The Willows and Beyond

by William Horwood

  “Mr Badger sent me to see if you were back,” he cried. “Mr Ratty’s failing fast!”

  “O my!” cried the Mole wildly “O my! Whatever’s wrong with him?”

  “The doctor says he may not last the night,” said Young Rat, hopping about from one foot to the other, and clearly quite as flummoxed as the Mole, “so hurry and come quick!”

  Nephew bundled his uncle back into coat and boots and thrust into a bag some remedies and healing balms. Then they all set off on the path down towards the River and the Rat’s House, but in such haste and dismay that they forgot even to close the door of Mole End behind them, which was left open to the winter wind.

  On the way Nephew managed to elicit from Young Rat an account of what had happened. It seemed that last night he and the Rat had spent a quiet and pleasant evening together and gone early to their beds soon after dinner, the night being cold. Early the next morning, the Otter and Portly had called on them, but Ratty had declined to join them on their outing, the recent wintry weather having brought on one or two aches and pains. Apart from those, however, Ratty had been well when Young Rat had left that morning.

  Nevertheless, Young Rat had not felt quite happy after he had left his friend and mentor alone, and somehow there was something in the River’s flow, in the swirling of its dark pools, in the shadows of its further banks, that made him ask the Otter if he could hurry home.

  “What is it that worries you?” the Otter had said.

  “Not sure, don’t know, the River. Shouldn’t be here — it’s Cap’n Ratty, I think he’s in trouble.”

  Otter needed no second telling, for he had learnt in the months past that Young Rat’s communion with the River was every bit as acute and reliable as Ratty’s own. In any case, the River had seemed strange that day and more so as the morning advanced.

  So the Otter and Portly had accompanied Young Rat back home at once, and there were met by a sight far more alarming than their worst forebodings. Poor Ratty lay groaning upon the floor, fragments of coal about him, evidence that he had been in the act of refuelling the fire when he was stricken down. Now the fire had gone out, the room grown cold, and Ratty was half incoherent with pains about his chest and arms.

  The Otter had taken charge at once — sending Young Rat to fetch Mole, for in such cases his services were invaluable, and sending Portly to fetch the Badger, and at the same time send for a doctor. These errands done, and the Mole being absent from Mole End, the others had stayed by the Rat and helped him as they might.

  “After the doctor came Badger told me to hurry back to Mole End, sir,” concluded Young Rat, before expertly berthing the boat at the Rat’s landing stage and helping the Mole and Nephew disembark. “He said you know Ratty better than any doctor and might help find out what ails him.”

  The scene that met their gaze when they entered the Rat’s parlour confirmed their worst fears. The room had the pungent odour of acerbic ointments and medicine. Otter was there leaning against the mantelpiece, shaking his head; Portly as well, but sitting slumped by the fireside in which the few flames of a paltry fire guttered and struggled for life.

  The Badger loomed at the Rat’s bedroom door. With an instruction to Nephew to tend to the fire, the Mole peered past the Badger towards the Rat’s bed, where he espied a gentleman in a dark suit, with a doctor’s valise open at his feet as he sat at the Rat’s side, holding his wrist and studying his pocket watch with a worried frown.

  “He’s very near the end, I fear,” whispered the Badger.

  “The end?” gasped the Mole.

  As if to confirm the fact, the doctor rose, placed the Rat’s unresisting hand back upon his chest, and with much frowning and shaking of his head retreated from the room, signalling the Badger to come with him that they might talk.

  “But what’s happened?” demanded Mole, anxious to go at once to Ratty’s side.

  The Badger quickly introduced him to the doctor, who was of the tall, whiskery, cadaverous kind, who regard their patients as nuisances, and the Mole was invited to join their hushed consultation.

  “The symptoms are grave indeed,” pronounced the doctor, “and I fear —“

  “But surely he is not — he is not going to — ?” cried poor Mole, quite beside himself.

