The Runaways (13 page)

‘Nothing,' said Smiler.

‘Well then, I got an order for some early peewees' eggs. Like to help me collect 'em?'

‘Peewees?'

‘Peewits, Johnny. Lapwings. Them birds what nest up on the downs. Could be some laying already. I can make a fair bob or two from them. Give you a quarter of what we make? All right?'

‘Yes. I'd like that, Mr Ringer.'

‘Right then. My place. Eight o'clock. And don't blab it around. The eggs is protected.'

‘Protected?'

‘By law. Shouldn't take 'em. But if nobody did the things they shouldn't the world would stop going round. While we're out I'll show you somethin' too. Place where my old Daddy used to live.'

While Joe was talking to Smiler, Yarra was making her way northwards across the plain to her sleeping place. The evenings were much longer now. After the soldiers had gone there was still a good two hours of daylight. It was a time when Yarra liked to be abroad and hunting.

Because of the cubs she carried there were days when she was full of hunger and would eat three hares and any odd partridges or birds she could flush up. There were other days when the hunger forsook her altogether, and she just liked to roam to ease her restlessness. This was one of those days.

Above her in the evening sky as she moved the lapwings – whose eggs Joe was going after – were flying. Now and again when Yarra, unsuspecting, passed close to a nest a bird would come tumbling and diving down at her with a fierce, rushing sound of wings. Yarra ignored them.

Yarra went north for about three miles, then dropped to a shallow valley which had a road running through it. She crossed a small brook bordered with watercress patches. As she jumped it a snipe went up from a clump of marsh grass by the water and zig-zagged away down the valley in a swift, clipping flight.

Yarra crossed the road and went up a long barren slope, studded here and there with turf-topped weapon pits. She went right to the top of the long slope and came out on its ridge.

Below her was a long, narrow combe running away to her right towards the far stretches of the plain. From where she stood the hillside dropped very sharply to the valley bottom. For a quarter of a mile either side of her the hillside was too steep for the passage of tanks or troop carriers so that its peace was never disturbed. Tank tracks ran up the bed of the valley. On the far side, and lower down, there was a group of tall trees. Beyond them showed a narrow piece of road and a collection of village houses, roofs and windows shattered, gardens wild and overgrown, and not a soul to be seen moving. Beyond the houses on a rising slope, partly seen through bushes and trees, was a grey-stoned church. Its tower reached up to the sky and was ornamented with five tall stone pinnacles.

During the day, as Yarra knew, the village was often busy with soldiers and their vehicles. But at night it was always deserted. It was a village lost and isolated in the miles and miles of the plain, and it was a village which held no human life except when the soldiers came.

Yarra dropped down the valley side. Fifteen feet below the ridge grew four or five mixed ash and alder trees, their bases screened with blackberry and thorn growths. Behind them was a chalky patch of loose ground outside an opening just big enough to take Yarra's body. Inside, a narrow passage-way curved back a couple of yards and then opened out into a small, circular den about five feet in diameter. Years and years before, the entrance had been no more than a rabbit hole in the valley side. Generations of rabbits had tunnelled and warrened the chalky soil. Parts of it had collapsed and become enlarged. A pair of badgers, years before this moment, had taken it over and made it bigger. In the loose soil of the earth, thrown and eroded out of it, seeds had been dropped by birds, or had fallen from the coats of rabbit, badger and fox. Many vixens had cubbed there after the badgers left. Trees had sprouted and grown, and briars and thorns had seeded and flourished to make a screen that hid it. In all the years that the soldiers had used the plain, not one had ever found it. Yarra had found it when rabbit hunting along the ridge. Inside it was dry and warm, and Yarra meant to have her cubs there.

She had used it now for more than a week. During the day, when the soldiers were about in the village below, she liked to lie just outside the entrance, sleeping or dozing, and sometimes watching the far movements of men and vehicles.

She went into it now. In the half gloom she scraped at the loose chalk floor, then dropped to it and made herself comfortable. She lay, stretched flat out her legs thrust away from her body, her head turned back on one shoulder. It was the way she liked to lie before sleeping.

