Animal Instincts

by Alan Titchmarsh

  He looked at his watch. Half past nine. Time he set off for Baddesley Court to meet Jinty. His heart lifted – and lifted more than it ever had in that land of sun and sea, where warm valleys produced fine wines and fine horses, where the locals boasted that they had ‘no worries’, and where Heather would be waiting for him to return. Or would she, by now, have made other arrangements? It was time they spoke again, he reminded himself.

  The landscape ahead was cool and green, with no vineyards or stud farms, only daffodils and sheep, countryside he had once called home, would soon call home again. He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of the Barbour and set off on a brisk walk to Baddesley Court.

  “You look the part!” She greeted him with a peck on the cheek.

  “It was the best I could do without looking like a refugee or a hooray Henry.”

  “Well, it’s a reasonable compromise.”

  “Not as reasonable as yours.”

  Instead of the cream jodhpurs and navy blue jacket she would have worn to ride, Jinty was decked out in jeans and green Wellingtons, her white Aran sweater covering her injured arm, and a Barbour over her shoulders. Her hair was held back under a silk scarf.

  “Mmm. I’m not sure about the headgear,” she confessed. “Makes me look like something out of Country Life. All I need is the string of pearls. But at least it covers up my bald patches.”

  “They’re growing now.”

  “Not fast enough.” She linked her good arm through his. “Do you want to walk or do you fancy a lift? Charlotte’s coming with the boys.”

  Kit raised his eyebrows.

  “All right, we’ll walk.”

  “Aren’t we a bit early?”

  “No, there’s a hunt breakfast before they set off. By the time we get there they should be well stuck in. Hope they leave us some.”

  “Has Roly gone?”

  “Yes. Just been down to the stables to see him off. He’s taken Allardyce and Seltzer. He’ll change horses around half past one. God, I wish I was riding!”

  He looked at her pallid complexion. “Look, why don’t we go with Charlotte? Never mind the dogs. You ought to take it easy.”

  “Stop fussing,” she said sharply, and he was surprised at her sudden burst of irritation. “I’ve been taking it easy for more than a week. I need to get back into the swing of things.”

  “But–”

  “Oh, come on.” She pulled at his arm and led the way to the track that crossed the fields to Lynchampton House. He hesitated.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but noticed that her thoughts were elsewhere. She was leading him determinedly in the direction of the hunt. Her mind was on that.

  The scene outside Lynchampton House reminded Kit of a table-mat. He had not seen so much horseflesh since he had left Australia. On the curved gravel drive, and spilling out across rough grass that could no longer be called a lawn, were more horses than he had ever seen at one time, their riders jacketed in black and dark green, navy blue and hunting pink.

  “Why so many?” he asked Jinty.

  “It’s a joint meet. The green jackets are from the Beaufort.”

  Kit looked at the riders and their different liveries. Most were women, exquisitely turned out, their hair in nets beneath black velvet riding hats, their jackets black or navy blue, their jodhpurs a soft shade of yellow – the colour of crème caramel. One turned round in her saddle and flashed him a smile. He thought he recognised the rider, almost called out a greeting, then realised his mistake and gave a half-smile in reply. He watched as the woman walked her horse past the row of boxes, and shivered suddenly at the reawakening of a distant memory.

  The men, some in brilliant scarlet hunting pink, some in black with silk top hats, and the Duke of Beaufort’s team in dark green, were exchanging pleasantries, as long as their horses would allow them to stay in one place.

  Jinty led the way to the back of the house, a large stately pile in red brick with pale stone crenellations and finials about its upper edges. Rooks cawed noisily from the treetops as they walked around a large pond edged with primroses towards a wide, barn-like stable where trestle tables and folding chairs had been vacated at the end of the hunt breakfast.

  Down one side of the floor space, several aproned farmers’ wives stood behind a long table upon which an assortment of frying-pans were being cleared of the remains of a breakfast.

  “Coo-ee! Miss Jinty!”

  They turned to see Mrs Flanders staggering towards them with a pile of dirty plates.

  “Fancy a bacon sandwich? With an egg? Think we can probably find you one.”

