Nine Till Three and Summers Free

by Mike Kent

  MacKenzie took a step forward.

  ‘Where are you going to teach, my lad? Look at the animal counts you can do if you bung a few frames about in the Trussachs.’

  ‘I’d never thought of it that way. Fascinating.’ Miss Fosdyke agreed.

  ‘Right then. Choose your piece of ground and throw your frames on the sward. Keep to the grassier bits. And keep well away from each other. About twenty yard intervals. Off you go.’

  Each person took a frame and wandered off to find a piece of ground. Dudley grabbed my arm, and passed me a small package. ‘It’s a bar of Kendal mint cake, old boy,’ he said. ‘I found two packets of it in my coat. I’m afraid I don’t know how long it’s been there, but if it was good enough for Edmund Hilary it should be good enough to keep you going for half an hour.’

  I thanked him gratefully and gave half the packet to Duggan, who snapped off a chunk eagerly and bit into it. Miss Fosdyke wandered over to see if we had everything we needed.

  ‘Awfully beautiful morning,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Apparently it’s not going to last through the day though. Dreadful shame. First real sunshine this year, you know. You really are awfully lucky.’

  ‘Oh? And why is that?’ asked Dudley.

  ‘Why, the weather of course. You’re lucky to have such good weather for your study period. What is that you’re holding? Birdfeed?’ She looked at him strangely, as if wondering why she hadn’t noticed a person with a large black beard the day before.

  ‘Kendal mint cake. You wouldn’t like a small section, would you?’ Dudley asked generously. ‘Might as well finish it up.’ Miss Fosdyke looked surprised and peered at the packet closely.

  ‘I really don’t think you should be eating your lunch just yet, you know,’ she said. ‘I think Major Beddington agreed that we would all have our lunch together when we get to Barrow Hill.’

  ‘This isn’t my lunch, dear lady,’ Dudley replied. ‘It’s a medicinal compound my specialist requires me to take. I have an ingrowing bowel condition.’

  Miss Fosdyke took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Oh, how awful. I do apologise. That must be extremely painful. You won’t drop the paper on the floor, will you?’

  ‘I expect he’ll eat it,’ Duggan muttered.

  ‘Of course not. I have immense respect for the country code.’

  ‘Splendid. Has your group got a pooter?’

  Dudley looked blankly at her. ‘Frankly, I’m not sure, dear lady. I’ve got a bit of a cold. I couldn’t be certain if I have a pooter or not. Is it a medical condition?’

  ‘No no no, one of these, dear.’

  She took a small glass jar out of her bag with two transparent lengths of tubing attached to it. ‘If you wish to keep one of your frame specimens, you suck on this end, and the specimen is drawn up into the tube, here, and then it pops into the jar.’

  She handed one of the jars to him, turned to walk away, and then walked back again.

  ‘I say,’ she said, peering intently at Dudley, ‘You’re not the chappie who studies bees, are you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Dudley, rolling up his trouser legs and exposing his blindingly white legs to the sun, ‘but I’m very interested in bird migration and owls, if that’s any help.’

  ‘Really? How fascinating. You do look rather like him. He had a similar beard. Incidentally, it was mealy bugs, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Dudley, wondering what on earth she could be talking about.

  ‘Yes. I have to say I’m not at all surprised. I rather suspected phylloxera quercus, of course, but the snap was quite clear. Do you photograph, Mr… er…’

  ‘Hornpipe.’

  ‘Ah. Do you photograph, Mr Hornpipe?’

  ‘Very rarely. I’m afraid I don’t possess a camera.’

  ‘Oh. That is unfortunate. And how are you getting on?’

  ‘What with?’ Duggan asked blankly.

  ‘Your little job. What sort of results have you got?’

  ‘I’m afraid we haven’t started yet,’ I explained. ‘We were just about to begin when you joined us.’

  ‘Oh, I see, I see. Well, don’t let me spoil it for you. Just throw the frame, Mr Hornby, just throw it. It’s very simple.’ She wandered on to the next group, and Dudley watched her go, stroking his beard thoughtfully.

  ‘Strange old bird,’ he said. ‘Might be worth studying her instead of the owls. Right, please stand well back, I intend to propel my frame.’

