by Gene Kemp
Suddenly Daddy came up to them.
‘You seem miserable, Thomas. Oh, yes, of course, Blossom’s got that awful child with her. Here, go and buy yourself something with this.’
Thomas ran to the nearest shop, where he purchased a particularly sticky bar of toffee which he ate all over the house, putting his fingers everywhere. He didn’t realize he was doing this; he was just thinking of all the horrible names he would like to call Gwendolyn, but Mummy found the traces.
‘Look at the mess you’ve made and the hall’s just been painted. Now go upstairs and wash your hands, and clean your teeth while you’re about it. They’re like yellow fangs.’
The toothpaste was minty and frothy. Thomas used a lot of it, building up a fine lather. He stuck his head out of the window and surveyed the garden. Everything was growing beautifully and he could see the most marvellous red and yellow tulip.
‘I wonder if I can spit in it?’ he thought, leaning far out of the window and taking careful aim.
At that very moment, Daddy chose to walk along the path and the frothy cloud dropped on his head and started to trickle into his eyes. The roar this time was really awe-inspiring, like fifty lions. Thomas crouched down under the bathroom window. Too late he thought of seeking refuge elsewhere. Daddy, like an avenging Thor with his thunderbolt, loomed large and terrible in the doorway, wiping off large quantities of toothpaste.
‘Bed,’ he remarked grimly, ‘is the only place for you today.’
He scooped Thomas under one arm, carried him into his room and dumped him on the bed.
‘Don’t dare get up till I tell you.’
He closed the door and stamped off.
Thomas lay in misery. All the beauty of the day had gone. Mr Rab crept down beside him and tried to sing the bedtime song.
‘Shut up, you idiot. It’s morning.’
Hedgecock was counting up to a thousand in tens, but Thomas didn’t care. He buried his face in Num and tried to sleep.
He was allowed up for lunch and sat quietly while Gwendolyn and Blossom chattered gaily. Gwendolyn was the daughter of Blossom’s teacher and was said to be very clever.
‘I’m reading a very difficult book just now,’ she informed them all.
Blossom looked at her admiringly. Thomas pushed his plate away, for Gwendolyn put him off his food, and, besides, he was very full of toffee.
After lunch he put out his lines for Percy, the small engine, and watched him, but the busy, chuffing train could not hold his attention for long. He heard the girls laughing in the garden and he lay on his back and drummed with his heels. Mr Rab tried to pat his head but he pushed the soft paw away. Then Mummy came in.
‘I thought we’d have a picnic on the lawn as it’s such a lovely day. Oh, do stop kicking, Thomas, and cheer up.’
Thomas sat up.
‘Can we have ice-cream and sausages on sticks and cheesy biscuits?’
‘Yes, of course. Now will you cheer up?’
‘Mummy, take me to the stream. Just me. Please.’
She considered this for a moment.
‘All right. Just for a little while. Come on, then.’
And suddenly, the day was beautiful once more. Cares forgotten, Thomas rushed to the stream, took off his shoes and socks this time, and paddled in the water. Mummy read and dozed. Mr Rab picked some flowers and Hedgecock floated twigs downstream.
‘Winter’s short,
Summer’s long,
Let’s all sing
A Flowering song!’
warbled Mr Rab.
‘Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,’ Hedgecock grunted.
At last Mummy got up, rather slowly, for it was pleasant on the warm, soft grass.
‘If we’re going to have our picnic tea, I’d better go and get it ready,’ she said.
They walked home in the sunny afternoon and Mummy went into the kitchen. The voices of Gwendolyn and Blossom on the lawn sounded just a little peevish. They were quarrelling as to which one was to be the chief princess. A day spent in each other’s company had been too much, and Blossom had begun to wish that she’d gone to the stream instead of listening to a long recital of Gwendolyn’s cleverness and achievements.
Thomas squatted in a far corner of the lawn and began to make a worm collection. Glorious things, worms. Daddy had told him how useful they were in the garden. He and Hedgecock tried to straighten them out to see which one was the longest. It’s not easy straightening wiggly, wriggly worms but very interesting if you happen to like them, which Mr Rab didn’t.
‘A wriggling worm
Just makes me squirm,’
he shuddered.
