Stray Shot Page 2

  ‘Young Charlie took his seat in the House of Lords, of course, and using his connections he promoted himself a few minor consultancies, probably with firms who wanted no more from him than his name on the letterhead. But he turned out to be good. Small firms with good ideas could come to him and he’d put the ideas into marketable form. He took one or two other scientists as partners and a young lawyer who specialised in international patent law. They got government funding. After all, they were doing a vital job, helping British high-tech to stay in this country, where it could maintain jobs and earn foreign currency, instead of getting milked abroad or dying of apathy and lack of support. They even have overseas clients now, using the expertise on patents.

  ‘They interact a lot with the universities, but of course a lot of money has to get ploughed into expanding their own laboratories.

  ‘I’m telling you all this,’ Keith went on, ‘for no particular reason except to explain the financial setup. When the last of those insurance policies expires, young Charlie will be doing all right thank you. Meantime, he has to count the pennies. Last year, he released five hundred birds. This time around, I think he’s up to a thousand. The old keeper’s semi-retired but still works half-time with a couple of the farm-lads helping him out occasionally. The whole thing’s a shadow of its former glory. Charlie just keeps it going for about six shoots a year, for fun, as a memorial to his ancestors and because it gets him some worthwhile return invitations.’

  ‘We won’t be overworked, then,’ I suggested.

  Keith humphed. ‘Fifty birds would make a Big Day,’ he said. ‘All the same, it’s a connection I value.’

  I was relieved. My mental picture, fostered by television plays which I now know to be travesties, had been of birds raining out of the sky and runners scooting off in all directions while Boss and I made idiots of ourselves under the noses of tweedy aristocrats.

  ‘Is there a countess?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He’d make a good husband for Deborah.’

  ‘Don’t think she hasn’t thought of it.’

  ‘Really! You two!’ Deborah said. ‘I never thought any such thing. Mum did, though.’ She did not sound displeased.

  ‘What does Charlie think about it?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s waiting for her to grow up before he considers the matter,’ Keith said with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

  Any suggestion that she was still a child was anathema to Deborah but she kept her temper. ‘In point of fact,’ she said loftily, ‘the shoe’s on the other foot. His Noble Lordship can be very immature at times.’

  Chapter Two

  At Aikhowe, Keith brought the car to rest among a group of vehicles which clustered around what seemed to be a former stable block. The house loomed large in the background. It had a certain charm but I could not go along with Keith’s description of it as ‘beautiful’. Architecturally, it had set out to be a Georgian mansion and had then been embellished with most of the worst features of a Scottish town hall. The gardens, on the other hand, redeemed it. They were slightly unkempt but none the less lovely for that, and were presided over by some towering specimen trees which must have been a century old.

  The beaters, as Keith had said, were composed of the old and the young and the jobless, but they seemed a cheery bunch. They all knew Keith and clearly Deborah was a favourite with them. I was introduced around. Most of them had dogs, spaniels predominating, and Boss exchanged courtesies with them. I could sense his expectations kindling. Until then, I had been a great disappointment to him.

  The keeper was Mr Macrae and he was never referred to or addressed otherwise. He was an elderly man but tall and still vigorous. While the beaters were climbing into a large pickup, he gave Keith a few words of briefing and a map marked with what seemed to be the plan for a major battle before climbing into the front of the pickup. But he paused before driving off. ‘The Laird wants a word wi’ you,’ he said.

  Keith sketched a salute and the pickup moved away. He scanned the map quickly. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘We can take the car to most of the stands. Stuff the dogs back inside and we’ll get moving.’

