With any wild animal in captivity meal-time is of course the great social occasion of the day. So that if you dislike handling its food or if you are upset by the way it eats it, or if it refuses to eat in your company or only eats in the middle of the night, then relations between you are unlikely to be very close. Owls, I am pleased to say, are as obliging as toads. Although both of them normally eat after dark, they are quite willing to adjust their timetable to suit your convenience. Luckily, unlike toads, a young owl does not insist on live food. Give it a dead mouse and it will be happy to show you how it deals with it – and Clare and I were fascinated to watch.
One of the reasons why one feels such an affection for owls – and indeed toads too – is because they look so human. One can almost imagine them as little old men. And this is partly because of the position of their eyes. Owls, unlike other birds, have their two eyes side by side in the front of their head. This gives them a much more limited field of vision – they can see only what is going on in front of them. But what they do see they see with both eyes at once. In other words they have stereoscopic vision and this enables them to judge distances.
This leads to two rather pleasing characteristics. The first is that if you walk round an owl you can pretty well unscrew its head. The second is that a young owl, when it has nothing better to do, spends its time distance-judging.
We kept our owl in the spare bedroom, a room in which there was no carpet and little furniture. The bedroom door opened into our sitting-room. When it had grown enough feathers to be able to flutter around, we sometimes left this door open and it would fly up and perch on the top. From here it could survey us and watch what we were doing. And then it could calculate how far away we were and how far away the cat was and things like that. It did this by leaning forwards and moving its head from side to side – thus, I presume, increasing the stereoscopic effect. I’ve not seen an adult owl do this but the young do it regularly. There were two young owls that used to come across to our plane tree every evening from their nest in a wood lower down the valley. They spent the night there while their parents went hunting, their wheezing cries going on non-stop until dawn. And if ever we stood beneath the tree and looked up, they would look down and start wagging their heads at us.
Once a wild animal has consented to take food from the hand, naturally one feels that the next step is to pick it up and stroke it. But not every animal welcomes this. Although I have fed a toad while it has been sitting on my hand, they are said to dislike the dryness of human skin. Owls will happily perch on your finger though their grip may be a little painful, or they will ride on your shoulder. I used to take ours out into the garden in this way and let it scramble among the branches of the big apple tree. But if you really want to make an owl happy you must scratch its forehead just above its beak.
Instinct of course teaches them how to fly, but I’m not sure if it teaches them how to hunt. Possibly we should have attempted some lessons, but our fortnight’s holiday was approaching. By then we had had our owl for about six weeks and it could fly quite well. Clare, after her half-term holiday, was back at school again. We were off to Italy. Goolie was moving in to look after the cats. Could we ask her to look after an owl as well? Hardly. So we persuaded the Field Centre at Slapton to give it board and lodging.
After that I saw it only once more. I called at the Field Centre on our return and found it greatly changed. It was now an adult, well feathered and with a wild look in its eyes. It glared at me from the top of a bookcase and clicked its beak angrily. They had fed it while we were away but had made no attempt to handle it and it clearly had no wish to be handled again. Very soon now it would be flying away, and all I wanted was one small sign of recognition which I could take for a farewell. I climbed on to a table to get a little closer; the owl shuffled away along the bookcase still clicking. I talked to it and held out a hand and moved a little closer – and, yes, it allowed me to scratch its forehead just above the beak. . . .
A few days later and it was gone.
Though perhaps it might not seem wrong to have toads and caterpillars in residence at the same time, one could certainly not invite a vole to share a bedroom with an owl. So it was lucky that the vole came some years later.
Clare and I had been doing some shopping in Dartmouth and were driving home in the van. In the back of the van was her tricycle and when we had reached the bottom of the hill I had parked the van and then she had cycled and I had walked the last mile along the valley to Embridge. Later that afternoon I walked out alone to collect the van; and on the way I met the vole.
It was sitting on the road among some leaves. It was perfectly round, like a brown golf ball, and it took no notice of me at all. So first I wondered how near I could get before it ran away. And then I wondered if I could touch it. And then I wondered if I could pick it up. And still it took no particular notice but searched among my fingers for things to eat and tried nibbling one or two of them. At that moment a large dog came down the road followed by a car and I had to squeeze into the hedge to let them both go by, and the vole ran up my arm. The car stopped and the driver looked out and said ‘What have you got there?’ ‘A vole,’ I said, and it ran up the other arm. The driver said ‘Oh’, the dog mercifully said nothing, and they both went on.
As the vole was still with me, I wondered whether perhaps I could get it home to show Clare. So I picked a handful of grass and made a nest for it in my jersey and walked on until I had reached the van. Driving home was a little difficult with one hand and half my attention on the vole, but luckily we didn’t meet any more cars.
