That was what they’d called him, Little Virgil. It was what Gideon Denning had scribbled in the Field Guide to British Birds the Gaffer had been given in thanks for his service. Denning must have known he couldn’t read (in fact he was still shaky on a few words up until his death), and assumed that he would think the thing valuable rather than edifying, with its gold embossed lettering and the woodblock prints of hen harriers, red grouse, buzzards and carrion crows. Although, even as a boy, the Gaffer said he knew that it was a present that came with conditions attached. Expensive books were not generally wasted on boys from dirty farms in the arse-end of Yorkshire; it was a reminder that Little Virgil should keep to himself what he’d seen at Far Lodge, especially on those evenings when Denning’s old friends from Oxford had come to stay.
The Hellenics, they called themselves; it was the name they’d given to the philosophical society they’d formed during their time at Magdalen. A name that sounded academic enough for them to be able to meet in the upper room of a public house on the Broad without too many questions being asked. Every Wednesday evening at seven, the Gaffer told me, they’d take supper in the parlour bar, read the newspapers, smoke cigars and then go upstairs with two good bottles of claret and try and contact the dead. Denning wore his college scarf around his head and played medium while the others sat at the table with their hands spread and their wine glasses filled. They’d call up Shakespeare and Denning would deliver a sonnet that no one had heard before. They’d tell Cleopatra to make herself known and Denning would paint his eyes and his lips and kiss them all one by one. And at midnight, they’d invite the Devil to their circle for a glass of Château Latour and Denning would make horns with his fingers and chase his fellow undergraduates out into the street.
Years later, when he inherited Far Lodge, he was able to take them to an even better place, miles from anywhere, to play and to drink, especially drink.
‘The toffs, Johnny lad,’ said the Gaffer. ‘You think it’s all cups of tea and cucumber sandwiches with them, don’t you? I tell you, they put it away like it’s going out of fashion. And the women,’ he said, ‘the women have mouths on them like you wouldn’t believe. They’d make a docker blush, some of them.’
‘Women went there too?’ I said.
‘One or two, aye,’ said the Gaffer. ‘I’ll tell you what, the things I saw at Far Lodge after the sun went down, Johnny lad.’
But the pretty book, and the half-crown in the middle pages, instructed him to say nothing about the men who had been taking the opium pipe, the men who had been kissing one another during the séances. What had been spelled out about Mr Denning by the planchette one evening should not be repeated. Nor would it do for rumours to start about the Duke of Bowland’s daughter, who’d drunk a thimble of dog’s blood and spent the evening on all fours—her thrupnies dangling like udders, Johnny lad—and let the men stroke her as they played canasta.
Most of all he should forget about that night, late in the season, when Gideon Denning, brandied and scotched to slurring point, had read out instructions from an old book he’d brought back from the Levant. And his friends, drunker still, had cut their thumbs and drawn shapes on the door. They were important men and would not wish their names to be mentioned. Nor would they want it reported that someone had come knocking in the small hours, a child by the voice, and they had been too frightened to let them in. They would not want anyone to know, either, that the next day, when they were stalking the deer, there was another with them on the moors. A figure of someone or something, its size constantly growing and shrinking like the firelight shadows in the Lodge, so that when they looked to the ridges behind them, it was impossible to tell how far away it was, or how close.
That was the time the Gaffer had found the small black hand with the six fingers.
‘There it were, Johnny lad,’ he said. ‘Lying in the heather. He’s like a snake, the Owd Feller. Sheds his skin.’
‘Is that true?’ I said.
‘Course it is,’ said the Gaffer. ‘He’s always changing. That’s why you have to keep your wits about you.’
‘Did you show it to the toffs?’ I said.
‘Nay,’ said the Gaffer. ‘They were scared enough.’
The Duke of Bowland’s daughter, especially, and she’d begged the Gaffer to take them back to the valley as quickly as he could. The others, too, were certain that whatever was following them, whatever they had woken in the night, wanted to do them harm, and now that the weather was coming in they didn’t want to be trapped on the moors. If the Gaffer could lead them down to the farm before it turned then there was a handsome tip in it for him and a book about birds that they knew he would like very much.
It was hard to describe the noises that were there behind them as they made their way along the Corpse Road, the Gaffer said. Like crows calling and yet like children crying too. And every so often, the sound seemed to fly over their heads, low enough to make them duck, a hard, loud scraping like metal on stone.
By the time they’d come to the Wall the moors had fallen silent, and in Fiendsdale Clough there were only the familiar voices of rain and water, but none of them spoke until they were in the kitchen at the farm drinking tea and brandy. They hadn’t stopped long, enough to dry out in front of the stove, enough to settle their nerves for the drive back to Brownlee Hall, which, a day or so later, Denning closed up for the winter. The servants were released and the doors and windows locked and the chauffeur sent to deliver a book to the end farm in the Briardale Valley.
