'Why don't you try, then?' said Tobermory patiently. Tomsk thought it over for several minutes and then nodded and went off leaving Tobermory chuckling to himself. Tomsk was a very good tree climber he always won when they played Wombles and Ladders but he wasn't much good at pretending to be a monkey. However, it was wonderful exercise and although he fell down more times than he swung from branch to branch he didn't hurt himself, because he always landed in a soft bed of snow; and his temper improved no end.

Orinoco enjoyed the snow for quite a different reason. It meant that there was very little work to be done, so he carefully built himself a kind of snow sofa with curves and b.u.mps in just the right places to fit his figure. Then he lined it with dried bracken from one of the store cupboards, borrowed a pair of sungla.s.ses from Tobermory's collection and a very wide selection there was from which to choose, as Human Beings are better at losing sungla.s.ses than practically anything else except perhaps gloves and settled himself down for a really long rest with his favourite book from the library. It was called: g*FORTUNE & BASON.

SPLENDID CHRISTMAS CATALOGUE, 1932.

g*And Bungo and Alderney, of course, were having the time of their lives, although neither of them ever mentioned the idea of building another snow Womble. So all the young ones were extremely happy and contented with this wonderful weather. But with the older Wombles it was quite a different story.

'How much is left in the larders?' asked Great Uncle Bulgaria, when Madame Cholet brought him his mid-morning hot drink. Alderney was out building an igloo, so Madame Cholet was on trolley duty.

'Alas,' said Madame Cholet, 'we are getting low on food.'

'How low?' asked Great Uncle Bulgaria, giving her a sharp look. 'I want the truth now, my good Womble.'

Madame Cholet twisted her ap.r.o.n between her paws and said in a low voice, 'There is enough to last for another ten days. That is all.'

Great Uncle Bulgaria grunted and went over to the barometer which Tobermory had hung on the wall during the Great Rains. He tapped the gla.s.s, but the needle stayed firmly at 'Snow'.

'Tsk, tsk, tsk,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria, and pushed aside the plans for the great Midsummer outing on which he had been working. The party seemed a long way off at the moment, and his instinct told him that a danger even worse than the floods lay ahead.

A really long hard winter makes life a difficult business for all wild creatures, and the Wombles were no exception, although they were more efficient than most at surviving because they are by nature so thrifty. While the squirrels only stored nuts, the Wombles packed away everything they possibly could. All through the spring, summer and autumn months Madame Cholet was bottling, drying and stacking everything on which she could lay her paws. Nothing was wasted in her kitchen, not a blade of gra.s.s or a single berry, not a mushroom stalk or half a bar of chocolate.

Many of the Human Beings who picnicked on the Common would have been astonished to know that what they left behind so untidily was carefully taken back to Madame Cholet, cleaned by washing or boiling, and turned into some delicious dish. Orinoco had been known to track a likely looking picnic party from one side of the Common to the other and no Womble would ever forget the time when he had returned in triumph with a whole bag of perfectly good bananas. Rolled and coated in gra.s.s-seed dough they had been baked very slowly and served with thick, creamy rowan berry sauce. It had been one of Madame Cholet's greatest triumphs.

All this went through Great Uncle Bulgaria's mind now, and it made his mouth water. He pushed the memory to one side and said, 'I'd better come and have a look.'

'Very well,' said Madame Cholet rather crossly, for like all good cooks she didn't care for anybody inspecting her kitchens and larders.

Great Uncle Bulgaria's heart sank as they moved through the storerooms. There were all too few full jars, sacks and packets left.

'There's only one thing for it,' he said. 'We'll have to start rationing food. We did it in the bad winter of '46 to '47 and we'll have to do it again. Please fetch Tobermory and we'll work out a scheme together.'

And so the three Wombles sat down at the scrubbed wooden table made from orange boxes, and with papers and pencils and much 'ho-humming' from Great Uncle Bulgaria and sniffs from Madame Cholet they drew up a list of food and a list of Wombles and divided one with the other.

