The Willows and Beyond (7 page)

“Why, Mole,” cried Ratty, his suspicions now confirmed, “it’s from the Sea Rat. The one I met so many years ago.
You
remember!”

The Mole did indeed remember, only too well. It was a story he had told Nephew a good many times as a warning against yielding too impulsively to those restless yearnings for travel that beset so many animals of a wandering nature at autumn time. He had told him of how that stranger had appeared along the River Bank, and held the Rat spellbound with many alluring tales of far distant places; of how the Mole had come along just in time to restrain the Rat from following in the stranger’s footsteps and leaving the River Bank for ever, to end up one day in a watery grave at the bottom of some foreign dock (as the Mole imagined such wandering seafarers too often ended their days).

The Rat resumed his reading of the letter:

“I am that same Sea Rat to whom you were so hospitable, and I have never forgotten your kindness or the River Bank where you had your home.

“Well, fellow mariner the game’s up with me now and I have not many days to live, mayhap only hours. By the time you read this; shipmate, I’ll be down below in Davy Jones’s locker.”

For the first time since they had entered the cage the young rat responded in some way: he nodded sadly It was evident that the Sea Rat had indeed passed on, just as he had predicted.

“Now, here’s the point. I remember you to be a practical kind of fellow, as most nautical rats are, so I’ll not beat about the bush. After I left you those many years ago, fate and good fortune took me to the creeks of Malaya where I gave up the sea-faring life for a time and made a stab at rubber plantation work. But I lost what money I had, and I lost as well the only pearl I ever possessed in all my life—

—
the mother of that youngster you see before you now.”

‘The poor youth!” cried the Mole, much moved by the Sea Rat’s testimony.

“I decided to work my passage home but was diverted up the Nile, where they have need of a good hand upon a deck, which I was, and which my boy had by then become. But lady luck went against me once more, and not a fortnight since I contracted a fever, what we would call the ‘Gruesome’ in our lingo.

“I said before that the boy’s mother was the brightest pearl in my life, but not far behind is the boy himself He’s good about the water, so you’ll have a use for him and he’ll work his passage without you needing to train him up. He can speak five languages fluently, and two more passably, though you may not have much use for Malayan lingo and its dialects along the River Bank, nor Chinese for all I know.

“I’ve racked my brain as to what to do with him, for this place is filled with villains and low types; so once I’m gone he’ll be lucky not to be sold into slavery and bondage. Anyway, the sea’s no life for a rat these days; for now the sailing ships have all but gone there’s no joy left in it. Come to that, the roaming life’s not all it’s cracked up to be. That was why I had been trying to get him back home and apprentice him to land-lubbing work of some kind; but I’ll not be able to now.

“All in all, and when I count the little money I have left, which isn’t much, the best thing I can do for him, which will let me die in the hope he’s got a bit of a start in life, is to send him to you. Seeing as I don’t have enough to buy a ticket for him as a passenger, except to get him as far as Sicily, where I don’t put his chances too high, I thought I’d send him by the Colonial Royal Mail, which will give him feed and water, and get him home safer than if he was the Crown Jewels, which to me he is.

“So that’s the long and short of it. There should be a bit of change left over, which you’re welcome to, and I know he’ll more than make up for the trouble he’s causing you. Don’t mind if he don’t say much till he’s near water. He don’t like to be away from it too long. Farewell, old shipmate, and look after my lad for me proper, and teach him all you know And don’t let him wander off till he’s learnt how to settle down, as you have but I never did.

“Regulations won’t allow livestock to have baggage, but then seafarers like me travel light. Still, I’ve hung me old marlin spike about his neck so he’ll have something to remember me by. I’ve had it since my first ship and now it’ll have to travel on without me.

“Your old friend,

“Sea Rat.”

Ratty stood in silence for a moment, and then signalled to Mole to come with him out of the cage.

“Whatever am I going to do, Mole? I can’t possibly take him home with me. Yet I can’t very well leave him here, can I? Why this young rat is absolutely nothing to do with me, and it is very presumptuous of that old sea dog —”

“You haven’t forgotten him, then?”

“Of course not. I have often thought of him, but now —“But now he’s gone, Ratty, as we all will one day and he’s left you the only thing he had to leave.”

“Well, I suppose you could put it that way”

“And he has entrusted that ‘item’ to the only animal in all the world — and I daresay he met a great many in his time — upon whom he felt he could rely”

“Well… “began the Rat, weakening. But then he looked down the aisle to that unkempt, dirtily dressed stranger, and he thought of his own small quarters, shipshape and orderly No, he couldn’t possibly.

“I won’t do it, Mole!” cried Ratty. “Why, if I let go of the tiller now upon the stormy and uncertain waters of the Sea Rat’s presumption, and your wrong-headed persuasion, there’s no knowing where I’ll run aground!”

“And what did you advise when Nephew turned up at my door, Ratty?” said the Mole, who in circumstances such as these could be formidable. “Did you tell me to send him packing?”

“No, I suppose I didn’t.”

“Did you not tell me to put up with it? Did you not suggest that it might even do me some good?”

“I suppose I might have said some such thing,” conceded the Rat grudgingly.

“And that it might make me a little less self—centred?”

“Yes, yes, Mole, I did think those things, and I do think them. But Nephew is one thing, and a relative to boot; but this young fellow… why no, I won’t do it and that’s final!”

With a fierce and irritable look on his face, Ratty turned back to the cage to give his decision.

