The Glimpses of the Moon (32 page)

‘Would you mind,' he said mildly, ‘getting that thing out of our way?'

‘A little talk first,' said Mr Dodd with equal civility. ‘All we're asking is to have a little talk with you. A
reasonable
talk.'

‘Fascist pigs,' snarled the hunt saboteuse, brushing hair out of her eyes.

‘We just want you to think a little about what you're doing,' said Mr Dodd, ‘when you go out hunting innocent, helpless animals.'

‘Blood-lust.'

‘Consider how uneven the contest is,' said Mr Dodd. ‘All those horses, all those dogs. And just one terrified little fox, running for its life.'

‘Go and live in South Africa,' said the hunt saboteuse. ‘Those tyrants there will give you something better to hunt than foxes. They'll give you blacks. That's it, go and live in South Africa, you bourgeois scabs.'

‘And then, think how it all ends,' said Mr Dodd, still endeavouring doughtily to keep to the point. ‘The fox is cornered. Trembling, he has no hope left. The hounds surround him. Then they pounce. Their great teeth tear gobbets from him. In his intense agony, his blood gushes like a fountain. He dies slowly. He is literally rent in pieces. And all around him, the huntsmen sit astride their horses, laughing.'

‘Sado-masochistic élitists.'

‘Miss Davenant' - here Mr Dodd addressed the hunt saboteuse in mild reproof - ‘I don't think your approach is getting us anywhere. Peaceful persuasion, that's the line to take. It - ‘

‘Power-crazed murderers.'

‘Well, I scarcely - Peter, what are you doing?'

What Peter - the bald youth - was doing soon became obvious. He had reached into the estate wagon for a large glass jar full of colourless liquid, had unstoppered it, and was now splashing its contents freely on to the surface of the lane. The odour of aniseed rose up and engulfed them all. Miss Mimms started crying again.

The second huntsman's teeth gleamed in the forests of his beard. He made his first and only contribution to the discussion. Glowering at the bald youth, he hissed ‘Scybalum!' twice - an arcane obscenity which, whatever its appropriateness, failed to have much effect, since only Fen understood what it meant.

Mr Dodd, who had his choleric side, said testily, ‘What on earth is the use of that, Peter? You're just wasting the stuff. The hounds are nowhere near.'

The hunt saboteuse gave Mr Dodd a withering look. ‘You just go ahead, Peter,' she shrilled. ‘You just
show
the pigs.'

Peter followed up action with speech. ‘We did ought to have laid a false trail,' he said, frowning at the bearded scybalummerchant: ‘And we did ought to have unstopped the earths, and sprayed the dogs with Anti-Mate, and used firecrackers and thunderflashes and horns and whistles. That's what we did ought to have done.' He transferred his displeasure to Mr Dodd. ‘And why haven't we, that's what I want to know? Why haven't we?'

Mr Dodd groped for the vanishing tatters of his leadership. ‘As regards this particular meet,' he stammered feebly, ‘I made an arrangement with the Master that we shouldn't - that we shouldn't - In short, that we should confine ourselves to banners and to verbal protest. You see, the police - trespass -'

‘Revisionist!' the hunt saboteuse said. ‘You're nothing but a dirty bourgeois revisionist. Trespass, hell! I tell you, these bloody aristo land-owners have got it coming to them anyway. And as to being scared of the fuzz, all I can say is -'

‘You're a bourgeois yourself, come to that,' said Mr Dodd stoutly.

‘Still, you didn't ought to have done it,' said the bald youth in more moderate tones. Thoughtfully, he poured more aniseed on to the ground.

During this interchange, the man in the caftan had wearily dismounted. He let go of his horse's reins - it was a sixteenhands bay, apparently of a very equable disposition - and on being released it wandered to the grassy bank above which the hedge grew, coming to rest immediately beneath the branch on which the Major was sitting. Here it stood grazing as voraciously as its bridle allowed; and here it remained unperturbed throughout all the subsequent disturbances, until its fate finally caught up with it.

The man in the caftan approached Mr Dodd on foot, watched suspiciously by the hunt saboteuse and the bald youth. The bearded man imitated him in dismounting, to stand in the lane in silence, glaring at the scene. Miss Mimms stayed up, quietly weeping, with no one now to pat her on the arm.

