The Willows at Christmas

by William Horwood

  It was at moments like this that she terrified him, for she was bigger than he was and a great deal stronger. At such moments he felt like a naughty child again, that same child who used to be admonished by her mother Nanny Fowle, then already ancient:

  “Master Toad, stand up straight!”

  “Master Toad, sit down!”

  “Master Toad, how dare you presume to have any pudding before you have eaten your meat!”

  “Well?” said Mrs Ffleshe, bending down to look into his eyes.

  “I —” gasped poor Toad.

  “I know where you were. I know!”

  “O dear,” said Toad’s inner voice, “she has discovered even this last secret and is about to take it from me. It seems I have just had my final Christmas pre-breakfast in the library. Pater, what shall I do?”

  “Mr Toad,” said Mrs Ffleshe, rising to her full height, “despite your ill-treatment of me, and your ingratitude for all I have done, I have a present for you — no, I say again it would be distasteful for you to wish me a Merry Christmas now! Here is your present, so be good enough to open it.”

  More confused than ever, Toad took the square, large, heavy and flat gift from her, before asking, “Might I perhaps have a little breakfast first?”

  “Well!” she exclaimed with every appearance of disappointment. “Since your stomach is obviously larger than your gratitude, I suppose you must! When you do finally deign to open it, perhaps you would find time to thank me for my trouble!”

  Mrs Fleshe sat down once more and tucked into her bowl of fat sausages and black pudding, affecting to ignore Toad, who stood before her, helpless and uncertain.

  “I suppose…” quavered Toad.

  She swallowed some tea.

  “I suppose I might…”

  She helped herself to half a dozen extra rashers of bacon.

  “I — I shall open it now, then’ said Toad.

  She gazed at him with the smug look of the victor.

  “It would certainly be polite to do so’ she said acidly. He tore at the string and paper with sinking heart, for her presents were never things he wanted, and usually things that provoked gloominess in one way or another.

  From the shape and feel of it, it was a picture of some kind. Affecting interest and pleasure, but feeling only dread, he tore off the final layer of crepe paper and saw that it was more than a picture, it was a portrait. More even than that, it had been executed in oils which, despite the care with which they had been applied, and the artist’s search for colours and a technique that might soften the subject, could not disguise the fact that the subject of the portrait did not have a visage that lent itself to the plastic arts.

  “Why, it is a painting of Nanny Fowle!” exclaimed Toad with feigned delight. “How — how —” but words failed him, and after placing it on the sideboard where they could both see it, he studied it bleakly. The thin mouth, the cadaverous cheeks, the straggling hair, the mean and hateful eyes, the pendulous ears, the perpetual frown.

  “It is a very good likeness,” he said, thinking that he might put the wretched picture in the attic, underneath the skylight that leaked.

  “I am glad you like it,” she said. “It is for the library.”

  This was a command, not a statement.

  “You want to put it in the library?” spluttered Toad. “But…” A grim thought occurred to him. His father had stressed time and again that the library was the one place Nanny Fowle had never been permitted to go in any circumstances. “I rather think — I greatly fear —”

  “Yes, Toad?” said Mrs Ffleshe, leaning towards him.

  “I don’t believe there is quite enough room for it in the library,” he squeaked.

  “O yes there is,” she said with that resolution he knew so well.

  He dared say no more to her on the subject, but for the rest of their breakfast he could think of nothing else and quite lost his appetite.

  “Not the library, not my Pater’s beloved room, not that!” he whispered to himself as Mrs Ffleshe tore at her toast, guzzled her tea and rang imperiously for more of everything. “Not the one place where Pater could escape from Nanny Fowle!”

  Mrs Ffleshe rang the bell again and told Miss Bugle that she was slow and the eggs were overcooked and might she please make sure in the days ahead that there was more coal on the fire and that the hot water in her bedroom was not quite so hot but that the towels were a little more warmed.

  “Come on, Toad!” said Mrs Ffleshe, rising when her breakfast was over. “I am going to have to suffer your common guests within the hour, so let us hang my mother’s portrait before they arrive.”

