A Kestrel for a Knave

by Barry Hines

  In the dusk, feet braced, above the fields, he swung the lure, calling, calling, calling. Sometimes the lure smacked the hedge, momentarily destroying his balance and the rhythm of his swing. But with a flex of the knees and a sway of the hips, he adjusted his stance and brought the lure back into play. Sometimes the handkerchief dragged across the hawthorn spikes, ripping it a little each time, until finally it ripped away from the lure and lay spiked on the hedge top. Billy left it, a dark shape on the hedge; a shade of the hedge, like the lure passing over the hedge, and emerging a mere silhouette in the gloom.

  Billy let the lure fall in front of him, and stepped down after it; swinging it up again and continuing along the path towards the woods. The face of the woods began to come up out of the gloom, a black band stretching right and left, and filling more of the sky as he walked towards it. The lure, when swung vertically to its limit, surmounted the raggy silhouette of the trees, and for a second imposed itself against the greyer sky, before diving, and bumping the ground and being pulled up on a flatter trajectory. But as Billy neared the trees, he reached a point where no matter how steeply he swung it, the lure failed to clear the tree tops and stayed ineffective against a total background.

  He started to run. He reached the stile leading into the woods and ran over it, dragging the lure behind him. It caught on the cross-bar and jerked him to a halt. He tugged it, wound the cord round his hand and rushed forward. The cord broke, releasing him staggering forward off balance; regaining balance, and shaking the loose cord away from his hand as he left the path and cut into the undergrowth.

  ‘Kes! Kes! Kes! Kes!’

  It was immediately darker, and he had to move with his arms forward to protect his face from the branches of the saplings. Above the saplings were the dark bunches of the hawthorns, and high above these the branches of the tallest trees formed lattice work against the sky.

  He blundered on, shouting into the darkness, stumbling and falling on all fours, resting a moment with head down like a tired animal, then scrambling up and on again. He came out of the undergrowth into the heart of the wood, where there was more space between the trees, and each space was as damp and dark as a cellar. The leaf mould gave beneath his tread, and where the leaves had been gathered in hollows and at the bottom of slopes by the Autumn winds, his feet disappeared completely; sinking, high stepping, slow motion skating when his legs got tired, and stopping when the drifts reached up to his knees. When he stopped he called, and waited, but the only sounds were the echo of his voice and the rain.

  The rain, millions of drops per second, some falling between the branches, some hitting the branches, where they fused and gathered underneath as heavier drops, until their weight parted them from the branches – splash – into the rotting mould. To be replaced by identical pendant drops. All over the woods, from millions of branches, millions of drops per second, pat pat pat against the background hiss of the rain falling straight through.

  ‘Kes! Kes! Kes!’

  The one syllable of the call was echoed in the pat of the drops: a whisper all through the woods as Billy progressed. Dying under each fresh call, but picking it up immediately, more subtle, more insistent than the call itself. He brushed against an oak sapling, still thick with dead leaves. They rattled like snakes, making him veer away, anywhere, running, calling, tripping and falling over stumps and branches clogged down under matted grass. He hit the path again, crossed into the other side of the wood and back-tracked, coming out at the stile where he had first entered. It was dark across the fields. In the distance the sky had an orange tint as though the estate was on fire. Billy cut back into the trees, straight into a bramble patch. He ran on, his initial impetus carrying him the first few yards, before the tentacles started to bind on his jeans, dragging at the material and cutting through his socks at the ankles. Slower and slower, until he was sprinting dead slow as though in a nightmare. Sprinting on the spot, then stopping and stamping his way out.

  He covered ground he had already covered. He crossed ridings to cover new ground, then recrossed them to cover the old ground again all without plan, because it was too dark to take bearings from the trees or any other form of marker.

  Until finally the trees thinned, and through them he could see the lights of the Monastery Farm. He made towards them, coming out of the trees at the hedge which skirted the cart track separating the woods from the farm. In the house the kitchen curtains were open and the light shone out on to the lawn and the stumpy apple trees dotted about it. To the right of the house the stables and other outhouses could be picked out by the lights from the yard behind them, and just apart from these buildings, in the dark, was the vague hulk of the barn. To the left of the house was an open space where the monastery wall had stood. The site was clear now, except for a few slabs of tumbled masonry which could be made out as dark shapes amongst the grass. Billy stared over the hedge across at the farm for a long time. Then he started to shiver and turned away, and slowly made his way back through the woods.

