Hordes of bankers and other money-borrowers, of every degree of venality, have followed them here like greedy shite-hawks and each prime site in St Helier is snapped up by these shameless guzzlers as soon as it falls vacant. This is probably a bad thing.
There are several minor categories like nobility and gentry, Portuguese waiters, Indian trumpery-mongers, transient barmaids and drunken novelists but these, although uniformly nice, concern our story but little.
The Fauna
The prop of the economy, and the only large mammal other than the Jersey lady, is the Jersey cow. She is doe-eyed and quite beautiful and secretes wonderfully rich milk. She is usually tethered because pasture is precious and fences are costly; in winter she is ‘rugged’ with a plastic mackintosh and in summer she sports a sun-bonnet. Yes, truly. There are some pigs but I believe no sheep, which is perhaps why a certain Highland Regiment has never been stationed here. There is a great number of horses and the suburban cavalry may be seen tittuping along the lanes at any hour of the day.
Wild-life is scarce except for sea-birds; the dominant species are the magpie and the sparrow. There is no shooting land and therefore no gamekeepers, so the ubiquitous magpie munches up all the nestlings; only the sparrow, that bird of Venus, can outbreed magpies by diddling his mate all the year round, sturdy little chap. In the late autumn small rare birds may sometimes be seen on passage, resting in the fields of unborn daffodils.
The Flora
This is chiefly grass and gardening, the latter often of an excruciating garishness. There is some bracken and gorse on parcels of land waiting for planning permission but all the rest is luxury crops: early potatoes, daffodils, anemones, tomatoes and the occasional shy cauliflower. Certain cabbages with prodigally long stalks are grown for tourists to photograph: the natives assure them with straight faces that these are grown for walking-sticks but no one in his senses would believe that, would he?
The Buildings
These range from the gloomy to the absurd via the pretentious. St Helier is a positive barrel of architectural fun: even Sir John Betjeman would be unable to keep a straight face. In the countryside the characteristic building is a large, grim farmhouse made of liver-coloured granite, with huge outer walls and a shortage of windows. Rich incomers grab them avidly and modernize them hideously. The finished article is worth ten times the price of a comparable house in England. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.