  There was nothing for it but to do as she asked.

  “Well, Toad, bring it with you then, for goodness’ sake! Really, I sometimes wonder…”

  He followed reluctantly and found her in the centre of the library, apparently examining the walls and picture rail for the best location.

  “You see,” he said meekly, “there is no room.

  “Then that will have to come down!” she cried, pointing at his father’s portrait.

  “Pater’s portrait!” he stuttered, utterly appalled.

  It had never occurred to him that she could propose such a thing. Some distant will to fight arose in him and he darted in front of the fireplace to put himself between the picture he loved so much and her large self.

  “Mr Toad,” she boomed, “I really must insist you take down that picture.”

  “No!” he gasped, picking up the poker. “I will not —you cannot — I do not —”

  “Such ingratitude on Christmas Day!” cried Mrs Ffleshe indignantly before, ignoring his plaints, she pushed him aside and grasped at his father’s portrait.

  He leapt up and hung on to her arm.

  “Unhand me, Mr Toad, or I shall summon the constabulary!” she cried, leaving the picture where it was and stepping back a pace or two, with Toad swinging from her arm like a light pendant in an earthquake.

  “Leave it, madam, for if you do not — if you do not —”

  “Yes, Mr Toad, yes?”

  “Then I must — I shall — I —”

  It was only when this unseemly struggle had gone on for some moments more that both of them realised that someone had entered the room. It was the Mole and the Badger, who had come ahead of Rat and Otter.

  “Ahem!” said the Mole uncertainly. “A very Merry Christmas to you both!”

  Mrs Ffleshe fell back at once, as bullies usually do when thus discovered, and with Toad panting hard she said, “Sirs, you are just in time to save me from this brute! Unhand me again I say, Mr Toad, unhand me!”

  The Badger was not fooled and nor was Mole. When there had been no response to their knocks at the front door they had let themselves in and so had witnessed the struggle of the portraits almost from the beginning. Both knew the portrait of Toad Senior very well indeed and how much Toad valued it, and could easily guess how he must feel at the prospect of its being displaced by Nanny Fowle on this day of all days.

  “We have not met formally,” said Mole in measured tones and in the absence of any word from the Badger.

  She advanced upon him and eyed him much as she had eyed the goose on the day they had met. For one dreadful moment he thought she was going to apply thumb and forefinger to his thigh and arm to see how much meat he had on him, and sniff him too perhaps.

  “Don’t I know you?” she enquired.

  “I am Mr Mole of Mole End, and with Mr Badger here I have come to pay seasonal respects to Mr Toad, and to say that two of our friends, namely Mr Water Rat and Mr Otter, are delayed. They have to —”It doesn’t matter why they can’t come,” she said sharply. “You I know, Mr Badger, for you have come along on previous Christmas mornings, have you not?”

  “I have, madam. A Merry Christmas to you!”

  “Humph!” she said. “You cannot stay long, for we have a luncheon party starting at noon and friends of some social standing will be arriving at that time an
d I would prefer they did not see people of your station here. I’ll give you quarter of an hour, Toad, and then…”

  She glared fiercely at them all and departed, leaving behind Nanny Fowle, who stared at them malevolently from where she had been propped.

  Toad collapsed into an armchair, head in his hands.

  “O calamity!” he groaned. “It is even worse this year than last. I wish you had not seen what you did. By myself I can survive, but knowing you are so near and —and what is worse I locked you in that coal-hole, Mole, and didn’t even come to let you out! I feel ashamed in all directions!”

  “Toad,” said the sympathetic Mole, “there is no need to apologise. Today is Christmas Day and I have come to present these modest gifts to you, which I thought might give you pleasure and solace in the days ahead.”

  He produced a basket of delicacies and fruit, and one or two other small things all wrapped up and neatly labelled “TO TOAD” and “FOR TOAD” and “FROM MOLE TO TOAD”.

  “Please take them, Toad.”

  Toad did so with trembling hands, greatly moved.

