by Bob
I got through primary school by the skin of my teeth, but I was eventually expelled from the first secondary school I went to and I got expelled from the second school after thirteen days. I went to a third in Thornbury, which was about ten miles away from where we lived, and they got fed up with me not attending lessons. But, instead of expelling me, they just sent me out to help the caretaker, mowing and cutting hedges and doing maintenance work in a school for the mentally handicapped, which was next door. That wasn’t too bad, because I was out and about most of the time and I got on alright with the daft kids – they were unfortunate and I felt so sorry for them, never to have the freedom of the fields, like me. But I eventually got expelled from there too, for swearing at someone.
They couldn’t get no good of me at any of those schools and it was agreed that it would be best for everybody if I stayed at home, but a teacher would be sent out to tutor me. That didn’t work either. A woman came out on a Monday morning and the first thing she said to me was, ‘I’ve come to teach you.’
‘You can piss off!’
She gave up in despair after ten seconds flat. Finally they summoned me before the Council’s Educational Welfare Board in Bristol. I went down there with Bob to see what the authorities were going to do with me. I was thirteen now and we sat at a big long table with eight other people. One of them started.
‘The boy’s got to—’
‘The boy has a name!’
‘Sorry, Mr Tovey. Brian’s got to . . .’
. . . do this and do that and do the other. Bob listened patiently until the man was finished, then he spoke back.
‘If someone told you to climb up the suspension bridge and jump off, you’d have the right to refuse, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, Brian’s got the right to refuse to go to school.’
‘No, he hasn’t.’
Another one spoke up.
‘The law says you have to send your child to school, Mr Tovey.’
‘The law also says I can educate him myself.’
This caused a flurry of mumbling and grumbling and whispering and flapping. Rules were consulted and options aired and opinions expressed and, in the end, it was agreed that I could be self-taught, but someone would have to come and check on me every Monday to make sure I was studying and not getting into mischief. They sent an ex-policeman round to keep tabs on me, but he just had a cup of tea and a bit of cake or toast and a chat about what we’d been poaching, then went away again. He was just going through the motions and wasn’t really bothered, because he knew it would get him nowhere.
This went on for a few years, until I was sixteen. But the only thing I self-educated myself in was poaching – rabbiting and lamping and ferreting and shooting and coursing. I push-biked round the countryside within a radius of thirty-five miles, with the .410 in the leg of some old army trousers, sewn up and tied to the crossbar of the bike with laces. When I wasn’t poaching, I earned some extra pocket money doing seasonal work on the farms – potato- and stone-picking and hay-baling and a bit of labouring on the building sites for £3 a day.
And so, up and into my teenage years, I gallivanted round the countryside looking for game and having a good old time. Over the fields and hills, with the grass under my feet and the wild wind blowing the cobwebs of the street away and the whole world smiling. The smell of the meadows and the marshes and the woodland marjoram and the air around me as fresh as spring water. The keepers and lords and earls and teachers and coppers all tut-tutting and saying how I’d end up bad some day. But I didn’t care: Finger wet, finger dry, cut my throat before I die.
And houses are alright, the didicoy said, but they have them terrible walls!
Brian with coursing dogs, circa 1987
7
Bob – The Enemy
I was doing a bit of hod-carrying on a building site in Yate when I met Cora. I was thirty-three by then and she was in her early thirties too. Her mother didn’t like me much and wouldn’t have me in the house, so I’d have to sit outside in the car while I was waiting for her. I can’t say as I blame her mother, considering the state I used to get into back then – drinking in The New Inn and The Beaufort and The White Horse and The Railway and The Gate and every other pub for miles around besides. I’d drink anything: Cheltenham & Hereford beer or rough cider from the local factory at 4d a pint – stuff called ‘stun ’em’ and ‘splash pan’ and I could down twelve large whiskies one after the other without hardly drawing breath.
Cora’s mother used to call Cora her ‘little bit of trouble’ and kicked up a fuss when she started going out with a bad lot like me, but that didn’t stop Cora. I don’t know what she seen in me – maybe it was the way some women is drawn to men who’s mad, bad and dangerous to know – but, whatever it was, I’m glad she did, because she saved my life.
One day, her father Joe came out. I could see him approaching the gate and I thought he was going to try to clobber me or run me off or something.
‘D’you want to come in for a cup of tea?’
‘I dunno. I bin sat out here this bloody long . . .’
Then I thought, I better accept the offer, and I went in for the cuppa. There weren’t much talking and the atmosphere was a bit strained and I was glad when Cora was finally ready and I could get out of there. We was going out for about a year when she fell pregnant with my son Robert, so we got married and she wore my mother’s wedding ring and moved in with me and my two other children, Brian and June, who were eight and six at the time. Then Robert was born in 1973. After Cora’s father died, I used to take her mother a pheasant or a rabbit and she started to take to me a bit better, but for some reason she never came to visit us in our house.
