From the depths of a chair through a cloud of tobacco smoke it floated up. ‘We seen ‘em come, we seen ‘em go.’ Within a month he was gone.
From time to time others come, seeing perhaps an opportunity to exploit in a seemingly neglected area. But this man is too ambitious: he needs more space than he will find. He is a big man and his big car needs wider roads. And this man wants to get rich quick, but here he will find he can get nothing quick. He is a fast man and his fast car needs straighter roads. The fast car creeping behind a tractor, the big car backing clumsily to where the road is wide enough for two to pass: here they both look ridiculous.
So we are a community of small people: we run small businesses, live in small houses, drive small cars and are content with small incomes. We are in no hurry. We are like that community of small plants that grow and flourish among our rocks, thrusting fine roots deep into rocky cracks. We like it here, Lesley and I. We like living among people similar to ourselves. Though we might have grown bigger, I doubt if anywhere else we would have been happier.
3. Animal Life
In my father’s words: ‘To say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” and “Please, sir” and “May I? sir” was hell itself to one who had been as spoiled by good fortune as I.’
And in my words: ‘He could radiate enthusiasm, but he could never impose discipline. My father’s relationships were always between equals, however old or young, distinguished or undistinguished the other person.’
This did not mean that he judged all men equal. Very far from it. He was very conscious of differences both in class and in ability. It meant rather that his contacts with others were side to side, not end to end; for it gave him no pleasure either to look up or to look down. Of his first meeting with one of his Lance Corporals during the war he wrote: ‘We found that we shared a passion for Jane Austen.’ This, rather than the military chain of command, was the link that joined them.
I don’t know whether all humanity can be neatly divided into side-by-siders and end-to-enders. But certainly I am a side-by-sider like my father – and not only with humans but also with animals. It is this that makes me prefer cats to dogs.
Although undoubtedly dog and man can live together as equals, it is more usual for dog to worship and man to command. No man ever commanded a cat. You can shout at a cat, you can even land a wallop if you are quick enough, and the cat may vanish through the window, or it may ignore you and begin washing its tail, or it may stare at you in pained surprise. But it will never apologize, never promise not to do it again.
Some people, unable to boss their cat, try to pretend that their cat bosses them. But just as no cat ever accepted discipline, so no cat ever imposed it. A mother cat can’t even keep her kittens in order. It is no argument to say that your cat always insists on the most comfortable chair. Naturally, given a choice, it prefers the good to the less good: cats aren’t stupid. Our cats, as a matter of fact, prefer to sit on the various unpaid bills, unanswered letters and unfilled-in forms we so often seem to leave lying around. I’m not sure what that proves.
Hodge was our first cat – I mean the first that Lesley and I shared. ‘Hodge’ was his ‘given’ name. A cat usually has one ‘given’ name and then a succession of ‘calling’ names, which are not normally for publication or use outside the family. As I have already said, in his early days he lived over the bookshop. Having no other cats to play with, except for an hour or two every evening, and with no possibilities of hunting, except once when the bookshop suffered from a plague of rats, he was forced to devise his own entertainment. Many a less enterprising animal would have gone to sleep; but Hodge was a ginger cat. Not surprisingly he was often reluctant to come home at night. It was not that we couldn’t find him. He came to within an inch or two and then, as we reached to pick him up, he would dance off, rush up a lamp post and dangle upside down from the top. In the day time he would sometimes come down to the shop – where he wasn’t really allowed – and get behind the books on our shelves. They were the shelves we had inherited and not yet replaced, too deep for books but leaving just enough additional space for a cat: and browsing customers were often surprised by a ginger face popping out or a ginger paw helping them choose.
Downstairs he had to entertain himself. Upstairs we played with him. One Christmas Uncle Bob sent us a joke card. ‘A Present from the Sphinx’, it said on the front, and when you opened it a bat flew out. We examined it. It was made of strips of cane covered with black tissue paper, and an elastic band turned a small propeller so that it could fly from one side of the room to the other. Hodge examined it too. . . .
