Chester Cricket's New Home (10 page)

She cleared her throat and spoke with a slight but becoming warble. “Jerome and I were out for our constitutional—” By which she meant a high-class walk that the Pheasants took late every afternoon. “And we thought we'd just drop round and see how dear Chester was faring. Didn't we, Jerome?”

“Mhmm.”

“He's faring lousy!” said Walter, from the pool. For some reason known only to himself—or perhaps to another water snake—Walter's speech had a curious tendency to become somewhat crude whenever he talked to Beatrice. “Tell 'em, Cricket. Unburden your woes on these sympathetic listeners.”

“
You
tell 'em,” said Chester. “You're enjoying my woes a lot more than I am.”

So Walter did just that: with many a flourish and many a flip—a few of which splashed water all over the Pheasants, but only by accident—he narrated Chester's night in the willow and his night in the wall.

Beatrice found it all very distressing. She murmured “Shocking! How very common!” when she heard about all those party-flocking birds, and muttered something to the effect that she herself had been told by the chipmunks to stay off the grass—and none too politely, at that. Jerome seemed a little more amused. He had a kind of private laugh, a cackle or chuckle, that showed how much he enjoyed the adventures, but Beatrice, with a polite look, managed to silence him before he could start to laugh out loud.

When Walter finished speaking, she tsked and tutted—which she did very well—and scratched the earth firmly with her sharp right claw. “Most upsetting, I'm sure. But the answer's perfectly obvious.” With a swish of her tail—which she swished very often—she solved all problems. “Chester dear, you must live with us!”

“Oh—uh—I—” Chester looked one way, then another, and his six legs started to creep backwards. “I'd hate to be a nuisance, Beatrice.”

“Nonsense, Chester! No nuisance at all. We've oodles of room. Don't we, Jerome?”

“Mhmm.”

“There are five tuffets now, in the Towers, I believe. Are there five, Jerome? Or six?”

“Hmm?”

“Tuffets, dear! In the Towers? Five or six?”

“I lost count,” said Jerome.

“What's the Towers?” Walter asked.

“That's what we call our place,” explained Beatrice. “Tuffet Towers. There's the tuffet that faces south—we call that Sunnyreach—and the one to the north—Chillington—and two that we just call the east and west wings. And the big one in the middle, of course—
the
Tower—which gives the whole thing its name. That's five.” She sighed, somewhat weary. “But there may be one or two others elsewhere. It makes one long for the simple old days.”

“And how, might I ask, are all these tuffets connected?” asked Walt.

“With thatch, Mr. Water Snake—all with thatch. A little thatch here, a little thatch there—”

“Here a thatch, there a thatch, everywhere a thatch-thatch—”

“Walter!” Chester whispered. “Be quiet, please.”

But Beatrice Pheasant hadn't noticed, or else she pretended not to notice. With a well-bred pheasant you never know. “So space is no problem. Do come!” she urged.

Chester had his doubts about Tuffet Towers. It wasn't in Tuffet Country, he knew. That part of the Meadow was near his stump. There was space and grass between most of the tuffets, and although they hadn't been planted in rows, there seemed to be some kind of order there, as if Nature herself had made a garden, with a subtle design that only she knew. But the Pheasants lived off to the north and the west, past Emmy and Hen's stone wall, in a woodsy and wild location. It never had really been cultivated as garden or orchard for the old homestead, and even the long-gone cows never browsed there. It was simply an area of the Old Meadow that had grown up alone, and been let go.

“You'll love it!” said Beatrice to Chester. “So rustic and free, we feel. It's all very unspoiled.”

“Many mountain lions up there?” said Walter Water Snake.

“Mr. Water Snake—really!”

“Wolves? Bears?”

“You're joking, of course.” The pheasant managed a ripple of giggle.

“Walter
never
jokes!” said Chester.

Beatrice, who was used to getting her way, scratched the ground again. She had a slow but determined scratch, as if her way was somewhere in the earth down there, and sooner or later she meant to get it. “And Miss Jenny'll take care of you.”

Walter, Simon, and Chester all looked at each other—and then at the Pheasants. “Who's that?”

“She's our field mouse,” explained Beatrice. “We've had her for years. Have we not, Jerome?”

“Mhmm.”

Simon Turtle gasped. “You don't mean little Genevieve Field Mouse? From years ago? I remember her! What a darling she was! So rambunctious and funny. Good grass, I'd almost forgotten her. How is she now?”

“She's
old,
” said Jerome.

“I should think so, indeed.” Simon smiled as his eyes looked at nothing and saw the past. “My stars—we were young together.”

“And turtles are older than anyone,” observed Walter Water Snake.

“Such pretty silvery fur she had.” Simon felt the sweet hurt of things gone by.

“It's all gray now!” said Jerome.

“Just how far along
is
Miss Mouse?” Walter inquired.

“Why, Jenny”—Simon reckoned the time. “Of course, even then I had a few years on her—I've got a few years on most Meadow folk—but Jenny—twenty, twenty-five, thirty—”

“Mmm!” Walter murmured appreciatively. “That's a ripe old age for a field mouse.”

Beatrice, too, was becoming nostalgic. “She came to us the same day we moved under our very first tuffet.”

“And she wasn't young then.” Jerome did a little scratching himself. “And that's
ages
ago!”

“Not ‘ages,' dear,” his wife corrected.

“Just what,” Walter went on, “does Miss Jenny Field Mouse do for you?”

“She gets lost a lot.”

“Oh, Jerome! Don't exaggerate!
Really,
my dear! A slight tendency to wander away,” Beatrice explained. “That's all it is. She fetches, carries—makes the beds.”

“When she can remember where they are!”

“I'd be lost without her.”

“We get lost trying to find her sometimes,” said Jerome.

