Outside the town hall demonstrators were surging, milling around, and chanting slogans. Most of them had banners bearing graphic pictures. As Amiss averted his eyes, the baroness suddenly appeared at his side, having ploughed a path through the demonstrators with no apparent difficulty. ‘I would prefer it,’ remarked Amiss, ‘if my duties did not extend to having to look at pictures of eviscerated animals. It doesn’t exactly encourage me in this particular crusade.’
‘Oh, stop being so feeble, Robert. I could equally well show you pictures of gassed and shot foxes. This is propaganda; it has nothing to do with the truth. Now, come on in and let’s get a ringside seat.’
The hall filled up quickly. From the front row, Amiss looked round covertly a few times.
‘I doubt there are many on our side,’ he whispered.
The baroness, who had been searching her bag for her pipe, turned and stared around openly.
‘There certainly seems to be an absence of jodhpurs. Fear not. You’ve got me.’ She clamped down the tobacco and sucked on her pipe. A woman behind tapped her on the shoulder. ‘No smoking.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re just about to.’
‘Who says?’
‘You’ve got a pipe in your mouth.’
‘I’ve shoes on my feet but I’m not walking.’ She put her pipe on her lap and took from her pocket an enormous handkerchief into which she blew her nose noisily. The complainant sat well back in her seat, evincing a mixture of shock and disgust.
‘Ha! That’s better.’ The baroness returned the handkerchief to her pocket and put her pipe back in her mouth.
‘You’re just trying to tease them.’
‘Of course I am. It puts them in the wrong, this old unlit pipe trick. Anyway, it’s quite soothing—gives me something to grit my teeth on. How else would I get through a speech of Beatrice Parsons’?’
By 8.00 the hall was completely full. The audience ranged from octogenarians in woolly hats with Home Counties accents through to steely-eyed fanatics brandishing banners threateningly—which seemed odd, Amiss thought, since virtually the entire audience could be assumed to be on their side. Perhaps it had simply become a habit.
At this moment, a chap in an Aran sweater, crumpled tweed trousers, and sandals emerged from behind the scenes leading three speakers onto the platform. Screams and shouts of approval broke out at the back of the audience. As his team sat down, he stood at the microphone and called the meeting to order.
‘My friends.’ Silence fell. ‘As president of the Friends of Oppressed Animals, I am delighted to be here this evening. We are all friends in this great undertaking—united here in a great cause. A cause in which people who, in other circumstances might be politically at odds, can join hands in defence of the defenceless. Victory is within our grasp, but it is important that our champions be shown how much we respect and admire them and how—as they continue to hunt down cruelty and oppression—we will be riding closely behind them. We will not be wearing scarlet jackets, for we are not fine lords and ladies, but we will triumph in the chase nonetheless.’
This was apparently regarded as wit by a large section of the audience; they guffawed and roared with laughter.
‘Now, if I may make so bold, I would like to introduce someone who is indeed a fine lady, but not in the sense of one of those battening on the oppressed, be they human or animal. As plain Beatrice Parsons, she has long been a fighter for the poor and underprivileged, and that fight she will of course continue, but it is as Lady Parsons, the proposer in the House of Lords of the bill to outlaw these foul practices, that she comes to us today. So now, without further ado…’ He bowed low in Parsons’ direction.
Baroness Troutbeck gripped tightly on her pipe and out of the corner of her mouth muttered, ‘Sycophantic git.’
‘Sssh.’ Amiss didn’t like the look in the eye of an old lady who had overheard this challenging comment.
‘Why should I?’
‘We’re in a rather vulnerable spot,’ he hissed. ‘I don’t want to be beaten to death by those who want to abolish cruelty.’
The baroness threw her head back in a gesture which was presumably meant to imply distress at Amiss’ pusillanimity, but, to his relief, she said nothing more.
