After a while Wolf began to join in, and when she’d played the lullaby three times, he knew it by heart.
“Very nice, dear,” said Mary when he had sung it right through. “I like that tune, though it does make me feel a bit sleepy.”
“Why don’t you give it a go, Mommy?” said Wolf, and at the same time Mrs. Honeybee, sitting and watching the two mice, heads close together, whiskers mingling, said, “Come on, mother mouse. You give it a shot.”
“I can’t sing,” said Mary in answer to her son.
“How d’you know?” said Wolf. “You’ve never tried.”
“Now, then, mother,” said Mrs. Honeybee. “Here’s your note.”
“Go on, Mommy,” said Wolf.
“Ready?” said Mrs. Honeybee. “One…two…” And Mary Mouse opened her mouth and out of it came a lot of hoarse, discordant squeaks.
“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Honeybee.
“Oh, dear,” said Wolf.
“I told you!” said Mary angrily. “I suppose you think it’s funny to make a fool of your old mother, Wolfgang Amadeus.” And she flounced off.
Wolf followed, carrying the chocolate, while Mrs. Honeybee softly played and sang an old music-hall song that went:
“Oh, dear, what can
the matter be?”
That evening Wolf came alone.
The mother’s taken umbrage, Mrs. Honeybee thought. Wherever my little mouse gets his voice from, it’s certainly not from her. She played another new tune, a song by Schubert, and Wolf was very soon la-la-la-ing to it.
So quick and true was his musical ear that during the next few weeks he learned a good number of new songs. Not knowing any words to them didn’t, he found, keep him from enjoying the sound of his own voice, and the more he learned, the more pleasure he got from his singing. The candy was very welcome, of course, but he would have sung away to the lady’s accompaniment quite happily even if there had been no chocolate awaiting him.
And one morning there wasn’t.
Wolf knew by now that very soon after the grandfather clock in the hall had struck eleven times, the lady would come into the living room to play. She would already have put a chocolate on the piano top, though Wolf never took it until after his singing was over.
That morning the clock struck, and after ten minutes or so, Wolf came out of the hole and ran up onto the piano top.
Funny, he thought, she’s not usually late. He looked for the chocolate, but it wasn’t there.
He waited. The house was very silent.
By the time the grandfather clock struck midday, Wolf was becoming worried. His relationship with his accompanist had become very close—sometimes, he felt, they could almost read each other’s thoughts—and he now felt it was up to him to see if anything was the matter. I won’t tell Mommy, he said to himself. She’ll only forbid me to go.
The living room door was, as always, shut, but Wolf ran along a mouseway that came out into the hall and made his way toward the kitchen. As he entered it, he saw to his horror that the ginger cat was lying in its bed beside the stove. The cat’s horror was, however, far greater. At the sight of the mouse it leaped up and disappeared through the cat flap at top speed.
Wolf looked around the kitchen and then searched the other downstairs rooms, but there was no sign of the lady.
Made bold by the flight of the cat, Wolf decided to go directly up the stairs. It was a long, steep climb, but he was young and fit, and he soon found himself on an upstairs landing, where he had never been before.
There were several doorways at the sides of this landing, and through one of them, an open one, Wolf suddenly heard a groan.
– NINE –
A Rescue
MRS. HONEYBEE HAD awakened that morning expecting a perfectly ordinary day. As was now usual with her, she thought first of her mouse.
“My mice, I should say, I suppose, but of course the mother is just an average mouse,” she said. “Whereas my little mouse is the eighth wonder of the world! How beautifully he sings, and how well we communicate now—I teach, he learns, and so quickly, too. What a pity it is that humans and animals can’t communicate directly by speech. I could say ‘I’m Jane Honeybee,’ and he would reply ‘And I’m Whatever-it-is’—I really ought to give him a name—and I’d say ‘What kind of song would you like me to teach you today?’ and he might say ‘Oh, something cheery because it’s a lovely day,’ and then I might play ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’!’ from the musical Oklahoma!”
