Tamworth Pig Stories

by Gene Kemp

  ‘We all know whose fault it is. Thomas, come here!’

  Mrs Twitchie’s stentorian tones filled the hall.

  Thomas turned blindly, hemmed in by people, who stared at him, pushing him forward. He could not get his breath. Panic rose in him. All these horrible people! And he had not meant it. It was not fair, she must have left her coat near the stall. He had only tried to help.

  Something soft thrust into his hand. It was Tamworth’s snout. The crowd fell back at last as the huge pig moved to his friend.

  ‘Up, Thomas. Get on my back, old lad.’

  He pulled himself on to the familiar, golden back as the deep voice rang out, drowning the angry splutters of Mrs Dench and Mrs Twitchie.

  ‘Friends,’ Tamworth cried, ‘let us not make fools of ourselves. Let us be calm and sensible. Thomas, my dear friend here, made a mistake. Well, which of us has never made a mistake? We all have made mistakes. And, by the way, that’s Thomas’s anorak you’re wearing, Crasher Dench. You see, Mrs Twitchie, Thomas was quite fair. He sold his own clothes, too.’

  The crowd laughed. The Vicar smiled his austere smile.

  ‘Come, Mrs Dench. Give Mrs Twitchie her coat. Your money and our apologies shall be given to you.’

  The clothes were handed back, the money returned.

  ‘Furthermore,’ Tamworth said blandly, his voice like cream, ‘Mrs Dench has guessed my weight correctly and so has won the cake, which, I’m sure, will be appreciated by her admirable family.’

  Mrs Dench looked astonished, as well she might, never having bought a ticket to guess Tamworth’s weight. Then she smiled.

  ‘Thank you, Tamworth.’

  ‘Thank you, madam. And thank you, Mrs Twitchie, for your kind forgiveness of us all.’

  Mrs Twitchie was still glowering alternately at Thomas and the Denches.

  Never one to lose an opportunity, Tamworth concluded, ‘Thank you, everyone. Remember our cause, and come to the next march. Save the trees!’

  ‘Save the trees!’ re-echoed through the hall. The Vicar’s wife began to sing.

  ‘Shush, my dear,’ the Vicar said.

  She stopped singing.

  Mummy went up to Mrs Dench and said quietly, ‘Let Crasher keep the anorak. I think he likes it.’

  The entertainment was over, so the crowd moved on. Thomas stroked Tamworth’s ears and slid off his back. Lurcher Dench pulled his arm, his eyes like slits.

  ‘We don’t want your manky old clothes.’

  They glared at one another and together pushed their way outside to the field behind the hall.

  Lurcher kicked Thomas’s shin. Thomas punched him on his nose.

  ‘That’s better,’ he panted almost happily, as they fell to the ground pummelling each other.

  Life was back to normal again. Tamworth would disapprove, Mummy would grumble, but Thomas knew that when he and Lurcher were fighting each other, everything was all right.

  CHAPTER NINE

  At first tamworth would not believe the news, then, gradually, he realized that it must be true. He looked at the two small forms, both hanging on his words, expecting him to think of the solution to their problems, then and there.

  ‘You say that the motorway is going to by-pass the village, which we knew, but that, instead of going east through the slag heaps, where we thought it would go, and where it would only improve the landscape, it is being directed straight through Tumbling Wood, so that the hill will be levelled and all the wood destroyed. Is that it, my friend?’

  ‘Yes, indeed to goodness,’ the Welsh Rabbit replied. ‘From all directions reports are coming in, they are, man.’

  He lowered his voice.

  ‘Some do say that the Minister of Environment has been all over the woods, himself in person.’

  ‘We’ve met Ministers before,’ Mr Rab quavered. ‘They’re nothing to Tamworth.’

  He tried to snap his paws but failed lamentably. He was very nervous. Tamworth perceived that he had described his friends to the Welsh Rabbit as being very clever and important and he was anxious that they should live up to this. But the Welsh Rabbit did not look as if he were easily impressed.

  ‘Mr Rab, my friend here, said that you got things done, that you had influence, man. That’s why the animals in the wood sent me to see you, to stop this terrible thing, this threat to our lives and our homes.’

  Tamworth looked grave.

