The Willows in Winter (7 page)

“Bother,” said the Rat, stopping suddenly some
time later, “I don’t believe I tied up that boat of mine properly. That’s what
comes of talking about Toad. It’s the effect he has on others. Well, we’re too
far up the tunnel now and finding Mole is more important.”

On they stumbled by the flickering light,
growing colder by the moment, and soon losing all sense of time and direction.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever but at last they reached a stout door with
massive hinges set into the enormous roots of an oak, on which the Rat banged
as hard as he could.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

How the sound echoed about them, so loud that
Mole’s Nephew covered his ears when Rat knocked again, even louder.

“Perhaps he’s asleep.”

“Of course he’s asleep,” said the Rat, “but Mr
Badger will not mind being woken up to advise us how best to find Mole. Mind
you, I don’t expect he’ll be in the best of tempers when he comes, so —
Suddenly
, loudly, even ferociously, the great door was
pulled open and a stream of light quite blinded the two animals. As if that was
not enough Mr Badger stood hugely over them, a great wooden cudgel in his right
paw, and roared, “How
dare
anybody use this — or bang on my — and come —

“It’s
us,
Badger, Rat and —”

“— and Mole?” said Badger.

“Not Mole proper, no,” said the Rat. “His —”

“Well, Rat and not Mole then!
Don’t you know I’m asleep? I’m not to
be woken. I’m
Not
at Home.
It’s
winter, and —”

“Please, Badger, don’t shut the door on us!”
said the Rat, for the Badger was in the process of doing so, having held his
bright lantern in their faces and peered at them severely.

“Can you give me one good reason why I should
not close the door and send you packing?” growled the Badger, opening it wider
again, and looking at them just a shade more kindly.

“I can and I will,” said the Rat stoutly. “It’s
Mole. He’s lost, and perhaps lost forever. He fell through the ice on the
river. He — Badger — we — we need your help!”

It was the best that the Rat could do before
the tears he had fought back for so long overtook him.

“Badger — I — we —“

“My dear Ratty,” said Badger in a very
different voice, “and you too,” he added to Mole’s Nephew, “you come out of
that cold tunnel — I must say it was very clever of you to remember how to find
it — and tell me what’s happened. Come on!”

He guided them into his warm chambers, closed
the door and, putting a huge paw on their shoulders, led them into his large
untidy parlour where a huge log fire, scented with crab apple wood, burned
merrily away.

“Now in a moment I’ll get you a drink, but
first tell me quickly what’s happened so that I can think about it as I put on
the
kettle.
”

They told him what they could and then, as they
drank the warming drink he made and their teeth stopped chattering, they
answered the many careful questions he asked.

“But to me,” he said finally, “the
most
important
thing of all that you’ve said is that you think that the river was trying to
tell you that Mole’s alive. Every creature hereabouts knows how well you
understand the river and would believe as I do that if you say it tells you
Mole
is
alive, then Mole
is
alive.”

“Only just alive,” corrected the Water Rat.

“We shall institute a search for Mole
forthwith, and all the animals of the Wild Wood, yes
even
the weasels
and the stoats shall help!”

“But, Badger, I know we need them as well for
so great an undertaking,” said the Rat, who felt much better for talking to
Badger, and hearing all that the wise animal had said, “but they have never
been very co-operative and lately —”

“And lately,” interrupted Badger, “they have
been getting above themselves once more. It is no good relying on their good
nature, for they have none that I have ever seen. No, we must threaten them!
‘We must intimidate them!”

Badger banged a gong that stood near the
fireside and in no time at all a couple of hedgehogs appeared.

“Go and get the weasel, you know the one I
mean, and while you’re at it summon that wretched stoat!

“Leave ‘this to me, Water Rat, and in no time
at all they’ll be as servile as rabbits and a lot more use! But don’t be weak
with them, not for a moment. No, take as your example the splendid way Mole
himself dealt with them in those days when we had to wrest Toad Hall back from
their miserable paws. Do you remember?”

“I do, Badger.”

Whatever the hedgehogs said to the chiefs among
the weasels and stoats must have been very frightening, for very soon several
weasels and more than enough stoats were knocking at Badger’s door and only too
eager to help.

“Now listen!” said Badger. “This is an
emergency, and although the fearsome Water Rat and myself know very well that
there are some of you who have reason not to like us, and even less the mighty
Mole, remember that we treated you fairly in times gone by, when we might have
been a great deal more harsh. Now the Mole is in trouble, and the chance has come
for you finally to redeem yourselves. The first one of you who succeeds in
finding Mole alive and well and brings him to my home — or to Rat’s or Otter’s,
whichever is nearest — that first one,
and
a friend of his choosing —”

The greedy weasels and acquisitive stoats slid
their snouts nearer,
all the
better to hear what the
Badger would offer them as reward. But Badger was rather stuck for words, for
he lived but modestly, and had little in the way of goods or chattels which
were worth parting with.

The ever-resourceful Water Rat came to his
rescue and said, “— that weasel, or that stoat,
and
his friend shall, as
reward, have that which very few creatures in the ‘Wild Wood have ever had —”

“Which is?” hissed one of the stoats, as all
the others, weasels and stoats alike, slid even nearer.