Mrs. Honeybee got out of bed and washed and dressed, went downstairs, made herself some breakfast, and fed the cat.
Later that morning, after she had puttered around the garden for a while and was thinking about going to the living room to put out a chocolate for the morning playing, she suddenly remembered that she’d forgotten to make her bed.
She went upstairs and stood at the open bedroom window for a moment, looking down the sunlit street and whistling “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’!” But then suddenly it wasn’t.
As Mrs. Honeybee turned away from the window, momentarily blinded by the glare of the sunlight, she tripped over a small footstool and fell. Because she was old and stiff, she fell awkwardly, and as she hit the ground she heard a horrible cracking sound and felt a white-hot pain in one ankle.
For a while she lay in a state of shock, but then she began to try to get to her feet (or rather to one foot—the other, she realized, could not possibly have any weight put on it). But she was quite shaky and her efforts were in vain.
“Oh, dear, Jane Honeybee!” she gasped as she lay on her bedroom floor. “What in the world’s to become of you?” And, half-fainting because the pain was so sharp, she gave a groan.
Wolf, running into the bedroom at the sound, was mystified. Why was the lady lying on the floor with her eyes closed? And that groan had been a most unhappy noise.
I must try to brighten her up, he thought, and in the most cheerful voice he could manage, he began to sing his version of the words to:
“Come on, everyone!
Sing and dance and run!
Making friends and
Having a lot of fun!”
Mrs. Honeybee opened her eyes.
“Oh, mouse!” she said. “You certainly are a good pal. You must have been wondering where I’d gone. You haven’t had your morning chocolate, and I was going to teach you a new song, too. Oh, dear, oh, dear! If only you could understand me, I’d ask you to go downstairs and pick up the phone and dial 911, and when they ask ‘What is wrong?’ you could answer ‘Mrs. Honeybee needs an ambulance.’ I need help, mouse, I need help.”
Wolf of course could not understand a word of this, but some instinct told him that the lady was in trouble. I can’t do anything, he thought. She needs a human being to come to her aid. And where are there other humans? Out on the street!
He ran across the room and climbed up the curtains and onto the windowsill. Mrs. Honeybee’s house was on a quiet tree-lined street where many people were not usually about. But at that very moment a man appeared, walking at a leisurely pace along the sidewalk toward the house. He was a tallish man, Wolf saw as he peered down, and he was dressed in a dark blue uniform and wearing a cap. His boots were big and black.
No good squeaking at him, Wolf thought. I must sing as loud as I can to attract his attention. What shall I sing? Quickly he thought about some new songs that he had learned. Mrs. Honeybee’s taste in music was broad, and by chance she had recently taught Wolf an old Beatles song.
At the top of his voice Wolf began to sing “Help!”
At the sound of that voice, so high, so pure, so true, the policeman stopped on his patrol and looked up at the bedroom window. Not only was he the local community policeman, but he also sang in the police choir, and what’s more, he was friendly with old Mrs. Honeybee, knowing her onetime reputation as a concert pianist. Sometimes, as he walked along the street, he had heard her singing as she played. But this was not her voice. This was in a far higher
register. In fact, it was the voice of a coloratura soprano.
The policeman squinted upward, but he could see nothing, for Wolf was hidden from his gaze by the ivy that covered the house. He stood a moment, smiling, for the voice, whoever it belonged to, was a very lovely one. Must be a recording she’s playing, he thought as the song ended. He was about to walk on when he thought he heard a noise coming from the bedroom, a noise that sounded almost like a groan.
“I hope the old lady’s all right,” he said to himself, and he went and knocked on the front door, then rang the bell.
No one came.
He looked through the letter slot and saw letters scattered on the hall floor. “Mrs. Honeybee!” the policeman shouted up at the bedroom window. “Is everything all right?” And in reply he heard a feeble “No.”
Quickly the policeman used his radio to contact his station sergeant. “It’s Mrs. Honeybee,” he said. “You know, the pianist lady. She’s in trouble, I think, Sarge. Better send for an ambulance. I’ll try to get into the house.”
