by Bob
It’s all down to skill – and the tricks of the trade.
Bob, long-netting at the Pentons, near Andover, October 1998
15
Bob – Eccentric Characters
As well as the poaching, I used to do a bit of sheep-rustling too. I remember being up on Oxwick Farm one time, near a building called Cromwell’s Barracks, where the Roundheads gathered before marching down and laying siege to Berkeley Castle during the Civil War. I was in a ditch, cutting a sheep’s throat, and I had this idiot up a tree, keeping a lookout for the farmer. He fell asleep, this bloke, and he never seen the farmer coming and the next thing I know the shit-kicker’s looking down into the ditch at me.
‘What you doing?’
‘Sheep run into some barbed wire, just trying to help her.’
‘Is she alright?’
‘I think so. I’ll have her out of here in a minute.’
‘Need any help?’
‘No, I’ll be alright.’
‘Good man, come up to the house and I’ll give you a drink.’
As soon as he was gone, I had the sheep on my shoulders and was away, leaving my snoring lookout up the tree.
Sally Grosvenor, the deceased Duchess of Westminster, was one of three illegitimate daughters of a woman called Muriel Perry. The girls were raised by a governess and rarely saw their mother, who served as a nurse in the Great War and who was supposed to have little interest in them. The only one who visited them was a man they called ‘Uncle Bodger’, who’d bring them presents – they had no other family or friends. Uncle Bodger’s real name was Roger Ackerley and he confessed on his deathbed to being the girls’ father. Sally and her twin sister ran away from home when they was eighteen and she married Gerald Grosvenor, who became the Duke of Westminster and the wealthiest man in Britain. They never had no children and, when the Duke died in 1967, Sally travelled round the world first, then moved back to the family home in Gloucestershire and lived in a big house with about thirty acres of land round it. She kept a breed of black sheep and I used to poach the land and my greyhounds would bring down some of her flock. A greyhound will kill a sheep by biting into its throat or the back of the neck – they’re powerful dogs for any kind of hunting. I butchered the beasts and sold the meat and the hides and boiled up the heads and the bones for the dogs. She had no keepers up there, so it was easy enough to get away with.
I also used to steal her vegetables and she put a notice up in the window of the local post office asking – ‘If the person who is stealing my sheep and vegetables comes to see me, I will give them some free of charge.’ But I never did, because I didn’t trust her not to call the law.
The Chief Constable for Avon and Somerset used to go up there for dinner parties and he’d bring a plod with him to stand guard at the bottom of the drive. There’s no street lights anywhere near; it’s pitch black and there’s a bit of grass where the copper could keep back out of sight. He’d stand there on duty and you couldn’t see the bugger, barring a car went by and you got the reflection of the headlights off his silver buttons. I was up there to get a few pheasants on one of the very rare occasions when I poached after having a drink – I didn’t fancy going all the way in and there was some cockerels out clucking, so I got a bit of mortar out of the wall and chucked it down. They thought it was corn and I drew ’em over and shot ’em. I stuffed them in my pockets and went on my way. As I was coming back past the house, I suddenly sees this copper standing in front of me.
‘What’s this, then?’
He gave me such a start, I kicked him hard in the shin and ran off into the dark, where he couldn’t see me to come after me.
After going past there a few times with the .410 folded and being taken by surprise by that copper in his hiding place, I decided I’d give him a fright, instead of the other way round. There used to be a big stuffed grizzly bear up on the Duchess’s land and it was half-hidden in some trees. There’s no way the copper would know it was there, but I did. Anyway, I goes up there one dark night and throws a stone at him. It hits him on the helmet and he starts to come after me. I let him keep sight of me until I disappear into the trees and he follows me in – then he comes upon the stuffed bear. I’m behind it and I lets out a deep growling sound. Well, this copper nearly shits his trousers and he’s off out through the trees and away down the road. I don’t know where the Chief Constable thought he’d gone when he came out after having his cigar and brandy, but he never got him back out there. The plod must’ve told all his mates there was a wild bear up on the Duchess’s land because I never saw none of them on guard at the bottom of the drive no more.
The stuffed bear’s gone now. It rotted away in the rain.
Anyway, I was in the lanes shooting pigeons one day when Duchess Sally came past on a horse.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Shooting pigeons.’
‘Why?’
‘They’re eating my cabbages.’
She was having a problem with vermin on the estate and she had one of the Duke of Beaufort’s keepers over there, because the old Duke was always visiting for one reason or another, maybe knocking her off or something, who knows. This keeper’s name was Barratt and he was useless. He’d bring over a dead squirrel or a rabbit that they’d killed on the Duke’s estate and go sit at the bottom of her big garden under a tree and let off a shot every now and then, so she’d think he was doing his job. He’d take her the dead rabbit or squirrel and she’d give him a couple of quid and he’d go and have a drink. I had a chat with her and she seemed quite friendly for a toff and, in the end, she asked me to go up there and sort out the vermin – which I did with my son Robert, who had a little Jack Russell terrier that went under the sheds and killed the rats, while my spaniel worked the hedges and I shot whatever came out.