Bats are delicate things, and though Hodge always did his best not to damage them too severely and though I always did my best with fresh tissue paper and glue, and though we rationed him to three flights a day, we were constantly appealing to Uncle Bob – or to anyone else who might happen to be in that part of London – to send us fresh supplies.
The game, which we worked out together, went like this.
The bat was wound up and put in its card. The card was put on a chair and a book was put on top to hold it closed. Hodge, who had been watching these preparations, then jumped onto the chair and sat on the book. Then, very delicately, very slowly, to spin out the pleasure, he would pull the card from under the book, holding it shut with his paw, then slowly lift his paw, peer inside, remove the bat with his mouth, and sit back holding the bat between his paws – all this without letting the elastic unwind. Finally, for the game had to have an ending, he would release it. The bat would fly off and he would watch it go.
His other mouse-substitute was a crumpet, a fresh rubbery crumpet in a paper bag. All cats love paper bags. We were playing with him one lunch hour in our dining-room. He had been getting the crumpet out of the bag, playing with the crumpet then playing with the empty bag. It was a very small bag, nowhere near big enough to get right inside. He had got his head in it and was blundering round the room playing a sort of blind-man’s-buff, and there we had left him and gone back to work. Sometime later a man came into the shop, very agitated.
‘Excuse me, but did you know there was a cat sitting on top of your window?’
I reassured him. It was a sash window and we often left it open a few inches, and Hodge, wanting to see the world, would jump up and squeeze himself between top of window and top of window frame. It looked perilous but was really quite safe.
‘He often sits up there,’ I said. ‘It’s quite all right.’
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘but did you know that he had a paper bag over his head?’
It was the arrival of Clare and our move to Spriggs Holly that started the deluge, and quite soon our cat family had gone up to four, then six, then seven – and all this not counting kittens. Kittens of course were the explanation, for you can’t not have them.
‘We’ll easily find homes for them,’ said Lesley. And she made another of her familiar kitten notices and stuck it in the shop window. And it is true that usually we did, and only sometimes we didn’t.
I can’t begin to remember all our kittens. It is hard enough to remember all our cats. Their entrances were always a delight; their exits not always too great a sorrow; and each was its own unique self. After Hodge we seemed to specialize in tabbies and to the visitor they may all have looked alike. This was perhaps a good thing. If the visitor met them one at a time, he might well think that he was seeing the same cat six times over and we had no need to confess the truth. But of course to us they not only looked different, they had totally different characters. Take Cosmos for instance.
Cosmos (he is named after the purple flower, not the universe) can open doors. None of the others can do this.
Our doors are fastened by what are known as Suffolk latches. On one side is a metal lever that you lift and this in turn lifts the latch. On the other side the lever is flattened into a knob that you press and below it is a handle that you hold. The knob is four feet from the ground, and on this side the door opens away f
rom you.
Practice makes perfect and most skills are acquired by degrees; but for a cat there are no easy steps to learning how to operate a Suffolk latch. Cautious sniffing and experiment with paw are impossible, for the thing is out of reach. You can only look at it and ponder and try to puzzle it out. And this is presumably what Cosmos had been doing in private for as long as it takes a cat to master such things. The first we knew was when the kitchen door suddenly opened and he came swinging into the dining-room still clinging to the latch handle.
Of course once he had learned how, I can understand why he is for ever doing it. Anyone who has a party trick likes to show off; and he is naturally keenest when we have visitors. So we are able to introduce him with absolute confidence. ‘This is Cosmos, the cat who opens doors. Would you like him to show you?’ We put him out and close the door. ‘Come along, Cosmos,’ we call. There is a rattle at the latch and a thump. Then a paw pushes the door open, and in he comes, tail held high and running very fast, like a circus horse entering the arena, collecting applause and clearly very pleased with himself.
If you are lucky he might even show you how he does it, crouching beneath the latch and looking up, then springing, holding on to the handle with his right paw, pressing down the knob with his left. There he hangs until the door is free, then slides down and pushes it open.
