Mr. Wimble’s Fortieth Wink
In the town of Middle Yawning, naps are taken very seriously. The shops shut at two. The town clock does not strike three; it yawns, long and low, and anyone still awake goes and lies down.
In Middle Yawning, winks are real. When somebody dozes off, little winks drop from their eyelashes, one at a time, plip, plip. A wink is grey and warm and about the size of a button, and it goes into a jar to be counted. Forty winks make a proper nap. Everybody knows that.
Mr. Wimble lived halfway down Pillow Lane, and he was a very tidy man. His slippers faced the same way. His jar had a label that said WINKS in his best handwriting. By the fireplace hung a little chalkboard where he wrote his best score, and for eleven years the chalkboard had said 39.
Every afternoon at two, Mr. Wimble sat in his armchair and set his jar on his knee. He folded his hands and shut his eyes, as solemnly as a man posting an important letter. Every afternoon the winks dropped, plip, plip, into the jar. And every afternoon he woke up and counted them.
“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and . . . oh, bother.”
Because there, going out under the door, was the fortieth wink.
The fortieth wink was always slightly squarer than the others. Nobody knew why. Square things do not roll properly, and so the fortieth wink never landed nicely. It hit the rim of the jar and tipped. Then it went bumping off across the floor in a lumpy, sideways way, out under the door and away down the lane.
Mr. Wimble wanted his forty winks. He only wanted them once. He did not think that was too much to ask, and I don’t suppose you do either.
On Monday he tried a mixing bowl.
He went next door to borrow one from Mrs. Bramble. Mrs. Bramble was the night baker. She baked from moonrise till dawn, and she had never had a nap in her life. She opened the door with flour on her eyebrows and yawned so wide that Mr. Wimble could have counted her teeth. He didn’t. In Middle Yawning, people get careful about counting.
“It’s for a nap,” he said.
“Lucky you,” said Mrs. Bramble, and she gave him the biggest bowl she had.
Mr. Wimble put the bowl on the parlour rug, climbed in, and sat down with his jar on his knee. Now nothing could possibly roll away. He shut his eyes. Plip, plip. The fortieth wink fell, hit the rim of the jar, and dropped into the bowl.
Then it began to roll. It went round the inside of the bowl, round and round, the way a marble goes round a basin, only lumpier. Each time round it went a little faster and a little higher. At the top it hopped clean over the edge, bumped across the rug, and went out under the door.
Mr. Wimble woke up. “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and . . . oh, bother.”
On Tuesday he decided to fall asleep faster, so the fortieth wink would not have time to get away. And everybody knows the fastest way to fall asleep is to count sheep.
But Middle Yawning has one rule, and it is painted on the town hall in letters as tall as a door: DO NOT COUNT SHEEP. In Middle Yawning, when anyone counts sheep, sheep come. That is why the town keeps a cart for taking sheep home. On the back of the cart is a sign that says PLEASE COUNT SOFTLY. The sheep have to be counted onto it, you see, and anyone who counts them loudly ends up with more than they started with.
Mr. Wimble thought he would count very quietly, and only a few.
“One,” he said, with his eyes shut.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Mr. Wimble, who was too polite to ignore a knock, even half asleep. “Two.”
There was another knock.
“Come in. Three.”
Counting is very hard to stop once a person is nearly asleep, and so it went on, knock and come in, for some time.
When at last he opened his eyes, the parlour was full of sheep. There were about thirty of them, very woolly and very polite. They had wiped their feet on the mat. They stood between the armchair and the bookcase and all over the hearthrug. One was standing in the mixing bowl because there was nowhere else. They all looked at Mr. Wimble as if they were terribly sorry not to be a nap.
“Baa,” said the sheep in the bowl, very softly, which meant sorry.
Mr. Wimble did not get a single wink that afternoon. Nobody could, with thirty sheep in the room trying their hardest not to breathe on him.
The sheep cart only came on Thursdays. So Mr. Wimble did the tidy thing. He put newspaper down, filled every bowl he owned with water, and gave the sheep all his cushions.
“You came because I asked,” he told them. “That’s good manners, really.”
On Wednesday he did not borrow a bowl, and he did not count anything. He had decided that if he could not keep his fortieth wink, he would at least like to see where it went.
So, for the first time ever, he tied his shoelaces before his nap, and sat in his armchair with the sheep asleep all round him. Plip, plip. When he woke, he did not stop to count. The fortieth wink was just going under the door, and Mr. Wimble went after it in such a hurry that he left his jar on the table. The sheep got up and came too. They had grown fond of him.
The fortieth wink bumped down the garden path, through the gate and along Pillow Lane. Then it stopped. It stopped at the very next doorstep. All those years, it had only ever been going next door.
On the bench by her front door sat Mrs. Bramble in her apron, with an empty jar on her lap. She picked up the wink and held it out.
“Is this yours?” she said. “One comes down the lane every afternoon. I like to hold it while it’s warm. I’ve never had one of my own.”
“Never?” said Mr. Wimble.
“I bake all night,” said Mrs. Bramble. “And all day I sit here and try. But as soon as I shut my eyes, I start thinking about the bread.”
Mr. Wimble looked at the wink, and at the empty jar, and found he did not want the wink back. “You keep it,” he said. So she put it in her apron pocket.
It is much easier to fall asleep next to somebody who is very good at it.
Mr. Wimble cleared his throat. He was not a man who sat on other people’s benches. “If you liked,” he said, “I could nap next to you. I’ve already had a go today. But I am extremely good at the first thirty-nine.”
Mrs. Bramble laughed. She went in and came back with a spare jar for him, because a baker always has a spare jar. They sat on her bench in the afternoon sun with their jars on their knees. The sheep lay down round their feet in a woolly ring, like a rug that was breathing.
“Don’t think about the bread,” said Mr. Wimble. “Think about nothing in particular, very slowly.”
“I’ll try,” said Mrs. Bramble.
Plip, plip, went the winks, into her jar and into his. When the fortieth wink fell from Mr. Wimble’s eyelashes, squarer than ever, it hit the rim and tipped. It rolled off the bench and bumped into the woolliest sheep of all. The sheep opened one eye, put out its nose, and nudged the wink politely into the jar. Then it went back to sleep.
They woke when the sun had gone round behind the chimney.
“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine,” said Mr. Wimble, “and . . . forty.”
Mrs. Bramble counted hers. She had forty too, the first forty of her life. She sat and looked at them for quite a while.
“So that’s what a nap is,” she said. “I’m so glad you came down the lane.”
“So am I,” said Mr. Wimble. “I should have done it eleven years ago.”
Then Mrs. Bramble noticed the woolliest sheep. Its fleece was dotted all over with little grey winks, caught where they fell. She counted them carefully, because counting winks on a sheep is not the same as counting sheep. There were forty.
That evening Mr. Wimble wiped the 39 off his chalkboard and wrote 40, with a flourish so large it went right off the edge. Underneath, smaller, because he was a fair man, he wrote: Mrs. Bramble, 40. One sheep, 40.
On Thursday the cart came, and Mr. Wimble counted the sheep onto it in a whisper, and not one extra sheep turned up. The woolliest one leaned out of the back and said “Baa,” very softly, which this time meant thank you. Then it hopped down off the cart and trotted round to Mrs. Bramble’s bench, which meant it was staying.
And every afternoon after that, at two o’clock, Mr. Wimble took his jar next door, and the two of them slept on Mrs. Bramble’s bench in the sun, forty winks each, with the woolliest sheep at their feet, and not one wink ever got away again.