But, if something of a tragic figure in amours, Merchanty Swift was legendary in commerce and had certain accomplishments of exchange which were repeated by others in tones almost hushed for very awe. Pre-eminent among these, to be sure, was the cheese thing. It requires a small book, I'm afraid, to tell it, but if one is interested the account is available in any reputable mousebook shop. Swift and Modern Cheeses may sound a dry tome but in fact I've always thought it moves rather well, if one may be forgiven for saying so oneself, and it is populated by the colorfullest characters of every stripe, from the darkest brigands of mongery—smugglers and hoarders and monopolists and the like—to the fairest heroes and heroines of the mercantile arts. One might enjoy it.
He appeared to all, Merchanty Swift, a casual fellow—easily met and full of good stories. But his co-workers and a few close friends knew him to be, in fact, almost meticulous. Indeed, though I am certain that there were times when he actually worried, he had such an enormous natural talent for what he did that his work appeared easy and effortless. It wasn't, of course. It was difficult, rigorous, often tedious and occasionally dangerous. But there was this: he had nerves of steel, Merchanty Swift. Those who had seen him in the marketplace, toe to toe with bullies and wheedlers and flatterers and whiners—the whole panoply, in fact, of conscienceless higglers in the world—were certain that Merchanty Swift would come down in his price (or up his offer, as the case might be) exactly one mousesecond before his opponent (if buying) would huff away from the table having taken irremediable umbrage or (if selling) would hurl his wares back into his valise in an ostentatious gesture of undisguised finality. Those who witnessed such bargaining events were often heard to use the word "breathtaking" in their descriptions.
Whenever you called on Merchanty Swift, Mrs. Clementine Nickelpenny, his housekeeper, would serve you a very nice tea, but you were not likely to sit on the same chair twice. The one you sat on during your previous visit would have been traded for something better. Or for two somethings slightly worse. One of those, then, would have been bunched with four other articles which a linnet would have thought quite useless to begin with and sold at a handsome profit, which Merchanty Swift, often as not, would have placed in an unmarked envelope and slipped under the door of the Tottensea Foundling Home on his way to supper. Merchanty Swift cared nothing about things, you see. What really interested him was trading two of those things which he cared nothing about for another much better thing (which he cared nothing about either) and then showing it to you and asking you if you wanted it because he needed the room to put yet another thing which he had just acquired in trade a few moments ago—unless, of course, you wanted it, instead—in which case he wouldn't need the extra room anyway and, come to think of it, that would be an excellent solution to the problem.
In consequence of all this, Mrs. Nickelpenny had interesting experiences. One thinks right away of the storage crisis which ensued from the arrival in midwinter of no less than 84 mousepuncheons of pickled smolt when even the vast warehouses of Swift Mercantile Ltd. were already quite bulging with Scottish plaid, Irish linen, vanilla extract and a list of other things so long that it would require the remainder of this chapter, I suppose, to write it all down. Issuing from that circumstance, all sleeping, dressing, bathing, visiting, reading of mail and other forms of general existence—to say nothing of eating and drinking!—had to take place in the Swift kitchen and rather in Mrs. Nickelpenny's way for several days running until the smolt, the linen and the extract could all find their way to proper markets.
Some of Mrs. Nickelpenny's interesting experiences had to do with a group of amiable bachelors who gathered once a month for dinner and cards at the home of Merchanty Swift. For those occasions Mrs. Nickelpenny recruited her friend, Mrs. Proserpine Pockets, to help with the meals. And at one such event, while serving the meal in the dining room, Mrs. Nickelpenny and Mrs. Pockets overheard that this monthly gathering of more or less eligible associates had begun to refer to itself as The Unable To Find Wives Club. Upon their return to the kitchen, Mrs. Nickelpenny, who was a widow and felt quite eligible herself, as it happened, said to Mrs. Pockets, also a widow, "Did you hear that, dearie? The Unable To Find Wives Club indeed! I put it to you, Proserpine Pockets: Am I invisible? Are you?" And, with that, Mrs. Nickelpenny committed two muffin pans to the kitchen sink rather more noisily than might have been required.
Mrs. Pockets only smiled but Mrs. Nickelpenny, rather overflowing with the very idea, said, "All right then. They'll not find us calling it The Unable To Find Wives Club. You and I, my dear, shall call it The Not Paying Attention Club." And so they did. And, as I think their complaint reasonable and just, so shall I.
