Washy and the Crocodile Read online

  “All right,” said Washy. “What do your family call you?”

  At the mention of his family, Wombat the wombat looked very worried, and dismissed all further discussion of names from the agenda.

  “They don’t,” he said. “They can’t.”

  “Why not?” Asked the tall aborigine, who was becoming very intrigued by this encounter with a nameless wombat and his uncommunicative family.

  Wombat snuffled, scratched the earth with his mighty forepaw, turned round very quickly in a complete circle, did it again, did it again, and—

  “What happened?” Said Washy.

  Wombat came to a complete standstill.

  “They’ve been captured,” he squeaked. “By a group of zoo—a group of zoo—”

  “Zoologists?” Said Washy, who had been warned about this nuisance at a tribal gathering.

  “Exactly,” answered Wombat the wombat, who was always prepared to accept help with his vocabulary.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Washy, and selected a eucalyptus leaf on which to clean his teeth. “But they can’t have gone far. And the zoologists won’t have harmed them. Even the tribal elders said that. So we’ll go and find them and bring them back, shall we? After we’ve had breakfast, of course.” Washy wanted to help Wombat, because Wombat had that effect on people. But he wanted his breakfast too.

  Wombat looked surprised. He hadn’t thought about breakfast. And now that Washy had mentioned it—

  “No,” he said. “We have to go right now. I’m worried.” And he snuffled.

  “All right,” said Washy kindly. “We’ll forget all about breakfast. We won’t have breakfast at all. We won’t even think about breakfast. We’ll go and find them right now.”

  “Exactly,” said Wombat the wombat, thus cleverly using the same word twice and not exhausting his vocabulary: but there was a slight quaver in his voice. He hadn’t had breakfast either, and the thought was a slight temptation—even for a wombat that had lost his family. For the time being, that was.

  “Come on,” said Washy, rising to his full height, from which he towered over the squat and muscular little wombat, and picked up his spear, his toothpick (in case they had breakfast later on), and a spare war boomerang, which looked extremely fearsome and which he could throw at least a hundred yards: more than enough to deal with any city-dwelling zoologist. “Let’s go.”

  “Exactly,” replied Wombat, who never believed in wasting a word. “Um... Where to?”

  Washy considered the shy little animal with affection. Wombat had that effect on people. “Back to where you last saw them,” he said.

  Wombat scratched his head with his rear left paw. “What would be the point of that?” He asked. “They aren’t there any more.”

  “No, they’re not,” answered Washy. “But their tracks are.”

  The wombat looked depressed, and screwed up his little eyes in shame. “I don’t do tracks,” he said dolefully. “I can’t. I’m only a wombat.”

  Washy smiled. “No,” he said. “You don’t. But I do. And you’re going to be a great help to me.”

  “Am I?” Asked the wombat, cheering up immensely. “Oh, goodie!” And the two trotted off together. “Shall I carry your spear?” Asked the wombat politely. He would have found it almost impossible to do so; but he would have tried his hardest. Wombat didn’t give up easily. In fact, he didn’t give up at all. There was one occasion when—

  “No, really, thanks awfully,” replied Washy, with equal politeness. (The wombat had that effect on people.) “I wouldn’t feel fully dressed without it.”

  “I see,” said Wombat, who didn’t, but would never have admitted it. If a naked aborigine needed to carry a spear to feel fully dressed, that was fine with Wombat. Live and let live, he thought: a very profound thought, and quite enough for one day or possibly the whole week.

  The wombat didn’t do much thinking. He left that to Mrs Wombat. She was the thinker in the family. Why, only last night, she had looked up from the Financial Times, which she had been reading with her little glasses perched precariously on the end of her shiny nose, and had said—but what Mrs Wombat had said will never be known, except to those who were present at the time, for Wombat suddenly realised that the aborigine was leaving him behind, and he trotted faster. How those long legs could cover the ground! For a moment, the wombat wished that he had long legs. But then, how would he be able to burrow? Thinking was very confusing, and he decided to give it up.

  ***

  “Here,” said Wombat. And stopped.

