Fair Game

by Gerald Hammond

  She blazed up, and for a moment he could see the termagant that she must have been in her youth. ‘Very well,’ she said grimly. ‘But you’ll be sorry if I sell the land to somebody with sporting aspirations but short of spare cash. Being next door to a major sporting estate never did values any harm. They’ll sit here for ever, milking you of your bloody birds.’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll think it over. Time’s on my side. You’ll not get that price from anyone else, and if the estate has to pay that much I don’t care whether it’s paid to you or to whoever follows you. If you drop the price, let me know.’

  ‘I’d rather . . .’ She broke off, and started again in a more conciliatory tone. ‘I’d rather settle the matter soon. I want to get ahead with the stables.’

  ‘It’s tough at the top,’ Keith said, and turned away.

  As they started back down towards the sunlit loch they heard the tractor move off with a jerk behind them. Brutus, who had kept his distance from the noise and angry voices, fell in beside them.

  ‘She’s nae pleased,’ Winter said. He sounded amused.

  ‘She doesn’t have to be pleased,’ Keith said grumpily. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m glad she’s doing something about the foxes.’

  ‘She sells the furs,’ Winter said, ‘not that they fetch much more than the price of a cartridge at this time of year. If she’d any sense she’d have left it until it had its winter coat, but she’s that desperate for money she’d be feared somebody else’d get it first. God, but she’s looking her age these days,’ he added, ‘and I never realised what big feet she had until I saw her up on the tractor.’

  Keith’s throat was still sore from all the shouting. They walked in silence as far as the loch. Then he asked, ‘Does everyone around here shoot?’

  ‘Just about,’ Winter said. ‘Wi’ the right sort of friends or the right sort of job, you shoot game. If not, you stick to pigeon and rabbits, or go down to the Firth after geese and ducks on the foreshore. And some come out as beaters and pickers, and get on the keepers’ shoots at the tail-end.’

  ‘And how many use home-loaded cartridges?’

  ‘The most of them, at least for game-loads. I’ve aye loaded my own. Some of the men in the village share a machine between them. And the rest just buy their cartridges off them or off me. The farmers usually get from me in exchange for grain for the birds.’

  ‘And you all use Joe Merson’s shot?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Winter said. ‘I don’t want the beggar about the land again, but I wish he’d come back just long enough to pour some more. Or I’ll have to be buying the real stuff again. Man, that’s a terrible price.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  That day, Keith took his afternoon tea in Miss Wyper’s office. While they discussed agenda items for the first meeting of the new board, Keith also laid out his materials and loaded the Roman Candle pistol for the general to fire his salute at the service, now only a few days off. Keith wanted the job done. He had a feeling that, after they returned to Newton Lauder at the weekend, they might not be coming back.

  Molly had joined them, but not, apparently, to be sociable. She sat knitting in an aloof silence, just occasionally looking up at Keith with hurt eyes. Miss Wyper kept making nervous conversational overtures, trying without success to coax a response. Keith remained polite and considerate. Whatever was wrong, it must work itself out. Something told him that whatever he said would be wrong. He tried not to think back to the days of love and laughter.

  The shrill sound of the telephone was a welcome interruption to as disjointed a discussion as Keith could remember. Alice Wyper took the call, listened for a moment and then covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Harry Bloom. From the inn. He says you know him.’

  Keith thought back over the faces that he had met in the bar. ‘Is he the chap with the half-inch forehead and knuckles trailing on the ground?’

  Miss Wyper chuckled. ‘That’s the one,’ she said.

  ‘I liked him.’ Keith took the handset from her. ‘Calder.’

  Harry’s gruff voice sounded gruffer over the line. ‘Mr Calder? We got a rabbit-shoot on this evening. A market-garden near here’s being eaten out by the mappies. They’ve made a hell of a come-back there since the last mixy, and he’s got permission from the farmer next door to shoot today, just the one day before the cattle go back in. Harvey said you might be on for it.’

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ Keith said. He looked at Miss Wyper. ‘Want to go on a rabbit-shoot?’ he asked.