Lady Parsons was by now on her feet. She was a contained-looking woman, crisply turned out in the uniform now de rigueur among ambitious women of the left, conventional wisdom being that the more radical you were, the more you had to dress like something out of a glossy magazine. Her close-fitted and stylish yellow jacket sported epaulettes and brass buttons; her cream shirt was silk; her hair was simple but had obviously benefited from the attentions of a very upmarket practitioner. Lady Parsons’ vowels were clearly enunciated in a Home Counties/public school/Oxbridge accent that, at times, she must have wished to be without while she battled her way up the ladder of North London local politics.
‘Chair, friends, along with all of you, I am honoured to serve the cause of outlawing the cruelty that so disfigures our countryside. I am gratified to be able to play a part in bringing to Britain civilized standards of the kind the Establishment has always fought against.
‘I don’t need to tell you, my friends, the provisions of this bill.’ She then proceeded to do exactly that at considerable length and in the style of Counsel for the Prosecution making the final damning summing-up speech to the jury. Lady Parsons was clearly someone whose austerity allowed for no such luxury as emotion. Hers was a forensic mind, Amiss thought with distaste, as he listened to the bloodless analysis.
As she grimly went through the bill clause by clause, Amiss began to feel much more sympathy for Jack Troutbeck’s point of view, for Lady Parsons’ perspective clearly had no room for light, shade or tolerance. She saw no distinction between people kicking hedgehogs to death or setting fire to squirrels just for the hell of it and a sport that had involved whole communities throughout the countryside for centuries. Indeed, if anything, it was clear that hunting was the real butt of her loathing and disdain. At every opportunity she offered a humourless sneer at ‘bastions of privilege’ and ‘luxuriators in inherited wealth’ who sought to flaunt their riches and heartlessness in such an obscene manner. She even produced without apology, and as if it were newly minted, Oscar Wilde’s epigram about hunting being ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’.
Amiss hated her. She oozed moral superiority from every well-tended pore, and her intellect was competent, efficient and clinical—the intellectual equivalent of a Swiss laboratory. Without warmth, humour, or any kind of doubt, it was clear that on all moral issues, where many people saw pros and cons, Beatrice Parsons would be on the side of tidiness. Aborting the unfit, providing a national euthanasia service on demand, and purifying the genetic mix to eradicate inherited defects of physique or character would be right up her street.
‘So now, colleagues, the issues are clear. The government has led the way, the voice of the people of the United Kingdom, ninety-four per cent of whom are against fox-hunting, has been already exercised through their elected representatives. It is my duty to ensure that the people’s will triumphs in that redundant anachronism, the House of Lords, over the selfish interests of the landed gentry.’
‘What a pill,’ observed Jack Troutbeck in a whisper that carried several rows back. Amiss kicked her on the shin, eliciting a bellow of pain that would have been heard in the back row by the hard of hearing. If it disconcerted Amiss, it markedly unsettled the speaker. She shot a castigatory look at the author of the disturbance, who beamed back at her and moved her pipe to the other corner of her mouth. Parsons looked down at her notes, failed to find her place and ended lamely, ‘Well, that’s it, Chair. I’m grateful for your support. Victory is within our grasp.’
‘That rattled her.’ Jack Troutbeck beamed. She swung her right leg over her left knee with gay abandon, causing her skirt to ride up.
‘You’re showing your knickers,’ hissed Amiss, under cover of the thunderous applause in which he, unlike the baroness, was cravenly, though perfunctorily, joining. She looked down at the eau-de-nil satin that peeked from under the houndstooth tweed and said, ‘Good. That should upset the monk.’
The chairman rose and quelled the applause with a gesture.
‘We are very, very grateful to Lady Parsons. It is comforting to know our cause is in such capable hands. We are honoured further to have here a man of God whose life has been pledged, not only to the service of his fellow human beings, but to the service of all his fellow creatures Brother Francis has, over the years, contributed movingly to the literature of the animal world in many, many magazines. His short stories and poems have brought tears to our eyes as we contemplate the nobility and unselfishness of our animal friends and the suffering we impose on them. Fortunately for our cause, Brother Francis is not only an inspiration, he is in a position to help fight directly this last battle for the little fox and all the other wild animals whom we are all here determined to protect from the beastliness of man. For Brother Francis is also Lord Purseglove and his eloquence must move those members of that institution whose hearts are not irretrievably hardened. Please warmly welcome Brother Francis.’
