Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village

by Louis de Bernières

  Most amazingly, Sergeant Corker brought in dozens of moles, mauing triumphantly as he trotted up the garden path to lay them out carefully in rows on the mat at the back door, like collections of fat furry sausages, which the moleman would collect every evening. Mr Chittock began to feel positively disturbed by such monumental carnage. He felt guilty that so many innocent deaths were being laid to his account, and left for him as gifts. Nonetheless, he did not call a halt to the slaughter, and after two weeks the number of the dead began rapidly to diminish.

  After eighteen days, it seemed apparent that Sergeant Corker had completely cleared the meadow. He now took on a bored and restless mien, prowling about, moaning softly, and swinging his head and tail with frustration like a caged jaguar. He spent less time in the meadow, knowing that it was not worth his while to stalk there, and finally, at the expiry of three weeks, Mr Joshuah Entincknapp arrived to take him away in his basket, but not before he had had a falling-out with Mr Chittock.

  The latter gave him a manila envelope containing one hundred and twenty-nine pounds, with that sum clearly marked on the outside.

  ‘One hundred and twenty-nine, sir?’ said Mr Entincknapp. ‘It’s supposed to be one hundred and fifty, sir. Fifty pounds a week, sir, and you’ve had him for three weeks.’

  ‘Indeed, my good man,’ replied Royston Chittock, ‘but for the last three days he hasn’t done any work. He didn’t catch any at all. So I owe you for eighteen days, not for three weeks.’

  The moleman was stunned. ‘Eighteen days, sir? Why, sir, he didn’t get any more because there weren’t any. You agreed three weeks, sir, so you did, and it’s three weeks you’ve had him for, and that’s one hundred and fifty pounds.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Entincknapp, but that’s my last word. I have rounded it up, you know. Strictly speaking it should be one hundred and twenty-eight point five seven one four two eight pounds, that’s to six decimal places, and I have rounded it up to one hundred and twenty-nine pounds.’ He looked imperiously at the moleman and said, ‘You are excused.’

  ‘Oh, I’m excused, am I?’ replied Mr Entincknapp. ‘Well, sir, that’s very big of you. Excused, eh?’

  As he started to leave with Sergeant Corker, he turned and said, ‘Did you know, sir, that round here “chittock” is an old word for “magpie”?’

  ‘No I didn’t. How very interesting.’

  Mr Entincknapp opened the garden gate, and said, ‘A very appropriate name, sir. Magpies are bloody thieves, so they are.’ Thereupon he left, without a backward glance, his single eye glowing with anger and contempt.

  Mr Chittock felt sad afterwards in his empty house, and thought about getting a cat of his own.

  There had not been a molehill on the lawn for over a week, and Uncle Dick therefore returned in his spare time in order to make the lawn lovely enough to putt on.

  Mr Chittock had not realised that the creation of a putting green is no simple matter, and neither is it cheap. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked the greenkeeper. ‘A couple of weeks?’

  Uncle Dick looked at him as if he were mad, and said, ‘It’ll take a good year, sir, unless you don’t mind a bodge.’

  Chittock was astonished. ‘A year? A whole year? How can that possibly be?’

  Dick explained. ‘I don’t mean a whole year of me being here workin’, I mean a year before it’s fit to play on without makin’ a sorry mess of it. It’s got to settle, and the grass has got to get contented. First thing is, this is clay soil. It’s heavy stuff, so we’ll have to dig out a couple of feet for drainage, and fill it up with shingle, unless you’d rather be sloshing about in mud. Then we got to put a few pipes with holes in when we build it up.’

  ‘Build it up?’ echoed Mr Chittock, who had hitherto been thinking of a green that was at lawn level.

  Well, sir, do you want the green raised, with nice curves and little difficult bits, and a bunker to chip out of like a proper realistic green that’s just like the real McCoy? ’Cause if you do, you’ll need to build it up.’

  The idea appealed to Mr Chittock, who pictured himself holding aloft a series of trophies. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘but can you make it behave just exactly like the ones at the West Surrey?’

  ‘Yes, I can, sir, but in the end everything depends on the maintenance.’

  Chittock stroked his chin with his hand and said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to do the maintenance?’

