A Kestrel for a Knave (6 page)

Bastard Bastard Drunken
SMACK
– Already committed to its strike, Billy’s claw had involuntarily hardened to a fist, and thumped Jud, smack on his ear as he turned over on to his side.

For a second, a still, catching Billy poised over the bed, fist still clenched above the offended ear. Then the monster began to rumble. Billy snatched his clothes off the chair, flicked off the light as he ran past, and ran downstairs. His fingers almost seized up as they fumbled at the lock on the kitchen door, their ineptitude making him glance round and squeal softly in fear and excitement. With the door opened, he relaxed and paused on the step to listen. Silence. Continuing silence. So he went back inside and fetched his jacket and pumps, and dressed at leisure in the doorway, by the light of the moon.

The moon was almost complete, its outline well defined, except for the blur on the waxing curve. The sky was cloudless, the air still warm, but when he reached the fields it cooled slightly, taking on a fresher, sharper quality. The moon made it light in the fields, and lent the grass a silver sheen, and the piebald hides of the cows were clearly visible in this silvery light. The wood was a narrow black band beyond the fields, growing taller and taller as Billy approached, until it formed a curtain stretched out before him, and the top of the curtain appeared to touch the stars directly above.

He climbed on to the stile and looked into the trees. It was dark on both sides of the path, but above the path the foliage was thinner, and the light from the moon penetrated and lit the way. Billy stepped down off the stile and entered the wood. The trunks and branches lining the
path formed pillars and lintels, terraced doorways leading into dark interiors. He hurried by them, glancing in, right and left. A scuffle to his left. He side-stepped to the right and began to run, the pad of his feet and the rasp of his breath filtering far into the trees,
WO-HU-WO-HOOOO
.
WO-HU-WO-HOOOO.
He stopped and listened, trying to control his breathing.
WO-HU-WO-HOOO.
Somewhere ahead; the long falter radiating back through the trees. Billy linked his fingers, placed his thumbs together and blew into the split between them. The only sound he produced was that of rushing air. He licked his lips and tried again, producing a wheeze, which he swiftly worked up into a single hoot and developed into a strident imitation of the tawny owl’s call. He listened. There was no response, so he repeated it, this time working for the softer, more wavering sound, by stuttering his breath into the sound chamber. And out it came, as clear and as clean as a blowing of bubbles. His call was immediately answered. Billy grinned and answered back. He started to walk again, and maintained contact with the owl for the rest of the distance through the wood.

The farmhouse was in darkness. Billy carefully climbed over the wall into the orchard and ran crouching across to the ruins. He stood back from the wall and looked up at it. The moon illuminated the face of the wall, picking out the jut of individual stones, and shading in the cracks and hollows between them. Billy selected his route, found a foothold, a handhold, and began to climb. Very slowly and very carefully, testing each hold thoroughly before trusting it with his weight. His fingers finding the spaces, then tugging at the surrounding stones as though testing loose teeth. If any stones moved he felt again, remaining still until he was satisfied. Slowly. Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.
Never stretching, never jerking. Always compact, always balanced. Sometimes crabbing to by-pass gaps in the stonework, sometimes back-tracking several moves to explore a new line; but steadily meandering upwards, making for the highest window.

As he climbed, his feet and hands dislodged a trickle of plaster and stone dust, and birds brushed his knuckles as they flashed out of their nest holes. Occasionally he dislodged a small stone or a lump of plaster, and when he felt this happen he paused during the time of its fall, and for a time after it had landed.

But there were no alarms, and he reached the window and hooked his left arm over the stone sill. He slapped the stone and sh sh’d at the hole at the other end of the sill. Nothing happened so he climbed astride and hutched across to the nest hole. He peered in, but there was nothing to see, so he stretched belly flop along the sill and felt into the hole, wriggling further along as his arm went further in. He felt around, then withdrew his hand grasping a struggling eyas kestrel. He sat up, caged the bird in his hands, then placed it carefully into the big pocket inside his jacket. Five times he felt into the hole and each time fetched out a young hawk. Some were slightly larger than others, some more fully feathered, with less down on their backs and heads, but each one came out gasping, beaks open, legs pedalling the air.

