Читать книгу England have my Bones - T. H. White - Страница 7

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It was a hellish day, but in some ways grand, because it was medieval. I shook off the dust of Grantly after breakfast and picked Macdonald up from Craigenkillie at 10.30. The water was improved. We drove to the Gordon Arms, a superb John Buchan sort of beer shop, and left a bag, after covenanting for £2 a week. We drove straight down the precipice to Linbane farm and started fishing the Mill Pool at noon. I pricked what was supposed to be a salmon and a 3-lb. trout almost at once, but Cheese’s rod seemed not heavy enough to drive home the multiple hooks of a Devon minnow. We went over the pool twice, and then up the river. In the Crooked Pot I took the first fish, a trout of 17 ounces. We fished up through the Ardgalleys fruitlessly, then back to Linbane for lunch. After lunch at 3.30 I tried the Mill Pool for trout, using Silver March Brown, Skinnum, and a blue-silver-teal sort of sea-trout fly, in that order from tail fly to top dropper, on a 4x cast. In one hour I had eight more fish, two ¾ lb. and the rest going down to ½ lb., and put them all back, except one of the ¾ lb. for breakfast. All three of the flies were taken; though the gaudy one only once, by a very small stupid fish. Then we went back to minnow, but in vain. At seven o’clock we tried to restart the car and found that it had blown up. At seven-thirty we decided to walk back to Craigenkillie, and did so by moonlight over the moors. Macdonald would take me to the nearest garage in his motor bicycle. But that wouldn’t start either. So we went on walking. By nine o’clock we had reached a garage. By eleven-fifteen, after sufferings which defy description, I got to the beer shop, in a car that would not do 15 m.p.h., without an overcoat, but having had the pleasure of walking across half a dozen moors in two overcoats, until I shed them; and then found that the next two hours were to be spent standing still beside the derelict Bentley. I got to the beer shop, and found they had gone to bed. “They” were a witch and a semi-imbecile natural, apparently. This is a grand country: the pubs 15 miles apart, garages 10, telephones 8. The Bentley will cost a fortune to repair, but it doesn’t matter. In any case the witch will cut my throat at night, and feast upon my heart. To-morrow, if not, I am to be at Craigenkillie by 8.30, to fish the Catloupe.

Macdonald assures me that I can catch a salmon before I go, but it doesn’t seem real. What is a salmon like? The idea of it looms over the fishing day; but it is only an idea, like the water in an urban tap. I can’t imagine it in relation to myself.