The Crowstarver

by Dick King-Smith

  He liked to be out in the open, he liked to be by himself, he enjoyed doing his carvings of animals, imitating the calls of animals, exercising the extraordinary hold he had over all creatures.

  He was totally unaware of his skills, as indeed he was ignorant of his shortcomings.

  In a nutshell, Spider was as unselfconscious as it is possible for a human being to be, and, having no worries, as happy.

  Mister and his wife were saying this, in so many words, as they sat at breakfast one morning.

  ‘I think he was happy before he got his dog,’ Mister said, ‘but he’s even happier now. Brilliant idea of yours, that was.’

  ‘I’d like to think he’ll be happy all his life,’ said Mrs Yorke.‘However long that may be. Now then, I’ll have some sandwiches made up. What sort would you like?’

  The Yorkes were having a day’s hunting. Throughout the War so far, a large landowner, who was a neighbour of theirs and a Master of Foxhounds, had managed to keep together a scratch pack, a mixed pack of ten couple of hounds, to give sport for the locals, and for officers on leave from the Forces, and of course for the farmers of the district who provided the kennels with flesh in the shape of livestock casualties, mainly calves and sheep.

  The hounds were meeting at this neighbour’s stately home, quite near, a few miles only beyond the southern boundary of Outoverdown Farm, so the Yorkes were hacking to the meet.

  ‘I’ve told Tom to move his sheep nearer home,’ Mister said to his wife as they trotted up the drove.‘I’m fairly sure those hounds are steady on sheep, but better safe than sorry. It’s quite possible a fox might run our way, on to the Far Hanging, say.’

  After they had disappeared from sight, two figures came out into the drove and followed them, one a tall thin boy with a strange gait, the other a long-legged gingery dog.

  In the carthorse stables that morning, Percy had given the men their orders while leaning, as always, on Flower’s great rump. The shire mare had long been used to this, and more recently to another attention, for Spider liked to stand at her head while the foreman was talking.

  At first he would just croon to her, stroke her muzzle, but then one morning he took from his pocket his usual paper bag of licorice allsorts, put one in his mouth and another on the flat of his hand and offered it to the mare. She sniffed at it and nuzzled at it with big soft rubbery lips. Then she accepted it, and from then on she would each morning nudge Spider with her great head, asking for this odd treat.

  She was still mumbling one of the sweets when Percy called, ‘Spider, come here a minute,’ and when he did, the foreman said ‘You can have the day off today, boy. It’s a nice day, and you’ve worked well this last week, so have a little holiday.’

  ‘Hol-i-day!’ said Spider. ‘Ta, Per-cy!’

  It was indeed a fine clear winter’s day, dry, not too cold, the sort of day in fact from a foxhunter’s point of view when scent would lie well.

  Spider, Sis at heel, went first for a walk along the bank of the Wylye. Whether or no he remembered his ducking, the river with its wildlife was always attractive to him, and there was the chance of a glimpse of the ‘hotters’. He saw none that morning, but sat, Sis still and silent at his side, watching a couple of water voles swimming across, their heads and backs showing above the water, an arrowhead ream trailing from each.

  Next he struck across the fields, calling in at his house in the spinney, remembering perhaps the ‘vox’ that had come to take food from his hand, and then he walked along the lynchets that terraced the last slope before the downs. Here were many rabbits, but Sis had now learned that these, like hares, were not for her to chase, and she trotted at her master’s heels without affording them so much as a glance.

  Meeting the drove at the point where it began to climb steeply, Spider turned up it, continuing his holiday walk and taking his usual pleasure in the peaceful scene and the creatures that inhabited it, while skylark song laced the clear sky above his head, until at last he came to the furthermost gate on the farm, that led to the Far Hanging, a great sweep of downland more than a hundred acres in extent.

  Never before had Spider been as far as the southern boundary of this farthest part of the downs, and now he set out across the springy turf towards it. Almost in the centre of the Far Hanging was a raised squarish grassy tumulus, a barrow perhaps a hundred yards in length, and in the side of this ancient earthwork were many rabbit buries and, amongst them, Spider noticed, one much larger hole.

