The Woman from Bratislava (25 page)

He was there with the other men when we drove up. Niels Ejnar stopped the tractor – its enormous, brand-new rear tyres now caked with thick, black mud – clambered down from the driving seat and touched his cap to the gentlemen, but like us beaters he kept his distance from them. They were standing in a group, all drinking from steaming mugs of real coffee laced with aquavit to take the edge off the morning chill. ‘To warm the bones,’ Dad said as he passed the hip-flask round. The members of the shooting party were all burly men in heavy coats and green
plus-fours
which stopped just below the knee, leaving a length of thick knitted sock showing between them and the top of their rubber boots. They were all wearing caps and smoking pipes, cigarettes or cheroots. They reeked of masculinity, standing there discussing the forthcoming shoot. We kids were also offered coffee or
lemonade
, proper coffee with creamy milk and sugar, and bread rolls from Dad’s bakery with real butter, spread so thickly in honour of the occasion that it tickled the roof of the mouth when you bit into it. As the baker’s family we had no shortage of butter, but we had margarine scraped on our sandwiches at home, just like everyone else. Because that was what one did. Dad smiled at Fritz and me, but stayed with the other men, naturally. The colour had come back into his cheeks, he had filled out again too, and he stood there chatting away easily to the Count – so I noted out of the corner of my eye, while Fritz was fooling about with Niels Ole who was his best chum, even though his father was a vicar and didn’t take part in the shoot, and we never went to church. ‘The church has made people soft,’ Dad always said. We had been christened, though, and would be confirmed, because that was all part of being Danish, Mum felt – and Dad too really, I’m sure. We shivered in the cold air, but were proud to be on the shoot.

It was quite normal for us to be given the day off a couple of times a year, when the Count held one of his big shooting parties
for friends and business acquaintances. Among the guns were local farmers whom I knew, because I was often allowed to go with Kaj on his bread rounds. Sometimes they would give me a piece of rock candy or a glass of squash. Others were gentry from the local market town. A few of the guns came from much further afield: the Count was a well-known and highly respected man. Mum said that just after peace was declared there had been rumours that he had done rather too well for himself during the early war years, but that he had been careful to break with all dubious associates before it was too late. The people at the top always looked after number one. Such insinuations from the grown-ups were often lost on me, although I was always a very observant child. But what I remembered most clearly about our home was that those who were constantly being hailed as heroes were regarded, in our family, as villains who had not understood the necessity of shaping a new Europe under the leadership of Germany. Hadn’t former prime minister Stauning himself said that Denmark would have to fall in with the German plan economy, which would also act as a shield against the dreaded capitalism. But no one mentioned that now. The general feeling seemed to be that it was best to put all of that behind one and make a fresh start. And although we were never told this in so many words, Fritz and I knew not to talk about the war to anyone else. Nothing good could come of that. But Teddy did not know anything, nor was he ever told anything. ‘There’s no need for anyone born after the war to be burdened with all that,’ my mother would later say to Fritz and me.

One of the Count’s gamekeepers came over to us and kindly inquired whether we had had coffee and rolls. Because, if so, the Count would like to get started at first light. ‘Drive them over to the Vesterås boundary, Niels Ejnar Jensen,’ he said, tipping a finger to his green cap. Like the other men he had his shotgun open and resting in the crook of his arm and his cartridges in the bag slung over his green coat. Guffaws of laughter sounded from the group of guns, backs were thumped and thighs slapped in that noisy,
all-boys-together way which, later in life, would drive me mad. Such masculine arrogance – as if they really believe that they are the stronger sex and the world belongs to them.

On that morning, however, it seemed perfectly natural to me. We climbed back into the wagon and Niels Ejnar drove us north to the boundary of a field. Two other tractors and wagons from the next parish were already drawn up there. Ahead of us lay stubble-fields dotted with narrow furrows and occasional pools – little more than puddles really – left by the autumn rain. The Count always left little clumps of bush and scrub standing in the fields – for the game – and in some spots even delayed the autumn ploughing until after the first shoot. Further off, past the first little ash grove, the meadows stretched out, damp and steaming. On the horizon lay the forest and beyond it more fields. Way out on the edge of the area we hoped to cover that day, the marshes began.

