The Wombles to the Rescue (9 page)

It took Tomsk and Wellington the best part of two hours to get the wheelbarrow properly stacked up and its load secured, let alone back to the burrow. Luckily the wind had died down for the moment, but the barrow was so heavily loaded that it kept swerving first one way and then another, and a couple of times it turned right round before they could stop it.

‘What have you got there?' asked Orinoco, who had just tiptoed out of the burrow to wait for the trolley to come round. He'd had a double helping of breakfast all right, but the odd thing was that he felt hungrier than ever.

‘It's a load of plastic sheeting which . . .'

‘. . . fell off the back of a lorry,' put in Tomsk.

‘Jolly good,' said Orinoco. ‘Jolly clever too. Just what's needed. Hallo, I do believe the trolley's coming at last. I'm
starving
.'

‘Needed?' queried Wellington cautiously.

‘Um. Make a smashing front door with one of those plastic bits,' said Orinoco. ‘That's what you brought it back for, isn't it? I wonder if I could manage
three
grass buns with daisy cream? Yes, I dare say I could.'

‘Ah,' said Wellington slowly, ‘yes, yes, of course. It will make a very good front door.' He heaved one of his enormous sighs. He was supposed to be the brainy one who had all the good ideas, and yet both Tomsk and Orinoco had come up with really smashing ones which he hadn't even thought of. It was funny how once somebody else thought of an idea it always seemed obvious.

Wellington sighed again and began to trundle the barrow into the burrow and then he remembered his own (if small) invention and brightened up. He parked the barrow neatly and darted down to get his surprise out of the box where he kept all his special treasures. He was halfway to the kitchen and just passing the Workshop when a voice which made prickles run up and down his fur stopped him dead in his tracks.

‘Wellington,' said Miss Adelaide, appearing in the doorway of the Workshop, her toe tapping, ‘as Tobermory appears to be elsewhere at the moment, perhaps
you
will be kind enough to explain!'

‘Yes, Miss Adelaide,' said Wellington, although he hadn't the least idea what she was talking about. But Miss Adelaide (like Great Uncle Bulgaria) was not the kind of Womble that a young working Womble would question, except in very unusual circumstances. However, the moment he was inside the Workshop Wellington put two and two together with the speed of light.

‘Oh!' he said and swallowed.

‘Oh, it is indeed,' agreed Miss Adelaide, her toe tapping faster than ever. ‘I thought I recognised your writing, Wellington! Together with the writing of others, I must agree. Have you any notion just how much of our valuable paper you must have used up with your silly scribbling? Paper which is badly needed in the Womblegarten for the young ones? Hm?'

Wellington shook his head and Tobermory, coming into the Workshop and realising what was happening, looked, at that moment in spite of his advanced age, just as young and guilty as Wellington.

‘I'm waiting for an explanation,' said Miss Adelaide. ‘From both of you!'

‘
Tsk, tsk, tsk
,' said Tobermory.

.

Chapter 9

The Big Splash

It took quite a long time to explain matters to Miss Adelaide and, even when this had been done, she still only sniffed and looked disapproving as she smoothed down her neat apron with silky grey paws.

‘I see,' she said in exactly the tone of voice which meant that what she saw was how very silly and wasteful they had been, using up all that paper when it was so badly needed in the Womblegarten. She walked out at last with her nose very much in the air, and Tobermory and Wellington glanced at each other and let out two enormous sighs of relief.

‘We'll have to do something about the dratted paper shortage,' said Tobermory, ‘but what it is I haven't the faintest notion. You'd better have one of your Ideas, young Wellington.'

‘I haven't had any at all lately,' said Wellington, with his mouth turned right down at the corners. ‘Everybody else seems to be having them instead.'

‘Oh yes,' said Tobermory, hoisting himself on to his carpenter's stool. ‘What's that in your paw then, ho-hum?'

‘It's a surprise for Madame Cholet,' said Wellington.

‘Well, off you nip and show it to her then,' ordered Tobermory and slid the welding mask down over his eyes as he reached for yet another tin tube.

Madame Cholet was at the kitchen table chopping up grass with the brisk
tick-tock-tick-tock
of an expertly held knife. Alderney was writing out labels for jars (what there were of them) and altogether the kitchen was a particularly nice, warm and friendly place for a young Womble who hadn't been very lucky recently.

