The Second Wave (The Dorset Squirrels)

by Michael Tod

  Marguerite wriggled out of the drey, sat on a branch and groomed herself in the sunshine, licking her fur and combing her tail hairs with her claws. Soon Juniper followed her.

  ‘Perfect day for a Sun-day,’ he said, looking round at the tops of the pine trees where the rain-soaked needles were steaming away the night’s moisture, then down to the pool, which he could glimpse through the tree-trunks below. He sat there, as he did on most fine mornings, combing his whiskers and enjoying the colour of the pool. It was a different colour every day. Sometimes, as now, it would be blue. On other mornings it would start green and change through several shades to turquoise and eau-de-Nil. Even on overcast days it usually ended up that intense sapphire colour that had earned it the Blue tag and which attracted humans to come and see it summer after summer.

  Marguerite and her family climbed head first down the trunk of their tree to forage, pausing below branch level to look about and scent for possible danger. Juniper spoke the Kernel:

  A watchful squirrel

  Survives to breed and father –

  More watchful squirrels.

  Kernels as important as this one could not be repeated too often. Knowing these gave the youngsters the greatest chance of survival in a world in which a squirrel would be regarded by many animals as nothing more than a welcome meal.

  It is so peaceful here, now that the Greys have gone, Marguerite was thinking. So pleasant to live quietly in this beautiful place with her life-mate and their youngsters after the frenetic action of the previous two years. And yet … No, she didn’t really enjoy all that activity, and yet … She had to admit to herself that it was exciting having to plan for your very survival, using your wits, and your energy and skills, to keep one leap ahead of your enemies…

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chip woke with a start. It was still dark, but he knew he must be out of the warmth of the dried grass before his parents discovered that he had sinned by indulging himself with comfort. He thought there was a little time yet before his parents would wake, so he wriggled down again into the warm nest. The storm must have blown itself out. There was no wind-sound, though he could feel vibrations through the ground from the sea-swell pounding the rocky shoreline.

  He lay there, listening to be breathing of his sleeping parents, trying to identify an unfamiliar feeling that surrounded him. He tried to focus on it, straining his mind and his whiskers to pick up whatever it was. In a way it resembled the warmth of the grass around his body, but it was more subtle than that. It came from the wood above him, from the Man-den, the hut on its little plateau amongst the huge boulders.

  There were no men there – he would have scented and heard them moving long before this – but it was Man-associated. It was something like the ‘cared for’ feeling he remembered from his mother when she has suckled him back in the spring. Then, in a distant, painful memory, he recalled his grandfather, Old Sarsen, saying, ‘Don’t get squimpish about that youngster. He’s not yours. You have only borne him to serve the Sun.’ And over the next few days that warm, cared-for feeling had been withdrawn.

  Now he sensed that the hut was cared for, by humans. Could things be cared for? Could squirrels themselves ever be cared for except when they were dreylings? He hugged himself with the excitement of the thought.

  A finger or grey light probed under the hut. Chip quietly destroyed his nest in the corner and moved away from the scattered grass to lie down on the cold soul until his parents woke. They lay as they taught him to, with their tails away from their bodies so as not to indulge in the warmth these might unworthily give them. He copied them and shivered.

  A herring-gull, perched on the ridge of the hut above, called raucously. Crag and Rusty sat up at the same time and Rusty reached out and shook her son’s shoulder where he lay, pretending to be asleep. ‘Time for prayers, Chip-Son,’ she told him.

  Crag glowered at her.

  ‘Chip, you must wake now,’ she said forcing herself to sound hard and uncaring.

  The three went out into the chill of the dawn air. If the sun was up over the eastern sea, it was hidden by the vast stone bulk of Portland behind them. Crag climbed on to a small rock, gave a quick look round for danger and, seeing none, said the Morning Prayer;

  Be not too wrathful,

  Oh Great Sun, on those squirrels –

  Who sinned in the night.

  Chip shifted uncomfortably as Crag went on.

