The River Bank

by Kij Johnson

  And after a time, Beryl returned. There was a quickness to her steps now, and her eyes were bright. The lily that had been in her hands was gone. “Rat!” she said, and her voice was light and sweet, very unlike her normal low, calm tones. “O, I have seen Him!”

  The Water Rat straightened; had he been napping? “Seen who?” he said, ungrammatically.

  “Him! O, Rat, you did not say that He was here! Can you hear them? Even now—His pipes—there, listen! . . . You are right, O, He is dangerous, yes—but not to us animals, surely not.” Her eyes shone. “He spoke to me, and I worshipped at His feet. Have not you?”

  It came to the Rat for one perfect instant, the memory, full and complete and free of loss or regret, of that blessed night last summer when he and the Mole had walked across the Island and seen Him, the Protector of Small Animals: His kind, wild eyes and human face; the wooden pipes in His long brown fingers; the curved horns that sprang from His forehead; His goat’s-legs, fine and strong and glossy brown; and little Portly the Otter between His hooves, asleep within earshot of the deadly weir.

  “Yes,” said the Water Rat. “Yes!” and it all made sense in that instant, for writing was a sort of divine madness, and who better to see the God of divine madness than one who wrote? He, the Water Rat, was a poet, and he knew he saw more than dear Mole or the Badger or the Otter—or Toad, bless his heart!—but Beryl, he knew now, was one of His own, adopted child of the god, never to be free of His regard. She would never have a day that she did not see something and hear a voice in her mind say, Remember this and then write this.

  And he realized suddenly that he had no wish to take on that burden. He could write, or not write. Days or weeks could pass by without him setting pen to paper, or even thinking of poetry. He, if he chose, could mess about with rhymes as someone else might with boats: a passion, but one that could be set aside or ignored.

  As though he had closed a book, the memory slipped away. “Miss Mole,” he said kindly, for she was staring into the air as though listening to something; but the space around the lilies was silent, quite silent. “Beryl, come into the boat.”

  And she did. They said little on the long row back. It was hard, in spite of the Water Rat’s words earlier, but he welcomed the labor. The day was nearly faded—how had they spent so much time on the River? But they had not started in the morning; that must be it—and gnats rose up in clouds that stained the air. Beryl said aloud, “I shall have to rewrite most of it; I see the problem now.” He knew she was not speaking to him and said nothing.

  It was nearly dark when he let her off at last at the Cottage’s dock, and she smiled down at him in the dimming light: “Thank you, Rat, for a lovely day.”

  “Thank you, Miss Mole,” he replied, and after a moment’s pause he considered his next words. “May I ask—?”

  But she was gone already, running up the lawn to the cottage, to the Novel and the changes that had become so clear to her on the island between the weirs.

  It was downstream from her cottage to his own comfortable hole, so he floated down, content to be the Water Rat, to have spent the day with his River. But those lilies, now—they really were worth writing about. When he got home, he might dig out that old poem and try again. Or perhaps not—for as he approached the bank by his hole, the Mole was waiting for him and ran down to catch the painter and tie the boat up.

  “Was it a good day?” said the Mole shyly, as the Water Rat handed up the cushions. “I want to apologize for being so surly! I should have gone.”

  “Well, as to that,” began the Water Rat, and then stopped. In the bow was Beryl’s little basket. “Why, we forgot all about the seedcake and sandwiches! Where did the time go?”

  Chapter Seven

  Flight

  When the Toad came back to his senses in the bramble beside the signpost, he could not at first recollect what exactly had happened. There had been a delightful sensation of speed and the wind in his face, almost as though he had been flying; the great vibrating roar of some magnificent machine in his proximity; and a great complacency, a sense that, among all those who walked upon the face of the Earth, he was the finest. “So at least I remember who I am, even if I don’t know anything else!” he said to himself: “Toad of Toad Hall! Why, it’s a pleasure to recollect I am Toad, and not some other poor wretch—old Badger, for instance, admirable chap though he is!”

  He was unaware he had spoken aloud, but—“Of course you’re the Toad!” said a voice not his own, a young female voice quivering with what sounded like relief. “O thank goodness, you are coming back to yourself!”

