The Willows at Christmas

by William Horwood

  “Yes, that much I had discovered,” responded the Mole sympathetically.

  “But did you know it was on Christmas Day itself!” she added tragically. It was plain from the play of emotion upon her face and the passion of her voice that this memory was still very real and fresh in her mind.

  “O my goodness!” said Mole with a look of dismay, for this important detail had been omitted from Badger’s account.

  “I believe that no son loved his father more than Mr Toad Junior loved Mr Toad Senior. The two were quite inseparable, you know, and for Toad Junior the spirit of Christmas was his father. Which for anyone honoured to know that gentleman, his good nature, his high spirits, his generosity in all things and his happy knack of putting others at their ease, is scarcely surprising. Why, if he had been my father, I believe I might have found it very hard indeed to celebrate Christmas knowing that he had passed away on that day of all days. So it was that with the death of his father, something of the spirit of Christmas also died in Mr Toad’s heart.”

  Miss Bugle shook her head sombrely, the colours of Christmas bright about her.

  “Sir, I have striven for years to think of a way of shaking Mr Toad out of his malaise. Indeed, sir, I may say that I have made it my ambition to play a part, however small, in bringing back to Toad Hall the Christmas spirit it has lost. When you suggested that perhaps we might endeavour to do something towards that together my heart was filled with new hope and so — here we now are!”

  “Madam,” said the Mole, “I am most encouraged by your words. We shall — we must — find a way to help our mutual friend, in which enterprise I believe we shall be helping the whole of the River Bank! But there is one more thing.”

  “Ask it, sir!” cried Miss Bugle. “Let us be entirely frank with one another.”

  “Well —” began the Mole diffidently, for he felt a little guilty that his curiosity on a particular point so troubled him, “it was simply that neither you nor Mr Badger has actually explained to me what caused Toad Senior to pass away and I wondered if that was in any way —”His demise was caused by a surfeit of plum pudding.”

  For a moment the Mole thought he had not heard aright, but he saw from Miss Bugle’s seriousness that it was exactly what she had said.

  “He choked then…?” suggested the Mole. “Perhaps on a stone?”

  “Choked?” repeated Miss Bugle distractedly. “On a stone? I think not. No, he was laughing at the time, you see. O it was terrible, and so unexpected. Everybody was in the banqueting room, the fire cheerfully roaring, his friends all about, the tree glorious with candlelight, listening to Mr Toad Junior making his first festive speech. When he had finished, Mr Toad Senior arose to respond in like manner, saying as he did so, ‘I’ll have one more mouthful of Cook’s plum pudding and I had better make it my last!’ Then a spasm of pain passed across his face, and then a look of comprehension as he repeated the fateful word ‘last’ and began to laugh.”

  “Laugh?” said the Mole, rather hollowly, for he was not quite sure how to respond.

  “Well, they were all laughing, as I remember,” said Miss Bugle, “for they did not quite realise the situation. Then suddenly Mr Toad Senior clutched at a cracker, waved it about his head and slumped breathless into a seat by the fire.”

  “By the fire,” murmured the Mole.

  “He had begun to recover after his thoughtful son offered him a glass of champagne when he clutched at his chest and fell back once more. Then he bravely managed to cry out ‘Merry Christmas!’ and, offering one end of the cracker to his son, he was suddenly…”

  “Suddenly what?”

  “No more,” announced Miss Bugle.

  “No more?” murmured the Mole, thinking it was as good a way to go as any, and better than most.

  “He was gone,” said Miss Bugle with finality. “I could see that my employer was now the late Mr Toad. And yet… yet…

  “Yes, Miss Bugle?” said the Mole very seriously, leaning forward in a way that perhaps conveyed to her his deep engagement in the story she told.

  “Yes,” she continued in a softer voice. “He looked very cheerful with a paper hat on his head, a cracker in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other and the firelight on his face. He looked very cheerful indeed. But there was no doubt that his spirit had departed.”