  ‘I’m sure we can come to an accommodation,’ said the greenkeeper. ‘I expect young Robert would mow it for you. It’s the mowing and rolling that matters mostly, and putting down poison for the worms, and I can come and sort out the spiking and feeding and everything else.’

  Royston Chittock volunteered to help Uncle Dick with the labouring, having entertained romantic ideas about the dignity of labour and the benefits of fresh air and fitness, but after one hour he had aching muscles and blisters on his hands. He told Uncle Dick that he had urgent paperwork to attend to, and left him smiling knowingly to himself as he removed and stacked the turves.

  Dick set about cutting cubes of clay out of the ground. It was just the right time of year for it, because the ground was neither baked hard, as it is in summer, nor sodden and glutinous as it is in winter. Even so, it was very hard work, complicated by the roots of a may tree nearby, and Dick almost regretted not having ordered in a small earth mover. His reason for not having done so was that he was being paid by the hour, and couldn’t see the point of hurrying anyway. He was happy to dig out the hole over several visits, as long as it didn’t rain too much and turn into a quagmire. He reflected more than once that it would have made an ideal garden pond if it were puddled. The clay was just right, smooth and almost yellow, unalloyed by dirt and stones. It occurred to him that he might be able to sell any surplus to the brick factory.

  As the days went by the hole grew larger and the heap of spoil turned into a small hill. Then one day a lorry came from Godalming, reversed across the lawn, leaving tracks four inches deep and emptied several yards of shingle into the hole. Uncle Dick built a kind of wall of clay around it, and laid irrigation pipes out from the centre in a fan. Then another lorry came from Godalming with a load of medium shingle, followed by another a few days later with a load of coarse soil, followed by another loaded with medium soil.

  Uncle Dick spent some frustrating hours with his client, who hummed and havered over precisely what contours he wanted. Several times he arrived at something that was simultaneously beautiful, practical and challenging, only to have Mr Chittock come out and say, ‘I was just looking at it from the landing window, and I thought, “What if we just …”’ and then he would explain that he wanted something quite different to what had been previously specified. In the end, taking account of Mr Chittock’s endlessly retelling the story of his ace on the second hole at the West Surrey, Uncle Dick proposed that they reproduce the contours of that particular green, in commemoration of the historic feat. The ploy worked, although the new green would have to be very considerably smaller, and the bunkers proportionally less horrifying.

  A lorry containing several yards of sieved topsoil arrived from Hurtmore, and reversed across the ever deepening tracks in the lawn. Uncle Dick raked it for hours to get it into shape, and six inches deep. When this was done to his satisfaction, he knocked on the door of the house and informed Mr Royston Chittock that, although he would be back from time to time, in order to get rid of any weeds, and to roll it, there would be a six-month wait before the next step.

  ‘Six months!’ exclaimed Chittock. ‘Six months! Really, this is preposterous! Six months!’

  ‘You let it settle before you seed it,’ said Uncle Dick imperturbably. ‘That’s the best way to do it. If you want it done badly, I’m sure there’s those that might oblige.’

  A certain hostility had arisen between the two men over the previous weeks. It was not just because of Mr Chittock’s frequent changes of mind. It was because the latter’s urban suspiciousness led him to cavil constantly
about payment, both for labour and materials. He all but accused Uncle Dick of slacking when he wasn’t looking, and of over-ordering shingle so that he could sell some of it on. Uncle Dick had become more and more irritated and curt with his client, and that had only made things worse. By now he had also heard the moleman’s story about the short-changing of Sergeant Corker, and, after initial disbelief, had come to share his disdain for the displaced townsman.

  Uncle Dick turned up once a week to see how the ground was settling, sometimes with young Robert’s pet rook, Lizzie, in attendance. Ever since the bird had learned to fly, she had taken to dropping out of the sky on to the shoulders of those she knew, so that she would meet Robert when he alighted from the bus upon returning from school, or, with a jubilant squawk, crash-land in his mother’s shopping basket when she was walking home from the Cricket Green Stores, in the hope that it might contain cheese or grapes. If Lizzie spotted Uncle Dick, whether at the golf course or elsewhere, she would land on his shoulder, murmur sweet nothings in his ear, and set about tidying up the tufts of hair that protruded about his ears from beneath his cap. When he was working on Mr Chittock’s new green, she sat in the hawthorn tree, raising and lowering the feathers on the top of her head as she watched out for worms or leatherjackets. Uncle Dick would stop and stroke her under the chin, repeating ‘silly bugger, silly bugger’. Mimicking young Robert’s voice, she would reply, ‘Come on, come on.’