When he had emptied the nest he reversed the procedure, dipping into his pocket for an eyas and holding it in one hand while he compared it with another. By a process of elimination, he placed them back into the nest until he was left with only one; the one with most feathers and only a little down on its head. He lowered it back into the pocket, then held his hand up to catch the light of the moon. Both
back and palm were bleeding and scratched, as though he had been nesting in a hawthorn hedge.

When he reached the bottom of the wall he opened his jacket and clucked down into the pocket. The weight at the bottom stirred. He placed one hand underneath it for support, and set off back across the orchard. Once over the wall, he started to whistle, and he whistled and hummed to himself all the way home….

… Billy had been standing so still that the hawk had lost interest in him, and flew from the shelf to the perch at the back of the shed. He put his face close to the bars, had a last look at her, then turned away and walked up the path and across the estate to school.

Mr Crossley dug the Biro point in. Too late, the black stroke skidded diagonally down the square. He lifted his face slowly to the class. All the boys were looking at Billy.

‘What was that?’

‘It was Casper, Sir.’

‘Did you say something, Casper?’

‘Yes Sir, I didn’t…’

‘Stand up!’

Billy stood up, red. The boys looked up at him, grinning, lolling back on their chairs in anticipation.

‘Now then, Casper, what did you say?’

‘German Bight, Sir.’

The rest of the class laughed out, some screwing their forefingers into their temples and twitching their heads at Billy.

‘He’s crackers, Sir!’

‘He can’t help it.’

‘
SILENCE
.’

There was silence.

‘Is this your feeble idea of a joke, Casper?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Well what was the idea then?’

‘I don’t know, Sir. It wa’ when you said Fisher. It just came out, Fisher – German Bight. It’s the shipping forecast, Sir; German Bight comes after Fisher; Fisher, German Bight, Cromarty. I know ’em all, I listen to it every night, I like to hear the names.’

‘And so you thought you’d enlighten me and the class with your idiotic information?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Blurting out and making a mess of my register.’

‘It just came out, Sir.’

‘And so did you, Casper. Just came out from under a stone.’

The class roared out again, tossing their heads back and scraping their chairs, banging their desk lids and thumping the backs and arms of any boy in range; using the joke as a mere excuse to cause havoc.

‘Quiet! I said
QUIET.
’

His gaze raked the class, killing the sound in each face. The bell rang. Crossley fixed Billy with his eyes all the time it was ringing, and for a while after it had stopped.

‘Any more pearls of wisdom to volunteer, Casper?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Well
SIT DOWN THEN
.’

Billy sat down, sliding down his seat until his hair scuffed the top rung of the chair back. Crossley moved his Biro back to the register, cocking it vertical like a fishing float. Outside the room the corridor was crowded with children moving to assembly.

‘Anyone else absent besides Bridges and Fisher?’

Pause for inspection.

‘No, Sir.’

‘Right, off you go then. One row at a time.’

The boys lolloped up into the aisles, merging at the door into a tributary of the mainstream in the corridor.

‘Hey up, Casper, what’s tha mean, Germans bite?’

‘O shut thi mouth.’

Crossley marked off the remainder of the ‘present’ strokes, then changed his black Biro for red, and, very carefully, bending low over the register, tried to bend Fisher’s stroke into an 0, lapping and lapping the tiny square until he had gouged a mis-coloured egg, the focal point of the whole grid.

‘Hymn number one-seven-five, “New every morning is the love”.’

The navy blue covers of the hymn books, inconspicuous against the dark shades of the boys’ clothing, bloomed white across the hall as they were opened and the pages flicked through. The scuff and tick of the turning pages was slowly drowned under a rising chorus of coughing and hawking; until Mr Gryce, furious behind the lectern, scooped up his stick and began to smack it vertically down the face.

