A Piglet Called Truffle

by Helen Peters

  “Hello, little one,” Jasmine whispered, stroking the piglet’s shivering back. “I’m going to feed you now, and then you’ll soon feel better.”

  She set the mug down on the bedside table, sat on the bed and took the things from her coat pockets. She unscrewed the top of the bottle and tore the sachet open. She tipped the powder into the bottle and read the instructions on the back of the packet. Then she carefully added the correct amount of warm water.

  The instructions said you should whisk the powder into the water for three minutes to get smooth milk with no lumps. But Jasmine didn’t have a whisk, and she wasn’t about to make another trip downstairs and risk awkward questions. So she pinched the teat tightly between her thumb and forefinger and shook the bottle vigorously, timing it on her bedside clock.

  Three minutes of vigorously shaking a bottle felt like a very long time.

  When the shaking was done, she pulled up the sleeve of her jumper and shook a few drops of the thick, yellowy mixture on to her wrist to make sure it was at body temperature. If the milk felt either hot or cold on the thin skin of her wrist, that would mean it wasn’t the right temperature.

  The milk felt just right. Finally, everything was ready.

  Along the landing, she heard Mum scrape her desk chair back and call, “Jasmine! Dinnertime!”

  Oh, no.

  If she went down to dinner now, it would be at least another half hour before Truffle was fed. And that half hour could be the difference between life and death.

  Chapter Four

  A Tiny Bit at a Time

  Jasmine put the bottle on the floor beside Truffle’s box and left the room, closing the door behind her. She couldn’t risk Mum coming in.

  “Oh, there you are,” said Mum. “Come down to dinner. You must be starving.”

  “I’m not hungry at all,” Jasmine lied. “I can’t eat any dinner. I… I feel really sick.”

  Mum raised her eyebrows. “Have you been eating sweets in your room again?”

  “No,” said Jasmine indignantly. “I don’t even have any sweets.”

  “Hmm,” said Mum. She put her palm to Jasmine’s forehead and looked closely at her face. “You seem all right. Come down to dinner and try to eat, at least. It’s only jacket potatoes.”

  “I can’t,” said Jasmine, pressing a hand to her stomach and wincing. “My tummy feels really funny. Can I just lie down in bed?”

  Mum looked surprised. “Really? Well, I’d better bring you up a bowl, then, in case you’re sick.”

  “It’s OK, I’ve already got one,” said Jasmine quickly. The last thing she wanted was Mum coming in to her room.

  “Oh, good girl.” Mum kissed the top of her head. “Go on, then, just lie down and rest. Call me if you need me.”

  Mum walked down the landing and knocked on Ella’s door. “Ella! Dinnertime!”

  Jasmine hurried back to her room. She felt bad about deceiving Mum, but a life was at stake here.

  She bent down, lifted the trembling pig out of the box and laid her in her lap. Gently, she held the bottle to her mouth. Truffle didn’t respond. Jasmine held it there patiently but the piglet’s mouth stayed shut. She slipped her fingers into Truffle’s mouth and prised her jaw open. It was remarkably resistant, and she was surprised to feel a row of sharp little teeth.

  She pushed the teat in, but it slipped right out again. She tried several times, but Truffle made no attempt to suck. She clearly had no strength at all.

  Sometimes, the weakest lambs were like this. She would have to fetch a feeding syringe from the medicine cupboard.

  Everybody else was in the kitchen, eating dinner. If she wasn’t to be seen, she would have to go by the outside route.

  Jasmine tiptoed downstairs and softly opened the front door. She went out into the cold November night, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could. Then she walked around the side of the house. Luckily, the back door was kept unlocked until Dad bolted it before he went to bed.

  Jasmine held her breath as she opened it. “Please don’t creak,” she whispered.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if the door had creaked. The kitchen was full of noise, with the radio on in the background and Manu and Ben in peals of laughter. Nobody would have heard the back door opening.

