The Wombles to the Rescue (8 page)

A great deal was going on too. There were papers everywhere and bits of cardboard were pinned up on the shelves and being drawn over. In fact, paper was being used up at a rate which would have really distressed Miss Adelaide. But fortunately
she
was clearing up the Womblegarten and getting it ready for the afternoon's paw-craft lesson, and so was much too busy to put her head round the door.

In one corner Shansi, with her little pink tongue stuck out of one corner of her mouth, was writing in a notebook as fast as she could go.
Flip, flip, flip
went the pages as Tobermory told her what to write. She was too busy to wonder what was going on until later in the afternoon when Tobermory gave her quite a different sort of job to do.

And part of the result of all this activity was that just before supper time two beautifully written notices were pinned up on the corridor side of the Workshop door. The first one was headed:

.

S
PECIAL
P
ROJECT
:

U
NDERWATER
F
ARMING
:

A
LL THOSE WOMBLES INTERESTED IN JOINING THIS PROJECT SHOULD SEE
C
OUSIN
B
OTANY
AT
8
P.M. IN THE
P
LAYROOM THIS EVENING
.

.

And the second one was headed:

.

E
MERGENCY
!

S
PECIAL AND EXTRA WOMBLE TIDY GROUPS NEEDED
. A
LL THOSE INTERESTED IN
SPECIAL DUTIES
SHOULD SEE
T
OBERMORY
AT
8
P.M. IN THE
W
ORKSHOP THIS EVENING
.

.

‘There,' said Tobermory. ‘That should get the ball rolling, I think.'

.

Chapter 8

Miss Adelaide Puts Her Foot Down

The burrow was soon absolutely buzzing with activity, with Wombles scurrying about in all directions. Tobermory had been quite right, twice over. The ball was definitely rolling and all the quarrelling and fighting had stopped as if by magic. Of course, Orinoco volunteered to help Cousin Botany, and he was so relieved that he wasn't going to be half starved that he was almost embarrassingly grateful.

‘Oh, all right, all right,' said Botany, swiping at the beaming Orinoco with his awful hat, ‘no need to go on so. We're not out of the wood yet. First off we've got to start tunnelling . . .'

‘Tunnelling!'

‘'Sright. Tobermory's worked out the lay of the land round the burrow so that we can see which way the water flows when it rains. They're called cul-something or other, but to me they're little valleys and so I shall call 'em. Now what we has to do is to work out which little valleys we pipes the water from back to here. See?'

‘Sort of. Do you mean there'll be digging work?'

‘Ah.'

‘I'm not very strong, you know,' said Orinoco, backing towards the door. ‘In fact, I'm really rather a delicate sort of Womble and . . .'

‘Nothing like a bit of digging to make you strong then,' said Botany. ‘Collect your spade at six o'clock sharp!'

‘Oh dear,' mumbled Orinoco. ‘No sooner is one difficulty all nicely finished with when along comes another. I think I'll have a double helping of breakfast to get my strength up.'

Alderney too had asked to work on underwater farming and to her surprise found this meant that she had to help Madame Cholet clear out the larders, so as to find new containers for all these exciting foods which would soon, they hoped, be coming into the burrow.

‘
Alors
,' said Madame Cholet. ‘We have so few nice little jars and plastic boxes left. The Human Beings don't throw them away like they used to,' and she almost sighed for the Bad Old Days when there had been almost too much dumped rubbish for the Wombles to tidy away and make use of again.

‘They still dump bottles,' said Alderney, who was swishing away with a mop in a bowl of soapy water. ‘I mean lemonade bottles and milk bottles and things like that. And tins . . .'

‘True, my little one, true. Gently, please, you are washing the jars not the floor. Tobermory has asked for every tin that is tidied to be sent straight to the Workshop. He says it is because of the Emergency. He says.' And Madame Cholet gave a loud sniff to show what she thought of this idea.

‘Couldn't we use lemonade bottles?' asked Alderney.

‘Of course, we do so. For bracken juice, dandelion cough mixture, fizzy buttercup and so on and so on. But also one needs the jars for dried this and that and so forth. It is very difficult for a cook, especially a good cook, to have to work without the proper equipment! Now when I was young . . .'

