Hazel (2 page)

‘Hazel!’ called the girl’s voice. ‘Hazel, where are you?’

‘You should have looked where she was going,’ said the boy’s voice.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said the girl, whose voice had become a little quavery. ‘Hazel! Hazel, darling! Where
are
you?’

The little girl, who was nearly eight (tomorrow would be her birthday), had begun a frantic search for her beloved guinea pig at one end of the kitchen. Her elder brother, aged ten, sat and
watched.

The girl looked behind the fender. Hazel could surely not have got into the fire? She looked at the mousehole in the skirtingboard. Hazel could surely not have got through that! She looked
behind the sofa. She even looked in the cupboard. But Hazel was nowhere to be seen.

‘I expect she fell in the fire,’ said the boy unpleasantly. ‘She’s probably burnt up by now. Mum shouldn’t let you keep a guinea pig if you can’t look after
it.’

‘What about your hamster, then?’

‘That was different, and besides, I was only six. I looked
after
Hammy. It wasn’t my fault he escaped. You can’t look after Hazel.’

‘I can.’

‘Why are you crying, then?’

‘I’m not …’
crying
, his sister tried to say. But by the end of her sentence, she was.

Hazel did not have an opinion about whether the girl was crying. She only wished that they could get her out of the tunnel. She let out agonised squeaks to inform the children of her
predicament.

The little girl, through her sobs, came out into the hall and heard Hazel squeaking. But she could not tell where Hazel was hidden.

‘Hazel!’ she called again. ‘Where are you?’

But what could a guinea pig
do
? She could not say the words: ‘I am in a tunnel. Stuck would be the word for it.’ She could only squeal, and when this had no effect she was
once more silent.

‘I heard her. I really heard her out here,’ said the girl.

‘You’re making such a noise yourself, how could you hear her?’ her brother asked crossly.

‘She was squealing,’ said the girl.

‘I can’t see her,’ said the boy.

Hazel heard him kick the hall chair and scrape its legs on the tiles. The children were looking underneath the chair. Then they opened the cupboard under the stairs and called Hazel’s
name. They had no idea that she was just under their noses, stuck in the Wellington boot.

Inside the boot it was still very dark. It also felt hot and Hazel was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. There was another strange thing. The longer she stayed in the narrow tunnel, the
narrower it seemed. She felt the sides of the boot grow tighter and tighter against her sides. Surely she was not actually getting fatter inside the boot? By now she was ravenously hungry, and she
could not remember when she last saw a decent cabbage stalk or a bowl of bran. It was a sorry state that Hazel had got herself into, and the thought of it made her start squealing again. This time
she was not squealing to alert the children. She was just squealing in despair.

‘I heard her that time,’ said the boy. ‘I suppose she hasn’t got underneath that pile of boots and shoes by the back door?’

No sooner had these words been spoken than Hazel felt the tunnel heaving and shaking and shuddering.

Thump!

Something had fallen on top of the tunnel.

Bang!

To the right and left of her, boots, shoes, roller-skates, trainers, tennis balls, and rubber flip-flops were being thrown.

And then Hazel got the feeling you get in a fairground if ever you are brave and silly enough to go on the roller coaster. Her stomach heaved and jumped. And although she was still squeezed
tight in the blackness of the tunnel, she felt the tunnel being lifted into the air.

‘She’s in the Wellington boot!’ the boy cried aloud from the back door.

‘Where? Where? Give her to me!’ shouted his sister.

‘Don’t be rough.’

‘I’m not being rough.’

‘You are.’

‘Give her to me,’ said the girl crossly.

While these words were being exchanged, Hazel could feel the tunnel swaying about in the air and being dragged to and fro. And then she heard the girl say, ‘We’ll put you on the
kitchen table, Hazel dear, and we shall have you out in a jiffy.’

‘A jiffy, eh?’ thought Hazel. ‘Well, I’d rather be in a jiffy than in a tunnel. Just as long as it isn’t what I would call a
narrow
jiffy.’

But before she had time to ask herself what a jiffy
was
, Hazel was screaming with violent agony and terror. The girl’s hand had reached inside the Wellington boot and was pulling
Hazel by her hind legs. It felt as if she were having her legs pulled off. However much the girl pulled at the back, the front part of Hazel’s body still remained stuck in the boot. And the
more the girl pulled, the more Hazel screamed and the more she wanted to get away from the pain by burrowing deeper and deeper into the toe of the boot.

‘You’re hurting her,’ said the boy.

‘I’m trying to get her out. Come on, Hazel.’

And once more, the girl thrust her hand into the boot in an attempt to extricate the captive.

But Hazel was stuck. She was more stuck than ever. And by now her screams could have been heard half a mile away. She sounded like a big farmyard pig just about to be made into bacon.

‘Let’s have a go,’ said the boy.

But the boy’s hand was bigger than his sister’s, and he was afraid to get hold of Hazel lest he squash her altogether. He tried, as gently as he could, to hold the boot upside down
and to shake Hazel out. Her screams did not grow any quieter.

‘There is only one thing to do,’ said the girl. ‘We will have to cut the boot with some scissors, the way some babies are born.’

‘Mum will go spare if you cut my boot,’ said the boy.

‘But Hazel is
stuck
,’ said the girl.

Hazel, very much stuck, stopped screaming for a moment and listened. She heard one of the children opening a drawer. She heard the rattle of metal objects. Then the boot began to heave and to
shake once more, and the children were once more quarrelling.