While the Gaffer was unwrapping the parcel and quietly pocketing the coin that slipped out into his lap, the Devil was wandering from ridge to ridge across the moors. When the rain had come down, he’d lost sight of the ones who’d woken him and he tried to follow their scents instead. But the damp autumn had diluted the trails and they led nowhere. Days went by and then, distantly, he began to catch the sounds of sheep and dogs and whistles that led him to the rubble of the Wall where he hid to watch the shepherds at work. As the sheep brayed and trotted and swerved, two of the lambs peeled away into a mossbog and were soon just white heads crying to be saved. The shepherds went to pull them out with their crooks and the Devil scaled the Wall and caught the ewe closest to him by the horns. His arm around her throat, he pulled her jaw crossways and snapped her neck before she had time to make a noise. Then he cut off the fleece and threw it over his back and went to join the flock as they were driven down into the Endlands.
∾
We stopped at the rim of a little hollow and Dadda took out his binoculars again. The deer had settled into a walking pace, pausing now and then to tear at the grass. But they’d got at least a mile ahead of us and were too far away to shoot. The younger of the two stags seemed to have assumed the role of sultan while the other kept his distance and watched.
‘Go on,’ Dadda said, looking through the binoculars. ‘Get yourselves up to the ridge.’
‘Won’t they hide themselves in the rocks?’ I said.
‘Nay,’ said Dadda. ‘There’s nowt to eat. They’ll go down into the bracken on the other side.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then we’ll be able to pick them off,’ he said. ‘It’s easier to shoot them from above.’
‘Do you think we’ll have enough daylight?’ I said.
‘Aye,’ said Dadda, looking at the sky. ‘We’ll be all right. So long as they keep moving.’
But they were content for the moment to stand and feed and the two stags kept vigil on one another, each waiting for the moment when he would have to prove himself. Thumbing on the safety catch, Dadda set the rifle aside and lay down in the heather out of sight. Between the roots were the bilberry bushes that the Gaffer used to pick from while he was out with the dogs, his hands blood red when he got back to the farm. By October, though, the fruits were long gone, like the little birds that had fed on them in the summer. Autumn plays such sad music up there on the moors. There are no meadow pipits, no skylarks. Only the mournful diph
thong of the buzzard and the pea-whistle cry of the curlew blown far away to the junction of horizon and sky.
As we kept watch on the deer, a kestrel rose from the bare stems of cotton grass and fluttered so close that we could see its steel hood and butterscotch belly. It fought with the wind for a moment and then settled into an almost perfect stillness and waited for whatever mouthful of meat was quivering in the heather to grow large in its eyes. It had already seen us, of course—it had been watching us since the first gunshot—and knew that if we were a threat then it would only need the twist of a feather-end to take it away from harm.
As a boy, I’d always liked to watch the birds of prey at work. The Gaffer said that they knew the moorland best of all, better than we ever would. They spent their lives peering down at it, scrutinising every inch for signs. The slow unzipping of the water on Top Pond as a rat swam to one of the reed islands. The coming and going of the mother grouse to the nest under the Wall. They knew from the way the grass moved if it was merely the tug of a sudden breeze or the kick-start of a hare. They could swoop or climb on instinct.
‘Theirs is a bigger world than ours, Johnny lad,’ said the Gaffer. ‘They have the sky as well as the earth. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
If I hadn’t been an otter, then I would have been a hawk.
Dadda brought out his hip flask and took another swig of brandy.
‘You sure you don’t want some?’ he said, wiping the neck on his sleeve.
This time I took it from him and filled my mouth with the stuff, a welcome fire on the tongue and the throat now that the day had started to turn colder.
‘You’ll be glad to get away from here after Gathering,’ said Dadda, pulling up the hood of his jacket. ‘Weather like this.’
‘We don’t have to go,’ I said.
‘Are we really going to have this conversation again, John?’ he said. ‘Katherine’s a nice lass, but you knew she were never going to want to come and live here when you chose her. That’s why you chose her, isn’t it?’
‘Give her a chance, Dadda,’ I said. ‘She’s only been here a couple of days.’
‘John, she could stay here for the rest of her life and not feel at home.’
‘Mam was new here once,’ I said. ‘She must have felt the same.’
He looked at me, knowing exactly what I was getting at. ‘It were different for her,’ he said, and took off his cap and wiped his brow with the inside of his wrist.
‘Was it?’ I said.
‘I mean that folk were different then.’
‘I don’t think people change,’ I said.
‘You lot want much more than we ever did,’ he said.
‘That’s not true,’ I said.
‘It must be,’ said Dadda. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have left in the first place, would you?’
‘I shouldn’t have done,’ I said. ‘I know that now.’
‘Aye, well.’
‘You make your bed, do you?’ I said.
‘Summat like that, aye,’ he said, fitting the binoculars back to his eyes.
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ I said.
He tapped his wedding ring on the casing, itching for a smoke.
‘Dadda?’ I said.
‘It were a long time ago, John,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember how she felt.’
‘Come on, you must do.’
‘Why do you want to live here?’ he said, removing the binoculars and looking at me. ‘You never know what’s going to happen from one bloody month to the next. Is that really what you want?’
‘It’s always been like that, Dadda,’ I said. ‘I know what I’d be coming back to.’
He put his eyes into the rubber cups again. ‘It’s changed,’ he said. ‘It’s not how it used to be when you were a lad.’
