A Black Fox Running Read online

  ‘There idn a lot of dew, dad,’ George Lugg said.

  He clamped his father’s fist round a mug of tea. A haze covered the sun and Lugg squinted at the sky, noting the high-flying swifts.

  ‘Best get they horses out,’ he said. ‘Scoble and Yabsley will be here soon and I idn payin’ good money for them to stand round doing sod all.’

  ‘Scoble must have had two gallons of rough last night at the Rock,’ George said. ‘I bet he’s still got his head down.’

  ‘You don’t know him like I do, boy,’ said his father. ‘He’s a worker. He’ll drag Yabsley from between the sheets.’

  ‘If Joan don’t haul him in too,’ George laughed.

  ‘God! If her idn randier than a rabbit! Bert’s getting more than his share of home comforts.’

  ‘And so’s a few others,’ said the elder Lugg. ‘Her was like it at Sunday School back-along – sweet as can be, hair done up in a pink ribbon, white frock and granny’s Bible, and no knickers.’

  The van was left under the beeches by the linhay. Scoble and Yabsley scuffed up the dust as they walked. Ahead of them the dogs parted the wayside nettles with their bodies to sniff the exciting smells and cock their legs. Scoble wore an old straw Panama that made his ears stick out. He moved heavily, the light sliding along the curve of his scythe and twinkling on the point. Every so often Jacko stopped and looked back to make sure he was still there. The strange, masked brightness of the morning had men and animals screwing up their eyes.

  George Lugg led out the first pair of horses and the mowing machine. Another team had been borrowed from West Horridge. The farmer and his son would cut the two small fields leaving the large one by the brook to the hired help.

  ‘Dew’s light enough,’ Yabsley said taking the reins.

  ‘Reckon it’ll be a scorcher when the haze lifts,’ said George, and he opened the gate.

  ‘Cuttin’ grass is thirsty work,’ Yabsley said.

  ‘There’s a barrel in the barn,’ Lugg smiled. ‘My brother down at Bickington let me have some of the rough he got from his Kingston Blacks.’

  ‘That’s cider sure enough,’ said Yabsley with sincere reverence.

  Marsh marigolds crowded in the corner of the field by the stream. Partridges whirred away low over the far hedge and Scragg the heron hoisted himself up from the water on his big, grey wings. The dogs, who were old hands at the haymaking, lay around and waited for the first swath to be cut.

  ‘Before I forget it, Leonard,’ the farmer said, ‘I’m losing poultry and down at Sigford they’m missing a duck or two.’

  ‘Old Blackie’s got it in for you, boy,’ Yabsley said. ‘He’s smarter than a commercial traveller. ‘

  The metal bars were lowered and the cutting knives set about an inch from the ground.

  ‘Was it the black sod?’ Scoble said, pushing the wart into his cheek.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Lugg. ‘’Tis fox and a bugger that likes chicken. Red or black I idn happy with him on my place.’

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ Scoble said. ‘Fowls have been taken from Yarner Wells. Only I’m certain it idn Blackie. It’s not his style.’

  ‘Will you ever catch him, Leonard?’ Yabsley said innocently.

  ‘Yes,’ Scoble said. The confidence in his voice impressed the men.

  ‘Mind ’ee don’t catch you, boy,’ said Yabsley.

  The trapper rubbed a handful of wet grass on his scythe blade and began honing, moving the stone firmly to and fro.

  ‘It’s just a matter of time, Bert,’ he said. ‘I got the vixen and cubs. One day Old Blackie’s luck will run out and I’ll have him – wire, gin, dog or gun, I’ll have him.’

  ‘Don’t let Colonel Shewte hear ’ee, Leonard,’ Lugg said. ‘Us don’t want to upset the Squire.’

  Colonel Shewte lived at Lansworthy House, and like most of the local gentry he rode to hounds and respected the animal he hunted.

  ‘He’ll be round today,’ Lug went on. ‘He haven’t missed a haymaking yet. Come dinner time we’ll see him.’

  ‘They’m all as wet as ducks’ arses,’ Yabsley said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The so-called bloody gentry,’ Yabsley snorted. ‘They don’t know how to peel a spud or tie their own bootlaces.’

