good man, have a glass on me.

  “Well, sir, seeing as you insist, sir, and trusting you won’t tell —”

  “Tell!” said Toad. “Not me!”

  It was a sorry and despicable sight, the way that Toad tempted the sweep and led him astray, and all the more despicable for the ease with which it was done. One moment the sweep was a master craftsman and the next he was a slumped and sorry mess incapable of completing the job in hand and with strength only to drink another glass of the wine that Toad pressed on him.

  “My dear fellow,” said Toad eventually, “you seem a little tired. Pray, put your feet up on this bed, so!”

  The sweep was asleep in an instant. From then it was a matter of moments for Toad to exchange his own aeronaut’s garments for the filthy shirt and sooty red neckerchief of the sweep. That done, he carefully took down the canes and cloths and, using what little soot there was to dirty his own face, neck and hands, Toad put back into the bag what the sweep had taken out of it. Then, eager now to be gone, he heaved the sack over his shoulder, went to the bedroom door and opened it.

  “Finished, sweep?” came a discreet call from down the corridor.

  “All done, Yer Honribble Ludship,” said Toad, thinking himself very clever to adopt the sweep’s voice and vulgar accent, “and very blocked up it was. As for ‘im, ‘e says to leave ‘im for a bit.”

  “Follow me then and I’ll show you the way out down the servants’ stairs,” said the footman.

  Toad eyed the splendid curve of gilded stairs up which he presumed he must originally have come and down which he would quite like to leave and said, “Beggin’ yer pardon, Ludship, but I ought to see the flues on the way out.”

  This seemed to impress the footman, who turned back and led the delighted Toad down the Great Stairs, past portraits in oil and great wall hangings, ancient swords and cutlasses, along with some impressive stag heads.

  To his alarm, however, as the stairs curved round and down, he found himself descending towards a huge hall in which a number of important people stood about and stared up whence he came. His heart was suddenly in his mouth, for there, unmistakable, his nostrils beaky, his eyes cold as flint, his brows bushy and imposing, his face long and his forehead huge, was the very Chairman of the Court of Magistrates, now a Judge, who had once sentenced him to twenty years’ hard. There too was the policeman who had arrested him, now an exalted Commissioner. And there —Toad pulled himself together and with a humble and apologetic air, but chortling to himself all the time, he scampered past these unsuspecting persons in the wake of the footman, and then through some dark arched way into the back recesses of the great House.

  Here, to his alarm, he found himself face to face with Prendergast the Butler.

  “O Yer Royal Honour,” said Toad, “I am obliged to you for deigning to let me clean the chimney of that great and important gentleman so troubled by the smoke.”

  “Take this extra shilling,” said the butler, apparently completely taken in.

  “Why thank you kindly, sir,” said Toad, doffing his cap. “I —”

  But here he was interrupted by a commotion from the front of the House, and bells ringing in the servants’ quarters as a footman came hurrying and a great to-do began.

  “‘E’s up and coming down!” cried the footman.

  “‘E’s out and on ‘is way!”

  “Who is?” asked Toad, puzzled, and quite forgetting to chop his aitch.

  “Why the great airernought, of course!” said a scullery maid rushing by, adding over her shoulder, quite taken up by the excitement of it all, “‘E’s the bravest and most ‘onrable man what ever was, isn’t ‘e! Risked ‘is life ter save the Town from being crashed upon. I’m going to take a peek at ‘im if I can!”

  Toad saw that he was immediately forgotten in the rush and with dark suspicions beginning to form in his bosom — suspicions which carried most dreadful implications that he might have quite misunderstood the situation and have failed utterly therefore to capitalise on it — he decided to follow in the wake of the maid.

  So it was that he found himself among a cluster of whispering and excitable servants at the door to the back of the House through which he had hurried moments before, in time to see a sight that was most horrid and most painful to him.

  For at the grand curve of the stairs, with the butler supporting one arm, and a tall footman the other, tottered and staggered the drunken sweep, dressed in the headgear, the goggles and the jacket that but a short time before had been Toad’s own.

  “Don’t ‘e look ‘andsome!” said the
scullery maid.

  “But —” began Toad.

