by Mike Ripley
That sounded eminently sensible to me. But Stephie just redoubled her sulk.
‘And you go easy on that champagne,’ he added, and she didn’t deny it.
Then he pointed the whip across the road to where a blonde woman was sitting in the open tailgate of an Audi estate car. She wore a soft leather bomber jacket and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans that had been moulded on, and totally impractical high-heeled ankle boots.
‘And for God’s sake keep an eye on your mother. She’s on her second bottle already.’
I wondered if I should volunteer; but then I thought of the whip and that big horse and those hooves and let it pass.
Mr Stephie moved off and joined a huddle of horsemen. Stephie tugged at my sleeve.
‘They’re up to something,’ she hissed in my ear.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘They’re closing the bar.’
We were both right. The huntsmen were gathering into formation and the whipper-in had taken the rather unsteady Rex over to the horse-box transporter where the hounds were baying louder by the minute. Local women acting as barmaids for the morning were threading through the spectators collecting empty glasses on trays.
‘They’re going to go early,’ said Stephie excitedly, ‘before Geoffrey gets here.’
The whipper-in and a couple of helpers were unbolting the tailgate of the horsebox. The hounds got louder and Rex took up a gunfighter’s stance in the road, waiting to marshal his troops
‘Dammit. They must have been tipped off,’ said Stephie.
‘They have look-outs,’ I said.
‘How do you know?’
‘The guys on foot, they’ve all got mobile phones in their pockets.’ I thought everybody had noticed.
‘Bastards! Somebody in the village must have told them Geoffrey’s lot has set out.’
‘Well, I didn’t think they were using them to call up an air strike.’
Stephie tried to wither me with a look, but I’d been withered by experts in my time.
The hounds were released onto the road and they snapped and wagged around Rex, who stood stock still and tried to look imperious. He was probably as drunk as some of the riders.
‘No horns,’ said Stephie as if it meant something.
‘What?’
‘They’re not blowing their hunting horns. It would tip off Geoffrey that they’re on the move. They’ll wait until they’re off the road.’
‘Well, we can certainly do something about that. Come on.’
‘Whereto?’
‘Back to Armstrong – the cab. We’ve got to stop Lara from attacking them right here and now.’
‘Too many innocent spectators around, you mean?’
‘Don’t be daft. Too many police.’
We broke from the crush, squeezing by a horse intent on taking its rider sideways, despite what he wanted, and set off down the road at a brisk stroll.
‘Don’t run,’ I’d told Stephie, ‘it’ll give the game away.’
She seemed to buy that. She was concerned about the hunters; I was worried about the cops.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ snapped Lara, still crouched down in the back of Armstrong.
‘Mingling,’ I smiled back. ‘Stay where you are, the game’s afoot.’
‘What’s he on about?’ hissed one of Lara’s shock troops.
‘The hunt’s moving off and coming this way,’ I said through the glass screen as I climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Now stay down and we’ll turn round. There are cops directing traffic here, and I want to get clear.’
‘They’re early, the swine,’ somebody said, which I thought was a bit rich. Don’t swine have rights too?
Stephie made to get in the back, but I waved her into the front and the space normally reserved for luggage.
‘Crouch down and stay down,’ I said. ‘You’re not supposed to ride there.’
She was delighted to be doing something that was (a) illegal and (b) something Lara wasn’t doing.
‘Ow! What the hell is this?’ she swore, having sat on my trumpet case.
‘Something I brought for emergencies like this. Open it.’
As she fumbled with my trumpet, I started Armstrong and did a one-lock turn, heading down the road. One of the traffic cops actually waved me through, thinking I was being sensible and getting out of the way before the hunt appeared.
Around the first bend, and out of sight of the policemen, I slowed at the first five-bar gate into a field on our right.
‘This one?’ I asked.
Stephie shook her head. ‘No way. That’s reserved for experimental crops. Scientific farming and all that shit. They wouldn’t go across there. Try the next. Hey, this is a trumpet.’
‘Top of the class, kid. Find the mouthpiece. It’s in the felt-covered box at the front.’
The next gate was a hundred yards away, and it was open.
‘This looks like it,’ said Stephie. ‘That’s Knapworth Woods over there.’
She pointed to a lump of green three fields away.
‘Okay, team, let’s go for it,’ I said into the back, and amid some choice cursing, Lara and crew stumbled out.
They had all put their masks on, and they went about their business with frenzied enthusiasm, scattering peppermint and pepper and aniseed essence all around the entrance to the field and a good way into it.
I got out and held out my hand to Stephie for the trumpet.
‘You’re going to play?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘I’m going to warn Geoffrey,’ I said primly. ‘What do you think he’ll do if he hears a horn?’
‘He’ll get here bloody quick,’ she said, cottoning on.
I licked my lips and fluffed the first three notes of the opening to ‘West End Blues’. Maybe I had been a bit ambitious. So I slipped into ‘Perdido’, as there was nobody there to criticise the break.
The horn did me proud, ringing out bell-like over the still frosty fields. Ah, Beiderbecke, eat your heart out. They say Buddy Bolden could be heard two miles away across New Orleans on a still night. Of course, he was in a loony-bin at the time.
