The springer spaniel’s mission in life is primarily to hunt through rough cover, ‘springing’ the game. (Retrieving was a later addition to the repertoire.) There is a limit to the training for this vocation that can be given on barren ground, even if supplemented by a rabbit pen and by the ingenious contraptions of skin-clad dummies and catapult rubber that were one of my specialities. The time must come for an introduction to real quarry, but that is the time when lessons may go out of the window and steadiness be forgotten in favour of the heady but unacceptable habit of chasing – a particular hazard with spaniels, which at one moment may be being urged on to hunt and a second later be expected to stop dead when an enticing rabbit bolts from nearby.
There was one long patch of gorse which I knew grew in shallow soil over solid rock and so, although it held rabbits for most of the year, had no bolt-holes. I hunted the dogs one at a time through this, taking the occasional shot as rabbits bolted for holes beyond the open grass, and keeping the whistle handy in case of a failure to ‘drop’ instantly at the bolting of a rabbit or the flush of a pheasant.
The lesson went well. Ash, who had been sold as a pup and brought back to us for advanced training, showed signs of impetuosity, but got the message after being checked a time or two. After that, progress was rapid and I might have continued in order to cement the lesson. But movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. Henry was waving from where the furthest of the feeders stood beside a small stand of silver birch. I drew the session to a close, walked the dogs at heel to the Land Rover and put them away with a word of praise each.
Following one of Angus’s fake sheep-tracks that meandered among the bushes, I walked to join Henry. ‘Item One,’ he said as I arrived. He pointed to the half-buried carcass of a hen pheasant.
‘Damn and blast it!’ I said, more mildly than I felt. ‘If he’s put one victim by for another day it strongly suggests that he had at least one other.’
‘And I can show you where it is.’ Henry led me round the birches to a place where a narrow sheep-track dipped between the nearest tree and some overgrown gorse. ‘Items Two A and Two B.’
Item 2A was the corpse of another hen pheasant, this time lying on the surface. Item 2B was the wire snare, originally set close to where the hen lay. This was attached to a concrete block which had now been dragged some yards along the track. The ground between was scored by the marks of a violent struggle.
‘We had him,’ Henry said, ‘and he got away.’
‘And now he’ll be warier than ever. God bless our legislators,’ I added unfairly. So that unintended captures such as badgers or domestic moggies could be released, frightened but unharmed, self-locking snares were made illegal, with the result that a snared fox, instead of dying relatively quickly, may have to wait in the snare twenty-four hours or more; and a side-effect is that a strong fox sometimes manages to free himself from the snare, which surely could never have been the intention.
‘Now for Item Three,’ Henry said.
‘There’s more?’
Without immediate answer, Henry led the way over the crest to a strip of gorse running along a steep bank honeycombed with rabbit holes. It was not an area much favoured by pheasants and rather off our beaten track, so that we tended to neglect it. ‘You seemed happily occupied,’ Henry said, ‘so I thought I’d have a poke around and see if there were any other signs. This caught my eye.’ He pointed.
Another but smaller wire snare was set from a cut stick in a rabbit-run through the gorse. I walked along a few paces and spotted a second and then a third.
‘Would Angus have set those?’ Henry asked.
‘He never concerns himself with rabbits unless the farmers complain. And they haven’t been too bothered this year.’
‘That figures. This area’s alive with rabbits, but there’s nothing in the snares and half a dozen rabbits have been paunched over there,’ Henry pointed to the far end of the strip, ‘and the guts seem quite fresh and haven’t been found by the crows yet, which suggests that the snares have been visited this morning.’
‘Which in turn rules Angus out. Well,’ I said, ‘Angus will have the fellow’s guts if he catches him, but it doesn’t seem to me that he’s doing us a whole lot of harm.’
Henry looked doubtful. ‘If he poaches rabbits, will he leave the pheasants alone?’
‘If he’s after pheasants, would he bother snaring rabbits and risk alerting us? Not everybody has your addiction to pheasant,’ I reminded him. ‘We have enough to do. We’ll let Angus worry about it.’
