The Willows at Christmas (5 page)

The Parish Clerk sighed heavily.

“He lives, Mr Mole, but no longer in the Parish. Mr Toad Senior was his predecessor and
he
took his duties seriously, often honouring us with his presence on the Bench. But Mr Groat…”

The Mole’s ears pricked up. He had heard that name before, and only this very morning. Why, surely, that was Toad’s uncle?

“… Mr Groat left the Parish rather under a cloud some decades ago and in consequence much, indeed most, which is to say virtually all, affairs of the Village have ground to a halt for lack of his imprimatur. I have done the best I can but it is not enough.”

“This gentleman, Mr Groat, am I to understand he is the uncle of Mr Toad, of Toad Hall?”

“You are, though I’d rather you described him as the brother of Mr Toad Senior.”

“Which is to say Toad’s late father?” said the Mole.

“You know Mr Toad?” asked the Parish Clerk. “I believe you are too young to have known his father.”

“Yes, I do know Toad,” said the Mole. “I had tea with him at Toad Hall only a few days ago.

“You have actually
spoken
with him?” asked the Clerk in wonderment and with evident respect.

“He usually speaks to me, actually,” said the Mole. “It tends to be rather difficult to get a word in edgeways when he is in the room.”

“Then, sir, then —”

“Yes?” said the Mole, surprised at the animation that had suddenly come to the Parish Clerk’s face.

“— you are in the position to do me, and the Village as well, a service, a very considerable service.

“Am I?” said the surprised Mole.

“You are. But let us first retire to the Village hostelry.”

They set off across the bridge and then by way of the High Street to the Public House. With its guttering candles, struggling fire and dark shadows, it seemed rather unwelcoming at first.

The landlord was a man of gloomy expression who gruffly greeted the Parish Clerk with, “Yer’ve come fer yer annual quart, then?”

“I have,” said the Parish Clerk, “which is to say —

“Which is to say ‘ere it be,” said the landlord, thumping a great frothing tankard down upon the bar. “And what’ll it be fer yer friend?”

“The same, please,” said the Mole.

“Right you are. Nah then, wot abaht yer food?”

“What’s on the menu?” asked the Parish Clerk. “Christmas Fare, of course. There’s matured turkey from last year, and some red cabbage wot turned back to green five months ago, and tatties mushed with onions?

“They’re fresh, are they?” enquired the Mole. “Fresh as the month they was mashed, which is February last,” said the landlord. “And very flavoursome they are too. Proved particularly popular with the passing trade, for they’ve never come back to complain. And the beans is good —”

“Er, no beans for me, if you don’t mind,” said the Mole hastily, remembering the poulterer’s warning. Nor did he like the sound of anything else he had been offered. “Perhaps I’ll just have this fine tankard of beer.”

“Suit yerself.”

The Mole saw that there were a few more gentlemen of varying ages scattered about the parlour, all looking beaten down and miserable.

“Take a pew,” said the Parish Clerk, indicating what he saw was indeed a pew, judging by its length and shape. “Now, where were we?”

So it was that the resourceful Mole found himself seated in the Village Public House, surrounded by a group of men who, though nearly as mournful as the landlord, proved willing enough to talk.

Of the conversation that ensued the Mole never spoke in detail, but it was enough to confirm that festive matters had reached even more parlous a state in the Village than they had along the River Bank.

Some blamed Mrs Ffleshe directly, while others, like the Parish Clerk, laid the blame at the door of the departed Groat and said dereliction of his duty was at the root of all their woes.

“How can a ship come to port rudderless?”

“How can mangels be lifted when the tines ‘ave gone missin’?”

“Yer can’t ‘spect the cows to come ‘ome with no cowherd to bring ‘em!”

Mole saw where the problem lay, but could well understand why it might be that since Mrs Ffleshe’s coming the once-festive and sociable Toad had not been in the mood to grace their company.

“He be barred from coming ‘ere,” explained the coughing man by the fire, a rodent catcher who made the Mole feel decidedly uneasy. “It’s because that woman says ‘e spends too much, which is a rum go, seem’ as ‘e ‘s related to the Lord and Lords is meant to spend, otherwise what’s the point?”

“The Lord?” queried the Mole, though by now he was getting the gist of things.

“Of the Manor.”

“And of Session, or be you wanting to forget that, eh Daniel?” responded another. The others laughed.

“Daniel here is the last living man to have been arrested and arraigned, imprisoned and tried by the Lord of Session of the Village, which is to say the Court Baron?