  She nodded violently.

  ‘Harry, can Miss Wyper come along?’

  ‘Is she safe?’

  ‘Safe enough.’

  There was a pause. ‘We were hoping you could get Mr Grass’s Range Rover.’

  ‘You want the Range Rover, you get Miss Wyper as well.’ He raised his eyebrows at Molly, but she shook her head. Keith should be safe with Miss Wyper and a gang of men. ‘What time?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Come as soon as you can.’

  Keith gave the telephone to Miss Wyper to hang up, and looked down at the Roman Candle – a wheel-lock pistol made in Germany some three hundred years before. He had probed for and counted the internal vents, and calculated that the pistol had been designed to fire up to thirteen shots from its four barrels. So far he had only inserted seven loads. But the fewer the safer. ‘Put this by for the general,’ he told Miss Wyper.

  *

  At about the time when the Range Rover was collecting a varied assortment of men, guns, dogs and nets from the inn, Mr Enterkin was stretching full-length on Penny Laing’s sofa. She was on her knees, coaxing a log fire into life. She had a free evening, and there was tacit agreement that they would spend it in the proper savouring of food, wine and dalliance.

  Mr Enterkin, looking fondly on her bent back, was suddenly seized with an unlawyerlike impatience. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that it’s time that we thought about getting married.’

  Without looking round, she shook her head so that her hair danced. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not the wife for you. I’m all right for a cuddle and no harm done, but our lives are different. You’re a solicitor from the other side of the country, and you’ll go back there when this job’s over. Just come and see me sometimes, at weekends. I’ll be here as long as you want me.’

  There was a silence. She poked at the fire. The flames lit a rosy halo round her head. ‘The board will meet soon,’ he said at last.

  ‘You told me that.’

  ‘One of the first items of business will be the appointment of a full-time director. They’ll probably have a lot of grand ideas between them, and draw up a list of qualifications that’ll only attract the kind of applicant we can’t afford. And there may be some who’d rather see a glorified gamekeeper in the post. I’ve got to point out to them that what they really need is an organiser. Somebody who can take their policies, get advice, and put it all in effect. A degree in accountancy or the law would help. I thought that I might put in for the post myself.’

  She turned round. ‘You didn’t! You wouldn’t!’

  ‘You don’t know everything after all. I would.’

  She pulled a cushion down onto the floor and knelt on it, laying her head on his chest. He began to fondle the nape of her neck. ‘Bit of a come-down for you, wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘You have an exaggerated idea of the life-style of small solicitors. It’s not an enormous salary, but free accommodation counts for a lot.’

  ‘At Whinkirk House?’

  ‘At Whinkirk House. I’d save a lot of money not having to travel all the way through here to see my –’

  ‘Fancy woman?’

  ‘– my lady-friend. If I did two conveyances a month and drew up the occasional will, I’d be rolling.’

  She stirred under his hand. ‘If it’s what you want . . .’

  ‘What I want is a wife.’

  ‘Get one then, but not me. Can you see me up at the big house?’

  ‘Easily.’

  ‘The direc
tor’s wife?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll tell you why not. I’m just a barmaid, and a small farmer’s widow. If I went up to the house it’d be to help with the cleaning.’

  He gave her a pat on the back of the head. ‘Now you just shut up and listen to me for a minute,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you think the director’s wife would have to do, so I’ll just tell you. She’d have to advise me about country things, because although I know about the law and accounts and how to organise things I must admit to a certain innocence about all things bucolic. You’d have to supervise the cooking and cleaning and housekeeping. You could do that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Serve drinks to visitors?’

  She gave a muffled snort. ‘Of course.’

  ‘A lot of the visitors will be young keepers or agents who’ve never been far from home before nor stayed in a big house, and they’ll be feeling a bit lost and alone. They’ll need a nice, motherly soul –’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I like that!’

  ‘– who’ll make them feel at home.’

  There was a silence but for the crackling of the logs. ‘I thought,’ she said at last, ‘that you were supposed to do the kneeling down.’