‘How’s that?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Dadda. ‘It just feels like me and your mam saw the best of this place.’
‘It can’t all come to an end, just like that,’ I said.
‘Of course it can,’ he said. ‘Everything does. What do you think’s going to happen to Angela’s farm? She’s no one to take over, has she?’
‘She’ll have Grace eventually,’ I said.
‘Come on,’ said Dadda. ‘She’d never manage that place on her own.’
‘All the more reason for me and Kat to come back then,’ I said.
Dadda shook his head. ‘The Endlands are finished, John,’ he said. ‘That’s it.’
‘You’re only saying that because of the Gaffer,’ I said.
‘I’ve felt like this for a long time,’ he said. ‘I’ve got used to the idea. Another few years and then I’ll sell up before I get too tired. I’m sure the money would be more use to you than this bloody place, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t want your money, Dadda.’
‘What do you want then?’ he said.
‘To pass it on,’ I said. ‘Like we’ve always done.’
‘Well, I pity the poor bastard you’d lumber with this job,’ he said. ‘Look at us for Christ’s sake, covered in shit and mud.’
‘We owe it to the Gaffer, though, don’t we?’ I said. ‘He put his whole life into the farm.’
‘You sound like you admire him,’ said Dadda.
‘Don’t you?’ I said.
‘To be honest, John,’ he said, ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’
The deer began to move on and Dadda gave me a nudge. The kestrel folded its wings and threw its talons into the heather.
It was bereavement talk, that was all. He didn’t mean glad. Relieved, maybe, for the Gaffer’s sake. Eighty-six was old enough to be still working and he wouldn’t have wanted to see him doddering about the valley in his nineties, useless as one of the old dogs that Jim used to look after. Dadda might not have admired him as such, but he could at least see the sacrifice the Gaffer had made to the Endlands. If only because it was equal to his own.
∾
We followed the deer for another hour, giving them the space to roam and the chance to forget we were there. When they came closer to Blackmire Edge, they began to skirt around the wide expanse of peat that gave the place its name and head up to the strip of gritstone on the ridge. Wind and rain had peeled away the grass and the peat here and on the other side the moorland fell away from the escarpment to a vale of deep bracken.
‘Go on, you bastards,’ said Dadda, willing the deer to stop lingering on the skyline and head down the slope.
‘Here,’ he said and handed the binoculars to me, while he rooted around for a stone.
He threw it as far as he could and the sound of it sent the deer running out of sight.
We followed them and of course Dadda was up the gradient much quicker than I was and waited for me in the rocks. The rain that had been threatening all afternoon finally drifted towards us and by the time I came to where Dadda was crouched on the ridge, it had fingered its way between my hood and collar and found my skin. Dadda passed me his hip flask and I took a couple of swigs, feeling the brandy burning and gassing as I looked down.
A hundred feet below us, the older stag, bison-thick in the chest and throat, had begun to move closer to the harem and let out a deep cow-moan that drifted away as white air. The young stag matched him and shook his antlers as the hinds fed in the undergrowth. Dadda kept the rifle out of their sight and watched them with the rain dribbling off the brim of his cap.
‘What are you waiting for?’ I said. ‘Can’t we just get it done and go back down to the farm?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Wait.’
The rain was puddling around our feet and flowing in miniature waterfalls between the rocks. The cloud drifted lower, momentarily veiling the deer below us.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ I said. ‘Then we won’t see a thing.’
‘Quiet,’ said Dadda and moved along the ridge a little way as the older stag groaned again, drawing the younger male away from the hi
nds and into the open grassland. For a few minutes they stalked each other, keeping their distance, one lowering his antlers and the other doing the same before lifting their heads again and showing off their voices.
What they saw, or what each sensed in the other, I don’t know, but they suddenly dropped their heads and rammed forward at the same moment, their antlers clacking and grating. With their noses close to the ground, they muscled and strained, turning each other in and out of the bogwater, slipping and bracing in the peat. The older stag was much stronger and twisted the young stag’s head to the side, turning his ear into the rain. For a while their horns were caught together and they pulled rather than pushed trying to untangle the prongs. When they did, the older stag lost his footing and before he could recover the younger drove his antlers into the side of his face, raking open his throat and tearing out one of his eyes. There was a feeble attempt at retaliation but as soon as the older stag was on his feet again he ran away, breasting through the ferns. The younger stag tipped back his head, gave a bassy affirmation of victory in his throat, and then returned to his hinds.
His defeated rival moved slowly through the bracken, his fur slathered in mud. He snuffled and shook his head to try and dislodge the pain but then his legs gave way and he lay down, his chest rising and falling.
‘Let me take the other one,’ I said.
‘You?’ said Dadda. ‘When was the last time you held a rifle?’
‘I need to learn again,’ I said.
‘Aye, well, I’ve a pop-gun back at the farm,’ he said. ‘You can shoot tin cans off the fence all day if you like.’
‘Come on, Dadda,’ I said. ‘Teach me.’
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘You’re best off well away from here.’
‘Please, Dadda,’ I said, and held out my hands.
He looked at me and then gave me the rifle.
‘Hold it steady,’ he said, as he slotted a new round into the chamber.
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