Anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation.*
Ed Murrow
Clarity, Simplicity, Concision – yes. On the other hand, Confusion, Mystery, Doubt. I mean, what are we to make of things so far? According to Percy, he drives the cart to the river, constructs a raft and delivers the Wolf, the Sheep and the Lettuce to their destinations.
i.e. The Wolf to Grandma Pumfrey's
The Sheep to Mr/Prof/Dr Bodley
The Lettuce to Auntie Joyce
According to the Sheep, it's mainly – utmost care, no delay – the Sheep who's delivered. There's no raft but there is a canoe. Which is no use because Percy can't work out how to get them over one at a time. Percy dozes off on the bank and without some mysterious HELP, which the Sheep declined to CLARIFY, they'd all still be there.
The Sheep appears more trustworthy than the boy. On the other hand (how many hands is that?), she's also more secretive, and (have you noticed?) inclined to enlarge her own role in the story, i.e. a bit of a bighead. Later on, for instance, when she heard this book might eventually be published, she proposed in all seriousness her own alternative title: The Very Important Sheep.
Hm. Where was I? Ah, yes, on the veranda.
I remained at the McFirkin place for a couple of hours. My cup of tea was accompanied by delicious home-made biscuits. Later on there was pork pie, tomatoes and a Scotch egg. When Mr McFirkin showed up, on his mud-splattered bicycle (plus bucket and ladder), there was delicious home-made beer and introductions.
‘Here's Mr Smout, the writer, dear – come to see us!’
And, ‘This is my husband… Hermann.’
Mrs McFirkin, it turned out, was a great reader with a high regard for authors, yours truly included, or even in particular. The children, of course, had never heard of me.
Anyway, such HOSPITALITY. I live alone, you see, or did in those days. Simply to have a PLATE brought to me with FOOD upon it and a mug of FOAMING beer, was a huge relaxing pleasure. It did, however, I must confess, undermine my determination to question Mrs McFirkin in particular about the activities of her son, the movement back and forth of the Sheep, the odd (to put it mildly) business with the Wolf and the whereabouts of the Lettuce. Though I did try.
Mrs McFirkin was tall, wide and strong, a wonderful woodcutter, if somewhat vague and dreamy at times. She loved, of course, her little boy to bits, and his little sister likewise. The possibility that there could be any flaw in his nature was for her an impossibility. Thus she confirmed that Percy had left the house (on that bright and fragrant morning) with his unlikely load: Lettuce to the left of him, Wolf to the right, Sheep to the rear. And so on, and so on. Completed his assignments. Slept the night at Auntie Joyce's. Come home safe and sound.
The Lettuce, Mrs McFirkin explained, was her own prize candidate in the horticultural show: salad section. The Sheep belonged to (let's call him ‘Professor’, shall we, for sanity's sake), to Professor Bodley. He paid the McFirkins to lodge and supervise the Sheep from time to time in their clover-rich paddock and feed her extra vitamins.
The Wolf – Ah, here we come to it – the Wolf was, er… Mrs McFirkin hesitated (embarrassed, guilty perhaps?), a hesitation soon reinforced and extended by the arrival of her hot and thirsty husband, the bedtimes of her children, washing up of crockery, blowing of nose. Etc.
Well, it was a tough question to put to so soft-hearted a mother whose hospitality you're still enjoying: ‘How could you send your little boy off all alone through the forest WITH A WOLF?’
Yes, a tough question. I never asked it.
Thus, eventually, the shadows lengthened across the yard, the bats came skimming out of the barn, the forest itself gave every appearance of creeping up on the well-lit, cosy house… and I departed.
* * *
The Sheep. Before completing my journey home through the darkening forest, I ought, I think, to say a little more, a page or two, about the Sheep. It occurs to me I have not been entirely fair to this extraordinary creature, ‘A scientific marvel!’ in some people's opinion. I mean ‘bighead’, that's just rude, isn't it? Out of order. I should not have written it. The thing is, I do HAVE MY MOODS, that's the truth of it. Sometimes – Oh, dear! – am up and down like a yo-yo, round and round like a revolving door, in and out like a… well, never mind.
Anyway (or as my old mother would say, ‘Any road up’), the Sheep. Yes, she was conceited. Yes, she was a snob. But, and this is the point, she was not boring. No, sir, she knew a thing or two, that Sheep, scientific stuff mostly, gathered, I understand, from her long association with Prof Bodley. That bit I wrote earlier, for instance, ‘rainbowed light refracted from the puddles’, that was her. I would not have thought of it. She told me also, on a separate occasion, some absolutely fascinating things about spiders' webs. I have an interest in spiders. My garden's full of 'em. Anyway, spiders' webs, it turns out, are in proportion stronger than steel hawsers. They can stop a bee doing 20 mph dead in his tracks. Prof Bodley, it seems, among his many other researches, has produced a prototype artificial spiders' silk, thick as a washing line, that, it's rumoured, can stop an F16 fighter aircraft dead in its tracks. My word.
Yes, a clever character, that Sheep, maybe the cleverest, brainiest character in the entire book. Except Prof Bodley, himself, who hardly appears. Oh, yes, and except ONE OTHER, who shall be revealed. And I don't mean me. I mean, I'm not in the book, not really, am I? Or am I? I suppose, from your point of view, looking down now on the page, scratching your ear perhaps, feeling a bit peckish, I probably am. Hm… how peculiar, I never thought of that: an author in his own book.
Where was I? Well, not where I ought to be, that's the truth. I should be getting on with the Wolf's version by now, not lured away like some well-deceived bloodhound. This chapter is entitled, ‘Space, Time and Grandma Pumfrey’. For some reason I'd got it into my head to tell you what the Sheep told me about time. ‘Time,’ she said, in that deep voice of hers. ‘Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.’ She said things about space too. All very interesting. All TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. And Grandma Pumfrey really belongs in the next chapter, not this. I don't know, sometimes this head of mine feels like a beehive.
Time to go home.
The Forest (again). Moonlight lay across its winding paths, illuminating its clearings, glittering on its sudden puddles and ponds. The little lamp of my bicycle added its shine to the general illumination. Dark shifting shadows crowded at the edges of my sight. Eyes blinked in the blackness. Warm, humid, mushroomy smells rose up around me. I had a rendezvous tomorrow WITH A WOLF. Something furry and alive brushed fleetingly against my cheek. I felt a sudden, irresistible desire… to whistle.