  “Departed,” whispered the Mole, who had some difficulty in picturing the scene without wondering what he might have done in such a situation, had he been a guest at Toad Senior’s table. Death he had known, but not death on Christmas Day, the company full of jollity.

  Since Miss Bugle remained silent he felt he should say something. But what?

  “I think I know,” he said finally, and for lack of anything more profound, “what I might have done when faced by such a crisis.

  “What would that have been?” asked Miss Bugle with very real curiosity, for she often wondered if she had done the right thing herself.

  “I would have removed the paper hat from his head,” said the Mole, adding after some thought, “and I think the cracker from his hand.”

  “That would have been the right thing,” concurred Miss Bugle, “always assuming that the cracker would come easily. However, it seemed to me that Mr Toad was holding on to it very tightly and, of course —“

  “Yes,” whispered the Mole, who knew a little about rigor mortis, and how swiftly it can set in, “it might well have been unseemly to attempt to break his grip.”

  He said no more, for it was too distressing to contemplate the possible consequences of attempting to pull a Christmas cracker with one who was already deceased and whose grasp was involuntarily growing stronger by the second.

  Miss Bugle said, “Yet I wish I or someone else had thought of removing his paper hat before the undertaker came, for they didn’t think to do it either. So it was that the undertakers portered Mr Toad out of the dining room with the green paper hat upon his head and the unpulled cracker still in his hand.”

  Mole sat in silence for a time pondering Toad Senior’s distant passing. This information certainly put into a very different light the nature of Toad’s festive malaise. The time was right to propose another toast, and this time it was Miss Bugle who proposed it.

  “To the memory of Mr Toad Senior and to the final victory of the Christmas spirit!” cried Miss Bugle impulsively, and with such abandon that it seemed possible to the Mole that a single glass of madeira was the equivalent to Miss Bugle of several casks to those more used to alcoholic beverage.

  “To victory!” cried the Mole in loud response, to whom it seemed that the image of Mr Toad Senior upon the mantelpiece, and that of several Father Christmases all about, were one and the same, and each one a stalwart party to their shared purpose and revolutionary intent.

  “Let’s finish off the madeira,” said Miss Bugle rather too loudly, and the Mole saw that she was not to be denied, “and then we shall make some plans!”

  The two huddled forward in their chairs in the manner of conspirators and agreed that each would do all they could over the next few days to find a way to release Mr Toad from his bondage to the past, in the belief that by doing so they would be helping to free the River Bank.

  Later, with the servants’ bell now sounding angrily to summon Miss Bugle from far below, she and Mole set about the sad but necessary task of packing up the decorations and carrying them up to the attic till finally, their work done, Miss Bugle closed the attic door behind them.

  “You had better use the servants’ entrance again, Mr Mole, in case she sees you,” advised Miss Bugle. “Good night, Mr Mole.”

  Thus Mole took his leave and, with so much to think upon, barely noticed that the night was blowing up a storm as he walked across the fields to his familiar front door. Once safely inside, he lit a candle and poured himself a glass of his famous sloe and blackberry. But no sooner had he settled down in the comfort of his own armchair than he heard a whispering at his front door, and a timid knock.

 
; “The field-mice! The field-mice have come a-carolling — Christmas is truly here!” he cried, as he leapt to his feet and hurried to the door to let them come tumbling in — shy, talkative, laughing and finally singing out their Christmas songs.

  Mole warmed some mince pies and handed round some fruit punch. Then he told them some stories of his childhood, and yielded to their demands to hear how he and Mr Badger and the Water Rat and the great Mr Toad had once wrested Toad Hall back from the weasels and stoats.

  Till at last, when their parents came by to take them home, Mole’s Christmas Eve was nearly done.

  Yet not quite.

  He still had to propose the final toast of the night. He opened his front door and raised his glass to such stars as he could see. “To the memory of my family,” said he, “to my parents long gone, to my sister long lost, and my errant brother rarely found. And to my nephew, who I have never met. Wherever they may be, may the Christmas spirit be with them in the festive days ahead and bring them health and happiness, and contentment.” He paused a moment, as the swirling clouds opened up to reveal the moon and stars more clearly than before.

