by Alex Miller
The best hounds enjoy working out their hunches. A matter of care and patience, of skill in deciphering elusive clues, disconnected possibilities dabbed here and there on isolated twigs and leaves. They keep at it and bridge the gaps, piecing fragments together into a coherent picture of events. But more than anything else, questing for the right deer when less persistent hounds have given up and changed to a stronger scent. It’s these stayers that are prized by the huntsman, that are treated by him like a nobility. It’s these rare hounds that I’ve heard Perry and Cheyne and some of the others refer to as ‘staunch to a line’; solemn with respect while saying it, as if they were talking about a quality in those dogs that is a mystery even to them.
I sit still on Kabara, staring down at the debris: the roots, the leaves and the small plants, the twigs and the other odds and ends which make up the intricacy of the forest floor beyond the edge of the path, where it has remained undisturbed and has accumulated. I can’t help feeling shut out from this place, finally, to think that so much of what is really here is beyond me, hidden from me, is in a dimension that I can’t assess. It’s no good kidding myself about that.
I let Kabara walk on further after a minute or two, along the track to the first bend. Here we stand, peering around the corner, deeper in to the shadowed recesses of these old woods. It is all still. If I didn’t know the hounds were in there working feverishly at this minute I would think it all deserted too. There are sounds about me, if I consider them, small scrapes and clicks, twitches of the air in the foliage and amongst the litter of the ground, shiftings and scuttlings at the corners of my vision. But through it all there is a longer silence, of something withdrawn. The same silence I’ve detected before. Always the same. Maybe the hounds belong here, in a way, through being hunters to the bone, through their ancestry, or something like that, but Kabara and I are intruders. We’ll always be intruders here, no matter what we do and no matter how long we stay. And if we were to stay I’m sure the forest would move away from us and establish itself elsewhere.
I wonder if John Grabbe feels like this? Or has he somehow managed to slip past? Has he gained a special access? That’s the impression he gives me. That he’s done something like that. But if he has done that, most people would say he’s paid too dearly for the privilege; whatever that is! There’d even be some who’d claim that perhaps he’s no longer really quite one of us because of it; and one of them would be Roly-Poly. The hunters need him, so they say nothing.
I become aware that I’ve been hearing, for maybe several seconds, way off in the distance, the outpouring sound of a number of hounds in hot pursuit. And at the moment I realise this, a hind comes into view, cantering along the ride towards us. She’s not panicked, not fleeing madly or scrambling along, but is cantering evenly and with a purpose, swiftly but contained. We are stationary and she doesn’t see us until Kabara shifts his head for a better look at her. She pulls up at once then and gives a short cough, staring at us, maybe thirty yards off, assessing the situation calmly. Even from here her gaze is relaxed and intelligent.
She is obviously in fine late-summer condition and, except for where a shaft of sunlight is showing up the rich russet of her coat, her colouring blends her almost perfectly into the background greens and browns of the covert. And if she were to remain stationary, even that bright patch of fox-red might confuse the eye and conceal her true shape. Her face is long and bony and her ears too large for her to seem pretty or fawn-like. Quite the opposite. Sitting here looking at her, I see she has the serious features of a calculating creature. At this time of the year she would almost certainly be suckling a calf. But there’s no sign of one. It must be planted somewhere for safety, keeping still as a stone, its small body flattened against the earth deep in a great brake of gorse or bracken out on the moor, or through the other side of this wood on the farther flank of Winsford Hill, which they call the Punchbowl because of its shape. She stands there gazing at us for maybe three seconds. Then, without obviously gathering herself for it, startling Kabara with the suddenness of it, she springs upwards and sideways, effortlessly clearing the first dense thicket of scrub and bracken at the side of the track, and she lands soundlessly amongst the trees somewhere out of our line of sight.
I release Kabara and he jumps powerfully off his hind legs straight into a gallop, almost leaving me behind. Slingshot! We’re at the spot from where she made her leap in seconds, but there’s not a sign of her. Not a movement anywhere. She’s gone! Vanished! Or is it possible she’s squatting down in there? Standing stock-still, even, in full view, watching me? Waiting to see what I’ll do? Waiting for me to make a move? To make a mistake? If I were to go scrambling around in there, penetrating the thickest of it in search of her, would she sneak out silently and head back the way she came, establishing a mile start on me, while I was blundering about taking minutes to get out of it and back onto her trail?
