Pastoral (3 page)

“O—oh, yes. Pigeons is ver’ good eating. In my country we eat many pigeons.”

“Well, see if you can lay your hands on that gun, and let’s have a crack at them.”

“The farmer—it will be all right?”

“I’ll see the people at the mill and see if they mind. They ought not to. I’ll race around the mess and see if I can borrow a shot-gun. It’s a good thing to shoot pigeons. They eat the crops. It says so in the paper.”

“Perhaps the farmer does not read the paper.”

“Get that rifle, anyway.” The pilot wound the last of the line back smoothly on to the reel. He raised the little rod above and behind his head and flicked his arm; the plug went sailing out into the stream smoothly and with no effort.

“Nice,” said Gunnar. He stooped to the bag and picked out a reddish, translucent plug bait. “I think this one will be the best.” He pointed to the shallows and the backwater between beds of reeds. “There is the best place for a pike.”

The pilot said: “Too weedy and too shallow.” He paused. “Do you think we could get the run-up a bit shorter?”

“I will try.”

Marshall reeled the plug in to his feet and drew it dripping from the water. “I’ll try telling you the evasive action that I’m going to take, down the intercom. Each move, so that you know what’s coming. And you can tell me which way to bias it. We’ll have to waltz into position before levelling off.”

“It will be ver’ difficult,” said Gunnar doubtfully.

“We’ll have a stab at it to-morrow on the flight test.”

“Okay.” The Dane picked up his rod. “Now I will catch a roach for tea.”

Marshall called after him: “Don’t forget about that rifle.”

Gunnar raised his hand, and the pilot stood watching him for a moment as he went away down-stream between the trees in the dappled sunshine. He was a damn good chap, Marshall thought. That matter of the tanks—Gunnar never missed a thing. He’d probably get his roach all right.

Marshall turned back to the pool and began casting.

A quarter of an hour later he rested again, thoughtful. There might be something in what Gunnar said; pike liked sunny spots and sometimes came into quite shallow water. He did not think he could cast in among those reeds without catching his plug and losing it eventually; still, if it wouldn’t catch a fish what good was it to him? He cast the lame mouse up the backwater into a shallow swim between green beds of weed and drew it fluttering towards him. Was it his fancy, or was there something following behind the bait?

He cast to the same place a second and a third time, without result. Then he changed to the reddish plug that Gunnar had advised, and made an experimental cast or two out into the rough water of the pool. Having got his length he cast again to the same place, the gravelly, weedy shallow, and began reeling in.

In the backwater there was a sudden splashing gulp upon the surface. The line tightened and the little rod bent suddenly; he gripped it with both hands and heard the reel scream as the line went out. He knew at once that it was a bigger fish than he had ever hooked before; indeed, he had only caught two pike in his life, both very small. In the backwater there was a thrashing turmoil in the weeds with quick jerks on the line. He grasped the handle of the reel and got in line. The fish dashed from him up the backwater taking out line as he went; the pilot reeled him in again. Then, in the manner of a pike, the fight went out of him, and Marshall drew him through the swift water of the stream without a kick. He woke up when he saw the pilot and made a short run; then he was finished and came up to the surface as Marshall pulled him in. The great snapping mouth, cream-coloured underneath, was open, the red plug hooked firm in the lower jaw.

The young man breathed: “God, he’s a bloody monster.”

He had neither gaff nor landing-net nor priest. He had too much sense to touch the fish; he towed it with the rod, limp and supine in the water, to a little beach and pulled it up the sandy mud, wriggling and snapping the great jaws. Then with a stone he hit it gingerly upon the head, divided in his anxieties to kill it before it could escape, to kill it without injuring the look of it, and to avoid being bitten. Presently it lay still, and he pulled it up on to the grass.

He was excited and exultant; it seemed to him to be a most enormous fish. As soon as he dared put his hand near it he measured it with his thumb, which he knew to be an inch and a quarter from knuckle to tip; it was thirty-three inches long.

