Vote at Toad Hall

by Eddie Saint

  ‘The Dogs, sir?’ asked Reynard. ‘But the Referendum is in Wild Wood. Surely the Dogs have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Ah, but think of the Wall Of Sound, my dear Reynard. Folks in Wild Wood need to know that even the powerful Dogs are afraid of terrorism.’

  ‘Terrorism, sir?’

  ‘Indeed. That brings me to the second paw.’ He turned and looked over his shoulder at Reynard. ‘Launch Salvatore!’

  Reynard was a wise strategist. Viewed together, he quickly saw the merit in the moves Vulpine wanted to play.

  ‘Get ten,’ continued Vulpine, ‘no, fifteen of our local sleeper news desks in the Dog’s heartlands ready to run front page scare stories about terrorist threats. ‘How long before it happens in our back yard?’ That sort of thing. Don’t use all of them. We need to keep some asleep to use in the future, but fifteen should cause more than a rustle of winter leaves.’

  Reynard nodded his head.

  ‘As you wish, sir. I will action it right away. Salvatore will play out today, and Dogs in the hills will wake up tomorrow to the frightening thought that terrorists might be coming for them before the day is out.’

  ‘Excellent, Commander. Now, is there anything else we need to discuss?’

  Reynard thought for a moment. He wondered if he should mention that an enemy agent had got a sniff of ‘Hornworm’, and that maybe if Vulpine had been a little more careful then Reynard’s Alternative Army wouldn’t need to go cleaning up after him.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ he said. ‘I believe we are up to date.’

  He got up quickly and made his way back downstairs to his regulation military office.

  YOU’D THINK I’D be happy, but I wasn’t. I was sitting at my table in the window at Chandler’s cursing my luck.

  I mean, come on! You’ve seen me at work: how I took a threadbare e-mail and, within twenty four hours, I’d pin-pointed the sender’s name and address. It had felt like I owned the internet.

  When you are travelling as fast as I was, a brick wall can really hurt. I’d got the courier invoice number. I knew what time the delivery had been set up. All I had left to do was hack in to the courier company’s records and there I’d find Tony Mole’s address shining back at me, the glittering prize at the end of the treasure hunt.

  Only…when a courier company isn’t completely on the level, when it keeps some of its orders off the books to cut down on the tax bill…

  The trail had gone cold. There was no record of a delivery at that time, or one charged to that account. I’d hit a wall.

  ‘I’ve seen you look better,’ said Mother.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I replied, and shrugged.

  She came out from behind the counter and cleared the mugs from the table next to mine.

  ‘Anything I can help with?’ she asked, casually, as she wiped away the coffee rings.

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether you can conjure an address up out of thin air.’

  ‘Any particular address?’

  Mother wasn’t going to let me dance around the issue for ever. She always won, so I ripped off the plaster and gave in.

  ‘Ok,’ I said. ‘I got a message, and I’m trying to trace the sender. I reckon he might be in big trouble.’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ said Mother. ‘Always looking out for the other guy. So what’s his name?’

  ‘Tony Mole.’

  Mother raised an eyebrow.

  ‘And how come you are so clever but you can’t find him?’

  ‘I almost had him, Mother. I know he had a ticket couriered over to his house, but that’s where I lost him.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Looks like the courier kept it off the books.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘The courier?’

  ‘Yes. Was it Benton’s or McGready? Or some smaller crew?’

  Mother’s insistent, knowledgeable line of inquiry jolted me out of my world of dead ends. There was a brisk efficiency about her.

  As usual.

  Diamond.

  ‘Actually, it was Benton’s.’

  She smiled, more with her eyes than her small mouth.

  ‘Flatfoot Benton? No surprise he’s keeping the books light.’

  Mother seems to know about pretty much everything in the city.

  ‘Well, I hope he enjoys his tax returns, but I think Mr Mole might have to pay a heavy price for it.’

  ‘So… what? Benton’s sent a courier and you need to know where it went, but it’s not logged anywhere?’

  ‘That’s about the top and bottom of it.’