  ‘At least they’m honest and fair to deal with,’ Lugg said.

  ‘And life can be hard if you cross one.’

  The stone purred along the edge of the scythe.

  They worked with the effortless rhythm of true peasants. The mowing machine sailed along behind the roans and the knives moved quickly from side to side, clipping the grass, laying it in a swath. When the knives became blunt Scoble put on a fresh bar and sat under the hawthorns sharpening the dull edges with a file. The haze endured for most of the morning to create a sticky heat, but as the sun climbed to noon the sky cleared.

  ‘Christ it’s hot!’ Bert Yabsley said.

  He left the mowing machine and came into the shade. Scoble swung his scythe at the grass growing tight against the hedge where the knives could not reach. Gnats hummed in to greedy on his face.

  ‘I could drink a duck pond,’ Yabsley continued. The terriers stood on their hindlegs and placed their front paws on his thighs. Their mouths were open and they were panting.

  ‘They’m thirsty!’ Yabsley said in a tender voice. ‘Look at their little eyes. My kids look at me like that when they’m ill.’

  ‘They’re animals,’ said Scoble. The sweat dripped off his nose.

  ‘What about your Jacko?’

  The lurcher lifted an ear and whined. He had sprawled in the white bed straw and foxgloves, but on hearing his name he arched his back and yawned. Then he shook himself. For the first time Yabsley saw the meanness and strength of the creature. It seemed to stare through him into places where thought had no right to trespass.

  ‘What about that wicked bugger?’ he said.

  ‘He’s a dog,’ said Scoble.

  ‘Dang me if you idn as cold as yesterday’s mutton, Leonard.’

  ‘Animals is animals. We ride them and work them, and hunt them and kill them and eat them. God intended for it to be that way. The Bible says so.’

  ‘You idn a churchgoer, boy.’

  ‘No, but I believes. Church is just another house. There’s more of God in my garden than you’ll find in Buckfast Abbey or Exeter Cathedral.’

  ‘Get home, do! You’re a bloody pagan, Leonard.’

  Scoble pecked at his wart with a fingernail and lidded his eyes.

  Presently the farmer’s youngest son came down to tell them dinner was ready. The boy unharnessed the horses and gave them their feed. He was glad to be home from school for the mowing.

  ‘Don’t let ’em drink too much water,’ Yabsley said.

  ‘Want to give ’em some of your scrumpy, Bert?’ the boy grinned.

  ‘Mind I don’t give ’ee a big ear,’ Yabsley roared from the centre of a smile.

  If was a short walk back to the barn. Normally the haymakers ate in the field, but Lugg had made the mowing a special occasion. His wife brought the pasties – or oggies as they were called in Devon – to the barn. Lugg drew off a half-gallon enamel jug of scrumpy from the wood and filled the men’s pots. They drank in deep gulps and the fowls gathered round them waiting for crumbs.

  ‘Bloody beautiful,’ Yabsley whispered.

  ‘The Kingston Black,’ George Lugg said proudly.

  ‘Agricultural wine,’ the farmer said, smiling at his own wit.

  Scoble ate slowly, cramming great wads of pasty into his mouth. Although the barn was cool the sweat still poured off him.

  ‘You’re giving that oggie hell, Len,’ Yabsley said. He nudged George. ‘I don’t suppose you do a lot of cookin’ at home.’

  The trapper’s eyes were becoming used to the half-darkness. He looked up and saw the barn owls crouching on the beam against the far wall. The soft keening of the owlets was almost drowned by the clucking of the hens and the leathery rustle of their fee
t in the straw.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Mind you don’t eat your fingers, boy,’ Yabsley said. ‘If you had a woman at Yarner’s Cott you’d get oggies every day and somethin’ better at night.’

  George fluted through his nose into his cider pot making the pale yellow liquid bubble.

