Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  Johnny counted and said, ‘Twenty-five hounds.’

  Virginia corrected him. ‘Twelve and a half couple. Like grouse, or pheasants, only you count them in braces.’ She giggled, and said, ‘That sounds silly, doesn’t it? I mean, brace.’

  They reached the expanse of gravel in front of the main entrance, and stood to one side, on the edge of the grass. Johnny blew his nose, wished he had an aspirin, and listened to Virginia … ‘That’s Lord Swanwick … no, on foot, with the left arm a little withered and the hunting horn stuck into his coat … The two men he’s talking to are his sons. The one in uniform is Arthur Durand-Beaulieu – the Honourable Arthur – and the other, in pink with white buckskin breeches and mahogany-topped black boots, is the heir, Lord Cantley.’

  ‘I saw them at Henley,’ Johnny said, ‘but not to speak to.’

  ‘The man riding up on the piebald cob, in the black stock and low-crowned topper, is the rector, Mr Kirby … he’s a hard man to hounds, Uncle Christopher says … That’s Lady Barbara Durand-Beaulieu, riding round from the stables. She looks very dashing in her habit and topper and veil now, but an hour ago she was mucking out the stables and grooming her own horse. All the Park grooms but one have joined up, and now she does the work of about three of them. You’ve met her sister at Uncle John’s … Lady Helen, who’s working as a farm girl for them now, since … well, I can’t tell you about that… That’s Arthur’s wife, in nurse’s uniform, on the steps. She was a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital in London before they were married … The man she’s talking to is Old Eaves, the secretary of the Hunt.’

  ‘Is that Lady Swanwick, coming out now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who’s the girl beside her? The very pretty one with auburn hair, in a black dress.’

  Louise Rowland laughed – ‘That’s her new lady’s maid, Florinda Gorse. Her grandfather’s the village poacher … and doesn’t mind serving for a few other villages, too. We passed her brother Fletcher on the way … Remember the young man who said the scent wouldn’t be very good in some places, with this snow?’

  ‘I remember … Here comes Stella.’

  They were coming up the drive in a bunch, having met outside the Green Man in Walstone to ride the last mile together to the meet – Squire Cate, John Rowland, and Naomi in front, Laurence and Guy and Stella behind – John in pink, with immaculate breeches and boots, Cate in black, both silk hatted; Stella, Naomi, and the boys in grey and brown, with bowler hats, and leather or canvas leggings.

  Rachel Cowan muttered something under her breath and Johnny, not hearing clearly, turned to her, ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Cowan?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘It’s barbarous … but beautiful.’

  ‘Barbarous?’ Louise Rowland said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not barbarous, Mrs Rowland … that’s the wrong word … extraordinary … when men are being killed by the thousands in Flanders … and not five miles away, children have to walk barefooted, and go to bed hungry.’

  The two older women turned away, not precisely in rebuke but clearly not wishing to discuss the matter any further. This was the New Year’s Day meet of the North Weald hounds, their backs seemed to say: look at the farmers on their sturdy horses, come to the local nobleman’s estate, to share the hunt with him: look at the villagers on foot, come to see the splendour, standing respectfully back on the grass, allowed on this day and on the earl’s birthday to come and go freely in the Park; look at the earl himself, being helped up into the saddle now by a groom. This is what the men in Flanders are fighting for … so let us not discuss anything except the hunt, please.

  ‘Here’s the Governor,’ John said, reining in his big bay beside them. He raised his silk hat as his father and mother got slowly down from the Rowland, helped by Wright. Alice followed, and there was a flurry of greeting all round. Horses and riders were packing in more tightly on the gravel. Servants were coming out of the main entrance of the big house, and down the steps in a steady stream, each carrying a silver tray loaded with glasses.

  A manservant came up to them. ‘Stirrup cup, sir? Mrs Rowland?’

  ‘What is it? It’s Edwards, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, madam. Sloe gin on this side, cherry brandy the other.’

  They all took a drink, even Virginia being allowed a sloe gin by her mother.

  Then, as they were handing back their glasses, a hunting horn blared a call, not very surely blown. Johnny saw Lord Swanwick with the horn to his mouth, his cheeks red and puffed out.

  ‘Lord Swanwick has to hunt hounds himself,’ Louise Rowland said. ‘The huntsman left last month, to join the army.’

  ‘And he’s not very good at it,’ Virginia added, sotto voce.

