Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

I think I might have told you about our dog. He was a great big fool of a hound. We called him Archibald Scott-Moncrieff, which soon got shortened to Archie. He was a black retriever who took his vocation seriously. At one time Archie got delusions of grandeur, and came back from walks with fifteen-foot branches of oak in his maw. Then he would get stuck at the gate.

All this retrieving gave me a humorous notion, and so it was that one day at lunch I said to my mother, ‘Mother, do you think it would be a fine idea to train Archie to retrieve eligible spinsters?’

My mother looked up from slurping her soup, and eyed me. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have my doubts.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Because a dog’s “eligible” might be a funny thing, and not to your satisfaction, I should think. He’d want her to smell of lady dogs.’

‘Nonetheless,’ I said.

‘No harm in having a try, then,’ she observed, ‘but don’t hang any washing on it.’

Of course, the difficulty wasn’t with the idea, but with the execution. How does one train a dog to retrieve women who are specifically good-looking, intelligent, amenable, amusing, playful but faithful, fond of housework, and prepared to put up with my mother? The only way to do this would have been to identify such women myself, and work out a system of rewards for Archie whenever he got hold of one by the sleeve and dragged her in my direction. Clearly, if I had to find such women in order to train the dog, then I might as well just do the finding myself, and leave Archie out of it.

I decided to train him to find golf balls instead, and that’s why I have five carrier bags of them in the cupboard under the stairs. I took him to the local nine-holer, which was a rough-hewn business designed by an aristocrat who used to own the big house. The course was like a First World War battlefield, in that it was sloppy with mud, and cratered with water-filled holes, there were rabbit scrapes all over the greens, and sheep browsing the rough. One par three was so constructed that you had to play your tee shot over the roof of the great house. The windows had to have steel shutters over them on playing days. If you muffed your shot, it might ricochet back over your head, and plop into the pond behind the tee, or you might have to go and chip your way round the house, avoiding the peacocks and the statues of naked girls with no arms. The best I ever did that hole was a birdie two, and the worst was forty-eight, if you don’t count the ball that got stuck in the gob of the gargoyle on the west wing.

I soon found that no amount of training could get Archie to distinguish between a lost ball and one that was still in play. It was very embarrassing when he raced away on to another fairway, and came back with someone’s perfectly placed drive, or their ball that was just about to roll into the hole for an eagle. Eventually I had to tie Archie to my golf bag, so that I could catch up with him when he tried to hare away after another illegitimate target. Sometimes he would fly off into the woods on the trail of a wild shot, and then get lost altogether, when his attention was distracted by a roe deer. Once he chased a deer all the way to Chiddingfold, and was spotted by one of the teetotalling brothers from the garage, who brought him back to Mother in the cab of his tow truck.

One day, as I was hacking up the first and someone else was coming down the third, Archie slipped his leash and scampered away with his ears flapping behind him. Off he lolloped, and before I knew it, he was back with a nice Dunlop 65, American size, all covered with slobber, which he deposited at my feet. ‘Good boy,’ I said, since he was so pleased with himself, and I didn’t therefore have the heart to tell him off. I picked the ball up, wiped the dribble off on to my trousers, and began to walk towards its owner, who was striding towards me.

I was preparing my apologies, when I noticed that the golfer was a woman, and so I ran back and hid in a holly bush. Male golfers are usually quite jolly and placid, but female golfers can be terrifying in a variety of ways, and it is best to avoid them at all costs, just in case they turn out to be someone with a degree in Art and an amazing collection of conspiracy theories.

I didn’t escape, though, and before I knew it she was poking at me through the prickly leaves with a four-iron. ‘I know you’re in there,’ she said firmly, ‘I can see your shoes.’ Her voice sounded quite pleasant and mellifluous, with a happy burbling in it rather like a brook running over pebbles.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, from the depths of the bush, ‘but my dog can’t help retrieving things. It’s his hobby, and I can’t stop him. I’ll give your ball back.’ And with that I tossed the ball through the branches, in the hope that she would be satisfied and go away.

‘You’re being very silly,’ she said. ‘It’s your dog I want to talk to you about. I’ve got a bitch just the same, and I’ve been meaning to breed from her. Your dog looks just right. A very fine specimen. I’ll pay you a stud fee and twenty pounds per pup. How about that?’

‘Archie would enjoy that,’ I said, disentangling myself from the bushes and coming face to face with a woman of about thirty years of age. She had blue eyes, and a mouth that curled up at the corners, as though she was always smiling and her mouth had to be ready on the blocks. For a lady golfer she seemed surprisingly on the level.

That’s how it all started with Evie and me. All that hoo-ha and palaver about ovulation and being on heat, and making sure that there was penetration and fertilisation, gave us something in common, a good excuse to meet up and get to know each other. I think that talking frequently about mating must have got us all worked up subconsciously, and I can’t imagine how many pots of tea we drank while we eyed each other up across the kitchen table, with Mother hovering outside in the corridor.

On the big day, Archie did his stuff pretty amateurishly, I’d say. He started at the wrong end, Evie’s bitch got muddled, and we had to rearrange them. All the same, Evie was thrilled, and later that afternoon we went to the shop and bought a bottle of Spanish champagne. She made a shepherd’s pie with caramel-flavoured Instant Whip to follow, and, well, you know how it is, how one thing leads to another.

THE GIRT PIKE was caught in the days before the village pond had been sanitised. Once upon a time it was quite accepted that the village boys should spend their summers angling for rudd, squeezing pellets of dough on to size-twelve hooks, and casting out among the lilies. In the evenings the brassy rudd would skip for flies at the time of the hatch, and it seemed unbelievable that one small pond could hold so many fish. It was permissible in those days for people to throw sticks into the pond so that their dogs could fetch them, and the ragtaggle of semi-domesticated ducks would have to shift for themselves, paddling away in comical alarm. In later years the pond would be stocked with ornamental golden tench, little boys would be forbidden to fish, dogs would be forbidden to scare the ducks, and a fence would be erected around the banks to prevent erosion, and to prevent children from falling in. The pond became prettier, but in its prissified state it did not become better loved, and thenceforth it no longer played any part in cementing the friendships of the very young, or filling their holidays with sunshine and clean air.

Before it was sanitised, there was nearly always a party of little boys there in the summer months, usually on the bank nearest the road that led to the village green and the shop. There would be little girls there, too, making daisy chains or squinting against the sunlight as they cried ‘Ugh, oh yuk!’ every time a boy laid hands on a fish to unhook it. The girls never did understand why anyone could bear to get their hands slimy and smelly, and so they watched the boys with appropriate disdain and uncomprehending disgust. If any boy was using maggots or worms, there would of necessity arise a moment when one or more of the girls would be chased squealing round and round the pond by one or more of the boys, who would be threatening to put the worm or the maggot down their necks, or even down their knickers. These episodes would normally end with somebody falling over and hurting their knee or sliding down the muddy bank into the water.