  ‘I don’t think that I’ve the sort of influence that moves motorways. Besides, I like motorways. I think they will solve traffic problems and bring prosperity, but that we must be sure they take the best path through the countryside.’

  He sat back on his haunches and brooded for a while. Mr Rab twitched and wriggled, but managed to keep silent for once. At last Tamworth spoke.

  ‘I think this is all we can do. First, write to the Minister and find out definitely if the motorway is to go through the wood. Second, if so, we must get up a petition asking if the original route can be used instead. Third, promote publicity about the wood and its beauty. It’s not very well known at present. Fourth, carry on with our “Save the Trees” campaign.’

  He reflected for a moment.

  ‘Plans have been changed, though not often. Let us hope, my friends, that this will be one of those rare successes.’

  ‘Thank you, Tamworth the Pig. I see what they are saying, you are indeed a clever pig, and we shall in your trotters leave it. I will tell the wood dwellers that you are trying to save them. Or else at the worst it is, we have all lost our homes.’

  ‘Indeed to goodness, yes,’ Mr Rab agreed.

  So began the biggest campaign ever. Blossom and Thomas drew poster after poster. Tamworth, getting steadily thinner, held meetings and toured the countryside on Farmer Baggs’s tractor, speaking through a loud hailer. He went into school and addressed the children. Mrs Twitchie was most polite, for Tamworth as a Very Important Pig was quite different from Tamworth, friend of terrible Thomas.

  Next day the children were all gathered together in the school garden. Mrs Twitchie, wearing a mackintosh and gumboots, emerged with Mr Starling following. He carried a small sapling and a spade. Mrs Twitchie’s clarion tones rang out.

  ‘Children! I am about to plant a tree!’

  She took the spade from Mr Starling and dug into the ground. There was a clink as it struck a stone.

  Thomas watched with mixed feelings. He wanted to save trees, especially the Tumbling Wood trees, very much indeed, but he hated being on the same side as Mrs Twitchie. He started to wriggle. He wanted to kick Christopher Robin Baggs, standing just in front of him, but Blossom slid in quietly beside him. She knew how he felt.

  ‘Tamworth says we have to use all the support we can get when it’s a Cause, even if it’s someone we don’t like,’ she whispered.

  So Thomas stood still, while Mrs Twitchie, tired of digging, handed over the spade for Mr Starling to finish the job. A cheer went up as the tree was finally planted. Thomas tried to join in but he could not, and was saved by a gusty shower of rain splattering over them, speeding them all back to the classrooms.

  Meanwhile the Vicar’s wife knitted sweaters with ‘Save the Trees’ on the front. These proved popular and soon all the children were wearing them. Lurcher Dench liked his very much. He had not had a new sweater for ages. A famous firm got to hear of them and bought the pattern from her for a large sum of money, and hundreds of sweaters were made in their factories. With this and the money from her record, she became quite rich. However, the Vicar did not like this at all and made her give most of the money away to charity. She did buy a beautiful red velvet dress, though. Mummy went with her to choose it.

  Tamworth wrote to a badge manufacturer and soon thousands of green and gold ‘Save the Trees’ badges were being worn on tee-shirts throughout the length and breadth of the land, as their owners went out to plant nuts, pips and seeds in all sorts of likely and unlikely places from quiet lanes to cracks and crevices in concrete yards.

  Ta
mworth was asked to appear on ‘This Week in England’, a television programme.

  Thomas brushed him and scratched his back.

  ‘Shall I shampoo you like I did before, when you went on television?’

  ‘No, not that again,’ Tamworth said, shuddering at the memory of it. ‘The water was icy.’

  ‘I know,’ Thomas said, and shot away to return with a large tin of talcum powder which he upended over Tamworth.

  ‘Atishoo! Atishoo!’ Tamworth trumpeted, now a white not a golden pig.

  He looked at himself in the Pig House mirror and groaned.

  ‘I look like the ghost of a pig.’

  But Thomas brushed so firmly and steadily that Tamworth’s coat emerged, shining and clean, though a slightly paler shade of gold.

  ‘That’s better. By the time the make-up girls have finished with me, I shan’t look too bad.’

  Suddenly he looked sad.

  ‘But I am not the Pig I was, you know, Thomas, I’m much too thin.’