'Perhaps the younger ones should have a little more,' suggested Madame Cholet, who in that family of kindly creatures probably had the warmest heart of all.

That meant a lot more adding and dividing and subtracting and even so it was plain that there would be only enough food to last three weeks and Great Uncle Bulgaria, who could remember one winter when the snow and frost had stayed on the ground for two months, shook his white head, but kept his thoughts to himself.

'If only there was some better way of keeping food,' said Tobermory, sharpening their pencils with the small knife attached to his screwdriver it was his own invention and a very useful one.

'I'm sure I do my best,' said Madame Cholet, sitting up very straight.

'Yes, yes, of course,' said Tobermory hastily, 'only there are times such as September when we have a glut of blackberries and mushrooms . . .'

'. . . and toadstools,' put in Great Uncle Bulgaria, who had a weakness for this delicacy, which is poisonous to Human Beings but much enjoyed by Wombles, some of whom are convinced that it prevents falling fur.

'Yes,' agreed Madame Cholet reluctantly, 'but I bottle all I can, and mushrooms and toadstools just will not keep. They go wormy.'

'Exactly what I mean,' said Tobermory. 'Just think how splendid it would be if we had some now.'

All three Wombles licked their lips and sighed and then pulled themselves together.

'If wishes were wings then Wombles would fly,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria, quoting an old proverb. 'Rationing must start immediately, Madame Cholet. I shall make an announcement in the Common Room before lunch.'

The news was greeted by the Wombles in shocked silence, and several of the younger ones wished that they had stopped to eat a larger breakfast instead of rushing off to play in the snow. When they saw their plates their faces fell more than ever, and a kind of gloomy shiver ran through their fur.

'This is simply dreadful,' whispered Orinoco, who had worked up a nice appet.i.te from lying in the pale sunlight.

'I don't understand it,' said Alderney, thinking sadly of her little trolley which Madame Cholet had told her would not be used until after the thaw. She did so enjoy pushing it along the corridors and ringing the bell.

'It's quite simple,' said Bungo, who had been listening to the older Wombles and who was getting a little more grown-up every day. 'There are two reasons really. First, Human Beings don't come on to the Common at all when the weather's like this, except if they are exercising their dogs and then, of course, they don't bring any food with them. And second, we can't get at anything that's growing not that there is much in the winter because of the snow.'

'Then how do the birds manage?' asked Alderney.

'Quite often they don't,' said Tobermory, who had overheard this question and who felt that the three young Wombles were now old enough to learn some of the harsher facts of existence. 'They die.'

At this a really dreadful gloom settled on the table and Alderney began to sniff, so to cheer her up Bungo suggested a game of Wombles and Ladders. Alderney soon perked up a bit, but Orinoco became steadily more and more upset. He knew he was greedy, he was perfectly aware that he thought too much about food, and ever since he had got stuck in the rabbit hole he had tried to be better. But now, faced with a real shortage, his whole tubby little body longed and yearned and ached for food. He made matters worse for himself by imagining all his favourite menus, from bracken and berry pie to chocolate and orange-skin cake. Every night he had wonderful dreams in which by some miracle Madame Cholet suddenly discovered a forgotten larder and dished up the most enormous high tea.

Poor Orinoco would wake up groaning and with his tongue hanging out, and in spite of all Great Uncle Bulgaria's instructions he would slip along the silent pa.s.sages, past the other slumbering Wombles and down to the small back door near the road to see if it had stopped snowing yet.

But each time all he saw were the soft, shining flakes filtering slowly on to the Common and the rooftops. It had even hardened on the road so that the traffic moved far more slowly than usual, and at all times of the day and night there were Human Beings throwing shovel-loads of yellow sand on it to make it less slippery. The sand made Orinoco think of lovely fine yellow sugar, and he groaned more than ever.

And every day the Wombles grew a little thinner and their fur became a little less sleek and their eyes more worried.