  ‘Two hours,’ Mother said, in a matter-of-fact way. She picked up her cloth and turned back to the counter.

  ‘Two hours ’what’?’ I asked.

  ‘Two hours, maybe less. I can get that address for you. Just tell Mother what you’ve got.’

  Not everything is connected by digital cables. Most things, sure. But not everything. Mother didn’t have much to do with computers, she still lived in an analogue world. But hers was a world of real creatures, with links to other creatures, and it was held together with respect and trust.

  She winked, took off her apron, handed it to me and bustled out into the street.

  I spent a quiet couple of hours looking after the café while Mother went… somewhere. I served a pawful of coffees, helped a Pole Cat with a lazy eye to fix his phone’s privacy settings, and spent the rest of the time sitting on a stool watching the world of the Ends pass by, with the news playing quietly on the radio behind the counter.

  The Referendum was causing a big stir. No one had seen that coming from Prime Minister Toad. Journalists trawled the history books to see when was the last Free Hit that was on such a scale. Nothing came close in all the peacetime years since the Second Orchid War. Opinion pieces tried to figure out if it was Triple T’s arrogance or if such a grand gesture befitted his years in office.

  Big yawn.

  In other news, a Toad minister had called a police guard ‘ignorant’ for asking to see ID at the gates to Toad Hall.

  ‘If you’d had a proper education you’d know who I was!’ he’d apparently said. It hadn’t helped that the guard in question had then come back with,

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir. Who were you?’

  It had been a tense exchange.

  And so the cycle of news turned…

  The streetlights were just flickering on when Mother returned, with a basket of shopping in one paw, a dripping bag of oysters in the other and a hand-written address poking out of her coat pocket.

  ‘Do you like to stand for bad news, or do you prefer to sit?’ she asked, more cheerfully than I thought was appropriate. It was the same tone she would have used if she was just asking whether or not I wanted sugar.

  Instinctively, I got to my feet and came out from behind the counter.

  ‘I see you are a stander,’ said Mother, and she plunged the bag of oysters into a sink of cold water.

  ‘What is it? Did you find Tony Mole?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, rattling the oysters around in the sink. ‘Would have been quicker but when Mulligan has fresh oysters the queue is round the block!’

  I love her to bits but sometimes she can be infuriating.

  ‘Mother! Did you get his address?’ I snapped. I know, I’m sorry. I’m usually really patient. Really. But I was on edge that afternoon, and with good reason, as you will eventually discover.

  She looked up from the sink and said, ‘Well, yes, I did get his address. That bit was easy.’

  She paused to swirl the oysters around in the sink again.

  ‘It wasn’t far from Benton’s place, as it turned out, so I took a little stroll around. He’s a creature of habit, your Mr Mole, only…’

  She turned the tap on hard, pulled the plug and gave the oysters one last rummage to clean them off.

  ‘…well, he�
�s normally been to the bakery and the Library by now, but none of his neighbours have seen him since yesterday.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘ANY-HOO, DID YOU meet up with Pincer? Is he coming on-board?’

  Stoat picked up his whiskey glass and stared at the ice cubes, trying to look cool and calm. Weasel saw right through him.

  ‘You dog! You got him, didn’t you? What did he say? What can he do?’ Weasel’s ears were up and his nose was twitching upwards. Could he smell something? Was it success?

  Stoat knew he had his friend’s full attention. He grinned at his glass then slowly put it down on the bar and turned. ‘He was busy this morning, but I’ve set up a meeting for this afternoon.’

  Weasel raised his drink.

  ‘This deserves a toast!’

  ‘Great. What shall we drink to?’

  Quick as a flash Weasel came back with, ‘Leave the LEAF!’

  ‘Leave the LEAF!’ repeated Stoat, not quite as enthusiastically as Weasel had said it. In fact, Weasel thought he had said it almost as a question, so he decided to try again.

  ‘That’s right: Leave the LEAF! With conviction this time!’

  ‘Leave the LEAF! With conviction this time!’ repeated Stoat, with the whiskey and his friend’s enthusiasm starting to lift his spirits. Weasel just gave him a withering look.

