Sex in the garden
My education on sex was begun quite early in my life, with my mother providing a live commentary styled after the young David Attenborough on Zoo Quest.
“Here,“ she said softly, “ – after his feeble attempt at courtship – we see the male – now preparing to mount the female.”
Unlike Attenborough, however, my mother was not secreted in tropical island shrubbery, quietly filming the mating ritual of some rare and exotic bird; she was instead seated with a cup of tea in hand, on an aluminium-framed deck chair, at the edge of our back garden lawn, with me kneeling on the grass beside her. Ahead of us – and looking considerably more perky than usual – was our pet tortoise, Toby. A little way in front of him was his garden companion, Fred, who it now transpired needed to be re-christened, Freda.
As we continued to spectate, Toby – with a quite remarkable turn of speed – hastened towards the object of his desires with his neck extended and his mouth agape. Then, when close up behind her, he somehow launched his front half off the ground and came to land with his hindquarters close to her hindquarters, with his front legs then desperately struggling to grip her shell so that he could hold this position long enough to do the necessary. Freda meanwhile seemed wholly unmoved by the goings-on at her rear, and blithely continued to munch away on a dandelion.
When the deed was done, Toby slid back down to lawn-level and retreated into his shell. Freda finished off her yellow-flowered teatime snack, and then went in search of further floral nourishment.
“And that’s all there is to it, darling,” said my mother. “Much ado about precious little,” she added, and then returned to the kitchen to wash her cup and saucer.
(Winner of the Booksie Pet Flash Fiction competition, 2023.)
Scraps
Although Scraps provided a faithful fireside companion for my father, and a good-natured garden playmate for me, he was nevertheless born and bred as a ratter. Whether he was guided by sight, or sound, or scent, he rarely made a mis-step in hunting down the rodents that inhabited the disused factory yards that abutted our back garden.
When the air raids over Coventry began in late 1941, however, his ratting skills were turned to an altogether different purpose. Night after night he went with my father, the ARP wardens, firefighters, and other volunteering locals, to seek out and rescue those who fell victim to the Luftwaffe’s bomb blasts, infallibly leading the search parties to the bodies that became trapped beneath the debris from collapsed buildings.
On the night of 14th November 1941– the night when St. Michael’s cathedral and much of the city centre was destroyed – Scraps led the search parties to Daimler munitions workers who were buried beneath the fallen factory flooring and blast-scattered machinery. As he barked to call attention to a man lying injured beneath fallen brickwork, a burning roof timber fell and brought his ratting days to an end.
My father carried his lifeless body home wrapped in old sacking.
On the following morning, we buried him toward the back of the geranium bed, and later marked the spot with a deep-blue hydrangea.
For long enough the hydrangea provided the only tangible reminder that we had of Scraps, but in the summer of ’62, when my father died and we got to sorting through his personal effects, we found an old hand-tinted photograph in his writing bureau. I treasure this picture, in part because it’s the earliest that I have of the two of us together, but also because it shows my wartime garden playmate – a scruffy little dog who lost his life helping to save those of others.