The Willows at Christmas (14 page)

“Pater, what can I do but accept my fate? I am a tragic toad, unloved and all alone, for with your passing there is nobody left to care for me.

Then, having finished the porridge Miss Bugle had so lovingly made for him, and engaging with the coddled eggs by way of a pinch of salt and a peck of fresh pepper (freshly ground by Miss Bugle), he glanced up at his father’s image, sudden tears streaming down his face.

“O Pater!” he cried, checking that Miss Bugle had buttered his toast as she usually did and seeing that she had, “I am the Wounded King of the River Bank!”

His Pater, had he been able, might well have raised his eyebrows at this comparison but he need not have waited long for an explanation. Polishing off the last of the eggs and gratified to see that there were a good few pieces of toast left over, enough to account for most of the jar of marmalade, Toad added with a certain irony, “A Wounded King, yes, but with no knights to fight his cause, no! There is no one who can rid me of this pestilent woman! She is my fate, my doom and I shall breathe my last before she does, Pater!”

The hour of nine struck and Toad knew he must finish his little meal and join Mrs Ffleshe for breakfast. The only bright spot he had to look forward to in the hours and days ahead was the brief visit of Badger and the others later that morning. This was a tradition he had not permitted Mrs Ffleshe to put a stop to, albeit she complained loudly about it the day before and for several days afterwards, calling his friends “lower-class spongers” and “liberal no-gooders” and “layabout loungers” and several more permutations of the same.

He rose, he looked sadly at his father’s eyes and he made his way to the chilly confines of the breakfast room, there to await Mrs Ffleshe’s arrival.

“Toad! You are late! You have kept me waiting and I am fainting with hunger. This is not the behaviour of a gentleman, or of one who should be thinking of my happiness and welfare upon Christmas Day!”

The startled Toad stood upon the threshold of the breakfast room in mental disarray. She was early! She was never early without there being a reason that would be to his disadvantage and discomfort. So she had finally invaded even this precious time.

“Kindly do not wish me a Merry Christmas,” said the enraged Mrs Ffleshe, “for you have made it begin badly, very badly indeed.”

“I am sorry —” began Toad meekly.

“Where have you been?”

“I have — I mean — I was —” stuttered Toad, wondering if there was any coddled egg on his morning jacket, or evidence of porridge on his cuff.

“Well?” she said, rising and staring down at him.

It was at moments like this that she terrified him, for she was bigger than he was and a great deal stronger. At such moments he felt like a naughty child again, that same child who used to be admonished by her mother Nanny Fowle, then already ancient:

“Master Toad, stand up straight!”

“Master Toad, sit down!”

“Master Toad, how dare you presume to have any pudding before you have eaten your meat!”

“Well?” said Mrs Ffleshe, bending down to look into his eyes.

“I —” gasped poor Toad.

“I know where you were.
I know!”

“O dear,” said Toad’s inner voice, “she has discovered even this last secret and is about to take it from me. It seems I have just had my final Christmas pre-breakfast in the library. Pater, what shall I do?”

“Mr Toad,” said Mrs Ffleshe, rising to her full height, “despite your ill-treatment of me, and your ingratitude for all I have done, I have a present for you — no, I say again it would be distasteful for you to wish me a Merry Christmas now! Here is your present, so be good enough to open it.”

More confused than ever, Toad took the square, large, heavy and flat gift from her, before asking, “Might I perhaps have a little breakfast first?”

“Well!” she exclaimed with every appearance of disappointment. “Since your stomach is obviously larger than your gratitude, I suppose you must! When you do finally deign to open it, perhaps you would find time to thank me for my trouble!”

Mrs Fleshe sat down once more and tucked into her bowl of fat sausages and black pudding, affecting to ignore Toad, who stood before her, helpless and uncertain.

“I suppose…” quavered Toad.

She swallowed some tea.

“I suppose I might…”

She helped herself to half a dozen extra rashers of bacon.

“I — I shall open it now, then’ said Toad.

She gazed at him with the smug look of the victor.

“It would certainly be polite to do so’ she said acidly. He tore at the string and paper with sinking heart, for her presents were never things he wanted, and usually things that provoked gloominess in one way or another.

From the shape and feel of it, it was a picture of some kind. Affecting interest and pleasure, but feeling only dread, he tore off the final layer of crepe paper and saw that it was more than a picture, it was a portrait. More even than that, it had been executed in oils which, despite the care with which they had been applied, and the artist’s search for colours and a technique that might soften the subject, could not disguise the fact that the subject of the portrait did not have a visage that lent itself to the plastic arts.

“Why, it is a painting of Nanny Fowle!” exclaimed Toad with feigned delight. “How — how —” but words failed him, and after placing it on the sideboard where they could both see it, he studied it bleakly. The thin mouth, the cadaverous cheeks, the straggling hair, the mean and hateful eyes, the pendulous ears, the perpetual frown.

“It is a very good likeness,” he said, thinking that he might put the wretched picture in the attic, underneath the skylight that leaked.

“I am glad you like it,” she said. “It is for the library.”

This was a command, not a statement.

“You want to put it in the library?” spluttered Toad. “But…” A grim thought occurred to him. His father had stressed time and again that the library was the one place Nanny Fowle had never been permitted to go in
any
circumstances. “I rather think — I greatly fear —”

“Yes, Toad?” said Mrs Ffleshe, leaning towards him.

