The Tale of Hawthorn House (34 page)

“Tortoises?” Libby and Mouse echoed blankly.

“No!”
cried Jemima, aghast.
“You mean, after all my QUACK hoping and watching and waiting, all my QUACK dreaming and knitting and naming, I have been sitting on a QUACK nest of QUACK QUACK

 
REPTILES?”

32

Tortoises?

Libby, almost over her fright but still much puzzled, looked up at Deirdre. “What is a tortoise?” she asked. “Is it some sort of comb?”

Now, I’m sure you know what tortoises are, and turtles, too, for you have read books and watched films and gone to zoos and seen a great many creatures as you traveled the world. But please don’t think it strange that Libby and Mouse have never seen a tortoise, for the truth is that there are no native tortoises (who are land creatures) or turtles (who are amphibious) in the entire Land Between the Lakes—indeed, in all of England and Scotland. This may come as a great surprise to Americans, for our lakes and rivers are full of turtles (who are glad to dine on ducklings, when they can catch them) and our fields and woodlands are home to many tortoises—in fact, I have a box turtle (who is really a tortoise, but that’s another story) living in my garden at this very moment. I’m glad to have him, too, or her—I have not closely inquired as to gender—for box turtlesfeast on insects that might otherwise feast on my vegetables. Every garden could use one.

“Do you remember Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise in Miss Potter’s book,
Jeremy Fisher
?” Deirdre asked. “They are reptiles that carry their house around with them.” (At the word “reptile,” Jemima gave another horrified
QUACK!
) “When a tortoise wants to go home, all it has to do is pull its head and legs and tail indoors and shut the windows.” The baby tortoise obliged, so that Deirdre held nothing in her hand but a very curious shell, sturdily constructed and neatly covered with what looked like scales, arranged in a symmetrical fashion. “People use tortoise shells to make combs and hairpins and shaving brushes,” she added.

Jemima was crushed.
“Do you mean to tell me,”
she wept,
“that I have been sitting on a collection of QUACK combs and hairpins these whole two months?”

Libby frowned. “Is a tortoise anything like the Mock Turtle?”

“Very good!” Deirdre exclaimed, who just read the children “The Mock Turtle’s Story” from
Alice in Wonderland
. “They are quite like the Mock Turtle, I should think, although there is nothing very ‘mock’ about these.” She put the little creature down. “These tortoises are quite real.”

“ ‘The master was an old Turtle,’ ” said Libby, quoting the Mock Turtle. “ ‘We used to call him Tortoise—’ ”

“ ‘Because he taught us’!” Mouse piped up, and both girls giggled.

Kep came running full-tilt into the barn, and skidded to a halt.
“What’s all this noise?”
he barked.
“What’s going on here?”

“Look, Kep!” Libby exclaimed, pointing. “It’s a tortoise! Jemima hatched it!”

“Tortoises,”
Jemima whimpered hopelessly.
“All my darling duCKluCKlings have turned into QUACK combs and hairpins!”

Kep stared at the small black creatures crawling erratically through the straw on the barn floor.
“Tortoises?”
He put a paw on top of one and watched as it promptly retracted all its extremities, like a mechanical toy.
“Never heard of ’em.”
He bent down and sniffed.
“Don’t smell like much. Do they bark? Do they bite?”

Mouse picked up one of the babies and turned it upside down, squealing with delight as its head and legs and tail disappeared. “But where did they come from?” she cried excitedly. “How did they get into Jemima’s nest?”

“And whose
are
they?” asked Libby—a question that has no doubt occurred to you, too. For if there are no tortoises in England, how can there be tortoise eggs?

Of course, you and I and Kep could answer the first of Mouse’s questions, for we know that Jemima found the eggs half-buried in silt along the shore of Eeswyke Inlet, at the edge of Esthwaite Water. Thinking they were duck eggs, she took them home with her. I’m not sure how she did it, but I like to imagine her carrying the eggs to the barn in her poke bonnet—in twos and threes, probably, for all ten at once would have been more than a mere duck could manage.

“As to where they came from,” Deirdre said importantly, “I believe I can answer that question. But perhaps it is better to show you.” And with that, she began scooping baby tortoises into her basket, along with the eggs.