  Jinty shook her head and turned to Kit. “How about you?”

  “Love one, Mrs Flanders – and you should have one too,” he told Jinty. “Fuel you up for your walk.”

  “Not my sort of food. Too fattening.”

  He squeezed her gently around the waist. “I think you’ve room for an inch or two after your little local difficulty.”

  “Cheeky thing. I’ll watch you eat yours and even that will probably put pounds on me.”

  Mrs Flanders pointed them in the direction of one of the frying-pans, and a plump old lady with round-framed glasses beamed at them and cracked an egg into bubbling fat. “Sir Roland’s Leghorns. Fresh this morning. Been keeping ’em back just in case. Nice to see you up and about, Miss Jinty. We was a bit worried about you.”

  Jinty smiled ruefully. “Thank you, Mrs Maidment. It’s very kind of you.”

  Mrs Maidment concentrated on frying, checking the rashers of bacon in the adjacent pan through her misty, fat-spattered lenses. “Crisp or soggy?”

  “Crisp, please.” Kit looked sheepishly at Jinty, now feeling guilty at the prospect of his tasty sandwich.

  As they walked out into the open air, Kit could barely remember an egg and bacon roll tasting so good. He was mopping his chin with a hanky when another hunt follower came round with a tray of plastic glasses, each containing a deep red fluid.

  “Stirrup cup?” she offered.

  “That’s more like it,” remarked Jinty.

  They took the ruby port from the beaming dumpling of a lady, and sipped at it, standing among the horses, Kit anxious for her arm, and Jinty rather impatiently fielding solicitous enquiries as to her health.

  Elderly ladies in quilted green jackets with black Labradors at their heels came and spoke to her; hunky young men on horseback bent to offer her a kiss, and the sun rose steadily in the sky over the girl whose pale green eyes danced like moonbeams on the sea as she flirted.

  Kit looked around him at the assorted population – landed gentry and men of the soil in equal measure. There were a few chinless wonders, and women with hearty voices whose ruddy cheeks looked like a relief map of the Volga delta. Patrician tones, male and female, boomed out over the grass, but so too did the earthy voices of farmers and labourers.

  “Reckon he’s down in yonder copse,” said one old man. “Missus saw ’im this mornin’.”

  “Long gone by now, then,” opined another.

  Clusters of elderly men in flat caps, with binoculars slung round their necks, and women in waterproof jackets, their bottoms resting on shooting sticks, pointed at this horse, then that one, remarking on the finer points of a hock or criticising an ugly conformation. Children in jeans and wellies leaned idly on the low wall at the front of the house, and from beyond them all came the discordant music of hounds giving tongue.

  The sound grew louder, until the canine army spilled round the corner with the huntsman at their centre. Perched high upon a chestnut mare, Titus Ormonroyd was no longer a glass-eyed, bow-legged man in dirty overalls. In his blood-red jacket and faded black velvet cap he looked like a king or like Jove in his Chair, surveying his kingdom from on high.

  Beside him was the Master of the Beaufort, in green jacket, calling to his hounds like a headmaster endeavouring to keep control of a class of rowdy adolescents. “Come on . . . hold up together!” he
bellowed.

  Titus, seeing Kit and Jinty, winked and raised his cap, before the Master shouted once more at a recalcitrant hound who had scented egg and bacon rolls and was off on a chase of his own.

  “Paleface – go on,” yelled the Master, and a couple of followers did their best to repel the hungry member of the pack who preferred the taste of pig to that of fox.

  “Aren’t these Titus’s hounds, then?” asked Kit.

  “No. The Beaufort bring their own.”

  “So he’s not in charge today?”

  “Oh, he’s still the huntsman. He’ll still tell the Master where he thinks the fox will be.”

  “I see.”

  At this point a higher-pitched yapping joined the contralto tones of the hounds, and Charlotte approached them with her two pompoms on leads. Jinty saw her coming. “I think Uncle Roly’s waiting until these two are out of the way before he makes an appearance.”

  Charlotte passed them at speed. “I’m just putting these two in the car. Bit high-spirited today,” she offered, as she was swept along almost horizontally behind the delinquent dogs.

