The Willows in Winter

by William Horwood

  The weir’s roar assailed the Mole’s ears, and even as the dreadful thought occurred to him that the Rat might recently have been in the boat but was no longer so, the more immediate danger of the boat drifting off forever out of his reach, and anyone else’s if it reached the weir, spurred him to action.

  Mole splashed forward through the reeds, grasped the bows with the same assurance as if he was the Rat himself, and heaved it a little way onto firmer ground.

  “It is Rat’s boat, that’s for sure. O dear! I hope he did not lose it in search of me! I trust there is some better explanation of how it comes to be here than the one I fear!”

  The Mole peered downstream in the direction of the weir, whose fall of water he could not see, though a steady rise of spray and watery haze showed all too clearly how especially dangerous the weir was when the river was in such spate.

  “Well, I shall just have to wait till the water subsides a little, as it surely will, and then consider what to do. At least the sculls are still in the boat, which I take as a good sign. Providence may have sent this boat to me —indeed, I shall consider that it has till I learn otherwise. Meanwhile —”

  Mole’s “meanwhile” lasted three days more, during which the only mercy was that no rain fell, though the sun shone no more after the day of Mole’s awakening as grey and dreary weather set in. They were miserable days in which the grumbling of the Mole’s stomach grew worse, and the dreams of food and drink he might be having, instead of the plain dull fare which was all the island offered him, tormented him continually.

  He had no idea how long he had been on the island, and his sense of isolation and timelessness was increased by the complete lack of life on the banks of the river, along which, in spring, summer and autumn he might have expected to see a great deal of the coming and going of life.

  All now was cold and dull and flooded, and the only life that showed, and that briefly one morning, was a flock of grey geese passing through, and a ragged heron, which settled for a time in the meadow beyond the trees opposite, looking as lost and forlorn as he felt.

  The Mole was much concerned about his friends, for either they were in trouble and needed him, or they were fretting on his account — and both possibilities sorely troubled him.

  “Even Toad!” Mole told himself. “Even he will be worried for me, I should think!”

  So the sooner he got off the island and was able to show them that he was alive and well the better.

  “But I shall try nothing till the river has subsided and I have regained the strength I shall undoubtedly need if I am to scull the boat against the river’s current and onto proper land once more. I have made one mistake — I shall not make another! Then, when I am able to reach home again, and trusting that my friends are safe and well, I shall invite them to a feast, the greatest feast I have ever given! There will be —”

  Once more the Mole suffered himself to enumerate the many things he would like to eat as he contemplated the miserable berry or two which was all his latest foraging had thrown up.

  “Hmmph!” he declared finally, making his way to Rat’s boat, the same boat in which he had so often in summers past sat with a wicker luncheon-basket overflowing with good things as his friend rowed them to some quiet and shady nook. “Hmmph!”

  Almost without thinking the Mole climbed into the boat and sat in the little seat he knew so well, as if, thereby, he might get just a little closer to those fond memories of better days. Closer, even, to a full stomach, despite the darkening afternoon and the chill winter wind. But sitting thus gave him cold comfort for a time.

  Three more long days, with longer nights to accompany them, passed by before the water began to recede and the river began to look and sound like itself once more. Mole had long hoped for that moment, and remembering some of the boating lore the Water Rat had taught him, had pushed the boat back towards the river as the water receded, lest it was left high and dry and he unable to shift it, and therefore to use it.

  Practical matters such as these, and a routine tour of the island every hour or so to see if any animal was about to whom he could signal his existence, kept him preoccupied through those days, though the ache in his stomach grew no better, and the dreams of food had long since turned into hallucinations of great feasts just out of reach over the water.

  But sleep and time are healers, and somehow the Mole got through his long wait, regaining his strength, and gaining in confidence so that when the time came, and if help had not come already, he would venture forth in Rat’s boat and try to scull upstream and deliver himself home once more.