  “It is a wonder he has clung on so well,” said the doctor wearily, giving the impression that it had been rather unreasonable of the Rat to have done so and thus prolong the agony (for his friends) and inconvenience of a country call (for the doctor), “for with so faint a pulse, and loss of all sensibilities apart from the power of hearing, which is often the last to go, I would not have thought that he would have survived this morning, when I believe he was first found.”

  “If only we had been in when Young Rat first came!” cried the Mole in much distress. “I might then have brought him some herbal tea, or a poultice perhaps, and then, then—”

  “Tut tut, sir!” said the doctor with some asperity. “One so gravely ill as Mr Rat would hardly respond to tea and sympathy if he has not responded to my best efforts for the last three hours. I very strongly suggest, indeed I absolutely insist, that my patient should not be troubled with old woman’s remedies, nor forcibly given liquids, for in his condition … In any case, he is drifting in and out of sleep now, and has mumbled a few words, so perhaps I have averted the crisis and he will make some kind of recovery, even if it is too much to expect him ever to lead an active life again.”

  “Ratty inactive!” cried the Mole. “No, that cannot be. Please be so good as to tell me what is wrong with him?”

  His dander was up, for domesticated he might be, but “old woman” he was not, and he had never forced Ratty to do anything in his life except — except —Mole felt a sudden pang then, a brief and troubling memory of a time when he had forced Ratty to do something. Why, if Ratty did not recover, then he would never be able to follow the dream that the Mole had dissuaded him from following so many years before.

  “O my!” he said aloud, sobbing suddenly. “If only Ratty would survive I swear I shall never make him do anything he does not want to do, or stand in his way!”

  “Why, Mole, whatever can you mean?” said the Badger.

  But this moment of weakness and doubt on the Mole’s part passed as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come and, taking a grip upon himself, he stood upright once more and stared boldly in the doctor’s eye, for his earlier question had not been answered, and they could do nothing useful till it had.

  “What is wrong with my friend?” he asked once more.

  “Wrong with him?” said the doctor guardedly.

  “Yes,” said the Badger, glad of the Mole’s question. “You have been treating him for half the day; surely you have come to some conclusion or other?”

  “What is wrong with him is very plain,” said the doctor brusquely, though the Rat’s friends fancied they detected a touch of uncertainty beneath his now chilly air. “He is suffering from that form of physical dementia of which a general paralysis of the vital organs and nervous functions is the most marked symptom, and for which the only known cure is extreme rest, an abstinence from violent exertion and sudden shocks — either of which might cause a complete collapse and both of which certainly would — and, if the condition worsens further still, then as a last resort the application of steam heat to loosen the blood, followed by leeches to release it entirely”

  “Steam heat?” whispered the Mole, who knew that the Rat did not much like hot and humid days.

  “Leeches?” muttered the Badger, who had early memories of those loathsome creatures being applied to his maiden aunt to cure a persistent cough, and her rapid demise very soon afterwards.

  “Just so,” said the doctor. “I shall be back tomorrow morning to re-examine the patient, and meanwhile, though I have desisted from giving him medicine till now, you might give him these pills. My bill will be in the post.”

  His face creased into an ambiguous and not entirely pleasant smile, and then he
was gone into the twilight without a further glance at his patient.

  If the Mole had been in a state of shock till now, and slow to respond to the crisis, he quickly recovered himself after the doctor’s departure.

  “Old woman, am I? Steam heat indeed! Leeches, my foot! Let me take a look at Ratty for myself before we give him any of this doctor’s pills!” Then he paused and said, “Did the doctor say he had given Ratty no medicine at all?”

  “None that I have seen,” said the Badger.

  The Mole sniffed the air and said, “But I thought I caught the smell of medicine when we arrived, or of an ointment of some kind.”

  Then, ignoring all the Badger’s protestations, Mole suggested that Young Rat should stand by to ferry him across the River to Mole End for temporary bedding and certain supplies that he might stay the night. Then, when he had ordered Portly to fetch more fuel for the fire, and instructed Nephew to tidy up the kitchen while he was at it, for it seemed to be in an awful mess, he went at last to the Rat’s side.

  “My dear chap’ he began, taking his friend’s hand in his own.

