The Crowstarver

by Dick King-Smith

  They reached the lambing-pens just in time to see the shepherd in the act of drawing a lamb from a ewe. He was holding the baby’s forelegs, and he pulled, gently but strongly, in concert with the mother’s contractions, till, with a slippery run, out upon the straw came the newborn lamb, limp and wet and stained with birth fluid. Quickly Tom cleared its mouth and pumped its forelegs around till he was satisfied that it was taking its first gulps of air. Then he placed the lamb by the head of the ewe and she began to lick at it.

  ‘He’s a big one, isn’t he, Tom?’ Kathie said.

  ‘He is,’ said Tom, ‘and awkward too. He had his head turned back and I had a bit of a job with him. Just as well there wasn’t a twin behind him or it might have been in trouble.’

  Spider was watching the ewe as she worked on the lamb, blatting softly at it while it shook its head about and sneezed and struggled to rise. He pointed at it. ‘Good un, Dada,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right, Spider my son,’ said the shepherd. ‘Got the same birthday as you too. Tell Dada how old you are today.’

  His age was one of the things Spider had learned over the past year. Now he grinned his lopsided grin and proudly held up his right hand, fingers and thumb extended.

  ‘That’s five, love,’ said Kathie. ‘That’s what you were yesterday. Today you’re six.’

  Spider looked from one to the other, puzzled.

  ‘One more, son,’ said Tom and he held up his own left thumb.

  Spider copied him. Then he looked at his hands, at the four fingers and, now, the two thumbs. ‘Spider six?’ he said on a note of query.

  They nodded, smiling.

  So Spider set off down the line of pens with his splayfooted walk. In some there were ewes with twins, in others one with a single lamb, while in two pens there were ewes that had not yet given birth, one actually straining in the first stage of labour. To each and all in turn the boy cried in a loud excited voice ‘Spider six!’

  ‘Once lambing’s done,’ said Tom,‘we’re going to have to see about getting him into school.’

  ‘If they’ll have him,’ Kathie said.

  ‘Mister might help,’ said Tom.

  One day, admittedly a long time after Major Yorke had said that he would drop in and take a look at the shepherd’s adopted son, he did so, and realized immediately that the child was abnormal. To Kathie of course he only said ‘A dear little chap,’ but at home he said to his wife, ‘You remember that strange business a few years back when someone abandoned a newborn baby in the lambing-pens, and then Tom and Kathie Sparrow took him on?’

  ‘Of course I remember,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, I’ve just seen the child and he’s half-witted, no doubt of it.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mrs Yorke. ‘You must be the last person in the valley to know, I suppose because your head’s always full of hounds and hunting. I’ve been to see him several times, poor little fellow. Of course he’s retarded, but there’s something rather taking about him.’

  ‘Damn bad luck on the Sparrows,’ said Major Yorke.

  ‘Maybe you can do something to help, later on, when the boy’s older,’ his wife said. ‘Find him something to do on the farm, perhaps, something simple, just to keep him occupied.’

  ‘Huh!’ said her husband. ‘He doesn’t look strong enough to lift a sheaf of corn. Crowstarving’s about all he’ll be fit for by the look of him, walking up and down banging a sheet of tin with a stick to keep the birds off new-sown corn. Unless he improves a lot, which I don’t see how he can, because he’s never going to be fit to go to school.’

  On the morning after Spider’s sixth birthday, Percy Pound had sent Albie Stanhope to give Tom a hand at the lambing-pens. As Albie walked up the drove, he saw in the distance a horse and rider coming down towards him from the top lands of the farm. He quickened his pace and when he reached the shepherd’s hut, he called out ‘Tom! Mister’s coming!’

  ‘Well, you’d better look busy then, Albie lad,’ said Tom, who was eating his breakfast. ‘Start cleaning the pens.’

  But before Albie could begin, he heard the noise of hooves and then saw Mister dismounting.

  ‘Here, Albie,’ Major Yorke called, ‘hold my horse a minute, will you, while I have a word with Tom?’

  The horseman’s son obeyed with alacrity. He loved all horses, of whatever sort, and there was certainly an odd selection in the stables – the great shire mare Flower, several half-bred hairy-heeled carthorses, a couple of pensioned-off hunters used for light work, and even a large shaggy pony called Pony.

