The Stray

The Water Horse

Excerpts

How wonderful it would be if when Thomas, Richard, and Henry were grown up, they really could somehow "frighten the life out of the cats"! What a revenge that would be for the death of the trins' father!

At that instant Mrs. Gray made a decision. She would train the trins to become guerilla fighters in the cause of mousedom.

They would not grow up timid and fearful like other mice, but bold and cunning and ingenious, dedicated to waging unceasing war on those two monsters, one white, one black, that ruled the farmhouse.

Not only Attics but also Ups and Downs would view them as heroes and saviors of mousekind. Even the despised Cellarmice would drink to the health of the terrible trins.

With this ambition in mind, Mrs. Gray set to work.

As soon as the trins' eyes were open and they were properly clothed in fur coats (grayish, as it turned out), their mother began to brainwash them.

"You are the greatest," she would croon as she lay and nursed them in the nest. "There have never been mice like you before. Remember, Thomas. Remember, Richard. Remember, Henry. You are the Terrible Trins." She even made up a special nursery rhyme, which she taught them to sing in their piping little voices.

Have you heard the news, puss?
There's trouble on your track.
So mind your P's and Q's, puss,
And never turn your back.
Who will make you pay, puss,
For all your many sins?
Who'll haunt you night and day, puss?
The Trins! The Trins! The Trins!

As soon as Thomas and Richard and Henry were old enough to leave the nest, Mrs. Gray started them on a fitness program.

At first it was quite modest-a series of running, jumping, and climbing exercises, all done in the attic. But before long she took them downstairs, training them to follow her at high speed along those many channels and tunnels and stairways, until they knew their way all over the farmhouse.

Because she had had plenty of milk to give them and because they were only three in number, the trins grew at a great rate and were already much bigger and stronger than other cubs their own age among the Attics or Ups and Downs. But throughout this training program Mrs. Gray took great care to steer clear of Wallace and Bertha.

She showed the trins a mousetrap and explained its workings (with special reference to the late Mr. Brown), and (remembering the late Mr. Black) she pointed out the perils of the tropical fish tank.

But not until Thomas, Richard, and Henry were cubs no longer, but teenagers (in weeks, that is) and fine specimens of young mousehood, did she show them the archenemy.

She picked on Wallace, reckoning that his deafness made him safer to use as a demonstration model.

Very early one morning she took the trins down the M1, as the main mouseway was known. The M1 was a vertical shaft that led directly out of the attic via the back wall of the Budges' bedroom and ended under the kitchen sink. From here a number of minor roads ran around the kitchen, and Mrs. Gray chose one that had an exit just above and to one side of the kitchen stove.

Motioning to the trins to follow, she crept out to the edge of a cupboard top, and together they looked down at the large white shape that lay on its side below, fast asleep.

"That," said Mrs. Gray, "is a cat."

"It's big," said Thomas.

"It's ugly," said Richard.

"It stinks," said Henry.

"Is that the one that ate our dad?" asked Thomas.

"No," said Mrs. Gray. "That was a black one. This white one's different from most cats because he's a bit deaf. That's why I'm talking in a normal voice-he can't hear me."

"Can't he hear anything at all?" asked Richard.

"Not much."

"Not if we shouted in his ear?" asked Henry.

"Oh, I daresay he'd hear that, all right."

The trins looked at one another.

"Have you heard the news, puss?" sang Thomas softly.

"Who will make you pay, puss?" sang Richard.

"Who'll haunt you night and day, puss?" sang Henry.

Then they ran down the cupboard door, lined up beside the ear of the sleeping Wallace, bent forward until their little snouts were almost in it, and with one voice and as loudly as they could, squealed "Boo!"

* * * * *

Hard of hearing Wallace may have been, but not that hard. To be woken from a deep sleep by a three-mousepower shriek right in his ear hole was a shattering experience, like having a sudden strong electrical shock. In one convulsive movement the white cat shot straight into the air, then landed with flattened ears and poker-stiff tail, glaring all around him for the cause of so terrible a noise. But there was nothing to be seen in the kitchen. The only sounds-now too distant for Wallace to hear-were the excited squeaks and giggles of the Gray family as they scuttled back up the M1.

"Oh, Mom, that was fun!" cried Richard when they reached their attic home.

"He didn't think so!" Henry said, laughing.

"Can we do it again another day?" asked Thomas.

Not a bad idea, thought Mrs. Gray. Psychological warfare-maybe that's the way to deal with the white one. Keep giving him shocks like that and turn him into a nervous wreck.