  “Make sure you leave a window open,” Jinty shouted after her. “Sun’s up.” She turned back to Kit. “Which means there won’t be much of a scent. Not a good day for hunting.”

  “I thought it was a lovely day,” he said, looking up at the pale blue sky with just the occasional wisp of linen-white cloud.

  “Better scent when it’s cold and wet. Sad but true,” and she dug her good elbow into his side. “Here comes the boss.”

  Sir Roland Billings-Gore came round the corner of Lynchampton House with Major Watson. The Major was mounted on a grey and Roly on Allardyce, whose flanks shone in the noonday sun. He walked the horse over to where they stood and raised his cap to Jinty. “All right . . . what? Feelin’ all right?”

  “Fine thanks. He looks good.”

  Roly leaned down and slapped Allardyce’s neck. “Fine feller. Seltzer’s . . . er . . . in the trailer. Later on. Mmm. Not much scent, though, eh?”

  “Probably not. Still, you never know,” offered Jinty.

  “Where’s Titus?”

  Kit pointed to the other side of the lawn, where Titus and the Master of the Beaufort were engaged in conversation.

  “Ah . . . yes. Well, good huntin’?” He beamed and prompted Allardyce to walk in the direction of his huntsman.

  “Do they kill many?” asked Kit.

  “About fifty brace a year,” replied Jinty.

  Kit whistled. “That’s a lot.”

  “We’ve got a lot of foxes.”

  “How many hounds?”

  “Sixteen and a half couple – the Beaufort have more, I think.”

  “What sort of language is that? Why can’t you just say thirty-three?”

  “Because we don’t.”

  “And why a half?”

  “Need one to catch the fox. Come on.”

  Kit knew the complicated logic of foxhunting but continued to tease as they walked towards the twin brick pillars that sat at either side of the drive. Jinty motioned him to sit on the low wall. Before them now, displayed like some cinematic panorama, was the vista of a Devon valley – clumps of trees and copses scattered at intervals over the greening hills and valleys.

  “Wow!”

  “Good view, isn’t it?”

  “Amazing. I’ve never been to this house before.”

  “It’s why I wanted to come. We shouldn’t need to walk very far. We can watch for a while from here – they’ll probably be led off down there.” She pointed to a distant patch of woodland. “Titus reckons they might be in luck.” She turned her head to the right to look down the lane that approached the drive of Lynchampton House. “But I’m not sure that we are.”

  Kit looked in the direction of her gaze, to see a small group of people approaching. They were clad in combat jackets and balaclavas. They carried placards and sticks, and they were not in pursuit of a creature with four legs.

  Chapter 22: Woundwort

  (Stachys arvensis)

  “Do they always come?” asked Kit.

  “No. Never seen them before. It’s usually the local RSPCA ladies in their old Range Rover. Placards and stuff – FOXES BEING MURDERED IN YOUR AREA TODAY. That sort of thing. We have a good relationship with them.”

  “Well, I don’t like the look of this lot.”

  “Nor me. Come on, let’s go back inside the grounds.”

  Kit and Jinty made to move off, but the gang of around fifteen individuals had already spotted them and began to shout, “Fox killers! Murdering bastards!”

  As though on cue, the hunt rounded the front of the house, the hounds spilling out ahead of the horses as the shrill ta-roo, ta-roo of the horn goaded them on. Titus and the Master of the Beaufort led the field, clattering out of the drive amid the sea of hounds.

  Jinty and Kit flattened themselves against a pillar to one side of the entrance as the horses came through at the trot, at which point the saboteurs, now maybe twenty yards away, held up their placards and began spraying the road with aerosols.

  “Away, away!” shouted Titus, as he rode through a side gate and into a field to avoid the gang and their attempt to put the hounds off the scent.

  Seeing their quarry take avoidance tactics, the gang ran forward, but as the number of riders and mounts increased, they slowed, positioning themselves to one side of the turning phalanx of horses.

  Two of the gang rushed forward, pushed their placards up into the faces of a pair of riders – a young boy, whose horse shied, then galloped off ahead of the field, and a robust middle-aged woman who struck out with her riding crop, dislodging the cardboard, which read, ‘HOMICIDAL FOX KILLERS’.

