Notwithstanding (5 page)

Robert counted out his money and realised that he was sixpence short. He stared at the coins in his palm, the threepenny bits and the halfpennies, and felt the leaden weight of disappointment in his heart. He looked and looked at his coins, as if looking might conjure up the extra coin that he had to have. Tears came to his eyes, but he mastered them, and slowly he offered back the brown paper bag containing his purchases. ‘I ain’t got enough,’ he said.

Mr C. F. Horne looked down at him sympathetically, and then he had a brainwave. ‘Let me look at those coins,’ he said, and he took them, turning them over in his hand with a scholarly air. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed theatrically. ‘Just as I thought!’

He held out a blackened old penny that bore the all but deleted image of Queen Victoria. ‘See this, young sir? This penny is very rare. In fact, it’s so rare that it’s not even worth a penny.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Robert, fearing that it was so worn out that its value might have been reduced to a halfpenny.

‘As luck would have it,’ said Mr Horne gravely, ‘this penny is so rare that it’s worth sixpence, and sixpence is exactly what you owe me.’ He handed back the brown paper bag, saying, ‘Thank you kindly, and good luck with the, er, Girt Pike. And don’t go putting your fingers in its maw until you’re sure that it’s dead.’ He watched Robert leaving the shop, and sighed
and
shook his head on account of his own foolishness. For months afterwards, Robert was to wonder somewhat ungraciously whether his penny might have been worth even more than sixpence, and half suspected Mr C. F. Horne of having diddled him.

The following day Robert took a small bowsaw from his father’s shed, and went to the Hurst. It was dark, wet, criss-crossed with inexplicable ditches, and in some places it had been coppiced for centuries. One of the ditches was oozing with the old engine oil emptied into it routinely by the gypsies at the scrapyard, but in those days no one thought anything of it. It was a place of kingcups and bluebells, pheasants, and abandoned iron pans with the bottoms rusted out. Through it ran the old cart track that in former times had been the main road to Chiddingfold and Abbot’s Notwithstanding. Nothing ever grew on it, and it remained a ghost road, or perhaps a road-in-waiting. He soon found a hazel that was in the ideal state, because he had often thought that one day such a wand might come in handy for something.

Not far off, Polly Wantage, apparelled in plus fours, was banging away at squirrels with her twelve-bore, and Robert worked quickly, with the fear in his breast that she might mistake him for a squirrel and give him a peppering. He whistled out of tune, very loudly, so that she would know he was a boy. His Uncle Dick frequently claimed to have been shot up
the
backside by irate gamekeepers, and liked to tell Robert that every evening he found lead shot in his underwear, where it had worked its way out of his bum during the day. He would put a hand down into the seat of his trousers, draw it out, and present the boy with pieces of warm swan shot, exclaiming, ‘There you are, son, get a load a’ that! Just think where that’s been, eh! Makes yer wince, don’ it?’

The holy grail and ultimate ambition of every little fisherman was a twelve-foot fishing rod. One day Robert hoped to own the very best, a Sealey Octofloat, which was made with real split cane, and was a proper twelve-footer. Twelve foot was long enough to reach out beyond the lily pads at the fringes of ponds, it was long enough to drop a float delicately next to the bubbles being sent to the surface by a tench, it was long enough to feel like a grown-up’s weapon. Never mind if it was also long enough to get tangled in the branches overhead during lapses of concentration and periods of excitement. Robert cut a long hazel pole that looked as if it must be at least twelve foot, and pulled it out of the clump where he had found it. Rather self-consciously he walked back home with it, past the green and the village shop, and past Obadiah Oak, the village’s last peasant, who made no acknowledgement beyond a friendly nod of the head, conscious that little boys often need long sticks for all sorts of purposes. Robert was worried
that
it might have been illegal to cut sticks in the Hurst, and his heart thumped with anxiety until he had arrived safely home, in case he was passed by the bobby on his bicycle, who would probably know straight away that the stick was a stolen one.