And off went Madame Cholet but, as she was quite interesting to listen to, Alderney didn't mind too much. Also she wanted to learn to be a good cook herself one day, so she was keen to pick up any tips that were going.

The young Wombles were let off work at dusk and met for a few rounds of ‘Great Uncle Bulgaria's Footsteps' which is a very skilful, rather scary game that Tomsk won easily.

‘Let's have some more,' he suggested.

‘No fear, I'm far too tired,' said Orinoco, who had anyway sat out, or rather dozed out, the last few rounds. ‘I've had an
awful
day. Nothing but work. I'm
exhausted
.'

‘I bet your day wasn't as bad as mine . . .'

‘Or mine . . .'

‘Or mine . . .'

‘Me too,' echoed Shansi.

‘
You're
all right,' grumbled Orinoco, ‘all you do is writing. Anyone can write. That's not work. I dare say I could write a whole book if I wanted to. A jolly good book it'd be too.'

‘Am not writing book,' said Shansi. ‘Am writing out many notes for Tobermory. Am using much paper too.'

She sounded a bit worried and Wellington, who had been sitting thinking about his beautiful and apparently useless oil rig, said kindly, ‘It's not your fault. Those men Terry and John said there was a worldwide shortage of paper, but it's not your fault.'

Which well-meant remark made Shansi feel more guilty than ever.

‘I bet I worked harder than anybody,' said Alderney, and she told them about cleaning out the larders and storerooms and how they were running out of jars and how Tobermory was taking all the tins.

‘I picked up enough lemonade bottles today,' said Wellington, who with Tomsk was working for the Special Duties Section. ‘Of course, they'd be the wrong shape, but if you got rid of the long neck part . . . oh, hold on.' And he put his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes tightly shut. Everybody kept a respectful silence as they knew that these were the signs that Wellington was having one of his Ideas. Sometimes they worked too, although not always, as in the case of the oil rig.

‘A grinder. Something to grind with,' muttered Wellington.

‘Teeth?' suggested Orinoco, yawning and scratching. ‘I can grind anything with my teeth . . .'

‘Not bottles, you couldn't,' said Wellington. ‘See you later. Excuse me,' and he went trotting back to the burrow where he burst into the Workshop, skipped round Tobermory and vanished into the back storeroom where he could be heard muttering. ‘Something very hard. A metal blade. A clamp. A wheel. And sandpaper. Must have sandpaper.'

‘Now what's he up to,' Tobermory said aloud, but he couldn't hear his own words as he had a lot of welding to do which is a fairly noisy occupation if you are right on top of it. Sparks went shooting in all directions, but not, of course, into Tobermory's eyes as he was wearing goggles which were attached to his bowler hat and gave him a fearsome expression.

Probably the truth was that Tobermory had been working harder than anyone, for ever since the notice had been put up on the Workshop door and the two meetings had been held, a new spirit had pervaded the burrow. Everybody had begun to work so hard that Tobermory had been showered with old tin cans of every size and shape. His working party had sorted them, scoured them and removed their lids and bottoms with Tobermory's patent lid-remover, which left no raw edges. The working party had also painted the tins – and quite a bit of themselves – both inside and out with Tobermory's patent preservative-and-anti-rust paint, but it had been left to the old grey Womble to do the laborious job of welding all these treated tins into the pipelines which would be needed for the underwater farming scheme.

Tobermory welded the umpteenth tin of the last eight hours and turned down his blowtorch and lifted up his goggles. The muttering was still going on in the back storeroom, interspersed with little grunts and thumps and once by ‘Ouch, ouch, ouch, that was my finger. Ouch'.

‘You all right?' asked Tobermory, who felt too tired to get down off his carpenter's stool.

‘Yes, thank you. I'm inventing, you know.'

‘I thought you might be. Can I ask what?'

There was a slight pause and then Wellington's face appeared round the door as he said apologetically, ‘Would you mind awfully if I didn't say, please, Tobermory? Only it might not work like you-know-what and then you feel such a Womble twit.'

