Taking the Peace

Not having grown up in the countryside I had always harboured certain misgivings about the great wide open and that generally it was a place best avoided, what with its flying-buzzing-stinging things, its reactionary politics, its seemingly lackadaisical attitude to inbreeding and its fresh air. As a townie born and bred, it wasn't for me. I can see now that these opinions, though largely correct, weren't insurmountable and that if I were to achieve my goal of moving my family and me as far away from civilisation as reasonably possible, I just had to put up with certain things and accept the rough with the smooth. I have even grown quite fond of fresh air.

  There are certain things, however – things that are peculiar to a country life – that I simply will not tolerate: the lack of appreciation for a sharp suit, for instance, early mornings, muck and the like. But by far the worst is 'facial mushrooms'. Yes, you read that correctly, 'facial mushrooms'. For some weeks Thérence had had a rash on his face which the doctor insisted was eczema, and so prescribed a cortisone cream to deal with it. The rash continued to spread like a bushfire, however, and by this time was covering most of his face. It was an alarming sight; fiercely red, it looked like second degree burns and had spread into his ears and around his eyes.

  Natalie had already made an appointment with the dermatologist, but it wasn't going to be for another three weeks, so we went back to the doctor who, realising he'd made an error, changed Thérence's prescription. By now, however, our confidence in him was pretty low and we thought a second opinion was needed. The simplest way to get a second opinion on child healthcare issues in France is simply just to walk your child down any given street at any time of the day and just wait for old women to spring from the recesses and offer their unsolicited advice on matters of health, clothing, haircuts etc. The French still have a very strong sense of family – but not just their own, everybody else's too. There is also the opinion that if you are a man alone with your child or children you are probably quite inept and therefore would appreciate a bit of advice. Which we do – no, really, we love it; me especially. There's nothing I like better than to be stopped in the street by a bearded old woman and be told that my son isn't dressed warmly enough and then have my hand slapped away while the old crone tightens the coat up herself! This kind of thing really happens. I was in the supermarket once and when I returned to my trolley I was given a lecture on not leaving my child unattended while looking for groceries, not by one woman alone but by a group of women, a coven, who then decided to follow me around the shop just in case of further parental lapses.

  Fortunately we were spared the amateur medical opinion in this instance when the dermatologist rang back with an immediate appointment, which I think was down to the doctor who had probably rung her and explained how bad the situation had become. It was, she said, a very bad case of champignon – a skin fungus basically – but was certainly treatable and shouldn't leave any scarring. The question is, she mused, how did he get it? Do we have any animals?

  It is fair to say that Thérence is quite feral; the way he insists on playing with the cats and dogs, climbing into their beds, even eating their food when our backs are turned makes him seem more Mowgli than the ModPadawan I had him marked down as – he loves his pets. But as we listed the volume of animals that we have the dermatologist's face went ashen, not because it's particularly unusual in the countryside but because we had to try and narrow down which animal, if any, was carrying the fungus. My chief suspect was Pierrot – whose insatiable appetite for pleasing himself on furniture was surely just asking for bacterial trouble. Then there's Vespa who briefly had ringworm; Toby takes himself off to places of an afternoon, so who knows what he's up to; Flame of course; the horses shedding their winter coats as they had been, that can't be healthy... it could have been any one of them.

  Or, because it's the countryside it could have been none of them, just something poor Thérence had picked up in the air, like germ warfare. We arranged for the vet to come out the following week and begin an investigation, but in the meantime Thérence had some 'scrapings' taken from his cheeks to see if they could determine the cause. Apparently they do this by seeing what cultures grow from the scrapings, in other words what vegetation can be cultivated from my lad's face! As Marlon Brando said in The Godfather, 'Look what they did to my beautiful boy.'

