The Crowstarver Page 4

  One morning after he had given out his orders in the carthorse stables, the foreman made his way to one of the lower fields, sown with a piece of turnips and thousand-headed kale, over which the shepherd was folding his flock.

  As Percy approached, Molly gave one sharp bark but then, recognizing the scent and sight of the limping man, ran to him, tail wagging, ears flat back in pleasure at seeing this familiar friend. Once the two men had exchanged greetings, Percy said ‘Your Spider, Tom. How old is he now?’

  ‘Thirteen,’ said Tom. ‘Thirteen and a half.’

  ‘That’s about what I thought. Strong lad, is he?’

  Tom did not answer this directly. Spider, he knew, seemed to tire more easily than a boy of his age should do. Instead he said, ‘Well, he don’t carry much flesh. Bit skinny like. Why are you asking, Percy?’

  ‘It’s like this, Tom,’ said the foreman, ‘Mister don’t want to take on another man in place of Albie just yet, but he said he could find something for your boy to do. If you and Kath were agreeable, that is. He’d give him a few bob every week.’

  ‘He couldn’t do the sort of jobs Albie could,’ said Tom. ‘Not in a million years. He don’t know nothing about farm work.’

  ‘But he could learn a bit, couldn’t he?’

  Tom sighed, a deep sigh. ‘You do know as well as I do, Percy,’ he said, ‘that he ain’t got a lot up top nor ever will have. The only thing he’s good at is imitating the noises different animals make and Mister ain’t going to pay him for that.’

  ‘No, but he’ll pay him to make another sort of noise.’

  ‘Wass mean?’

  ‘Well, there’s all thisyer winter wheat that Mister’s sowing, now there’s a war on, and there’ll be spring corn to come too, and he isn’t drilling it to feed the birds. There’s something Spider could do, for a start.’

  ‘Crowstarving, you mean?’ said Tom.

  ‘He could do that, couldn’t he?’ said Percy. ‘Make a noise, shout and yell, bang on a bit of tin to keep the birds away? Or d’you think Kath wouldn’t like the boy to be up on the farm on his own?’

  ‘A few years ago she wouldn’t,’ said Tom. ‘After those kids set on him that time. She watched him like a hawk. And he was scared for a while, wouldn’t go anywhere. But he’s got over it now and so’s she, I reckon. I’ll talk to her about it, Percy.’

  That night, he did.

  ‘Crowstarving?’ said Kathie. ‘That’s not much of a job, out in all winds and weathers, he’ll catch his death of cold, and he’ll be all on his own.’

  ‘He likes being on his own, Kath, you know that,’ said Tom, ‘and it’d keep him out from under your feet, and Mister’d pay him a little wage, Percy says. It’d be pocket money for him, you could buy him something down the shop each week. I’d keep an eye on him, make sure he was all right, and so would the other chaps. He can’t come to no harm, so long as you wrap him up warm, and t’isn’t as though it was hard work, just walking about, shouting and banging.’

  ‘To frighten the birds away?’ said Kathie.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Tom. He won’t ever do that. He loves the birds, Spider does, like all the other animals. You remember how he started off when he was little, imitating the owl and the cuckoo. Then as soon as he learned to whistle, it was the lot of ’em – blackbird, thrush, robin, chaffinch, woodpecker – he can do them all.’

  ‘Well, he won’t be scaring them. Just the croaks, as he calls them, and the rooks and the jackdaws.’

  ‘He’ll never do it,’ Kathie said.‘He’ll let them eat all the corn they want.’

  The more Tom thought about this, the more he felt his wife might be right. And if Spider couldn’t even do a simple job like crowstarving, Mister wouldn’t bother about trying him at anything else, like helping at lambing for instance.

  But then the next day an idea struck him as he was moving the hurdles to give the ewes a fresh bite of the turnips and kale, and that evening he said to his son,‘Spider, how’d you like to work on the farm, like Dada does?’

  ‘Sheep?’ said Spider.

  ‘No, looking after the corn. Mister’s growing a lot of corn now on the farm, wheat it is, to make bread to feed people on in the War, and Albie Stanhope’s gone off to be a sojer, so Mister needs someone else to give a hand,’ said Tom. Though the Lord alone knows how much of all that he understands, he thought.

