Crowstarving was the ideal job for Spider, though he could not have said why, even had he possessed the vocabulary to do so. To begin with, he was on his own, which he liked to be, yet never alone, for all around him were animals of one sort or another. There were the croaks of course, keeping him on the move and requiring him to shout and to bang his tin, both of which things he liked doing. But then in the quiet intervals, when the black thieves had temporarily left to pilfer someone else’s corn, there were all sorts of creatures for him to enjoy watching. There were many other sorts of birds, some of which, like wood pigeon, feasted on the sprouting wheat as greedily as had the crows and rooks and jackdaws, but because they were not croaks – and only croaks, he had been told, were bad – Spider allowed them to eat in peace.
At one end of Maggs’ Corner (it was a roughly triangular field) there was a small spinney of ash and hawthorn, and here the wood pigeon rested when full-cropped.
‘Coo-coo-roo, coo-coo’ – repeatedly they sang these five notes – and soon grew used to hearing them echoed from below in an exact facsimile of their song.
The magpies too, more inquisitive by nature, became accustomed to hearing, coming from the mouth of a human figure, their loud chattering ‘Chak-chak-chak-chak!’
‘Peewit!’ cried Spider to the flocks of lapwings that flew over his head, sometimes with their peculiar slow flapping wing-beats, and sometimes throwing themselves wildly about in the air. And there were so many other birds, out there in the wide open spaces under the huge bowl of the sky, that called to the crowstarver and were answered by him.
‘Kiu! Kiu! Werro!’ barked the little owl, abroad in daylight unlike the rest of his clan.
‘Korrk-kok!’ crowed the pheasant, and ‘Krric! Krric! Kar-wic!’ grated the partridge, while high above, the skylarks poured down their long-drawn-out high-pitched musical cadenzas. And all were faithfully answered by Spider.
As well as these and many other kinds of birds, there were beasts on Outoverdown Farm, rabbits galore, quite a few hares, the occasional fox, hunting in the daytime.
All of these of course kept well clear of Spider while he was frightening the croaks, but in the quieter intervals of the day he had many creatures to look at. Sometimes they were at a distance, but, as though to compensate for his other deficiencies, his eyesight was exceptionally sharp and his hearing very keen. Some of these animals – like the ‘barrits’ – Spider knew well, for he had so often seen them before, hopping about the headlands of the fields or popping into burrows at the edge of the drove, but he could not put a name to hare or to fox.
However he had at home a picture book that Tom and Kathie had given him because of his interest in animals, and he would point out to them the likeness of some creature that he had seen and they would tell him its name (for he could not read a word). Thus after seeing a hare lolloping across Maggs’ Corner one day, he found it in his book, showed it to them, and said ‘Big barrit?’
Spider looked puzzled. He put his hand up to his head and pulled at his forelock.
‘No,’ said Kathie.‘It’s spelled different.’
Not understanding, Spider said again ‘Big barrit?’
Tom nodded.‘All right,’ he said.‘You call it that, son, if you like. We’ll know what you mean.’
Then, a day or two later, Spider saw a fox. He was sitting in the edge of the spinney, eating his lunch. Magg’s Corner was for the moment free of croaks, and only the privileged wood pigeons filled their crops. Suddenly they too all lifted off and flew hurriedly away, and Spider, looking in that direction, saw a red-coated bushy-tailed figure trotting along the headland of the field towards him.
He sat quite still, even ceasing to chew, as the animal came nearer. Suddenly it saw him and stopped in its tracks, one fore-paw raised.
Then a truly surprising thing happened. The fox came on, more slowly now, alert but showing no sign of fear, until it was no more than ten feet from the boy, and then it sat down facing him, ears pricked, eyes fixed upon him. It licked its lips.‘Good un!’ said Spider softly, and he broke off a bit of bread and awkwardly, for all his actions tended to be clumsy, tossed it towards this wild animal, which by rights should have fled at the mere sight of him and would surely have done so from any other human being.
Patently, by some strange instinct, the fox seemed to know that this human was different from others and posed no sort of threat. It moved in a step or two and picked up the bread. It did not gulp it down or make off with it, as it would have done had danger threatened, but ate it delicately, like a cat. The bread finished, fox and boy remained quite still, each gazing into the other’s eyes, and then, unhurriedly, the animal turned and trotted back in the direction from which it had come.
That night Spider got out his picture book and found a portrait of a fox. Excitedly, he showed it to his parents, grinning and pointing.‘Spider see!’ he said.
‘Saw a fox, did you?’ they said.
‘Vox!’ said Spider.‘Vox! Good un!’ and he pointed to his mouth and made chewing movements.
‘Eating summat, was it?’ asked Tom.
‘Or was it when you were eating your lunch?’ asked Kathie. To both questions Spider nodded vigorously, and then he performed a little pantomime for them.
First, he put a hand to a pocket, pretending to draw something out and break a piece off it. Then he carried one hand to his mouth and, breaking off another imaginary piece, stretched out his arm and offered it to Mollie.
‘Spider eat, vox eat,’ he said.
‘Sharing his lunch with a fox?’ said Kathie later when Spider had gone to bed.‘Whoever heard tell of such a thing! Dunno what goes on inside his head.’
‘Dunno what Mister’d say if t’was true!’ said Tom.‘Only good fox for him is a dead one.’
‘What does Mister say about Spider?’ asked Kathie.‘D’you reckon he thinks he’s doing the job all right?’
‘Too true,’ said Tom.‘Couple of days after he’d started, I was feeding the rams in that long paddock by the roadside, you know, and I heard a clip-clop and Mister comes riding down the road, and he pulls Sturdiboy up and says to me “How’s that boy of yours getting on, Tom? Mister Pound tells me he’s put him up on Maggs’ Corner. Keeping the birds off, is he?”
‘Well, before I could answer, our Spider starts up. Now, Maggs’ Corner’s a good half mile from the rams’ paddock, I reckon, but you could hear him a-hollering and a-banging as though he was tother side of the fence. And we looked up over that way and you could see a great cloud of birds lift off. And Mister looks at me and he grins and he says “He’s doing all right, Tom. That row would wake the dead”.’
Spider spent a week or so more up at Maggs’ Corner, by which time the wheat was up and getting away strongly and the threat of bird damage had lessened, but on most of those days he came home and acted out his pantomime of feeding the ‘vox’, so that any belief his parents might have had in this story waned and died, and they thought the whole business to be of his imagination.
Little did they guess that the fox, despite all the racket that Spider made for most of the day, had come again at the boy’s lunch time. Each time it came a little nearer to where he sat, until, on his final day of crowstarving on that particular field, it sat before him.
Slowly, Spider stretched out his arm and, gently, the fox took the food from his hand.