The Tale of Castle Cottage Page 7

  “Oh,” Beatrix said, suddenly deflated. “No, of course I don’t mind.”

  As she spoke, she suddenly found that she minded a very great deal—but what she minded was the fact that Will had to leave. She hadn’t seen him for over a fortnight, and she had been looking forward to spending this afternoon together. She stole a look at him, wondering what the “dodgy bit of business” might be and why he had to see Captain Woodcock so urgently.

  “Splendid,” Will replied, with what seemed to her a forced cheerfulness. “And I haven’t forgotten about this evening. You and I are having dinner at Tower Bank House. I’ll call for you at . . . oh, say, seven?”

  “Of course,” Beatrix said.

  He leaned forward and brushed her cheek with his lips. “Well, then, cheerio, my dear. I’ll just clear off.” He turned to go.

  She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “But I really feel we must have a talk with Mr. Biddle soon, Will. Perhaps later this afternoon, after you’ve had your talk with the captain? We’d have to find the man, but—”

  “This afternoon?” He shook his head. “Afraid not. Truly sorry, my dear. I have to see a client back in Hawkshead. But we’ll do it soon. I promise. And I’ll see you tonight.” Then he was gone, hurrying out to his motorcycle, kicking it into life, and driving back down the hill with a great cloud of dust hanging in the still air behind him.

  Beatrix stood stock-still, feeling herself unable to move. Will had a mild temperament and was slow to show worry or impatience. In all the many hours she had spent with him, he had never seemed quite so hurried and brusque—and evasive—as he had just now. Whatever was troubling him, it must be serious.

  She opened the gate. It couldn’t be . . . It couldn’t be something between the two of them, could it? Between herself and Will? She thought back to the last time they had been together, in early July, when he had come over to Lindeth Howe for a brief Sunday afternoon visit with her parents. It wasn’t the first time he had called. After all, the two of them were engaged. And she insisted on treating it as if it were a real engagement, even though her mother and father tried very hard to pretend it didn’t exist.

  She and Will had made every attempt at normal conversation. But despite their efforts, her father had been mostly silent and her mother had been hostile and rude. Both had made it clear that their daughter’s friend was not a welcome caller. The visit had been almost unbearably uncomfortable, and she had actually been glad when Will looked at her with a despairing sigh, said goodbye, and left. Since then she had scarcely heard from him, except for one or two short notes to explain that he was very busy with some matters at the law office and couldn’t get away. She hadn’t thought anything of it, for she herself had been busy with the drawings for Pigling Bland. But now—

  Now she had to wonder. Perhaps Will was coming to realize what she had felt for some time, that there was really no use in trying to create something out of nothing, to build a future where none was likely to exist. The thought made her stomach hurt and her head ache, but the possibility had to be faced, didn’t it? It would certainly be better to end the engagement sooner, rather than later, so that Will could find what he needed.

  Beatrix had no heart now to go inside the house, its old life pulled out of it and spread like so much rubbish all over the garden, its new life not yet—and perhaps not ever to be—realized. It loomed behind her like a metaphor for a failed relationship, for an unrealized dream. And even if she could find Mr. Biddle, facing him in her current frame of mind was out of the question.

  She went through the gate, leaving Castle Cottage and its mess behind, and began to walk slowly down the hill.

  5

  In the Castle Farm Barn

  . . . Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbithole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  It’s probably a very good thing that Miss Potter did not go into the barn. If she had climbed the ladder and looked into the loft, she would have been surprised and very bewildered by what she saw. But she might have been even more surprised if she had gone into the second stall on the right, the winter home of the Cottage Farm draught horse, a big, burly fellow named Brown Billy who was spending the summer working with Mr. Jennings in the hayfield.

