‘It was in-in-interesting,’ he might add weakly.
He would try for a bit longer, but was no good at it, and when Rebecca was like that, his whole world seemed to grow dark and he wanted to escape.
Sometimes Rebecca would say she was sorry and it wasn’t his fault. At other times she would let him go without saying a word, feeling a numbness within herself and unable to do anything but, eventually, weep. Or she would do busy things around her burrow, losing herself in rearranging it or cleaning out already clean tunnels.
Sometimes he would stay quietly with her when she wept and hear the things she said, and could have said in the hearing of no other mole in Duncton, about how she had no strength to serve them all and how they came all the time and they needed her help and how she ought to have the strength to give it if she was to honour Rose’s memory. She would weep and even scream sometimes. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ And he would listen to her, too slow in his speech to say anything, light only dawning in him very slowly that sometimes she needed a mole to run to, as he ran to her and the others did. It was then, too, that he wished there was a mole like Mekkins had been, whom she could rely on and lean against sometimes. He wished he was like that and not, as it seemed to him, so weak. Still, he could go to the Stone, which he did, and pray that perhaps the Stone would let Bracken come back so he could help Rebecca.
It was after one of these dispiriting times in March that Comfrey went to the Stone and crouched there, racking his brains about the way he could help. Several days later, Rebecca noticed that not a single mole had visited her, which was odd. She had never been left so blissfully and peacefully alone before. She began to worry about them, and after fretting for a whole day, went down to see what was apaw.
The first mole she met, a female, looked surprised, even alarmed, saying, ‘Oh! Rebecca!’ and scampering away.
The second, a male well known for his habit of finding things wrong with himself when everything was all right really, because he needed Rebecca to tend to him once in a while, said a strange thing when he saw her. ‘Hullo, Rebecca! I’m just fine. Nothing troubling me at all… no, not a single thing!’ he added with a merry, unnatural laugh.
She finally got the truth out of an old female who was genuinely unwell and whose distress she could sense before she even entered her burrow. It seemed that Comfrey had gone around the tunnels virtually ordering all moles to stay away from Rebecca ‘b-b-because she needs a rest’. If anymole needed her desperately they must go to him on the slopes and he would do what he could for them without disturbing Rebecca. Which was an odd thing, because if there was one thing Comfrey didn’t like, it was being disturbed in his own herb-laden burrow.
She went down to the slopes herself to see him and scolded him for what he had done—but very half-heartedly because, in truth, she could hardly remember anymole doing anything so kindly for her benefit and she loved him for the care he had taken and the love he had shown.
But her low spirits persisted as March progressed, increased, rather than lifted by the exciting arrival of the first litters in the ancient tunnels for many generations. Most of the females had mated and the first litters, although a little late, began to arrive towards the end of the month.
The excitement! The rushing! The chatter in the great old tunnels! The hurried, whispered thanks to the Stone! But at the end of the day, Rebecca, the loveliest mole in the system, the most beautiful, the one who so desired to cherish and nurture a litter of her own, remained mateless and litterless. The truth was that she might well have accepted one of the males in the system had they not all been so afraid of her, and in awe of her healing power. But none dared step forward and she thought wistfully of Cairn, of moles like Bracken and Mekkins, and, yes, even of Mandrake. She wished that the shadow of a male such as they had been would cross the entrance to her tunnels. But then she told herself that perhaps it wasn’t just a mate she wanted, and she dared to think it was Bracken alone she needed, whom she loved and who she feared might never return. She let herself weep for him, her face fur contorted with her sense of loss and despair and with the weakness, as she thought of it, of feeling such things. She looked out towards the west and trembled to think that he would never come back.
Comfrey saw this side of her as well and wished there was some comfort he could bring her, however slight.
It was in the second week of April, with the weather still changeable and cold, that he tried once more to help.
He arrived at her tunnels and said, ‘Let’s go for a w-w-walk.’
He ignored her reluctance, her distance, her coldness and her wish to be alone, and almost literally dragged her out.