The keepers had organised the beats in consultation with the Count, in such a way as to ensure that they were drawn as
efficiently
and thoroughly as possible. They would be shooting both hare and pheasant and if anyone happened to bag a fox into the bargain then so much the better. I knew that a dead fox caused the men to swagger even more when they surveyed the bag laid out on display at the end of the day. We were strung out in a long line with a keeper in the middle and one at either end, their job being to keep the beaters in line so that the game would have no chance to break through their ranks. The keepers’ liver-coloured hunting dogs were whining and straining at their leashes, quivering with excitement. Much as we were, I suppose, although I winced every time I saw a bird or an animal hit. Not that I would ever have admitted that – to myself or to Dad.

The keepers had us ranged up like soldiers in an old-style war. In the cold, grey morning light we saw the guns forming a line down at the other end of the field, well spaced-out, with their shotguns over their arms. And far away though they were, I could see their breath swirling around their faces. I could just make out
Dad, way out on the right. Then a hunting horn keened, high and mournful in the distance. As the sound died away over the flat fields the keepers’ whistles trilled. We moved forward, clapping our hands. A few of the boys thwacked pieces of wood together, but the line of beaters made so much noise as it swished through the wet stubble that that in itself was enough to flush out the game. The keepers yelled at us to hold the line. The dogs strained at their long leashes. It could not have been more than a few seconds before the first pheasant flew up, wings clattering, to be followed by partridge and more bright-feathered pheasant cocks, and even before I heard the shots I saw the grey plumes of smoke issuing from the barrel mouths when the guns, as if on command, raised their twin barrels to the sky, from which the beautiful birds, checked in their flight, plummeted groundwards, suddenly and without warning, like hard, alien fruit, and sundered feathers fluttered in the breeze and blew over our heads. Two hares also sprang up, right at my feet. They zigzagged down the beaters’ line; we whooped and hollered and one of them bolted, ears flattened, straight towards the guns – only to be hit and sent rolling across the ground like a football that had just been kicked. The other hare stopped in mid-spring, turned, spotted a gap in the beaters’ ranks, darted through it and sped off across the field in a series of mighty bounds.

‘Hold the bloody line, young ’uns!’ the keepers bellowed, all shouting at once. It sounded worse than it was. As if they were angry or annoyed, but they weren’t really. That was just how they spoke to children. But it was early in the morning, the first drive had produced a fine bag and spirits were high. The keepers
gathered
up the game and piled it into the wagon which Niels Ejnar on the tractor pulled round after each drive, while the guns carried on down the lane. Dad strode out alongside the Count and a farmer whom I knew because he had once paid his bill with a side of pork instead of cash. The odd spit of rain fell from the grey sky, moving some of the men to get out their hip-flasks and take a swig as they
made their way to the next beat, where they spread out as before and the whole performance was repeated.

At the third beat we were ranged just in front of a ditch lined by stunted willows. There was water in the bottom of the ditch. We could see all the way across the flat meadows to the dyke which ran out to the shallow channel. We had to drive the game down the side of the dyke towards the row of guns who appeared, by now, to be looking forward to the light mid-morning refreshment which the Count laid on. The maids would bring out coffee and schnapps and sandwiches for the shooting party. For us there would be boiled sausages and soft drinks. The girls carried the sausages out in a big pot, from which clouds of steam and the most glorious smell escaped when they lifted off the heavy lid. We ate the red-skinned frankfurters wrapped in greaseproof paper out there in the fields. They were delicious, and smelled faintly of vinegar and onions from the cooking water. But if the gentlemen looked forward to their elevenses, this was as nothing compared to the eagerness with which they anticipated the lunch which would bring the shoot to a halt for a couple of hours. We beaters were looking forward to that too. There would be rye-bread sandwiches with salami, liver paste, rolled-lamb sausage and cheese, and all the lemon or orange squash we could drink. And it would be a bit warmer in the big garage where we children were usually fed, while the gentlemen sat down to table in the Count’s
banqueting
hall. Ploughs, harrows and other farming implements were moved outside to make room for us, the keepers and Niels Ejnar. The morning was beginning to tell on our legs. It was heavy going in the damp soil which clogged the soles of our rubber boots. But I could tell from Fritz’s face that he was still keyed-up and rather exhilarated by the shoot. Possibly by the blood from the dead
creatures
. He did not appear to have been upset by the sight of those lovely birds stopping in mid-flight and dropping like stones when hit by the lead shot. Or the hares, cartwheeling pathetically across the ground when their lithe progress was cut short in mid-leap. He
seemed quite comfortable with the smell of blood and gunpowder. One could tell just by looking at him that he could not wait for the day when he could stand next to Dad, alongside the other guns, peering at the line of beaters with his shotgun at the ready.

