Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure

In which Badger Bill gets almost more worried than a badger can and the McGloone sisters wear clothes that should be illegal in all sensible countries. And you never know what might happen until it’s happened. And this is when it will start to happen.

The two dreadful sisters had eaten a hearty breakfast of gravy and mouse ears in their own damp and ugly house behind the tripe barn. Now they were busy at the fighting cage. They were dressed in their Saturday finest. Ethel was wearing a lemon-coloured silk miniskirt – which showed off her scaly and bumpy knees – and a puce velvet top and red snakeskin high-heeled shoes. Anyone who’d seen her without expecting to would have screamed and been sick. And Bill felt like screaming and being sick anyway.

Maude was even more frightening. She was dressed in a wide, round skirt of purple chiffon and lace and bows and an orange leather jerkin and high-heeled pink-and-black cowboy boots. This made her look like something you might dream if you were feeling really ill.

Bill was feeling really ill, but he knew he wasn’t dreaming. He was still locked inside the cage. Meanwhile, crowds of people were gathering. They were all parking their cars and walking to watch the badger fight, as they did every Saturday, unless it was too snowy or too wet.

Ethel and Maude were laughing and teetering about on their heels and shaking hands with lots and lots of people who were crowding into the little yard and sneaking looks into the cage and pointing at Bill and screeching with laughter.

It seemed that Bill’s fight was going to be a popular event. He’d never been a popular event. He’d only had an audience once, when he’d recited a poem at school and forgotten the end. “I especially don’t want an audience now,” thought Badger Bill. “I want to be rescued! Where is that Uncle Shawn?”

But there was no sign of Uncle Shawn, only more and more people who were squeezing into the yard. In fact, there were visitors’ cars parked right the way up the lane.

(Bill didn’t know this, but just at that moment, Uncle Shawn was dancing along that very lane and slightly scratching the paintwork of each car as he went.)

“Place yer bets!” yelled Ethel. “Who thinks the badger will last three minutes?”

Maude yelled, too: “How long will the badger lassst? Do I hear forty ssssecondsss?”

Bill tugged at his shorts and scuffed his boots on the floor of the cage, and all of his insides seemed to be flapping about and interfering with his heart.

Suddenly, Ethel reached into her top and pulled out a surprisingly large bell, which she rang loudly and wildly. Then Maude screamed out, “THREE MINUTESSS TO GO, LADIESSS AND GENTLEMEN, BEFORE BATTLING BADGER BOB FACESSS RIPPER!” Many of the people in the crowd put up umbrellas while Maude hissed, because this produced a good deal of spray. “THE FAMOUSSLY SSSAVAGE RIPPER!”

“AND SSSNAPPER!” By now Maude’s chin was dripping with saliva – as if she was a snake trying to drink lemonade and missing.

There was a huge, final cheer and then Bill could see that everyone in the yard was shuffling or jumping out of the way to leave a wide path that led between the entrance of the yard and the fighting cage.

Then, with a flash of claws and far too much barking, Ripper pranced in, snapping and glaring. He was bigger than Bill remembered. His coat was gleaming and his claws and teeth were shining and clattering.

Ripper was followed by Snapper – who was even bigger than Ripper – and who growled like a cellar full of lawnmowers and tried to bite someone’s trousers.

And then – Badger Bill couldn’t believe it – here came Cracker. He was only a little bit taller than Bill. He had quite small paws and quite short claws. But when Bill looked into his eyes he knew that Cracker was the scariest animal you could meet and that he had no mercy and would punch grandmothers and nip off squirrels’ tails and steal ice cream from lonely orphans, just for fun.

Cracker always made crowds fall silent. Everyone he looked at flinched and backed away. Even his brothers seemed scared of him and his small, very, very sharp needle teeth and his tiny, very, very sharp claws and his big, nasty, nasty mind full of terrible ideas, all flickering about at the backs of his eyes. Meeting his eyes was like looking into two pools of hate that went down and down into forever.

Bill knew that in less than three minutes Cracker’s eyes might be the last things he would see…

Maude came and unlocked the cage door and the dogs slowly approached it. Even Maude didn’t like to be too close to Cracker and made sure that she didn’t turn her back on him.

The human beings either side of the wire mesh stared down at Bill and nudged each other, saying things like, “That badger won’t last long.” And, “Small, isn’t he?” And, “I think he’s going to cry.”

Bill was trying to stand up with his eyes shut because that might make it easier. But it didn’t. He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t move any more, he was so frightened, and he thought that any moment now he wouldn’t be able to breathe…

Only then something very strange took place, which shouldn’t have surprised Bill, because – as Uncle Shawn had said – you never know what might happen until it’s happened.

