The Crowstarver (4 page)

‘My, you've grown, Spider!' they might say, and Spider, smiling, would reply ‘Good un!'

But these were no longer his only words. A stranger listening to the boy talking would realize immediately – as everyone in the village did – that this was no ordinary child. But all the same Spider now had a rudimentary vocabulary of his own. Tom was ‘Dada', and Kathie was ‘Mum', and
he used a number of other words, chiefly the names of the creatures around him. ‘Molly' had been the first new word that he had spoken, and, appropriately, ‘sheep' and ‘lamb' soon followed.

Tom and Kathie played on his interest in animals and would repeat their names to him. Once he had connected name and creature, he never forgot them, though sometimes his version differed from the normal. A blackbird, for example, was a ‘birdblack', a crow was a ‘croak', and rabbits were ‘barrits', but one name he always pronounced correctly was ‘sparrow'. He knew his own name now, though this in itself was a little confusing for him so that sometimes he called sparrows spiders and sometimes he would come upon a spider and say,‘Sparrow!'

Now, as he walked up the drove with his mother, a large flock of lapwings or green plover that had been standing in a field rose as one and lifted away with mournful cries. Spider knew them by the name that was locally used, and he pointed and cried ‘Peewit! Peewit!'

They reached the lambing-pens just in time to see the shepherd in the act of drawing a lamb from a ewe. He was holding the baby's forelegs, and he pulled, gently but strongly, in concert with the mother's contractions, till, with a slippery run,
out upon the straw came the newborn lamb, limp and wet and stained with birth fluid. Quickly Tom cleared its mouth and pumped its forelegs around till he was satisfied that it was taking its first gulps of air. Then he placed the lamb by the head of the ewe and she began to lick at it.

‘He's a big one, isn't he, Tom?' Kathie said.

‘He is,' said Tom, ‘and awkward too. He had his head turned back and I had a bit of a job with him. Just as well there wasn't a twin behind him or it might have been in trouble.'

Spider was watching the ewe as she worked on the lamb, blatting softly at it while it shook its head about and sneezed and struggled to rise. He pointed at it. ‘Good un, Dada,' he said.

‘You're right, Spider my son,' said the shepherd. ‘Got the same birthday as you too. Tell Dada how old you are today.'

His age was one of the things Spider had learned over the past year. Now he grinned his lopsided grin and proudly held up his right hand, fingers and thumb extended.

‘That's five, love,' said Kathie. ‘That's what you were yesterday. Today you're six.'

Spider looked from one to the other, puzzled.

‘One more, son,' said Tom and he held up his own left thumb.

Spider copied him. Then he looked at his hands, at the four fingers and, now, the two thumbs. ‘Spider six?' he said on a note of query.

They nodded, smiling.

So Spider set off down the line of pens with his splayfooted walk. In some there were ewes with twins, in others one with a single lamb, while in two pens there were ewes that had not yet given birth, one actually straining in the first stage of labour. To each and all in turn the boy cried in a loud excited voice ‘Spider six!'

‘Once lambing's done,' said Tom,‘we're going to have to see about getting him into school.'

‘If they'll have him,' Kathie said.

‘Mister might help,' said Tom.

One day, admittedly a long time after Major Yorke had said that he would drop in and take a look at the shepherd's adopted son, he did so, and realized immediately that the child was abnormal. To Kathie of course he only said ‘A dear little chap,' but at home he said to his wife, ‘You remember that strange business a few years back when someone abandoned a newborn baby in the lambing-pens, and then Tom and Kathie Sparrow took him on?'

‘Of course I remember,' she replied.

‘Well, I've just seen the child and he's half-witted, no doubt of it.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Mrs Yorke. ‘You must be the last person in the valley to know, I suppose because your head's always full of hounds and hunting. I've been to see him several times, poor little fellow. Of course he's retarded, but there's something rather taking about him.'

‘Damn bad luck on the Sparrows,' said Major Yorke.

‘Maybe you can do something to help, later on, when the boy's older,' his wife said. ‘Find him something to do on the farm, perhaps, something simple, just to keep him occupied.'

‘Huh!' said her husband. ‘He doesn't look strong enough to lift a sheaf of corn. Crowstarving's about all he'll be fit for by the look of him, walking up and down banging a sheet of tin with a stick to keep the birds off new-sown corn. Unless he improves a lot, which I don't see how he can, because he's never going to be fit to go to school.'

On the morning after Spider's sixth birthday, Percy Pound had sent Albie Stanhope to give Tom a hand at the lambing-pens. As Albie walked up the drove, he saw in the distance a horse and rider coming down towards him from the top
lands of the farm. He quickened his pace and when he reached the shepherd's hut, he called out ‘Tom! Mister's coming!'

‘Well, you'd better look busy then, Albie lad,' said Tom, who was eating his breakfast. ‘Start cleaning the pens.'

But before Albie could begin, he heard the noise of hooves and then saw Mister dismounting.

‘Here, Albie,' Major Yorke called, ‘hold my horse a minute, will you, while I have a word with Tom?'

The horseman's son obeyed with alacrity. He loved all horses, of whatever sort, and there was certainly an odd selection in the stables – the great shire mare Flower, several half-bred hairy-heeled carthorses, a couple of pensioned-off hunters used for light work, and even a large shaggy pony called Pony.

But Mister's big bay Sturdiboy was an aristocrat of his kind, and Albie was only too happy to stand at his head and stroke his velvety muzzle and talk to him in that special way that people who are fond of horses do.

Inside the shepherd's hut there was an exchange of ‘Good mornings' and some general talk about the lambing, and then the farmer was
about to leave again when Tom said ‘Have you got a minute, sir?'

‘Yes certainly,' said Mister.

‘'Tis about Spider's schooling.'

‘Spider?'

