Up the garden path

26 April 2008

Jeremy Clarke on his Low Life

It was a path, though very steep and hazardous. I was on all fours; Joe was blowing so hard I worried that he might have a heart attack. About halfway up the cliff, the path was blocked by a wooden gate and barbed wire. The gate was too high and too smooth to climb over and the wire was fiendishly positioned. We’d come too far to turn back, however. I made a hole in the wire large enough for Joe to wriggle his fat self through. I followed and got hopelessly stuck. It’s been many years since I last pressed my face into damp soil and smelt the richness of the earth. After unpicking my coat from the barbed wire, I finally threaded myself through the gap in the wire, and we pressed on up the cliff path.

Now we were in a sort of Lost Gardens of Heligan with old overgrown walls, where ancient palms and flowering shrubs survived in the shade of larger trees gone wild. The path continued to zigzag upwards, but now there was gravel underfoot. Joe was a walking bellows. His tongue was right out of his head, his eyes were glazed, and he was limping. Nearly there, Joe, I said.

The path turned sharply and there was a flight of old stone steps, at the top of which we found ourselves on a lawn in front of the wrong house. We’d reached the top of the cliff, but we were nowhere near Margery’s. A man was marching towards us at the double. ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ he yelled. I didn’t recognise him. The house must be a second home. Another one. He might own a house in the village, but he clearly felt no allegiance to the village. He came marching up to me and said, ‘How did you get in here? This is private property. Get off my land.’ He was absolutely furious.

Dear Joe now took advantage of the halt and the expanse of lawn to make another valiant, trembling attempt to void his stool. Forgetting the pompous man for a moment, I watched with interest. Furious though he was, the man fell silent and also watched. This time it was a success. A very great success. Joe then did that raking thing with the back feet that dogs do afterwards. I noticed a vein standing out on the man’s temple. ‘Well done, Joe!’ I said. ‘Good boy.’