Hazel (3 page)

‘Carrots,’ thought Hazel. ‘Now I must remember to look for those. I’ll have a look in the living room, and then – if there’s what I’d call time,
I’ll run over and look in the bedroom. Worth a look.’

‘Now, Hazel,’ said Mum. ‘In you go.’

And Mum put Hazel safely back inside the hutch.

First Hazel looked at her bowl of dried food, and then she ran back into the bedroom to peep at the hay on the bedroom floor. Then she scuttled back into the living room to look for the bread
and carrots. And then she paused. Had she really seen what she thought she had seen in the bedroom? She thought that she had seen a handsome black, white, and orange boy guinea pig, the colour of
tobacco.

She turned. She chirruped. That
was
what she had seen! She went back into the bedroom and burrowed in the hay.

The new guinea pig was called Tobacco. He had a contented nature, he enjoyed his food and he liked Hazel. They made a very happy pair. Hazel lost that slight wistfulness which
she had had when she lived on her own. She no longer scurried about so much, everlastingly on the lookout for something. She had found what she was looking for. She discovered that many of
life’s simple pleasures were twice as enjoyable when they were shared with an amiable companion. In the old days, if someone had put an apple core in the hutch, she would have eaten it
cheerfully enough. But now, as well as there being something to eat there was something to talk about.

‘Anything important?’ Tobacco called from the bedroom, hearing that there had been a delivery next door.

‘A bit of fruit, by the looks of things,’ said Hazel.

‘Fruit, eh?’

Hazel never fully remembered
all
the fruits that there were, but Tobacco had a real knowledge of the subject. As he came out of the bedroom he said, ‘It could be a piece of orange
peel. Then again, it could be a pear.’

‘Ar,’ said Hazel. ‘It could be a pear.’

She was eating some of it and couldn’t rightly make up her mind.

‘It could be, girl,’ Tobacco conceded.

He had taken to calling Hazel ‘girl,’ and she seemed to like it, though she never called him ‘boy’.

‘But as it happens, this is …’

‘It’s nice,’ said Hazel.

‘That it is,’ said Tobacco, sinking his teeth into the apple core. He had momentarily forgotten what this particular fruit was called, but it was very delicious.

When they had nibbled it down to almost nothing, Tobacco shared with Hazel some of his almost-memories of the old days. He had no memory for things that had happened very recently. But there
were some fascinating things lodged in his memory from three or four weeks before, when he lived with his parents in a rather over-crowded hutch. He did not
know
that they had been his
parents, and when he thought of his father, it was simply a half-memory of an old black and white guinea pig who had talked rather a lot.

‘I knew a guinea pig once …’ said Tobacco, remembering his father but not
knowing
that it was his father.

‘Now I can’t remember whether I ever did,’ said Hazel.

‘This guinea pig,’ said Tobacco, ‘he said the best fruit to eat was called the Barn Anna. White, I believe it is.’

‘More like a cabbage?’ asked Hazel.

‘Could be.’

‘This here fruit was nice,’ said Hazel, surveying the few remnants of the apple core. ‘What did you say it was? My memory’s terrible. Not like yours.’

Tobacco went to the bars of the hutch and sniffed.

‘It’s a really nice day today, girl. Let’s hope they put us out on the lawn.’

A few minutes later the children came and put the guinea pigs in the run on the lawn. When Tobacco and Hazel ran about together on the grass, they were a joy to see. They were so happy, so
playful, so carefree.

Now it so happened that on that day, the children who looked after the guinea pigs were planning a surprise for Tobacco. The girl had told all her school friends about him. Yes, Hazel was a
wonderful, beautiful creature. And when she had owned just Hazel, the girl had believed that it would not have been possible to love a guinea pig more. But after Tobacco arrived, well …
comparisons are odious. The girl did love Tobacco very, very much indeed. He was so friendly and happy, and he chirruped when you picked him up and put him in your jumper. The girl had told her
friends that Tobacco was the handsomest, the most chirruping, the friendliest, and the best
boy
guinea pig in the world.

The girl’s best friend, another girl called Rona, was also very fond of guinea pigs, and she had one whom she considered the prettiest, the most chirruping, et cetera: Fudge was a special
breed, known by guinea pig experts (or, as they call themselves, Cavy fanciers) as American Crested.

The girl who looked after Hazel and Tobacco knew that no girl guinea pig could be nicer than Hazel. But she agreed with Rona that it would be very exciting if Fudge could have some babies. And
if the prettiest, most chirruping, et cetera were to mate with the handsomest, most chirruping, et cetera, they would have the most et cetera
baby
guinea pigs in the world. Some of them
might even turn out to be et cetera
cresteds
, and that was an exciting thought. So the girl had agreed that Rona should bring round Fudge that Saturday morning, and that Fudge should spend
the weekend in a separate hutch with Tobacco. But as with so many things that sound like a good idea, it actually turned out badly.