‘The boy, our boy.'

‘Of course, of course.'

‘See, he's just turned six, sir, and Kathie and me, we was wondering, could you have a word with the vicar' (it was a Church of England school) ‘and perhaps he could speak to the headmaster, to see whether he'd take the boy, this summer term coming. He's a bit slow, you see, sir, bit backward like.'

‘I'll do what I can, Tom,' said Major Yorke.

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘And look here, when he's a bit older we'll find something for him to do on the farm. He could lend a hand in the season, for a start.'

‘He's fond of animals,' said Tom.

‘Good, good. Anyway I'll speak to the vicar.'

Outside the gate of the lambing-pen there was a short length of old walling, and by this Albie Stanhope stood waiting, holding Sturdiboy. The bit of broken wall was of a height to serve as a mounting-block, and, using it thus, the farmer hoisted his bulk into the saddle.

‘Thanks, Albie,' he said, and off he rode.

‘He's a beauty, that horse,' Albie said to Tom as he went to fetch wheelbarrow and fork. ‘I'd love to have a ride on ee. All I ever gets to sit on is Pony – father lets me have a go round the orchard when the foreman ain't looking.'

‘You might get your dad's job one day, when he retires,' Tom said. Though my son, he thought, won't ever be offered my job.

Mister was as good as his word, and both he as a school governor and the vicar as another put the case of Spider Sparrow to Mr Pugh, the headmaster, with the result that, just before the end of the spring term, Kathie received a summons to bring her son in to the village school one afternoon.

As they arrived, the children were just coming out to go home, the bigger ones by themselves, the smaller with their mothers, and as they streamed past, Kathie heard a lot of things said. Some were good-natured, like ‘Hullo, Spider!' or ‘Good old Spider!' but some children called out ‘Good un!' in mockery, and some, she could see, were imitating Spider's way of walking. Mercifully she did not hear a comment from one of the bigger boys.

‘Ee'd have frightened Miss Muffet to death, ee would!' he said, amid the sniggers of his cronies.

Spider, she could see, was scared at the sight of so many children and her heart bled for him. How would he manage at school without her to protect him? How would he stand up for himself? How, with his limited and often strange speech, would he make his needs known to the teachers?

One side of her wanted him to become a schoolboy, to learn, even if that learning was only to be of the most basic kind – to write his name, to read a few words, to know some numbers. The other side of her half-hoped, as they entered Mr Pugh's office, that the headmaster would not feel able to offer him a place, so that he could stay at home, with her, safe and protected.

In the event, it was no contest. Spider, already frightened by the crowd of children, now lost what wits he had. It mattered not that Mr Pugh was a kindly, fatherly sort of man, anxious to put at ease this boy of whom he already knew something from Major Yorke and the vicar. Spider simply clammed up.

‘Now then, young man,' said the headmaster, ‘let's see how much you know.' He wrote
in large capital letters on a piece of paper the word: CAT.

‘What does that say?' he asked Spider.

There was no answer.

Mr Pugh pointed to each letter in turn, asking for their names, but Spider only looked up at his mother as though to say, ‘Take me away.'

The headmaster opened a picture book, asking more questions about the illustrations but receiving no replies, except that when he showed a picture of a rabbit and asked what it was, Spider said in a small voice, ‘Barrit.'

‘Can he write his name, Mrs Sparrow?' asked Mr Pugh.

‘No.'

‘Does he know any numbers?'

‘He knows how old he is.'

‘How old are you, Spider?' said Mr Pugh, but even then in his confusion the boy only held up four fingers and a thumb.

‘He's just six,' Kathie said.

There was a silence, while the headmaster looked at the little boy known as Spider and said to himself that there was no way such a child could be taught in his school.

Nervously, Kathie said ‘He's ever so clever in some ways, Mr Pugh. He's wonderful with
animals, any sort of animal, and he can copy the noises they make, to the life.'

‘Mrs Sparrow,' said the headmaster, ‘it's better if I'm frank with you. Your boy has got problems that I don't think we can deal with. I'm sorry.'

At these words Kathie suddenly and definitely felt, not disappointment, but relief. She watched Spider's face as they walked home hand in hand, and the further they got from the school and the nearer to the cottage, the more it brightened.

As they went in through the garden gate, Spider gave vent to the longest sentence of his life. ‘Spider not go school, Mum?' he asked anxiously.

Kathie shook her head.

He grinned hugely. ‘Good un!' he shouted.

T
here was no dairy herd on Outoverdown Farm. Instead, Mister bought in a large number of stirks, that is to say maiden heifers. These came from Ireland and were all Dairy Shorthorns. Though he knew he could rely upon the dealers to find him decent stock, he went over himself, each winter, ostensibly to check the quality of the animals on offer, but actually to get a week's hunting with a well-known Irish pack.

The Shorthorn stirks were varied in colour, red, red-and-white, white, and roan, and Mister ran them out on the downs, each bunch with its own bull. Then, eight months to a year later, they would go to Salisbury Market to be sold as springers, heifers, that is, that were approaching
their first calving; ‘springing to calve', as the term was.

The bulls were all Aberdeen Angus, chosen for their placidity, but also because that breed tends to throw smallish offspring, so that the Irish heifers could calve more easily.

These cattle, a hundred to a hundred and fifty of them on the farm at any one time, were Percy Pound's special responsibility and interest. Of the other farm livestock, he well knew that he could entrust the care of the sheep to Tom Sparrow, of the horses to Ephraim Stanhope, and of the laying hens, which were also kept up on the downs in movable fold units, to Stan Ogle.

Of the other farm men, Albie helped his father or Tom as and when needed, and Red and Rhode Ogle gave their father a hand with the daily moving of the folds. The Butts, Billy and his nephews Frank and Phil, were general farm workers, able to turn their hands to any job.