  The old owls were clacking their mandibles. Why don’t you fly off? Scoble thought. The young ones will grow on your strength, then desert you. If the vixen hadn’t bothered about the cubs she could have escaped. He remembered the river and the liquid rustling of the grass, and the sky too hot and cerulean to be English. Half of him was scared and the other half excited. Then the noise and the filth and the death. And men died to save their comrades, strangers dying for strangers. They forgot their wives and families, forgot their sweethearts and took shrapnel for some stranger on the wire. His upper lip curled. Lose a leg, gain a medal – Shit! Shit on King and Country.

  ‘Leonard.’

  Scoble belched and drank another pot of cider in one go. The jug was refilled and went the rounds. The terriers dashed among the fowls, but Jacko sat beside his master and growled.

  ‘Ever had a woman, Len?’ Yabsley said.

  Like a badger, Scoble thought, never lets go. Like to see him on the end of a Prussian bayonet, pig on a skewer, a big fat target.

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘Only askin’.’

  ‘Women are like tapeworms,’ Scoble said.

  ‘We all had mothers, boy.’

  ‘Us didn’t have no say in the matter. Wives is different.’

  ‘You have to earn your oats,’ George Lugg said.

  The farmer cleared his throat and looked down at his boots. Things had gone too far.

  ‘Will it be gins or snares, Leonard?’ he asked.

  ‘Snares.’

  ‘Idn it hard to get a fox in a wire?’

  ‘Not if you know how.’

  Yabsley glared at him and said, ‘Give us some more of that scrumpy, maister.’

  The trapper stuffed his face with pasty and shrugged.

  The jug passed from hand to hand and the air was filled with the chaff of small talk. Scoble sat gazing at the owls.

  Colonel Shewte and his daughter made a brave show of interest in Lugg’s affairs. The workers sat at attention and their speech became as stiff as their backs. The gentleman’s platitudes merged with the clucking of the hens and the softer more distant summer sounds. The tall, flat-chested girl wore a flower-print frock and sandals, and a tortoiseshell slide in her hair, which was the kind of dull brown that few men notice.

  ‘Weather couldn’t be better, Lugg.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Many partridges?’

  ‘A few, sir – more than last year.’

  ‘Good show.’

  Weather’s on our side, sergeant major, the subaltern said. Cricket weather, he smiled. And the sergeant major smiled, although he came from Liverpool and had never known anything but poverty and hard graft. Get the men away quickly, the subaltern said. His light, lounge bar accent had the flesh crinkling on Scoble’s neck. Give ’em their due, Corporal Wellan said. They know how to die. Yes, Scoble thought, and they’ve got something to die for. Their England, their cricket, their woods and fields and rivers.

  He glanced up at Shewte. He was his father’s son, and no mistake. Scoble tilted his pot. Lieutenant General Shewte had been an even more imposing figure. He too had come down to Sedge Brimley for the haymaking. Leonard’s father had been impressed. And the Lieutenant General had packed old labourers and their wives off to the workhouse, yet the poor had never condemned him or remarked on the inhumanity.

  ‘Is the cider good, Scoble?’ Colonel Shewte said briskly.

  ‘The best, maister.’

  ‘And the foxes?’

  Scoble did not flinch.

  ‘Out and about takin’ lambs and chickens and things.’

  ‘We’ll let the hunt know. Foxes are the hunt’s business.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We’ll get Old Blackie for you, Scoble,’ the colonel smiled. ‘Stick to the small beer. No more cubs and vixens.’

  ‘What do’ee mean, sir?’

  ‘No more foxes.’

  ‘Bible says we got dominion over the birds and the beasts. Don’t that apply to foxes, sir?’

  ‘This is Devon, not the Holy Land, Scoble.’

  The trapper opened his cigarette tin.

  ‘In Genesis it says there was a Garden of Eden. Well, I got a garden. The Bible don’t say the Moors of Eden – just garden. And I reckon there was foxes in it.’

  ‘We must be off, Lugg,’ Colonel Shewte said, turning his back on Scoble and smiling now at the farmer.

  ‘Will you have some cider before you go, sir?’ Lugg said.

  ‘’Tis a pressing of Kingston Blacks.’

  Colonel Shewte held up a hand and politely declined.

  Striding along the lane beneath the beech leaves, he said, ‘What do you make of Scoble, Jenny?’

  The girl frowned.

