Hindsight (11 page)

I suppose I had really been waiting for Dobbs, using the excuse of getting my neglected plot-work sorted out, before I tackled the scenes which my visit to Richmond had startled me into recollecting. Or perhaps I had relapsed a bit into my old reluctance to confront them. Now, with my father's last letter to Molly echoing in my mind, I settled down to try and bring them out into daylight.

11

T
wo of the boys had already lost fathers during the fighting, both at Dunkirk. Three years later Greatrex was to be killed when his house on the Kent coast received a direct hit from a flying bomb. But the nearest St Aidan's as a corporate entity came to the physical disgustingness of war was the deer-cull that took place on the last Saturday of October 1940.

Breakfast began, as always, with the duty master saying grace. Then there was silence apart from the clicking of spoons on porridge bowls. You could get a drill-mark for even muttering to a neighbour to pass the milk. After five minutes The Man came in to read the fortnightly marks. Paul was still top of Schol, but by less than usual because he'd missed several batches of marks doing extra maths and classics. Higley was miles bottom of Schol and would be going back down to Midway. So on, through the school.

Then came notices. Fish got his soccer cap, which allowed everyone to cheer for ten seconds. There was the team against St Dominic's, but as it was an away match there was nothing about the drill for school support. Summertime was ending and the clocks would go back an hour at midnight. Sunday drills—Loader—second time this term. The Man looked up from his papers but did not leave.

‘Break will be in Big Space this morning,' he said. ‘Nobody will go out before boys' dinner, for any reason. The deer are being culled today. This means that men are coming to shoot some of them. It has to be done. There are sick and weakling animals which must be removed if the health of the herd is to be maintained, and perhaps some healthy ones so that numbers do not get out of hand. They will also try to deal with the stag which attacked Mr Floyd by the Temple. I have arranged that as far as possible they will clear the area around the school this morning, but they are governed to some extent by the movements of the deer and we may have to stay indoors this afternoon as well. In any case all you will probably hear is a few shots. The shooting will be done as humanely as possible. It is necessary for the sake of the deer themselves, and the meat will be a useful addition to the food resources of the country.

‘You may talk now.'

The usual metallic clamour of voices crashed out. The Schol table was never as noisy as, say 2a, but this morning everyone was calling congratulations to Fish, possibly overdoing it out of an urge to ignore poor Higley, scarlet-faced still and just not weeping.

‘Look at Higger,' muttered Dent.

‘A sick and weakling animal which must be removed if the health of Schol is to be maintained,' said Paul. He wished he hadn't, though Higley couldn't have heard. His tongue was always saying things like that, because they felt as if they were going to sound amusing, and they didn't. Dent frowned.

‘I say,' said Twogood, ‘we might get venison for boys' dinner tomorrow.'

‘Not for a week, glue-head,' said Chinnock. ‘Don't you know it's got to hang.'

‘I think it's horrible,' said Higley suddenly. ‘Don't you, Rogue?'

‘I suppose they've got to do it,' said Paul. ‘I mean, all the meat we eat has been killed by someone.'

‘My aunt's a vegetarian,' said Twogood. ‘She lets her corgi eat meat but my poor old uncle is stuck with cheese. They get extra cheese on the ration, though.'

Paul knew that Higley had only been making a fuss about the deer to hide the way he was almost weeping about going back down to Midway. There was a joke about the school cook having invented the vegetarian sausage; somebody made it again. Paul wondered why he wasn't shocked by the idea of men coming to shoot the deer, and decided that it was all right because of their wildness. It was the price of wildness. They lived their own lives, and being hunted was part of that. It would have been different if they were tame, coming up to you to feed out of your hand. But they were better wild. They could use that lovely racing run to try and escape from the guns—that belonged. Death among the bracken belonged too.