  The six months passed, and Uncle Dick raked the green, sowed it with fescue bent and rolled it. He was confident that the birds would leave it alone, because the seeds had been treated with something to make them taste horrible, and he was confident that there wouldn’t be any worm casts either, because he had dosed the ground with the same poison that they used at the West Surrey.

  Mr Royston Chittock came out of the house and said, ‘How long before I can use it, then, my good man?’

  Uncle Dick was irritated by the patronising cheeriness that Chittock sometimes liked to affect, but he replied truthfully, ‘Six months, sir. And in the meantime you’ve got to get yourself a little mower with a very fine adjustment, and get those blades sharpened absolutely perfect. Your Suffolk Punch is a damn fine machine, but it’s too big and clumsy for a green. If you’re interested, sir, I expect young Robert would come and mow for you.’

  ‘Six months?’ repeated Chittock. ‘Another six months? Really, I had no idea it would all take so long.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to say that it does, sir, and there’s no point in hurrying. I did tell you it would take a year. You wouldn’t take a bird out of the oven afore it’s done, and you shouldn’t use a green ’til it’s good and ready.’

  In the six months that passed, Royston Chittock worked hard at his golf and managed to win the Stableford competition and the Major Whitworth Men’s Memorial Medal. There were some murmurings in the clubhouse, and he received a joint letter from the men’s captain and the secretary requesting that he submit new cards, since he had consistently been playing far better than his handicap suggested. The letter congratulated him politely upon the extraordinary progress that he had obviously made with his game.

  At last the time expired and Mr Royston Chittock had a beautiful green ready to use, a perfect miniature of the second at the West Surrey. Uncle Dick, supervised by Lizzie from her perch in the hawthorn tree, had given it the final mow, cut the first hole and installed a new white cup. Mr Chittock was thrilled.

  His delight did not extend to rewarding Uncle Dick with a large tip, however. Instead he disputed the final account, and paid for four hours’ less work than the greenkeeper had actually done, saying, ‘Come, come, my good man, I’m not a fool. I’ve kept a record of when you’ve been here and for how long, and one can’t help noticing that your propensity for stopping and drinking tea has recently become greatly exaggerated.’

  Uncle Dick looked at him long and cold and pocketed the brown envelope, saying, ‘Well then, Mr Chittock, sir, if you intend to cheat me after all I’ve done for you, and in my spare time too, don’t ask me for any help if things go wrong.’

  ‘Cheat you? Really, this is an outrage! Cheat you? How dare you accuse me of such a thing?’

  ‘I speak as I see,’ replied Uncle Dick, and he departed with his head high and Lizzie wobbling on his shoulder. That evening he telephoned Mr Joshuah Entincknapp.

  They met up in the Merry Harriers, a pub that for years had advertised itself with cheerful irony as purveying ‘warm beer and lousy food’. From its ceiling there was suspended an impressive collection of chamber pots, but perhaps its most appealing feature was a very large and amiable long-haired Alsatian dog named Beulah, whose hobby was collecting stones. This hound had several heaps of them in the garden, and had quite worn down the tips of its canine teeth.

  Over a pint or two of mild and a game of darts, Uncle Dick and the one-eyed moleman discussed how to get even with that bloody Mr Royston Chittock.

  A week later Royston Chittock rose joyfully at eight in order to go out and do some early-morning putting. Tomorrow he would practise those frightening three-footers that had ended the career of Peter Alliss, but today he was going to do some long curving putts. It would be beautiful.

  Upon looking out of the window his eyes practically bulged out of his head. He felt as if he would faint and sat down on the bed for a few moments. Then he went back to the window. It was all too true, and it was just as he feared. There was a large molehill on his new green.

