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  Hazel the Guinea Pig

  A. N. Wilson has written over twenty stories for grown-ups, many of which have won prizes such as the Somerset Maugham Award (for The Healing Art) and the 1988 Whitbread Award (for the biography Tolstoy). He has also written the story of the exciting adventures of a hamster in a book called Furball and the Mokes and the tale of an old cat looking back over his life, called Stray. He has had many pets in his life, including dogs and cats. His three daughters have, between them, had rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, goldfish and dogs.

  Also by A. N. Wilson

  Furball and the Mokes

  First published in Great Britain in 1989 by Walker Books Ltd.

  Published in paperback in Great Britain in 2012 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Text © 1989 A. N. Wilson

  Illustrations © 2012 Luisa Crosbie

  The moral right of A. N. Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 078 8

  E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 079 5

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  Contents

  Hazel’s Search

  The Visit of Fudge

  Brown ’Un

  Hazel’s Search

  Hazel was a brown, sleek, beautiful guinea pig with eyes as glossy and black as raisins. Like most guinea pigs, Hazel enjoyed her food. She was far from slender. To be honest, Hazel was a very fat guinea pig indeed. In fact, she was so fat that she looked as though she had been blown up like a balloon. Her cheeks bulged. Her black-curranty eyes seemed to pop out of her ample face. And her body was a sphere, a pudding of glossy brown fur.

  But Hazel was an extremely handsome creature. It suited her to be fat, just as it suits some people to be fat. And fat is what she was.

  Hazel was a brown, sleek, beautiful guinea pig with eyes as glossy and black as raisins.

  Hazel liked to explore. When she was in her hutch, she sometimes ran from one room to the next, as though she were looking for something. Life in two rooms becomes more interesting if it can be turned into an everlasting quest. She waddled into her living room and ate some food. Then she nuzzled about behind the food bowl, as if she were looking for something there. Then she ran back into her bedroom and burrowed into the hay, as though she had lost something – something very precious.

  When her young owner got her out of the hutch, Hazel liked to explore some more.

  ‘No,’ she seemed to say, turning this way and that on someone’s lap. ‘It’s not here. Let’s try up there.’ And she would scuttle up under someone’s jersey.

  ‘Hazel loves going up your jumper,’ said one of the children, one afternoon when their mother was out at the shops.

  ‘Yes, she does,’ agreed the other child. ‘She likes to explore.’

  ‘I suppose I do,’ thought Hazel. ‘I like to explore. I wonder what there is down this dark passage. I’ll just have a look. You never know.’

  When she went down that dark passage, Hazel felt wool pressing hard against her cheeks, and she heard the girl’s voice crying out, ‘Hazel! What are you doing?’

  ‘She is going up your jumper,’ said the boy’s voice.

  Hazel tried to advance further into the sleeve-tunnel, but it was tight and dark and woolly. Before long, she could feel the girl pulling at her hind legs and dragging her back into the daylight.

  Hazel wriggled and struggled to be free. She had begun to feel a bit peckish, and she would not have refused if someone had offered her a piece of brown bread or a carrot. (These were her favourite foods.)

  She found that the girl had put her down on the kitchen floor, and she was able to run about freely. Here there was much to explore.

  ‘Worth a look,’ thought Hazel, as she scuttled to the other end of the kitchen and peered between the bars of a fender. A fire was glowing beyond the bars, and Hazel wondered whether she might have a closer look at it. Very bright, fire is. Very interesting. On the other hand, it is also … Hazel wondered how she would describe it. Well, hot would be one word. The bars of the fender almost hurt her nose before she had started to sniff them.

  ‘I remember now,’ she thought. ‘Fire’s hot. Ar well, now that I’ve had a look at that, it is time to search about for … for …’

  What was it that Hazel was always searching for and seeking?

  She ran along the skirting board and listened at a mousehole. All was quiet within, for this was a household with cats. There was no mouse merrymaking there.

  Hazel peered at the bottom of a cupboard. But the door was shut.

  And then, at the other end of the kitchen, she saw another door. This time, it was an open door.

  No one was taking as much notice of her as they should have done when Hazel, very swift, though very fat on her short legs, made her rapid progress towards the open door. She ran! Oh, how Hazel ran! She ran out of the kitchen and into the tiled hall, through the legs of a chair, and up to a most interesting selection of articles lying higgledy-piggledy by the back door.

  ‘Now,’ Hazel asked herself, ‘what have we here?’

  She had stopped feeling slightly peckish. She had become extremely hungry. And she had decided that there was no point in waiting for someone to give her a stalk or a leaf, a carrot or a crust. She should go and look for them. That’s what she would do.

  Hazel’s mind had wandered a bit by the time she reached the heap of interesting articles. She had forgotten, exactly, what it was that she had decided. Explore, that would be it. But what for?

  Now then, what had she here? Hazel paused. In that moment, she looked as round and as brown and as sleek and as fat as she had ever looked in her life. Just ahead of her nose, she had seen a Wellington boot resting on its side.

