The Sound of Trumpets

by John Mortimer

  Agnes turned her head, kicked her horse and cantered out of the path of the attack. Terry tried kicking also, but Balaclava stood stock-still, trembling like a gigantic leaf, his nostrils dilated and his eyes rolling, awaiting the command for a fatal charge. Then he tossed his head and uttered a ghastly whinny, a sound like the trumpet of death. At which moment, the dogs broke like surf about his hooves. Terry saw men with whips and red coats, a woman on a huge horse yelling at him, words of abuse he couldn’t hear above the horses, the baying of the hounds and the thudding of hooves.

  Now, Balaclava galloping along at full stretch, and Terry, gripping the horse’s mane, pale in the face and white in the knuckles, were up with the leaders in headlong pursuit of a kill.

  Months later he lay awake at night re-living the nightmare that followed. He was deafened by the noise, above which he could hear furious voices ordering him to get the hell back, a command which he had no means of persuading Balaclava to obey. He was conscious of tearing up farm tracks, between hedges where branches whipped his face, and through great puddles from which the horses’ hooves threw up mud which plastered his face and momentarily blinded him. They thundered through woods, and he had to lie, as though in some horrible embrace, along Balaclava’s neck to avoid being swept to the ground, or perhaps decapitated, by low branches. He charged, at breakneck speed, along paths at the edge of ploughed fields and across pasture in which the cows lolloped away in fear.

  Then he saw a towering hedge rushing towards him, blocking out the low-hanging sun. Riders around him sailed into the air, sending back a cloud of twigs and leaves. For a moment Terry was sure that Balaclava was about to take off, to aim his cumbersome weight at the sky and deposit Terry, a bag of broken bones, on the other side. But the riding-school horse was not so ambitious. He twisted towards a gap, his hooves struck a cattle grid, a fatal trap all animals are meant to avoid and, by some miracle, wasn’t caught and lamed in its iron rungs. With a resonant clang horse and rider were over and in the forefront of the charge up another green field towards the distant shadow of a wood. Far ahead, now the last of the sunlight had returned, he could see a small shadow moving quickly; a fox running towards the trees. He closed his eyes and gripped the mane harder than ever, not knowing what would happen next and whether he would fall into the racing, baying pack of hounds.

  What happened was that Balaclava stopped and Terry fell, once again, on to his horse’s neck. Other horses were standing round a group of hounds, who were consuming a dead fox. The sabs had left their vans and were busy photographing what might appear to be dogs rending apart a living animal. None of this was seen by Terry, who was dazed, mud-spattered, blinking and no longer able to exercise any control over Balaclava, as the horse moved in a lurching walk towards the devouring hounds. There was a flash, and he saw, leaning against a sab van and pointing a camera directly at him, none other than June Wilbraham, reporter, photographer and general runaround for the Sentinel. A moment later Agnes, riding up to him, grabbed Balaclava’s reins and led him away. She was laughing so much that she was barely able to control the two horses.

  Later he was lying in the bath in her house by the river, soaking off the mud and the aching of his limbs and feeling that his arms might, just possibly, settle back into their sockets. He saw her standing naked beside him, still laughing, until she joined him and crouched between his legs in the soapy water. He had never felt fear and love so intensely, over so short a period and, for a while at least, he forgot the election.

  Chapter Fourteen

  LABOUR CANDIDATE IN AT THE KILL

  Greatly to the surprise of members of the Hartscombe Hunt, Terry Flitton joined them for a day out yesterday. Scorning the traditional hunt uniform, Labour man Flitton turned out in a sweater and jeans, but he was, old hunting hands say, a fearless rider and was up with the leaders when they killed near Hanging Wood. The informality of his dress surprised those who had seen him turn out in black tie at a recent Barbarians dinner. He left the field immediately after the kill and Field Master Blanche Evergreen was unable to say if he was applying for hunt membership. ‘We haven’t yet seen his payment for today’s outing,’ she told the Sentinel’s June Wilbraham.

  Neither Terry Flitton nor Labour Party headquarters were prepared to comment last night, although a statement is expected shortly. Tim Willock said he disapproved of blood sports and would, when elected, be one of the Conservatives who wished to see hunting with dogs made a criminal offence. ‘Flitton’s tally-ho attitude,’ Willock said, ‘will horrify his Labour supporters.’

  It so happened that the Sentinel came out the day after the hunt, and the front page had been remade to include a photograph, spread over four columns, of Terry, mounted and muddy, wearing a borrowed riding hat and staring down at a pack of hounds making a meal of a fox. He had no doubt that the story would be picked up and the picture reproduced in every one of the nation’s newspapers.

  By the time Kate got back from London on the day of the hunt he was bathed, changed and well aware of the difficult time ahead. He laid the table and prepared to cook spaghetti. When she arrived he poured her a drink and told her the whole story. To do this he had to confess that he had taken to riding out with Agnes Simcox, a piece of information he had postponed passing on to her, but naturally he omitted such post-equestrian scenes as those which had recently taken place in Agnes’s bathroom.

  ‘You mean, you sat there and watched while the dogs ate an animal?’ Kate was more worried about the fox than about Agnes.

