the repeated pneumatic cough of the air rifle, and reflected that boys will be boys.
Joan made corned-beef fritters and baked beans for lunch, and afterwards Peter sought hopelessly for something to take up the slack until it was two o’clock and time to go out with the dog. There was only half an hour to wait, but it was, in emotional terms, a year. He emptied the waste-paper baskets, even though it wasn’t Thursday, and separated out the things that were not inflammable, small bottles and aerosols for female potions and lotions. They were often lilac-coloured. He had to watch out for his father’s discarded razor blades. The residue, which included the womenfolk’s balls of cotton wool with suspect deposits, and rough drafts of his own apostrophic poems to Froggy, Peter burned in the incinerator.
At a quarter past two Peter called the dog, who had been sighing pointedly ever since early morning. The dog sighed and waggled his eyebrows every day until he was walked, affecting an air of suffering, but as soon as anyone went to the walking-stick stand or fetched wellington boots, he would lift off vertically into the air, bouncing straight up and down so rapidly that it was impossible to attach his lead. You had to throw one arm around his neck and restrain him while his back half continued to cantilever up and down. In order to avoid unmanageable explosions of excitement, the family had had to learn to avoid mentioning the word ‘walk’ anywhere near the dog. Thus they progressed through ‘W-A-L-K’ to ‘promenade’, to ‘Spaziergang’ to ‘paseo’ to ‘peripateion’, with the dog always only one linguistic step behind.
Peter set off up the road past the big house where the famous actress lived with her charming but alcoholically outrageous bisexual husband, and past the council houses. In one of these houses lived John, gardener to the Shah of Iran, who had kept a motorcycle combination secretly from his wife all the years of their married life. He passed the hedging and ditching man, who was up to his waist in mud, brambles and nettles. He was cradling in his hand a cantankerous tortoise that he had found at the end of its hibernation in the bank side. Peter passed what was to become the Institute of Oceanography, unaccountably sited in the middle of the countryside rather than by the sea. Once a large workhouse, it was at this time Notwithstanding Homes. It housed a tribe of noisy and emotionally damaged children, who felt a natural and reciprocated disdain for the fortunate children of the village. Once Peter and Robert and Froggy’s brothers had got into a stone-throwing fight with some of them, which had ended with one of the Homes’ children receiving a large and ragged gash in the forehead. Peter, who had thrown the stone, had been aghast and guilt-stricken, and from then on all hostilities had ceased, both sides understanding at last the appalling consequences of war. The disadvantaged children retreated behind their twenty-foot wall.
Peter entered the woods and strode along a track that, after centuries of use, had sunk fifteen feet below the level of the forest floor. The banks on either side were thick with blueberries that, the moment they were ripe, fell victim to old ladies and squirrels. To the left was a stand of enormously tall Scots pine, where Polly Wantage, to the detriment of squirrels, ventured forth daily in brogues and plus fours, armed with her twelve-bore, and to the right lay the sandy hillside, brackened and bridle-pathed, which was known as Busses Common even though no one knew who Buss had been.
At the end of this track was a low white house whose owners had two Mercedes, were rumoured to possess an aeroplane, and were said to drive all the way to Harrods in order to buy butter. Peter turned right and followed the fence that separated the nuns of the convent from the outer world. Peter could not conceive why anyone would want to be a nun and renounce sex for ever. He had
Joan made corned-beef fritters and baked beans for lunch, and afterwards Peter sought hopelessly for something to take up the slack until it was two o’clock and time to go out with the dog. There was only half an hour to wait, but it was, in emotional terms, a year. He emptied the waste-paper baskets, even though it wasn’t Thursday, and separated out the things that were not inflammable, small bottles and aerosols for female potions and lotions. They were often lilac-coloured. He had to watch out for his father’s discarded razor blades. The residue, which included the womenfolk’s balls of cotton wool with suspect deposits, and rough drafts of his own apostrophic poems to Froggy, Peter burned in the incinerator.
At a quarter past two Peter called the dog, who had been sighing pointedly ever since early morning. The dog sighed and waggled his eyebrows every day until he was walked, affecting an air of suffering, but as soon as anyone went to the walking-stick stand or fetched wellington boots, he would lift off vertically into the air, bouncing straight up and down so rapidly that it was impossible to attach his lead. You had to throw one arm around his neck and restrain him while his back half continued to cantilever up and down. In order to avoid unmanageable explosions of excitement, the family had had to learn to avoid mentioning the word ‘walk’ anywhere near the dog. Thus they progressed through ‘W-A-L-K’ to ‘promenade’, to ‘Spaziergang’ to ‘paseo’ to ‘peripateion’, with the dog always only one linguistic step behind.
Peter set off up the road past the big house where the famous actress lived with her charming but alcoholically outrageous bisexual husband, and past the council houses. In one of these houses lived John, gardener to the Shah of Iran, who had kept a motorcycle combination secretly from his wife all the years of their married life. He passed the hedging and ditching man, who was up to his waist in mud, brambles and nettles. He was cradling in his hand a cantankerous tortoise that he had found at the end of its hibernation in the bank side. Peter passed what was to become the Institute of Oceanography, unaccountably sited in the middle of the countryside rather than by the sea. Once a large workhouse, it was at this time Notwithstanding Homes. It housed a tribe of noisy and emotionally damaged children, who felt a natural and reciprocated disdain for the fortunate children of the village. Once Peter and Robert and Froggy’s brothers had got into a stone-throwing fight with some of them, which had ended with one of the Homes’ children receiving a large and ragged gash in the forehead. Peter, who had thrown the stone, had been aghast and guilt-stricken, and from then on all hostilities had ceased, both sides understanding at last the appalling consequences of war. The disadvantaged children retreated behind their twenty-foot wall.
Peter entered the woods and strode along a track that, after centuries of use, had sunk fifteen feet below the level of the forest floor. The banks on either side were thick with blueberries that, the moment they were ripe, fell victim to old ladies and squirrels. To the left was a stand of enormously tall Scots pine, where Polly Wantage, to the detriment of squirrels, ventured forth daily in brogues and plus fours, armed with her twelve-bore, and to the right lay the sandy hillside, brackened and bridle-pathed, which was known as Busses Common even though no one knew who Buss had been.
At the end of this track was a low white house whose owners had two Mercedes, were rumoured to possess an aeroplane, and were said to drive all the way to Harrods in order to buy butter. Peter turned right and followed the fence that separated the nuns of the convent from the outer world. Peter could not conceive why anyone would want to be a nun and renounce sex for ever. He had
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