The Crowstarver (5 page)

The foreman liked nothing better than to ride his old Matchless 500 c.c. motorcycle up the drove, or indeed across the fields, and then to dismount and walk across the down to check the cattle. He thought there was no finer sight to see than, against a backdrop of rolling downland, a big bunch of those Shorthorn heifers moving
across the grass in all their variety of colour, while with them, usually bringing up the rear on account of weight, shortness of leg, and general idleness of disposition, slouched the stout figure of a bull, coal-black and with not even the shortest of horns, for the Angus is a naturally polled breed.

In the autumn Mister would often accompany his foreman on his rounds, so that between them they might pick out the most forward of the springers. Major Yorke was in the business of producing not milk but milkers and it was Percy Pound's job to see that the springers left the farm in the best possible nick.

On a fine September morning in 1936, farmer and foreman walked among one of the current bunches of heifers. In some ways the two men were alike. As well as having both served in the Great War, they were of an age, and each had a family of a boy followed by two girls.

Physically they were very different. Mister was a big man, tall and stout and red-faced, with fair wavy hair. Percy was a head shorter, prematurely grey-haired, lean of build, his face etched with lines that were the legacy of pain as well as age.

They looked at the cattle through somewhat different eyes. Major Yorke was a good judge of a horse or a hound, but he had come somewhat late to farming and lacked that stockman's instinct that his foreman possessed in full measure. Whether or not he would have admitted this, he was wise enough not to dispute the other's opinion of a beast.

‘A nice bunch, these, Percy,' he said.

In front of the other men Mister always addressed his foreman as ‘Mr Pound', but it was ‘Percy' when they were on their own.

‘And they're well forward too,' he added.

Percy nodded. ‘Bull's done his job, any road,' he said. ‘There was one or two as I was a bit doubtful about but I reckon they're all in calf now.'

As he spoke, the Angus bull sauntered by, his black coat gleaming in the sunshine. ‘Lucky old bagger, aren't you?' said Percy. ‘So many wives as Solomon,' and the bull rolled an eye at him in passing, comically, as though he understood.

Master and man walked on across the down to look at the next group of springers, the farmer curbing his long strides to accommodate the limping pace of the other. The downland stretched away endlessly, the sky was as blue as a
thrush's egg, there was no sound but the singing of skylarks. No scene could have been more peaceful.

‘I've been meaning to ask you, Percy,' said Mister.‘How's that boy of the Sparrows? I haven't set eyes on him for a dog's age.'

‘Kathie keeps him tied tight to her apron-strings these days,' said Percy. ‘On account of some of the village boys.'

‘Tease him, do they? Call him names?'

‘T'was a bit more than that, back in the spring,' Percy said. ‘There's a gang of them go round together, kids of twelve or thirteen, and they frightened the life out of Tom and Kathie's boy.'

‘How?' asked Mister. ‘What did they do?'

‘They hunted him, sir,' said Percy.

‘Hunted him? What d'you mean?'

‘Well, it seems that Spider had been out in the garden and I suppose Kathie wasn't keeping as sharp an eye on him as she did when he was little – he's ten now, after all – and she looked out and he'd gone. She went off down the village, thinking he might have gone there, but when she got back, she found him hiding under the kitchen table. Shaking like a leaf he was, Kath said, and his clothes all torn and dirty, and cow-muck all over
his face. She couldn't get anything out of him – all he could say was “Bad boys! Bad boys!” A lorry driver I met told me he'd seen this gang of kids out in the fields, didn't know who they were of course, and he'd stopped his lorry to watch. They were all chasing another kid. They must have come across Spider wandering about and thought they'd have a bit of fun with him. They were all barking, like a pack of hounds, and shouting “Tally-ho” and “Gone away!” and all that, and then they'd catch up with him – he can't run fast, Spider can't – and push him over and stand round him laughing, and some of them growling and pretending to tear at him.'

‘Like hounds at a worry!' said Mister.

‘Yes, and then he'd get up and stumble away, the lorry driver said, and they'd do it again. Till they got tired of it and left him, but not before they'd pushed his face in a cowpat.'

‘Wicked little devils!' said Mister.

‘It's the same with animals, isn't it, sir?' said Percy. ‘They'll always turn on one of their own sort if it's weak or crippled.'

This last word led the farmer to say ‘Knee bothering you much these days, Percy?'

‘No sir,' said Percy. ‘Not to speak of. Always
better this sort of weather. It's cold and wet it doesn't like.'

‘How long is it now since you got your Blighty?' Mister asked.

‘Twenty years.'

‘I was one of the lucky ones, I never got a scratch.'

‘They're saying we might have to do it all over again,' said Percy. ‘The way this Hitler bloke is going on.'

‘Except that it won't be us the next time,' said Major Yorke. ‘It'll be our sons, your boy and my boy, they'll be just of an age, as we were, by the look of things. The Great War, they call our one. Wonder what they'll call the next one.'

‘You reckon it'll come, sir, do you?'

‘Not yet awhile maybe. But before we're much older, Percy, I fear it may.'

‘God forbid,' said Percy.

‘Let's hope He will.'

B
ut that hope was not to be fulfilled. Three years later, on 3 September 1939, Britain was forced, once more, to declare war upon Germany, and her young men, once more, took up arms.

The only sons of both farmer and foreman enlisted within the first few weeks, one in the RAF, one in the county regiment. The younger ones amongst the farm men were not called upon to join the forces. They, and all others like them, were deemed to be in a reserved occupation, needed to stay where they were, to grow more food for their country. But the horseman's boy, Albie Stanhope, lost no time in joining the Yeomanry. (Little did he know that soon they would lose their precious horses and become
mechanized.) There was thus one fewer pair of hands on Outoverdown Farm, which led to Major Yorke speaking to Percy Pound, and Percy having a word with Tom Sparrow.

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.