Nothing happened in the first half of the morning. Break in Big Space felt odd with the sun shining outside, not a cloud in the sky, the lake as still as a mirror; but it wasn't boring because the comics came on Saturday. Captain Zoom was back, and old Vultz; stupid, but you couldn't help reading them. Paul was doing so, perched sideways on one of the broad windowsills, when a van drove on to the gravel outside. ‘R. & R. Boyce,' it said. ‘Corn Chandlers. Exeter.' A fat man in green plus fours got out and opened the rear doors. Three more men emerged, carrying shot-guns. At this point Stocky came down the front steps and spoke to the man in green, who shouted at the driver and pointed. The van drove off towards the garage yard. As it went several more men with guns came in sight from that direction. They stood around on the gravel, pointing and arguing. One or two raised their guns to their shoulders and took imaginary aim down the slope. They looked a bit different from the shooting parties Paul had seen at Uncle Charles's, most of them fairly old and some not wearing proper shooting clothes, but grey flannel bags with the trouser-ends tucked into their socks. Some wore gumboots, a few breeches and leather gaiters. One of the men in gaiters also wore a bowler hat. Some of the tweeds were pretty loud.

‘Hi, Dent,' said Paul. ‘Come and look.'

Dent strolled over and gazed out of the window.

‘Just a lot of tradesmen,' he said. ‘Look at the way they're fooling around with their guns.'

‘I suppose they'll be using buckshot.'

‘Better had.'

‘They're going to have to get jolly close.'

(Paul hadn't told anyone about his attempts to stalk the deer. Even Dent might be a prae next term, and then if Paul let on he'd pretty well have to tell The Man.)

‘I expect they'll try and drive them,' said Dent. ‘Like Dad does with the pheasants.'

Next class was maths with Clumper Wither. Paul had completely forgotten that the deer-cull was happening when he heard the first shots, one bang followed by another. The squeak of Clumper's chalk on the blackboard faltered and he looked towards the back window. Schol was at the southwest corner of Paddery on the second floor (there was really no first floor at this point because of the height of the ceiling in Big Space). The back window looked south over the lake and the side window out along West Drive. Clumper had started to write again when a whole volley of shots clattered out.

‘Oh cripes!' said Chinnock. ‘Come and see.'

You could, with Clumper. Chinnock had already twisted to kneel on the seat of his desk, his face close to the glass. His voice had expressed something more than ordinary lesson-interrupting interest. The other eight boys rushed to the back of the room. Paul, coming last, stood on the scat of what had been Higley's desk to look out over their heads.

More shots clattered as about fifty deer came streaming across the slope between the house and the lake, right to left, going faster than Paul had ever seen them move, the ones in front stretching into huge leaps as they went. Most of the others came on at the same marvellous pace, but there were knots and turbulences in the flow of movement, ugly disturbances in the beauty of wild speed, because …

The groups separated, and Paul understood. What he had seen was a wave of deer overtaking the stragglers from the previous wave, the ones that had set off the first volley of shots. Flat out they could cross the open grass in a few seconds, and they could overtake the stragglers because these had been hit, and now, as the unwounded animals swept clear of them, were left in the open, labouring painfully on. A hind only twenty yards from the gravel had her back leg broken, trailing and bloody. The blood came from a wound the size of a saucer, low on her rump. She fell, tried to rise, got her fore-quarters up, heaved, but could not force her hind leg to stand and so fell again. At once she started heaving forward and up, not understanding that it was no use. She did it again and again, heave and collapse, heave and collapse, getting a few inches further from the guns after each ghastly effort. It was too painful to watch. Paul climbed forward and stood on the writing-surface of Chinnock's desk to try and see where the men with guns were.

They had stationed themselves along the edge of the open space, using the trunks of the trees to conceal themselves until the deer had been driven in range. They must have decided this was a good place, because the beaters could then funnel the deer between the lake and the garage block which stretched out west from the main building, but it meant that they couldn't really fire until the deer were already past them, which is why so many animals were messily wounded in their hind legs. They went on shooting like this, though after the first two waves the driven deer must have known they were there and tried to swerve out from the funnel or break back between the beaters. Some of the shots seemed to be coming from along West Drive, which meant that there were guns out there to widen the mouth of the funnel. Two or three deer were in the lake, swimming for the far shore. A whole troop of them fled across the slope beyond. But small groups, or sometimes single animals, still came hurtling out from under the trees, pursued by shots; almost always the rhythm of limbs would falter and at least one of the group would drop behind, moving now at a stumble, but usually strong enough to reach the left-hand trees.