‘Fair enough,’ Henry said.
From our fresh vantage point we had a view for miles over a countryside speckled with trees now stripped by winter. To our left we could see over the lower hill to the roofs of the village in the distance and far beyond that to the broad estuary of the Tay. The dam was in the valley between, with a farmhouse and buildings beyond. The road which was entered from the left fork in the village ran past and formed the western boundary of our shoot. It vanished again, in the direction of the unknown Kirkton of Littleknapp, to the right among the Sidlaw Hills, whose lower reaches, here, were lost in forestry plantations once planted for the grants and tax exemptions and now apparently forgotten.
Beyond the road, the Foley Burn, which meandered past the village and thence to the Tay, had cut itself a tree-hung gulley, but on this side of the road and immediately below us was a string of cottages. These had been built (for some forgotten purpose) in two terraces of four, probably of stone but now roughcast. To judge from the back garden walls the group nearer to the village had been converted into two houses of more generous size, with neat gardens given over – as well as I could judge at the distance – to grass and flowers. The other four remained separate, and their gardens were dug over for vegetables and held unmatched sheds.
Beyond the village end of the cottages and across the road I could make out an opening in the trees. The burn must have been bridged because the slated roof of a larger house showed above a screen of evergreens.
‘Did somebody say that one of the beaters lives in those cottages?’ Henry asked.
‘At least one,’ I said. ‘Bob Somebody. Roberts, that’s it. Bob Roberts. The big chap with the beard. But there’s another occasional beater. I forget his name. He’s what I think they call a Directional Driller on the oil rigs. He gets called away for weeks at a time to ensure that the drill string goes where it’s supposed to go, but he comes beating whenever he’s on shore when we shoot. I think he lives there.’
Henry nodded twice, once to acknowledge the information and once towards the farmhouse. ‘And who’s the farmer?’
‘Albert Dodd. A crabby old bastard,’ I said. I was going to say more, but I realized that I had said all that I had to say about Albert. Quite forgetting about such matters as rent and leases, keepering and the cost of the birds, Albert was convinced that in a just world he would have had the right to shoot the pheasants or share in the profits. This belief resulted in an uneasy relationship, both parties sticking strictly to the letter of their leases and giving no quarter. To be fair, if we agreed to pay him to erect a fence or plant a strip of game-crop, the job would be well and honestly done; but if we were rash enough to consult him about our plans for a shooting day, we were certain to find sheep or cattle or a working tractor just where we least wanted them.
‘Yes. I’ve heard about him. He’s not Angus’s favourite either,’ Henry said.
‘His son’s all right,’ I said. ‘He does most of the work. Unfortunately, you can never get hold of him. Or, if you can, Dodd the Father will contradict whatever Dodd the Son told you. There’s nothing to be done about it except try to outlive the old devil.’
*
Descending into the valley again at the western end, the Land Rover was trying to slither on the damp grass. I engaged four-wheel drive and let it choose its own pace.
When the slope levelled off and the Land Rover slowed, Henry opened his eyes, took a deep breath and
looked at his watch. ‘Are we grabbing an early lunch or making a start on the other side?’ he asked.
‘Once we climb the other slope, we may as well do the whole job,’ I said.
‘Then let’s have lunch.’
‘How would you fancy a short walk first?’
‘To raise an appetite? Unnecessary, my appetite is already at its apogee. But why not?’
At the bottom of the field, Henry had to descend to let me through another gate. We skirted the dam, putting ducks into the air – teal and pintail as well as our mallard. The teal usually kept to a far corner, away from the more boisterous mallard. The grain and potatoes scattered around and the small seeds in the shallow margins were appreciated by more than our local stock. There would be more overnight visitors when the duck flew in from daytime roosts; these were our releases plus a lazy few which had taken up residence.
I gave them a blast of the horn to unsettle them. Any fool can raise tame duck, but to raise wild duck takes hard work and a hard heart. Two more gates and a stretch of deeply rutted track and we were near Albert Dodd’s farmyard.