  But Miss Potter, disheartened by her brief exchange with Mr. Heelis, did neither of these things, going instead down the hill toward the village. Since that is the case, I will take the liberty of telling you what she would have seen. She would have been very much puzzled by the stacks of lumber and other building supplies, which would have seemed to her to be a duplicate of the materials that were heaped outdoors, being spoilt in the weather. And in Brown Billy’s stall, she would have noticed a great many unusual comings and goings amidst the rustling of crisp hay and the squeaking and chirping of rats.

  Yes, rats. Rats with caps pulled low over their eyes, rats carrying baskets of pilfered produce and cheeses, rats staggering under heavy loads of booty. And if Miss Potter could have made herself very small (like Alice, who followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland), I have no doubt that she, too, would have followed these rats and discovered that every one of them was going through a trapdoor in the floor under Brown Billy’s manger.

  Through a trapdoor in the floor? Yes, indeed, and down a wooden ladder, craftily built of willow wattles lashed with binding twine, and thence into a large cavern that had been carved out under the floor of her barn. But since Miss Potter didn’t do this, we will, exercising the special privilege extended to writers and readers of stories. For as you know, we are entitled to see through walls and listen at keyholes and generally poke our noses into all sorts of odd and out-of-the-way places where real people cannot go—for example, down Alice’s rabbit hole or through a trapdoor and under the floor of the Castle Farm barn.

  This barn had been built over two centuries before and was in serious need of repair when Miss Potter bought it. She planned to use it to provide the cows and farm horses and pigs and chickens with a warm and cozy shelter from the snows and rains of a north England winter, so she had engaged several workmen to replace the broken slates on the steep roof, replace the rotted timbers, and strengthen the stone walls. Now, during the summer and while the house was being renovated, it was empty.

  But if you have ever visited a farm, you will appreciate the fact that, while it is very easy to put cows and horses and pigs and chickens into a barn, it is most assuredly impossible to keep other creatures out. Give a mouse or a vole or even a bat the smallest opening, and the creature will enlarge it to the size of a proper front door, hang a rope bell-pull beside it, and send out hand-printed cards announcing that he (or she) will be at home every afternoon (except Wednesdays) at three. Then she (or he) will put up fresh curtains, stock the larder, set out the tea things, and receive callers.

  Unfortunately, however, not all barn residents are quite so well-mannered and genteel as this. Both you and I know that the animal world contains just as many individuals of a low and despicable character (that is to say, scum and riff-raff) as does our human world. These are creatures—rats, mostly, of the vilest and dirtiest sort—who have no respect for the bourgeois niceties of bell-pulls and fresh curtains and stocked larders and would never think of inviting anybody to tea.

  Oh, no, no indeed. These creatures are social pariahs, gangsters, mobsters, and desperados who live outside the law, making a career of burglary, shoplifting, housebreak, bagsnatch, and assault. Give these ratty rascals the smallest opening in an otherwise respectable barn, and they are likely to turn it into a pub of the sort one finds in the slums of London and Liverpool. Pretty soon, there will be a billiards table a
nd dart board; somebody will install a keg of beer and set up a row of dirty glasses and a cash box; and others will bring in as many sticky buns and cheeses and cigarettes and cigars and such as they can filch from the neighborhood. Before you know it, there’ll even be entertainment: concertina players and vaudeville dancers and burlesque comics, with a new and bawdier show every night. If you think I am making this up, I suggest that you read The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood, for something very similar took place in the attics at Hill Top Farm several years before the time of our story, when Rosabelle Rat invited her homeless relatives, who invited their friends and cronies, who invited any rat who happened along. It wasn’t long before the entire place had been taken over and very harsh measures indeed were required to evict the interlopers.

  I am sorry to tell you, however, that the gang that has moved into the hole under the floor of Brown Billy’s stall in the Castle Farm barn is worse—yes, far worse—than those rowdy rats at Hill Top. The latter were merely good-time Charlies who let their unwise appetites for entertainment get the better of them. These rats are what the police call “professional criminals”: hard-looking, foul-mouthed toughs whom you would never allow to darken your kitchen door—if you could keep them out, that is, which perhaps you could not. They are led by old Rooker, a wily, scruffy-looking gray rat with needle-like claws, fierce whiskers, and a reputation as a dangerous fellow and a master thief.