  Lord Swanwick, Master of Foxhounds, rode slowly forward, past the pack on the edge of the grass and across the park, heading north-west. The whippers-in cracked their whips and the bitches followed the Master, sterns waving in a little moving forest, the whippers-in behind them. Then followed the riders in a loose mass, squire and rector, gentleman farmer and working farmer, tenant, lawyer, officer, doctor, magistrate, schoolboy and schoolgirl, and undergraduate.

  ‘What a splendid sight!’ Johnny murmured. This was the England he had wanted to fight for … and still did. He watched Stella ride past, talking to an older army officer he did not think he had seen before. They were riding close, Laurence on the officer’s other side, their heads turned towards each other as their horses walked on to the turf and then, following the Master’s example, broke into a trot heading for Ten Acre copse where, according to Virginia, hounds always found on New Year’s Day.

  They found in Ten Acre, as promised; that was not surprising, Stella Cate thought, since it was rumoured that Skagg regularly slipped a bagman there every New Year’s Day, early. But the fox, viewed only briefly by a few of the field, quickly headed for the Scarrow. The water brought hounds to their noses and although they cast along the banks upstream and down they could no longer own the scent.

  Assembled again on the south bank of the stream, Lord Swanwick beckoned to his whippers-in. The three sat close, their horses’ heads pushing together as the men discussed what to do next. The field waited a little apart, at the foot of the forty-acre plough the fox had crossed just after leaving the Park, there unfenced, and gone to the river.

  A gnome-like figure glided along the river bank, and, when it reached the three, touched a finger to its battered deerstalker. ‘Morning, my lord.’

  Swanwick looked up, frowning. The frown deepened when he recognized Probyn Gorse; but a reflex action made him answer the greeting with a grudging, ‘Morning.’

  ‘Looking for a fox, my lord?’

  ‘What the hell do you think we’re doing, Gorse?’

  ‘You’ll find one in Abbas Wood, my lord – a big dog … I saw him not half an hour ago. He’d heard the horns, but I don’t expect he’ll want to move.’

  Swanwick looked at him suspiciously. He returned to the whippers-in: ‘What do you think?’

  The elder, Billing, said, ‘It’s as likely as not, my lord. Probyn would know better’n me.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Snodgress, the other whipper-in, said.

  The earl continued to frown, but suddenly made up his mind. ‘Well, take hounds up the side, Billing,’ he said. ‘Snodgress, you take the field to the east edge of Abbas Wood. If the fox breaks covert, hold the field till he’s clean free of the wood, or he’ll just double back in.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  The horn twanged, the whips cracked. Snodgress put the field into a trot, and they headed for Abbas Wood. At Stella’s side Captain Irwin said, ‘Let’s hope we get a longer run this time.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, smiling at him. He was quite old, over thirty certainly, and he had a funny narrow small head and narrow shoulders … but he was so brave, badly wounded at Uncle Quentin’s side in France. The way he looked at her made her feel warm and beautiful. And his being older meant that she could trust him, turn
to him for advice in the way that she turned to her father … more so, really. From the corner of her eye, as the horses trotted heavily up the sloping field, mud clots flying from their hooves, she saw the family group following the hunt on foot, as best they could. Johnny Merritt was waving at her … she waved her crop back. Johnny was very nice; but he seemed so young in comparison with Captain Irwin, and sometimes he didn’t know quite what to do, and that made her feel awkward, for she didn’t know what to do, either. Captain Irwin always knew what to do, and always made you feel confident, because he was in charge, and he knew, whether it was ordering China tea at the South Eastern, walking in the Park, or helping you into a taxi, or on to a horse. He limped a little from his wound and would probably never be able to go back to France, which disappointed him terribly, he said. She was glad though, not only for his sake, because he would not be killed now, but for her own … she did not know where she was going with him, but she wanted to complete the journey, and that was a new and exciting emotion for her. A year ago it would have been unthinkable; now, because of the war, it wasn’t. Danger and the unknown were all about. They frightened some, appalled others; she welcomed them, and went towards them.

  Her brother was glancing at her strangely. Perhaps she looked strange. Laurence could see things about people most others couldn’t. She smiled at him, and he looked away.

