Notwithstanding by Louis De Bernières

stop for Morris Minors if they’re broken down. Usually I can get them going, you see. I’ve got a toolbox and some spares in the car. Solidarity and all that.’ He looked at her, feeling foolish.
    ‘Actually, I haven’t broken down, so I’m not a damsel in distress, but thank you all the same. It was very kind of you to stop.’ She smiled at him. It was the smile of someone who wishes that you would go away.
    ‘The thing is, you’re parked near a bend, so I thought …’
    ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘it’s a silly place to stop, but …’
    ‘Yes?’ It was then that he saw, behind her head, a pheasant. ‘Gracious,’ he said, ‘poor little bugger.’
    It had clearly been struck by a car while flying across the road and had hurtled into the side of the thorn hedge, near the top, where it had become stuck upside down, and died. The brown rump of the pheasant, as it protruded from the hedge, looked both comical and pathetic.
    ‘Yes, poor little bugger,’ she agreed. ‘So many of them get splatted at this time of the year. God knows why.’
    ‘It’s the mating season perhaps? That’s when all the animals get silly.’ A thought occurred to the young man. ‘You weren’t … are you, er, if you don’t mind me asking, planning to eat it? I mean, did you stop to get it out?’
    She looked horrified, but also guilty. ‘Gosh, no. They’re so bruised when they’re hit that the flesh goes all black and has a horrible texture. My dad ran one over once, and it wasn’t at all nice when we tried to eat it. It’s the kind of thing that everyone tries once. Not recommended.’
    The young man scrutinised the bird. He was always fascinated by the intricate and beautiful patterns on pheasants’ feathers. ‘I wonder what happened to the tail,’ he said. ‘This pheasant doesn’t seem to have one. The feathers can’t have been knocked out by the car, surely?’
    ‘Well, actually, I’ve got them,’ she admitted, taking her hands from behind her back, and holding out the long, barred feathers. ‘In fact, that’s why I stopped.’
    ‘What, for a hat or something?’
    ‘Me? Can you see me in a hat with pheasant feathers in it? My granny, maybe.’
    ‘Well, I suppose they’re very pretty in their own right. I can understand why anyone would want one. Or even a handful.’
    ‘It’s not because they’re pretty. It’s because I play the oboe.’
    ‘The oboe?’ he said, trying to make the conceptual leap that might connect oboes with pheasant tails, and failing.
    ‘An oboe,’ she repeated. ‘It’s a wind instrument, and it has a conical bore that’s very tight at the top. A pheasant feather is just ideal for cleaning it when you’ve finished playing. You could say it’s traditional.’
    ‘To get the spit out?’
    She smiled wryly. ‘I call it condensation.’
    ‘So you play the oboe?’
    ‘I just started again. You know, kids at school, husband at work, a bit of time on my hands. I got the itch again. It’s not going very well, though. If you haven’t got anyone to play with, you can’t improve, and anyway my mouth seems to have lost the knack.’
    ‘Trouble with the embouchure,’ he said.
    ‘You know about embouchure?’ she asked eagerly, her enthusiasm triggered by the code word.
    ‘Kindred spirit,’ he replied. ‘I play clarinet. I know what happens when you stop for a while. It always comes back eventually, if that’s any comfort.’ He said, ‘I teach music actually, and I’ve been trying to find someone to play with.’ They looked at each other for a long and portentous moment.
    ‘Well …’ She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come round and meet my husband. We could try something out.’ She placed a particular weight upon the word ‘husband’, a weight that was not lost on him.
    ‘Delighted to. Perhaps you’d like to give me your number, and I can ring you later.’
    ‘OK,’ she said, and she took the old receipt from Timothy White’s that he produced