by Ashly Graham
‘Don’t bandy words with me, you horrible little man,’ said the DL; ‘just do it, and don’t stint on the measure.’ Complying without further word, he was deliberately clumsy with the decanter, and plonked the glass down on the side-table so that some of it spilled. His mistress sighed as she sipped the single malt from the cut glass tumbler, and the man stuck his nose in the air and left the room. Half an hour later, without being summoned, he was back and clearing his throat in a contrastingly deferential manner.
The devil lady frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘Shall you be going to hear Ophelia’s sermon tomorrow?’
‘Ophelia doesn’t preach, I understand, neither does she pronounce, postulate, or pontificate. She is pulpit-averse.’ The whisky had done its job.
‘If you say so.’
‘Well, as little as I want to return to that place after the circumstances attendant upon my last visit, I suppose I’d better. You shall come with me and we’ll sit by the door. I may want to make a quick getaway.’
The church was packed for the service, and people were talking nineteen to the dozen as Ophelia roamed up and down, leaning into the pews and grasping hands with concerned enquiries as to everyone’s well-being, bestowing a hug or a kiss here, and murmured greetings there, and patting children on the head as they went up and down the nave clutching toys from the play box at the back. She addressed everyone by name, including several who had attended only once before, and asked after their proximate relatives, also by name. She assured those whose family members were ill or too infirm to attend or who were in hospital or, vital decession notwithstanding, were absent on this occasion, that they would be remembered in her prayers and that she would visit them soon. Next to the table at the back, Effie was supervising her usual half-dozen or so women, the Church Rats, as they set out the post-Service refreshments.
When she was ready to begin the show, Ophelia went to the cupboard and utility area under the tower and behind a screen to collect her thoughts. Then she took a long look at herself in a small shaving mirror set askew on the wall, adjusted a lock or two of her hair, and breathed deeply before gliding down the gangway. An expectant rather than reverent silence fell on the congregation. When she was halfway to the front she began speaking informally and with animation, her usual solicitous whisper replaced by an articulate and musical voice that carried to the corners of the building. As she walked, she dropped the white surplice that she was carrying over her head—there might have been an alb and stole, cope or chasuble in the vestry, had there been a vestry, or there might not.
The audience smiled and settled down to enjoy itself, confident that Ophelia could be relied upon to entertain and pay scant attention to the order of ceremony, which everyone knew too well anyway to be bothered with.
With an iron clunk of the door handle the devil lady and her serving-man entered, and Effie, who was seated opposite the door for ease of assuming her station afterwards, looked away, her face set in a mask of antipathy. The infernal pair ignored the prayer book and hymnal that were thrust at them at arm’s length by Mrs Patnode, whose many duties included tending to those who came in after Service had begun. Each unwillingly accepted a service booklet, which Mrs P. was very insistent that they take, as if she were serving a writ. Hearing the door, the congregation rounded and glared balefully at them, and some crossed themselves. Making a swift visual recce of the assembly, the two took the last remaining seats at the end of the back row to the fore of the font; upon which those closest to them slid as far away as possible towards the wall.
Ophelia always insisted that there was no such thing as being late, and would hail by name any who entered after she had begun, to their embarrassment. Today was no exception.
‘Welcome to our Lady of the Manor, and her, ah, friend, who I understand can drink more beer than anyone in the village. That’s quite an accomplishment.’ This was received in silence, and Ophelia proceeded to open with one of her favourite gambits.
‘I don’t see any bishops among us today...not that they wouldn’t be welcome, for even bishops ought to go to church once in a while.’ The audience tittered: their priestess’s run-ins with authority were part of local lore. ‘Which reminds me that the last time I was at a Service with a bishop, at his place not mine, attendance wasn’t voluntary for either of us because I was there to be ordained.’ Laughter. ‘As to bishops in general, I am reminded of the words of my late-eighteenth-century friend Sydney Smith, who said, “I must believe in the Apostolic Succession: there is no other way of accounting for the descent of the Bishop of Exeter from Judas Iscariot.”’
The DL’s eyes narrowed with interest.