Someone’s shouting at me. I look up. Galloping along the ride towards me on the track of the hind is Mrs Grant in desperate pursuit of three hounds, who are streaming ahead of her in line, looking just like the dogs at Catford Stadium chasing the electric hare on a Saturday night. She’s waving her crop and yelling at me, ‘Stop them! Stop them!’
I snatch at the reins and Kabara, startled out of his wits, snaps into a series of fancy pirouettes, spewing the brown humus around us in a shower. I hang on, only just, and call out, ‘Stop! Stop!’ – the world whirling past me while the hounds swerve round us, like a little volley of torpedoes, and head on up the track at seventy miles an hour.
Mrs Grant pounds past ten yards behind them, missing us by half an inch, and covering me in another shower of small clods. Maybe she mouths a silent remark at me, too, I think. Kabara dances around some more, lashing a wild kick or two at possible attackers, just in case there really are any, before more or less settling down again, quieting his amazing instinct for self-preservation; but still trembling, ready to go again now that I’ve managed to stir him up. We stare down the track after Mrs Grant and the hounds, in the direction of the stubble-field. They’ve gone. I was lucky I didn’t come off Kabara then. And it’s just as well the Tiger didn’t witness my performance, it might have given him second thoughts. It was being alone that did it; seeing that hind so close caught me off guard. I got carried away. I forgot we weren’t actually hunting her.
I hesitate, wondering whether to follow Mrs Grant and the hounds, or whether to hang around here in the woods and wait a bit longer until Kabara’s thoroughly regained his calm, when the three hounds come bowling back around the corner. It must have taken them the best part of a hundred yards to realise they’d run out of scent. They’re coming along towards me at a trot, no longer single file, but questing from side to side of the track, noses down, tails up, silent.
I’m not sure what I should say to them in order to stop them, so I yell, ‘That’ll do!’ riding towards them and waving my right arm about. The yellow brindly-looking dog in the lead glances my way, then goes on with what he’s doing. The other two don’t even look up. Kabara is not enjoying this. He knows I’m unsure of what I’m up to, and he’s ready to start deciding things for himself again any second. I give the wood-hard, muscular bow of his neck a reassuring pat and guardedly shout at the hounds, which are now making their way around me; ‘Okay! I said that’s enough!’ I haven’t got a whip or a crop, and I’m wondering if Kabara would stand for it if I were to break off a branch and start lashing at the dogs with it, when Mrs Grant canters into sight again.
‘That was well done!’ she shouts, sarcastic, driving her horse straight at the brindle hound as if she intends pulping him. ‘Get out of it, Max!’ Spurring her mount and holding it in at the same time, so that the horse seems to be on the point of trampling or striking at the terrified dog; but she’s got the business under control, you can see that. Then, finished with brindle, she swerves and descends on the other two, running them down and almost putting her horse over the top of them. ‘Crossbow!�
�� she yells at the scuttling dog, and, ‘Roger! Get on out of here, you damn fools!’ She’s all action! A remarkable sight here in the dark woods! Her black coat flapping and her beautiful expensive white buckskins drumtight over her strong thighs! A horse-woman! The real thing. She gathers them up and herds the three hounds ahead of her, back the way they came, down the ride deeper into the woods, returning over the hind’s scent but not hunting it now. And having set the dogs firmly on their way back to work, she hauls in her horse and she turns and takes a look at me. The once-over! Then she says, ‘You are all right, I suppose?’
‘All right?’
‘You’re managing that horse, are you?’
‘Oh, him? Yes, we’re okay.’
‘Good,’ she says, but I don’t think she’s convinced. She sits there considering us for a second or two longer making up her mind, then she says, ‘Try not to get in the way.’ And she canters away up the ride after the hounds.
We’re alone again.