  ‘You’re all right. I know, smoke your new pipe in between questions. It will give you the right air.’

  Tamworth’s television appearance went off well and the number of visitors to the Tumbling Wood increased tenfold.

  ‘Beauty Spot In Danger – Pig Speaks’ ran the headline in a famous daily newspaper.

  *

  But one evening, when Blossom was returning home from a music lesson, she found Joe the Shire Horse waiting for her.

  ‘I want a word with ’ee, Blossom,’ he said in his slow way.

  ‘Yes, Joe. What’s it all about?’

  She felt in her anorak pocket for a lump of sugar. She found two, and they both crunched together.

  ‘It be about Tamworth.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, ’ee don’t laugh no more and ’ee don’t sleep. Night after night ’ee’s up and down Pig ’ouse.’

  ‘He’s very busy saving the trees.’

  ‘It ain’t only that. He sits dreaming for hours, reciting bits o’ poetry.’

  ‘He’s always recited poetry.’

  ‘Not love poetry! And worst of all, ’ee’s getting so thin.’

  ‘Yes, lots of people have noticed. They keep writing to him, asking if he’s on a diet and can he recommend one. But Tamworth doesn’t want to be thin. Well, Joe, what do you think is wrong?’

  Joe bent his head low and whispered in her ear. She nodded.

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll see to it. I really will. I’ll do all I can, Joe, I promise.’

  So Blossom went home to make inquiries and to write letters that had nothing whatsoever to do with saving trees or moving motorways.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Daddy piled a great deal of marmalade on to his toast and reached out for the Sunday papers with a sigh of satisfaction. He turned to the sports page, then fixed an irritable eye on Blossom.

  ‘What are you tittering about?’

  ‘You dropped a chunk of marmalade in your tea.’

  He arose, stalked to the kitchen, tipped the tea down the sink, returned and poured out another cup, then sat down and reached for his newspaper, holding it up firmly between Blossom and himself. A minute passed peacefully.

  ‘Daddy,’ she cried.

  ‘Oh! For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter now?’

  ‘Look at that.’

  ‘At what? England’s doing well in Australia.’

  ‘No, no. Look at this page. Here.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t read the paper when I do.’

  ‘But look, please.’

  ‘What at?’

  ‘“Mrs Baggs Speaks. Exclusive Interview. Pig is wrong, she says.”’

  Daddy found the place and continued aloud.

  ‘“In an interview with our reporter, Mrs Baggs stroked her curls” …’

  ‘What, those greasy sausages?’ Thomas interrupted.

  ‘“and talked to us in her beautiful farmhouse.”’

  ‘You mean that smelly old dump.’

  ‘“‘Tamworth Pig is a threat to our country,’ she said. ‘He hinders progress and ruins the morals of the young’” …’

  ‘What’s morals?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Goodness and things. Oh, never mind. Let me go on. “‘He’s big-headed and pig-headed,’ she continued, looking every inch a farmer’s wife” …’

  ‘And there’s hundreds of inches of her,’ Thomas shouted.

  ‘… “‘I have treated that pig like my own child, and I have received nothing but ingratitude and unkind words. I fed him with my own hands and the finest food’” …’

  ‘I hope she kept them separate,’ Mummy put in.

  ‘… “‘and so he started his Grow More Food campaign and spoke against me’” …’

  ‘Oh, how can she tell such lies?’ Blossom breathed.

  ‘… “‘Mrs Baggs, what do you think of his latest campaign to save Tumbling Wood,’ our reporter asked. ‘It’s a shame and a disgrace. The wood is an eyesore, full of rotting trees and rubbish that has been dumped there’” …’

  ‘If there’s any rubbish, she must have put it there. I bet she would too, the old ratbag.’

  ‘Thomas!’ Mummy said in a horrified voice.

  Daddy lowered the paper.

  ‘Loyalty to your friends should not affect your language, Thomas. By the way, I think Mrs Baggs’s brother Bert is a sub-contractor to the firm building the motorway, which may account for her attitude.’

  He read on.

  ‘“Our reporter then said that he believed that Farmer Baggs was very fond of Tamworth Pig. ‘He’s a gentle, kind man, Mr Baggs is, and he cannot see the villainy that is in such a wicked animal as that pig, but, in time, we shall all see,’ she concluded.”’

