Bright Stars

by Sophie Duffy

  The librarian stamped the label with an authoritative clunk, reminding me it had to be returned by nine o’clock the following morning. I clasped the book to my chest, showing the old walrus I’d cherish it like a bairn. I could be trusted. I was dependable.

  ‘Fancy a pint?’ It was Tommo, as out of sync with the environment as he was in the lecture theatre.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. Just a drink. It’s not a marriage proposal.’

  So I followed him, clutching my book.

  We went to Fylde JCR, waited for the bar to open. I had tea; he had black coffee, three sugars. Jim from Hull in the Sabbath T-shirt was loitering with his Weeble-like girlfriend who he’d somehow recently acquired. Apart from that, the place was pretty empty.

  ‘I can’t stay long. I have to get this essay finished.’ I brandished the book. ‘I have to fetch it back in the morning.’

  ‘I guess I should’ve borrowed one of those too.’

  ‘This was the last one.’

  ‘Good for you. I’ll have to blag it then. Bat my eyelashes and beg for an extension. That Professor Proctor fancies me anyway, so it’ll be fine.’

  Tommo then went on and on about the ins and outs of Rousseau and Saussure and I couldn’t follow his train of thought, distracted by his eyelashes. Was he actually wearing mascara?

  Then suddenly Bex was there, breezing in, commandeering our attention. ‘There’s a hunt in the morning.’

  ‘Oh?’ Tommo seemed interested.

  ‘A hunt?’ I asked, wondering where this was going. Did she mean foxes? She must mean foxes. Surely she didn’t want to go out and kill foxes. She was a vegetarian.

  ‘Up the valley.’ She looked around, discounted Jim from Hull (and his Weeble-like girlfriend). ‘I’m a sab.’

  ‘A sab?’

  ‘A hunt saboteur, you idiot,’ Tommo said.

  I was none the wiser. Didn’t say anything.

  ‘We’ve lost a driver to mushrooms or something,’ Bex blethered on. ‘Which one of you can drive?’

  We both shot up our hands, school boys trying to please Miss. Ms.

  ‘Wow, that’s great,’ she said. ‘We can use Dodger’s van, no problem. I’ve got his keys.’

  Keys. ‘What does the driver have to do exactly?’

  ‘Just drive us round.’ She looked at me, considering. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve done this loads before. All the time back home. And I’ve done two up here already. Signed up during Freshers’ Week.’

  ‘What about insurance?’

  ‘Car insurance?’ Bex looked at me. ‘A fox’s life is at stake here.’

  ‘Yeah, and what the hunt represents,’ Tommo added, the smarmy weasel.

  She ignored him.

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘I’ll drive.’

  They both stared at me, like they’d already discounted my efforts. I felt this bubble of pride rumble round my belly. Or maybe it was sheer terror at the thought of being out in a strange place with strange people with absolutely no idea what was going on.

  ‘What do I have to do exactly?’

  ‘Drive us up there early tomorrow and stay in the van.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘That’s great, Cameron, thank you.’ She touched my arm and gave it a pat.

  But then Tommo ruined the moment. ‘So how can I help?’

  Bex thought about this. I wanted her to say get lost, you’re not helping. But instead she sat down between us, shook off her back pack and rummaged inside, discreetly revealing the contents. Sprays of some kind. A pair of binoculars. An OS map. A camera. ‘Are you in?’

  ‘I’m in,’ Tommo said.

  And Bex gave him this enormous smile.

  It was only later, after she’d talked us through our tactics, after Tommo and Bex had left the JCR to meet up with the other sabs, that I realised my book was missing and that I wouldn’t be finishing my essay that night.

  _________________________

  *Bex was also doing English as a minor. But social work was her thing. She was born to it. And also possibly rebelling against her father who thought all social workers were do-gooders.

  *Professor Proctor had quite possibly seen that episode of Not the Nine O’clock News where Rowan Atkinson is in a public lavatory wearing similar punk trousers with many zips and he cannot find the right zip to be able to relieve himself.

  *Junior Common Room.