Brother Francis certainly looked the part. His skinny stooping body, his snowy hair, and cadaverous face had the true stamp of aestheticism. His slightly hooded eyes were of a piercing blue which was intensified by the pallor of his complexion.
‘Savanarola?’ whispered Amiss to the baroness.
‘Probably.’
But there was nothing fanatical about the delivery or the voice of Brother Francis. His tone was gentle, his slightly Welsh accent with its seesaw intonation had an rather bardic effect overall and the content of his speech would have raised few eyebrows at a meeting of the North Gloucester branch of the RSPCA. It was treacly and glutinous rather than threatening.
‘Sisters and brothers. I am not here to preach religion to you. I am here to preach faith—a faith that is love of one’s fellow creatures. Whether you believe in God, whether you are Christian or whatever you may be, all of you here with me will have sympathy with Jesus Christ’s promise that not a sparrow falls without God knowing it. Sisters and brothers, as a small boy in the country, I was lucky enough to have read to me the story of St Francis of Assisi and how he loved Brother Donkey and Sister Rabbit. It was then that I decided to dedicate my life, not just to God but to those little creatures that cannot speak for themselves, yet are as noble a part of the world as the greatest saint or genius. Who is to say that Sister Nightingale trilling her matchlessly beautiful song is inferior to Schubert; that Mother Moorhen, selflessly searching from morning till night for food for her brood, has less love and selflessness than Mother Teresa; or that Brother Silverback defending his tribe of gorillas is less courageous than Hercules?’
Amiss gazed sideways at the baroness and caught a look of outrage crossing her face. She changed posture noisily and positioned herself, knees out, feet squarely on the floor, elbows on knees, head in hands. He heard the phrase ‘Pass the sickbag’ floating out. Her distress was certainly not shared by most of the audience. Thunderous applause broke out every time the tremulous philosopher paused. He went on to share with them a moving fragment of autobiography concerning the moment when he had just decided to apply to the Franciscan order. ‘I went out into the grounds of my father’s home, wondering if I was making the right decision about what to do with the rest of my life. Then I saw, hundreds of yards away, emerging from a copse, a fox in full flight. That beautiful innocent creature fled across the lawn and through the hedgerow, followed shortly afterwards by the baying hounds. And not far behind were the horses ridden by men and women so enamoured of blood that they wore clothes of scarlet. In the front row, I knew to my shame, would be my father.
‘As I stood there despairing at that horrible sight, a little squirrel who had come to love me—and whom I called Tiny Tim, for he represented to me such innocent goodness—jumped from a branch overhead onto my shoulder and rubbed his tiny head against my cheek. I knew then that what I had seen was a sign that I must dedicate myself for life to protecting my little feathered and furry friends against the cruelty of man. For it is man who was the enemy here, not the innocent hounds. As I wrote of them:
That faithful hound, his master’s slave
Serves the serial killer to his grave.
‘I can do little but pray and by my trifling pieces of verse awaken in others that understanding and kindness that you, by your presence here tonight, show is within each and every one of you. Let me end with a poem that I am proud to say has become the anthem of our great crusade. You will, I hope, sing the last lines with me.
The cunning fox to you may seem
A lowly creature in God’s scheme,
But see that vixen with her cub
Peering at you through the scrub
As if the frost had froze her.
She’s Madonna Lachrymosa.
And is the small hare in the gorse
Who flees the hounds and farmer’s curse
Bobbing his fluffy ears in fright
(So vigilant all day and night)–
A villain up to his old tricks
Or martyr on his crucifix?
‘And now, brothers and sisters, sing out for our little siblings.’
And to the tune of ‘Jerusalem’, the audience sang out lustily.
And did those paws in ancient times
Scamper on England’s mountains green?
And did the duck and grouse divine
Fly forth upon our clouded hills?
Bring me my scroll of burning gold
Bring me my quill, my Muse, my lyre,
I will not cease from Mental Fight
Nor shall my odes sleep in my brain
Till we have every blood sport banned
In England, not just on my land.