  Let us serve your needs

  For the whole of this your day

  Weak though we may be.

  Let us find sustenance,’ Crag said, after the long silence that followed, and only then could they start to forage amongst the rocks for food.

  On the seaward side of the hut a spring of clear water trickled down through small pools overhung with brambles. Each drank from the stream in turn; first Crag, then Rusty, then Chip.

  They found a few roots and a puffball which, though beginning to set spores, was just edible. These, with a few hard-pipped blackberries and some crimson hips, made up their meagre breakfast. Then Crag saw some sloes on a stunted blackthorn bush between two rocks and allowed each of them one of the mouth-drying fruit, before ordering Rusty and Chip to follow him along a Man-track that wound between the boulders.

  The light was stronger now and Chip could see many more of the wooden Man-dens between the rocks. Most were brightly coloured and radiated that odd cared-for feeling he had sensed during the night, but a few were dilapidated and forlorn, the wood unpainted and weathered grey, their doors and windows hanging open or broken.

  None of the huts appeared to be occupied. Maybe the humans used them only in summer, Chip thought, as Crag hurried them on. His shoulder brushed against a plant with brown-edged leaves that leaned over the path, and little hooked seeds clung to his fur. He stopped to try to comb them out, but burdocks had evolved the tiny hooks to take their seeds well away from the parent plants, and they were not easy to remove.

  Seeing that Chip had stopped, Crag called back over his shoulder, ‘Keep going. We must avoid meeting humans. They are trouble, and their dogs will chase us.’

  The sun cleared the top of the cliffs as they hopped along the path which wound in and out, up and down, through the tumbled boulders, and more and more Man-signs were to be seen. Wet paper bags and stinking cigarette-ends littered the sides of the Man-track. Chip found a rusty nail and showed it to Crag, expecting him to collect it as they usually did for the Temple, but was brusquely told, ‘We’ll have to leave it.’

  His father did, however, pick it up and hide it out of human sight.

  Rounding the last of the rocks at the end of the path, they could see ahead of them rows of stone Man-dens ranged behind the great bank of pebbles that curved away into the distance. Crag signalled to them to lie low whilst he climbed up on to a large boulder to plan a route. When he re-joined them, he led them away from the track and down on to the beach.

  The smooth round stones here were bigger than the squirrels themselves, and they hopped from one stone to another, keeping on the seaward side of the debris forming the high-tide line.

  Chip wanted to stop and look. Huge rollers, a legacy of the previous day’s storm, towered in the air before crashing down in a mass of foam and rushing up the beach as though intent on snatching the animals and dragging them down into the depths. Then the waves, losing their momentum, drew back over the stones, which rubbed and tumbled against each other, groaning like a great beast in its death throes, only to be tossed forward yet again. But Crag, with that familiar ‘nothing will stop me now’ look in his eye, urged them on.

  After they passed the Man-dens and some brightly painted boats drawn up on the beach, there was nothing on their right-paw side between them and the sky but the top of the pebble bank, whilst to their left the empty sea stretched away to a far horizon. They hurried on, and Portland, well behind them now, appeared smaller each time they glanced back.

  Chip was hungry again.

  It got harder an
d harder to make progress along the beach. The pebbles were smaller now, about the size of a squirrel’s head, and each rolled underfoot in a way that quickly tired their legs. Rusty called to Crag, ‘It might be easier if we followed that line of seaweed.’ She indicated the high-tide mark.

  ‘Things are not meant to be easy,’ Crag told her.

  ‘If we were not slipping about so, I think we could make better time. Old Sarsen said we were to leave Portland and it is our duty to go as quickly as we can. That’s all I meant.’ She added lamely, as Crag glowered at her.

  ‘Very well,’ he conceded. ‘But try to keep up with me. Both of you!’

  They hopped up the beach and then from one clump of seaweed to the next, clambering over twisted pieces of smooth grey driftwood and splintered spars and old planks tossed up by the sea. Chip wanted to sense and examine all of them, but Crag kept urging them on. The waves to the left continually rushed up the beach, churning the pebbles, grinding them even smaller.