“‘Which is,” said the Water Rat grandly, before
pausing for full effect, “high tea with Mr Badger himself at his own table!”

There was an awed gasp from most of the weasels
and stoats, though not quite all, for one of the boldest of the stoats,
scenting advantage, had the nerve to whisper, “… and?”

“And …” faltered the ‘Water Rat, desperately
wondering what more he might offer, for this surely was concession enough,
“and — a letter of forgiveness from Toad for past wrongs!”

There was another gasp of awe, though one last
weasel, it seemed, remained unimpressed and held out for more.

“In addition to
— ?
”
he dared add.

“In addition to not being driven out of the
Wild Wood!”
roared
the Badger, at which they all fell back upon each other frightened out of their
wits, the negotiations over.

After that, and with so great a prize on offer,
the weasels and stoats were putty in the Rat’s paws as he, and the Badger, led
them to the river bank and began the long search downstream from Rat’s house;
while Mole’s Nephew led a smaller party by way of the bridge upstream to
supplement the Otter’s work with the rabbits on the other side.

All that day they searched, leaving no sedge bank untouched, no piece of
driftwood unturned, no old vole
hole
or tiny creek or
gully unchecked. Then they started at first light the next day, calling a
council to discuss matters only when it became increasingly obvious to all
concerned that matters were worsening. “The river is still rising,” declared
the ‘Water Rat, “and it will go on rising. We have hardly covered a quarter of
the ground and yet if not by tonight, then certainly by tomorrow, all the
places where poor Mole might have been washed up, and may even now be lying
trapped and calling for help, or perhaps too weak now to call, will be
flooded.”

“Which means,” said the Badger, “the worst!”

The Rat nodded his head gravely.

“It means that our friend, loved by us all,”
and here even some of the weasels, and one or two of the stoats, looked
genuinely sorry, “will be drowned.”

But as he said this there was another of those
ominous roaring and
splutterings
which had been
coming from the direction of distant Toad Hall for days past.

“What
is
that?” asked the Rat.

Badger shrugged, and the others shook their
heads. “Just Toad, that’s all that is.
Toad making a noisy
nuisance of himself.
Best to ignore it, whatever it
is.
Now, I ask you all, very seriously indeed, to consider very
carefully our difficulty and to see if one of us — and there are many of us
here — cannot come up with a solution. There
must
be a way of—”

The roaring sound was increasing, and fast.

“—
there
is certain to
be —”

The roaring sound was beginning to shake the
very trees.

“There must —”

The roaring sound was coming at them like
thunder out of a clear sky, rolling and roaring and shaking and terrible, so
that the Badger’s words were utterly drowned, and every weasel and stoat there,
and many more besides, dived for cover as the Badger, ‘Water Rat, and Mole’s
Nephew turned their startled gaze up-river.

But it was not up-river that they needed to
look so much as above-river, a few feet above-river as it seemed, where a black
shadow grew into a dark monster, and that monster into a wild roaring
unstoppable rushing thing that flew, and sparked, and shattered its way through
the air right past them and just above the swollen river itself.

From which monster, quite unmistakable even
above that earth-shattering roar of engines and propellers and wind through
wire, came the triumphant laugh of a creature all there thought and hoped they
had long since seen the last of: an Ecstatic Toad.

Then Badger and Water Rat, the only two who
dared to keep their eyes open — Mole’s Nephew yielding to instinct and diving
to the ground — saw something more terrible than the braying laughter that they
heard: they saw Toad himself waving at them as he roared demonically by, his
eyes wide and wild, his mouth open, his hands raised in a salute of unutterable
jubilation, as if to make sure that all knew what it was that was rushing by
just out of reach, and frightening the wits out of every sensible animal for
miles around.

Then he was gone as suddenly as he had come,
away down-river, up higher into the sky, the roaring continuing about them
after he had gone and then following after him and fading in his wake as he and
the contraption which carried him rose in a steep climb into the air, higher
and higher, and higher still, till it was nearly vertical. Then, astonishingly,
and now out of earshot, it continued its
mesmeric
ascent till it slowly, magically, amazingly looped the loop and roared off to
become a tiny speck.

All was silent when it had gone, and remained
silent for a very long time after, as the Badger and the Rat stared
open-mouthed into the distant and now empty sky, and Mole’s Nephew rose shakily
to his feet once more.

Eventually first one and then another, and then
a third weasel and stoat popped their cowardly heads out of whatever rabbit
hole or bramble bush they had escaped into, or up from whatever tree root or
mossy bank they had tried to hide behind.

Badger looked at Water Rat and Water Rat looked
at Badger.

“Are you thinking what I am thinking, Badger?”

“I am thinking, Water Rat, that what goes up
must unfortunately come down, and that when it does it would be as well if you
and I were there to meet it. There to admonish it. And there to permit it to go
up again for one purpose only, which is, in the little time we may have left,
to help us search the rest of the river bank where Mole may be!”

The Rat could not have put it better himself,
nor did he try to. When the Badger was in this mood there was no stopping him,
and no wise animal would have tried.