The Crowstarver (9 page)

‘That's one of 'em,' he said to Spider after he had cleared its mouth of mucus.‘Here, take thisyer towel and give un a good rub.'

Then he knelt down again in the straw of the pen and began work on the other. This too was a breech presentation, the backside trying to come out first, and again the shepherd had to push the second lamb back in order to grasp its legs, hindlegs this time. Things did not seem to be going easily, and the ewe blatted loudly in pain, and Spider left the now dry firstborn and began
to stroke the mother's head. He made reassuring sheep noises, as though he were the ewe and she the lamb, and it seemed to comfort her.

Tom meanwhile was frowning in puzzlement, and then suddenly he began to smile as the truth dawned on him.

‘Must be to celebrate your birthday, son,' he said as he drew the second lamb and handed it to Spider. Then, quite easily now, for it was released from the traffic jam of its siblings, he delivered a third lamb and placed it by the ewe's head.

‘Triplets!' he said to Spider.‘Wass think of that then?'

Spider looked at the three lambs, his face splitting in a great grin. He held up a hand and counted upon the fingers.‘One! Two! Three!' he said.

‘That's right.'

While Tom was seeing to the triplets, Spider stood stock still, staring fixedly at their mother. After a while, he pointed at her back end and called, ‘Dada!'

‘Yes,' said Tom.‘What is it?'

‘Four?' said Spider, and looked quite disappointed when Tom shook his head.

Lambing over, and the spring corn no longer in need of Spider's protection, life on Out
overdown Farm followed its usual tranquil pattern, but in April things began to boil up abroad.

Poland had surrendered to the Germans not long after the outbreak of war, and in March the Russians had overrun Finland. Now, in April, Germany first invaded Denmark and Norway, and then, the following month, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Between 29 May and 4 June, 38,000 Allied troops were rescued from Dunkirk.

On 10 June, Percy Pound and his wife received a telegram from the War Office, regretting to inform them that their only son, Private Henry Pound of the Wiltshire Regiment, had been killed in action during the retreat.

So, for the first time, the War impinged upon the life of the village and of the farm in particular. Major and Mrs Yorke, whose only son was training as a fighter pilot, came to the foreman's house to offer their sympathy, and in the stables all the men, including on this occasion Tom and Stan Ogle, mumbled condolences in one way or another. Only Spider said nothing, and the men presumed it was because he had not understood.

Percy, though his heart was breaking and his knee hurting him abominably, received the halting words with a nod and a quiet ‘Thank you',
and all went about their business.

And the business of the farm went on as usual, though now all (except Spider) realized that Britain was in imminent danger of invasion by the German forces.

Haymaking came and went, with every available hand helping, including Mister driving the old Lea-Francis with a sweep on the front of it, and soon it was September and harvest-time.

In the hayfield Spider had not been allowed to use a fork but had been given a wooden rake, to pull in the outermost swath from the headlands and to tidy up odd corners. All this he did very meticulously but very, very slowly.

At harvest time he carried sheaves of wheat or of barley to the other men, who set them up in stooks. The binder on its journey round the field would throw out the tied sheaves, which must then be collected and arranged in stooks of six or eight, each sheaf leaning against one opposite, butts to ground, heads upwards, forming a kind of tent or tunnel, for maximum drying on the one hand, and, should the weather break, for maximum protection.

For Spider, a stook was another kind of house, and he liked to creep into one to eat his lunch. Until of course he knocked one down and
was sworn at. But mostly the men treated him kindly. He was useful too for running errands (though running was a misnomer), and one day, a beautiful September day, Percy sent him back down to the farm to fetch something.

They were harvesting barley at the furthermost southern end of the farm, where Mister had had a piece of virgin downland ploughed up, and all the men were at work pitching the now dry sheaves up on to the wagons. The biggest of all was drawn by Flower, with Jack in the traces in front of her. Two other wagons were drawn by two of the hairy-heels, and Em'ly pulled the Scotch cart.