  *I was never late handing in my essays at school, always focused despite the constant distractions from my litany of brothers. Band Practice. Arguments. Punch-ups. Raging hormones floating round the house like a party of poltergeists. Rows with Dad over money and motorbikes and the odd visit from the police. None of this was me, you understand. I was the good one.

  Fox

  Tommo owned plenty of black clothes so I borrowed a jacket off him, and I had my woolly hat. I was to stay in the van but Bex had said to dress dark.

  ‘You need to keep a low profile,’ she’d told us, looking at Tommo. ‘It’ll be hard for you but this is serious.’

  ‘I know that, Bex,’ he said. ‘I might come across as flippant and facile but I do care about animal welfare.’

  ‘It’s not just about reading the Guardian. It’s about doing stuff.’

  ‘And I’m doing it. With you.’

  I don’t think he meant the double entendre but it didn’t exactly help his seriousness.

  Bex walloped him. ‘You’d better not bloody louse this up.’

  ‘I won’t, I won’t.’ And he did actually seem serious, like he wanted to do something important. Or rather, he wanted to please Bex.

  But she wasn’t going to cave in so easily. ‘It’s not about animal welfare, by the way,’ she said. ‘It’s about animal rights.’

  I was a careful driver, passed my test first attempt. I could handle the van well enough as I’d been allowed to drive our hearse of a Volvo a few times, manoeuvring it down narrow streets and up steep hills, Dad with his hands clutched to the seat, smoking as if it were his last cigarette.

  We drove for twenty minutes or so, heading into countryside, through the early morning darkness, a mist clinging to the hedgerows and shrouding the distant woodland. Me, Bex and Jules in the front, Tommo and Bob lolling around on a grubby mattress in the back. I was glad Bex was next to me but she made me nervous too. She was kitted out in camouflage trousers, bomber jacket and boots, her hair shoved into a black woolly hat. She looked the business. She looked amazing, all sinew and strength and energy.

  Jules on the other hand was tiny, barely five foot, but with this granite force field around her, rather than the soggy puddle I had. She was a veteran, a local, a third year Philosophy student and all round activist. She knew this area inside out. Every hollow, every covert, every tree.

  Jules showed me where to park up then she briefed us like a firebrand preacher keeping us out of hell. Tommo was to shadow Bex as it was his first time. A virgin. Bob was staying with me (another virgin). Bob was reassuringly bulky, with a scar across his face and dirt under his fingernails. Well, under nine fingernails as one finger was half missing, like Dave Allen off the television or the Professor man in The 39 Steps.

  Jules indicated the other van, parked up across the valley with two other sabs. Both vans were rigged with CB radios so we could keep in contact, move on if necessary.

  ‘You’ll get hunt supporters trying it on. Don’t let them intimidate you.’ Bex was worried about me, hoped I could handle it. ‘Just stay here until Bob gives you the nod.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

  She gave me the thumbs up and headed off into the gloaming with Tommo and Jules. Tommo turned around before they were out of sight, saluted me. He’d better not screw things up and put Bex in danger. I’d heard some nasty tales of the terrier men. And now Bob was telling me even more nasty tales with grim attention to gruesome detail, sitting up front with me now, a right harbinger of doom. And a vegan. With vegan hair
like a scant bird’s nest. But a fellow Scot, a Highlander, so I felt some comfort hearing his voice. Tried to listen to the rhythm of it, rather than the things it was saying.

  ‘Will the girls be okay?’

  ‘Are you referring to Bex and Jules as “girls”? That’s wrong on so many levels.’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘Don’t ever let them hear you call them “girls”. He said the word ‘girls’ like Miss Jean Brodie, driving home the point so that it struck me through the heart.

  And he laughed some more and the laugh filled the van, swamping me with a shame I didn’t quite understand, like being back in school, like I hadn’t grown up at all. ‘I just don’t want Tommo messing things up for Bex?’

  ‘For Bex or for the hunt?’

  ‘Well, both, but especially Bex. I only came here cos she asked.’

  ‘Someone’s got it bad.’ He laughed again, a right comedian. ‘You’d better concentrate. Don’t want you getting distracted.’