The youngster looked very frightened and sorry for himself. He certainly was grubby, and hungry, too.

“Well, sir,” said the Post Office official, joining them once more. “Having seen the item, are you to accept it or send it back? Naturally it makes no difference to us, as under recent agreements with the government of Egypt return passage is paid for in the case of non-acceptance, and in the circumstances I would quite understand.”

“Humph,” said the Rat, glowering.

“If
you
won’t, Ratty,” cried the Mole, much distressed, “let
me
take him in, for though my home is small, I can surely find space!”

“Ah!” said the Post Office official. “Now that would not be permitted, no, not at all. It must be the addressee who accepts, or nobody, and as I say, returns of such items are quite a regular occurrence. Those parrots you saw will be on their way back next week, seeing as they don’t speak English. If you do not wish to accept the item, then it would simply be a matter of completing the correct paperwork, and then shipping the item to Egypt again. That item could be back in Cairo in less than a year.

“Hmmm,” growled the Rat, frowning even more.

“But, Ratty,” interrupted Nephew, “you cannot possibly send him back! At least you could see if he knows something about river-work by asking him some questions. He might be useful to you.

The Water Rat went closer to the item in question, and after some thought asked, “You can scull a boat, I suppose?”

The item nodded.

“Tie a bowline?”

The item nodded.

“Tack and gybe and punt one-handed across a five-knot current in a Force Six wind?”

The item nodded a third time.

“What can’t you do?” said the Rat grumpily.

The item frowned thoughtfully and finally spoke.

“Can’t swim,” it said.

“Can’t swim!” cried the Rat. “Did you hear that, Mole. Here is a rat, brought up on the water, and he can’t swim! Can’t swim, indeed. Well, I’m not having a water rat going out into the world who can’t swim: it’s not right, it’s not dignified and it’s not good for my kind’s reputation. Imagine how eagles would feel if one of their number went about in public who couldn’t fly!”

“He’d have to walk,” said Nephew, winking at the item” to indicate that despite Ratty’s huffing and puffing he was on the way to coming round a little. Though a wink must have seemed a poor weight to set upon the balance of that animal’s future expectation against the frowns, glowering, and determined words the Rat had so far spoken, and so he continued to look very frightened and pathetic.

“Or imagine,” continued the Rat, “a rabbit that couldn’t burrow or —“Yes, yes, Ratty,” said the Mole, intervening. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“He can stay with me till he’s learnt to swim.

“And then he can stay a little longer,” said Nephew, feeling perhaps that this was the moment to set the future straight for the young rat, “till he has, as his father put it so fairly, ‘worked his passage’.”

“So you’ll accept the item, sir?” enquired the Post Office official.

The Rat nodded curtly and signed the card offered him. He did not linger once his decision was made, but on the way back to their craft he sought to insist that they visit a clothes shop to kit out the newcomer in something clean and decent. But once more the sensitive Mole intervened, saying that since his clothes were the only possessions the youngster had from his past life, apart from the marlin spike about his neck, perhaps he might feel more comfortable hanging on to them a short while longer, grubby and heathen though they were.

“I am sure that Nephew here, who is about his size, or Master Toad, who has a very extensive wardrobe, will be happy to kit him out for a time till he can make his own choice.”

“Humph!” said the Rat, who had not yet so much as smiled upon the poor youngster, or given him the slightest encouragement.

But then, as they reached the end of a narrow street and turned the last corner, the River, with all the jetties and boats and multifarious activity of a busy riverfront, came into view, and a heart-warming change immediately came over the young rat.

Till that moment he had stayed close by the Mole, for he was frightened and confused and the Mole seemed the only friendly thing about. The horses, the carts, the shouting of street-sellers and the honking of occasional motor-cars had been almost too much for him.

Now there was the River, and in the air its watery scent. The youngster stopped quite suddenly Thinking that there was difficulty or danger about, the Mole stopped as well, while a little way off, where he had been walking along huffily, the Rat also came to a halt, slowed by the sight of the River perhaps, but caught still more by the expression on the youth’s face.

The fear had gone from his eyes, the confusion, too, and had all the horses and carts and people in the world descended upon that very spot, it would not have mattered one whit. A dreamy vacant look had come to his face, and even as the Mole started to urge him on, for they could not stand in everyone’s way at so busy a junction, it was the Rat’s turn to be sensitive.

He raised a hand to still his good friend the Mole, and they watched together as the youngster, like a pigeon flying home to roost, made his own way towards the River’s edge. Slowly and dreamily he went, not quite looking here, nor quite there, yet taking in everything at once by sight and sense, and by touch as well. His hands felt the worn metal-hooped bollards as he passed them as if they were old friends, lingered on a barge half hauled out of the water, and finally found a resting place on a rope that ran down from the barge in a great sweeping curve to the water, where it was tied fast to an upright timber.

On this rope the youngster leaned his weight, and then gently rocked back and forth, as if to shed from himself all the cares he had carried so long alone. Those watching him could not but reflect how hard his journey must have been, how alarming, and how often he must have wondered what his final destination would be.

Having lingered thus at peace for a time, watching the River’s flow and all its varied currents near and far, he let go of the rope and went to sit upon a wooden jetty his feet dangling over its high edge down towards the water.

He sat quite still there, as if considering something, till at last he cocked his head to one side, listening, then raised one hand and finally another, and moved them gently to and fro.

“But he’s…” began Nephew, for he had only ever seen one other animal do what the youngster was doing now.

“He
is!”
whispered the Mole with delight.