  Mole stared and wondered at what he saw and remembered someone he would like to see again.

  Meanwhile, far off, further away in the wide world than the Mole had ever been or hoped to go, and as bells ancient and modern rang in a new Christmas, there was another who watched the moon, and saw the stars, and thought of Mole.

  “Merry Christmas, my dear,” said Mole’s lost sister to the distant night, tears in her eyes, “a very Merry Christmas, wherever you may be.”

  Nor, in those wishes, was she quite alone. For just across the fields, the candles in her parlour now nearly all gone out, Miss Bugle also stared out from her window, and watched the moon’s brief show.

  She whispered a Merry Christmas to the world and impulsively, in the same breath as she mentioned the Mr Toads, Senior and Junior, she dared to add the name of Mr Mole, who had given her so much pleasure that afternoon, and renewed her faith in Christmases past, present and future.

  “May his wishes all come true,” she said.

  She did not close her window till long after the bells of the Village church had ceased to chime.

  “I wonder —” she whispered as she blew out the last of the candles in her parlour, “I wonder if I dare!”

  The very last candle she blew out, as was her wont, was the one by the image of Mr Toad Senior. He seemed to wink at her, encouragingly, and laugh with all the good humour of the world.

  “I could do it,” she whispered, “and I shall! Not today, which is Christmas, nor tomorrow, which is Boxing Day, but the day after that, when all opens up again. Then — I will!”

  VII

  The Final Straw

  Toad of Toad Hall awoke early, with that feeling of despondency and dread he had come to associate with Christmas morning. Not least because it was such very hard work doing the right thing in a house ruled by Mrs Ffleshe, where doing the wrong thing seemed almost inevitable.

  The plain fact was that for Toad to survive these twelve long days of Christmas each year he had to be other than he truly was. That glorious triumphant other self, a Toad full of courage, a Toad filled with purpose, a Toad who was the originator and avid proponent of bold schemes far beyond the imaginings of lesser mortals (as Toad perceived it), did not for those twelve days exist.

  Nor, come to that, did that vain, conceited, foolhardy, maddening and foolishly generous creature whom the River Bankers knew and loved.

  In the place of these two toads, who lived side by side for something more than three hundred and fifty days a year there was a defeated Toad, a ground-down Toad, a Toad overcome by a torrent of harsh words, a Toad flattened by a female steamroller of abuse and contempt, a wan and pallid Toad; a toad, in fact, who was not Toad at all.

  How this had come about, Toad himself had long since forgotten, and ceased to concern himself with, for to do otherwise was to cause himself distress, and misery. His only consolation was that but for their brief audience on Christmas morning his friends did not have to see him in this sorry state.

  So it was that this Christmas morning Toad rose wearily from his bed, bedraggled in appearance and all but defeated in spirit. He expected nothing of the world that day, nothing at all.

  He did not, for example, bother to glance at the bedpost at the end of his bed to which, in happier times, as a child and sometimes as an adult, the Christmas spirit had somehow attached a bulging stocking.

  Certainly he did not look out of his window as he had as a child (and, indeed, for all his adult years till the coming of the dreaded Mrs Fleshe), to see if it was to be a white Christmas and he might go sledging or skating.

  He did not even peer into the mirror above his fireplace before he commenced his ablutions and whisper, however pathetically, “A Happy Christmas, old chap!”

  Toad simply groaned and then, sighing, set about preparing himself for the doleful day, his thoughts entirely concerned with how he might contrive to see as little as possible of Mrs Fleshe, and whatever ghastly guests she had coming that day.

  He had to appear at breakfast, that was certain; and luncheon as well. Whether or not he would have to attend dinner depended entirely upon whether or not Mrs Ffleshe had decreed that it was then or at luncheon that they had their Christmas fare. If at lunch, he might avoid evening dinner, so that was his preference, but naturally he was not informed till the last moment.