So it was that Wolf’s singing brought help. The policeman borrowed a ladder from a neighbor and climbed up and through the open bedroom window to comfort Mrs. Honeybee and then to let the paramedics in when they arrived.
Wolf, hiding behind the curtains, watched as, very carefully, the paramedics lifted the lady onto a stretcher.
“The cat!” she said as they loaded her into the ambulance. “Who will feed the cat?”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. H.,” said the policeman. “I’ll go right now and ask the next-door neighbors to do it.” And off he went.
“But what about my mice?” said Mrs. Honeybee. “Who’ll give them their chocolate candy?”
“She’s wandering in her mind a bit,” said one of the paramedics.
“It’s the pain,” said his partner.
“Your mice will be all right,” they said.
“To think,” said Mrs. Honeybee, “that I was going to teach him ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’!’ ”
“Teach who?” said the first paramedic.
“My little mouse. He sings beautifully, you know.”
“Yes, love,” said the second soothingly. “Of course he does.”
– TEN –
A Composer
IF MRS. HONEYBEE had been young, the hospital would have set her broken ankle, put it in a cast or a bandage, and sent her home in no time at all.
As it was, the doctors decided to keep her in for a while because of the shock she had suffered, and because she did not quite seem to be in her right mind. She kept worrying, the nurses said, about a singing mouse to whom she was teaching songs!
So Wolf and Mary were alone in the house (apart from the cat, which they now never saw, and those brothers and sisters of Wolf who had not moved out but who never came back to the living room anyway).
Mary did not particularly miss the lady, but she did miss the chocolates. She had become hooked on them and was now suffering severe withdrawal symptoms. These made her short-tempered, and a good deal of the time she addressed her son as Wolfgang Amadeus.
Wolf missed his friend badly. What’s more, he had no idea when she would return. How he longed to see her sitting at the piano, smiling at him (for he now knew that when she showed her teeth at him, it did not—as would have been the case with most animals—mean that she was angry with him, but rather the reverse).
He missed his singing lessons very much, and though he practiced his scales every day as she had taught him, and sang all the songs he’d learned, it wasn’t the same without the accompanist.
Nor, of course, was he hearing any new melodies.
One evening when Mrs. Honeybee had been in the hospital for four or five days, Wolf was sitting and thinking on the piano stool—it made him feel closer to his friend—when suddenly an idea occurred to him.
She’s not here to teach me new tunes, but why don’t I make up my own music? Has any mouse ever composed music before, I wonder? No. But then has any mouse ever sung the way I can? Why shouldn’t I be a composer as well as a singer? Think how surprised she’ll be when I sing my own music to her, my very own, and I don’t mean dumpty-dumpty-dumpty stuff, but really difficult music like she sometimes plays, where I can really use my voice to the best advantage. What’s more, if I sing this piece of music—whatever it turns out to be—often enough to her, she can learn to play it, and then she can accompany me.
What a pity it is that animals and humans can’t communicate directly by speech. She could say “I’m Whoever-it-is”—I really ought to give her a name—and I’d say “I am the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mouse.”
Composition, Wolf found, was not at all easy. He spent many hours sitting on the piano top, warbling away without producing anything that satisfied him (he didn’t bother with words; the melodies were what interested him).
Then one day he hit upon a theme that he immediately knew would be the backbone of his piece.
He was sitting, not on the piano but upstairs on the sill of the now-closed window in the lady’s bedroom. He looked out, and there, high up in the sky, were swallows, hawking for insects in the warm evening air. A swooping, twisting, darting melody came into his head ready-made.
As he sang the first few bars of it, Wolf felt suddenly inspired, and the music poured out of his mouth as his voice swooped and twisted and darted like the birds. Somehow he seemed to know instinctively where this musical work of his would start, and the way it would continue, and how it would end. And when it did end, he sang it again and again, until he had every note firmly fixed in his head.
Then he ran downstairs to find his mother.
