Brendon Chase

by B. B.

  Contents

  1. Hatching the Plot

  2. The Getaway

  3. Gone to Ground

  4. The Hunt is Up

  5. ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’

  6. Harold

  7. Tally Ho!

  8. The Honey Buzzard’s Nest

  9. Bunting

  10. The Whiting

  11. The Coming of Bang

  12. Mr Hawkins

  13. Smokoe Joe

  14. The Picnic

  15. Bunting Again

  16. The Badger Skin

  17. Doctor Bowers

  18. The Trees

  19. Robin Hood Goes Hunting

  20. The Bells of Brendon

  21. The Christmas Dinner

  22. Run to Earth

  Epilogue

  Read On

  Best known for his children’s books, B. B. wrote and illustrated many books for adults under his real name, DENYS WATKINS-PITCHFORD. He was born in Northamptonshire, studied art in Paris and London (at the Royal College of Art) and taught art at Rugby School. But for most of his life he lived in Northamptonshire, developing a wide knowledge and deep love of the countryside.

  The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.

  If ye go thyder, ye must consider

  When ye have lust to dine,

  There shall no meat be for to gete

  Neither bere, ale, ne wine.

  Ne sheetës clean to lie between,

  Made of thread and twine;

  None other house but leaves and boughs

  To cover your head and mine.

  Lo, mine heart sweete, this ill diète

  Should make you pale and wan;

  Wherefore I’ll to the greenwood go,

  Alone, a banished man!

  1. Hatching the Plot

  The end of the Easter holidays was drawing very near; only two more days remained before five hundred odd boys, whose ages ranged from twelve to nineteen, would discard their carefree clothes to don the well-pressed trousers, the speckled straw hats and black tailed coats which, from time immemorial, had been the garb of all Banchestians. Farewells would be taken, some resigned, some sad, some even joyful, handkerchiefs would flutter down many a long platform, heads would cram many a window as the inexorable chuffing engine drew them away from their loved ones and all they held dear.

  But to the three boys sitting together dreading the thought of another term at school, this did not apply. Their parents had gone abroad when the youngest boy, Harold, was only three years old, and they had been entrusted to the care of a maiden aunt who knew nothing of children, and never understood boys.

  But their environment had one redeeming feature, namely the old Dower House, and its old fashioned garden, set snugly in a well wooded county with streams and river abounding. They escaped to the fields and spinneys whenever possible, bird-nesting, fishing and poaching with catapult and air gun, and, in general, getting up to all those tricks young boys love to play.

  So that though the ‘home’ atmosphere was strained, the old house and grounds, the thickly timbered country and the adjacent Weald exercised a great fascination and they had come to love it.

  Now the holidays were virtually over and only forty-eight hours remained, but to the young that is an eternity.

  In a dim-lit loft, the three boys sat cross-legged among the onion skins.

  Their council chamber was roomy, though one could only stand upright in the centre of the floor, because the sloping rafters came up on either side, festooned with cobwebs, and with dim lights showing here and there through chinks in the tiles. In one corner was a mass of drying onions, especial pride of old Rumbold, the gardener, the only other male member of the Cherry Walden establishment.

  Robin sat facing the small window on an upturned flowerpot. From there he could see the ivy leaves shaking outside as the sparrows chirped and scuffled. Occasionally one would fly across the square of saffron light. He could also see the top of the lilac tree, masses of rich purple flower strongly lit by the low rays of the evening sun. The loft had a peculiar smell of its own. The scent of earth and the musty odour of rafters and plaster, all mingled into one exciting, fruity bouquet.

  It was an ideal hideout. Rumbold rarely climbed the rickety wooden stairs. He kept the door below securely padlocked but the boys had found where he secreted the key, under a flowerpot on an upper shelf of the potting shed. No small wonder Rumbold kept the door to this loft carefully locked. Halfway down the stairs was his rook rifle of .22 calibre, fitted with a silencer, a glorious lethal weapon, with which he slew the grey wood pigeons when they raided his greens in the snowy winter weather. Naturally an Auntish decree forbade the use of firearms of any sort; even catapults were banned, though John possessed a good one, in the use of which he was extremely proficient. On this same stair was also the ammunition for the said rifle, fully a hundred rounds, in a heavy, red-labelled box.

