‘They’m separated, huh?’
‘Well, yes, they are, just at the moment,’ said Flora. ‘That’s why I’m out here – to fetch my mother and my little sister and take them back to school. They’ll be safe there, I hope, and anyway I want them to meet my boyfriend. He’s called Buck.’
‘Buck?’ said the rabbit. ‘You got a rabbit for a boyfriend?’
‘No, no, he’s a mouse. He’s ever so handsome. He’s pure white, you know, snowy-white, and he’s got beautiful pink eyes.’
‘And six legs and a pair of dear little wings, I suppose,’ said the rabbit. ‘I got to hand it to you, mouse. You’m the craziest. I dunno about schoolmouse, seems to me ’tis more fool mouse,’ and with these parting words he turned and disappeared down his burrow.
Hyacinth and Love-in-a-mist were unworried at the sound of the tractor’s approach. They had grown used to its regular visits to collect a load of straw. What they had not bargained for was that one day, as the stack diminished in size, they might become part of that load.
That morning it so happened that they had made their way to the very edge of the stack, to watch out for Ragged Robin’s return, when the tractor driver began to load his trailer.
‘Dratted mice!’ he said, as he lifted a bale and found two of the creatures hiding beneath it, but before he could do anything, they had leapt on to the bed of the trailer and hidden themselves among the bales already there.
When the tractor returned across the field with its load, Flora had been on the point of leaving the shelter of the rabbit burrow. But hearing it approach, she forced herself to observe it carefully as it went by. It is all part of my education, she told herself, to learn about such things. She noted the features of the great red monster, its driver perched high in his cab, and she ran her eye down the load of straw bales.
Suddenly she saw, right at the bottom of the load, two anxious faces peeping out between a couple of bales on the bed. One, a small one, she did not recognize. The other she did.
‘Mother!’ yelled Flora at the top of her voice, and she ran out of the rabbit hole and scuttled along beside the trailer.
‘It’s our Flora,’ said Hyacinth to Love-in-a-mist.
‘Jump, Mother! Jump!’ cried Flora.
‘Jump, Lovey,’ said Hyacinth.
‘But, Mum . . .’ said Love-in-a-mist.
‘No buts,’ said Hyacinth.
For a mouse, a leap from such a height is the equivalent of a man plunging off the top of a tall building. But mice fall light, and the lush grass cushioned their landing so that they bounced, unhurt.
‘Flora!’ yelled Hyacinth. ‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Come to fetch you, Mother,’ said Flora.
‘But why did your father not come back? I told him to.’
‘Is Dad all right?’ said Love-in-a-mist.
‘You must be Love-in-a-mist,’ said Flora. ‘You have got a long name, haven’t you?’
‘Mum usually calls me Lovey.’
‘Come on then, Lovey,’ said Flora. ‘We must all hurry back to school and then I can explain everything.’
‘Are you still in the Infants?’ asked Hyacinth when they arrived.
‘Oh no, Mother,’ said Flora. ‘I’m a Lower Junior now,’ and she led the way to her classroom.
In her absence Ragged Robin and Buck had spent their time in conversation. Buck was feeling guilty at having wounded Flora’s father, and Robin was touched at his obvious concern.
‘Don’t worry, my boy,’ he said. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ but in fact they said a great deal to one another.
Robin wanted to know all about pet mice and Buck about schoolmice.
‘It’s this reading business that amazes me, Robin,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how Flora does it. And she can count to thirty-one, and she knows a fantastic lot of things. Education, she calls it. I don’t even know what the word means.’
‘Me neither, Buck,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve been a schoolmouse all my life, but you could count the things I know on the toes of one foot.’
‘Talking of feet,’ Buck said, ‘you should be resting yours. Why not come on down to my place, you’ll find it quite comfy.’
So off they went to the Lower Junior classroom, and Robin followed Buck down the hole beneath the sink.
It was indeed a comfortable den, for Buck had pulled a good deal of the lagging off the water pipes, and the two mice took their ease on the most comfortable of thick beds of yellow felt.