I cleared all the land of vermin and she was as good as gold. She was nice and polite, for a ya-ya, and down to earth, and she’d send us out tea and biscuits. She even signed a book for Robert and dedicated it to him. He still has it – it’s called ‘Just Dogs’.
But she wasn’t stupid, she knew what I was – it just suited her purpose to employ me. Anyway, I’m up there on my own one evening and there’s some kind of wedding reception going on. The Duchess sends me out some sandwiches and her butler says I can come in for a drink if I wants. I tells him I don’t drink no more but I’d like to have a look at the guests – just to be nosy and see who was there. He goes and asks her and comes back and tells me I can stand to the side of the main hall and, as long as I keep myself out of sight and don’t interfere with the festivities, it’ll be alright.
By the time I goes in for a gawk, the guests are all well intoxicated. The bridegroom’s all done up in a silver suit and the bride’s far too young and beautiful for him. They has this group of classical musicians up on a little stage and people is dancing round in a wide circle – all moving in harmony, in the same direction, like they all knows exactly what they’re supposed to be doing.
Then this young fella in a blue silk suit butts in and upsets the synchronicity – bumbling his way through to a tray of champagne held by a waiter. He’s obviously pissed, because his tie’s undone and the tail of his shirt’s hanging out of his trousers. The dance stops and, when the next one starts up, the drunk grabs hold of the bride and drags her out for an embarrassing display of stumbling around the floor. Everyone’s glaring daggers at him and the bride’s eyes are appealing for help. The groom eventually goes and rescues the girl and the atmosphere lightens again, with high-pitched voices and ‘darling’s and ‘how delightful’s. Before the next dance can begin, the blue-suit stands in the centre of the big hall and tries to lead everyone in a sing-song.
Regrets, I’ve had a few . . .
‘Sit down!’
The groom shouts at him and the guests start coughing politely and turning their heads away to pretend this ain’t happening and that makes the man more determined than ever. I’m just enjoying the spectacle of it and see
ing the toffs in their element.
He continues with his Frank Sinatra impression, then he’s up with an unsteady leap onto the little stage and grabbing hold of a microphone.
The band leader is trying to wrestle the microphone back from him, when someone’s foot kicks over the cello-player’s chair with a string-twanging crash and one of the fiddlers sticks his bow up the oboist’s nose. By now security are on the scene and they grab the miscreant – but he’s being awkward as a tup and not wanting to let go of the microphone.
I’m imagining this fella must be some previous lover of the bride who’s been dumped for an older, richer man and is intent on disrupting the genteel reception and causing chaos.
A hefty pull by the bouncers sends the blue-suit flying off the stage and onto his arse, still clutching the microphone and entangling the flex round the flautist, sliding him off his stool and taking several other instruments along with him. Everything’s in an uproar! And while they’re unravelling the waltzes from the reels, the blue-suit howls out some more of the gin-sodden song before they drags him to the door.
A few minutes later, the Duchess’s man comes to me again.
‘The Duchess wonders if you might do her a favour.’
‘What?’
Apparently, the drunk’s the groom’s younger brother and he’s the prodigal son of the family, with a grudge agin’ his father for leaving everything to the eldest. He’s threatening to come back in and spoil the party, but they don’t want to have him arrested and cause a scandal.
‘The family has a house in Wotton-under-Edge.’
He presses an envelope into my hand that has inside it an address and a key – and two fifty-pound notes.
‘Would you take him there . . . across the fields?’
I goes outside to find the blue-suit sitting on the gravelled driveway, slugging from a bottle of whisky. He holds the bottle out to me.
‘I don’t drink, and you’ve had enough.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve been trained.’
I take the bottle from him and hand it back to the butler, then I lift him to his feet.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘Home.’
I has to half-drag him, because he’s completely inebriated now and he’s still singing as we go.
He takes out a packet of cigarettes, but can’t find his lighter.
‘Do you have a light?’
‘No.’
It’s a trek across the countryside to Wotton-under-Edge and it’s about 2:00 a.m. when we gets there. The blue-suit’s sobered up in the fresh air and the night-time chill, just as the Duchess knew he would, and he still has the cigarette dangling from his mouth. We’re making our way along Old London Road, towards Westridge Wood and the address in the envelope, when this idiot goes and knocks on someone’s door. A muddled old pensioner in pale striped pyjamas looks out at us from the low light in his hallway.
‘Could you possibly oblige me with a light?’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Maybe.’
‘It’s two o’clock!’
A woman’s voice calls down the stairs.
‘Who’s that at the door, dear?’
‘Two escaped lunatics, love.’
‘What about my light?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Surely you have a gas cooker or some such appliance?’
The old man slams the door, just as the blue flashing lights come racing down the road. Suddenly, we’re surrounded by a swarm of policemen.
‘And what have we here?’
‘Couple of poachers, sarge.’
It’s only the big fella who bet me the fiver his dog would catch Brian, and didn’t.
‘I know this one. Tovey, ain’t it?’
‘Aye, and you owe me a fiver.’
