The Willows in Winter (16 page)

It spread unavoidably wider as he got nearer to
it, and he saw all its terrible detail: the Cathedral, for example, with all
the suggestion of sinfulness and retribution it implied; the Police Station,
large and square and unmistakable, which loomed towards him from below, and
towards which the machine seemed to twist and twirl and throw out embarrassing
signals of contempt and disdain; while nearby, even more imposing, dark and
sombre in its
crenellations
, the Court House reached
up towards Toad threateningly as his machine helter-
skeltered
down towards it.

“No!” cried Toad rather desperately “O no!” he
whimpered, beating the wooden dashboard of the machine and then in his panic
looking down past his seat at its flimsy floor as if he half hoped there might
be a back stairs there down which he could scramble to safety, and escape.

But all this seemed as nothing when — the
Cathedral, the Police Station and the Court House successfully flown over, and
Toad beginning to think that perhaps the winds might let him down gently in
some quiet and private field from where he could slip away and return to Toad Hall,
never to go astray again — when he saw (and though he was upside down again,
and going sideways he knew it instantly) something he had never ever, not
once, wished to see again.

It had walls dark and dolorous, it had a keep
huge and impregnable, it had great stout gates of wood and horrid rusting
nails, and it had a dungeon, deep and dank, where once, a lifetime before as it
seemed, he had been confined: it was the Castle.

Towards this place,
which was
the highest, thickest, darkest castle in all
England
, with the lowest,
dampest, most
dungeony
dungeon imaginable, his
machine now rushed through the air.

“Out is surely better than in!” Toad now cried
terribly, gripping the side of the machine and heaving himself up against the
forces that held him down. “They shall not confine me again! Death is better
than such a life as that! I, Toad, aviator and explorer, shall go gloriously
to my final liberty, saying farewell to everybody now!”

With that, and the prospect of crashing into
the Castle too much for him to bear, Toad leapt clear, his fear of death
infinitely less than his fear of the fate that lay in store for him if he were
recaptured by the forces of justice.

And indeed, had not the very thoughtful and
resourceful Rat tied the cord of his parachute to the fuselage Toad might well
have fallen to his doom — a doom, some might say, which he partly deserved. But
Rat
had
secured the cord, and Toad had not tumbled far when with a
sudden and unexpected jolt, and a loud report above him as the air filled his parachute,
he found himself floating towards the ground.

As he did so his machine, which had seemed set
on a course destined to bring it somewhere near the top of the impressive
Castle keep, leapt in the air as it was lightened of its load, skimmed over the
top of the
castellations
, and went slowly on to
crash harmlessly somewhere in the empty meadows beyond.

Meanwhile, Toad discovered that the winds had
not yet quite finished with him. It was not, it seemed, parachuting weather,
and his passage down was accompanied by several return journeys upwards as,
quite helpless, and nearly suffocated by the strapping around his middle and
chest, and with his goggles all steamed up, and his body bitterly cold, he made
a slow and erratic descent towards the earth.

It was not in Toad’s nature to count his
blessings, remarkable though they were, but rather to assume them, as spoilt
animals usually do.

“I am, then, alive,” he was saying to himself
as he made his erratic descent, “and I therefore remain the clever and insuperable
Toad I was before — before my attempted self-sacrifice. Clearly, I was not
meant to be caught and confined, and I shall not be. I shall land in that
verdant field of which I dreamed only a short time before, and from there I
shall decide what route to take, and what my future holds.

“Flying was fine while it lasted, but now I am
returning to earth I declare I feel a certain happiness and contentment. Let
none say I have not lived, nor seek to guess what the future may hold for one
as full of genius as I!”

The ground was now coming uncomfortably close,
except that it was not mere common ground towards which he was floating, even
Toad could see that: it was some vast estate — a good bit vaster than his own
—with a huge house, and outbuildings, and all the accoutrements and more that
such estates generally have. Unfortunately it was towards a particular part of
it that Toad now found himself helplessly drifting, and the nearer he got to it
the less he liked what he saw He tried tugging at the strings of his parachute
in a vain attempt to change direction somewhat.

“Only a little bit, that’s all I need!” he
muttered to himself with increasingly alarm.

Since that produced no change, and if anything
seemed to bring him ever more swiftly and inexorably towards the object of his
fear, he tried waving his arms about, and wiggling his legs and feet in a most
ridiculous way But it was all to no avail. Destiny may have saved his life (so
far) but destiny seemed intent on punishing him all the same.

For what Toad found himself floating so rapidly
towards was a great and shining tropical hothouse, which looked quite as big as
Toad Hall itself, and which was filled, as he could all too plainly see, with
tropical trees and jungle blooms. It was true that these might at least cushion
his landing, but it was what he must first crash through to reach them that
concerned him.

Nor could there be an easy getaway if he made
so spectacular a landing. The noise alone would surely bring forth the whole
estate — though one thing, at least, seemed in his favour: by some happy chance
there was not a single worker or person about who might be witness to his
descent.

The shining glass and white metal structure of
the hothouse was rushing up at him. One moment it was there, all neat, perfect,
elegant beneath him, the fronds of greenery just beyond, and the next there was
a
crash!
and
a
thump!
and
Toad was —Toad was —

— coming dizzily to his senses to
discover that he was neither in nor out, but rather betwixt and between.
The top half of his body, his head,
shoulders and arms, was stuck outside the superstructure into which he had
fallen, with bits of wood and metal, and nasty shards of broken glass, poking
at him from all sides or lodged irredeemably in his thick jacket, whose
lambskin and thick inner lining had undoubtedly saved him from anything worse
than heavy bruising, and a few cuts here and there.

