The Gamekeeper Read online

  ‘You would an’all.’

  ‘Well, it’s no good wasting it is it?’

  ‘You’re not going to waste it, are you, love?’

  And she tried to tempt him by cutting his bacon up into small stickable pieces.

  ‘It’s no good trying to force him, Mary. He’d eat it if he was hungry.’

  ‘I know, but he’ll be starving by dinner time if he doesn’t eat a bit more.’

  ‘It’ll serve him right. He’ll eat his breakfast tomorrow then.’

  Mary Purse turned away to prepare her husband’s breakfast at the stove.

  ‘It’s all your fault, anyway.’

  ‘That’s it, blame me.’

  ‘You hit him, didn’t you?’

  ‘He should do as he’s told.’

  ‘He only wanted to carry a pheasant.’

  ‘He’s not big enough.’

  ‘You could have helped him, couldn’t you? Anyway, what could have happened? It was taped wasn’t it?’

  ‘What if it had broke loose, and we’d have been chasing it all over the yard? Pheasants have been known to go sterile when they’ve been scared bad.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, George. It’d have had plenty of time to settle down. They’ll not be laying for another couple of months.’

  ‘I’m not taking any risks, Mary… Anyway… look, am I getting any breakfast, or what?’

  And that was the end of that.

  Mary Purse made as if to continue the argument; then she shrugged and turned back to the stove. She sliced a tomato into the frying pan, and the reaction of the juices on the hot fat created a furious energy, which jiggled the slices around, and produced a hissing sound like an angry cat.

  John had brought a cat home once. He was five, just started school, and did not know any better. He did not know that his father was a gamekeeper.

  A girl in their class had brought three kittens to school in a cardboard box, lined with an old red cardigan to keep them warm. Her dad said that if she could not get rid of them, he was going to drown them. Some of the children said they would like one, but they had already got pets, and their parents would not let them have any more. Some of the children said they would like one, but pets were not allowed in the new flats. John said he could have one. The teacher asked him if he was sure. They had got lots of animals at their house he said, a kitten would not make any difference. He did not mind which one he had. They were all nice. They were tabbies, with different-sized white bibs, and different-sized white socks on their paws. They all had blue eyes, and they seemed to smile every time they said mew. One of the girls said that the kittens could have her bottle of milk at playtime. Some more children said that the kittens could have theirs as well. Then the teacher said that there was no need to argue about it because there would be a spare bottle anyway; and she took the kittens along to the staff-room for the morning, so that they could get on with some work.

  John took his kitten home at dinner time. He carried it down his jerkin to keep it warm. He kept running a bit and walking a bit, and every time he stopped running he looked down his jerkin at the kitten clinging on to his jumper.

  When he arrived home his mother was hanging nappies out in the yard. The new baby was asleep in the pram. When she saw the kitten she dried her hands on her pinafore and took it from him. It pulled itself up her jumper and clung to her shoulder, mewing. She held it there, and stroked its back, and told him that he could not keep it. He started to cry and said that he would look after it. His dad did not like cats, she said. They killed the pheasant chicks if they got chance. Then his dad came out of the wood with his gun. ‘Where’s that thing come from?’ he said. His wife told him the story. ‘Well, he can take it straight back,’ he said. ‘There’s enough cats get here off that estate as it is, without bringing them here. They all ought to be drowned,’ he said. John took it back to school after dinner, and another boy took it home at four o’clock. He never saw the kitten again.

  Mary Purse served out her husband’s breakfast, then took Ian’s duffel coat down from the peg behind the kitchen door, and helped him to put it on. John made no move to get ready. He just stood in front of the fire in his stocking feet, watching. A decision had been made, and he was now waiting for the outcome.

  His father looked across at him from the table.

  ‘Isn’t it time you got your things on, John?’

  John looked from his father to his mother. Still fastening the toggles on Ian’s duffel coat, she reciprocated the look; it was a kind of telepathic baton passing. She turned to her husband.