  ‘Well,’ said Hazel to herself, ‘if that isn’t a tunnel! What was it that I had decided to go and do? Explore! That was it. Well, where better to explore than up a tunnel? And – me being hungry and all, who knows? Like as not, there’s a carrot or a bit of brown bread at the end of that … yes, that tunnel. Tunnel’s the word for it.’

  In short, Hazel was stuck.

  And with great eagerness, Hazel advanced into the Wellington boot. Inside it smelt rather rubbery, but she pressed on, fearless, towards the toe.

  ‘Now this,’ she thought, ‘is what I’d call dark. Very, very dark, this tunnel. Dark and – ’ she added to herself as she got further and further inside the boot – ‘dark and, well, narrow would be one word for it. Yes, I would definitely say that this tunnel was narrow. Still, what was it? Carrots and crusts?’

  By now Hazel was in complete darkness, and she realised two very disagreeable facts. One was that the sides of the tunnel were narrower than her own fat little body. Another sad fact was that, though her feet were still scampering and scuttling, she had stopped moving.

  In short, Hazel was stuck.
r />   She had never walked backwards in her life. She had only walked forwards. And the more she scampered and scuttled with her sharp little claws, the more stuck Hazel became. The sides of the Wellington boot pressed against her fur. She had become a prisoner.

  In the kitchen, the children had noticed Hazel’s absence, but they were unable to explain it.

  ‘Hazel!’ called the girl’s voice. ‘Hazel, where are you?’

  ‘You should have looked where she was going,’ said the boy’s voice.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said the girl, whose voice had become a little quavery. ‘Hazel! Hazel, darling! Where are you?’

  The little girl, who was nearly eight (tomorrow would be her birthday), had begun a frantic search for her beloved guinea pig at one end of the kitchen. Her elder brother, aged ten, sat and watched.

  The girl looked behind the fender. Hazel could surely not have got into the fire? She looked at the mousehole in the skirtingboard. Hazel could surely not have got through that! She looked behind the sofa. She even looked in the cupboard. But Hazel was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘I expect she fell in the fire,’ said the boy unpleasantly. ‘She’s probably burnt up by now. Mum shouldn’t let you keep a guinea pig if you can’t look after it.’

  ‘What about your hamster, then?’

  ‘That was different, and besides, I was only six. I looked after Hammy. It wasn’t my fault he escaped. You can’t look after Hazel.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Why are you crying, then?’

  ‘I’m not …’ crying, his sister tried to say. But by the end of her sentence, she was.

  Hazel did not have an opinion about whether the girl was crying. She only wished that they could get her out of the tunnel. She let out agonised squeaks to inform the children of her predicament.

  The little girl, through her sobs, came out into the hall and heard Hazel squeaking. But she could not tell where Hazel was hidden.

  ‘Hazel!’ she called again. ‘Where are you?’

  But what could a guinea pig do? She could not say the words: ‘I am in a tunnel. Stuck would be the word for it.’ She could only squeal, and when this had no effect she was once more silent.

  ‘I heard her. I really heard her out here,’ said the girl.

  ‘You’re making such a noise yourself, how could you hear her?’ her brother asked crossly.

  ‘She was squealing,’ said the girl.

  ‘I can’t see her,’ said the boy.

  Hazel heard him kick the hall chair and scrape its legs on the tiles. The children were looking underneath the chair. Then they opened the cupboard under the stairs and called Hazel’s name. They had no idea that she was just under their noses, stuck in the Wellington boot.

  Inside the boot it was still very dark. It also felt hot and Hazel was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. There was another strange thing. The longer she stayed in the narrow tunnel, the narrower it seemed. She felt the sides of the boot grow tighter and tighter against her sides. Surely she was not actually getting fatter inside the boot? By now she was ravenously hungry, and she could not remember when she last saw a decent cabbage stalk or a bowl of bran. It was a sorry state that Hazel had got herself into, and the thought of it made her start squealing again. This time she was not squealing to alert the children. She was just squealing in despair.

  ‘I heard her that time,’ said the boy. ‘I suppose she hasn’t got underneath that pile of boots and shoes by the back door?’

  No sooner had these words been spoken than Hazel felt the tunnel heaving and shaking and shuddering.

  Thump!

  Something had fallen on top of the tunnel.

  Bang!

  To the right and left of her, boots, shoes, roller-skates, trainers, tennis balls, and rubber flip-flops were being thrown.

  And then Hazel got the feeling you get in a fairground if ever you are brave and silly enough to go on the roller coaster. Her stomach heaved and jumped. And although she was still squeezed tight in the blackness of the tunnel, she felt the tunnel being lifted into the air.

  ‘She’s in the Wellington boot!’ the boy cried aloud from the back door.

  ‘Where? Where? Give her to me!’ shouted his sister.

  ‘Don’t be rough.’

  ‘I’m not being rough.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Give her to me,’ said the girl crossly.

  While these words were being exchanged, Hazel could feel the tunnel swaying about in the air and being dragged to and fro. And then she heard the girl say, ‘We’ll put you on the kitchen table, Hazel dear, and we shall have you out in a jiffy.’