  ‘He has a parochial imagination, Daddy.’

  ‘So has God, my dear. So has God,’ the Colonel chuckled. ‘But never mind, we must look after the foxes.’

  A goldcrest sang from the clustered white florets of cow parsley. It was seeking insects. Printed on the air behind father and daughter was the rasping chirr of the mowing machine, then Lugg’s voice bellowing at his youngest boy, telling him to ‘get out of the bloody seat and let the horses rest’.

  ‘When’s your American coming down, Jenny?’ Colonel Shewte said.

  ‘Soon – next week some time.’

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘He’s not too keen on hunting, I believe.’

  ‘No, but he’s not a crank. I suppose the war has put a lot of people off blood sports. Richard is just a nice human being.’

  She smiled and suddenly looked very pretty.

  Lugg wandered over to Scoble while the last swath was being cut.

  ‘Best forget the snares, Len,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Shewte knows what you did at Wistman’s.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I don’t want no foxes trapped on my land.’

  Scoble parted his stubble with a fingertip to get at the wart. The horses plodded towards him. He lifted a shock of grass on his boot and let it fall. The field was whispering.

  BEAST OF THE EARTH

  At last the drought ended and the wind went round to the west. It rained slowly in showers that cooled the air and made everything fresh and pleasant. Heavier downpours swelled the streams and raised the level of the ponds, and the hiss of raindrops hitting the water became a familiar sound.

  There was a loneliness about the Leighon Ponds and the Becca Brook that surpassed all the country Wulfgar had visited. Often the hush enclosing them was intense, punctured by the cry of a moorfowl or the croak of a raven. It was the dream landscape and in the early part of the day he moved like a sleepwalker letting outside forces guide him. Everything conspired to create the timeless quality – the rise of fish, the fall of a leaf, the flags curling at the tips in the breeze.

  ‘And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so.

  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good.

  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’

  Scoble shut his Bible.

  ‘Over the beast of the earth, Jacko,’ he said. ‘That’s foxes, boy – and idn I a man? It don’t say gentleman – just plain, simple man. If the toffs can kill him with their bloody hounds I can trap him.’


  He hacked a point on the stake of the heavy fox snare. He was happy, and Jacko, sensing his mood, became playful. When Scoble was calm the hot screw rarely turned in the dog’s skull, but the visions of horror lay in ambush and there were times when he had to go and lie in the wood stack, tearing at the bark with his teeth, letting the madness escape through his nose in a whine.

  Scoble put half a dozen of the heavy snares in the sack and ran an expert eye over the rows of potatoes. Under the ash trees at the far end of the garden he had a keeper’s gibbet reserved exclusively for members of the crow family. The carcasses of magpies, jays, carrion crows, rooks and daws hung in decomposition. Scoble gathered maggots from the birds to use as bait for the illegal taking of pheasants.

  The ferrets, which scowled at him from the wire netting of their hutch, were sleek and fit. He fed them on rabbits in fur, chickens’ heads, entrails and birds in feather, but they were never permitted to overeat. Every thing and every creature in Yarner’s Cott was put to good use, a lesson he had learnt from his parents in a home where he had been treated like a possession rather than a child. His character had been formed by those early years of drudgery and loneliness.

  The jill ferrets clutched the wire and stood upon their hind feet to greet him.

  ‘They’m worse than you for rabbits, Jacko,’ Scoble murmured. And the dog thought he was growling and laid back his ears.

  After the rain had fallen the night became still again, and an unknown living something moved through the rushes and plopped into the water. Romany was scrunching an eel on the dam, when his mate whistled to him from the margins of the wood.

  Wulfgar came down Black Hill at speed trying to contain his frustration. Stargrief had gone off without a word like a true mystic. ‘I’ll give him one more sunset, Wulfgar thought, then we’ll take the dog my way.’

  But he loved the old fox and was merely voicing his impatience.

  The rooks in Holwell’s beeches had finally stopped cawing. Softly burning Antares hung over Rippon Tor and a moon big enough and bright enough to please all predators rose above Haytor Down. Soon it was high over Leighon and mirrored in the ponds. A barn owl drifted along the brook and became one with the silence.