The Wombles Go round the World (11 page)

‘Now, now, Great Uncle Bulgaria,' murmured Miss Adelaide.

Madame Cholet put the rolling pin under her arm and shrugged so that her shoulders came right up to the top of her ears.

‘Too right,' said Cousin Botany slowly.

‘Too right, indeed. Another expressive phrase. Therefore, I have decided that we must do something about the situation. Something very drastic indeed.'

Great Uncle Bulgaria paused and everybody held their breath. The old Womble's little round eyes twinkled as he looked at their anxious faces.

‘What we're going to do,' he said gently, ‘is to stop being silly and cross and bad-tempered and tired. We're going to have a holiday from work. I shall stop writing, Tobermory will let the rubbish stay where it is, Miss Adelaide will forget all about rotas and correcting lessons and Madame Cholet can stop cooking.'

There was an absolute buzz of astonishment which was stilled by Madame Cholet saying, ‘Monsieur Bulgaria, that is all very well, but if I do not cook what shall we eat?'

Great Uncle Bulgaria leant forward and tapped the barometer with his stick, at which the needle moved right round to ‘Fair and Warm'.

‘Spring is really here now. There will be nettles and moss, clover and daisies and buttercups on the Common . . .'

‘Too right and plenty of good waterweed as well,' said Cousin Botany. ‘I noticed it this afternoon when the ice broke. I had meant to mention it before, but it slipped me mind. What with one thing and another . . .'

‘So we'll have a two-day picnic,' went on Great Uncle Bulgaria, giving Cousin Botany the ghost of a wink. ‘Do us all good and I dare say the Womblegarten might like to have some kind of sports day, hm, Miss Adelaide?'

‘It might be a good idea,' said Miss Adelaide, by which she meant that it was a very good idea indeed. ‘However, it will take a lot of planning.'

‘Yes, indeed. Let
them
plan it. Here, you in the blanket with your mouth open, why don't you plan it, hm? An acorn and spoon race? Jumping the bushes hurdles? A long jump? Think you could manage it?'

The small Womble shut his mouth with a snap and nodded violently. Then he turned round and pushed the rest of the Womblegarten ahead of him, whispering and shoving until the last of them disappeared in the direction of the Playroom.

‘Got another young Bungo there, I shouldn't be surprised,' said Tobermory in a dry voice. ‘Well, all right then, Bulgaria. I'm on.'

‘I suppose they'll manage,' said Miss Adelaide a shade doubtfully.

‘Make an awful job of it probably,' said Cousin Botany, ‘but do 'em a power of good. Well, I'm off to take a look at that waterweed. Very nice it was. Might take a cutting or two for my greenhouses and see how . . .'

Cousin Botany nodded a couple of times and left, still muttering under his breath as he went.

‘No cooking,' said Madame Cholet, sinking down on a packing case which had . . .
YFFES BANANA
stencilled on it. ‘
Tiens
. I very much enjoy making meals, you understand, but it will be very pleasant to have
le holiday
. . .'

‘I love picnics,' said Alderney, ‘and, just think, no typewriting or washing-up for two whole days! Smashing!'

‘No lists, no rotas, no rushing, no crossness,' murmured Shansi.

‘Exactly,' agreed Great Uncle Bulgaria. He sniffed suddenly and then said, ‘Excuse me, Madame Cholet, but – er – is everything all right in the kitchen?'

‘My elmbark casserole!' exclaimed Madame Cholet, springing to her feet. ‘I put it in the oven hours ago. Tonight we all have a hot meal, but tomorrow, Monsieur Bulgaria, it is
le picnic. Oui?
'

‘
Oui
,' agreed Great Uncle Bulgaria.

.

Chapter Nine

Chinatown

‘Cor, it's hot,' said Orinoco.

‘Never known it so warm for the time of year,' agreed Cousin Yellowstone, using his broad-brimmed hat like a fan.

Bungo was, unusually for him, beyond speech.

Only Idaho, sitting cross-legged and cross-armed in the shade of an immensely tall redwood tree seemed undistressed by the heat.

‘Why don't we go down to the coast?' he suggested. ‘Bound to be a bit of a breeze off the sea there.'

‘Good thinking,' said Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Well, have you seen enough of the forest?'

‘Never seen anything like it before in my life,' said Orinoco truthfully as he looked up and up and up at the great trees, which seemed to go on for ever. A fat ground squirrel, with its short tail, came hopping across the grass and nibbled at a nut which it held delicately between its front paws.

‘They're quite different – but just as silly – as the Wimbledon Common squirrels. Don't they
ever
climb trees?' asked Orinoco.

‘Never, not built for it,' said Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Hi there, young Bungo, wake up now. What do you think of this neck of the woods? Hm?'

Bungo blinked, stretched and sat up sleepily.