  Thomas was drumming with his heels, his face bright crimson.

  ‘I’m going to kill her,’ he said.

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that, Thomas. It does no good,’ Mummy reproved him.

  ‘I’m off to take it to Tamworth,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Tamworth has all the Sunday newspapers anyway, so he won’t need this one. Don’t worry about him, he’ll know what to do,’ Daddy replied.

  In fact, Tamworth treated the whole thing as a joke and was especially polite to Mrs Baggs when she appeared with his food as usual, a smirk in the corners of her mouth.

  *

  But Thomas spent the day in a state of fury, planning revenges, none of which seemed likely to succeed. It was no use kidnapping her or emptying Tamworth’s food over her head. He did think of putting on his skeleton costume and hiding in her wardrobe so that he could jump out at her when she had gone to bed, but it really did not seem practicable.

  What he did do, in the end, was to waylay Christopher Robin Baggs, seize him by his bow tie, force him down on his knees, and compel him to say that Tamworth Pig was the greatest.

  Christopher Robin squirmed and tears ran down his cheeks, but afterwards he told Mrs Twitchie about it, so Thomas came off worse after all. He was barred from football until the end of term because of his lack of sportsmanship.

  After school, he sat bitterly beside Tamworth under the damson tree.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ he said.

  ‘I told you violence is wrong,’ Tamworth murmured to him, rubbing his snout against him. ‘We must be patient and bide our time, Thomas.’

  ‘I don’t like patience and biding. I like fighting and winning,’ Thomas said with great conviction.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was the welsh rabbit, on swiftly flying paws, who brought the news to Mr Rab.

  ‘The campaign has failed. Bulldozers have up the wood started to tear.’

  Blossom and Thomas rushed to Tamworth and five minutes later he was riding through the village on Farmer Baggs’s tractor, calling through a loud-speaker to a rapidly gathering audience.

  ‘Brothers! Friends! A cry for help has sounded. We must help our brothers the trees and those who live in their shelter. Without warning, the machines ar
e moving in to destroy the prettiest spot in the whole country. Come, let us to the wood. Let us save the trees!’

  A ragged cheer arose. Tamworth held up a trotter.

  ‘Forward, my friends. To the wood!’

  Children rushed away, to return with flags and banners, and set off behind Tamworth, Blossom and Thomas. Hedgecock and Mr Rab climbed up on Joe’s back. The students appeared, being ever on the alert for a demonstration, and animals and birds came running and flying. Rather more slowly, the grown-ups joined in the procession, one at a time, at first, then in twos and threes until they were pouring out of their houses, rallied by the Vicar’s wife’s voice ringing through the air.

  ‘Save the Trees,

  Save the Trees,

  We’re marching over there to save the trees!’

  Lurcher ran up beside Joe.

  ‘We’re with you on this,’ he shouted to the unwelcoming face of Thomas who had climbed on Joe’s back. ‘Deadly’s coming to help, too.’

  ‘You’d better,’ Thomas snarled, then lent a hand to haul him up.

  The roar of motor-bikes was heard as the leatherjackets formed an escort to the procession.

  P.C. Cubbins and P.C. Spriggs ran out, but they could only go along with the steadily increasing throng.

  ‘Forward!’ Tamworth cried. ‘It is the Cause!’

  More and more people joined in. Cars and Land-Rovers bumped along the track as folks from outlying farms and houses enrolled.

  ‘Save the Trees,

  Save the Trees.’

  The cry seemed to rise up to the sky.

  ‘Tamworth,’ Thomas shouted. ‘Tam – worth. Tam – worth.’

  ‘Tam – worth. Tam – worth. Tam – worth,’ took up the crowd.

  Blossom felt wild excitement rising within her. She felt like flying, like crying. This was living. This was life. This was better than anything that had ever happened. This was the way to the stars. People were wonderful. People could do anything, save anything. She felt proud. She felt she had wings, a crown on her head, a fire in her heart. She looked at Thomas and Lurcher, loving them. And their eyes were bright and wild, their faces red. She looked at everyone around and behind her, and saw flushed, singing faces, with no sense in any of them. The excitement left her and Blossom was afraid.