  ‘Please don’t say anything.’

  ‘Course I won’t say anything. Us Scots have got to stick together, right?’

  ‘Right. So what happens now?’

  Bob sighed expansively, put his muddy boots up on the dash, rummaged in his coat pocket for his tobacco tin, rolled a fag with great skill, dexterity, and perfect uniformity, hours of practice waiting in a van. ‘There’s a chance the hunt will be called off if Jules’ phone calls work.’

  ‘Phone calls?’

  ‘Yeah, she’ll be in the village phone box ringing the local pubs to tell them it’s off.’

  ‘The hunt’s off?’

  ‘No, it’s not off. We’re just spreading the word so hunt supporters think it’s off. That way it might get cancelled if not enough turn up. It sometimes works.’

  It didn’t work. The meet went ahead, gathered outside one of the pubs Jules had hoaxed. The hunt knew now that the sabs would be out. They were always out.

  We took turns watching them, the sabs, through Bob’s binoculars, a ramshackle legion, dark clothes, boots, hats, striding out northwards across the washed-out fields, through a fragile sunlight that cast feeble shadows on the bumps and crevices of muddy grass. They closed and locked gates, they stooped low against the ground, they moved forward. Bex had checked the wind direction and Jules told them where she thought the hunt was likely to go. They were organised. Nothing ramshackle about the ‘girls’.

  My thoughts were shot through by the wail of a horn.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked Bob.

  ‘The bastards have found the fox.’ He stubbed his fag out in the ashtray, sat up, alert.

  ‘Look.’ He handed me the binoculars and took control of the CB.

  I didn’t hear what he said because I spotted it, up close, so close I thought I could reach out my hand and grab its tail, its brush, a creature so breathtakingly beautiful that my heart pumped faster and the adrenaline kicked in.

  The fox was pelting full speed across the adjacent field, headed towards the covert, as Jules said it would, close upon the sabs now. They let it go past, then began to spray, extra sabs appearing out of the dawn light, spreading out along the line, quickly as they could.

  The horn got louder. They didn’t have much time. I could make out Bex, pulling Tommo along with her over the rough sodden ground, towards the copse where the fox had darted.

  Then I couldn’t see anymore. Bob grabbed the binoculars back, ordered me to drive.

  ‘Put your foot down. We’ve been spotted.’

  I checked the mirror, saw a looming group of men with dogs. ‘Who are they?’ Pathetic question. I already knew the answer.

  ‘The terrier men.’

  It happened so quickly. The rock. The smash. The broken window. Glass on my head. Blood in my eyes. I put my foot down, following Bob’s shouted instructions, and we got away, the van swerving and lurching as I struggled to see, leaving the shouts and the anger behind us, the smoky exhaust cloaking them like a moorland mist.

  ‘You all right, mate?’

  I barely heard Bob above the beating of my heart. We’d found another lane by this time, pulled into a passing place. I only had part vision out of one eye. There was the crackle of the radio as Bob gabbled to Bongo, the other van driver, over the airwaves, using unfamiliar words, a mystifying language.

  He handed me his drinks canister, one like Edward’s old Action Man’s. And a grimy rag. ‘You need to rinse that, mate.’

  It stung. I had a cut above my eye but it wasn’t too bad. The bleeding had all but stopped. My vision began to clear. Bob handed me back the binoculars.

  ‘Look at those scumbags,’ he said. ‘The spray isn’t working. The wind direction’s changed. They’ve got his scent.’

  ‘Is that it then? Is it all over?’ I had the covert in my sights, but no fox and no Bex.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We’re one step ahead. Jules and Bongo unblocked the earths in there so he’s got somewhere to hide. But if the hounds get in we’ll have our work cut out.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Hope they call the hounds back from the draw. Jules will use the horn, her voice, any tactics she has. I just hope that tosspot Tommo doesn’t cock it up.’

  I don’t know why but I laughed then. A small nervous laugh that I covered with a cough.

  Bob didn’t notice. He carried on. ‘They need to call the hounds in the opposite direction to where the fox is headed.’

