‘I say,’ calls a sudden gruff voice, the type of voice that carries with it generations of breeding. I’m even keener to get away. Maybe if I don’t look up, don’t make eye contact he’ll pass on by.
‘I say,’ he repeats, his voice carrying a greater degree of urgency, as if he has read my intent on a get-away.
I realise that it’s too late to make my escape. I look up to see a well-dressed, ruddy-faced man, of indeterminate age but possibly in his seventies, approaching and gesticulating with a walking cane from the other side of the road. My immediate impression is that the very embodiment of Toad of Toad Hall has just materialised into the real world, straight from the pages of Wind in the Willows. His brown tweed jacket is open to reveal a matching tweed waistcoat, straining to remain closed over his ample stomach. Beneath the waistcoat is a checked shirt, sporting at the collar a neatly-tied red tie – a Windsor knot if I’m not mistaken. Whether his face, atop which is perched a clothe cap matching his jacket and waistcoat, is unusually flushed because of the tightness of the tie or some excessive physical exertion or whether this is its normal colour I can’t be sure. Below the jacket is a matching pair of plus-fours, thick red walking socks and a pair of stout walking shoes. The cane completes the picture. I am just disappointed that he isn’t wearing a monocle.
For a moment I expect him to start berating me for parking in the lay-by; some of the locals in this exceedingly affluent area can get very censorial and vocal about ‘strangers’ with unknown intent suddenly appearing within their realm, but I needn’t worry on that account.
‘Nice day isn’t it?’ he said, a welcoming smile splitting his ruddy face. Having been berated by a few ‘Little Englanders’ in my time, it is not my experience that they ever begin with pleasantries about the weather.
Allowing a car to flash past, he crosses the road towards me. ‘They drive along here so fast,’ he says with a gruff Churchillian bluster. ‘I live just over there,’ he adds, pointing with his cane in the general direction of a particularly large detached residence on the side of the road from which he has just crossed. ‘Just been for a walk. There’s quite a lot of history to this place, you know.’ He proceeds to give me the potted-history of the area, including a list of the rich and famous, including Henry VIII’s wife Anne of Cleeves, who he mixes up with Anne Boleyn. Well, having too many Annes probably does get confusing.
‘Have you been working around here?’ he suddenly asks, possibly having exhausted the well of his historical knowledge. He uses his cane as a pointer to indicate the general area behind the lay-by. After I explain that we have been clearing scrub towards the top of the slope, he replies, ‘Have you now, indeed,’ seemingly impressed that anyone could access, let alone work, on such a slope. ‘You’ve been doing a good job up there. I walk the dog along the ridge at the top quite often. Good to see that someone is taking an interest in maintaining it. How high would you say it is?’
This takes me a little aback. From the expansive view at from the top out over the Sussex Weald, I know that it’s quite high, but as for an actual figure...
‘A thousand feet, do you think?’ he suggests.
‘I wouldn’t think that high.’
‘Oh,’ he replies, clearly disappointed.
‘Maybe two or three hundred,’ I say, taking a wild stab.
‘Two or three hundred,’ he slowly repeats, as though carefully weighing up my estimation. The pain on his face shows an even greater degree of disappointment. ‘Well, those are my trees over there. How high would you say they were? About seventy or eighty feet, do you think?’
‘About that,’ I agree, not sure but happy to go along with him. It’s cold, it’s getting dark and I’m getting hungry.
‘And the top is about three or four times the height of the trees, wouldn’t you think. That would make it…’
‘Between just over two hundred and just over three hundred feet,’ I reply as he struggles to juggle the various guestimates.
‘Two hundred to three hundred,’ he echoes.
‘More or less.’
‘Oh, dear, that’s nowhere near a thousand, is it?’ he says thoughtfully, his voice betraying the fact that this wasn’t the answer he was hoping for.
‘Unfortunately, not.’ I wish that I could make it higher for him as he seems a genuinely nice man, but no amount of willing is going to add seven hundred feet to the top. Unlike in the film, this Englishman wouldn’t be claiming to have gone up a hill but to have come back down a mountain.
‘Oh, dear,’ he says again. ‘I have my grandchildren coming over at the weekend and I told them that it was a thousand feet high. They’re looking forward to it.’
‘They might not notice,’ I offer, feeling that he now sees himself as a bit of a fraud.
‘Possibly,’ he muses, but is clearly not convinced. ‘Still, I mustn’t keep you,’ he says, and I notice that he has already kept me for twenty minutes and the light is fading fast. ‘They will be disappointed,’ he mumbles as he wanders back across the road. ‘I was sure it was higher...’ his voice fades along the grass verge.