Tamworth Pig Stories

by Gene Kemp

  ‘Joe, Joe,’ she cried in his ear. ‘Let me down. Let me down. I must see Tamworth.’

  He paused a moment and she slid off. The crowd pressed up behind and she felt terrified. Now there was no stopping, only going on. Somehow she got up to the tractor.

  ‘Tamworth,’ she called.

  The tractor slowed down and she climbed on to it.

  ‘Tamworth! Oh, Tamworth. I don’t like it. They’re all mad. Someone will get hurt.’

  She pulled at him. She wanted to see his face. He turned to her. Tamworth’s eyes were as kind and calm as Mummy’s were when she told bedtime stories.

  ‘Don’t let them …’ she started.

  ‘It’s all right, dear Blossom. No one will get hurt. There will be no violence.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I promise,’ said Tamworth Pig.

  The wood came into sight.

  ‘There they are,’ the crowd roared. ‘The machines. There are the machines. Wreck them! Wreck them!’

  Blossom looked at the earth-movers and shuddered.

  ‘Oh, Tamworth. What are we doing?’ she whispered.

  The crowd was moving rapidly now, shouting, calling, singing, booing. ‘Save the trees! Wreck the machines!’

  ‘Stop,’ Tamworth called.

  The crowd stopped. Cars and bikes braked erratically. There was a terrible roar like a tide surging on a storm-ridden beach.

  ‘Quiet,’ Tamworth said.

  There was silence. Tamworth spoke, his voice gentle as a summer breeze.

  ‘Brothers and friends. We are here to save, not to destroy, to conserve, not to ruin. We come with love, not hate. Let there be no talk of wrecking. I will speak to the men of the machines.’

  He drove the tractor forward to the foremost bulldozer. The driver was dark and angry.

  ‘Get those lunatics out of here. We’ve got a job to do. Out of the way!’

  Tamworth held up a trotter.

  ‘I would not stop any man doing his job. I only ask you to wait for a time. I think the plans may be altered, so please don’t destroy this wood.’

  The dark, angry one, glowered.

  ‘Get that lot out of here. Come on, men!’

  The machines turned towards the wood.

  Tamworth’s voice boomed like a jet plane.

  ‘Save the trees!’

  Like a huge cloud settling on a mountain top, people and animals surged forward and lay down in the path of the bulldozers. They wrapped themselves round the trees and stayed there. Blossom caught sight of the Vicar’s wife lowering her long form to curl round a beech tree and Mr Rab scurrying away to the elderberry bush. Thomas climbed up beside her. The motor-bikes lay scattered on the ground.

  ‘We are prepared to stay here day and night,’ Tamworth announced calmly.

  ‘Till nine o’ clock anyway. I got a date wiv a bird, then,’ Deadly yelled.

  A ginger-haired man dropped down from his earth-mover.

  ‘I’m off home,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a Saturday off in weeks. Best of luck, folks. It’s a nice wood.’

  The others followed suit, till only the dark, angry one remained. At last he spoke.

  ‘I’ll go. But I’ll have you for this, pig!’

  The crowd got up slowly to return home to television and Saturday tea. Tamworth and Blossom turned to one another and smiled.

  The Welsh Rabbit emerged cautiously with Mr Rab and Hedgecock.

  ‘A narrow squeak, indeed to goodness,’ he sighed.

  ‘And Mr Rab’s a narrow pipsqueak,’ Hedgecock snorted, laughing at his own joke.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tamworth sat outside the ‘duck and Drake’, talking to certain officials and reporters about the proposed new route that the motorway should take. The bulldozers and earth-movers had been halted while various important and high-up personages decided what to do.

  Several of Tamworth’s friends were there, and refreshment was laid on, beer and cheese and pickled onions from the inn, or coffee and biscuits from the Vicar’s wife.

  ‘Yes, I’m expecting a telegram from the Minister at any time now,’ Tamworth said. ‘He promised to send one as soon as a decision was reached.’

  Tamworth looked very pale and his eyes were dull. His ears hung heavily. He nibbled at an apple without enthusiasm.

  ‘Where’s Blossom? She’s not here. In fact, I haven’t seen her all week.’

  ‘Oh, she’s up to something. She’s got that I-know-something-you-don’t look on her face. I kicked her yesterday because of it, the silly, fat thing,’ Thomas said.

