Tivington Nott (11 page)

And that’s where the Tiger gets left behind.

That’s where not only Cheyne, but Mrs Grant, and Lord Harbringdon and Jack Perry and even Tolland leave the Tiger behind during the big gruelling runs. If the Tiger were nine or ten stone there would be no problem. But he’s fifteen stone and like Harry Cheyne he needs big horses. For horses there is a rule: the bigger they are the better bred they must be. Large ill-bred horses are the worst kind. They are death traps on this moor. I can pick out half a dozen from here, right now, lolloping and stumbling around the place, tripping over their own feet and getting in everyone’s way. They won’t be going far. Their riders will take a peek over the first hill, probably not see a deer, then retire from the field for the rest of the day to the pub.

If he’s to stay with the hounds to the end the Tiger needs a big blue-blooded aristocrat under him. He’s never been able to afford a horse like that, and in the normal course of things never would have the chance to own such an animal. Then suddenly there it was! Falling into place with the record harvest more sweetly than he could ever have dared dream: Alsop staggering around the corner of the rick almost begging him to buy Kabara, the wonder horse!

From the cheerful way he’s going on there in front of me with his friend Harry Cheyne no one would suspect the Tiger of being at a delicate point in negotiating the price of this horse.

Twisting around in his saddle and yelling at me. Something about close up and stay with him. And here we go. Horses and cars and people and dogs all struggling and yelling and mixed up, a bottleneck as we turn into the pub yard. And there’s Morris’s car. No sign of Morris or Alsop but Mrs is sitting in the front seat waving at me. We’re pouring through the gate and in to the stone-flagged courtyard, people all over the place trying to get a look at the hounds and Tiger and Cheyne roaring for a passage through.

Jack Perry’s off his horse. He opens a low door in the end of a cowshed and urges the hounds into the dark hole. They don’t like it, but the whips start singing and Perry has his way. The last of them in, he bolts the door. They howl mournfully for their freedom. We’re all watching the huntsman. He eases the girth on his mare and things go quiet suddenly in the yard. There’s a labourer staring at me, or staring, rather, at a point half-way down Kabara, his hands held loosely behind him, shoulders down, waiting and watching, without having anything to do. He looks away as I look at him and kicks at the wall with the heel of his boot, dislodging a silvery flurry of lichen from the old stone. I climb down off Kabara and lead him over near the Tiger.

Mrs Grant has joined him and Cheyne and they’re talking animatedly about the condition of the hounds. The foot people begin drifting out of the yard, realising the excitement’s over for the time being. Tolland and the second-horsemen go off somewhere, taking Jack Perry’s mare with them, and the huntsman sits on an old mounting block and takes off his cap. There’s a deep red line across his forehead and above that, in contrast to his weathered face, his skull is white and shiny. He gives his head a vigorous rub with the palm of his hand before jamming the hard riding cap down on it again. He’s waiting for John Grabbe, the harbourer, to bring in his report.

I loosen Kabara’s girth and lean back against the sunlit wall. My thighs are throbbing pleasantly from all the riding. I feel good. Hungry. It’s warm, and I half listen to Cheyne and Mrs Grant and the Tiger talking, without actually following their conversation. They’ll go round to the front of the pub in a minute or two and have a glass of sherry or brandy, or whatever it is they drink at this time of day. They’re staying mounted for that. Out through the courtyard gate I can see the people and riders milling around, and cars nosing their way cautiously down the street between them, hoping to find somewhere to park. Every now and then someone comes and stands in the gateway and looks around the yard expectantly, then, seeing nothing happening, goes away again. And after a few minutes I spot John Grabbe making his way through the throng out there. Few of them know who he is, or that it is
he
we are waiting for—the master, the huntsman, the hounds yelling again now in their black hole as if they have winded him. And even impatient men such as Harry Cheyne and Tiger Westall—they all wait for John Grabbe on these mornings without complaining. He’s riding to this meeting place mounted on a damp-looking mud-spattered moorland pony that is half asleep. He’s been out slotting deer in the dark most of the night, or at least since the worst of the storm passed. There’s a scruffy-looking spotted scarf pinned at his throat, almost as if he must intend a private joke by it. That it could be taken to represent a silk hunting stock, perhaps. His jacket’s open, and under it he’s wearing a dirty grey woollen jumper over a black waistcoat, and under that a few more layers of clothing. His pony’s coming along head down, plodding, going by instinct, smell or something, habit maybe, but not by eyesight because its eyes are closed! He makes his way through the last of the sightseers on the road, overhearing rumours and speculations about stags seen in the area lately, but not looking around or saying hullo to anyone. Knowing all and saying nothing, he rides into the yard. The minute Cheyne and Mrs Grant and the Tiger see him they stop talking and turn their horses and watch him with great interest, but they don’t go over to him or call out. Jack Perry gives his hat another firm push and stands up, going forward only the last couple of yards to meet the harbourer and putting his hand on the pony’s bridle; ‘Good morning, John. What have you got for us?’