Thomas and Hedgecock took no notice. The worms felt cool and smooth, and there were lots of them.
‘Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five,’ Hedgecock counted.
Gwendolyn could not resist; over she came to the counting figures.
‘Ooeeowh,’ she squealed. ‘How horrid. How nasty. Oh, you are a dirty, beastly little boy, aren’t you, Thomas?’
He didn’t reply, having just found a good cluster under the apple tree, but Gwendolyn went on.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you. Blossom says how awful you are.’
Blossom’s cheeks began to go red. She was squirming inside, just like Mr Rab, only not because of the worms which she didn’t mind at all. She’d realized that she much preferred Thomas to Gwendolyn, and remembered the tree-house and his anger and disappointment when he’d been shut out of the games. Gwendolyn was going on and on, as she always did when she got started on a topic.
‘Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six,’ Hedgecock counted.
Mr Rab sang under his breath:
‘Gwendolyn’s a silly twit,
I don’t like her one little bit.’
‘I should hate to have you for a brother,’ Gwendolyn shrilled on.
Blossom thought her voice sounded like a dentist’s drill, and she half hoped that Thomas would explode in one of his furies, but feared what would happen if he did.
‘Why, you don’t even say hedgehog, you say hedgecock. I’ve heard you. A hedgecock, I ask you!’ Gwendolyn twittered gaily.
Thomas looked up at her curls bobbing up and down, pale blonde curls like corkscrews. ‘Just like worms,’ he thought, and, seizing his collection, he threw them with careful aim all over her face and hair.
Mother had always had a gift for appearing at the wrong moment. Bearing a tray of food she was just in time to see and hear Gwendolyn screaming hysterically, brushing off hordes of worms.
‘I’m never coming here again,’ she shrieked as she rushed away.
‘Blossom, go after her and apologize to her. I know he won’t,’ Mother said as she put down the tray.
‘Oh Thomas, how could you? Why on earth did you?’
He stood sullen and silent, but Blossom, her face crimson, cried:
‘It was her fault. He wasn’t doing anything and she went on and on, saying nasty things, and laughing at Thomas because of Hedgecock.’
She stopped and burst into tears.
‘Well, Thomas?’
‘I’m sorry – a bit.’
‘You don’t throw worms at people, however badly they behave. Blossom, there’s a box of chocolates at the top of the cupboard. Run after her and say Thomas is sorry and give her the box. Then we’ll have our tea out here. It’s a pity to waste it. But, Thomas, go and wash your hands. I don’t share your fondness for worms.’
‘Oh lovely, shiny, frabjous day
Gwendolyn has gone away,’
carolled Mr Rab.
‘There were fifty-nine worms altogether,’ Hedgecock announced. ‘Shall I let them go?’
‘Yes,’ they all shouted together.
CHAPTER THREE
Blossom and Thomas had awoken early and begun on the posters requested by Tamworth Pig. Hedgecock assisted, but Mr Rab still lay in bed, nose a-twitch, dreaming of living in a burrow with real rabbits, his favourite dream. Blossom’s posters were beau
tiful, neatly lettered, and decorated with drawings of grapes and apples, and the hives of honey-bees. Thomas’s were covered with finger marks and large wobbly letters that wandered up and down the paper. Blossom’s read ‘Make more Food’, and Thomas’s ‘Grow more Grub’. Hedgecock was doing some of his own on rather tatty torn-off scraps. ‘Vote for T. Pig of Baggs’s Farm’ he wrote. He also counted them. Blossom had done twelve, very neatly, Thomas nineteen, rather messily, and Hedgecock seven.
‘I wish I hadn’t got to go to school,’ Blossom moaned. ‘I’d like to deliver these to Tamworth now, not wait till four o’clock.’
‘That’s simple,’ Hedgecock replied. ‘Don’t go.’
‘Oh, but I must.’
‘Why?’
‘To learn.’
Hedgecock snorted. ‘You can read and write and draw, now. You’ll never learn to do sums any more than Mr Rab will. And Tamworth can tell you more than anybody. He knows everything. School is Mrs Twitchie. Ugh!’
Mr Rab woke up in the middle of the speech, rubbing his eyes.