“I don’t believe there is quite enough room for it in the library,” he squeaked.

“O yes there is,” she said with that resolution he knew so well.

He dared say no more to her on the subject, but for the rest of their breakfast he could think of nothing else and quite lost his appetite.

“Not the library, not my Pater’s beloved room, not that!” he whispered to himself as Mrs Ffleshe tore at her toast, guzzled her tea and rang imperiously for more of everything. “Not the one place where Pater could escape from Nanny Fowle!”

Mrs Ffleshe rang the bell again and told Miss Bugle that she was slow and the eggs were overcooked and might she please make sure in the days ahead that there was more coal on the fire and that the hot water in her bedroom was not quite so hot but that the towels were a little more warmed.

“Come on, Toad!” said Mrs Ffleshe, rising when her breakfast was over. “I am going to have to suffer your common guests within the hour, so let us hang my mother’s portrait before they arrive.”

There was nothing for it but to do as she asked.

“Well, Toad, bring it with you then, for goodness’ sake! Really, I sometimes wonder…”

He followed reluctantly and found her in the centre of the library, apparently examining the walls and picture rail for the best location.

“You see,” he said meekly, “there is no room.

“Then
that
will have to come down!” she cried, pointing at his father’s portrait.

“Pater’s portrait!” he stuttered, utterly appalled.

It had never occurred to him that she could propose such a thing. Some distant will to fight arose in him and he darted in front of the fireplace to put himself between the picture he loved so much and her large self.

“Mr Toad,” she boomed, “I really must insist you take down that picture.”

“No!” he gasped, picking up the poker. “I will not —you cannot — I do not —”

“Such ingratitude on Christmas Day!” cried Mrs Ffleshe indignantly before, ignoring his plaints, she pushed him aside and grasped at his father’s portrait.

He leapt up and hung on to her arm.

“Unhand me, Mr Toad, or I shall summon the constabulary!” she cried, leaving the picture where it was and stepping back a pace or two, with Toad swinging from her arm like a light pendant in an earthquake.

“Leave it, madam, for if you do not — if you do not —”

“Yes, Mr Toad,
yes?”

“Then I must — I shall — I —”

It was only when this unseemly struggle had gone on for some moments more that both of them realised that someone had entered the room. It was the Mole and the Badger, who had come ahead of Rat and Otter.

“Ahem!” said the Mole uncertainly. “A very Merry Christmas to you both!”

Mrs Ffleshe fell back at once, as bullies usually do when thus discovered, and with Toad panting hard she said, “Sirs, you are just in time to save me from this brute! Unhand me again I say, Mr Toad, unhand me!”

The Badger was not fooled and nor was Mole. When there had been no response to their knocks at the front door they had let themselves in and so had witnessed the struggle of the portraits almost from the beginning. Both knew the portrait of Toad Senior very well indeed and how much Toad valued it, and could easily guess how he must feel at the prospect of its being displaced by Nanny Fowle on this day of all days.

“We have not met formally,” said Mole in measured tones and in the absence of any word from the Badger.

She advanced upon him and eyed him much as she had eyed the goose on the day they had met. For one dreadful moment he thought she was going to apply thumb and forefinger to his thigh and arm to see how much meat he had on him, and sniff him too perhaps.

“Don’t I know you?” she enquired.

“I am Mr Mole of Mole End, and with Mr Badger here I have come to pay seasonal respects to Mr Toad, and to say that two of our friends, namely Mr Water Rat and Mr Otter, are delayed. They have to —”It doesn’t matter why they can’t come,” she said sharply. “You I know, Mr Badger, for you have come along on previous Christmas mornings, have you not?”

“I have, madam. A Merry Christmas to you!”

“Humph!” she said. “You cannot stay long, for we have a luncheon party starting at noon and friends of some social standing will be arriving at that time and I would prefer they did not see people of your station here. I’ll give you quarter of an hour, Toad, and then…”

She glared fiercely at them all and departed, leaving behind Nanny Fowle, who stared at them malevolently from where she had been propped.

Toad collapsed into an armchair, head in his hands.

“O calamity!” he groaned. “It is even worse this year than last. I wish you had not seen what you did. By myself I can survive, but knowing you are so near and —and what is worse I locked you in that coal-hole, Mole, and didn’t even come to let you out! I feel ashamed in all directions!”

“Toad,” said the sympathetic Mole, “there is no need to apologise. Today is Christmas Day and I have come to present these modest gifts to you, which I thought might give you pleasure and solace in the days ahead.”

He produced a basket of delicacies and fruit, and one or two other small things all wrapped up and neatly labelled “TO TOAD” and “FOR TOAD” and “FROM MOLE TO TOAD”.

“Please take them, Toad.”

Toad did so with trembling hands, greatly moved.

This was not a vain Toad, or a puffed-up Toad, but rather a wan and troubled Toad who had been reminded again, as often before, that it was from River Bankers like Mole and Badger that true friendship came.

“Also, I have an invitation for you to an At Home I am planning later this morning,” continued the Mole, “though if you are otherwise engaged —”

A dreadful look crossed poor Toad’s face at the prospect of luncheon at the Hall.

“— if you
are
engaged,” continued the thoughtful Mole, “then do please come over to Mole End the moment you are free; night or day you will be welcome. Please say you will.”