  Spider looked blank.

  Nothing, thought Tom. Let’s try again. ‘See here, Spider my son,’ he said. ‘After the ground’s ploughed and worked down and all ready for sowing the corn, then along comes Frank Butt on the Fordson tractor and his brother Phil riding the seed-drill, and they puts the wheat in the ground. But then a whole lot of birds come along and start to eat up the wheat. Your job’s going to be to frighten the birds away, you don’t have to hurt them, just scare them.’

  Spider frowned, looking unhappy. ‘Spider frighten birds?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sparrows?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Birdblacks?’

  ‘Well these birds are black but no, they’re not the nice little birds we’ve got in the garden. These are croaks.’

  ‘Croaks bad?’ said Spider.

  Sorry, all you rooks and jackdaws and crows, said Tom to himself, I’m going to blacken your names, and to Spider he said ‘You remember that time when those boys pushed you over? In the cow-muck?’

  ‘Bad boys!’ said Spider.

  ‘Yes. Well now, the croaks are bad birds, stealing Mister’s corn, and he wants you to scare ’em off. You’re going to be a kind of a sojer, like Albie. He’s gone to fight the Germans and you’ve got to frighten the croaks, marching up and down, just like a sojer, and making a good old row, so that the bad croaks all fly away.’

  Throughout this recital, Tom saw, the boy was becoming increasingly excited, hopping from one splay foot to the other and swinging his arms up and down. Now he cried loudly ‘Spider sojer?’

  Tom nodded. ‘What d’you think?’ he said.

  ‘Good un!’ shouted Spider.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The following Monday was to be Spider’s first day at work. It was quite a cold morning, and Kathie had sent him off properly dressed against the weather. He wore an old army greatcoat that had belonged to Tom in his brief days of soldiering and was a good deal too big and long for his son. It reached down to Spider’s ankles, and the waist had to be drawn in by a length of binder twine. In one pocket of this coat was a packet containing bread and cheese and in the other a bottle of cold tea.

  He left the cottage in company with his father, and they parted at the bottom of the drove, Tom to go on up it to the shepherd’s hut, Spider under orders to go down the road to the farmyard and report to Percy Pound.

  ‘You just do as you’re told, Spider lad,’ said Tom,‘and you won’t come to no harm.’

  Spider grinned and set off in his usual bent-forward flat-footed way, but though his feet turned outwards as ever, his arms, which normally hung by his sides, now swung vigorously in what he obviously considered a soldierly manner.

  Ephraim Stanhope the horseman was always earliest in the stables, so that Percy Pound’s first words on arrival were, as usual,

  ‘Morning, Eph.’

  ‘Morning, Percy.’

  ‘Dunno if I told you,’ said Percy, ‘but Tom Sparrow’s boy’s starting today. I’m going to take him up to Maggs’ Corner, to keep the birds off. We drilled it with wheat last week.’

  ‘Oh is that what he’s on about?’ said Ephraim. ‘“What you doing here?” I said to him, and he says “Croaks! Bad croaks!” and flaps his arms about.’

  ‘Oh, he’s here already, is he?’

  ‘Ar, and I’ll tell you something for nothing, Percy, he’s either fearless or foolish. He’s been round all the horses already, talking to ’em, if you can call it talking, mumbling more like, and gentling them, and they’ve all stood there like lambs.’

  ‘Ne
ver!’ said Percy.

  ‘Some of them’s quiet enough as you know,’ said Ephraim, ‘but old Flower, she don’t like kids anywhere near her as a rule, and Em’ly, she do lash out at strangers, and as for that Pony, he do bite – took a nip out of our Albie just afore he went off to the Yeomanry. But this Spider, he ain’t afeared of any of them and they seem to know it.’

  Before Percy had time to comment on all this, the rest of the farm men came into the stables, first Red and Rhode Ogle and then the three Butts. Frank and Phil were biggish men, and between them their uncle looked even smaller than usual. Billy was approaching sixty-five now but he could still do a good day’s work, and, had there been a donkey on Outoverdown Farm, he would without doubt have talked the hind leg off it.