  This was not a vain Toad, or a puffed-up Toad, but rather a wan and troubled Toad who had been reminded again, as often before, that it was from River Bankers like Mole and Badger that true friendship came.

  “Also, I have an invitation for you to an At Home I am planning later this morning,” continued the Mole, “though if you are otherwise engaged —”

  A dreadful look crossed poor Toad’s face at the prospect of luncheon at the Hall.

  “— if you are engaged,” continued the thoughtful Mole, “then do please come over to Mole End the moment you are free; night or day you will be welcome. Please say you will.”

  But Toad did not speak. He could only stare at the fire and at the portrait of his father, now askew, and clasp the Mole’s basket to his lap as if it were the nicest, kindest gift he had ever had.

  But speak? That he could not do. Nor suddenly could his friends.

  How long they stayed thus would be hard to say, but they remained so till Miss Bugle knocked on the door and brought in a tray of tea and mince pies. As they tucked in, they could hear Mrs Ffleshe in another room making plain that she thought it time that Toad’s guests left, for hers would soon be arriving.

  Miss Bugle dared close the library door upon this unseasonal cacophony, as the Mole and the Badger poured tea for Toad, and tried to comfort him.

  It was some time later, when Toad was somewhat fortified and seemed to be on the road to recovery, that something happened which seemed to bring to a head all his years of failing struggle with Mrs Ffleshe.

  He had finally found enough strength to raise a third cup of tea to his lips when with a slide and crash his father’s portrait, which must have worked loose, fell on to the mantel, and from there towards the ground.

  In fact, it did rather more than that. It was in a heavy gilded frame and a corner of this crashed unerringly into the portrait of Nanny Fowle and dealt as severe a death blow as can be dealt to an inanimate object. It seemed to tear the portrait apart, frame and all, leaving it in tatters on the carpet, made subjugate by Toad Senior, who quite unharmed smiled benignly at them all, and particularly at his son.

  For a long time Toad stayed mute and dumbstruck. Then, suddenly, he decided to take this accident as a sign from beyond the grave — or more accurately a call to action. But to what action, to what purpose?

  “I am undone and broken, the wreck of the Toad I once was,” he cried, leaping up and scattering tea cups and presents everywhere. “It is my fault! All is lost! The Hall and the River Bank are ruined and I am to blame, for I can never be my father’s son!”

  “Badger, perhaps you should fetch him a glass of water,” said the sensible Mole.

  “Water?” cried Toad, turning and turning about in his distress. “What can water do against the awful might of Mrs Ffleshe? Niagara Falls would not trouble her nor a regiment of Hussars subdue her! Arsenic would be as ambrosia to such a one as she, and a stake in the heart would merely be taken as encouragement. No, the combined force of the Roman and Protestant churches could not make her know the meaning of generosity and kindness, and now this has happened to the portrait of Nanny Fowle my life is not worth living. And it is all my fault for not standing up to her!”

  “Toad!” cried the Mole, who was finding it very hard to hold his friend down. “Toad, please try to be calm, because —These, never a wise choice of words with the excitable Toad, were the very worst just then.

  “Calm!” cried Toad, throwing the Mole back against the fireplace and rushing for the door. “I cannot and will not and must not and shall not be calm!”

  “Sir!” cried Miss Bugle, who appeared at that moment with the Badger. “Try this — or this!”

  She offered him a glass of water with one hand and attempted to waft a bottle of smelling salts under his nose with the other.

  “There is no other solution now!” he said, muttering more to himself than them. “Farewell, Miss Bugle! Farewell, Badger! Farewell, my home!”

  Rushing to the great front door, he pulled it open violently and found himself facing the party of Mrs Ffleshe’s guests, who were just then arriving and who, judging by the cut of their shoes and coats, and the imperiousness of their gaze, were very important personages indeed.

  “Farewell to you all,” he cried inclusively, knocking them all back down the steps they had just come up. “For now I must leave you and my home for ever!”

  With that, he set off across his lawn at a fast pace, heading straight towards the swollen River.