  As Robin sat watching the window a swallow passed now and again, the sun shining on its blue back and brick-red throat. He had seen swallows depicted in old Egyptian wall paintings and the red throat and forehead suggested the sun-baked lands of the Nile, pyramids and sphinxes.

  The chirping of sparrows and twittering of swallows was strangely muted here in this dim chamber, as were all sounds of the sunny world outside.

  The loft served not only as a council house where any important plots could be hatched, it was also a refuge from that strange drab world of grown-ups, those poor blind beings who had – apparently – no joy in outdoor life, and whose imaginations had long since been stifled and submerged.

  When aunts and governesses became too troublesome, or ‘visitors’ threatened, it was to the loft the boys fled, to emerge timidly and fearfully, like rabbits, when their scouts pronounced the danger past. It was there they sought refuge when the Bramshotts arrived.

  The Bramshotts were the prolific family of a neighbouring titled squire, who from time to time descended unbidden and uninvited, at least by the boys – in an open carriage – it was before the days of the universal car – driven by a wizened old family coachman. This vehicle reminded Robin of a comic turn he had once witnessed on the stage, when a never-ending stream of quaintly attired people descended from a dilapidated fly, to the accompaniment of rising squeals of hysterical laughter from a delighted audience.

  As each Bramshott emerged they were counted and even when the last, a babe in its nurse’s arms, had descended, the boys anxiously searched the interior of the carriage for yet another which might have been overlooked behind some cushion. As Robin once neatly remarked – rather coarsely perhaps – it was not a family, but a farrow, and such prodigality struck the boys, even at their tender age, as faintly disgusting.

  Robin as the eldest – he was fifteen, John thirteen, and Harold twelve – was now unfolding a plan so daring and exciting as to give everyone a sudden warm ache in the pits of their respective stomachs.

  ‘My idea is,’ he said, ‘that we should run away to Brendon Chase!’

  ‘Run away!’ exclaimed John. ‘And not go back to school on Thursday?’

  ‘Exactly. Why shouldn’t we live in the forest like Robin Hood and his merry men?’

  For the moment there was dead silence. The boldness of the idea was shocking.

  ‘But how can we get enough food to keep us alive?’ asked Harold after a breathless pause. He was always one for his stomach.

  ‘There you go, you greedy little hog, always thinking of your stomach,’ said Robin witheringly. ‘Of course we should get enough to eat, we should go hunting.’

  ‘I can’t see how we can get enough to eat unless we have something to hunt with,’ John said d
oubtfully, ‘I’ve got my catapult but we can’t rely on that.’

  Without replying Robin got up and descended the stairs. The others knew what he was about. When he returned he had Rumbold’s rifle in his hands. ‘What about this?’

  The rifle! They could kill all they wanted with that!

  ‘Of course, by rights we should have bows and arrows,’ said Robin, ‘but we can make those when we get to the forest. In the interval we can use the rifle; it will keep us in meat and pelts.’

  ‘Pelts?’ queried Harold.

  ‘Skins, silly. We should hunt for skins as well as meat, all proper outlaws do!’

  ‘But if we go shooting about in the forest, somebody will hear us, keepers or somebody, and we should be caught and get in a fine old row.’

  ‘Rot!’ said Robin. ‘Can’t you see it’s got a silencer? I saw Rumbold shoot a blackbird with it and it made no more noise than that –’ he clapped his palms together.

  They were suddenly aware of voices. In an instant each boy slid to the window with a warning whisper. Far up the kitchen garden was Aunt Ellen with two visitors, maiden ladies from the village. They were walking up the long cinder path by the lavender hedge and Aunt Ellen was pointing at the gooseberry bushes.

  ‘It’s only Aunt and the two Pug Westons,’ whispered Robin, who had nicknames for everybody in the village. And after all the two Miss Westons were awfully like pugs. ‘They’re looking at the fruit trees.’

  The boys could see their aunt, pince-nez on nose, her garden hat – which they hated – jammed down on her iron grey hair, earnestly talking to the elder Miss Weston and shaking a finger in front of her nose.

