There was no dairy herd on Outoverdown Farm. Instead, Mister bought in a large number of stirks, that is to say maiden heifers. These came from Ireland and were all Dairy Shorthorns. Though he knew he could rely upon the dealers to find him decent stock, he went over himself, each winter, ostensibly to check the quality of the animals on offer, but actually to get a week’s hunting with a well-known Irish pack.
The Shorthorn stirks were varied in colour, red, red-and-white, white, and roan, and Mister ran them out on the downs, each bunch with its own bull. Then, eight months to a year later, they would go to Salisbury Market to be sold as springers, heifers, that is, that were approaching their first calving; ‘springing to calve’, as the term was.
The bulls were all Aberdeen Angus, chosen for their placidity, but also because that breed tends to throw smallish offspring, so that the Irish heifers could calve more easily.
These cattle, a hundred to a hundred and fifty of them on the farm at any one time, were Percy Pound’s special responsibility and interest. Of the other farm livestock, he well knew that he could entrust the care of the sheep to Tom Sparrow, of the horses to Ephraim Stanhope, and of the laying hens, which were also kept up on the downs in movable fold units, to Stan Ogle.
Of the other farm men, Albie helped his father or Tom as and when needed, and Red and Rhode Ogle gave their father a hand with the daily moving of the folds. The Butts, Billy and his nephews Frank and Phil, were general farm workers, able to turn their hands to any job.
The foreman liked nothing better than to ride his old Matchless 500 c.c. motorcycle up the drove, or indeed across the fields, and then to dismount and walk across the down to check the cattle. He thought there was no finer sight to see than, against a backdrop of rolling downland, a big bunch of those Shorthorn heifers moving across the grass in all their variety of colour, while with them, usually bringing up the rear on account of weight, shortness of leg, and general idleness of disposition, slouched the stout figure of a bull, coal-black and with not even the shortest of horns, for the Angus is a naturally polled breed.
In the autumn Mister would often accompany his foreman on his rounds, so that between them they might pick out the most forward of the springers. Major Yorke was in the business of producing not milk but milkers and it was Percy Pound’s job to see that the springers left the farm in the best possible nick.
On a fine September morning in 1936, farmer and foreman walked among one of the current bunches of heifers. In some ways the two men were alike. As well as having both served in the Great War, they were of an age, and each had a family of a boy followed by two girls.
Physically they were very different. Mister was a big man, tall and stout and red-faced, with fair wavy hair. Percy was a head shorter, prematurely grey-haired, lean of build, his face etched with lines that were the legacy of pain as well as age.
They looked at the cattle through somewhat different eyes. Major Yorke was a good judge of a horse or a hound, but he had come somewhat late to farming and lacked that stockman’s instinct that his foreman possessed in full measure. Whether or not he would have admitted this, he was wise enough not to dispute the other’s opinion of a beast.
‘A nice bunch, these, Percy,’ he said.
In front of the other men Mister always addressed his foreman as ‘Mr Pound’, but it was ‘Percy’ when they were on their own.
‘And they’re well forward too,’ he added.
Percy nodded. ‘Bull’s done his job, any road,’ he said. ‘There was one or two as I was a bit doubtful about but I reckon they’re all in calf now.’
As he spoke, the Angus bull sauntered by, his black coat gleaming in the sunshine. ‘Lucky old bagger, aren’t you?’ said Percy. ‘So many wives as Solomon,’ and the bull rolled an eye at him in passing, comically, as though he understood.
Master and man walked on across the down to look at the next group of springers, the farmer curbing his long strides to accommodate the limping pace of the other. The downland stretched away endlessly, the sky was as blue as a thrush’s egg, there was no sound but the singing of skylarks. No scene could have been more peaceful.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Percy,’ said Mister.‘How’s that boy of the Sparrows? I haven’t set eyes on him for a dog’s age.’
‘Kathie keeps him tied tight to her apron-strings these days,’ said Percy. ‘On account of some of the village boys.’
‘Tease him, do they? Call him names?’
‘T’was a bit more than that, back in the spring,’ Percy said. ‘There’s a gang of them go round together, kids of twelve or thirteen, and they frightened the life out of Tom and Kathie’s boy.’
‘How?’ asked Mister. ‘What did they do?’
‘They hunted him, sir,’ said Percy.
‘Hunted him? What d’you mean?’
‘Well, it seems that Spider had been out in the garden and I suppose Kathie wasn’t keeping as sharp an eye on him as she did when he was little – he’s ten now, after all – and she looked out and he’d gone. She went off down the village, thinking he might have gone there, but when she got back, she found him hiding under the kitchen table. Shaking like a leaf he was, Kath said, and his clothes all torn and dirty, and cow-muck all over his face. She couldn’t get anything out of him – all he could say was “Bad boys! Bad boys!” A lorry driver I met told me he’d seen this gang of kids out in the fields, didn’t know who they were of course, and he’d stopped his lorry to watch. They were all chasing another kid. They must have come across Spider wandering about and thought they’d have a bit of fun with him. They were all barking, like a pack of hounds, and shouting “Tally-ho” and “Gone away!” and all that, and then they’d catch up with him – he can’t run fast, Spider can’t – and push him over and stand round him laughing, and some of them growling and pretending to tear at him.’
‘Like hounds at a worry!’ said Mister.
‘Yes, and then he’d get up and stumble away, the lorry driver said, and they’d do it again. Till they got tired of it and left him, but not before they’d pushed his face in a cowpat.’
‘Wicked little devils!’ said Mister.
‘It’s the same with animals, isn’t it, sir?’ said Percy. ‘They’ll always turn on one of their own sort if it’s weak or crippled.’
This last word led the farmer to say ‘Knee bothering you much these days, Percy?’
‘No sir,’ said Percy. ‘Not to speak of. Always better this sort of weather. It’s cold and wet it doesn’t like.’
‘How long is it now since you got your Blighty?’ Mister asked.
‘Twenty years.’
‘I was one of the lucky ones, I never got a scratch.’
‘They’re saying we might have to do it all over again,’ said Percy. ‘The way this Hitler bloke is going on.’
‘Except that it won’t be us the next time,’ said Major Yorke. ‘It’ll be our sons, your boy and my boy, they’ll be just of an age, as we were, by the look of things. The Great War, they call our one. Wonder what they’ll call the next one.’
‘You reckon it’ll come, sir, do you?’
‘Not yet awhile maybe. But before we’re much older, Percy, I fear it may.’
‘God forbid,’ said Percy.
‘Let’s hope He will.’