He climbed up on to the wide wooden top-rail, stood there poised, balancing for three terrifying seconds, then he leaped - he leaped up and out as far as he could go and at the same time he shouted 'Help!'
'Help! Help!' he shouted as he fell. Then he hit the water and went under.
When the first shout for help sounded, the woman who was leaning on the rail started up and gave a little jump of surprise. She looked around quickly and saw sailing past her through the air this small man dressed in white shorts and tennis shoes, spreadeagled and shouting as he went. For a moment she looked as though she weren't quite sure what she ought to do: throw a lifebelt, run away and give the alarm, or simply turn and yell. She drew back a pace from the rail and swung half around facing up to the bridge, and for this brief moment she remained motionless, tense, undecided. Then almost at once she seemed to relax, and she leaned forward far over the rail, staring at the water where it was turbulent in the ship's wake. Soon a tiny round black head appeared in the foam, an arm raised above it, once, twice, vigorously waving, and a small faraway voice was heard calling something that was difficult to understand. The woman leaned still farther over the rail, trying to keep the little bobbing black speck in sight, but soon, so very soon, it was such a long way away that she couldn't even be sure it was there at all.
After a while another woman came out on deck. This one was bony and angular, and she wore horn-rimmed spectacles. She spotted the first woman and walked over to her, treading the deck in the deliberate, military fashion of all spinsters.
'So there you are,' she said.
The woman with the fat ankles turned and looked at her, but said nothing.
'I've been searching for you,' the bony one continued. 'Searching all over.'
'It's very odd,' the woman with the fat ankles said. 'A man dived overboard just now, with his clothes on.'
'Nonsense!'
'Oh yes. He said he wanted to get some exercise and he dived in and didn't even bother to take his clothes off.'
'You better come down now,' the bony woman said. Her mouth had suddenly become firm, her whole face sharp and alert, and she spoke less kindly than before. 'And don't you ever go wandering about on deck alone like this again. You know quite well you're meant to wait for me.'
'Yes, Maggie,' the woman with the fat ankles answered, and again she smiled, a tender, trusting smile, and she took the hand of the other one and allowed herself to be led away across the deck.
'Such a nice man,' she said. 'He waved to me.'
The Champion of the World
All day, in between serving customers, we had been crouching over the table in the office of the filling-station, preparing the raisins. They were plump and soft and swollen from being soaked in water, and when you nicked them with a razor-blade the skin sprang open and the jelly stuff inside squeezed out as easily as you could wish.
But we had a hundred and ninety-six of them to do altogether and the evening was nearly upon us before we had finished.
'Don't they look marvellous!' Claud cried, rubbing his hands together hard. 'What time is it, Gordon?'
'Just after five.'
Through the window we could see a station-wagon pulling up at the pumps with a woman at the wheel and about eight children in the back eating ice-creams.
'We ought to be moving soon,' Claud said. 'The whole thing'll be a washout if we don't arrive before sunset, you realize that.' He was getting twitchy now. His face had the same flushed and popeyed look it got before a dog-race or when there was a date with Clarice in the evening.
We both went outside and Claud gave the woman the number of gallons she wanted. When she had gone, he remained standing in the middle of the driveway squinting anxiously up at the sun which was now only the width of a man's hand above the line of trees along the crest of the ridge on the far side of the valley.
'All right,' I said. 'Lock up.'
He went quickly from pump to pump, securing each nozzle in its holder with a small padlock.
'You'd better take off that yellow pullover,' he said.
'Why should I?'
'You'll be shining like a bloody beacon out there in the moonlight.'
'I'll be all right.'
'You will not,' he said. 'Take it off, Gordon, please. I'll see you in three minutes.' He disappeared into his caravan behind the filling-station, and I went indoors and changed my yellow pullover for a blue one.
When we met again outside, Claud was dressed in a pair of black trousers and a dark-green turtleneck sweater. On his head he wore a brown cloth cap with the peak pulled down low over his eyes, and he looked like an apache actor out of a nightclub.