CHAPTER 7
The Not Paying Attention Club
The Not Paying Attention Club, though a bit fluid in its membership, usually consisted of Merchanty Swift, the host, Peebles Carryforth The Mayor, Sir Rotherham Twickets, Umpteen Weeks Who Was Pretty Old And Knew Things, Leacock Hardesty The Younger (of Hardesty & Hardesty), General Random Chewings, and Warburton Nines Who Once Lifted A Cat. And these might be joined for dinner by a fine little fellow named Farnaby Pockets who, though he sometimes helped his mother with the serving, was more often to be found sitting at the table as Merchanty Swift's special guest.
On one occasion, an hour before the club was to arrive, Mr. Swift informed Mrs. Nickelpenny with emphatic apologies that the china and crystal which had been laid on the dining room table since half a day previous must be taken up at once as they had unfortunately been included in a recent transaction involving certain commodities. He was happy to add however that a fine set of stoneware and some pewter tankards, which should serve very nicely for the evening's purpose, would be arriving within the hour along with 16 quires of writing paper, 12 mousebolts of hounds-tooth, 3 gills of quite good treacle and eighteen and a half cases of reasonably good scuppernong (which could hardly be got anywhere in those days, he said—at any price).
In point of actual fact, an unfortunate delay in the delivery of these items resulted in the dinner being served somewhat later than originally planned. Mrs. Nickelpenny therefore was forced to report to her employer that there was a slight inconvenience involving the material absence of certain eating and drinking apparatus which would be more or less required were the meal to go forward.
Merchanty Swift, ever given to quick thinking, turned immediately to General Random Chewings who proved more than equal to the occasion by passing a wonderfully diverting half-hour with a military lesson for the layman on the art of turning an enemy's flank—a spirited presentation liberally sprinkled with quotations from von Clausewitz and illustrated across Mrs. Nickelpenny's almost empty tablecloth in such a way that the salt cellar and the pepper caster, though quite surprised by a pre-dawn attack from the napkin rings and taking heavy losses in the early going, were able ultimately to marshal the forks in countermeasure and, keeping the spoons in reserve until the cream jug had been irretrievably committed, carried the day in an absolute rout. "Ha!" cried The General triumphantly at the final dispositions as he struck the table in a slight overplus of martial excitement. "Ha!" cried Farnaby Pockets as well (without intending to, I think).
Peebles Carryforth The Mayor was greatly entertained and instructed along with the others, but in him there were misgivings. A very solid mouse was Peebles Carryforth: deliberate, circumspect, a bit serious at times perhaps, but quite well-liked and, I think on the whole, a handsome mouse, though some said his whiskers were tragically short and all agreed that he could have lost a bit of weight. But he was, after all, a bachelor, wasn't he? He was a good mayor, an humble leader who stayed mostly behind the scenes, guiding by example and persuasion and gathering what wisdom he might at the lonely pinnacles of mouse leadership. And on this evening The Mayor was disquieted. Something was not right, he thought.
General Random Chewings was not, of course, a real general—not a military general I mean. He always wanted to be one, it's true, and he had
studied the arts of war since childhood. It was, in fact, a matter of the deepest disappointment to him that he could not be a general and he had frankly wondered, in this connection, if perhaps there had been some mistake in his origins. He was much loved by the mice of Tottensea and greatly valued for his recondite knowledge. It was a mysterious thing to them, war. They knew nothing about it and accordingly they regarded it—and him—with a kind of awe. They made him General of Tottensea Burrows, having not the slightest idea what that would be, and gave him a uniform.
It was a handsome uniform—dignified and conservative. The mice all nodded and said, "Very practical," to one another when they saw the tunic and felt it. It was Prussian blue with a high standing collar and button loops the color of toast. "Just the thing," they thought. The hat was a bicorn—jet-black with some plumes on it. Merchanty Swift found the outfit somewhere in his travels, brought it back and had it altered. The mice then presented it to Random Chewings at a brisk little ceremony one Saturday morning in the early spring. There were short speeches and things to eat. Every mouse there smiled broadly at other mice and was pleased. They do love that sort of thing.