  ‘Yur, ’tis brass monkey weather,’ he piped now, rubbing his hands together, and to the foreman who stood leaning his left arm on Flower’s rump as usual, he said, ‘I ’opes you got a nice warm job for me today, Percy. I ain’t so young as I was.’

  ‘Go on, Billy,’ said Rhode Ogle.‘You don’t look a day over ninety.’

  ‘Shut thy trap, young Rhode!’ squeaked Billy angrily.‘Eighteen hundred and seventy-four I were born and that’s a bleddy long time ago, I can tell ee. You wait till you gets to my age, which I don’t never suppose you will, feather-brained young idjut, got no more sense than one of your dad’s cockerels, and they don’t wear no bleddy glasses what’s more, chances are you’ll fall off the top of a hay mow and break your bleddy neck afore you’m much older and don’t think old Billy’ll come to your bleddy funeral neither.’

  Percy opened his mouth to say ‘That’s enough’but before he could speak, Billy suddenly fell silent, for Spider had come down Flower’s off side from where he had been standing at her head, hidden from the men. Seeing Percy’s attitude, he copied it. The mare turned her head at the touch of Spider’s right arm on her rump, but then turned back, unconcerned, and pulled a wisp of hay from her crib. The Butts and the Ogles gawped at this sight. They all knew that the shire mare, though generally tractable, had no liking for children and would shift about and stamp her great feet if one came near. Yet here she was, placid as an old sheep beside this odd-looking boy in the long greatcoat. Even Billy lost his tongue.

  ‘Right,’ said Percy Pound sharply (the east wind was making his knee hurt).‘Perhaps now you’ll let me get a word in edgewise, Billy. But first of all, this is Tom and Kathie’s boy as you all know, and he’s starting work today, going to do a bit of crowstarving. Now, he’s got his little problems, Spider has, and I don’t want anyone poking fun at him just because he don’t speak too well. Now then, Spider, you tell ’em what you’re going to do today.’

  Spider looked around at the men confronting him and saw that each wore some sort of a smile, and he grinned back and said ‘Spider scare croaks!’

  ‘Good boy,’ said Percy.‘Now you just wait awhile, and then I’ll take you up to Maggs’ Corner and start you off.’

  When he had given out his instructions to the other men and they had left the stables, Percy said to the horseman ‘Got a bit of old tin about anywhere, Eph? Need summat for the boy to bang on.’ Ephraim scratched his head awhile and then said ‘There’s that old broken swath-turner out in the back yard under they nettles. You could bash one of the wings off ee.’

  So it was that, ten minutes later, Percy Pound started up his old Matchless, on the luggage carrier of which he had strapped one of the wings of the swath-turner and a stout iron bar to act as a drumstick. He straddled the low saddle of the big machine, working the hand-throttle so that the engine bellowed in short bursts, while Spider watched, jigging up and down in excitement at the noise.

  Then Percy put a hand behind him and patted the pillion seat.‘Come on, Spider,’ he said.

  Spider’s mouth fell open. Plainly the thought that he was to be offered a ride had not entered his mind. He looked at Percy, he looked at the pillion seat, he looked at the horseman who was standing by, watching.

  ‘Go on, lad,’ said Ephraim.‘Jump on. Percy’ll look after thee,’ and he helped the boy to swing a clumsy leg over, while the foreman reached down either side to plant Spider’s boots on the rear footrests.

  ‘Now then, Spider,’ said Percy, ‘you put your arms round my middle and you hold on tight,’ and off they went.

  Percy drove slowly out of the yard and up the road to the junction with the drove. Because its rammed chalk surface was rough, he did not increase his speed, but then they came to an opening that led into a large piece of permanent grass, beyond which lay the field called Maggs’ Corner. Once on the grass and confident now that the ferocity of the grip round his waist meant Spider would not fall off, he moved through the gears until they were speeding along at a good rate.

  Behind him he could hear Spider yelling, not with fear but with delight by the sound of it, and then in front of him he saw a black cloud of birds rise from the new-sown wheat at the sound of the motorcycle.

  At the gateway into the field Percy switched off, dismounted and helped the boy down. He unstrapped the piece of tin and the iron rod from the luggage carrier.

  ‘Quiet now,’ he said to Spider, and put a finger to his lips, and they stood still, waiting, while the birds circled above, and then, at first in ones and twos, and then in numbers, flew down again and pitched further down the field, in which the wheat was just beginning to show green in the drills.

