The Gamekeeper, page 23
‘Go on, you bugger,’ he said, as he watched it fly on unharmed, and carry on right over into the next field.
The rabbits trapped in that narrow strip of woodland had no choice, they had to run for it. One dashed back and escaped between the beaters, the others were driven forward into the field. They had no chance in there. One ran along the end furrow parallel with the hedgerow, and two ran diagonally across the field, making for the end of the line of Guns. None of them made it. The force of the shot sent them cartwheeling and left them dead, draped across the crests of the furrows.
While all this shooting was taking place, the dogs at the stands had to sit still until the drive was over. They watched the pheasants falling around them, and the rabbits sprinting, then just lying there, but they could not pick them up yet. They had been trained not to move until they were given permission. Although none of them ran for the game, they could not help whining occasionally, and although they were all sitting down, they kept brushing the earth with their tails in anticipation.
The beaters reached the hedgerow, but the drive was not over yet. George Purse told them to walk along the hedge and thrash the thick grass and brambles beneath it. He was right. A hen and then a cock got up, exploding from the brambles like rockets from the sea. The hen tried to fly up the face of the wood and escape back over the tops of trees, but the Duke killed it before it reached that height, and it fell back on to the hedge. The cock was killed overhead by Lord Cannock. It was so straight that it nearly fell on his dog. The labrador just looked at it and blinked. It was used to being rained on by pheasants.
That was the last bird. The dogs could get to work now and pick them all up. The old cock pheasants were big for their mouths, and sometimes they had to take several gulps at them, before they could grip enough to hold on to without biting. Small feathers came off the birds and stuck to the dogs’ noses and mouths, and after the pheasants had been taken from them, they spluttered and snuffled until they had blown all the feathers away.
The beaters kept their dogs out of it. They could have done the job just as well as the dogs working in the field, but they did not have time. They had to get back to their positions on the middle ride ready to drive the bottom half of the wood. As soon as all the pheasants and the three rabbits had been picked up and thrown into the back of the lorry, the loaders climbed in after them, the Guns got into the Land Rovers, and they all drove round to the other end of the wood to take their stands. Colonel Garmonsway got out at the end of the middle ride where George Purse was lining up the beaters. The Colonel was the walking Gun on this drive. He would follow the line of beaters and try to shoot any pheasants which broke back over their heads.
The drive had only just started when George Purse found a greenfinch fluttering in the leaves underneath a beech tree. It had made a hole in the leaves, and the flattened grass was showing through like lino through a hole in a carpet. He picked it up, still fluttering. Its little green body was fluffy and warm, and its eyes were bright and wide open. He touched its toes with his little finger and it gripped the finger with both feet. He lifted the feathers on its chest and gently felt its wings at the shoulders, and while he was examining it, it died in his hand. Its wings stiffened, its head lolled and its tiny eyes became glazed. Two beaters on his left were walking together and he could hear them talking about cars. He told them to spread out, then he walked down the line and shouted to the beaters on the left flank to steady up and stop racing. He was so busy organizing the drive that at the end of it, when the last shot had been fired, and he had stopped walking, he realized that he was still holding the dead greenfinch. It looked thinner and darker now because its feathers were slicked together with the sweat from his palm.
There was a fence dividing the wood from the field where the Guns were standing. George Purse climbed over the fence, and while the dogs and the loaders and the Guns were picking up the dead pheasants, he walked across the field until he was in front of Mr Friar’s stand, then he bent down and pretended to do something to his wellingtons. When Toby, Mr Friar’s labrador, was hunting close by him, he quietly called it over, let him sniff the greenfinch, then pushed it into the dog’s mouth. He stood up and walked back towards the fence while Toby trotted back to the brewer, swishing his tail. Mr Friar saw the little head and blunt beak protruding from the side of the dog’s mouth. The dog gave him the bird, and when he held it up by the tip of one wing, the weight of its body made it unfold, and it hung like a fan from his fingers.
‘What the devil’s this you’ve brought?’
The Duke, who had been shooting at the next stand, heard him and looked across.
‘What’s that you’re holding, Jack?’
‘I’m not sure. It looks like a damned finch of some kind.’
‘A finch! What in heaven’s name did you shoot that for? Did you mistake it for a snipe or something?’
‘I didn’t shoot the bloody thing. It must have been lying in the field. But why the devil Toby had to pick this when there’s all those pheasants lying around, God only knows.’
And George Purse; who was leading the beaters along the side of the fence to the next drive, which was in Duck Wood by Duck Lake. The stands had been fixed in a field of barley stubble midway between the lake and the wood. When the beaters walked across the field, they flushed a flock of Canada geese, which was feeding amongst the stubbles. There were so many of them that they made a single shadow which moved across the land towards the lake, where they landed on the water with a sound like a deep sigh.
The beaters stopped to watch them, and after they had landed, and the ducks and other swimming birds were bobbing around in the wash they had made, George Purse said, ‘A grand sight that. There’s summat majestic about geese when they’re flying.’
‘There’s summat majestic about them when they’re in the oven with roast taties all round them,’ one of the beaters said.