  Robin turned from the window in disgust. ‘Oh, it’s all right, don’t worry about them – women, women, women, that’s the whole trouble. I’m just about sick of petticoat government. I’ve just about had enough of it. Even if you two don’t come I’m going and nobody will ever catch me. If Father and Mother were here it would be all different and we shouldn’t want to cut school and run away to the forest and live like Robin Hood. Anyway, Father told me once that when he was a boy his people let him go off every holiday with a gun and a tent and he walked all round the coast of Scotland living on what he shot and fished. But Aunt throws a blue fit even if we get our feet wet and we can’t even ride the pony Father gave us, for fear we should fall off. I’m sick of it. What about you, John, will you come with me?’

  ‘Come? Of course I’ll come; I never said I wouldn’t, did I?’

  ‘And I’ll come too,’ said Harold.

  The others looked at him doubtfully. ‘I’m not sure you ought to,’ said Robin. ‘You might get ill or something, and then we should have to bring you back.’

  Harold’s face was a study; he was having a terrific struggle within himself to hold back the tears.

  ‘Oh please take me, Robin, I’ll do anything you want, all the camp work, I’ll wash up the dishes while you and John go hunting. I shan’t mind what I do! I swear I won’t get ill or be a bother, really I won’t.’

  His elder brother looked at him doubtfully and his fate hung in the balance.

  ‘Oh, very well then, there’s no need to blubber, we’ll take you,’ said Robin grandly, ‘but if you’re a nuisance you’ll have to come back and then you wouldn’t have to breathe a word of where we were.’

  ‘There’s another way we can get food,’ said John, whose mind had been busy, ‘we can snare rabbits and things. Bill Bobman’s boy showed me how to make a snare once, it’s easy.’ (Bill Bobman was the village poacher.) ‘All you want is a bit of copper wire, a peg and a string; there’s some in Rumbold’s toolbox in the coach house, I saw it yesterday. Aunt Ellen wanted some wire to hang a picture and I saw him get it.’

  ‘Well, we’ll take some wire with us, that’s a good idea of yours, John. All proper outlaws trap and snare.’

  ‘And we can make deadfalls out of logs,’ went on John, warming to his subject, ‘you know, a log propped up on a stick with a bait tied to it, and the wolf or beaver or ’possum comes along and pulls the string and down comes the log!’

  ‘Like Bill Bobman’s brick sparrow traps?’ asked Harold.

  ‘Yes, that’s the idea, only bigger.’

  ‘And then we shall want salt, and flour to make bread, shan’t we?’ asked John.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Robin, ‘we can’t take bread with us, it would be too bulky, and besides, it would go as hard as a rock. We’ve got to take as little as possible.’

  ‘Why not oats instead of flour, and then we can make porridge?’ suggested Harold. ‘Nice stiff porridge you can stand your spoon up in, not Cook’s sloppy stuff, full of lumps.’

  ‘Well, that’s not a bad idea, Harold,’ said Robin, ‘not at all a bad idea – for you,’ he added grudgingly. ‘We shall have to do without forks; for knives we can use our hunting knives.’

  ‘What about plates?’

  ‘Yes, we’d better take a plate each, the tin ones out of the picnic basket will do; we’ll borrow the saucepan and frying pan as well, they’re Father’s anyway, though Aunt Ellen says they’re hers, and we’ll take the compass along, Father’s old army one.’

  ‘Kettle?’ queried John.

  ‘No, we can’t take a kettle, too much to carry. Besides, we shan’t drink tea, at least, not if we’re going to be proper outlaws. We shall want a blanket each, we’ll pinch those off our beds, and that’s about all we’ll manage to carry. Even that’ll be too much I expect, when we come to escape. We’ll take matches too; we can buy a whole packet at the post office.’

  ‘I thought outlaws always made a fire by rubbing two sticks together,’ ventured Harold.

  Robin sighed wearily. ‘I know they did, but it doesn’t work, only in books, ’cos I’ve tried, ever so many times. There’s a waterproof matchbox in the picnic kit; we’ll take that along.’