  The countryside was undulating, small woods alternating with fields and hedgerows. Keith seemed to know his way around the narrow roads and soon brought us to where several cars were parked on the verge. The cars were on average larger than the beaters’ cars but no cleaner or less rusty. The half-dozen men readying themselves looked very ordinary. There was a slightly higher preponderance of green wellies over black than there had been among the beaters and, before being reduced to a similar state by thorns and barbed wire, their clothes had come from better shops, but I could see what Keith meant. In my uncle’s waxed-cotton coat and flat cap, fraud that I was, I probably looked the part better than any of them. Meeting them at the roadside I would have taken them for poachers or worse until hearing them speak. Apart from one man whose accent belonged in an overdrawn film about Rabbie Burns, their voices sounded foreign and yet familiar until I heard myself speak and realised that one and all their voices sounded very much like mine. This, I decided, must be His Lordship’s No. 2 guest list or lower.

  The Earl turned out to be a harassed-looking man of about my own age but stockier and with curly brown hair and a prominent nose. He broke off an earnest discussion with the one man whose dapperness set him apart from the shooting party and pounced on Keith immediately, pausing to give my hand a quick shake in passing and to thank me for turning up.

  ‘Beautiful dog!’ he said absently. ‘Yours?’

  ‘I like to think so,’ I said. ‘But I’ll have to watch him here. He’s a fanatic. He’ll follow any man who’s carrying a gun.’

  We moved aside to let the dapper man get into the only clean car. ‘Typical!’ Lord Jedburgh said. ‘Keith, I’m glad you’re here. We’re two guests short. They ran out of road near Scotch Corner and God knows when they’ll get here if at all, or in what shape. You have a gun with you?’

  Keith only nodded. He always has a gun with him.

  ‘Then you’d better draw a number and we can spread out a bit. Unless your friend . . .?’

  It took a second or two before I realised that he was referring to me. The idea that Lord Jedburgh would invite me to join his shooting party was too outrageous. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but definitely no. And I’m not sure that I can manage the picking-up on my own.’

  Keith stepped in quickly to save me from having to admit that I had never done the job before. ‘I’ll try to look after my end of the guns,’ he said. ‘If we can’t manage between us, we’ll pull Deborah out of the beating line after the first drive and she can help you out. Charlie, you could ask the guests to mark their birds down, gather up anything easy and let Simon or myself know what else is to be picked.’

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ the Earl said. He and Keith joined the other men, leaving me in limbo until Mr Macrae arrived in the pickup and joined me.

  ‘Are they only just drawing their numbers?’ he said. ‘The beaters will be started in a minute. Ah weel, it’ll no’ be my fault if the birds a’ gang o’er vacant pegs. Will Mr Calder be shooting?’

  ‘That seems to be the general idea,’ I said. ‘He says he’ll do the picking-up at his end of the line.’

  Mr Macrae stooped to scratch behind Boss’s ear. From the dog’s reaction he seemed to know the exact place where a scratch would be appreciated. ‘That’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch behind him.’

  The group was breaking up. Mr Macrae hurried to have a final word with the Earl and Keith rejoined me. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’ve drawn six, so you look after the low numbers. If you place yourself in the middle of that pasture . . .’ He spent a few seconds explaining the geography.

  So I found myself sitting on a shooting stick in the middle of a field wondering what on earth happened next. The calm, universal confidence of everybody else that I would manage perfectly well gave me less than no comfort.

&n
bsp; *

  I need not have faced the task with quite so much trepidation. Keith had briefed me adequately. Alice, who was versed in country ways and wanted me to acquit myself well, had read me a two-hour lecture. And Boss knew the job better than any of us.

  I heard the beaters approaching, sticks tapping, the occasional call to a dog. Pheasants began to flush from well back, clearing the foremost trees and coming high over the guns. Despite my prejudices, I felt my pulse quicken. Shots sounded over an interval of several minutes but surprisingly few birds came down and those were close to the line of guns. Other birds flew or glided on over my head to the sanctuary of some rough ground far behind me. The beaters began to show among the trees and a whistle sounded.

  Boss was looking at me expectantly. ‘Go on and do it, then,’ I said, ‘whatever it is.’ He turned and raced away across the grass, returning in a minute with a hen pheasant, stone dead. He sat and gave it into my hand and looked at me again. ‘Get on,’ I said.