I want to yell after her; I know where the great Tivington nott is harboured! None of you lot know that! Like Cheyne, she’s decided I’m an idiot. It can’t be helped. For one reason or another it’s always going to look like that to them. No wonder John Grabbe doesn’t hunt. Nor Morris. I walk Kabara back slowly along the track and out on to the sunlit stubble-field. We go through a cloud of dayflies, or whatever they’re called, gnats, tiny luminous things jiggling madly, massed in the air just at the entrance. Kabara flicks his ears and I take a swipe at them, but they swerve away from my blow like a shoal of airborne fish. Millions of them! Out in the bright field again, I look down the hill. Perry’s still there. In exactly the same position. The only other sign of life about the place is someone standing way over behind him in the shade of a solitary walnut tree. Whoever it is, they’re not exactly poised for action. While I’m watching, the figure moves out into the half-sunlight and sits on an implement that’s parked there. It’s probably Grabbe.
The heat is rising up off the glowing field now, a moist smell of grain and wheat-straw rising with it, and the only movement for the next half-hour or so is a little black and white bird over near the ride. It darts out from a holly tree, snatches something from just above the ground, checking left and right at each dash, then flits back again into the tree.
We’re both watching this flycatcher when Kabara lifts his head. This time he gazes up the hill to our left, in the direction taken by the Tiger and Cheyne. It’s a long way off but, listening carefully, I just pick it up. Someone yelling. A high, drawn-out cry repeated several times. It’s a view. Somewhere up in that direction they’ve seen the stag break from the cover and gallop away. I can’t hear any hounds. I listen for a bit longer, but there’s nothing more. Perry won’t have caught that cry from where he is, so I suppose I ought to go down there at once and tell him. I hesitate for a second or two, then start down at a trot. I know how Mrs Grant or Harry Cheyne would be doing this. They’d be standing in their stirrups, galloping down the hill, yelling at the top of their voice and waving their hat.
I’ll just tell him.
We’re about thirty yards from him and I’m on the point of deciding it’s time for me to speak up, when Tolland appears at a gap in the hedge, scrambling his horse over it and breaking out into the field. He canters up, calling out, ‘He’s gone away out over the Punchbowl. Half the field viewed him.’
Perry gives a grunt and nods in the direction of the trees in front of him; ‘Half the field’s not worth one of our hounds, though, is it, Mathew?’
We both look towards the point he’s indicating, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to see. Tolland says, ‘I had it from Harry Cheyne himself.’
‘And I have it from Bellman himself,’ Perry replies drily, unmoved, offering no further explanation, gazing steadily into the woods. I look over towards the walnut tree. John Grabbe’s still sitting on the roller, facing the other way, the pale blue smoke from his cigarette visible against the deep shade behind him. Tolland glances at me, then he trots away up the hill. Where’s he going? I stay where I am, and a few minutes later we hear a hound opening on a fresh line. Unmistakable. This single voice is soon joined by another, and within a minute it’s swelled into the ringing outcry of several voices. They’re coming this way.
I hear a crunch in the stubble behind me and I turn round. Grabbe’s there. He grins, friendly, and reins in next to me. ‘They mean business this time,’ he says quietly.
Perry looks round slowly at the sound of Grabbe’s voice, ‘He’s never been far away.’
‘Pushed his squire out ahead of him over the open country and turned back this way himself,’ Grabbe says.
‘Just the one?’ Perry asks.
‘I counted eighteen hinds going in there this morning, but there was only the two of them.’
‘We can expect him,’ Perry says, and neither of them speaks again. We watch the woods; the howling and yelling of the hounds getting closer. A grey heron screams and a pair of them rise slowly from their perch in the treetops, wheeling away sharply at the sight of us. And silently, here he is at the edge of his covert. He turns his head slowly to examine us and the branches of his antlers move like a fantastic headdress. Standing calmly, not a sign of fear in him. He turns again, listening to the racket in the woods behind him. We don’t seem to interest him. The tufters are coming up fast on his fresh scent, but it’s obvious he’s made a decision about what he’s going to do. He steps carefully over the wire, giving a hop with his hind legs, and he walks down the bank and out on to the stubble, standing now in the full sunlight. His thick shaggy coat is a rich red and the fine hard tips of his antlers are white. His eye is large and black and bold, his face flatter and wider than the hind’s, and he looks at least twice her size. His gaze, passing from one to the other of us, passes over me and I see in him how he belongs to his own world. Wild!
