The Blue Field Read online

  Pistol, Bardolph and Nym, assisted by ’Enery and Pierre, discovered a new racket, and drove round to all the game-keepers in the district offering fancy prices for various sorts of vermin. They had a typewritten tariff which ran like this:

  and at the bottom of it was a rather furtive-looking scrawl in pencil:

  Rabbits, partridges, pheasants by negotiation.

  It was assumed that the squirrels, moorhens, crows, jays, etc, would appear later under the style of chicken en casserole in the more expensive London restaurants. Death, observed Mr Chorlton, is a great leveller.

  As Christmas approached, the black market enjoyed its seasonal heyday and Nym sold a rabbit to a visitor from Birmingham for seven and sixpence. Later this record was beaten by Pistol, who came into the Horse and Harrow smiling happily and carrying an old sack which heaved in a familiar way (as if it were a lung breathing) and which contained, we knew, his fitcher ferret.

  ‘Two rabbits’ – he said – ‘how much do you think I had for two rabbits, from a swell in a motey-car? How much?’

  We said we couldn’t guess. Pistol opened his hand to show us three ten-shilling notes. ‘“How much, mister?” the swell says; so I takes a chance and asks him fifteen bob: meaning for the two, see. But not a bit of it. “That’s apiece?” he says. So “Let’s ’andle,” says I—’ Pistol grinned and scratched his palm. ‘“Let’s ‘andle,” says I, and he pays up, and I slings the rabbits all bloody on to his back seat and off he drives pleased as Punch.’

  A week or two later ‘Those Spivs’, as Vicky angrily called them, went into the mistletoe trade; and we were rather surprised to learn that George Daniels was associated with them in this – he had bought a pair of climbing-irons with which he climbed up the trees to cut down the mistltooe boughs. We supposed that he went in for this dangerous pastime because he found peace boring, having been dropped so often out of the sky during the war. But Mrs Merrythought, when she heard of the climbing-irons, was filled with alarm for the safety of her girls, and especially of Susan. ‘Men,’ she said darkly. ‘They get up to anything.’ And she had the windowsills of the land girls’ bedrooms strung with barbed wire.

  General Bouverie held his Opening Meet and needless to say failed to kill a fox; but he made up for this omission at his pheasant-shoot, when he completely filled the yellow wagon with slaughtered birds and also shot a record bag of woodcock. He was a strict and regular churchgoer, and he was heard to remark after the service on Sunday: ‘I always notice that the woodcock arrive in these parts round about the time when the First Lesson is about Shadrak, Mishak and Abednego.’

  So November went out, in a first flurry of snow, and as always happened at that time of year the world seemed to narrow about us. The village became a microcosmos, and within a circle which contracted as the days shortened our own affairs became proportionately larger, as if we saw them through a magnifying-glass. A poachers’ hare-hunt across the General’s fields, told at the Horse and Harrow, became an Odyssey. When Joe Trentfield killed his pig it was a drama watched by half the village. Dick Tovey was a priest with his sacrificial knife, and the pig’s squeals filled the universe. Neighbours’ quarrels were magnified into little wars; and every ordinary courting couple became Romeo and Juliet. And then suddenly the case of William Hart blazed up again, and loomed over all.

  The Siege

  We had heard that William had made a good recovery from his illness and was able to hobble as far as his drive-gates. His friends who called on him reported that he had broached a new cask of home-made wine (it was parsnip, very strong and very old, the same brew which had once robbed the Rector of his power of locomotion and laid him flat on his back on the roadside for the whole parish to see) and they added that he was rapidly drinking his way to the bottom of it. Perhaps it was this parsnip wine which fortified him and lent him its lustihood on the fourth of December, when at noon precisely, it being then ten weeks after Michaelmas Day, some minor official of the WAEC, accompanied by a valuer, arrived to complete the formalities of taking over his farm.