The blue-suit’s starting to get uppity, as his class tend to when they’re asked to be reasonable. But, after our trek through the brambles and bushes, his shoes are covered in shite and his shirt’s torn and his face is scratched and his hair looks like an unruly rook’s nest – and he stinks of whisky.
‘I’ll have you know that I’m no damn poacher!’
‘Oh no, what are you then?’
‘I’m the second Marquess of Evesham.’
The coppers are in convulsions of laughter and we’re both arrested for causing a disturbance and dragged protesting to the station. And in the night I hears him howling and banging his cell door and, to take my mind off it, I lie back on the bunk and imagine I can see the stars above in the sky and feel the free wind across my face and I sleeps for a short while. In the morning, the Duchess comes and everything’s sorted out and I’m free to go with no charges pressed – they even gives me back my two fifty-pound notes.
And they says that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing – but complete bloody ignorance is a crime!
That was one Duchess. Another was Mary von Teck, who became the Duchess of Beaufort when she married the Marquess of Worcester – who became the 10th Duke of Beaufort. She lived at Badminton House on the Beaufort Estate and died in 1987, aged 90. She was out riding one day when a Pyrenean Mountain Dog frightened her horse. Instead of getting all indignant about it like the gentry normally did, she said to the dog’s owner, ‘What a beautiful animal, would you sell it to me?’
The owner wouldn’t sell at first, but she offered him enough money to buy six Pyrenean pups to take its place. She brought the dog back to the Beaufort Estate and had it shot. Then she got her men to hang the carcass up on a clothesline and she beat it with a stick every day for a fortnight. You or I would be locked up in a nuthouse for behaving like that but, if you were one of them, you were said to be ‘eccentric’ rather than insane.
They were a rum lot, all the aristos whose land we poached, and most of them thought they could do as they liked, until you stood up to ’em. They all had histories and skeletons in their cupboards that they tried to keep out of sight. They were no better than us and, in some cases, a lot worse. Take Lord Podge, for instance, third son of the eighth Duke of Beaufort and a great friend of the Duke of Clarence, eldest son of Edward VII. When a house in London was raided by Scotland Yard in 1889 and a number of male prostitutes arrested, they named Lord Podge as one of their clients. Don’t forget, homosexuality was illegal in them days and Podge faced a hard-labour prison sentence just like Oscar Wilde. But, if Podge was brought to trial, the Duke of Clarence, Queen Victoria’s grandson, would also be implicated. So Podge conveniently disappeared to the French Riviera. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but it was too late, he was long gone. He never came back to England to face the charges and spent the rest of his life in the South of France with his male companions.
It was common belief that Podge was allowed to escape to save the monarchy’s blushes. The scandal was even debated in the House of Commons and the government accused of criminal conspiracy. But there was never any inquiry or investigation. Less than two years later, the Duke of Clarence died, of pneumonia they said, leaving it clear for his younger brother to become the next king.
And they had the gall to call us criminals!
But it ain’t just the aristos who was eccentric, if that’s what you wants to call it.
There’s a picture of me long-netting hares that was painted by a famous wildlife and animal artist called Mick Cawston. Cawston lived in a small cottage on a farm in Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. He loved to paint dogs – pointers and spaniels and terriers and greyhounds – and he rang me up one day to ask if he could come along to our drag and do some sketching. At the time, we was running some whippet courses and he come along in his old battered jacket and long hair and torn jeans, looking like a bit of a tramp.
He took photos and drew sketches of the whippets and then painted pictures of them, and I’m sure he was able to sell them pictures to all the old women who’d pay a lot for oil paintings of their dogs. We got talking about hare-netting and, as it happened, we wa
s going down to Sir James Scott’s in Ropley, near Winchester, netting hares – Scott was an acquaintance of the artist and Cawston came along a few times to the long-netting. That’s when he painted the picture of me. It was a miserable rainy day and he did a great job and the painting’s hanging in my front room at home. He was recognised as one of the finest wildlife painters of all time and I found him to be alright. He was one of the boys and easy to get along with. He was a very talented bloke and there was no edge to him – like, he weren’t up above no one else. But, under the surface, he was a haunted man who lacked belief in hisself and he suffered from deep depression. He stabbed hisself in the heart in 2006 and died at the age of forty-seven.
Nowadays we rents land off a man called Albert Chadwick. Albert’s a big fella and he can lift a bale of hay with one hand. His family had two farms in the area – the Top Farm and the Bottom Farm. Then Albert’s father died and left all his money to an animal sanctuary. From then on the family was struggling – they had fields of turnips and corn and wheat and barley they couldn’t afford to have harvested. That was a benefit to us, because it used to attract the pheasants in the winter time and we’d just walk up there and shoot ’em. Over the years, things deteriorated into bankruptcy and Albert had to sell the farmhouse and the barns, one by one, to townie yoikes who converted them into their sterile ‘living spaces’. Until, apart from the fallow land itself, he was down to one yard full of rubbish and he lived in a cow barn – an old milking shed that was converted into a makeshift bungalow. He got a bit violent with the builders who was doing the barn conversions – and who could blame him – and they called the police and he was locked away in Gloucester nuthouse for a while. And not for the first time either, as it happened.