In the Pays des Collines in northern Hainaut Catherine and I put down the deposit on a holiday flat. The flat was in the attic above a large, square farm. Smells of stewing beef wafted up the stairs; geese honked in the yard. The farmer's wife had the benign, slightly startled features of an elderly guinea pig. A chatty woman, she spoke so quickly as she showed us around you had the constant feeling you'd come into the story half-way through and were a little too late to catch up.

When Catherine pointed out a donkey in a nearby field, the farmer's wife exclaimed, 'Ah, Julie! She is fifteen. Last weekend the man was supposed to come to see her. Then on Friday the man's mother died and the man had to stay at home to comfort his father. Julie was desolated. That night she kicked down her fence and went in with the chickens!'

After a few seconds it dawned on me that 'the man' who had stood Julie up was a male donkey. I had some specialist knowledge here which I felt would benefit the conversation; just before we had come to Belgium I had met up with an old schoolmate of mine who is a farmer.

I hadn't seen Richard for nineteen years. He hadn't changed that much. His body had thickened, his cheeks had taken on the characteristic sand-blasted look of the northern agriculturalist and his hands had expanded to the size of shovels, but his face still crinkled up when he smiled and took on a self-deprecating look of bewilderment when some aspect of the story he was telling ran against him. His land was near Kirby Moorside and he had a broad North Riding accent, enunciating his words deliberately and speaking so very, very slowly that every phrase sounded like a paragraph. And you

Had to fight

The urge

To finish

Off all

His sentences for him.

He said, 'There are two things they say you never see: a happy farmer and a dead donkey. Well, one of our donkeys died last month. So that's something out of the ordinary in itself. I said to my wife, Annie, I said "Oh heck, I'll need a big hole to bury that in and I'll need to get on with it or we'll be in bother with the council."

'Annie said, "Before you set on that, why not give Alan a ring and see if he wants it?" We have this friend called Alan, you see, and he's a taxidermist. Well, he isn't a taxidermist by profession, he's a welder, but taxidermy is his hobby. Don't ask me why. So I phoned Alan and asked would he be interested in stuffing my donkey and Alan said he would, because he thinkgs Leeds Playhouse are after one. So I took it over in the pick-up.'

'Did he do a good job?' I asked.

'Oh, he hasn't done it yet. He's got the donkey in his freezer. Whether it's whole or in bits, I don't know. And to be honest I don't really want to know. But when you go to his house it's absolutely incredible, really. He's stuffed all sorts. Trout, stoats, terriers, ferrets, everything.'

'But a donkey's a bit different, isn't it?' I pointed out. 'I mean, it's a bloody sight bigger than a stoat.'

'Oh, a donkey's not the largest thing Alan's done, not by a long chalk. Because when an animal dies at Flamingoland Zoo Alan always gets the body. Tigers, lions, he's done the lot. Last time I called round to see him he was out in the garage stuffing a giraffe.'

The first part of this story seemed particularly relevant to the situation at hand, so, mustering my French, I said to madame, 'For the donkeys to die it is very not normal, I am certain.'

Madame looked at me as I was mad. 'No, monsieur,' she said matter-of-factly. 'All animals die, it is the way of things.'

I shrank slightly, an airy-fairy urban liberal crushed by rural common sense. Afterwards Madame never treated me with quite the same respect. I imagine that even now, as you are reading this, she is in comversation with a friend at another farm saying: 'The English! How can we let them have any say in the Common Agricultural Policy? I had one staying with me once. He thought the donkey had the gift of eternal life. No, Hortense, not any specific donkey, all donkeys! You laugh, but these people have a say in how we poor Belgian farmers make our living. It is incroyable!'

Of course, I could be greatly over-estimating the impact I had on her life.

In the kitchen of the farm I handed over a BF1,000 note for the deposit. 'Ooh!' the farmer's wife cried excitedly at the sight of it, 'the new note! I have read about it, heard of it, but never yet seen it!' She called out, 'Marie! Auntie! Come and see!'

A rangy woman emerged from a side room clutching a broom. She had a peroxide bouffant, rosy, wind-burned cheeks and a denim shirt. She looked like she might break into 'Stand By Your Man' at any moment. Instead she sauntered over to inspect the new note, a big smile on her ruddy face. 'It has King Albert on it,' the farmer's wife informted her joyously.

Another door opened on the opposite side of the rrom. This time an old lady trundled into view clutching a manila wage packet aloft like Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich. She had battleship-grey hair and such a pronounced stoop that gravity carried her perpetually forward. The only way she could stand still was to grab a piece of furniture and hang on to it. The farmer's wife waved the 1,000-franc note at her. 'Auntie! The new one. Here it is!' The old lady stared at it, proclaimed astonishment, then glanced at Catherine and me. 'Netherlanders?' she asked. We told her we were English. She smiled. 'The English,' she said, in English, with a haughty inflection that suggested she received tuition from Dame Edith Evans, 'the English are always welcome here.'

We thanked her. 'Do you know Yorkshire?' the old lady asked. I told her that I am from Yorkshire. 'I have friends there,' she said. 'Mr and Mrs Robinson, perhaps you know them?' I shook my head. 'Mr Robinson,' the old lady said in an attempt to jog my memory, 'works,' she waved the manila envelope skyward, 'up a tower.' Before she could explain further she lost her grip on the table and disappeared out of the door Marie had come in through. I never saw her again. Though a month or so later we passed a woman who looked remarkably like her seventy miles to the north, heading towards Antwerp.

back to Harry's books