‘It's those hotel – no, motel – places that I liked,' he said. ‘American Human Beings seem to like living out of doors, don't they? That swimming pool in the last motel place was smashing. Tomsk would've liked it. I did. Actually it's the only time I've felt cool.'

‘You swim real good,' agreed Idaho, who had watched Bungo practising his Womble crawl up and down the pool at sunrise.

‘What I can't get over,' said Orinoco, waking up completely, ‘is all that food your Human Beings put out in plastic bags. Lots and lots of perfectly good food. Your American Wombles can't ever be hungry.'

‘Agreed,' said Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Our deep freezes are rarely empty. Our big problem is the objects we tidy up, most of which are some sort of plastic. Plastic is not an easy kind of material to make good use of.'

‘Tobermory often says that,' said Orinoco. ‘What he says is . . .'

‘Problems, problems,' said Cousin Yellowstone, starting to laugh. ‘Good old Tobermory, I can just hear him doing it. OK, let's go.'

‘Where to?' asked Bungo, tidily sweeping up his iced clover lolly-stick.

‘The coast,' said Idaho. ‘The western seaboard. You've seen just about everything else. The Middle West, the Grand Canyon, the old Wild West towns, the gold diggings, the East Coast, the Prairies, the Deep South . . .'

‘Um, lovely food there was there,' said Orinoco with a happy smile. ‘Some of the very best food I've ever eaten actually. I'll tell you what I remember about
that
. Chocolate-covered acorn pancakes with whipped daisy cream, waffles with clover syrup, nutties loaded with cream, blueberry pudding, bracken batter cakes, cream of wheat, Womble special three-deckers, nut . . .'

‘You've got jolly fat,' said Bungo, pulling his friend up on to his feet, as Orinoco, with an enormous smile on his face, leafed through all the notes which he had so thoughtfully taken for Madame Cholet.

‘I'm just exactly the right size for a Womble,' replied Orinoco in a dignified manner.

‘If you get much fatter Balloon One won't get up into the air at all!'

‘Shut up.'

‘Shut up yourself.'

Orinoco cuffed Bungo and Bungo hit him back, at which Idaho forgot to be quiet and dignified and took a flying dive at both of them, and a most enjoyable fight was had by all three.

‘OK,
OK
,
OK
,' said Cousin Yellowstone, marching into the middle of the fray and ending it by the simple means of tucking two struggling Wombles under one arm and picking up the third by the scruff of his neck and shaking him.

‘It's too hot to tangle. Darn it, don't know what's got into the weather. C'mon, we're going to the coast to cool down.'

The three young Wombles, now in the best of tempers as there is nothing like a good scuffle between friends to make a Womble stop feeling scratchy, hot and irritable, found themselves dumped in the back of the clockwork pickup.

‘How about a song?' suggested Idaho as the warm wind blew through their fur. ‘One, two, three.
Go down, Wombles, go down
. . .'

‘
Go down
,' sang Orinoco in a deep voice.

‘
Go down
. . .' warbled Bungo.

‘
Go down, Wombles
,' they chorused together. ‘
Go down
. . .'

‘
Go down and pick up all that trash-can-litter-rubbish-and-
ALL
,' roared Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Go down, Wombles . . .'

They sang and thumped their back paws all the way through the great forest, much to the astonishment of the ground squirrels and the deer who, with huge almond-shaped eyes, looked even more surprised than usual. However, as they were quite used to Womble litter-details in the forest, they weren't in the least frightened. In fact, in their own shy way, they were glad to see them, as many a young fawn had been stopped from choking to death on a plastic bag, or been freed from a jagged tin, by a helpful, if bossy, member of the Womble clear-up group.

‘We'll make camp tonight,' said Cousin Yellowstone, as they reached the end of the forest, ‘so that we can get to the coast early morning. OK?'

‘OK,' chorused the three young Wombles, who had by now started to doze off again.

Cousin Yellowstone, who was thoroughly enjoying getting away from the responsibilities of running his burrow, gathered together a lot of fallen wood and whistled softly to himself as he worked. It really made him feel quite young again to be living out under the stars, and he sighed a little as he remembered the old days when he had worked his way from east to west living from paw to mouth. Idaho was happy too as he got the cooking-pot going and Orinoco was only too pleased to assist him.

‘Waffles?' he asked, his eyes gleaming in the starlight.

‘Waffles coming up,' replied Idaho.

‘Smashing,' said Bungo, who had been trotting about looking important, but who hadn't, in fact, been doing very much. ‘I'll tell you what, it's jolly nice being a Womble in America. It's . . . it's so big, you know.'

‘Correct,' agreed Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Well, the burrow's made. How about some food, hm?'

It was before dawn when they left the great forest. Not even the earliest of the early birds were stirring as they made for the coast, and the slight breeze was refreshingly cool on their faces as they travelled westwards. They reached San Francisco just in time to see the sun come up, and for just a moment the famous bridge did look as if it were made of gold.