  “Here is where you last saw them?” Asked Washy, squatting on his heels and looking at the ground very carefully, as if it were a rare and much admired manuscript in a museum.

  “Exactly,” said Wombat for the fourth time. “Right here.”

  Washy looked around. There was a small shelter, which might have hidden the entrance to a burrow. There were a few burnt twigs on the ground where Mrs Wombat would have been cooking; and nothing else. There was certainly no sign of any wombat. There was, however, a faint but lingering smell of rabbit pie in the air: and Washy was extremely found of rabbit pie.

  “What’s that smell?” He asked.

  “Rabbit pie,” answered the wombat, who remained a creature of very few words. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll say!” Said the other. “Um... Your wife makes it... Does she?”

  “Of course,” said the wombat proudly, and stuck out his chest like a miniature Napoleon. “She’s my wife.”

  “Good,” said Washy. He was beginning to really like the wombat. “So... what happened?” He asked.

  The wombat looked puzzled. “When?” He replied.

  “When your wife went missing,” answered Washy.

  Wombat looked embarrassed. It is not easy for a wombat to look embarrassed, for its face tends to remain expressionless whatever it may be feeling; but Wombat managed it.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” he said, thus cleverly using his favourite word in a slightly different way, and embarked on the longest speech of his life. “I woke up in the early morning and went outside to—to—well, you know,” said Wombat, who was a very modest little beast, and didn’t want to refer to his bodily functions in front of the aborigine, who was still a stranger, after all. Even if he were going to help him find Mrs Wombat. And the little wombats.

  “I know,” said Washy, and tried not to smile. “And after you’d—you know, what happened?”

  “I came back,” said Wombat simply. “And they were missing.” He rubbed his eyes. He was a brave little wombat; but there was only so much that a furry marsupial could take. “They must have been abducted by the zoo people, because we’d seen them in the area on the previous evening. Mrs Wombat said not to worry, so I didn’t,” added Wombat almost but not quite thoughtfully. “She knows best. She’s the thinker. I’m not. I leave all that to her.”

  “So I gather,” said Washy. “It would help if I knew a little bit more about the missing - about the family. What they weigh. How they walk. Who follows whom. Anything that will help me to track them. You know.”

  “Do I?” Asked Wombat doubtfully. “I don’t think I do.” He brightened up. “I can draw you a picture.” He sketched a circle in the dust, and Washy could see Mrs Wombat and the three little wombats.

  “How did you do that?” Gasped Washy.

  “How did I do what?” Asked Wombat, who was gazing at his family with a fierce parental pride.

  “Draw that circle, and bring your family to life within it.”

  “I don’t know,” said the wombat. “I just do it. I suppose it’s a gift.”

  Washy stared at him. To-day was proving to be full of surprises! Why had he never spoken to a wombat before? “You’re the father of three little wombats,” he said encouragingly.

  “If you say so,” replied the wombat. “I don’t usually count that far.”

  “Well done!” Said Washy. “Just think! “How did all that happen?” He asked, rather foolis
hly: and could have kicked himself.

  Wombat looked puzzled. “I don’t know,” he said, and blushed bright pink. “Maybe...” He did not finish his thought.

  Washy tickled him behind the ear, and gave him a walnut.

  “You really are a little beast, aren’t you?” He said.

  “I suppose so,” said the wombat, eating the walnut still in its shell, and snuffling with pleasure.

  “What are they called?” Asked Washy. “Your three children, I mean.”

  There was a pause, while Wombat scratched himself in bewilderment. “I’m not good with names,” he said at last. “Just give me a moment. While I think. Only...”

  Washy watched him.

  “Only....” He said kindly.

  “I’m not very good at thinking,” said the wombat simply.

  Washy waited. He needed a little more information, and he was prepared to wait for it. He was an aborigine, after all. It had already occurred to him that his relationship with his new little friend, although a deep and charming one, and full of sudden depths and unexpected insights, was going to be punctuated by pauses; and he wondered, for one brief and almost wholly unconvincing moment, whether or not Mrs Wombat and the little wombats had actually been captured, or had simply taken the opportunity for some extended conversation with the zoologists.