  ‘You’re horribly mean to Blossom,’ Mr Rab protested. ‘I think she’s the nicest girl in the world.’

  ‘And I think she’s the stupidest,’ Thomas replied.

  A telegraph boy came along the road on his red bicycle.

  ‘Here comes the telegram,’ Tamworth said.

  A Land-Rover was also coming from the other direction with Blossom waving from the front seat, but Tamworth’s eyes were fixed on the telegraph boy, who seemed to have developed a puncture, for he had dismounted and was gazing solemnly at his front tyre. Some people ran forward to meet him, but Mr Rab had been watching the Land-Rover.

  He called out excitedly. ‘It’s Blossom! And Farmer Baggs! They’re getting out. And there’s someone else with them. Oh! Oh! Oh! It’s Melanie. It’s Melanie. It’s love.’

  Out of the Land-Rover, Blossom beaming at her side, came the pretty little black and pink pig, her plump form wobbling delightfully as she trotted straight towards Tamworth, who sat motionless as if he had been struck by lightning.

  A reporter was rushing towards Tamworth, pulling the telegraph boy with him, but the pig had no eyes for them. His ears had pricked up, his eyes were shining and his bristles sparkled. Blossom ran to him and threw her arms round him.

  ‘I had to fetch her. You were so thin and unhappy. I wrote to her farmer and he wrote to Farmer Baggs and then we went to fetch her. Oh, Tamworth, I’m so happy.’

  ‘Open the telegram. See what it says! Come on!’

  Everyone was milling around Tamworth, who was gazing into Melanie’s eyes and gulping. ‘I’m too old for you. You want a handsome, young pig.’

  ‘You’re the handsomest and cleverest pig in the whole world. I want you, and I’m not going away again. Never!’

  She turned to Thomas.

  ‘And I know you’re Tamworth’s friend and please, oh, please, Thomas, please like me.’

  She put out a black trotter on Thomas’s arm and looked at him with her round, black snout and bright eyes. A grin spread slowly over his face.

  ‘I love you,’ carolled Mr Rab falling at her feet.

  ‘It might work out,’ Hedgecock sniffed. ‘But for pity’s sake READ THAT TELEGRAM!’

  Tamworth’s trotters were trembling wildly, so Blossom opened the envelope. He read it, shook his head in disbelief and then started to laugh, a great, huge, enormous, gigantic, tremendous, colossal, belly-shaking laugh that made him ripple from top to toe. Soon everyone else was laughing too.

  ‘What are we laughing at?’ Thomas said, still spluttering five minutes later.

  ‘The wood is saved,’ Tamworth said.

  The crowd cheered.

  ‘But – but – the new route is to go right through the orchard and Pig House.’

  The crowd groaned.

  ‘Why are you laughing then?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘I think it’s funny that I did all that work to have it moved right through my house instead. I don’t think I’ll interfere next time.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We shall do what we can to have it altered yet again, if only for the sake of Farmer Baggs’s land. But, as for myself …’

  He stretched his golden body till he seemed bigger than any pig that ever lived.

  ‘Where Melanie is, where my friends are, that is my home, wherever it may be!’

  Cheers rang out and he turned to go with his little pink and bl
ack pig and Blossom and Thomas.

  ‘He doesn’t half carry on,’ Hedgecock said to Mr Rab. ‘All I can see is more work and trouble.’

  ‘And your trouble is that there’s no poetry nor love in your soul. In fact, I doubt if you’ve got a soul. Don’t hit me.’

  But Hedgecock hit Mr Rab several times as they trotted along the way, following Tamworth Pig and the others.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘For goodness sake, thomas, sit down.’

  ‘I can t.’

  ‘Well, stop wandering round the room. Read a book or play a game.’

  Daddy was being very patient for him, but Thomas continued to shuffle up and down, round and round.

  ‘Look, boy, if you don’t settle, you’ll have to go to bed.’

  ‘I can’t go to bed until I know.’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Piglets are being born all the time.’

  ‘But not Tamworth’s piglets. They’re special.’

  ‘Look at Blossom. She’s just as excited as you are and she’s sitting quietly reading.’

  Blossom stood up.

  ‘I’ve read the same page twenty times and it still doesn’t mean anything. Oh, Mummy, when shall we know?’