  Jasmine unlocked the cupboard and reached for a syringe. A medicine bottle toppled over and clattered on to the tiled floor. Jasmine held her breath. But the noise in the kitchen carried on. She put the bottle back in the cupboard and, standing on tiptoe, carefully extracted a feeding syringe, wrapped in its sterile plastic packaging. She put it in her pocket. Then she tiptoed outside, walked round to the front door, re-entered the house and went back to her bedroom.

  Truffle was still trembling, and now there was dribble coming out of her mouth, too. That was a bad sign. Jasmine would have to work fast.

  She unscrewed the top of the feeding bottle and dipped the nozzle of the syringe into the colostrum. She pulled back the plunger and the syringe filled with the rich, creamy mixture.

  Jasmine sat on the edge of the bed and gently lifted the pig on to her lap, talking softly to her the whole time.

  “Now, Truffle,” she said, prising her jaw apart and slipping the little plastic nozzle into her mouth, “can you swallow this for me? No need to suck, I’m just going to drop it down your throat, a tiny bit at a time. OK?”

  To Jasmine’s relief, the milk, drop by drop, seemed actually to be going down Truffle’s throat. For a long time Jasmine sat there, completely still, her world made only of the tiny mouth of a barely-alive piglet.

  If this didn’t work, Jasmine thought, she would have to tell Mum. Her mum might be angry with her for stealing a pig, but she was a fantastic vet. She would do everything she could to keep Truffle alive. If she couldn’t save Truffle, nobody could.

  But Jasmine also knew that there was probably nothing Mum could do for Truffle that she herself wasn’t already doing. Providing food and warmth was all anybody could do.

  And then the miracle happened. The plunger had almost reached the bottom of the syringe when, suddenly, Truffle’s eyes flickered open.

  “Truffle!” Jasmine whispered. “Oh, Truffle, you’re getting better!”

  The little piglet had beautiful eyes. Deep, dark blue, with long sweeping lashes. But after a few seconds, they closed again.

  “Open your eyes,” Jasmine urged her. “Come on, Truffle, open your eyes.”

  But Truffle’s eyes remained closed, and still she shivered.

  “You need to be in the Aga, don’t you,” Jasmine said. “I’ll put you in there once everyone’s out of the kitchen.”

  The Aga had four separate ovens, two on each side, all permanently on at different temperatures. The one on the top right-hand side was really hot, but the one on the bottom left was just a very gentle warmth, perfect for reviving sick baby animals. Dad often put orphaned lambs in the Aga, but it had never been used for a piglet before.

  Suddenly a thought struck Jasmine. “I know. I’ll get you a hot water bottle. Wait here a minute, and then I’ll give you some more colostrum.”

  She put Truffle gently back in her box and packed straw all around her. Then she walked down to the kitchen. A hot water bottle was easy to explain. If anybody asked, it was to soothe her aching tummy.

  Ben’s mum was standing by the sink with a cup of tea, chatting to Jasmine’s mum. Jasmine’s dad was standing with his back to the Aga, warming himself up after a day on the farm. Ben and Manu were still at the table, eating chocolate biscuits.

  “I hope these two behaved themselves today,” Ben’s mum said. “We don’t want them getting sent to the Head twice in one week, do we?”

  Jasmine’s family, their eyes wide with shock, turned to Manu.

  “You got sent to the Head, Manu?” asked Mum.

  Perfect, thought Jasmine. Nobody would notice her now. She slipped behind them, took the kettle, filled it and switched it on.

  “Oh, goodness, I’m sorry,”
said Ben’s mum, looking really embarrassed. “I didn’t realise you didn’t know.”

  Jasmine might as well have been invisible. She took out her hot water bottle with the knitted cover from the cupboard under the sink.

  “You got sent to the Head?” said Ella. “In Year One? What did you do?”

  “Not just us,” said Manu. “Alfie and Noah, too.”

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” said Ben. “It was just Alfie’s sister making a fuss.”

  “What did you do?” asked Mum, giving Manu a hard stare.

  “We were only playing Violent Babies,” said Manu.

  “Violent Babies?”

  “It’s this really good game Ben made up. We’re all superheroes, but we’re baby superheroes, so we can only crawl.”