  But Mister’s big bay Sturdiboy was an aristocrat of his kind, and Albie was only too happy to stand at his head and stroke his velvety muzzle and talk to him in that special way that people who are fond of horses do.

  Inside the shepherd’s hut there was an exchange of ‘Good mornings’ and some general talk about the lambing, and then the farmer was about to leave again when Tom said ‘Have you got a minute, sir?’

  ‘Yes certainly,’ said Mister.

  ‘’Tis about Spider’s schooling.’

  ‘Spider?’

  ‘The boy, our boy.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘See, he’s just turned six, sir, and Kathie and me, we was wondering, could you have a word with the vicar’ (it was a Church of England school) ‘and perhaps he could speak to the headmaster, to see whether he’d take the boy, this summer term coming. He’s a bit slow, you see, sir, bit backward like.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Tom,’ said Major Yorke.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And look here, when he’s a bit older we’ll find something for him to do on the farm. He could lend a hand in the season, for a start.’

  ‘He’s fond of animals,’ said Tom.

  ‘Good, good. Anyway I’ll speak to the vicar.’

  Outside the gate of the lambing-pen there was a short length of old walling, and by this Albie Stanhope stood waiting, holding Sturdiboy. The bit of broken wall was of a height to serve as a mounting-block, and, using it thus, the farmer hoisted his bulk into the saddle.

  ‘Thanks, Albie,’ he said, and off he rode.

  ‘He’s a beauty, that horse,’ Albie said to Tom as he went to fetch wheelbarrow and fork. ‘I’d love to have a ride on ee. All I ever gets to sit on is Pony – father lets me have a go round the orchard when the foreman ain’t looking.’

  ‘You might get your dad’s job one day, when he retires,’ Tom said. Though my son, he thought, won’t ever be offered my job.

  Mister was as good as his word, and both he as a school governor and the vicar as another put the case of Spider Sparrow to Mr Pugh, the headmaster, with the result that, just before the end of the spring term, Kathie received a summons to bring her son in to the village school one afternoon.

  As they arrived, the children were just coming out to go home, the bigger ones by themselves, the smaller with their mothers, and as they streamed past, Kathie heard a lot of things said. Some were good-natured, like ‘Hullo, Spider!’ or ‘Good old Spider!’ but some children called out ‘Good un!’ in mockery, and some, she could see, were imitating Spider’s way of walking. Mercifully she did not hear a comment from one of the bigger boys.

  ‘Ee’d have frightened Miss Muffet to death, ee would!’ he said, amid the sniggers of his cronies.

  Spider, she could see, was scared at the sight of so many children and her heart bled for him. How would he manage at school without her to protect him? How would he stand up for himself? How, with his limited and often strange speech, would he make his needs known to the teachers?

  One side of her wanted him to become a schoolboy, to learn, even if that learning was only to be of the most basic kind – to write his name, to read a few words, to know some numbers. The other side of her half-hoped, as they entered Mr Pugh’s office, that the headmaster would not feel able to offer him a place, so that he could stay at home, with her, safe and protected.

  In the event, it was no co
ntest. Spider, already frightened by the crowd of children, now lost what wits he had. It mattered not that Mr Pugh was a kindly, fatherly sort of man, anxious to put at ease this boy of whom he already knew something from Major Yorke and the vicar. Spider simply clammed up.

  ‘Now then, young man,’ said the headmaster, ‘let’s see how much you know.’ He wrote in large capital letters on a piece of paper the word: CAT.

  ‘What does that say?’ he asked Spider.

  There was no answer.

  Mr Pugh pointed to each letter in turn, asking for their names, but Spider only looked up at his mother as though to say, ‘Take me away.’

  The headmaster opened a picture book, asking more questions about the illustrations but receiving no replies, except that when he showed a picture of a rabbit and asked what it was, Spider said in a small voice, ‘Barrit.’

  ‘Can he write his name, Mrs Sparrow?’ asked Mr Pugh.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he know any numbers?’

  ‘He knows how old he is.’

  ‘How old are you, Spider?’ said Mr Pugh, but even then in his confusion the boy only held up four fingers and a thumb.