  The course of treatment he was prescribed was also quite harsh. Firstly tablets, which are 250 milligrams but of which he can only take 200 milligrams, which meant us crushing the tablets in a pestle and mortar and then in rather dubious fashion, chopping the powder into lines and placing it in wraps. He was also given some cream which was so strong he wasn't to be allowed out into the sunlight! For two months! A situation which got Natalie especially quite angry about the whole misdiagnosis thing, but what do you do? This is a very small, rural community and the doctor is a very powerful figure here, it's not a case of simply changing your doctor; that would be a very public insult and a decision not to be taken lightly. It's not wise to upset local bigwigs; I've seen Jean de Florette.

  Despite her frustration with the doctor and the logistical difficulty in keeping an adventurous toddler locked indoors on a sunny day, Natalie's mood is always lifted in the spring and at last it was here in all its glory. Like the popular bloke who turns up deliberately late at a party, spring had sneaked in, been forgiven for its tardiness and was being worshipped by all. Immediately the mood changed at home, rather than coming downstairs in the morning and being greeted with leaden skies, spring brings a freshness to the day; there is hope, there is potential.

  'Spring is my favourite time of the year,' Natalie said for the fourth time that evening, as she concentrated hard on her garden design drawings and her notebooks. I had had the rare pleasure of being at home for a week but had barely seen her in that time, though in truth I hadn't really expected to. When spring arrives she is outside from sunrise to sunset and if we could rig up powerful arc lights for the night she would be outside then too.

  My outdoor roles are, by choice, fairly limited but I am occasionally called upon to perform some menial task and one of those is 'small animal rescue', which hitherto has consisted of only two actual rescues. The first was the kingfisher that flew into the lounge windows and knocked itself out, and the other rescue was when a small rabbit, which must have been dropped by a clumsy buzzard, landed on Eddie's head. That all changed with the advent of the cats. I was now constantly on call, like a lifeguard, always ready to rescue small animals of differing varieties from the clutches of the evil cats. Mice, shrews, birds, lizards – their cruelty is indiscriminate while they just toy with the small beasts. They had actually taken to dragging whatever creature they'd caught to the front of the house where they knew we'd watching, because they knew what would happen next. Natalie would stop humming and shout, 'Ian! Vespa's caught something!' The boys would come running and generally get there before me, the cats would have a crowd and then I would turn up like a wheezing David Hasselhoff and the chase would begin.

  The cat would pick the thing up in its mouth and make a dart for the open field, I'd go after it, rugby tackle the cat, whereupon the other cat would pick up the ball/mouse and run with it. I'd go after that one too. This would go on for as long as they want it to and is quite simply exhausting, rendering me a sweaty mess in whatever area of the garden we would finish in, unable to walk anymore, triumphant in my rescue of whatever creature I might have saved that day, but physically spent. This is where Natalie's shrewd garden design would come into its own, as fortunately there are plenty of places for me to just sit down and have a rest; she certainly never uses them, especially in spring.

  One of Natalie's most endearing qualities has always been her quite monumental determination – her utter refusal to yield to the inevitable, despite overwhelming evidence that she is fighting a losing battle, is almost superhuman. I don't mean that in an unflattering way either, the reason we are able to have what we have despite me hardly being around is because of her strength and resolve. But when she first insisted on keeping the cats I did point out, with a certain degree of 'I don't know why I'm even bothering to say this but...', that they would kill everything in sight. The small rodents that scurry across the patio, the lizards that bask on the walls, the fish in the pond and the myriad of birds that nest in the garden; all of that, I said, you are putting at risk. Are you really sure that that's what you want?

  'Don't worry,' she replied, 'I'll teach them not to kill.' And in one fell swoop went from endearingly stubborn and resolute to downright deluded.

