Kiss Kiss (25 page)

      
I glanced up at the keeper. He hadn’t moved.
      
Claud threw a second raisin into the clearing; then a third,
and a fourth, and a fifth.
      
At this point, I saw the keeper turn away his head in order
to survey the wood behind him.
      
Quick as a flash, Claud pulled the paper bag out of his
pocket and tipped a huge pile of raisins into the cup of his
right hand.
      
“Stop,” I said.
      
But with a great sweep of the arm he flung the whole
handful high over the bushes into the clearing.
      
They fell with a soft little patter, like raindrops on dry
leaves, and every single pheasant in the place must either have
seen them coming or heard them fall. There was a flurry of
wings and a rush to find the treasure.
      
The keeper’s head flicked round as though there were a
spring inside his neck. The birds were all pecking away madly
at the raisins. The keeper took two quick paces forward and
for a moment I thought he was going in to investigate. But
then he stopped, and his face came up and his eyes began
travelling slowly around the perimeter of the clearing.
      
“Follow me,” Claud whispered. “And
keep down
.” He started
crawling away swiftly on all fours, like some kind of a
monkey.
      
I went after him. He had his nose close to the ground and
his huge tight buttocks were winking at the sky and it was
easy to see now how poacher’s arse had come to be an
occupational disease among the fraternity.
      
We went along like this for about a hundred yards.
      
“Now run,” Claud said.
      
We got to our feet and ran, and a few minutes later we
emerged through the hedge into the lovely open safety of the
lane.
      
“It went marvellous,” Claud said, breathing heavily. “Didn’t
it go absolutely marvellous?” The big face was scarlet and
glowing with triumph.
      
“It was a mess,” I said.
      
“What!” he cried.
      
“Of course it was. We can’t possibly go back now. That
keeper knows there was someone there.”
      
“He knows nothing,” Claud said. “In another five minutes it’ll
be pitch dark inside the wood and he’ll be sloping off home
to his supper.”
      
“I think I’ll join him.”
      
“You’re a great poacher,” Claud said. He sat down on the
grassy bank under the hedge and lit a cigarette.
      
The sun had set now and the sky was a pale smoke blue,
faintly glazed with yellow. In the woods behind us the
shadows and the spaces in between the trees were turning
from grey to black.
      
“How long does a sleeping-pill take to work?” Claud asked.
      
“Look out,” I said. “There’s someone coming.”
      
The man had appeared suddenly and silently out of the dusk
and he was only thirty yards away when I saw him.
      
“Another bloody keeper,” Claud said.
      
We both looked at the keeper as he came down the lane
towards us. He had a shotgun under his arm and there was a
black Labrador walking at his heels. He stopped when he was
a few paces away and the dog stopped with him and stayed
behind him, watching us through the keeper’s legs.
      
“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 cock-bird
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 Christ!”
      
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 ghost 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.