  Ratty let forth a faint moan.

  “Can you hear me?”

  He managed a feeble groan.

  “Can you tell me where it hurts?”

  The fingers of the Rat’s other hand fluttered about the counterpane as if to indicate the concept of “all over”.

  “That is not much use to me, Ratty,” said the Mole firmly, “so will you please be more particular?”

  The Rat frowned and allowed his free hand to settle finally upon his stomach.

  “You have pains especially there?” said the Mole. “Here?” As the Badger watched, the Mole pressed the Rat’s stomach gently and his friend managed both a moan and a groan, and then tried to speak.

  “He seems to be trying to say something,” said the Badger.

  “And his eyes are opening,” said the Mole, “which is a hopeful sign.”

  They did open and he spoke, though not in a way that seemed to make much sense.

  “It was very nice’ he said.

  The Badger frowned and glanced at the Mole.

  “What was very nice, old fellow?” asked Mole.

  “Never known the like before! A touch of Araby! It was almost worth it.”

  “Araby?” whispered the Mole, returning the Badger’s glance and mutely sharing that wise animal’s sad opinion that the Rat’s dementia was worsening.

  The Rat then broke into a strange and plaintive hum, waving his hands about and rolling his eyes.

  “They do it in the souks, he said.”

  “Ratty, dear chap,” said the Mole very gently, “why do you not try to get more sleep?”

  “Is there any left?” asked the Rat, breaking into his strange other-world hum once more and turning on his side away from them both before he added sleepily. “Because if there is you should try some, Moly Please do not take offence if I say it tastes quite the equal of your fennel and ramson stew”

  A slow dawning light came to the Mole’s eyes and he stood up, leaned over the Rat and asked, “What did you eat last evening?”

  “And quite as good as your quince and mulberry parfait, old chap, yes we —“

  “Ratty, wake up at once!”

  But the Rat was asleep, his crisis fading fast, and with a look of blissful memory upon his face.

  “It’s something he has eaten!” pronounced the Mole grimly “I have seen Ratty in a similar condition before, after he had eaten my wild mushroom and broccoli pie with stewed cucumber and cauliflower sauce.

  “But that’s one of your best autumn dishes,” said the Badger.

  “It may be to you and me, but I am afraid it gives Ratty indigestion,” said the Mole. “This talk of Araby and suchlike suggests that Young Rat has been trying his hand at some cooking of a kind too exotic and spicy for Ratty.”

  Young Rat appeared, and confirmed that he had indeed cooked for the Rat the evening before.

  “Did so at the Cap’n’s request,” said the youngster. “Told ’im I had a mind to try my hand in the galley, seeing as we’ve had a bit too much of his stickleback and potato pie lately, not to mention his baked pike in chutney and roach and ramson mulch.

  “Ratty didn’t take it wrong, and warmed to my tales of Pa’s cooking in the old days, especially after he had served a spell as stoker in the kitchen of the Caliph of Al Basrah. The Cap’n was taken with my songs and tales of those parts and said to surprise him with some dishes of the East.”

  “O Ratty!” groaned the Mole, as if the stricken animal were at his side. “You know that rich and exotic food does not agree with you!”

  “Well, anyway, when Mr Otter took me to the Town a week ago I bought some ingredients from a sailor’s shop that caters for mariners who miss the foods of Araby, as I do, and beginning last week I took my turn in the galley. We started with mogul crayfish with Malayan banana-bean sauce —“Crayfish, Nephew, he gave poor Ratty crayfish!”

  “In bean sauce, Uncle. That cannot have helped at all!”

  “— then he was much taken with my version of Pa’s Shaljamiya Chicken.”

  “Which is?”

  “Chicken drowned in turnip and goat’s cheese stew”

  “Turnip! O my! O dear!”

  “But it was the Cairo crab he really liked, served with aubergines lightly fried in sesame oil with turmeric and bodi onions.”

  “Crab! Aubergines! Bodi onions!” cried the Mole distractedly.

  “Raw said the indefatigable and foolish Young Rat. The Mole had heard quit enough and went back into Ratty’s room and stood over his bed.