  This time he went out to the side and scurried along the hedgerow, snuffling. Mr Macrae walked over as Boss came back with a struggling bird, a cock this time. The keeper took the bird and despatched it with an easy flick of the wrists. ‘Twa braw retrieves,’ he said. ‘Yon’s a grand dog you’ve got there.’

  I tried not to swell visibly with pride.

  Apparently the beating line was rather sparse. It was decided to leave Deborah to beat. I was to pick up for half the line while Keith, backed by Mr Macrae, looked after the other half.

  And so it went on. After the second drive, Boss brought me a bird still kicking and Mr Macrae was not there to help me. Stomach heaving, I managed to wring its neck without pulling its head quite off.

  After the third, one of the Guns insisted that a bird at which he had shot was a runner although Boss was showing no interest in the area. Keith had warned me that ‘There’s always some optimist who’s sure that every bird he shot at was pricked.’ Looking at the two of them I decided that Boss was probably the wiser. I thanked the Gun and made a token search in that direction until he was out of sight.

  As we regrouped at the cars I gathered from the general chitchat that the birds were sparse but ‘good’. The last was a comment not on their physical condition but on their height and speed. Gaining confidence I even handed out, patronisingly, some of Keith’s pearls of wisdom as my own, to a Gun who grumbled that he ‘couldn’t catch up with the bastards.’

  It was on the fourth drive, the last before lunch, that everything went wrong.

  I was beginning to enjoy myself. The sun had come out and there was some warmth despite the brisk breeze. The landscape was as fine as any which I had ever seen. It looked wholly natural, but as I began to appreciate the finer points of driving game I realised that it must have been laid out by the Earl’s father or grandfather for the sake of such days as this.

  Working the dog behind the Guns was in a sense the errand of mercy which Keith had described. Nor did I find the shooting as offensive as I had expected. There seemed to be no pleasure taken in the act of killing. I could understand, if not wholly approve of, the urge to pursue meat – the urge which, together with a purely masculine love of firearms, impels men to spend so much more money and energy than the meat recovered is worth. It was a pleasant and sociable day spent in the open, matching skills against a worthy quarry which, three times out of four, was elusive enough to hold its own.

  The beaters were coming through an area of rough ground, a plantation of very young trees on a steep hilltop. They were still distant, but I could pick out Deborah’s slim figure. A cock pheasant rose almost from under her feet and came forward, heading high over the gap between two of the Guns. For a moment I thought that he would escape unsaluted, but then one of the Guns fired. A feather was left hanging in the air and the cock swerved and put on a spurt, climbing slightly to clear the rise on which I was standing. As he went over, I saw that he had a leg down.

  No shots were sounding. I turned and watched the bird make for a wood a third of a mile behind me. It was undoubtedly hit and it was well away from the drive. Boss was watching me expectantly. I sent him after it and then concentrated on the action, trying to mark where the dead birds fell and to judge whether those which flew on had been hit or missed.

  The beaters came on. There was a last flurry of action and then the drive was over. I looked down. Boss was not back yet. I walked forward to make sure that there were no runners to claim our attention but was told that all the birds had been picked. I returned to my position.

  There was still no sign of Boss. And the wood where he had vanished bordered a road which, if not major, was certainly not one of the estate’s narrow, tarmac lanes.

  Keith approached over the stubble, his sleeved gun slung over his shoulder and two birds in his hand. Herbert, his spaniel, was frisking, evidently very pleased with himself.

  ‘I sent Boss down to that wood and he hasn’t come back,’ I said.

  ‘He’s probably spotted his bird stuck in a treetop,’ Keith said. ‘You go on down and gather him up. I’ll get the car and collect the pair of you. You lunch with the beaters where we met them first. I’m invited to eat with the guests. Enjoy your sausage roll while I dig into the smoked salmon.’

