ANOTHER VOICE
That outing. I didn't mean to, but if I did, I apologise
MATTHEW PARRIS
They came to take Rupert away today. I feel dreadful. I have outed an innocent llama in the Observer — and I'm not even certain that he's gay. No BBC edict protects him, Anne Sloman holds no brief for him and, unable to write or even speak, Rupert cannot complain to the Press Complaints Commission. All he ever wanted was respect for his camelid privacy. I have tram- pled over that, carrying squalid metropoli- tan assumptions into a bucolic rural setting. Michael Vestey, switch off here.
Rupert joined us earlier this year, as a guest. In the Derbyshire hills where I live I keep two llamas of my own, both girls. Iles- ley, who is nearly two, is named after my father Leslie because, like him, she was born on 1 April. She is chocolate-brown and white with a dark patch on her face, and a crimped coat. Imp, a few months older, is honey and white with a fluffier coat and the more obviously pretty of the two, though Llesley has an inner beauty. Imp has atti- tude; Llesley is keener on humans.
Mara, my Italian friend who lives with me and looks after the animals, is the llama-keeper. She nursed Llesley through pneumonia last winter when the visiting Bakewell vet thought Mara had said `sick lamb' but established the right temperature for llamas by taking the temperature of the well one. Mara has pronounced both girls fit, and she and I had hoped for the patter of little llama feet next year, the gestation period being 11 months. We spoke to Jane Methuen, who keeps a small herd near Ashbourne, and asked if we could borrow a boy for the summer.
You have to do this. Even were it not the case that I insist on my girls living emotion- ally fulfilled lives, artificial insemination would not be an option. This is because, like cats and horses, llamas ovulate on pen- etration — or, to put it as my mother would prefer, do not become ready to conceive unless romance is in the stars. The boy needs to be around for weeks or months. Llamas are among the very few animals which, like humans, make love lying down. Apparently the lady llama adopts a semi- recumbent position and stares into space with a long-suffering expression, as if to say `Oh do get on with it', while the gentleman llama thrashes around and makes a rattling noise — for hours.
I say `apparently' because we fear that nothing has happened with Rupert. He sports an oatmeal-coloured coat and a rather woebegone look. On leading him to join my girls I had fancied he might rush eagerly forward to meet them — and they to him with joyful expressions, humming, as llamas do, with anticipation. Instead, noth- ing. Rupert looked warily at my two beau- ties, then made for the opposite end of the field. And there he stayed, staring out into the mist. The girls kicked their heels and chewed grass, hobnobbing together, as far away from him as they could get.
And so it has been all summer and autumn. Mara is hopeful that something might have happened in the night but we have heard no rattling. Anyway I think one can sense these things: I am just not picking up any sexual chemistry in their field. For a couple of days something between Rupert and Llesley did seem to be budding — they tried to graze together — but whenever they got too close, Imp would mince between and stand glaring at Rupert with her ears flattened back. Imp and Llesley are good friends, and Rupert was the gooseberry. I cannot say he persisted or showed any serious interest in either. Soon the two girls were grazing together again, Llesley occasionally glancing over at him but Imp flattening her ears whenever he approached. They were like two schoolgirls, best mates: boys were silly, and Imp was guarding her friend who was in some dan- ger of flirting, shaming her out of it.
I think Rupert was secretly relieved. Jane Methuen had another theory, that perhaps Llesley was already pregnant when I bought her. This is unlikely. Jane says a pregnant female indicates her condition to an amorous male by kicking and spitting at him until he goes away; whereas my two girls' response to Rupert has been frosty rather than agitated. I suspect they just don't fancy him. In this way they have my sympathy: he's hardly hunky as llamas go. But he has no excuse for not fancying them, paragons of camelid womanhood — no excuse unless, of course. . . .
But that was only speculation. In the highly charged London atmosphere, with people allegedly outing each other all over the place and the tabloids going potty, I ventured onto foolish ground. Chatting to the distinguished and (in the best sense) high-minded writer Andrew Marr, I men- tioned my suspicions regarding Rupert. Days later, in a kind profile in the Observer, Mr Marr repeated the slander. Mara was incensed. As she pointed out, this kind of banter may be regarded as amusing in Islington, but in agricultural circles where (Michael Vestey has explained this in his radio column) homosexuality does not exist, the innuendo could be fatal.
By now things were spinning out of con- trol. Still smarting from Mara's justified anger, I was interviewed in my London flat by another distinguished colleague, Matthew d'Ancona, for the Sunday Tele- graph. By way of small talk, I lamented my outing of Rupert in the Observer. Imagine my horror when, in a kind profile in the Sunday Telegraph, d'Ancona actually began his piece by recounting the dreadful tale which had already featured in the rival Sun- day paper. Mara points out that in rural Derbyshire far more people read the Sun- day Telegraph than the Observer — indeed among many Observer readers my specula- tion about Rupert could even boost his rep- utation. Not so with Telegraph readers. I know exactly what Lord Tebbit would think of a gay llama: might a homosexual mafia be operating within this herd?
And now Jane Methuen is cross with me too. Personally a tolerant woman, she points out that in the llama-breeding com- munity what has been published about Rupert is damaging to a creature who boasts himself an `entire male'. Besides, she can lead me to at least four crias (baby lla- mas) whose father could only be Rupert• Jane thinks he might just have been feeling tired this summer. I must of course accept this, and do.
On Sunday 1 November, the Marr slur. My geese began bullying him. On Sunday 8 November, the d'Ancona libel. Even the chickens started bullying him. On Sunday 15 November, Jane came for Rupert. We herded him into Jane's horse-box, tempting him with his favourite goat-feed mixture. Leaving, he turned to me with a reproach- ful but sensitive glance. I wish I'd never got into this outing business. To out an `In Cabinet minister may be regarded as care- lessness. To out a camelid is unforgivable.
Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and columnist of the Times.
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