We had reached the crest of the hill and now we could see the wood ahead of us, huge and dark with the sun going down behind the trees and little sparks of gold shining through.
'You'd better let me have those raisins,' Claud said.
I gave him the bag and he slid it gently into his trouser pocket.
'No talking once we're inside,' he said. 'Just follow me and try not to go snapping any branches.'
Five minutes later we were there. The lane ran right up to the wood itself and then skirted the edge of it for about three hundred yards With only a little hedge between. Claud slipped through the hedge on all fours and I followed.
It was cool and dark inside the wood. No sunlight came in at all.
'This is spooky,' I said.
'Ssshh!'
Claud was very tense. He was walking just ahead of me, picking his feet up high and putting them down gently on the moist ground. He kept his head moving all the time, the eyes sweeping slowly from side to side, searching for danger. I tried doing the same, but soon I began to see a keeper behind every tree, so I gave it up.
Then a large patch of sky appeared ahead of us in the roof of the forest and I knew that this must be the clearing. Claud had told me that the clearing was the place where the young birds were introduced into the woods in early July, where they were fed and watered and guarded by the keepers, and where many of them stayed from force of habit until the shooting began.
'There are always plenty of pheasants in the clearing,' he had said.
'Keepers too, I suppose.'
'Yes, but there's thick bushes all around and that helps.'
We were now advancing in a series of quick crouching spurts, running from tree to tree and stopping and waiting and listening and running on again, and then at last we were kneeling safely behind a big clump of alder right on the edge of the clearing and Claud was grinning and nudging me in the ribs and pointing through the branches at the pheasants.
The place was absolutely stiff with birds. There must have been two hundred of them at least strutting around among the tree-stumps.
'You see what I mean?' Claud whispered.
It was an astonishing sight, a sort of poacher's dream come true. And how close they were! Some of them were not more than ten paces from where we knelt. The hens were plump and creamybrown and they were so fat their breast-feathers almost brushed the ground as they walked. The cocks were slim and beautiful, with long tails and brilliant red patches around the eyes, like scarlet spectacles. I glanced at Claud. His big ox-like face was transfixed in ecstasy. The mouth was slightly open and the eyes had a kind of glazy look about them as they stared at the pheasants.
I believe that all poachers react in roughly the same way as this on sighting game. They are like women who sight large emeralds in a jeweller's window, the only difference being that the women are less dignified in the methods they employ later on to acquire the loot. Poacher's arse is nothing to the punishment that a female is willing to endure.
',,. 'C Ah-ha, Claud said softly. You see the keeper?'
'Where?'
'Over the other side, by that big tree. Look carefully.'
'My God!'
'It's all right. He can't see us.'
We crouched close to the ground, watching the keeper. He was a smallish man with a cap On his head and a gun under his arm. He never moved. He was like a little post standing there.
'Let's go,' I whispered.
The keeper's face was shadowed by the peak of his cap, but it seemed to me that he was looking directly at us.
'I'm not staying here,' I said.
'Hush,' Claud said.
Slowly, never taking his eyes from the keeper, he reached into his pocket and brought out a single raisin. He placed it in the palm of his right hand, and then quickly, with a little flick of the wrist, he threw the raisin high into the air. I watched it as it went sailing over the bushes and I saw it land within a yard or so of two henbirds standing together beside an old tree-stump. Both birds turned their heads sharply at the drop of the raisin. Then one of them hopped over and made a quick peck at the ground and that must have been it.
I glanced up at the keeper. He hadn't moved.
Claud threw a second raisin into the clearing; then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth.
At this point, I saw the keeper turn away his head in order to survey the wood behind him.
Quick as a flash, Claud pulled the paper bag out of his pocket and tipped a huge pile of raisins into the cup of his right hand.
'Stop,' I said.
But with a great sweep of the arm he flung the whole handful high over the bushes into the clearing.
They fell with a soft little patter, like raindrops on dry leaves, and every single pheasant in the place must either have seen them coming or heard them fall. There was a flurry of wings and a rush to find the treasure.
The keeper's head flicked round as though there were a spring inside his neck. The birds were all pecking away madly at the raisins. The keeper took two quick paces forward and for a moment I thought he was going to investigate. But then he stopped, and his face came up and his eyes began travelling slowly around the perimeter of the clearing.
'Follow me,' Claud whispered. 'And keep down.' He started crawling away swiftly on all fours, like some kind of a monkey.
I went after him. He had his nose close to the ground and his huge tight buttocks were winking at the sky and it was easy to see now how poacher's arse had come to be an occupational disease among the fraternity.
We went along like this for about a hundred yards.
'Now run,' Claud said.
We got to our feet and ran, and a few minutes later we emerged through the hedge into the lovely open safety of the lane.
'It went marvellous,' Claud said, breathing heavily. 'Didn't it go absolutely marvellous?' The big face was scarlet and glowing with triumph.
'It was a mess,' I said.
'What!' he cried.
'Of course it was. We can't possibly go back flow. That keeper knows there was someone there.'
'He knows nothing,' Claud said. 'In another five minutes it'll be pitch dark inside the wood and he'll be sloping off home to his supper.'
'I think I'll join him.'
'You're a great poacher,' Claud said. He sat down on the grassy bank under the hedge and lit a cigarette.
The sun had set now and the sky was a pale smoke blue, faintly glazed with yellow. In the woods behind us the shadows and the spaces in between the trees were turning from grey to black.
'How long does a sleeping-pill take to work?' Claud asked.
'Look out,' I said. 'There's someone coming.'
The man had appeared suddenly and silently out of the dusk and he was only thirty yards away when I saw him.
'Another bloody keeper,' Claud said.
We both looked at the keeper as he came down the lane towards us. He had a shotgun under his arm and there was a black Labrador walking at his heels. He stopped when he was a few paces away and the dog stopped with him and stayed behind him, watching us through the keeper's legs.
'Good evening,' Claud said, nice and friendly.
This one was a tall bony man about forty with a swift eye and a hard cheek and hard dangerous hands.
