The Memoirs of a Fox-shooting Man

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 873, 27 April 1956, Page 24

The Memoirs of a Fox-shooting Man

By

A. R. D.

FAIRBURN

NE should not, of course, do ‘such things. Nor even think them. There is something soiling to the mind in the mere contemplation of unworthy ends. Silence offers no redemption. I have already waited much too long, oppressed by secret guilt, or-worse, much worse -luxuriating in it. But perhaps it is not too late, even now, to unburden myself. The first thing I have to confess is that the title I have just set down, and am looking at with mingled shame and wistfulness, is something of an over-

Statement, WNevertheless, I allow it to stand, as (let us say) the crumbling monument to a great

aspiration, the sepulchre of a dream. It is something over twenty years ago since I first went to England, a wild colonial boy who didn’t know Blackpool from Whitechapel, and who thought a brasserie was something women wore. After a shortish spell in London I found myself beating a retreat from the great Wen and settling down for a period in a south-western county. while things in general had a chance to settle down. The change was a tonic to the nerves. The days passed like a procession of angels carrying banners, There came a time when I made a trip to Bath to see the Roman remains and bought an old shotgun in a secondhand shop. If that sounds just the least bit inconsequential, I can’t help it. I’m just trying to tell you a true story in simple words. Having done a good deal of rabbit-shooting in New Zealand, where rabbits are looked upon by farmers very much as Job regarded boils and whirlwinds, I saw no hindrance to adding yet another simple flower to my garland of rustic joys. For a week or two I took a stroll every evening at dusk on the lower slopes of the big, partly-wooded hill half a mile from our cottage. I had some good sport, and brought home more than enough for the pot. When I took a brace of rabbits to the people across the road, they told me that the land on which I was shooting belonged to a neighbouring farmer; and I resolved ‘to go next day and formally ask his leave, merely as an act of courtesy, explaining how much I had already helped him in dealing with the rabbit pest. This approach, I

thought in my generous way, though technically a little too retrospective, would give him an opportunity of showing his indebtedness to me and extending the hand of gratitude and friendship. I expected warm congratulations, and perhabs even a delicate compliment or two about my marksmanship. He might even ask me in for a drink. The reception I got was warm enough. So I was the — — who'd been shooting his -- rabbits. He’d heard the shots, but couldn’t catch up with me. I would please get off his — land and

feave nis — game alone, or he’d send for the police? Mention of the fact that T owas an tanacane

-_-s) -_ = New Zealander only seemed to add fuel to the fire. This was surprising, and not a little dampening to the spirits. But only for the moment; My humiliation acted as a sort of compost, within which a seed lodged..I began to think about the situation. Strange that rural England should take up such an oddly proprietary attitude towards a rodent pest like the rabbit. Perhaps the rat also? I must enquire. When in Rome. Unlikely, of course, that either of these should be a sacred animal like the fox. _ Ah, the fox! At this moment the seed of ambition sprouted. I conceived the idea of writing. a best-selling book with the title I have just lifted out of my album of memories and set at the head of this autobiographical fragment. To business, then. I Had been told that a vigilant watcher might very occasionally catch a glimpse of a fox at dawn or dusk in the fields around our cottage. I loaded both barrels of the shotgun and set it behind the kitchen door, ready for instant action. _ Nothing happened for some weeks. No fox appeared. Then came New Year’s Day. The Tattletown Hunt was, I learned, to be working, or playing, or foxing, or whatever the right term is, in our neighbourhood. The beagles were also to be out and about, and altogether the district was to have quite a rousing time of it. We had another refugee from London staying with us, an old friend, and he and I decided to try running with the beagles. We had lots of fun, and so did everybody else, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) including the dogs. (I apologise for the word, I use it purely in a generic zoological sense.) The two hunts crossed each other’s trails from’ time to time, and the beagles kept getting mixed up with the hounds, and vice versa. A great deal of rhetoric was used by various people, and carried far in the cold, still air of that grey New Year’s Day. Tempers were frayed. Late in the afternoon, having run ourselves to a standstill, we watched Lord Millpond, M.F.H., and three other fat men in pink coats try to dig a fox out of a bank with a flush of borrowed spades. The fox sat on a full house and won comfortably. When we arrived home, strange tidings awaited us. My wife, who had stayed around the place all day, told us that towards the middle of the afternoon a huntsman had attempted to jump his horse over the back hedge into the garden, which was some feet lower than the field outside. The horse had got itself stuck fast, straddling the hedge, its hind legs in ‘the field and its forelegs overhanging our property — dang- ling, oddly enough, above our little patch of horse-radishes. The rider, still aboard, had tried for some minutes to urge his mount forward, speaking caressingly to it and from time to time breaking off to make some remarks of a quite general nature, In the middle of his act my wife, who had been occupying a small outhouse in a corner of the gar-

den, some ten feet away, emerged and made a stately progression down the path and into the kitchen. This fifth horseman of the Apocalypse had soon afterwards dismounted, dragged his beast out of the hedge, and cantered across our garden and out into the roadway. Some five minutes later he had returned, the prey of disturbing thoughts, and for several expressions that had escaped his lips. My wife told him to think nothing of it-she had often heard much worse from her husband. But the most astonishing, the really anguishing, part of her story was yet to come. A few minutes after the departure of the repentant huntsman she had happened to look out of the kitchen window, and had seen a handsome and prosperous fox picking his way across the kitchen garden. Pausing in the middle of the onion bed, the animal had made a leisurely toilet, squatting up and washing his face with his paws, cat-style. He had then yawned, and had moved off the property without haste. My wife, being afraid of guns, had made no attempt to act as’ my literary deputy. So it came about that I lost the only opportunity that ever came anywhere near me of opening up a career as a fox-shooting man. To be honest, I have to this day never set eyes on a fox, And my book, which might have shaken England to its foundations, remains unwritten,