The only little fly in the ointment was Peter, who was always sucking up to the keepers and showing off, because he had already turned sixteen. Peter’s Dad was a lawyer in the town. He had been on the right side during the war and Peter was always boasting about how his father had met Montgomery and chucked a whole load of Nazi swine into jail on May 4th and 5th, the days of
liberation
. I didn’t know if this was true. Folk were always bragging about what they had done during the occupation. You would have thought the whole country had been united against the Germans, when the truth was, in fact, that most people had stayed out of it, minded their own business. Or collaborated. But when Peter or anyone else started holding forth I either had to keep my mouth shut or try to talk about something else. Not that he was interested in talking to a twelve-year-old girl anyway, but sometimes you’d be standing on the fringes of a group in the playground, talking about this and that, and you heard things. Peter’s father hadn’t yet joined the shooting party. He had gone to pick up another man in Odense, some bigwig all the way from Copenhagen. This was Peter’s way of rubbing in the fact that his Dad had a private car with black registration plates, as opposed to the yellow
commercial
ones which Dad, for example, had. Luckily Peter was way down at the the other end of the line when the keepers blew their whistles and we started moving down towards the bottom of the field where the guns were waiting impatiently.

Again we flushed out both pheasant and partridge. And two hares that bounded away, running for all they were worth. Dad brought down one of them, the other was smarter; it darted
sideways
, down the line of beaters and disappeared over the dyke. A few of the guns appeared to have been hitting their hip-flasks again: they were starting to shoot wild now, or merely winging
their quarry; the keepers had to send the dogs out to find the downed creatures. Yet another hare leapt from cover. It was a mystery to me how they managed to hide in the virtually bare, reaped field. But they stayed very still, blending into the earth. Then all at once they would spring up and run for their lives – first dashing towards the beaters, then leaping round on themselves. More often than not they made the wrong decision and ended up running straight to their deaths. This particular hare was a big beast which looked as though it had been in this same situation before. It raced straight for me, I clapped my hands furiously and shouted and yelled. One of its ears appeared to have taken a shot at some point. It was smaller than the other and flopped at an odd angle, as if dragged down by the weight of an old lead pellet, but it had powerful legs and a thick coat. The hare stopped right in front of me, looked at me for a split-second, and I was filled with a burning desire to step aside and let him through; then he turned round – I’m pretty certain it was a buck – and ran, in long,
graceful
bounds that caused the wind to ruffle his fur, towards the guns. And, typically, there was one gun who simply could not wait for the hare to come properly within range. I saw him take aim, saw the puff of gunsmoke and, a moment later heard the two sharp cracks from the double-barrelled shotgun. The hare tumbled head over heels, but it got back onto its feet. It was limping now, though, trailing one of its forelegs which was stained red with its blood. It hopped back and forth between the guns and the beaters. Our own line was so close to that of the shooting party that no one dared shoot. I saw one of the keepers raise his gun to put the
creature
out of its misery, but I think he was afraid some stray shot might hit one of the gentlemen. It looked as though the wounded animal might get away. We beaters stood stock-still – almost as if ordered to do so, although no one had said a word – and
followed
the hare’s lurching course. We knew enough about shooting to comprehend that it was wounded and ought to die, nonetheless I could not help hoping – a hope shared, I felt sure, by some of the
other beaters – that he would run away, over the dyke to freedom, if only to find himself a place to hide and die there peacefully and alone.