  “Quick, after him!” shouted the Mole. “He intends to jump in and he will not survive in such a flood! Badger, try to catch him for you are faster than I, while I make haste to the Iron Bridge and alert Otter and Rat, who are working there.”

  Without another word, the Badger did as the sensible Mole suggested, calling after Toad and begging, ordering, demanding that he stop.

  But it was too little, too late, and with hardly a pause in his progress the overwrought Toad ran down to the bank near his boathouse and with a despairing cry flung himself into the flooding waters.

  Naturally, this spurred the Badger on still more and though he was by no means a competent swimmer he knew that if he had to he would risk his own life by diving in after Toad.

  Meanwhile, Mole had hurried out of Toad’s gates and was running as fast as he could towards the Iron Bridge, where he knew that Otter and the Water Rat were carrying out some repairs to damage caused by the weasels and stoats. When he arrived, he was in a state of exhaustion, so breathless that he could only cry out to Rat, “It’s Toad! He’s in the…” before pointing upstream. At that same moment they heard Badger’s shouts and saw him standing on Toad’s lawn, pointing at the swirling, rushing waters, and they deduced at once that the worst had happened.

  “Can you see him?” called the Otter, who was on the bank below.

  The Rat was still, staring grimly upstream at the raging waters, eyes travelling from one side to another, from ripple to wave, from swirl to turning current.

  “Get the boathook, Otter,” he cried, “and pass it up to me. If he surfaces it’ll be me who sees him first. I’ll try and arrest his passage. There he is! There!”

  Mole certainly would not have recognised what Rat was pointing at. It looked like a log, or perhaps a scruffy branch as it turned, but then he saw a hand.

  “It’s Toad!” cried the Mole.

  Rat tore off his jacket and leapt over the railings into the water. The current was so strong that the Mole saw at once he would not be able to swim against it to reach Toad, but Rat knew his work, and Otter understood the strategy.

  That sturdy animal deftly passed the great boathook to the Rat as he was swept past and then dived in himself and quickly had Toad’s inert body in his firm grasp. Meanwhile, downstream the Rat had used the boathook to haul himself to the bank, and he now stood ready to haul in Otter and Toad when they came past.

>   They did not have to wait long to discover if Toad was still breathing, for moments after Otter had brought him to the surface, Toad began to talk.

  “Unhand me! Let me float away to my fate! Let me sink to my Shangri-La! Leave me!”

  “O Toad, do be quiet and keep still till we have you back on the bank, or else I shall let you go!” gasped the Otter as he strained to pull their struggling friend to safety.

  “There’s no law in the land to stop a gentleman from going for a swim on Christmas Day!” cried Toad, who seemed suddenly light-headed.

  “Push him this way a little, Otter!” cried the Rat from the bank. “That’s it!”

  Then he expertly hooked Toad by his shirt collar and with the Otter’s help heaved him to safety.

  “Liberty was so near that I saw its golden beams!” cried Toad as he slumped wetly on to the grass and the others gathered round. “But now — now — I feel a terrible chill upon me, and my limbs are growing numb!”

  With that he began to shiver, and his teeth began to rattle, and they judged it best to get him home to bed as swiftly as they could. The resourceful Rat took up one of the larger planks he kept under the bridge for the purpose of shoring up the bank and together they laid the bedraggled Toad upon it. Then, sharing the weight between them, as if they were a funeral cortege and he the corpse, they carried Toad the short distance up the public road to his gates and thence across his drive to his front door.

  “The Master’s drownded!” cried the stable boy, who had come to see what the fuss was about. “Drownded, soaked and sopping and — by the look of ‘im — it’s all too late for the doctor!”

  This alarming pronouncement brought the household staff outside, where many took off their hats and caps, bowed their heads in grief, weeping openly at the sight of the prone Toad.

  A very different diagnosis was made by Toad’s long-suffering friends, who concluded that there was nothing much wrong with Toad that a warm bed, a hot drink, some good food and a fire would not soon put right.

  “But — but —” cried Mrs Ffleshe, who having shown her guests into the drawing room after Toad’s sudden departure now suffered the embarrassment of having them all come out again to see what the fuss was about.