Darcy Dancer holding his breath. The bull slowly turning to sniff in the shadows. And the welcome sound. Of ripping grass again. The behemoth grazing. And another shadow seems like a heifer nudging beside him. Much better that he jumps on her than he wastes time chasing me. Dead tree leaves thank god, underfoot. Feels like dry land. Bat flitting overhead. A cottage. Just get closer. Creeping up this mound of grass. The white washed wall around this dim lighted window. Peer inside. A table, dresser full of dishes. A pail. May be full of milk. To wash down Kelly’s rather excellent chocolate fudge I borrowed. And chew now at this very moment so gratefully. Like the cottage out in the bog lands. With the bog woman and blind bog man. Dog sleeping in front of the fire. Good lord. There they are. The inhabitants. Kneeling praying. A statue candle lit with its heart burning red. And the dog. Its head rising. Getting up to bark and run. Right at this window. If they catch me a Protestant sneaking around their yard. But they won’t now that I’m running. To get at least five miles away. Briars tearing my jacket. Get through this hedge. Charge up this hill. Right to the top. Feel warm now. The mist shifting. Making faint shadows of trees below. And beyond. Way back there. The red glow in the sky. So many young chaps’ future education going up in smoke. And a handy beacon to keep me straight in my direction. Which is I pray, truly westerly. And just hope I don’t come to a bog. And sink. Down deep in brown blackness.
Be found
Centuries later
Petrified
14
Darcy Dancer stretching out his stiff limbs. This third damp morning. And the sound of clapping wings. Two pigeons speeding out of the branches over my head and disappearing off into the faint lighted fog. Aching now after all the endless hedges, climbing stuck gates, sliding down ditches and skirting bogs with the snipe in a whirr of wings shooting up in the dark. During these chill and slowly starving past two days. To always and always at all costs keep hunching forward.
Rub my eyes. Hands immovable with cold. Massage my joints. The dried scabs of blood all over my scratches. Mud down the side of my face. Where I’ve used the ground as a pillow. Near a ditch and gurgling water. Under the red berries of a hawthorn tree. And Kelly’s fudge box abandoned there in the tall grass and its contents deposited not unsweetly in one’s belly.
Get up. Slowly take a feel to see if my ears are still on. The shape of my back in the pile of the hay. Searched for dark hours to find cocks in a field. To make sure that a farmer wouldn’t have beasts loose there to come sniffling and trampling me in the night. Kept my side and back warm. Beads of sweat coming off my sweater. Right over my heart. Steam rising out the top of that cock of hay. Be somewhere rotting within. Just as one wishes the fog would lift, it’s lifting. The sky covered by purple cloud all the way to the horizon. A bright golden crack opening there full of the sun. My blue leather diary still in my jacket pocket. Written nothing in it over all these horrendous days. Curled now with damp and ink stains running blotting between the pages. Suppose if I had a pencil. I’d write rudely in the appropriate empty space. O shit. Being as I am presently suffering from torpor of the bowel. And need I think to refer to Mr Arland’s homoeopathy book for a suitable remedy.
Darcy Dancer bending to cup hands to drink water. And wading through the tall grass to pick a palm full of bramble berries. Tasting unsweet and decayed. But at least one has had breakfast. And again last night I had a dream of being at sea. Where I’ve never been. On a great liner sinking. All of us first class male passengers in our evening clothed finery. Going down in the ocean’s icy waters. Like gentlemen.
A shadow over there. Rusty broken roof of an old hay barn. Next to a high broken brick wall. Beyond the hill through trees, chimneys of a big house. Roof slates gone. Windows broken and walls crumbling. And all around as I stand here, silvery drops of dew hanging off every blade of grass. Miles and miles I’ve gone. And with just a few hours on Molly or Petunia I’d be home. Singing down into Molly’s ears. She always kept in step with a tune. And changed stride to the rhythm of each new song I’d sing. Then go high stepping indeed if I sang It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. Got to be somewhere now. If I haven’t gone totally wrong with the hopeless muddle of road signs. Every one twisted or bent by the locals in the wrong direction. Some instinct tells you which way to go. Even when it means getting your feet all the way up to your knees covered in mud. Forearms soaked through. Tripped and fell over a tree root last night. Landed elbows deep in the turf. To just narrowly miss a nice man size deep puddle of water.