  ‘It won’t be long now. Come on, I’ll make a drink and then you really will have to go to bed. It’s almost midnight.’

  ‘I want to know how many,’ Thomas insisted.

  ‘So do I,’ put in Hedgecock. ‘Fancy counting all those little trotters. Very interesting.’

  They all adjourned to the kitchen, including Daddy, and sat around the table.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Thomas said.

  ‘You say that every Christmas Eve. That’s what tonight feels like, waiting for Christmas Day really to arrive. Or birthdays,’ Blossom replied.

  Daddy stood up and yawned.

  ‘Well, I’m off to bed and I think it would be a good idea if everyone else did, too.’

  He peered especially hard at Thomas.

  ‘Please let us stay. Oh, Please. Please! PLEASE!’

  ‘Farmer Baggs promised us he’d come,’ Thomas cried.

  A loud knock rat-tatted at the door. The children rushed to open it and Farmer Baggs entered the kitchen, blinking in the bright light.

  ‘I could see your lights were still on, so I thought I’d best let young Thomas and Blossom in on it.’

  ‘How many? How many? How many?’ They danced round him.

  Farmer Baggs’s eyes were twinkling.

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t tease us,’ Blossom cried.

  ‘Eight,’ Thomas said.

  Farmer Baggs shook his head.

  ‘Ten,’ guessed Hedgecock.

  ‘Fourteen,’ Thomas said, jumping up and down.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh!’ wailed Blossom. ‘There’s only a few!’

  ‘No,’ said Farmer Baggs.

  ‘Eighteen,’ Thomas said, hopping on one leg.

  ‘I give up. I can’t bear it,’ Blossom whispered.

  ‘I know! I know! I know!’ Thomas shouted. ‘It’s twenty, isn’t it? Twenty piglets!’

  Farmer Baggs nodded. ‘You’re right, young Thomas.’

  ‘Twenty. Good heavens!’ Mummy exclaimed.

  Daddy went to a cupboard and brought out a bottle.

  ‘Let’s drink to the piglets, all twenty of them.’

  He filled up glasses for everyone. They raised them high.

  ‘To Melanie, Tamworth and the twenty piglets,’ he toasted.

  ‘To Melanie, Tamworth and the twenty piglets,’ they all replied.

  Blossom’s eyes shone like twin beacons.

  ‘It’s as good as Christmas.’

  ‘Better,’ Thomas shouted, turning a somersault on the floor.

  ‘Mind now, I ’ope it stays at twenty.’

  Farmer Baggs’s voice was serious.

  ‘Why, what do you mean?’ Mummy asked, full of quick concern.

  ‘That last little un’s very weak. It’s the runt of the litter, all right, and it’ll ’ave to be bottle-fed if it’s to live. As a matter o’ fact, we thought it was dead. Wasn’t breathing at all. But Tamworth gave it the kiss o’ life, and ’e kept on and on, ’e wouldn’t give up ’ope, and in the end it gave a twitch and we wrapped un in a warm blanket and there it was, alive.’

  ‘Oh, poor little thing. Will it live?’

  ‘I ’ope so, as otherwise, it’s going to upset Tamworth summat terrible. ’E already thinks the world of that little black runt, he do.’

  ‘Black?’ Daddy asked.

  ‘Yes. As black as coal.’

  ‘What colour are the others?’

  ‘We … ell, there’s so many. But the first’s a great, big, golden pig like Tamworth and there’s lots more like ’im, and then there’s some black and pink uns and some just pink uns, like all the colours o’ the rainbow they are, but there’s only one all black un, the runt.’

  ‘Oh, I want to see them, now,’ Blossom said.

  ‘No, definitely not. Melanie and the piglets will need their sleep.’ Mummy’s voice was firm.

  ‘And so do Tamworth and I. Scoot, scatter, be off. You can see them in the morning.’

  Daddy’s voice was even firmer so they went upstairs.

  ‘I shall compose an extremely long poem about this,’ Mr Rab decided.

  ‘Ugh,’ Hedgecock growled.

  ‘I shan’t sleep,’ Thomas announced, settling Num around him in bed, and was thereupon struck by a terrible thought.

  ‘You don’t think I ought to give my Num to that little black piglet, do you? I don’t really want to, but …’

  ‘Shouldn’t think it’d be much use to anyone but you really,’ Hedgecock, ever practical, said.

