She could hear her grandmother and Mr Franklin talking elsewhere in the cottage, in lowered voices – probably about her.
She longed to be allowed back into the meadow by herself. She needed to reassure the mole that, in spite of such a frantic expansion, she was all right. She also wanted to point out – perhaps he realized this already – that he had proved his power over the witchcraft in him. Even, indeed, to excess. Now he knew for certain that he could use witchcraft to get rid of witchcraft – to become true mole again.
This last thought was hard for Bet. She had not allowed herself before now to admit what it meant. The mole had often told her that a true mole never sought human company, feared human beings and would shun them. So their friendship would be over.
In the midst of her brooding, Mrs Allum came to take her home. Bet had a bowl of bread and milk for her supper, and then was put to bed, early as it was.
She was glad to be in bed, but she could not possibly sleep. Her size bothered her. Her feet reached to the very end of the bed, which they had never done before; and, if she wriggled her body up the bed, then at once her head hit the headboard. She was taller and altogether bigger than she should be: she felt wrong.
Her grandfather had stared at her almost disbelievingly, and grunted. What would it be like at school, when people saw her? What would Maddy think? Oh! what would her mum say?
There was nothing else for it: she must go back to the mole to ask to be restored to her normal size, and as soon as possible.
She dozed the evening away, resting. As soon as both her grandparents had gone to bed and she judged them to be safely asleep (her grandmother was snoring), she set off, leaving the front door on the latch for her return.
The night was light with starshine; and, at any other time, she would have enjoyed this solitary, secret expedition. But now she was too anxious, and too ill at ease in her new size. She trudged wearily along the few miles that separated home from the Franklin cottage: first, along the high road; then a lane; and then the farm track. She knew that Mr Franklin often worked very late, but the cottage was in darkness. She went into the meadow, to the log. There she sat down and then lay on the dewy grass by the mole-hole.
She called down the hole, but only softly, for fear of being heard in the cottage. There was no response. In her mind's eye she saw the mole curled up among the grass and leaves of the sleeping chamber which he had shown her, fast asleep. He would never hear her.
Then suddenly he was there, hauling himself very slowly up to the mouth of the tunnel, where he rested. He seemed glad that she had come; but he was still exhausted from his frenzied exertion in the encounter with Moon. He said, ‘I recognized your footsteps overhead. Heavier than usual. That's because you're bigger – too big. I'm sorry I bungled that…’
‘You saved me,’ said Bet. ‘From Moon. And without my help at all.’
He shuddered. ‘At a cost. All – all my life's energy was spent in that moment. Afterwards I wanted only to die… But the witchcraft in me held me alive on a thread.’ He paused. Then, ‘I think I can never – ever – attempt that again, alone.’
Bet said quickly, ‘But you'll never need to. I shall be here.’ She had wanted to comfort him; and he raised his tired head towards her in acknowledgement.
She said, ‘Do you think – well, would it be possible perhaps to make me even a little smaller? Nearer to the size I used to be.’
The mole became almost brisk. ‘Of course. Together we should be able to manage that. But we must be careful to adjust accurately.’
The mole came out of his tunnel, and Bet got to her feet and then stooped and touched him. Together, very carefully, with many stops and starts, they willed shrinkage, until at last Bet could stand up straight and say, ‘That's it! I'm the right size! I feel it; I know it!’
The mole was snuffling to himself in satisfaction at a job well done.
Now that she was her comfortable self again, Bet's walk home did not seem so long. She was back in her bedroom well before her grandmother's time for getting up – and it seemed that her grandfather had not needed to thump during the night.
To Bet it hardly seemed worthwhile to take off her outdoor clothes. So she was standing by the window, fully dressed, when Mrs Allum looked in to see how she was after yesterday's alarm. Mrs Allum had not admitted that there was anything unusual about Bet's size; but now she paused in the doorway to stare. Then she gave a little cry of pleasure and relief: ‘Oh, that's my girl again!’
Chapter Seventeen
Come Hell or High Water
Restored to her, right shape and size, Bet looked back with near-disbelief on the events of that hot afternoon, when, above ground, her grandmother had spring-cleaned so furiously, while Mr Franklin was out of the way in London on his book hunt.
On that afternoon Bet had descended into the earth to the mole's secret world of cool passageways and chambers, storerooms and vaults, where no human being had ever been before – or, perhaps, would ever go again. All her life she would remember the strangeness and – at one point – the solemn fearfulness of that chthonic adventure. She thought of the mole differently now: an Earth-master, indeed!
However, neither of them spoke of what they had experienced together. After all, it had been intended as a test of the power of the witchcraft at the mole's command. Now they were certain that, with Bet's help, he could use witchcraft to get rid of witchcraft.
When?
The mole knew that, when the school holidays began, Bet was going to stay with her new family. It would be an important step for her to take.
‘After that, perhaps?’ he suggested.
Bet, however, was asking anxiously, ‘While I'm away, you won't be going off to Hampton Court or anywhere? You will be here when I get back from my mum's?’
