Hazel (4 page)

‘I’ll teach you to pull my crown, you common little
brat
!’ howled Fudge.

‘Crown! Huh! Silly hat more like,’ said Tobacco.

He regretted saying this, because it excited in Fudge a truly murderous fury.

‘No one insults the cresteds and gets away with it,’ hissed Fudge through two slightly protuberant front teeth, both very sharp. ‘Particularly not a
thing
like
you.’

Fudge pounced on poor Tobacco and knocked him over on his back. Tobacco waved his paws and shrieked in despair; he was completely powerless. He looked up and saw the open mouth of Fudge and two
long sharp fangs coming closer and closer to his throat.

Then, just in the nick of time, the door of the hutch opened, and Mum’s hand reached inside and picked up Tobacco. He was quivering with fright, and he had a cut on the side of his
head.

‘Poor Tobacco,’ said Mum.

She stroked him, and kissed him, and examined his cut. It was not as bad as it looked. Mum put Tobacco in the run with Hazel. Then Mum went to the garden shed once more. She took Fudge out of
Tobacco and Hazel’s hutch.

‘Come on, Fudge,’ said Mum. ‘We’ll put you in this spare hutch over here.’

It just happened that Mum had been weeding the flower bed near the garden shed. She had heard the furious squeaking of Fudge and Tobacco and had gone to see what was the matter with them. Mum
did not blame either of the guinea pigs for fighting. She was not cross with Fudge for having flown at Tobacco. She realised that it was just nature. She was just a
little
cross with the
children for having gone off leaving the guinea pigs before checking that they were getting along well. A nasty incident had been narrowly avoided.

In the run Tobacco was still shaking with the shock of it all.

‘How have you gone and got that nasty cut?’ asked Hazel, her mouth full of grass.

‘Silly Hat did it,’ said Tobacco.

‘What’s that then?’

‘You’ve been all right, girl, eating grass in here.’

‘Ar,’ agreed Hazel. ‘I’ve been all right.’

‘But they’ve gone and bought this terrible pig with a thing on its head like you’ve never seen.’

‘What kind of a thing?’

‘Well, hat’s the only word for it,’ said Tobacco. ‘And a darned silly one at that.’

‘Watch your language,’ said Hazel.

‘Well, silly, then, and never mind about the darned.’

‘That’s better.’

‘And where do you think they’ve gone and put this Silly Hat creature?’

‘Where?’

‘In our hutch, that’s where.’

‘What, not in
our
hutch.’

‘That’s right, girl.’

‘Another guinea pig?’

‘Like I says, with this darned – sorry – with this Silly Hat thing on its head.’

‘That wouldn’t be right,’ said Hazel. ‘Not on its head, a hat.’

And then Tobacco felt fonder of Hazel than he had ever felt before, and he went and stood so that his nose was very nearly touching her nose. And then he thought how beautiful she was – so
plump and sleek and brown and glossy. And he made a noise that the girl called chirruping – but actually he was saying, ‘That’s my girl.’

They talked for ages about Silly Hat while they munched their grass. Tobacco partly talked so much about it because he couldn’t stop, and partly to remind himself of what had happened in
case he forgot it.

‘Then it came at me,’ he said.

‘Oh
dear
,’ said Hazel.

‘But I gave it what for,’ said Tobacco.

‘I bet you did,’ said Hazel, ‘but you shouldn’t go fighting.’

Although Hazel said this, she was secretly very proud of Tobacco for defending their hutch against an intruder.

Tobacco said, ‘Then I says, “Don’t come a step further,” I says, “or I won’t be actionable for my answers.”’

‘Oh
dear
!’ exclaimed Hazel.

‘It came at me,’ said Tobacco, ‘but I were ready. Its teeth were bared, and it was hissing and oh, girl – the stink of the creature.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Hazel.

‘Do?’ asked Tobacco. ‘What else could I do? I just fought it. I give as good as I got, girl.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Hazel. ‘But you didn’t ought to have got into no fight.’

‘It come at me,’ said Tobacco, ‘but I knocked it sideways. Flat. That’s what I knocked it. I really think if that lady hadn’t come along, Silly Hat would have been
a goner.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t …’ Hazel hesitated. Either she could not find the word ‘kill’ or she did not want to use it. Instead she asked, ‘Where are
we going to live? We can’t share a hutch with Silly Hat.’

‘We shall
protest
,’ said Tobacco. ‘If they pick us up and tries to put us in that hutch with Silly Hat, we must wriggle, we must struggle, we must shout. We must never
allow them to put us in there.’

When the children returned from their game, and tried to catch Tobacco and Hazel, they found it astonishingly difficult. Both the guinea pigs ran round the run and
wouldn’t
be
caught. And when they were eventually caught, they squealed and squealed, demanding to be free. But it was all right. When they got back to their hutch they found that Silly Hat had been taken
away. She had gone home with Rona.