‘I also recall that on that occasion I was only one of quite a few who were joining the clergy. Some of the others have since moved onward and upward to become solicitors and accountants. One of them, instead of reading Numbers—I refer to the book in the Bible—is now counting the days in gaol. When I went to see him he offered to sell me his car, owing to his not needing it for four to eight years, by which time he should want a more up-to-date model. As much as I would loved to help him, I don’t drive, and neither does Effie. People tell me that is as much a blessing to those on the roads as the one they get in church.’
As more laughter rang out, a shadowy figure at the front of the congregation stood and hurled an overripe tomato, large enough to be one of the genetically modified variety, to the rear. Narrowly missing the serving-man’s head, it splatted against the wall above the collection box.
Ophelia beamed. ‘Now, I’m sure that none of you have come here today to be “preached to death by wild curates”, to use another expression of good old Sydney Smith; which is why, as all of you know, I never use the pulpit or give sermons. Pulpits are only for railing against the perils of Hellfire, and I fervently hope that none of us here has been wicked enough to deserve such an awful fate.’
The devil lady shifted on the hard bench.
‘So instead I have it in mind to tell you a parable, or story. One about animals and birds. Let us suppose, if you will, that I am a badger, or brock as the animal used to be called. In Latin, Meles meles. As a badger I live with my family in a place called a sett. A sett, for those of you who don’t know—ah, Jimmy does, well done, Jimmy—is an underground house consisting of rooms connected by a network of tunnels. We badgers have more than one dwelling, so as to have somewhere to go if we get flooded out or have to move in a hurry. For there are many hazards associated with living out of doors, and I don’t just mean unwanted visitors. Some of the oldest setts are a hundred years old and more, and we badgers dig them out every season, shifting huge amounts of earth with our short muscular limbs and long claws and probing snout.
‘Foxes and rabbits live in similar homes but they’re smaller. On occasion we badgers might agree to rent our spare place out for the season, perhaps to a family of foxes, because foxes are often too lazy to dig a home for themselves. But we would only let them move in upon payment of a heavy damage deposit, because whereas badgers are clean and tidy animals, foxes are not; and the sett is sure to need fumigating and redecorating at the end of the lease.’
As she was speaking Ophelia drew a picture of a badger on the ever-present easel, which entertained the grown-ups as much as it did the children.
‘Now then. Because I’m a badger I wake up and begin my day at sunset. Although I generally avoid other animals on my rounds, I tolerate foxes and rabbits so long as they don’t expect me to stop and chat. I’m an animal of few words, and a grunt or gruff hello is about all they’ll get out of me. The badger way is to stick to well-worn paths and tracks up and down and along the hillside, and we’re so regular in our habits that you could set your watch by me—if you wear one, which I don’t—as I forage for food. Although I’ll eat pretty much anything, I prefer plain food and subsist mostly on roots and grubs.
‘What’s that Jimmy? Ah, you got a watch for your birthday, did you? You must show it to me afterwards. And you ate
a worm…I’m sure your mummy talked to you about that. You didn’t tell her? Well, you have now, Jimmy.
‘Where was I? Ah yes. As a badger you might call me a stolid yeomanish sort of beast, drably grey except for the white blaze or stripe on my head. You’d be right to call me dull or boring if I was the sort of animal that went out into society, which I do not. But as shy as I am, watch out. Should you pick a fight with me I’ll turn very fierce indeed, and once I’ve got you in my powerful crunching jaws it’s impossible for you to escape.
‘So long as you leave me alone, however, you’ve nothing to fear. I’m a family person and like a quiet life, sleeping during the daytime and hibernating in winter, all cozy and dozy and warm. We badger boars and sows insulate our home before winter arrives by dragging in bracken and grass to line the sleeping chambers with. There, in a thick bed of sweet-smelling straw, I lie and dream of the spring, when I will feel the cool night air on my nose again, and roll in the dew on the emerald turf as dawn glimmers on the horizon. For we badgers are beautiful dreamers with vivid imaginations, which comes of our eyesight being so poor and our senses of hearing and smell so acute.’
Looking about to satisfy herself that people’s minds had been cast sufficiently in the badgerine mould for her to move on, Ophelia flipped her pad to a fresh page, drawing and colouring as she spoke.
‘Now imagine that I’m a different animal altogether, a fox. Reynard, or Mus Reynolds, or Mr Tod, as some of us might say. Vulpes vulpes, in case you didn’t hear it the first time. In temperament we foxes are the opposite of badgers: we’re sarcastic animals with short tempers, by nature factual and unromantic. If we dream at all it’s of catching a squealing rabbit and cracking its bones with our teeth, or breaking into the farmer’s hen house, or slaughtering a lamb.