  ‘He says he doesn’t want to go this morning.’

  ‘Why, what’s up with him?’

  ‘He says he doesn’t feel very well.’

  ‘What’s up with you this time, John?’

  John looked at his stomach, then marked its position with his hand.

  ‘I’ve got stomach-ache.’

  The gamekeeper levelled a forkful of egg at him. The portion of white, hanging over the prongs, looked as languid as a Dalí watch.

  ‘Stomach-ache my arse. You’re telling lies again, John. Now then, what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you want to go to school?’

  The boy looked to his mother for support. But she shook her head at him. The game was up. But although she would no longer comply with the deception, she was prepared to defend the fear which had caused it.

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter with him. He’s getting picked on again at school. I’ve a good mind to go up and see Mr Newton about it.’

  ‘You’re not, Mam. You’re not going up there.’

  The gamekeeper shook his head in agreement. Although he knew nothing of the merits of the case, he agreed with the boy in principle. Parents, especially mothers, no matter what the circumstances, should keep away from school.

  ‘Who’s picking on him this time?’

  ‘That eldest lad of Docherty’s.’

  ‘What, Sammy Docherty’s lad? Well, you know why that is, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I know.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what. I’d have had his mate an’all that morning, if his dog hadn’t started growling and warned him.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Joe Price.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t catch him. Our John’d be all right with Price’s team ganging up on him. How many have they got, six? Seven?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they all ought to be gassed in their beds like they do rabbits. And they’re all taking after their father. I’m fed up of chasing them out of the woods. And the lip they give you when you say owt to them. When I was a kid, if we were caught on private land we knew we’d done wrong and we’d just get off, thankful that we didn’t get some stick, or get reported. But these days… Pu!…’

  And he took two substantial drinks of hot sweet tea to fortify himself against modern times.

  ‘The way they talk back to you; you’d think they’d the right to trespass. You’d think that the woods belonged to them.’

  And he was so indignant at the insolence of the Price family, who by now embodied the evils of a whole generation, that he forgot about the immediate problem confronting his own family, and continued with the demolition of his breakfast.

  Ian was now ready and waiting for someone to take him to school. If John was not going, either his father or his mother would have to take him up the cart track through the wood, and see him across the main road which separated the Duke’s estate from the council estate.

  The mother and the two boys stood there, watching the gamekeeper eat, waiting for a decision; until he became aware of them watching him.

  ‘Hey up, it’s not a sideshow you know.’

  ‘We’re waiting. Is our John going, or isn’t he?’

  The gamekeeper was surprised at the question. He thought he had settled it minutes ago.

  ‘Of course he’s going. If they see he’s frightened of them, they’ll pick on him even more. I know it’s not very nice for him; it’ll be the same for our Ian when he gets older. But I’ve a job to do. Every time I catch somebody poaching I can’t stop and think to myself, has he got any kids who might bash our John up at school? He’ll just have to put up with it, that’s all. I mean, what do you want me to do, give me notice in and go and work back at Brightside Steel?’

  As the two boys left the house in their wellingtons and coats the gamekeeper said to the elder boy,

  ‘Remember, John, you stick up for yourself. If they see you’re not frightened, they’ll stop bothering you.’

  All John wanted was to be friends. He did have friends at school, but these relationships were never cemented because he saw so little of the other boys after school.

  Sometimes he stayed to play at someone’s house on the estate, and sometimes, on Saturdays, he went to play football on the recreation ground. This was all right. But the trouble was, John could rarely ask anyone home in return. His father was always uneasy when there were strangers around the place. He occasionally allowed an individual friend. But a gang, never. And this frustrated the boys. They could not understand it. All they wanted was to play. So, when things went wrong between them, and John became involved in an argument, and they reached that point where reason fails and irrelevant accusations begin, John’s opponents always used his father as their first point of attack. In similar circumstances some boys have the handicap of obesity or foreign birth, crossed eyes or an impediment of speech. John’s handicap was having a gamekeeper for a father.

