Читать книгу England have my Bones - T. H. White - Страница 19

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Sunday. I had a long lie and a bath; went up to Craigenkillie at 1.30 for the camera and talked to Macdonald; copied the map of the river and took several photographs. A dull day for photographers, but I must chance it. Then I went and fetched Tommy Watts, the genius who first began to make the Bentley go. We footled about till 7.30. Mrs. Watts made me go in to tea. We saw a heron fishing, and three teal. Paid debts over car. Still not running on one switch. Boring day. But Tommy Watts is a grand person.

The water is going down, and I shall use a small Kessler’s Fancy to-morrow.

Macdonald took me over the castle. It will do. I must get a book on toxicology.

On a blank day one can think about fishing. My mind keeps going back to the people who talk about patience. Put it like this. A man who is fishing for salmon has a whippy piece of wood, attached to the end of which there is a bit of string perhaps as long as a cricket pitch. He has got to wave his piece of wood in such a way as to extend the string behind him and then drop it in front of him in an absolutely straight line. Many people have difficulty in managing a crop, whose lash is only about four feet long. He repeats this delicate feat perhaps seven hundred times in a day, speculating every time about the exact place where he wants the string to land, and he is content to do this for three days running without killing a fish, provided that he kills one on the fourth. This looks to me like a good tribute to the excitement of the kill.

People seem to think that a fisherman sits in the shade of a pollard willow watching his float, whilst the countryside dreams about him, the cuckoo sings, and the cattle draw the grass. It has snowed or sleeted almost every day that I have been here. I have walked perhaps ten miles a day, and been at it nearly twelve hours a day—in the sleet. This is not because I am tough or obstinate, but because the joys are so thrilling (a queer word to use about an art that has nothing to do with steeplechases or motor-racing) that it would be unthinkable to do anything else. The fisherman fishes as the urchin eats a cream bun, from lust. You might as well talk about the patience of Tarquin.