Saturday, 27 April 2013

Dogs Delight 19 The Evensong experiment

    I open an ancient oak gate and slide into an empty pew near the back.
village church, evensong, clerestory, pew
The church is stone cold.  I lean back, breathing in strong polish and reading the lists of fallen from the First World War, inscribed in creamy stone above our heads.  The church is stripped-down medieval, clean and calm and beautiful; but the flower arrangers and apostles’ wives have filled the vases with depressing plants, late rusty brown dahlias and cotoneaster. 

I count the worshippers: ten of us are here for Evensong, including two apostles and a toddler in the front pew.  He is struggling in his mother’s arms and waving a chubby hand at the cruel beak of the lectern eagle as we mouth the first hymn:

                 Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
                 There is no shadow of turning with thee;

Jacob Hopkirk plays too low for almost all of the tiny congregation; all but the apostles and the large woman who runs the teashop in Laxley who is singing in a strong bass, not much off key.

                 Thou changest not thy compassions, they fail not,
                 As thou hast been thou for ever wilt be.
                 Great is thy faithfulness
                 Great is thy faithfulness

I look past the candlelight into the dark shadows behind the altar.  There is no shadow of turning with thee.  I try to pray, but how should I pray?  My words are commonplace: ‘Please help me.  Please help me to go.’  Where can I go?  Despite my supplication, my straining after certainty and resolve, there is no revelation.  St Agnes’ remains a cold museum.  The back of my neck is hot and tingling and I pray I do not faint.

Holy people say that every action and every thought can be a prayer, so I kneel and try to project my hopelessness and lack of belonging in the press of my forehead on the cold oak of the pew.  I do not belong.  I never will belong.  I hate this place.  I hate the walls and the house and Richard and his friends and his mother and even the boys.  I screw up my eyes but cannot force out a tear.  

And from the front of the church comes a furious cry, the wail of the angry baby who is reaching out his arm to the lectern.

‘Want parrot!’ he screams.  ‘Want parrot!  Want that parrot!’ 

The vicar stands up like a wraith, mildly smiling.  He coughs twice and begins to speak to us about parking, and the importance of patience, which is one of the virtues.  


                                                                             parrot, lectern, Evensong, vicar, Evensong service
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Friday, 26 April 2013

Dogs Delight 20 Tall dark and strange


There is one stranger in the church tonight, a tall dark newcomer with whom I share a moment of recognition. 
  Surely I would remember if I had seen him before!
As we are leaving the Reverend Newsome offers us each a long thin hand and we look questions at each other, all three.  The stranger has a shadowed sensitive face I already know, the facsimile of the engraving of Byron at the front of my Romantic Poetry book.  Can this be the impressively fast answer to my prayer?  But before we can speak there is a bustling behind us.  The regulars, dour cast of the village pantomime, are assiduous in wishing us goodbye and it seems to me that by the force of this farewell they are underlining their role as hosts at Saint Agnes’.  We are the guests, the stranger and I; prodigal children.  Remember, an inward voice is prompting them, the Father loves the prodigal son.  And so we are ostentatiously provided with service sheets and hymn books by the goodly folk; watched over and nodded at and nudged when we lose our place.  This welcome ensures that we leave somehow embarrassed and will not soon return.  When I look back up the path the stranger is not there. 

A cold breeze is getting up as I saunter reluctantly home, lifting and scattering the piles of dirty leaves.  The skulking smoker has gone and the notices about gun clubs and the WI’s threatened Oklahoma gleam in the yellow light of the street lamp. 

Bailey greets me in the hall, lowers his head slowly and ejects a mouldering starling on to the carpet.

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Thursday, 25 April 2013

Dogs Delight 21 Red sauce

It is the morning after Evensong and also after the curry.  Richard is swallowing the indigestion remedies he keeps in a cupboard in the kitchen, next to his range of red hot sauces: Thai and West Indian, Chinese chilli, and the newest bottle, the contents vermilion as the geraniums before they withered, with its label, ‘Insanity Sauce’: a jolly gift from a friend.  Ranked behind are more red sauces with names like Steaming Momma and Texan Big Bastard. 
I am sitting in the garden in a fine rain, huddled in my coat and considering my options as the marble angel sneers at the ugly line of conifers against the dull sky.  I am conjuring up a favourite image of Richard as a vampire waiting for me behind the end conifer, a line of red sauce dribbling from his mouth.  Evensong at St Agnes’ has not dispelled my fears or put me in possession of myself, so as a distraction from thoughts of my husband I make some bullet points:

·      Holiday 

·      Painting 

·      Visit

   …I suppose I could just go away for a while, to think, as they say.  I could explain to Richard that I must go, that it will benefit all of us: perhaps to somewhere with a high winding cliff path and raging seas where I could walk with my cold face taut against the spray, collar up and my hair windswept.  The seas must be raging at this time of year. 

   Perhaps I won’t tell Richard; or anyone.

   Shall I go on a retreat?  Or just catch a train somewhere?