There was no sign of the old devil. We left the Land Rover well out of harm’s way on a patch of rough ground behind two barns and set off. I carried my gun and took one of the spaniels, on the principle that no chance of a minute’s exercise or training should ever be wasted. The field had been drilled with a winter crop; we detoured around the young barley and followed a dense hedge bordering the road, heading away from the direction of the village.
Before we reached the cottages, the field boundary took a bend away from the road. The cottages had been built along one side of a triangle of waste ground, largely a jungle of weeds and bushes but in places a dumping ground for unwanted stones, prams and refrigerators. A path had been worn and in places even maintained, serving the gates in the back garden walls, and we followed the path. My guess was that the back of the cottages would be more revealing than the front. I put the spaniel to hunt. He was another of our pups, sold the previous year and brought back by an impatient owner who had tried to progress too quickly and now wanted me to correct his mistakes. The spaniel put up several pheasants but there were very few rabbits around.
In the middle of a working day, there was little life to be seen around the cottages other than the several cats wandering the gardens or taking what sun was to be had on the shed roofs. They looked without interest at the spaniel, secure in the knowledge that they could outrun or outfight any mere dog. A tall woman with dark grey hair got into a dark grey car at the gable of the first double cottage and drove off as we arrived. The second seemed deserted. The cottages had been built to a commonplace standard, but efforts had been made to upgrade them. As I had guessed, the first garden had been laid out for beauty and leisure by occupiers who were prepared to buy their vegetables. There was cypress hedging to screen a tank for domestic fuel oil. The second garden was different, very neat but given over to herbs and to some plants which were unfamiliar to me.
There was a break before the first of the single cottages, where most of the large back garden was occupied by a complex of sheds. Nobody was in view, but I could hear the sound of somebody sawing timber by hand. Next door, at a cottage where the accommodation had been increased by the addition of dormer windows, the gate was sagging open on a garden that was mostly dug over but still held a few ragged cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts. I could see a fat woman bustling about in a modernized kitchenette.
The two gardens beyond were also empty. I had no excuse prepared for knocking on doors. I was about to give up and turn back when a large, bearded man came out of the back door of the furthest cottage and vanished into another shed. He emerged again a second or two later and set to work.
‘Bob Roberts?’ Henry whispered.
‘Correct.’
Roberts’s gate, when we reached it, was ajar. I saw that he had collected a hatchet and, seated on an upturned log, was splitting another into kindling, using unnecessary force so that he sometimes had to drag his hatchet out of the chopping log below. The signs were that the hatchet was very sharp. He seemed impervious to the cold of the day – there was a gap the size and shape of a Rugby football between his jeans and the T-shirt which was all that he wore on his torso. His dog, a Labrador/collie cross, lay nearby but looked at us with cold eyes and gave a single low bark, seeming to imply that that was all that we were worth. Roberts looked up and saw us. He sank his hatchet into his chopping-log, got to his feet and came slowly down the garden. I noticed that his garden was tidier than those of his immediate neighbours.
‘You wanted something?’ he asked. His accent came from Dundee itself rather than the Angus countryside.
‘Well, Bob,’ I said. ‘Not working today?’
‘Not working any day. Got laid off last month, didn’t I?’
‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. You’ll be out to beat for us on Saturday, then?’
‘Did I ever let you down? Now you tell me. Are we having a Keeper’s Day this January? That bugger Todd wouldn’t promise.’
I could almost have smiled. It was a debate which had maddened Angus, but I found it rather funny. The Keeper’s Day, traditionally the last shooting day of the season and one to which usually only the beaters and pickers-up are invited, is a valued perk. But the beaters know how to drive the ground better than the host and often better even than the keeper. In the previous January, our beaters had divided themselves into three teams standing in turn, leapfrogging each other in two Subaru pick-ups so that at any given moment there was one group standing to shoot, one group beating towards the first and the third probably already in transit. Ignoring Angus’s attempts to call for moderation, they had managed fourteen drives in the day (as against the six to eight which was our norm) and had so nearly cleared the ground that Angus had been hard put to it to catch up the birds that he needed for his intensive rearing programme. Another result was that we had fewer wild clutches than usual this year – but very little difficulty recruiting beaters.