The General of Tottensea Burrows was not a real general for the simple and very excellent reason that there is no such thing as an army of field mice. There couldn't be! It's simply not in them. They have courage, yes. Some of them have a great deal of courage. But they could hardly be persuaded to harm anyone, you see. No, no. They are not warriors. They are nerved and sinewed for the other things: for escape and hiddenness. It is their glory to disappear—to be quick and to vanish, to melt right into the briar and sedge. Theirs it is to baffle and confuse the predator's eye, to astonish with sheer evanescence—seen threading through stalk and stem and abruptly gone! A vapor! Suddenly down into the deep fortress of the earth they would be, racing through the clever tunnels, through straits too narrow and turns too sharp for the enemies who hungered after them and wanted them.
All this, of course, Peebles Carryforth knew, had known for a very long time. But it was at this particular meeting of The Not Paying Attention Club that he saw—and saw clearly—what was not right about Tottensea Burrows. It was at this meeting that he saw that Tottensea Burrows was in fact, misplaced. But he was a leader, Peebles Carryforth, and it was part of his wisdom to know when his mice were ready to face facts and when they weren't. So he kept his own counsel for the moment and awaited his opportunity.
After the dining table had been reclaimed from the noise and fume of war and had been returned to more gentle purposes, Mrs. Nickelpenny and Mrs. Pockets served a splendid carrot loaf, garnished with a parsley wreath and accompanied by stuffed marrow and various trimmings—all nicely truffled and beautifully set out on whatever silver tray Merchanty Swift happened to own that week. It was greatly enjoyed and remarked upon, that meal—and eaten, too, off stoneware plates which had, at length, arrived and which everyone, to the last guest, thought handsome in the extreme and as well worth waiting for as any plates they had ever been slightly inconvenienced by—which inconvenience, they went on to emphasize, was so minimal as to be hardly worth mentioning in any event.
And they were greatly taken with the tankards. Absolutely loved the tankards. All pewter and weighty they were—rather masculine in their opinions—with hinged lids which might be counted on they thought to keep a mouse's ale from going flat while he went on with his eating. Exactly right for their purposes and all of them pleaded with great passion for Merchanty Swift to please keep these tankards and not trade them away next week for venetian blinds or enameled toothpicks or some awful thing! And when Swift saw their depth of feeling he was moved to promise that these tankards would never go onto the block. No, not in the fiercest heat of commercial exchange, he said, would he be tempted to throw these tankards into the clinch of some difficult bargain. These tankards would be for his friends.
They all said hurrah to that and, knowing their mouse, never did they worry. For though they knew him to be rather devoted to a bit of trading, they knew him to be even more devoted to his friends.
During the eating, just after The General had asked the group whether anyone in the world could make a vegetable aspic as well as Clementine Nickelpenny, Merchanty Swift turned to Master Pockets, who sat just to his right, and said, "How does it go with rocks these days, Farnaby Pockets?"
"Very well, thank you, sir," the young mouse replied.
"Any good ones recently?"
"Oh, yes sir! I found a very nice one in the rockery. It looks ever so much like a frog on the one side of it."
"Ah, capital," said Sir Rotherham, taking up the subject. "And on the other side, then?"
"Hmm," Farnaby pondered. "No actually. On the other side I'm afraid it looks more like a rock, sir."
"Yes, well," consoled Sir Rotherham. "To be expected I suppose. Still, in all, very nice on the one side?"
"Yes sir," said Farnaby Pockets.
"And how are you mending, by the way?" Merchanty Swift asked his young guest.
"I'm quite recovered, sir."
"Ah. That's good hearing, Farnaby. You gave us a start, you know."
"Have you been ill, then?" asked The Mayor.
"Oh, no sir," Farnaby said. "Not ill, exactly. It's just that...I jumped, sir."
"You jumped." The Mayor said, uncertain.
"Yes sir. Off something."
"I see," said The Mayor, cautiously. "Are you given to jumping?"
"Not so as I used to be, sir."
"And was there an umbrella involved, perhaps, in the jumping?" The Mayor wanted to know.
"Yes sir, there was."
"Hmm. Ineffective was it—the brolly?"
"Yes sir."
"Came right down, did you?"
"Like a stone, sir."
"Yes, well," The Mayor said, and clucked his tongue, gravely.
