Animal Instincts

by Alan Titchmarsh

  Praise for Alan Titchmarsh

  ‘Splendid . . . I laughed out loud’

  Rosamunde Pilcher

  ‘Absolutely charming . . . made me understand a lot more about men’

  Jilly Cooper

  ‘A steamy novel of love among the gro-bags’

  Observer

  ‘A fine debut . . . great fun, but also sensitive and sensible with a tuneful storyline. Titchmarsh fans will lap up Mr MacGregor’

  Independent

  ‘I admit it, I like Mr MacGregor. It’s as satisfying as a freshly-mown lawn’

  Daily Mirror

  ‘Humorous, light-hearted and unpretentious.

  Titchmarsh’s book is strengthened by authenticity.

  Ideal for romantic gardeners’

  Mail on Sunday

  For Clare with love and thanks

  “There is no truth; only points of view.”

  Dame Edith Sitwell

  Chapter 1: Angels

  (Geranium robertianum)

  “Could you fold your table away, sir?”

  He was miles away. Half a world away.

  “Sir?”

  “Mmm? Sorry.”

  “Can I take your cup?”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry.” He managed a weak smile

  She was quite pretty, her hair tied back in a smooth, shiny dark brown bun, her lipstick the same bright red as the pattern on her uniform. The sort of lipstick his mother used to wear. Strangely old-fashioned now. He folded up the table and secured it with the clip, then leaned sideways to look out of the window.

  The landscape was gradually rising up to meet him. It should have been grey – he had been convinced it would be grey, to match his mood and the image of the country he had left behind ten years ago. But it was soft green and dusky purple, pale russet and dark brown. There was no hint of battleship grey anywhere, except on the roads that snaked though the countryside. He sighed, and looked down at the newspaper folded open on the seat next to him in row fourteen. It should have been row thirteen, but they had left out that number, skipping straight from twelve to fourteen. On this occasion the thoughtful adjustment by British Airways seemed futile.

  The Daily Telegraph was less tactful. On page 13 he read, again, his father’s obituary:

  Rupert Lavery, who has died aged sixty-two, was best known for his work at the West Yarmouth Nature Reserve in Devon where, over the space of thirty years, he built up a reputation as a conservationist of unusual stance and individual reasoning.

  The writer had clearly known his father well.

  Not for Lavery the left-wing activist approach. He concentrated, instead, on influence by example. He steadfastly refused to allow hunting on his land, but remained on good terms with the Lynchampton Hunt, whose territory surrounded him. He made sure his own land was farmed organically, but took a broad view of genetically modified crops, refusing to join in with those who condemned them as ‘Frankenstein foods’. On one occasion, when interviewed, he suggested that the widespread invasion of ragwort was currently the greatest threat to the British countryside and was being overlooked by both farmers and government alike.

  Here, at least, was something upon which they agreed. Ragwort was deadly to horses.

  Lavery endeavoured to reintroduce the red squirrel to Devon, with little success, alas, but is credited with contributing to the saving from extinction in Britain of the large blue butterfly.

  He looked up, blinking back the tear that had came to his eye. Dear old Dad. A failure with the red squirrel but a winner with the butterfly. What a legacy.

  Those who perceived Rupert Lavery as a crank missed the point. A tall man, with a gentle but determined nature, Lavery regarded himself as a responsible custodian of 300 acres of Devonshire. Though never an evangelical animal rights campaigner, he maintained steadfastly that the link between badgers and bovine tuberculosis was largely unproven, and won a following for his dedication to local natural history in South Devon. But for his tragically early death due to a fall, there is no doubt that he would have continued to be one of the country’s most influential conservationists.

  Rupert Christopher Lavery was born at West Yarmouth, Devon, on 2 May 1937, and educated at Radley and Trinity College, Cambridge. He attended the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, before beginning a career in estate management, finally taking over the family farm from his father in 1970.

  He was a Fellow of the Linnaean Society and a member of the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, but was seldom seen on the water.