I’m still drinking heavy at the time, and fighting with them who gets too chopsy with me. Eventually, I gets barred out of every pub in the local area and I have to walk over to Charfield to get a drink. But Cora bears with me and she becomes mother to all my three children. And once she even comes out poaching with me. She’s dressed in britches, with a coat and a bobble hat pulled down over her hair. I have my little Austin car and we go up onto the Earl of Ducie’s estate. I shoot some pheasants and the dog catches a rabbit and we have a lot of fun. On the way back to the car, we’re come upon by a land agent. I warn him away.
‘Stay where you are.’
He thinks Cora’s a man because of the low light and the way she’s dressed and there’s two poachers for him to deal with, so he stands back. When we gets to the car, old Ducie’s there with the boot up, looking for poached game.
‘Put that boot down!’
‘Or what?’
‘Or he’ll belt you.’
I point to Cora when I say that. Just like the agent, Ducie thinks Cora’s another male poacher and he don’t like the odds of two-to-one, so he moves away while we get into the car and drive off home.
Well done to Cora!
But the drinking was getting the better of me and was making me ill. It was affecting my liver and kidneys and every other organ in my body. I’d never admit to no one I had a problem and, if I’d gone on the way I was going, I’d have been six foot under long before my time. And I’d have missed out on the best part of my life, seeing my boys grow up into the good men they are today and having the company of the woman I loves for so many happy years.
I got stopped in my tracks one day, when I was labouring on a building site in Charfield for a few bob to buy something or other. It was shortly after I married Cora and I’d had a big drinking session the night before and I felt terrible. This was unusual, because I had a big drinking session most nights and I was always alright the next day. But it was different this time. I lasted as long as I could on the site, but I was disorientated and, in the end, a mate had to take me home. But I kept on drinking, though not nearly as much. It was another two years or so before I gave it up completely – when I was nearly dead and we had no money in the house, because I drank it all.
It got to the stage where a few pints would put me in bed for a week with the shakes – not even the strength to sit up. I knew then if I didn’t stop I’d soon be dead. I told Cora to pull back the carpet in the living room and lay newspapers on the bare brown tiles, then put a mattress on top of the newspapers and make a bed for me there. I knew what I had to do – what I had to go through to save my life. I lay there shaking and shivering and not knowing where I was and the sweat from my body soaked through the mattress and the newspapers underneath and turned the floor tiles white. I was in a terrible state altogether, with delirium tremens and the horrors and the shakes and barrel fever or anything else you likes to call it.
I was sick for a full year and couldn’t leave the house and could easily have died, if I hadn’t had Cora to take care of me. When I recovered I saw an advert in the local newspaper for Alcoholics Anonymous. Cora rang the number and a priest came round to see me. The next day he took me to an AA meeting. I was frightened to go, because I was still shaking and very weak, but I went, and admitted I was an alcoholic, and I’ve never had a drink since. It wasn’t difficult to give up the boozing in the end, because I was so sick, and I never had a longing for alcohol in all the years since then. I owes it to my family to stay sober because without them I never would have made it, and I got no illusions about what would happen to me if I took a drink again now. I used to drive blokes round to the AA meetings after I seen the light, but only one of them stopped drinking for good.
That was me!
Drink loosens the tongue, and the most dangerous thing a man has is his tongue. It can get him into all sorts of trouble. It’s best to keep quiet and stay out of arguments and just try to enjoy life. I love my wife and family above all else – the only thing that will make me angry these days is if there’s a threat to them. I’m not very big, but there’s some people who’ve found out the hard way not to underestimate me. I ain’t proud of the things I did while I was hard-drinking. But what’s done is done and can’t ever be taken back and it’s a sinful shame when I think back on how I used to be. But when I was sober, I built up the bond I has now between me and my family and that bond was strong enough to hold us together in the hard drunken times.
I ain’t had a drink since 1974 and that’s over forty years ago.
Giving up the drink was the best thing that ever happened to me. Life in the Tovey household gets calmer then, because I’m not coming home pissed every night. I get fit again and I has three greyhounds hunting in a pack close to a brook called the Little Avon, below where we live. I cross the water and let the greyhounds loose. I’m walking up a steep hill and the dogs is working the hedge as we move along it. Suddenly, all three of them’s gone in there and I can’t see ’em no more. I goes through after them and can spot them away in the middle of the next field. They’re chasing a small roe deer and they bring it down about a hundred yards from me. I’m running as fast as I can to get to them and I haul them away from the kill and tie ’em up. I has no vehicle with me and it’s too far to carry all the way home. So I guts the deer and puts it up in a tree to keep it away from foxes and other predators. I throws the pluck to the dogs and they makes short work of it. Soon the area’s clean and it looks like nothing’s happened.
That night, after it gets dark, I comes back and takes the deer down from the tree and I’m carrying it back to the car, about half a mile away. I’m crossing an open field to the road when this keeper comes upon me. He’s carrying a gun and he points it at me.
‘You going to shoot me?’
‘If I have to.’
‘You ain’t got the balls for that.’
I keeps walking towards the road. He knows once I get out there he’s lost me. There’s no mobile phones back then – he can go for help or call the coppers if he likes but, by the time he gets back, I’ll be long gone. There’s only one thing for it – if he can’t shoot me, then he’ll have to fight me and the winner takes the field. He throws down his gun and takes his jacket off and spars with the air. I throw down the deer and roll up my sleeves. I’m only a small man and this keeper’s much bigger and he thinks he’ll be able to get the better of me. But I’ve been fighting for seven years in the Navy and after that in pubs and on street corners and I’m no pushover.