  He ran outside, clutched his hands to his temples, and went to fetch his spade and barrow. He scraped up the molehill and emptied the spoil on to his rose bed. That morning he putted with a heavy heart, and very badly, glancing frequently at the crumbs of spoil that disfigured his perfect green.

  The next morning there were two molehills, and the morning after that there were three. On the fourth day there were four molehills, and on the sixth there were six. On the seventh day the moles rested, but on the following Monday there was one. Swallowing his pride, he telephoned Uncle Dick in the evening.

  ‘It can’t be moles,’ said Dick, ‘moles can’t get through all that gravel, and anyway, they go after the worms, and there aren’t any worms in that green on account of the poisoning I gave ’em.’

  ‘It is moles,’ insisted Mr Chittock. ‘Really, there are seven molehills.’

  ‘Can’t be moles, sir,’ said Uncle Dick, ‘maybe it’s marmots,’ and he put the phone down. He stood by the telephone in the hallway, and a smile began to spread across his face, which soon turned into a happy grin. That evening he was laughing so much and so randomly that at dinner time he accidentally sprayed Robert and his mother with tea. He had to go out into the garden to calm down, but was still wiping the tears from his eyes at bedtime. Robert’s mother said, ‘There’s nothing more annoying than not knowing what the joke is,’ and Uncle Dick said, ‘I’ll tell you, love, I’ll tell you, I promise. Jus’ wait ’til I can speak, won’t you?’

  Royston Chittock telephoned Mr Joshuah Entincknapp. ‘It can’t be moles, sir. Moles couldn’t cope with all that gravel, and anyway, it’s worms they’re after, and there ain’t worms in that green on account of all the poison.’

  ‘But it is moles,’ protested Mr Chittock.

  ‘Can’t be, sir.’

  Mr Chittock was confounded. ‘Well, could I hire Sergeant Corker for a week, just in case?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My dear fellow, why not?’

  ‘Because you hired him last time for three weeks and you paid for eighteen days. So he isn’t available to the likes of you, sir, and in any case he’s busy.’

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘He’s clearing the moles out at Feathercombe, sir, and that’s a big place. And after that he’s doing the manor house. One thing I can suggest, sir: do you have a shotgun licence?’

  ‘A shotgun licence? No. Why?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t dig into that green to put in traps, sir, be
cause you don’t want to disturb that surface more than you have to after all the hard work that’s gone into it, but one thing you can do, sir, is stand on that green with a shotgun, and when you see that earth heaving, you blast it one. Never fails, sir. I wish you good day, sir.’

  Mr Entincknapp put the phone down, and began to chuckle. He chuckled so much all through the evening that Mrs Entincknapp thought that he must be losing his wits. All he could say was, ‘Tell you later, love, tell you later.’ He was still chortling and spluttering at night when she was trying to get to sleep, so she made him go and sleep on the settee in the living room. In the morning, at dawn, he went to the golf course, and he and Uncle Dick filled another sack with tilth from the molehills at the bottom of the dip in the seventeenth fairway. On the way to Mr Chittock’s house they laughed so much that Uncle Dick had to pull into the side near the pound in order to recover.

  Mr Royston Chittock set about acquiring the shotgun licence. He collected the form from Godalming Police Station, filled it in, obtained references from the Reverend Freemantle and his former solicitor in London, and awaited the arrival of the firearms officer. This gentleman gravely inspected the gun cabinet that had been bolted to the wall in the cupboard under the stairs, and equally gravely questioned Mr Chittock. He wanted to know what the gun would be for. It was for pest control, said Mr Chittock, truthfully, adding mendaciously that he also wanted to take up clay-pigeon shooting, and that a friend in Scotland had invited him up for the Glorious Twelfth.

  ‘Have you any experience of shooting?’ asked the officer, whose real mission was to find out over a cup of tea whether or not the applicant might be mad or dangerous or suicidal, and Mr Chittock said, ‘Oh yes. I’ve used one before when I was young, and I also learned to fire a .303.’ He did not explain that the shotgun in question had been a garden gun, used by little boys to scare finches away from fruit blossom, and that he had fired it once, unsuccessfully, at a hedge sparrow, nor that the .303 had been for firing blanks in the school cadet force. The firearms officer said, ‘Even so, if I were you, sir, I would have a couple of lessons.’