It was a dirty field they were in. The farmer had been burning straw and the ground was scarred with black stripes and patches. When the beaters walked across these charred areas, their wellingtons disturbed the ashes, and the smell of burning was revived in their nostrils.
So far the beaters had enjoyed a good morning. They had won a pay rise and one drive had been cancelled. The sun was shining and it was dry in the woods. They had completed two drives, just seen the geese, and now it was a quarter to one, and there was only one more drive before lunch.
George Purse could not hold them on this last drive. He kept shouting to them to steady up. They kept relaying his messages along the line, kept on ignoring them, and kept on walking just as fast. Then a rabbit with myxomatosis stopped three of the beaters in the middle of the line. They could tell that it was infected by its attitude. It did not sit up straight with its ears pointed, then show them its scut and back paws like a healthy rabbit. It just cringed there in the middle of the clearing, occasionally creeping a few yards, then doubling back, as though it was confined in a low wire-netting enclosure.
The rabbit knew there was something wrong. It could hear all the noise, and it could smell the men and the dogs, but because it was nearly blind, it could not see to run away from them. One of the spaniels just ran up to it, picked it up, and carried it squealing and struggling like a baby back to its owner. The beater took it from the dog’s jaws, and the other two beaters closed in to look at it. They could only just see its eyes, they were so far back inside the swollen lids. The men shook their heads and curled their lips, registering sorrow and disgust at the same time.
‘Poor bugger.’
And the beater swung it by the back legs and knocked its head against a tree. He did this two more times, made sure that it was dead, then threw it into some brambles.
‘Leave it!’ He had to tell his dog, and the three men moved on. But they had fallen well behind by this time. There was a hole in the middle of the line, and when a cock pheasant flew up in the gap where they should have been, and flew back over their heads, they were not near enough to tell the walking Gun that it was coming until it had cleared the tree tops. He snatched two shots at it, but the pheasant kept on flying.
‘Damn! I wish someone would tell me what’s happening up there!’
George Purse heard him and shouted for the beaters to stop. Stop! Stop! Stop! All the way along the line, sometimes one man to the next, sometimes just an indiscriminate shout, which leapfrogged several men and was taken up again by someone several stations down the line.
When the three centre men had caught up, and the line was nicely spaced again, George Purse started them off again.
‘And let’s have no racing this time! We’re supposed to be driving pheasants, not chasing them!’
But there was a level bare stretch between the trees on the right, where all the beaters had to walk through were leaves. Instead of slowing down and waiting for the others, who were having to work undulating land matted with rhododendrons, brambles and beds of old nettles, they strolled on, tapping the trees as they passed them.
George Purse saw that the line was becoming dog-legged and stopped to give them a shout.
‘Steady on the right!’
Perhaps they had not heard.
‘Steady on the right!’
They must have heard that. He made a megaphone with his hands.
‘hey up! are you deaf over there? i said steady up on that fucking right!’ His amplified exhortation carried through the wood and out into the field where the Guns were waiting. They had been joined by the Ladies for the last drive before lunch. The loaders set their faces to stop themselves from laughing. Some of the shooting party pretended they had heard nothing and concentrated their gaze on the wood, willing the pheasants out so that they could start shooting and ease their embarrassment with some noise and action. The Duke turned to Henry Clay, who was loading for him.
‘I say, that was a bit much, wasn’t it, Henry?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Who was it?’
Volume and distance had distorted George Purse’s voice, and made it unrecognizable to anyone who did not know him well.
‘I think it was George, your Grace.’
‘Well, have a word with him at the end of the drive will you, Henry? It’s most embarrassing, especially when the Ladies are present.’
‘Yes, Sir. I’ll tell him.’
The first pheasant flew out of the wood. Lord Cannock shot it. The shot echoed across the lake as though he had fired his second barrel as well, and most of the birds were off the water before the dead pheasant had reached the ground. They flew in all directions, and the mass beating of their wings sounded like a coming wind. Geese, gulls, coots, waterhens and miscellaneous ducks; hundreds of them, some flying away, and some recovering and circling the water, wanting to land again. The only birds which did not panic at the lingering crack were two swans, which stayed where they were, sitting in a parched bed of bulrushes.
Two mallard, sweeping out wide and twisting their necks as they looked back at the lake, came within range of the Guns. Four triggers released four hails of lead shot at them. One bird crumpled in the air and plumbed down like a Christmas treat dropped from an aeroplane. The other one had a spray of feathers knocked off it. It staggered as though buffeted by an air current, lost height, then started to fly again. But its wings could not keep it up, so it stopped using them and glided towards the lake. The glide weakened into a fall and it crashed out of control into the water.
Then a teal copped it. Then the pheasants started to come over from the wood. The gunfire became frequent, and each shot sent an echo barking across the lake and kept the wildfowl off the water. All except the two swans, which looked as though they were making a deliberate show of their indifference by preening their backs and wings in the rushes.
A woodcock sprang up from a tuft of grass at George Purse’s feet. It rose in a sitting position for the first few yards, its beak sticking out like chopsticks, its expression surprised but not angry, like a long-suffering cartoon character being blown through the roof of his house. Again.