With a light shake of his body, as if to rid himself of the last of his sleep, he moves off. With a lurching, easy canter he goes past us and down the hill towards Winn Brook, following almost the exact line taken by Tolland earlier, his pace so seemingly leisured that it makes me feel as though if I made a real effort I could catch him on foot. He’s travelled less than a hundred yards when five clamouring hounds, with Bellman in the lead, scramble from the woods. Perry spurs his pony forward and intercepts them, cracking his whip and calling on each of them by name. When they come out of the wood, with their ears flattened by the wind and their sterns down, the dogs look to be travelling at twice the stag’s speed, but they make up no ground on him. In fact he pulls away from them effortlessly. His action is genuinely deceptive; an unhurried long bounding movement really, which distances him swiftly, but which gives at the same time an impression of something a little ungainly. Watching him go away down the hill I see it is a hesitation in his stride, just at the instant he thrusts with his hind legs, a last half-chance to alter direction before the effort is fully committed. Perry has to lay in to a couple of his dogs before they’re prepared to take him seriously. This close sight and hot scent of their quarry is maddening them and they hate to give up the chase! We watch the stag until he disappears around the promontory of trees. He’s doing the opposite of what everyone perched up there on Winsford Hill was hoping he’d do, and many of them will go home today without having seen him. As far as they’re concerned he may as well not exist.
The moment the stag rounds the trees and is out of our sight, Perry snatches his short hunting horn out of his coat and rips out a blast. Then, spurring Kit forward and urging the tufters ahead of him, without a glance at Grabbe or me, he gallops full pelt back across the stubble towards the village.
Shaken by the strange shrill blast of the horn so close to his ear, Kabara leaps in behind the huntsman and we’re off whether I like it or not. I glance back at Grabbe. He’s not moving. His job’s done. But I’ve no time for waving. Kabara’s tucked himself in close behind Perry’s bounding mare and I’d better watch where we’re going if I wa
nt to stay up. Perry drives at the hounds, his reins gathered tightly in his left hand and his right hand jamming the mouthpiece of the horn to his lips, blowing repeatedly a rising four-syllable note, rousing the countryside, announcing to all hunters that a warrantable stag has gone away out of his covert and has begun to run.
There’s nothing sweet or musical in the sound the horn makes, but something mad. A sound filled with alarm. Putting us on edge. Startling our nerves. Kabara lunges and dances unevenly in his stride and snatches the bit angrily at each blast. It’s getting us going, though! Giving our hearts a shot of something!
A bit out of control, we gallop in a tight fast formation across the stubble-field and plough straight through the brook as if it’s not there, showering each other from head to foot with an explosion of silt-filled spray, the shrilling note of the horn jabbing out around us, penetrating the wooded combes and jarring awake everything in them. This frenzied blaring of the persistent horn striking aside the calm summer morning. Like someone having a fit. Neither the stallion nor I see the bank until it is nearly too late. We smash down the sudden slope into the water, Kabara driven almost to his knees by the shock of his landing, and throwing me on to his neck, but recovering at a stride and ‘catching’ me with the saddle he pounds strongly across the river, his nose inches from Kit’s thrashing tail; one unlucky step on these smooth stones and here’s a violent end to it already! We slam up the far bank and skid out on to the hard black surface of the road, my left stirrup swinging wildly, leaping after these hurtling tufters as if we intend to ride them down and destroy them, Perry still blowing his crazy horn full blast!
We pull up outside the pub, people converging on us from all directions. As if they’re coming to gawk at an accident. Rushing at us. Staring. Scared of missing out on something vital. The riders among them worrying how they’re going to make sure of getting into a good position in a few minutes when Perry lays the pack on the stag’s scent—lose touch with what’s happening now and they know they could be out of it for the rest of the day. May as well not have bothered to turn up in that case. And the horde are returning down the road from Winsford Hill too. Anxious cantering riders blocked by the cars! Shrieking kids dashing in and out everywhere, daring the situation. Anything might happen. Up the hill one minute, down again the next. And here come Tolland and Mrs Grant, pushing through with the other tufters that went after the wrong stag. Perry’s not waiting for them. He’s given Kit into someone’s hands and he’s climbed on to a fresh hunter. He’s going straight for the yard and the howling black hole.