‘It’s my boot.’

‘She’s my guinea pig.’

‘You’ll jab her if you wave those scissors like that.’

‘I forbid you to cut my boot.’

‘Hard cheese.’

‘Either you give me those scissors and let me cut the boot, or Hazel will stay in the boot and die. Oh, stop
blubbering
.’

Hazel was silent. She was dumb with terror. The tunnel had started to shake again, and at her back she could hear the noise of scissor blades, coming closer and closer and closer. Snip! Snip!
Snip!

‘I’ll have to cut the boot all the way up.’

‘Well, mind you don’t cut Hazel.’

‘I’ll feel it when the scissors go anywhere near her body,’ said the boy.

‘You mean,
she’ll
feel it,’ said the girl.

Hazel could indeed feel it. She could feel the cold steel of the blade creeping up the hot fat side of her body. And as soon as the scissors touched her, she screamed again.

‘You’ve stabbed her!’

‘Cripes!’

‘You’ve stabbed her!’

‘Of course I haven’t.’

But the boy did not sound very sure. His scissors
had
come very close to the guinea pig, and he could not be sure whether or not he had accidentally nicked her with the blade.

But, in fact, Hazel was all right. Suddenly she saw daylight. The walls of the tunnel were ripped away. A hand was clasping her firmly and gently and giving her to the girl.

‘Here you are. No cuts. She’s quite safe.’

What a relief! What a drama!

In a few minutes Hazel found herself sitting on the girl’s lap nibbling a cauliflower stalk. It was very consoling to be free again, and I am sorry to say that in the excitement of the
moment, Hazel also made a rather large puddle over the girl’s dress.

‘Never mind, Hazel. This is not the dress which I am wearing to my birthday party tomorrow. Do you know what Mum is giving me for my birthday, Hazel? She says it’s a surprise. But
now that you are safe and well, I can’t imagine a nicer present than you, dear Hazel; just you, safe and well again after your adventure.’

Well, an adventure was one thing you could call it. Hazel was not sure, but she thought you could easily call it an adventure. As for birthday presents, she did not know about those. At the
moment, she was finding the cauliflower stalk most sustaining. When she had eaten enough, she burrowed once more into the girl’s jumper. Now, what
was
it she had been looking for
when she first set out to explore and got stuck in that horrible tunnel?

Coming back into the kitchen a few minutes later, the boy said, ‘I’ve put the boot in an old plastic bag and hidden it in the dustbin. The dustbin men come tomorrow.’

‘And tomorrow is my birthday!’ said his sister. She was happy now. All her tears were dry.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear when it next rains,’ said the boy. ‘But it is true that those boots were getting tight for me and one of them leaked. Mum
keeps saying she’ll get me some new ones, but she never remembers.’

Just then they heard the squawk and squeak of their mother’s bicycle brakes. Looking through the window, the boy saw his mother leaning her bicycle against the far wall at the end of the
garden and hurrying into the shed where Hazel’s hutch was kept.

‘Mum’s back,’ said the boy. ‘Here she is, coming down the garden path. And it looks as though she has a parcel for your birthday.’

‘Is that my birthday present, Mum?’ asked the girl when their mother came indoors and placed a large bag on the kitchen table.

‘Your birthday present is a surprise,’ said Mum. ‘This bag is some more boots for your brother. He said that the old ones fit, but they were getting tight.’ And out of
her bag she produced a lovely pair of black, shiny Wellington boots, as black and shiny as Hazel’s eyes.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ said the boy. ‘You’re right, my old boots were getting a bit tight.’

‘They shouldn’t leave them lying about,’ Hazel thought. ‘Not if they are tight, and a girl might feel inclined to go exploring up them. No wonder I got stuck, if they
were tight. Tight is what they felt.’

The new boots, apparently, were a perfect fit. While the boy tried them on and expressed his pleasure in them, Mum talked to Hazel and the girl.

‘Here you sit, Hazel,’ said Mum, ‘and I have been cycling around town, buying boots and I don’t know what. You have a lucky life.’

‘Well,’ said the girl, but her brother shot her a glance that made it clear that she should not tell Mum the story of how Hazel got stuck in the boot, and how they had to cut her out
of it with kitchen scissors.

‘Is it a dull life for you, Hazel?’ asked Mum, stroking the back of the guinea pig’s head. ‘All on your own, with nothing to do?’

‘I don’t think it’s dull,’ said the girl.

‘I think it’s a
bit
dull,’ said Mum. ‘You can’t really imagine a guinea pig having an adventure, can you? She just has her food, and she scampers about and
… oh, look what she’s done on your dress! Come on Hazel, back in the hutch before you do any more damage.’

‘My dress is drying now,’ said the girl.

‘I’ll put her back in the hutch just the same,’ said Mum.

‘I will,’ said the girl.

‘No,’ said Mum, ‘you stay here. I will put Hazel back in the hutch.’

Mum went to the larder and came back with two carrots and two lumps of bread.

‘Mum!’ said the girl. ‘Hazel’s fat enough as it is. She’ll burst if she eats all that.’

‘She might get hungry,’ said Mum.

‘Quite right,’ thought Hazel. ‘You never know when you might get what I call hungry.’

‘Come on, Hazel,’ said Mum. And Hazel, who by now had recovered from the secret adventure of the boot, was very happy when Mum picked her up and carried her off down the garden
path.

Mum opened the door of the hutch very carefully with one hand and put inside it the two carrots and the two lumps of bread.