  ‘If I’d wanted a smart arse I’d have plugged the internet up my backside’, he said. Stoat looked a little crest-fallen, albeit with a drunken fuzz starting to soften the blow.

  They settled into a contemplative silence, each creature lost for a while in his own thoughts. The sound from the TV nearest the Snug, which was tuned to a rolling news channel, washed over them. Weasel’s own lunchtime interview was just ending and then the camera moved on to a close up of Toad’s shiny round face, avuncular sincerity in his eyes. Then there was a wide shot showing him standing in a lowered cherry picker addressing a crowd of factory workers, then a shot of a reporter doing a piece to camera as the Prime Minister walked past behind her, shaking hands and waving to the happy crowds of workers.

  Weasel looked at the performance with a knowing eye.

  ‘He’s good. I’ll give him that,’ he said to Stoat, who by now had finished all the food and was starting to drop off in his chair in the corner of the snug.

  ‘Whaa…?’ he asked, jerking back to life.

  ‘I said old Triple T. He’s good. He knows how to use the crowd, the camera, the news crews.’

  He settled back in his chair, feet up on the three yellow binders, and drained the last of his pint. The camera was now back in the studio, where a Mole in a neat orange blouse was turning away from a smaller screen showing scenes from the factory and then handing over to a Squirrel standing in front of a large swing-o-meter graphic pointing doggedly to the far left. The sound was still muted, but he didn’t need to hear the words to get the message. The arrow on the graphic was pointing to a number, ‘Ninety two percent’, and the Squirrel was nodding confidently.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy, Stoatey, not easy at all,’ Weasel said, half to himself. He tried to drink more from his pint but realised he had already finished it so he put it back down on the table and slid it just out of his reach.

  Then, back on the news something caught his eye. The Squirrel was still there, and the swing-o-meter too, only the big number had changed. It now read ‘eighty four percent’. They must have started by showing the overnight polls, he thought. He did a quick calculation and slapped Stoat’s shoulder with the back of his paw.

  ‘Wake up, Stoatey! It looks like things are moving.’

  Stoat rubbed his eyes, stretched and sat upright again in his chair.

  ‘Why?’ he said sleepily. ‘What’s going on?’

  Weasel pointed at the screen, but the Squirrel had already handed back to the Mole and the latter was talking directly to camera with a small picture of a fallen oak tree just behind her left shoulder.

  ‘Here, check on your phone,’ he insisted. ‘See what the latest polls say.’

  Stoat was quick with technology, quicker than Weasel at least, and it wasn’t long before his nimble fingers had brought the latest poll figures up on his screen.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Ignoring the Don’t Knows there’s Leave: sixteen percent; Remain: eighty four percent. Sheesh, that’s one heck of a difference!’

  ‘Give me that,’ said Weasel, and he snatched it from his friend’s paw. ‘OK, but look at this: forty percent Don’t Know. Well that’s a start, I guess.’

  Stoat’s blank look drew further comment from Weasel.

  ‘Look, we’ve only been at it since this lunchtime and already an extra two percent of the population have climbed down off the fence. AND, we’ve doubled our share of the vote!’

  Stoat still looked dubious. ‘Yeah, from eight to sixteen. That’s like the difference between being stepped on by an Elephant or a Horse, isn’t it? They’ll be scraping you up either way.’

  ‘Come on, Stoatey. Glass half full, eh? We’ve started to wake folks up already, and they are coming over to our side. We have a message that works. Now we just need to ramp up the volume…’

  Weasel struck his thinking pose, feet up, head back, squinting at the ceiling.

  ‘What time are you meeting Pincer?’ he asked.

  Stoat checked his phone.

  ‘Blimey! Five minutes!’

  Precisely one minute later the pair were saying their goodbyes to the landlord and heading on foot to a meeting in Pincer’s offices in Tufty Tail Street.

  SALVATORE WAS A Gibbon who had always suspected there was more to life than petty crime, but it had taken him until early adulthood to discover his true calling.