  ‘Don’t hang back,’ Crag growled over his shoulder when Chip stopped and sniffed at the oil-soaked feathers of a dead guillemot. Chip reached out, however, and touched the sticky black stuff covering the bird before scrambling on after his parents.

  Some of the black stuff had stuck to his paw, so he rubbed it on his belly-fur to try to clean it. Looking down, he could see that the stuff was now there as well. He tried to lick it off, but the taste was foul on his tongue.

  ‘Don’t lag behind,’ Crag shouted back to him, and Chip hurried to catch up, leaving a grey mark on every pebble that his paw touched. The smell of the oil was now making him feel ill.

  At High Sun Crag called a halt when he sound the dried-up body of a dogfish. He thanked the Sun for providing them with unsought sustenance and the three of them gnawed through the rough skin to the stinking, crisp meat within. Chip ate only a little, still feeling queasy, then wandered away from his parents to poke about amongst the strange and fascinating stones and wood.

  He was holding up a pebble with a hole right through it when his eye was caught by a glint from a disc of bright metal near his feet. He picked it up. It was as golden as the sun and as round as a pebble one way, but thin and flat the other. He turned it over in his paws. It has been smoothed by rubbing against the pebbles, but he could see that there was a human’s head on one side and strange squiggles and shapes on the other. He showed it first to his mother, Rusty, then to Crag, who bit it with his sharp teeth. ‘Soft and useless metal,’ he pronounced. ‘No gift for the Sun!’ Throwing the golden coin down the beach, he told them to follow him.

  After another mile of tiring progress Crag led the weary squirrels to the top of the ridge. Beyond them was the lagoon that they had first seen from the cliff-top. It separated the pebble bank from the green fields of the Mainland, though at one place they could see that the lagoon narrowed near a Man-den, and the box-things that humans travelled in were passing over the water at that point.

  Crag decided that they would go that way and led them down from the ridge. Chip was pleased when they reached an area where the ground was flatter, and the pebbles, bound together with clay, no longer rolled underfoot. Tufty sea-pink, sea campion and other shoreline vegetation was growing between the stones in the hard ground and a huge hare, disturbed by the squirrels, rushed out of its form and lolloped up the beach and on to the loose pebbles, which rattled and clattered behind its enormous back feet.

  The air chilled as the sun dropped behind the pebble bank. Chip hoped that they would soon stop so that he could rest at last, with a warm place to sleep, but Crag had other ideas. He kept urging his family on until they came to the wide, smooth Man-track which smelt like the stuff on the guillemot’s feathers, and where the humans’ box-things rushed along. The squirrels crouched, waiting in the dusk, until the roadway was clear, then scurried across it and down through the wiry grass of the bank on the far side. They found themselves in a large hollow amongst the hulking shapes of boats and many new and interesting smells.

  Some of the boats were on the ground, others up on trailers ready to be towed away for winter storage. The squirrels prowled round the unfamiliar objects, vainly trying to work out what they were. The scent of dogs was faint on the grass but nauseatingly strong on the wheels of the boat trailers, even though some hours old. Crag set out to find a safe sleeping place as high above the ground as he could.

  A rope hung from the bow of a sailing cruiser cradled in its trailer near the road. Crag caught at this as it swung in the wind and climbed up it to the deck. A mast was lashed horizontally on top of the cabin, and from this he called down to Rusty and Chip to follow him. They chased the evasive rope-end and clambered up to join him, whilst he nosed about until he found a gap under the cabin door large enough for them to squeeze through. It was warm inside the cabin and Chip hopped up on to a soft seat, only to be ordered down to the wooden floor.

  ‘Don’t indulge yourself, young one,’ Crag growled.