  ‘Let’s keep things the way they are. Very suitable.’

  ‘My knees are getting stiff.’ They rearranged themselves, sitting close together on the couch. ‘You don’t want that job,’ she said. ‘You’d hate it. You just think I’d like it. Well, I’m not going to have you giving up your life and your friends just because I’m slow and stupid. You’ve told me what I’d have to do here. What would I have to do there?’

  ‘In Newton Lauder, if you married me?’ Mr Enterkin thought about it. ‘Nothing very much. I live a quiet life. I don’t give cocktail parties or go to big dinners. If I dine out, it’s with friends like Keith. I don’t bother to keep up with any Joneses. In fact, if you wanted to go on working as a barmaid, but in Newton Lauder, it wouldn’t bother me one damn bit.’

  ‘Your friend Keith Calder,’ she said. ‘He’s the one you want for director.’

  ‘I’d thought about it. I don’t suppose he’d take it on, but I’ll ask him. You like Keith and Molly, don’t you?’

  ‘They’re all right.’ Penny hesitated. ‘I’ve only seen her the once, in the bar. She’s a bit odd, isn’t she?’

  ‘You noticed? She isn’t usually like that. She usually bubbles over with happiness. And she’s devoted to Keith. I can’t think what’s come over her all week. It must be the baby. Well now,’ Mr Enterkin said, turning back to more important matters, ‘what about it?’

  ‘I’ll think it over.’

  ‘But for how long?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said,’. . . after we’ve had our dinner.’

  *

  The venue for the rabbit-shoot turned out to be much as Keith had visualised it – a small market-garden showing signs of serious rabbit-damage. Beyond the fences lay pastureland dotted with clumps of gorse. A small hillock bore a thick crest of the same gorse, and was scored by a thousand typical rabbit-scrapes and burrows.

  Keith and Miss Wyper waited, as requested, in the Range Rover while the men, who were obviously accustomed to working as a team, set off on a flanking movement, walking very softly despite a load of assorted netting.

  ‘Are they going to use ferrets?’ Miss Wyper asked.

  ‘Not at this time of year,’ Keith said, shocked. ‘Too many young in the buries, they’d have to wait a fortnight for the ferrets to come up to the surface again. By this time of a sunny day, there should be plenty of bunnies out and about. They’ll use the long net around the jungly bit and purse-nets over the rest of the holes to back-net any rabbits that make it that far. The drill is, don’t shoot any rabbits that’re making for the nets. That way, youngsters and does in milk can be let go again.’

  ‘That won’t suit the market gardener, will it? And if it reduces the bag it won’t suit me either.’

  ‘Harry knows what he’s doing. The vegetables were hopping with rabbits when we arrived, and he’s put the young chap to cover the dead ground. They’ll still be there. How many do you need?’

  ‘I’m up to sixteen. But, if I go, I’ll go decently clad. I want another ten. And,’ she said, ‘I’ll get them, too. I went to a clay-pigeon school at the weekend.’

  ‘And how do you feel about it all now?’

  ‘In some ways, I can still hardly bring myself to do it. When you skin them, they’re just like little people. And yet . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I couldn’t say I’ve formed my own opinions yet,’ she said slowly. ‘But I’m beginning to see the sense in what other people have said. Mr Winter always told me that if pests have to be controlled you might just as well eat the meat. I can see that now. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? And Mr Grass used to say that game-shooting was a branch of agriculture, you put them out, look after them and then harvest them. I suppose that’s true in a way. But I can’t feel quite comfortable about the natural species – wildfowl and so on. I mean, they’re there, and we don’t have any special right to predate on them.’

  ‘Look at it this way,’ Keith said with equal seriousness. ‘They don’t die in their beds as we do. Mostly, they die of cold or starvation, or get taken by a predator. Me, I’d as soon be shot. As long as man operates within the margin that’d die anyway in a hard winter, I don’t believe that that species needs to be protected from him. But that’s what the schedules to the Protection of Birds Act are all about.’

  ‘I sort of see that. But it’s not the way the . . . the other side see it.’