  He took the metal frame from Duggan, looked at it cautiously for a second or two, and then raised it to his shoulder, lobbing it energetically in front of him. It flew in a jagged semi-circle like a faulty boomerang, and struck Major Beddington with great force in the back of the neck. The Major lurched forward, spun round, and gripped the back of his head with both hands.

  ‘Who the devil threw that?’ he roared, glaring round at the groups nearest to him and rubbing the back of his neck. Heads raised from poring over plants and metal frames, and Dudley stood quite still for a moment. Then he bounded over to the Major, hands outstretched.

  ‘Oh, look, I really am most terribly sorry, old boy,’ he apologised cheerfully, laying a meaty hand of reassurance on the Major’s shoulder. ‘I had no idea it would travel like that. I do apologise. I don’t know how it managed to go like that at all.’

  ‘You bloody fool!’ the Major shouted, a portion of his neck turning the colour of a cooked beetroot. ‘I said throw the frame, not try and hurl the bloody thing into the sea. What’s the matter with you, man? First I find you trying to break into the place at midnight, then I’m told you need twice as many beds as anybody else. And now you try to kill me. Are you supposed to be a training college student or a bloody hired assassin?’

  Dudley shuffled awkwardly in front of him, nodding in agreement. Then he put his hand out to soothe the Major’s neck. ‘Yes, I repeat, I am most dreadfully sorry. I do assure you I was only trying to…’

  The Major slapped his hand away. ‘I know what you were trying to do, you fool. Next time, either throw it underarm, or give me ten minutes to evacuate the valley.’

  He rubbed his neck again and returned to an examination of the soil, muttering under his breath. Miss Fosdyke peered at him sympathetically, but decided it probably wasn’t the best moment to say anything.

  ‘I think it might be best if I moved some distance away to share in this dubious activity,’ Dudley said to me. ‘Devonshire perhaps. I had the same trouble with cricket balls at schools. I’m afraid I broke somebody’s ankle, once.’

  He picked up another frame and wandered off miserably. I walked in the opposite direction for fifty yards and then threw my frame a short distance away from my feet. It fell on the ground with a soft plop near a fallen tree, and I hurried forward to examine its contents. Apart from a slight movement of the grass I couldn’t see anything at all, and for the moment I wondered if the sound of Major Beddington’s voice had caused all the wildlife to beat a hasty retreat. I moved closer to the frame and examined it in greater detail, feeling a little ridiculous, as if I’d planted an orange pip and stayed around to watch it grow.

  An ant carrying a tiny sliver of bark suddenly moved feverishly across the frame and disappeared among the blades of grass. I counted it, and put a note on my pad. Several minutes later, the ant appeared again, still carrying the same piece of bark. I assumed it had either taken the wrong route, or delivered it to the wrong colony and been told to take it away again. Though I scrutinised the area inside the frame carefully, nothing else seemed to be moving at all. I stretched my arms and lay back in the sunshine, wondering what Samantha was doing. I was surprised at how much I missed her, even though it was only three days since we’d been together. Perhaps I’d ask Major Beddington if I could dig up a few orchids for her…

  Resting my head on my elbow so that I could scan the frame easily, I looked across t
he valley at the others. Daines was talking urgently to his group and prodding the ground with his foot. MacKenzie and two of his friends were chewing something furtively. Charlton and his group were on all fours around a counting frame, trying to hoover the area inside with a pooter, until Charlton suddenly realised he was blowing instead of sucking and was likely to end up with a mouthful of ants. Duggan was scratching the ground inside his frame with a piece of stick. Barton, nearest to him, was having a fierce argument about whether the two worms his group had spotted were really both ends of the same creature. Barton then suggested they should eat it rather than count it. In the distance, I could just see Dudley frantically waving a butterfly net. As I watched, the cane it was attached to suddenly became entangled with Dudley’s legs, and in a spectacular somersault Dudley disappeared from view behind a clump of bushes. After several minutes, he reappeared holding his ankle with one hand and the two pieces of butterfly net in the other, and hobbled cautiously back towards the group.