  Though his eyes were still closed, he became aware of his surroundings: He was in some outdoor venue (he could hear insects and bird song, and a barking dog a short way off), lying upon his back across a root or something uncomfortable, amid something else that was pricking him all over his exposed flesh, his paws and feet and face; and he was very uncomfortable. And what voice was this? Someone was chafing one of his paws. He opened one eye.

  It was the Rabbit! She had cast her bonnet aside and, heedless of the blackberry brambles tearing her ribbons and the ripe berries staining her skirts, she knelt over him, ears twitching with concern, his limp paw between hers. It all came flooding back to him—the motor-cycle—the police—the chase through Town—the flight across the countryside—the final crack-up—his unhappy situation. Tears began to flow. “O no!” he wailed. “Doomed—doomed!”

  The Rabbit said anxiously, “I don’t think your injuries are that bad, dear Toad! No broken bones—no parts missing—your skull uncracked . . . You have a few scratches and bruises, but it is fortunate that we fell into these brambles, or things should have been much worse, you know. Indeed, we are quite lucky!”

  But the Toad could not be comforted. “Doomed,” he wailed. Enormous tears rolled from his eyes to puddle in his ears. “O, I am such a vain, foolish Toad! What was I thinking? My home, my friends, my wealth—Lost! Torn away! Gone, because I could—not—restrain—myself!” He sat up, but could hardly hold his head upright for his gusty weeping. “Ratty—Mole—Otter—dear old Badger—they all warned me, again and again—told me that I must learn to be a better Toad—but I did not listen—and now I’m for it! No hope, no hope at all!” He threw himself down again full-length among the brambles (though avoiding the worst of them) and absolutely let himself go.

  The Toad’s display of sorrow—long, noisy, and damp—was not for the faint of heart, but the Rabbit had many younger siblings and she had seen worse—though, to be just, never before from anyone grown to adulthood. She looked around, but there was no vase convenient, that she might dash its contents into the Toad’s face and break his hysterical frenzy. Nor did she think she could bring herself to slap him—someone of the male persuasion, and very nearly a stranger! But her reticule had somehow remained on her wrist through the long activity-filled day, and she pulled from it a little bottle of smelling salts, uncapped it, and waved it beneath his broad nostrils.

  “O!” said the Toad, arrested in mid-wail, choking at the strong smell. “What are you doing, you detestable female?”

  “Trying to calm you!” said the Rabbit, a little tartly, for her day had not been one of unalloyed delight, either. “And I am not detestable.”

  “No, you’re not,” acknowledged the Toad with a flush of shame. “I know that; it is only my own selfishness speaking. You . . . mean well, I know that. . . . If you are brutal, it is . . . not intentional. . . . But my constitution is more delicate that one would think, to look at me.”

  “I am sure not!” said the Rabbit robustly. “Why, you are—hsst! Listen!”

  They heard the clop of hooves and the creaking of wheels: a horse and cart approaching. It came to a stop as the Toad and the Rabbit stared at one another with wide eyes. Someone got down from the cart, and then a second person, and then there were footsteps closer, closer. . . .

  “Hullo!” said a voice just outside the bramble: a female, country voice. “Look
, Ned—here’s a ruined motor-cycle! Someone’s taken a spill!”

  A second voice—male; this must be Ned—exclaimed, “Right you are, Mum!” and called, “Hullo? Is anyone in there?”

  The terror-stricken Toad said nothing, only cowered in his place, but the Rabbit cried out, “Yes, O yes! We have been in a terrible accident. Please help us!”

  “No!” With a scream, Toad leapt to his feet, and collapsed instantly into a deep swoon.

  When the Toad at last returned (again) to consciousness, he found himself tucked into a soft bed between sheets that smelled deliciously of lavender; and since in his experience dungeons were not generally furnished with such amenities, he sat up cautiously and looked about himself. There was a cheery fire in a grate, burned down now but still bright enough that he could see the room he was in: a small, cheerful space with sloping ceilings and a dormer window with curtains pulled cozily against the night he could see peeping through a gap. There was a rocking chair turned to face the fire so that its back was to him, and a red quilt upon his bed. He could smell that someone had put arnica on his bruises, and a bulky white bandage was wrapped tightly around his head, which made him look (though he did not know it) a bit like the evil genie in a fairy story. There was a pitcher of cool water and a cup upon the bedside table; he drank thirstily.