  ‘Of course not. And maybe they’re right. Maybe in a hundred years man’ll have lost the instinct to hunt. Maybe not, we’ve had it a long time. I just happen to believe that it’ll be a bad day for wildlife if it comes.’

  ‘The general –’ Miss Wyper stopped dead.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Oh, just that he invited me to go with him to a chicken-farm, one of those battery places, and see for myself whether that wasn’t a crueller way to provide fowl for the table. I think I’ll take him up on it. But I remembered something else. I was out early this morning, down towards the lake, and I saw the general slinking along. He didn’t see me and he was trying not to be seen. I wondered whether it was something I should tell you or Mr Winter about.’

  ‘Was he carrying a gun?’ Keith asked.

  ‘No. He had a fishing-bag over his shoulder.’

  The general, Keith thought, would have been setting snares or otherwise continuing his poaching. ‘I take it that he wasn’t wearing a white coat?’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’

  ‘I’ll have to have another very serious word with the old gowk,’ Keith said uncomfortably. ‘He just doesn’t seem to take a telling. I suppose, on these dawn forays of yours, you’ve seen no sign of Joe Merson being back?’

  ‘Harry Bloom’s the person to speak to,’ she said. ‘He and Joe were often up to mischief together.’

  They chatted on, desultorily. It was another half-hour before Harry Bloom stole quietly up to the Range Rover and put his head inside. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  Keith nodded. ‘Have you seen Joe Merson lately?’

  ‘Not for months. Now if you, Miss, would go and stand by that old shed, and for Pete’s sake don’t let them get underneath or we’ll never get them out, and you, Keith, come and put your dog through the greens and we’ll see what we get. Move quietly, mind. About old Joe, there’s just the one thing fashes me.’ Harry stopped and stared into the distance where a pair of lapwings were swooping and climbing over an empty field. ‘I’d believe,’ he said at last, ‘that Joe’d just gone off, but for that one thing. He never went off, not of his own accord, without he’d bring his ferrets down for me to keep. And he didn’t. Of course, he may’ve sold them.’

  ‘Have you been up to his cottage to look?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Can’t
. Mr Grass caught me knocking his pheasants out of their roosts with a catapult in moonlight. He got an inderdict, stopping me coming onto the land for a year,’ Harry said without resentment. ‘But he gied me back the twenty quid I was fined. He was a gent, was Mr Grass.’

  The frantic sport, the hurtling rabbits, the shots that scored and shots that missed, none of these are any part of our story. It is of only slight relevance that Miss Wyper shot seven rabbits, and paunched them on the spot without turning more than a very few hairs. More pertinent, strange as it may seem, was the fact that one rabbit belonged to Brutus alone. The last rabbit of the day had avoided the guns and was streaking for an unguarded hole when Brutus overtook and grabbed it up. He took it straight to Harry Bloom, and by the time that Keith could get there was being praised and petted for what was in fact a gross breach of training. Keith threw up his eyes to the darkening heavens. He knew that months of patience would be needed to undo the damage and prevent the dog becoming a chronic runner-in.

  Miss Wyper, who was becoming a favourite with the men, was invited to help with the delicate task of gathering up the nets, but Keith and the “young chap” were considered to be too ham-fisted. Keith smiled and went to sit on a wall and watch the sky change colour, and soon the boy came and sat near him. Brutus, who by now considered himself to be the only real expert present, was far too busy supervising the others to spare Keith a moment. Brutus’ new-found pride and dedication were such that he would follow any man with a gun. Harry still had his gun with him, so he had a black shadow at his heel.

  ‘Mr Calder, may I talk to you for a moment?’ The boy was well-spoken. His voice reminded Keith of somebody.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘We weren’t properly introduced. I’m Bob Ambrose.’

  ‘Ambrose. Didn’t I meet your mother a few days ago?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You’ve got something to do with Mr Grass’s will, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not a lot, but something. I’m dogsbodying for the executor. I’ll help you if I can without cutting across anybody else’s right to confidentiality.’