Suddenly she twitched and stirred and gave a little grow. Inside her one of the cubs had kicked and moved. Yarra's head dropped. She licked at the line of her swollen dugs. The movement came again from inside her. She opened her great jaws in a yawning, silent unmasking of her fangs.

Within the next forty-eight hours Yarra was due to cub. That day was a Thursday.

When Smiler got back to Ford Cottage that evening, he made his usual cautious approach. It was a well-worn routine with him now. He first rode by the cottage on to the bridge to check for signs of life. Then he hid his bicycle in the copse behind the barn. From the kitchen garden he made a closer inspection of the house before slipping into the barn. When the light began to go, he always made a visit to the house to look at the letters which had been delivered while he was away. He left long before the postman called. He knew something of Mrs Bagnall's habits now, too. She always came on a Wednesday morning. But sometimes if she was passing the cottage of an evening she would just look in to collect any mail for forwarding to Major Collingwood abroad. Smiler's chief concern was that there should come a day when the Major would send Mrs Bagnall a postcard saying he was coming back. He knew, of course, that he might miss such a card when Mrs Bagnall collected mail while he was away. But that was a chance he had to take.

What Smiler didn't know was that the Major was a man of uncertain routine. Sometimes he wrote to Mrs Bagnall at the cottage, and sometimes he wrote to her at her own house. And what Smiler would have been very concerned to know on this evening was that Mrs Bagnall that morning had received a card at her own house from the Major. It said that he and his wife – who was now in good health – were coming back on Sunday afternoon.

Yarra had her cubs at six o'clock on Saturday evening. It had been a beautiful, warm April day. She lay most of the time on the patch of chalk just outside the cave entrance, blinking her eyes in the sun and watching the valley and the deserted village. Chiff-chaffs were calling in the tall trees. There was a bright sparkle of water by the road, where a spring rose to feed the little brook that ran through the village and away down the far valley. Two cuckoos exchanged their call signs most of the morning. Once a jay flighted up the valley side and sat in an ash above Yarra and scolded and shrieked at her. The movement in her belly went through her in slow waves and she changed her position frequently to find ease. She saw a Land Warden's patrol car move through the village twice during the day.

As the afternoon finally wore away Yarra got up and went into the gloom of the cave. Within an hour two cubs were born. They were little larger than kittens. Their eyes were shut and there was only the faintest shadow of marking on their grey bodies. Yarra cleaned herself, nuzzled the cubs close to her licked and groomed them. They made pathetic mewing noises, their wet pelts starred with white chalk dust. After an hour they found her dugs. They butted and chewed at them for a while, finally found the coming milk, and began to suck. One cub was slightly larger than the other. This was a male. The other was a female.

Yarra lay happily with them, her head facing the cave entrance, her ears alert for any sound. When darkness came the cubs slept, cradled into the warm fur of her belly. Yarra caressed them with her muzzle and now and then licked at them. The restlessness had gone from her and she was at peace with the world.

With the coming of dawn light she was suddenly hungry. She stood up. The cubs sprawled away from her clumsily and then found one another. They huddled blindly together as Yarra left the cave.

She went up over the valley ridge on to the wide plain lands. Dawn was just coming up. On the wind from some distant farm came the sound of a cock crowing. A few early larks had risen and were filling the sky with song. Yarra trotted up the ridge to the higher reaches of the combe where it shallowed and finally merged with the long, undulating slopes of the high plain. Coming down wind to her Yarra suddenly caught a familiar scent. She froze and surveyed the ground. There was a slight movement in some tall grasses fifty yards ahead. Against the grass Yarra's keen eyes picked out a brown, white-mottled form, and she moved fast. Her body now was lighter than it had been, and there was a fierce joy in her that spurred her on as much as her hunger. A small fallow deer took to its feet ahead of her and went away like the wind. The deer, unlike a hare that would have twisted and doubled and tried every trick in the book, kept to a straight line, relying on speed.