‘
STOP THAT INFERNAL COUGHING
.’

The sight and swishsmack of the stick stopped the throat noises and the boys and the teachers, posted at regular
intervals at the ends of the rows; all looked up at the platform. Gryce was straining over the top of the lectern like a bulldog up on its hind legs.

‘It’s every morning alike! As soon as the hymn is announced you’re off revving up! Hm-hmm! Hm-hmm! It’s more like a race track in here than an assembly hall!’ – hall – ringing across the hall, striking the windows and lingering there like the vibrations of a tuning fork.

No one muffed. Not a foot scraped. Not a page stirred. The teachers looked seriously into the ranks of boys. The boys stood looking up at Gryce, each one convinced that Gryce was looking at him.

The silence thickened; the boys began to swallow their Adam’s apples, their eyes skittering about in still heads. The teachers began to glance at each other and glance sideways up at the platform.

Then a boy coughed.

‘Who did that?’

Everybody looking round.

‘I said
WHO DID THAT
?’

The teachers moved in closer, alert like a riot squad.

‘Mr Crossley! Somewhere near you! Didn’t you see the boy?’

Crossley flushed, and rushed amongst them, thrusting them aside in panic.

‘There, Crossley! That’s where it came from! Around there!’

Crossley grabbed a boy by the arm and began to yank him into the open.

‘It wasn’t me, Sir!’

‘Of course it was you.’

‘It wasn’t, Sir, honest!’

‘Don’t argue lad, I saw you.’

Gryce thrust his jaw over the front of the lectern, the air whistling down his nostrils.

‘
MACDOWALL
! I might have known it! Get to my room, lad!’

Crossley escorted MacDowall from the hall. Gryce waited for the doors to stop swinging, then replaced his stick and addressed the school.

‘Right. We’ll try again. Hymn one hundred and seventy-five.’

The pianist struck the chord. Moderately slow it said in the book, but this direction was ignored by the school, and the tempo they produced was dead slow, the words delivered in a grinding monotone.

New ev-ery morn-ing is the love

Our wakening and up-rising prove;

Through sleep and dark-ness safe-ly brought,

Restored to life, and power, and thought.

‘
STOP
.’

The pianist stopped playing. The boys stopped singing.

‘And what’s that noise supposed to represent? I’ve heard sweeter sounds in a slaughter house! This is supposed to be a hymn of joy, not a dirge! So get your heads up, and your books up, and open your mouths, and
SING
.’

There was a mass bracing of backs and showing of faces as Gryce stepped round the lectern to the edge of the platform and leaned out over the well of the hall.

‘Or I’ll make you sing like you’ve never sung before.’

The words came out in a whisper, but they were as audible to the older boys at the back of the hall as to the small boys staring up under his chin.

‘Verse two – New mercies each returning day.’

Gryce retreated, and the remaining four verses were completed without interruption, verse two with increased
volume, deteriorating through three and four, to the concluding verse, which was delivered in the original monotone.

Before all the hymn books had been closed, and with the last notes still in the air, a boy came forward from the drapes at the back of the platform, and while still in motion began to read from the Bible held close to his chest.

‘Thismorning’sreadingistakenfromMattheweighteenverses…’

‘Louder, boy. And stop mumbling into your beard.’

‘Never despise one of these little ones I tell you they have their guardian angels in heaven who look continually on the face of my heavenly Father. What do you think suppose a man has a hundred sheep if one of them strays does he not leave the other ninety-nine on the hillside and go in search of the one that strayed. And if he should find it I tell you this he is more delighted over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that never strayed. In the same way it is your heavenly Father’s will that one of these little ones should be lost here ends this morning’s reading.’

He closed the bible and backed away, his relief pathetic to see.

‘We will now sing the Lord’s Prayer. Eyes closed. Heads bowed.’