First, there was a remarkable noise, as if thunder was thundering quite close and getting closer. Under poor Bill’s feet, the concrete was shaking and starting to crack and there were louder and louder rumbles and bangs and clatters on all sides.

From the back of the crowd, a very tall, thin person, who Badger Bill now recognized, winked straight at him and then smiled. And then Uncle Shawn (because that’s who it was, of course) shouted, “Look! Look! The farmhouse is falling down! Everything is falling down!”

Uncle Shawn had an incredibly loud voice when he wanted to and everyone could hear him, but for a little while no one believed him.

Ethel laughed. “That house has been there for years, what are you talking about—” But then she noticed that everyone else was turning towards the McGloone house, where Uncle Shawn was pointing, and she saw – as everyone else did – that the farmhouse’s slimy, miserable bricks and nasty, bad-tempered stones were crumbling apart. The roof was sagging. One of the windows fell out, followed by two of the McGloone children. Slates began to fly through the air and shatter on the ground.

“That’sss not sssupposssed to happen!” screamed Maude, making a couple who had travelled all the way from Poole to see the badger fight very wet indeed.

As the bricks and beams and slates tumbled, the crowd started to rush about in panic, but it was hard for them to know where they should run to. The farmhouse was falling apart and so was the barn and so was Ethel and Maude’s house and so was every single wall that belonged to the McGloones. It was all crashing and clattering down, so that people were stubbing their toes on bricks and being covered in dust and thumped by bits of masonry and each other.

“Oh, wonderful! Wonderful!” Bill was sure that the fight wouldn’t happen now and that he would be all right. And maybe this had something to do with Uncle Shawn, who was walking towards the cage as if he knew exactly what was going on and felt very safe about it. None of the bits and pieces of farmhouse and wall were falling anywhere near him. It was as if he was carrying a big invisible umbrella over his incredibly happy head.

But then Ripper and Snapper and Cracker – who were cowards when anything happened that they didn’t understand – rushed into the cage because they thought it would keep them safe from falling lumps of McGloone Farm. Suddenly, Bill was faced by just the horrible faces his nice, quiet, peaceful face had never wanted to face.

As Ethel teetered past on her snakeskin stilettoes and Maude tottered past on her cowboy boots, Bill found himself squashed into a corner of the cage with three snarly mouths very close to him and drool dripping off snarly teeth and onto his fur. It was the worst thing yet. And Cracker was peering at him with his deep, deep black eyes full of wicked thoughts.

Only, just then a different kind of thunder that wasn’t to do with walls collapsing got louder and louder and louder, and then the yard was packed with a rushing crowd of squirrels and rabbits and weasels and shrews and siskins and blackbirds and robins and every kind of small animal that was fond of Uncle Shawn. (And pretty much all the small animals that had ever met Uncle Shawn liked him very much.) The creatures hopped and scampered and leaped and scrabbled and flew and pecked their way among anyone who was still left in the yard. The couple from Poole had their ankles nibbled by shrews, and a man from Cumbernauld had his wig stolen by a young squirrel, who also laughed at him, and rolled-up hedgehogs rattled about across the cobbles, prickling people for being so nasty and wanting to see a badger in shorts when everyone knows badgers don’t like them.

And – thank goodness – while some of the creatures were clearing the yard, a big crowd of stoats and weasels and hedgehogs and the little cat and her mother all rushed right into the cage and swept Badger Bill out past the dogs.

The dogs were very surprised and scared and covered in sparrows, who were pecking their ears and then jumping out of the way of the dogs’ teeth. And wasps were stinging them and giggling and stinging them again. As it happened, the dogs were horribly afraid of wasps and had always been nasty to them and squashed their nests while they were sleeping in the winter. So now the wasps were having their revenge. And Ripper and Snapper and Cracker were howling like puppies and big lumps were coming up on their noses and all over them under their fur.

And in all this confusion, Badger Bill felt a big, warm, safe hand take hold of his paw and he looked up and saw Uncle Shawn smiling down at him and saying, “Everything is fine. But we have to run now.”

And Bill did run, as fast as his lovely but slightly short legs would go. And the small animals and the little birds all ran and rushed and fluttered and buzzed away, too. And for a few moments Uncle Shawn turned round and ran backwards so that he could shout, “Thank you, wasps. Thank you, Jeremy Wasp. Thank you, Suzie Weasel. Thank you, Angus Rabbit and Mary Rabbit and Hughie Rabbit and Shane Rabbit… Thank you, Mother Mole. Thank you very much! Thank you all!” And the so many, many creatures scattered away into the countryside again, laughing and cheering and saying, “It was our pleasure! Don’t mention it, Uncle Shawn!” Because they had never liked the McGloones, not one bit.

Behind Bill and Shawn, the last pieces of the farm and its buildings fell into a number of ugly heaps of rubble.

SECTION FOURTEEN