‘Fisherman's Wharf,' said Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Put on your coveralls and caps.'

Bungo and Orinoco obediently slid into what they would have called overalls, and looked at what lay before them.

‘Goodness,' said Bungo, ‘doesn't this place go up and down a lot?'

‘Even more than Wimbledon High Street,' agreed Orinoco. ‘I say, what a very nice smell.'

‘That is the sea,' said Idaho coldly.

‘No, it isn't, it's food,' replied Orinoco. ‘Well, of course, it could be the sea as well, I dare say.'

Cousin Yellowstone parked the truck and the four Wombles ambled up and down the quayside, looking round-eyed at the stalls, which were absolutely covered in all kinds of marine life like crabs, clams, shellfish, lobsters, sand dabs and soles.

‘I can't like it,' said Bungo in a small voice. ‘I know it's all very interesting and that, but I honestly can't like it. Can you, Orinoco?'

‘No. It's all right for Human Beings, I suppose, but not for Wombles. Oh . . . look!'

Orinoco pointed with a small fat paw and Bungo was just in time to see some sleek pelicans flapping across the sky. As pelicans are extremely rare on Wimbledon Common, the two young Wombles were very interested. What was even more rare, so rare indeed that neither of them had ever seen it before, was a smooth face suddenly rising out of the sea. It had round black eyes and a moustache and it opened its mouth and went ‘
Aaaark!
'

‘It's Nessie!' exclaimed Bungo, grabbing at Orinoco. ‘It's Cousin Nessie, the Water-Womble from Loch Ness.'

‘'Course it isn't,' said Orinoco. ‘Nessie hasn't got a moustache. Mind you, it is a bit like a Tobermory Water-Womble . . . no, it's a – a – um sea lion. And
aaaaaark
to you.'

The sea lion barked back, put up its flipper, did a backwards somersault and vanished into the Pacific.

‘Seen enough?' asked Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Well, while it's still cool, we'd better have a trip on the trolleys. This way.'

A ‘trip on the trolleys' turned out to be an absolutely fascinating and rather fur-raising journey on a cable car which, like the pelicans, went swooping up and down over the hills of San Francisco. As, even at that early hour, the cable cars were full, Bungo, Orinoco and Idaho found that they had to cling to the outside of the car. It was very exciting, especially when they reached a crossroads, as the cable car driver didn't bother to slow down, but just went
ding ding ding
very loudly on his bell, expecting all other traffic to get out of his way. Luckily it always did so.

Cousin Yellowstone wisely stayed inside the cable car, where he had found himself a nice, comfortable seat near the driver. The two of them struck up a conversation which they both thoroughly enjoyed, as it was all about what they called The Good Old Days when, according to them, Everything Was Much Better.

‘Don't know when I've had a nicer talk,' said the driver at the end of the trip, ‘Glad to know you, sir.'

‘Glad to know
you
,' said Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Thank you kindly.'

Cousin Yellowstone bowed politely and climbed down and went and unstuck Idaho, Bungo and Orinoco who, being Wombles, were still clinging tenaciously to the outside of the cable car.

‘Last port of call, Chinatown,' said Cousin Yellowstone. ‘Back to the truck.'

‘
China
town?' Bungo whispered to Orinoco behind his paw, wishing for the first time in his young life that he had paid more attention to Miss Adelaide's Geography lessons. ‘I say, I thought a Chinese sort of town would be in China, you know, and this is America.'

‘'Course this is America. But you can have Chinese towns all over the place. Dare say there's one in Wimbledon somewhere,' replied Orinoco, who was pretty hazy about this situation himself. But being older than Bungo he wasn't, naturally enough, going to admit to this.

‘Chinatown,' announced Cousin Yellowstone in his deep voice. ‘Everybody out now, and mind, keep together.'

It was just like stepping into another country. Instead of the skyscrapers which had quite taken their breath away in New York, or the dignified and enormous buildings of Washington, or even the elegant houses of New Orleans, the Wimbledon Wombles saw before them a criss-cross of narrow streets and small buildings which were absolutely packed with stalls, fluttering signs and Human Beings. What is more there was rubbish everywhere.

‘I felt you should see this,' said Cousin Yellowstone in a mournful voice, ‘so that you would realise that we have a great many problems in some parts of the States. This is one of them.'

‘Cor,' agreed Bungo.

‘But it smells nice,' said Orinoco, sniffing deeply. ‘I expect they are good cooks, these Chinese Town Human Beings.'

‘That's as may be but, like most Human Beings, they don't clear up very well,' said Cousin Yellowstone heavily.

Keeping very close together, the four Wombles walked up and down the narrow streets until Orinoco could bear all the delicious smells no longer.