'Good evening,' Claud said, nice and friendly.
This one was a tall bony man about forty with a swift eye and a hard cheek and hard dangerous hands.
'I know you,' he said softly, coming closer. 'I know the both of you.'
Claud didn't answer this.
'You're from the fillin'-station. Right?'
His lips were thin and dry, with some sort of a brownish crust over them.
'You're Cubbage and Hawes and you're from the fillin'-station on the main road. Right?'
'What are we playing?' Claud said. 'Twenty Questions?'
The keeper spat out a big gob of spit and I saw it go floating through the air and land with a plop on a patch of dry dust six inches from Claud's feet. It looked like a little baby oyster lying there.
'Beat it,' the man said. 'Go on. Get out.'
Claud sat on the bank smoking his cigarette and looking at the gob of spit.
'Go on,' the man said. 'Get out.'
When he spoke, the upper lip lifted above the gum and I could see a row of small discoloured teeth, one of them black, the others quince and ochre.
'This happens to be a public highway,' Claud said. 'Kindly do not molest us.'
The keeper shifted the gun from his left arm to his right.
'You're loiterin',' he said, 'with intent to commit a felony. I could run you in for that.'
'No you couldn't,' Claud said.
All this made me rather nervous.
'I've had my eye on you for some time,' the keeper said, looking at Claud.
'It's getting late,' I said. 'Shall we stroll on?'
Claud flipped away his cigarette and got slowly to his feet. 'All right,' he said. 'Let's go.'
We wandered off down the lane the way we had come, leaving the keeper standing there, and soon the man was out of sight in the half-darkness behind us.
'That's the head keeper,' Claud said. 'His name is Rabbetts.'
'Let's get the hell out,' I said.
'Come in here,' Claud said.
There was a gate on our left leading into a field and we climbed over it and sat down behind the hedge.
'Mr Rabbetts is also due for his supper,' Claud said. 'You mustn't worry about him.'
We sat quietly behind the hedge waiting for the keeper to walk past us on his way home. A few stars were showing and a bright three-quarter moon was coming up over the hills behind us in the east.
'Here he is,' Claud whispered. 'Don't move.'
The keeper came loping softly up the lane with the dog padding quick and soft-footed at his heels, and we watched them through the hedge as they went by.
'He won't be coming back tonight,' Claud said.
'How do you know that?'
'A keeper never waits for you in the wood if he knows where you live. He goes to your house and hides outside and watches for you to come back.'
'That's worse.'
'No, it isn't, not if you dump the loot somewhere else before you go home. He can't touch you then.'
'What about the other one, the one in the clearing?'
'He's gone too.'
'You can't be sure of that.'
'I've been studying these bastards for months, Gordon, honest I have. I know all their habits. There's no danger.'
Reluctantly I followed him back into the wood. It was pitch dark in there now and very silent, and as we moved cautiously forward the noise of our footsteps seemed to go echoing around the walls of the forest as though we were walking in a cathedral.
'Here's where we threw the raisins,' Claud said.
I peered through the bushes.
The clearing lay dim and milky in the moonlight.
'You're quite sure the keeper's gone?'
'I know he's gone.'
I could just see Claud's face under the peak of his cap, the pale lips, the soft pale cheeks, and the large eyes with a little spark of excitement dancing slowly in each.
'Are they roosting?'
'Yes.'
'Whereabouts?'
'All around. They don't go far.'
'What do we do next?'
'We stay here and wait. I brought you a light,' he added, and he handed me one of those small pocket flashlights shaped like a fountain-pen. 'You may need it.'
I was beginning to feel better. 'Shall we see if we can spot some of them sitting in the trees?' I said.
'No.'
'I should like to see how they look when they're roosting.'
'This isn't a nature-study,' Claud said. 'Please be quiet.'
We stood there for a long time waiting for something to happen.
'I've just had a nasty thought,' I said. 'If a bird can keep its balance on a branch when it's asleep, then surely there isn't any reason why the pills should make it fall down.'