Stephie was tugging my arm again, and I opened my left eye. She was pointing behind me. I stopped playing mid-phrase and turned.
One of Rex’s offspring – and a couple of his cousins – were belting down the lane towards us. The rest wouldn’t be far behind.
‘It’s your playing,’ said Stephie, tugging even more violently on my arm.
‘They like jazz?’
‘They think you’re calling them, dimmo.’
‘Bloody hell. Let’s get out of here.’
We piled into Armstrong, and in the mirror I saw more of the pack turn the corner, but the leaders had slowed and were weaving across the road trying to pick up a scent. The real huntsmen had started blowing their horns to restrain the dogs, which would act as a further signal to Bell.
Not that he needed one. His shock troops were already in sight, hurrying down the road towards us with a blue and white police panda car trying to ride shotgun on them, driving at about five miles an hour.
I looked behind again and saw the first red-coated, black-capped horsemen had rounded the bend as well as the rest of the hounds. I reckoned that both columns would meet just about where Armstrong was parked.
Definitely time to go.
I dropped the brake and turned into the field where Lara and her squad were happily running around in circles laying false scent trails like woodland fairies on the toot.
‘Yeow! This is ace!’ yelled Stephie, bouncing up from her crouched position in the luggage space and hitting her head on Armstrong’s roof.
As long as the ground stayed frozen, I thought. Armstrong was a versatile vehicle, but a half-track personnel carrier he wasn’t.
‘Get in!’ I sho
uted through the window.
Lara and her three saboteurs stared at me, then at the growing confusion in the lane, and then they dived into the back. Okay, so I didn’t actually stop for them, but I did slow down a lot.
Lara came up for air and asked where the hell I was going.
‘Through that field and back onto the road, which should bring us out behind the hunt,’ I shouted.
‘But we haven’t finished scenting,’ she screamed back, and then she pitched sideways as we hit another bumpy patch.
‘Yee-hah!’ yelled Stephie. ‘Ride ‘im, cowgirl!’
‘Pour the stuff out of the windows,’ I said. ‘Look out the back.’
In the mirror, I could see the first dozen or so hounds had entered the field and were galloping round in a circle, totally confused. At the gate, the panda car had stopped to try and let the horsemen into the field while keeping the protesters at bay. Three or four made it and tried to lead the dogs away.
I slowed down and began to search for a gap in the hedge into the next field. There had to be one, I figured, so the tractors could move in and out.
I found it by following the tractor ruts in the hardened mud down the side of the hedge, going slow because the ruts were deep and Armstrong’s undercarriage was scraping dangerously close to the packed dirt between them.
We almost made it, but five yards short of the gap in the hedge, Armstrong snuck his front axle in the earth and wouldn’t budge.
‘Everybody out, round the front and push. Now!’ I ordered, and to give them credit, none of them argued.
I slammed the cab into reverse and, as they heaved, he moved back just enough for me to put a left-hand lock on the wheel.
‘Right, round the back,’ I shouted through the window. ‘All together after three.’
They trotted to the rear, and I looked over my shoulder. Two of the huntsmen on those big, stupid, probably rather annoyed horses had spotted us and were galloping over. I didn’t think they were coming to help push.
‘Three!’ I shouted, and they heaved and Armstrong jerked out of the rut and almost into a drainage ditch before I corrected the steering.
Lara and co dived in as we moved off. The horsemen were 40 yards away and yelling things. I don’t think they realised that almost the whole pack of hounds had set off after them.
Lara had noticed and was hanging out of a window sprinkling the rest of her herbs and spices to confuse the poor mutts even more. She almost bounced out as we crossed more tractor tracks and shot into the next field.
‘Hey, this is the scientific field, the experimental stuff. They won’t allow the dogs in here,’ said Stephie.
‘Has anybody told the dogs?’ I asked.
I wasn’t going to risk driving in any more tractor ruts this time, so I pointed Armstrong diagonally across the field and headed for the gate into the road.
Whatever it was they were scientifically farming in there hadn’t put on much of a show; well, it was December. It could have been a con anyway, just to claim the Common Market agricultural subsidy. But whatever it was, I reckoned that Armstrong’s twin tyre tracks wouldn’t cause terminal damage.
Of course, I couldn’t speak for the pack of hounds that followed us in there, attracted by the trail Lara was laying out of the window. Or the horses and riders, for that matter, who charged in to round up the dogs.
I slowed down as we neared the gate into the road. Round the corner to our right, it sounded as if a minor war had broken out, with car horns mixing with hunting horns and a steady chant of ‘Stop the Hunt! Stop the Hunt!’ In the distance, a police siren started to wail.
I told Stephie to get out and open the gate.
In the mirror, I could see more dogs and more horses tearing chaotically across the field.
‘And make sure you close it after us,’ I added primly. ‘Remember to respect the countryside.’
Despite the howls of protest from the back seat activists, I turned left into the lane, away from the ruck around the corner.
‘Is there a back way back to the village?’ I asked Stephie.
‘Sure. Left at the crossroads, left, left, and left again.’
‘Wait a minute!’ commanded Lara. ‘We can’t desert Geoffrey.’