‘Look,' said the man in the caftan, ‘I don't in the least mind talking about the pros and cons of hunting, but this isn't the time for it, or the place. Miss Mimms has been thrown. She's hurt herself. We're taking her to see Dr Mason, and you're in the way. So will you please get
out
of the way?'

The hunt saboteuse laughed harshly and performed a little dance of triumph. Mr Dodd said, ‘Oh dear, I am sorry. Perhaps in the circumstances we'd better - '

‘She don't look hurt bad to me,' said the bald youth.

‘Miss Mimms is suffering from extensive bruises and from shock.'

‘Serve her right,' said the hunt saboteuse.

‘Come, now,' said the man in the caftan.

‘Yes, I think in the circumstances perhaps we'd better -'

‘She can still ride her horse, can't she?' said the hunt saboteuse. ‘If she wants to see a doctor, tell her to go jump a hedge.'

Miss Mimms dissolved into a niagara of tears. ‘Shock can be very dangerous,' said the man in the caftan sternly.

‘Yes, I think perhaps –'

But what the issue of this conflict would have been, neither Fen nor anyone else would ever know, for at this point a new element was added to the situation. From down the lane beyond the Rector's house a locally familiar aggregation of sounds
came within earshot, approaching rapidly: shouts, a bicycle bell, a drumming of hooves.

One of Clarence Tully's herds was on the move.

Fen, the Major, the huntsmen and the hunt saboteurs were alike struck dumb, peering into the east to catch a first sight of this fresh complication. And they had little time to wait. In the van of the procession, as usual, came Tully's third cowman on his bicycle, pedalling away frenziedly. Then the South Devons -luckily only about twenty of them, but all moving precipitately, at their utmost speed. Finally, to draw up the rear, trotted Clarence Tully's youngest son, a brawny eleven-year-old whose penetrating voice was on the change, and who carried a long hazel switch with which to lash out at the bony rumps of the hindermost cows if they showed signs of straggling or of losing momentum. This rowdy, intimidating muster came belting up the lane at full tilt, and it seemed impossible that it would be able to stop in time to avoid breaking against, and deluging, the obstacle of the hunt saboteurs' estate wagon, as an Atlantic roller drenches a shingle bank.

‘My word!' said the Major.

Matters were not improved by the fact that the third cowman seemed to have lost his head: apart from ringing his bell, he seemed proposing to do nothing to avoid a collision. At almost the last possible moment, however, he recovered himself and took action. True, this consisted of nothing more constructive than veering into the bank, hitting it with his front wheel, falling off his saddle and inflicting on himself some painful, disabling injury of the ankle; but it was just sufficient to bring the cows to a halt. Once relieved of their hurry, the creatures immediately began to disperse in various directions in search of food. Some attempted to wander back in the direction from which they had come; a second group decided to explore the offshoot opposite the gate of the Rector's house, in which the Mini was parked; a third tackled the nearest verges and hedges; a fourth - three cows only, including the leader - remained standing more or less still, sniffing at the paintwork of the estate wagon. Tully's youngest son, whose name was Alan, ran hither and thither, cursing, making cow noises like ‘Coop, coop', and plying his switch in an effort to re-assemble the herd in a homogeneous
mass in the lane, all facing the right way. Sometimes he shouted at the hunt saboteurs, ‘Get that bloody thing out of the way!' Sometimes he shouted at the third cowman, who was sitting on the bank moaning and nursing his ankle.

‘Git yer arse up off o' there, Enoch, an' come an' help!'

‘Can't,' Enoch shouted back. ‘I think I gone an' broke me bloody leg!'

‘Pity you ‘asn't broke yer bloody neck,' said Alan unfeelingly, fluctuating between treble and bass. Panting, he continued to chase the errant cows single-handed.

‘I think, perhaps -' said Mr Dodd.

‘Capitalist feudalists,' said the hunt saboteuse.

The Major said, ‘I say, my dear fellow, do you think we ought to get down and help?'

‘As far as I can see,' said Fen, ‘the only way we could really help would be by knocking the two younger saboteurs unconscious and moving their car.'

‘Well, I wouldn't mind doing that.'

‘Good heavens, what's happening now?'