  Ben grinned proudly. “We start in different corners of the playground, then we all crawl to the middle, and when we reach each other, we wrestle.”

  “It’s a really good game,” said Manu. “But Alfie’s sister’s such a spoilsport, she said we had to stop because we were frightening the Receptions, and we didn’t stop, so she told the really mean dinner lady.”

  “The one with a face like a mouldy turnip,” said Ben.

  “Ben!” said his mother.

  “And the turnip lady sent us to the Head. And we hadn’t done anything.”

  Everybody started talking at once. The kettle was nearly boiling. Jasmine filled the hot water bottle and slipped out of the kitchen.

  Chapter Five

  I Won’t Let You Die

  Just before half past ten, Jasmine heard her mum walk up the stairs and go into the bathroom. Finally! She had been waiting all evening for her family to stop moving around.

  She bent down and lifted Truffle out of her box. She had managed to get nearly all the colostrum down her during the evening, but Truffle was still shivering and breathing very fast. Jasmine tried to stand her up. She wobbled and collapsed back on her side.

  Jasmine tried not to think depressing thoughts as she looked at the miniscule creature trembling in her lap. A night in the Aga would surely revive her, just as it had revived so many lambs over the years.

  But not all of them.

  Jasmine couldn’t help thinking about Harry, her lamb from last spring. Harry had been barely alive when he was born. Dad had revived him three times in the Aga, but eventually he had died anyway.

  “Sometimes, nature knows best,” Dad had said. But Jasmine had been inconsolable for days.

  What had Mr Carter said? “Survival of the fittest.”

  Mum always said the first night was crucial for a newborn animal. If it was going to die, she would say, it would probably be dead by morning.

  “You won’t die,” Jasmine whispered fiercely to Truffle. “You won’t die because I won’t let you die.”

  She took the fleecy blanket off the end of her bed and draped it over the little pig. The house seemed quiet, but you could never be sure. There had been a nasty moment earlier when Mum had come into her room to see how she was feeling. Jasmine had thrown the blanket quickly over Truffle’s box. “I was too hot with that thing on my bed,” she said when Mum gave her a questioning look.

  Cradling the blanket-covered Truffle in her arms, Jasmine crept out of her room, along the landing and down the stairs.

  A rustling noise came from the living room. Jasmine jumped and shrieked.

  Dad appeared in the doorway, holding a copy of Farmers Weekly.

  “Jasmine!” he exclaimed. “What on earth?”

  “I thought you were in bed,” said Jasmine.

  “I thought you were in bed hours ago.” He frowned at the blanket in her arms. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s … a surprise,” Jasmine said. “For your birthday.”

  “My birthday? Well, that is a surprise. Seeing as my birthday isn’t for another six months.”

  “I’m being prepared.”

  “Well, get back to bed now. You need your sleep.”

  “I’m just getting a glass of water,” said Jasmine. “I won’t be long.”

  “Hurry up, then, before you freeze.” And he took his Farmers Weekly up to bed.

  Jasmine went into the kitchen, turned on the light and opened the bottom left-hand oven of the Aga. She took some old newspaper from the recycling box and laid it on the oven floor. Then she kissed the tiny piglet on the head and laid her on the newspaper.

  “I’m going to leave the oven door ajar,” she told Truffle, “and I’m going to come and feed you every single hour of the night. Don’t worry one bit. You’ll be safe in here. And I’ll come and fetch you back up to my room very early in the morning, before anybody else gets up.”

  And then she went back to her room and set her alarm clock for one hour’s time.

  Chapter Six

  What Was That Noise?

  Jasmine woke to the sound of shouting.

  “Where are my football boots?”

  That was Manu, from the top of the stairs.

  “Wherever you left them when you took them off last time.”

  That was Mum, from somewhere downstairs.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Well, how would I know? They’re your boots.”

  Suddenly, Jasmine’s stomach lurched. She sat bolt upright.

  Truffle!

  She had crept down and fed her every hour in the night. And she had meant to bring her back upstairs after her six o’clock feed.

  What time was it now?

  She snatched her alarm clock from the bedside table.