“Wait, Deirdre!”
Kep barked, alarmed.
“Stop! Hold on! Cease and desist! You cannot take Jemima’s babies!”

“Indeed she can,”
Jemima said grimly.
“I give her leave to take every single one of the horrid QUACK creatures. I want nothing more to do with them. Two whole months QUACK of my life, and I’ve hatched shaving brushes! QUACK QUACK!”

At that moment, Mrs. Jennings, who had finished cleaning the floors in her house, came into the barn with a pail to get some fresh milk from Kitchen the cow. “What have you found?” she asked Deirdre, seeing the children on their hands and knees.

Deirdre stood up and held out her hand, palm up. “It’s a tortoise,” she said, wisely failing to mention that the duck had hatched it, and that there were others.

“Eek!” cried Mrs. Jennings, putting her hands to her face, much affrighted. She had never seen a tortoise and was deathly afraid of scaly things. “Get it out o’ here!”

“Are you sure you don’t want it?” Deirdre asked earnestly. “Perhaps it belongs to Miss Potter.”

“T’ foul creature doan’t belong to her nor to me, neither!” said Mrs. Jennings. “Take it straight away. And if there be others, take them, too. Now!” Skirts flying and pattens clattering, she ran out of the barn, in such a hurry that she forgot entirely about the milk.

Deirdre looked at the little tortoise in the palm of her hand, its legs and head and tail tucked inside its shell, and then at the other babies, scurrying around under the feedbox.

“I think we had better take them to their mother,” she said.

“By all means,”
gritted Jemima.
“Find the unfortunate QUACK creature and give her babies baCK!”

“Their mother?”
Kep barked in a wondering tone.

“But who is their mother?” Mouse asked.

“And where does she live?” Libby wanted to know.

“Come along and I’ll show you,” Deirdre said.

Since I (and I hope you, as well) would very much like to know the answers to both these questions, we will go with Deirdre and the two little Suttons. And since Kep wants to know, he’s coming along, too.

But Jemima, even though Kep politely invited her, declined. She had already had quite enough of tortoises, thank you very much. And now that she was free of her maternal responsibilities, she had other matters to attend to. I suspect that these had to do with her friend, the sandy-whiskered gentleman.

Miss Potter always said that Jemima Puddle-duck was a simpleton.

33

The Tale of Hortense the Tortoise

Deirdre, Kep, and the two young Suttons walked up the Kendal Road, turned left at The Garth, and went downhill in the direction of Esthwaite Water until they reached a large complex of buildings known as Esthwaite Farm. Deirdre led her little group down a path to Willow Bank Cottage, where she knocked at the door and asked for Mrs. Allen. When the maid asked what they had come about, Deirdre said, “Please, miss, tell her it’s about tortoises.”

Now, if someone appeared at your door and announced that they had come about tortoises, I daresay you would be tempted to send them straight away. But Mrs. Allen, when she heard this, dropped everything and hurried to the door. This lady had a great interest in the subject, you see, because she happened to be the owner of quite a few exotic pets, including two fine leopard tortoises that her great-uncle Roger had brought back from Africa many years before. These tortoises, named Hortense and Horatio, were still young when Great-Uncle Roger found them in a cage in a noisy, crowded market in Botswana. Admiring their brown and yellow carapaces and feeling that two such handsome tortoises deserved better than to end their days as hair-brush handles or bracelets or earrings, Great-Uncle Roger bought them for a shilling each and shipped them to England, where they took up residence in the conservatory in his garden, near Brighton. Great-Uncle Roger enjoyed his tortoises for ten years before he fell ill and died, and something had to be decided about the future of Hortense and Horatio.

And that future might be a protracted one. Tortoises can live a long time, if they manage to survive the hazards of hatchling-hood. Eagles and owls and frigate birds gobble them readily, and eels and crocodiles and mongooses (or is it mongeese?) snap them up in their vicious jaws. Once successfully grown to dinner-table size, they are also prey to humans, who fancy the tasty meat that is locked up in the great cupboard of their shells, and the shells themselves, which are turned into all manner of useful and decorative objects. A leopard tortoise who somehow manages to escape these various predations may grow to the size of a large china wash basin, weigh in the neighborhood of thirty to forty pounds, and live for more than sixty years.

