Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “Poor thing,” Privet found herself saying in wonder, her voice weakening as that deep urge that lies in moles waiting for its moment to find life, found life in Privet: the urge to save life, to nurture, to make the frightened safe, to help the lost feel secure.

  Timid, uncertain, frightened though she was herself, yet she sensed a crucial moment in her life had come. Was it her deep faith in the Stone that helped her see the Light? For surely simple obedience to her Keeper and the Master was not sufficient to give her such strength as she needed to go forward, as she then did, and snout down at the pup, and half lick it, and begin that act of uncritical acceptance from which parental love is born.

  Yet doubt still remained and Privet said, “I don’t know his name,” hoping perhaps that in his anonymity would be a way out of the responsibility that faced her.

  “His name is … Whillan,” said Stour, and there was some wonder in his voice as he said it, and unaccustomed gentleness, and somewhere in his heart, though then denied, he knew that in this strange happening something more powerful than anything he had experience of was speaking to him, and speaking true. In this event lay the beginnings of an answer to troubles that had been building up so long and which were not yet at their worst. In this shared act of faith answers to future problems not yet even guessed-at lay.

  “Whillan …?” said Privet, frowning and puzzled, as if she knew the name. “Oh, Whillan …’ And she snouted down at the pup once more, licking with a sudden and whole-hearted gentleness.

  “Whillan, my love!” she whispered, and she and the pup might as well have been alone, for all she cared, or seemed to see of all the world about.

  Then she took him up by the scruff of the neck as Stour had done, and accompanied by younger, eager aides, who cooed and chirruped and chattered along behind them both, turned back out of the Library and from thence to her modest quarters down towards the Eastside.

  “Well, get on, get on!” said Stour sourly to those many who still stared. “To your work, the drama’s over.” His aides noticed however that he could not work, but dithered about all day, snapping at moles to right and left, until, when evening came he who was normally last to leave was first away and off to the Eastside, to Privet’s place.

  That same evening, gentle Pumpkin, who had been much shaken by the coming of the pup and his part in finding Privet, turned from the Library exit and slowly crossed the Wood westward to the Stone. It was not a place he often went, nor was praying a thing he often did, or felt he knew much about. Yet pray he felt he must.

  So into the Stone Clearing he went, across its open space, and stanced down humbly before moledom’s greatest Stone.

  “Don’t know what words to say, Stone,” he said, “but somemole must make a prayer to welcome that pup Whillan to our Wood. And wish him well. There’ll be reasons why he’s come to us, and why it’s as an orphan he was born and will not know his mother, or father, or much about himself. Well … you know best, Stone. You know everything. Grant the pup life, and Miss Privet the patience and the love to nurture him. Watch over her as well, Stone, for she’s a mole I think has suffered much and yet finds love to give.”

  Pumpkin said nothing for a while, but stared for a long time at the Stone, and shed tears which were neither sad nor happy ones, but tears acknowledging that sometimes life is hard for moles and must be borne.

  “Feel better now,” he said at last, “for good has come this day to Duncton Wood. Grant that I may play my part in it, Stone, and be worthy of what tasks you choose to give me.”

  Then he turned and left, and where he had been the Stone was awesome in its Silence, and about it was a Light that seemed to touch all the trees of the clearing, and shine beyond them into the wood to where old Pumpkin went on his solitary way.

  Chapter Six

  For Privet, who since the mating season had begun had felt so cast down by her unspoken memories of the past, the days that followed the pup’s arrival were so far the most extraordinary, most trying, and yet most exhilarating of her life.

  Poor Privet. Whatever the burdens she already carried, life had now thrust another upon her, and its shape was puppish, and its sound was puppish, and its effect was puppish: which is to say it offered no possibility of escape.

  Twisting, turning, bleating, feeding, excreting, waking, always waking, crying, scrabbling, sniffling, there was not one single troublesome wakesome ‘-ing’ that the pup Whillan did not do, and many that Privet had never dreamed a mole might do.

  The first day or two was one long frantic worry over keeping him alive, for he/Seemed limp and desperate, his little furless chest heaving in and out as if breath was in short supply and he had best get it while he may, his mouth sucking for milk she could not give. It seemed certain that death was lurking just beyond the portal of her sparse and modest burrow on the slopes, awaiting the slightest excuse to enter and take the pup away.

  But like so many moles who must care for young they have not borne, instinct and necessity found a form of nourishment in chewed worm and spittle. As Privet made it, Whillan took it, and did not die. Worse, he wanted more, and more, and more again, and left Privet more exhausted than if she had been feeding a whole community of moles.

  Nor was Privet’s most obvious source of help — Fieldfare — available to offer it. She had, for reasons of her own, made herself scarce the moment she had heard of Stour’s appointment of Privet as foster-mother to the pup. In this Fieldfare was acting most wisely, and with the thoughtfulness for her friend she so often showed, understanding well that at such a moment a mole must be allowed to sink or swim on her own, and that her presence would have robbed Privet of something of the discoveries she must make for herself in rearing the youngster.

