Wild Wood
My first book - although not my first published - was my version of
Kenneth Grahame's masterpiece The Wind in the Willows. Much
as I had always loved Toad, it occurred to me one Sunday afternoon that
if you looked at him through jaundiced left-wing eyes (God forbid!) he might
turn out somewhat less lovable. I did, and he did too. A fat
and jolly plutocrat, more money than sense, with friends who lived lives
of idleness and eternal pleasure. From there, it was a small step
to redreaming the villains of the Wild Wood as sturdy, starving heroes of
the rural proletariat. (My God, we really need an exclamation mark there!)
It wrote itself, practically, and as I recall it, only took three weeks
or so. The wonderful Willie Rushton agreed to do the illustrations,
and it has been in print, on and off, ever since. Willie and I were
working on a kind of follow-up before his sad, untimely death. Here
is the moment, in Chapter Seven, when my hero, Baxter Ferret, meets his
nemesis. He is in a steam traction engine, with his fellow farmhand
Tetley, going to pick up the wreck of their boss’s motor lorry, a Throgmorton
Squeezer.
We had
rounded the bend. Determined to try and hear the end of the tale I
had clenched my fists and kept my eyes on Tetley's clattering dentures rather
than look up. Now I did. Alongside the dismal wreck, peering
into the cab, was a figure.
"Thieves!" shrieked old Tetley. "Robbers! Villains come to lay
hands on gaffer's stuff."
He banged open Old Betsy's throttle another fraction with a handy wrench,
although she was already giving her very best speed. His free hand
waved above his head till it contacted the whistle wire, on which he dangled
frantically, one booted foot hovering in the air. A hoarse blast of
sound and steam rent the clear and frosty morning.
The figure looked up, apparently not in the least alarmed. He moved
to the front of the Squeezer in fact, and lounged on the sagging bonnet,
about where the mudguard should have been. He was waiting for us.
As we lumbered forward, it appeared that there was another vehicle parked
beside the lorry, which we had not been able to see at first. It slowly
came into view, took shape and colour. I felt my stomach begin to
flutter, my fingers to tremble. It was a motor car. A battered
motor car. A very severely battered motor car.
Old Tetley drove the last few yards in the grim silence of concentration.
He eased the steam back, judging his distance to a tee. The huge engine
ground and grunted to a halt only inches from where the Throgmorton’s radiator
used to be. There was a moment of absolutely uncanny quiet after the
din, until the engine settled down to a contented and familiar hissing as
she built up pressure.
The black-coated figure pushed himself upright with a leather-gauntleted paw
and walked towards us.
"Hello, you chaps," he said at last. "What a splendid day."
It was Mr Toad.
After that, my story follows the lines of the original with remarkable
closeness. Except that all the things we know and love about Mr Toad's
life and adventures are seen through different eyes, at different angles.
Toad Hall is renamed Brotherhood Hall, and all the River Bankers' triumphs
- including the final great assault which clears the denizens of the Wild
Wood out of Toad's home lock, stock and barrel - are revealed to be a dreadful
sham. Toad, inevitably, does not seem to understand a single jot of
it...
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