The Valley of the Fox

by Joseph Hone

  It was indeed some kind of summerhouse, a little pleasure-haunt, contrived, it seemed, in rather the same eccentric Gothic manner as the house in the parkland above. And since the island was set in the middle of the lake, with few trees to cloud the sun, the place was still almost warm inside, the stones retaining the heat of the day. I took off my trousers and finding a stone bench of some sort at one side of the summerhouse I laid myself flat out on it and was soon asleep.

  When I woke there was a faint smell of roses in the air, the bright morning light reflecting off the lake making queer watery patterns on the white stuccoed ceiling immediately above my head. It was a conical roof, built in a series of stuccoed fan arches, the delicate Gothic tracery partly crumbled away and the paint badly flaked, though I could see it had once been blue like a sky, with the remains of flower garlands and cornucopias and cherubs here and there in the corners. There was a faintly ecclesiastic air about this heavenly tracery above me. And when I at last got up from the stone bench I saw why: I had spent the night sleeping on the flat top of a large raised tomb.

  On the other side of the chamber, I saw then, was another identical tomb, with a stone base, but with a white stucco surround on top, elaborately carved along the edges allowing for an inscription beneath in heavy Gothic lettering: ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness …’ I couldn’t see the rest of it. The biblical admonishment ran right round the corner of the stone.

  I didn’t shiver, even when I saw the skull and bones at one end of the other tomb, where part of the stone casing had caved in, for it was nearly warm already in the little mausoleum, the sun well up above the lake. I stood there instead, between the bodies wondering who they were, or had been, as if I’d spent an intimate night with two strangers who’d disappeared unaccountably at daybreak, companions who had given me vital sanctuary and warmth, whose names I had to know …

  I looked on top of both tombs and along the sides. But apart from the old-testament inscriptions there was no other writing. Then I saw the ivy-margined tablet set in the wall above the doorway. I brushed a few leaves aside, displaying the whole stone, woodlice and earwigs caught in the light suddenly running madly now, escaping from crevices in the deeply cut inscription. There was no religious or other preamble, it started in straight away.

  George Arthur Horton, Kt., M.P., J.P.

  1830 – 1897

  Formerly of Harrisbrook House, Nottingham,

  and of Beechwood Manor in this parish.

  Rose Horton (née Blumberg)

  1840 – 1914

  Of Brompton Gardens, Kensington, and of Beechwood.

  This Avalon, on the waters they loved,

  made over into their final resting place.

  Together Again.

  The tablet had an admirable simplicity, I thought, so happily lacking in the usual verbose and grandiose pieties expected in such Victorian inscriptions – this almost Arthurian legend applied to some Midland coal-baron, as I imagined, who had bought Beechwood estate, built himself a Gothic pile in the middle of it as a sort of re-created Camelot, perhaps, and had lived here with his Jewish wife, disdaining an appropriately Christian resting place in the local churchyard, choosing instead this lesser Gothic folly where, in due time, his wife could join him, passing eternity together in the middle of their lake, which the two of them had probably created, far from the prying, gossiping eyes which would otherwise have found them in some public burying-place.

  For I sensed at once a clear attack on convention here, in the inscription as in the lives of these two people. The Jewish maiden name need never have been so bluntly included, after all – nor, indeed, in those severely Christian times, could it have been an expected marriage in the first place. The words here were an affirmation of something, a confirmation, in life, of some social disregard in this man who, with his traditional industrial honours, seemed otherwise so conventional. I admired what seemed such forthright deviations.

  Something had changed George Horton, with his dour Midland background: a snub to his wife, perhaps, among the county gentry where he had come to live – the fault of ‘new’ money compounded by a Jewess. Or perhaps, more simply, his wife had changed him – softened the puritan industry, his hard familial ambition, had ironed out the rough nature of his soul. So that halfway through life he had changed course and they had built themselves a water garden, a pleasure-haunt where they were indeed together again now. It was all conjecture … But I could at least, with certainty, admire their love.

