The Goshawk (18 page)

The larger front end of the inverted boat would be covered first with a ground-sheet and, atop of that, with the blanket of mustard. The smaller end, already stitched over with brown felt, was tucked well under a briar and piled with branches of gorse in an enormous and painful bush. The proprietor having entered the larger end, whose supports were driven into the ground, pulled the movable back end up to him by means of a piece of string, and was to lie perdue.

I fixed and gorse-covered the smaller end, and then came back for Cis, with whom to re-set the spring trap. To this we re-attached the brass wire and tarred it afterward. The pole stood out rather higher than before above the holly tree, and remained a silent vigilant whose uncomplaining day-and-nightly watching might take, by chance, what all the life-cored engines might fail to charm.

Being a Sunday, on which none of the corn could be carried, it was a glorious day. We stood long at night-fall, trying to sum up the chances for the morrow. The high cirro-cumulus, the lower cumulus fairly well set, the reddish sun, the steady barometer, the cows feeding peacefully as one, the open sky, the gossamer on the trees, all seemed to point to a fine day at last. But we could see and hear much too far in the moist and windless air, and the dew before dark was only moderate. On the whole, though fearful now to look for anything good, it looked like fine at last: for Tom and his barley, for me and my vigil in the dripping wood. Going out later in the deep night, I made sure that all would be well. The dew now was heavy and productive, a correct September ground-mist was almost as it ought to be, and, high above, the visible Milky Way almost engulfed the angles of Cassiopeia.

It had been only irony on the previous day to give us a hopeful sunset. It was the stoic who would survive this summer and winter, the man who expected nothing at all.

After four hours of sleep I went out again into the night, and there was the Milky Way, there Cassiopeia, in the same sky as before. But they had been working while men slept. The enormous dome, sliding imperceptibly on the smooth ball-bearings of the stars, had swung them immovably round the pole. The bear was almost down: the river of heaven now flowed more nearly north and south; Orion, at midnight hardly raised above the eastern rim, now ruled the sky: and ruled it long after the wind had gone to call the sun, after dog, bear and dragon had paled, after the lemon light had wandered weakly up behind the stratus clouds of morning. He stood his ground, the bold and shameless hunter, naked but for his belt.

From seven o'clock onward the blackbirds came to the trap at intervals which varied between fifteen minutes and an hour. There were a pair of them, and they came sometimes together, sometimes alone. By ten o'clock I was trembling with cold, for the heavy dew had drenched me and the sun failed to break through. Four times a bird had been within the circle of the trap, but not at its centre, and I had feared to pull. At the fifth visit, cold, hunger, boredom, sleeplessness and misery made life desperate. The bird was well within the perimeter, but somewhat to one side. Forgetting that the strings were also somewhat to one side, I gave a fearful tug. The trap worked beautifully, but so did the blackbird. Jerked upward by the pull string, which must have been directly between his legs, he left the ground at the same moment as the net did. It knocked him sideways, safe: the leaves strewn on the net leapt up in a fountain; Cassandra, tethered nearby (but, on second thoughts not in the trap, because he would have kept the blackbirds off its centre) flew into the air with a wild cry, reached the end of his leash, stopped suddenly, twisted himself round a bough and hung head downwards flapping his wings. I got up cursing, collected my traps, and left the God-forsaken spot. It was no good staying now.

The weather would drive one to the grave. A weak and windy sun, after a sunless and still morning, had done nothing to dry the dew-drenched barley: and, in the evening, cumulo-nimbus came with a few growls of cold thunder to soak everything afresh with one brief, decisive torrent.

At seven o'clock I went up dead beaten to make the final arrangements of the mustard hide after nightfall, but decided not to watch it on the morrow. Too dis-heartened by the malevolence of God and moisture, I took the excuse that the trap might just as well stand untenanted for a day, in order that the hawks might get used to it. The danger was that the rabbits might eat the mustard: but I had planted mustard, rather than cress, which grew quicker, because I hoped that the heat of this plant would not attract the creatures.

‘In order that the hawks might get used to it.' If there were any hawks, if anything in this world ever went right for anybody. At least the thing would make a very convenient grave, being exactly the right shape and size for that purpose, and the next lot of hawks to nest in Three Parks Wood might well get used to my maggots in it, when I had died of rheumatism and pneumonia in a vain search. If I had been sure that the ‘sparrow-hawks' still abode, or that the engine lay on some route frequented by Gos: if even I had been sure on my own evidence that Gos still lived, then no mist nor petty rain nor mean, unholy thunder would in the least particle have deterred a rejoicing patience. But in the worst summer within memory, to sit cramped day long without tobacco (perhaps the most maddening deprivation) in damp and cold and hunger unoccupied, in a place where one was only sure that hawks
had
been, with tools which one had never known to be successful, on an old quest which might from the start have been ridiculous, while all one's letters for help round Europe went not only without help but even without answer: it was bitter work. I saw a sparrow-hawk on Friday, so far as I was able to tell a sparrow-hawk at a distance of two fields. He was not Gos nor a kestrel. From his sandy colour and flight I should have thought him not a little owl. The owl flew bobbing and buoyant, as if, Gilbert White put it, he ‘seemed to want ballast': my creature on Friday flew with the true rowing of the short-winged hawks. Yet this was all I had to go upon, an amateur guess backed by the evidence of my ears.