“I've heard quite enough,” the pheasant decided. “Now come along, Chester. We'll show you the Towers while there's still enough light. It'll just be splendid, having you there. And also, my dear, there's one wee chore you can do for us. I'll tell you about it on the way home. Jerome—follow me!” With great dignity—she'd been practicing all her life—Beatrice swiveled and swung around, her plumage ruffed and head thrown back, Jerome in tow, and began a stately plod toward home.

Chester Cricket felt helpless. As happens so often, he had let himself be defeated again by the kindness of friends. “Okay—let's go.” He shrugged his first shoulders, sighed at Simon, made a face at Walter, and, hopping his hardest, brought up the rear of the pheasant parade.

“Shh!” Walter hissed at the turtle, to warn him. “Be quiet, now. We can't start work till they're out of sight.” By craning up, he could just see over the edge of the bank. “I daresay before another day has passed we shall hear the tale of Chester Crickety and Field Mouse Rickety.” He shook his head and laughed at the three receding figures. “Chester's jumping looks grim. There's no joy in that jump. The poor
cricket!
And there he goes.”

NINE

Tuffet Towers

And—“Here he comes!” Walt said the next morning.

His head was still craned to see over the bank. A stranger, a casual human being who took a stroll around Simon's Pool, might think that nothing had happened at all. But much had. And not simply the fact that the water was cleared of all its litter—except for Chester's boat. Simon Turtle was lolling as usual on his log; Walt Water Snake had been swimming and sunning, too—and craning and waiting; the morning seemed perfectly ordinary. It wasn't. There was something in the air. But then, a turtle and a water snake
always
seem to be keeping some secret.

“Not a word, now! At first.”

“Don't you be bad, now, Walter,” said Simon.

“We have to have some fun! For a while!” And that human stranger who overheard the two friends talking might have thought Walter's eyes were glinting wickedly. They weren't. It was mischief. However, you have to know a snake well to tell the two apart.

Slipping down and swimming tummy-up—he was expert at different styles, was Walt—the water snake slithered next to Simon and lay on his back, as if he wanted some sun on his stomach. But his eyes were open a little slit, so when Chester appeared: “Good gracious! My word! And upon my soul! Turtle-urtle, we have company!” He zipped over for a closer look. “Chipper Chester—what's
happened?
I never yet have seen a bug with big bags under both his eyes, but if any insect could—”

“Oh, Walter, I'm so tired—”

“Again—?”

“No. Still. I didn't sleep a single wink.”

“Hop on the
Becalmed.
I'll rock you.”

“I called it the
West Wind.
”

“The weather changed. This boat will have a new name every day. Jump! Jump!”

Chester did as he was told. And gratefully collapsed on his ship. “Oh—oh—it feels so good, to lie down.” The pleasure of stretching was wonderful. “I just am simply dead.”

“Were you up all hours hunting for field mice?”

“I was up all hours—tolling.”

“Tolling?” Simon and Walter asked together.

“Chiming!” answered Chester Cricket, with a little bit of crazy impatience. “But of course you don't know—and you wouldn't think it to look at me, would you?—I am a clock now! If you please!”

Simon made a whistling sound—disbelief—as if now he had heard everything. “I have lived in this Meadow since Hedley was only a country village, since before there were houses on Mountain Road, and I
never
—”

Walter Water Snake interrupted him. “How does a cricket become a clock?”

“He tells time,” said Chester, matter-of-factly.

“May we hear how this strange change took place?” said Walter. “From cricket to clock? It sounds like a fascinating if somewhat unnatural transformation.”

“I have to take a nap,” began Chester. “I—”

“Afterwards! Afterwards!” Walt rocked the boat, to prompt the cricket. “You hopped all the way to the Towers Terrific, or Thatchworth Manor, whatever Mrs. Magnificent calls it, and—and—?”

“And all the way there she kept telling me how ‘at home' I'd feel. She wanted me not to be disturbed by how ‘well off' Jerome and she were. How ‘well-to-do.' She said that several times. And she knew that I came from ‘modest circumstances.'”

“By which she meant your stump?”

“I guess. You see, she explained, Jerome and she were, well, rather wealthy—”

“Wealthy she said, but rich she meant!” Walter whacked the water with his tail. “Can you beat that bird!”

“It's very curious,” Chester reflected. “I thought that was only a human problem. It's one of the big advantages of being an animal: if you decide you're rich, then you are!”

“Yeah, that's probably just how it happened,” growled Walter. Beebee Pheasant woke up one morning and said, “Jerome, we are
rich!
Let's add another tuffet, my dear.”

“I doubt if she said that,” laughed Chester.

“Words to that effect. So what else did Towering Tail Feathers do to make you feel at home? Along with telling you that you were just an impoverished cricket without a hole to call your own?”

“Oh, Walter, it wasn't as bad as that. She was only trying to ‘set me at my ease,' she said.”

“I'd like to set
her
on her ease!” grumbled Walter.

“Anyway—we got to the Towers, and sure enough, Miss Jenny had wandered away again. But not too far. She was under a patch of daisies, sleeping. So peaceful she looked. And when we woke her up, she said she was hunting for strawberries.”

“Strawberries?” said Simon. “In August?”

“When Miss Jenny hunts for strawberries, she hunts for
strawberries!
” Chester said. “She's so old by now that whatever season she wants it to be, why that's the season she's living in. It's wonderful, in a way. And she was absolutely thrilled that I was coming to live with them. She'd been expecting me, she said. I know—don't ask—how could she be? But she was expecting
someone
—that's all—and it might as well be me. You just have to think the way she does—as if thought had all turned into dreams, or memories, or secret desires—and then everything falls in place. And don't you hiss, Mr. Water Snake.”