The Willows and Beyond Read online

  “Mon Dieu!” cried Master Toad, reverting to his native tongue in his panic and fear. “There! Ah non! O!”

  He pointed a trembling finger at the bridge as the others scrambled onto the bank. Even the normally fearless Otter was struck dumb by what he saw.

  A huge, strange, hunchbacked figure on the bridge, ghastly eyes white and shining just as the two lovers had claimed, and carrying an enormous thick stave that might easily strike all of them down with one blow.

  It seemed to see them and moved to descend the bridge towards them. Only the Otter’s stolid stance and Young Rat’s calm kept Master Toad and Portly from fleeing headlong in the opposite direction.

  “Here you, what do you want?” cried the Otter boldly, while Young Rat sensibly took up a boathook and held it out most threateningly.

  This seemed enough to halt the Beast’s advance, for it paused and stared at them awhile, its huge head swaying from side to side, before it turned away went back over the bridge and disappeared over the far side, where it was lost in the mists and shadows of the evening.

  “Did you hear its rasping, groaning voice?” said Master Toad.

  “Did you see its thick, clawed hands?” cried Portly.

  Considerably chastened, the four animals retreated along the bank to the Rat’s house. That brave and resourceful animal listened with some scepticism at first, for like the Mole he was no believer in ghosts and beasts, but knowing the Otter to be an utterly reliable witness, and impressed by Young Rat’s calm affirmation of what his old friend reported, he was finally inclined to take the matter seriously. But as for it being the legendary Beast of the Wild Wood.

  “Beast, indeed!” declared the Rat dismissively. “It is probably some wanderer who is the worse for drink. He has no business frightening folk like that — what he needs is a good drubbing, and that’s what he’ll receive if I get my hands on him!”

  “That’s just what my uncle has been saying,” observed Nephew.

  “Well, if you’d come with us today you could have given him that drubbing there and then,” said the Otter, who had been surprised when the Rat had declined to join them for River work that day.

  “I had business in the kitchen,” explained the Rat. “Nephew reminded me that it is Mole’s birthday tomorrow and though that modest and retiring animal has never celebrated the event with a party before we felt that he should do so now. Nephew has arranged for Mole to call on me at lunchtime tomorrow, leaving him a clear run to prepare Mole End for our surprise, and make some sandwiches and so forth. I shall ferry Mole back, and bring with me the cake I have spent the day baking.”

  The Rat led them to his stove and showed them the currant cake he had made, which was covered in white icing upon which he had inscribed the message “For Our Friend Mole, Happy Birthday!” along with a picture of the Mole sitting in the Rat’s boat, in which the two friends had spent so many happy hours.

  “Why, Ratty, I am most impressed,” said the Otter warmly.

  “And so will Mole be, I hope,” said the Rat, “when we all meet on his doorstep tomorrow at three in the afternoon and surprise him with a party! I have asked Badger to make sure that Toad arrives on time — we all know his irritating propensity for lateness. Master Toad, there is no need to look so smug, for you are not much better in my experience! Now where were we?”

  By the time they had finished their ruminations on the subject of the Beast the hour was late. As the Rat’s home was too small for them all, the Otter took Master Toad back to his own home, where it was proposed that he should stay the night, whilst Nephew was quickly ferried back across the River to take the short route up to Mole End.

  The Otter was very much surprised to hear Master Toad say as he reached his house, “You know, Otter old chap, it’s good of you to offer me a bed, but I ought to be getting back.”

  “Toad won’t miss you overnight,” said the Otter heartily “He knows you’re in good hands.”

  “Well, that’s just it, you see, he’s imposed a curfew on me till I return to school. I should have been back in the study at six for a final hour of work and in bed by half past seven with the light out. It’s most irksome but he’s threatened not to pay my school fees! I should have been back long ago really”

  The Otter laughed to see how Toad had imposed his will on the wayward youth, and was about to offer to accompany him home when to their surprise Toad himself suddenly appeared out of the darkness, lantern in hand.