'Perhaps we could buy some food,' suggested Tobermory.

'We've got very little English money left,' replied Great Uncle Bulgaria, who was becoming a shadow of his former self for, unknown to anyone but Madame Cholet, the old Womble had cut his own rations in half and insisted that the rest should be divided among the younger ones. 'When you get to my age you don't need so much,' he said, pulling his tartan shawl more closely round his shoulders so that she shouldn't notice how straggly his white fur had become.

'We should never have bought all that concrete,' said Tobermory. 'It was my fault, worrying on about foundations and cracks. You reminded me once that Wombles were more important than mere things. You were right.'

'Don't be an idiot,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria, who hated seeing his usually strong-minded friend showing such weakness. 'We couldn't have foreseen this snow siege. If things do get really bad then we'll be forced to buy but it'll only mean about one biscuit each. I'm going to read The Times. Think I'll have a copy of the Jubilee Summer in 1935. I remember that I never did finish that crossword.'

It was on the nineteenth day of rationing that Orinoco was woken up by the sound of his own empty stomach rumbling. He had been dreaming of fungus tarts, and for a moment the reality of there being no such things available was almost more than he could bear. He shook his head and clambered out of bed and tiptoed past Bungo and went off down the long dark pa.s.sage.

Surely, surely, it would have stopped snowing by now? But it hadn't. Little drifts of white flakes flurried into his face and settled on his fur. Orinoco blinked his eyes and made a sound which was almost a sob. He was so upset that for a minute or two he didn't realise that something unusual was happening by the flashing lights of the black and white crossing. Then it did slowly occur to him that there was a great deal of activity for one o'clock in the morning, so he edged towards the snowy bushes to investigate.

It appeared that not quite enough sand had been put down, or perhaps the deep cold had turned the road to ice, for there, tipped up against a tree, was a large van. Two of its wheels were stuck up in the air, its back doors had swung open and a group of Human Beings were standing round arguing and talking and stamping their feet.

Orinoco moved a little closer, keeping in the shadows, and then, almost unbelievingly, he saw that a large crate had fallen out of the van and was lying on the snow with half its contents spilled about it.

'Cakes,' breathed Orinoco, rubbing his paws in his eyes the better to see this glorious sight. 'Buns, rolls, bread!'

The food was already being covered with a thin layer of snow and it was icy cold, but even so the delicious smell of newly baked food swam round Orinoco's nose. And what was more the food was lying ON THE COMMON, and Orinoco knew that no Human Being would salvage it once it had been spilled on the ground.

Orinoco registered all this in a flash and then with one excited whimper, he burrowed through the bushes, grasped the crate with one paw and shovelled everything back into it with the other. A pick-up van with a flashing yellow light on the roof was slowly coming down the road, and the Human Beings were far too interested in that to notice one desperate Womble tugging a large box into the bushes.

Although it was as large as he was Orinoco pushed and pulled, pulled and pushed that beautiful heavy crate all the way to the back door of the burrow without stopping for a rest. Then he leant against the wall and with his tongue hanging out and his breath coming in excited gasps he investigated his discovery.

It was glorious, astonishing, absolutely fantastic. The rich spicy smell made his heart whirl and his stomach rumble even louder than before. For one second Orinoco hesitated and then before he could control his paws they had picked up a particularly succulent chocolate cake and rammed it into his open mouth.

Orinoco didn't bother to chew it at all, he was too anxious to get at a lovely sticky Chelsea bun and then a sausage roll. It was when he tasted the meat that his wild delirium was halted, for Wombles are not carnivorous. So he spat out the sausage and buried it in the snow, and then shut his eyes as shame flooded over him. He had been taught all his life that Wombles shared everything. It was true that there were some private possessions such as Tobermory's screwdriver and Great Uncle Bulgaria's tartan shawl, but these were really only on loan.

What Orinoco had just done was an almost unforgivable crime, for while the other Wombles were starving and they were very close to it by now he, Orinoco, had stuffed himself.