  Then I saw the vase of flowers. It had been placed outside on the small terrace, shielded from the wind just beneath the stone balustrade that gave over the water: a dozen fine red roses, which had been the smell, I realised now, that had wafted in on me as I woke that morning in the faint breeze. They were fresh blooms, early hothouse roses I thought, most of their petals still firmly sheathed around the bud, a sheen of moisture on the deep colour. I was not the only person to have been here recently.

  I turned quickly, involuntarily, searching the empty space behind me as though some fourth person had crept in with these flowers during the night while I slept, and might still be there, somewhere on the island, who would come on me through the bramble-filled doorway at any moment. But there was nothing: only the morning sun slanting directly on the tombs now, warming them once more.

  Five

  I returned to my beech tree at the south end of the lake and with painful stiffness managed to pull myself up the branches to my hammock. Lying back in safety at last I saw that the valley beneath me was not so inviolate as I had imagined.

  Someone else had been in the little mausoleum within the last few days. Yet how had they gained access to it? Had they waded across the channel, as I had, with a vase of roses held high? Difficult. But how else? The footbridge would have held no weight, not even a child’s. They must have come by boat, I thought suddenly, from the other, northern end of the lake perhaps. And if they had come by boat, they must, too, have come from the big house above me, for the boat would have to be kept somewhere along the margin of the water. I was nervous about this strange intrusion, and yet curious, so that having slept again for most of the middle of the day, I climbed down from the tree later in the afternoon and set out along the eastern shore of the lake to see if I could find such a boat.

  I took Spinks’s bow with me for the first time, with a single arrow tied to its belly. Later I always brought two arrows with me, for a second shot. But these were early days. I don’t know what I expected to shoot with it. I hadn’t even sharpened the arrow tips yet. The bow, I suppose, was simply an emblem to begin with, an earnest of something I intended to achieve in the way of protection or pursuit, I didn’t know quite which then.

  My legs still ached, and my back too, so that I moved slowly, pausing behind every tree and bush for a minute, as I moved round the lake edge in the late-afternoon sunlight. Again, in those early days I moved almost too cautiously, before I found the rabbit and other woodland paths, where I could travel faster and more securely, well back from the lake, hidden by the thicker undergrowth.

  The lake shore on this far side had less cover in any case than on the western margin which led up to the parkland. And the hill that rose from the valley here was not so steep, a more gentle rise, with the beech trees even taller, their branches less accessible.

  At the far end of the lake on this side I found the old pumping-shed some yards back from the water, overgrown with elder and bramble: a stone shed, roughly built many years before with the roof largely collapsed. But the wooden rafters here, protected from the weather by the heavy canopy of trees, were nearly all sound: more than a dozen 8-foot lengths, 6 inches by 2: ideal material, I saw at once, for the tree-house I had in mind. There were even a number of old nails which I picked up before realising that, in hammering them in, the noise could give me away. I needed twine, and there was none of that. Nor was there much else of use to me in the place apart from some broken lengths of old lead piping and a
huge monkey-wrench, a kind of steel shillelagh. I put these potential weapons aside for possible future use.

  Immediately beyond the shed the lake narrowed quickly to where the brook fed it from the north. Here the trees and undergrowth thinned, and the steep sides of the ravine gradually gave way to easier slopes which led out to more open, and thus to me more dangerous country. But I had to move into it. I had to see how the land lay, how far the safety of this valley went.

  There was a rough path out of the beech trees to begin with, an old, hard deeply rutted cattle path which wound its way along by the stream through clumps of furze which gave me reasonable cover from the more thinly wooded hills above me on either side. After half a mile the stream narrowed, then became a broad, flat trickle filled with watercress, which finally spread out, losing itself in a delta of marshy ground which was its source. There were clumps of marigold and yellow iris here, a still, airless place, like a cavern, overhung by a semicircle of sheer limestone walls, the remains of an old quarry, it seemed. And there, running along the top of the quarry, was the great, ten-foot-high barbed-wire fence, the same that I’d crashed into on my first evening in the woods, here again, obviously circling the entire estate, making me a prisoner.