  But it was not till a full week had passed, and the water was almost back to normal, the river nearly placid again though discoloured by the mud and rubbish that a flooding brings, that a day came when it looked as if he might try to get the boat afloat. The sky had dawned clear and bright, and the day frosty, so that the leafless willows on the island and across on the bank hung still and white with rime, and the meadows beyond were all covered in white as well.

  “I could try” Mole told himself many times to give himself courage, “I could have a go at least!”

  But dawn had passed to morning, morning to midday, midday to a dulling afternoon, and still he did not quite dare, though he eased the boat into the water, and readied the sculls for himself several times, till each time his nerve failed him. Then the sky clouded strangely, and the air grew still and heavy.

  The Mole might easily have let the moment pass, and stayed where he was for another night, had not a few tiny flecks drifted down and told him that snow might soon be on the way once more. The threat of which put a greater fear in him than venturing onto the river, for the snow might turn heavy, and it might settle, and it might continue and then, eventually, it would melt.

  “And that could mean — no, it would mean — that the river would rise once more and then —” And then the poor Mole had visions of more days and nights, more weeks even, stranded on the island, his whereabouts unknown, missed by his friends for a little longer and then forgotten.

  “O Ratty, I wish you were here to advise me! I wish I knew what to do for the best. The weir seems so near, though it is much quieter than it was. But supposing I drop a scull into the water, or lose my strength, or — or —“

  There seemed then to come a scent with the evening breeze that was beginning to stir the willow boughs, a scent which was of many things, but most particularly of the cheerful burning of a fire in his hearth, of rice pudding in a bowl held in his own hand, and of some warm and potent brew set down on the little table close by his armchair.

  “O my!” he sighed.

  More than that, that scent contained something of the Rat’s very best tobacco, and, magical scent that it was, seemed almost to conjure up the Rat’s voice, telling him some tale or other of his doings on the river.

  “I shall!” he declared. “I shall push this boat out, so! I shall ready the sculls, just so! And I shall turn the bows to the current exactly, so! And finally I shall leap aboard as Ratty would, with confidence and style — so!”

  Then, Mole was aboard, and the boat drifting out into the river, and before he knew what he was doing he had grasped the sculls as if he were the Rat himself grasping them, and was sculling up-river against the current, slowly but steadily.

  “And not a moment too soon!” he declared with satisfaction as the weir receded downstream, and the island as well, and as the little flecks of snow turned into bigger flakes, and the sky turned stranger and heavier still, and the snow settled in the boat, and upon his black fur.

  “This is all right!” said the Mole, panting with effort. “Imagining that I am Ratty, I shall conserve my strength by staying close to the bank; I shall press on upstream! I shall not give up! And when I feel my strength sapping, or my purpose failing, I shall think of all the food that Ratty and I shall have when we are together once again! I shall! Mole End, here I come!”

  With this most heartening cry — which would certain
ly have been heard had there been anybody along the banks nearby — the Mole pressed on against the current, determined not to give up till he reached his destination.

  VI

  In Memoriam

  The one and only light that Badger could discern in the dark tunnel into which he had been plunged by Toad’s abduction of the flying machine and Rat, and his wild ascent into the heavens, was that Rat might still be alive.

  Whether or not Toad was alive seemed to matter not one whit to the Badger now. If Toad was alive and well — and it would not surprise Badger one bit if he were —then he, Badger, would personally make sure that the wretched animal was never allowed to darken the portals of Toad Hall again, or sully the banks of the river.

  “He shall be banished! He shall be persona non grata! He shall —” Thus the Badger had fumed for a very long time.

  But far more important was the possibility that the tiny dark object that he and several others had seen falling from the flying machine over the Wild Wood, whose rapid downward descent had been arrested by the opening of a parachute (after what had seemed a period of several lifetimes to those watching it), might be the Water Rat.

  “It must be Water Rat!” declared the Badger as that distant black object drifted beyond the Wild Wood and then out of sight.