'Ohhhhhhh,' groaned Orinoco, wringing his paws.

He was not a particularly brave Womble, but he knew at this moment that the only thing he could possibly do was to go to Great Uncle Bulgaria and tell him everything. Orinoco took a deep breath and opened his eyes and picked up the crate and at the very same moment a terrible voice said in his ear, 'You wicked, wicked Womble.'

It was Tobermory, who had been wandering about trying to discover where the cold draught was coming from, for Orinoco had forgotten to shut the door behind himself.

'I was just going to take this to Great Uncle Bulgaria,' whispered Orinoco.

'After you have gorged your own miserable stomach,' said Tobermory, still in the same dreadful voice, which made Orinoco shake to his back paws.

'How how did you know?' asked Orinoco, in a mere thread of a voice.

'Chocolate crumbs on your whiskers,' said Tobermory, and he shut the door and bolted it and folded his arms while Orinoco went scuttling off down the pa.s.sage making a terrified little whimpering noise.

g*

Chapter 10.

g*Bungo's Great Adventure What was said at that meeting in the middle of the night none of the other Wombles ever discovered and they were far too polite to ask. Of course the general gist of it leaked out, and there was a great deal of shocked whispering in corners, especially when Great Uncle Bulgaria stumped into breakfast with his white fur looking quite lank and dull and his back more bowed than anyone had ever seen it before. And when a squabble broke out at one of the lower tables between two young Wombles over who should have an apple core, Great Uncle Bulgaria didn't even put on his staring spectacles. He just looked at them in such a sad way that it struck terror into their small hearts, and their fur rose up in p.r.i.c.kles and they didn't utter another sound until the end of the meal.

The truth was that Great Uncle Bulgaria hadn't even noticed the noise particularly; his mind was on other things. He felt that he had failed. Failed to teach the Wombles properly and, even worse, failed in his trust to guard and look after them. He should have foreseen this dreadful winter, and somehow made provision for it, but now it was too late.

And as for Orinoco, he was sitting on his bed with his front paws clutched between his knees and his eyes fixed on the wall. He was, without doubt, the most miserable Womble in the whole world. He felt lower than the lowest worm and as he was normally rather fond of himself this was a terrible sensation.

'I'm a wicked, wicked Womble,' he whispered, rocking backwards and forwards.

It was true that he, and he alone, had brought in enough food to last one more day, but that didn't seem to make things much better at the moment. In fact, Orinoco for the first time in his happy-go-lucky existence was struggling with the pangs of a truly dreadful remorse. He was, of course, painting matters much blacker than they really were, for the Wombles are a kindly lot and in a matter of days Great Uncle Bulgaria and Tobermory would have forgiven him. But Orinoco was quite unable to look that far ahead, and he couldn't bear the thought of being despised.

Suddenly an idea came into his head. He would run away. With him gone there would at least be his ration of food to be divided amongst the others, and that would more than make up for what he had stuffed into his greedy mouth that morning.

To think was to act. Orinoco scribbled a note and pinned it to his pillow; then he put on his battered straw hat and tied the scarf over it and wound it round his neck and across his chest and knotted it at the back. He gave one last look round the room and then very quietly let himself out and tiptoed along the empty pa.s.sage.

It was still snowing, although not so hard, and Orinoco felt rather sad, yet n.o.ble and brave at the same time. He walked quickly, with his head bent against the gusts of wind, and quite soon his small pawmarks were being blown away and then completely blotted out by the drifting, silent snow.

Orinoco's disappearance was not discovered until the early afternoon. Everybody felt that he would rather be left alone so they didn't go to his room, but after a while Bungo, who had finished his work in the Workshop, decided to go and have a chat with him.

'Hi, Orinoco, old chap,' he said, putting his head round the door.