We circle round, sizing each other up in the gloaming. He’s the first to lunge, but I easily sidestep his right cross and land one on his jaw as he lumbers past. This makes him angry, and an angry fighter will always lose the bout. You got to stay calm and collected and wait for the right opening. He comes after me like a mad bull and I picks him off with stingers to the solar plexus and the kidneys and the small of the back, then dart out of danger before he can connect with a killing fist. I’m telling myself to keep out from him when, suddenly, he lands a lucky one on me. It’s a big swinging swipe and it sends me staggering back, but I don’t go over. He sees I’m dazed and senses blood and comes after me. Another brutal right to the side of my face sends me to the ground. He’s standing over me and I wait for his boot to go in and finish the job. But this keeper must’ve learned the Marquis of Queensbury rules or something, because he don’t try to do me on the ground – he stands back and waits to see if I’m going to get up. Big mistake. By the time I’m back on my feet, my head’s cleared and I circle him like a snapping hound after an enraged bear. My fists is fast, flying into his sides and stomach and the big grunty begins to break down. He drops his guard to protect his hurting body and I launches a both-feet-in-the-air blow to his chin. He stands for a second like a statue, then he falls over like a felled tree onto his face. I picks up the deer and goes on my way.
It’ll be the last time that keeper lets a poacher back up off the ground.
When I gets home, I hangs the deer in the lean-to and skins it. Then I joints it up and keeps some for the family. The rest I distributes around the village like always, selling to them who can afford it and giving away to them who can’t. That’s what my house is like, all the time – full of wild meat in the freezers and there’s always something for them that likes a bit of game for their dinner and for them in need of a feed. Even so, like I said before, I still keeps myself to myself because I ain’t never been one for the complicated issue, and was always only after the simplest of lives. But you gets caught up sometimes in things you can’t control and can be blown along like smoke, no matter how hard you tries to avoid it.
I kept a lot of dogs at one time, along with a flock of geese and the two hundred Aylesbury ducks and fifty cockerels – twenty-five in the front garden and twenty-five in the back. We had big gardens and no money, but we had plenty of food. The toffee-noses in the village never liked the noise, thinking it lowered the value of their houses. And sometimes they was as bad as the lords and earls. But we wasn’t next to or near any close neighbours and I didn’t give a damn even if we was. I lived my own way and let others live their way. I never complained about nobody in the village and I couldn’t explain why they would want to complain about me when I herded my fowls down the road to the fields where they grazed and grew fat. The council came out a couple of times and I said to them, ‘Tell the Duke of Beaufort to get rid of his pack of hounds and I’ll get rid of my dogs.’
‘What?’
‘Tell him to get rid of his pheasants and I’ll get rid of my fowls.’
They had no answer to that. In the end they sent me a letter giving me permission to keep my menagerie and I retained my rights as a freeman of England.
Now, the Codrington family were slave-traders in the West Indies for hundreds of years and they made their money from slaves and sugar. From the middle of the eighteenth century, they preferred to live on their estates in Gloucestershire and left the management of the plantations to overseers. They were notorious authoritarians and, in 1786, Granville Sharp, a longstanding opponent of the slave trade, even wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury about their ancestors. But we didn’t worry much about their reputation and we poached their estate along with all the others, taking
dozens of pheasants from them. There was always a big shoot up there and me and my boys went lamping one night near Christmas. We’d been rabbiting there before and seen how many pheasants they had, so we thought we’d take some off their hands. We got dropped off by a mate of mine and arranged with him to come back for us at a certain time. We shot eighty-one pheasants and had ’em all sacked up and got back to the meeting point forty minutes early.
The bloke who dropped us was late picking us up, because he was scared of the Codringtons. He’d heard about their ruthless reputation and was probably afraid of being flogged with a horse-whip, even though they only did that to their slaves – when they was allowed to have slaves. We waited and waited and it was getting dangerous, because we could have been come upon at any minute. We heard the keepers patrolling and we hid ourselves and the guns and pheasants. In the meantime, our lift arrived and we was nowhere to be seen. He started calling for us: ‘Bob! Brian! Robert!’
The keepers heard him and nabbed him and took him away, but they left the motor with the keys in it behind. We jumped in and took off as quick as we could.
He spent the night in the local police cells and went back for his car in the morning, but it was gone and he had to walk all the way to the village and arrived weeping and wailing. He was relieved when he found out we had the motor and he never got charged with anything. I said, ‘That’ll teach you to be on time.’
But he never dropped us off nowhere again. We lamped two hundred and forty pheasants from Codrington that Christmas, and another hundred and sixty from Tortworth, and sold ’em to butchers and postmen and villagers and even to the police. Everyone loves a pheasant at Christmas time. As far as I knows, the last of the Codringtons drives a taxi now and lives in a small cottage somewhere. James Dyson, who invented the bagless vacuum cleaners, bought the big estate.