“Mommy!” he cried. “What d’you think! I am a composer!”
“Composer?” said Mary Mouse crustily (for she was missing those chocolate candies). “What on earth does that mean, Wolfgang Amadeus?”
“I have made up some music of my very own,” said Wolf. “Shall I sing it to you?”
“If you must,” said Mary.
Truth to tell, she had a very poor musical ear, and though she was proud of her son’s talents, she derived little pleasure from most of the songs he sang. But now as she listened, she found herself at first interested, and then moved, and finally captivated by the beauty of the music that he was singing, by its lightness, its airiness, its sheer joyfulness.
“Oh, Wolf dear!” she said when he had finished. “That was really lovely! Does it have a name?”
“Yes,” said Wolf. “That is my ‘Swallow Sonata.’ ”
– ELEVEN –
A Recital
WHEN MRS. HONEYBEE did come home, she was on crutches and a nurse was with her. The first thing Mrs. Honeybee thought about was her mouse, but she didn’t say anything to the nurse. She had realized that in the hospital she had babbled on a bit about her singing mouse—they had probably thought she was senile—but now that she was back home, she knew that she wanted the matter kept secret. If it got out that she had the world’s first singing mouse beneath her roof, the publicity would be overwhelming and she would never again have a moment’s peace.
The first thing she did was to go to her grand piano and, leaning one crutch against the wall and balancing with the other, tap out with one finger “There’s No Place Like Home.”
“You’ll have a tough time playing, dear,” said the nurse, “with that foot in a cast.”
“I’ll just have to manage with one pedal for the time being,” said Mrs. Honeybee.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing you won’t be able to manage,” said the nurse, “and that’s the stairs. We’ll have to make you up a bed downstairs. Where shall it be? In your den?”
“No, here, please,” said Mrs. Honeybee. “Here in the living room, right next to my beloved piano.”
And very near my beloved mouse, she thought.
“There’s a sort of daybed,” she said, “that I use out in the garden. You’ll find it in the conservatory at the back of the house. I’ll be with you in half a min
ute.” And when the nurse had left the room, she hopped across to the candy tin. She opened a fresh packet of chocolates, then put not one but two on the piano stool before following the nurse.
When they came back to make up the bed, the chocolates, Mrs. Honeybee saw immediately, were gone.
“Look, Mommy!” Wolf had said. “One each!”
“Thank goodness!” Mary had cried, and she had begun to gobble her chocolate like a crazy thing.
Once she was sure that Mrs. Honeybee had everything she wanted, the nurse left, saying that she would be back the next morning. As soon as she had gone, Mrs. Honeybee put out another double ration of candy, on the piano top this time, and sat on the stool and waited.
In the mousehole Mary said, “She’s put out some more, I can smell it. Come on, Wolf!”
“Okay, Mommy,” said Wolf, and together they came out and ran up the leg of the piano and onto the top.
“One each again!” squeaked Mary, and she attacked her chocolate eagerly.
Wolf did not touch his. Instead he sat above middle C, above STEINWAY & SONS, and gazed fondly at Mrs. Honeybee’s face while she gazed fondly back.
Oh, how glad I am to see you again, each thought. (Mary thought the same, but she was referring to the chocolate candy.)
Should I sing to her? wondered Wolf. Should I sing her my very own composition now?
But then something told him, No, this is not the moment. I want her to hear it first when we’re alone together. Mommy might interrupt, and anyway she’s making a lot of noise gobbling chocolate. I’ll wait for the right time.
“Tomorrow,” said Mrs. Honeybee, “we’ll have some music, okay, mouse? Just now I’m going to bed. I’m a bit tired.”
However, that night she could not get to sleep. It was so odd to be in bed in the living room, beside the grand piano. But then, maybe by chance, or maybe because he sensed that this was what a cradle song was designed to do, Wolf began to sing, very softly, the Chopin lullaby. In a matter of minutes, Mrs. Honeybee fell asleep.
A Mouse Called Wolf Page 3