'What's under there?' I asked, seeing the bulge at his waistline.
He pulled up his sweater and showed me two thin but very large white cotton sacks which were bound neat and tight around his belly. 'To carry the stuff,' he said darkly.
'I see.'
'Let's go,' he said.
'I still think we ought to take the car.'
'It's too risky. They'll see it parked.'
'But it's over three miles up to that wood.'
'Yes,' he said. 'And I suppose you realize we can get six months in the clink if they catch us.'
'You never told me that.'
'Didn't I?'
'I'm not coming,' I said. 'It's not worth it.'
'The walk will do you good, Gordon. Come on.'
It was a calm sunny evening with little wisps of brilliant white cloud hanging motionless in the sky, and the valley was cool and very quiet as the two of us began walking together along the grass verge on the side of the road that ran between the hills towards Oxford.
'You got the raisins?' Claud asked.
'They're in my pocket.'
'Good,' he said. 'Marvellous.'
Ten minutes later we turned left off the main road into a narrow lane with high hedges on either side and from now on it was all uphill.
'How many keepers are there?' I asked.
'Three.'
Claud threw away a half-finished cigarette. A minute later he lit another.
'I don't usually approve of new methods,' he said. 'Not on this sort of a job.'
'Of course.'
'But by God, Gordon, I think we're on to a hot one this time.'
'You do?'
'There's no question about it.'
'I hope you're right.'
'It'll be a milestone in the history of poaching,' he said. 'But don't you go telling a single soul how we've done it, you understand. Because if this ever leaked out we'd have every bloody fool in the district doing the same thing and there wouldn't be a pheasant left.'
'I won't say a word.'
'You ought to be very proud of yourself,' he went on. 'There's been men with brains studying this problem for hundreds of years and not one of them's ever come up with anything even a quarter as artful as you have. Why didn't you tell me about it before?'
'You never invited my opinion,' I said.
And that was the truth. In fact, up until the day before, Claud had never even offered to discuss with me the sacred subject of poaching. Often enough, on a summer's evening when work was finished, I had seen him with cap on head sliding quietly out of his caravan and disappearing up the road towards the woods; and sometimes, watching him through the windows of the filling-station, I would find myself wondering exactly what he was going to do, what wily tricks he was going to practise all alone up there under the trees in the dead of night. He seldom came back until very late, and never, absolutely never did he bring any of the spoils with him personally on his return. But the following afternoon - and I couldn't imagine how he did it - there would always be a pheasant or a hare or a brace of partridges hanging up in the shed behind the filling-station for us to eat.
This summer he had been particularly active, and during the last couple of months he had stepped up the tempo to a point where he was going out four and sometimes five nights a week. But that was not all. It seemed to me
that recently his whole attitude towards poaching had undergone a subtle and mysterious change. He was more purposeful about it now, more tight-lipped and intense than before, and I had the impression that this was not so much a game any longer as a crusade, a sort of private war that Claud was waging single-handed against an invisible and hated enemy.
But who?
I wasn't sure about this, but I had a suspicion that it was none other than the famous Mr Victor Hazel himself, the owner of the land and the pheasants. Mr Hazel was a local brewer with an unbelievably arrogant manner. He was rich beyond words, and his property stretched for miles along either side of the valley. He was a self-made man with no charm at all and precious few virtues. He loathed all persons of humble station, having once been one of them himself, and he strove desperately to mingle with what he believed were the right kind of folk. He rode to hounds and gave shooting-parties and wore fancy waistcoats and every weekday he drove an enormous black Rolls-Royce past the filling-station on his way to the brewery. As he flashed by, we would sometimes catch a glimpse of the great glistening brewer's face above the wheel, pink as a ham, all soft and inflamed from drinking too much beer.
Anyway, yesterday afternoon, right out of the blue, Claud had suddenly said to me, 'I'll be going on up to Hazel's woods again tonight. Why don't you come along?'