After endless debate we had decided on a compromise only a few days earlier. ‘You’ll get two days instead of one,’ I said. ‘But cocks only. Anyone shooting a hen goes straight home and doesn’t come again.’
He knew what I meant. Any cock pheasants left wild at the end of the season, over and above the minimum number required for breeding, were consumers of expensive feed and, worse, by squabbling over and pestering the available hens they worsened the prospect of broods raised in the wild to supplement the released birds.
‘Right,’ said Roberts. He was not a man to make concessions to anybody. If anything, he looked slightly put out at having been robbed of a valued grievance. There would be no point making subtle approaches.
‘Somebody’s snaring rabbits on the shoot,’ I said. ‘I don’t grudge him a few rabbits but I’d like to know who it is.’
‘It isn’t me.’
I believed him. Roberts’s style would have been to take his gun and his dog and shoot the rabbits, daring Albert Dodd or Angus to do something about it. ‘I never thought that it was,’ I said. ‘But do you know who it is?’
He shook his head. There was no expression on his beard but I was sure that he knew. There was no point pursuing it. That sort of loyalty between neighbours is seldom breached. ‘You know Charlie Hopewell?’ I asked.
Bob Roberts nodded. ‘From the village.’ He scowled. ‘Bloody tyke of a spaniel. Comes round here raising hell.’
‘Did the dog come round here a week past last Friday?’ I asked. ‘That was the day of the rainstorm.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
I tried not to sigh. Bob Roberts, I recalled, was an efficient beater but on his own terms. Angus might give out orders, but Roberts would do the job in what he believed to be the best way. As far as he was concerned, he was always the one in step. ‘On that Friday morning,’ I said, ‘he strayed from home. When he returned, somebody had chopped off half his tail.’
Roberts’s f
ace did not change, so far as I could tell, behind the beard, but he said, ‘That’s nasty. You think he came this way?’
‘It seems possible,’ Henry said.
By reputation, Bob Roberts cared more for dogs than for people, a preference for which I had some sympathy. The news brought on a rare burst of speech. ‘Could be. I didn’t see him, but he came this way often enough. The widow woman at the far end, Mrs Bell, chased him away with a stick once for messing on her lawn; she was home that Friday, if I mind right. I saw her pruning her rosebushes before the rain. And then there’s Jim O’Toole. He’s aye here, for he runs a cabinet-making and repair business from his shed. He and his missis have a miniature poodle bitch as is in season just now.’ He paused and stooped to pull the ears of my spaniel, but his loquacity had not quite run out. ‘I can see why you’re fashing yoursel’. You think somebody may have it in for spaniels? Or for dogs in general? Or for Mr Hopewell?’
‘None of those, I hope,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to be sure. Do you have any suggestions?’
He dried up immediately. ‘No,’ was his sole reply.
He was not a man to be pushed. Perhaps he could be led to open up a bit. ‘Do you know the Hopewell lassie?’ I asked him.
He scowled, his first visible expression. ‘Don’t you go suggesting any such thing. Yon lassie may not be college material but she’s good wi’ dogs. And she’s a fine girl. Just fine,’ he repeated. ‘There’s naethin’ adae wi’ her. And at least she has enough sense to chase the village lads away, which is more than you can say for some.’
‘I’m inclined to agree. If you think of anything, let me know,’ I said. Before turning away, I added, ‘I hope you get fixed up soon. Why don’t you go offshore?’
His beard sneered at me. ‘Not much call for foresters on the rigs,’ he said. ‘That’s what I was, up-bye.’ He nodded towards the regimented lines of spruce which began beyond the first crest. ‘The estate’s cutting back. I could get work if I moved, but why should I? I’m settled here. The Government changed the rules, about taxes and subsidies and the like of that. Let the bastards keep me for a change, out of the money they saved.’
Sting in the Tail (Three Oaks Book 6) Page 7