  Something rustled and ran before him, disturbing a bird into flight through the branches.

  ‘Kes!’

  He found the path and followed it back to the stile. As he climbed over, his legs touched the broken lure line. He unwound it from the cross-bar, rewound it round the lure, then jumped down and started to run back across the fields towards the estate.

  The houses came up as a link of black cut-outs against an orange background. Lighted windows made a sequence of coloured squares along the bottom of the shapes, but this sequence was broken by the sudden illumination of a bedroom window, off-set from the lighted window below it.

  Billy reached the houses and ran up the snicket into the cul-de-sac; into the orange light, which stood in fuzzy haloes round the heads of the three lamps grouped there, and round the heads of the lamps alternatively spaced up both sides of the avenue.

  Their living-room light was on. Billy ran down the path, round to the kitchen door and pressed the handle, paused, then allowed it to spring back as he turned away from the door and tried to see through the darkness down to the shed. Slowly he walked towards it, slower and slower, almost stopping, then sprinting the last ten yards. The door was still open. The shed was still empty.

  When Billy burst through from the kitchen his mother and Jud were half standing at the table, startled up by the clatter which had preceded his appearance. When they saw who it was they both sat down again.

  ‘Where is it? What’s tha done wi’ it?’

  Jud glanced up at him, then back to the comic which was propped up against the sugar basin. His mother shook her head.

  ‘An’ where you been in this lot? Just look at you, you’re sodden.’

  It was warm in the room. The fire was high in the grate, the radio was playing, and the tea was on the table.

  ‘Go an’ get them wet things off, then come an’ get some tea.’

  She opened a magazine and folded it inside out along the spine.

  ‘An’ shut that door, Billy, there’s a terrible draught behind you.’

  Billy stood still, still breathing heavily, looking at Jud all the time.

  ‘I said where is it?’

  Jud took no notice of him. Directly before him, equidistant between the edge of the cloth and the comic was a pot of tea. At the side of the pot stood a cylinder of biscuits, taller and thinner than the pot. Wisps of steam rose from the tea, and every few seconds Jud’s exhalations blew the wisps over the slope of the comic. The whole effect was reminiscent of a model for a new industrial plant.

  Jud continued to read, automatically taking biscuits from the packet and dipping them into the tea, then popping the whole darkened circles into his mouth just before they had time to disintegrate. He scoffed four biscuits in this way, and with the fifth immersed looked up at Billy, who was still watching him.

  ‘What thar staring at?’

  His shout made Mrs Casper jump. He withdrew his biscuit hurriedly. Too late, it disintegrated under his
pull back into the tea, leaving a damp segment between his finger and thumb.

  ‘Nar look what tha’s made me do!’

  Billy rushed to the table. His mother jumped up and swiped at him with the magazine.

  ‘What’s goin’ off? What’s all this bloody shouting about?’

  Billy dodged the magazine easily, simultaneously answering his mother and pointing at Jud.

  ‘Ask him, he knows what it’s about!’

  Jud stood up and thumped at Billy across the table.

  ‘Yes lad, an’ tha’d have known if I’d have got hold of thi earlier.’

  ‘Known what? What you both talking about?’

  She sat down, her nylon smock swishing as she crossed her legs.

  ‘Sit down, Billy. An’ get them wet things off before you catch your death.’

  Billy started to cry, big sobs that took his breath.

  ‘Now then what’s a matter wi’ you?’

  He couldn’t answer. He just pointed at Jud, who looked away, then sat and lowered his head to his comic.

  ‘What you done to him now, Jud?’

  Jud backhanded the comic straight off the table and shot up, making his mother sit up straight in her chair, and Billy stop sobbing for a moment. The exposed sugar basin stood directly beneath the light bulb. Stuck to its walls was a crust of dried sugar, dull in comparison to the sparkling white sugar in the bottom of the bowl.