  The hounds were baying, an eerie sound. I wasn’t overly keen on dogs, especially ones flying towards you with one thing in mind. Flying towards Bex who would stop at nothing.

  The pack disappeared into the covert, yelping in some awful chorus, mournful and haunting. Then I heard this voice. A tough, scary, firm ‘come-come-come’. And then a horn. And then clapping and shouting.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Bob was out the car now, had the binoculars back off me, standing up on the gate so he could work out what was going on. ‘The guys are making a racket, getting the hounds off, confusing them.’ Next thing he was punching the air. ‘They’ve led the hounds out the copse!’

  I didn’t need the binoculars. The sabs were running breakneck downhill towards us, hounds following, hunters behind them, confused as their dogs, but a determined huntsman was ahead of the game, catching up on the sabs, a splurge of blood red, the thud of hooves and a whip-crack cutting through the cold air.

  ‘Back up the van, mate. We need to let them through.’

  I did as I was told, my hands shaky, head spinning, while Bob opened the gate. A few seconds later, Jules was through, effing and blinding, panting and angry. Then Bongo and a few others scrambled after her onto the lane. But Bex… Bex had stumbled in the field. She’d caught her foot in a hollow, a rabbit hole or something, and gone flying onto her face. The thud of hooves was louder, the whip cracked. Bob had to slam the gate shut, before the hounds ran into the road, they were everywhere, chaos, then I saw Bex on her knees, hands to her head, blood escaping through her fingers. Tommo lunged towards her, heaved her up, dragged her along and somehow got her over the gate, Bob and Jules hauling her by the shoulders.

  And then the police turned up.

  We, the sabs, were the good guys but the police didn’t see it like that. Even when they clapped eyes on Bex with her bloody face and ripped jacket, they were distinctly unhelpful.

  ‘They’re upper-class tossers,’ Tommo informed the sergeant. ‘See what they’ve done to her?’ He put his arm around Bex, protectively. Possessively. She shrugged it off.

  ‘It looks to me like the lass slipped and cut her head.’

  ‘It was that bastard with the whip.’

  ‘Are you alleging one of the riders whipped her?’

  ‘No, but it was pretty close. He was chasing her.’

  ‘I think maybe you’ll find it’s you lot that were trespassing.’

  ‘I told you. They’re bastards.’

  ‘Are they, sir? And who might you be, sir?’

  �
�I’m Tommo. Tommo Dulac.’

  ‘Short for Thomas?’ The sergeant took out his notepad and began scribbling. The other copper was standing behind him, arms folded.

  ‘Short for Ptolomy.’

  ‘And how do I spell that?’

  Tommo spelt it clearly, a pronunciation Miss Jean Brodie would admire, brashing out his name, his background, his class.

  ‘A ‘P’ you say, sir?’

  ‘It’s Egyptian.’

  ‘Egyptian are you, sir?’

  ‘No, I’m British. My parents liked the name. Don’t ask me why.’

  ‘I’m sure they had their reasons, P-tolomy.’

  Bex was trying not to laugh. She couldn’t help herself, maybe the bang to her head, the tension of the day, the relief of escape, the hunt that was now disbanding, successfully sabbed.

  ‘And what about Doolack? Is that Egyptian too? Or Ancient Greek?’

  ‘D-U-L-A-C. It’s French.’

  ‘French. I see.’ He scribbled some more, slid his pen back into his pocket and gave us all the once over. ‘Farmers get very angry about this sort of caper. But if you lot clear off, we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘What?’ Tommo was agitated, strutting his stuff.

  ‘And the tax disc is out of date, sarge.’ The other officer was shaking his head, facetious bastard, and Tommo looked about to lose the plot.

  ‘Leave it, yeah, Tommo.’ Jules gripped his arm and pushed him towards the van. ‘We’ve done what we came to do.’

  Tommo paused for a moment. ‘You’re right, Jules.’ And he put his arm decisively around Bex and squeezed her. She winced in pain but didn’t shrug him off this time. Maybe she was concussed.