Notwithstanding (26 page)

‘Oh, don’t you? Where else would they go?’

‘It’s like this, sir; the hills is at the end of side tunnels, and they scrape the spoil out of the main tunnels an’ up the side tunnels, just to get rid of it. They don’t come back, and if they do, they’re always pushing some soil in front of ’em, and what gets caught is the little bit of earth they’re pushing. You don’t hardly ever catch ’em by just sticking those things in the hills like that.’

‘Oh dear, what am I supposed to do then?’

‘You stick ’em in the main tunnels, sir. Here, I’ll show you.’ Uncle Dick pulled the traps out of the hills, and walked about very slowly, scrutinising the ground beneath him. Finally he stopped. ‘Here we are,’ he said, pressing down with his foot. ‘See that, sir? The ground gives just there, so there’s a tunnel right underneath. If you’d fetch me a trowel, I’ll show you what’s to do.’

Mr Chittock went to his potting shed and returned with a gleaming stainless-steel trowel that had clearly seen little service, and Uncle Dick knelt down and cut a neat square out of the turf. He excavated the hole a little, and put his hand in to investigate. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘the tunnel goes straight through there, so I’ll put the trap in.’ He set it carefully, and inserted it into the hole. Then he fetched a couple of handfuls of long grass and packed them loosely around the trap, sprinkling a little soil on top. He took a twig and stuck it into the ground
beside
the trap, saying, ‘Just to show where it is. It’s easy to trample ’em accidentally, like.’ He took the remaining two traps and recommenced his careful walking about. ‘Now look at this, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s a very, very small molehill, sir. That’s what I call a housekeeping hill. The tunnel goes right beside that, so you take a dig in it and find out which side the tunnel goes. Then you dig it out a bit more and set the trap as usual. And one more thing: moles are dead good smellers, so you don’t wash your hands with soap. In fact, it’s best to wear your gardening gloves or do some gardening first, so your fingers don’t pong of anything but soil.’

The next morning Mr Chittock found that two of the traps had been sprung. One was empty and the other came out of the ground with a large tube of dark-brown velvet mole in it. The jaws had clamped across its chest and neck, and its nose was bright red. Chittock felt a pang of guilty triumph. It was the first mole that he had ever actually seen, and he was fascinated by the big bony paddles fore and aft, the marvellously smooth close fur and the sharp little canine teeth, immaculately white.

Royston Chittock became fairly good at setting the traps, and he caught his quarry a good 50 per cent of the time. On each occasion that he caught a mole, he would clear the hills off the lawn, tip the soil on to the rose beds, and visualise all over again what it would be like to have a perfect lawn that was good enough to
putt
on. He might even install a bunker so that he could practise chipping out of it.

Inevitably there would be new molehills within five days. ‘Like I said,’ Uncle Dick informed him, ‘you should call in the moleman. As long as there’s moles in that meadow out there you’re going to get them coming back in here.’

So the moleman was summoned. Joshuah Entincknapp was a man in his sixties of stout peasant build. He was fond of saying that ‘Moles ’ave only got feet, they ’aven’t got legs’. He dressed in hobnail boots, corduroy trousers and a thick cotton shirt closed at the collar by a tatty old green woollen tie. Beneath his shaggy tweed jacket he sported a waistcoat of his own manufacture, consisting of precisely one hundred mole skins. There had been a time when he’d supplied a local furrier with best skins at sixpence each, and it had taken seven hundred skins to make a fine lady’s coat that would sell for forty guineas. He’d stretch the skins dry by nailing them to a board with one nail through the snout and one through each foot, so you wouldn’t damage the skin itself. Nowadays there wasn’t much of a market for them.

The most striking feature of the moleman’s appearance was the lack of his right eye, which did not have even a glass substitute in the socket. This loss had been brought about by a Rhode Island Red pullet when he was a toddler, his parents having left
him
in the chicken coop, under the illusion that he would be safe in there while they painted the kitchen. It felt odd to look at his face, depending upon whether one focused on the concave empty socket, or on the bright dark eye that gazed ironically from the other.

Joshuah Entincknapp had heard from Uncle Dick that Mr Chittock was something of a townie out of his depth in the countryside, and he therefore made a point of speaking slowly and carefully to him, to compensate for his backwardness. ‘Well,’ he explained, ‘Dick yonder was quite right. You can trap as many as you like in this garden o’ yours, but they’ll still be slippin’ in from that meadow, and I don’t reckon you’ll ever catch up with yourself. No you won’t. And what’s worse, this garden o’ yours, it’s like a main road, you got those moles passing through all the time when they’re going somewhere else, ’cause those moles don’t like to get too crowded, they like to live on their own, they do, so they got their own living quarters, and they don’t let no other moles in, and they also got these main roads that they share and share alike, and they use them roads to get from place to place, and it so ’appens you’ve got something like a Kingston Bypass going through ’ere, so you’ve got residents and you’ve got passers-through. Do you follow me, sir?’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Mr Chittock, ‘isn’t there anything you can do?’ He began to fear that he never would have a lawn good enough to putt on.

‘Well, it so ’appens that there is, but it all depends.’

‘Depends? Depends on what?’

‘Cats, sir. Do you ’appen to like cats?’

Royston Chittock gave the matter a moment’s thought. ‘Well, I can’t say I’ve ever known many. I’ve never had one. I’ve known one or two, to pat on the head, so to speak. Why do you ask?’

‘’Cause I got a cat and I hire ’im out, sir, but I’m warning you he’s expensive. He’s the best moling cat in Surrey, sir.’

‘A moling cat?’

‘Yes, sir, a moling cat. You see, cats are specialists, sir. You get cats who only do birds, and you even get cats that only do pigeons. You get cats that do rabbits and voles, but they won’t touch birds and mice. You even get cats that do frogs and nothing but. It so ’appens that there’s occasional cats that do nothing but moles, and it so ’appens that I’ve got one. But he’s expensive, sir.’

‘How much is he, then?’

‘Fifty pounds a week, sir, plus livin’ expenses, and I get the moles for the skins.’

‘Fifty pounds a week? That’s an awful lot. Really, fifty pounds a week?’

‘Best moler in Surrey, sir. He’ll clear that meadow ’til there’s not one left. He’s guaranteed.’

‘Really, it’s too much, Mr Entincknapp. I think I’ll persist with the traps.’

Mr Entincknapp shrugged. ‘As you wish, sir, but you know where I am if you change your mind. Mind you, there’s other things you can do.’

‘Really?’

‘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.’