‘What was all that about?’
‘Hedgecock says it’s no good going to school.’
‘Oh, but he’s so wrong, so very wrong, as usual,’ Mr Rab quavered, ignoring Hedgecock’s fierce glare. ‘First of all, you have to learn to be good, you see. That’s the most important lesson. And you can’t really learn it at home, because you have to learn to mix with other people, and like them. Even the horrid ones. You see, they have just as much right to be them as you have to be you. Hedgecock and Thomas just think that what they think is right, is right, if you see what I mean. Don’t hit me.’
Hedgecock did hit him, and Mr Rab cried, but he spoke on bravely.
‘I know if I’d ever been to school, I wouldn’t be so shy with real rabbits. I’d be able to be friends with them.’
Thomas put down the posters.
‘When you two have finished, she’ll have to go ’cos she’ll get walloped if she doesn’t. Now shut up. You can come with me to take them to Tamworth.’
‘Don’t forget to ask him about making money, he must have some ideas by now,’ Blossom said as they went down to eat their breakfast.
Tamworth was pleased to see them. He was running happily around his half-acre of land, most of which was trampled down and eaten clean of grass, flowers, shoots, thistles, nettles – the lot. Pigs are wonderful at clearing ground. They often have to have rings in their snouts to stop them destroying too much, but Tamworth wasn’t ringed. Mr Baggs had considered it, but on seeing the look in Tamworth’s eyes had refrained from doing so.
Thomas had brought two carrier bags with him, one containing the posters, the other some apples and potato peelings. Tamworth was pleased with the apples, but the peelings he regarded with disdain. He ate them all the same.
‘Sorry to be ungracious, dear Thomas. It’s just that Mrs Baggs, that extremely mean woman, gives them to me all the time. Hardly ever do I get any proper pig food. Swill, I believe they call it. A nasty word. I do wish that people would realize that we pigs are essentially clean, fastidious animals. We suffer because of the lazy, inefficient methods of humans. Now if I were Prime Minister, it would all be changed. You see …’
Thomas brought out the posters from his bag in order to stop Tamworth, who seemed likely to go on for ever.
‘It’s a day for people making long speeches.’
Thomas himself believed in action, not words.
Tamworth examined the posters.
‘Mm. Not bad. Not bad at all. Blossom’s are very nice. Refined. They give tone to the whole proceeding. Those are yours, Thomas, I suppose. Well, we must be grateful for small mercies. Still, they’ll do. Hedgecock, I presume these are yours. Quite hideous, but the idea’s good. I’d like them copied by Blossom, with my name in full and with a portrait of me on them – in profile.’
‘What’s profile?’ Thomas asked.
‘Sideways on,’ Hedgecock hissed back. ‘Showing his snout and tail.’
‘Quite right, though somewhat inelegantly expressed. Perhaps our great poet Mr Rab may pen a few rhymes in my honour and we can write them on a poster.’
Mr Rab simpered with delight and started rhyming immediately.
‘Vote for Pig
He’s really big.
Tamworth – er – hamworth.’
Hedgecock kicked him.
‘What ’ave we got to vote for you for, anyway?’ Joe said, ambling from nowhere into the morning. ‘’Ave we got an animals’ Parliament or summat? And will it get me more oats and ’ay?’
Tamworth sat silent as though thunderstruck. At last he spoke.
‘Of course, of course. Out of the mouths of hedgecocks and horses cometh wisdom. You’ve hit it.’
He snorted three times.
‘That’s it. I’ll be President of the Animals’ Parliament. I think someone thought of something similar. George, his name was. But I shall do better – much better.’
He charged three times round his ground and sat down again, breathless.
‘On with the posters, Thomas. Joe, get together all the animals you can muster and tell all the pigeons, owls, sparrows and starlings – yes, especially the starlings – they’re a chatty crowd – that there’s a meeting in the orchard, tonight, at midnight. Spread the word.’
‘By the way,’ Thomas said, before Tamworth got too carried away, ‘Blossom told me to ask about the money.’
‘What money?’
Tamworth was occupied with a vision of himself as the chief animal of the British Isles.
‘We want to get some money because Mummy and Daddy are poor.’