  Home was just a word for the place where his mother cried, his siblings argued and his father never visited. School was the first reliable source he knew for a good meal and a respite from the temptations of the street. However, when he first got to Prison he realised that was his true home, his real school, where he got his own bed and food and an education. Access to prison was easy: steal this, take that, sell some of those. It was an application process he had become very good at. Yet prison life always left him feeling like there was something missing. Was this really all there was to life?

  It was Yuri, a Siberian Cat with long flowing hair, who had shown him the one true path to salvation. They had struck up a conversation about Salvatore’s name across a nailed down table in the prison dining room. Yuri seemed to see inside him. He was a Cat who really understood how empty it felt to continue in a cycle of small crimes, and it was from him that Salvatore had got his copy of ‘The Tree of Life’. Suddenly, time spent in the cells took on a whole new purpose. Salvatore read the book, every word, even tough he found some of them tricky. Yuri had introduced him to a group in prison that met regularly to discuss ‘The Tree of Life’, and it was blissful to spend an hour with like-minded souls, away from the overbearing presence of the Guards or the shower block bullies.

  The last time Salvatore had stepped out of prison he knew, deep in his reformed heart, it really was ‘the last time’. Yuri had convinced him of that. He strode down to the train station with just the clothes he stood up in, his well thumbed copy of ‘The Tree of Life’ and the yellow woollen ‘thinking hat’ his group had given him as a leaving gift.

  Kind Yuri had also arranged a job for him. It wasn’t much, working in a bakery, but it meant he could afford a roof over his head, and food, and the customers all enjoyed discussing passages from ‘The Tree of Life’. For the first time in his life Salvatore was completely happy.

  Yuri had told him that many were called, but few had the privilege to be chosen. He had said that some spent a lifetime waiting to learn their true path, but that a lucky few were blessed with a specific calling, and that if ever Salvatore was called he should consider it an honour, and should drop everything the better to answer the call.

  Today that call had come.

  Now he had a purpose. He was need
ed. His mission was clear.

  He put on his yellow woollen hat and his jacket of Sycamore Seeds and headed in to town.

  ‘Thanks for coming over. It’s good to finally meet you in the flesh.’

  Tommy Pincer was an American Bulldog, pure white but for a grey-green patch that coloured his right ear and down over one eye. He shook Weasel’s paw warmly, nodded at Stoat, and ushered the pair of them up the front steps.

  He immediately got down to business.

  ‘You guys have made quite a start. I’m impressed!’

  ‘Well,’ said Weasel, ‘we’ve got a little movement in the polls already, but time is really tight so anytime you want to jump aboard you’re more than welcome.’

  ‘Hey, glad to hear it. You’ve been great, by the way,’ he said to Weasel, grasping his shoulder in a hefty paw. ‘Just great. You’re a natural on TV. Y’know, maybe, when this is all over, you might want to come and help me train up a few animals in some other places. I’m banking on this here Referendum being a blueprint for a new kind of politics.’

  Holding the front door open, Pincer ushered them into a small, wood-lined lobby. ‘There was a time when Gold was King,’ he said. ‘Then came Oil: Black Gold. Now there is a new King on the horizon, and do you know what that might be?’

  Stoat wasn’t sure, but he definitely knew he was impressed by anyone who spoke with as many capitals as Pincer did. Weasel held his tongue. He recognised a ‘set speech’ when he heard one.

  ‘I’ll tell you for nothing. The next King of the pile is… Data!’

  Weasel and Stoat shared a look, not quite sure if they had heard a pearl of wisdom or just a throw away line.

  ‘Data, the new Gold. And right here,’ he gestured to the lift, ‘right here is the centre of the Data world.’

  THE CENTRAL MESSAGE of ‘The Tree of Life’ was that existence was an endless cycle of pain and rebirth. Just like a tree growing in a forest, that loses branches in the wind, and is burrowed into by insects, so each animal spends their life subject to a thousand pains, some larger than others, that accompany them until they die. There is no way to find release from the endless cycle of suffering, but following the teachings of ‘The Tree of Life’ was the best way to cope with the pain.