John Welcome: On The Stretch (1969)

John Welcome, On The Stretch: A Richard Graham Adventure (Faber and Faber, 1969)

The County Corway Foxhounds hunted one of the most sporting countries in Ireland. So Bailey's Hunting Directory had told me before I left. It also said that every sort of obstacle was to be met, from tall, narrow single banks to broad doubles and the occasional stone wall. From the observations I had made when driving through it, I thought that the description of the country was probably accurate. Bailey's had also noted an almost complete absence of wire. I remembered,  too, a friend of mine who had hunted here some years back telling me that it was not an easy country to cross and that you were well-advised to have a horse that knew his job if you were to avoid being involved in some moving accidents by flood and field. (Ch 6)

On the stretch: obliged to use one's utmost powers.

Country: area of land that a hunt is allowed to ride over.

Moving accidents by flood and field: Othello Act I Scene 3. The Shakespearean tag was well-known in foxhunting circles.

Moving accidents by flood and field

[Image source: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/162207502637 .]

Richard Graham, former amateur jockey and British secret service operative, has been sent on a job to Ireland. His supposed employer (actually object of surveillance) has given him the day off to go fox-hunting. Arriving at the meet:

The weather still held and the mountains stood out against the sky, brooding over us, blue, remote and mysterious. Behind and below the village the country rolled away, a sea of grass fenced by those formidable banks. It was a foxhunter's paradise. It was also, I had the sense to see, a survival, something out of the last century. No jets disturbed the air, no lorries thundered here, no screaming youths with beards bore down on us with banners. Here was the blood and bones of a sport made for men. As I pulled the Land Rover to a halt behind a large green horse box, I speculated idly on how long it would last.

For Graham, hunt saboteurs are a noisy manifestation of modern life, like lorries and jets. We're getting into a debate about power that Graham never gets close to resolving. 

The country is superb but this smart hunt, Graham realizes, is fuelled by new money and is not altogether the authentic heart of Anglo-Irishness...

A few yards away from me two pretty boys were sharing a magnum of champagne on the bonnet of an Aston-Martin with one of the blue-coated girls. Another young man put his racing whip underneath his arm and remarked that yesterday he'd had a fall at the third at Wincanton. It was more like Kirby Gate than the South of Ireland and sat a little oddly, I thought, on the heirs of Flurry Knox and Dr. Hickey. (Ch 6)

Kirby Gate: the meet of the Quorn Hunt in Leicestershire, formerly a haunt of the rich and powerful, as shown below in its heyday, c. 1900.

A meet at Kirby Gate

[Image source: https://hallandadams.co.uk/products/kirby-gate .]

Flurry Knox and Dr. Hickey: characters in Somerville and Ross' Irish RM stories. 

When the chase begins Graham finds that "this fashionable field, like most fashionable fields, were not too great to go". He finds himself up front with "the top-sawyers". In particular a business-like girl on a "blood weed" who rides superbly. She turns out to be the daughter of the impoverished Anglo-Irish aristocrat Arthur Ravidge, and is thus Graham's adversary, supposedly. 

After a thrilling chase the hunt ends with the fox going to ground in a "shore" (Irish dialect for a drain, from the same Anglo-Norman origin as "sewer"). 

Top-sawyer: originally the worker who stands above the timber in a sawpit. Hence a person in a position of advantage or eminence.

Blood weed: The only definition I've seen is "a horse lacking substance". But this four-year-old is evidently as exceptional as its rider.

Graham and the girl have time for a drink. She asks for a port and brandy. Drinks and fast cars are notable features of the story. In the second half it expertly moves up through the gears and there's less time for drinks. At one point Graham, like the fox, saves his own life by slithering through a coastal drain.

Port and brandy: formerly a popular British pub combination.

Reluctantly missing out the race at "Tigerstown" and the ensuing stewards' enquiry, here's a longer extract from when the action starts to ramp up. 

Graham has gone to a Dublin address to follow a lead, but it turns out to be in a square of derelict Georgian houses scheduled for demolition. And then he's shot at from cover, so he flees into the house, but finds the back door barred. They're coming in after him.

Climbing on to the bath I reached up. I could just get my hands on the lid of the trap-door. Pushing upwards I managed to slide it to one side. Then I gripped the edges of the trap and pulled myself upwards.

Fear gave me both strength and impulsion. One agonized kick and I had got myself half through the opening; another and my weight was on my biceps. A desperate heave and I was up and inside. Then I quietly slid back the door.

It was only just in time. As I lay panting, the door of the bathroom opened. There were footsteps below me and a noise as if a door of a cupboard was being pulled at. It came free and then there was a grunt of disgust and the footsteps went away. 

I looked around in the gloom. Beside me was a huge galvanized tank with a sort of laocoön of lead pipes entwined about it. Leading to the tank from the roof was a lead-lined catchment channel. This was broken and leaking which explained the drip I had heard. The place was festooned with spiders' webs. But, praise be, just above my head, there was a sky-light.

The searchers, so far as I could ascertain from the noises off, were now in the upper part of the house. I didn't deceive myself that I was safe or anything like it. Sooner or later they were going to discover that there was no way out except the front door and after that it was only a question of time until they found me.

The sky-light was one of those affairs which are operated by a long iron handle and open outwards. The handle was rusted and the whole thing jammed with the dirt and deposit of ages. I squirmed myself into a position where I could get hold of it. Then I pulled it back and pushed it up. The window creaked and groaned, opened a few inches and stuck. I thought I heard footsteps coming down from above. Putting my shoulder under the window frame I heaved. The thing moved a bit more with a rasp of old and angry hinges. I heaved again. By this time I was making a hell of a noise, what with the protests of the window and my own struggles. I was past caring. I wanted out and that was all. With a bang the window came right away from its hinge and went clattering across the slates. The cool breeze of evening blew in on to my face. I clambered out on to the roof.

By now it was almost dark. Some distance away I could see lights on in houses and the evening glow of the city was reflected in the sky.

The slates were wet and slippery. Moreover the securing nails had rusted away so that the whole roof seemed to be shifting and moving underneath my hands. About six feet below me guttering ran along the roof edge. Putting my feet into this I tried to steady myself as best I could and to look around. The guttering didn't seem too secure, either. I felt it move as my weight came on to it.

Then I heard sounds of movement in the bathroom beneath me . . . (Ch 8)

Laocoön: referring to the celebrated classical sculpture of Laocoön and his two sons being overwhelmed by sea serpents. 

Laocoön and his sons

[Image source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons .]

Perhaps Dickens was the more direct source:

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings.

(A Christmas Carol, Stave 5.)

One book that I don't suppose John Welcome had read is Richard Wright's Native Son (1940). Bigger Thomas likewise tries to escape his pursuers by getting out on the roof, but he isn't as lucky as Richard Graham.

In Dublin, swathes of Georgian houses whose owners had moved out tended to become dilapidated tenements. The government was not sympathetic to preserving these emblems of the colonial era, and there were economic factors favouring redevelopment. Consequently there was a good deal of demolition of Georgian Dublin in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Richard Graham is oblivious to the political resonance, but Irish readers could not be. On The Stretch is a lament, part nostalgic and part caustic, over the remains of Ascendancy Ireland. 

*

John Welcome (pseudonym of John Brennan, 1914 - 2010) was an Anglo-Irish solicitor in Co Wexford, educated at Sedbergh and Oxford, a keen huntsman and horse-racing enthusiast. 

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/analysis/lawyer-who-took-up-literary-reins/58779.article