  Suddenly he heard a noise in the distance, a noise that he had heard once before, from Slimer’s, and had not recognized. This time it was nearer, and though Spider had never in his life set eyes on a foxhound, he knew what kind of animals must be making this noise.

  Then he saw a different sort of animal coming over the ridge and making its way towards him.

  ‘Vox!’ said Spider softly, and he stood quite still, a hand on Sis’s head.

  Whether the hunted fox ever focused on the motionless figure before it is doubtful, so exhausted was it. Its red coat was darkened, its tongue lolled, its ears lay flat, its brush dragged.

  All the time the music of hounds grew louder, and now the pack came into Spider’s view as they topped the ridge, half a dozen riders not far behind them. Hounds’ heads were down as they followed the line, but though still distant they were making directly for him, for him and Sis.

  Spider had no fear for himself, but something, mercifully, told him that, apart from the fox, his reddish-coloured dog was also in mortal danger. Thankfully, one of the things that he had taught her was to go home when told, and now he gave the order and away she sped, far faster than any foxhound could have run.

  Before the hunters on horseback streamed the pack, heads up now for they could see their quarry. Beyond, the exhausted fox dragged itself desperately over the few remaining yards that lay between it and the mouth of its earth in the side of the barrow.

  But between the two, hunters and hunted, was running – if you could call such an awkward blunder ‘running’ – the gawky figure of a boy. He was trying, it seemed, to interpose himself between fox and hounds, hounds in full cry and intent on pulling down their fox at the end of a long chase.

  Frantically the huntsman galloped, whip cracking, the Yorkes and the others with him, to try to turn the pack before they overran the boy, but in vain.

  As the fox crept, with the last of his strength, into safety, so the leaders, but a few yards from his brush, reached Spider, and he tripped and fell, and the rest of the pack flowed over him.

  Kathie, bringing in washing from the line behind the cottage, saw Sis come in from the lane. She looked about for Spider but could not see him.

  At first Kathie was not especially worried. If anything had happened to Spider, if, say, he had had an accident, the dog would have stayed with him, surely? Oh, but then suppose he had sent her home to fetch help? Was he ill perhaps? He’d never been strong. She put on her coat and hurried out. Not far up the lane she met Ephraim, driving Flower in the big wagon.

  ‘Where’s Tom, Eph?’ she cried.

  ‘Up in the yard, putting up the lambing-pens,’ he said.‘I just come from there, took un up a load of straw.’

  Kathie hastened up the drove.‘Tom,’ she said when she found him, ‘I’m worried. Sis came home without Spider. Have you seen him?’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Seen Percy though, he said he’d given him the day off. He’ll have gone for a walk, I dessay.’

  ‘But why would he send the dog home?’

  Before Tom could answer, they heard the sound of hooves, and going out into the drove, looked up to see two riders coming down it. It was not until they came nearer that they saw there were in fact three riders, for though Mrs Yorke’s horse carried one burden only, Sturdiboy carried two. Behind Mister, long arms clasped around his scarlet coat, sat Spider.

  Tom helped him down, and the Yorkes told them all that had happened.

  ‘We were all absolutely horrified,’ finished Mister
. ‘He just disappeared under this wave of hounds, hounds with their blood up, that had been within an ace of killing their fox.’

  ‘But when we got to him,’ said Mrs Yorke,‘he was sitting up and the only danger he was in was of being licked to death. Every single hound in the pack seemed to want to wash his face, his hands, any bit of them they could lay a tongue on.’

  ‘He had his arms round a big dog-hound, Gambler it was,’ said Mister, ‘and it was wagging its stern off.“Bad dog” he was saying to it.’

  ‘Oh Spider!’ cried Kathie.‘Are you all right?’

  Spider nodded. Then he said ‘Bad dogs. Mustn’t hurt vox.’

  ‘If it had been any other boy,’ said Mister, ‘I dread to think what might have happened.’

  ‘He’s not like any other boy, sir,’ said Tom. ‘Thank God.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  At the time of Spider’s sixteenth birthday, in 1942, Tom did not get much help from him at lambing time, for the crowstarver was too busy at his first job. Mister was ploughing up larger and larger acreages of downland to grow more wheat and barley and oats for the War effort (and for his own profit – farmers have no objection to making money). Maggs’ Corner had been re-seeded to a three-year ley but Slimer’s was once again drilled with spring barley and the ‘croaks’ were as predatory as ever.