Claud looked at me quick.
'After all,' I said, 'it's not dead. It's still only sleeping.'
'It's doped,' Claud said.
'But that's just a deeper sort of sleep. Why should we expect it to fall down just because it's in a deeper sleep?'
There was a gloomy silence.
'We should've tried it with chickens,' Claud said. 'My dad would've done that.'
'Your dad was a genius,' I said.
At that moment there came a soft thump from the wood behind us.
'Hey!'
'Ssshh!'
We stood listening.
Thump.
'There's another!'
It was a deep muffled sound as though a bag of sand had been dropped from about shoulder height.
Thump!
'They're pheasants!' I cried.
'Wait!'
'I'm sure they're pheasants!'
Thump! Thump!
'You're right!'
We ran back into the wood.
'Where were they?'
'Over here! Two of them were over here!'
'I thought they were this way.'
'Keep looking!' Claud shouted. 'They can't be far.'
We searched for about a minute.
'Here's one!' he called.
When I got to him he was holding a magnificent cockbird in both hands. We examined it closely with our flashlights.
'It's doped to the gills,' Claud said. 'It's still alive, I can feel its heart, but it's doped to the bloody gills.'
Thump!
'There's another!'
Thump! Thump!
'Two more!'
Thump!
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Jesus Chris!'
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
Thump! Thump!
All around us the pheasants were starting to rain down out of the trees. We began rushing around madly in the dark, sweeping the ground with our flashlights.
Thump! Thump! Thump! This lot fell almost on top of me. I was right under the tree as they came down and I found all three of them immediately - two cocks and a hen. They were limp and warm, the feathers wonderfully soft in the hand.
'Where shall I put them?' I called out. I was holding them by the legs.
'Lay them here, Gordon! Just pile them up here where it's light!'
Claud was standing on the edge of the clearing with the moonlight streaming down all over him and a great bunch of pheasants in each hand. His face was bright, his eyes big and bright and wonderful, and he was staring around him like a child who has just discovered that the whole world is made of chocolate.
Thump!
Thump! Thump!
'I don't like it,' I said. 'It's too many.'
'It's beautiful!' he cried and he dumped the birds he was carrying and ran off to look for more.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
Thump!
It was easy to find them now. There were one or two lying under every tree. I quickly collected six more, three in each hand, and ran back and dumped them with the others. Then six more. Then six more after that.
And still they kept falling.
Claud was in a whirl of ecstasy now, dashing about like a mad g
host under the trees. I could see the beam of his flashlight waving around in the dark and each time he found a bird he gave a little yelp of triumph.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'That bugger Hazel ought to hear this!' he called out.
'Don't shout,' I said. 'It frightens me.'
'What's that?'
'Don't shout. There might be keepers.'
'Screw the keepers!' he cried. 'They're all eating!'
For three or four minutes, the pheasants kept on falling. Then suddenly they stopped.
'Keep searching!' Claud shouted. 'There's plenty more on the ground!'
'Don't you think we ought to get out while the going's good?'
'No,' he said.
We went on searching. Between us we looked under every tree within a hundred yards of the clearing, north, south, east, and west, and I think we found most of them in the end. At the collecting-point there was a pile of pheasants as big as a bonfire.
'It's a miracle,' Claud was saying. 'It's a bloody miracle.' He was staring at them in a kind of trance.
'We'd better just take half a dozen each and get out quick,' I said.
'I would like to count them, Gordon.'
'There's no time for that.'
'I must count them.'
'No,' I said. 'Come on.'
'One...
'Two...
'Three...
'Four...'
He began counting them very carefully, picking up each bird in turn and laying it carefully to one side. The moon was directly overhead now and the whole clearing was brilliantly illuminated.
'I'm not standing around here like this,' I said. I walked back a few paces and hid myself in the shadows, waiting for him to finish.