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Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Dogs Delight 22 Weeding the countryside

   I am imprisoned in the village as surely as Hilary Green, who never leaves its boundaries as she weaves about tearing up groundsel and thistles and stickyweed.  This tidying of the village and the lanes is a serious matter.  Only rarely, after two or three glasses of cider and green ginger in the Lone Gelding snug, does she become skittish, hiding behind the hedge to throw trails of stickyweed at the coats of passers-by.  This exercise must give her some relief, I suppose. 

 

I have heard newcomers laughing about Hilary, but I consider her sinister.  Perhaps I am afraid that if I do not escape I will one day join her, trailing behind her as she roams around the village, both of us wrapped in woollen garments with grey wisps escaping from our woollen hats, rapt in our vocation.

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Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Dogs Delight 23 Labrador not retriever


I lie on my bed, watching a grey cloud roll across the window, dreaming up ways to escape.  Sometimes I am alone but sometimes I am with the stranger from Evensong.  We rush through an airport together, happy and excited, or hand in hand we tread the gangway of a cruise liner wearing tropical clothes.  We are always laughing.
                                               
When I  hear the door slam as Mrs Dilkes heavily leaves the house I wander downstairs and realise that Bailey has been missing for hours; so I haul on Richard’s waxed jacket and set off to find him in the heavy rain.  Retrievers are meant to retrieve but I am often out in the fields retrieving Bailey and I don’t think he has ever brought back anything useful: just carrion and the large stones he digs up in fields and streams, which wear down his teeth and trip people up as they cross the fields.

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Monday, 22 April 2013

Dogs Delight 24 Foxhunting

Peter Hopkirk marches past with two buckets of hot manure, throwing me his usual discounting glance.

shooting foxes, country novel, fox, country sport 

As I am passing the Lone Gelding I hear loud retorts and the thunder of rolling metal.  Stokes, the landlord, is out at the back again with his shotgun and Jack Russell, blasting at foxes. 

He rarely empties the large catering bins, which attract them in numbers from the fields around.  Probably this neglect is deliberate as, witnessing him aiming and firing in silhouette, anyone can see he revels in his sport.  He also takes the odd potshot at Brunt’s yard in the hope of taking out Russell, who is now crowing at dusk and supper time as well as before dawn. 

I ponder the complete lack of attractive personalities in the village.  Stokes’ personality, for instance, has hardly a positive trait and nor has his appearance.  Think of how he leers at revellers from the shadows behind the bar: yellow dome circled by straggling hair, a seedy Dickensian miser in a holey cardigan. 

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Sunday, 21 April 2013

Dogs Delight 25 Stock market

He occasionally remembers his duty as landlord and throws in a comment to stir up controversy, generally on the need to ‘bring back the stocks.’
village stocks, village green, bring back the stocs

Stocks on the village green, say Stokes and his cronies, will not only bring down vandalism but bring in tourists.  (They say he is building a set in his gun shed.)  His supporters cite the example of  Near Otterby, which still has its gibbet, provoking envy in the villages all around.  Some of the regulars have begun calling him ‘Stokesy’ in a game and doomed attempt to lend him a more amiable character.  






village stocks, village green, country life

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Saturday, 20 April 2013

Dogs Delight 26 Village colour

He and the slatternly Mrs Stokes have a silent son who dyes ferrets: pink, usually, but red and green at Christmas. 
ferrets, ferrets as pets, dyeing ferrets
But he does it in a perfunctory way, as though there is nothing better to do and certainly not with an appropriate sense of joy. 

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Friday, 19 April 2013

Dogs Delight 27 In solitary

Striding through the damp fields behind the pig farm I pass a broken lorry, the cab tilted sideways into the nettles, which I imagine which must be an
old farm, farming village, farm vehiclesenticing object for Peter Hopkirk, causing him a lot of envy and agitation.  


Over the fence I see Brunt has another pig in solitary confinement. 

‘I puts any naughty pig in a field by hisself,’ he once told me sibilantly, through stubby brown teeth. 

The sinning pig is eating, unconcerned, and the rest of the herd are making their low contented grunting as they listen to a Chopin Prelude in their long broken shed, patched here and there with squares of asbestos.  The muck-encrusted radio dimly visible on a sill is permanently tuned to Radio Three.  Maybe the dial is stuck, or more likely Brunt doesn’t know how to change stations.

  naughty pig, free range pig, pig farmer
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Thursday, 18 April 2013

Dogs Delight 28 Retriever


Despite wading through several fields until my boots are mud-heavy I can find no trace of Bailey and turn for home wondering whether Mrs Hunt has locked him in the Hound Pen again or Stokes has accidentally shot him. 

black labrador, retrieve, field

But when I reach the Lone Gelding car park I turn and see a movement by a distant hedgerow and Bailey races towards me with his long easy lope.  He is waving his tail wildly and gladly and in his mouth there is a hand.

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Wednesday, 17 April 2013

Dogs Delight 29 Funny turn


The damp smell of grass is sweet.  It reminds me of a picnic long ago, but it was summer then and the field was bright with buttercups so tall I could lose myself.  Just like then, I never want to get up again.  I lie completely still until the damp has seeped through my coat and I am shivering. 

buttercup field

Stokes’ Jack Russell finds me when they come out to lock up the shotgun for the night and Stokes hauls me up roughly, muttering under his breath.