  “Ratty, wake up at once!” he cried.

  Reluctantly, sheepishly, the Rat opened his eyes.

  “Is it any wonder,” pronounced the Mole very severely, “that you have been so ill after persuading Young Rat, who knew no better, to cook such dangerous concoctions for you?”

  “But they weren’t concoctions, Mole, they were delicious, every one, though perhaps I ate overmuch of one or two of them.”

  “Of all of them, I rather fear’ said the Mole. “But their scents, Mole, they were mouth-wateringly wonderful! How could I refuse? And they conjured up for me, more than anything I have known in the years since he so briefly visited the River Bank, that far-off world evoked for me when Young Rat’s father, the Sea Rat, came to the River Bank. O, how I wish I had followed my whim and visited those places of which he spoke. Young Rat, sing him one of the songs your father learnt in the Caliph’s harem!”

  As Young Rat essayed to do so, his voice rising and falling with the strange cadences of the East, the Rat managed at last to sit up, and waved his hands about as if conducting his assistant’s song.

  “Do you remember the Sea Rat?” asked the Rat dreamily.

  “I do. O, I do,” said the Mole, for it was that same Sea Rat whose stories of Araby and the Orient had so nearly seduced the Rat into leaving them. “O my! O my!” said the Mole miserably, sitting down on Ratty’s bed.

  “Whatever is it, old fellow?” said the Rat. “When you were so ill just now, and I thought you might not pull through, well, I thought, though it was silly of me, that you —“There, there, Mole, don’t take on so. What did you think?”

  “I remembered how I stopped you from following the Sea Rat on his travels, which I since have often thought I had no right to do, and I told myself that if you recovered I would never again dare suggest you should not follow that desire for travel and exploration in exotic realms that you have felt for so long!”

  The affection in which the two held each other was well known, but there are occasions when the truth is more important, and so far as the Rat was concerned this was one of them. For he did not now seek to reassure the Mole, indeed he went so far as to remove his hand from his friend’s, and his eyes hardened a little.

  “Mole, old fellow, you have dared raise a subject I have often thought of raising with you. It is perfectly true that but for your intervention I would
have followed the Sea Rat south all those long years ago, and our lives might have been very different. I make no complaint about that, for nobody knows better than you how content and fulfilled my life along the River Bank has been — and all the happier and satisfying for your constant companionship.

  “Yet, I do not deny that there have been times when I have been regretful — more than regretful perhaps — of that opportunity never taken, a feeling that has grown more rather than less troubling in recent years, especially since Young Rat appeared on the scene. He means no harm with his tales of Araby and the Orient, and gives me pleasure with his songs and his food — even if the after effects are sometimes more than disagreeable! — and he cannot know how wide was that door upon a new and exciting world opened by his father so many years ago, and how I have never quite been able to close it.” The Mole’s head slumped lower still.

  “Indeed, Mole’ cried the Rat passionately, sitting up, brightness returning to his eyes, “do you remember —Then he realized that others were in the room and perhaps this was not a topic upon which his friend desired a public airing.

  “I say, Badger, would you be so kind as to ask Young Rat or Nephew to brew us a nice cup of tea?”

  The Badger understood at once and retreated, saying as he closed the door behind him that he would bring in the tea himself.

  “Do I remember what?” said the Mole quietly.

  “You’ve probably quite forgotten, but many years ago, when we first met, we were sauntering near Mole End, after you had abandoned it to spend the summer months in my house, and you caught the scent of it, the feeling of it.”

  “I remember,” said the Mole, peering out of the bedroom window across to his own side of the River. “And do you remember how you had to insist that I listen to you, and that you followed your heart back home?”

  “I do, Ratty.”

  “I was insensitive, was I not?”

  “A little, but you quickly made amends.”

  “Well, Mole, my yearning for foreign climes, my dreams of travel and my desire to journey to those places the Sea Rat and his son once knew so well run very deep — as deep in their own way as that desire for home you felt those long years ago, and still feel. The desire for travel is in the nature of those who lead a nautical life.”