Thomas sounded bored but it was only because he’d already explained this and he hated wasting words.
‘Oh, that. Well, a little money can be earned easily, like this. Gather some wild flowers, tie a ribbon round them, put them in water – jam jars will do – and sit by the roadside and sell them. Trippers will buy them, telling their friends they picked them in the wild woods and then do quite nasty flower arrangements at home with two twigs and a piece of bark.’
‘I don’t fancy that,’ Thomas said.
‘Blossom and I will do it,’ Mr Rab volunteered.
‘Well, then, Thomas. You know Ethelberta Ever-Ready, the hen that lays so many? She has a secret nest by the old barn that isn’t used any more and Mrs Baggs, that mean woman of whom you’ve doubtless heard me speak, hasn’t found it yet. Ethelberta keeps on laying and laying and there are dozens of eggs there. Show them by the roadside with a special poster saying “Extra fresh eggs here in the countryside”, and motorists will buy them for far more than they would pay in the shops.’
‘What about half as much again?’ Hedgecock the mathematician asked.
‘That would be excellent,’ Tamworth said.
‘We’ll do that. Good-bye. Thanks, Tamworth.’
‘Are you coming to the meeting?’
‘No, it’s too late, but I’ll come and hear about it later.’
‘More oats and ’ay is what I’ll say,’ Joe promised.
Tamworth was walking up and down composing speeches as they left.
They meandered through the fields for some time, then followed the ditches home, swatting nettles and flies with their sticks. Thomas stopped to cut off a stem of hedge-parsley to make a blowpipe to blow the hawthorn buds through. And out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of red jersey on the other side of the hedge.
‘Look out,’ he whispered to Hedgecock. ‘Robin Redbreast is about.’
Quietly they ran along to climb the stile that led into the next field, and crouching behind the hedge were Christopher Robin and Lurcher Dench, preparing to jump him. Thomas’s face was crimson, his eyes shining with excitement. He stepped to one side to avoid Christopher’s mis-timed rush, putting out his foot very neatly to trip him head first into the nettle-filled, watery ditch. There was a despairing wail from Christopher as his face encountered mud, weed, snails, nettles and the bramble.
/> Thomas turned to deal with Lurcher. Putting his head down, he rushed at him and butted him in the solar plexus. Lurcher fell back, winded, but not for long. Recovering his breath, he rushed forward, arms flailing like a windmill. Thomas knelt down and Lurcher fell over him. Up he jumped, aiming kicks at Thomas’s shins and pulling his sweater so hard that the seams parted down one side.
Hedgecock yelled: ‘Come on, Thomas. Bash him.’
Lurcher kicked him out of the way. Then Thomas went berserk. He charged at Lurcher, hitting left to the head, right to the body and left to the nose, which was bleeding as Lurcher stumbled away. He didn’t cry. But by now, Christopher Robin had emerged even spottier from the nettles, shouting unprintable words about what he was going to do to Thomas, who hit him firmly in one eye. Mrs Baggs’s boy departed howling.
‘Come on,’ Thomas said. ‘Stop shivering, Mr Rab. I’m all right.’
‘Yes, we won,’ Hedgecock said.
‘Of course we did, we always shall, but I wonder what Mummy will say. She’ll never believe I didn’t start it.’
She didn’t.
He said to Tamworth Pig later that day as he sat curled up beside him with Num covering them both:
‘Grown-ups are unfair, Tamworth.’
‘Something that you have to learn, Thomas, is the terrible injustice of life. Even you and I, deserving and worthy as we are, cannot win all the time.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Whitsuntide holidays had come round and Blossom was to have a week at home. Money-making plans could be put into operation, but first Tamworth must be visited to see if he needed any further assistance in his campaign for ‘Grow more Grub but Eat less Meat’.
Blossom had finished twenty ‘Vote for Tamworth Pig – He’s really Big’ posters. He looked most handsome in profile with his long snout and curling tail. They took these along with several offerings for Tamworth’s enormous appetite. Hedgecock also hopefully took a chessboard. He was growing a little tired of posters and campaigns and wished he had never started the idea. Previously he had enjoyed a game of chess with Tamworth, but now the pig always seemed too busy.