  Rupert Lavery married, in 1965, Rosalind Bennett, who predeceased him. He is survived by a son.

  Kit folded the paper so that he could no longer see the obituary. An insistent ping accompanied the illuminated ‘Fasten Seat Belts’ sign, and the 747 tilted slowly to reveal, through the small oval window, the sprawl of London. Now it was grey, with only the muddy ribbon of the Thames to guide the aircraft towards Heathrow.

  He would stay just long enough to sort things out. A few weeks. Maybe a month. Perhaps two.

  Had he known what lay ahead of him, he would have transferred his baggage to a Qantas flight and headed straight back to Balnunga Valley.

  He had completely underestimated the ladies. But, then, he hadn’t met any of them yet.

  Chapter 2: Earthgall

  (Centaurium minus)

  Kit took a bus to Reading, then a train to Totnes. He gazed out of the windows of the railway carriage, reacquainting himself with the countryside into which he had been reluctantly plunged. Anything less like the landscape of south east Australia would be hard to imagine. The brightly painted clapboard houses of his adopted settlement had been replaced by damp brickwork. The names of the stations – Taunton and Tiverton Parkway, Exeter St David’s and Dawlish – were all exquisitely, stultifyingly English. The clean white fences of the stud farm in Balnunga Valley had been replaced by posts and rails of dark brown, and by leafless hedges of increasing height and thickness as the train rattled on through Newton Abbot.

  By the time the grubby carriages trundled into Totnes, Kit felt world-weary and bone-achingly tired. Doors thumped and slammed, the vibration fizzing through his head. He heaved the single weighty suitcase from between the seats and shambled off the train and on to the windswept platform. A female passenger passed him, smiling sympathetically at his apparent bewilderment, his tanned face marking him out as a foreigner on unfamiliar ground.

  Devon in February. The air nipped at his nostrils, and he pulled the inadequately insulated jacket around him to keep out the sudden rush of cold. A handful of grubby litter swirled in a sudden eddy at his feet and he looked along the platform for the exit.

  Elizabeth Punch had offered to pick him up at the station, but he’d said that he would make his own way to the farm: he could not be sure that his flight would arrive on time, and he didn’t want her to be hanging about. That had been only half true: the thought of sharing a journey with someone he had never met but who had lived and worked with his father for the last ten years filled him with apprehension.

  He’d tried to imagine what she looked like from their brief, crackly telephone conversation across the world. She’d sounded matter-of-fact, and there was little trace of emotion in her voice, which surprised him. He was unsure of the nature of her relationship with his father, knowing only that she had worked with him on the reserve since just after his own departure, and that his father, whenever they had corresponded or spoken on the phone, had never suggested that this was anything more than a working association. Perhaps Rupert had been attempting to spare his son’s feelings. Perhaps not.

  For a moment Kit wondered where to go. The station, once so familiar, now seemed completely foreign. The exit sign swung squeakily in the breeze, and his h
ead swam – a combination of jet lag and tiredness.

  “Come on,” he said to himself, and walked purposefully down the platform and out of the station to the taxi rank.

  The motley parade of cabs was headed by a battered Japanese model that had seen better days. Originally it had been white; now it was grey and more than slightly foxed. Kit reached for the handle of the rear nearside door. As he did so the electric window by the front passenger seat buzzed downwards.

  “Where to, zirr?”

  “West Yarmouth, please.” And then, realising that some more particular destination would be needed, “The farmhouse. The nature reserve.”

  “Very good, zirr. Mr Lavery’s place?”

  “That’s right.” Kit eased himself on to the worn brown leatherette bench seat and slammed the door. As he did so the handle came off, and he shot to the far side of the seat.

  “Don’t worry, zirr. Alius doin’ that.”

  Kit smiled, remembering the silver-grey Porsche Boxster now shrouded in cambric in an Australian garage, then pushed himself upright and filled his lungs with the acrid tang of stale tobacco. He eased down the window a little and the icy air cut through the oppressive fug in the car.

