Low life | 22 November 2018

Evenings, I sit in a chair facing the cave interior and Catriona lies on the new sofa facing me (and, behind me, the window). Neither of us likes telly much so we read. She is currently consumed by a biography of Gerald Brenan; I’m enjoying The Unfree French, which is a history of the German occupation and the Vichy government.

The cave wall is light brown and pitted and striated by a river that once cascaded over it. The rock is stable and perfectly dry and according to one’s imaginative mood resembles either a gigantic petrified bath sponge or Arizona viewed from a light aircraft. To encourage visitors towards the second imaginative view, Catriona has placed a toy wigwam in a crevice and beside it a cowboy figure, who is taking aim with his pistol at a surprised and pitifully defenceless Indian.

After dark, shadows cast by angled house lights lend the rock an extra fascination. With a gun held to my head, and told to choose, I think I would rather look for hours at the cave wall instead of at a television. Last week, between chapters of The Unfree French, I looked up from occupied France to rest my eyes on the illuminated rock towering above Catriona as she lay reading on the sofa. And at a point about two feet from her head, a mouse popped out of an invisible hole and ran a little way down the rock face. It then paused, as if to read a sentence or two about Gerald Brenan over Catriona’s left shoulder.

It was a confident and very beautiful mouse, small and plump, its fur a rich chocolate brown. It ran headlong and vertically down, now quickly, now slowly, like a raindrop running haltingly down a windowpane.