  Half an hour later, in the field waiting outside Abbas Wood, everyone sat more firmly down in the saddle as the shrill music of the bitches came closer through the trees, to the distant crash of boughs as the Master and Billing brought them on. Guy jammed his bowler down on his head, John his top hat. Naomi eased the reins as her mare jiggled and danced side-ways under her. Old Eaves put away a brandy flask and the rector clapped his horse’s neck, crying, ‘Ready, Springer?’

  The fox slipped out of the wood thirty yards further along. Snodgress shouted sharply, ‘Hold hard, gentlemen, please!’ The leading hounds burst out of the wood with a crash of music like pealing bells. The fox was a hundred yards clear, streaking across the hill to the eastward. Snodgress yelled at the top of his voice ‘Gone awa-way, gone awa-way!’ and galloped after the pack. The Master emerged from the wood at full gallop, twanging his horn as he went. Closely followed by Billing, he cleared the post-and-rail fence in a long, low arc.

  ‘Here we go,’ Captain Irwin said. He jabbed his spurs into the horse and away they all went, helter-skelter after the fox, the hounds, the Master, and the whippers-in.

  Hounds picked up a big dog fox in Abbas Wood after noon, and ran strongly eastward. After a two-mile point past Lacey’s Farm, Almshouses, and Drabblegate, there seemed to be danger that Reynard would reach Whitmore Woods or Thickthorp Spinney and go to ground in one of the many warrens there; but pedestrians and bicyclists following the hunt turned him and he ran right-handed past Gladwin’s Mark, Benty Grange, and Thin Withins, and crossed the Hobsdon Brook at Lambs’ Holes after another twenty minutes without a check. Then Charles James crossed the railway, indeed ran along it and disaster was narrowly averted as a passenger train nearly ran over hounds, stopping just in time.

  The landowner there had masked the railway’s considerable fence with a thick hedge. The bitches, running hard on a burning scent, scrambled through and down the side of the shallow cutting, then along the railway lines, the fox almost in view. The Master, swearing at the top of his voice, had followed, with Billing close on his heels. Then they saw the train, coming from the direction of Hedlington. The driver was leaning out of the cab, the whistle blowing continuously. The Master stood in his stirrups, purple in the face, waving his crop. ‘Stop, you blasted idiot!’ he bellowed. ‘Can’t you see hounds are on the line? Stop!’

  The wheels screeched as steel ground on steel. The engine driver and fireman hung out, watching, for there was nothing more they could do. Billing cracked his whip and yelled obscenities at the hounds. A lady in immaculate black put her big grey at the hedge, cleared it with ease and slid down the bank on to the railway lines. The Master shook his fist at the engine driver, thundering, ‘I’ll have your job for this! Stop, you bloody idiot!’

  The driver took his pipe from his mouth and said, ‘I ’ave. An’ you an’ your dogs are on railway property, mister.’

  The earl managed to give the impression that he was dancing in the saddle with rage. The engine had indeed stopped. It was an old Stephenson inside-cylinder o-6-o of London, Chatham & Dover ancestry and now stood hissing and breathing deeply. Passengers’ heads popped out of windows all down the train. The Master swung his horse round furiously on the lady with the big grey and yelled, ‘Hold hard, you miserable bitch! Your bloody horse is trampling hounds!’

  ‘All right, Master,’ the lady said equably. She turned the grey’s head and put him at the bank and the fence and high hedge on top.

  The earl was back at the side of the engine, still yelling and shaking his crop. Billing had moved the hounds well to one side.

  Guy, at the top of the bank outside the hedge, said to Stella, ‘It must be a strange feeling, to be on horseback and still have to look up at someone.’

  The driver put his engine in motion and at the same time let loose a powerful blast on the whistle. Lord Swanwick’s horse gave one tremendous buck, hurling the earl off on to the grass beside the line, and then stood still. Some of the train passengers gasped, some cheered. Billing was off his horse, helping the earl to his feet. Swanwick was hurling epithets at the departing engine driver.

  Guy said, ‘What terrible language his lordship uses. I bet you don’t even know half the words, Stella.’

  Stella sniffed, and Captain Irwin said, ‘A Master of Foxhounds can say things, in the field, that would get anyone else banned from decent society.’

  The scent was soon picked up again at Tinker’s Corner. Hounds ran strongly past Coltishall and the Whin, left-handed by Brockets, Nether Loads, and Black Horse Common. Now Reynard was tiring and hounds killed in Mr Stammer’s Lower Thirty Acre at three o’clock. The Master awarded the mask to Miss Naomi Rowland, daughter of Mr and Mrs John Rowland of High Staining, Walstone; and the brush to Miss Jane Felton, daughter of Mr and Mrs Arthur Felton, of Cantley.