‘I can still smell that
thing
in here, you know, girl,’ said Tobacco, indignantly walking up and down the living room.

‘Oh come to bed and stop worrying.’

Much later, as they lay in the hay, Tobacco said quietly to Hazel, ‘I’m glad it’s gone.’

‘Me too,’ said Hazel.

‘I’m glad it’s just you and me, girl.’

‘That would be right,’ said Hazel.

The whole incident caused the children embarrassment and worry. The girl had told Rona that Tobacco was so friendly. Rona had said the same thing about Fudge.

‘And it would have been so wonderful if Fudge could have had Tobacco’s babies,’ said the girl.

‘Wonderful, indeed,’ said Mum. ‘It would have been a miracle.’

‘Why is that?’ asked the girl.

‘Surely you’ve realised by now,’ said Mum, ‘that Fudge is a boy.’

Hazel was a very fat guinea pig. After a few weeks of living with Tobacco, however, she became even fatter. The children began to suspect that she was eating too much.

‘It’s like Mum and Dad,’ said the boy. ‘If Mum is on her own, she just eats a stick of celery and a tub of cottage cheese for her lunch. But when Dad’s at home, she
cooks a leg of lamb, roast potatoes, vegetables, pudding and custard.’

‘Sometimes,’ said the girl. ‘Not always. Sometimes it’s stew and dumplings, followed by rhubarb fool or …’

‘I know, I know,’ said the boy. ‘That was just an example, stupid. Married people eat more than single people, it’s a well-known fact.’

‘How do
you
know?’ asked his sister.

The boy did not bother to answer this question. He just said, ‘It’s the same with guinea pigs.’

‘But Hazel doesn’t give Tobacco his food,’ said the girl. ‘I’m the one who puts out the dried food and the raw carrots and the …’

‘When you remember,’ said the boy. ‘Usually it’s Mum who feeds them.’

‘It is not,’ said the girl. ‘Anyway, you may be right. I shall try giving them less to eat in the future.’

So that day she only half filled the guinea pigs’ bowl with bran and instead of giving them one raw carrot each, she cut a carrot in two and put that in their cage.

Hazel and Tobacco did not notice that their rations had been halved when the food arrived.

‘Grub’s up,’ squeaked Tobacco.

‘Eh?’

‘Wonder what it’ll be today. Now I feel like a nice carrot.’

‘Carrots? Oh good.’

And Hazel scuttled into the living room part of their cage and started to nibble her half carrot. She found her meal very delicious. But when she had eaten her carrot and rummaged about in the
blue plastic food bowl, she felt her meal had been strangely unsustaining. Tobacco felt the same.

‘I’ll be glad when we’re out on the lawn,’ said Hazel.

‘Same here,’ said Tobacco. ‘I could just do with a few mouthfuls of grass. Just to round off the meal nicely.’

But that day it was raining, and the children did not put the guinea pigs out in the run. After about an hour and a half they were squeaking with hunger.

This went on for two or three days. The little girl gave the guinea pigs smaller meals, and they both felt acutely hungry and miserable. And there was this curious fact. In spite of her special
diet, Hazel remained decidedly stout. In fact, the less she ate, the fatter she became.

Then the girl had a horrible thought. She had several times seen films and pictures of very hungry people in Africa, and she remembered that when poor children are dying of starvation, their
stomachs swell up. Perhaps the reason that Hazel was getting fatter and fatter was that she was starving.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said her brother. ‘How can she be starving? And anyway, that doesn’t explain why she is so
much
fatter than Tobacco.’

So they decided to ask Mum why Hazel was getting so fat, but Mum just smiled and said, ‘Wait and see.’

Mum also told the girl to go on feeding Hazel and Tobacco a normal amount of food. She also said that it would be better, even though the sun was now shining, if Hazel did not go out in the run.
Tobacco could go in the run but not Hazel.

‘I expect you can guess why Hazel wants to be a bit quieter,’ said Mum.

‘She doesn’t like the hot weather,’ said the boy. ‘That’s why.’

But the girl had by now guessed the real reason that Hazel had become so very, very fat. She took special care to clean out the hutch every day. She made sure that Hazel had plenty of clean hay
in the bedroom. And she gave her
extra
little bowls of bread and milk to eat.

‘It’s not just herself that she has to feed, is it, Mum?’ said the girl. But the boy just looked puzzled. And sure enough, after not many days, the girl’s expectations
were fulfilled.

It happened early one morning before the people in the house were up. Tobacco and Hazel were in the hutch. It was a bright sunny morning and outside the birds were singing. Tobacco had woken
early, thinking of his breakfast.