  “Is that you, Otter? I was looking for… ah, there he is, skulking about and —“

  “Not at all, Monsieur Toad, you see we —But the Otter put a hand on Master Toad’s arm to quieten him. They had already agreed not to mention the second sighting of the Beast to Toad lest it upset him, and caused him to do something foolish such as hire a posse of armed guards.

  “My fault, Toad,” interposed the Otter. “Late getting back from our River work, at which Master Toad has excelled himself by the way He was just saying he must hurry home and was willing to do so alone, despite that scare we had some nights ago.

  “Pooh to that!” said Toad. “That was just some stuff and nonsense that gardeners and scullery maids dream up. Nothing that honest and upright citizens such as ourselves need fear or even give a second thought.”

  “So you’re not nervous of the Beast, Toad?” said the Otter, who had been very surprised indeed to see him walking about alone at night.

  “Me? Not a bit!” cried Toad. “Now, come on, Master Toad; it’s late and you need sleep, for tomorrow —”

  “Yes, Pater? What shall we do tomorrow?”

  A grim and determined look came upon Toad’s face. “Tomorrow you shall begin that educational exercise I promised you.”

  “Ah, non!” groaned the youth.

  “O yes!” declared Toad.

  With that, and a wave of farewell to the Otter, the determined Toad led his ward back over the bridge.

  “But are you not frightened at all, Monsieur Toad?” said the youth with very considerable respect as they approached Toad Hall.

  “Not at all,” said Toad, feeling the revolver, three knives and sabre he had secreted beneath his coat, just in case. “No, not at all.”

  On the whole, Toad was thus far well pleased with his campaign to bring Master Toad to heel, and instruct him in the pleasures of healthy routine, self-discipline and the academic arts and sciences. His threat to remove his ward from school and send him off to earn his own living seemed to have had a most salutary and beneficial effect. The youth had gone to bed early every night, woken each morning in good time for breakfast, and then risen from the table of his own accord and headed off to the study, where he worked diligently on all the exercises and items of reading set for him.

  Why, he had even attempted to engage Toad in conversation about aspects of topography, geometry, trigonometry and the history of the colonies and the French Revolution! Toad’s knowledge of such things was a little rusty, to say the least, but that did not prevent him from giving his views on all five subjects, as well as certain aspects of Shakespearean tragedy and comedy that he thought Master Toad might find helpful.

  Toad’s only regret was the gloomy feeling that came over him when he himself had to practise the austere habits he now daily preached over the breakfast table. His plight was somewhat eased, however, by certain private arrangements he had made with his butler. It was not so hard sticking to the healthful regime of orange juice, thin un-buttered toast, a solitary egg (poached) and single slice of bacon (lean) once a week that he had prescribed for them both, when he knew that a full English breakfast plus buttered crumpets (so necessary to stave off the advance of winter) were awaiting him in his bedroom, once he had packed his ward off to the study each morning at a quarter to nine.

  “Aaah … !“ sighed Toad, who was rediscovering certain lost pleasures of youth as he tucked into his secret second daily breakfast, such as the fact that scrumped apples taste a good deal better than those honestly obtained.

/>   It was true he was a mite puzzled that Master Toad seemed to be taking his medicine so willingly and without complaint, but then he remembered that he himself had taught the youngster the arts of cunning and deception. No doubt the youth had established his own lines of supply for extra sustenance, and no doubt they involved the Housekeeper (whom Master Toad had long since charmed) and certain drawers and shelves in the library as hiding places which Toad might himself have used.

  One day soon, Master Toad would be off into the world and there he would discover that very often the end justified the means, and Toad felt sure he would be grateful for the lessons directly and indirectly taught him that autumn.

  Toad ruminated on these matters as he led his ward back to Toad Hall that night. But as they went inside and Master Toad compliantly headed off to bed with only one final plea — “Pater, are we really to go ‘iking tomorrow?” — which Toad ignored, he turned his thoughts to the one area in which he had so far failed.

