keeper needed every man and woman he could get into the line to bring in
the pheasant from the huge piece of ground on top of the hills and to
push them off the brow, out over the valley where the guns waited at
their pegs far below.
It seemed to Royan a supreme piece of illogical behaviour to rear and
nurture the pheasants from chicks I and then, when they were mature, go
to such lengths to make them as difficult to shoot as the keeper could
devise.
However, Georgina had explained to her that the higher and harder to hit
the birds passed over the guns, the more pleased the Sportsmen were, and
the more they were willing to pay for the privilege of firing at them.
'You cannot believe what they will pay for a day's shooting,, Georgina
had told her. 'Today will bring in almost 14,000 to the estate. They
will shoot twenty days this season. Work that out and you will see that
the shoot is a major part of the estate's income. Quite apart from the
fun of working the dogs and beating, it gives a lot of us local people a
very useful bit of extra money.'
At this stage of the day, Royan was not too certain just how much fun
there was to he had from the job of beating. The walking was difficult
in the thick brambles, and Royan had slipped more than once. There was
mud on her knees and elbows. The ditch ahead of her was half filled with
water and there was a thin skin of ice across the surface. She
approached it gingerly, using her walking-stick to balance herself. She
was tired, for there had already been five drives, all as onerous as
this one. She glanced across at her mother and marvelled at how she
seemed to be enjoying this torture. Georgina strode along happily,
controlling Magic with her whistle and hand signals.
She grinned at Royan now, 'Last lap, over.' love. early Royan was
humiliated that her distress had-been so obvious, and she used her stick
to help her vault the muddy ditch. However, she miscalculated the width
and fell short of the far bank. She landed knee-deep in the frozen water
and it poured in over the top of her Wellington boots.
Georgina laughed at her and offered her the end of her Own stick to pull
her out of the glutinous mud. Royan could not hold up the line by
stopping to empty her flooded boots, so she went on, squelching loudly
with each pace.
'Steady on the left! the order from the head keeper was relayed over the
walkie-talkie radio, and the line halted obediently.
The art and skill of the keeper was to flush the birds from the tangled
undergrowth, not in one massed covey, but in a steady trickle that would
pass over the waiting guns in singles and pairs, giving them the chance,
after they had fired two barrels, to take their second gun from the
loader and be ready for the next bird to appear in the sky high above
them. The size of the keeper's tip and his reputation depended on the
way he 'showed' the birds to the waiting guns.
During this respite Royan was able to regain her breath, and to look
around her. Through a break in the branches that gave the drive its
name, she could see down into the valley.
There was an open meadow at the foot of the hills, the expanse of smooth
green grass broken up by patches of dirty grey snow from the previous