His heart was fluttering with excitement. Mechanically he began to take down his rod and pack up his gear; he would fish no more that afternoon. Anything after this magnificent experience would be an anti-climax; there was a time to stop and rest upon achievement, and this was it. Gingerly and timorously he poked a bit of string through the gills and made a loop. He slung his bag over his shoulder, and with the fish in one hand and his rod in the other went to find Gunnar.

A wet fish thirty-three inches long suspended by a bit of thin string is not a convenient burden if you want to keep its tail from dragging on the ground. Carrying it with his arm crooked Marshall found the muscular exertion quite considerable and it spread its slime all down his battle-dress
trousers; carrying it over his shoulder upon the butt end of the rod was easier, and it spread its slime all down the back of his blouse. In the open air, and while the slime was fresh, this did not seem to matter very much; it became important to him later in the day.

Gunnar saw him coming in the distance and stood up from his little stool, and came to meet him. “That is ver’ good,” he said genially. “It is a ver’ good fish, that one.”

Marshall said: “Thirty-three inches.”

“So?” The Dane felt the weight of it. “With which plug?”

“The red one—
and
over in the shallows.”

Gunnar nodded. “He pull ver’ hard?”

Marshall said: “He gave up pretty soon.” He paused. “Have you done any good?”

“Two.” The sergeant pilot opened his bag and showed two quarter-pound roach lying upon a bed of grass.

“Coming back to the camp?”

Gunnar shook his head. “They are feeding well; I shall stay here.” He grinned. “I think that they have heard the news; so they come out to feed.”

Marshall glanced down at his fish. “I bet this one’s eaten a few roach in his time.”

He left Gunnar and walked up the bank towards his bicycle, carrying his awkward burden. He speculated as he went how much it weighed; his estimates showed a tendency to rise as he went on, so that the buoyancy of his spirits offset the fatigue of his arm. He reached the mill at last and spread the fish, now stiffening, across his bicycle basket and tied it insecurely there with string. Then he rode back to the camp.

The guard at the gate grinned broadly as he rode into the camp with a very large fish drooping at his handle-bars, and took occasion to salute him very formally. Marshall returned the salute and rode on to the mess past laughing groups of aircraftmen and W.A.A.F.s; nobody in the camp would ever say again that he could not catch fish. He parked the bike and, carrying the fish, went through into the kitchen and induced the W.A.A.F. cook to put it on the scales. It weighed eleven and a quarter pounds.

“My!” she said. “That is a nice bit of fish now, isn’t it?” Her words were like music to him. “Will you have it stuffed, Mr. Marshall, like we did the other?”

He agreed, and she gave him a dish for it and arranged it stretched out at full length, and he carried it through into the
dining-room and put it on the table for display. Then he went through to the ante-room to see whom he could find to show it to.

It was half-past five. There were half a dozen officers sitting reading in arm-chairs, and two W.A.A.F. officers looking at the illustrated papers. Marshall looked around for Pat Johnson to confound him, but Pat was not there, nor Lines, nor Humphries. Davy would have to do. Davy was reading about Lemmy Caution and his gorgeous dames, and detached his mind with an effort as Marshall said:

“I caught a bloody fine fish this afternoon. Come and have a look at it.”

“Where is it?”

“In the dining-room.”

“See it some other time, old boy.” The dame had brunette chestnut hair that fell down on a bare shoulder, and slim bare ankles thrust into white mules, and grey eyes, and curves in all the right places, a small black automatic pistol that pointed straight at Mr. Caution’s heart. It was asking too much to leave that for a dead fish.

Slightly damped, Marshall looked around. None of the old sweats of the Wing, the men that he had known for many months, happened to be in. There were only new arrivals that he did not know so well, officers who had been drafted to the station in the last month to replace casualties. There was a Canadian that he had hardly spoken to since he arrived a week before, just getting to his feet. Marshall said: “Like to come and see my fish?”

“What kind of fish?”

“Pike. Eleven and a quarter pounds.”

“I guess that’s pretty big, isn’t it?”