The time passed pleasantly as they chatted, and then at last they heard voices above.
‘They’re here!’ said Robin, and he made his way up through the hole in the floorboards and limped, three-legged, towards his wife.
‘Hyce, my dear!’ he cried. ‘You’re back!’
Hyacinth regarded her scruffy husband with a stern eye.
‘You’ve been fighting,’ she said.
‘Well, yes,’ said Robin.
‘How could you! You are too old for such behaviour.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Robin.
‘You started it, I’ve no doubt. You went and picked a fight with someone.’
‘Well, no,’ said Robin.
‘And now you’ve got hurt. Why can’t you act your age?’
‘But, Hyce . . .’ said Robin.
‘I’d just like to get hold of the mouse that did it,’ said Hyacinth.
‘But, Mother . . .’ said Flora.
‘No buts,’ said Hyacinth.
At this point Buck emerged from the hole. He looked, as usual, beautifully groomed, with not a hair out of place. His white coat gleamed, his whiskers were neatly combed.
He lowered the gaze of his pink eyes before Hyacinth’s astonished stare.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I am the mouse that did it.’
For an instant Hyacinth stood stock-still.
Then she leapt at Buck and fastened her needle-sharp teeth in the end of his nose.
TWELVE
In Which Hyacinth Makes an Apology
‘Your Bummy,’ said Buck that night, ‘is a bost fierce bouse.’
Flora licked his swollen snout tenderly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It all happened so quickly. I had no time to explain.’
‘She’s bade a bess of by dose,’ said Buck.
‘Lie down and rest,’ said Flora, arranging the felt bedding more comfortably around him. ‘I expect she’ll say she’s sorry in her own good time.’
But Hyacinth was in no mood for apologies. That great white monstrosity of a mouse had bitten her poor little husband, so she had responded in kind. ‘A nose for a foot and a tooth for a tooth,’ she said to Robin, back in their old nest under the staffroom floor.
‘You certainly clobbered him, Hyce,’ said Robin.
His feelings were muddled. He felt sorry for his new friend, and at the same time pleased that his wife had sprung to avenge his injury.
‘You won’t do it again though, will you?’ he said. ‘Now that everything has been explained. I mean, he is one of the family now.’
Hyacinth did not answer.
‘I wish I had a boyfriend.’ said Lovey.
‘You are much too young,’ said her mother. ‘Why, it seems only yesterday that you were born, here, in this very spot.’
‘Buck’s place is nice,’ said Robin. ‘It’s much roomier than this and ever so well furnished. Why don’t we move in with him and Flora – what d’you say, Hyce?’
But once again Hyacinth did not answer, and Robin knew better than to nag her.
As the next evening approached, only one of the five mice in the school had had a good day’s sleep and that was Lovey. Ragged Robin’s foot and Buck’s nose allowed them no more than a fitful doze, and Flora and Hyacinth were deep in thought.
Each had a problem.
Under the boards in the staffroom Hyacinth now wrestled with her conscience. Should she say she was sorry? She wasn’t sorry, but should she say she was? How could they move
in with Flora and Buck unless she did say so? What should she do?
Under the sink in the Lower Junior classroom Flora fretted about her future. I shouldn’t be here, she said to herself, the summer term will soon be starting and it’s time I became a Top Junior. I’m sure I could cope with the work. I want to move up, but I don’t want to move house. What shall I do?
As the light faded, Flora’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of Lovey.
‘There’s a meeting, Flora,’ she said. ‘In the staffroom. Now, Mum says,’ and away she went.
Flora and Buck made their way to the staffroom, and as soon as they entered, Robin greeted them heartily.
‘Flora, dear!’ he cried. ‘Buck, my boy! How are you feeling?’
‘Buch better, thag you, Robid,’ said Buck. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, I’m on the mend,’ said Robin. ‘Plenty of life in the old mouse yet.’
