Hah! Where's the little beast now! Incorrigible scoundrel. Mini-tiger indeed! I shall sue the pet-shop. Who ever knew a tiger to steal, and skulk so! S'blood, but I'll strangle the inscrutable minx. No kipper for me this evening. Toast and lime marmalade it is then. Earl Grey shall complement my repast. Perhaps it is a blessing disguised as a curse after all: for tonight I attempt to unpack my books. My nerves protest already. There it goes, the swine, past the door into the kitchen! It'll mean my death yet, I'll be bound! You may remove a cat from Persia, but you'll not take the Persian away from the beast, try though you may!
Mind you, a Gitanes, with the last of the Earl from my finest Spowforth bone (translucent, it almost burns in the limpid evening light), in the rose garden, ah, what ecstacy is this! (The cat prowls the path, gimlet eye fixed on my figure, tail snaking. It knows to keep its distance. But enough of the capricious little tart!) The scented air is thick with birdsong. Reclining in my deckchair - a souvenir from my halcyon days with the Bournemouth Players: oh, that summer I played Mr Jingle (I was a lither figure then!) in our musical caper on the theme of the "Pickwick Club": dear Roald! But I begin to run off sentimental, when I must be strong: clarity must prevail!
What a prospect I enjoy here! Elysian fields indeed! I could almost convince myself that I might be in Paradisiacal bliss, did not the uglifications of the working world intrude so barbarously. Why, this noon, as I was savouring the perfumed air in this very rose garden, I was startled and appalled to discover the most ramshackle and clangorous of farm contraptions jolting its way along the lane towards what I had hitherto fancied my sanctuary. Thoreau never suffered the like at Walden Pond, I'd vouch! The personage who rode the tractor seemed a figure such as confronted the elegant Romans in the primeval swamps and forests. It switched off the tractor's shuddering engine, and spake thus:
"Hast sin a hoss aboot?"
"A horse?"
"Yus, aye, a hoss. Wuv lost oor hoss this mornin. Took off oot er t'yard through t'oppen yat. Tractor frittened it off, d'yer see?"
I must confess that I was at a loss utterly to comprehend his speech, which issued from somewhere beneath an unfeasibly large and sweat-darkened tweed cap. The words - if such they were - came forth in jerked whiny gobbets, each one more indigestible than its predecessor. I was reduced to grimacing and flapping my arms in what felt like a ludicrous burlesque of a Frenchman.
"I'm sorry? You've mislaid a horse?"
"Hosses gone. A thowt mebbe thood sin't aboot this spot. It mun galloped by cos it'd nivver settle fer a gay lang strutch, twas in sec a panshite when it sid tractor cummern ower't brig at it!"
I might have been a bewildered and anxious Venetian gentleman, sent ahead of Marco Polo's train, confronted by his first Mongolian as the night took hold of the open and comfortless steppe. My gaze was drawn to the yellowed singlet stretched over his scrawny torso, and the skeletal arms, devoid of hair, that connected his bony shoulders with two shovel hands with fingers like cigar stubs. He leaned forward over his steering wheel as he spoke. Upon his feet were ancient clogs the colour of dried mud. He wiped his left hand across his nose and mouth, shifting the great cap back a little, and creasing his face in the sun's brassy glare. I saw that his face was that of a small and smooth rodent whose eyes were lustreless green and piercing. The filthy collie in the trailer box threatened to pounce at any moment, fixing me balefully with its marble eye that seemed to be squeezed out of the white side of its head. Like a psychedelic badger I thought, for some reason.
"Aye", he yawned, shifting on the metal seat. "Aye. Thoo's gitten a fair bit er fettlern to deer theer like. Will ter manish it does ter reckon?"
My God, would he never go? I began to detect the sweat running down my back. Indeed, I can feel it now as I recall this trial.
He did go, in time, the tractor lurching like some horrible sea craft over the rough red lane. At every bump the collie jumped and wheeled around in its box. Once the atrocious chariot was gone beyond the pine trees I hastened indoors. A lime cordial and a half-hour's blindfolded repose was in order. How I hankered for a Bath Oliver! And Horst not due till Thursday week!
