The Willows in Winter Read online

  The Rat looked about the Badger’s modest quarters amiably, and without feeling in the least put out by the Badger’s plaints. He looked at the worn elbows of the Badger’s old dressing gown, which he habitually wore all day at that time of year to keep himself warm. He glanced at the threadbare armchairs ranged about the Badger’s fireplace, reflecting that they would look a lot more threadbare had not Nephew taken it upon himself to cover the worn parts with some lace doilies he had found in the recesses of the dresser; and yet more forlorn, perhaps, had not Nephew also taken it upon himself to keep the Badger’s fire ablaze, for that was something he was inclined to forget about from time to time.

  The Rat looked too at the kitchen table, upon which were spread some of the learned Badger’s books and papers, which it might be difficult, even unkind, to disturb and tidy away for something so uncharacteristic of his home as a tea party.

  But the Rat reflected also on the happy celebration when the Mole returned, and how the unsociable Badger, drawn out of his lair by all the excitements and to-do of the Mole’s disappearance, had by the end seemed to rather enjoy the company and companionship of a celebration.

  Perhaps, after all, it was unreasonable to expect the Badger to organise a tea party all by himself, and that he needed an animal with rather more experience than the Mole’s young Nephew who was willing enough, no doubt — and was certainly right to mention scones as a starting point for the edibles — but who lacked the authority and tact to be firm with Badger.

  Then, too, a promise was a promise, and the Water Rat saw well that unless something was done, or at least some invitations sent out and a date fixed, the weasels and stoats might get restless and cause difficulties that might lead to a resumption of the hostilities that had plagued the Wild Wood, and many along the river as well, in times not so long past.

  It was plain, then, that the Badger would need some tactful help; and it was plain too, thought the Rat, that the Badger was worried by something else entirely, which explained his strange irritability and distraction of recent weeks. Perhaps —It is often at moments such as these that something is said impulsively which hits the mark and leads on to better things, almost without anybody realising it, and that is what happened on this occasion.

  “We could,” said the Rat, “borrow some crockery from Toad Hall! It wouldn’t be for long, and Toad is hardly going to miss it, and in all the circumstances even if he hears of it when he gets back he can’t complain.”

  “No,” growled the Badger, but so inaudibly that the Rat barely noticed it and carried on with his suggestion.

  “The crockery and cutlery and all such things can come from Toad Hall, then, and as for food, well, there will be plenty of willing helpers, I’m sure of that! I mean to say, Badger, if we widened the scope of the tea somewhat, inviting a whole lot of animals and not just those two or three weasels and stoats who have pushed themselves forward, then you might find it all much more palatable.”

  “Cups and saucers from Toad Hall?” muttered the Badger with distaste, shaking his head. “No, I’ll have nothing of Toad’s here. That place is doomed to rack and ruin as it is, and I’ll not be labelled a pillager.”

  “Rack and ruin! Pillager!” exclaimed the Rat, rather taken aback by this response. Everyone knew that the one grand place along the bank was Toad Hall, so rack and ruin did not come into it. As for pillaging, well!

  “We’ll return them straight afterwards, Badger. All you have to do is to make yourself scarce for half a day by going over to Otter’s for the morning, or down to Mole End if the weather gets better, and we’ll do the rest. Eh, Nephew?”

  “Of course we will.”

  “Toad Hall!” muttered the Badger once more, slumping into his armchair and looking gloomily at the fire. “O Toad!”

  For the first time in the Rat’s hearing the Badger uttered Toad’s name without anger, or rancour, but rather with a kind of dreadful finality, as one might mention the name of a close relative just passed away. ‘Which realization rather touched the Rat’s good heart, and made him see the Badger’s anger and rage about all that Toad had done in a somewhat different light.

  “Badger,” said the Rat carefully, for he guessed that he might be treading on sensitive ground, “I really am quite sure that Toad will come ba —”

  “I don’t want him coming back!” roared the Badger, rising impressively to his full height and fixing the Rat with an awful glare. “I don’t want his name mentioned in my hearing! And I certainly don’t want to rely upon his crockery and silver, his table linen and his napkin rings, his cake stands and his cake knives, and any of that wretched paraphernalia with which he surrounds himself— or used to — being brought here into my Toad-free home!”

