Chapter Seven
One of Jemima’s jobs about the farm was, in the evening, to shut up the hens and the ducks in their respective houses, to keep them safe from foxes. She left her mother working on the artificial webbed feet and went out into the orchard.
Sleepy murmurs from the henhouse told her that the flock had already gone to bed, and automatically she bent to close the pop-hole when she thought, Oh, Frank! Is he inside? She opened the door of the henhouse. He wasn’t.
She went to the duckhouse, outside which several ducks and the big white drake were still pottering about, preening and gabbling softly to one another.
Jemima hooshed them into the house and looked inside, to see all the ducks and all the ducklings – but no Frank.
Quickly she shut the duckhouse door and ran to the duckpond. There, still floating happily out in the middle, was Frank.
When the ducks had begun to leave the pond and waddle away towards the duckhouse, Frank had been in no hurry to follow. He had become rather hot, wearing as he was a rubber suit over his plumage, and now floating on the nice cold water as the heat went out of the day and the sun sank was so refreshing.
‘You coming, chick?’ the ducklings called out as they swam past following their mother.
‘I think I’ll stay here for a bit,’ Frank replied. ‘I’m enjoying it.’
‘Please yourself,’ they said. ‘Let’s just hope that someone else doesn’t enjoy you.’
‘Who?’ asked Frank.
‘Mr Fox!’ cried the ducklings, and they scuttered off.
For a while Frank continued to float about on the pond, trying to decide what to do. Surely I’ll be safe out in the middle here, he thought. Foxes can’t swim. Can they? Just then he heard his name called.
‘Frank!’ cried Jemima. ‘Come off the pond, you silly boy.’
When he made no move, she found a long stick and waded in till the water was near the tops of her wellies and reached out and managed to hook Frank with the stick and pull him to shore. Jemima picked him up and carried him to the henhouse, but when she went to open the door, he kicked and struggled and squawked and shouted, ‘Frank!’ in an angry voice.
So she took him to the duckhouse. As soon as she opened its door, he jumped out of her arms and rushed in.
When she had closed the door, Jemima listened for a moment. Inside, the ducks were gabbling quietly and the ducklings peep-peeping – in a show of welcome, she thought.
In reply her young cockerel said his name several times.
Strange, Jemima thought. It’s beginning to sound more like ‘Quack!’ than ‘Frank!’
‘What d’you think of these then, Tom?’ said Carrie Tabb to her husband, holding out the results of her handiwork.
The farmer picked one up and inspected it. ‘By golly, that’s a duck’s foot and a half,’ he said. ‘Grand pair of flippers they’ll make.’
‘More like galoshes really,’ said Jemima’s mother. ‘Don’t forget that Frank has to be able to walk in them as well as swim in them.’
‘When are you going to fit them on him?’
‘Tomorrow morning. Jemima can catch Frank when she lets the hens out.’
‘No, she can’t,’ said Jemima, coming in. ‘He wouldn’t go to bed with the hens, he’s in the duckhouse. Anyway, why must I catch him?’
Her mother and father pointed – one with pride, one with amusement – at the strange pair of artificial webbed feet, bright yellow with five stiffened claws (that had been four fingers and a thumb) and, inside each rubber glove, a piece of stout plastic cut to the shape of a duck’s foot.
‘Oh, Mum, you are clever!’ Jemima said. ‘I can’t wait to see if they work properly.’
‘Well, wait till I’ve finished tomorrow morning’s milking,’ said her father. ‘This is something I don’t want to miss.’
When, next day, the farmer came into the orchard, his wife and daughter were ready and waiting. They had fitted the new feet to Frank and taped the cuffs of the gloves securely around each leg. He looked a picture, with his brown head and wings and tail poking out of his green hot-water-bottle wetsuit and his yellow rubber-glove webs.
Jemima put the young cockerel down on the grass. For a moment Frank stood still, puzzled by the strange things that had been put on his feet. Then he began to walk, lifting each foot high and then putting it down again flat on the ground, rather like a man in snowshoes. He tripped himself up once or twice due to the size of his new webs, but then he got more used to them and began to make his way towards the duckpond. He sploshed in the shallows and walked on in till he was floating.
Jemima held her mother’s hand tightly. ‘Oh, Mum, it will work, won’t it?’ she said.
‘Fingers crossed,’ said her mother, and they all three crossed them.
Then, as they watched, Frank began to make strong thrusts with his long legs, just the movements he would have made to run on dry land, and immediately he began to move forward, slowly at first, then faster, faster, till he was swimming around the pond at a speed no duck could hope to match. All the other ducks in fact got hastily out of the way lest they be rammed by this speeding water bird.
‘Wow!’ the ducklings cried as he whizzed by. ‘What a swimmer!’
Farmer Tabb summed up the general amazement. ‘Cor lumme, luvaduck!’ he said.