Singular life
Where is Artemis?
Petronella Wyatt
Iimagine they must have guessed from the start that shooting is something with Which I am not entirely familiar, because When they telephoned last week to find out if I would like to come on a pheasant drive I asked, Will we be following the birds in our own cars or in somebody else's?'
The letter they sent me attempted clarifi- cation. It said: 'We will be shooting with two guns. A loader will be provided.' Two guns? This sounded like something out of The Godfather. Why wasn't one gun enough to kill a pheasant? And what in heaven's name was a loader? Did it wind Up or was it human?
Their suspicion must have turned to cer- tainty at this point for I was advised to take Myself off for instruction. Holland and Holland in Bruton Street seemed the place to go for enlightenment in the art of shoot- ing. When I arrived at this imposing home of gunnery, however, I was shown into what appeared to be a clothes shop.
.1 want to shoot,' I remonstrated with a nice looking girl with birds'-egg blue eyes. 'Yes, of course,' she said, 'but you can't go like that.' I glanced at my ankle-length grey Skirt. I protested that Catherine Deneuve had worn something similar for the shoot- ing scene in Mayerling. 'Do you want to fall on your arse?' the girl enquired.
She found me a pair of knee breeches, apparently made from moleskin, although When I touched them they didn't feel like moles at all but a sort of cotton. I examined Myself in the mirror. Not bad. Rather Cherubino, in fact. Next came two strips of Yellow which were apparently garters. Mozart had become Shakespeare. Did I cross them?
. 'They're to keep your socks up,' said the girl, who was herself becoming cross. After the production of some Wellington boots ---- lined for warmth — my hands were manoeuvred into a pair of shooting gloves. They didn't seem quite right. 'I'm not pay- ing for these gloves,' I protested, 'there's a finger missing on the right hand.' It's sup- Posed to be like that,' the girl said banging her head against the gun racks. 'It's for the trigger finger.' After she had quietly lain down and expired, I staggered out with my packages and hailed a taxi. It had been suggested that I take the precaution of having a les- son or two. 'Take me to the Holland and Holland shooting school in West London,' I commanded. He took me out to Northolt. 'This isn't West London,' I shouted. 'West London's Kensington.'
The shooting school was set in acres of country that novelists invariably describe as undulating. Men were walking around looking rustic. It transpired that one was my instructor, Chris. 'Glad to see keenness in a woman,' he said jovially. 'They often start slower but they can be great shots.' I remarked that I feared I would start very slowly indeed.
We proceeded to the gun room. Chris informed me that the guns were divided into those which had 20 bores and those which had 12 bores. I looked around for the bores but there was no one in the room — let alone 20 of them. It was explained that bores were not people but related to the gun's power. I had better have a 20 bore as it was apparently less unwieldy and easier to fire with.
Once outside on the shooting range Chris issued a series of baffling instructions such as 'attack it with your shoulder', 'close your master eye' and 'swing through as you fire'. Why should I attack the gun? Where was this swing and where did it go through? As for his exhortation to 'mount the gun', it seemed positively disgusting. Could one serve time for gun abuse?
Clay pheasant began their flight over my head. Proposition: If an expert helps you aim at an object and fire, you are likely to hit said object. Therefore, even I might hit said object. Right? Wrong. 'Try pulling the trigger,' implored Chris. 'Shall I squeeze it like a woman's breast?' Where on earth did you hear that?' The clays continued happily on their uninterrupted course.
I missed them by the feet and sometimes by the yard. Occasionally they did a sort of balletic movement out of spite. It was as if a Pygmalion of the chase had breathed mis- chievous life into their inanimate forms. Chris explained that although I seemed able to aim and fire it was rarely at the same time. 'Never mind,' he said at the end of an hour. 'If you kill the two pheasants you take home you'll be lucky.' He stared at me before asking, 'Are these good friends who have asked you to shoot?' 'Yes,' I replied. He remarked, 'That's just as well.'
'I'm a futures trader and this is the missus.'
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