Tuck Sings Pudding to Sleep

Tuck was an old dormouse with a voice like a gate that needs oil, and for three winters he had slept in a boot.

The boot belonged to the farmer’s wife at the bottom of the hill. One spring she had taken it off, set it down at the back of the woodshed, and forgotten about it for three years. Tuck thought this was the kindest thing anybody had ever done for him. Every autumn he carried in a mouthful of thistledown and climbed in at the top. He went down and round the bend to the toe, turned round three times, and slept until the primroses came out.

This autumn the farmer’s wife found the other boot under the stairs. Then she remembered the first one.

Tuck came home with his arms full of hazelnuts just in time to see his bed go down the lane on her foot, left, right, left, on its way to market.

“Well,” Tuck said, to nobody. “That was my bed.”

Now, you may think a dormouse can curl up anywhere. In July he can. But a dormouse sleeps right through the winter, from the first frost to the first warm day. He needs somewhere snug to do it. Otherwise he wakes in the middle of January, cold and cross, with nothing to do and nobody up. Tuck had about a week.

So when he saw the notice on the badgers’ round front door, he read it twice.

It was written in chalk, in large tired letters. WARM CORNER BY THE KITCHEN HEARTH, it said. ALL WINTER. FOR WHOEVER CAN SING PUDDING TO SLEEP. CONTEST AT MOONRISE ON FRIDAY. And then, underlined twice: PLEASE.

Everyone in the wood knew Mrs. Brock, and everyone knew Pudding. Mrs. Brock was a very tired mother. Pudding was a very wide-awake cub. He loved songs. He loved every song he had ever heard, and at the end of each one he shouted “Again!”

Tuck stood on the doorstep and tried a note, just to see. Down at the bottom of the field, the farm gate creaked back at him. He was not sure which of them had started it.

He put his name down anyway. Only two other names were still on the list. Everyone else had crossed theirs out after seeing the first one. The first was Trill’s, in very large, very neat letters. Trill was a nightingale and the finest singer in the wood, and knew it. The second name was forty names long, because the frogs from the stream had entered as a single choir.

* * *

On Friday the moon came up big and white over the hill, and the whole hillside came out to listen. There were rabbits on the slope and hedgehogs in a row. The fox from across the stream had brought a cushion. Down at the bottom, the stream was full of frogs, who were waiting their turn and singing a little anyway.

A stump stood in front of the round front door. On the doorstep sat Pudding, in his nightshirt, drumming his heels. Beside him sat Mrs. Brock in her dressing gown, holding a cup of cocoa she was too tired to drink.

Trill went first.

Trill flew up onto the stump, shook out every feather, looked round to be sure everyone had come, and sang. Trill did not sing to Pudding. Trill sang to everyone in the wood at once, the way Trill always did. It was a song so lovely that the hedgehogs uncurled and the frogs forgot to croak. The moon seemed to lean in closer to hear it, and the whole hillside went a shade whiter than before.

When it ended, nobody moved.

Then Pudding bounced on the doorstep and shouted, “Again!”

Trill, who had never once been asked to stop, sang it again.

“Again!” said Pudding.

“Thank you, Trill,” said Mrs. Brock. “That was beautiful. Next, please.”

Next were the frogs. All forty came up the slope and climbed onto the stump, which was not a large stump. Before they could begin, there was an argument about who should bow. The frog at the front said it should be the frog at the front. The frog at the back said that a stump is round and has no front. This took some time.

Then they sang in forty parts. There were deep frogs and high frogs and middling frogs, and one very small frog who only sang the word “bop.” It was a wonderful noise. By the second verse Pudding was standing up and singing “bop” as well, louder than the small frog, and by the end he was wider awake than anybody had ever seen him.

“Again!” he shouted.

The frogs bowed, all forty, in forty directions, which settled the argument.

Mrs. Brock put her face in her paws for a moment. Then she looked up. “Is there anyone else?” she said.

There was Tuck.

He climbed the stump slowly, because he was old, and because it was a long way up for a dormouse. By the time he reached the top it was far past a dormouse’s bedtime, and in autumn a dormouse’s bedtime comes early. Tuck stood up, opened his mouth to sing, and instead gave the biggest yawn anybody on the hillside had ever seen come out of something so small.

Pudding watched it with great interest.

Tuck sat down. He had forgotten the song entirely. He looked at the cub for a while.

“I had a boot,” he said.

His voice was slow and creaky, like the gate, but like a gate swinging shut at the end of the day.

“What kind of boot?” said Pudding.

“A left one. It belonged to the farmer’s wife, and she forgot all about it for three years, which was very good of her.” Tuck yawned again. “The toe was the warmest part. You went in at the top, and down, and round the bend, and there was the toe. Just big enough to turn round in three times.”

“Three times,” said Pudding, and sat down on the doorstep.

“It was dark in there,” said Tuck. “A good dark. Like the inside of a pocket. And it smelled of feet.”

Pudding giggled, but only a little.

“In a nice way,” said Tuck. “Warm feet. Feet that had walked about in the hay all summer.”

Pudding leaned against his mother’s arm.

“And the very best of all,” Tuck said, slower than ever, “better than the toe, and better than the dark, was the lin—”

Pudding had fallen asleep at “better than the dark.” Tuck fell asleep in the middle of “lining,” sitting up, and then slowly not sitting up, until his nose was resting on his paws.

Everyone on the hillside waited for Pudding to shout “Again!”

He didn’t. He was fast asleep with his mouth open, and so was Tuck.

* * *

Nobody clapped. Nobody even whispered. Mrs. Brock set down her cocoa and lifted Pudding onto her shoulder. With her other paw she picked Tuck off the stump, as carefully as if he were an egg. She carried them both inside to the kitchen. She laid Pudding in the warm corner by the hearth, tucked Tuck into the curl of Pudding’s arm, and pulled the corner of a blanket over the pair of them.

Then she came back out to the doorstep, where the whole hillside was still sitting very quietly in the moonlight.

“A song sung to be admired keeps everybody awake,” Mrs. Brock said. “To sing someone to sleep, you have to be a bit sleepy yourself.”

She looked at Trill, and at the frogs.

“That was the loveliest singing I have ever heard,” she said. “Will you come back in the spring and sing him awake?”

Trill said yes at once. The frogs argued about which of them should say yes, and in the end all forty said it together, quite softly, so as not to wake anyone.

* * *

And they did come back. On the first warm morning of spring, Trill sang from the stump, and the frogs sang in forty parts, and the very small frog sang “bop.” The round front door flew open, and out came Pudding, shouting “Again!” at the top of his voice.

Tuck slept through all of it.

He had slept the whole winter by the warm hearth, curled against Pudding, who turned out to be warmer than any boot. Dormice are slow to wake, and he did not open his eyes until the middle of May. When he did, Mrs. Brock brought him a hazelnut. She told him the corner was his every winter, for as long as he liked, on one condition.

“What’s that?” said Tuck.

“That you never learn to sing,” said Mrs. Brock.

Tuck said that would be no trouble at all.