‘Suit yourself,' said Tobermory. ‘Only be careful, do.'

And Tobermory pulled his mask down and prepared to tackle the umpteenth-and-one tin of the day. He was so intent on what he was doing that he never noticed that Wellington left the Workshop with a handkerchief round one paw, a smile right across his face and with his latest invention under one arm.

Although he was very excited and longing to show Madame Cholet his present for her, Wellington slept without moving all night as did all the other Wombles. Not even the chill draught which whistled through the gap under the front door could keep one of them awake, and when Tobermory finally got to his bed he started to snore the moment he got his head on the pillow.

Everybody overslept and there just wasn't time to get along to the kitchen before Wellington had to go off on tidying-up work, and as there had been a high wind in the night, all kinds of rubbish had landed on the Common.

‘It jolly well
would
,' muttered Wellington, tying his long scarf over the top of his cap to keep it on. ‘Just when we don't want any litter, we get tons of it. Whoops!'

It
was
whoops too, for the wind nearly blew him over and he had to hang on to a sapling. Tomsk, who was ahead of Wellington, got caught unawares as he was halfway across an open patch of ground and the next thing he knew he was being bowled along with his tidy-bag ballooning out like a sail ahead of him.

‘Yip, wow, help,' bellowed Tomsk, hanging on grimly to his bag as no Womble ever lets go of anything except under extreme pressure. But there was nobody about to help him and like a large grey furry ball Tomsk went bounding across the Common, now on his stomach, then on his seat as the gale-force wind took charge of him. He was practically out of sight by the time he finally managed to make a grab for a tree and he was going so fast that he careered twice round the tree before he sank to the ground feeling quite breathless.

‘Well,' said Tomsk, ‘well, I never. Hallo, what's happened there!'

He was close to the edge of the road and, although it was very early in the morning, a group of Human Beings were standing staring at something. So, of course, Tomsk had to go and stare too, and he crept forward through some bushes on his hands and knees until he managed to see that a large lorry was lying on its side. It was one of those lorries that have no sides to them and it didn't take Tomsk more than a minute to work out what must have happened. The lorry had obviously been piled high with large flat pieces of plastic, for they were now scattered far and wide. Like Tomsk, the lorry must have been suddenly caught by a powerful gust of wind and with its high load it had just been blown over. The driver didn't seem to be hurt, just annoyed as he told all the people exactly why it wasn't his fault. The people all seemed to agree with him and then they all turned and looked down the road as a breakdown van came into view and drew up ahead of the lorry.

It was really quite interesting watching how the men got the lorry back on its feet again so to speak, with a thuddering jar which made it bounce a bit. Then some of the men picked up the unbroken pieces of plastic and shoved them back on to the lorry, but the pieces which had got chipped they just pushed into the bushes.

‘Leave 'em,' said the driver. ‘There's no point in taking that lot back to the factory. Thanks, mates . . .'

And five minutes later the lorry and the van with the crane on its back had gone and so had all the people. What was left was Tomsk and a number of sheets of plastic. Tomsk eyed it doubtfully. It would have to be tidied up, of course, but how? He was still considering this question slowly and carefully when Wellington, his tidy-bag folded under his arm, joined him.

‘No good trying to tidy up in this wind,' puffed Wellington. ‘We'll have to wait till it drops. It keeps
on
coming and going. It doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind
what
to do, drat it. How did all this plastic stuff get here, I wonder? I should've thought it was too heavy to have been blown.'

‘Well, it was sort of blown,' said Tomsk and slowly explained.

‘I see,' said Wellington at the finish. ‘You'd better go back to the burrow and get some transport and a good strong rope. I'll keep watch here.'

‘All right,' agreed Tomsk and he'd gone quite a long way before it occurred to him that he ought to have asked what Wellington meant by ‘transport'. He tried to explain his dilemma to Tobermory who was now surrounded by lengths of pipe and hard at work again with his noisy blow-torch.

‘You're not having
WOM I
,' growled Tobermory. ‘I don't want it getting all scratched. You'll have to take the wheelbarrow. The rope's on the shelf marked
ROPE
. Now stop bothering me, do.'