His lower half, from his middle down, seemed to
dangle a very long way below him and felt — and here he could count a single blessing
at least — pleasantly warm. His parachute was spread to one side across the
unbroken curves and elevations of the hothouse, where its silky folds swayed
and fluttered in the light breeze.

Toad tried to heave himself up, hoping perhaps
to clamber onto the roof and then slither down its shallower angles and so to
the ground. No good. He could not raise himself.

Toad tried to lower himself, by drawing in his
stomach and chest and so slide down into the branches and foliage of whatever
rough tree it was in which he now felt his legs dangling. But that was no good
either. Neither up nor down could he go.

“Help!” he shouted, though rather
half-heartedly, for he still entertained the hope that he might free himself
and be off before he was discovered.

“There ought to be some common worker about,”
he thought to himself “some fellow who for a small consideration — though it
will have to be the promise of one since I have no actual money on my person —
will release me, and ask no questions.

He peered from his ungainly, if superior,
position about the extensive and well-kept lawns and vegetable gardens, and
towards the impressive walls and windows of the House itself— for
help,
and with an expedient eye to future advantage if he
was detained. But his reflections were interrupted by a rapidly growing sense
of discomfort down below, equalled only by a conflicting sense of discomfort up
above.

For in his lower half, where his legs and feet
were dangling and unable to get any purchase or hold on the foliage, the agreeable
warmth he had felt earlier was rapidly building beyond warmth into a hothouse
heat. Indeed, the lower half of him felt very much as if it had been immersed
in a bath that is a shade too hot, and for which there is no conveniently
placed jug of cold water to cool it down a little.

While above, where his head and shoulders were,
the air was cold, very cold indeed.
And getting steadily
colder, as it seemed to Toad.

“I am —” he began.

But he could find no word adequate for what he
was, since one vital part of him was bitterly cold, and the other vital half
was fearfully hot.

“I must escape,” Toad told himself, his
vocabulary failing him and beginning to struggle once more, “for if I do not I
shall die of— of pneumonia.”

Toad now began to panic, beating at the tough
glass about him, which though it had been so easy to fall through now proved
quite impossible to dislodge. He wiggled his feet and toes downwards, only to
find that mounting, terrible, humid heat below was now being aided and abetted
by the tickling, and the scratching, and the malevolent rasping, of the spiny
leaves, and prickly fruits, of the upper branches of the exotic tree into the
top of which he had fallen.

It was not long before Toad began to imagine
the worst of outcomes: the pneumonia — he already had a headache, and could
feel a sore throat coming on very fast — would overtake his frail body; and
while his lower half suffered heatstroke his upper part would freeze. It would
be a dreadful fate.

“Help!” he cried again. “Let me down! Money is
no object!”

These cries went unheard, and despite the fact
that so vast and rich an estate must surely have a vast staff, not a single
person was to be seen, or appeared to have seen him. He might as well have
landed on the moon, or on a deserted island, for all the signs of life there
were.

Then, in the distance, he heard the bark of a
dog.

“Help!” he cried. But no help came.

Then Toad heard, again out of sight and in the
distance, a door opening, a snatch of male laughter, and then the scrunch of
feet on gravel.

“Help, you heartless fools!” cried Toad, whose
teeth were by now chattering, but whose lower half was being braised in that
tropical hell beneath him.

“Help!
Help! Help!” he cried again.
“Surely you can see me up here, can’t you? I’m —” He was about to say he was
Toad of Toad Hall, for he assumed that those below would be common staff who
would be impressed by who he was. Yet he was still sufficiently composed to
remember that beyond the river, beyond his own estate, Toad of Toad of Hall was
not merely persona non
grata
, but, in some eyes, a
common felon and escaped prisoner, and it might be better if he did not reveal
his identity.

“I’m — an aviator in distress!” he bleated,
which was the best he could offer.

Then the opening of another door, a metal one,
and a vibration in the superstructure around him, followed by the clank of feet
upon the kind of cast-iron grille that often lines the floors of hothouses,
caused him to fall silent and still. He would wait and see who they were, these
fools and dunderheads, and if they seemed friendly and sensible, and likely to
yield to a small consideration in return for freeing him and saying nothing,
then he would call down to them.

He could have wished that the foliage that
tormented him would fall as still as he now tried to, but it did not. It
continued to tickle at him, to scratch him, and to make him want to scratch and
itch his legs, which he could not, unless he raised one foot and scratched the
other leg with it, which surreptitiously he did.

The clanking of the visitors’ feet grew
steadily louder below, and though the humid air muffled their voices somewhat,
he could hear their talk getting louder and clearer. Fear stilled his legs and
feet, which he hoped might look, from below, like a part of the foliage, or
perhaps some extra fruit or two, or even, if he was lucky, new growth.

He hoped too that those below — and there
seemed to be three of them from the vague images he could make out through the
fogged-up glass — would not pause too long in the general area where he hung,
for the longer they did so the more likely it surely was that they would notice
any debris that his crash had caused, and so look upwards rather more carefully
than they might otherwise have done. He wished to identify them before calling
on them for help.

Then he could see the top of their heads — bald
heads in two cases, grey hair in the third — and they did stop.
Right below him.

“Very interesting indeed’ he heard one of them
say.