  For the youth had successfully avoided each and every one of the planned afternoon sessions of educational exercise by resorting to all the tricks in the book, and many more that Toad had never come across.

  Master Toad had been afflicted by sprained ankles, headaches, upset stomachs, grumbling appendices, double vision, fainting fits and many other physical ailments, as well as some mental ones, all of the kind that can be relied on to disappear the moment darkness descends and the threat of educational exercise has receded for another day, and dinner is in the offing.

  So successful had these stratagems been, and so easily had Toad been daily defeated on this front, that his ward had begun to suspect that his pater’s heart was no more taken by the idea of hiking than his own. Indeed, he had the smug sense that the battle was won, and there would be no more talk of hiking from Mr Toad.

  In this he was nearly right, but finally wrong. For Toad had indeed found the notion of hiking considerably to his distaste, and the vast stock of hiking equipment he had ordered up from a well-known emporium in the Town used to dealing with military needs had at first baffled and alarmed him. Its sheer weight was dispiriting for a start, for Toad had quickly realized that what was not to be worn was to be carried. Then, too, there was the difficulty of working out what each item of equipment was meant to do. Hobnail boots were easy enough, as were water bottles. But dangerous-looking knives? A mosquito net? And a spade that looked like a pick? For what strange reason were these supplied to a gentleman who wished to take a healthful stroll in the countryside?

  Eventually, on Badger’s wise advice, he ordered several books on the subject of hiking, which was then attracting a good deal of attention from authors good and bad, experienced and inexperienced. Toad was no great reader and had eyed them askance for several days after their arrival. But then one morning, after a second helping of scrambled eggs and black pudding in his bedroom, Toad dipped into one of the tomes, and was fascinated by what he found there.

  Stories of hikes through the Pyrenees (child’s play), accounts of the ascent of Mont Blanc (easy) and climbs in the Zillertaler in Austria (more problematic), and a race against a killer blizzard up the north face of the Eiger (nigh impossible).

  All this, and a great deal more, Toad found he could achieve over an extended breakfast while seated in the comfort of a padded chair by his bedroom window, gazing out from time to time at the advance of autumn across the River Bank.

  “Yes, yes!” he would sigh, resting his book on his plump and contented stomach, and imagining himself leading an expedition to. .

  “Everest! I shall be its conqueror!”

  “Sir?” his butler would interrupt him. “Would you care for some fresh coffee before partaking of your midmorning bath?”

  “Yes, yes!” cried the ecstatic Toad, returning to his book. Though thus now persuaded that in theory at least hiking had a lot to commend it, Toad might very easily have got no further in his examination of the expensive equipment so impulsively bought and now safely stowed in the gun room, had his eye not alighted one day upon a book somewhat slimmer than the others, and of more austere aspect.

  “Hmmm, what’s this then?” Toad said to himself. “I don’t seem to have seen it before.”

  Even as he read the title and the author’s name, he felt a thrill of vocation and purpose, and knew at once this was the light in the hiking darkness he had been seeking.

  “Yes, O yes!” he whispered as he turned the pages, reading every word and each terse chapter with mounting speed and excitement, for here at last was a book that told him in terms he could understand how to deal — exactly how to deal — with those who refused to follow a leader’s command in matters of educational exercise: in short, those like Master Toad.

  The book was entitled Hiking For Leaders With Novices: Do’s, Don’t’s and Definitely Not’s, by Colonel J. R. Wheeler Senior, Member of the Alpine Club and Hiking Adviser to the Royal Marines School of Music (Yachting Section).