Deftly, the pitchers speared each sheaf on their two-grain prongs and then threw them up on to the wagons, and deftly the loaders on top built their loads, butts facing outwards, building quickly, carefully, skilfully, so that the whole would be secure on its bumpy journey to the stack.

It was a traditional English country scene, as peaceful as could be. But suddenly the War intruded.

The first the men heard was a distant roar of engines, and then as they leaned upon their pitchforks and looked about, they saw, approaching
at speed, two fighter aircraft. The sun was in the men's eyes, and they could not see that the leading plane had black crosses on its wings, but then suddenly they heard the rattle of machinegun fire from the chasing aircraft. Then the two planes were directly above them, and they could see the RAF roundels on the curved wings of the pursuing Spitfire. The German plane – a Messerschmitt – rocked in the hail of fire pouring into it and its engine began to stutter. It dropped lower and lower, over Tom's sheep a quarter of a mile away, which ran in a panic-stricken white blanket, over a bunch of the Irish heifers half a mile away, which galloped and buckjumped wildly in all directions, and then at last, losing height all the while, disappeared from sight over the shoulder of the downs. The watching men, all but one of whom had never in their lives heard a shot fired in anger, were cheering wildly at the outcome of this single combat. But Percy Pound, whose knee the Germans had smashed and whose son the Germans had killed, stood silent. He tried to make himself hope that the pilot would survive, but failed.

Meanwhile Spider, marching down the drove on his errand, suddenly heard the noise of the aircraft and then the rattle of the firing, and
he stopped and stood in a gateway, staring back up. He saw one aeroplane high above, twisting itself in what, though he did not know it, was a victory roll, and then he saw, coming over the shoulder of the hill, another. It was quite silent, this second plane, for its engine was dead, and as the Luftwaffe pilot looked desperately for somewhere safe to land, it dropped lower and lower, the wind whistling past its rocking wings. Spider stood rooted to the ground as the Messerschmitt swept directly towards him.

T
he enormous wind of the fighter passing only a few yards above his head knocked Spider flat, and when he picked himself up, it was to see the plane, its landing gear damaged and useless, sliding fast on its belly across the grass of the field that led towards Slimer's.

At the end of the field it ran into a four-strand barbed-wire fence, which burst like string but nevertheless acted as a brake on its further progress, and it slewed round and came to a shuddering halt.

Spider, watching, saw a figure climb out of the cockpit and jump to the ground. The German pilot, miraculously unhurt, was standing uncertainly beside his aircraft when he heard, coming from the higher ground above, the
noise of a farm tractor.

Like any hunted animal, his immediate thought was to try to evade capture, to find somewhere to hide from possible pursuers, and he ran off across the stubble, clumsily in his flying-suit and boots, making for the nearest cover. He did not look behind him as he ran, but had he done so, he would have seen the figure of a tall thin boy, hurrying, splay-footed, towards the crashed plane.

When the aircraft had disappeared from the sight of the men in the harvest field, the general impulse was to rush off in the direction it had taken. The brothers Red and Rhode Ogle, the most impulsive, were in the act of doing so when Percy called them back.

‘Steady, you two,' he said.‘You wait a minute.' Don't want them all getting there before me, he thought, which they would do, even old Billy, with this gammy leg of mine. I've got most reason to be keen to see a dead German.

As well as the horse-drawn wagons, they were using the Fordson tractor and its trailer, which chanced at that time to be empty, so Percy told Ephraim and Stan Ogle to stay with the horses, and he and the rest climbed on to the trailer. Frank Butt started up the tractor, and away
they went towards the top of the drove, Percy and Tom and Red and Rhode and Phil and Billy Butt.

‘Wonder where he come down?' said Tom to Percy.‘Nowhere near Spider, I hope, it'd scare the lad to death.'