  Yes, Rooker Rat. The same Corporal Rooker who appeared, homeless and bedraggled, at The Brockery, where he was hospitably fed and lodged. The rat who took advantage of his gracious hosts, devoured Parsley’s birthday cake, and then made off with three silver spoons in his pocket. Rooker Rat. The very same.

  Now, there are rats and rats. There are lovely white rats with pink eyes and twittery noses who live in a cage and feed from one’s hand and are altogether compliant and agreeable creatures. Miss Potter once had a rat like this. She called him Samuel Whiskers, named a book for him, and dedicated it warmly to “ ‘Sammy,’ The Intelligent pink-eyed Representative of a Persecuted (but Irrepressible) Race, An Affectionate little Friend and most accomplished thief.”

  Then there are field rats who live out their wild, free lives, roaming at large through the great woods and refusing to come near human habitation because they find us Big Folk to be too dirty and smelly (and because we harbor cats, whom field rats find to be a great nuisance).

  And then there are incorrigible rats like old Rooker, who has been apprehended and hauled off to the jug (that is to say “gaol”) more times than you can count. But this sort of rat never stays in prison long, for he always manages to bribe, bully, or bite his way out in very short order. Rooker will go anywhere and steal anything from anybody at any time. He is a clever rat who can appear in many beguiling disguises. He can masquerade as the innocently playful rat (sweet Sammy Whiskers) that Miss Potter enjoyed as a pet. Or the pathetically crippled Army veteran rat (old Corporal Rooker) who was welcomed at The Brockery. Or the brash, enterprising rat (Rooker the Rascally Rogue) with a cartload of goods—stolen, of course—that he will be glad to sell you if you’ve got a couple of spare bob about you. But beware: Rooker is also a dexterous pickpocket, so if you don’t fork over your shillings, you’re likely to lose them, willy-nilly.

  Now, all by himself, Rooker constitutes a veritable one-rat crime wave. But he is also a first-class executive, what is called in today’s common parlance a “godfather” rat. He has gathered about him a villainous crew of more than a dozen criminal specialists, each of whom has a reputation for doing one very bad thing very, very well. Some of his gang members are adept at breaking into locked pantries, closed closets, and chicken coops, whilst others are talented forgers, frauds, robbers, imposters, counterfeiters, and swindlers. Some (like Rooker and his lieutenant, Bludger Bob) are old and experienced; others (Cracksman Charlie and Jumpin’ Jemmy, for example) are young rats, nimble and fleet of foot, who can outrun and outjump anyone who is fool enough to give chase. Most are male, but there are a few females: Plymouth Polly, who is very good at sniffing out the most expensive jewelry, however cleverly it is hidden in m’lady’s boudoir; and notorious Newgate Nell, who has a talent for shoplifting. No shopkeeper dares to turn his back on Nell. She will rob him blind in an instant.

  Rooker and his gang of reprobates have perfected the art of moving from town to town, staying just one leap ahead of the law. When they’ve picked a place clean, they send their scouts out into the district, looking for the richest target of opportunity. When a promising neighborhood or village is found, word is sent back, and the whole gang up sticks and moves, bag and baggage.

  Their first task is to find a secure hiding place where they will be safe from discovery. It must be large enough for all of them to eat, sleep, and recreate, with adequate space to store their ill-gotten goods. It should have both a front door and a back door—several back doors, in fact, for the gang has occasionally found it necessary to make a hasty exit. The Brockery, of course, has a great many exits (more than even the badgers can count). Rooker had this in mind when he visited the place, reconnoitering it as a possibility for the gang’s hideout while they invaded Sawrey. To his disappointment, however, he found that the sett was too great a distance from the village. Rats are fundamentally lazy creatures and prefer not to haul their takings very far.