  ‘He’s just six,’ Kathie said.

  There was a silence, while the headmaster looked at the little boy known as Spider and said to himself that there was no way such a child could be taught in his school.

  Nervously, Kathie said ‘He’s ever so clever in some ways, Mr Pugh. He’s wonderful with animals, any sort of animal, and he can copy the noises they make, to the life.’

  ‘Mrs Sparrow,’ said the headmaster, ‘it’s better if I’m frank with you. Your boy has got problems that I don’t think we can deal with. I’m sorry.’

  At these words Kathie suddenly and definitely felt, not disappointment, but relief. She watched Spider’s face as they walked home hand in hand, and the further they got from the school and the nearer to the cottage, the more it brightened.

  As they went in through the garden gate, Spider gave vent to the longest sentence of his life. ‘Spider not go school, Mum?’ he asked anxiously.

  Kathie shook her head.

  He grinned hugely. ‘Good un!’ he shouted.

  CHAPTER SIX

  There was no dairy herd on Outoverdown Farm. Instead, Mister bought in a large number of stirks, that is to say maiden heifers. These came from Ireland and were all Dairy Shorthorns. Though he knew he could rely upon the dealers to find him decent stock, he went over himself, each winter, ostensibly to check the quality of the animals on offer, but actually to get a week’s hunting with a well-known Irish pack.

  The Shorthorn stirks were varied in colour, red, red-and-white, white, and roan, and Mister ran them out on the downs, each bunch with its own bull. Then, eight months to a year later, they would go to Salisbury Market to be sold as springers, heifers, that is, that were approaching their first calving; ‘springing to calve’, as the term was.

  The bulls were all Aberdeen Angus, chosen for their placidity, but also because that breed tends to throw smallish offspring, so that the Irish heifers could calve more easily.

  These cattle, a hundred to a hundred and fifty of them on the farm at any one time, were Percy Pound’s special responsibility and interest. Of the other farm livestock, he well knew that he could entrust the care of the sheep to Tom Sparrow, of the horses to Ephraim Stanhope, and of the laying hens, which were also kept up on the downs in movable fold units, to Stan Ogle.

  Of the other farm men, Albie helped his father or Tom as and when needed, and Red and Rhode Ogle gave their father a hand with the daily moving of the folds. The Butts, Billy and his nephews Frank and Phil, were general farm workers, able to turn their hands to any job.

  The foreman liked nothing better than to ride his old Matchless 500 c.c. motorcycle up the drove, or indeed across the fields, and then to dismount and walk across the down to check the cattle. He thought there was no finer sight to see than, against a backdrop of rolling downland, a big bunch of those Shorthorn heifers moving across the grass in all their variety of colour, while with them, usually bringing up the rear on account of weight, shortness of leg, and general idleness of disposition, slouched the stout figure of a bull, coal-black and with not even the shortest of horns, for the Angus is a naturally polled breed.

  In the autumn Mister would often accompany his foreman on his rounds, so that between them they might pick out the most forward of the springers. Major Yorke was in the business of producing not milk but milkers and it was Percy Pound’s job to see that the springers left the farm in the best possible nick.

  On a fine September morning in 1936, farmer and foreman walked among one of the current bunches of heifers. In some ways the two men were alike. As well as having both served in the Great War, they were of an age, and each had a family of a boy followed by two girls.

  Physically they were very different. Mister was a big man, tall and stout and red-faced, with fair wavy hair. Percy was a head shorter, prematurely grey-haired, lean of build, his face etched with lines that were the legacy of pain as well as age.

  They looked at the cattle through somewhat different eyes. Major Yorke was a good judge of a horse or a hound, but he had come somewhat late to farming and lacked that stockman’s instinct that his foreman possessed in full measure. Whether or not he would have admitted this, he was wise enough not to dispute the other’s opinion of a beast.

  ‘A nice bunch, these, Percy,’ he said.

  In front of the other men Mister always addressed his foreman as ‘Mr Pound’, but it was ‘Percy’ when they were on their own.

  ‘And they’re well forward too,’ he added.

  Percy nodded. ‘Bull’s done his job, any road,’ he said. ‘There was one or two as I was a bit doubtful about but I reckon they’re all in calf now.’