‘My God!' said Clumper, from beside Paul in the aisle.

‘I've got to stop this. Back to your desks, boys. Do set questions.'

Nobody paid any attention. He was clumping towards the door when Chinnock called out, ‘It's all right, sir. Mr Smith's come.'

The Man strode into Paul's line of sight, heading purposefully across the gravel towards the fat man in green plus fours, who waved him away with angry gestures as soon as he reached the grass. The Man took no notice, but walked right up to the fat hunter and started to talk to him. Paul could hear that voice in his mind, The Man really angry, speaking his words slowly and not very loud, but completely flattening. Paul thought it might not work, used on an adult; and, yes, the fat hunter was arguing. The hunter next in line came up to join him. Stocky was crossing the gravel. The argument was going on, two against one, when Stocky arrived, but The Man said a few words and Stocky came hurrying back. The fat hunter put a whistle to his lips and blew. All the other men stopped shooting and came walking up the slope along the edge of the trees. Down by the lake three deer, almost as if they'd been waiting for their chance, raced into the open. Across the grass arena lay about twenty others, the ones near the guns quite still, but some of those which had got further struggling to rise or else twitching or threshing where they lay. The hind up by the gravel was still not dead.

The Man paid no attention when the hunters gathered round him, but spoke only to the fat one who had been in charge. Some of the others shouted, or pushed forward and tried to get into the argument. Stocky came trotting back, carrying The Man's Sam Browne with his first war revolver in the holster; all the school knew that belt because The Man often brought it along to show them when he was reading something like a Bulldog Drummond, where revolvers came in. The Man took it from Stocky and strapped it on.

Somehow that seemed to settle the argument. He was in charge now. He spoke to the whole group. They moved apart, obviously unhappy and angry, but still doing what he told them. He came walking across the grass along the line of the slope, but after a few paces glanced up at the school. He halted and with his left arm made a sweeping sideways gesture. Without words and at that distance the command was still unmistakable. Several other form-rooms looked south and, no doubt, at all the windows boys' faces could be seen, pale ovals behind the glass; masters with much more discipline than Clumper might have failed to keep their forms at their desks.

Paul was dipping his pen when he heard a different-sounding shot, just one. Shoes and chairs scraped on the floor.

‘Better not,' said Clumper. ‘He knows which window it is.'

‘Sunday drills all round,' said Dent. ‘What does, Chinners?'

‘Killing the wounded ones with his revolver,' said Chinnock.

‘Thank God,' said Clumper.

The Man said grace before boys' dinner which he usually only did on Sundays. He held up a hand to stop the kitchen staff taking plates round.

‘Some of you may have seen that bad business this morning,' he said. ‘It is the sort of thing which happens in wartime, when the men who know how to do it are away fighting the Hun. I have written to Lord Orne to tell him what happened. This afternoon nobody, and that includes praes, will go beyond the line of Painted Trees. The taxis will come for the First XI as arranged. Everybody else will join School Walk, with Mr Stuart and Captain Smith. Meanwhile the men who came this morning are going to search the park for wounded deer and dispose of them as humanely as possible. I shall stay to see that it is done properly, so Mr Hutton and Mr Stock will go with the taxis to St Dominic's. It is unlikely that the men will find all the deer they have injured, but because of petrol rationing and for other reasons, only four of them will be able to come back tomorrow, so we will have to take over. I will tell you about the arrangements for this later. I suggest that if you are writing letters you do not make too much fuss about what has happened. Thank you, gentlemen.'

Sunday morning was strange and beautiful. Only Freshers went to church. The rest of the school was organised into groups of three, each with a section of the park to search. A master, the Captain in Paul's case, was in charge of several such groups.

Paul and two 2b-ites, Hale and Porter ma., were given a curving valley to the north of West Drive, almost at the lodge gates, an area so far from the school that Paul had only crossed it once in his roamings. There was a copse on the left-hand slope. Paul decided to comb up the valley and back on the right, and then do the more difficult part with the copse.