Wild Weekend

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘Yeah, well, the publicans, they’re just as bad. Don’t want to lose their regular business, do they? You’ll be in Yattenham St Mary. Perfect. Fancy a bit of sabbing, by any chance? We got word the scum are coming your way today. Trying to outwit us as usual. They think we’re thick, you see. Think we don’t know what filthy plans they’re making. But we got a watch on their kennels. Using our technology. They’ve got some plan to come over to Great Saxwold. And we think there’s a good chance they ain’t got no licence. Not their usual killing fields, you see. Trying their filthy tricks on us. The police will just stand by and watch’em get away with it, if we don’t do nothing. The law, the courts, they all side with the scum. This ain’t London, as I expect you found out yesterday.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot on your plate out here,’ Carole agreed.

  ‘Did you say you had somebody filming you?’

  ‘Yes, we brought a cameraman with us. A historic event, we wanted a proper record.’

  ‘Could be a good day for him. Specially if it’s a really bad kill, entrails and everything. Lot of money goes for film of that kind of thing. So you gonna come with us?’

  Carole shivered. The obsessive voice on the phone was talking without stopping. She had the distinct impression that she was out of her depth and dealing with people who did not fit the accepted definition of sane.

  ‘Of course,’ the voice was saying, ‘you coming from London, it’ll be a bit much for you, what we have to deal with out here. People can’t usually stand it …’

  ‘You can count us in,’ said Carole, feeling challenged. ‘Where’s it all happening?’

  ‘We’re meeting up in the car park of some pub. The Pigeon & Pipkin?’

  ‘I know it. That’s the bastard who threw us out. What time?’

  ‘Seven, seven-thirty. I’ll see you there.’

  Carole cut the connection and went to wake up Video Guy, who had said he couldn’t stand the smell in the van and had gone to sleep in the shelter of the Sports Hall doorway.

  The morning proceeded with the weary sense of ritual that settles over any occasion in which a matter of great importance can only be enacted after a great deal of standing patiently about waiting for every individual concerned to play his or her tiny part in the drama. In England, only shooting a feature film and re-enacting a historical event in full costume are carried off with the same combination of boredom, concentration and punctilious correctness.

  The sun was nothing but a red blush behind the thick quilts of white mist that lay over the fields when two minivans full of policemen parked outside The Pigeon & Pipkin. The officers got out and formed into groups. One group stayed with the vehicles while the rest set off at a brisk walk along Saxwold Farm Lane.

  The mist had hardly thinned when a number of cars turned in by the pub, and Carole decided to leave her van outside the Old Post Office in case the landlord turned hostile again. ‘And leave a window open,’ said Video Guy. ‘Get rid of that smell before we have to drive back to London.’

  About twenty saboteurs were soon gathered, one in a home-made fox suit, the rest with banners reading ‘Death 2 Hunt Scum’and ‘Honk If You Hate Hunting.’ Most of them also made for Saxwold Farm Lane. The police and the saboteurs who stayed behind in the car park eyed each other with reciprocal disgust.

  ‘This stinks, this does,’ said Carole’s contact among the sabs. ‘The scum don’t get out of bed Sundays, as a rule. Creatures of habit, same day same place every year. They don’t venture down these parts, either. I tell you, there’s a real stink about this.’

  Just before 8am, when the sun was a full red orb above the hedges and the mist had shrunk down into the dells, a short procession of vehicles drove slowly through the village and turned down the lane. First came an old brown lorry, then a slightly younger Range Rover towing a much newer double horsebox, then the khaki-green carcass of an ancient Land Rover, towing a box of the same vintage, then a long estate car and two small saloons, all with small and newish horse transporters attached.

  As this caravan passed them, the saboteurs roused themselves to a fury, brandished their placards and chanted, ‘Scum, scum, scum.’ The police, standing between them and the road, shifted nervously and looked up and down the line of protesters.

  The procession turned through the gate into Jimmy’s farm and halted when the man in the fox costume tried to throw himself on the bonnet of the Land Rover. Two officers stepped forward to pull him off, and the vehicles drove forward and parked where Jimmy’s father directed them. When the engines were all turned off, the eager yelping of the hounds could be heard from the lorry.