  Fieldfare was well aware that this was not something that Privet herself would readily appreciate or immediately understand, but trusted that in time she would come to do so. Nevertheless, the good mole felt obliged to seek Stour out and explain why she was disappearing off to the West-side for a time, and ask him to keep an eye on Privet in the first days and weeks.

  Rightly or wrongly he had, against Fieldfare’s advice, sent one of his female aides to help Privet, and she was the eventual cause of the first real upset for the new ‘mother’. For the crisis of the first days over, and the pup viable, another crisis formed itself in the shape of the female aide Stour had sent. Do this, she said: do that, she nagged.

  “Don’t go to him, Privet, he’s bleating because he knows you’ll come. Let him lie in his own mess, Privet, for that way he’ll learn. No, Privet, you must you cannot he’s looking strange he’s an ugly thing you’re tired it’s no —”

  “Shut up!” said Privet sharply, speaking words she had never in her whole life spoken.

  The mole’s eyes widened and Privet, discovering a strange sense of purpose which felt very right indeed, went on to say, though more gently, that she was very grateful for the help the mole had given and it had got her through the worst but now she thought she could cope, and would cope and would the mole please leave.

  Well, really! That Privet!

  “‘Shut up’ she told me and ‘Get out at once’ she said,” the outraged mole was reporting in the Library as soon as she could, adding that “Privet has no idea how to look after and raise a pup at all and in my view it was a most unsuitable choice the Master made.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. The burrow’s disorganized and she spoils the pup and does everything for him and never sleeps herself and everything is a mess, an utter mess. I really think …”

  Hearing this gossip Stour went visiting, but it did not take him long to see beyond the ‘mess’ and observe the touching bond between foster-mother and adoptive pup: nor was he wrong in his guess that a softer, gentler look was on its way to displace for ever that loss and withering which had beset poor Privet’s face for so long. Stour smiled to himself, thinking that perhaps the Stone knew a thing or two about fostering, and had guided him well to give Privet
the task. But then …

  For naturally in the days that followed, as Stour became sure the pup would survive, he began to think again of the extraordinary circumstances of Whillan’s birth and rescue, and of the mother who had seemed to expect him to be there, and spoke the name of Privet as if she herself knew what would be best for the pup. Who had she been, and why did she call the pup Whillan? It was not a name he had ever heard before.

  Yet Privet had seemed to recognize something about it, and he believed that it was from the moment she heard the name ‘Whillan’ spoken that her doubts fled, and she decided she would take up the task. It worried Stour that he did not know, nor was able even to surmise, to whom the dying mother had referred when she spoke of ‘us’ as parents, and who the father might be and what had happened to him, or how it was that the mother felt it was all ordained, and that Privet was the just’ mother, and that somehow, sooner perhaps than any of them knew, the Stone’s Silence, and its Light, waited upon these strange events.

  One thing at least was certain in what the mother had said before she died: she had not wished Privet to know much of anything. Long did Stour ponder the meaning of this, concluding that the arrival of the mole, and the so-far unknown tale of its parents, had something to do with that past life that Librarian Privet wished to deny had ever been.

  Well, Stour was not the one to interfere with a mole’s wishes, or break her confidence, not as Stour, yet the scholar in him said that truth was all that mattered, and since he was dedicated to wresting it from the lies or secrets that scribemoles of the past perpetrated through their work, he had no wish to contribute more mystery to the future. If one day he must tell what he knew of Whillan’s birth to make the truth known, then tell he would. Until then, silence about the circumstances seemed best.

  The drama of Whillan’s coming was, for most moles, a thing of a passing moment, and as the weeks lengthened into molemonths, and summer came, and moles saw that Privet could cope, their interest moved to other things.

  Yet for those few moles like Fieldfare and Stour, who were concerned, the changes in Privet as young Whillan grew and she suffered and enjoyed all the pangs and delights of rearing a pup, were touching to see. The mole that had come to Duncton Wood as a scholar, her face lined with doubt, her shoulders bowed under an unspoken burden of a past she wished to leave behind, now began to blossom forth in concert with the youngster whom she reared.

  Late in coming he may have been, nearly the last pup born to the system that spring, but he grew well and fast. His eyes were clear, his body well formed if perhaps a little thin, his nature curious yet a little timid, as only pups often are.

  It was a good, warm, early summer, and through the molemonths of May Privet and young Whillan became a familiar sight on the otherwise pupless slopes of the high Eastside. Moles sensed that a pup without siblings needed company of some kind, and so began to drop by Privet’s modest place. Good Drubbins came, and took the pup off her paws for a time; and Maple too, who until then Privet had barely known, brought older pups tendered to his care for exploring through the Wood, who though bigger than Whillan played with him, and let him play with them.

  “What’s his name?” they said.

  “Whillan,” replied Maple, in his deep voice, “and you look after him.”

  “Can we explore with him as far as … there!” they said, pointing their young talons at a clump of dog’s-mercury.

  “Aye, but watch him well, he’s only young.”

  So does a new generation begin its long and stumbling journey towards adulthood, and the distant day when it must take up the responsibilities its parents seem to carry so lightly, but which, in reality, are sometimes so hard.