‘Woodcock over!’
It would have been if the Guns had allowed it to get that far, but it was shot coming out of the trees by the Right Hon. R. Spencer-Davies. The lead pellets which did not pierce the woodcock rattled the branches of the trees behind it and scared a woodpigeon out of a beech tree. The Duke of Leicester shot it, and it fell down trailing white feathers like a vapour trail. Two rabbits sat up in a gap in the hedge bottom. They split and dashed in opposite directions, running parallel with the hedge as though executing a predetermined tactic to confuse the guns. They confused nobody. Lord Cannock shot one of them. Sir Patrick Fitzpatrick Q.C. shot the other. A hare immediately sprinted through the hedge, and judging by the speed it was coming at, it looked as though it had started its run way back in the woods. The Earl of Harley stopped it with his first barrel, but he did not kill it. It got up and started to gallop around in small circles, screaming. His second shot knocked it down again, and it stayed down this time, half on, half off a burnt strip of straw.
A spaniel filled the hole in the hedge bottom where the hare had come through. It was panting and its tongue kept slithering in and out of its mouth. From the wood behind it, voices were shouting Tally Ho! and laughing, and another voice was shouting, ‘Meg! Meg! Come here! Meg!’ But the Guns had no time to bother about the dog now; there was shooting all the way along the line now and pheasants were falling all over the field. One cock came over high. It had carried on rising once it had cleared the tree tops and was nearly forty yards up when it passed over the guns. It was the tallest bird of the day; flying directly over the Duke. He leaned well back, his weight on his right leg, his gun pointing straight up. He heard the pellets from his first cartridge snick the bird’s primaries as they flew by. His second shot visibly checked the bird as though it had suddenly met a strong headwind. It stopped flying, spread its wings and started to lose height in a long, slow, shallow dive. It cleared the rest of the field, cleared the narrow end of the lake, and swooped towards a copse growing on the slope at the other side of the water. It looked under perfect control, like a flying fox gliding between trees, but when it reached the trees, it just crashed into the top of an oak and bounced all the way down the branches.
The Duke marked it. It was an easy tree to mark because it still had plenty of brown leaves on it. But it was not under the tree when the Duke sent one of the beaters to look for it with his dog at the end of the drive. It had run away through the copse and worked its way into a patch of brambles when it was too weak to run any further. It just sat there, blinking and listening, tucked up and comfortable-looking, as though it was on a nest. It died like that early next morning, as the grey sky turned blue, and the moon became thin and transparent.
The next pheasant that the Duke shot was also a runner. It fell behind the line, got up, and set off down the field at such a rate that it was hard to understand how the pellets had brought it down in the first place. It started to trail one wing, but this did not slow it down, and it approached the lake so fast that it looked determined to run across the surface like some avian Messiah. Twenty yards from the bank, and without slowing down, it tipped forward on to its face and lay there, flapping its wings, as though it had been struck down for its pretensions.
That was the last bird of the morning. The Duke passed his hot gun to Henry Clay.
‘A jolly good drive in the end, George!’
‘Thank you, Sir!’ George Purse shouted back, as he crawled through the hedge into the field. There were two yelps from the edge of the wood which made everybody look. Meg’s owner had just caught up with her.
George Purse picked up a rabbit and carried it forward to Lord Cannock’s stand.
‘Is this one of yours, Sir?’
‘That’s right. Thank you very much.’
George Purse threw it down at the side of the pheasants that Lord Cannock had killed.
‘Seeing as you’re such a keen sportsman, Sir, I’m surprised you’ve never named any of your cars after game.’
‘We’ve thought about it. But it’s not a new idea of course. There were the old Humbers, the Hawk and the Super Snipe. And there’s the Singer Gazelle and the Stag. But we have seriously thought about it.’
He reached down to take a hen pheasant from the mouth of his labrador. Its plumage was so pale that it looked as though the rain had washed some colour out of it at some time.
‘The obvious ones, the pheasant, the partridge, the grouse are out of course. They don’t conjure up the right image. They’re a bit stuffy, a bit plump, a bit slow for today’s market.’
‘There’s some good ’uns left though, Sir. What about the… Wild Goose?’
‘Too long, too dreamy, needs more snap. You need alliteration when you use two words.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, like Super Snipe. Or, Grey Goose. Both words beginning with the same letter.’
‘Grey Goose. That sounds good.’
‘It’s not bad. But you would never sell anything using the word grey, especially a motor car. It sounds like a very dull performance.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean, Sir.’
Lord Cannock pulled his shooting stick out of the ground, and closed the seat to make it into a handle again.
‘We’ve considered them all; the curlew, the quail, the teal, the mallard. In fact we’re designing a little two-seater at the moment. But that’s a trade secret. I’d better say no more about that.’
He turned round to his loader, and asked him if there were any more birds to be picked. George Purse started to pick up some of the pheasants at his feet to carry back to the lorry.
‘If I was naming a sports car, I’d call it the Hare.’
Lord Cannock looked round at him sharply and stared at him just to see how serious he was.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s fast.’
Then, with his wellington, he nudged the rabbit that he had thrown down with the pheasants.