  Two huntsmen in red coats appeared, one carrying a clipboard with the permit for the day’s hunting attached to it. The senior police officer approached them and a short conversation took place while he read the paper through and noted down its reference number and signatory in his book. People, mostly young women, were moving about in silence, opening the horseboxes. The horses were led out and held while their rugs were folded back and their saddles heaved into place and fastened.

  Another engine was heard, and the shiny blue Range Rover with the Château Saxwold logo skidded to a stop at the gate. Surprised, some of the saboteurs turned around and banged on its doors with their fists.

  ‘Guns!’ somebody called out. ‘They’re bringing guns!’

  With the help of six policemen who held back the protesters, the vehicle inched into the yard and Jimmy closed the farm gate behind it. The driver, Florian’s brother-in-law, got out, with two other men, old shooting friends who had been persuaded to add their guns to the field.

  ‘They haven’t got a permit!’ shouted the man in the fox suit, with Video Guy at his elbow.

  The police, following orders, remained silent.

  ‘They haven’t got a permit! It’s illegal!’ shouted Carole’s contact. ‘What’s going on here? This wasn’t on their website. They can’t get away with this! We demand to speak to somebody about it!’

  The senior police officer nodded and handed back the clipboard. He surveyed the protesters for a moment, then walked over towards them.

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ he asked, an energetic, greying man who looked as if he would have preferred to be taking his sons off for football training, which indeed he would.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Carole’s contact. ‘What’s happening here? Why are there guns come up? Why wasn’t this on their website?’

  ‘I don’t know about their website,’ said the officer. ‘I can tell you that this isn’t a meet, as such.’

  ‘Then why have they got the hounds here?’

  ‘If you’ll let me speak. This is a special operation that the farmer’s asked for. He lost over a hundred ducks a few days ago. And everyone else with poultry around here, it’s the same story. The suspicion is, there’s been some fox-dumping. Urban foxes released on farmland. Our information is there could have been nearly forty of them. So the master’s agreed to bring a few hounds over the area and see what they can find. If they do find, the hounds will be withdrawn and there’ll be a rough shoot.’

  Carole felt as if someone had poured ice water down her throat. There was a deep chill somewhere at her centre. Instinctively, she hunched her shoulders inside her several sweaters and, with trembling fingers, pulled a strand of hair down over her face.

  ‘They can’t do that. That’s illegal,’ her contact was saying.

  ‘They can, madam, and it is legal. The permit was issued yesterday, I’ve just seen it and it is in order. I would caution you, for your own safety, to obey the marshals if the shoot takes place. Most of this land is private, there is no public right of way except on the marked footpaths. You want to blame somebody, blame whoever brought forty foxes up here and let them loose.’

  ‘That’s not against the law,’ said the woman, defiantly. ‘At least they cared about the animals, whoever did it, instead of torturing them.’

  ‘Some bunch of bloody idiots, up from London,’ said another vo
ice. ‘Haven’t they heard of fox sanctuaries?’

  Seeing a good chance to avoid any more argument, the officer stepped back, and focused his eyes somewhere above the protesters’ heads. Carole stepped back also, trying to lose herself behind the other sabs, suddenly afraid that she would be recognised and called to account for the day’s brutality. The plan didn’t work.

  ‘Don’t you be intimidated,’ her contact said, dragging her back into the front line. ‘You stand your ground. We’re not accepting this. We’re here to stop the scum from killing and that’s what we’ll be doing. They can’t threaten us with guns. They think they’ve got so much filthy money they can do what they like.’

  ‘They don’t look like millionaires to me,’ said Video Guy, taking his eye away from his viewfinder to make sure of what he was seeing. ‘Is this it, then? There’s hardly ten people. I was expecting hundreds. Loads of toffs knocking back the old cherry brandy, all done up in top hats and all that gear. This lot look as if they’re out for a day at Ikea.’