What was happening now, and what inhibited them from moving for the moment, was that the leader of the herd had come to the conclusion that the grass was greener on the other side. Eyes rolling, she proceeded doggedly to scramble across the bonnet of the estate wagon, its rusted metal buckling under her weight, and to descend somehow on the other side. The hunt saboteurs got expeditiously out of her way. So did the two huntsmen and Miss Mimms, all of whom had been contemplating these goings-on in pessimistic silence. Only the bay belonging to the man in the caftan remained unperturbed, still stationed beneath the Major's branch and apparently on the point of slumber.

Alan Tully was roused to a fresh access of rage.

‘Can't 'ee bloody stop 'er, you useless lot?' he shrieked. ‘Enoch, get after 'er, can't 'ee?'

‘It's me leg,' said Enoch, not attempting to get up. Seemingly in an attempt to justify his existence, he grabbed at his fallen bicycle and began trying to straighten the handlebars. The leader of the cows, meanwhile, had set off briskly towards the field gate at the bend of the lane, had reached it, and was now
doing her best to lift it off its hinges with her head. From their position on the other side of the estate wagon, such of the remaining cows as Alan bad managed to herd together stood regarding her admiringly.

‘Stop her! Git after her!' Alan bellowed despairingly. But no one answered him and no one moved. Both huntsmen and hunt saboteurs, indeed, seemed to feel that the time had come for them to re-open hostilities, and with the exception of the bearded man were all talking simultaneously when a menacing wave of assorted internal-combustion resonances reached their ears from the direction of Glazebridge. Fen and the Major heard them too, and Fen rotated on his bough to see a large number of machines strung out and roaring up the hill towards the bend.

The motor-cycle scramble had arrived.

There were Hondas and Suzukis and Yamahas and even a few Norton Commandos, ranging in capacity from 400 to 750 c.c. They were being ridden by youths and young men, who, unaware of what was awaiting them, were all going at a tremendous pace - so much so that when they rounded the bend, and the man in the caftan (by now perceptibly losing his cool) dashed forward to flag them down, their helmeted leaders were only just able to stop short of Miss Mimms's horse. With the exception of the cow at the field gate, who went on striving unabatingly at her furative task, the herd panicked, and the unfortunate Alan Tully was back to square one. Enoch continued to sit on the bank, grizzling and groaning and calling for medical aid and intermittently wrestling with his bicycle. The hunt saboteurs lined themselves defensively up against the side of their vehicle. The bay had apparently fallen asleep entirely. The bearded huntsman spat in the lane. The man in the caftan lifted its hem and wiped the sweat off his face with it. Miss Mimms again burst into tears. Fen and the Major stayed safely up in the apple tree, by this time so selfishly riveted by the scene as to be psychologically quite incapable of deserting their grand-stand view and climbing down to offer assistance.

Motor-cyclists went on pouring round the bend and stopping short until eventually the lane became crammed with them. Some remained astride with their engines idling; others
switched off; yet others dismounted. All looked grim and resentful. To the stink of aniseed and horses and cows was now superadded the stink of petrol fumes. Back along the lane to Glazebridge, far away from the hurly-burly, a rearmost motorcyclist had got off and was pressing himself and his machine hard into the hedge, though nothing at all was approaching him from either direction. Fen took this distant, terrorized figure to be Scorer.

The nearest motor-cyclist, who appeared to be fugleman for the rest, propped his Honda against the bank and after a quick assessment of the situation advanced minatorily on Mr Dodd. He was a muscular but rather stunted youth, scarcely taller than the chemist but a good deal more single-minded. He jerked his head towards the estate wagon and said, ‘That thing yours, Dad?'

‘Yes,' said Mr Dodd. ‘No. Well, in a way.'

‘Move it.'

‘I don't drive,' said Mr Dodd. ‘You'll have to ask one of these other two.'

‘You ask them -
Dad
. It's you I'm talking to, not them. You're in charge here, aren't you?'

‘Well, in a way. Up to a point, that is. In actual fact, we're a democratically elected - '

‘Stow all that, Dad, and get weaving. I know what you lot are,' said the motor-cyclist. ‘You're hunt saboteurs, that's what you are.'

‘And proud of it,' said Mr Dodd, drawing himself up to his full height.

‘Cissies, dykes, fags, Nosey parkers. Busybodies. Spoilsports.'

‘Polluters,' said the hunt saboteuse.
‘Lumpenproletariat
. Why don't you rise up against the exploiters and be men instead of