The Restraint of Beasts

by Magnus Mills

  “That took a long time,” I said, as he got out of the truck.

  “I know,” he replied. “I couldn’t find a shop.”

  “Wasn’t there one near that pub?”

  “I went the other way.”

  The sinking feeling was beginning to return.

  “But there weren’t any shops the other way,” I said. “That’s the way we came yesterday.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve been miles.”

  “So what did you do in the end?”

  “Came back.”

  There was a pause. “What…you haven’t got anything?”

  “No.”

  There was little more to say on the subject, so we loaded up the truck with posts and wire, and went up to the hill. It was a bare, treeless place, covered with a layer of turf and populated by sheep, which roamed around, grazing here and there. Mr Perkins wanted us to divide it into four quarters, so the final appearance would resemble a hot cross bun. Therefore the first thing we had to do was halve it. Donald had been down to survey the job in advance, and he’d put marker pegs in the ground where the fences were to start and finish.

  This first fence would run right over the top of the hill, and needed a straining post at either end. I gave Tam and Richie the task of doing one each. Then I took the shopping list and went to get their supplies for them. As expected, I found a general store about a hundred and fifty yards from the Queen’s Head. The whole trip took thirty-five minutes, which should have given Tam and Richie enough time to put their posts in the ground.

  I parked at the bottom of the hill and walked round to Tam’s end. There was a half-dug hole but no Tam. I carried on round to Richie’s end. The two of them were standing by Richie’s post, which was complete, having a smoke.

  “Just getting a fag off Rich,” said Tam as I approached.

  At that moment it struck me we were probably going to be at Upper Bowland a bit longer than Donald had predicted.

  ♦

  All fences had to be straight. This was our mission. Donald had drawn them as straight lines on his plan: therefore, they also had to be straight in real life. Even fences that went right over the top of a hill. Once the first two straining posts were ready, the next job was to stretch a wire between them. This would give us a straight line to work from. We wanted to bisect the hill perfectly, so I asked Tam to go and stand at the top and act as a sighting point. Then Richie loaded a coil of wire onto an unwinder, and began towing out the first strand. This unwinder resembled a small windmill. It turned slowly as Richie made his way up the hill, dragging the wire behind him, and I stood by watching for possible snags. Which required great patience. Each coil contained a quarter of a mile of wire, and I didn’t expect him to move particularly quickly. I was quite content to clock his progress as the coil steadily unwound. As he approached Tam at the summit I could tell he was flagging. The unwinder had been turning at a slower and slower rate, and when he got to Tam it stopped altogether.

  I waited.

  They were discussing something. I wondered what they were talking about, my two colleagues at the other end of the wire. Plotting my overthrow? Probably not. More likely “Got a fag, Rich?”

  Another moment and the unwinder began to move again as Richie continued across the top of the hill and disappeared from my view. Steadily it turned, gradually gaining speed when he started his descent and gravity took over. Soon it was spinning like a whirligig, which meant Richie had taken off at a run down the other side of the hill and was relying on the wire’s drag to hold him back and stop him breaking his neck. Suddenly the coil ran out and I watched the tail end go snaking up the hill. The unwinder spun silently to a halt. I assumed Richie had arrived safely at the bottom. Then I loaded another coil onto the unwinder and set off towing the new wire behind me. I found the end of Richie’s wire halfway up the hill and tied mine to it with a special fencer’s knot. Now we had a continual length of wire running right over the summit of the hill. As soon as it was secure at Richie’s end I could pull it tight and we would have our straight line. I glanced up at Tam. Could he see Richie from where he was standing? Probably not. He’d have to walk across the top of the hill to have a look, but this didn’t seem to have occurred to him. He was just gazing into space. I shouted to get his attention, but my voice didn’t carry far enough. This problem of communication along the fence was nothing new. Donald had considered supplying gangs with walkie-talkies to help make the process more efficient, but then decided that they were ‘open to abuse’ and abandoned the idea. I lost count of the times I had been at one end of a fence trying to pass instructions to the person at the other. Having a hill between me and Richie made the matter worse.

  I suppose it was my fault really. I should have set up some sort of pre-arranged signal before he went off.

  I wondered what Tam was staring at. Maybe nothing. Maybe he had been standing there so long his mind had just gone off the job. Meanwhile, I had no idea at all whether Richie had fixed the wire at the other end.

  “TAM!” I shouted at the top of my voice.

  No response.

  Again “TAM!! YOU deaf fucker!”

  This time he turned towards me. I shrugged at him, meaning ‘What’s happening?’

  He shrugged back. Now what was that supposed to mean? All I wanted him to do was go and have a look down at Richie, come back and give me a signal. But he just stayed where he was. I made a pointing gesture. Still he did not move, apart from shrugging again. I was very reluctant to go up the hill myself, him being already up there. It was such a waste of energy. We were all going to have to go up and down that hill a good many times before this job was finished. All the pointed posts that formed the main body of the fence were going to have to be lugged up there by hand because it was too steep for the truck. Then there would be the rest of the wires to tow out and fix. All in all a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and I could see no point in me going right up the hill just to ask Tam what Richie was doing. I didn’t want to call Tam down yet either: he had to keep an eye on the wire when it was pulled tight to make sure it didn’t get caught anywhere and go out of line.