'A hundred and seventeen... a hundred and eighteen... a hundred and nineteen... a hundred and twenty!' he cried. 'One hundred and twenty birds! It's an all-time record!'
I didn't doubt it for a moment.
'The most my dad ever got in one night was fifteen and he was drunk for a week afterwards!'
'You're the champion of the world.,' I said. 'Are you ready now?'
'One minute,' he answered and he pulled up his sweater and proceeded to unwind the two big white cotton sacks from around his belly. 'Here's yours,' he said, handing one of them to me. 'Fill it up quick.'
The light of the moon was so strong I could read the small print along the base of the sack. J. w. CRUMP, it said. KESTON FLOUR MILLS, LONDON SW17.
'You don't think that bastard with the brown teeth is watching us this very moment from behind a tree?'
'There's no chance of that,' Claud said. 'He's down at the filling-station like I told you, waiting for us to come home.'
We started loading the pheasants into the sacks. They were soft and floppy-necked and the skin underneath the feathers was still warm.
'There'll be a taxi waiting for us in the lane,' Claud said.
'What?'
'I always go back in a taxi, Gordon, didn't you know that?'
I told him I didn't.
'A taxi is anonymous,' Claud said. 'Nobody knows who's inside a taxi except the driver. My dad taught me that.'
'Which driver?'
'Charlie Kinch. He's only too glad to oblige.'
We finished loading the pheasants, and I tried to hump my bulging sack on to my shoulder. My sack had about sixty birds inside it, and it must have weighed a hundredweight and a half, at least. 'I can't carry this,' I said. 'We'll have to leave some of them behind.'
'Drag it,' Claud said. 'Just pull it behind you.'
We started off through the pitch-black woods, pulling the pheasants behind us. 'We'll never make it all the way back to the village like this,' I said.
'Charlie's never let me down yet,' Claud said.
We came to the margin of the wood and peered through the hedge into the lane. Claud said, 'Charlie boy' very softly and the old man behind the wheel of the taxi not five yards away poked his head out into the moonlight and gave us a sly toothless grin. We slid through the hedge, dragging the sacks after us along the ground.
'Hullo!' Charlie said. 'What's this?'
'It's cabbages,' Claud told him. 'Open the door.'
Two minutes later we were safely inside the taxi, cruising slowly down the hill towards the village.
It was all over now bar the shouting. Claud was triumphant, bursting with pride and excitement, and he kept leaning forward and tapping Charlie Kinch on the shoulder and saying, 'How about it, Charlie? How about this for a haul?' and Charlie kept glancing back popeyed at the huge bulging sacks lying on the floor between us and saying, 'Jesus Christ, man, how did you do it?'
'There's six brace of them for you, Charlie,' Claud said. And Charlie said, 'I reckon pheasants is going to be a bit scarce up at Mr Victor Hazel's opening-day shoot this year,' and Claud said, 'I imagine they are, Charlie, I imagine they are.'
'What in God's name are you going to do with a hundred and twenty pheasants?' I asked.
'Put them in cold storage for the winter,' Claud said. 'Put them in with the dogmeat in the deep-freeze at the filling-station.'
'Not tonight, I trust?'
'No, Gordon, not tonight. We leave them at Bessie's house tonight.'
'Bessie who?'
'Bessie Organ.'
'Bessie Organ!'
'Bessie always delivers my game, didn't you know that?'
'I don't know anything,' I said. I was completely stunned. Mrs Organ was the wife of the Reverend Jack Organ, the local vicar.
'Always choose a respectable woman to deliver your game,' Claud announced. 'That's correct, Charlie, isn't it?'
'Bessie's a right smart girl,' Charlie said.
We were driving through the village now and the street-lamps were still on and the men were wandering home from the pubs. I saw Will Prattley letting himself in quietly by the side-door of his fishmonger's shop and Mrs Prattley's head was sticking out of the window just above him, but he didn't know it.
'The vicar is very partial to roasted pheasant,' Claud said.