  We parted company. I found a gate through the fence which reinforced the nearer hedge and crossed a ploughed field to the wood. I whistled and called but there was no sign of the dog.

  Keith stopped in the road and I jumped the ditch to meet him. He wound down a window. ‘No luck?’ he said.

  ‘Not a sign.’

  ‘If his bird was a runner, he may have followed it far enough. Sometimes a pricked bird goes down a rabbit-hole and the dog settles down to wait. He’ll fetch up here eventually. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ I said.

  ‘Probably the best thing. I’ll explain where you are. When Boss casts up, make for the big house.’ He pointed along the road. ‘The main driveway’s about half a mile that way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  He drove off, leaving me very much alone and a prey to worries. Boss might have been stolen. We had a good relationship, but he had already changed owners once. And, like most Labradors, he was a gut-oriented dog. He might have gone with anybody who cared to offer him food. Which reminded me that I was hungry and getting cold.

  Still calling and whistling, I began to walk the road, looking in the ditches in case he had been hit by a passing car. I remembered hearing the sound of some slight traffic on the road.

  I was just returning to the wood when the same small Ford, cleaner than the average run of cars around the estate, arrived and pulled up beside me. The dapper young man, very dark-haired and with a black moustache, who had been talking with Lord Jedburgh before the first drive began, got out. He was dressed for town rather than country in a well-tailored suit and with just the right amount of cuff showing. Among the Guns, he had stood out like a cock pheasant among crows.

  ‘Mr Parbitter? I’m Donald Lucas. We almost met earlier. No sign of your dog yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said.

  ‘Lord Jedburgh says to hang on here until the dog turns up. Unless you’d like to take my car and go for lunch? I could stand guard.’ The words were friendly and yet I sensed a reserve in his manner.

  ‘I’d rather be here,’ I said. ‘Just in case. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘I’m quite used to handling dogs. I breed Dobermanns.’

  It was a kind offer, but I could see him turning up with the wrong Labrador. ‘I’ll stick it out,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t say I blame you.’ His manner became almost human. ‘Don’t worry, he’s probably scented a bitch five miles away. It’s amazing how they manage it.’ He gave a pat to the handkerchief in his breast pocket. ‘He’ll show up when all passion’s spent. Or when he realises that her owners are too careful for him.’

  He left me to it. Thinking that breeding Dobermanns was the last occupation which I woul
d have associated with him, I resumed my search along the roadside in the opposite direction. But there was no shining, black carcass in either ditch.

  Twenty anxious minutes later, the pickup stopped and Mr Macrae put his head out. ‘Nae sign o’ the bugger?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They aye come back in the end. You just bide here, we’ll get by. If he’s still gone in mid-afternoon, I’ll hae the Laird abandon the last drive. The beaters can dae a sweep o’ the country, just to see whether . . . maybe . . . he’s caught in a snare,’ Mr Macrae said reluctantly. ‘I brought you a piece,’ he added. He handed me out a tin of beer and a small parcel wrapped in newspaper and drove off quickly before I could thank him.

  The parcel contained two hot sausage rolls. Although I was hungry, worry had ruined my appetite; but I ate them anyway to pass the time.

  Keith turned up a little later. ‘I come bearing rich gifts,’ he said, ‘and insulting messages. No luck yet?’

  ‘None,’ I said sadly.

  The rich gifts were smoked salmon sandwiches and a flask of coffee, courtesy of his lordship. The only insulting message was from Deborah, asking whether Boss had gone in pursuit of a passing aeroplane, mistaking it for a pricked bird. I am usually shy of teenage girls but I had come to know Deborah well and I guessed that she was trying to divert my anxiety and to conceal her own.

  ‘The missing guests have turned up,’ Keith said. ‘Battered but unbowed. So I’m relegated to picker-up again. Which means that we can get by without you for the moment. But there’s been a theft from one of the guests’ cars so it looks like being a late start. You may still catch us before the next drive. Boss didn’t have a collar on, did he?’

  ‘No. You said to take it off.’