  ‘Oh, good,’ yawned Thomas and fell asleep.

  But Blossom lay awake thinking of the piglets and worrying about a small, black one who might not live till morning.

  Despite their late night, the children arose early and without stopping for breakfast, though Blossom grabbed several chocolate biscuits as she went, they set out in the chilly Spring morning. Four months had passed since Melanie came, four months since they’d heard that the motorway was to cleave its way through Baggs’s Farm and over Pig House, four months for Tamworth of unending speeches and meetings and delivering leaflets, but he was now a Pig filled with the strength of ten pigs because at the end of each day, Melanie was there to greet him with her gentle voice and loving ways. She did not come out and assist him, Thomas and Blossom did that as of old, but she was always ready at Pig House to greet the successful or comfort the downhearted.

  But in the end it was all worthwhile. The Minister for the Environment visited Tamworth and it was decided that the motorway should take the original route after all, the one first chosen, through the slag heaps and the low-lying marshlands to the east. So at the end of March the digging, the clearing and the vast upheavals that accompany motorways began. The farm, Pig House and the damson tree and all the neighbourhood were safe.

  By now, Melanie was enormous. She could hardly walk on her tiny trotters.

  ‘It’ll be funny if they’re April Fool piglets,’ Thomas said.

  ‘I don’t fancy that,’ Tamworth sniffed, looking down his snout.

  As a matter of fact they were born on 31st March, but only just. The little black one arrived about an hour before midnight.

  *

  Tamworth was waiting for them, ears a-prick, bristles a-shine. He lifted his trotter to his mouth and shushed but it wasn’t necessary. Blossom and Thomas were so much on tiptoe their feet hurt. They held two carrier bags, packed earlier, full of grapes and apples and cabbages. Nervous and excited, they entered the extra room built on to Pig House by Farmer Baggs for Melanie and the piglets.

  And there lay Melanie on her side, eyes closed, and curled against her was a warm, breathing, smooth sea of little bodies, almost too many to count. Thomas and Blossom and Hedgecock and Mr Rab knelt down to touch the soft warm
th. Melanie opened her eyes and looked proudly at her numerous offspring and smiled at them all.

  ‘They’re all real and complete. Look at their ears,’ Blossom breathed.

  ‘It’s their tails I like,’ Thomas said, touching a golden one.

  The Welsh rabbit had crept in quietly beside them. ‘Primroses and celandines from the animals in the wood, brought you, I have,’ he murmured.

  ‘Thank you,’ Melanie said.

  ‘Shut up a minute,’ interrupted Hedgecock, that ungracious animal. ‘Flowers is no good to anyone. You’ve made me go wrong in my counting. I keep getting nineteen. Unless you’ve got one tucked under your tail, Melanie.’

  ‘Tamworth will show you the other one,’ she said.

  The Pig of Pigs led them to the next room. There, on Tamworth’s own bed, nestled in a soft blanket, surrounded by hot water bottles, lay the tiniest, funniest, ugliest, little pig ever.

  ‘He’s very small,’ Blossom said in surprise.

  ‘Half the size of the others,’ Thomas added.

  ‘A third I should say,’ Hedgecock surmised.

  ‘Do you think he’ll live?’ squeaked Mr Rab.

  Hedgecock kicked him but Tamworth hadn’t heard, for he was gazing with immense pride at his microscopic son.

  ‘I saved him, you know. And he’ll grow up to be a fine, big, noble pig, you’ll see!’

  There was a funny little noise rather like a snort of laughter from the sleeping animal, that made them all start in surprise.

  ‘I wonder,’ thought Blossom. ‘I wonder.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gene Kemp was born in 1926 and soon established herself as one of the most inventive and imaginative of British children’s writers. After studying she taught, married and had three children. She is best known for her Cricklepit School stories, including The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, a winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Children’s Rights Award, Charlie Lewis Plays for Time, which was runner-up for the Whitbread Award, and Just Ferret, which was a runner-up for the Smarties Award. In addition, she has written The Clock Tower Ghost, Tamworth Pig Stories, No Place Like, No Way Out, The Well, Jason Bodger and the Priory Ghost, The Mink War, Juniper, short stories and a poetry anthology. She also wrote for TV and radio. In 1984 she was awarded an honorary degree for her books, which have been translated into numerous languages. She lived in Devon and died in 2015.