  “As for that — that animal, that disgrace to us all, that Toad,” he growled, watching as the flying machine disappeared in the opposite direction, its engine restarted and purring high in the sky once more, “beware the wrath of Badger!”

  But the Badger was not the only one who had watched Toad’s flight in mounting alarm and dismay, for the Otter had also witnessed events. He had seen and heard the first flight, just as the others had, and as his searches for Mole had thus far been in vain he had come to much the same conclusion as the Badger and the Rat, and headed for Toad Hall.

  His passage there across the fields was much slower, however, and he still had some distance to go when he saw the flying machine careering towards him, and spotting Toad himself at the helm deduced in a trice all that had happened. Then, watching open-mouthed, he followed the fatal flight, and observed that same black dot falling through the sky, and the machine’s revival into life in mid-air before its disappearance eastwards.

  Full of wonder and dismay, the Otter wearily made his way to Toad Hall, where he joined the Badger and Mole’s Nephew Together they re-organised the search, one party under the Otter’s leadership to continue the hunt for the Mole, the other led by the Badger himself, to see if they could find the Rat and discover whether, as seemed likely, he needed help.

  The Badger’s mood was bleak as he pressed on through the wilderness of the south-west reaches of the Wild Wood, beyond which Rat (as they hoped it would prove to be) had been seen to disappear. In the space of half a day the Badger had been torn from the comfort and security of his home, and had then proceeded to lose his closest friends in Mole and Rat; and Toad was gone as well.

  “Toad!” fulminated the Badger again, as he crashed on through the undergrowth, thrusting aside a huge raft of unkempt bramble, with the terrified weasels and stoats in his wake.

  “And Toad again!” he growled, kicking a rotting log out of the way.

  “Toad one more time!” he snarled, tearing aside a holly bush and marching on, as behind him his helpers muttered “That terrible Toad!” and “Most shocking Toad!” and “Very insufferable Toad!”

  The Badger heard all this, and it did not improve his temper at all, for he could detect in their “terrible’s”, and their “shocking’s” and most definitely in their “insufferable’s” a vein that ran counter to what they seemed to mean. A vein, in short, of respect, admiration and downright awe for a creature whose rebellious and radical spirit they had long since concluded was gone forever, but which they had now seen resurrected Phoenix-like with the flight — the terrible flight — of the flying machine.

  To add still more to the Badger’s ill-humour, and the ferocity with which he attacked any obstacle in his way as he sought out the Rat, was the reluctant acceptance that in his heart there was a morsel, perhaps only a mite, of liking and respect for Toad. Without Toad, after all, what would he and his more reasonable and sober friends have had to talk about all these years, and vent their occasional irritation on?

  Without Toad there would indeed have been a lot less colour about the place, as that most worthy and reasonable of animals, the Mole himself, had quietly said on more than one occasion.

  Now, it seemed, Toad was gone forever, or if he was not, and it was Toad they were now searching for and not the Rat, then Toad might as well be gone forever as far as the Badger was concerned. Which left a little sadness in the Badger’s heart, for terrible, shocking and insufferable as Toad indubitably was, he meant no harm by what he did. It was not all his fault, for what hope could there be for an animal as irredeemably self-centred as he was?

  “That Toad!” declared the Badger, thrusting his way through the last swathes of undergrowth of the Wild Wood and emerging into the daylight that illuminated the frosty ploughed fields before him, and the canal beyond. “That inconvenient Toad!”

  But even in that moment all thoughts of Toad were banished, and all fears and dreads not just for the Rat but for life itself.

  For there, wrapped about the base of an old gnarled oak that formed part of the distant boundary of the fields, and not far from the canal itself, were the billowing white folds of a parachute; and standing on the canal’s edge was the Water Rat, plain as could be, and alive!

