Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

‘You can dig a trench all around this garden o’ yours, three feet deep, and that’ll put ’em off. But it’ll cost a lot more’n fifty pound, and it won’t help your trees much. Or you can pour diesel down the tunnels. They hate that. Or I once knew a gentleman who just laid the garden to concrete.’

‘Really? Concrete?’

‘He was that desperate, sir. But he liked his concrete, sir. He came from Croydon, and that’s what he was used to. “Mr Entincknapp,” he says to me, “no more bloody moles and no more bloody mowing,” and I says to him, “Just you wait ’til it’s summertime, it’ll be so bloody hot out in this garden o’ yours, you won’t be able to stand it, you’re gonta bake like a bloody steak and kidney pie,” and it so ’appens I was right about that one. It was south-facing, and it got so bloody hot it peeled the paint off his windows. Served him right, silly bugger.’

Royston Chittock persisted with his traps, but after the passage of another month it seemed that there really was to be no end to the invasions of his garden, and there never was going to be a nice lawn good enough to putt on.

So it was that one day Mr Joshuah Entincknapp arrived with a basket containing one very large, short-haired, amber-eyed, smoky-blue cat with a huge head, an uneven moustache, bristling whiskers, smart white dickie and white spats.

It was released in the drawing room, and introduced to its host. ‘Mr Chittock, sir, this is Sergeant Corker. Corker, this is Mr Chittock.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Sergeant,’ said Chittock, bending slightly at the waist, as he looked down at the cat. The cat gazed back with the kind of expression one reserves for those who are beneath serious notice.

‘Sergeant Corker likes to sleep in an armchair,’ said the moleman. ‘He likes to come in and out through the window, so you’ll have to leave one open, and he only eats Felix. I’ve brought you his bowl, and he doesn’t like to eat out of anything else.’

‘Oh, do I have to feed him? Doesn’t he eat the moles?’

‘No, sir, he only catches ’em. You’ll find he has a very generous nature, sir.’

‘A generous nature?’

‘Yes, indeed, sir, you’ll see what I mean soon enough.’

The moleman scooped Sergeant Corker up into his arms, and the two men went out into the garden. Over the fence, Mr Entincknapp displayed the meadow of molehills to the cat, and a kind of quivering excitement came over it. Its eyes seemed to be popping out of its head with eagerness, and it was clearly straining upon the start in the moleman’s arms. ‘You get to work, then, Corky,’ said the moleman, allowing it to leap down. The cat twisted through the pickets of the fence, and trotted out into the meadow. ‘You probably won’t see much of him,’ said Mr Entincknapp.

Every morning and evening Sergeant Corker reported in for his Felix, and every now and then Mr Chittock had to resign himself to reading his newspaper in his second-favourite armchair. In truth he rather liked having the cat around. It was quite a responsive and friendly animal, purring gratifyingly when addressed or caressed, and chirruping and rubbing up against his legs when on the cadge. It had a very focused and tranquil attitude and somehow made the house seem more complete. Out in the meadow it would sit upright, patient and motionless amid the molehills like a feline heron. Often Sergeant Corker could be seen sitting companionably with Troodos, the Barkwells’ cat, a specialist in voles.

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?’