Yarra ran it down within a hundred yards. She leapt and hit it at top speed, bowling it over. The two animals rolled in a flurry of bodies and flying legs. When they came to a stop, Yarra's jaws were clamped across the deer's neck, her forepaws ripping at its throat. The deer died quickly and Yarra settled to eat.

She ate first into the belly, and then the meat from one of the deer's haunches, leaving most of the hide untouched. When she had finished and was full she left the carcase and turned back down the valley.

High above her, a carrion crow, marking her early morning sortie, had seen the chase and the kill. When she had started to eat he had planed down to a rock outcrop on the far slope to wait. As Yarra left he moved in to have his breakfast. A roving pair of rooks saw him and came down to the feast. They kept some distance away and darted in only now and then to snatch a morsel.

Yarra went down the valley fast, along the tank tracks. In one place turning tanks had scoured a great depression and had broken the earth crust deep enough for a small spring to burst through. The water bubbled up cold and clear. Yarra drank and then went up the steep valley side. She did not go straight back. She climbed out of the valley over the ridge and then moved along out of sight from the valley and the deserted village. When she was directly above the cave, she came back over the ridge, her silhouette low against the skyline, and dropped the few feet down to the cave.

Inside the cubs had become separated and were mewing and shivering. Yarra gathered them into the warmth and shelter of her belly fur. They soon found her dugs and began to suck. Yarra lay back as they fed and purred softly to herself.

Smiler was up early that morning, too. He had a quick breakfast of cheese and biscuits in the barn, washed himself in his bucket and then cycled off to Joe Ringer's cottage.

Joe was waiting for him by the van. It had double doors at the back. Inside the body was boarded off from the driving seat so that Smiler could not see if there was anything in it.

To Smiler's surprise Joe drove into Heytesbury and then took the road up to the plain past Danebury House. He stopped at the post-barred entry and made Smiler get out and raise the pole for him and lower it when he was through.

Back in the car Smiler said, ‘Mr Ringer, we aren't allowed up here, are we?'

‘Officially, no,' said Joe with a wink. ‘But if a man obeyed every
no
there was going, he'd grow moss on himself in a month. Nothing to worry about, Johnny. I know every inch of this place. And on a Sunday I can tell you exactly where the Land Wardens will be and when. Just leave it to your Uncle Joe.'

A bit later, when Smiler saw the notices about unexploded missiles, he asked about them.

‘Eyewash,' said Joe. ‘ They pinched the land from the public and now they don't want ' em a-tramping over it. But the officers and their friends shoot and hunt over it. Think they'd do that if there was landmines and such like about? No, me lad, most you'll find is a few empty cartridge cases, some signal flare canisters, and maybe a shell what ain't gone off when it should. You see anything you don't fancy – then leave it alone. I'll teach you all the tricks. Just leave it to your Uncle Joe.'

Joe drove along the road for about a mile and then turned off down a rough track. Five hundred yards up the track was an abandoned Nissen hut with both ends missing. Joe drove the small van into the arched span of rusty corrugated iron and it was effectively hidden from sight.

A few minutes later they were moving over the long sweeps of a small plateau hunting for the lapwings' nests. Joe had a pair of field glasses and would sit for a while watching the birds in the air or for bird movement on the ground. The peewits nested right out in the open. When they came down from flight to their nests they always landed some way away and then moved through the long grass towards them. After watching an area for a while Joe had no trouble finding a few nests. Smiler was far from being an expert. Once he was standing looking about for a nest when Joe said, ‘Go on, Johnny – you got a nest there.'

‘Where?' said Smiler.

‘Right under yer nose.' said Joe, pointing.

Smiler looked down. A yard in front of him on the almost bare ground he saw a shallow depression with three eggs in it. The eggs green-and-brown-marked, blended perfectly against their background.

‘Only one from each nest, mind,' said Joe. ‘ Mother Nature's a generous old gal – but she don't like greedy people.'

They spent the whole morning looking for nests and collecting the eggs, which Joe packed into a series of small boxes that he carried in his haversack. Once, he caught Smiler by the arm and pulled him down quickly.

‘Stick your head between your legs and your hands under your arms – like this. And don't move!'