Wellington put his surprise down on the kitchen table and Madame Cholet stopped chopping and put aside her knife and picked up Wellington's gift and went ‘
tsk, tsk, tsk
' several times. It was a nice little glass bottle with a tin lid which fitted snugly over the top.

‘But how,' said Madame Cholet, ‘how did you make it? And from what? Eh?'

‘It's an old lemonade bottle that some Human Being chucked away. I sawed off the neck with a glass cutter I made, and smoothed the cut bit quite smooth with sandpaper and I made the lid thing from one of the tin lids that Tobermory doesn't want. Do you like it?'

‘It is . . .' and Madame Cholet put her third finger and thumb together in a way which in France obviously meant ‘superb'. ‘How many such jars can you make, little Wellington? I can use dozens and dozens of them! Come, you shall have a special hot drink. You deserve it!'

‘You
are
clever, Wellington,' said Alderney.

So what with this and that in no time at all Wellington felt a great deal better. Quite obviously his luck was in too, for soon after this a whole batch of milk bottles was brought in by a tidying-up party, and Wellington had to get a somewhat unwilling Orinoco to help him grind them down.

‘I'll tell you what,' said Orinoco, ‘there's far too much to do these days. I shall be glad when old Bungo gets back to lend a paw. He's a bossy sort of Womble, but one does miss him after a bit. Ouch, that was my finger, ouch, ouch, ouch . . .'

‘You do have to be careful,' agreed Wellington, wiping his spectacles as they had misted up. ‘Perhaps that grinder ought to have some kind of safety guard on it. How's the digging getting on? I agree about Bungo. Funny really.'

‘What – the digging?' asked Orinoco somewhat indistinctly as he was sucking his bruised finger.

‘No, how you can miss a Womble. I missed Great Uncle Bulgaria right away, but I did think it'd be quite good without old Bungo bossing one about. Still, he'd be an extra paw round the burrow now all right. How's the digging, Orinoco?'

‘Very boring. You've seen one pipeline, you've seen 'em all. I wouldn't do it if I wasn't thinking of the good of the burrow, you know.'

Wellington almost started to say, ‘The good of your stomach you mean', but he managed to stop himself.

‘Dig, dig, dig,' went on Orinoco in an aggrieved tone, as he turned the little handle that made Wellington's glass-cutting blade go round with a satisfactory
zzzzzz
sound as yet another neck was cut from a bottle. ‘I suppose it'll work, but I don't see it myself. Supposing the wind keeps on coming and going and we don't get enough rain and the whole Project's an awful old flop! All my hard work will be for nothing, you know. And I've lost a great deal of weight over it.'

‘Have you?' said Wellington doubtfully for Orinoco looked as fat as ever to him.

‘'Course. Come on, young Wellington, give us another bottle. It's nearly time for a nice little snack to keep up our strength.'

Tobermory, too, wasn't completely sure that this very grandiose plan for underwater farming was going to work. For years and years he had been hoarding in one of his many storerooms some large and very ugly iron tanks which had the letters EWS painted on them. A whole row of them had been left on the edge of the Common and when people had started dumping rubbish in them, Tobermory had arranged for the tanks to be transported back to the burrow. He had performed this great task by having the tanks slid across the grass on rollers made of saplings. It had been a dreadfully heavy, tiring job, especially when the Wombles had had to manoeuvre the tanks in through the door which normally only
WOM I
used, but he had been sure in his own mind that one day the tanks would come in useful – and now they had!

What was more, while he was making up a simple water cleansing and aerating system he had suddenly realised what the letters EWS probably stood for –
EMERGENCY WATER SUPPLY
! It was the sort of joke that Tobermory enjoyed and he had actually gone ‘
HO
-
HO
-H
O
,
HEH
-
HEH
-H
EH
,
TSK
-
TSK
-
TSK
' to himself for several minutes. It had been a much needed moment of light relief for Tobermory had a great deal on his mind these days. There were endless problems piling up and he began to realise more and more just how much Great Uncle Bulgaria had had on his shoulders all these years. Only Cousin Botany, once again his old familiar almost silent self, seemed quite certain about the outcome of the Project. He went trotting here, there and everywhere, waving a paw at first this working party of Wombles and then at that one. The big tanks were now in position in the far end of the burrow. The lighting had already been connected and the pipelines were laid, except for the last few inches where they stopped just below the surface of the Common. The gale-force wind was still blowing, but Tobermory knew that the moment it dropped, the big rain clouds would come billowing in all ready to let loose their great burdens.