  Retracing my steps, and then walking round onto the top of this limestone bluff, standing just inside the fence, I saw the long lengths of much more open pasture beyond, with sheep everywhere, some of them within a stone’s throw of me, many with lambs, the great fields dotted with winter feeding troughs. A mile or two away to the north, down this long gentle slope, a car windscreen flashed in the slanting afternoon sun: there was a small by-road there leading to Chipping Norton. To my left, on a rise half a mile away, I could see what must have been the home farm at the back of the estate, some big dutch barns and a straggle of other farm buildings. This was the end of the hidden valley: the end of my world.

  I came back round the other side of the quarry and here, shrouded in elder and blackthorn, I found a much older Cotswold stone barn, with the stump of a metal wind-pump next to it that had once drawn water up for the animals from the spring below. But now the whole place was unused, except for storing animal feed in winter, for there were several broken hay bales scattered about on the earth floor. And here I found any amount of strong red baler twine, along with a dozen or so yellow plastic fertiliser sacks, the discarded remains of some previous attentions to the big pasture beyond. I left the sacks where they were but took as much of the twine back with me as I could, stopping on the way to pick great bunches of watercress in the flat shallows of the stream, stuffing this salad into all my pockets.

  Back at the lake, I looked along its margins for a boat. But I could see nothing. I hid near the island then, on the eastern side of the water, and gazed out at the roof of the little mausoleum. I waited till it was almost dark and fish had begun to jump in the long twilight, watching. But no one came. No barque, no mysterious passenger, set out on the still waters to comfort the dead. And yet I hadn’t imagined the vase of fresh roses.

  That evening I needed the watercress. The cheese and Ritz biscuits were gone and I ate it up like an animal, stuffing it into my mouth in great ham-fisted bunches. Yet when I’d finished it all I realised I was still starving. On the other hand the news on the radio was more encouraging: the police were definitely looking for me elsewhere now, in London, in Oxford. It was thought that I had managed to get a lift out of the Cotswolds that night. Car drivers travelling in the area at the time were being asked to report any such movement. The chase for the time being seemed to have passed over me.

  I contemplated lighting the gas burner and cooking up some of the Knorr Spring Vegetable Soup in Spinks’s billycan. But the light might have given me away and in any case the branches about me allowed no firm base for any such cuisine. I went hungry. And it was cold again too that night, even in Spinks’s Army-surplus pullover and sleeping-bag, wrapped up like a cocoon in the hammock. But on the plus side, having left my few matches out, the box half opened – tied to a branch to dry in the sun for the past two days. I found they worked now. I had a cigarette, which was marvellous. I now had seventeen left. I counted the matches. There were only twelve of them.

  And I thought, in the time it takes me to build a tree house, in order to make a firm base for the gas burner, in order to cook the soup, in order to survive, I may well have used up all the matches, tempted by the smokes, so that the gas would be no use to me in any case. Never mind, I thought for a moment: I can pop down the road to some local village shop and replenish these vital supplies.

  And it was then that I realised that I hadn’t yet faced up seriously to the problems of survival in the open at all, that I still viewed the whole business as something of a game. For, after all, even if I did risk going to any local shop, I remembered then that I had absolutely no money with me. I slept in a wind that came up that night – waking distractedly three or four times, hearing the branches rustle about like witches above me. What if it rained – a long spell of English summer rain? I’d pack it in then. I’d give myself up.