'Who, me?'
'It's about the last chance this year for pheasants,' he had said. 'The shooting-season opens Saturday and the birds'll be scattered all over the place after that - if there's any left.'
'Why the sudden invitation?' I had asked, greatly suspicious.
'No special reason, Gordon. No reason at all.'
'Is it risky?'
He hadn't answered this.
'I suppose you keep a gun or something hidden away up there?'
'A gun!' he cried, disgusted. 'Nobody ever shoots pheasants, didn't you know that? You've only got to fire a cap-pistol in Hazel's woods and the keepers'll be on you.'
'Then how do you do it?'
'Ah,' he said, and the eyelids drooped over the eyes, veiled and secretive.
There was a long pause. Then he said, 'Do you think you could keep your mouth shut if I was to tell you a thing or two?'
'Definitely.'
'I've never told this to anyone else in my whole life, Gordon.'
'I am greatly honoured,' I said. 'You can trust me completely.'
He turned his head, fixing me with pale eyes. The eyes were large and wet and ox-like, and they were so near to me that I could see my own face reflected upside down in the centre of each.
'I am now about to let you in on the three best ways in the world of poaching a pheasant,' he said. 'And seeing that you're the guest on this little trip, I am going to give you the choice of which one you'd like us to use tonight. How's that?'
'There's a catch in this.'
'There's no catch, Gordon. I swear it.'
'All right, go on.'
'Now, here's the thing,' he said. 'Here's the first big secret.' He paused and took a long suck at his cigarette. 'Pheasants,' he whispered softly, 'is crazy about raisins.'
'Raisins?'
'Just ordinary raisins. It's like a mania with them. My dad discovered that more than forty years ago just like he discovered all three of these methods I'm about to describe to you now.'
'I thought you said your dad was a drunk.'
'Maybe he was. But he was also a great poacher, Gordon. Possibly the greatest there's ever been in the history of England. My dad studied poaching like a scientist.'
'Is that so?'
'I mean it. I really mean it.'
'I believe you.'
'Do you know,' he said, 'my dad used to keep a whole flock of prime cockerels in the back yard purely for experimental purposes.'
'Cockerels?'
'That's right. And whenever he thought up some new stunt for catching a pheasant, he'd try it out on a cockerel first to see how it worked. That's how he discovered about raisins. It's also how he invented the horsehair method.'
Claud paused and glanced over his shoulder as though to make sure that there was nobody listening. 'Here's how it's done,' he said. 'First you take a few raisins and you soak them overnight in water to make them nice and plump and juicy. Then you get a bit of good stiff horsehair and you cut it up into half-inch lengths. Then you push one of these lengths of horsehair through the middle of each raisin so that there's about an eighth of an inch of it sticking out on either side. You follow?'
'Yes.'
'Now - the old pheasant comes along and eats one of these raisins. Right? And you're watching him from behind a tree. So what then?'
'I imagine it sticks in his throat.'
'That's obvious, Gordon. But here's the amazing thing. Here's what my dad discovered. The moment this happens, the bird never moves his feet again! He becomes absolutely rooted to the spot, and there he stands pumping his silly neck up and down just like it was a piston, and all you've got to do is walk calmly out from the place where you're hiding and pick him up in your hands.'
'I don't believe that.'
'I swear it,' he said. 'Once a pheasant's had the horsehair you can fire a rifle in his ear and he won't even jump. It's just one of those unexplainable little things. But it takes a genius to discover it.'
He paused, and there was a gleam of pride in his eye now as he dwelt for a moment or two upon the memory of his father, the great inventor.
'So that's Method Number One,' he said. 'Method Number Two is even more simple still. All you do is you have a fishing line. Then you bait the hook with a raisin and you fish for the pheasant just like you fish for a fish. You pay out the line about fifty yards and you lie there on your stomach in the bushes waiting till you get a bite. Then you haul him in.'
'I don't think your father invented that one.'