  The kittens were, by now, eight months old and it was carnage. Now obviously the countryside is a brutal place and as a lifelong 'townie' it takes some getting used to, but the sheer level of slaughter was frightening. I honestly didn't realise how much wildlife we had at the place until it started turning up in piles on the doorstep, and it was relentless. All day, every day, without rest or pause. If they hid what they killed, had any shame whatsoever it might have been more bearable; and if Natalie and the boys also didn't feel the need to have a state funeral every time another poor creature fell prey to the murderous felines that may have helped too. It was getting like Wootton Bassett at home, another senseless death, another outpouring of emotion, another burial. There was so much butchery at one point that even Natalie had to start using a mass grave instead of the individual plots she'd been regularly preparing and it also created a level of desensitisation with the boys. When the rabbit died, Samuel was in tears for hours afterwards but now neither he nor Maurice felt able to raise their heads from their Nintendos, a certain level of ennui having set in despite the heavy death toll.

  For any sentient human being this presents a stark choice, either accept what is going on or get rid of the cats, but seeing as neither of these seemed to actually be an option for Natalie she moved onto a third alternative, which I nicknamed Operation King Canute and was, I fear, always doomed to failure. The plan was this: acknowledge that cats have, over millions of years, evolved into brutal and efficient hunters and that they have their rights, but then teach them new skills while still having all the temptations around them. I admire Natalie's tenacity, I really do, but it was a bit like watching Tim Henman at Wimbledon, noble and backed up with fanatical support maybe, but ultimately doomed to failure.

  The cats of course were completely bemused by the whole project, when Flame was forcibly removed from a large mouse and picked up by the scruff of his neck one day and told he was being 'very naughty', he had a look of utter bewilderment on his face. I pointed out to Natalie that he wasn't being naughty at all but doing only what comes naturally to him.

  'You used to wake up every morning and light up a cigarette!' she shot back. 'But you changed!'

  'Fair enough. I'll just nip down the vets and get some 'Instinct Patches' then, shall I?' I said and scurried away before she picked me up by my neck too.

  'Cat Bibs' were the answer apparently. Having trawled the Internet for potential solutions, of which there are unsurprisingly very few, it seemed like Cat Bibs would do the trick. And they definitely work, according to the makers of Cat Bibs. The Cat Bib is exactly what it sounds like, it's a brightly coloured bib, made of rubber and foam and attaches to the cat's collar. I did some research of my own on this and not only did I not find a great deal of evidence to suggest that they do work, but even the people who say that they work aren't really sure why. To my mind the cat looks ready to eat which is hardly an impediment and surely will only muddy the waters further. It's suggested that the bibs either work because the prey can see the predator coming (eyewitness testimony), they act as a barrier to a successful leap (manufacturer's explanation), or the cat feels like such a berk having a bib-shaped computer mouse mat hanging from its neck that it's shamed into staying indoors (my theory).

  None of which matters, as they didn't work at all. Oh, they were slightly off-putting for the first couple of days but that was only while the cats got used to carrying the things around their necks. But it didn't take long for them to actually be a positive spur to hunting! The cats found a way of swinging the bibs around so, rather than look like a bib hanging from the neck and ready to be splashed with food, they were now hanging from the back of the neck and looked like small capes, giving the cats a new-found confidence as they leapt on anything that moved in the misguided assumption that they were now SuperCats!

  I fear that this dealt something of a blow to Natalie's confidence as once again the bodies mounted up. An air of resignation set in, mass graves were left open waiting for the next inevitable victim, even the bibs were put on forlornly and with no real expectation of success. Experience told me that this was the time to lay low, don't gloat, don't draw attention to yourself. While Natalie ruminated on the inevitable failure to turn back millennia of feline instinct she would have to turn her attention to softer targets so it was best to just stay out of her way, which was easier said than done.

  We have a big house, a lot of land and a lot of outbuildings, and yet there is nowhere I can go that will offer any respite whatsoever, there is nowhere to hide, no oasis of calm. You're probably thinking that this is a ridiculous complaint and you'd be right – I spend an awful lot of my time moaning about being away from my family and then when I do get home I'm moaning about that as well. In my defence, I could argue that I am an 'artiste' and therefore need my creative space, but actually I'm just a moody git who needs five minutes to himself occasionally for his own good and for the good of those around him.