‘A fox’s home is called an earth, or den, and it’s dirty and has an acrid smell. There are chicken and rabbit bones lying about that I never bother to pick up and bury outside. But in public I’m quite the dandy, as svelte and well dressed as the badger is thickset and drably grey. I have a smart red coat, pointed ears, sharp eyes, a refined muzzle, slim legs, and a brush for a tail. Instead of lumbering along and flattening everything in my path like the badger, I move fast, either high-stepping and dainty or close to the ground so that you can hardly tell where I’ve been from my footprints. I have excellent vision as well as hearing and scenting ability, and although like the badger I’m nocturnal and sleep for most of the day, it’s always with one eye open for an opportunity. I have a mercurial mind and eccentric habits: hence the phrase “crazy like a fox”.
‘Instead of eating plants and worms like the badger, I live mostly on rabbits, and one of my ingenious methods of catching them is to hypnotize them by dancing ever closer and closer, until dinner is one snap away. In this and many other respects I am, though I say it myself, extremely clever. For example, in order to get rid of the fleas that infest me owing to my slovenly lifestyle, I will back tail-first, very slowly, into a stream with a twig or piece of sheep’s wool in my mouth. Then, when only my snout is above water and all the fleas have gathered on the twig or the scrap of wool, I let it go so that all those pesky fleas are carried away by the current to drown or find some other animal to infest.
‘As a fox I have to confront a much more serious situation when human beings, whose practice it is to hunt animals to the death without having any intention of eating what they catch—though they would certainly regret it if they tasted me—send packs of hounds chasing after me, while they do their best to keep up on horseback after I’ve I’ve been flushed from covert and “gone away”. It’s a tally-ho! and tantivy! sport for them and a deadly trial for me; but there’s nothing like being in mortal danger to sharpen one’s survival instincts and cunning.
‘What I must do to save my skin, and brush, which if they catch me they will bear off as a trophy after the hounds have rent me into pieces, is trick the humans into losing the trail of my smell, which no amount of bathing or attempting to disguise it by rolling in manure can neutralize. So I jump into the stream, because the hounds can’t trace my scent in the water, and stop giving tongue, and I run or paddle along the stream and jump out on the other bank a distance away; and then I double back on my track to confuse them even more as they cast about, and mingle with a herd of cattle, which has a strong smell of its own; and then I climb a tree and lie foxo on a branch until the hounds and riders are far off. This means that the hunters have lost me and must accept defeat; unless instead I go to ground in my earth, in which case they will come and dig me out and kill me. Or “been “bowled over”, or “accounted for” as they euphemistically call it.
‘At night when I’m safe again, I celebrate having outwitted them by singing eery magic songs from the hill.’
Ophelia completed her drawing of the fox.
‘Now, as a rabbit or coney, Oryctolagus cuniculusa—ouch—though I live near the badgers and foxes who prey on me, I’m a very different sort of animal. We rabbits are sociable creatures, in the sense of being gregarious rather than so very friendly with each other. We have more relations than you can count, and live in communes amongst other extended families like our own. We’re all related to one another and have myriad cousins, and a plethora of first cousins, and second cousins, and cousins once and twice and thrice removed.
‘Our rabbit homes are an underground maze called a warren, the ins and outs of which are so complicated that we get lost in it ourselves. There’s no point in our drawing a diagram to remind us, because we’re forever digging new tunnels and it’d be out of date the next day. We have so many bedrooms that we never have to sleep in the same one.
‘Like sheep, we rabbits eat grass and leaves and shoots, and we’re out as much in the day, when the foxes aren’t around, as we are at night. We are built for speed and can outrun most dogs, twisting and turning, and we have long ears to pick up the slightest sound. If we see or smell danger we thump on the ground with our powerful hind legs to warn the others to get underground as fast as possible in one or other of the holes we never are far away from.
