The pair waited in the doorway, and eventually heard distant pads of footfall. The steps grew nearer and the large oak door creaked slowly open a fraction.
“Who’s that?” enquired a deep, treacly voice.
“Only me Badger,” replied Mole airilym, as if he had not a care in the world. “And a new friend of mine, Vole.”
“S’pose you’ll be wanting to come in then,” conceded Badger somewhat reluctantly.
The great door continued its inward arc at a snail’s pace. As the door reached its stopper, a great figure loomed in the candlelight. Badger’s black and white face was flecked with grey, and his muzzle and jaws were gnarled like the bark of an ancient ash tree, thick with scars, shabby and careworn. He scowled at Mole and Vole, with an expression of mild displeasure, turned slowly on his heels and led the pair down into his set.
“Close the door behind you,” growled Badger.
*
While the Mole and Vole recounted the tales of the day, in the warm cosy comfort of the Badger’s set and gulped down quantities of warm sweet tea, things were a great deal less cordial for poor Mr Toad.
“Oh poor me, poor, poor me,” wept the Toad.
Toad sat in a white tiled cell, upon a blue plastic-covered foam mattress perched wretchedly on a shelf, a sad apology for a bed. He tucked his large webbed feet up under his rotund belly and sucked on his knees for comfort.
A knock at the door was followed in a moment by the observation flap being snapped open. A pretty pair of blue eyes gazed in from the corridor.
“Hello Mr Toad, I’ve come to see if you would like any food?” The anonymous pair of eyes enquired.
Mr Toad was always one to indulge in collective self-pity and this new audience was delightful relief to the solitude of the previous hours.
“Poop, poop…” he managed in a shaking, choked voice.
The eyes looked to their right. “I’ll try talking with him,” they justified to a hidden third party outside the door. A metallic rattle of keys ensued, followed by the heavy clunk of an iron bolt being drawn back in the door. The door opened inwards and a young lady stood in the door and entered with an air of slightly forced breeziness.
“Hello dear, are you sure you don’t want to eat anything?” said the lady.
“My Dear young thing,” announced Toad, “I sit here in a state of nervous angst… disconsolate… trapped in the mire of officious bureaucratic injustice. My stomach feels like it is attempting to subdue a wild beast within its voluminous folds and you ask me if I require food? My Dear, what I require is legal representation of the highest academic calibre.”
“So, that’s a no then is it?”
“It is,” conceded Toad, chocking back a theatrical tear.
“It’s alright Brian,” called the lady through the open door, “this one’s got the first night nerves, I’ll sit with him for a moment – you carry on.”
The door remained ajar, a shuffle retreated outside in the corridor, and the lady introduced herself.
“I’m Sally,” said Sally, “I help here a few nights a week. You look like you could do with some company.”
Sally sat down on the foam mattress next to Toad. Toad glanced up with bloodshot eyes and recounted the day’s tale…
“…And when they got me in here, this young slip of a Sergeant produced reams of paperwork, which apparently pertained to prior misdemeanours on my part, but for which I have no recollection whatsoever! I am facing a trumped-up charge, based on misinformation, prejudice and envy.”
“Envy? Why would anyone be envious of you?” enquired Sally, which, considering Mr Toad was clad in the prison fatigues of a blue overall, was not such a ridiculous question.
“Because I am cursed with fiscal excesses,” said Toad.
“What does that mean?” enquired Sally.
“I’m ruddy loaded.” explained Toad, putting particular emphasis on the final word in the sentence.
*
“This is the last time I will be able to help out the toe-rag,” said Badger. “I made my promise many winters ago now, and have more than kept my word. But I am too old now and sadly the insolent boy seems to have learnt nothing from me about self control.”
“Don’t be too harsh on him Badger,” urged Mole. “He’s not used to things like you and I, he’s never wanted for anything and just doesn’t understand how the world works.”
“Don’t you believe it Mole,” countered Badger. “That Toad knows more than he lets on, he will do anything for an easy life, anything to avoid confrontation.”
“Come on then you two, no time to waste. Unless we get there soon I fear we will face even more problems created in our absence.”
The trio left the snug candlelight of the set and made off to catch the train into the City. Little did they know that Mr Toad was hatching his own escape plan as they journeyed.