  With that the Badger sat down again, glowering, and Nephew signalled to the Rat that it would be better if he left.

  “He’s been like this for days and I don’t know what to do’ whispered Nephew helplessly, as he saw the Rat off at Badger’s front door. “I think he’s tired.”

  “Tired!” said the Rat, grinning. “He’s not tired, my dear fellow, he’s missing Toad! I should have seen it before. Why, it was staring us all in the face and we never guessed. Badger’s always liked having Toad to complain about, always — and Toad has generally given him plenty to complain about. You’ve not been here with us for long enough to remember the days when Toad was truly bad, as bad as bad could be in fact. Why, in those days Badger was much more cheerful than he is these days. But when he leapt out of his armchair just now —”

  “I was dreadfully afraid he was going to attack you, Water Rat!”

  “Attack me!” cried the Rat, laughing aloud. “Far from it! I haven’t seen him looking better in years! Badger may look fierce a lot of the time, he may even sound fierce some of the time, but he’s got a warm heart and a gentle disposition. No, I see it all plainly now —this brown study into which Badger has fallen has been a long time coming — ever since, in fact, Toad turned over a new leaf after that business with the motor-car and his near life-imprisonment. Since then we’ve all made the mistake of thinking that Badger’s been pleased to have an altered Toad, and so he may have been on the surface. But deep down, in that kind, wise heart of his, perhaps he knew he had no right to be quite so hard on Toad, and to sit upon him, and crush him.

  “Perhaps, after all, he’s rather missed the Toad of old. Now, with Toad’s disappearance and possible loss, preceded as it was by your uncle’s mishap, perhaps Badger may be thinking that he’s realized these things a little too late. So though he may seem to be angry, very angry indeed, and say he doesn’t want Toad’s name mentioned, I suspect he thinks of nothing else but Toad.”

  “What should I do?” wondered Nephew, much perplexed.

  “Tell him from me,” said the Rat with firm purpose, “that whatever the weather, Mole and I will be setting off from Otter’s at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. On second thoughts, make it the day after tomorrow morning, just to give him time to come to his senses.

  “Setting off for where?” faltered Mole’s Nephew. “Toad Hall, of course!” called the Rat over his shoulder, as he went cheerfully out into the dusk towards the Otter’s house and the river bank once more.

  The Rat was as good as his word, and two days later, at nine o clock sharp, he stood with the Mole and the Otter outside the latter’s front door, all of them rubbing their hands and stamping their feet against the frosty cold.

  Rutted icy snow lay in the northern-facing nooks and crannies of the river bank, and also amongst the roots of trees along the edge of the Wood, where the occasional winter sun of recent days had been unable to reach it. But on more open ground the snow was mostly gone, replaced now by a heavy hoarfrost which marked and darkened the moment anyone stepped on it.

  The Rat had seemed eager to set off exactly on time, and so the other two were surprised when he said, “You two go off now, but don’t go fast. I’ve got something to do here for a few minutes more.

  �
�But, Rat,” said the Otter, not understanding at all, we can wait for you.

  The Mole grasped the Otter’s arm and led him off. “It’s no good asking him what he’s up to, or to try to change his mind,” he said. “Ratty’s up to something and you may rely on it that the best thing to do is to go along with him. You say we’re not to hurry?” he called back as they left.

  “That’s right, take your time like Otter does when he’s after a great big fish!”

  They heard the Water Rat chuckling cheerfully to himself as they set off along the bank, but could not quite guess what he was up to. Meanwhile there was much to see, for they warmed up once they got moving and a little winter sun obligingly broke through the pale sky and softened the frosty reeds to their right, and grey river beyond. Somewhere to their left, amongst the trees along the edge of the Wild Wood, a rook scuttered irritably about, and a wood pigeon briefly billed and cooed high in the leafless branches of an oak.

  “Not too fast,” the Mole reminded the Otter, and the two slowed their pace, and dug their paws deep into their coat pockets to keep warm.