'It's very popular with fishermen,' he said, choosing not to hear me. 'Keen fishermen who can't get down to the seaside as often as they want. It gives them a bit of the old thrill. The only trouble is it's rather noisy. The pheasant squawks like hell as you haul him in, and then every keeper in the wood comes running.'
'What is Method Number Three?' I asked.
'Ah,' he said. 'Number Three's a real beauty. It was the last one my dad ever invented before he passed away.'
'His final great work?'
'Exactly, Gordon. And I can even remember the very day it happened, a Sunday morning it was, and suddenly my dad comes into the kitchen holding a huge white cockerel in his hands and he says, "I think I've got it!" There's a little smile on his face and a shine of glory in his eyes and he comes in very soft and quiet and he puts the bird down right in the middle of the kitchen table and he says, "By God, I think I've got a good one this time!" "A good what?" Mum says, looking up from the sink. "Horace, take that filthy bird off my table." The cockerel has a funny little paper hat over its head, like an ice-cream cone upside down, and my dad is pointing to it proudly. "Stroke him," he says. "He won't move an inch." The cockerel starts scratching away at the paper hat with one of its feet, but the hat seems to be stuck on with glue and it won't come off. "No bird in the world is going to run away once you cover up his eyes," my dad says, and he starts poking the cockerel with his finger and pushing it around on the table, but it doesn't take the slightest bit of notice. "You can have this one," he says, talking to Mum. "You can kill it and dish it up for dinner as a celebration of what I have just invented." And then straight away he takes me by the arm and marches me quickly out the door and off we go over the fields and up into the big forest the other side of Haddenham which used to belong to the Duke of Buckingham, and in less than two hours we get five lovely fat pheasants with no more trouble than it takes to go out and buy them in a shop.'
Claud paused for breath. His eyes were huge and moist and dreamy as they gazed back into the wonderful world of his youth.
'I don't quite follow this,' I said. 'How did he get the paper hats over the pheasants' heads up in the woods?' r />
'You'd never guess it.'
'I'm sure I wouldn't.'
'Then here it is. First of all you dig a little hole in the ground. Then you twist a piece of paper into the shape of a cone and you fit this into the hole, hollow end upward, like a cup. Then you smear the paper cup all around the inside with bird-lime and drop in a few raisins. At the same time you lay a trail of raisins along the ground leading up to it. Now - the old pheasant comes pecking along the trail, and when he gets to the hole he pops his head inside to gobble the raisins and the next thing he knows he's got a paper hat stuck over his eyes and he can't see a thing. Isn't it marvellous what some people think of, Gordon? Don't you agree?'
'Your dad was a genius,' I said.
'Then take your pick. Choose whichever one of the three methods you fancy and we'll use it tonight.'
'You don't think they're all just a trifle on the crude side, do you?'
'Crude!' he cried, aghast. 'Oh my God! And who's been having roasted pheasant in the house nearly every single day for the last six months and not a penny to pay?'
He turned and walked away towards the door of the workshop. I could see that he was deeply pained by my remark.
'Wait a minute,' I said. 'Don't go.'
'You want to come or don't you?'
'Yes, but let me ask you something first. I've just had a bit of an idea.'
'Keep it,' he said. 'You are talking about a subject you don't know the first thing about.'
'Do you remember that bottle of sleeping-pills the doc gave me last month when I had a bad back?'
'What about them?'
'Is there any reason why those wouldn't work on a pheasant?'
Claud closed his eyes and shook his head pityingly from side to side.
'Wait,' I said.
'It's not worth discussing,' he said. 'No pheasant in the world is going to swallow those lousy red capsules. Don't you know any better than that?'
'You are forgetting the raisins,' I said. 'Now listen to this. We take a raisin. Then we soak it till it swells. Then we make a tiny slit in one side of it with a razor-blade. Then we hollow it out a little. Then we open up one of my red capsules and pour all the powder into the raisin. Then we get a needle and cotton and very carefully we sew up the slit. Now ...'