  “Not so bad, not so bad,” he said to himself complacently. “Another narrow escape, it looks like. I wonder if I can get a splash of brandy brought up to me?” And he started to look around for a bell-pull.

  The rocking chair shifted suddenly, and someone unfolded herself and crossed the room to his side to peer nearsightedly at him. It was a very old woman, with a face the approximate shape, color, and texture of a withered turnip, scattered with dark spots. “There, there, young sir,” she said, and he recognized her voice as the one he had heard outside the brambles, “lie still, lie still. You took a narsty spill, you did. Narsty. If me and my boy Ned hadn’t found ye, there’s no telling how things might have ended, but no harm done, no harm. How are you feeling, now?”

  “Not well,” wheezed the Toad feebly. “Brandy . . .”

  The old lady laid a hand on Toad’s forehead. “Brandy! Brandy’s no good for tumbles, no good at all. No fever, that’s good. Nah, you lie back now and don’t worry yourself. We brought you back, along o’ whatever bits of that motor-cycle were big enough to pick up off the ground, but I’m sad to tell you that it’s ruined completely, says my Ned, and he knows what’s what, about machines and engines and such-like.”

  The Toad cast one paw over his eyes with a groan. “The Dustley!”

  “I daresay, I daresay. And your sister—aow, I know you’ll be that worr—”

  “My sister?” said the Toad weakly. “O! My sister. Yes.”

  “No, no need to worry about her, sir! She’s fine—hardly a scratch. Very nimble she must a’ been, too, a-flying off the back of that motor-cycle when you cracked up, not to hit something. A very nice young animal, she is, and you should be proud of her: polite, and not above helping an old woman upstairs with t’ hot water. You just lie still, now—the doctor’ll be along a’ here in a moment.”

  The Toad lay back with a sigh. “A doctor! The very thing—”

  Back at the River Bank, the Toad had liked doctors; in fact, they had become rather a hobby of his in recent years, whenever nothing better was going on and his friends were busy. He summoned them often, especially on drab, rainy days in the autumn. Phantom pains, ominous coughs, strange sneezes, possible skin-splotches, an itch or a watery eye or a worrisome ear: anything was reason enough. The village doctor had not lasted past his first visit, when he had suggested that the Toad’s problems might be rooted, not in some mysterious ailment but in his corpulence and idle habit of life; but once the sufferer began to bring in eminent practitioners from Town, he found them very helpful indeed. He was listened to with courteous attention as he described his symptoms, again and again, in ever-greater detail. The doctors shook their heads gloomily and remarked upon his stoic courage, and recommended consultations with specialists (generally acquaintances planning costly trips to Egypt or the Holy Land), and suggested follow-up visits, on the expectations of which they ordered expensive new motor-cars for their wives. Syrups were concocted and tablets compounded; plasters applied and liniments prescribed. The Toad listened meekly and took such advice and medicines as did not run counter to his own preferences, and since his pains and ailments always vanished as soon as something interesting happened again—a boating expedition with the Water Rat, for instance, or a sunny day suitable for lawn bowling—it can be seen that this was an innocent, wholesome amusement, harming no one and profitable, in its way, to all.

  So, for slightly fewer than ten seconds, the Toad looked forward to the arrival of this doctor. He closed his eyes and began cataloguing what he could feel: neck—stiff; right paw—bruised; foot—itchy. And then it came to him: with doctors came questions, questions that might (no—would) be awkward to answer. Why, they should find out about the motor-cycle and the accident and the chase and— He opened his eyes wide and cried, “No! No doctors!” and swung his legs from the bed.

  But the old lady shook her head and inexorably returned his legs to their original position. “Nah, nah, it’s for t’ best. No gentleman wants to see a doctor, I know, but we wouldn’t want you to die in our wee house, me and Ned, and ‘Better safe than sorry’ is our motto, it is. And I’ll be honest with you, young sir: I don’t like your color, I don’t. Our old doctor’ll set you up finely.”