  Meanwhile, the Water Rat had slipped back inside Otter’s house, and was lurking near the window, watching the dark path that went into the Wild Wood, and led eventually to Badger’s house.

  He was humming to himself, and after a few moments more of watching he patted his jacket pocket, found his tobacco and set about filling his pipe. But he had only half done so when he stopped, peered out of the window once more, and then went to the front door which he had left ajar.

  “Ha!” he said to himself with a certain satisfaction. “I thought so!”

  Out of the gloom of the Wild Wood, and moving with a reluctant slowness as if this was not a journey he wished to make and at the slightest excuse he would abandon it and return home again, came the Badger with Mole’s Nephew trotting along at his side.

  Catching sight of the Otter’s front door, which the Rat had by now quietly closed, the Badger said, “There! What did I say! No one in sight. It was all talk after all. All talk! Come on, we’re going back!”

  “Maybe they’re inside Otter’s house waiting for you,” said Mole’s Nephew, not unreasonably.

  “Waiting? You mean still a-bed, more like. And here I am right on time —”

  “Almost on time, Mr Badger, for it is some minutes after nine o’clock.”

  “Near enough on time, then!” said the Badger with a markedly more cheerful spirit than he had displayed earlier on the journey. “Here I am and nobody else about —Mole’s Nephew had gone forward and had seen the footprints on the frosty ground left by the others, and the clear evidence that they had already gone off along the river bank.

  “Why look!” he said excitedly. “They’ve waited here for us and now they’ve gone, but probably only just. If we hurry —”

  “Hurry?” growled Badger, turning back once more towards the Wild Wood. “Hurry after animals who do not even have the good grace to wait a few moments for a colleague who was reasonably delayed and who made every effort to make up the lost time!”

  “But you dawdled along,” said Mole’s Nephew with some spirit, and much to the admiration of the Rat who was listening to their conversation through the Otter’s letter box, “and I told you that the Water Rat said he would leave at nine o’clocksharp.”

  “Well, be that as it may, they’ve gone now and we have no idea where they are going, or quite why.”

  “But — but —” protested Mole’s Nephew, as the Badger, duty done it seemed, turned back towards the Wild Wood.

  “Come along!” said he, with considerable relish. “There’s nothing for us to do here now If they wanted me to come with them they should have had the courtesy to wait!”

  “Why, Badger!” cried the Water Rat, emerging suddenly from Otter’s house and feigning astonishment to see the two of them there. “This is a pleasant surprise, a delightful surprise.”

  “But I thought you had gone’ said the Badger in a very disgruntled way “There are your bootmarks on the ground and —”

  “So I had, so I had,” said the Rat, “but I did so most reluctantly and against my better judgement for I knew you would not be long. But ‘Come on Otter said, ‘let’s be off!.’ And even Mole, why what an impatient, untrusting fellow he can be! But I said, ‘Wait! Badger has always been the most patient and wisest animal I have known, and perhaps we were wrong to leave so promptly. It’s not like him to be late, or to give no support to such an enterprise and undertaking as we are embarking upon, not like him at all!’”

  “Did you?” said the Badger dubiously.

  “I did, but though I hate to say it, such has your dislike and distrust of Toad been these weeks and days past that first Otter and then Mole declared, ‘Bother Badger! We can’t rely on him any more! Let’s be off!”‘

  “O!” said Badger, considerably deflated.

  “But not I, Badger, my friend, not I,” said the Rat magnanimously. “I said, ‘My instincts tell me he’ll be there in good time and so I shall retrace my steps and satisfy myself that I am right. I must confess I was disappointed not to see you here when I got back, so I went inside Otter’s house to fill my pipe and, coming out, what do I find? My confidence proved absolutely right. You have come to lead us upon Toad Hall, Badger, and have thus confirmed my own hopes, and I am sure it will restore the confidence of Mole and Otter in you too. Also, you have set an example of probity and tolerance to Mole’s Nephew here, the like of which he is never likely to forget.”

  “I have?” said the Badger slowly, not resisting when the Rat took his arm and led him onto the path which the Mole and the Otter had taken.