  I waved my arm again. Aha! Something had got through to Tam at last, and he set off walking away from me over the top of the hill. I waited a few minutes while he was out of sight. Soon, I thought, he would come back and give me a signal that everything was OK. I continued waiting. He didn’t come back.

  Eventually, I decided to walk round the bottom of the hill to see if Richie’s end was ready. When I got there it came as no real surprise to find he had gone.

  My fault again. I was foreman, so I should have organized it better. I looked up the slope but could see no sign of Tam either.

  It seemed like a good time to call it a day. The light was failing anyway. By the time I got back to the caravan it was dark. Again they were sitting inside, unseen apart from the glow of their cigarettes.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “What?” said Richie.

  “You haven’t lit the lamps.”

  “Oh,” he replied. “No. Couldn’t be bothered.”

  We talked of going to the Queen’s Head again that night. The previous evening, as I foretold, the pub hadn’t started to fill up until half past ten. The customers had been mainly blokes, but just before last orders two young women had turned up. They were obviously local girls, you could tell by the way they were greeted when they came in. They took no notice of us three whatsoever. Nevertheless, Tam and Richie decided that ‘we’ had a ‘chance’, so for the time being the Queen’s Head would remain our drinking base.

  “Shame the beer’s so weak,” said Richie.

  “Weak,” repeated Tam, looking at me. “Made by weaklings.”

  Before we went out for the evening I wanted to have a shave. I filled a kettle with water from the outside tap and put it on to boil. Shaving was part of the downside of being an itinerant fencer. It wasn’t too bad if we were at a farm where they kept cows. There was always lots
of hot water available in the dairy: something to do with hygiene. Sheep, however, were different. The animals were left to their own devices for much of the time, and absentee farmers like Mr Perkins didn’t even live at the place. The only thing on tap was cold water, and if someone wanted to wash and shave they had to boil it themselves. Tam and Richie didn’t seem very interested in washing, not on weekdays anyway. And they soon got fed up waiting while I had a shave, because the delay meant they couldn’t go out yet.

  “How long are you going to be?” said Richie, as I poured the boiling water into a bucket.

  “Ten or fifteen minutes,” I replied. He grunted and reached for his copy of An Early Bath for Thompson for a brief read.

  Meanwhile, Tam had nothing to do.

  “Why don’t you clear that up?” I suggested, nodding towards some baked beans that had been on the floor since last night. They were there because the can opener that came with the caravan was worn out. Richie had attempted to open some beans and the opener got stuck halfway round the lid and refused to go any further. At this point Tam took over the operation, and removed the contents with his wood chisel. Some, however, had gone on the floor. When I went to the general store I asked Tam and Richie if they wanted to go thirds each on a new can opener. They both said no, so I bought myself one and put it in my cupboard. Also in my cupboard were one plate, one cup and a knife and fork, which I washed separately and put away. We were now on our second day in the caravan and Tam and Richie obviously weren’t going to do any washing up. All the other plates, pans and cutlery had already been used, and were now stacked in the sink, which, by the way, had no plug. Tam said it was ‘pathetic’ when I did my own washing up and not theirs. Earlier this evening he asked to borrow my new can opener. When I refused he simply resorted to his wood chisel again. I realized I would have to stand firm about the can opener or risk losing my authority over Tam and Richie.

  Now Tam stood looking down at the beans. He cleared them up by opening the door and flicking them outside with his boot. Then he sat down again and watched me finish shaving, while Richie lay on his bunk and read An Early Bath for Thompson. When I was ready we went out.

  The landlord of the Queen’s Head seemed quite pleased to see us.

  “Like my beer, do you, lads?” he boomed as we walked in.

  “It’s alright,” Richie managed to say.

  The few people in the bar seemed to be roughly the same crowd as the night before. The girls weren’t there but it was only early, so we sat in our corner and waited for the evening to pass. When Tam bought the second round of drinks the landlord decided it was time to find out about the strangers. He targeted Tam, who had just carried one full glass across to our table, and was now going back to the bar for the other two.

  “So…” he said, looking hard at the beer flowing into the final glass. “What are you lads busy with down here?”

  “Fencing at Bowland,” replied Tam.

  The landlord looked at him and smiled faintly.

  “Sorry, what was that?” he said.

  “Fencing at Bowland,” Tam said again. A few seconds passed. I could see from the landlord’s face that he still hadn’t caught it. The embarrassing moment was approaching when he would have to ask for a third time. Interestingly, none of the others standing round the bar seemed to have grasped what Tam was saying either, even though they were now all listening. It must have been something to do with Tam’s accent. I’d got used to it, having spent so much time with him and Richie, but at this moment he might as well have been speaking another language. For his part, he wasn’t helping matters by just repeating ‘Fencing at Bowland’ all the time. Tam wasn’t making himself very clear, but then again, why should he? He hadn’t come in the pub to spend the evening being interrogated. Yet here he was, standing at the bar, each hand gripping a pint glass, with all eyes on him. He wasn’t finding any of this particularly easy.

