Duchess and the Runt Cloud
Duchess was the largest pig on Hill Farm, and she walked everywhere on tiptoe. Nobody had taught her. She simply felt that a pig of her size and quality ought not to slap her feet down like a goose. So she crossed the yard with her chin up and her trotters barely touching the ground, in the manner of a duchess.
What Duchess wanted was a puddle.
It had not rained on Hill Farm for five weeks. The yard had gone to dust. The mud in Duchess’s sty had dried into something like an old pie crust, and when she lay down on it, it crackled. A pig needs a puddle the way a person needs a pillow. She can get by without one, but she will not be happy about it, and she will make sure everybody knows.
Now, in that part of the world, rain was not hard to get. You sent for it. At the top of the hill stood the weather-mill, and at the weather-mill lived Mrs. Gale, and Mrs. Gale kept the clouds. She kept them tied in rows behind her gate, bobbing at the ends of their strings like washing on a line. Each one wore a brown luggage label saying which farm had ordered it. When a farm sent for rain, Mrs. Gale untied a rain cloud and led it down the lane, and it rained on whatever was underneath it and on nothing else.
But Hill Farm had not sent for rain. The hay was cut and lying in the long field, and the farmer wanted it dry. Rain could come when the hay was in.
Duchess did not care about hay. She looked up the hill at the clouds hanging in their rows, and she made a plan.
That night, when the farmhouse lamps had gone out and the moon was up, Duchess went to her sty gate. The farmer tied it shut with a knot he was rather proud of. Duchess undid it in the time it takes to say so, and tiptoed up the hill in the manner of a duchess.
The mill gate was too heavy to push, but there was a gap underneath it. Duchess held her breath, and squeezed, and was through.
The clouds bobbed above her in the moonlight. There were fat white ones and long thin ones and grey ones like wet wool. At the very end of the last row hung one so small it hardly counted, dripping steadily into a bucket. Duchess did not look at that one twice. A duchess does not choose the smallest of anything.
Here was the flaw in the plan. Duchess could work out any knot you cared to tie, but she could not read, which is a different skill and one most pigs never get round to. So the labels were no help. She had to choose by looking, and she chose the greyest cloud she could see, low and soft, because rain is grey. Its knot was wound round and round the bottom of the post, and Duchess was in a hurry. She chewed clean through the string, took the end in her teeth, and trotted home very pleased with herself.
By the time she reached her sty, the grey cloud had settled over her head and shoulders like a large damp hat. It was a fog. It was not wet enough to make a puddle. It was just wet enough to be annoying. And it smelled, faintly but certainly, of boiled potatoes.
She had gone up the hill in the manner of a duchess. She came down it in the manner of a pig in a fog.
In the morning the farm dog found her, and followed her about the yard with his nose in the air, in case there were potatoes in there somewhere. There were not. At eleven o’clock Mrs. Gale came down the lane in her three cardigans, one for wind and one for wet and one for whatever else turned up.
“There you are,” she said to the fog, the way you would say it to a hen that had got into the kitchen. “Come along. Out you come.”
She picked up the chewed end of the string and looked at it. Then she looked at Duchess. Then she led the fog home.
The next night Duchess tiptoed up the hill again, in the manner of a duchess.
She had thought hard about it all afternoon. Grey had been a mistake. This time she chose the biggest, heaviest, plumpest cloud in the yard, white and fat as a feather bed, because surely a cloud that heavy must be full of something. Its string was tied with a sheepshank, which is a knot with loops inside its loops, and it was tied very tight. Somebody had been expecting visitors. Duchess did not chew it. She worked at it with her teeth, loop by loop, until it fell open. Then she led the cloud home and lay down underneath it to wait.
At about two in the morning, it began to snow.
It snowed only on Duchess, because that is how clouds work, and it snowed quite a lot. When the farmhands came out at sunrise, in the hottest week of the summer, they found a dry brown yard. In the middle of it was one snowdrift with a pink snout sticking out of the top, looking offended.
She had gone up the hill in the manner of a duchess. She spent the morning in the manner of a pudding with sugar on it.
By noon the sun had melted every flake, and the thirsty ground had drunk up every drop, and Duchess was exactly as dusty as before, only crosser. Mrs. Gale came down for her snow cloud at one o’clock. She had the sheepshank in her hand, neatly undone.
“Took me a quarter of an hour to tie that,” she said. She did not sound cross. She sounded interested.
On the third night Duchess tiptoed up the hill in the manner of a duchess, though a slightly tired one. She squeezed under the gate. And there on an upturned crate, with a lantern at her feet and all three cardigans buttoned, sat Mrs. Gale.
Duchess stopped. She did not run. A duchess does not run. She stood with her chin up and waited to be scolded.
“Evening,” said Mrs. Gale. “I thought it would be you.”
She did not scold at all.
“Here’s how I see it,” she said. “Any pig who can untie a sheepshank with her teeth has earned a cloud. Not one of those, mind. Those are all spoken for.”
She got up and went to the very end of the last row, to the little cloud dripping into the bucket, and unhooked its string. Its label said NOT FOR SALE (LEAKS) in Mrs. Gale’s own handwriting.
“This is Pip,” said Mrs. Gale. “It’s too small to sell. It couldn’t water a row of beans. It drips on my floor day and night, and it can’t thunder properly to save its life.”
Pip thundered, to show her. It sounded like somebody politely clearing their throat to ask for the salt.
“See?” said Mrs. Gale. “No use at all for a field.” She looked Duchess up and down. “But a cloud that’s too small for a field might be just the right size for a pig.”
She took a pencil from her second cardigan, crossed out SALE and wrote DUCHESS. Then she read it over, frowned, and crossed out NOT as well. She left LEAKS, because it was still true.
They walked down the hill together, Mrs. Gale with the lantern and Duchess with Pip’s string in her teeth. Pip rained on Duchess all the way down the lane, a fine soft drizzle, and Duchess walked very slowly indeed to make it last.
She had gone up the hill in the manner of a duchess. She came down it in the manner of a pig with a cloud of her own.
At the sty, Mrs. Gale tied Pip’s string to the gate. She used an ordinary knot, since there was clearly no point in anything fancy, and Duchess left it alone. Then Mrs. Gale went home up the hill with one less bucket to empty.
Pip drizzled all night on one spot, gently and steadily, which was the one thing it had always been good at. In the morning the farm dog came to look, and sniffed, and went away again, because Pip smelled of nothing but rain. And there in the middle of the sty was the finest puddle on the hill, deep enough to lie down in, with Duchess lying down in it, up to her ears and fast asleep.
The hay came in dry at the end of the week, and the farmer sent for a proper rain cloud for the long field at last. Duchess did not get up to watch it go by. She had her own.
So Duchess got exactly what she wanted, which is usual for Duchess. And the smallest cloud at the mill, which nobody had wanted at all, got a gate to be tied to and a pig to rain on. Every now and then, above the sleeping pig, it gave its tiny thunder, like somebody politely asking for the salt, and both of them were as glad as a pig and a cloud can be.
The end.