  The driver turned the key in the ignition, and they began their lumbering journey southwards. The cabby tried his opening gambit. “Sad about Mr Lavery, ain’t it?”

  “Yes.” Kit hardly knew what to say. He had not had to talk about his father’s death to anyone acquainted with him, and realised now that over the next few days he would be doing little else.

  “Know him well, did you?”

  “I’m his son.”

  The car jerked as the driver’s foot slipped off the pedal. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, zirr. I didn’t know.”

  “No, it’s fine. No reason for you to know. I’ve been gone a long time.”

  “Australia, weren’t it, zirr?”

  “Yes.” Kit wondered how much the cabby knew, wondered if the locals had an opinion about him. Not that it mattered: he would not be here long enough for it to matter.

  “Lovely man, your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well respected in these parts. Well liked too, and the two things don’t always go together, if you knows what I mean.” He shook his head. “Great shame it was. Great shame. Man of his age falling like that. Could happen to any of us. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How we’re all human. How we don’t know when we’re going to . . . well, you know . . .” He tailed off.

  The journey continued in silence until the cabby’s curiosity finally got the better of him. “You be here for long, zirr?”

  “No. Just until I’ve got things sorted out.”

  “Not staying, then?”

  Kit did his best to remain noncommittal. “For as long as it takes.”

  “Lovely place, West Yarmouth. Especially the reserve. Picturesque.”

  “Yes.”

  “Be a shame to see it go.”

  Kit did not reply, just stared out of the window.

  As the late-afternoon light dimmed and the taxi drew nearer to West Yarmouth, nervous apprehension took over from the sense of irritated resignation he had felt for most of the journey. It seemed as though the house lights were fading before an impending theatrical performance, and that the recurring dream, to which actors alluded, of being in a play in which you know neither the moves nor the lines, was now reality.

  But as he looked out of the window the scenery was familiar. He recognised the towering oak on the corner of the village green at Lynchampton, the signpost saying ‘West Yarmouth 5, Plymouth 18’, and the cottages at the side of the road, fronted by a broad verge.

  His heart beat faster. He had been away ten years, yet he might as well not have been away at all. He had spent a decade in another culture, another world, and yet here he was, back where he had started, feeling just the same. But not. He found the two Kit Laverys difficult to reconcile. The Venetian Twins. The West Yarmouth Twins. The Man in the Iron Mask. He tried to blame his confused thoughts on jet-lag.

  The taxi slowed as it rounded the final bend then turned into the rough lane. The headlights briefly illuminated the sign, ‘West Yarmouth Nature Reserve’, printed in white on a dark green background.

  “Here we are, zirr. A little bit of ’eaven.”

  Towering hedges to left and right masked any view of the surrounding fields. The hedges had grown – it used to be possible to see over them. He peered between the two seats in front of him, his eyes scouring the track ahead for familiar landmarks, but now the lie of the land seemed strange, not quite as he had remembered it. Smaller. More overgrown.

  A distant light, veiled at first by the hedge, grew brighter. The small Queen Anne farmhouse looked even more like a doll’s house than he remembered. The rugged iron lamp that had hung over its front door for at least two hundred years was still there, still burning. He felt a pang, and a feeling, had he been able to admit it to himself, of coming home. The taxi ground to a halt with a crunch of tyre on gravel.

  “That’ll be eighteen pounds fifty, zirr.”

  “Damn.” The Australian dollars he held stared back at him mockingly. He’d forgotten to change enough currency. “Can you hang on a minute? I’ll have to get some English money.” And then, chancing his arm and smiling at the driver, “I don’t suppose you take Australian dollars, do you?”

  “Not in Devon, zirr. I’m afraid not. Even though my name is Sydney.”

  Kit smiled and shrugged, stepped out and left the driver to haul the bag from the boot. He wanted to walk straight up to the door, but instead he stood and looked up at the front of the house, which he had left, exasperated, ten years before. Its countenance was as friendly as he remembered it, the mellow brick warm and welcoming.