  Wombat’s attention had wandered to the mysterious world of the mind. Where was his family now? he thought: and then he found he was thinking about what he had thought. Was that a thought too? He wasn’t sure. And if it were-

  “Got it,” said Washy, who needed to start his search, and had found a way forward. “We’ll call them A, B and C.”

  “Good idea.” Wombat had no idea what Washy was talking about, but was prepared to encourage any initiative.

  “The children, I mean,” said Washy. “The little wombats. Which one came first?”

  “Which what?” Asked Wombat, whose thoughts were now thoroughly confused.

  “Which one of your children came first? He or she can be A,” explained Washy; but Wombat was silent.

  Washy contemplated him. “You don’t know, do you?” He said.

  Wombat scratched himself behind the ear with his rear paw, and his little face puckered up. “It’s jolly difficult, you know,” he said. “Being a father. There’s just so much happening. First of all there’s... And then there’s the... And as for what happens after that...”

  “I know,” said Washy, who didn’t. “At least, I can imagine.”

  “Can you?” Asked the wombat admiringly. “I can’t.”

  “But you imagined the picture,” said Washy with equal admiration. “I couldn’t have done that.”

  “Gosh,” said Wombat. “Did 1?” He took in this information in wonder and amazement, and quite forgot he was a wombat.

  ***

  “I like Wombat,” said Jack, interrupting the story. “He doesn’t pretend to be what he isn’t.”

  “So do 1,” echoed his sister promptly. “Like him, I mean. He knows when to stop.” She paused, meaningfully. “Not like some people I know.”

  “She’s thinking of her friend Samantha,” Jack added quickly. “She never knows when to stop.” He paused, importantly. Now he really had their attention! “It’s probably because of her deprived childhood.”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Jack,” said his sister impatiently. You’re interrupting the story! How can Washy think, if you’re going to talk all the time?”

  “Sorry, I’m sure,” said Jack, and pulled her hair, and she cried, but not very much, and the story continued only after he had promised never to do it again, and made a variety of other wild and extravagant promises, including sharing his pocket money and never making fun of her appearance and being really nice to all her friends, including Samantha who had not had a deprived childhood at all...

  No, he didn’t know where that idea had come from, and no, really no, he had never listened to a strictly private conversation in his whole life, or perhaps just once or twice, possibly, but he would certainly never do so again, and he crossed his heart and was prepared to die!

  Really?” Asked Evie.

  “Yes, really,” said Jack sincerely. After all, he was a very promising little boy. His teacher had said so on his last report, only she had then gone on to spoil it by adding some quite unnecessary other comments that were must have been meant for someone else. Teachers were so unreliable!

  Meanwhile, Uncle Otto was about to go on with his story. What a fine man he was, thought Jack, and how he would like to be Uncle Otto when he grew up! But then, if he did that, what would happen to the real Uncle Otto? This was all much too confusing, and he was beginning to think like Wombat. Oh, dear!

  ***

  Washy had suspended his belief in the idea that Wombat would tell him anything more (said Uncle Otto, who was quite used to Jack’s interruptions, and never allowed them to put him off his stride). He (Washy) had found the wombat family tracks, all four of them - sixteen tracks in all, thought Washy, who was privately very proud of his arithmetic, but would never have said so, because it wasn’t really an aborigine thing - and was pacing rapidly across the desert, following the trail as if he were receiving directions from his very own Satnav system.

  Wombat was following Washy, and squeaking with joy. Now they were getting somewhere, and he wouldn’t have to do any more remembering! He was a very, very lucky little wombat, to have made a friend like Washy. He glanced up at the hot sun, and hoped his family were all right, and wondered about the next walnut. Where had Washy found the first one? He hadn’t seen it lurking about: and he was much closer to the ground than the tall aborigine.

  Washy had very sharp eyes and didn’t miss anything, whereas he, Wombat, sometimes found it hard to concentrate. He knew that, because Mrs Wombat often told him so. When she had his attention, that was, which wasn’t all the time... because he sometimes found it hard to concentrate.

