months.
The Bryant household was tense in February 1975. The previous year, Leicestershire, along with much of the region, had swung back to Labour. There was talk of change at local level, and Lawrence Bryant, fearing for his job, came down with what he called ‘flu’. Until his early twenties, David believed that the symptoms of influenza were blocked sinuses, moodswings and acute paranoia. David’s father spent the day before the second leg of the challenge in bed.
Even had Lawrence been well, David saw no sense in asking for permission to use his gun. David had always been told that when he was seventeen he would be old enough to purchase his own shotgun, and therefore old enough to make his own decisions.
As a child, David had watched his father’s last driven shoot, somewhere near Foston. He remembered the cold, and little else. Lawrence suffered a back injury soon after, which forced him into a bitter retirement from his hobby. So while many of his country friends were being introduced at a very young age to all aspects of field sports, David was permitted only a small air rifle – a .410 – with which he had killed about six rabbits in the extensive family garden. Once, when he was drunk on his mother’s port, he had shot a squirrel from his bedroom window, but the pellet went straight through the torso, and the vermin escaped up the tree trunk with no apparent injury. That was the total of his life’s bag.
With his father bedridden, and his mother occupied with worry, it proved no great feat for David to enter his father’s shed, which stank of linseed oil and damp, take the old twelve-bore along with a box of cartridges, and put them in his cricket bag. When his family woke to find his bed empty, they assumed he was walking the dogs, as usual.
Louisa waited for him at the boundary gate of the field on the outskirts of the village. The cold grip of night loosened drip by drip from the fence planks and the roadside lamps. She could hear the canal. David was late. It appeared that he was unaccustomed to rising at dawn, but Louisa had already developed an uncharacteristic patience with David rivalled only by her forbearance when training eyasses.
She was also aware that letting David triumph in their hunting wager (which he would now surely do) might work in her favour. In her mind, the relationship had progressed quickly, and she had begun to see herself as a stabiliser, a scaffold for him. In this way, he had given her a purpose which she had otherwise failed to find outside of falconry. She admired his extrovert nature and his talent with people; to someone so lacking in these areas, he was like a magician.
When she saw him slogging up the hill with his cricket bag and a black spaniel, she did not know what she had been expecting; a Labrador and a couple of Land Rovers, perhaps. Or a large group of aristocratic men. The dog got to her first and licked the palm of her hand. ‘Where are we going?’ Louisa said.
He nodded to the woodland enclosure beyond the first field. Louisa knew it. She also knew the sour old owner of the surrounding arable land, the stubble fields and corn. ‘It’s a bit close to home,’ she said. ‘Is your dad the tenant? I couldn’t get permission to fly my hawks here. Maybe you could have a word—’
‘My dad’s not the tenant. I happen to know that the tenant is absent.’
They climbed the stile and began to walk the bridleway, which was cattle-trod, peaked and frosty in the shade. ‘So we’re poaching,’ she said.
‘Nobody’s going to miss a few rabbits.’
Louisa shook her head. In the early days, she had been just as rash, trespassing on farmland to steal eggs, hunting magpies in the orchards of her neighbours. These days, though, she asked permission.
‘I was expecting good quality plonk and high-class people. Isn’t that what happens? The ritual of the kill ?’
‘Yes, well. I’ve become solitary,’ he said, frowning, and then laughed at his own
The Bryant household was tense in February 1975. The previous year, Leicestershire, along with much of the region, had swung back to Labour. There was talk of change at local level, and Lawrence Bryant, fearing for his job, came down with what he called ‘flu’. Until his early twenties, David believed that the symptoms of influenza were blocked sinuses, moodswings and acute paranoia. David’s father spent the day before the second leg of the challenge in bed.
Even had Lawrence been well, David saw no sense in asking for permission to use his gun. David had always been told that when he was seventeen he would be old enough to purchase his own shotgun, and therefore old enough to make his own decisions.
As a child, David had watched his father’s last driven shoot, somewhere near Foston. He remembered the cold, and little else. Lawrence suffered a back injury soon after, which forced him into a bitter retirement from his hobby. So while many of his country friends were being introduced at a very young age to all aspects of field sports, David was permitted only a small air rifle – a .410 – with which he had killed about six rabbits in the extensive family garden. Once, when he was drunk on his mother’s port, he had shot a squirrel from his bedroom window, but the pellet went straight through the torso, and the vermin escaped up the tree trunk with no apparent injury. That was the total of his life’s bag.
With his father bedridden, and his mother occupied with worry, it proved no great feat for David to enter his father’s shed, which stank of linseed oil and damp, take the old twelve-bore along with a box of cartridges, and put them in his cricket bag. When his family woke to find his bed empty, they assumed he was walking the dogs, as usual.
Louisa waited for him at the boundary gate of the field on the outskirts of the village. The cold grip of night loosened drip by drip from the fence planks and the roadside lamps. She could hear the canal. David was late. It appeared that he was unaccustomed to rising at dawn, but Louisa had already developed an uncharacteristic patience with David rivalled only by her forbearance when training eyasses.
She was also aware that letting David triumph in their hunting wager (which he would now surely do) might work in her favour. In her mind, the relationship had progressed quickly, and she had begun to see herself as a stabiliser, a scaffold for him. In this way, he had given her a purpose which she had otherwise failed to find outside of falconry. She admired his extrovert nature and his talent with people; to someone so lacking in these areas, he was like a magician.
When she saw him slogging up the hill with his cricket bag and a black spaniel, she did not know what she had been expecting; a Labrador and a couple of Land Rovers, perhaps. Or a large group of aristocratic men. The dog got to her first and licked the palm of her hand. ‘Where are we going?’ Louisa said.
He nodded to the woodland enclosure beyond the first field. Louisa knew it. She also knew the sour old owner of the surrounding arable land, the stubble fields and corn. ‘It’s a bit close to home,’ she said. ‘Is your dad the tenant? I couldn’t get permission to fly my hawks here. Maybe you could have a word—’
‘My dad’s not the tenant. I happen to know that the tenant is absent.’
They climbed the stile and began to walk the bridleway, which was cattle-trod, peaked and frosty in the shade. ‘So we’re poaching,’ she said.
‘Nobody’s going to miss a few rabbits.’
Louisa shook her head. In the early days, she had been just as rash, trespassing on farmland to steal eggs, hunting magpies in the orchards of her neighbours. These days, though, she asked permission.
‘I was expecting good quality plonk and high-class people. Isn’t that what happens? The ritual of the kill ?’
‘Yes, well. I’ve become solitary,’ he said, frowning, and then laughed at his own
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