  It was that felicitous phrase “Leaders With Novices that so appealed to Toad, for a leader he felt himself to be, and with a novice he would be venturing forth. Wheeler, an ex-Indian Army officer and conqueror of the Nangha-Dhal in the Himalaya, had a good deal to say on all aspects of hiking, and was especially strong on boots, maps, thorn-proof breeches and hunting knives. He had a good section on protective headgear (against falling rocks) and goggles (against sand and snow), which he felt should be worn at all times, and an invaluable few pages on certain technicalities often overlooked in lesser tomes upon the subject, namely rope work, compass work and night-craft. But it was in his excellent writing on the art of effective leadership, about which Toad already felt himself to know a good deal, that Wheeler won his latest reader’s heart and mind.

  Wheeler’s notion of leadership was clear and to the point:

  The leader is leader, and must at all times be on his guard against insubordination and the dangers of paying too much attention to the weak and feeble in his group. These must be weeded out and made an example of.

  Where native porters are concerned, the leader is advised always to hire two or three extra (on my Nangha-Dhal Expedition I took on an extra porter for every four days of the journey, but conditions were extreme) so that they might be disposed of en route to encourage the others not to slacken.

  The good leader will always remain in front and not allow another to take his place there, otherwise, like the African pack lion, he is done for.

  Wheeler’s advice on a range of matters was of a kind that appealed especially to one such as Toad:

  It will frequently happen, and a leader should certainly not be disheartened by this, that the way will be lost. I make it a practice, and I urge novice leaders to learn from my mistakes and follow this advice rigorously, on no account to tell others in my party where I intend going. This ensures that wherever one may arrive, one appears to have intended that as one’s destination.

  But it was another piece of advice in the book that finally gave Toad the will to try out the equipment he had avoided actually using for so many weeks.

  The true leader should not feel obliged to know or understand the use of every piece of equipment or the practice of every technique, for he will have employed those in his expedition who should be able and willing advisers on such matters. However, the effective leader will need to appreciate the importance of seeming to know what he is talking about and looking as if he knows what he is doing. This inspires confidence in those he leads, and keeps them at their tasks.

  Therefore, a leader is strongly advised to try on the equipment till he is used to wearing it, and to find some quiet place where, unobserved, he can get the feel’ of it with a short solo hike or two. In this way he will ensure that he looks the part.

  Thus instructed, Toad had risen from his reading couch and that very evening, having ensured Master Toad was at his academic labours, repaired to the gun room to begin his further familiarization with hiking equipment.

  With Colonel Wheeler’s help
he was pleased to discover the purpose of the prismatic compass, but since it was difficult to hold and read, clearly faulty (the needle seemed to wobble about a good deal and refused to stay in the same place) and heavy, he discarded it.

  Wheeler’s book made rather more sense for Toad of an item for which he had been unable to see a use, but which once explained he saw as an essential. This was an alpenstock, a thick, rude stave almost as tall as himself, with a heavy iron spike at one end, deadly sharp.

  Apart from being an emblem of leadership, the alpenstock is useful for a great many purposes, such as killing game, the light disciplining of porters, bridging crevasses, forming stretchers and, in extremis, quelling native rebellions.

  Toad trusted that its primary usage, as symbol and prop to his leadership, was the only one on this impressive list he would need it for, and took up the huge stick with relish, holding it aloft like a crusader’s sword and inadvertently striking the ceiling above.

  Now feeling, as so often in his life, that nothing ventured was nothing gained, Toad quickly donned the thorn-proof suit and cap, hoisted the large haversack up onto his shoulders, placed the goggles over his eyes against sandstorms and, holding his trusty alpenstock, opened the gun-room door to check that there was nobody about.

  Seeing the coast was clear, he made his way through the conservatory and out into the dusk, and headed down towards the River Bank. When he reached the Iron Bridge, he struggled up its steep face in a slow and measured way (it reminded him of his imaginary ascent some evenings before of Mont Blanc) and found himself trotting down the other side in an alarmingly accelerating manner (the weight of the haversack, albeit stuffed only with wrapping paper, was not quite what he was used to) and straight into the hedge beside the road.