Notes from the Cévennes by Adam Thorpe

Author:Adam Thorpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

13

A Local Custom

The slopes of the southern Cévennes are mostly dark green with holm oak, but the patches of deciduous oak, along with spreads of chestnut, beech, mulberry and ash, mark the autumn with bright yellow streaks. So do the hunters in their equally bright but considerably less attractive jackets – these are now compulsory, in an attempt to reduce accidents. When an ex-lycée pupil of Jo’s was shot dead last year while out walking on a public path with his girlfriend, there was no question of restricting the sport: instead, it was suggested that high-visibility garb should spread to all users of the countryside, from mushroom pickers to hikers, as a prerequisite for being insured.

On average, two or three non-hunters are shot dead or maimed each year. The toll on participants, however, is high enough to keep them kitted out as blots on the landscape. This might have saved Billy Pilgrim’s father in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, but not Hautot père in Maupassant’s story Hautot père et fils, who made the common mistake of dropping his gun to seize the dead partridge. When we first came to live here in 1990, hunters were mostly dressed from head to foot in military camouflage, presumably in the hope that the boars, foxes, deer and game birds wouldn’t spot them. They were certainly camouflaged from their companions. As there was no legal requirement to plant warning signs back then (‘Attention: Chasse en cours’), or post sentries with their shotguns broken and open along the edges of the hunt’s territory, it was easy to find yourself stumbling into a phalanx of armed men and their hyperactive dogs.

This happened to us in our first month in France, when we were renting the old olive mill in the oxbow: the latter, being a near-island, was perfect for hunting. It might as well have been a giant sack (which it somewhat resembles from the air), bulging with quarry. Its population of wild boars had been so decimated, however, that nobody now bothered to come. My informant was Raoul, the owner of our nearest hardware shop, where I was buying a ladder. ‘Oh,’ I found myself saying, ‘only a couple of days ago I saw a big fat boar followed by about six little ones. It was very touching.’

The next day, as Jo had dolefully predicted on my return, we walked a hundred yards from our gate and straight into the middle of a hunt, led by Raoul. He suggested we turn round and go back home. I began to babble about our rights. A gunshot and excited shouts decided us. We trotted back as fast as we could, pursued by the pretty tinklings of the dogs’ neck-bells, which was to become a familiarly sinister sound over the years. A few weeks later, walking the other side of the river in the private but beguiling woods of a posh chateau, a deafening blast brought leaves pattering gently on our heads. A shot across the bows, if ever there was one.

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