Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  ‘And you’ve learned?’ Fletcher taunted.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she said slowly, not teasing or fooling; and though her voice was upper class it was not imitative – it was a voice that had suddenly become hers. ‘I am going to be one, soon – very soon. Things are happening.’

  Probyn stepped over to the fireplace and gave her a sweeping slap on the face. She made no sound but bent forward, her hand to her cheek. Probyn leaned over her, pointing – ‘You mind how you lead on the men at the big house, Lady Blah! They’re servants, but they’re men too – some of ’em. You know better than to get your belly filled, but how’d you like to finish up under a hedge, strangled with your own stockings … you wear ’em now, don’t you? You be careful, see?’

  ‘All right, Granddad,’ she said quietly, her hand still to her cheek.

  It was quite dark. Probyn said, ‘Tell her to set the alarm clock for five when she comes in,’ and went through to the bedroom he shared with the Woman.

  Fletcher called after him, ‘Shall I come with you in the morning, Granddad?’

  ‘No,’ he grunted, and closed the door behind him. In darkness he pulled off his clothes, down to his grey wool combinations, and climbed into the cold bed. He lay awhile, thinking. Time was when he didn’t need to have the alarm clock wake him, but now either he didn’t wake up, or he couldn’t sleep, remembering what time he should get up. He didn’t have to tell the Woman he’d want a hot cup of tea before he went out. She’d learned that the day he got her.

  Outside, by the fire, the Woman had come in, and was sitting in the chair Probyn had vacated. To his sister Fletcher said, ‘ ’Tis not one of the servants at the Big House?’

  Florinda shook her head.

  The alarm rattled at five, and Probyn stirred. The Woman was already up, no light showing in the front room, but two pieces of wood burning in the stove, a pan on, tea stewing, milk ready in an earthenware pot to one side, brown sugar in a jam jar. Probyn dressed carefully, slowly, in the dark. Over the combinations he pulled on a brown flannel shirt, a size too large for him, that Squire Cate had bought for him years ago in a jumble sale, trousers of wide-wale corduroy, dark brown, patched in two places, held up with frayed red braces, and also a wide leather belt; then the moleskin waistcoat, stitched together from the skin of a dozen moles, black, shiny, smooth as the inside of a woman’s thighs; a short jacket of the same corduroy as the trousers, the elbows patched with leather; two pairs of socks, both thick wool, loosely woven – these the Woman had knitted for him herself, the wool unravelled from various pullovers and cardigans that the gentry kept giving to the poor. Probyn had, no use for cardigans, but in his profession there was nothing worse than cold feet; and his boots – brown, hobnailed, laced with strong cord, well soled and heeled, well greased – were as waterproof as anything could be short of rubber.

  The tea was ready and he sat in the chair by the table sipping it, for it was too hot to drink fast. The moon was five days past full, and light from its distorted sphere poured in through the dusty windows, on to the table, the cup he drank from, the Woman standing ghostly pale by the stove. He left half the tea in the cup, and went out to the outhouse, pulled down his trousers and opened the flap of his combinations, and sat waiting for the bowel movement. Five minutes and it was done. He always went to the outhouse before leaving for work. In the woods it was not good to have to shit. For one thing you were at the mercy of anyone who happened to see you; for another, the keepers always went out with dogs, and the dogs would pick up the smell of the shit from a long way off on a good scenting day, and be after you … He wiped himself desultorily with the paper, almost as coarse as packing paper, that was the best the Woman could find. When he was a boy, they used to use leaves. Now everyone used this stuff, and what the hell good was it, besides costing money? That was what people were aiming at – that everything should cost money, that used to be free; or that it should cost more money. So now they made what used to be simple, complicated.

  Back in the cottage he put on his cap, a tweed cap peaked fore and aft, a deerstalker of the sort that Sherlock Holmes was always shown wearing. It was raw cold outside, not raining, but blowing gustily from the north-west; but Probyn did not untie the knot that linked the earflaps on top of the cap, and pull them down to tie the knot under his chin. That would have kept his ears warm – and prevented him hearing.