  There was a very dirty and stinking pond, a disused drinking-place for cows, just outside William’s farmyard; and having manoeuvred the official to the edge of the pond and having presumably surprised him off his guard, old William pushed him in.

  We did not hear about this until the following morning, when Dai Roberts Postman, our village Mercury, brought round the news with the letters. Later in the morning I went to see Mr Chorlton and we discussed what to do next. It was apparent that something had gone wrong, because only a few days earlier Mr Chorlton had heard from Halliday that the Minister had promised ‘sympathetic consideration’ of William’s case. The House was in the middle of some controversial legislation, with fierce debates and all-night sittings, and Halliday wrote that he was desperately busy. He wouldn’t be down at Brensham until the recess, but then he hoped to give himself the pleasure of meeting old William and seeing if he was really as ‘fierce and free as the weeds’. Also, said Halliday, he was going to hold a political meeting in the village on December 21st, under the chairmanship of Blacksmith Briggs; he hoped we’d all go and heckle him.

  Certainly something had gone wrong. ‘But it’s a far cry,’ Mr Chorlton pointed out, ‘from the Whitehall desk to the local office. Perhaps an official goes on holiday or falls sick or instructions are misunderstood or a document goes astray; such things happen even in the best regulated bureaucracies. Meanwhile the Fate spins her inexorable thread.’ We both, I think, felt by now that the case of William Hart was moving towards an inevitable climax and that we were helpless to alter the destined course of events. However we went down to the Post Office and sent a long telegram to Halliday; and then we dropped in for a drink at the Adam and Eve, where we learned that William, anticipating further developments, had begun to barricade himself in. He had driven his yellow wagon sideways against the garden gate and covered the top of it with a spider’s web of barbed wire. The baker, paying his daily visit, had tossed the loaves to Pru across this obstacle.’ We’ll take extra today,’ said Pru calmly, ‘in case we’re besieged.’

  ‘I wun’tgo willing,’ I remembered William saying. ‘They’ll have to fetch I.’

  At six o’clock that evening a wire came from Halliday: ‘Making urgent inquiries.’ But by then it was already too late. The official had returned with two companions. They had driven their car down the drive, where they were halted by the formidable barricade, which was now reinforced with a huge pile of prickly hedge-trimmings. Glancing up at the farmhouse, they had found themselves face to face with a shotgun, which was poking out of a bedroom window and behind which they caught a glimpse of William’s unblinking blue eyes. They had retired hastily, and in the course of backing their car down the drive had had the misfortune to bog themselves in a deep ditch. Our local garage-man had pulled them out, and they had driven away with the intention, he understood, of reporting their alarming experience to the police superintendent.

  No, said Mr Chorlton, we could do nothing more. Things had gone too far for our intervention. Clotho, Lachesis and Átropos had the business in hand. Already, no doubt, there was a summons out against William for assault, to say nothing of being in possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that in the end they’ll have him certified; for surely the State must either do that or admit itself to be insane – which, of course, is unthinkable.’

  Two days later we heard again from Halliday. He enclosed copies of his Private Notice Question and the Minister’s reply. ‘The case of William Hart had been given careful consideration in view of his age and alleged infirmity. There had, unfortunately, been a regrettable development within the past forty-eight hours. An assault had apparently been committed upon one of the Ministry’s servants, and the Minister would point out that if Mr Hart had been as infirm as he was represented to be it seemed unlikely that he could have thrown the official into a pond. (Laughter.)’

  ‘So, you see, I can
’t do much more,’ wrote Halliday. ‘Our poor old farmer seems to have taken the law into his own hands (demonstrating, incidentally, the strength of Samson, whereas I had pitched a tale that he was on his death-bed) and I’m afraid he’ll have to suffer the consequences. But if you think of any way in which I can still be useful, let me know.’