  Had he said that already? He wasn’t sure, and decided to ask Washy. Washy would know. Washy was tall, and kind-hearted, and generous, and listened to people, and knew how to read tracks. Washy, in fact, was pretty wonderful all round, and he, Wombat, was very lucky to have met him. How had that happened? He wasn’t sure, and would have to ask.

  “Washy,” he said, “You know-”

  “I know everything,” said Washy, making a joke.

  “Gosh,” said Wombat, who had never heard a joke before, and was stunned. So Washy knew everything! Was that good or bad? Wombat didn’t know. Washy knew the answer to that, too. Wombat had made a friend who could read tracks and knew the answer to everything! It was wonderful.

  ***

  “Wait,” said Washy. “We’re here. Look, there’s the camp. The zoologists’ camp. And that’s where they must be.”

  Wombat looked, and sure enough, there was the camp. He hadn’t known what a camp was, but now Washy had pointed it out, he knew. A camp was large and fierce looking, and full of strange square shaped animals that glinted in the sun and made a deafening noise, and appeared to have more than one pouch!

  It was all very odd, but he didn’t need to worry about that, because all he had to do now was to find his family, and he didn’t need Washy’s help to do that. Washy had found the camp. Now it was up to Wombat.

  “We need to be very cautious from now on,” said Washy cautiously, squatting on his heels and sketching out a plan of the camp in the dust, with the point of his spear. “We need to make a plan. That’s what the tribal elders say, anyway. And they are the tribal elders,” he concluded, not quite convincingly. “They know.”

  “Cautious. Elders. Plan,” repeated Wombat, not really listening, and digging furiously under the heavy metal fence that surrounded the camp with all four paws at the same time. (Only wombats can do this.)

  “Cautious,” he said again, his hairy, well-protected, barrel-shaped little body already half-way under the fence. It was clear that the wombat did not set much store by forward planning, and believed in t
he virtue of action.

  “Wombat!” Shouted Washy to the furry marsupial, who had already scrambled free of the other side of the fence, and was charging flat out towards the nearest hut, about fifty yards away. “We need to be careful! We need to follow a plan! This could be very dangerous! Some of these people may have guns!”

  “Plan! Guns! Right!” Shouted Wombat, who didn’t know what a gun was and couldn’t have cared less anyway. He was streaking across the flat terrain like a hairy rocket, and had already knocked down a man who had come out of the hut and pointed a shot-gun towards him and fired it in panic. What chance had an unprepared zoologist against an enraged wombat whose family was in peril?

  The shot-gun’s pellets passed harmlessly overhead, for Wombat was moving a such a speed that even a marksman could not possibly have hit him; and Wombat had bowled him over and seized the weapon and stuffed its barrel with earth, before you could say Jack Robinson.

  Whoever Jack Robinson may have been, said Washy to himself, as he emerged from beneath the fence, trotted over to the hut, and helped the uprooted zoologist to his feet where he tottered and wavered and swayed like a palm-tree in the grip of a tropical storm.

  ‘What was that?” Gasped the man, who was still in a daze, and had picked up the useless shotgun and was grasping it in shock. “What happened?”

  “Congratulations. You’ve met the Wombat,” Washy told him reassuringly; but he had to admit that the other man didn’t look very reassured. Washy didn’t like the look of the colour of his skin, which was far too pale. He would probably benefit from the medicine of the wise old woman of the tribe, but there would be plenty of time for that later.

  “He gets a bit excited,” the aborigine explained.

  “Does he?” Said the white-skinned man; and amazingly, he grinned. “I’d hate to meet him when he’s really worked up.” The wombat had that sort of effect on people.

  Washy considered him.

  “You’re very white,” he said.

  “I know,” said the other. “I can’t help it. I was born this way. With a very white skin. And red hair. And freckles.”

  “Gosh,” said Washy, his vocabulary reduced to almost Wombat-like proportions. This was serious. Perhaps the old woman of the tribe wouldn’t be able to help, after all. Not if he were born like it. “My name is Washy,” he said. It was the least he could do.