When he was home, Robert managed to get the pole through the house and out into the back garden with the assistance of his mother, who held on to the thin end to make sure that it didn’t whip any ornaments off their shelves. When he had laid it out on the grass he fetched a tape measure, and, with mounting excitement, confirmed that his rod was indeed not just twelve foot long, but sixteen. What should he do? All the best rods were twelve foot, but why not innovate, why not go even further? He wedged the rod into a chink in the fence, and bent it at the tip. It was definitely too thin and weak, so he cut off two feet. He waved the rod about, feeling it flex, and it was just right. He knew instinctively that it had enough whip in it to resist and tire a big fish, bending without breaking. Robert realised that he was pioneering a new concept in extra-long rods, and he felt emboldened and excited.

The little boy whipped the end of the thirty-pound line on to the tip, carefully emulating the technique taught him by his grandfather. He tied a loop in his line and tightened it about an inch from the point of the rod, and then very neatly he bound
it
along the final inch with button thread, under which he had laid a short loop of fine line, so that he could pass the thread through the loop, and then pull it through under the binding, to fix it. This always worked better than knots. Robert waited impatiently until his mother went out to the village shop to get bread, and then he sneaked upstairs and raided her make-up table for clear nail varnish. He painted it heavily on to the whipped thread, enjoying the clinging, intoxicating odour of it, so that it would shrink the whipping tight and set it hard and solid.

Robert had enough experience to realise that the line couldn’t be much longer than the rod, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to land the fish, and so he cut it off at fifteen feet, reasoning that this left some compensating margin for the line that in the future he was bound to lose while cutting knots away from hooks and traces. He rootled around in his treasure drawer and found the brightly painted pike bung that he had once rescued at great peril after spotting it abandoned, tangled up in reeds on the River Wey after the great flood. He pulled the stick out of the middle, laid his line in the slot, and replaced the stick. He resisted the temptation to tie on the trace and the treble hooks of the snap tackle. He had had a hook in his finger before, because of leaving his rod tackled up and ready to go. Uncle Dick had brought the hook through his flesh until it emerged,
then
he had cut off the barb and drawn it back out. The memory of the agony he had had to endure still made him clench his teeth.

Lastly Robert made a priest, because he knew that he was going to have to bash the pike over the head if he caught it. He found an old hickory broom handle, cut off a foot at one end, and drilled a hole in it. He decided to sacrifice some airgun pellets, and melted a handful in the lid of the tin, using Uncle Dick’s blowtorch. With a pair of pliers he gingerly picked up the lid, swimming with molten silvery liquid, and poured the lead into the hole that he had drilled. He would need the extra weight to make a sufficiently convincing cosh. He left it to cool, and then found to his frustration and disappointment that the lead simply fell out of the hole, because it shrunk when it cooled off. After a half-hour’s despair, Robert had a brainwave, and rummaged in his treasure drawer again. He had a big rusty bolt that he had found on the verge side, and this he glued into the hole vacated by the wilful lead. He smacked his palm with it a few times, and reckoned that it would be heavy enough.

So it was that two days later Robert called in on Mrs Rendall, ostensibly to let her know that he was there, but primarily to activate the flow of tea and peanut butter sandwiches. He had just had the most difficult bicycle ride of his life, because it wasn’t easy
cycling
up hills with a bag of fishing tackle and a fourteen-foot pole, and all the mad drivers like Miss Agatha Feakes and the nuns from the convent made it that much more nerve-racking and hazardous. He had been glad to catch his breath by stopping and talking to the hedging and ditching man, who, in the attitude of Hamlet cradling Yorick’s skull, had been examining the seized and rusted remains of an ancient gin trap that he had just found in the ditch. The hedging and ditching man had admired the hazel pole, and said that he would have been proud to have made something like that himself, and that if that didn’t catch the Girt Pike then nothing would. When he finally arrived at the Glebe House, Robert was quite exhausted, his legs were aching, and he definitely needed tea and peanut butter before he could begin to catch a fish.

He set up his normal rod, because first of all he had to catch a tiddler to put on the snap tackle. It was a perfect day, balmy, with a light breeze that was propelling wisps of cloud across the face of the sun. The animals and birds seemed especially active and cheerful. With the tea and sandwiches lying pleasantly on his stomach like the weight of a cat in the lap, Robert settled on his tiny folding fishing stool, and hauled in one tiddler after another. There was such pleasure in catching so many sparkling silver roach with their bright scarlet fins that it put the
Girt
Pike out of his mind. There was no sign of the great fish, and it receded into a distant possibility, a far potentiality, as if he suspected, or even knew, that he was not really old enough, or man enough, or ambitious enough, to catch it. He was also, in truth, reluctant to take one of those jewel-like fish, and impale it on treble hooks. Like all little boys, he had had his moments of gratuitous cruelty, but these beautiful little creatures were too perfect to violate.