Climb to high ground. White mists hovering in the dells. Where as evening falls and you descend to the low lie of land, you feel the icy chill growing on your face. The sun rising warmer and bright now. The big purple cloud moving west. Grey landscape poking up out of the grass’s greeny green. When the sky opens blue and wide as it does now, it often freezes. A vixen barked last night. Always means frost is coming. And I’ll be dead. With my three pounds ten shillings in my pocket. And only my unexpurgated diary to tell people how shameful I am. And I should write down where I should be buried. Where the Thormonds are.
Sound of a donkey braying. And a beast roaring. Right bloody well behind me. Made me rush onwards. To promptly plummet straight down the steep side of a drainage ditch. After finding in the afternoon that I had for many hours been going in the wrong direction. Shouted out of a field to an old grey haired black shawled woman fetching her water. Gave her a fright. She took one look at me. And pointed. That the town I wanted was that way. I tarried thinking I might ask her for some scalding tea, fat rashers and a half a dozen fried eggs accompanied by a finale of soda bread, butter and damson jam. Then she turned to see me waiting. And made lickety split back to her cottage. Water bouncing out of her pail on her long black garb. Could hear both halves of her door slamming shut and bolts being drawn. I must look an awful sight. And not in the least resembling gentry. More like a common sort, dreg of society, low fellow and vagabond. Blamed for starting the school fire. O dear, one does not want to be treated that way ever again. Flail and strike at them. Defeat them all. One by one. No matter what they try. Boot in their balls. And tell the Viscount Nelson up on his pillar in Dublin that he can get stuffed.
Sun growing red. A thatched cottage three fields away. Smoke out of the chimney. In there all cosy. If I knocked and said all I want is to drink the cream off your morning’s milking and an hour warming beside your fire. And get lead pellets from a shotgun instead. Got to keep moving. Stop shivering. Take another drink. From this stream flowing here. With its dark green water cress. Chew some for further breakfast. Find a poor man’s cow tame enough to stand still. And have a drink of warm milk with another fist full of bramble berries. That would take away this cold pain all down my throat and rumbling in my belly. In the thick fog of yesterday. I went mooing with my hand out towards this grazing cow. Absolutely as friendly as I could be. She looked up with her suspicious big brown eyes. At my every step closer she backed further away. Even when I said in my best bovine accent, look my lady I am not going to harm you. Can’t you see. I merely want like one of your calves a friendly drink out of your udders. Don’t you understand. Mooooooo. Mooooooo. Damn dumb insolent beast went shaking her head at me. And then hooking her hostile horns from side to side. As much as to say don’t you dare touch my teats. Her bag swinging creamily swollen full between her legs. And the big foolish stupid thing continuing to back further and further away, head down and snorting steam out of her nostrils. Now one understood Foxy and how he’d flash out with a kick at the likes of her. Or land an old beast a belt of a heavy thorn stick across the haunch. Sheer starving anger made me chase her. Lunging forward, blocking her this way and that. Her long pink teats wagging running, her hooves digging churning deeply in the turf. Me skidding after her, arms astretch through the whorls of mist and smack bang into the roars of a farmer. Twine around his black coat, his eyes blazing in his red weathered toothless face. Erupting with growls of what are you doing. Go on out of that. And I did. Pronto as they said
in the stupid cowboy film one recently saw. And he swung his pitchfork whooshing over my ducking head. And I took a flying leap through a thankfully near gap in the hedge, rending my trouser leg wide open and my skin as well from hip to knee with a barb of wire. Later tripping and tearing my trousers right down through the cuff with this flapping out behind like a flag. As I covered ground in the most indecent hurry for some time. All the while thinking I was the chased fox followed by baying hounds. Which, speak of the devil, or just hounds in general, I do believe I just then thought I heard, somewhere there, over the hill and brightly on to a scent. And indeed. That. The huntsman’s horn. Urging them on. O my god they could come this way and think I’m a lowly sneaky bog fellow or worse riff raff scum. And set upon me. With hunt members threatening me with their whips. Driving me before them. Of course, no silly such thing could ever happen to a Thormond. But dear god, soiled and cold, one does get awfully low in spirits with one’s tired limbs carrying an empty belly.