An awkward silence followed. Neither of the male mice could think of anything further to say, and Flora’s feelings towards her mother were less than kindly. She summoned us here, she thought, so let her get on with it.
After a while Hyacinth spoke.
‘Flora,’ she said heavily, ‘I owe you an apology.’
‘Me, Mother?’ said Flora, looking sideways at Buck’s nose.
‘Yes,’ said Hyacinth. ‘I was hasty. I did not realize that this . . . person . . .’
‘Buck,’ said Flora. ‘His name is Buck.’
‘. . . that Buck was a friend of yours.’
‘It’s not me you should be apologizing to, Mother,’ said Flora.
‘But . . .’ began Hyacinth.
‘No buts,’ said Flora in so Hyacinth-like a way that Robin was filled with delight. If a mouse could wag its tail like a dog, he’d have wagged his, if he’d had one.
‘After all,’ said Flora, ‘if we are all to live together as one happy family, we don’t want any more bad blood.’
‘Or any more good blood,’ said Robin.
‘Well, that was really why I called the meeting,’ said Hyacinth hastily, ‘to see if you would be willing – you and Buck, that is – for your father and Lovey and me to share your accommodation. It’s very comfortable and roomy, I hear, and it would be nice to be all together, wouldn’t it?’
‘On one condition, Mother,’ said Flora firmly.
‘What’s that?’
‘Say you’re sorry to Buck.’
‘It doesn’t batter,’ said Buck. ‘Least said, soonest bended, eh, Robid?’
Robin did not answer. Go on, Hyce, he thought, say it, even if you don’t mean it. It’ll do me a power of good to hear you eating humble pie.
Hyacinth looked at the white mouse’s still swollen snout. She took a deep breath.
‘Buck,’ she said, ‘I am sorry that I bit your nose,’ and to her surprise, she found she meant it.
‘Don’t bention it,’ said Buck.
‘Good old Hyce,’ said Robin.
‘Let’s all go to our place,’ said Flora.
‘Yippee!’ cried Lovey, and away they went.
The last few days of the Easter holidays slipped by pleasantly enough.
Both Robin’s and Buck’s injuries healed well, and the white mouse found himself thoroughly accepted by Flora’s family.
He and Robin were already firm friends, and for the little Lovey he was the perfect big brother. The way to Hyacinth’s heart, he found, was flattery.
Accustomed as she was to nothing better than such compliments as ‘Good old Hyce’, she was delighted when, for instance, Buck passed a remark on the beauty of her eyes. ‘Oh, the depth of blackness in those shining orbs, Hyacinth,’ he murmured, fixing her with his pink ones, and she bridled with pleasure.
Only Flora was restless. As the beginning of the summer term drew near, she haunted the Top Junior classroom. She was determined to move up a class, yet she did not want to leave the comfortable home under the Lower Junior sink.
Then, on the very last day of the holidays, she found the solution. The Top Junior classroom was much the biggest in the school, and one end of it had been set aside as a library area.
Here were not only well-stocked bookshelves, but also a large table on which various books of interest were always left open, to encourage children to look through them. There were atlases and dictionaries and encyclopaedias and many others.
Flora was standing in front of one of these, polishing up her reading skills ready for term time. It was a pictorial dictionary, open at pages dealing with the letter C. The picture was of a man in a suit, carrying a rolled umbrella and a briefcase and in the act of stepping into a railway carriage. It meant nothing to Flora, but she read the words beneath.
That’s the way to do it, thought Flora. I don’t have to leave home. I can commute to work and back each day.
THIRTEEN
In Which Flora Has a Brainwave
Schoolchildren look forward to the holidays and grumble about having to go back to school.
Schoolmice look forward to term time and are less happy when the school is closed and they have the place to themselves. To be sure, it’s nice to be able to run about wherever they like, and the peace and quiet is pleasant, but food in holiday time is much harder to come by.
Like all mice, Flora and her family could eat most things, but when there were not children around, their diet was nothing like as varied. They needed to venture outside to gnaw at roots and bulbs, and they ate a great many insects, woodlice in particular being especially crunchy, but the holidays were still a thin time.