The crucial question!

The huntsman’s voice carries clearly across the courtyard, and the three enthusiasts here can’t help leaning forward and rising a little in their stirrups, straining to catch Grabbe’s response. The Tiger and his friends would love to get close enough to those two to tune in on this conversation, but both men have lowered their voices and are standing close together. You can see by the way they arrange themselves that their conversation is to be a private one. Grabbe dismounts, leaving the reins slung loosely over his arm, and he gets out his tobacco and makes himself a cigarette, his back firmly towards us. Jack Perry watches his every move closely, bent a little forward so as not to miss anything, frowning and nodding his head every second or two, his concentrated gaze following Grabbe’s gestures as if the harbourer is about to conjure a stag out of the air for him. But Perry’s expression lets us in on nothing definite, one way or the other, about the quality of the information he’s getting. He shows no elation or disappointment. He’s pressing Grabbe, he’s prying and probing and cross-examining him, to get the detail out of him that he wants. And Grabbe shrugs and puffs his cigarette, he points up then he points down, mesmerising the huntsman with hints and possibilities, and once he laughs suddenly and takes a kick at a stone. It’s all the same to him. He never hunts.

Sensing that something’s up, a few of the more alert riders and foot people have begun gathering just inside the entrance to the courtyard. I see Morris and Fred Alsop among them. Alsop raises his hand to me in a nervous greeting, at the same time nudging Morris, obviously wanting to get him to come over here. But Morris stays planted where he is. Tolland has come up too, and makes his way through with difficulty, riding his own horse and leading Kit.

A moment later Perry signals Tolland to bring the mare over to him. The conversation’s finished. He can get no more out of Grabbe. He climbs into his saddle and he and the whipper-in trot out of the yard together, the crowd at the gate parting to let them through, then closing behind them and trailing after them. They’ve gone to interpret Grabbe’s news to the master.

This is not just a matter of being polite to the woman who’s paying for it all; she mightn’t have ridden a horse for more than twenty years, but Mrs Allen still controls the hunt. If they could get away with it, Perry and his hounds would chase almost any huntable stag they could rouse from the covers this morning. They want to get out there and get on with it. But she will insist that the stag to be hunted today is the most suitable, that it is the oldest stag harboured in the area. And as far as she’s concerned they can spend the whole day looking for that one rather than settle for something less. So now she wants a description from Perry of his intended quarry, a detailed description if she can get one, if Grabbe’s actually
seen
the beast and hasn’t just followed its footprints, though there’s not much Grabbe can’t tell about a deer from having seen its slots. She’ll want to be able to recognise the animal that her hounds are chasing when she sees it, and should they happen to kill something else at the end of the day, Perry will have her to answer to.

Almost before Perry and Tolland are out of the yard Cheyne spurs his horse forward and calls, ‘What’s the news then, John?’ And the rest of us, the Tiger and Mrs Grant from one direction, and Fred Alsop and Morris from another, with me and Kabara bringing up the rear, we all move in to hear what the harbourer’s got to say. You can see he’d rather not hang around, but he has to wait here for Mrs Allen’s decision, and then he’ll take the huntsman and a few of the senior hounds out and show them exactly where the stag is bedded down. After that he can go home and get some breakfast. Or go out catching rats, which is the other thing he does for a living. Perhaps I should ask him for a solution to
my
problem.