  Privet and Maple watched the young play their games, and in that sharing Privet found she came to know and like another mole of Duncton Wood.

  Others visited her too, among them gentle Pumpkin, and since there was something of the pup in him, despite his age, Whillan liked him, and happily played in the tunnels and on the surface with him as well.

  If it was from his ‘mother’ Privet that he first unconsciously learned not to fear texts or libraries or words, it was Pumpkin who affirmed it, for the aide told the youngster many a tale of the mysterious doings down in the stacks, where texts got lost, and wind-sound was, and what seemed dead to those who could not scribe became alive and rich to those who could.

  Then, too, Drubbins, concerned to meet all pups in the system before he conducted the Midsummer Ritual which formally blessed and welcomed them to the adult world beyond their home burrows, called in many times, and Whillan, timid before this most respected of moles, stared in awe, and listened as the old mole talked to Privet for a time of things the youngster could not understand.

  All this attention was new to Privet and, in her quiet retiring way, she enjoyed it, though as the time went by she began to miss her Library work, and wished sometimes she could go back to it, feeling guilty that she looked forward to the day when Whillan would grow a bit more and give her freedom to return. Yet she trusted Stour and knew that in good time he would send to let her know when she was needed and perhaps tell her at last what task it was he wanted her to undertake — apart from raising pups!

  In fact she had already heard from Pumpkin that Stour seemed to have come out of himself even more since April, and had been seen much more in the Library, and had even talked of the pup Whillan with something like paternalistic pride, as if — or almost as if — the pup were his!

  Certainly, when he came to visit her and to see how the youngster was getting on, his thin face managed to beam contentedly, and he seemed not to mind when the pup, not appreciating the importance of the mole who had come, climbed over him and buffeted his face.

  “Whillan!” said Privet, embarrassed. But old Stour did not mind, content to see the pup was well and lively. Perhaps, after all, pups were not so bad …

  “I would like to start my work again,” said Privet during a visit he made soon after Midsummer, feeling now somehow closer to Stour than she had felt before. There was a growing but unspoken trust between them.

  “I know, my dear, and so you shall. But if I remember my young days right these are precious months, when the pup stores memories. Well, then, spend time with Whillan while you can, and while he wants to. He’ll become independent of you sooner than you think. There’s time yet to find you a new task in the Library, and be assured I have one for you in mind.”

  So Privet did as he advised, enjoying the easy days of June, when the sun was warm but gentle, and the wood still rich with flowers before the fuller canopy of the trees subdued the light and they died away. Days of wandering at Whillan’s pace, and watching him run from her and then, alarmed, run back to the safe encirclement of her paws, and the loving snuffles of her snout. Days when she felt slide from her the prickles and briars of the past, which had made her closed and afraid of life. Austere she might still be, for there was something of that in her nature, but she felt a softening come over her, an easing, and believed that the Stone had sent Whillan to her, to heal her through rearing him.

  There were days when they lazed, and she told him stories of the past, tales she had heard when she was young and then later from Cobbett when living in Beechenhill, a system rich in recent history, where there was a Stone as well, in whose shadow the very saving of moledom in modern times had taken place.

  Those tales she told him, giving more away of herself than she ever had before, though safe in the knowledge that the youngster would not really know what it was he heard. This freedom helped her begin to come to terms with whatever it was she had left behind at the Wood’s edge when she had first come to Duncton.

  Then too, she spoke in her precise but vivid way of older tales that all moles learn from their parents, or from other adults, for they are the history out of which the present has grown. Of Whern she spoke, and the dreadful moles who once lived there. Of Bleaklow, where she herself was raised before she was taken into Beechenh
ill. These were the dark places she unknowingly delved and built in Whillan’s imagination, such as all moles have, though their names be different. Immutable places, repositories for doubts and fears just as other places similarly created by myth and story hold a mole’s most secret, and most needed, stock of trust, or faith, and of love.

  Just such a place for Whillan was Beechenhill, of which Privet sometimes spoke, telling with remembered love of the untidy and disreputable ways of scribemole Cobbett who had been her tutor once. In his character the youngster found more fun than in his reported tales. So when Privet told him of how Cobbett might begin one tale and absent-mindedly end it with the second half of another, the young Whillan was fascinated and begged his ‘mother’ to tell such a semi-tale to him.

  “Oh, I’m not much good at telling tales my dear,” she said, “or not made-up tales at any rate. My skill was recording them.”

  “But Cobbett was?”

  “He knows more tales than anymole in moledom, I should think. But he didn’t make them up you know, just collected them.”

  “What are they about?”

  “Anything and everything,” she replied.

  “What’s old Cobbett look like,” asked Whillan persistently.

  “Old, I suppose, with untidy, patchy fur which he never bothered to groom, and rather grubby talons. Half the time he could not remember what he was talking about a moment before, and he was restless, so restless, as if he expected something to come round the corner any moment.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” said Whillan.

  “Oh you can’t do that, my love,” she replied. “That was all long ago when I was a different mole. I’m afraid he’s long gone by now into the Stone’s Silence.”