  The Stirrup-cup

  Conscious and confident of its tremendous power, the State sometimes chooses to exercise that power in a way that seems almost leisurely. I have often thought that the very slowness of these processes makes them more terrifying than any swift retribution would be. It is the leisureliness of a huge and mighty animal which bestirs itself and yawns and with the utmost deliberation stretches out its deadly paw. There is no immediate response to your gesture of defiance; your ringing challenge echoes and dies away in a horrible silence, your fierce blows expend themselves uselessly like the üists of a maniac hammering on the walls of his padded cell. Nothing happens; but the challenge is noted, the blows are counted, all you have said and done is set down against the hour of reckoning.

  So it was in the case of William. The officials drove away, and we all said: ‘Tomorrow they will be back, and they will bring the police with them.’ Mr Chorlton, who had taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the law, asserted that if necessary even the military could be called in to evict old William. Soldiers! It didn’t seem possible, we said, in England. But the officials did not return on the morrow, nor on the next day, nor the next; and the only policeman who went to William’s farm was our own Constable Banks, who climbed painfully over a prickly hedge – he was still suffering from boils – to deliver a summons for Common Assault. He saw no gun, he said, and found William in a normal frame of mind. He was offered, but did not accept, a glass of parsnip wine. Ten days passed, and still nothing happened; except that William continued to consider himself in a state of siege, and strengthened the fortifications outside his front door.

  On the tenth day I happened to pass by his farm, on my way back from a walk over the hill. There is a field-path, an old right-of-way, which leads round the edge of the Home Ground and within a few yards of the back of the farmhouse. At the stile into the Home Ground I found young Jerry, armed with his catapult. I inquired what he was doing and he said he was a sentry; but if I was a Friend, I could go by. I asked him what enemies he expected and he said cheerfully: ‘The police. They were here this morning but Grandad frightened them away.’ So that was that, I thought. We had come nearly to the end of The Case of William Hart.

  I left Jerry at the stile, where he strutted to and fro very confidently, reminding me of David and planting in my mind the gravest doubts concerning the accuracy of the Book of Kings. Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons! I thought.

  I went on and came to the place where the path skirted the farmhouse and buildings. The garden was a brown thicket, for the first frosts had stripped the foliage from the riotous multitude of flowers and vegetables; but beside the back door there was still a bed of orange-tawny chrysanthemums with drooping heads nearly as big as dinner-plates. Only William, surely, could grow such flowers! I saw Pru, as demure and composed and unconcerned as ever, hanging out the washing on the line; and I waved to her, but I hadn’t the heart to stop and talk. Then I happened to glance up at the house, and at one of the bedroom windows I caught my last glimpse of William.

  His face was as brown as old shoe leather and as wrinkled as a russet apple in the New Year. His beard and eyebrows, in striking contrast, were snow-white, a wild lock like Whistler’s swirled up from his forehead, his beard jutted out in a jaunty fashion, the moustache and the bushy eyebrows likewise had an upward curl. His eyes, old as he was, were as clear and blue as the Germander speedwell. And he was laughing.

  He had a pint mug in his hand, and now he raised it ceremonially and drank my health. Still laughing, he picked up the gun off his knees and patted its butt. Then he filled the glass again and held it out at arm’s-length like one who takes his last farewell drink before a journey; and as I went on my way he waved his hand to me in what seems now to have been a valedictory wave.

  Part Four

  The Wind

  Joe’s Dream – William Hart is Dead – Like Wind I Go – The Funeral – Carminative Drinks – Runaways’ Eyes May Wink – Age, libertate Decembri – The Last Untidy Corner – Epilogue

  Joe’s Dream

  NEXT morning I had to drive into Elmbury and I stopped at the Horse and Harrow on the way, to make some arrangements about a cricket-meeting. It was about ten o’clock, and Joe Trentfield was sweeping out his bar. He stood at the open door and insisted on telling me in elaborate detail the peculiar dream he had dreamed the night before. Joe was much given to dreaming and he thoroughly enjoyed it, for there was never anything horrific about the phantasies which ornamented rather than troubled his repose. They were benign, extravagant and absurd, so that even in his sleep he sometimes chuckled at them, and his nights were almost as merry as his days.