  A cold wet spell in April meant that after each sortie against the robbers, Spider was glad to seek refuge in his house.

  One day he had marched to the far end of Slimer’s, banging his old sheet of tin, blowing his whistle, and shouting ‘Ee-orr!’ and ‘Oo-ah! Oo-ah!’ Then he noticed a movement under the hedge at the top of the field and saw there a partridge with a brood of nine or ten little chicks. It was coming on to rain hard, and the mother bird was trying to shield her babies from the weather as it rapidly worsened. There was a sudden flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a rumble of thunder, and then the heavens opened and the rain came down in great sheets.

  For a moment Spider stood there, wondering what he could do for the hen partridge and her brood, and then, already soaked, he hurried back to the spinney and the shelter of his house. The storm continued for some while, as Spider sat on his wooden crate in his sodden clothes, Sis shivering beside him. He was as wet as if he had once more fallen in the Wylye, but when the rain relented, he saw the ‘croaks’ returning.

  Anyone else would have left them to their devices and gone off to change into dry clothing, but Spider took up his duties again, drenched as he was.

  By the time he reached home that evening he was shuddering with the cold and the wet, and Kathie hastened to put the old copper hip-bath in front of the fire and fill it with kettles full of hot water.

  Next morning Spider had a nasty cough, and Kathie suspected on feeling his forehead, a temperature.

  ‘I’m not taking him to the doctor’s in this weather,’ she said to Tom, for it was still cold and very wet.‘The doctor will have to come here. You go down and see Percy,’ (the foreman had a telephone),‘and ask him will he ring up?’

  When the doctor came he took Spider’s temperature and sounded his narrow chest. He spent some little time listening through his stethoscope.

  ‘He’s got a chill, Mrs Sparrow,’ he said.‘Keep him in bed. I’ll leave you some medicines, and I’ll look in tomorrow.’

  Standing, poking the fire that evening, Kathie suddenly said to her husband, ‘What’s to become of him, Tom?’

  ‘Don’t fret, Kath love,’ Tom said. ‘It’s nothing much, he’ll soon be better.’

  ‘No, I mean what’s to become of him when we’re gone?’

  ‘Dead, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. How will he ever manage on his own?’

  Tom got out of his chair and put his arms round his wife. ‘Come on now, love,’ he said. ‘We’re not that old!’

  Tom was at home when the doctor next came and again listened carefully to Spider’s chest. Then he said, ‘Goodbye, John Joseph,’ (at which Spider looked completely blank) and went downstairs.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve a lot to worry about,’ he said to Tom and Kathie. ‘Like I said, it’s just a chill.’

  ‘He’s not coughing so much today, doctor,’ said Kathie.

  ‘Good. His temperature’s down a bit.’

  ‘He’s never been ill in his life before,’ Tom said. ‘Bit short of breath sometimes, but never what you’d call ill.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said the doctor. He had not been long in the district and had not met the Sparrows before, though he had of course at once realized that Spider was mentally subnormal. He was a young man but yet an old-fashioned sort of a doctor, who believed among other things that it was always best to call a spade a spade, and so fought shy of sugaring his pills. He also thought that it was the job of the head of any household to take what knocks might threaten his family. Had he been a ship’s doctor, he would expect every man, in the face of disaster, to cry,‘Women and children first!’

  Accordingly now, having said his goodbyes to Kathie along with certain admonishments as to Spider’s treatment, he lured Tom to walk out with him by admiring the beauty of the cabbages in his garden.

  Then, when they reached his car, the doctor said, ‘I think it best that you should know, Mr Sparrow, that your boy has a slight heart problem. I didn’t want to worry your wife with it, but I have to tell you that he has what we call a heart murmur. I could hear it quite plainly through my stethoscope, it’s an abnormal rustling sound, quite unmistakable.’

  ‘Dear God!’ said Tom. ‘He’s abnormal enough as ’tis, poor lad.’