  The landlord tried again. “No, sorry, still didn’t get it.”

  “We’re fencing at Bowland!” said Tam, raising his voice, and at last they understood.

  “Oh, you’re doing some fencing along there, are you?” said our host.

  There was a murmur. And then a different sort of silence fell on that bar room. It was only for a moment, little more than the minor register of something, but it was there alright. The locals seemed to draw back, ever so slightly. One of them was sitting on a stool by the bar, and at last he spoke.

  “All the fencing round here is done by the Hall Brothers.”

  That was all he said, but with those few words we became outsiders again. As the silence faded away, Tam came back across to me and Richie. He placed our drinks on the table and sat down with his back to the bar.

  “What does he mean by that?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Pay no attention to him.”

  “Who the fuck are the Hall Brothers?”

  “How do I know?” I said. “Forget it.”

  And for the time being, apparently, he did. We had a few more drinks and then, when it became obvious the women were not going to make an appearance, we left.

  As we departed the landlord said, “Good night.”

  No one else did.

  ∨ The Restraint of Beasts ∧

  Five

  “Posting up today,” I said.

  “Yep,” said Tam.

  “You going to get out of bed then?”

  “Nope.”

  This was Tam’s day. The day we were going to hammer a post into the ground every three yards for the entire length of the fence. Tam was the best at handling the post hammer and he knew it. Not getting up was his way of exploiting his position. Neither Richie nor I had got up either, but that wasn’t the point. Tam was the most important member of the gang today, so he would have to be the last to get up. It was only right.

  I let him bask in his moment of glory for a while longer. Then I swung my legs out of bed and said, “Alright then, me and Rich will have to do it.”

  This did the trick. Tam was out of bed in an instant saying, “Oh no you fucking don’t.” Which was how I got them out on the hill by eight o’clock in the morning. I wanted to get an early start on the fence because the previous day’s hold-ups meant we hadn’t really got much done. Donald would probably have estimated that we were already two-thirds of a day behind schedule. I wasn’t sure about that, but we certainly had some catching up to do.

  It was going to be hard work. Once the ground wire was tightened and our straight line established, we then had to hammer in all these pointed posts to form the main body of the fence. The process was simple. You stuck a steel spike in the ground to make a ‘starter’ hole, then one person held the post in position (point downwards) while the other hit it with the hammer. When it was into the ground the correct depth, and checked for alignment, you moved on to the next post. And the next one. And the one after that. Over and over again.

  We started from the bottom of the hill and worked up, Tam and Richie putting the posts in while I kept them supplied with fresh ones. Tam’s hammering technique had been perfected over the years since he began fencing. He used the ‘full swing’ method, which was the most efficient if done properly, but potentially disastrous if it went wrong. It depended on the fencer’s ability to land the hammer head square on top of the post at every attempt. Tam had that ability. He could swing the post hammer at arm’s length in a full circle and bring it down hard and accurate time after time. If he missed he was likely to split the post, break the hammer, or endanger Richie. Usually he didn’t, and Richie seemed totally confident as he stood there holding the posts.

  It was quite satisfying to see them working their way up that hill. At last I felt we were getting somewhere. Alright, so it was a bit of a slog carrying all those posts up the slope, especially as I had to make a longer journey each time, but that was all part of the game. Even when Tam and Richie stopped halfway up the hill for a fag it was OK with me. I paused to watch the familiar ritual in
the distance. Tam lowered the post hammer to the ground, straightened up and spoke to Richie. Then Richie took something from his shirt pocket, handed it to Tam, and began wriggling about trying to fish into his jeans. Why he couldn’t keep both items in his shirt pocket remained beyond me. His jeans were obviously far too tight for him, and it was a real struggle getting at that lighter. Eventually he succeeded, though, and they lit up and stood close together as smoke drifted away along the side of the hill. When I clambered towards them with another few posts on my shoulder, they started work again.

  As further progress was made along the fence, I again became aware of how poorly sound carried. I would see the tiny, faraway figure of Tam swing the hammer, strike the post, and swing again, yet the ‘clop’ of the impact came to me about a second later. This had the odd effect of making Tam and Richie seem to be moving in a different world to me. As I said, it was a hard day. Eventually we reached the summit and began working down the other side of the hill. By the time we got back to the caravan that night we were all whacked. After we’d had our supper we stretched out on our bunks and dozed. Richie attempted to press on with An Early Bath for Thompson, but he soon nodded off. I closed my eyes.

  Next thing I knew Tam was shaking me awake. It was dark in the caravan and there was panic in his voice. “What time is it?”

  Richie muttered something from his bunk and managed to light one of the lamps. It was half past ten!

  “Fuck sake, the pub!” cried Tam, and next thing we were all screaming round in the caravan looking for our boots and rushing out into the night. The truck didn’t start first time and there was a lot of shouting and cursing. Eventually we got going. We made the Queen’s Head for last orders, thank God, or the evening would have been wasted altogether.