  On this occasion he had dreamed that he was standing in the middle of the Summer Leasow, which is our big common field in the bend of the river, with his gun under his arm, waiting for duck. Mrs Trentfield, rather unsuitably dressed in the huge flowery hat she had worn at her wedding, stood at his side. There was a turbulent sunset (‘like a whacking great poached egg,’ said Joe) out of which flew in successive formations a procession of strange and heraldic beasts. First there came lions, golden and formalized, making much the same pattern against the clouds as they make on the Royal Standard. They were followed by a phalanx of spotted leopards which wafted themselves through the air in a very dignified fashion by means of an undulating movement of their paws. White horses succeeded them, rising and falling like the wooden horses on roundabouts at the Fair; at the heels of these came rampant tigers, and a squadron of unicorns brought up the rear. This unusual spectacle by no means daunted the stout heart of Joe Trentfield, nor did it occasion him any great surprise. He did, however, observe thoughtfully to Mrs Trentfield: ‘They’re flying south. We shall get some rough weather.’ Then he woke up.

  When he had finished telling me his dream his wife’s voice, from within the bedroom upstairs, commented that it was all them chitterlings on top of a bellyful of cider. Joe grinned tolerantly. ‘Maybe’ he said, ‘but all the same it is blowing hard.’ The gilded weathercock on the spire of the church was pointing nor’-west; and from the north-west out of a grey sky the wind came whistling up the village street, tearing at the boughs of the big apple tree beside the inn and blowing into fantastical shapes the remarkable assortment of family washing which Mrs Trentfield had hung out in the yard the night before. An outsize blouse bulged as if Mrs Trentfield’s vast bosom still inhabited it; stockings, pair by pair, danced jigs and minuets; Joe’s long-legged winter combinations imitated the grotesque contortions of a fat man hanging from the gibbet; suspenders dangling from a pair of corsets had captured a pale-blue brassiére which like a mackerel on a handline frantically flapped and wriggled; wind-filled bloomers achieved voluptuous shapes resembling the jaunty and generous behinds of their owners, Mimi and Meg. Joe, who had an eye for such things, placed his hands on his hips and laughed heartily; and when a pair of pink knickers became detached from the line and sailed away over the garden fence he laughed the louder. The wind whisked away his deep guffaw and sped it up the street in the wake of the knickers, which came to rest at the feet of Dai Roberts Postman, who was delivering letters next door.

  Dai Roberts picked them up, handling them with obvious distaste and embarrassment, for he was a puritanical man who believed that the cause of morals, as well as that of comfort, was best served by flannel next the skin. As he did so a sound other than Joe’s laughter made him tilt back his head and stare upwards. It was a queer sound, a sort of breathless clamour, as if a pack of hounds was hunting up there in the heels of the north wind. I craned my neck, and at last I saw a small cloud the size of a man’s hand, dark against the grey mass of clouds, which
even as I watched it became teased out into a long skein like a ball of wool unwinding or the swift streak of an approaching line-squall, and then suddenly resolved itself into a pattern of flapping wings. Grey geese! – two score of them in the first ragged V, and a bigger lot behind stretching wing-tip to wing-tip halfway across the horizon. Their honking filled the air, a crazy wild cry out of Spitzbergen or the Siberian waste, the untamed voices of creatures inexpressibly free. It was an alien sound in our placid English countryside, and I felt a kind of pricking at the back of my neck as I listened to it. Dai Roberts too sensed the strangeness and the wildness of it; he waved and shouted. But now the vanguard was vanishing towards the south, the main body was passing overhead, the last stragglers were coming up over the church spire. Joe declared that they formed much the same pattern in the sky as the heraldic creatures in his dream; the geese rode on the wind’s back as easily and swiftly as those phenomenal leopards! He was filled with awe at the strange coincidence, and being assured now that his dream had contained a prophecy, he announced in a loud voice to his wife within the bedroom: