The Day Henry Disappeared

The real Wolsey provided me with plenty of ideas for Wolsey’s Adventures, but he wasn’t the only dog who inspired my creativity. When Wolsey was three years old, I brought home an apricot-coloured miniature poodle, whom I named Henry. (Thank you, Antonia Fraser, for providing the idea for these two names.) Wolsey was bright, adventurous and clever. Henry was pretty. But they were the best of friends and always looked out for each other. I’m sure they had their own adventures from time to time, but there was one incident that inspired A Hole New World, the story where Wolsey and his sisters, Frieda and Hilda, fall through a hole in the ground in Heckles Wood, discovering an underground cornucopia of canine delights.

Many years ago, on an autumn trip to the Scottish Highlands, Jon (my partner at the time) and I were out with Wolsey and Henry on a day-long hike. The path we were following was situated directly next to a stream that provided fresh water for the dogs and us as we tackled a gradual incline up a modest hill. At one point we stopped for a lunch of packed sandwiches, crisps and juice, while the dogs enjoyed whatever it was that we’d packed for them at the time.

When we stood up to continue our walk, we somehow lost our bearings. The path seemingly disappeared completely, and we could no longer remember whether we’d stepped only a few feet away from it to sit and eat, or whether it sat further away. In the days before GPS (or even mobile phones), we had to rely on an Ordnance Survey map that had been folded over several times, making it difficult to ascertain just exactly where in the many folds of that map we were standing.

We spotted what looked like a trail of sorts and decided to follow it uphill. At least, we figured, we were headed in the right direction. And it was a perfectly good trail, at first anyway, oscillating between inclined and flat earth, as we progressed further away from our lunch spot and enjoyed the ever-changing views in front of us.

At one point, however, I became aware of the sound of running water, not from a stream, but from beneath my feet, as if there were a river flowing somewhere beneath the earth. The bracken and heather were growing thicker here, hiding the trail from view until, at one point, we realised that we were no longer following anything other than a confused sense of direction.

Jon was walking about 20 feet ahead of me. Wolsey was about 2 paces directly behind him, Henry was following them both, and I was bringing up the rear. Just as I was starting to worry that we were lost, I saw Henry fall through the bracken into the ground. He was there one minute, gone the next!

I shouted out for Jon to stop and told him what happened. He was incredulous at first, but once he accepted that I was serious, we then spent the next few minutes frantically pulling back ground cover in order to find the hole that had swallowed the pretty-but-not-very-bright Henry.

Time felt as though it had slowed down to a crawling pace. I had visions of running back to the car without Henry and making our way to the nearest payphone to ring Mountain Rescue. Would they even come out for a dog? “I’ve lost my Henry,” I would tell them, hoping they would think he was a young child instead.

Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary. We found Henry about 4 feet down the hole, sitting on what looked like a ledge. The hole itself was deeper, however. I couldn’t see the bottom of it. Had he not landed on that shelf, I do not doubt that Henry would have disappeared forever that day. But that would have made for an entirely different story in Wolsey’s Adventures.

After precariously rescuing poor Henry, we decided to turn around and make our way back to the car. We picked up the trail easily at that point and followed it back to our lunchtime spot next to the stream. It was then that we both noticed the path we should have taken. What we’d been following was likely a deer trail and was certainly not on the Ordnance Survey map.

So Wolsey and Henry didn’t both fall down a hole. I know Henry didn’t find a culinary heaven down that hole, but I always wondered what he made of that particular incident. He was shaking and crying when we pulled him out, the poor chap, but by the time we got back to the car, he and Wolsey were running around as if nothing had happened. And that’s where the inspiration for A Hole New World comes from.

Even in danger, there is adventure. Or perhaps because of danger, there is adventure.