The Willows and Beyond (31 page)

The Curator went to the Mole’s old dresser, and drew out a bottle, dusty with age, which he placed on the table before the Mole.

The Mole picked up the bottle and examined it. “Be careful, sir, that is the very last known bottle of Mr Mole’s famous Sloe and Blackberry!”

“And one of the very finest vintages!” said the Mole.

“You are an expert on such things, sir?”

“I am an expert on
this,”
said the Mole with truth. “Indeed, some might say that no one has ever made it better than I, eh Nephew?”

“Did you say
Nephew,
sir?” said the Curator, light beginning to dawn.

“Have you a paper and pencil?” asked the generous Mole. “Then I’ll give you the recipe!”

As Mole sat at his own kitchen table, slowly and carefully writing down the precious recipe, the Curator stared from one to the other, and back again, not daring to interrupt, nor to believe what he was beginning to think.

“There,” said the Mole at last, “and don’t believe it when people say you must have almonds in it, for it’s just not true. But the main thing is to pick your sloes from the blackthorn bushes that grow on the left side of the path going down to the River, and to do so as soon after the first heavy frost of autumn as you can, for then the sloes are ready to release their colour and their goodness, and there is no need to prick them one by one, which you will know to be a tiresome task if you have ever tried to do it. Now, was there anything else?”

The Curator decided that he would not risk asking the Mole outright if he was who he thought, as if it might break the spell in some way but he begged leave to ask in his children that they might meet him, and listen to him, and then to ask one last question.

“And what is that?”

“I have never been able to work out how it came to pass that Mr Mole first met Mr Water Rat. Would it have been here, perhaps, when that practical gentleman  was in search of someone to help with his boat, or down there on the River Bank, where Mr Mole might have been strolling along one day?”

The Mole stared at him a long time in silence.

“Nephew,” said the Mole at last, “I fancy we shall need some tea by and by, and perhaps a fire lit in the grate, for it is autumn now, and the nights are getting cold.”

Nephew rose to see what he could find in the way of tea and biscuits. Meanwhile the Mole got up from the table and sat down in his old armchair, and asked that the Curator sit in the other, and said, “Now, let me try to tell you how Mr Mole first met Ratty.

“You see, he had been working hard all morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders. O, but spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing —“

So the Mole began the story of his first meeting with the Water Rat, and if in the course of its telling Nephew, having lit the fire and made them tea, later quietly opened the bottle that the Curator had been guarding for so many years, and which had seemed irreplaceable, surely none of them could think that such an elixir was for keeping in a museum, but rather that it was much better drunk in good company.

In any case, more could always be made, and one day however long it might take, wherever it might be, there would be another vintage year to rival that which the Mole remembered so well, and which he recounted now with such love — which was the year he met the Water Rat, who introduced him to the River, and all the wonders that lay Beyond.

EPILOGUE

Beyond

Evening came, and the Mole declared himself to be somewhat tired.

“It won’t take more than a moment to get Mr Mole’s bed made up, nor his Nephew’s either,” said the Curator, who still pretended not to know who they were. “It’s against the rules, no doubt, but who is there here to find out but ourselves? In any case, sir, if I might say so, Mr Mole would never have turned you out into an autumn night.”

“But we must be up before the dawn,” said the Mole, “for we have a last task to perform down by the River on behalf of a friend, to say goodbye and give thanks for what we once had.”

“You’ll need to be gone early in any case, sir, for tomorrow’s Saturday and we have a charabanc coming from the Town at half past nine. We’ll have breakfast ready and waiting at sunrise.”

How well Mole and Nephew slept that night; how good to hear the sounds they had heard so often before: the tawny owl calling, the bark of the fox, and far off, low and whispering, the sounds of autumn coming, and the wind in the willows along the River Bank.

The Curator was as good as his word, and though Nephew had a hearty breakfast, the Mole had little more than a cup of tea and a piece of toast.

“It’s a misty morning, sir, and chilly with it, but a bit of walking will warm you up.

“Yes,” said the Mole quietly, wondering if he had quite the strength to walk so far.

“What is it, Uncle?”

The Mole put on his old coat and scarf, and opened his front door. It was cold, quite; it was misty, very.

“Uncle, are you all right?”

“Can you not hear her voice, Nephew; can you not hear her song?”

He barely said goodbye to the Curator before he was off into the strange dawn light, leaving Nephew to say his “thank you’s” for him.

“He’s not normally like this, you know, but he seems a trifle over-wrought this morning, and still a little tired.”

“It has been a pleasure, sir, to meet you and that gentleman, who was so kind to tell me what he knew of Mr Mole.”

Then the Curator winked, and chuckled, for he knew quite well who his special guest had been. Then, laughing, Nephew followed his uncle down the familiar path towards the River.

“Uncle, Uncle!” he called, for the mist was strange and swirling, and he was suddenly not sure quite how far down the path the Mole had gone.
“Uncle, wait for me!”

Down the path he went, almost running, yet not quite catching up with the familiar form of the Mole, whose head he saw, and then his scarf, and the shape of his coat — and a singing, a voice, a song of calling, a song of sweet belonging and of return.

“I’m coming, Uncle,” cried Nephew “I’m not far behind. The sun will soon be out and we’ll be able to see more clearly, and then, then —“

Nephew paused and came to a stop, for already he had reached the River and what he saw a little way below, still vague and misty was rather more than the Mole.

It seemed to be a rowing boat, a boat that might well have been moored and waiting, waiting for minutes or hours, days or years — but even now was casting off as it so often had of yore, as the River’s song grew louder, and the sun so bright in the mist that it was hard to see — and hard for Nephew to quite comprehend what he was seeing.

For there in the blue-and-white boat he knew so well was the Mole, in the seat in which he had sat so many times before, and sitting opposite him, oars confidently in his hands once more, was one who seemed to be the Water Rat.

“Ratty?” whispered Nephew in awe as the light came all about them, and the River’s song grew loud. “Uncle?”

For a moment the Rat turned to stare at him, and the Mole too, and on their faces there was a look of sweet companionship and contentment, and in their silence the calling of farewell.

Then, even as the mist cleared by the bank, the boat drifted out into the River and turned towards the Island with the River’s eternal flow.

“Uncle?” whispered Nephew once more, and he saw on the path, and down by the water, the hoof-marks of some great animal, and knew that He was near.

“Farewell!” sang the River, her voice joining at last with Ratty and Mole’s. “Farewell!”

The song rose all about Nephew as he watched and saw the boat drift onward, and the mist broke up ever more, yet never quite enough for him to see all clearly.

He stood in silence as the boat reached the Island, and the song changed from farewell to welcome. Though he could not be sure, Nephew felt certain he saw Badger waiting there, and Otter too, and Ratty helping Mole from the boat; yes, and there was Toad, younger than Nephew had ever known him, calling to them to hurry up and hurry along, for he had an idea for them, and it started just over there on the other side of the Island, just over there, just Beyond.

So Toad had now made the final journey too…

Nephew sat down and watched the mist slowly clear down towards the Island and the Weir. He stared at the water, and thought of many things.

He peered across the River to where once the Wild Wood had risen up. But as yet that was still in mist, and there was nothing to be seen. Yet the sun was all about him, and the autumn wind so mild, and the leaves of willows on the River, floating, falling, drifting —“Nephew? Is that really you?”

He awoke with a start, and thought himself still lost in that world of Beyond, for there in the middle of the River was a water rat, standing up in a skiff quite different from Ratty’s boat, yet one he knew, for he remembered Young Rat making it, many years before.

Nephew stood up.

“Hub, Young Rat,” he said without surprise, as if he had expected him to be there. “So you came back home?”