The vole was still remarkably unconcerned, as if travelling in vans was an everyday occurrence. I put it in a basket and carried it upstairs, and while Clare and I were looking at it, it climbed on to the edge of the basket; and at that moment one of our cats came into the room. . . . So then I found a cardboard box with a lid; and with the vole in the box and the box in the spare bedroom and the bedroom door firmly shut I felt it was safe for us to drive down to Dartmouth to collect Lesley from the shop. That evening I set to work to make a proper house.
The vole lived in Clare’s bedroom and was the most delightful companion we have ever had.
Its house was a wooden box turned on its side with a glass front and an intermediate shelf. It was furnished with (among other things) a jam-jar also on its side and filled with good nesting material – dead grasses, moss and so on – and one night all this was taken out and carried up to the shelf, and here the vole made its own nest, which we seldom disturbed. On the bottom I put a layer of earth and some turves of grass dug up from the garden, and this had to be renewed two or three times a week. The vole went up to its nest while I was doing its housework but came down again as soon as I had finished, eager to explore its new surroundings. The jam-jar remained empty for a while, though the vole would often hop inside after a meal to clean its whiskers. Then, as summer turned to autumn, instinct warned it that winter was on its way, and so instead of eating all the food I gave it, it began to store it; and it stored it in its jam-jar. Each day I put a variety of things into its pot – a bean, a bit of apple, a bit of artichoke, a rose hip, a hazel nut – and when I had done this and closed the glass front, out would come the vole from its nest to see what there was. It would have a quick nibble at this and another quick nibble at that and then, bean by bean and nut by nut, carry the rest off to its larder – until in the end the jar was quite full. On one occasion there was a stick across the mouth of the jar and the vole was carrying a chestnut. Here was a problem: over or under the stick? It tried over first, standing up on its back legs, chestnut in mouth and pushing. But the stick was too high and the nut kept falling back the wrong side. So then it tried under, pushing again. But the gap was too narrow and the nut wouldn’t go. So then it dropped the nut, hopped into the jar and tried pulling. Success at last, and I felt like cheering.
Often if you examine the ground under a hazel Bush, you will come upon nuts with holes
in their tops and empty inside, and sometimes on a ledge in a bank you will come upon a cluster of these empty shells. This is the work of a bank-vole. It is slow work of course because the shell is very hard, but it grinds away methodically, as a carpenter chips away at his wood, shell-dust. . . . falling all round it, until it is through to the kernel. It needs only a very small hole, too small one would think for the vole to get its head through to reach to the last of the kernel. But it manages, although I was never able to see exactly how.
Almost its favourite food was the bark from an apple twig. We gave it a twig in the first place to make a ladder to its shelf. But this was not really necessary, for over a short distance a vole can run up a vertical surface. Indeed it can even run upside down under a horizontal one. So instead its ladder became its lunch; and when it had been reduced to a white skeleton we renewed it.
As with owls so with the vole came the problem of our holiday. Holidays were difficult enough even with only a houseful of cats. But though we felt that Goolie might draw the line at an owl, we were hopeful that we could persuade our friend, George – who with his wife, Jessie, would be looking after Embridge in our absence – to accept additional responsibility for a vole. We made it sound very simple. We promised to have all the food ready. And George said yes, he was sure he could manage. So we left for Italy confident that all would be well.
The vole by then had been with us a year.
There was, I knew, a small gap between the top of the glass and the top of its box, but neither it nor I had paid much attention to it.
It is a pleasant thought that the vole missed me and came out to look for me. Or perhaps, less forgivably, it was deliberately trying to get George into trouble. Or perhaps it felt jealous and wanted a holiday too. But I expect it was really only chance that it chose this particular fortnight to do what it could just as easily have done at any other time. It got out, discovered a bean that George had left ready for its next meal, took possession of it and went exploring. Some time later George came in and noticed that the bean was missing.
George is a man whose thoughts move in planes far, far above the level of assistant zoo keeper and he was never the ideal person to put in charge of a vole. Yet he did now exactly the right thing. He made no attempt to look for it. He simply continued to feed it, putting its food on the floor. And to his great relief he found that it was being taken.
Where was it being taken? That was for me to discover on our return. And the answer was Clare’s chest of drawers. The vole had nibbled a hole in the front of the bottom drawer and this had given it access to all the other drawers. Never has a bank vole enjoyed such luxurious accommodation. Six drawers with plenty of good storage space in each and a wonderful supply of gaily coloured nesting material. One by one I took the drawers out, starting at the bottom, and in one drawer was a nest made from Clare’s woolly hat and in another was a nest made from Clare’s woolly scarf, and in all of them was a little larder of nuts and things. Not until I had got out the last drawer did I find the vole, clinging to the top of the now empty chest.
Both for humans and for voles holidays come to an end and then it is time to go home. But as a reminder of those happy, carefree days and to add a little gaiety to our surroundings we bring back with us some souvenir of our holiday. With Lesley and me it is often a piece of Italian pottery. Once it was a tapestry bed cover. Fair’s fair, I thought; and so the vole was allowed to keep a few fragments from Clare’s hat and a few fragments from her scarf. And with these it wove itself a magnificent new rainbow-coloured nest.