  Movement at an upstairs window to the right of the heavy, white-painted door caught his eye. He thought he saw a face. Then a heavy bolt slid back inside, and the door opened to reveal a tall, angular woman with a questioning expression.

  “Miss Punch?” Kit enquired.

  “Yes?” For a moment, she looked wrong-footed, but quickly regained her composure and asked, “Is it Kit?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, but I’ve come with no English money. Do you think you could give me some for the taxi?”

  “Yes, of course. Come in.” She tried to smile, but Kit detected fear in her eyes. He moved towards the door as she disappeared into the house, and decided to stay outside for fear of invading what had once been his territory but which was now probably hers.

  “Here we are.” She returned with her purse. “How much do you need?”

  “Eighteen fifty. Well, twenty pounds with a tip.”

  “Just a minute.” He watched as she counted out the money. “There we are. Nineteen pounds. That should do.”

  He made no argument, and she made no criticism of his intended magnanimity either with voice or expression. She snapped her purse shut and asked, “Just the one bag?”

  “Yes.”

  The taxi driver sighed in disappointment at the lean tip and eased himself back into his car. The engine coughed to life and, with a wink in Kit’s direction, he drove off down the lane in search of greater profit.

  Kit turned to pick up his bag, but found that it had vanished, along with Elizabeth Punch. He ran his eyes once more over the face of the old house, partially swathed in ivy, and this time saw quite clearly the other face at the upstairs window. It was small, with spiky, orange hair. It stared at him, and he stared back, until it receded into the darkness.

  He lowered his eyes to the door and saw, in the flagged hallway, the tall oak dresser under which he used to play. The light from a single brass oil lamp glinted on the serried ranks of willow-pattern plates and spilled soft amber rays on to the smooth, cobbled path. An owl hooted in the distance. He shivered, then stepped over the threshold and closed the door quietly behind him.

  Chapter 3: Lady’s Fingers


  (Lotus corniculatus)

  “We thought it best that you sleep here.” Elizabeth Punch held open the door of the main upstairs bedroom. “It was your father’s room so . . .”

  Kit looked at her enquiringly.

  She read his thoughts. “Jess and I sleep in the barn next door. The top floor’s been converted – well, not really converted, just turned into habitable rooms . . .” She stopped abruptly and regarded him with a confused mixture of sympathy and impatience. “Dinner will be in half an hour, if that’s all right. We’ll see you downstairs then.” She struggled to add some comforting epilogue, but managed only a bleak “I’m sorry,” before turning on her heel, shutting the door and clumping down the old wooden staircase.

  Kit sat down slowly on his father’s bed, feeling eerily detached from the goings-on around him. He raised his eyes and looked around the room. It had been the hub of his father’s small universe – the room in which he slept, wrote, read and thought. Three of the walls were book-lined – volumes on natural history and farming, wild flowers and poetry; a few were new, most old, some leatherbound. In front of the large window, which stretched almost to the floor, stood a Victorian roll-top desk. The papers on it were neatly categorised into orderly piles, but pigeon-holes were stuffed with a mixture of feathers and luggage labels, a pale blue eggshell on a wad of cotton wool, the stub of a candle in an old brass stick. A pot of pencils stood like a vase of faded flowers to one side of the ink-spattered blotter, on which rested the old Waterman pen that his father had used for as long as Kit could remember.

  He felt a stab of sadness, got up and walked towards it. He turned round the chair in front of the desk and lowered himself into it, then leaned forward on the battered leather top and gazed into his father’s world, as though looking for guidance. None came.

  He swivelled round and took in the rest of the room – the old brown dressing-gown on the back of the faded pine door, the piles of magazines stacked on the threadbare Indian rug that covered the floor – the Countryman and Farmer’s Weekly, the proceedings of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, and obscure publications with strange titles. It reminded him of the visit he and his father had made when he was small, to Churchill’s home at Chartwell. There, Churchill’s study remained exactly as he had left it, even to the glass of whisky on the desk.