  “Unnecessary,” croaked the Toad, feeling panic well up. “I feel entirely well! In fact—”

  He would have said more, but at that moment the door to the room opened a crack and the Rabbit peeped in. She said, “I thought I heard voices, and—O! I am so happy to see you awake, T—dear brother!” She tripped up to the side of the bed and, after a pause, kissed his bandaged forehead in a sisterly fashion.

  “Mmm,” said the poor Toad. It had been a very long day, beginning with the train into Town and ending with quite a substantial tumble into a blackberry bramble, and things were moving along a bit quickly for his lagging mind.

  The old woman was looking down at them dotingly. “Isn’t that the sweetest thing?” she said. “She was that worried about you, your sister. Now that you’re awake and your sister’s right here, I’ll just pop downstairs and make a posset or two. The doctor’ll be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, he will, and then you’ll be just as right as rain.”

  The Rabbit had barely waited for the door to shut behind the old woman’s retreating figure before she said, “Toad, how exciting! Why, we are criminals!”

  “I must flee!” The Toad flung aside his bedclothes. He was most conveniently still garbed in his motor-cycle riding suit, as removing over-tight leathers from an unconscious, obese Toad had proved to be beyond the skills of the old woman (and she had not quite liked to in any case, thinking it a liberty); and so she had left them on, taking only his overcoat and helmet. “Did you hear her, Rabbit? Doctors! And right after doctors come constables—and then it shall be Scotland Yard and the Tower! Alas!”

  “Surely not!” said the Rabbit. “I don’t think the doctor can have heard anything about what happened in Town.”

  “You think!” cried the Toad, trembling in every limb. “Even now, the news of our activities is being flashed by wire across the country! Telegrams! Telegraphs! Couriers on motor-cycles even faster than the Nonpareil! The evening papers—full of it! Pamphlets, I shouldn’t wonder—bills upon every wall! Dungeons! Torture! The guillotine! Help me find my coat,” he said in quite another tone, one of grim desperation. “I am leaving immediately.”

  “You can’t, Toad! You must stay quiet until the doctor has been here.” But she amiably hunted around the room with him, and it was she that found it, folded neatly upon the rush seat of the rocking chair. “Why, the old dear has been mending it! See, here—a bramble tear, sewn up neat as—”

  He
snatched it away, and searched the pockets. “My money—my guineas, my bank notes! Where have they gone?”

  “You threw them behind you as we left the motor-cycle shop,” she reminded him helpfully.

  “I did?” He stared at her with starting eyes. “I did! All those beautiful bank notes—gone! Tossed to the winds! And for what? Nothing! The motor-cycle is ruined anyway! What a stupid, idiotic, foolish thing to do! Penniless—bereft—on the lam! Can’t go home! No money to go elsewhere! What—can—I—do?” Sobbing, he threw himself down again on the bed, evidently preparing for a weeping fit which bade fair to throw all the day’s prior fits into the shade.

  The Rabbit said hastily, “Wait! I have a bit of money, I think.” Her reticule was still about her wrist, and now she dumped its contents out onto the red coverlet. “I have . . . three, four, or—here’s another shilling, and one, two, three sixpences, and O! A pound note—” After a moment, she lifted her head with a delighted expression. “Why, Toad, I have quite a surprising amount! I recall now—my quarterly allowance came only last week, and I have spent almost none of it yet.” She began stuffing the money back into the reticule.

  The Toad, face down in a pillow and still teetering on the brink of his incipient fit, moaned, “Money? Pennies and pounds! What good will it do us? We are doomed, quite doomed! Fugitives! Nowhere to go—nowhere to hide—they will be looking for us everywhere!”

  The Rabbit wrinkled her brow. “Well, we could go to my relatives. In fact, what a grand idea! I am not expected home for visit before Christmas-time—everyone will be so happy to see me! It shall be such a surprise to them! Mummy and Daddy and all my little brothers and sisters, and my aunties and—and you shall be my guest, so that’s all right. Toad, it will be a great adventure!”