Billy was in bloodthirsty mood. He alone had brought his pitchfork with him, and, as they bounced about on the trailer, Frank driving at top speed down the bumpy drove, he told everyone, in his loud shrill voice, just what he would do with it.

‘If so be the bagger's alive,' he squeaked,‘old Billy'll soon put that right. Stick un right through his bleddy German guts I shall, which I shoulda done with the bayonet if I'd been a sojer. I'd a made a bleddy good sojer, I would, thees know, won one of they Victorian Crosses I shouldn't be surprised, but there, I were too old when the War come.'

‘You coulda fought in the Boer War though, Billy, couldn't you?' asked Rhode Ogle innocently, but before Billy could answer, they came in sight of the downed plane.

Turning off the drove, the tractor roared across the grass towards it. Beside it, they could see, a figure was standing, and Billy, whose
eyesight was not what it had been, cried excitedly, ‘There, lookzee, the bagger's alive!' and he waved his pitchfork in the air and shouted ‘Now then, you bleddy German, I'm going to stick thisyer pick in thy bleddy arse!'

‘Bide quiet, Billy,' said Tom as they neared the plane.‘That's no German, that's our Spider.'

‘Where be the pilot then?' asked Phil Butt.

‘Dead in the cockpit maybe,' said Percy. I hope, he thought savagely.

But the cockpit was empty, they found as they inspected the Messerschmitt and saw the bullet holes and tears in fuselage and wings, the twisted and bent propeller.

‘Where is he then, Spider?' squeaked Billy, still bursting with blood lust.‘Didst see un? Dost know where he's gone to? He can't be far. Where's he to?'

‘Steady, Billy,' said Percy.‘Let Tom ask him.'

‘Did you see the man, Spider?' said Tom.

Spider nodded.

‘Where'd he go?'

Spider pointed towards Slimer's.

‘He's in the spinney,' said Tom.

‘Come on!' cried Billy.

‘Wait,' said Percy.‘He may be armed. It's no good rushing in there, mad-headed. Frank, you
drive the tractor round the back, by Maggs' Corner in case he breaks that way. Phil, you and Billy stop on the trailer and go with him, and you two Ogle boys, and then spread yourselves round the back of the spinney. We'll go in the front. If you see him and he comes out with his hands up, all well and good, but if he's got a pistol, don't try anything till we get help. And you, Billy, give me that pitchfork of yourn.'

Once he was satisfied that his men had surrounded the spinney, Percy shouted, ‘Come on out with your hands up!' and then, remembering the phrase from that other War, ‘
Hände hoch
!' At this, some woodpigeons crashed out of the ash trees but there was no sign of the fugitive.

Spider pulled at Tom's arm.

‘What is it?' the shepherd said.

‘Spider's house,' said the boy.

‘Like as not,' said Tom to Percy.

‘Come on then,' said the foreman.‘You keep behind me and keep the boy behind you,' and he limped forward into the edge of the spinney, pitchfork held before him.

Spider's house was partly overgrown now. Climbing plants had crept up its sides, and it was surrounded by a bed of stinging nettles. A path
way through the nettles had been freshly crushed, they could see.

‘He's in there,' said Percy softly.‘Tom, you pull the flap of the ricksheet back,' and he stood opposite the entry to the shelter, pitchfork at the ready, his weight forward on his good leg.

‘Keep back of me, Spider,' said Tom, and he pulled back the flap.

‘Right,' said Percy.‘Come out, you bastard.'

Then, bending under the low entry, there emerged from Spider's house a slim boyish figure, with fair curly hair and blue eyes.

‘
Kamerad,
' said the German pilot quietly, as he raised his hands above his head. He managed a nervous smile.

Percy Pound stared into those blue eyes, and all of a sudden, as he did so, he experienced a dramatic change of mood. He found himself forgetting his anger and his hatred for any member of the race that had killed his son, and instead he felt a stab of pity and an enormous sorrow for the madness of mankind.