  It was easier when I was a smoker; I used to wait until everyone else was in bed and disappear to my makeshift office in one of the dépendances and 'write' until the early hours of the morning. In reality all I did was smoke, sample too much of the local wine and pointlessly practise cricket shots until the early hours of the morning. I gave up smoking and moved my office into the spare room in the main house, a naive move, frankly, that lasted about as long as it took to turn on the computer as my desk rapidly became the 'go-to' place for ironing and toys that 'Daddy would mend'. So I moved my 'office' next to a wardrobe at the top of the stairs, where it couldn't have been more open plan if it was in the local town square, and besides which I couldn't use my chair as 'that's where the cats sleep'.

  I thought I'd found my oasis one afternoon. Samuel and Maurice were at school, Thérence was in bed and Natalie was occupying herself in the garden, so I vainly planned on setting up my laptop in the workshop and doing some 'work'. What I soon realised was that a family of swallows had built a nest in the workshop and now regarded the place as their own, angry little so-and-sos they were too. They quite clearly regarded my presence as an invasion of their privacy and sat angrily on the shelf above me telling me in no uncertain terms to 'bugger off'. I don't know if you've ever had a row with a pair of breeding swallows, but it's a pretty unedifying affair – the more they chirruped swallow obscenities at me the more I threw back exactly the same at them.

  'What is going on?' Natalie shouted as she rushed into the workshop. 'Who are you swearing at?'

  'The damn swallows!' I said, a tad embarrassed. 'The little sods won't leave me alone.'

  Natalie then spent the next five minutes telling me that this was their territory now and that I shouldn't be disturbing them while they lay eggs and no wonder they were angry – wouldn't I be if my territory was invaded? I tried to point out that technically and legally I was within my rights to stay and that it was my territory that had been invaded, but she'd already gone. I shut my laptop and left as well, but not before I'd given the cantankerous pair a right mouthful which they duly gave back. I moved into another room next door and the same thing happened, only this pair weren't content with verbal assaults and felt that swooping low over my head in an aggressive fashion would get me away from their nest. They were right too.

  Besides which, my grumpy animal rescue skills were apparently needed again. I could hear Maurice, just back from school, calling me.

  'Daddy, it's a snake! A big snake,' he shouted excitedly. Bloody hell, I thought, that's really not my department at all. I hate snakes.

  The three of them proceeded to describe the snake. It was big, smallish, greeny, beige with a square, triangular head and 'tractor', which was Thérence's contribution. It was like trying to get some sense out of a family of rednecks convinced that they'd been abducted by aliens. It's well known, apparently, that hens kill snakes but Tallulah and Lola didn't seem even remotely interested preferring instead to dig up Natalie's roses, much to her annoyance. Snakes can be a problem around here; years ago they released more snakes into the area to control a growing rodent population, so now people have hens to control the snakes. Presumably once the hens are out of control they'll release foxes and then when they're running wild they'll release a load of red-jacketed hunters 'tally-ho-ing' all over the shop.

  I looked for the snake, a bit gingerly to be honest and rather hoping that I wouldn't come across it, but I couldn't find the thing and assumed that Maurice had been mistaken or that it might just be a harmless grass snake. Then the next day the evidence arrived. A rat, a huge rat at that, had been killed just where they'd seen the serpent. There were no visible signs of attack on the thing and it was so big that I doubt even the cats could have got it, had they been inclined. It was a monster and Natalie took me to one side.

  'You have to find this thing,' she said simply. 'Somewhere it has found a place to hide, where it isn't disturbed by the cats or dogs and where the children haven't stumbled on it.'

  'You're right,' I replied with determination. 'Don't worry, I'll find it and when I do I'll ask him to budge up a bit.'

  I never did find the snake and no more evidence turned up suggesting that it had set up permanently somewhere on the property; my guess was that there was too much activity going on, too much noise and that he felt threatened by all the activity and just cleared off looking for a bit of peace and quiet. I had every sympathy with him too.