himself.
‘Don’t shoot, sir?’
‘I won’t. It isn’t loaded.’ Tom lowered his gun. He didn’t need to threaten. He could take the man with one hand behind his back. Skin and bone, he was. ‘After game, were you? This is private land!’
‘Not birds, sir. Had a couple of snares down, for a rabbit …’
‘Got bairns, have you?’ Poor devil. A square meal – one like Alice cooked – would send his stomach into cramps, by the look of him.
‘One little lad. At home, with the wife.’
‘And where is home?’
‘Near Camborne – Cornwall. She’s with her mother. Had to leave her there. No work, see.’
‘So you’re tramping – looking for a job?’
‘That’s it. But who’ll employ a man with a badly foot? I was a keeper myself before the war, but who wants a lame keeper? You should know the walking that’s got to be done.’
Tom knew – especially now. He’d been wondering about another keeper, he thought wryly, and one had popped out of the bushes in front of him, though one who’d be little use to anybody!
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And what’s to do with you, then?’
‘Wounded in the war. My foot. Two toes gone. Makes it awkward, when it comes to walking.’
‘Then how come you’re damn-near starving? What about your pension? The Army gives pensions to badly wounded men.’
‘Pension? You don’t get one of them when it was your own doing – or so they said!’
‘And did you? Did you shoot yourself?’ It hadn’t been uncommon. Driven to desperation, some soldiers had put a round into their own foot; an easy way out of the Army – a ticket to civvy street.
‘Did I hell! We went over the top, one night. I tripped and my rifle went off. Did you ever know what it was like, out there in No Man’s Land?’
‘I knew,’ Tom said grimly. ‘I was a marksman.’
‘And so was I. Like I told you, I was a keeper, and I know how to shoot, mister. If I’d had a go at my own foot I’d have made a tidier job of it than that!’ He stuck out his right boot. The front of it had been hacked away to accommodate the distortion of flesh and bone. ‘So they wouldn’t give me a pension. Told me I was lucky I wasn’t being put on a charge with a firing squad at the end of it.
‘My wife goes out scrubbing. She goes without so the boy can eat. If I had a loaded gun now, it wouldn’t be my foot I’d aim it at!’
‘That’s enough!’ Tom rapped. ‘You’re alive, man! Think back to how it was, and be grateful. There’s many a one who’d be glad to be as hungry and alive as you!’
‘Aye. Then more’s the pity I wasn’t one of them,’ he said without self-pity. ‘I’d be a hero, now, with a tidy gravestone to show for it – and my Polly with a widow’s pension.’
‘Sit you down, man. You don’t have to make excuses to me. How bad is that foot? In pain, are you?’
‘Sometimes. It’s my balance, though. I have to walk on my heel. Bairns make fun of me and you don’t get any help – not a penny parish relief – when your discharge papers say you shot yourself in the foot. A coward, that makes me, and I’ll swear on my son’s life it was an accident.’
‘How old is he?’ Tom was still remembering Daisy’s smile.
‘Just gone three, though I haven’t seen him for six months. Don’t know how it is with him and Polly – no fixed address, as they say, for them to write to. But you believe me, don’t you, sir?’
‘I believe you.’ He did – and besides, what right did a deserter have to stand in judgement on any man? ‘But you’re a long way from your wife and child – how come you ended up here? You’ll not find work in these parts, either.’
‘Maybe not. But I was billeted here, in the war, for six months. All of the summer of ’fifteen. A grand time it was, and the war something that was happening to the other poor sods – not to me.
‘The Army took over Windrush Hall as a billet. Polly was in service, then, ’bout two miles away. That was when I met her. When I knew I was going to the Front we got married and she went back home, to Cornwall. Her father was badly. She helped her mother to nurse him, though he died …
‘But that time around these parts were the best months of my life. I knew this estate and the big house, too, like the back of my own hand. Can’t blame me, I suppose, for making my way back.’
‘No, though the army left a right old mess behind them when they moved out. Windrush had gone to rack and ruin and as for these woods – nothing but a wilderness and not a game bird in them. I came here about eighteen months ago; been trying to lick things into shape, ever since. Reckon we’ll have some decent sport, though, come October.’
‘Aye, sir. And you’ll not turn me over to the constable? I’ll be off your land as soon as maybe if you’ll turn a blind eye to the snares.’
‘Did you catch anything?’
‘A rabbit. It’s in the bush, yonder. I’d aimed to light a fire, tonight – cook it. That was one thing you learned in the army. You were never stuck fast to find a way to cook a rabbit.’
‘Nor a chicken,’ Tom grinned. ‘But look over there.’ He pointed to the church tower. ‘Over to the right – that clump of oaks. There’s a hut, beside them. You can kip there.’
It was a keeper’s hut, usually to be found near the rearing field but moved away, now the chicks were grown, to the edge of the estate. On small, iron wheels with a tin roof, it was snug and dry with a stove inside it and a kettle and pan. A fine place for a keeper to shelter in on cold, wet nights when a poacher might be forgiven for thinking the weather was on his side.
‘I know it – remember it from way back.’
‘Then you’ll know there’s a little iron stove in there. Find yourself some dry wood, and light a fire. You can cook your rabbit on it. There’s matches on the ledge over the door, and water in the beck, nearby.’
‘How will I get in?’ he demanded, eagerly.
‘About twenty yards from the door you’ll see some stones. The key is under the big one …’
‘I’ll find it – and I’ll not take liberties. I’ll leave it tidy.’
‘You better had! And there’s no hurry, for a couple of nights. If anyone finds you there, tell them Dwerryhouse said it’s all right.’
‘I will, and thank you, sir. God bless you, and yours.’
‘Aaar. Be off with you,’ Tom grated, embarrassed. ‘And here – catch!’ he called to the limping man, throwing his packet of sandwiches. ‘Have these. You need them more than I do. And by the way – got a name, have you?’
‘Purvis, sir. Dickon Purvis …’
Tom turned abruptly, striding angrily away. It should not have been like this – a decent man begging, his wife and bairn miles away. And when he’d see them again, only God knew. Nothing but skin and bone, poor devil. He’d never see another winter through, in his condition. What would become of his wife, then? And what about the little lad; what if it had been Tom Dwerryhouse with a badly foot and Alice and Daisy miles away and living on charity and Alice taking in sewing, like as not, to help ends meet?
‘Come on!’ he snapped at his dogs, though they had never left his heels all morning. ‘Home!’
He took a deep, steadying breath. Alice would cut him more sandwiches and besides, he needed to see her, tell her about the man. Alice would listen,