Читать книгу England have my Bones - T. H. White - Страница 13

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There was a good deal of rain yesterday, and the river was still high, but the wind was in the north-west and much moderated compared with that of Saturday. We were fishing by 7.30 again, and drew blank up to the Mill Pool. There I killed a small fish of 7 pounds, on the 13-ft. rod, with a Bulldog, in eight minutes. The Crooked Pot was blank. In the Lower Ardgalley I had a fish of nine pounds on the same lure, and killed him in ten minutes. He was more exciting to run here than in the simple waters of the Mill Pool. Both fish before 11.30. I had a pull in the pool above the Dukes (alleged by Charles to be “no good,” but the contrary by Macdonald) and unfortunately it was nothing serious. I also had a trout of 11 oz. who was stupid enough to attack the Bulldog, but went back. From now on, the day went wrong. We lunched at the Mill Pool, after flogging it again, tried the Middle Ardgalley for my friend the second trout (and caught his fly-taster, who went back), worked our way homewards from four o’clock. The rain had set in. I had a pull in the Catloupe, but again only a tentative one, at 7.30, and stopped at 8.0 on a snowstorm. The Brown Hill looks beautifully salted.

A good day’s sport. After Saturday’s tragedy I don’t encourage Macdonald to fish in front of me, and he, which is a grand sign, refuses to fish behind. So he fishes the water that I leave out. When I do the Crooked Pot, he does the Island Pool, and so on. He had no fish, and I am not a gomeril.

A good day in other ways besides this. I saw a heron, four redshanks and a kestrel. The fields opposite us lead a very full life of their own. On Saturday there was the cow, on Friday (which I haven’t previously recorded) there were fifteen white hens and a cock walking along with the wind behind them and their tails over their heads, like a bustle of Victorian beauties at a boisterous Ascot, and to-day there was a plough horse that had fallen down and couldn’t or wouldn’t get up. The whole family of his owner (three men, one woman and two boys) stood round him, slapping him, pushing him, pulling him with ropes, and placing his hoofs in suitable positions for getting up. He may have been bewitched, and he may have been suffering from a nervous breakdown consequent upon the conditions of labour in this part of the country. But the stupid expression which he put on, and the fact that he got up perfectly easily when they had slapped him enough, point to another direction. I was watching from the other side of the river, and when he did get up I clapped. This made them all furious, except the boy, who was delighted.

Macdonald swears that a friend of his knew a ghillie at Aboyne. The ghillie was attending to a lady. She hooked a fish and had a thrilling struggle, which worked upon the nerves of the ghillie. He became wildly excited. Upon the fish making a dash straight at the rod, he was observed to rush backwards up the bank, beckoning meanwhile to the lady’s hinder parts, and exclaiming: “Airse this way, mum! Airse this way!”

My ankle is giving way again, and it took 35 minutes to walk back to the post office. But to-morrow, before the snow melts at noon and brings a spate, I propose to catch the fish who pulled me in the Catloupe, if I have to crawl. It will be the most exciting pool for a run in the whole river. Order of presentation: Kessler’s Fancy (small), Bulldog (medium and large), Fly spoon, small blue minnow, medium silver minnow, Macdonald’s gigantic minnow, gaff with hay tied round it. If none of these work I shall dive in and bite.

Macdonald described a heron fishing. It stands with its neck stretched right out, and its head on one side. Then it makes a dart. Tom Bourne in the Shire calls it something that sounds like Mollern—as if it were a corruption of Moll-heron. I am sorry to say that I once shot one of these beautiful creatures needlessly, not even in a fishing country. It was in the north of the Shire, where the ditches are as foul as the eels that live in them. I had been sent out to kill rabbits early in May, not for the pot nor even for the pleasure of a sporting shot, but because they were a menace to the young corn. I was to shoot them sitting: buck, young, or doe in kindle. It was butchery, but it was a job that had to be done like any other. I went out with the heavy gun on my arm and saw a heron almost at once. He was standing in the green fields, and attracted my eye as he got up: a great sweeping bird, trailing a sweeping shadow behind him. I marked him down in the little brook, and wondered whether I could get up to him. Herons are reasonably cunning, so I thought it would be good sport to try. I kept telling myself that I was not going to shoot at him, as he was a beautiful bird, useless to me, and doing no harm to anything I valued. Another part of me said it would like to shoot a heron. We skirted along the hedge by the ditch in a state of suspended debate, with the chances rather in favour of the heron’s survival, and anyway with little expectation of getting up to him. We did get up to him. I had marked him down farther off than he actually was, and suddenly here he was bustling out of the ditch by my right hand, in a great flurry. I shot him mercilessly, with only enough law to slip the safety catch and change my finger to the choke. He came down flump, in a crumpling parachute of blue-grey feathers, and I was miserable at once. His neck, which he had been accustomed to carry in a more than swanlike Z whilst he was flying, now lay loose on the earth like a bit of slack rope thrown down. His grey eyelid slowly rose up and covered the black eye, with its bright yellow circle. His lemon yellow beak lay on its side, his cold legs were still wet from the brook, and the wind which he couldn’t feel blew among the untidy spinsterish feathers of his back.

I had qualms to-day, after my second fish. Are fish really cold-blooded and more or less impervious to pain? If so, what brings them absolutely broken to the gaff? Not exertion, certainly, and if fear then it is little better. Not exertion, because the strain exercised by a rod is comparatively small. To test this, hold the fly in one hand and bend the rod to the normal running position. Hardly anything.^[1] It is a bad thought that these lovely silver creatures are brought in, killed by an agony worse than toothache.

I no longer want to have a fish on Cheese’s trout rod, unless it gets there by bona fide accident on a trout fly. It would get boring after an hour or so, and it would prolong the agony of the fish. Anyway I shan’t try on purpose. It would be silly.