‘Just because we rabbits are so numerous doesn’t mean we’re not scared for ourselves. We are afraid of everything and have a lot to be afraid of: foxes, guns, dogs, snares, ferrets, stoats and weasels, and disease. Humans drive their cars up the bostal and shine lamps in our eyes at night, to dazzle us so that we freeze and they can see to shoot us. And they set traps for us. If any one of us gets sick, the illness spreads fast because we live so close to each other. Ferrets, stoats, and weasels, because they are slim and fast, follow us into our burrows and when they have us cornered at the end of a passageway they kill us and drink our blood. Because we are good to eat, the humans keep ferrets to chase us out of our burrows into nets that they put over our holes. ‘Next: instead of an animal let me give you an example of a bird, by drawing a magpie for you. There. Now I’m a magpie, Pica pica. Like all members of the crow family, I have an awful voice, as harsh as a corncrake, and mine goes chak-chak-chak-chak-chak, very fast, even when I’m serenading my bride-to-be with a sound that I consider to be tuneful and sweet. Again, Jimmy? Very well: chak-chak-chak-chak-chak. How was that? Thank you, Jimmy, you’re welcome. No, I think that’s enough for now.
‘As you can imagine, that rough noise I make means I’m the last person the songbirds would ever ask to join their choir. So I take revenge on them by robbing their nests and eating their eggs and fledglings. The heartbreak that I, as a magpie, cause in other families doesn’t make me feel any better about myself. I’m still jealous of the nightingales and blackbirds and thrushes, and the robins and wrens, all of whom have beautiful voices, who say I’m tone-deaf and that my voice is discordant and ugly. Beauty is in the ear of the listener, I say. Also, I wish I were small and delicate like the warblers instead of awkward and ungainly, for while they hop and flit from place to place, I can only waddle and flap.
‘But despite all the contumely I have to bear from the other species, I li
ve in hope that one day the others will tell me how pure and lovely my voice is, and ask me to sing for them; which is why I never change out of my evening-dress concert attire of crisp white shirt and glossy black tail coat, in case I get called onto the stage to perform.’
Ophelia had drawn her picture of a magpie to show it straining to produce a musical note, as the other birds cover their ears with their wings.
‘Lastly, I’m a barn owl, Tyto alba. As soon as evening falls I leave my roost and go out on silent patrol, hovering over the fields as the somnolent earth breathes out its summary of the day’s events. I look like a ghost, as if I’m already part of another world; and at night when I’m abroad I float above the foxes and badgers and rabbits without them knowing I’m there. I have binocular vision that can pinpoint the location of the mice and voles that I eat on the ground, and my head can swivel quickly far around for my ears to pick up their direction and distance, and the wide deep orbits around my eyes capture very low levels of light. I have soft cushioned plumage and fluted edges on my feathers that enable me to fly without a whisper of sound; and my hearing is so acute that I can detect the slightest rustle in the undergrowth, and pounce on my prey in the dark.
‘But now I’m Ophelia again, and I live in a cottage in the village; and I’m asking you, Jimmy, and everyone else here today, to try and make a whole out of the pieces that I’ve just given you and the pictures that I’ve drawn.
‘I’ll give you a little help—it’s what I’m here for. Let us say that we each have a bit of the badger in us, and a bit of the fox, and the rabbit, and the magpie, and the barn owl, and others besides that I haven’t mentioned. Do you think, everyone, that these animals and birds—I mean wild animals and birds, not pets—are as capable as we are of experiencing emotions, of being happy or sad?
‘I say yes, and no. Why? Because they aren’t happy or sad in the way that we are capable of being happy and sad, they are just at one and the same with everything, with Nature as they find it and as they leave it. Those animals and birds can’t tell good from bad, they do what their instincts tell them to, and that to them is right without seeming to be right. The joy of spring does not make them rejoice, or the heat of summer, nor does the winter cold upset them. Animals and birds take no pleasure in the birth of their cubs and babies, any more than they mourn when one of them dies or is killed. They are not selfish, just driven to survive. The weak and sick die without feeling sorry for themselves. Life goes on until it ends, is the way they understand it without giving it any consideration, or understanding it, and while life lasts it carries natural obligations, to find food, and to reproduce, and to protect themselves and their families against marauders and those higher up the food chain. Animals and birds feel no compulsion to improve their lot, they have no expectations or ambitions, and they have no recreational vices. A badger does not long for spectacles, and a fox never considers taking a bath, and a rabbit is not longing to be able to bite a ferret’s head off, and an owl does not wish for a deep-freezer so that it doesn’t have to go out hunting for fresh food every night.