  ‘It may be nothing to concern yourself about,’ said the doctor, ‘but I thought it right to tell you. If he should show any symptoms of heart trouble in the future, we can have a much more thorough look at him. I shouldn’t worry your wife about it.’

  ‘What was he on about?’ asked Kathie when the doctor had driven away.

  ‘Oh, just chatting,’ said Tom.

  Thus it was that the shepherd, who had saved the life of the infant Spider sixteen years earlier, was now the only one to know that that life might possibly be threatened.

  Spider did not know of course, nor Kathie, nor Mister and his wife, nor Percy nor any of those who worked on Outoverdown Farm. Only Tom knew and only Tom worried, and even he, as haymaking passed and harvest time came and went, and Spider appeared in every way his usual self, began to be less concerned. Some days he never even thought about it.

  It was a wonderful summer for Spider. Early on, at the end of May, he stumbled upon a litter of fox cubs. There was an earth, part hidden by a stunted sentinel thorn bush, in one of the banks of the lynchets, and one day Spider saw from a distance the cubs come out to play.

  From then on he would go to see them whenever he could, gradually approaching nearer. Often the vixen scented and saw the silent watcher, but seemed not to mind.

  Spider would leave Sis at home on these occasions, telling her (in front of Kathie, so that she too would understand), ‘Spider go see baby voxes.’ Then he would walk up to the lynchets and sit and look down at the cubs, their coats still woolly and grey-brown, their tails small and pointed, playing tag, mock-fighting, scratching their fleas, and occasionally looking, bright-eyed and fearless, up at him.

  There were ‘hotters’ to watch too. The bitch in the willow-tree holt had given birth to three cubs in the spring, and Spider quite often saw the four of them – the dog otter, as was usual, had gone away elsewhere – in the daytime. Most otters sleep the day away inside their holts, but this family seemed to come out on purpose to greet Spider.

  One evening he saw, in the spinney, an animal he’d never before set eyes on. It was a thickset bear-like animal, that walked with a slow rolling shuffle, head and tail low. When it saw Spider, it did not flee but stood and stared at him, and then made a clucking sound of pleasure before passing him unconcernedly by. Spider soon found its picture in his old book, and Kathie told him its name.

  ‘Budger!
’ said Spider, smiling, and he clucked at her.

  Earlier in the year, a pair of house-martins had built their nest, a half-cup made of mud, under the cottage eaves; it was but a few feet from his bedroom window, and once the eggs were hatched, he could lean out and look up and watch the parents bringing insects for the four hatchlings, both birds in no way disturbed by his nearness.

  All creatures allowed him near – ‘barrits’,‘big barrits’, partridges, pigeon – any and every animal he met. It was as though all the wild life of Outoverdown Farm wanted to make the summer of 1942 a very special one for Spider Sparrow.

  It was not only the wild animals that gave him pleasure of course. There were the cattle and sheep, always glad to have him move among them, and Flower and his other friends in the carthorse stable, and, especially perhaps, the six once-wild broncos.

  These were now fit to be sold as riding horses, said Mister, and he had every intention of selling them, he told his wife. But somehow the months passed and still the four pintos, the sorrel and the buckskin continued to enjoy their freedom on the downs, and, when possible, the company of Spider.

  So summer prepared to give way to autumn, and Tom had almost completely forgotten the doctor’s visit and his words of warning. Then came one peerless day in late September, a Sunday it was, when the sun still shone warmly from an almost cloudless blue sky, and the breeze was gentle, and the Wylye Valley at its most beautiful. It was a day when, here on the wide Wiltshire downs, it did not seem possible to believe in the War with its daily bulletin of death.

  That afternoon Spider made it plain that he was going for a walk.

  ‘Not too far mind,’ said Kath, ‘and you be back in good time for your tea. I got a nice piece of meat for you and your father.’

  ‘What time, Mum?’ asked Spider, turning his wrist to look at the watch they had bought him for his sixteenth birthday present. It was a cheap one, they couldn’t afford better, but it kept good time, which Spider had learned to tell, after a fashion. He knew what it meant when the long hand pointed straight up, and Tom had taught him to count round the dial to tell what hour it was.