I told the bullocks they were stupid and nosy. They moved a few feet away, enough for me to disentangle myself from the brambles. "Don't bother me — stay there — you, too!" I said, and backed down the pasture to the gate while the big bull watched. The animals obeyed me in a reluctant way, but stubbornly, edging forward whenever I turned away.
Then I vaulted a fence and was safe. Perhaps I had never been in danger, but I had felt threatened. They began pushing at the fence as I walked on. And I thought how domestic animals are a much greater nuisance than wild animals — they are dependent and badly behaved and seem willful and obtuse.
After a few more hills I saw St. Catherine's, a lovely ruined chapel on the summit of a hill in Abbotsbury. There was a swannery in Abbotsbury, which was why I had seen so many of the birds on the shore. The village had a monkish gray stone appearance — there once had been a Benedictine monastery here — and the tithe barn and the cottages all looked as though they had been built by friars for the glory of God. In fact, it was now a village of house-proud English people who, at great expense, had restored the place and planted roses.
The path from here to West Bay and Bridport was straight along the shore, and a lovely sunset haze hung over the thatched village of Burton Bradstock, where land and water met, green and gray.
That night at the Crown Inn of Uploders I saw a sign saying rook pie. What did it mean?
Robin Upton, the landlord, said, "Ask my wife."
Shelley Upton was in her thirties and studious-looking, and she clearly enjoyed being asked about rook pie. She said, "The boys around here shoot rooks, you see. I heard their guns. I asked them what they did with the birds. They said, 'Oh, we throw them over the hedges.' I said to myself, 'If they're killing them anyway and throwing them over the hedges, one might as well find a way of cooking them and eating them.' And then I remembered a recipe for rook pie, in my Castle's Dictionary of English Cooking. That goes back to 1880. It's rook and onions and a homemade crust. It's very good."
I said I wanted to try some. She served it to me at the rear of the pub. The rook was dark meat, with a gamy grousey taste. I liked it very much, and her crunchy pastry, too, and the Dorset ale.
Not long after this there was a headline in the Bridport newspaper: POISON-PEN ATTACK ON ROOK PIE COUPLE. Apparently, a mention of Mrs. Upton's rook pie in the paper provoked a number of people to write abusive letters to the Uptons. Mr. Upton described the letters as "nasty" and the people as "nutters." He went on, "One said they hoped we died of cancer, and the other said that burning in hell was too good for us." The letters were of course from English bird-lovers, and Shelley Upton — the cheery soul in the country pub — was reported by the paper as now a nervous wreck, afraid to answer the phone or open letters.
Had Shelley Upton been a dog or cat in distress, she could have counted on the support of a pet-loving English public.
Yesterday's
Daily Telegraph
reported that the unfortunate Hyland family, whose two daughters were tortured, tarred and feathered by the IRA, had hurriedly left their home, belongings and pet dog in the Falls Road area to go into hiding.
By lunch two people, a woman ringing on her own behalf and a representative of the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had telephoned our correspondent at his hotel, expressing their concern for the welfare of the dog.
— Daily Telegraph
(May 16, 1972)
More recently, in what became known as "The Case of the Battered Budgie," a man was convicted in Bristol of causing unnecessary suffering to his pet budgerigar by placing it in a sink full of water. He was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £48 in witness costs. The witness was a Mr. John Bird. Mr. Bird "said that he saw the blue and white budgie called Sally, shivering with fright in George Brownless's ground floor flat." The case gained a certain notoriety, but at no point had anyone suggested that the prosecution of Mr. Brownless for excessively wetting his pet budgie was a waste of public money. Rather, there was a kind of comic self-congratulation: "You see how far we English are prepared to go in order to maintain our reputation for being eccentric and gentle?" But English animal-lovers could be violent, too. The Animal Liberation Front carried out destructive guerrilla raids on behalf of laboratory beagles and rabbits.
I walked a little farther down the coast, and in a pub near Bridport I met a young man named Fuggle, who was twenty-four and who told me, "I once dyed my hair purple — aubergine, actually — and then I walked around. I wanted to call attention to myself. I mean, I wanted to stand out in a crowd. Funnily enough, no one seemed to care. Didn't take a blind bit of notice!"
I said, "So your purple hair was a failure?"
"You might say so," Fuggle said. Fuggle had an odd habit, but it was one I had seen in other people. Whenever he turned to look at me, he shut his eyes, and when he moved his head away, he opened them again. "Anyway, I put henna on my hair, and it all turned bright orange. A man said to me, 'What's that all about then?' And I said, 'Don't you see I'm trying to tell you something?'"
"What were you trying to tell him?"
"Obvious, isn't it?" Fuggle said.
I said it was not obvious to me.
Fuggle said, "I was trying to tell him I was different. I'm not like other blokes."
"Because your hair was orange?" I said.
"No, no, no," Fuggle said, facing me and shutting his eyes. "I mean different deep down. I'm just not like other blokes."
"Give me an example," I said.
"For example, I'm engaged to a girl. I don't know whether I'm going to marry her, but I'm engaged. She's four feet eight and I'm six feet two. She can't understand me. And for another example, I'm not jealous. I don't know what the word means. One night I wanted to go out for a drink. My best friend, Brian, was there. I said, 'I just want to go out alone, for a drink.' I'm like that. Sometimes I want to be alone. I said, 'You two stay here.' Emily wanted to come with me, but I said no. Finally I said, 'Stay here and watch the telly.' Emily said there was nothing on telly. I said, 'Then you can go to bed together.' I didn't care. That's the way I am."
I said, "What was Brian's reaction when you told him he could go to bed with your girlfriend?"
Fuggle thought a moment, then said, "He just smiled." And Fuggle began to smile, too, though his eyes remained shut.
***
Bridport had no surprises for me. It was one of the few places on the British coast I actually knew. I had once lived up the road at South Bowood, which was a crossroads, four houses, and a pub. The pub, called the Gollop Arms, was now closed for good, and the owner — in England an owner was more like a pharisee than a publican — in retirement.
The prettiest place on the coast near here was a hill called Golden Cap. I took a bus to Morcombelake and climbed the hill and then set off in the sunshine for Lyme Regis, making my way through the woods and along the cliffs to Charmouth. It was only two miles from Charmouth to Lyme Regis. The rocky shore was full of fossils, and it was much easier and quicker than along the high cliffs and through the back gardens of bungalows. But when the tide was up it was impossible to walk along the shore.
I asked a man selling tickets at the parking lot at Charmouth whether I had time to walk to Lyme on the beach. He said that the high tide was at ten to three.
"It's half-past eleven now," I said, "so the tide's only halfway up."
"It's more than halfway at Lyme," he said. His name was Warren Hawtree. "You might get stuck."
I said, "What do you think I should do?"