  ‘It’s his fault! If he’d have put that bet on like he wa’ told there’d have been none o’ this!’

  ‘An’ didn’t he? Well I told him before I went to work this morning.’

  ‘Did he bloody hell.’

  ‘I told you not to forget, Billy.’

  ‘He didn’t forget, he kept t’money.’

  ‘An’ what happened, did they win?’

  ‘Win! I’d have had a tenner to draw if he’d kept his thieving hands to his sen!’

  ‘A tenner! Oo, Billy, you’ve done it once too often this time.’

  From their own sides of the table they looked across at Billy.

  ‘Hundred to eight and four to one they came in. I knew it an’ all! Tell-Him-He’s-Dead was a cert, and I’ve been following that Crackpot all season. It wa’ forced to win sometime. They were just waiting for a price that’s all.’

  He walked away from the table as though his loss was too great to bear standing still.

  ‘Ten quid. I could have had a week off work wi’ that.’

  He picked the poker up and smashed it down on to the fire, flushing a shower of sparks up the chimney back.

  ‘I’d have bloody killed him if I’d have got hold of him this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, what’s he crying about then?’

  ‘Because he’s killed my hawk instead, that’s why!’

  Jud continued to broddle in the fire.

  ‘You haven’t have you, Jud?’

  ‘He has! I know he has! Just because he couldn’t catch me!’

  ‘Have you, Jud?’

  He swung round, holding the poker like the Daily Express knight.

  ‘All right then! So I’ve killed it! What you goin’ to do about it?’

  Billy rushed round the table to his mother and tried to bury his face in her. She held him off, embarrassed.

  ‘Gi’o’er then, Billy, don’t be so daft.’

  ‘It wa’ its own stupid fault! I wa’ only goin’ to let it go, but it wouldn’t get out o’ t’hut. An’ every time I tried to shift it, it kept lashing out at my hands wi’ its claws. Look at ’em, they’re scratched to ribbons!’

  He held them out for inspection. Billy ran at him, aiming straight between them. Jud raised the poker, then pushed him away with his other hand.

  ‘You bastard! You big rotten bastard!’

  ‘Don’t call me a bastard, else tha’ll be t’next to get it.’

  ‘You bastard! You fuckin’ bastard!’

  Billy stood his ground, then turned at the cuff from his mother.

  ‘Shut up, Billy! I’m not havin’ that kind o’ language in here!’

  ‘Well do summat then! Do summat to him!’

  She just stood there, looking over him at Jud.

  ‘Where is it, Jud? What you done wi’ it?’

  He turned away to the fireplace and replaced the poker flat in the hearth.

  ‘It’s in t’bin.’

  Billy broke from between them, out through the kitchen to the dustbin at the side of the garage. He yanked the lid off and peered down. It was black inside so he reached down, fingers feeling lightly amongst the rubbish. Then he stopped feeling, and straightened up quickly, holding the hawk in his hand.

  He carried it into the kitchen and stood with his back to the living-room door to inspect it. Brown eyes open. Glass eyes. Curved beak ajar, tongue just visible in the slit. Head lolling downwards, swinging whichever way he turned it to brush away the dust and ashes from the feathers. Blowing the feathers clean, raising them with his breath, then smoothing them gently into place with his fingers.

  He opened one wing like a fan, and on the underside of it, slowly drew a finger down the primaries, down to the body, as though the wing was a feathered instrument, its note too soft for human hearing. He refolded the wing carefully across its back, then carried it through to the living-room.

  Jud was standing with his back to the fire. His mother was standing at the table, pouring tea. The comic was still on the floor.

  ‘Look what he’s done, mam! Look at it!’

  He held the hawk out to her across the table, yellow legs upwards, jesses dangling, its claws hooks in the air.

  ‘I know, it’s a shame, love; but I don’t want it.’

  She sat down, bringing her face on a level with the hawk.

  ‘Look at it, though! Look what he’s done!’

  She looked at it, curling her top lip, then turned to Jud.

  ‘It wa’ a rotten trick, Jud.’

  ‘It wa’ a rotten trick what he did, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I know, but you know how much he thought about that bird.’