Naturally there was no reply and Bungo was about to leave when he noticed the note on the pillow. It was addressed to Great Uncle Bulgaria so he took it to him immediately. The old Womble was dozing in front of the fire, The Times spread across his lap. He read the note and sat up with a thump, his paws trembling.

'Fetch Tobermory,' he snapped.

Tobermory came at once, still carrying a steering wheel which he had been straightening.

'Read this. Read it aloud. Bungo, listen,' commanded Great Uncle Bulgaria.

'Dear Great Uncle Bulgaria, I have gone to seek my fortune. I am only a disapointment . . . That should have two p's,' said Tobermory.

'Go on, go on,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria, thumping the floor with his stick.

'A disapointment and a trial to you. I once hid a bottle of lemonade and some other food too, but I never ate it. Bungo knows about it. Please share my rations with everybody else, particularly Bungo if possible. Yours very respectfully, Orinoco Womble. p.s. Have taken the hat and scarf, hope you don't mind. p.p.s. Hope that the Midsummer party is great fun and you have lots to eat. O.W.'

'Well,' said Tobermory and blew his nose violently on a large purple handkerchief.

Bungo didn't say anything at all, he just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

'Young fool,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria, who suddenly looked much more his old self, for there's nothing like worrying about somebody else's troubles to make you forget your own. 'Idiot, noddle-top, cork-brain, addle-pate, THICKHEAD.'

And he got up and began to pace backwards and forwards across the room talking all the time. 'Of course we'll have to bring him back. Why, a Womble hasn't been lost from this Common since the great kidnapping in 1914 or was it '15? Still that's beside the point, and anyway I wasn't in control then. But I am now and I'm not going to have it. Do you understand!' And he suddenly turned on Bungo, who nearly jumped out of his fur.

'Yes, I mean, no,' said Bungo.

'You're a fool too,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria. 'Knew you were a fool when you chose a name like Bungo. Silly sort of name. Still you've improved a bit recently, I'll say that for you,' and he shot a shrewd look at Bungo as though he were weighing something up in his mind. 'Well then, seeing that you're a friend of Orinoco's, where do you think he's run to? Eh?'

'I can't imagine,' said Bungo wretchedly. 'He always seemed so happy here.'

There was a short worried silence and then Tobermory said suddenly, 'Wait! There was a book he was always getting out of the library . . .' And with a speed surprising in a Womble of his age he left the room, to return three minutes later with a large and somewhat tattered catalogue. It was extremely brightly coloured and printed in gold across the front were the words: g*FORTUNE & BASON.

SPLENDID CHRISTMAS CATALOGUE, 1932.

g*'Don't see why this should interest Orinoco,' muttered Great Uncle Bulgaria, flipping through the pages which showed pictures of clothes and jewellery. 'Ho-hum. Ah yes, yes indeed. Now we're getting somewhere.' And he thrust the booklet under Tobermory's nose.

'Cream Chocolate Raspberry Truffles, our speciality,' read out Tobermory. 'Fifty pence a pound. Whipped Coconut Icing Dollops. Rare Rich Pomegranates in thick Hungarian honey. Turkish Coffee Fudge. Sugar-coated Chocolate Mice . . . dear me! It all sounds most indigestible.'

'Daresay it does,' agreed Great Uncle Bulgaria. 'But just the sort of thing to take Orinoco's fancy all the same. That's where he's gone, to Fortune and Bason in Piccadilly. Someone will have to go after him!'

'Who?' said Bungo.

The two old Wombles said nothing, but they glanced at each other and then fixed their eyes on Bungo in a most unnerving way.

'Tomsk is larger,' murmured Tobermory, 'but . . .'

'Ho-hum, quite,' agreed Great Uncle Bulgaria, 'but this young Womble on the other hand . . .'

'It's a possibility,' agreed Tobermory.

'What is, please?' asked Bungo, unable to keep quiet any longer.

'You are,' said Great Uncle Bulgaria, suddenly making up his mind. 'You are, young Bungo. You'll have to go after Orinoco and bring him home.'