Cosmos. We have him now on our roof as a weather-cock, a weather cat pointing towards the wind in an attitude that is all his own, tail erect then curving forwards, front paw extended horizontally. He points with his tail and he points with his paw. But in reality he is not pointing at all. Cats don’t point, which is why they cannot understand when humans do. In reality he is saying that he would like a cheese biscuit. His special cheese biscuits are kept in a plastic box on which Lesley had once written the words ‘Stewed plums’. We didn’t rub them out. I think we had a theory it might fool him. But it didn’t. You can’t fool cats.
As a child I lived in the country, and not having any brothers or sisters to play with it was perhaps natural that I should feel a special friendship towards animals. Indeed, inspired by Dr Dolittle, there were times when I felt I might one day learn their language.
The relationship between human and animal can at times be remarkably close, and many are the books that have been written – and many are the copies of them that we have sold – to prove it. Luckily for Lesley I have never wanted to exchange her company for that of a colony of chimpanzees in a distant jungle, nor even to turn our house and garden into a sort of Whipsnade. On the other hand, fond though I am of cats, there is something peculiarly fascinating about sharing a part of your life with a truly wild creature – even if only a caterpillar or a tadpole.
Caterpillars and tadpoles were where I started and where I still often return. A couple of years ago I was walking home from the bus stop at the end of our lane. It was late summer and the willowherb that grows beside the stream was in full flower; and here I came upon a man and a woman, both of them up to their waist in the willowherb, obviously looking for something. The man saw me and came towards me. He was carrying a jar. I didn’t know him, but even before he showed me, I knew what the jar held – the caterpillar of the elephant hawk moth.
We exchanged a few words and he told me that he lived near Hampstead Heath and had the idea of taking half a dozen of these caterpillars home with him in the hope that they might hatch and breed and so establish a colony there. I told Lesley all this when I got home and a few minutes later she set off down the lane to catch her bus and met the man.
‘I gather you’ve just been talking to my husband,’ she said.
He smiled a little shyly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and paused, and then, as if feeling that an explanation was called for:
‘I thought he looked like the sort of person who would be interested in my caterpillar.’
A nice compliment. Exactly what distinguishes the caterpillar enthusiast from the rest of humanity when seen at a distance I don’t know. But I am happy to think that I am recognizable as such.
However, I must not give the impression that wherever I find people looking for things I know at once what they are looking for. In this case I only knew because the previous week I had myself come upon this particular caterpillar in almost the same place. Altogether that year we found three and they were housed in Clare’s bedroom.
The hope with caterpillars, of course, is that you can keep them until they finally hatch into moths. The additional hope is that you may be present at one of the more exciting moments in their otherwise rather monotonous lives. I was once holding the chrysalis of a cabbage white when quite suddenly what I can only describe as the door in its undercarriage sprang open, and so, while we were having lunch in the garden, we were able to watch the butterfly slowly emerge, climb up the back of the chair where I had put it, and hang out its two little bundles of wings to drip-dry like washing on a line until the creases had come out and they were as smart as if they had been starched and ironed. With one of our hawk moth caterpillars I was present on a different occasion. I had found this one when it was still quite small and bright green – unlike the other two, which were fully grown and brown. The little one ate and grew. Then one day I noticed it had stopped eating and I was puzzled. It was still green but somehow it seemed now to be flushed with a sort of inner brownness. That was how it looked and that was exactly how it was, for as I watched the green skin split open and folded back, and there standing in its place was a caterpillar half as big again and dark brown. It happened as quickly and as magically as the transformation scene in a pantomime. Then – because in other respects caterpillars are not like princes – it turned and ate its discarded suit.
You can keep tadpoles until they become frogs or toads, but then I think they are best left free to wander through the wet grass and seek their fortunes. When they have become fully grown they can return.