  He went out then and to the door of the lean-to shed built against the side of the cottage, towards the river. He slid back the bolt, and went into the semi-darkness, leaving the door open to the flooding moonlight. His eyes were quite accustomed to the quality of the light now, and he could clearly see the two hutches, set side by side on a shelf four feet off the ground, where he kept his two ferrets. They were both jills, small, and both awake, for they knew his hours, and had heard him through the wall, getting up out of bed. They were pacing their hutches, peering red-eyed through the wire mesh – padding, turning, staring, half-standing, claws in the mesh, turning … lithe, small, pointed nosed, dirty ivory in colour, with darker yellow at the neck. Probyn had always had jills, only. They were much smaller than the hobs, but they could kill a rabbit just as easily, and that was all he wanted of them; and when one came in heat he would borrow a hob from anywhere – there were plenty of ferret hutches and ferret fanciers within five miles of Walstone, farmers and labourers as well as poachers – and put him in with the jill, and in return for the pick of the litter, he’d have more ferrets to sell. And the jills were more manageable, and less liable to forget their training and put a pair of needle-like teeth through your hand.

  He watched them for a few moments. He never made up his mind which ferret to hunt until he had taken a look and seen how they were. The one in the right hutch, Mrs Keppel, was moving more smoothly than Queen Alexandra in the left. The Queen was anxious, over-eager; she might be hard to get off a rabbit … He opened the right hutch and gently picked up Mrs Keppel, closing his hand on her back from behind, just behind the front legs. With his other hand he picked the ferret bag off its hook on the wall, opened the mouth, lowered Mrs Keppel in, and drew the string taut. She wriggled and turned a few times, and then appeared to go to sleep. He pictured her inside there, putting out her tongue at Queen Alexandra. The two jills were not friends; they were rivals for his affections, rather like their namesakes had been for the old King’s.

  On another longer wooden peg were hanging a dozen nets. Some of them were purse nets, with a single draw string, and some were plain nets, about twenty inches square. On the shelf, further along, was a pile of wooden pegs, no more than Y-shaped twigs, the thickness of a forefinger, cut to a point at one end. He stuffed a dozen nets and double that number of pegs into one coat pocket, put the ferret bag into the other, hitched an empty sack through his belt in the middle of his back, took a spade out of a corner, and went out, carefully closing the door and sliding the bolt shut behind him.

  After leaving the cottage he headed westward along the lane, and in five minutes reached the Hedlington road just outside the western edge of Walstone. He stayed on it only a few minutes, then climbed a five-barred gate and walked along the edge of a field of stubble, crossed another field, this one fallow, climbed another gate, dropped on to a footpath, and settled down to a shambling easy stride that looked lazy, but covered the miles. The lane ran between high hedges of hazel mixed with blackthorn, and was little used, since country roads had been improved and more people used bicycles.

  Probyn’s senses told him all that a man could be told of the country that he passed, and the land that he trod – the bark of a fox, far off to the north, probably in Felstead Woods; the soughing of the wind through the bare branches of the trees that stood scattered and lonely in the moonlit fields; the almost soundless wingbeats of a barn owl, hunting over by the river which here ran close to the path; the scurry of something very small, probably a field mouse … but at the same time his conscious mind was reviewing his affairs as a man, a sentient human being rathe
r than a two-legged hunting animal … Florinda was up to something – that he was certain of; but only seeing her Saturday afternoons and evenings wasn’t enough to know her now. She, too, was growing up – and away … The war was going to make it harder for a man to follow this profession of his, in some ways. In others, it would be easier. Men were marching and running all over, day and night, playing at soldiers; that disturbed the game, and there’d be fewer birds and rabbits about – but the soldiers also poached, and why not? So the gamekeepers had hundreds of poachers to worry about, not just Probyn and old Simmons in Beighton, who was getting past it; and young Budden in Felstead, who didn’t have the experience to be a proper match for Skagg and the rest of them … he thought of Fletcher. He wondered if Fletcher and Florinda fucked. They slept in the same bed – always had – so perhaps they did. The Woman thought they used to, when they were fourteen, fifteen, so they could find out what it was all about; but didn’t any more, having taught each other what there was. They loved each other, that he knew.