  As darkness fell, the pungent smell of the oil on Chip’s fur filled the airless confines of the cabin and they were all bothered by the swish, swish, swish of the cars passing on the road alongside them. In the early hours of the morning these sounds died away, but were soon replaced by the slap, slap, slap of ropes against the masts of other craft nearby when a night wind rose and eddied about in the hollow where the boats were resting.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The first glow of dawn was showing in the eastern sky beyond Portland Harbour when the squirrels in the boat were awakened by the sound of human voices outside. Crag hopped up on to one of the cabin seat and peered out through the round glass into the grey light. The largest travelling-thing he had ever seen had stopped on the roadside and men were getting out of it and coming down the bank, each carrying a box and a long, thin bag. They passed the squirrels’ hiding place and, by moving to another porthole, Crag could see the men joining sticks together and settling down at the water’s edge to dangle things that he could not quite see in the rising waters near the bridge.

  Chip lay quietly on the floor savouring the same cared-for feeling from the fabric of the boat as he had sensed beneath the hut on the previous night. Crag hopped down from the seat.

  ‘We must stay in here for a while,’ he said before they commenced the Morning Prayer, which was followed by a longer than usual period for contemplation of their sins. Chip was glad of the extra rest-time, though he tried not to let it show, just storing away the memory of his enjoyment of the cared-for feeling, to be purged by apologies to the Sun at the next prayer session.

  Crag climbed back on to the seat and watched through the round window.

  The sun had climbed high in the sky over Portland when the coach returned to pick up the fishermen, who joked and chaffed one another as they passed the boat on its trailer at the head of the little beach, before swinging themselves up into the vehicle.

  As it pulled away, the squirrels, thinking that it was now safe to leave the boat, were about to squeeze under the cabin door when another travelling-box, squarer than most and with a cloth-covered back, came bumping down over the gravel track from the road. They did not move as the Land Rover backed up to the front of the trailer. Crag, watching awkwardly through one of the forward portholes, saw two humans leave the vehicle and come towards the boat. One went out of his sight, but he saw the other bend down and suddenly the angle of the boat’s floor changed as the bow was lifted and the trailer was connected to the towing-hook. Crag dug his claws into the fabric of the seat and held tight, but Rusty and Chip were tumbled and thrown into a heap by the unexpected movement. They got up and dusted their fur, and Chip looked apprehensively at his parents.

  Rusty, seeing her son’s concern, said, ‘The Sun must have this planned for us. I am sure that we will be safe.’ Then, turning to Crag, she asked, ‘Can we have the Danger Prayer?’

  Crag, peering through the porthole, tried to keep his balance while the boat rocked and tilted as the trailer carrying it was towed up the unev
en bank and on to the road. He dug his claws into the fabric again and said in a loud voice,

  We worthless squirrels,

  Not understanding your plans

  Crave your protection.

  It is the Unknown

  That we fear. In your good time

  Please enlighten us.

  The rocking stopped, and Crag saw the water of the lagoon pass below them as the Land Rover, with its boat-trailer in tow, crossed the bridge to the Mainland, then pulled up a hill with Man-dens on either side. The sensation was totally alien to him. Never in his entire life had he been inside, or even on, anything that moved in this way. He tried to establish what was reality. About him was the boat, apparently still, apart from a slight rocking motion, but, if he could believe his eyes, the world was moving past him.

  He called to Rusty, who was crouched on the floor with Chip, ‘Come up here and look at this. Tell me what you see.’

  She hopped up on to the seat and Chip, risking his father’s wrath, also hopped up, and the three of them each stared out through a porthole.

  Man-dens and great trees were rushing past heir eyes. One huge Man-den had a cliff of its own at the far end, soaring up into the sky. Seeing it, Chip felt a strong urge to be on familiar rocks again, high up where he could observe his surroundings and the world was a stable place.

  The passing trees created a different and less familiar urge in him, though equally strong. The soft-looking brown stuff that covered their trunks and branches attracted him. His claws itched, and he sensed instinctively that he would feel secure if he could only dig them deep into it.