  The riders had mounted. While their horses had been groomed until their spring coats gleamed like the bonnet of a new Rolls-Royce, the riders let them down. True, the huntsmen wore red coats, but they were faded and much-repaired. One other adult male was wearing old jeans and a fleece jacket. The remaining three riders were girls of about fourteen, neat but scarcely elegant in pigtails and gilets, their ample hard hats overhanging their delicate teenage noses. Set against the architecture of Jimmy’s farmyard, which was heavy on concrete blocks, concrete posts, and concrete in general, the tableau had a definite lack of romance.

  Finally, the back doors of the lorry were opened and the hounds scampered out, a handful of dogs whose white coats were marked with caramel blotches. They made a more satisfying picture as they frolicked around the huntsmen and lifted legs on the car tyres, though they seemed to think they were in a dog food commercial, not a small-scale cull of rural vermin, or an exercise in mass murder, depending on your viewpoint.

  ‘Is that it?’ said Video Guy again. ‘That’s six dogs, that is. You count them. I was expecting a whole great pack of them, all baying for blood and stuff.’

  Oliver, bleary-eyed after two hours of sleep, woke himself up with a shower and went over to Jimmy’s, as an act of friendship, to see the huntsmen arrive. ‘Is it always like this?’ he asked, as the crowd of protesters mobbed the contingent from the Château.

  ‘Nutters,’ Jimmy replied.

  ‘What we hope,’ said the master, ‘is that they haven’t had time to go out spraying. They spray the land to spoil the dogs’scent. Of course, they don’t know where to spray, so it’s usually ineffective. But if they’ve done that here, it may throw the dogs completely. This is a new one on me. I’ve heard of these lunatics dumping foxes, but we’ve never had it round here before. You’re new round here, aren’t you?’ This was to Oliver alone.

  ‘I’m afraid I am,’ he said.

  ‘You’re the one going organic?’

  ‘Trying to.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

  I’m still trying to pass, thought Oliver. It’s been nearly three years, and I’m still trying to look like I know what I’m doing, when everyone knows I haven’t a fucking clue what I’m doing. Who am I trying to kid?

  Still, he stayed to watch the riders set off, and remarked their quietness, and their competence, and also a certain anxiety about this task. They did not complain, nor talk themselves up as they set off. They were people setting about an emergency job on a Sunday morning, and it was nothing either to whine or boast about. Most of his life, he had worked with people whose local dialect was egotistical blag and whose religion was pushing their own advantage. My God, he thought, as he hurried over to the Manor, no wonder this species is endangered.

  ‘Who am I, again?’ Lucy Vinny came to the kitchen of the Manor for a cup of coffee before assuming the role into which Oliver had persuaded her.

  ‘You’re the riding stables,’ he said.

  ‘Do I have a name?’

  ‘If you like. Up to you.’

  ‘I’ll be Hoofprints, then. Bit twee, but there was a place round here called that, until it went bust. And what about money?’

  ‘Charge what you like. Make’em pay cash. You’ve got to get something out of this, after all.’

  ‘Are you sure? Haven’t they tumbled it yet?’

  ‘They haven’t a clue,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Not a clue,’ said Bel. ‘Trust me. Why should they suspect anything?’

  ‘I can’t believe they’re so stupid. And that woman’s minister for farming or something? Ruling class, total farce. If you ask me.’ This was from Toni, who had relapsed into her usual sulk as soon as Tolvo and Juri left to go back to their caravan.

  ‘And we’re talking about a one-hour hack, down the bridle path over your bottom field. Where’re the hounds?’

  ‘Over Jimmy’s.’

  ‘Fine. And you?’

  ‘I’m going to the Château. Florian’s caught one of my pigs over there. I’ve got to fetch him back.’

  ‘My horses aren’t crazy about pigs. Where are the rest of yours?’

  ‘Top field. By the cottage. Shouldn’t give you any problem.’

  ‘Not if we stay well away from them. And you said they could ride, these women?’

  ‘They said they could ride.’

  Lucy sniffed. ‘They always say they can ride. We’ll see, shall we?’

