Pettigrew could see the boy in his mind’s eye with remarkable clarity, except for one particular-his face. But if the features altogether escaped him, he could be sure of the expression, which he knew to be one of intense solemnity, the expression of the participant in a sacred rite. Had he enjoyed it? That was the very question they used to ask him at the end of the day, he remembered. He had always said “Yes”, as a matter of course, before stripping off those agonizing breeches and plunging into a hot mustard bath. It was the answer they expected. But even then he had known how hopelessly inadequate the word “enjoy” was. One “enjoyed” so many things-parties, theatres, the common pleasures of life. Hunting was a thing apart-a compound of excitement and terror, discomfort and ecstasy, boredom and bliss…
“Well?” said Eleanor.
By now the picture of the small boy was becoming overlaid in Pettigrew’s mind with a host of other images-his father’s old-fashioned, full-skirted hunting coat, the Henry Aiken prints in the Sallowcombe dining-room, the echo of the peculiar wail of the Vicar’s voice at Mattins. With an effort he came back to the present and looked for inspiration across the valley towards Tucker’s Barrows. (How could he have forgotten that household name for an instant? he asked himself.) But the view gave him no help in self-expression. Rather flatly he said at last:
“Actually, it was rather fun.”
“Fun!”
There was something in his wife’s voice that made Pettigrew add hastily, “Fun for a boy of that age, of course, I mean.”
“But even at that age, Frank, did you not realize the pointlessness, the wanton cruelty of the whole thing?”
“No, I certainly didn’t. Boys don’t, you know, unless there is someone about to point it out to them.”
“I suppose not. Girls are different, of course.”
Pettigrew, remembering certain female cousins among whom he had been brought up, opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it.
In the silence that fell between them he became aware of a variety of small sounds-the buzzing of an intrusive fly, the plash of water from the stream in the combe below, and finally the sound for which, without realizing it, he had been straining his ears for minutes past-the faint whimper of hounds. It came for a moment only and was not repeated. Pettigrew was not surprised. Wherever they were running, he reflected, it was an even chance that it was uphill and through long heather or bracken. They would have little breath to spare to give tongue on a warm afternoon like this. It was, of course, a matter of complete indifference to him whether they were running, or in what direction; but he found himself none the less concentrating his attention upon a particular part of the skyline where the ground dipped to form a saddle between the Barrows and another, less prominent eminence. The latter point he recognized at once, in his mood of reawakened sensitivity to the past. It was called Bolter’s Tussock; and astonishingly enough, the absurd name evoked a thoroughly disagreeable sensation in his mind. Alone in that wide prospect of familiar, friendly scenes the place stood for something vaguely but unquestionably sinister. Something had occurred there so unpleasant that he had long since buried the recollection of it deep in his subconscious mind. Painfully and perversely he struggled to disinter it. He was almost on the point of success when the present intruded upon the past, and temporarily blotted it out. An object appeared momentarily on the skyline at the very point that he had selected for attention, and began to move at a steep angle down the slope opposite to where they sat. Pettigrew leapt to his feet, startling Eleanor, who had begun to assemble the contents of the picnic basket.
“There he goes!” he exclaimed.
Eleanor looked up, and after some little difficulty Pettigrew succeeded in pointing out the deer to her just before it disappeared in the wood of stunted oaks that clothed the lower slopes of the valley.
“Oh, the poor thing!” she said softly.
Pettigrew said nothing. Already the leading hounds were racing down the slope from the brow of the hill, not half a minute behind their quarry. Barring a miracle, the stag was doomed, though there might yet be an hour’s tow-row down the water before he was booked. It was no use being sentimental about it. But telling himself so did not prevent him feeling sentimental, all the same. It was all of fifty years since he had last seen a hunted deer and now the sight of it had in some way dispelled the enchantment of reminiscence in which he had been living up to that moment. Willy-nilly, he found himself looking at the hapless beast through the eyes of the elderly, urban humanitarian who had somehow evolved from that small boy. He had forgotten that a stag looked so defenceless, lumbering along with its curious stiff-legged canter in front of the pitiless pack. A shrill squeal from below announced that someone had viewed the deer on his way down the valley, and he felt a sudden stab of pity for the victim.
This is quite illogical, he told himself. I shouldn’t feel a bit like this for a hare, and if it was a fox I should have probably screamed my head off by now. Why the distinction? He pondered the problem gravely, while the field streamed across the slope opposite and clattered down the track that led through the wood. On serious reflection, he came to the conclusion that it was a question of size. A deer was altogether too big to hunt with a clear conscience. In sport one should always kill something a good deal smaller than oneself, something that succumbed easily, quickly, anonymously. A stag was too large to be anything but an individual, his death too difficult to be other than a prolonged personal affair.
“Honestly now, Frank,” said Eleanor, “what do you think of it?”
“I think,” said her husband deliberately, “that it would be much worse if they were elephants.”
It was quite impossible to tell from Eleanor’s expression what, if anything, she made of this remark. By way of reply, she picked up the rug on which they had been sitting, shook it free of crumbs and returned it to the car.
“The last of the hunters has gone,” she said. “I think we’ve seen all that there is to see. Shall we be getting back?”
“By all means.”
“You’re sure you want to? You don’t want to-to walk it off before you come home?”
“Walk it off? What do you mean?”
“Come, Frank, you know perfectly well.”
Pettigrew looked at his wife in silence for a moment. Then he acknowledged defeat with a shrug of his shoulders.
“To be honest, I do,” he said. “What beats me is how you know.”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? You’re suffering from a bad attack of-I suppose the psychologists have invented a technical term for it, but I should call it nostalgia. You’ve been living in a dream world of your own ever since we arrived at Sallowcombe. Was that where you used to stay when you were small, by the way?”
“You know perfectly well that it was,” said Pettigrew, a shade bitterly. “I thought that I was being decently reticent about it, and all the time it appears that I’ve been making life quite intolerable for you by my sentimentalizing. I apologize.”
“Don’t be absurd, Frank, there is nothing to apologize for. Only it struck me, especially since this stag-hunting business began, that perhaps there was a ghost that wanted laying and you might be happier if you went ghost-hunting by yourself.”