It was a nerve-racking period and all the Wombles felt it, even as they went about their double duties. Knowing how much it meant not only to Tobermory and Cousin Botany, but to all of them and the future which lay ahead, they crossed their paws behind their backs and waited.

‘Zero Hour', which is what Tobermory had called it on the notice on the Workshop door, arrived with surprising suddenness, just as the last few inches of pipeline were finished and the ‘plugs' inserted in them. These plugs were a really clever touch by Tobermory as they were made of wood and were covered with plastic grass, painted by Shansi with here and there a daisy or a buttercup or a dandelion (also plastic) so that they merged into the Common.

The gale-force wind died as quickly as it had blown up and, sure enough, within two hours the rain started. The burrow was alerted instantly.

‘All Wombles to their stations, all Wombles to their stations,' said Tobermory, who had himself been woken a mere three minutes earlier by the Nightwatch Womble, who happened to be Tomsk.

Everybody hurried to their own particular place, quite forgetting how tired and deep in sleep they had been only such a short while ago. Their eyes were bright and their fur was lying not quite flat which is a sure sign with a Womble that exciting things are happening. And of all of them Cousin Botany was probably the most excited, only he showed it the least as he pulled his awful hat firmly down on his head and marched into the first tank room. The Outside Womble Action Party scampered out of the burrow and made for their own particular places and then, ears at the alert, they heard Tobermory's whistle and up and down the Common as the rain began to
plop, plop
down on the grass, the ends of the pipelines were opened up and various small Wombles settled back, nicely protected from the rain by their thick fur, to wait for another blast on the whistle which would tell them to close the pipelines.

Down below, Tobermory paced up and down, his paws behind his back. But Cousin Botany stood placidly in the big tank room and waited. He didn't have to do so for long. First there was a
drip, drip, drip
and then a soft
shhhhhh
and a thin trickle of water came sliding down into the big tank. The trickle grew thicker until it was quite a respectable stream which was gurgling into the tank from the pipes. Tobermory stared at the lapping water as if he could hardly believe it was really there and then, as the level grew higher and higher at a quite remarkable speed, he had to rush off and get the next lot of rainwater diverted into the next tank and then the next and the next. And all the pipes he had made so carefully not only held firm, but didn't leak a single drop.

It rained throughout the night and by the time a very pale sun struggled up over the edge of the Common there were some extremely wet Wombles still at work, closing down the pipe-lines, as the tanks down in the burrow were full of softly lapping water.

.

.

‘Well,' said Cousin Botany, ‘that's all right then. Thanks to you, Cousin Tobermory. Well done, old friend.'

They shook hands.

Tobermory slept in the next day and it was Cousin Botany who took charge of the following part of the proceedings. It was he who got his Womble Working Party on to moving his precious underwater plants from Queen's Mere to the burrow and quite a proceeding it was too.

They did try using Wellington's oil rig, but it wasn't precise enough as it kept bringing up rather smelly mud, a great many bubbles and all kinds of old rubbish as well as the plants. So quite early on Cousin Botany told Tomsk that he, Tomsk, had better dive down with a shovel and carefully bring up the precious plants. They were funny-looking things too, varying in colour from pale green to a deep emerald and from what looked like long stems of grass to fat little curly leaves.

Orinoco tried eating one of these as he carried a trayful of them back to the burrow, and his spirits fell considerably. The leaves had a bitter taste which made him screw up his mouth as though he had been sucking a lemon.

‘I don't think I'm going to fancy this new food at all,' he muttered and he felt so mournful he had to go along to the kitchen to have a nice, sweet, daisy syrup day-cap.

‘Never mind,' said Alderney. ‘Have it in one of our new mugs. Aren't they pretty?'

They were too. For Alderney handed the drink over to Orinoco in a good sensible mug with lovely blue pictures on it.