  “O,” said the second under-cook, “I think I’m going to faint at just seem’ ‘im, and to think I ‘ave the ‘onour of knowing ‘e’s eaten the ‘taters I ‘elped peel!”

  “But —” protested Toad.

  “If ‘e looks my way I’ll faint, I’m sure I shall!” declared a fifth deputy housemaid, clutching Toad’s arm in readiness.

  “But I was the —” cried out Toad in his agony, for it was all too much to bear. To think that the honour and the glory that should have been his were being stolen by this — this wretched impostor of a sweep who was staggering and swaggering down the stairs to where the Highest in the Land were awaiting, and clapping, and cheering.

  “It is I you should be —” he cried again, his voice barely heard above the hubbub of adulation for the triumphant figure that now reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Toad was about to thrust himself forward, to claim the honours as his own when, perhaps by chance, perhaps because his strangled cries had been heard, His Honour the Judge looked his way Those cold eyes and that beaky nose quite withered Toad’s soul.

  Then the Commissioner cast him a glance, as it seemed to the self-obsessed Toad, and those gaoler’s eyes, the vindictive brows, caused Toad to retreat back into the scrum of servants from which he had tried to emerge.

  Yet still he might have tried to reclaim his proper place had not My Lord the Bishop glanced his way What judgement was in that gaze! What formidable reminder of a Greater Day than This! It caused Toad to shrink back a third time, and withdraw.

  So that as servants pressed forward about him, and the false airman was quite swallowed up by the crowd of admirers, his hands shaken and his back slapped, and his drunken babblings mistaken by the crowds as the excitement and confusion of a modest and reluctant hero recovering from his injuries, Toad slipped back through the kitchen, thence through the scullery, and then across the cobbles by the stables where, with a sigh of profound regret, he arranged his sweep’s bag and brooms upon the crossbar of the sweep’s bicycle, mounted it with difficulty, and wobbled his way unseen and unnoticed down the long lonely carriageway of the House, and out towards the wintry world beyond.

  The miraculous return of the Mole, alive and well, had proved but a two-day wonder, and soon the River once more exerted her calming influence on the Rat and the Mole and all their friends and acquaintances.

  “Of course, I knew he would be all right!” was the general opinion of nearly everyone. “I never doubted for one moment that Mr Mole would turn up safe and sound!”

  But for those forty-eight hours at least there was a great deal of celebratory coming and going around Mole End, despite the snow and the inclement, unsettled weather. So what should have been a wake was happily turned into a celebration — till in the end the food and drink ran out, as did the animals’ capacity to continue eating and drinking and being of cheer, and one by one they left Mole End to go back to their own homes, leaving only the Badger, the Rat, Mole’s Nephew and the Mole himself.

  “Well then,” said the Badger, “you can see how glad we are to have you returned home, Mole, and none gladder than us three. But now the time has come to rest a little, and reflect perhaps on what might have been and what is.

  “I would be much obliged if your Nephew would accompany me back to the Wild Wood, Mole, for there’s a promise I must keep before long, which is to entertain to high tea a number of weasels and stoats. Your Nephew can help me prepare for that, and his sharp young eyes can help me watch out for any difficulty or trouble that might arise from the fulfilment of my rash offer.

  “Rat, too, may well wish to return to his home,” added the Badger, hinting in this thoughtful way that Mole might like to be left alone for a little, for few understood so well as he the need for a time of solitude and reflection, especially after such excitement, and even more especially in the dark wintertime.

  “If my Nephew is willing to go,” said the Mole with some relief, “then who am I to stop him! I hope he will help you in the days ahead, Badger. But Ratty might like to stay a while longer, today at least, to help me get sorted out once more and, well —”

  The Mole looked a little mournfully about his now nearly empty rooms, and beyond to the darkening winter evening sky Leafless branches fretted and tapped at his window, and spring still felt a long way off.

  “Of course,” declared the Badger, quite understanding that the Mole might want to talk a little with his friend before he turned in for some well-earned sleep.

  When the Badger and Mole’s Nephew had gone, the Mole said little, and the understanding Water Rat stayed silent as well. Together they cleared up what untidiness remained — though the Rat had long since organised the rabbits to tidy and clean and put away before they left, so there was not too much to do. Then the Rat cleared out the grate in no time at all, laid a new fire and set it merrily ablaze just as the sky darkened into twilight outside Mole End.