  Stella had the fox in view for most of the last ten minutes, its strength failing as the hounds tore after it, bursting through and leaping over hedges, heads up and running to view. The lane from the railway station to Felstead ran by the edge of Mr Stammer’s fields, and half a dozen followers of the hunt were there as the fox passed – Probyn and Fletcher Gorse, Rachel Cowan, Virginia Rowland, and Johnny Merritt; Louise and Fiona Rowland had earlier turned back for their homes.

  The leading couple of bitches jumped at the fox simultaneously, one from each quarter, as the fox turned at bay, its hindquarters sinking to the ground. The hounds’ weight brought it down, and in a moment a dozen others were on it, snarling and tearing. Others yelped and bayed and tried to burrow into the heaving mass of bodies. Then Billing was off his horse, his whip cracking as he waded into the pack – ‘Garaway, Arrogant, garaway, Antic! Damsel, Joyful, Shatterer, Actress – garaway boick!’ His whip thong cleared a circle round the torn carcass of the fox. The Master unsteadily quavered the ‘kill’. The leaders of the field were up, leaning forward to take their weights off the saddles of the foam-streaked hunters. Naomi was there, perspiring, dirty, radiant; Stella, who’d jumped the last three hedges blind, not caring in her wild excitement what lay on the other side; Irwin, who’d followed her, his heart beating fast; Guy; Christopher Cate, coming now … the rector, a dozen others … John and Laurence …

  Billing knelt beside the fox, took a knife from a sheath at his side, under his coat, and severed the head completely from the body. As the bitches eagerly watched, he cut off the fox’s brush. Then he picked up the headless, tailless corpse and held it over his head. ‘Tear ’im and eat ’im!’ he brayed, and flung it to the hounds. The bitches quickly reduced the carcass to scraps of blood-flecked fur.

  Billing picked up the mask and
brush and looked enquiringly at the Master. Lord Swanwick glanced round to see who was up. ‘Here,’ he said, reaching down, took the trophies from Billing’s hand, and walked his horse towards Naomi’s. Then he brushed the bloody stump of the brush across her face, before giving her the mask. ‘Well ridden,’ he said. ‘That’s a mask worth having. And perhaps it’ll help you persuade your father to take the hounds.’

  ‘Thank you, Master,’ Naomi said. Under the streaked blood on her face she was blushing with pride. Her father was clapping her on the back, Virginia running forward to congratulate her, while the Master performed the same blooding ceremony on a girl of about fourteen mounted on a chestnut pony, who had been up at the death. After blooding her, the Master gave her the brush, which she nonchalantly stuffed between the buttons of her coat, like a horn.

  In the lane twenty yards away Rachel Cowan muttered, ‘Incredible!’

  ‘What is?’ Johnny asked.

  ‘Naomi – she’s my best friend … thoroughly civilized, gentle. Look at her! Covered with an innocent animal’s blood, beaming. Oscar Wilde’s definition is too simple.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He described foxhunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable … only most of them are such nice people, like Naomi, and Mr Rowland. No wonder foreigners don’t understand the English. Do you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Johnny said cautiously: though, to tell the truth, he was becoming surer every day he spent in England that he did not understand the English, even those whose background and education would seem to have been very similar to his own. He was about to tell Rachel so, when his attention was diverted by catching sight of Stella, now behind most of the field, with Captain Irwin at her side. Johnny could not see clearly through all the people and horses but he thought the captain had taken her hand briefly to his lips. No one else seemed to have seen. Perhaps they all had their backs turned. Perhaps he himself had not really seen it. He forced himself to think of something else. His father was returning to New York in a week’s time. Soon after that he, Johnny, would have to start writing the informal progress reports. He’d better have a uniform plan for all of them: start with the war, telling his father what he could that was not in the newspapers for him to read for himself … come down to the state of Britain as a whole – the spirit of the people, what was on their minds, what were their opinions … then Hedlington, the Jupiter Motor Company, and its employees … He should try to warn his father of what might be expected in the near future; it wouldn’t be sensible to try to read too far ahead. He’d better make some contact with Mr Ellis, the local MP, to hear what was going on behind the scenes at Westminster, and to press for government orders …