  Eight thirty! She had slept through her six o’clock alarm! And now everybody was up and Truffle was still in the Aga and how on earth was she going to smuggle her upstairs again before she was discovered?

  Jasmine scrambled out of bed and ran downstairs in her bare feet. Mum was in the kitchen taking off her coat. She must have just got back from a call. She smiled as Jasmine came in.

  “Have you just woken up? Oh, goodness, your feet will freeze. Go and put your slippers on.”

  “I’m not cold,” said Jasmine. She had to check Truffle. At least nobody seemed to have discovered her yet.

  Mum went to fill the kettle. While her back was turned, Jasmine darted to the oven. She had her hand on the door when footsteps thundered down the stairs. Manu burst into the kitchen, pulled out a stool and sat at the table facing the Aga.

  “What do you think would kill you quicker, Jas, yew berries or rat poison?” he asked.

  Jasmine didn’t answer. This was terrible. How was she going to be able to check on Truffle now? She didn’t even know if she was still alive.

  “It has to be yew,” said Manu, who would settle for a conversation with himself if nobody else was willing to join in, “because rat poison is for killing rats, which are tiny, but yew kills massive animals like cows and horses.”

  Please be alive, Truffle, prayed Jasmine. Please be alive.

  The back door opened and a gust of wind blew in through the scullery. The door shut again and Jasmine heard Dad taking off his boots.

  “Who’d like pancakes?” asked Mum, taking a box of eggs from the cupboard.

  “With syrup?” asked Manu. “Yes, please.”

  “Blossom’s been laying well this week, then, Jasmine,” said Mum, opening the box to reveal six dark brown speckled eggs.

  Blossom was Jasmine’s very own hen. On her fifth birthday, Jasmine had opened a wicker basket to find a fluffy yellow day-old chick, nestled in a bed of hay. Blossom had quickly grown into a beautiful hen and now she lived with the rest of the chickens, but she was extremely tame and loved to be picked up and cuddled. Jasmine could carry her all around the yard, stroking her silky feathers, while Blossom nestled in her arms, clucking in a low, rhythmic way that sounded almost like purring.

  Dad walked into the kitchen in his socks, which had wisps of hay stuck all over them.

  “Another nice calf out there,” he said. “Lovely little heifer.”

  A grunt came from the
Aga.

  Truffle! She was alive! Jasmine felt dizzy with relief.

  Mum looked startled. “What was that?”

  Jasmine thought quickly. “It was me. Sorry.”

  “You? What an odd sound to make.”

  “Sounded like a pig,” said Manu.

  From the Aga came a little squeal, followed by a scuffling sound.

  Everyone stared at the slightly open oven door. Then a change came over Mum’s face. Her eyes narrowed and she shifted her gaze to Jasmine, who was sitting on her stool with what she hoped was an innocent, dreamy look on her face.

  Mum walked over to the Aga. Jasmine sprang up and stood in front of the oven door.

  “Jasmine,” said Mum, in her quiet-but-deathly voice. “What have you done?”

  “Oh, don’t be angry,” pleaded Jasmine. “I had to take her. That horrible farmer was just going to let her die. And she would have died, too. She’s so tiny you wouldn’t believe it. Look. I couldn’t have left her, could I?”

  And she bent down, reached into the oven and lifted out the miniscule piglet.

  “Oh!” squealed Manu. “That’s so cute!”

  Mum’s face softened as she looked at Truffle. She was trembling a little in Jasmine’s arms but she had her eyes open now, and Jasmine marvelled again at their deep blue colour and the length and curl of her lashes.

  “My goodness,” said Mum. “I think that might be the smallest live pig I’ve ever seen.”

  Ella appeared in the doorway in her pyjamas. She gasped as her eyes rested on the piglet. “Ohhh!” she squealed. “That is the cutest thing ever. Where did you get it?”

  Dad was looking utterly bemused. “Would somebody mind telling me how on earth a piglet has just appeared in our Aga?”

  Mum raised her eyebrows at Jasmine. “I think you’d better answer that question, Jas. Don’t you?”