Notwithstanding by Louis De Bernières Read Free Book Online Page B

in blossom, causing some people to ring the gas board, and others to wonder what feline had pissed so copiously as to make the whole village smell of cat piss. Out on the roads, squashed baby rabbits were being dismantled by magpies, and frogs migrating to their breeding ponds were being flattened into very large and thin batrachian medallions that would, once dried out, have made excellent beer mats.
    It was a Saturday, and the young man was driving along Notwithstanding Road, which leads twistingly and straitly from Notwithstanding to Godalming. Over time the lanes had sunk some fifteen feet below the surface of the ground, steep banks rose up on either side and trees so overarched the carriageway that the ensemble formed a kind of natural tunnel that gave people exhilarating intimations of being in fairyland. It was on this road that one was most in danger from the nuns who lived in the convent on the hill. Their bizarre disregard for safety on the roads was a source of constant wonderment to the locals.
    The young man was taking a long cut into town in the spirit of exploration, since he was relatively new to the area, having recently taken up a post as assistant music teacher in a local public school. It was the kind of public school that one might have described as being in the top rank of the second-raters. He was not on duty this day, having been spared the embarrassment of refereeing any football games or supervising any detentions. Thus far he was not relishing his job particularly. The boys’ attitude to music was more robust and jocular than musical, confining itself mainly to bawling out filthy rugby songs in the communal showers. Moreover, since he was accommodated in a spartan bachelor flat provided by the school, he had not experienced the customary welcome of newcomers to the village, which consisted in solidly constructed, inquisitive middle-aged women turning up with pots of home-made marmalade and general offers of assistance and advice. His flat was in a large house in a remote corner of the school grounds, and the other flats were occupied by the school chaplain, a sports teacher who thought that classical music was for ‘queers’ and a fey and unhappy young English teacher who almost certainly was one.
    The music teacher was quite poor, and had no prospect of ever being otherwise. He drove a Morris Minor saloon which he had bought for fifty pounds at the age of seventeen. He and his father had dismantled and rebuilt it in the garden. The car was admittedly and visibly hand-painted, but it had already proved a faithful servant, and it worked well even when technically ill. He was fully reconciled to a long future with this car, even though his rowdier friends in better-paid jobs were roaring about in souped-up white Ford Escorts with red stripes down the sides and huge holes cut out of the bonnet in order to accommodate oversized Weber carburettors.
    He had passed the hedging and ditching man, who was contemplating an old whisky bottle that he had just excavated from the mud. He was somewhere in the vicinity of the Glebe House when he came across a car that was stopped on the verge, unwisely near to a bend in the road. He felt reluctant to overtake it, in case a car should be coming round the bend the other way. Most of all, though, he stopped because the stationary car was also a Morris Minor.
    Going round to the front, he met with a woman, standing and facing him with an expression that had something about it of embarrassment and shame. Her hands were behind her back, as if she were concealing something. She was about thirty years old, a little plump, pleasant in the face without being pretty, dressed practically rather than for elegance or for effect.
    ‘Ummm, hello,’ said the music teacher diffidently. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, but I wondered if … if you were in need of assistance. I mean, I thought you might have broken down, and, as it were, I drive a Morris Minor myself, and I always