  Deciding that a single ant was a considerable disappointment, I scrabbled my hand in the grass. To my surprise, there was an immediate flurry of activity. Ants moved in all directions, a woodlouse lay on its back waving its legs at me, and two millipedes hurried off at the disturbance. I rushed to count everything, but by the time I’d counted the larger and slower creatures all the ants had promptly disappeared again.

  I scrabbled again, and once more the area inside the frame sprang to life, except that I now had no way of knowing which of the creatures had been added to my list and which had simply turned up for a re-count. I decided this wasn’t really my area of expertise, and after making what I considered to be a reasonable estimation of the contents of my frame, I wandered over to see what others had found. Duggan seemed mildly satisfied with his findings.

  ‘Look at that,’ he cried, thrusting his notepad towards me. ‘I’ve got thirty nine ants to start with and a right collection of shelled stuff crawling about in there as well. It’s a high density population area, this bit. What have you got?’

  I showed him my list.

  ‘Not bad, not bad. You can’t beat mine, though. Have a look in my frame.’

  The metal rectangle was indeed seething with life. Ants jostled and fought each other over a mound of tiny coloured particles in the centre, two millipedes inspected a matchstick with interest, a spider ran along the left hand side of the frame, and a dozen woodlice were sorting through the coloured particles. There seemed to be activity in all corners.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I said. ‘I wonder what the stuff is that the ants are so attracted to.’

  ‘It’s fishfood,’ said Duggan.

  ‘Really? How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I put it there. I don’t know what’s in it but they certainly don’t waste any time in shifting it. I’ve got to admit I imported the woodlice, though. There’s a rotten log over there with hundreds of them underneath.’

  Major Beddington suddenly bellowed an instruction for the group to finish the count and gather round him again.

  ‘Some good results on the whole,’ he said approvingly as the group sat on the ground around him. ‘We’ll draw up a comparison grid when we get back to the Hall. Now, I’ll give you another forty minutes to collect some flora specimens and then we’ll move on up to Barrow Hill. Before you start, kindly remember that wild plants need to be protected. Flowers that were common once are often rare now. Pick only where there is an abundance of blooms. Don’t tread on them. And don’t dig ‘em up by up the roots. You might not realise it, but it’s against the law. Fortunately we don’t get many picnicking fools treading all over them at this time of year.’

  Finding wild flowers was easier than recognising them, and after failing to identify four of the first six we collected, Duggan and I decided to combine efforts and fill a specimen bag between us.

  ‘Here’s an interesting one,’ Duggan called. He walked over with a small clump of yellow flowers.

  ‘They’re buttercups,’ I said. ‘My mother’s garden is full of them. And the other stuff is grass.’

  ‘Ah,’ Duggan cried, ‘That’s the layman’s point of view. This may look like grass to you, but it is in fact soft false brome grass. As opposed, say, to sheep’s fescu. Now what do you suppose the other plant is?’

  ‘Which plant?’ asked Miss Fosdyke, appearing behind him and examining his bag with interest. ‘That’s grass, young man. Brome. I shouldn’t bother collecting it. There’s a lot of it about.’

  She smiled silently, savouring her joke to the full. ‘And what else have you collected?’ She peered in the polythene bag and thrust her hand inside.

  ‘There’s not much, I’m afraid,’ Duggan apologised. ‘Mostly buttercups.’

  ‘Ah, but creeping, meadow or bulbous, Mr Hornpiece? All of them nutlet producers, of course, and most of them having that typically acrid taste. Upright sepals, palmate leaves. Ah, now this is the bulbous, of course. Prefers dry grassland to marshy areas. What else have you got there? Pass me that one, will you, Mr Hornbeam?’

  ‘I’m not Mr Hornbeam. Or Mr Hornpiece,’ said Duggan.

  ‘I do beg your pardon.’ She pointed to a flower near the bottom of the bag and I pulled it out with a flourish like a conjuror producing a rabbit.

  ‘Not that one, dear. The other one. Right at the bottom of the bag. The one you have there is a capsulla bursa-pastoris.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s wasted on him,’ said Duggan. ‘He wouldn’t know a capsulla bursa-pastoris from a daisy.’

  Miss Fosdyke looked at me sympathetically. ‘Really? Oh dear. We shall certainly have to do something about that, won’t we?’