*
“So, you see my money is an awful bind,” said Toad meekly. “It’s a family thing, I got left an absolute pile as a tadpole and have been gradually feeding off it ever since.”
“So it’s a deal then,” said Sally, changing the subject away from Toad’s personal problems for the hundredth time within ten minutes. “When you are out, you’ll send me a cheque for the amount we agreed and I’ll not see you again?”
“My Dear girl, if you spring me from this terrible, dry airless hole you will be handsomely rewarded.”
As they had planned, the Toad squatted to the left of the heavy cell door and pushed it closed gently, while Sally wrapped herself in the blue plastic covering of the mattress and lay on the floor at the furthest end of the tiny cell.
“Help, help!” She cried and immediately footsteps came running up towards the cell door. The observation flap was dropped with urgency and a pair of dark heavily-browed eyes peered through. They spotted the blue-clad shape at the end of the cell and this seemed to initiate a series of fantastically slow thought processes behind their glassy stare.
“Wussup?” the eyes enquired.
“Help” whimpered Sally, doubt suddenly cutting though the promises of fortune and wealth.
The door sprang open and in a swift movement his stout figure disguised well, Mr Toad leapt thorough the door behind the large Officer and pulled it closed behind him.
“Parp, parp!” mocked Toad through the observation flap, and bounded away down the corridor nattering loudly to himself.
The Toad reached a junction of corridors and realised he had no idea of which direction to run. For a moment he attempted to head in all four directions simultaneously; before pulling himself together, sniffing the air and heading off in the direction of a watery smell.
The Toad burst out into a roofless quad and eyed the starlit sky hungrily. He looked up towards the top of the walls and noted the severe glint of razor wire which skirted the bricks loosely. A small gap in the wire was apparent in one corner and Mr Toad squatted at the base of this wall and paused for a second as if concentrating on something.
“Oi, what are you doing?!” exclaimed a Prison Officer, spotting the crouching figure in the gloom. With that prompt ringing in his ears, the Toad leapt skywards with a piercing snap of his legs!
“Ooh, my hamstring!” exclaimed Toad.
The leap was enough to send him up onto top of the wall and, as the Prison Guards poured out of the doorway into the quad far below, they were powerless to restrain the rapidly diminishing figure of the plump Toad on the roof.
Toad found a convenient drainpipe at the front of the square, red-brick prison building and shinned down the pipe. Webbed feet bleeding from the unfamiliar efforts, and knuckles bruised and battered, the Toad limped across the road, slid downhill into a railway cutting and shambled across the tracks.
The blinding yellow light of an approaching train caught the Toad in its fiery beam, dazzling the poor creature momentarily before Toad regained composure and leapt bodily away from the tracks. The howl of a horn swept past and muffled a surprised shout from one of the train’s windows.
“Toady??!” Cried Mole; who had ridden the entire train journey nervously hanging out of the window like an enthusiastic puppy, in an attempt to make the City materialize more quickly.
The train pulled into Central Station and Badger, Vole and Mole bounded down off the platform and back along the tracks. A young boy waiting for the Exmouth train with his mother watched the trio in fascination from the opposite platform.
“Toad my boy, this is the last time I’m coming to get you out of trouble,” admonished the Badger as he approached. Although it was very well concealed, Toad could make out the tiniest hint of relief in the voice of his dear old friend.
“Hello chaps, have I got a story to tell you?” exclaimed Toad.
“Plenty of time for that on the walk home,” said Mole. “I’ve had my fill of busses, cars, trains and planes for one day; let’s get back to our riverbank.”
And so the four friends turned and shambled, hobbled, shuffled and skipped down the tracks, away from the city lights and into the velvety folds of the night. From his bench on the platform, the little boy watched the scene unfold with his mouth agape.
As the friends shrank into the night, so they shrank in stature too. Their clothes fell from shoulders and hips onto the tracks as their wearers became too slight to support their cloth.
Badger dived off to his left into the think brambles of the railway cutting, snuffling and sniffing out a much needed worm or two. Mole dived into the first patch of open grass and proceeded to burrow out of sight of the moon. Vole scampered away down the tracks toward the river, while Toad shuffled awkwardly along, walking slowly on his warty dry webbed feet, sore and bleeding slightly.
His big yellow eyes blinked slowly as he swallowed down a large juicy slug, and he shuffled on, with many miles to travel before he would eventually find himself in familiar surroundings once again.