  He thought about his son Willum, the twins’ father. What would happen to him if Mary died? He ought to be in an asylum, if everyone had his rights, being looked after … an asylum, or the army, where they told you when to wipe your arse and when to come in out of the rain …

  So, thinking and sensing simultaneously but separately, after nearly two hours and seven miles he came to the railway embankment half-way between Cantley station and Felstead & Whitmore station. It was thirty feet high in the centre, and three hundred yards long, spanning a shallow valley where a side stream flowed into the Scarrow from the north, passing first under the Hedlington road, and then, forty yards on, through a culvert in the embankment. Probyn climbed the embankment, crossed the two pairs of lines, and went carefully down the other side. The dawn light was beginning to dim the brightness of the moon, and he set to work quickly. If he had a dog he would have set it to sniffing at the rabbit holes that pockmarked the foot of the embankment on this, the southern face, all along the bottom ten feet; but Skagg’s knaves had shot his dog and he had not yet got another so he went to the west end of the embankment, where there were six or seven holes well separated from any others, probably not connected except among themselves, and began to cover each of them with a net. The purse nets he spread carefully over the holes, one for each, hammering in a single peg at the top, the draw string tied to it. He used four of these and for two others used square nets, each kept in place by three or four pegs, at the corners, depending on the shape of the hole. He sat down by the last, unnetted hole at the base of the embankment, and waited, spade resting between his knees.

  The Scarrow began to show as a faint line of silver behind the willows fifty yards in front of him. This was railway property he was on, demarcated by two wire fences, one on each side of the embankment. He was poaching, but from the South Eastern & Chatham Railway Company, as it had now become, not from any private landowner. The rabbit warrens along this embankment were not well known, except to poachers, and they were hard to reach. The fields all round belonged to a hot-tempered farmer who was not above firing a twelve-bore past the ears of trespassers, so that the only safe way to reach the warrens was to walk down the railway line … and though the South Eastern & Chatham did not make much effort to stop poaching on their land, they objected very strongly to anyone walking on their right of way. The line was almost straight between Cantley and Felstead & Whitmore stations, so that both stationmasters, the signalmen in their high boxes, and porters working on the platforms, could see from one to the other … and the would-be poacher would find an angry railway servant bicycling furiously along the cinder path after him, shaking his fist and swearing …

  The light was strong enough. Seven-thirty, no frost, just some wind, and the damp, rain in the air, rooks beginning to awaken in the rookery across the river. Probyn got up, opened the mouth of the ferret bag, and eased Mrs Keppel out of it at the mouth of the unnetted hole. She stood, sniffed, turned round, and seemed to want to go for a walk. He picked her up gently and put her back, her nose pointing down the hole. She looked at him once as though to say, ‘You really want me to go into this one?’ – a message so clear that he involuntarily nodded – then she walked into the darkness. As soon as she had gone, he put a square net over the hole, staked it firmly, went back to the high wire fence and leaned against it, facing the embankment, his head and eyes slowly moving to watch all the seven holes.

  He waited. Below, Mrs Keppel wandered seemingly aimlessly along the black corridors of the warren. She smelled the rabbits close, trod over pellets of their dung, peered, sniffed, and went on, more like a moving wave than an animal, rippling. Close to one side she heard the sudden scut and thud of a rabbit flying off in a panic. They had smelled her. She moved on slowly, deliberately.

  A rabbit tore out of a hole directly in front of Probyn, burst into the purse, and was caught. Probyn darted forward, loosened the draw string and pulled the rabbit out. It had been kicking and struggling but, held now by the hind legs, it ceased, and hung limp, the bulging eyes staring down. Probyn hardened his right hand and chopped downward at the back of its head. Its neck broke with a crack. He dropped it to the grass, quickly reset the net, and went back to the fence.

  Another rabbit burst out higher up, to be caught in one of the square nets. It was a big strong buck; the earth of the embankment was friable and Probyn had twenty yards to scramble up the bank. Before he reached it it had pulled two of the four pegs out of the earth, slipped out from under the net, and darted down the embankment, under the fence, and away. Probyn swore aloud. Prince would have got to the net in time to hold the rabbit.

