Lincolnshire

by Angla Brady

In the autumn of 1992 I travelled northwards to Scotland. Isolated in a tired and cranky Ford Escort of indeterminate vintage, the independence of the motor car freed me from the need to engage in anything but the most superficial discourse. Accompanied by rust, a bicycle awkwardly stowed across the back seat and a basil plant, insulated against human contact, I became an observer.

In Lincolnshire, some long-forgotten un-named town drew me, seeking the birth place of friends from home. Pity I had forgotten Sue’s maiden name, pity also that English pubs had the indecency to close on Sunday afternoon. Curled up on the back seat of the Escort, an inadequate sleeping bag separating the bike from my extremities, cold and darkness blanketed as the sun tired prematurely into the ever present clouds.

Layers of sleep, isolation, chill and rust barricade against civilisation. Reluctant to suffer another black pudding breakfast or syncopated snoring at the YHA, I head to the snug comfort of the pub to chance my hand. Ordinarily, in Australia, I would never venture lone into such a bastion of masculinity. Ironic, that Australian pubs seem so hostile, yet in those cigarette and swill palaces, the boys consider the only appropriate place for their fists is around a glass. In these British nooks, amidst antique bed pans, redolent with stuffed hunting trophies and cosy red-shaded wall sconces, the average lad feels compelled to finish a night with his fists, outside.

At Market Rasen, the publican checks the mood, a trivia quiz marshalling forces into good humoured mirth. An off-duty policeman, spotty youth and I make an unusual yet effective trio, blasting our way to second position. At the end of the night, escorted across to the opposition that provides accomodation, by my gently tipsy competitors, I am invited to spend the next day at a local estate, beating pheasants.

Strange really, that the European Union pays people not to farm. Set-aside areas (of course, the north-facing barren hills, not the fertile valleys) are planted with cover crops, kale, jerusaleum artichoke and bramble-berry. The beaters are an assorted crew, the bank manager on his day off, the local rozzer, an assortment of fair haired faces of varying weather-beatenness. One young chap, clean cut, tweeds, clenched pipe and gaiters echos some pre-war relic of aristocracy. I search for an ancestral likeness to Sue and Michael.

Bundled into the back of a Land Rover, amidst empty feed sacks, we are marshalled into raggle-taggle khaki and burberry clad lines. Borrowed boots and gaiters ward off perpetual dampness as we wheel in patterns reminiscent of pre-Napoleonic skirmishes and tiger hunts of the Raj. The pheasants, hatched under broody hens, cosseted and fed through the summer, scuttle askance through the cover. Indistinct, intermittent flashes of brilliant plumage show that our noisy advance is driving our quarry. The game keeper orchestrates a pincer movement, sweeping an uphill swathe; commands my section to hold steady.

Watchers now. Arraigned below, Donegal tweeded gentlemen sporting shot guns, labradors and Range Rovers, stand with easy watchfulness, willing to pay double a working man’s weekly wage for a days shooting and a brace of birds. Suddenly, squeezed between the two flanks of now still beaters, a hen more nervous than the others takes to the sky. Now level with spectator's eyes, we watch as more birds follow her. Muted thuds echo, accompanying a spectacular tumbling of russet and gold.

Finally an all-white bird takes to the sky, a sharp intake of breath from the ranks as a final shot is loosed off. The game keeper curses and calls the end as the pygarg once again makes cover safely.

Bundled once again into the back, perched on sacks, the beaters head to a barn to feast on a luncheon of tatties and stout. Thawing out, the conversation canters to shoots past when rank, monied upstarts have betrayed their callow backgrounds by shooting the pygarg. Ancient rhythms revealed as my companions explain the significance of an all-white bird, a distinctive creature that better reveals the covey. Banishment from further shoots, no less, is the punishment for such an offence of destruction.

As the day draws down, heather and bracken darken on the hill side as the last drive is completed. Headed back to the Escort, clutching my ten pounds recompense for a day spent in observation, I ponder the form of this agrarian ritual. My companions knowingly donning the mantle of peasantry, the pretentious revelling in their inflated superiority against a glorified free-range chicken.

I suspect the pygarg was laughing.