  She had hitched the horses side by side to the five-barred gate to the garden. Tulip, Samson and Smithie. Tulip she was riding herself, her current pride and joy, an elegant four-year-old with a russet coat and a flowing Arab tail that nearly touched the ground. Samson was also her own horse, bought off a farmer when he was too old to be hunted, to live usefully as a steady paddock companion for the others. His ancestors included shire horses, for he was big and mostly black, with a white face and shaggy white feet. Nobody was quite sure how old he was but on his good days he was still game for a gallop.

  Smithie was all black and another one who could fairly be called bomb-proof, having started his working life as a city police horse. His owner, a weekend wallet from whom Lucy had called in a favour, had bought him as a starter horse for his long-legged daughter, who always called Smithie a perfect gentleman. So, Lucy reasoned to herself, the horses know their job and no matter how useless these women are, we should be OK here.

  ‘They look awfully big,’ said Clare to her daughter, as they came around the corner of the Manor House, kitted out in jeans and sweaters, and saw their mounts for the first time.

  ‘Big can be good,’ Miranda reassured her. ‘At least they won’t have been messed around by children. The one with the white feet looks pretty old. Not a lot of excitement there.’

  ‘Why don’t I have that one?’ Clare suggested at once. ‘You can have the good-looking one.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Miranda. Sometimes it was useful to be able to project the confidence you didn’t feel. So strange, to see her mother looking hesitant for once. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Thank you.’ This was to Lucy, who was holding out a hard hat with a blue velvet cover. Miranda boldly snapped it on, took hold of Smithie’s reins, put her foot in the proper stirrup and stepped up into the saddle, refusing to feel bad about their joint surrender to the full English breakfast less than an hour ago.

  Inside the house, Oliver watched the proceedings on the drive, keeping out of sight behind his mother’s ample curtains and waiting until the riders had turned a corner before setting off for the Château. How awkward the two of them looked, perched up there on the horses! How ridiculous that the woman charged with planning the death of an entire culture should have absolutely no idea what that culture was or why it might deserve a fair deal. Or any conception that it might be the very foundation of all society, the provider of their nourishment and their stake in the natural world.

  Still, the girl didn’t look too bad. A bit stiff. Nervous, probably. Nice legs. Wel
l, who cared? Stuck-up metro-totty. Serve her right if she falls off. No, delete that. I need them back in shape to pay their bill tomorrow. He had the bill running up in the computer. With the full English breakfasts added in, it was nearly up to £900 already.

  Cynicism had always been difficult for Oliver. His heart was too big and too susceptible to wonder. One of the things he had hated about urban life was the constant requirement for sneering and negativity. Now, after nearly three years in the country, and on what turned out to be a shining morning full of birdsong, he found his lust for revenge faltering, undermined by all kinds of inconveniently decent feelings.

  There was guilt. Just a few twinges, but they niggled. And an undeniable sense of absurdity. He’d enjoyed the whole deception so much it was almost wicked. All the emotions that had built up over the past months, the rage over his squandered savings and the grief over the dead lambs, all the feelings he’d refused to acknowledge and tried to drown at the pub, he’d poured them all into this ridiculous scam as if he could erase all his past mistakes by making an even bigger one.

  His next task was to retrieve the pig that had strayed into Florian’s domaine. A quick roll call of the animals now safe at home revealed that Miss Piggy was the truant. Oliver tried to argue with himself as he negotiated the winding lanes leading towards Château Saxwold. No, it’s not a mistake, exactly. It would only be a mistake if it went wrong, and it wasn’t going to go wrong. It’s just a lark. Anyone would see that.

  OK, so technically he was committing fraud. Obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, that’s the legal definition. But he was helping his mother out of a tight spot. What could be more noble than that?

  The alleged victims were hardly suffering. They were looking pretty damn content, actually. All shiny and relaxed. Not to mention well fed and rested, which was more than he could say of himself. In fact, he was the one suffering. The suckers had had a pretty pleasant weekend out of it, so far. So where was the harm, really?