  ‘A jiffy, eh?’ thought Hazel. ‘Well, I’d rather be in a jiffy than in a tunnel. Just as long as it isn’t what I would call a narrow jiffy.’

  But before she had time to ask herself what a jiffy was, Hazel was screaming with violent agony and terror. The girl’s hand had reached inside the Wellington boot and was pulling Hazel by her hind legs. It felt as if she were having her legs pulled off. However much the girl pulled at the back, the front part of Hazel’s body still remained stuck in the boot. And the more the girl pulled, the more Hazel screamed and the more she wanted to get away from the pain by burrowing deeper and deeper into the toe of the boot.

  ‘You’re hurting her,’ said the boy.

  ‘I’m trying to get her out. Come on, Hazel.’

  And once more, the girl thrust her hand into the boot in an attempt to extricate the captive.

  But Hazel was stuck. She was more stuck than ever. And by now her screams could have been heard half a mile away. She sounded like a big farmyard pig just about to be made into bacon.

  ‘Let’s have a go,’ said the boy.

  But the boy’s hand was bigger than his sister’s, and he was afraid to get hold of Hazel lest he squash her altogether. He tried, as gently as he could, to hold the boot upside down and to shake Hazel out. Her screams did not grow any quieter.

  ‘There is only one thing to do,’ said the girl. ‘We will have to cut the boot with some scissors, the way some babies are born.’

  ‘Mum will go spare if you cut my boot,’ said the boy.

  ‘But Hazel is stuck,’ said the girl.

  Hazel, very much stuck, stopped screaming for a moment and listened. She heard one of the children opening a drawer. She heard the rattle of metal objects. Then the boot began to heave and to shake once more, and the children were once more quarrelling.

  ‘It’s my boot.’

  ‘She’s my guinea pig.’

  ‘You’ll jab her if you wave those scissors like that.’

  ‘I forbid you to cut my boot.’

  ‘Hard cheese.’

  ‘Either you give me those scissors and let me cut the boot, or Hazel will stay in the boot and die. Oh, stop blubbering.’

  Either you give me those scissors and let me cut the boot, or Hazel will stay in the boot and die.

  Hazel was silent. She was dumb with terror. The tunnel had started to shake again, and at her back she could hear the noise of scissor blades, coming closer and closer and closer. Snip! Snip! Snip!

  ‘I’ll have to cut the boot all the way up.’

  ‘Well, mind you don’t cut Hazel.’

  ‘I’ll feel it when the scissors go anywhere near her body,’ said the boy.

  ‘You mean, she’ll feel it,’ said the girl.

  Hazel could indeed feel it. She could feel the cold steel of the blade creeping up the hot fat side of her body. And as soon as the scissors touched her, she screamed again.

  ‘You’ve stabbed her!’

  ‘Cripes!’

  ‘You’ve stabbed her!’

  ‘Of course I haven’t.’

  But the boy did not sound very sure. His scissors had come very close to the guinea pig, and he could not be sure whether or not he had accidentally nicked her with the blade.

  But, in fact, Hazel was all right. Suddenly she saw daylight. The walls of the tunnel were ripped away
. A hand was clasping her firmly and gently and giving her to the girl.

  ‘Here you are. No cuts. She’s quite safe.’

  What a relief! What a drama!

  In a few minutes Hazel found herself sitting on the girl’s lap nibbling a cauliflower stalk. It was very consoling to be free again, and I am sorry to say that in the excitement of the moment, Hazel also made a rather large puddle over the girl’s dress.

  ‘Never mind, Hazel. This is not the dress which I am wearing to my birthday party tomorrow. Do you know what Mum is giving me for my birthday, Hazel? She says it’s a surprise. But now that you are safe and well, I can’t imagine a nicer present than you, dear Hazel; just you, safe and well again after your adventure.’

  Well, an adventure was one thing you could call it. Hazel was not sure, but she thought you could easily call it an adventure. As for birthday presents, she did not know about those. At the moment, she was finding the cauliflower stalk most sustaining. When she had eaten enough, she burrowed once more into the girl’s jumper. Now, what was it she had been looking for when she first set out to explore and got stuck in that horrible tunnel?

  Coming back into the kitchen a few minutes later, the boy said, ‘I’ve put the boot in an old plastic bag and hidden it in the dustbin. The dustbin men come tomorrow.’

  ‘And tomorrow is my birthday!’ said his sister. She was happy now. All her tears were dry.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear when it next rains,’ said the boy. ‘But it is true that those boots were getting tight for me and one of them leaked. Mum keeps saying she’ll get me some new ones, but she never remembers.’

  Just then they heard the squawk and squeak of their mother’s bicycle brakes. Looking through the window, the boy saw his mother leaning her bicycle against the far wall at the end of the garden and hurrying into the shed where Hazel’s hutch was kept.

  ‘Mum’s back,’ said the boy. ‘Here she is, coming down the garden path. And it looks as though she has a parcel for your birthday.’

  ‘Is that my birthday present, Mum?’ asked the girl when their mother came indoors and placed a large bag on the kitchen table.