  As he spoke, the Angus bull sauntered by, his black coat gleaming in the sunshine. ‘Lucky old bagger, aren’t you?’ said Percy. ‘So many wives as Solomon,’ and the bull rolled an eye at him in passing, comically, as though he understood.

  Master and man walked on across the down to look at the next group of springers, the farmer curbing his long strides to accommodate the limping pace of the other. The downland stretched away endlessly, the sky was as blue as a thrush’s egg, there was no sound but the singing of skylarks. No scene could have been more peaceful.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Percy,’ said Mister.‘How’s that boy of the Sparrows? I haven’t set eyes on him for a dog’s age.’

  ‘Kathie keeps him tied tight to her apron-strings these days,’ said Percy. ‘On account of some of the village boys.’

  ‘Tease him, do they? Call him names?’

  ‘T’was a bit more than that, back in the spring,’ Percy said. ‘There’s a gang of them go round together, kids of twelve or thirteen, and they frightened the life out of Tom and Kathie’s boy.’

  ‘How?’ asked Mister. ‘What did they do?’

  ‘They hunted him, sir,’ said Percy.

  ‘Hunted him? What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, it seems that Spider had been out in the garden and I suppose Kathie wasn’t keeping as sharp an eye on him as she did when he was little – he’s ten now, after all – and she looked out and he’d gone. She went off down the village, thinking he might have gone there, but when she got back, she found him hiding under the kitchen table. Shaking like a leaf he was, Kath said, and his clothes all torn and dirty, and cow-muck all over his face. She couldn’t get anything out of him – all he could say was “Bad boys! Bad boys!” A lorry driver I met told me he’d seen this gang of kids out in the fields, didn’t know who they were of course, and he’d stopped his lorry to watch. They were all chasing another kid. They must have come across Spider wandering about and thought they’d have a bit of fun with him. They were all barking, like a pack of hounds, and shouting “Tally-ho” and “Gone away!” and all that, and then they’d catch up with him – he can’t run fast, Spider can’t – and push him over and stand
round him laughing, and some of them growling and pretending to tear at him.’

  ‘Like hounds at a worry!’ said Mister.

  ‘Yes, and then he’d get up and stumble away, the lorry driver said, and they’d do it again. Till they got tired of it and left him, but not before they’d pushed his face in a cowpat.’

  ‘Wicked little devils!’ said Mister.

  ‘It’s the same with animals, isn’t it, sir?’ said Percy. ‘They’ll always turn on one of their own sort if it’s weak or crippled.’

  This last word led the farmer to say ‘Knee bothering you much these days, Percy?’

  ‘No sir,’ said Percy. ‘Not to speak of. Always better this sort of weather. It’s cold and wet it doesn’t like.’

  ‘How long is it now since you got your Blighty?’ Mister asked.

  ‘Twenty years.’

  ‘I was one of the lucky ones, I never got a scratch.’

  ‘They’re saying we might have to do it all over again,’ said Percy. ‘The way this Hitler bloke is going on.’

  ‘Except that it won’t be us the next time,’ said Major Yorke. ‘It’ll be our sons, your boy and my boy, they’ll be just of an age, as we were, by the look of things. The Great War, they call our one. Wonder what they’ll call the next one.’

  ‘You reckon it’ll come, sir, do you?’

  ‘Not yet awhile maybe. But before we’re much older, Percy, I fear it may.’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Percy.

  ‘Let’s hope He will.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But that hope was not to be fulfilled. Three years later, on 3 September 1939, Britain was forced, once more, to declare war upon Germany, and her young men, once more, took up arms.

  The only sons of both farmer and foreman enlisted within the first few weeks, one in the RAF, one in the county regiment. The younger ones amongst the farm men were not called upon to join the forces. They, and all others like them, were deemed to be in a reserved occupation, needed to stay where they were, to grow more food for their country. But the horseman’s boy, Albie Stanhope, lost no time in joining the Yeomanry. (Little did he know that soon they would lose their precious horses and become mechanized.) There was thus one fewer pair of hands on Outoverdown Farm, which led to Major Yorke speaking to Percy Pound, and Percy having a word with Tom Sparrow.