"We'll see," she said. "You boys did well to make such a quick getaway. That's where training pays off, you see. Now then, line up! I want to see you do six lengths of the attic floor and back again. Touch the wall at each end before you turn. Ready, set, go!"

Old Mrs. Budge, lying awake in bed in the room below, heard the patter of tiny feet above her head and smiled.

Dear little pretties, she said to herself. I sometimes wish we didn't keep cats. Mice are nice, mice are. I like to see them about the place with their bright eyes and their big ears and their little whiskers twitching. And she lay very still so as not to wake her husband while the noise above was going on.

In the kitchen Wallace had been joined by Bertha, who came in through the cat door with a dark, hairy Cellarmouse, still alive, in her mouth. She laid it down on the floor and put a paw on it. "Those farm tabbies," she said. "They seem to think all the mice from the cellar belong to them. I gave them a piece of my mind, I can tell you. 'Now, look here,' I said, 'I'll catch whatever mice I choose,' I said, 'inside the house or outside. Just because I'm one of the house cats,' I said, 'doesn't mean I can't hunt in your dirty old farmyard if I want to,' I said, 'so mind your manners.' Common as muck they are, that lot."

"What?" said Wallace.

"Wallace!" cried Bertha. "You didn't hear a word I said!"

She moved a step or two closer to him, taking her foot off her prey as she did so, and spoke more loudly.

"Whatever's the matter with you?" she said. "You're as white as a sheet."

"Had a shock," mumbled Wallace.

"What? Where? How? Why? When? What happened to you?" said Bertha.

"Nasty noise," said Wallace. "In my head. Woke me up. Startled me."

All this time the Cellarmouse that Bertha had caught was crawling dazedly away. It was very shocked and damp and disheveled from being carried in the black cat's jaws, but it was unhurt. It headed for a mousehole under the bottom of the same cupboard on which the Grays had stood to look down on Wallace.

"A noise in your head?" said Bertha. "What nonsense, Wallace. You've had a nightmare, I expect, that's all it was. Have some of my mouse now and you'll feel better. I'll bite his head off and you can eat that-brains are very good for a shock, my old mother always told me."

But when Bertha looked around, the Cellarmouse had disappeared.

The black cat growled angrily.

"Now look what you've made me go and do," she hissed. "If you hadn't kept on and on, chattering away nineteen to the dozen about some stupid noise in your head, we could have shared that mouse, but as it is, he's scrammed, and it's all your fault, d'you hear me?"

"What?" said Wallace.

Without another word (surprisingly), Bertha flounced out the cat door.

Under the cupboard, the Cellarmouse sat shivering at the sound of the cats' voices, and not till they had ceased did he begin to pull himself together. He sat up and began to inspect himself for damage but could find none. All that was wrong with him (and it was bad enough) was that he had an awful headache, which had nothing to do with the cat.

What a fool I am, he said to himself, to have had so much to drink.

The previous night there had been quite a party in the cellar. In the evening Farmer Budge had come down to refill his cider jug. Going back up the dark cellar steps he had tripped and spilled quite a lot of cider.

A number of jolly young bucks had found the pool of scrumpy, and this particular Cellarmouse, whose name was Kevin and who was old enough to know better, had joined them.

Determined to show that he could drink mouse for mouse with these youngsters, Kevin had downed drop after drop of the strong cider until his head was spinning.

"Shorry, chapsh," he muttered to the others. "I musht be going now."

"No, no, Kevin, old boy!" they cried. "Have one for the road."

So he did, before staggering up and out through a grating in search of fresh air.

Emerging into the farmyard as dawn broke, Kevin looked up to see two suns rising over the twin tops of two cowsheds. He shut his eyes and shook his head to clear it. When he opened his eyes again it was to see two black cats standing before him.

Now, peering out from the hole under the cupboard, he saw that there was a single white cat in what, he realized, must be the kitchen. I can't get out that way, he thought. How am I to get back down into the cellar?

At that moment he scented mice approaching along a runway somewhere in the wall behind him. And they won't be Cellarmice, he said to himself. They'll be Downs, or worse, Ups, or worse still, Attics, and they'll probably beat me up.

Oh, what a fool I am, he thought once more. I'll never touch the stuff again, I swear it. I'm sticking to rainwater from now on, if I ever get out of here in one piece, that is. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I am of all mice the most miserable.

And to the trins, who had just popped back down the M1 in search of breakfast, that was indeed how poor bedraggled hungover Kevin appeared.