‘This,’ Tobacco was saying, ‘is what I’d call juicy. Really juicy grass, this.’

Hazel gazed at him admiringly. He had such a way of putting things. But just then the side of the run was lifted up, and a hand reached in and grabbed Tobacco in mid-sentence. He was just
saying, ‘I know this guinea pig once who knew about grass …’

‘Don’t squeak, Baccy darling,’ said the girl. ‘You are going to meet Fudge.’

‘Oh, he
is
sweet,’ said Rona. ‘He’s so nice and glossy.’

‘Fudge is nice, too,’ said the girl politely.

Tobacco stayed still in the girl’s hands and quietened down. She sat on the grass and held him in her lap. He looked this way and that. This way he could see the wife, running about the
run, saying, ‘Ar, juicy, that’s the word for it.’ And that way, the other way, he could see some knees, clad in a pair of jeans, and some hands on which the nails were rather
bitten down, and in the hands the silliest-looking guinea pig Tobacco had ever seen in his life. It was an orange affair (not that he troubled himself about colours; as it happened he
couldn’t make out colours). And it had this sort of fur-hat thing on its head. Well, really! Tobacco tried to think of a word for it and selected the word
silly
.

‘I mean,’ he said quietly to himself, ‘a head’s a head. Just a head. You don’t need to go dolling it up with a sort of
hat
effort.’

‘I think he chirruped then,’ said the girl optimistically.

‘It sounded more like a whimper,’ said her friend Rona.

‘No,’ said the girl firmly, ‘it was a definite chirrup.’

‘I so very much hope,’ said Rona, ‘that they’ll like one another.’

‘It is impossible not to like Tobacco,’ said the girl.

‘Shall we try putting them together in the hutch?’ said Rona.

The girl stood up and carried Tobacco down to the garden shed where the hutches were, and Rona followed carrying Fudge. The girl opened the bedroom door of the hutch and put Tobacco inside.
Tobacco felt disappointed that he had been given such a very
short
time in the run. He had been enjoying the fresh air, and the grass, and the good talk. But he contented himself with the
certainty that Hazel would soon be brought to join him.

‘Shall we put Fudge in the bedroom, too?’ asked the girl.

‘No,’ said Rona, ‘I’ll put her in this living room part of the hutch.’

So this they did. And then they shut the doors, making sure that they were fastened securely. The two girls peered into the hutch. Fudge chirruped and nuzzled into Tobacco’s feeding
bowl.

‘She loves that bran,’ said Rona. Then she added coyly, ‘I expect they want to be left on their own.’

And the two girls walked out of the shed, leaving the guinea pigs to their own devices. They went and sat on the lawn and watched Hazel munching her grass-feast in the run.

‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if Fudge had some babies?’ said Rona.

‘A whole litter of crested Tobaccos,’ said her friend. ‘As glossy and friendly and sweet as Tobacco, only with little crests on their heads! If Fudge
does
have a
litter of babies, would you let me have one?’

‘Would your mum let you have three guinea pigs?’ asked Rona.

‘Of course she wouldn’t,’ said the girl’s brother, who had come out to join them. He thought it was soppy to be drooling over the little creatures in this way. He wanted
someone to play tennis with and waved a racket grandly. ‘Come and play a game.’

‘Not if you’re going to be rude about Baccy,’ said his sister.

‘I’d like to play,’ said Roma.

So they all went to the nearby park to play tennis.

Inside the hutch, Tobacco lay in his hay bed for a while, and felt sad. Then he decided that there was no point in sulking, and he had no sooner made this sensible decision than his spirits
lifted. He heard some munching and scuffling next door in the living room and he happily assumed that Hazel had been brought to join him.

‘I could have done with longer on the grass, girl,’ he called from the bedroom. But as he waddled out to join her, he did not hear the familiar cries of ‘Ar’ or
‘That’s right.’ Instead, to his absolute amazement, he saw Silly Hat bold as brass, standing in
their
living room and eating
their
food.

‘Get back in there if you value your life,’ said Fudge angrily.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard.’

‘That’s not manners,’ said Tobacco. ‘And who are you, I would like to know.’

As he spoke, all the fur stood up on his back. He felt a violent hostility to Silly Hat. He felt so angry that he would have liked to bite the silly pig.

‘Warned you!’ said Fudge, who ran towards Tobacco with fur on edge and teeth bared.

The fight was sharp and furious. Fudge tried to jump on Tobacco’s back and bite his neck. Tobacco threw Fudge off and scratched at the enemy with his claws. Then to his great satisfaction,
he managed to get a good mouthful of Fudge’s crest. He yanked and tugged with his teeth and succeeded in pulling out some of the fur before Fudge hit him with a claw on the side of his head
and knocked him dizzy.