  Other members of the gang surged into the fray as the last of the riders rounded the corner and turned into the sloping field. Most of the horses were cantering away on the lower slopes now, and only the laggards remained. Sticks were raised and with angry cries the balaclava army ran at the last few, waving their weapons high in the air.

  One of the horses began to turn in its own circle. The rider, a girl of twelve or thirteen, did her best to rein it in – a fourteen-hand piebald cob – but was clearly having difficulty. She called in vain at her horse: ‘Bessie, no! Come on! Bessie!” Jinty, unable to restrain herself, started to run at the saboteurs to shield the girl, but Kit saw what she intended and cut her off, interposing himself between the saboteur and the young girl’s mount.

  The stick came down on his head with a resounding crack, and stars flashed in front of him as his knees buckled and a red curtain descended over his right eye. His head throbbed and buzzed as Jinty cried, “Get off!” Through his one good eye, Kit saw her run at the saboteur who had hit him.

  He lunged forward to protect her and came face to face with a smaller saboteur, whose eyes and a wisp of fair hair were the only things visible under the camouflage of the thick balaclava. “No!” yelled the small figure, and the one with the stick raised above Jinty’s head backed away and ran off down the lane with the rest of the tiny army in its wake.

  Kit squinted at the hazy figure who had shouted, but within moments it, too, had fled. The only people who remained in the lane were the foot-followers who had not yet made their way down the field.

  Jinty rushed to his side, pulling a handful of tissues from her jacket pocket to staunch the blood that was flowing from a cut in his eyebrow.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, panic in her voice.

  “I think so.” Kit slumped on to the low wall. “Ow! It bloody hurts.”

  “Just keep still. Put your head up, if you can, and hold this tissue to it. Press hard.”

  Three more hunt-followers ran up, one carrying a first-aid case. Within a few minutes Kit’s face was cleaned of blood and a large plaster with a wad of cotton wool beneath it was stuck above his eye.

  “I think you’d better come with me,” said the voice of the older man who was now repacking the first-aid case. Kit looked at
him. It was Dr Hastings.

  “I think you’ll need a couple of stitches. I can do them at the surgery.”

  “Can’t I just–”

  “I think it would be a good idea. It’s a deep cut.”

  Kit looked at Jinty. “I’ll come with you,” she said, concern etched into her face.

  They were interrupted by a shriek. The small group turned in the direction from which it had come to see Charlotte running up the lane from where the cars were parked on the wide grass verge. “I don’t know what they’ve done! I don’t know what they’ve done!”

  “What on earth . . .” began Jinty.

  “My boys! They’ve hurt my boys!” Charlotte’s voice cut through the air in a heartrending wail, as she turned and raced back down the lane with the party of hunt-followers hard on her heels. When they reached her car, they saw her two dogs on the back seat, their eyes streaming with mucus, their breath coming in short gasps. No longer the yapping bundles of fluff they had been but half an hour ago, the only sound that came from them now was a pathetic whine.

  “What shall we do?”

  Dr Hastings was swift to give his opinion. “Get them to the vet – now! I’ll drive. Get in.” With Charlotte in the front seat beside him, and Kit and Jinty in the back with the two wheezing dogs, Frank Hastings put his foot down and burnt rubber all the way to the veterinary practice in Lynchampton. By the time they arrived, Lancelot and Bedivere were no longer breathing.

  Chapter 23: Mourning Widow

  (Geranium phaeum)

  Roly gazed into the fire, a glass clenched in his right hand. “Just can’t understand it. Never any bother before. RSPCA ladies very well behaved. But this . . .” He took a gulp of his whiskey.

  Kit was seated in the armchair opposite, the large plaster replaced with neat sutures. He took a sip from his own glass and felt the amber liquid burn down his throat. “Hasn’t it happened before?”

  “Maybe once in the last five years. Never this bad. So much huntin’ down here. Competition too stiff for ’em.”

  “Why now?”

  “Lord knows.”

  Kit rubbed his head. “I just can’t see how they can justify harming other animals when they’re trying to protect the fox.”