  He climbed back down to the fence. The light was growing stronger every minute. After five minutes he went to the warren and bent down, listening to the earth in several places. She was still moving; he did not hear her silent passage, only the thumps of the rabbits as they fled … another darted out, to be firmly caught and quickly dispatched. A few minutes later, another … The three rabbits lay stiffening on the damp grass near the fence, their white scuts showing, a few pellets of excrement expelled from their bodies in their last spasmodic throes.

  It was a little after eight o’clock now, and a distant engine whistled from the north. That would be the down passenger train, Probyn thought, that stopped at every station from Hedlington up the Scarrow valley, and then over to Ashford. Mrs Keppel had not come out, nor had any more rabbits. Probyn stared at one of the netted holes, his lips pursed. He should have put her on the line – the fine cord by which he could retrieve her if she got a rabbit in a dead end, killed it, and stayed down there to drink the blood: the line was in his pocket but she hadn’t done this for months and he thought she was over it. She was near her heat and that might be upsetting her.

  He walked slowly across the steep-sided embankment, listening, at every few steps kneeling, one ear pressed to the ground. Between two holes near the top of the warren he heard a sharp rapping sound below ground. He waited … a few seconds later the rap was repeated. He nodded. Mrs Keppel had a rabbit cornered in a dead end; the rapping sounds were the rabbit kicking the ferret back as she tried to get a grip. It might go on for five minutes, but sooner or later the ferret would sink its teeth in flesh and start sucking the blood; then she would go on until the rabbit was dead and she herself bloated. Then she might not come out of the warren for a day, or even two.

  Probyn fetched his spade, which he had leaned against the fence and started to dig. The train whistled again, closer – that was for the level crossing at Cantley station. Probyn kept working: it was a down train and would therefore be on the other side, the line furthest from him. Neither driver nor fireman could see down the embankment on this side where he was – and even if they could it wouldn’t matter: trainmen were much less officious than station staffs, though a guard sometimes shook his fist at you, if he saw you … but what more could he do?

  The train passed, leaking steam, its connecting rods clanking, the whe
els thunking over the rail joints. Probyn went on digging, more carefully, for he knew that Mrs Keppel was not far down.

  Barely two feet below the surface, his spade cut into an earth corridor. Listening, he heard a chewing sound close to the right. He stuck his head into the hole he had dug and saw Mrs Keppel’s tail eighteen inches into the corridor, and a brownish bulk beyond – the rabbit. It was no longer kicking, and Mrs Keppel had it by the throat. He took off his corduroy coat, wrapped his right hand in the skirt of it, reached in and gently tried to get hold of Mrs Keppel’s body; but the tunnel was too tight, and all he got was her tail. He caught it and pulled firmly, expecting to feel the needles of her teeth at any moment. The corduroy would lessen the depth of the bite, but she’d easily break his skin. She did not bite, keeping her jaws buried in the throat of the rabbit, which she was pulling after her. Her greed has saved my skin, Probyn thought: it had happened before. He took his hand out of the corduroy, caught Mrs Keppel at the proper place and with his other hand pried her teeth apart and kicked the rabbit down the bank. It was not in bad condition. He could not sell it to a butcher, but it would make a good meal at the cottage.

  Carrying Mrs Keppel carefully, he walked down the bank, picked up her bag, and dropped her in, moving his hand back quickly as he did so. She would be in a bad temper and full of blood lust for a little while; but she’d be all right by the time they got home.

  And now to get home … first, back up the embankment, cross the rails, hurry down the northern side before the up passenger train passed, which it did as he reached the lane. Then, into the lane, and swing along as he had in the night, but watching now, for the sack that had been hitched through his belt now swung over his shoulder, tied to the haft of the spade, heavy with the weight of four rabbits. He was off the angry farmer’s land, the path was a right of way, and then he had only a short distance of the main road to walk along before reaching the cottage … and even that could be avoided if he smelled danger.