  Then Percy gave the rod and the tin to Spider.

  ‘Now then, sojer,’ he said (for Tom had told him of his subterfuge),‘see all the bad birds down there, stealing Mister’s corn?’ He pointed, and Spider nodded.‘Right then,’ said Percy.‘Up and at ’em!’ and he swung open the gate.

  Then down Maggs’ Corner marched the thin figure of Spider Sparrow in his overlarge greatcoat, each foot turned out at forty-five degrees from the straight, banging his piece of tin for all he was worth.

  ‘Geddoff croaks! Bad croaks! Bad uns! Bad uns!’ shouted the crowstarver.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Crowstarving was the ideal job for Spider, though he could not have said why, even had he possessed the vocabulary to do so. To begin with, he was on his own, which he liked to be, yet never alone, for all around him were animals of one sort or another. There were the croaks of course, keeping him on the move and requiring him to shout and to bang his tin, both of which things he liked doing. But then in the quiet intervals, when the black thieves had temporarily left to pilfer someone else’s corn, there were all sorts of creatures for him to enjoy watching. There were many other sorts of birds, some of which, like wood pigeon, feasted on the sprouting wheat as greedily as had the crows and rooks and jackdaws, but because they were not croaks – and only croaks, he had been told, were bad – Spider allowed them to eat in peace.

  At one end of Maggs’ Corner (it was a roughly triangular field) there was a small spinney of ash and hawthorn, and here the wood pigeon rested when full-cropped.

  ‘Coo-coo-roo, coo-coo’ – repeatedly they sang these five notes – and soon grew used to hearing them echoed from below in an exact facsimile of their song.

  The magpies too, more inquisitive by nature, became accustomed to hearing, coming from the mouth of a human figure, their loud chattering ‘Chak-chak-chak-chak!’

  ‘Peewit!’ cried Spider to the flocks of lapwings that flew over his head, sometimes with their peculiar slow flapping wing-beats, and sometimes throwing themselves wildly about in the air. And there were so many other birds, out there in the wide open spaces under the huge bowl of the sky, that called to the crowstarver and were answered by him.

  ‘Kiu! Kiu! Werro!’ barked the little owl, abroad in daylight unlike the rest of his clan.

  ‘Korrk-kok!’ crowed the pheasant, and ‘Krric! Krric! Kar-wic!’ grated the partridge, while high above, the skylarks poured down their long-drawn-out high-pitched musical cadenzas. And all were faithfully answered by Spider.

  As well as these and many other kinds of birds, there were
beasts on Outoverdown Farm, rabbits galore, quite a few hares, the occasional fox, hunting in the daytime.

  All of these of course kept well clear of Spider while he was frightening the croaks, but in the quieter intervals of the day he had many creatures to look at. Sometimes they were at a distance, but, as though to compensate for his other deficiencies, his eyesight was exceptionally sharp and his hearing very keen. Some of these animals – like the ‘barrits’ – Spider knew well, for he had so often seen them before, hopping about the headlands of the fields or popping into burrows at the edge of the drove, but he could not put a name to hare or to fox.

  However he had at home a picture book that Tom and Kathie had given him because of his interest in animals, and he would point out to them the likeness of some creature that he had seen and they would tell him its name (for he could not read a word). Thus after seeing a hare lolloping across Maggs’ Corner one day, he found it in his book, showed it to them, and said ‘Big barrit?’

  ‘No,’ they said.‘Hare.’

  Spider looked puzzled. He put his hand up to his head and pulled at his forelock.

  ‘No,’ said Kathie.‘It’s spelled different.’

  Not understanding, Spider said again ‘Big barrit?’

  Tom nodded.‘All right,’ he said.‘You call it that, son, if you like. We’ll know what you mean.’

  Then, a day or two later, Spider saw a fox. He was sitting in the edge of the spinney, eating his lunch. Magg’s Corner was for the moment free of croaks, and only the privileged wood pigeons filled their crops. Suddenly they too all lifted off and flew hurriedly away, and Spider, looking in that direction, saw a red-coated bushy-tailed figure trotting along the headland of the field towards him.