“Not bad.”

“Pike. Is that the same as a muskie—what we call a muskellunge in Canada?”

“I think it is. Come and have a look—it’s in the dining-room.”

The other said: “I’m real sorry, but I’ve got a date. I’m late for it already. Say, you want to come to Canada one day. I’ll take you where you can get a muskie, thirty pounds, any day of the week. Gee, I wish I was back there!” He waved his hand. “Be seeing you.”

The glamour was fading fast. Outside the light was going; the sun was setting behind trees in a clear sky. A W.A.A.F.
mess waitress came in and put on the lights and began to draw the black-out. Marshall lit a cigarette and looked around.

He saw Pilot Officer Forbes sitting pretending to read the
Illustrated London News
and staring at the coal-scuttle. Pilot Officer Forbes had been sitting and pretending to read things for three days now, since Stuttgart. They all knew what was wrong with him; it was Bobbie Fraser. But what could anybody do?

Marshall hesitated, and then crossed over to him. “I caught a bloody nice fish to-day,” he said gently. All the conceit had gone out of his voice. “Like to come and have a look at it? It’s in the dining-room.”

Forbes said without moving: “I don’t think so.”

Marshall said in a low tone: “Come on, old boy. Snap out of it.”

Forbes raised his head. “If you don’t muck off and let me alone,” he said, “I’ll kick your bloody face in.”

Marshall moved away towards the table with the periodicals upon it. Section Officer Robertson looked up from
Punch
as he passed her. He looked like a little boy, she thought, disappointed because nobody would play with him. It was too bad.

She got up from her chair. “I’ll come and see your fish,” she said, “if I may. Where did you say it was?”

Marshall turned to her in pleased surprise. “Would you really like to see it?”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“Will you listen if I tell you how I caught it?”

“Not for very long. But I’d quite to like to see it.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got it in the dining-room.”

It was the first time that he had spoken to Section Officer Robertson. She had been with the Wing for about a month, but the W.A.A.F. officers kept themselves very much to themselves. They used the ante-room and lunched with the officers, but they had their own sitting-room in their own quarters to relax in. In the mess and in the ante-room they were carefully correct, and brightly cheerful, and rather inhuman; when they wanted to read the
Picturegoer
or mend their underwear they went to their own place to do it. It was suggested to them when they took commissions that good W.A.A.F. officers did not contract personal relationships with young men on their own station. As candidates for commissions they were serious about their work and desperately keen about the honour of the Service, and so some of them didn’t.

Marshall took the girl through into the deserted dining-room. The fish lay recumbent on its dish, its sombre colours dulled. Death had not improved it; it leered at them with sordid cruelty, and it was smelling rather strong.

Section Officer Robertson said brightly: “I say, what a lovely one! How much does it weigh?”

“Eleven and a quarter pounds.”

“Did you have an awful job landing it?”

“Not bad. I had it on a wire trace; I was spinning for it.”

“In this river here?”

He nodded. “Up at Coldstone Mill.”

“Oh, I know that,” she said. “A great tall building in the fields.”

“That’s the place,” he said. “I got it in the pool below the mill.”

“It must have been lovely out there this afternoon,” she said. “It’s been such a heavenly day.”

Recollection came to him suddenly: the black-haired girl in the grey jersey. “I saw a lot of W.A.A.F.s this morning out in the field doing physical jerks,” he said. “I saw them from my window as I was getting up. Was that you drilling them?”

She nodded. “I took them out because it was so lovely. Were you just getting up then?”

He said indignantly: “I didn’t get to bed till three!”

She laughed. “Sorry.” She turned back to the fish.

“It really is a beauty.” That, after all, was what she had come to say.

She had overdone it. Marshall looked at it with clearer eyes. “I don’t know that I quite agree,” he said. “I think it looks ugly as sin, and it’s starting to ponk a bit. Be better with a lemon in its mouth.”

She laughed again, relaxed. “Well—yes. We’d better open a window if you’re going to leave it here. What are you going to do with it?”