  But fortunately for Rooker and his felons, they quickly discovered the barn at Castle Farm, which is right at the top of the village and convenient to the cottages, the shop, and the pub. They explored the barn’s many nooks and crannies and discovered that once upon a time, a very long time ago, another clan of rats had excavated a sizeable cavern under the floor of the stall that now belongs to Brown Billy. There was even a rather ingenious trapdoor over the opening, designed to look like a wooden shingle lying on the floor. When the trapdoor was closed and covered with straw, you would never in the world guess that an entire gang of thieves was living underneath the floor. And even if you did, there would be nothing you could do about it, for when the new gang moved in, they installed a latch on the underneath side of the trapdoor. If you want to get in, you have to know the secret code—a predetermined number of brisk raps, a silence, then more raps. And Thursday’s code won’t do you any good on Friday, because the rats change it every day.

  It was from this clever hideout that the rats went out to raid the best larders, fruit and grain bins, bakery shelves, jewelry chests, money boxes, bookcases, and wine and liquor cabinets in the village. Once the Big Folks had turned down their gas lights or snuffed their candles and gone to bed, the thieves set about their jobs as systematically as any welltrained gang of workmen, making whatever forced entries were required, raiding private premises all over town, and silently departing with their loot, which they carried off to the Castle Farm barn. There they divvied up their spoils, feasted on their stolen foods, and counted their ill-gotten coins and jewels. Some of them went to bed to sleep through the day, whilst others (the more ambitious of the thieves) took only a short nap before venturing out into the daylight. They planned to keep on repeating their chicanery until Sawrey was well and truly stripped and there was nothing left to steal.

  These robbers are already making inroads into the village. We have heard that Miss Potter has reported the theft of ten turkey eggs. Sarah Barwick missed a half-dozen sticky buns from her bakery, and now she can’t find the leather purse with her initials stamped on it, where she keeps her earnings. There might be as much as ten or twelve shillings in it! (She has not yet got this matter quite sorted, since her accounts are so badly muddled.)

  There’s more, however, and the picture is not a pretty one. In the kitchen at the Tower Bank Arms, Mrs. Barrow noticed the absence of two fine cheddars and a round of goat cheese from the dairy cupboard. In the pub bar, Mr. Barrow became very cross when he took out the full can of salted nuts and found that it is now nearly empty. Both the Barrows have a tendency to blame the hired help when things get lost or misplaced, but both the kitchen mai
d and the bar boy protested their innocence, and of course there was no proof.

  At the village shop on the other side of the Kendal Road, shopkeeper Lydia Dowling counted and recounted the sausages hanging from the overhead line that stretches across the corner above the vegetable bins and concluded that the two largest sausages were missing—or perhaps three, since she couldn’t remember exactly how many there were. And as she recalled, the marrow bin was full when she shut up shop the previous evening. It now appeared to be half-empty. Where had all the marrows gone?

  And at Belle Green, across the lane from the barn, Mrs. Crook was frantic, for she could not find her emerald-cut crystal pendant, the one that had belonged to her grandmother. She could swear that she put it into the rose-colored china dish on the top of her bedroom dresser (although, as a matter of fact, she had left it on the kitchen table). In the event, the pendant was in neither place, and no one in the house would confess to having seen it.

  Now, as we learnt in Chapter Two, Crumpet (in her role as the president of the Village Cat Council) makes it her business to be aware of everything that happens in Sawrey. As you will recall, she had been listening when Sarah Barwick asked Miss Potter what she would do if she suspected that somebody was stealing from her. However, at that moment, a loud commotion had erupted in the Hill Top chicken coop, and Crumpet had to rush off and see what it was. (Nothing urgent, as it turned out: Mrs. Bonnet, who is slightly myopic, had mistaken one of Mrs. Shawl’s newly hatched chicks for her own and attempted to chick-nap the little one.) The brief flurry of feathery disagreement was settled by the time Crumpet arrived on the scene, and complete harmony was restored to the barnyard.