We move in on Grabbe, as if
he
were our quarry. He’s slow to respond to Cheyne, concentrating on nipping straggling threads of tobacco from a new smoke. He greets Morris and touches his hat to Mrs Grant. His skin is brown and shiny, drawn tight over the small sharp bones of his face, with scarcely a wrinkle in it, almost oriental. I don’t know how old he is. At first he looks old, sixty or more, but the longer you look the more you see there’s something young about him. About his eyes in particular, which are cheeky, or amused. As if he might be aware of a situation that no one else has noticed, and is waiting for the moment when someone
will
notice it, so that he may then share his amusement with them. His expression makes me want to look around, to see what the source of his amusement might be. To these hunting people he’s a mystery man. A troll, out of the earth and bracken and forest. Smelling like a deer himself. He gets a meagre living from them, but he does his work alone, not sharing it, secretly. None of them really knows exactly how he goes about it. Perhaps he doesn’t know how he goes about it himself, not in a way to tell anyone. Exercising an instinct for such things. A sense of how things are in the woods about him. The bending of a twig or the cropping of a leaf, staring signs, shouting events at him, and where others see only a confusion of muddy footprints, he sees the time and the place, the size and the direction, the age and the sex of the animals that made them. The detail of events accumulating in his awareness as he moves slowly through the grey dawn, or stands for an hour, still, receiving information in the dark. Attuned more finely to the ways of the animals, at last, than to the ways of humans. And doing all this while others sleep. People are bound to wonder about him.

It is said Grabbe lost his home and his family and his job as an estate manager years ago through this obsession with the forest and with the habits of the nocturnal deer. Roly-Poly would say he was drawn away, that he was seduced by his taste for it, like an alcoholic, or an insane person with a delusion, by degrees going deeper, until in the end he had abandoned everything useful, and was ravelled up and lost in affairs to which sensible people give no more than a passing nod. What can be got out of such entanglements? They are a disaster! And she would suspect him of touching on the power to curse or cure. One of
them
! The crazies! A threat! That’s why she keeps well away from hunting. She sees too much of this kind of thing in it. Too much relying on insights that ordinary people know nothing about. Knowledge that can’t be decently accounted for or explained. Relying on crazy freaks like John Grabbe to tell you what to do? That can’t be right! And all of it going on up here, away from civilisation! Away from the work and the crops and the regular business that holds her life together. She doesn’t come here, because she doesn’t want to know about this consultation in the backyard of the Royal Oak at Winsford. She’d feel sick and scared if she had to witness the way her husband is so passionately interested now in the words of this ragged little misfit from the woods who’s messed up his own life. And what about this trembling black fortune standing at my heels? What about this entire with the strange Australian name? Kabara? Why give a horse a name like that? What can it possibly mean? And it’s on the point of soaking up half her harvest money! What about that? It would make her dizzy to see it all swimming together like this in the yard of the pub here; all the money, and the good health, the lives even, all hanging by threads, hanging by sudden accidents or by decisions made hot. Why risk all good things on this business?

Cheyne’s voice booms out over our heads: ‘Well, come on John! What’s it to be?’

The harbourer is looking at Kabara while replying to Cheyne. And that private amusement in his eyes has spread to the rest of his face, to his lips. His voice is soft, relaxed, unhurried, his few words concealing more than they reveal. It’s easy to hear that he’s not interested in what he’s saying or in the question that’s been put to him. His mind is on something else. Despite Cheyne’s aggressive energy, his authority, his almost threatening mounted bulk which he is thrusting forward now, he’s not having much of an impact on the harbourer. Grabbe is more interested in Kabara’s feet. He comes over and reaches down, bending towards Kabara’s off-foreleg, preoccupied with this action when he says: ‘A stag went into Burrow Wood this morning.’

The Tiger and Mrs Grant nod knowingly at each other, as if they had guessed as much already. And it
is
a confirmation of what they’ve been hoping for. Cheyne urges his mount in even closer, not satisfied with this, wanting more. Grabbe slides his hand down Kabara’s foreleg and eases the foot up to inspect it. At this, Alsop and the Tiger check each other nervously. What’s going on here? Grabbe gazes steadily at the underside of the hoof for a few seconds, everyone staring at him and waiting. Then he puts it down; Kabara is still and quiet while this man’s hand is on him.