  Because the boys loved to visit John’s house if the game keeper happened to be away for a few hours. They thought it must be the best place in the world to live. They would have gone on their holidays there. It was a real cottage in a wood. They burned logs on the fire, and there was even a wooden trestle to saw them on, like in Hansel and Gretel. There were old dark stables with creaky doors filled with ancient and mysterious tools. There were dogs and hens and hutches with ferrets in. And sometimes, when you looked warily into their rancid dens, there was the shocking sight of a dead rabbit or a bird in the sawdust, and the ferret staring up at you from the hole in the flesh.

  There was usually something dead about the place; a load of rooks or woodpigeons, or sometimes a hedgehog or a hare. Something for the boys to turn over with their foot, and make them jump, when the flies exploded off it.

  And in the summer, swallows zipped in and out of the outhouses, and when you peered upwards into the cool gloom you could see the mud bowls of their nests moulded to the rafters, and the high places up on the walls.

  It was magic land. You could play hide and seek, and in less than a minute be crouched down in a bracken cave, so secure that nobody could find you, and eventually you were forced to crawl out to make a game of it.

  But the gamekeeper could not allow this. He could not allow gangs of boys to race around the house when the pheasants were in the laying pen. The noise and the excitement would terrify the birds, and might affect their fertility. Then, when the poults had been released in covert, he could not allow the boys to rampage through the woods, Tarzaning up the trees, and adventuring in the undergrowth. They might scatter the birds and force them to leave covert, and then there would be less pheasants for the guns to shoot when they came in the autumn. He could not allow that. He was paid to keep game, not to administer a public playground.

  And so the Purse boys were lonely boys. Their main companions were each other.

  George Purse wiped his plate clean with a piece of bread, washed the bread and grease down with the remains of his tea, then stood up. He picked up the unopened newspaper from the table and walked across the kitchen to have a look at it by the fire. Mary Purse cleared his dirty dishes and put them into the sink with the other pots. She scalded them with water from the gas heater on the wall, and the rising steam misted up the kitchen window. She immediately wiped a clear patch on a pane. She liked to look out while she was working at the sink.

  Her husband stood on the hearthrug letting the fire scorch the backs of his legs. When they became too hot he stepped forward a pace, then back a pace as soon as the heat decreased. He was secretly messing about, daring himself, experimenting with mild degrees of pain. He had nothing special to do that morning; yet while he stood there, reading the paper, taking a step forward, then taking a step back, he never considered helping his wife with the pots, even though she had a lot of work to do and would still be doing it at bedtime. There was rigid demarcation in the Purse household. He did his job. She did hers.

  Mary Purse had the radio on to keep her company while she worked. It was a record request programme, and the compère talked as though the whole country was having one big coffee morning while they listened to the show. She hummed the tunes, and joined in the words when she knew them. All those songs, all about love, love, love. Some banal, some risible, some true. Relayed over tannoy systems to women in factories; over radios to mothers at home; some dreaming, some consoling themselves, all trying to make sense of the promise of it all.

  George Purse was not trying to make sense of it. He had finished courting as soon as he had got married. Courting had been a necessary embarrassment. It had been an uncomfortable time, when he had been forced to endure jibes from the rest of the lads. It had been the same with them all. The general idea seemed to be to get a girl, get her courted and get her wed; then start getting out with the lads again. Crazy.

  George Purse was trying to make sense of something he was reading in the paper, about a stray dog that had been caught with tattoos on its ears. Experts were puzzled by it, it said. So was George Purse. He shook his head at the story.

  ‘It’s a pity some folks have nowt better to do with their time. I hope they catch them. And when they do they want to tattoo their bloody ears. They want to write silly bugger, on each one.’

  He dropped the newspaper on to a chair and set off across the room for his jacket.