Here we have few frogs but innumerable toads. There is a toad pond a quarter of a mile away opposite the big house at the top of the hill, and this is where they breed; and in the early spring on a damp night our lane becomes thronged with them as they make their way to this pond. Sometimes they travel singly. Sometimes the smaller male rides on the female’s back. Occasionally you find a trio, with two males riding one above the other. The lane follows a fold in the hills. For both toad and man it is the natural route to the pond. So perhaps it is not surprising that each chose it and that though, over the centuries, man has changed it, toad still uses it. Alas now it is a dangerous route for toads and at times it can look like a battlefield, but still the ancient instinct tells them that this is the way they must go.
Sometimes, driving home at night, I have found so many blocking the way that I have had to stop the car and get out and move them into the side of the road or lob them gently over the wall into the field where the pond is. One night I moved over a hundred.
Toads are quite prepared to spend a month or two in human company, and on several occasions they have shared Clare’s bedroom. Given a comfortable box and the right sort of food they are quite content. It is always a great moment and brings an immense sense of satisfaction and pride when a wild creature first takes food from one’s hand. It is – or it appears to be – the moment when it says ‘I trust you’. A side-to-side relationship is established and one feels immensely flattered. This is why toads make such good companions. If you are prepared to oblige them they will quickly oblige you. All they ask of their food is that it should move, and for this reason worms and caterpillars are better than slugs. You hold one end of the worm and allow the other end to wave about, and after a minute or two the toad will emerge and amble up. The worm moves, the toad comes closer. The worm moves again, the toad comes to within an inch and peers down at it. It is now within range of its tongue. The worm moves for the last time. There is a pop and it has vanished. . . . No, not quite: for there is half an inch still dangling and the toad uses its hands to cram this last bit into its mouth. There is a final gu
lp: it blinks its eyes: and that is that.
In this – as in many ways – the toad resembles the owl. Both are nocturnal, both a little mysterious, both a little human in appearance; and both swallow their food whole and after a last gulp and blink sit absolutely still with a look of smug innocence on their faces.
You may remember Old Brown, after he had caught the infuriating Squirrel Nutkin, ‘sitting on his doorstep, quite still, with his eyes closed, as if nothing had happened. But Nutkin was in his waistcoat pocket.’ Beatrix Potter clearly knew about owls.
We found ours – a tawny owl, like Old Brown – in the lane under the great plane tree just below Embridge. It was an evening in early summer. Clare was back at school. We had bought Embridge but were still living at Spriggs Holly; and we had come out after work to look around. We were sitting on a grass bank when we heard what sounded like a great cursing and swearing coming from somewhere below us. And there in the middle of the road was a small, grey, oval object that was clearly very angry.
I could see the hole where its nest was but it was impossible without a ladder to reach it. The young owl was a mere nestling, covered with fluffy down and many weeks away from being able to fly: and so it was not hard to persuade ourselves that there was only one thing to be done. I picked it up and we took it home.
I had kept an owl once before, one summer term at school when I was about twelve – I and two other boys. We had been allowed to keep it in the carpenter’s shop, carpentry being a winter activity only, and there it had had the run of the benches and could sleep among the chisels and no one would mind – until next term – about the mess it was making. So I knew something about their general behaviour, and in particular I knew about their curious eating habits. Their natural diet is small mammals, small birds and the larger insects, and a sympathetic butcher will be able to provide most of their nourishment. But unfortunately nourishment is not the only thing they need. They must also have roughage – bones, fur, feathers, beetle wing cases and so on. This they form into firm, dry, neatly shaped pellets which they later cough up. Roughage is the problem. A naturalist friend recommended match sticks and cotton wool – with nearly fatal results. For though they went down all right they formed a great mass that couldn’t get up again. Luckily I saw it at the back of the owl’s throat and was able to reach down with my fingers and help it out. After that we used to comb our cats’ fur and put it round scraps of meat. And at the same time we passed the message to other cat-owning friends that they were to let us know whenever a mouse was brought in.
The Path Through the Trees Page 27