After Great-Uncle Roger’s death, the leopard tortoises of our tale made their home with his daughter, who had a house next door to The Elms in the village of Rottingdean, near Brighton. You may recall that The Elms is the house in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling resided while he was writing the novel
Kim
. In fact, Mr. Kipling enjoyed visiting with Hortense and Horatio, for he had written about a tortoise named Slow-Solid in one of his
Just So
stories—the one called “The Beginning of the Armadillos,” in case you want to go and read it—and was rather fond of the creatures. I daresay that if Mr. Kipling had known that Hortense and Horatio were in want of a home, he would have taken them to live with him, and there would be no tortoises in our story.

But to tell the truth, it is not easy for two very large tortoises to find a good home. Hortense and Horatio had several other adventures (I do not know what they were, so I cannot relate them) and were at last given into the custody of Mrs. Janet Allen (Great-Uncle Roger’s great-niece), who lived at Willow Bank Cottage, at Graythwaite Farm. The tortoises traveled by train to the Land Between the Lakes and took up residence in the Willow Bank greenhouse, where they were very comfortable. Mrs. Allen, a matronly lady above middle age, was possessed of several interesting creatures, including a spider monkey named Spiffy, a parrot named Admiral Nelson (who gave commands in great nautical style), and Timothy the Tegu lizard. She became quite fond of Great-Uncle Roger’s tortoises and took great care to provide them with everything their hearts could desire: collards, kale, cabbage, parsley, dandelions, mustard greens, and corn, with grated carrots, zucchini, and a chopped apple for variety. She made sure they had clean hay and fresh water, and gave them pleasant weekly soakings in a large pan filled with warm water. (She had read that leopard tortoises enjoyed these long baths.) They lived in the greenhouse, but spent time in the garden on bright warm days, foraging in the grass.

As time went on, Mrs. Allen noticed that the two tortoises were quite opposite in temperament. Horatio was a phlegmatic tortoise who liked to sit under a vine and wait for dinner to be served, after which he would shut himself up in his shell and have a nap (or perhaps he read the newspaper or did the crossword puzzle) until it was time for dinner the next day. Hortense, on the other hand, was far more adventuresome. She was inclined to wander, specially when she had it in mind to lay eggs, which, in the manner of tortoises, she buried in a hole she had dug for that purpose.

Now, most female tortoises, I am told, give little thought to the health and well-being of their offspring, leaving them all alone to get on with the business of hatching and to fend for themselves in the great world. But Hortense was made of different stuff altogether, and (like our Jemima) had an intense personal desire to be a mother, a desire so strong that one might almost call it an obsession. She did not want to leave the raising of her young to others, intending instead to watch over them and rear them carefully. She had not had any success, however. It seemed that, just when she got into the mood to lay a clutch of eggs—in Great-Uncle Roger’s conservatory, or in the garden at Rottingdean—something always happened to disrupt her life. It was exceedingly trying.

So when Hortense settled in at Willow Bank, she began to think once again of motherhood. She decided not to leave her eggs in the garden, where they might be inadvertently dug along with the potatoes and turnips. Hence her occasional sorties along the shore of Esthwaite Water (such as the time she was found by Miss Potter and Miss Potter’s brother Bertram and returned to Mrs. Allen, who was very glad to see her). But being a tortoise, Hortense had by nature a smallish brain, and so even though she was determined to be a good mother, she could never quite remember where she had left her eggs (which she always took care to cover). When she went back to check on their progress, she could not find them.

But even if she had remembered, it wouldn’t have mattered, for I am sorry to say that Hortense’s eggs were no safer in the meadow and along the lakeshore than they would have been among the turnips and potatoes in the garden. They were promptly dug and eaten by foxes and badgers and other such predators, while the few hatchlings who survived were quickly gobbled up by the fierce eagle who lived along the shore and was always on the lookout for lively hors d’oeuvres.

Now, when she was told by the maid that a young person had come to see her about tortoises, Mrs. Allen was immediately apprehensive, thinking that Hortense might have wandered away again. But when she saw what Deirdre had in her basket, amazement took the place of apprehension.