“I was clapped in irons by
his
great-grandfather,” said Daniel in an aggrieved voice, pointing to the Parish Clerk, “and only pardoned because news of Boney’s defeat was proclaimed that same day. But not before —”

“You tell the gentleman,” said the others, who seemed to gain pleasure from hearing an old tale repeated.

“— aye, not before I was put to the rack and stretched a yard at least and then spitted on the fire and so roasted my eyebrows never grew back, and then squashed under a millstone till I was a goner.

“Tell ‘im what brought you back to the land of the livin’,” one of his companions called out.

“Blessed Toad Senior it was, he who was nearly sainted for his good works; he who kept the Village free of the riddles when all others in the land ‘ad it; he who’s been on that very pew where you’re sat and turned water into porter with a wave o’ his blessed hand at this very table. Mr Toad Senior! He took one look at me in the coffin — for that’s ‘ow far it got — and said ‘I am the Lord! Rise up, Daniel, and walk to the pub!’ and I ‘eard is voice and though I was comfortable where I was I couldn’t say no. It’s as true as I’m sitting ‘ere now, and seem’ as yer buying I’ll have a treble porter with a dash of mild.”

The Mole stayed in the company of these agreeable gentlemen a good deal longer than he should, and it was a testimony to his friendly good spirits that the mood in the hostelry became a good deal more festive than it had been. He learnt much, but most of all that they regretted the passing of the old days when the Lord of the Manor took his duties seriously, and made sure that those in the Village who served the Hall through the year, and very many more who did not or were not able, were looked after with free food and drink, and fuel as well, through the harsh winter months.

“It’s no good hopin’ we’ll ever ‘ear from that Groat,” the Mole afterwards remembered them saying — but who said it he could not quite recall, for his memory of the details was fuzzy — “and as long as he do stay away we’m doomed to be whittled and stoomed till the only thing left o’ us is the stitching of our boots!”

Nor was the Mole able to remember quite what it was that the Parish Clerk asked him to do as a favour to them all, for by then the Clerk’s voice was unsteady, as he was unused to anything stronger than well water.

When all but he seemed fast asleep and quite unwakeable, the Mole’s fuddled attention was drawn by the sound of rain against the window. He saw that the afternoon was advancing rapidly towards dusk and so, making his excuses to the sleeping throng, he picked up his package and stepped outside.

Before he set off on the long journey home, his curiosity drew him back to the bridge, where he paused again to look down at the gloomy gaol below Then he went on to Court House Yard and shook his head in astonishment at the memory of what lay within and at the stories that the Parish Clerk had told him.

Finally, he walked round to the rear of the building, searching for the dreadful door he had noticed earlier from inside.

And there it was! A heavy nailed and arched portal set high in the wall with no sign of any way down except vertically, straight into the now-raging waters of the river beneath.

“O my!” whispered the Mole to himself, suddenly glad that the days of ancient justice were over and more humane methods of trials and punishment now in vogue.

With this more cheerful thought upon him, the Mole walked back along the High Street and headed for home by way of the muddy road he had come up earlier that day with the poulterer. He reflected to himself that the visit had greatly cheered him, and the friends he had made and the ideas they had unwittingly given him left him much to think about.

He stopped only once along the way for as his head cleared with the fresh air so his memory came back, and he remembered the favour that the Parish Clerk had asked, and his rash undertaking to try to fulfil it.

“Yet I wonder if I might!” he exclaimed more than once.
“I wonder if I dare?”

III

Taken Alive

Darkness had descended when Mole finally reached the crossroads near Canal Bridge and familiar territory once more. He was now quite close to Otter’s house, and he had not forgotten his intention of calling on him on his way home. In any case, he felt a little tired and in need of some refreshment before the final haul across the bridge and over the fields to Mole End.

“O, it’s
you,
Moly!” cried the Otter when he opened his door to Mole’s knock. “Whatever brings you out on such a rough night?”

Mole was very pleased to find the Otter at home, for his path had taken him perilously close to the Wild Wood. The Mole was never a cowardly animal —just the opposite — but he was always a prudent one, and the various hisses, squeals, roars and wailings that emanated from the depth of the Wood boded ill, so he had hurried along the path as quickly as he could. When he saw that there was no light in Otter’s house he had naturally grown doubly fearful at the prospect of a lonely return along the same route. So when his knock was answered so soon and so cheerfully by the Otter, Mole was greatly relieved.

“But why are you sitting in the dark, Otter?” asked the Mole.

“Ah! Yes!” said the Otter as he pressed a warming drink into his friend’s hands. “I fear your unexpected coming may have disturbed a little ruse Ratty and I are just now involved in to catch out the weasels.”