He was in that hypnagogic state common in bank-side fishermen, when he became aware quite suddenly that something was happening at his feet. There was a stirring and a swirling in the water. He looked down and saw that the Girt Pike was tugging at his keepnet in an attempt to get at the tiddlers within. The great dark fish, casual, brutal and impudent, was actually within a hand’s reach, and Robert felt his heart leap in his chest. He shouted and leapt backwards, knocking over his stool, and the pike flicked its tail and vanished. When Robert came back to the water, thankful that no one had been witness to his panic and foolishness, he could see the pike near the surface by the lily pad, fanning the water with its fins, and watching him. It must have been three feet long, and was the biggest fish that Robert had ever seen. It seemed impossible that such a creature could have lived in this small pond.

With his hands shaking, Robert took a roach from his keepnet and hooked it on to his snap tackle, just as it said in the books, with one hook through the dorsal fin and another through the lip. He did not enjoy doing this, but he had been taken over by a deep and ineluctable instinct. He knew that it was necessity, and that was all.

He swung the little victim out over the water, dropped it just past the lily pad, and drew it straight past the nose of the pike.

To his amazement and surprise, and so fast that he could not react, the pike lunged forward and took the bait. Robert knew that when a pike took, you had to wait a second before you struck, otherwise you could just wrench the bait out of its mouth, but in this case he was so astonished that he nearly didn’t strike at all. When he did so, he felt the massive weight and strength of the fish at the other end, and began to experience an intoxicating terror that he would never in his life forget.

He would always remember the effort of trying to control his fright, and the temptation to do stupid or counter-productive things. He forced himself not to haul on the fish, not to risk breaking the rod, to let it tire itself out naturally against the spring of the hazel wood. He was amazed and bewondered by the energy and fury of the pike, as it surged one way and then another, bending the rod so that it bucked
and
leapt in his hands. Robert realised that he did not have his landing net ready, and understood too late that the net was far too small in any case. It was a little folding thing that he had found in the White Elephant in Godalming, and it had been originally intended for trout. He tucked the hazel pole under one arm, and managed to flick the net open with one hand.

He never knew how long it was that the mighty fish hurled itself about. Every time Robert thought that it had given up, the fish suddenly flamed back into furious resistance, rushing hither and thither, shaking its head, diving and leaping. Robert lost all sense of time and entered into another dimension that had something about it of eternity. He was holding on grimly, clutching his hazel pole more desperately than he really needed to, his knuckles white, his eyes popping in his head, and all the muscles of his arms and back aching with the strain. As the fish finally did begin to tire, as the intervals between its furies grew longer, he started to experience the terrible anxiety of not knowing how he was going to cope with such a monster once he had got it on to the bank.

Finally the Girt Pike was utterly spent, and Robert eased it towards him by raising the tip of the rod. Robert put his landing net into the water, and made the classic fisherman’s mistake. No one had ever told
him
that big fish seem to know what a landing net is for. This is why you draw a fish over the net, and then lift it. You cannot risk pulling it straight into a net that is plainly visible.

The Girt Pike saw the net and with shocking suddenness it burst back into frenzied life and hurled itself out towards the centre of the pond. Before Robert even knew what was happening, it had wrenched the rod out of his hand and towed it away across the water towards the lily pad.

Robert wanted to cry, and he sat down on the grass gazing numbly out at his rod floating on the water, and the heaving of the lily pad as the pike thrashed about in it. Finally he stood up, shaking but determined, and took off his shoes, socks and trousers. He dipped a toe into the water. It seemed unnaturally cold for a summer’s day. He worried that the water would be too deep, because he was not a good swimmer. He waded out, feeling the silty mud squelching between his toes, until he could grasp the butt of the rod. He raised it, and prepared to take up the strain of the fish. When he did so, it was the lily pad that responded, and he realised that the fish had wound the line round and round the massed stems. He pulled futilely on the line. The lilies moved but did not give, and his despair was renewed. The situation seemed irretrievable.