Crouch running to climb the top of this hill. Across the distant landscape. The galloping scarlet coats blazingly blatant, their red against the green. The blood’s up. Boiling. Find him. If they did and it was me. Torn to ribbons in a thrice. Wouldn’t even be my fly buttons left. All found later as black specks in the dog dung back at the kennels. With maybe a tooth or two of mine glinting out bright white. The screams and the shouts and whooping and yelling round me during the kill. Rip him up. O god I will never again hunt the poor ruddy fox. And again speak of the devil. There the ruddy fellow is, the very canny canine himself, loping casually as you please along beside that copse of ash trees. In a near one of which has just landed a magpie, shaking his black and white plumage. Letting me know the sight of him is bad luck. O no. But o yes. Ah. His mate thank god. Has just arrived alighting on a branch just over his head. And whoops. She lets fall a load of white shit right on the shiny black dome of her husband below. To my double good luck for the first time in days.
The sterns of the hounds wagging white with their heads to ground, descending the side of another hill only a field away. Now got to move. Or they’ll hunt me. Followed on horseback by the mean hardbitten faces, purple jowls jangling. Lips curled in lust. Pounding down upon me. And good lord I may stink of fox. Trying as I did to crawl into one’s hole my first awful night. If they lost the scent and pick up mine. Feet please go faster. Find me somewhere soon a big Protestant tree. To climb up. And don’t leave me aground forever streaking along all these barren Catholic hedgerows.
Darcy Dancer, clothes flying in ribbons. Stretching legs fore and aft. Over this lumpy pasture. Heart pounding in chest. Lungs hoarse with the cold air. The baying hounds. Closer and closer. O my god there goes that ruddy twisty fox again. Out to save his brush. Steering the hounds in a circle and the ruddy foxy fellow must be following me and now is deucedly detouring ahead cleverly shifting the entire mob of his domesticated pursuers to scenting a poor old escaped schoolboy like me.
The fox leaping the stream. Pausing on the other side to grin from ear to ear and backward all the way down his throat. Knowing that I’m now the victim. With the hooves pounding. And a huntsman and Master coming up over the brow of the hill. And Mr Fox scampering off. Leaving it to me to give his pursuers yet another merry burst of chase. With the ditch to leap. Easily nine feet across and nine feet down and which I’ll never get over. And in whose murky slime I may drown if I try. Goodness. Here they come. Got to slip down the side. And hide. Dear me. I’ve been seen. How shall I present myself. As a fellow fox hunter from a neighbouring hunt. I say chaps, that fox has given you some very pretty sport, ran a fine line there. O dear. That statement sounds so utterly forced. Coming as it must from way down in these squelching boggy climes here. And especially when made to participators in such an elegant hunt as the Moonhound Mad Hatters. Maybe it’s just safer to just crouch among the dying stalks of weeds by this bank. Try not to be noticed and certainly not known.
‘I say, it is someone. Huntsman come here. There is some nuisance minded fellow who has headed the fox. Brazen cheek and nerve. Who are you down there. Speak up. Or I shall dismount and come give you a few swipes of whip. Poaching are you. You scruffy young wretch. Who are you damn it. Speak up.’
‘I am nobody sir.’
‘You are damn well someone to turn our fox off his line. Get yourself on your way before I get down and give you a blazing good hiding.’
‘I’m a member of the hunt.’
‘You uncouth fellow, how dare you try to take the mickey out of me. Hunt member be damned.’
‘I’m a hunt supporter too.’
‘A hunt supporter, are you. A bloody layabout thief is more likely. Ruin a day’s sport. You deserve a good thumping. Get up out of that ditch.’
Another scarlet coat thundering up. The horse’s nostrils exploding twin barrels of steam. Copper gleam of hunting horn hanging from the huntsman’s neck.
‘What’s the difficulty here Master.’
‘This fellow deliberately interfered with the fox.’
‘I did not.’