In the early days of its stay with us I thought it might be nice to take the vole out from time to time, for it had seemed so willing to be handled when we first met. But it never really enjoyed these excursions; nor from our point of view were they necessary. For it was always glad to come to the front of its little theatre and perform for us there; and we would sit and watch it entranced. The owl was really mine. But the vole was Clare’s and she spent more hours happily watching it during school holidays and weekends air home than ever Lesley or I did. And at night she would lie awake listening to it grinding away at its nuts. She would watch it and listen to it and talk to it, sitting in her chair in front of its house. It was the perfect companion for someone who could watch and listen and talk as well as anybody – and probably a great deal more happily – but who couldn’t manage the feeding or cleaning. And I am grateful to our little bank vole for entertaining her not only so well but – by bank vole standards if not indeed by any standards – for such a remarkably long time. It lived with us for two years and eight months.
4. Life
One of the differences between man and the rest of the animal world is man’s ability to accumulate knowledge and pass it on. Each generation starts where the previous generation left off, and it needed only one Newton watching an apple fall for today’s mathematical schoolboy to be able to calculate its speed on reaching the ground. Most of what we learn we learn from others: it is the quick and easy way. Someone shows us how, or tells us how, or we look it up in a book.
Looking things up in books is something that comes naturally to a bookseller, and in this way I have extended my knowledge of a variety of subjects. But now and again I have not wanted advice. I have wanted the answer to be my answer, not somebody else’s; and I have wanted the satisfaction of finding it on my own. To some extent this has been my attitude towards bookselling itself. It has also been my attitude towards what is going to be the subject of this chapter.
In my previous book, The Enchanted Places, I had something to say about my religious beliefs. After all, one who possesses a name that in many people’s minds is indissolubly linked with the saying of prayers could hardly avoid the subject. And it was a subject I returned to in a later chapter when, wanting to illustrate my father’s view on his son’s education, I told the story of my conversion from Christianity to Humanism and referred in particular to a book he had sent me during the war – Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man.
To my surprise this little story attracted a quite disproportionate amount of attention. The Martyrdom enjoyed a brisk sale at the Harbour Bookshop – until, to my sorrow, it went out of print. While to counter-balance this came a number of letters from Christians who were clearly upset by what I had written.
I am now going to say rather more. But before I do so I must make it quite plain that I no more expect the reader to share my beliefs than I have expected him to share my love of bookselling or Dartmouth or Embridge. Why should he? We are all different. I only ask that he should read patiently and with as much sympathy as he can manage.
In the second half of The Enchanted Places I wanted to write about my father. I had probably known him better than anybody then alive. Yet when I came to think about him I realized how much there was I didn’t know; and I wondered for a time whether to consult with others and add their impressions to mine. In the end I decided against this, partly because I felt that if I was going to consult anybody I ought to do the job properly and consult as many people as possible – a mammoth task – and partly because I wasn’t really writing that sort of book at all. Mine was a personal memoir, not a biography. I decided therefore to confine myself to my own memories; and this, besides being a great deal easier, had the added advantage that nobody could tell me I had got them wrong.
So then I began to sort out my raw materials. There were the things we had done together, mainly during school holidays. There were my recollections of the things he had said in the letters he had written to me when I was away from home. There were his published writings. And finally the fact that I was his son and resembled him in many ways helped me to guess many of his unspoken feelings. My intention at this point was simply to string all this together and leave it to the reader to draw what conclusions he wished. But as I wrote, so I found myself being led on to form my own conclusions. I was like an archaeologist who, not content with excavating a handful of pottery fragments, goes on to deduce how the completed
vase must have looked. No one could dispute the fragments, but somebody else, holding fragments of their own, might dispute the vase.
This search for my father has, I believe, something in common with man’s search for God. I could say that I ‘knew’ him as many say that they ‘know’ God. I knew him through his published words, through our personal contacts and through his reflection in myself. And this is how the Christian knows his God: through the Bible, through personal experiences and through himself. And the Christian too, whether describing God in words or pictures, fills in the gaps between the fragments.
Is it the truth? What is the truth? What do we mean by the word ‘Truth’ anyway?
Having suggested that a parallel exists, let me return again to my father. If the parallel continues, so much the better: but I am not forcing it.
What was the truth about my father? It seemed to me when I first asked myself this question that there were two kinds of truth. On the one hand there was factual truth – the information one finds in Who’s Who or can obtain with a tape-measure. And on the other hand there were the opinions and impressions of those who knew him. ‘He was born in 1882’ may at first sight seem truer than ‘He was a kindly man’ because the second statement could be disputed. But if one qualifies it by adding the words ‘In my view. . . . then it becomes as true as the first. These opinions and impressions might therefore be described as personal truths, for they are truths concerning a personal relationship between the observed and the observer.
The Path Through the Trees Page 28