  But it didn’t rain. The hot sun was there again at daybreak and later on I found the tree I thought I needed – one of several very old oaks in the valley, with a big collar of twigs and leaves about twenty feet up its trunk which completely hid the centre of the tree, if anyone looked up into it directly from beneath. The foliage in any case was much more dense than that of the beech trees. And the branches, I could just see, were thicker and more numerous. It was a vast tree, almost in full leaf, set about five yards back from the water, a little below the island and ruined footbridge, in the southern end of the lake. The only problem was to climb it. From beneath that was obviously impossible.

  After ten minutes moving about it, I saw the beech tree, on the steep sides of the valley above the oak, and noticed how its branches interlocked in places with the other tree. If I could climb the beech I might be able to cross onto the oak. And so it was. I found a long sloping limb on the beech tree, running down to within a few feet from the ground, near the top of the valley, which gave me ready access, like a gangway, up onto the main trunk of the tree. And from there, moving carefully out along one of its great central branches, I found that I could cross over onto the oak fairly easily getting into its middle, about thirty feet above the ground.

  Right at the centre of the oak, higher up, the trunk splayed out, like an upturned hand, into half a dozen smaller limbs, forming just the kind of support I needed for the old rafters in the pumping-shed on the other side of the lake. It seemed ideal. I could see nothing of the outside world at all here. Yet by climbing upwards another fifteen feet or so, to where the branches thinned, I found I could peek out over the whole northern end of the lake – and by moving outwards horizontally along another thick branch lower down I found myself looking straight down into the smooth, coppery water forty feet beneath me.

  With some lengths of baler twine attached to Spinks’s canvas water carrier, and with a stone to weight it in the bottom, I could then lower it into the lake and ensure myself a constant supply of drinking-water without ever leaving the tree. With some long single strands of the same twine, attached to the nylon leader of one of Spinks’s Woolworth fishing hooks and a worm, I might even have fish for my supper with no more inconvenience. With such thoughts, some hidden boy scout emerging in me, I forgot about the vase of roses in the little mausoleum on the island.

  I built the tree house right in the heart of the green oak. It took me all of three days, pushing the rafters out one by one late that evening from the old pumping-shed and letting them drift down the lake in the current during the night, so that next morning they had all arrived by the island, lodged against its shores or caught in the ruined footbridge supports.

  From there I hoisted them up into the tree with Spinks’s nylon mountain rope, and fastened them securely with the baler twine, like floorboards, across the cradle of branches. I had to cut some of the smaller oak branches out of the way so th
at the rafters would fit, and prune some of the beams themselves as well. Spinks’s flexible pocket saw made this a possible, if laborious, business. Later I’d set other planks or branches upright round this floor, tie the fertiliser sacks to them and build a roof, too. I’d make a proper house out of it all. Why not? For the thought had come to me even then: if this tree-house was successful, if I remained free, I’d somehow rescue Clare from wherever she’d been taken and bring her to live with me. I didn’t think about how exactly I’d manage this. At the time, since things were going well, I took only the broad view. I was filled with mad optimism.

  But for the moment at least, in actual fact, I had an almost flat space – about seven by five feet wide, where I could lay the sleeping bag out, where I could cook and eat and listen to the transistor in some comfort. The only trouble was that by the time I’d finished the house I’d nothing left to cook. The packet soup was all gone and I couldn’t face another mouthful of watercress. I thought of mushrooms, but there weren’t any: and nettle soup, but that appealed less than the cress. There were fat pigeons flying in and out of the trees. But how to catch them? I’d heard of setting out lime for the smaller birds. But where was the lime and how did you set it? There were the wild mallard, too, on the lake which I fancied. But I could never get to within fifty yards of them before they clattered away. I’d made some snares and put them along some of the rabbit paths. But the wire that I’d taken from an old fence by the quarry must have been too stiff or rusty. I’d tried to fish as well from the big branch: tying long single strands of baler twine to Spinks’s Woolworth leaders and hooks, with a piece of oak bark as a float, letting the line sink into the dark pool from my perch far above in the great tree. But I had no success. Perhaps the fish didn’t fancy worms. The old cheddar would have been more to their taste, but that was long gone.