The mole said, ‘I shall wait here. I promise. When he was a schoolboy, Master Y had this slangy saying: “Come hell or high water”, he'd do whatever it was. And he did. And so shall I.’
‘Good,’ said Bet. ‘Because, when I get back, you'll want to hear about my mum and everything. I'll be able to tell you then.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the mole. ‘And after that…’
‘I suppose so,’ Bet said slowly, unwillingly, and still unwillingly, ‘Yes, of course.’
No more was said on the subject.
Bet went on her visit as soon as term ended. She began to feel at home with her family. She liked going out with her mother and the baby to do the household shopping. She liked helping her mother in the flat, especially with the cooking. Her stepfather liked his food, and they all ate well. Most of all she liked helping to bath the baby – especially as her mother often asked Maddy if she would like to come down and help, too.
On the second night of her stay, Bet was woken by thunder and lighting and rain – torrential rain. The heatwave was suddenly over. It was succeeded – most unusually for this season of the year – by almost continuous rain. Day after day it rained as if it would never stop; and the weather forecasters warned of the danger of flooding in some parts of England.
Bet and Maddy – they were together now most of the time — never bothered much with weather forecasts.
Then Mrs Allum telephoned with the news that the river by the Franklin cottage had risen and was now brimming its banks; and water was welling up in the meadow in wide puddles. The old grey pony had been taken away into safety. She and Mr Franklin were busy getting up mats and rugs from the ground floor of the cottage, and he had insisted on all his books – his own and old Miss Franklin's being moved out of harm's way. For the present he was staying on in his upstairs bedroom.
Maddy thought it sounded exciting; Bet felt uneasy.
The next evening Mrs Allum telephoned again. The river and the meadow were one sheet of moving water. Water had begun to enter the cottage, seeping through ancient brickwork and then, in a rush, through the doorways. Mr Franklin had had to leave. He was now staying elsewhere with an old acquaintance.
Bet, an
xious for a friend in peril, said, ‘Oh, I want to go back! I must go back! Please – please!’
‘Gran told me to tell you not to think of any such thing,’ said her mother. ‘She's far too busy with everything that's cropped up to have you at home just now, she says. And your grandpa's being difficult again, into the bargain.’
Only at the end of a full week's stay did Bet leave Disham. By now the rain had stopped at last; the floodwaters everywhere were going down, or were gone.
Bet arrived home in the evening. The next morning she went with Mrs Allum to the Franklin cottage. Mrs Allum went inside; Bet went into the meadow.
The meadow seemed just as usual – or did it? The grass on the sodden earth sank under her every footfall, a reminder – a warning – of what so recently had been. There were still the five great trees; but no grey pony, of course; and all the molehills had been flattened or washed away.
And then she saw what was terribly wrong –
No log!
No one had noticed its going, but it had gone. The floodwaters had swept over the meadow and round the log and nudged at it and gently heaved at it and finally dislodged it and swept it rolling away downstream with the current of the swollen river.
All that remained was a roughly oblong patch of bare earth. There was no other trace of the log or of a mole-hole that had been beside it.
Chapter Eighteen
Green Grow the Rushes
Bet stood where the log had lain, and she despaired. Everything was changing; things were slipping and sliding away; nothing would ever be comfortably the same again.
She tried to think calmly. Had the moles of the meadow all drowned, trapped below ground, each in its separate tunnel system? But the mole who was her friend could not die. Was he still here – somewhere – or had the flood carried him away, like the log itself, to faraway dangers and disasters?
She wandered distractedly over the meadow, ending up by facing the only rising ground that might have escaped flooding – the wooded part on the far bank. Between the meadow and that higher piece of woodland ran the river, still full and fast with excess water.
There was just a chance.
Just supposing he were there, she must try to attract his attention. She thought of their ‘Tirra-lirra!’, but that had been agreed on as a warning call, and she certainly did not want to warn him off – if he were there…
Then she remembered the song she had sung, half to herself and half to him, while she cared for him after the death of the heron. She began at once:
‘I'll sing you one, O
Green grow the rushes, O.
What is your one, O?
One is one and all alone –’
Then she broke off, realizing that her singing voice in the open air hardly carried across the river. She remembered Mr Franklin telling her to read aloud almost in a shout to begin with, so that the mole would hear and come.
She began again, this time raising her voice and singing out so loudly that even Mrs Allum in the cottage heard, and paused in her work. She was an old woman, but this was a song much, much older. She remembered her own grandmother singing it to her when she – Mrs Allum – was a little girl.
‘I'll sing you two, O
Green grow the rushes, O.
What is your two, O?
Two, two, the lily-white boys
Clothed all in green, O.
One is one and all alone
And evermore shall be so.’
Bet thought, If only he had been able to swim, and if he were now among the trees on the far bank, and had heard her… Surely he would recognize the song and the voice of the singer?
She sang on, closely watching the water by the far bank.
‘I'll sing you three, O
Green grow the rushes, O.
What is your three, O?