  “But —” said the Badger, the last vestiges of his resistance melting away before the Rat’s ingenious flattery, “well, I suppose we should try and let bygones be bygones when it comes to it. Hard though that is in the case of Toad, and in this particular case of Toad. The truth is, Rat —”

  “Yes, Badger?” murmured his doughty companion. “Well, of course, Toad must be punished, and perhaps he already has been but, well, I wouldn’t want that punishment to be too extreme, too — final as it were.”

  He spoke very sombrely indeed, and with furrowed brow cast a grim gaze skywards as if there to see some terrible vision of Toad’s final struggle at the controls of his flying machine, of his desperate efforts to get clear of the thing in which his own pride and vanity had trapped him, of a final realization of his many sins and omissions and his own moral worthlessness, till, thus spiritually condemned, Toad and his machine plunged to their inexorable doom on the cold indifferent wintry ground far far below.

  The Rat and Mole’s Nephew shuddered at the terrible vision which the Badger’s mute gaze alone had power to put before them, whilst Badger himself shook his head sadly and slowed his pace till he had quite stopped.

  “No’ he whispered, “even Toad, even he, does not deserve so grim a fate.”

  Thus beset by sober thoughts of their erstwhile friend, and treading that easy path along the bank which summer and autumn, spring and now winter, led to his unnecessarily vast and inflated domain, into any minute corner of which their own abodes could have fitted comfortably ten times over or more, the Water Rat led Badger on.

  Perhaps to brighten things up a little, for the Rat was not an animal inclined to gloom and despondency, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll catch them up soon enough —”And but a short while later they did so, which was not surprising because the Mole had finally half-guessed the Rat’s scheme, and had persuaded the Otter to pause and sit upon the bank despite the cold, and wait.

  So it was that Badger found himself, as often before, at the head of a file of animals heading resolutely for Toad Hall.

  “Now, Badger’ said the Water Rat, “tell us as we go along exactly what you meant a day or two ago by describing Toad Hall as ‘doomed to rack and ruin’.”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” said the Badger shortly, hunching his shoulders purposefully and thrusting his
head forward as if to get there all the sooner and show them exactly what he meant.

  “My word!” declared the Water Rat as they paced about the rooms and corridors of Toad Hall a short while later. “I really had no idea!”

  “Dear me’ added the Mole, eyeing the scene with something akin to shock, “I never imagined things could have got so bad so fast!”

  “O yes,” said the Badger, “they can and they have and that’s what comes of spending all your money on splendour and trumpery and not spending a little more on maintaining it. It happened with Toad’s father, and now it’s happening with Toad!”

  The three animals were alone, for Mole’s Nephew and the Otter, not enjoying one bit the chilly interior of the Hall, and seeing the glorious winter sunshine that was shining warmly outside it, had gone to sit on the steps that led from the ballroom down towards the main lawn.

  The scene inside was grim indeed. Whether from neglect, as the Badger implied, or oversight, or some mischance which might have happened to any structure as vast as Toad Hall, somewhere in the floors above the water pipes had frozen in the weeks past, and had burst.

  Had such a misfortune been promptly dealt with the damage might have been kept to a minimum and quickly rectified. But with most of Toad’s aides and servants already gone off for the festive break some time before his own less planned departure, and those that were to have stayed behind having left of their own accord following the disappearance and seeming demise of Toad himself, there was nobody about to deal with the burst pipes.

  It might well be that some had come back, seen the extent of the damage, raised their hands in helpless horror and departed once more. Whatever the truth, the results were all too plain to see: water damage everywhere. Great stains in the ceilings, the mouldings all ruined, and wallpaper discoloured and in many places hanging half off.

  Carpets were covered in fallen plaster, as were some of Toad’s most expensive armchairs and sofas, including even the chaise-longue in his summer room, upon which, in better days, he had been wont to hold court to such acquaintances as he could persuade to fawn and admire him. The Badger, of course, had never accepted invitations to such occasions, though the Rat and the Mole were both perfectly willing to eat cucumber sandwiches and drink iced Indian tea with Toad from time to time, and thoroughly enjoyed doing so.