  ‘I don’t know, there’s some rubbish in the papers these days. If it’s not dogs with tattooed ears, it’s a picture of some silly sod looking out of a bedroom window next to a sunflower. What about that bloke up on the estate who had his hand off last week, because his machine guard was faulty? I never saw that in the paper, did you?’

  Mary Purse was listening to Frank Sinatra on the radio.

  When love congeals

  It soon reveals

  The stale aroma of performing seals.

  I wish I were in love again.

  George Purse took his jacket down from the hook on the back of the kitchen door and put it on. He took his deerstalker hat out of one of the side pockets and put that on. He was now dressed in his full gamekeeper’s uniform; hat, tweed knicker-bocker suit and woollen knee stockings. That hat and socks he had had to buy for himself. The suit was provided.

  The Duke’s gamekeepers were issued with one suit per year. They were made by a tailor in Harrogate. An old family firm which specialized in country wear. Once a year the tailor drove down from Harrogate to measure up George Purse and the other gamekeepers for their new suits. The Duke selected the pattern. It was a family tradition. Once a year he looked through the swatches of green tweeds and decided on the check. The game-keepers always knew how old each other’s suits were when they met each other.

  George Purse was wearing his last year’s suit. He always wore his last year’s suit for work, and saved his best suit for attending country shows in the summer, and for the shooting season later on in the year.

  He straightened his tie in the mirror. Except for the times when he was doing jobs at home, he always wore a tie. He had instructions to do so; whether he was on his rounds in the fields and woods, or up in the village, or out anywhere else on business. He had been told to look neat and tidy at all times. Gamekeeping is a very respectable profession.

  It was a green tie, pure wool, handwoven in Scotland. He had bought it one year at the Country Landowners’ Association Game Fair. He had been drinking all lunchtime in a marquee, and had emerged into the sunlight, staring and reckless. He had bought the tie for himself and a pair of sheepskin slippers for his wife.

  When he took the tie out of the bag at home, he wasn’t sure. He thought it was a bit gaudy; more blue than green perhaps. But it had cost him two pounds so he had to wear it. He was glad there hadn’t been any red ties on display, or any with polka-dots or zig-zags on them. His wife said that sheepskin made her feet sweat. She had told him before. But the slippers had also been expensive, and eventually she wore them out.

  He tucked his tie down his sweater. It was a green sweater. Not the same green as the tie, or suit, or socks, or hat. None of them were the same green as each other. But they all toned in well enough, as the different greens in a wood tone in. Game-keepers always wear green. According to pictorial evidence, moving and otherwise, so did Robin Hood and his merry men.

  Mary Purse turned round from the sink for the tea towel, and saw her husband adjusting his tie at the mirror.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘I thought I’d have a walk up to the yard. See if I can get a bit of timber to mend that pen door.’

  ‘While you’re up there, see about that window frame again. And tell them if they’d have come and put a bit of paint on the house, it wouldn’t have rotted in the first place.’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t told them?’

  ‘Well, tell them again. The only way you get anything done round here is by pestering their eyes out.’

  She was right. This is what George Purse had done to try and get his bedroom window frame repaired. First, he had reported it to the Head keeper, and then he had mentioned it casually in conversation to the other keepers. He felt obliged to tell the Head keeper because, although he had nothing to do with the repair of window frames, he was George’s immediate boss, and to circumvent him during the process might lead to offence, and perhaps repercussions, or the withholding of favours at some later date.

  He did not have to say anything to the other keepers, but they usually told each other their external domestic grievances. They derived comfort from each other’s troubles. When George told them that the frame was rotten, and the wood was as soft as shit, they told him he should get up to the yard and get it reported. Their approval was important, it gave him confidence and strength; he felt he was acting as a delegate when he issued his complaint. Another reason they told each other, was that none of them wanted the others to think that they were obtaining favours surreptitiously. If they acted in this way they would appear to be humble and cowardly, to be bosses’ men. The gamekeepers liked to be thought of as men of independence, brave and open in their dealings.