In the dark empty lounge of the Lone Gelding Mrs Stokes begins to pour out a brandy, but I ask for Pernod instead: long and with lots of ice in a tall glass.  It’s the only drink I really like.

glass of Pernod with ice, Pernod in pub
  
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Dogs Delight 30 Bad dog


The village is a long line of houses forming Main Street, with a few short rows leading off.  Main Street is now lined with bulky television vehicles and two satellite vans are parked on the village green, all because of Bailey’s discovery. 

satellite van, local news, television, village green

This morning two local television crews hammered on our door and asked to film him, but Richard sent them away, swearing freely, and let Bailey out at the back into the garden, where he dug a hole in the lawn. 

I stay inside, shaking, waiting for the police inspector to arrive.  Through the window I can see two officers following Bailey around the maples, hoping to discover where he buries his treasures; but Bailey does not usually bury things as he prefers to eat them straightaway.  One of the policemen tells me they may have to arrest him. 

I can’t tell whether or not he is joking. 

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Monday, 15 April 2013

Dogs Delight 31 Silent witness

The Inspector is short with a round pleasant face and he tries to be kind, but my lips are quivering when I answer him so it is hard to form the words and I can tell him so little.

‘I looked at Bailey.  At first I thought it was an old glove.  Then I suppose I must have fainted.’

police dog, police witness, silent witness 

Richard says that he raced back from work when the landlord rang and found Bailey sitting by the back door, waiting for his dinner.  He explains how Bailey squeezes in under the fence at the end of the garden where there is a missing post.  Richard and the Inspector look at each other, as if I am making it up. 

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Sunday, 14 April 2013

Dogs Delight 32 Dog house

The hand is nowhere to be seen and now Bailey is with the vet, who has been ordered to collect and examine everything he produces.  When Richard heard about this he laughed and said, ‘I expect that will put a smile on his face.’

His laughter is unnatural.








dog, labrador, naughty dog, vet, bad dog
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Saturday, 13 April 2013

Dogs Delight 33 Local news

In the morning there is a large photograph of Bailey in the Laxley Gazette with the glaring headline, ‘The Beast with Five Fingers.’ 
the beast with five fingers, horror, horror film

I think this is worse than last night’s television news, which showed the village uncustomarily festive with its fluttering lines of police tape and furtive groups of villagers aiming glares at the camera.  We watched it with Mrs Dilkes, who was excited because the reporter had accosted Mr Dilkes for his reaction to the story and she was eager to see him on screen.  The Dilkes haven’t bought a television yet.

‘He said it’s shocking that it should happen in a tight-knit community like this,’ she told us; which was a sensible response, if untrue.  But while he was speaking Pamela Jolie rode Saracen too close to the cameraman, knocking his elbow, and his interview was not used.







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Friday, 12 April 2013

Dogs Delight 34 Witch


Instead they showed the postmistress, who claims to be a witch, her eyes looking at each other, her long face in close-up under the black shawl:


‘We’re not a tight-knit community,’ she proclaims aggressively.  ‘Witches face a lot of prejudice in backward places like this.  I expect people will be pointing fingers at me.’


‘Only if they can find them,’ said Richard as the witch was pushed aside by Mrs Hunt leaning into the microphone and barking, ‘A lot of fuss.  Labradors are bound to retrieve things left lying around.  It’s their instinct.’

                                          raven, witch, witchcraft, village witch
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Thursday, 11 April 2013

Dogs Delight 35 Child care

My retriever retrieved a hand, out in the fields....

At least I don’t have to collect James and Christopher today.  They are with their Grandma for a few days, so something good has come out of this.


   grandma looking after, grandma babysits, lego 

I decide I will do ordinary things: show my face in the village; go out into the street to buy something.  Though there is nothing to buy here but meat. 

children's games, child care, labrador retriever      
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Dogs Delight 36 Neighbourhood watch


On my way to the butcher’s I meet Peter Hopkirk wheeling a large home-made trolley containing a builder’s spade and a complicated device for unblocking drains.   
old farm implements, farm contraption, home-made trolley, home-made cart 

He is wearing his best boiler suit and waders and gives me a cynical glance before steering the contraption scornfully past the satellite van and the array of media vehicles by the green. 

Peter Hopkirk disapproves of newcomers with a silent bitter intensity; of the media, obviously, and of the Hunts, who will soon have been at Cobblers’ Cottage for thirty years.  They are throwing a celebratory party at Christmas.  As if staying in the village for any length of time is something  to celebrate!

christmas decorations, christmas party, village party

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Monday, 1 April 2013

Dogs Delight: The Plot


Save me!  My husband is planning to kill me!  No one understands me except for my labrador and now he's involved in a police investigation after finding something absolutely horrific out in the fields. 
They'll find me out there next and then you'll be sorry....  Though probably you won't care.
I should be with someone sensitive; someone you would appreciate me.
...Like Byron...
Or Keats.

                               
labrador retriever, gun dog, walking the dog
                                                                             











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