  ‘Quite honestly, darling, there was very little I could do about it.’

  ‘You didn’t protest? You didn’t shout at those murdering bastards?’

  ‘You mean the dogs, or the people?’

  ‘Both!’ Her voice rose in anger. ‘Of course I mean both!’

  ‘The fact of the matter was’ – he did his best to explain – ‘all the breath had been knocked out of me. I’d been dicing with death.’

  ‘You’d been dicing with death? What about the bloody fox?’ At which Terry’s wife burst into tears. She scorned both spaghetti and wine and remained speechless until she went to bed and lay, in danger of falling out, as far from her husband as possible.

  Terry slept fitfully, drifting into total oblivion only around dawn. When he woke up at nine Kate had gone, leaving him a note telling him that she was staying in London until she’d got over the shock and worked out how she should respond to what he had told her. She needed her own space, she said, and she particularly asked that he shouldn’t try and phone her or contact her in any way until she’d cleared her head.

  While he was reading this the telephone rang and the voice of Nabbs, querulously gloomy, asked him what sort of joker he thought he was and said that he’d brought not only his campaign but the entire Labour Party into hatred, ridicule and contempt. Walworth Road would be down on him like a ton of bricks, and if he thought he’d ever live to fight again he had another think coming. It was the predictable result of selecting so-called intellectuals from the universities instead of men like Nabbs, who represented the decent, ordinary Labour Party supporter in the street. He’d better issue a press statement at once and denounce the barbaric spectacle which he’d been forced to attend.

  ‘Forced? What do you mean, “forced”?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me why you were stuck up there on a horse like a bleeding toff.’

  ‘I’ll think about what I’m going to say.’ Terry tried to respond with dignity.

  ‘Think quick, or I’ll have to think for you.’

  ‘If you issue a statement which I haven’t approved of I’ll disassociate myself from it at once.’

  ‘Suits me if you disassociate yourself from the entire campaign.’

  ‘You know perfectly well I won’t do that. I’m going to go on, and I’m going to win. I’ll think about my press statement. Call you later.’ And he put down the phone. To be fair to Terry, he meant what he said. His determination to win was as strong as ever
. This momentary set-back would be overcome, but he was in need of advice.

  ‘You want to appear a complete bloody idiot?’

  ‘I suppose that’s the truth of the matter.’

  ‘You’re a man who goes out on a horse he can’t control, gets swept along by a crowd of people he’s never met and finds himself making a clear political gesture in favour of a highly controversial cause with which he doesn’t agree. Hardly the sort of clown the good people of Hartscombe might choose to represent them.’

  ‘I suppose it could be made to look like that.’

  ‘That’s exactly how you’re going to make it look if you tell that story.’

  ‘It happens to be true.’

  ‘That,’ Lord Titmuss said, ‘is clearly what’s wrong with it.’ He laughed in a way which reminded Terry, uncomfortably, of the laughter of Agnes. Titmuss the adviser, the final arbiter of the Labour candidate’s reaction to this bizarre turn of events, had, strangely enough, suggested a meeting in Rapstone church. The occasion was so momentous, perhaps he had thought, the decision so vital, that no other rendezvous would be suitable. In fact he wanted to make sure no one knew they were together before the press statement and had forbidden Terry even the back door of the Manor. ‘Rapstone church is always open for private prayer,’ he’d said on the telephone, ‘but no one prays privately any more. Shall we say ten o’clock?’

  When Terry arrived he had seen, in the subdued light, the back of Titmuss’s head, with the bald patch gleaming like a tonsure. He was sitting alone in a pew, reading the Daily Telegraph. He was wearing his leather car-coat as it seemed that the church heating wasn’t turned on for the comfort of private prayers. So now they sat beside the tombs of the Civil War Fanners whose kneeling children were equally divided in the King’s or Parliament’s uniform to ensure the survival of the family whichever side won, and Sir Lorenzo Fanner, who drowned in the river at Hartscombe during the Regency, being transported to heaven, wearing boating costume, by marble cherubs and a weeping angel.

  ‘This hunting business,’ Titmuss said, ‘is extraordinarily tricky. The British may be won over to the common currency. They might agree to an independent Yorkshire. They’ll put up with the withdrawal of child support and exorbitant charges for false teeth. But they’ll never change their minds about fox-hunting. They’re either passionately for it, or passionately against it, or they passionately don’t give a damn. I belong to the third small and happy group.’

  ‘Willock’s declared himself against it.’

  ‘At least that’s a powerful argument in its favour.’

  ‘You mean you want me to come out for hunting?’

  Terry stared bleakly into the future and saw his marriage split apart on the rocks and sinking rapidly. In spite of his growing love for Agnes, the thought filled him with dismay. This was not a moment in his career to start discussing divorce.

  ‘You needn’t necessarily come out for it. And certainly not yet.’ Titmuss cheered him up a little.

  ‘What’s that mean exactly?’

  ‘That there is only one way to deal with this tricky and deeply felt issue.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A full inquiry. An informed debate.’

  ‘So what was I doing?’

  ‘Collecting the evidence, of course. The hard way. Taking part in the experience. So that you could speak on the subject with authority.’