For the schoolmice, then, that first day of the summer term was quite a treat. Flora’s knowledge of the cleaning ladies’ routine meant that she could direct the family to rooms as yet unswept: here they quickly snapped up biscuit crumbs and apple cores and spilled fragments of potato crisps of various flavours (cheese and onion being the favourite) before the arrival of Hoover and broom and dustpan and brush.
That first day in the Top Junior classroom led Flora to another breakthrough. Here there was no handy hole in the wall as in the Infants, no convenient bookshelf as in the Lower Juniors, and already it was plain to her that the library area would be her happiest hunting ground in her search for knowledge.
At lunchtime and in both the morning and afternoon breaks, she came out of hiding and ran busily about the library table, studying the open books.
One of these, the same pictorial dictionary in which she had found ‘commuter’, had been used that very day and was no longer open at the letter C. The user by chance had been Buck’s late owner. Tommy, as usual, was making a nuisance of himself, and the Headmistress had sent him to the library table and told him to sit quietly and look at a book.
Tommy had flicked the pages about aimlessly until he chanced upon a picture that interested him. It was of a cowboy, astride a madly bucking bronco. He went into a daydream in which he defeated all-comers at the rodeo, and he left the book open there.
The word that happened to catch Flora’s eye was the one immediately before ‘rodeo’.
Rodent
it said. Flora read on.
Rodents have distinctive chisel-like teeth. These teeth grow throughout life as they are worn away by gnawing. Common rodents are rats and mice, and the first warning sign that a building is infested by them is the discovery of their droppings. Poison may then be used against these pests.
Musmors, thought Flora! Don’t I know it! And she remembered poor Sweet William and all the others who had eaten the dreaded blue pellets. That’s why the people used the poison, she said to herself, because they found mouse droppings about the school. They mustn’t find ours.
When the commuter arrived home from work, she told the others what she had read.
‘Then we must be careful not to leave our droppings about in future,’ said Hyacinth.
‘That’s all very well, Hyce,’ said Robin, ‘but a mouse has got to do what a mouse has got to do.’
‘Perhaps we should u
se just one place, under the floorboards?’ said Buck.
‘It’d get ever so pongy,’ said Lovey.
‘I’ll think of something,’ said Flora.
While the others were out foraging (under strict orders not to leave any evidence about), Flora lay in the hole beneath the sink, pondering the problem. She happened to be facing towards the drainpipe, and in her mind’s eyes she saw the waste water pouring down inside, carrying away the rinsings of paint pots and brushes and the dirt from childish hands.
Where to, she thought? Where does the gurgling water go?
Bestirring herself, she set out to follow the line of the pipe under-floor. She knew that it took a right-angled turn and went along what was, so to speak, the side wall of their quarters, but she had never explored its course further. Through a sizeable hole in the outer wall of the school it disappeared at last, emerging, Flora found, above a square, brick-built soakaway in which was set a metal grating.
‘Perfect!’ said Flora. ‘The most modern form of sanitation, a water closet, where all will be flushed away. Here shall all our droppings drop.’
And from that day on, they did, each mouse making the short journey to the drainhole whenever he or she felt the call of nature.
‘A great idea that, don’t you think?’ said Buck, a week or so later, when Flora, having first paid a visit to the soakaway, had commuted to work.
‘She’s no fool, our Flora,’ said Hyacinth.
‘It’s all this education,’ said Ragged Robin. ‘I never had none.’
‘You never had any, Dad,’ corrected Lovey.
Robin flared up at this piece of cheek from his younger daughter.
‘You keep your trap shut, miss,’ he said.
‘Robin!’ said Hyacinth warningly, for this was bad language among mice, and Lovey moved behind her mother for luck.
But later that evening, when Flora had returned from her classroom and the others were going out and about, Lovey stayed behind for a moment.
‘Flora,’ she said.
The Schoolmouse Page 5