  ‘We shall want green stuff to eat or we’ll get scurvy,’ said John.

  ‘Well, we must cook wild herbs, like all outlaws do. You don’t suppose they eat cabbages and things, do you?’ asked Robin scornfully. ‘There’s wild sorrel, and nettles and lots of things you can eat. It tells you in the Scout Diary Miss Holcome gave me on my birthday, and it tells you how to find your way by the stars, and all kind of useful tips like that.’

  ‘We haven’t got a tent,’ said Harold.

  ‘No, we shouldn’t take one if we had. We’ll have to make a hut or something out of branches; we’ll soon find some sort of place in the forest,’ said Robin confidently. ‘And we must have proper names. I’ll be Robin Hood, John can be Big John, and you, Harold, can be Little John.’

  Suddenly from the garden they heard their names called, ‘Robin! John! Har–old!’

  ‘Not a word, the wicked Abbess calls,’ hissed Robin dramatically, sliding to the window. ‘The vicar’s there now,’ he groaned, ‘I expect Aunt Ellen wants us to come and say goodbye.’

  The vicar, known to the boys as the Whiting, was rather a pal of theirs. He was a keen entomologist and in the summer holidays they used to go butterfly hunting with him up on the Weald and in the woods. He also gave them amazingly good teas in his big creeper-clad vicarage, served by his cosy old pink-faced housekeeper. She had a goitre, a phenomenon which always intrigued the boys enormously and filled them with vague dread because Aunt Ellen once said it was ‘catching’. In season the Whiting’s table groaned with plates piled high with strawberries arranged in scarlet cones, plentifully laced with delicious cream and as much fine castor sugar as you wanted. Aunt Ellen banned strawberries from their diet as she said they gave you ‘appendicitis’ and ‘rashes’. The Whiting, like many old bachelors, was extremely absentminded. Many were the tales in the village of this weakness of his. Sometimes he would forget to preach the sermon or he would read the first lesson twice over. The best story about him was how once at a dinner party, when he was describing to the company present how a certain burglary had been committed, he demonstrated his story by putting the solid silver spoons and f
orks into his pocket and these had to be extricated by a tactful hostess before he left.

  The Reverend Whiting’s round jolly face was now partly visible over one corner of the greenhouse. Their aunt was looking towards the Nutwalk – by experience she knew its green thickets usually held skulking braves – and she was clucking like a fussy hen.

  No reply being forthcoming, they saw the Whiting smile, wag his moonlike face from side to side, and stick his thumbs over the pockets of his Norfolk jacket. Then they all drifted out of sight through the arched doorway by the ilex tree and their voices were stilled.

  ‘The old Whiting isn’t a bad sort and we might get a tip if we go and say goodbye,’ suggested John slyly. ‘He usually stumps up half a crown when we go back to school.’ But even the lure of gold would not tempt Robin, whose imagination was afire.

  ‘Let’s go and say goodbye tomorrow evening. It’ll be better without Aunt Ellen there, and we can see those white admirals he caught last year in High Wood. That reminds me,’ he added, ‘we ought to see heaps of rare butterflies in the forest. When I went there with the Whiting in his old car last summer hols he told me he had once met an old man called Smokoe Joe who lives in the middle of the Chase. He’s a charcoal burner or something. He seemed to know quite a bit about bugs and things and he told the Whiting he’d seen a purple emperor in a certain part of the forest, though he wouldn’t tell him where. The Whiting tried to get it out of him and even offered him half a sov if he’d tell, but he wouldn’t. Smokoe told him all sorts of things about animals and birds; he’d seen goshawks and honey buzzards and all kinds of rare birds. He’s lived there for years and years.’

  ‘Won’t he find us living in the forest?’ asked Harold.

  ‘It’s doubtful; he doesn’t get about much, he’s too busy with his charcoal and his sight isn’t good, so the Whiting said.’

  ‘Aren’t there any keepers or watchers who look after the place?’

  ‘There used to be but not now. The Whiting told me that it’s a Chase, and that means it was a hunting ground which belonged to a subject of the King and not to the King himself, though of course the King could hunt there if he wanted to.’