Notwithstanding by Louis de Bernières

Author:Louis de Bernières [Bernières, Louis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409086703
Publisher: Random House
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

RABBIT

JOAN WALKS WITH the Major, and with Leafy, wife of the redoubtable Colonel Pericles Barkwell. It is an evening late in March, but the day has seemed more like one from the end of June. They have gone out warmly dressed, because it is only March, after all, and now they are huffing and sweltering as they circle the bounds of the fields behind Joan’s home. Joan doesn’t like to sweat so much because she doesn’t want people to know that she has been struck by the menopause, and it is beside the point that this particular sweat is brought about by a very English refusal to concede that any March day might be other than cold and blustery.

The Major is clad in green wellingtons, corduroys, a grey woolly jumper and a khaki-coloured quilted body warmer that enhances his military mien. In his pocket is a supersonic whistle for the dog, which he never uses because he has trained the dog to respond to parade-ground orders. ‘Dogs will retire. Ab-o-u-t turn!’ he roars, and the black Labrador obediently comes to heel. The supersonic whistle is a present from his son in the City, who believes in high-tech solutions to problems which no one had previously recognised as problematical.

Leafy Barkwell is dressed in wellies, and a tweed skirt that has seen smarter days. Its wool has been teased by bramble and thorn for a decade, and some people have taken to commenting unkindly that it looks like a sisal doormat. It is the only scruffy garment she has, because indoors she is elegant, and indoors is where she most likes to be. Today, however, she has succumbed to the warmth of the day and has come out at the same time as the primroses, with which she shares some of her delicate beauty, even though she is no longer young.

In the clump of elms at the end of the field noisy squadrons of rooks croak and squabble. It is nesting time, and the birds are raiding all the surrounding trees for twigs, which they bring back to the elms, where other birds try to snatch them away. There are quarrels and tugs of war, and the booty almost inevitably gets dropped, whereupon the birds fly off back to the willows and oaks in order to break off more twigs with elaborate exertion that involves much acrobatic risk. The fallen twigs they stupidly do not bother to collect, so that under the rookery the ground begins to look as though a small hurricane has just passed by. In the old days when the peasants had been poor, when, in fact, there actually had been peasants, they used to come and collect the fallen twigs, and bind them into faggots. Now there is only one peasant left, malodorous old Obadiah Oak, with his teeth like tombstones. Jack Oak is probably the only person left who can remember what it was like to collect rook faggots and to know that young rooks aren’t scared of guns.

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