  ‘You mean, I intended to join in the hunt?’ Such an explanation had never occurred to Terry.

  ‘Of course you did. I mean, you’re not a complete nincompoop, are you?’

  ‘A few minutes ago you thought I was.’

  ‘Time’s passed. Your prayers have been answered, and you have become intelligent enough to deserve my help. For the time being.’

  ‘So the press statement will say I was carrying out a carefully prepared programme of research into the hunting question?’

  ‘You’ve got it!’

  Terry thought it over. ‘The Labour loyalists won’t like it one little bit.’

  ‘They’ll put up with it. It doesn’t commit you to anything. And they’re going to vote for you anyway. And as for the Conservative pro-hunters …’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘There’re quite a lot of them, judging by the crowd in my drive yesterday. I imagine they’re fairly pissed off with Wee Willie Willock’s anti attitude. There might be quite a few votes worth catching.’

  ‘From blood-sporting Tories?’

  ‘Why ever not? Their crosses on ballot papers are worth just as much as hunt saboteurs’.’

  Terry was silent, thinking it over. The church chill seemed to be eating into his bones. He saw, as usual, some sense in the Titmuss approach. But there was a difficulty.

  ‘I told Kate it was entirely accidental.’

  ‘Who’s Kate?’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘Then she’ll support you whatever you choose to say about it.’

  ‘I’m not too sure about that.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to deal with her.’ Titmuss was clearly drawing a line. For all his political mastery, he had never enjoyed a similar success with women. ‘I can manage your election campaign. But you’ll have to deal with your wife. You’d better start now.’

  On his way out Terry saw the vicar, a small, round-faced man in a thick sweater and a glimpse, almost an apology for a dog-collar, busy, for some reason, among the graves.

  ‘I’m grateful to you,’ he said. ‘So few people take advantage of our open-church policy for the purpose of private prayer.’ And, looking round nervously, as though afraid of being overhead by God, he added, ‘You can be certain of my vote.’

  ‘I realize that the fox-hunting issue rouses strong and sincere feelings on either side. I am determined to research the question thoroughly before I come to a settled view and decide on political action. For that reason I decided to follow the hunt when I was out riding, and the experience has been of enormous value to me in forming an opinion,’ Labour candidate Terry Flitton told the Sentinel’s June Wilbraham. ‘I’m having further talks with members of the Hartscombe Hunt and with those who view hunting with dogs as morally repugnant. There is much more to be learnt from both sides, and I regret that my Conservative opponent has come to a premature conclusion without, so far as I am aware, ever having ridden to hounds.

  ‘I have been asked why I didn’t intervene to save the fox once it had been caught. The Hunt Master had told me that the fox is killed instantly by the lead dog. To stop the rest of the pack eating it when dead could be achieved only by violence and cruelty to dogs. I am determined to investigate this further, and I will come to no conclusion until both sides have had a further opportunity of putting their case.’

  ‘So you see,’ Terry telephoned Kate to say, ‘I’ve left the way open for a ban on fox-hunting.’

  ‘That’s not how you said it happened at all.’

  ‘That’s how I’m saying it happened now.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So I can have a bit of credibility with the voters. So they’ll elect me to do all the things you want.’

  ‘Like stopping blood sports?’

  ‘Of course! In the fullness of time.’

  ‘How full does the time have to be?’

  ‘I suppose, when we get into power.’

  ‘You mean, postponed indefinitely?’

  ‘We can’t do anything until we get into government, Kate. You understand politics as well as anyone. We want exactly the same things. You know that.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she had to admit.

  ‘Come back, Kate.’ His voice became soft and pleading. ‘I can’t manage here without you. You know that.’

  ‘You seemed to manage to go riding with Agnes Simcox without me. You could go on lots more disastrous rides.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go riding with her again. Come back, Kate. Come back this evening. We’ll eat out. At the Chinese restaurant.’

  ‘Wil
l she be there? Smoking?’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t. If she is, we’ll go to the Thai Kitchen. Say you’ll come!’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll consider all the evidence.’ Then she rang off, leaving him not entirely dissatisfied.

  ‘It’s absolutely hilarious!’ Agnes had put down the Sentinel after reading the column.

  ‘It seemed a sensible way of explaining it.’

  ‘It’s an absolutely ridiculous way of explaining it.’ She was laughing at him, not without affection. ‘Your horse bolts with you clinging on to its mane for dear life and what you’re doing is carrying out careful and open-minded research into animal welfare. You must see how wonderfully comic it makes you look.’

  ‘To you, perhaps. Not to the average voter.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For saying I’m not the average voter.’ They were in the bookshop, in an alcove reserved for contemporary fiction. There were no customers about, and she kissed him. He had his arms round her as he said, ‘I know you’re in favour of fox-hunting.’

  She broke away from him, searched on her desk for her packet of cigarettes. ‘My father the doctor was neither a criminal nor a sadist. He went hunting because he enjoyed it and could find nothing immoral about it. It provided him, he thought, with an easy death. He said we’re all animals, the foxes and us. Hunting is a natural instinct. Like sex. I don’t do it much now. I’m afraid of the jumps. Hunting, I mean, not sex.’