  It seemed that the Water Rat was too far off to hear the Badger’s happy call immediately, for he did not respond to it, but stood stock-still, staring off across the canal as if he had seen something there from which he could not tear his eyes, not even to turn and greet his rescuers.

  “My dear fellow!” cried the Badger, coming up to him at last and beginning to think Rat had turned deaf, for he had not responded to their joyful cries. “It is I and some helpers and we have been searching for you. I cannot say how glad I am to see you safe and in one piece. Water Rat, dear chap! It is Badger!”

  Only then did the Rat turn to look at his friend, and at the weasels and stoats accompanying him, but he stared at them so vaguely, from so strange a distance, that they all stumbled to a halt, and the Badger said, “Dear fellow, you don’t seem yourself at all.”

  “Badger,” said the Rat, shaking his head, “you have come then?”

  “Of course I have come!” cried the Badger. “When I saw what happened, and your passage through the air, and its arrest to a safer speed by means of that newfangled thing over there, that —”

  “Parachute,” said the Rat quietly, “a wonderful invention.”

  “Yes, well, the parachute,” went on the Badger, “I naturally hoped it was you, and so we came as soon as we could, not at all sure what we would find. You seem a little shaken, I must say, and perhaps —”

  “I am shaken,” said the Rat quietly, “very shaken.”

  “It can be no pleasant thing to be hurled out of a flying machine so high above the ground,” said the Badger.

  “I didn’t notice that at all,” said the Rat. “And falling through the air was not unlike swimming through water, which as you know, Badger, I am well equipped to do.”

  “Well then, all is well, all is well,” said the puzzled Badger.

  “I saw Beyond,” said the Rat very quietly.

  “Now we had better get back,” said the Badger, ignoring him. “I fear Mole has not yet been found and Toad —”

  “I saw — Toad? He was safe enough,” said the Rat. “Badger, you just don’t seem to understand, I saw Beyond —”

  But again the Badger did not hear the plea, or the wonder, or even the loss in his voice but interrupted him busily, saying, “Now, it would be better if we did not rest here but back at my home, to where, by the time we return, I am sure Otter will have sent a report. Is that all right, Rat? Will you come along now?”

  “Come
along?” repeated the Rat, looking back across the canal in a distracted way once more. “Come with you now? Yes, yes, I suppose I shall. Has Mole not been found then?”

  He said this with what seemed almost indifference, at which the Badger, much perplexed, said with some asperity, “No, he isn’t found, Rat; he is very much unfound. He is lost and gone.”

  “But the river flows on, I daresay,” observed the Rat moonily.

  At which the Badger finally decided that the poor animal was worse affected by the accident that had befallen him than he had at first thought, and the best thing was to abandon conversation and get him back somewhere familiar, safe and warm without more ado.

  “You are to come to my home, Rat,” said the Badger gently but firmly, “and there you will be fed and looked after till you fully recover, which may take weeks, months even. You must sleep and take things very easily and —”

  “Badger —” said the Rat, trying to interrupt him. “Now, old chap, it’s really best if you don’t try to talk or even think —”

  “But, Badger —”

  “— because,” continued the Badger overbearingly, you are not quite well, you see —”

  “But —”

  “— so now we will set off and discuss things later.”

  “Yes, Badger,” said the Water Rat meekly, for he had given up trying to talk sensibly to his normally sensible friend. “For now!” he muttered to himself as he obligingly settled in behind Badger on the long journey home.

  The Badger was now quite convinced that the Rat was unstable, or at least in a bad state of shock, that the Mole was lost for good, and that Toad was unlikely to return; accordingly he began to behave in what he no doubt felt was a firm and resolute manner. Decisions must be made, orders given, and although nothing would now ever be the same, at least things could be returned to some order and stability if a purposeful course were followed. This became his dominant and overriding principle, and it rode roughshod over all else, and appeared quite out of character for the animal all River-bankers had always thought to be the wisest, the kindest and the most trustworthy they knew.