rather taken as binding, you see. Bets start at a thousand guineas.'
God Almighty. What was I doing here?
Her eyes searched mine. 'I do hope you're not offended at my mentioning it, Lovejoy?
Sometimes people feel obliged to pretend they're high fliers when…'
'I'm not?' I got her off the hook.
She smiled. 'I can't afford to gamble either, you see.'
We trudged out in clusters. Sherry, madeira, and port were offered in beautiful but phonily new silver stirrup cups. Everybody started saying toodle-pip and suchlike. Odd, but here it sounded quite normal. Genuine, possibly? I'd have sounded ridiculous saying anything like that. A stompy old colonel kept on, 'What? What?' to me. I just grinned back, which pleased him. I quite liked the man, but didn't like the modern double-barrelled shotguns he handled like toothpicks.
Gloria Dee came with us in the estate cars. I noticed she brought an artist's palette box.
I tried to get into the same Range Rover but was shunted into the last. We drove off as the mist dwindled and the world appeared in all its murderous glory.
There's a bloke and his missus I know who buy and sell antiques solely to save up money to kill ducks on the Norfolk Broads. He's Jepp and she's Zina. They have a house full of trophies, and talk endlessly about duckocide, this one shot at a seventy-three angle in a ninety-knot wind, all that. I don't visit, unless I'm delivering some antique.
They're desperate to show me yet another photograph of themselves proudly holding up another dead creature. Deep down they suspect that I hate them, so taunt-torture me with their accounts. 'Our triumph wall, Lovejoy!' Zina says. I ask you. To kill an unarmed bird, for Christ's sake, a triumph? Zina's offered me more than a glimpse of her trophy wall, but I couldn't in a million years. I'd keep seeing those poor reproachful slaughtered birds just as we… No, no. I'd like to tell her straight out, but can't. I think I'm basically weak.
Here, I was to admire the trophies in course of creation, so to speak. Mort, Mr Hartson and other countrymen were waiting along a small valley. Mort attached himself to me.
He carried two double-barrelled shotguns, under-and-overs. I said nothing. He whistled a gentle trill. A black dog appeared from nowhere, wagging along its entire length, grinning up.
'Jasper's your retriever for the day,' Mort said.
'What do I have to do?'
'I load. You fire when the birds come.'
'Do we have to hide? Or be camouflaged?'
He brightened at my ignorance. 'Not today. The beaters start soon. Please don't shoot low. Keep the gun high. Avoid the hunters.' A hint of dryness there? Cocky little sod.
We stood in a line along the shoulder of the vale. Each shooter had a dog. They seemed to know far more than me what was happening. To my immediate left was a tallish man wearing more or less the same gear as me. Beyond him stood a loudmouth, telling how many he'd bagged at the Southworth's place in Dorset. I saw the look Mort gave him. Good. A few more glances like that, I'd be able to assess these people's usefulness for me.
'Hey, Lovejoy,' the colonel called. 'Don't know how much of this you've done, but under-and-overs are more difficult. Don't mind my saying, hey?'
'Not at all, sir,' I called as Mort avoided my eyes. 'The hard way!'
'Harf harf,' the old gent laughed. 'You young uns, what?'
While we were waiting I asked Mort, quiet, who everybody was. He started telling me. I listened to his inflexion, not the words. I wasn't so thick that I'd missed the coincidence
- Mort, the one I wanted to talk to, appearing at the only shoot I'd ever joined, same day, time, place, and being made my bearer. It couldn't be coincidence. Trout's influence? Anyhow, I'd deliberately asked Caprice to slot me in because Clovis's land almost adjoins Saffron Fields, the old Carting's Vineyard just over the river.
'That one over there's a big land buyer. Has boats, him and his cronies.'
'Cronies? Who?'
'Sir Jesson Tethroe.' The name was familiar. 'The MR'
Dots joined swiftly in my head. The Hon. J. Tethroe, MP, whose seat was unsafe, next election. Who'd been partly disgraced, after that affair with some Spanish lass, lost Cabinet promotion on account of it. He definitely was one of the people I'd need. Tided snobbery counts double.
'Lives in Westminster and Weymouth. Rich. Shrewd.'
'Even better,' I'd said before I could stop myself. 'I mean, even better that he's, er, made a go of life.'
Mort ran down the list. I noticed Gloria Dee setting up her easel and watercolours. A Midlands engineer contractor called Talleyton had fetched his own gunbearer. And a timber merchant from the coast. And a lady called Mrs Patterson they called Maeve, expert shooter.
'They're coming,' Mort said, with anguish. He'd heard the signals.
The first gunshot startled me. I felt grieved. The birds flew so heavily, having to work at it, monstrous energy for so little speed. God must have been all thumbs the day he made ducks. I shot last. The recoil almost knocked me over, slamming into my shoulder. I missed by a mile.
The roar steadied, kept up as the birds came in rushes, darting to avoid the beaters thrashing the bracken. I thought, 'Keep hidden, you daft sods, and you'll be safe.'
Terrified creatures never do the right thing. I'd learned that from me.
Before long I realized I was following Mort's signals. He'd give a wave of his hand down by his side. 'Right, high,' I'd mutter, pulling the trigger. The birds coming at me would angle slightly, making it over the line of us shooters to safety beyond. Mort'd pat his leg rapidly, and I'd translate, 'Quick, left,' blasting merrily away into the