  There was one ritual, however, that he observed with that small part of his spirit Mrs Ffleshe had failed to subjugate — an act of rebellion that took place early in the morning. Mrs Ffleshe had always insisted that Toad should not begin his own breakfast till she had made her appearance, which she normally did some time between nine and ten o’clock. Toad had observed this stricture for a number of years but tended to become rather hungry and ill-tempered by the time Mrs Ffleshe came down, for Toad liked his food and felt faint if he did not have it in good time. The excellent Miss Bugle had circumvented this distressing problem, however, by laying out for him a light repast in the library, where she also lit a fire for him and made sure he had some tea.

  This repast, which consisted of porridge in the Scottish manner, a coddled egg or two, some toast and marmalade, and some cooked fruits and fresh cream — just enough, in short, to keep Toad alive till breakfast —was the quietest and most pleasant part of Toad’s long Christmas Day.

  The reason Mrs Fleshe had not put a stop to it was that she generally did not set foot in the library at all. This room, more than any other, had been Toad Senior’s retreat. He had banished Nanny Fowle from it and as a consequence her daughter Mrs Ffleshe continued to feel uncomfortable there. Moreover, above the fireplace hung a splendid portrait of Toad Senior at his jolliest and most cheerful, which she could not abide.

  Toad would sit under this benign image, aware of the fact that his time was short, and enjoy his pre—breakfast, wondering how on earth he was going to survive the twelve long days of Christmas.

  “Never was there a toad unhappier than I, Pater,” he would say, as he pondered how much milk to add to his porridge, “for I remember things as they used to be and can never be again.” Then, adding some cream to the porridge on top of the milk and tucking in, he continued:

  “Pater, what can I do but accept my fate? I am a tragic toad, unloved and all alone, for with your passing there is nobody left to care for me.

  Then, having finished the porridge Miss Bugle had so lovingly made for him, and engaging with the coddled eggs by way of a pinch of salt and a peck of fresh pepper (freshly ground by Miss Bugle), he glanced up at his father’s image, sudden tears streaming down his face.

  “O Pater!” he cried, checking that Miss Bugle had buttered his toast as she usually did and seeing that she had, “I am the Wounded King of the River Bank!”

  His Pater, had he been able, might well have raised his eyebrows at this comparison but he need not have waited long for an explan
ation. Polishing off the last of the eggs and gratified to see that there were a good few pieces of toast left over, enough to account for most of the jar of marmalade, Toad added with a certain irony, “A Wounded King, yes, but with no knights to fight his cause, no! There is no one who can rid me of this pestilent woman! She is my fate, my doom and I shall breathe my last before she does, Pater!”

  The hour of nine struck and Toad knew he must finish his little meal and join Mrs Ffleshe for breakfast. The only bright spot he had to look forward to in the hours and days ahead was the brief visit of Badger and the others later that morning. This was a tradition he had not permitted Mrs Ffleshe to put a stop to, albeit she complained loudly about it the day before and for several days afterwards, calling his friends “lower-class spongers” and “liberal no-gooders” and “layabout loungers” and several more permutations of the same.

  He rose, he looked sadly at his father’s eyes and he made his way to the chilly confines of the breakfast room, there to await Mrs Ffleshe’s arrival.

  “Toad! You are late! You have kept me waiting and I am fainting with hunger. This is not the behaviour of a gentleman, or of one who should be thinking of my happiness and welfare upon Christmas Day!”

  The startled Toad stood upon the threshold of the breakfast room in mental disarray. She was early! She was never early without there being a reason that would be to his disadvantage and discomfort. So she had finally invaded even this precious time.

  “Kindly do not wish me a Merry Christmas,” said the enraged Mrs Ffleshe, “for you have made it begin badly, very badly indeed.”

  “I am sorry —” began Toad meekly.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I have — I mean — I was —” stuttered Toad, wondering if there was any coddled egg on his morning jacket, or evidence of porridge on his cuff.

  “Well?” she said, rising and staring down at him.