‘You blasted well did. Huntsman, you go on. I’ll attend to this young ruffian. Now you. Get up. And be damn quick about it. And move off out of here.’
Darcy Dancer climbing back up the bank. Clutching clumps of grass to pull himself forward to the top. The Master manoeuvring his horse near and raising the whip. Bringing it down across Darcy Dancer’s shoulders. Felt like a feather through all my pairs of underwear. And he’s raising his arm again. Whoever this big bully thinks he is.
‘How dare you strike me.’
‘Get on with you. And don’t you attempt to ape my accent you peasant cur. Get on. Or I’ll give you another one across your face for your trouble.’
Darcy Dancer on his feet. Suddenly throwing both his arms up in the air. Right under the head of this horse shying upwards, front legs pawing at the sky. The Master straining back tightly gripping the reins. And Darcy Dancer reaching and grabbing the Master’s whip and yanking it with one great pull out of his hand. The massive chestnut gelding elevating near vertical. High up on its hind legs. The Master losing the reins and tumbling off in a somersault over the tail. Landing on top of his head, his cap visor crushed down on his nose. And a yellow pair of braces hitched to his breeches across his pink tunic under his red coat. The horse galloping away back firing kicks and farts over the pasture. Darcy that Dancer chasing after him. Up the hill and down again into the corner of the field. To grab the reins as he began to graze.
The Master just on his feet standing. As I come cantering over the rise. High and haughty in the saddle. Wave an arm to signal my departure to this Master now bloody nosed and limping. And no doubt desperately trying to gather some measure of speed towards me. Before remaining right where he is insanely enraged. Even have his leather cylindrical port case. Hope it is still full of a good vintage of that dark liquid.
‘Get down from my horse. Come back here. You scoundrel. You villain.’
My two muddy cow flop spattered feet firmly planted in the stirrup irons. Pop open and back the leather cap. Pull out the bottle. And feel the welcome sting of this fortified wine warming down my throat. Plunge a couple of heels hard into this gelding’s flanks. Giddy yap you steed. Hope you have plenty of go left in you. Because you’re going to run run whether you have or not. Down this hill at the full gallop. And leave there plonk in the meadow that poor florid faced Master, angered gasping out of his wretched mind. Foxy said testicles withered on old men. And I hope that pompous bully’s may have already dropped off. Wagging his one arm in the air as if the other were broke. And imagine. Screaming. Would you ever believe such indubitable bloody optimism. For me to get off his horse. With life suddenly again all so ruddy wonderful.
‘How dare you drink my port. Dismount I say, you low cunt you. You shan’t get out of this field.’
Darcy Dancer rounding this strong willing chestnut gelding. Turn him on a six pence. Face all sixteen hands high of him squarely into that even
taller impenetrable bank of briars. Show this Master a thing or two about making a hole in a hedge. High enough up so no one else can follow. Foxy Slattery is able to go between two molecules so I’m going to bust between two atoms. Gather you together nicely now. Giddy bloody yap. Up you sod. Jump. Tear these ruddy bramble tops asunder. Soar through and over. And none by god will come in our wake. Nicely done. You good hot and steamy chap. Snugly under me. With your owner well knocked out of his haughtiness back there. Be in an awful evil temper if he has a broken arm as well. Need to see the bonesetter. The Jolly Straightener they call him. Practises all over the countryside. Gets you on a couch and as you lie there, he circles you some distance away sizing up the fracture. And each time around helps himself to a generous swig of whiskey. To yet come round again and say, oh it’s a nasty one, a real bad one that, ah bad enough indeed to make your poor wife a widow. Or deprive a mother of her son. Hope the Jolly Straightener scares the Master. As he does everybody, stiff. But his genius for fixing fractures brings many to him from miles around. To have busted collarbones to broken arses mended. All my limbs thank god through these last three days are still sound. And pray now I’ll never be identified. With all the mud on my face that Master could never know it was me. Take a look back. Goodness. Some straggling cowards have caught the Huntsman up. Standing round him now the middle of the field. Taking his instruction. Planning their campaign of urgent pursuit. Well you bastards. I’ll tell you one little thing. I would indeed be entirely delighted if you tried. But you’ll never catch me.