I stood on the brakes.
‘You go if you want to. Armstrong is far too bloody well-known round here. I’m getting him out of sight.’
‘It makes sense, Lara,’ said one of the others in the back.
‘You’re right. Come on, we can walk.’
They piled out and slammed the doors. I knew what had gone through Lara’s mind: if she was caught inside Armstrong, there was no way she’d talk her way clear. On the road or in the fields, with the rest of the crowd, there would be much less chance she’d get picked up by the cops.
‘I thought they’d never go,’ said Stephie, trying to be coy.
‘You staying?’
‘Oh yes, you’re far more fun than they are.’
‘Do you want to get in the back?’
‘No, I’m fine here.’
She spread her legs to brace herself and crouched down. She couldn’t possibly be comfortable. She was even less comfortable half a mile further on, when I pushed her to the floor as the police car came out of a turning ahead of us.
The country road was just wide enough for us to pass if we slowed. He had his blue lights flashing but had turned the siren off. As we drew level, I pulled my window down and leaned out.
‘Fucking road’s blocked to hell back there; can’t get through. Where the hell have you boys been? Christmas in the country, eh? Stuff that for a game of soldiers.’
The copper driving the car just nodded wearily at me, and accelerated as soon as he was clear without looking back at us.
‘That was clever,’ mumbled Stephie from somewhere under the glove compartment.
‘The last thing those guys wanted was stick from a chopsy cab driver.’
She mumbled something else, which I didn’t catch. Then my leg was tapped and I looked down.
‘Want some?’
Stephie had found the emergency vodka.
I stashed Armstrong behind the Parish Room, as he would be out of sight from the road there.
‘No sign of the Animal Army,’ I said, indicating the deserted rectory.
Stephie stepped in front of me, her hands clasped behind her back, shoulders hunched. I could see the up-from-under look coming a mile off.
‘How should we fill in the time?’
I thought of her father and how big he’d looked on that horse and made the only really sensible decision of the day.
‘We’ll go and have lunch. I’m starving.’
We were almost at the door of The Five Bells before she stopped swearing under her breath. Once inside, her face lit up, especially when the landlord recognised her and said hello. It was only just after noon, but the pub was filling rapidly, mostly with men escaping from cold turkey and visiting relatives.
‘A pint of bitter, please,’ I said, ‘and –?’
‘A coke, please, Mr Jenner,’ said Stephie sweetly.
‘Certainly, my dear,’ said the landlord. ‘Would that be a coke or a Coca-Cola?’
He winked at her as he pulled my beer. I wasn’t following this at all.
‘Oh, a Coca-Cola to begin with, I think,’ she said.
He took a long glass and squirted about an inch of coke from a mixer dispense unit into it, then added some ice cubes from a bucket behind the bar. And then, almost as if he just happened to be passing it, he hit the vodka bottle for a double shot and zapped the glass on the bar.
As I paid, I asked her: ‘As a regular here, if not the actual captain of the darts team –’
‘Vice captain,’ the landlord chipped in.
‘– what do you recommend for lunch?�
�
‘Steak sandwiches,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Rare.’
I sneaked a glance out of the pub window across to the rectory. All clear.
‘Make that two.’
What was fascinating about the rest of that afternoon was not just the variety of alcohol that was consumed, nor the fact that I seemed to pay for very little of it. It was the mix of people who visited the pub.
Apart from the locals, there were spectators from the hunt and the huntsmen themselves, along with their dog-handlers, stableboys or whatever they called them, and the hunt saboteurs too, or at least the less fanatic ones. And because the huntsmen had changed out of their red coats and the saboteurs had left their placards outside, they mixed without friction. Sure, there were the occasional dirty looks flashed across the bar, but the landlord kept his eye on things, and while they weren’t actually buying each other drinks, they didn’t seem likely to try and kill each other. Maybe it was just a game to both sides.
Quite a few of the saboteurs wanted to buy me drinks for my valiant action during the morning’s campaign. I pooh-poohed most of the compliments and told them to keep their voices down in case any of the hunting fraternity suddenly remembered who’d been driving the black London cab, but I accepted most of their drinks, and Stephie took her share of Coca-Colas (saying ‘It’s the real thing’ after each one.)
The two army types, Tony and Harry, appeared at about two o’clock and stood us another round.
‘You wouldn’t like to stage your charge across that field again, would you?’ Tony asked me. ‘We didn’t get there in time to video it, unfortunately. But everyone was talking about it.’
I sighed with relief. I’d forgotten about these two prats and Billy’s video camera.
‘No action replays, I’m afraid. Don’t think the locals would approve.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Harry, eyeing Stephie with ill-concealed lust. ‘The word is that the company that owns most of the land round here is slapping the hunt organisers on the wrist in no uncertain terms about that field you ruined.’
‘It wasn’t just me –’ I started.
‘Of course not,’ soothed Tony. ‘Tactical expediency on your part; bloody great cock-up on part of the Hunt. They’d been warned off going in that field – some special crop or other. But it was really just a put-up. The farmers don’t really like the Hunt; makes too much mess and all that. So they’ll use it as an excuse to stop them in future.’