  ‘He didn’t think half as much about it as I did about that ten quid.’

  ‘He thought world on it though. Take it away from t’table then, Billy.’

  ‘It wasn’t worth ten quid was it?’

  ‘I know, but it wa’ a rotten trick all t’same. Take it away from my face then, Billy, I’ve seen it.’

  Billy tried to get close to her with the bird, but she wouldn’t let him.

  ‘It’s not fair on him, mam! It’s not fair.’

  ‘I know it’s not, but it’s done now so there’s nowt we can do about it is there?’

  ‘What about him though? What you goin’ to do to him? I want you to do summat to him.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Hit him! Gi’ him a good hiding! Gi’ him some fist!’

  Jud snorted and turned round to look at himself in the mirror above the mantelpiece.

  ‘I’d like to see her.’

  ‘Talk sense, Billy, how can I hit him?’

  ‘You never do owt to him! He gets away wi’ everything!’

  ‘O! Shut up now then! You’ve cried long enough about it.’

  ‘You’re not bothered about owt you.’

  ‘Course I’m bothered. But it’s only a bird. You can get another can’t you?’

  She looked down at her magazine and raised her cup. Billy clenched his free hand and swung at it, fisting it clean off its handle across the room, shooting out a tongue of tea. Jud, watching the scene through the mirror, was too slow to interpret the reverse order of events, and before he had time to turn or step aside both cup and tea hit him smack between the shoulder blades. Mrs Casper was left looking at the lug crooked on her finger. Billy followed the tea and the cup on to Jud’s back, grasping him round the neck with both arms. Jud swung him round like a maypole hanger. Mrs Casper jumped up and tried to drag him off. He kicked out at her like a hare, and she doubled up back into the table holding her breasts. The pot
wobbled. The packet of biscuits and the milk bottle fell over. The bottle rolled off the table and smashed. The biscuits were stopped by the swamp of milk on the cloth.

  Billy was screaming and crying into Jud’s ears. Jud was trying to reach over and grasp him by the hair, but every time his hand came back Billy swayed backwards or side-ways out of its reach. Then, with a quick duck Jud flicked him over his head. Billy kept hold until the impetus of his somersaulting body made him let go, and he swung over to land knees and chest against the back of the settee, knocking it over, making the front castors squeal and spin, and revealing the pouched hessian bottom. They both went for him. Billy stood up, and, holding the hawk by the feet, swung it at them. Its wings opened, and the open eyes and the rush of feathers before their faces halted them long enough for Billy to hurdle the upturned settee and dart out between them, banging both doors behind him.

  As he ran up the path to the front gate, neighbours clustered at half open doors, and at their own front gates to watch him. He jumped up on to the wall, down to the pavement and bent down at the gutter, feeling in the running water for a stone or a pebble.

  ‘Billy! Billy, come back here!’

  He turned at the voice. His mother was run-walking up the path, glancing around at all the neighbours as she came. She reached the gate, but before she had time to open it, Billy was away, up the avenue. She stood gripping the pointed verticals, watching him into the distance.

  ‘Billy! Come back here, you young bugger!’

  ‘You’ll not catch me! You’ll never catch me.’

  He had been out of sight a long time before she went in. And even though it was still raining, not until she had closed the door behind her did anyone make a move to return to their own homes, or close their own doors.

  Billy looked over his shoulder, then gradually eased down to a walk, as though he had just completed a long distance race. He was panting hard, but he didn’t stop to rest, but continued to walk slowly down the middle of the road. There was little traffic about, and when a car did come, he just stepped aside momentarily to let it pass. He raised his right arm to wipe his face on the sleeve, and the hawk was there before his eyes, still clenched in his hand. He moved to the kerb and stopped under a lamp. When he changed hands, the palm of his right hand was hot and sweaty, and the breast feathers of the hawk were damp and matted. He stroked them back into place, stroked its back and wings, then opened his jacket and carefully placed it in the big inside pocket. There was no bulge when the jacket hung down again. He wiped his hands on his jeans and started to walk again; reached the end of the road, and without looking up, turned right into the next road, and continued head down, down its centre.