"Shocking parachutes, brollies!" Sir Rotherham mumbled. "Still, lesson learned and all that, I suppose."
"Yes sir," Farnaby said.
"We must all learn to measure our risks," The Mayor put in, looking around at the others rather pointedly.
"And to check with one's mother before doing some things. Hmm?" said Merchanty Swift, cheerfully, looking at Farnaby from under raised eyebrows.
"Yes sir."
"Were you badly injured then, Pockets?" Sir Rotherham asked.
"I broke my leg, sir!"
"I dare say!" Sir Rotherham exclaimed. "Was there anyone to help you?"
"No sir. Not at first, there wasn't. But then Mr. Pickerel happened by."
"Pickerel, you say? Would that be Langston Pickerel?" Sir Rotherham asked, somehow surprised at the thought.
"Yes sir. And he carried me right home to me mum!"
"Did he indeed?" Sir Rotherham exclaimed. "Langston Pickerel happened by and carried you to your mum. Well now there's a thing!"
"It certainly is," said Merchanty Swift.
"Langston Pickerel." Sir Rotherham mused to himself, still in some amazement.
"Quite a colorful chap, Pickerel." Merchanty Swift said, "Has his own ideas about things."
"I dare say!" Sir Rotherham replied to that.
"And I think we must give him every credit for his kindness to young Pockets, here," Swift went on.
"Hear, hear," Sir Rotherham said, governing his tongue decently and passing on without gossip. Langston Pickerel was, after all, the most tempting subject for gossip in all of Tottensea Burrows. I would go further to say that sometimes, in fact, only the most stringent discipline was sufficient to produce the necessary forbearance to avoid gossip where Langston Pickerel was concerned.
"Tell me, Swift," The Mayor said, changing the subject, "in your travels you must see lots of field mouse communities."
"To be sure," said the host.
"And do you find Tottensea Burrows to be...umm...typical in its situation?"
"Certainly not," answered Merchanty Swift. "I'll thank you for another of those truffles, Hardesty."
"How's
that, Swift? Not typical, you say?" asked Sir Rotherham, disturbed at the very thought of his community being irregular in some way.
"No, actually, not typical at all, placed hard by The Cottage here as we are."
"Oh, that," Sir Rotherham said. "Well, that's rather an advantage, isn't it? Convenient foraging and all."
"It'll be the ruin of us!" said a brusque voice near the end of the table. They all turned to look at Umpteen Weeks.
"Do you think so?" asked The Mayor.
"We don't know flippin' nothin' 'bout bein' field mice these days," said Umpteen Weeks. "Gone all soft, we have...eatin' after birds and a dog of all things! When I was a nipper we lived in the fields like proper field mice. Had everything mice could want, we did. Pretty safe it was, too. Knew our way around the hedgerows like the backs of our paws. Didn't live underfoot of no man and no woman. I can tell you that!"
"So you didn't," said The Mayor. "How did you come here, then?"
"I was brought, wasn't I? By my family."
"Ever think of going back to the fields, Weeks?"
"And leave my relations?"
"Hmm, I see," said The Mayor. "No, of course not."
And just at that moment, to the great satisfaction of everyone at table, Clementine Nickelpenny and Proserpine Pockets brought in the trifle.
CHAPTER 8
Poker and Cheroots
After dinner, in the drawing room, there was card playing. With Mrs. Pockets and Farnaby gone home and Mrs. Nickelpenny well retired to her rooms, members of the club thought it meet to indulge themselves in games of skill and chance. They normally began with a riotous thing called Mole Biscuits.
I've never played Mole Biscuits, myself, though I have watched it being played—for all the good it did me. I find it fairly impossible, actually. On this evening, I am told, General Random Chewings innocently put forth a card only to be suddenly and gleefully advised by Mayor Peebles Carryforth that one may not play a black six while the red knaves are on the board. "Honestly Chewings!" The Mayor said, laughing hugely, "What were you thinking?" The General then, having struck his forehead in self-reproach and saying, "Crumbs! How could I have forgot that?" was required to exchange places with Umpteen Weeks at the foot of the table and did so in jovial humiliation to the extreme merriment of all other players.
The Linnet's Tale (A Mouse Story for Grownups) (The Tottensea Series) Page 4