Three, three, the rivals…’
On the surface of the water there were all kinds of ripples and eddies that seemed as if they must be being made by some creature moving in the river. But, traced back to its beginning, the disturbance always turned out to have been started by a water weed growing up from below, or, begun from above, by a willow branch low-dipping into the water. Bet went on singing:
‘I'll sing you four, O
Green grow the rushes, O –’
Now she noticed a dark blob in the water in the shadows just under the opposite bank. Whatever it was, it was certainly progressing through the water, but not towards her at all; instead, directly upstream.
She went on singing, and watching.
‘I'll sing you five, O
Green grow the rushes, O –’
The dark blob – whatever it was – was moving quite determinedly upstream, but all the time the current bore down upon it, so that its course was deflected. It was being carried sideways across the river, and downstream, and she saw that, inevitably, it would be carried to her side of the river, to the very spot on the bank where she stood.
She stopped singing.
She held her breath.
The dark blob reached her river bank. There was a flurry in the water, and something small and very wet and dark began clambering up the bank. For a moment she was not even sure that this was the mole. Then she was. She was so relieved, she felt almost like crying. She said, ‘I thought I might never see you again.’
‘A possibility,’ the mole admitted. He was still getting his breath back after the river crossing. ‘Yes, touch-and-go. Such volume of water coming down! But you should have remembered that a mole has forewarnings through the earth. I was not entirely unprepared.’
‘And I didn't know that a mole could swim,’ said Bet.
‘You have forgotten – as I have not – all those Scottish lochs less than 300 years ago.’
Bet said, ‘What about the other moles from this meadow?’
‘Similarly saved; and now no doubt battling among themselves for tunnelling space in the new territory.’ The mole dismissed them from the conversation. ‘Tell me: what of Franklin?’
‘Mr Franklin had to move out.’
‘And the cat, Moon?’
‘Left early, to avoid drowning.’
‘Pity,’ said the mole.
Bet said, ‘Are you going to move back into the meadow, now the flood's over?’
‘My dear child,’ said the mole, the flooding may be over, but all my tunnels will be waterlogged and some will have collapsed entirely.’
‘What will you do?’
‘In due course I shall set to. I must tunnel and repair, tunnel and repair. I still have all the strength and skill of a mole, in spite of any harm that witchcraft does me. Which brings me to this present moment. You are back, and I am here; and you are going to tell me – briefly – about your visit to your family. How was it?’
‘Good,’ said Bet. She was too frightened to say more: she could see how this conversation would end.
‘And your mother?’
‘Mum's lovely,’ said Bet. ‘We really get on. Really.’
‘Good,’ said the mole. ‘Nothing more?’
‘There's lots,’ said Bet. ‘But really – no, nothing more.’
‘Then,’ said the mole, ‘we can move on at once to the next thing: the ridding me of the last of the witchcraft.’
Here was the moment that Bet had been dreading… She said, ‘There's nowhere to sit now. The log's gone. The earth is soggy wet.’
The mole said, ‘There is no need to sit for the work we have in mind.’
Bet said, ‘I don't think I can do it. Not today.’
‘When, then?’
‘Later.’
‘Later?’
‘I've only just got back from my mum's. I need a bit of a rest. After that, perhaps.’
‘After that, perhaps…’ repeated Bet's words wonderingly. Then he said, ‘Your mind is dark to me.’
He said no more; and Bet did not answer him. She knew what she ought to say – what she ought to do. She could not. The mole's own heartfelt de
sire made no difference. She could not – she could not – give up his friendship.
Bet took a sudden, secret decision, blindly.
‘About getting rid of the witchcraft,’ she said, ‘I don't think it'll work; but, if you like, I'll try with you now.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now.’
‘You have changed your mind,’ said the mole. ‘And why should our process not work? It did before, when we shrank you to mole-size.’ Bet said nothing. The mole went on: ‘You know what I shall be wishing and willing; and, when you touch me, you must be wishing and willing the same thing. You're ready?’
Bet heard herself say flatly, ‘Yes.’ She bent towards him.
The mole's compact little body seemed to draw itself in even more compactly with the inward-working tension of his will. His head and shoulders lifted themselves towards Bet; she stretched out her hand, fingers extended, and touched him. For a few seconds they were in contact: then the mole gave a little cry of bafflement and disappointment, and fell back.
‘What happened?’ asked Bet; but she knew.
‘Nothing,’ said the mole. ‘Nothing. I cannot understand it. Nothing at all.’
They did not discuss or speculate: the mole was too bewildered, and Bet seemed to be in a hurry. Talking rather quickly, she said that she must be getting back into the cottage to help her grandmother with all the work that needed to be done after the floods. Putting everything to rights would take days and days, she said. Indeed, there might be no time at all for her to come into the meadow before visiting her family again.
Perhaps the mole was listening to all she said; perhaps he was thinking of other things. Bet could not be sure.
He said, ‘I shall be in the pasture whenever you return. My exact whereabouts will depend partly on how quickly the ground here dries out and becomes suitable for digging. It will also depend partly on – well, other things. But, anyway, as soon as possible I mean to reopen the exit shaft by the ash tree. You remember?’
The Little Gentleman Page 8
