Moles

Moles are small, mostly unseen animals whose presence in the churchyard is marked by mounds of disturbed earth. In the novel, they connect Alice Pagett’s routine among the graves with Gerry Fenn’s later, uneasy passage through the same kind of landscape, making their earthworks both a sign of ordinary animal life and a source of ominous imagery.

The Moles and Their Mounds

Alice encounters molehills scattered among the cemetery graves while carrying out her weekly task of collecting old flowers. She knows that moles are difficult to eradicate: after one is poisoned, another may move into its underground lodging. The animals themselves remain hidden; their activity is inferred from the soil and from the efforts of the mole catcher.

The mole catcher uses poisoned worms as bait and pushes a metal rod into the earth to make a hole for one. Alice has often watched him work. The scene establishes the moles as creatures pursued through signs of their subterranean presence, rather than animals directly seen by her.

Alice’s View of the Underground

Alice imagines a mole moving through solid darkness, searching for food and approaching its own death without knowing it. That imagined journey leads her to picture the animal digging its own grave. The association is especially pointed in a graveyard, where mounds of earth and buried bodies make the boundary between animal burrow and human burial part of her reflection.

Her attention to the mole catcher is also shaped by her deafness: she sees his lips move but hears nothing, and she cannot hear her own giggle as she watches him. Moles remain an object of observation, but Alice’s silent experience gives the scene a distinct perspective, joining the hidden life below ground to the words she feels have never escaped her.

Recurrence in Fenn’s Pursuit

Later, while following a running figure through a churchyard, Gerry Fenn notices conical mounds of dark earth at his feet. In the darkness he briefly takes them for something more threatening, then corrects himself and recognizes them as molehills. The moment shows how the same ordinary feature that belongs to Alice’s weekly surroundings can become uncanny when encountered at night by someone already frightened and uncertain.

The recurrence links the two cemetery scenes without making the moles themselves supernatural. Their mounds remain evidence of animals working underground; the sense of menace comes from the observers’ circumstances and from the setting among graves. In Alice’s scene, the mole’s hidden passage inspires thoughts of mortality; in Fenn’s, the mounds briefly intensify his fear before his reporter’s reasoning identifies them.