  Mole felt sombre and tired, and, sensing this, Rat bade him sit down once more in his favourite armchair and declared that at such a moment, and in such a case, there was nothing better than a bowl of light soup, and new-made bread.

  “But Ratty,” said the Mole, who felt not only tired, but just a little inclined to tears for no good reason that he could think of, “I haven’t any soup or —”It’s all done, all ready,” said the Rat, taking his friend’s arm and leading him to his chair. “I gave orders for it to be made this morning. Now, Moly, be a good and obedient fellow and sit down and let me serve you what you deserve.”

  “I really — I don’t think — I mean —” said the Mole, sniffing and wiping away the untoward tears that began to course down his cheeks. The Rat saw them, of course, and he heard the Mole’s sniffles, but chose to say nothing and let things be.

  So the two animals sat on either side of the fire, eating their soup, having second helpings, and cleaning the bowls out with crusts of buttered bread, neither saying a thing for a very long time. Finally, when the Mole had taken a little nap and the Rat was already on his second pipe of the evening, and both their noses were red with the firelight, they talked at last.

  “My dear chap,” said Rat sympathetically, for Mole still sniffled to himself from time to time, “if you have the inclination, would you like to tell me what really happened down there in the river?”

  “I would,” said the Mole fervently, saying nothing more.

  “I confess,” said the Rat at length, “that I was gravely worried for you. The river is a dangerous thing and few animals, not even myself, would survive if they fell through the ice as you did.”

  “No,” said the Mole, “I don’t suppose they would.”

  “Yet you did, Mole, and here you are back home again, and no one more glad, more happy, more pleased than myself.”

  “Yes,” said the Mole, staring at the fire.

  “So —” began the Rat again, puffing at his pipe. “I don’t know how I survived, Ratty, really I don’t. I remember so little about it, you see, except how my concern to get across to your house got the better of my prudence, and how I felt foolish to have tried so dangerous a thing, even as the ice threatened to break. Then it did break and I could do nothing to save myself, nothing at all except grasp a floe and hang on! Then I felt that —in that dreadful dark icy water — and I couldn’t think or breathe — I really couldn’t — I mean I knew, I believed, I was sure I was going —”

  Poor Mole was quite overcome by the memory of those terrible moments, and the Water Rat sensed that the best thing was still to do no more than make murmured noises of support. Then, when the Mole’s sobs and tears threatened to quite overwhelm him, the Rat put down his pipe, got up, and put a comforting arm round his friend’s shaking shoulders, and still said nothing.

  “But — but — but —”

  “You take your time, Mole, for there’s plenty of it now. Don’t try and hurry yourself because I’m not going away till you send me awa
y.

  “No, don’t go!” cried the Mole, who in his distress did not quite understand, and then: “I’d rather you stayed, much rather.”

  The Mole was silent a good while longer, but then seemed a little more settled, and the Rat felt it safe to go back to his own armchair and take up his pipe.

  “When all’s said and done,” said the Mole at last, “I don’t know how I did survive. It’s all rather vague, really, rather strange.”

  “But you remember something, even if it is vague and strange?” murmured the Rat.

  “I remember —”

  The Water Rat was surprised to see the Mole suddenly sit forward in his chair as if he had seen something in the fire, which perhaps he had, for he stared at the flickering of the flames, and into the deepest reds and mauves of the embers, his eyes open, his face alert, and he continued quietly thus: “I remember that I was sinking into a darkness deeper and darker than any I had ever known or imagined before. More than just towards the river’s depths, of that I’m sure. It was cold, fearfully cold, and there was a peace in the oblivion towards which I was going, and an endless sleep, and I wanted to go there, Ratty, I really did. I felt I could go on no longer, not fighting the cold and the swirling current and the ice.

  “Yes, I remember that. Then — and then —”

  Now the Mole leaned forward even more, and the Rat put down his pipe and leaned forward himself to stare into the fire, as if there, together, they might somehow summon forth once more the memory that was eluding Mole.

  “Ratty’ continued the Mole, casting a glance at his friend as if to be sure he was still there and attentive, “we have said from time to time that we know there is Beyond, have we not, but have never been there, and cannot imagine it?”