  ‘Are we likely to eat, soon?’ asked Duggan earnestly. ‘It’s half past one.’

  ‘Good Lord, is it really?’ said Miss Fosdyke. ‘You must be very hungry. I’ll tell Andrew. We normally have our lunch when we get to Barrow Hill.’

  She hurried off and several minutes later Major Beddington bellowed at the group to come and sit round him again. When he was satisfied that every piece of equipment had been collected and returned, he announced his intention of stopping half a mile further on to eat. Putting the bag of sandwiches on his back, and entirely unsympathetic to the fact that Dudley was hobbling quite badly, he then set a strong pace at the front of the column and led the way through the valley and up to the brow of the next hill. Showing no sign of being even mildly fatigued by the walk, he stopped beneath a large oak tree and ordered everybody to sit down again. It was intensely hot, and my clothes stuck uncomfortably to my body. I felt as if I’d sweated half a stone during the climb.

  Opening the canvas bags containing the packets of sandwiches, Major Beddington instructed everybody to come and collect one, and then he settled back with Miss Fosdyke under the shade of the tree. She opened her sandwiches, selected one carefully, and bit into it with contentment. Each packet contained two jam sandwiches, a dry sausage roll, a tomato and an apple. Barton leaned round the tree and signalled to Duggan.

  ‘Do you two want to join the escape party?’ he hissed. ‘It’s tonight. We’re tunnelling out from Room Six.’

  ‘Haven’t got the energy, mate,’ said Duggan. ‘Do you want your tomato?’

  ‘‘Fraid so. Do you want your sausage roll?’

  ‘Well it’s either that or I’ll have to eat my plimsolls.’

  After twenty minutes, Miss Fosdyke came round with a plastic bag for the sandwich wrappers, and then the Major stood up, lit his pipe, and called for everybody’s attention again.

  ‘Haven’t got through as much as I’d hoped this morning,’ he said. ‘Can’t think why they insist on these short courses. We’ll have to push on fairly quickly or we won’t get finished. I want to look at the floor of Fletcher’s Wood this afternoon. Might even get time to do some beating. Pick up your kit and follow me, please.’

  Setting the same pace as before, h
e led the group through a tortuous route of fields and footpaths. After a while nobody bothered to speak, concentrating instead on trying to reach the next destination and hoping that a cafeteria might rise, phoenix like, out of the ground in front of us. During the brief lunch period Dudley had strapped up his left foot and fashioned a crutch out of a fallen branch, and I noticed that he maintained a surprisingly good speed with it. Major Beddington stopped only occasionally, either to point out a changing feature of the countryside or to talk briefly about a particular plant or bird he felt everybody ought to be able to recognise. A sudden burst of song made him halt and listen expectantly, his hand cupped round his ear.

  ‘Chaffinch!’ he announced decisively, as if defying anybody to say that it wasn’t. ‘Listen. Whit-iu, whit-iu, whit-iu. There, hear it? Easiest bird to recognise, of course… black forehead, slate-blue nape… feathers often with a trace of white. Keep your eyes open. You might hear a whinchat. Or possibly a redstart or shrike.’

  The noise he made sounded very little like anything I could hear but nevertheless, I admired the Major’s ability to select a single sound from the various noises above us and make a positive identification of it.

  ‘Clever, isn’t it, Mike?’ said Duggan, echoing my thoughts. ‘I can only do a positive identification on the ones in Trafalgar Square. They’re pigeons,’ he added proudly.

  By the time we entered the woods, the sky had changed to a muddy grey. Clouds began to mass above the trees and the stifling atmosphere was slowly replaced by a cooler breeze that gradually strengthened into a gusty wind. It stirred the patches of grass and flicked the dry leaves over restlessly, sending them scurrying along the footpath.

  ‘Miss Fosdyke was right, then,’ said Duggan, looking up at the sky. ‘I thought it was too good to last.’

  ‘It might be a benefit in disguise,’ I said. ‘I hate to admit it, but I wouldn’t mind a quick storm. At least we’d have to stop for half an hour.’

  Duggan laughed grimly. ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that. He’ll probably expect us to bivouac in the forest and build huts out of natural materials until the storm’s over.’