Read Online On The Black Hill (Vintage Classics) by Bruce Chatwin - Free Book Online
Authors: Bruce Chatwin
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11
THAT AUTUMN, ALREADY wearied by the weight of the oncoming winter, Mary went on frequent visits to the vicar. The Reverend Thomas Tuke was a classical scholar of private means, who had chosen the living of Lurkenhope because the squire was a Catholic, and because the vicarage garden lay on greensand – a soil that was perfect for growing rare Himalayan shrubs.
A tall, bony man with a mass of snowy curls, he had the habit of fixing his parishioners with an amber stare before offering them the glory of his profile.
His rooms bore witness to a well-ordered mind and, since his housekeeper was stone-deaf, he was under no obligation to speak to her. The shelves of his library were lined with sets of the classics. He knew the whole of Homer by heart: each morning, between a cold bath and breakfast, he would compose a few hexameters of his own. On the wall of the staircase was a fan-shaped arrangement of oars – he had been a Cambridge rowing blue – and in the front hall, ranked like a colony of penguins, were several pairs of riding boots, for he was also Joint Master of the Rhulen Vale Hunt.
To the villagers their vicar was a mystery. Most of the women were in love with him – or transported by the timbre of his voice. But he was far too busy to attend to their spiritual needs, and his actions often outraged them.
One Sunday, before Holy Communion, some women in flowery hats were approaching the church door, their features reverently composed to receive the Sacrament. Suddenly, a window of the vicarage banged open; the vicar’s voice bawled out, ‘Mind your heads!’ and he fired off a couple of barrels at the wood-pigeons crooning in the elms.
The shot fell pattering among the tombstones. ‘Bloody heathen!’ muttered Amos; and Mary hardly held back her giggles.
She liked the vicar’s sense of the ridiculous, and his sharp turn of phrase. To him – and him alone – she confessed that farm life depressed her; that she was starved of conversation and ideas.
‘You’re not the only one,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘So we’d better make the best of it.’
He lent her books. Shakespeare or Euripides, the Upanishads or Zola – her mind ranged freely over the length and breadth of literature. Never, he said, had he met a more intelligent woman, as if this in itself were a contradiction in terms.
He spoke with regret of his youthful decision to take Holy Orders. He even regretted the Bible – to the extent of distributing translations of the Odyssey round the village:
‘And who, after all, were the Israelites? Sheep-thieves, my dear! A tribe of wandering sheep-thieves!’
His hobby was bee-keeping; and in a corner of his garden he had planted a border of pollen-bearing flowers.
‘There you are!’ he’d exclaim as he opened a hive. ‘The Athens of the Insect World!’ Then, gesturing to the architecture of honey-cells, he would hold forth on the essential nature of civilization, its rulers and ruled, its wars and conquests, its cities and suburbs, and the relays of workers, on which the cities lived.
‘And the drones,’ he’d say. ‘How well we know the drones!’
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘I have known drones.’
He encouraged her to replace her own hives. Halfway through the first season, one of them was attacked by wax-moth, and the bees swarmed.
Amos ambled into the kitchen and, with an amused grin, said, ‘Your bees is all knit up on the damsons.’
His offer of help was worse than useless. Mary posted the boys to keep watch in case the swarm flew off, and hurried to Lurkenhope to fetch the vicar: Benjamin would never forget the sight of the old man descending the ladder, his arms, his chest and neck enveloped in a buzzing brown mass of bees.
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ he asked, as the vicar scooped them up in handfuls and put them in a sack.
‘Certainly not! Bees only sting cowards!’
In another corner of his garden, the vicar had made a rockery for the flowering bulbs he
11
THAT AUTUMN, ALREADY wearied by the weight of the oncoming winter, Mary went on frequent visits to the vicar. The Reverend Thomas Tuke was a classical scholar of private means, who had chosen the living of Lurkenhope because the squire was a Catholic, and because the vicarage garden lay on greensand – a soil that was perfect for growing rare Himalayan shrubs.
A tall, bony man with a mass of snowy curls, he had the habit of fixing his parishioners with an amber stare before offering them the glory of his profile.
His rooms bore witness to a well-ordered mind and, since his housekeeper was stone-deaf, he was under no obligation to speak to her. The shelves of his library were lined with sets of the classics. He knew the whole of Homer by heart: each morning, between a cold bath and breakfast, he would compose a few hexameters of his own. On the wall of the staircase was a fan-shaped arrangement of oars – he had been a Cambridge rowing blue – and in the front hall, ranked like a colony of penguins, were several pairs of riding boots, for he was also Joint Master of the Rhulen Vale Hunt.
To the villagers their vicar was a mystery. Most of the women were in love with him – or transported by the timbre of his voice. But he was far too busy to attend to their spiritual needs, and his actions often outraged them.
One Sunday, before Holy Communion, some women in flowery hats were approaching the church door, their features reverently composed to receive the Sacrament. Suddenly, a window of the vicarage banged open; the vicar’s voice bawled out, ‘Mind your heads!’ and he fired off a couple of barrels at the wood-pigeons crooning in the elms.
The shot fell pattering among the tombstones. ‘Bloody heathen!’ muttered Amos; and Mary hardly held back her giggles.
She liked the vicar’s sense of the ridiculous, and his sharp turn of phrase. To him – and him alone – she confessed that farm life depressed her; that she was starved of conversation and ideas.
‘You’re not the only one,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘So we’d better make the best of it.’
He lent her books. Shakespeare or Euripides, the Upanishads or Zola – her mind ranged freely over the length and breadth of literature. Never, he said, had he met a more intelligent woman, as if this in itself were a contradiction in terms.
He spoke with regret of his youthful decision to take Holy Orders. He even regretted the Bible – to the extent of distributing translations of the Odyssey round the village:
‘And who, after all, were the Israelites? Sheep-thieves, my dear! A tribe of wandering sheep-thieves!’
His hobby was bee-keeping; and in a corner of his garden he had planted a border of pollen-bearing flowers.
‘There you are!’ he’d exclaim as he opened a hive. ‘The Athens of the Insect World!’ Then, gesturing to the architecture of honey-cells, he would hold forth on the essential nature of civilization, its rulers and ruled, its wars and conquests, its cities and suburbs, and the relays of workers, on which the cities lived.
‘And the drones,’ he’d say. ‘How well we know the drones!’
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘I have known drones.’
He encouraged her to replace her own hives. Halfway through the first season, one of them was attacked by wax-moth, and the bees swarmed.
Amos ambled into the kitchen and, with an amused grin, said, ‘Your bees is all knit up on the damsons.’
His offer of help was worse than useless. Mary posted the boys to keep watch in case the swarm flew off, and hurried to Lurkenhope to fetch the vicar: Benjamin would never forget the sight of the old man descending the ladder, his arms, his chest and neck enveloped in a buzzing brown mass of bees.
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ he asked, as the vicar scooped them up in handfuls and put them in a sack.
‘Certainly not! Bees only sting cowards!’
In another corner of his garden, the vicar had made a rockery for the flowering bulbs he
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