'He hangs it eighteen days,' Charlie said, 'then he gives it a couple of good shakes and all the feathers drop off.'
The taxi turned left and swung in through the gates of the vicarage. There were no lights on in the house and nobody met us. Claud and I dumped the pheasants in the coal shed at the rear, and then we said good-bye to Charlie Kinch and walked back in the moonlight to the filling-station, empty-handed. Whether or not Mr Rabbetts was watching us as we went in, I do not know. We saw no sign of him.
'Here she comes,' Claud said to me the next morning.
'Who?'
'Bessie - Bessie Organ.' He spoke the name proudly and with a slight proprietary air, as though he were a general referring to his bravest officer.
I followed him outside.
'Down there,' he said, pointing.
Far away down the road I could see a small female figure advancing towards us.
'What's she pushing?' I asked.
Claud gave me a sly look.
'There's only one safe way of delivering game,' he announced, 'and that's under a baby.'
'Yes,' I murmured, 'yes, of course.'
'That'll be young Christopher Organ in there, aged one and a half. He's a lovely child, Gordon.'
I could just make out the small dot of a baby sitting high up in the pram, which had its hood folded down.
'There's sixty or seventy pheasants at least under that little nipper,' Claud said happily. 'You just imagine that.'
'You can't put sixty or seventy pheasants in a pram.'
'You can if it's got a deep well underneath it, and if you take out the mattress and pack them in tight, right up to the top. All you need then is a sheet. You'll be surprised how little room a pheasant takes up when it's limp.'
We stood beside the pumps waiting for Bessie Organ to arrive. It was one of those warm windless September mornings with a darkening sky and a smell of thunder in the air.
'Right through the villa
ge bold as brass,' Claud said. 'Good old Bessie.'
'She seems in rather a hurry to me.'
Claud lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old one. 'Bessie is never in a hurry,' he said.
'She certainly isn't walking normal,' I told him. 'You look.'
He squinted at her through the smoke of his cigarette. Then he took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked again.
'Well?' I said.
'She does seem to be going a tiny bit quick, doesn't she?' he said carefully.
'She's going damn quick.'
There was a pause. Claud was beginning to stare very hard at the approaching woman.
'Perhaps she doesn't want to be caught in the rain, Gordon. I'll bet that's exactly what it is, she thinks it's going to rain and she don't want the baby to get wet.'
'Why doesn't she put the hood up?'
He didn't answer this.
'She's running!' I cried. 'Look!' Bessie had suddenly broken into a full sprint.
Claud stood very still, watching the woman; and in the silence that followed I fancied I could hear a baby screaming.
'What's up?'
He didn't answer.
'There's something wrong with that baby,' I said. 'Listen.'
At this point, Bessie was about two hundred yards away from us but closing fast.
'Can you hear him now?' I said.
'Yes.'
'He's yelling his head off.'
The small shrill voice in the distance was growing louder every second, frantic, piercing, nonstop, almost hysterical.
'He's having a fit,' Claud announced.
'I think he must be.'
'That's why she's running, Gordon. She wants to get him in here quick and put him under a cold tap.'
'I'm sure you're right,' I said. 'In fact I know you're right. Just listen to that noise.'
'If it isn't a fit, you can bet your life it's something like it.'
'I quite agree.'
Claud shifted his feet uneasily on the gravel of the driveway. 'There's a thousand and one different things keep happening every day to little babies like that,' he said.
'Of course.'
'I knew a baby once who caught his fingers in the spokes of the pram wheel. He lost the lot. It cut them clean off.'
'Yes.'
'Whatever it is,' Claud said, 'I wish to Christ she'd stop running.'
A long truck loaded with bricks came up behind Bessie and the driver slowed down and poked his head out the window to stare. Bessie ignored him and flew on, and she was so close now I could see her big red face with the mouth wide open, panting for breath. I noticed she was wearing white gloves on her hands, very prim and dainty, and there was a funny little white hat to match perched right on the top of her head, like a mushroom.