Since Gos escaped there had only been my ears to depend upon for the sparrow-hawks. Except on that Friday I had not seen them with my eyes, and on the Friday it had been a single bird instead of a pair. What reliance could one put upon the word of other people, not living for hawks, and how much reliance on one's own hearing? The call notes of the hunting couple were single cries, singly answered. ‘Mew,' cried one, ‘Mew,' replied the other. But little owls cried to one another in single notes, and hunted during the day-time, for the country people recognized this phenomenon as a sign of rain. Crouching huddled under four hurdles, the straining ears grew optimist, took the screech-screech of the little owls for the mew-mew of the sparrow-hawks, even pricked themselves for the counter-answered ‘tuits', and ‘dwees' of linnet, goldfinch, etc. Sometimes a chiff-chaff would almost deceive one for a moment, sounding like two monosyllabic birds. Any menacing single note, and some of the smallest birds had prodigies of voices, made a mirage in the numbed mind which cowered in the dripping bower. Even that couple seen so many weeks ago chasing each other round a tree, were only guessed to be sparrow-hawks, out of the probable alternative of kestrel and sparrow-hawk: they might have been kites, been falcons, or even
hobbies
. There was no reason why they should not have been rare birds and migratory. They might be gone.

And for these, for guesses (for you had either to watch the trap unseeing and guess, or not watch and hope to guess the better) I toiled at uncertain schemes in a climate of hell: for these rose in agony when revellers were just going to bed, and lay in the dissolving torrent of rain while others worked, or hazarded the labour of a nightly record.

This day I watched blackbirds in a heatless thunderstorm for two hours. I was sure that the scare of yesterday would have driven them away, but watched to prove the certainty, and did not trouble to set the trap. I came away convinced that it would be many weeks before a blackbird visited that net again for grain.

Meanwhile it dewed, and stormed and thundered. What protest could one make against this devilish providence? Nothing, I supposed, except, like Mr. McMahon, to go out and have a shot at the King whom we then professed to love.

One was expending an enormous amount of patience and ingenuity, but nothing seemed to come of it. Perhaps a pigeon was too large a decoy for a sparrow-hawk, whose usual prey when trained was the blackbird. It was no good muddling along like this, in the effort to do everything at once. (Already one was attempting to catch hawks without devoting a preliminary week or two to making sure that they were there.) If a blackbird was necessary as a lure, then I had better devote my energies to catching a blackbird before expending them upon catching a hawk. But it hurt to leave the bow-net unused, when, for all one knew, the still unplaced hawks of Three Parks might migrate at any moment.

I determined to make the bow-net automatic, and as efficient as possible, while the quest for blackbirds was carried on. There was a stuffed teal on the mantel-piece, so I converted him into a decoy, in place of the live pigeon which had to be watched. Being stuffed, he did not move about. He was as stationary as the pieces of cheese in a mousetrap, and it was into something very like a moustrap that I converted the bownet for the time being.

This oblation having been offered to fortune—it caught a weasel in the end, but he easily ate his way out, leaving only his footmarks—I set about the capture of the blackbirds. Since it is only illegal to
take
birds with bird lime, but not to manufacture or to advertise it, I can offer the experiences on this subject without fear of the dock. I warmed it, allowed it to spread on a nine-inch square of cardboard, sprinkled the same with maize or tasty-looking hedge fruits, and set it out in places frequented by blackbirds within view of the cottage. It was popular not only with the birds (who would hop about in it, and, standing on one leg, examine their feet with evident satisfaction) but also with the Wheeler pigs, who would eat the whole squares, cardboard and all, as fast as I could lay them down. It was not till some months afterward that I discovered the secret of this product, from a farmer who owned clap-nets, and who seemed on these matters to live a life haunted by visions of the law. The secret was to spread it on straws or any small twigs. These, he informed me, would catch on various parts of the bird, sticking from leg to wing and so forth, until he became too hampered for flight.

Bird lime proving of little value, I constructed a kind of net-sieve, in the garden, on the old-fashioned principle, and led the string to my bedroom window. There I stuck the shaving mirror at a convenient angle, so that, taking my siesta, I could keep half an eye on the maize and blackberries which were to tempt my blackbirds into captivity. The bedroom was a pleasant change after the hide.

They never came, of course. There was far too much fruit left in other parts of the garden, and in hedgerows unmenaced by strange erections, for any sensible blackbird to take much interest in mine. In the winter it might have worked, but in the late summer it was only a laughing stock.

The pigs came, however, those ubiquitous Wheeler pigs which had eaten all the gooseberries, black and red currants, windfall apples or plums, and lures tied out for Gos on his perches. They often came into the kitchen to eat the dog's bread and milk. I sometimes feared that they would come upstairs and eat me. They would have done it unconcernedly I suppose, munching away while I tried to drive them off with a stick or something. All the hedges were barricaded with old iron bedsteads, crockery, anything that could be thrown into the breach. They thrust all aside. Eventually they ate the sieve.

But I—lying with one eye on the mirror—and occasionally rushing downstairs to hit a pig with a polo stick, which I kept outside the back door for that purpose—rested for three days and skimmed one eye through Shakespeare.