A. E. (Alfred Edgar) Coppard - The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard

But the boy’s chosen season was that time of year when the plums ripened. Pavey’s garden was then a tiny paradise.

“You put a spell on these trees,” Dan would declare to his son every year when they gathered the fruit. “I planted them nearly twenty years ago, two ’gages and one magny bonum, but they never growed enough to make a pudden. They always bloomed well and looked well. I propped ’em and I dunged ’em, but they wouldn’t beer at all, and I’m a-going to cut ’em down—when along comes you!”

Well, hadn’t those trees borne remarkable ever since he’d come there?

“Of course, good luck’s deceiving, and it’s never bothered our family overmuch. Still, bad luck is one thing and bad life’s another. And yet—I dunno—they come to much the same in the end, there’s very little difference. There’s so much misunderstanding, half the folks don’t know their own good intentions, nor all the love that’s sunk deep in their own minds.”

But nothing in the world gave (or could give) Dan such flattering joy as his son’s sweet treble voice. Martin could sing! In the dark months no evening passed without some instruction by the proud father. The living-room at the back of the shop was the tiniest of rooms, and its smallness was not lessened, nor its tidiness increased, by the stacks of merchandise that had strayed from Meg’s emporium into every corner, and overflowed every shelf in packages, piles, and bundles. The metalliferous categories—iron nails, lead pencils, tintacks, zinc ointment, and brass hinges—were there. Platoons of bottles were there, bottles of blue-black writing fluid, bottles of scarlet—and presumably plebeian—ink, bottles of lollipops and of oil (both hair and castor). Balls of string, of blue, of peppermint, and balls to bounce were adjacent to an assortment of prim-looking books—account, memorandum, exercise, and note. But the room was cosy, and if its inhabitants fitted it almost as closely as birds fit their nests, they were as happy as birds, few of whom (save the swallows) sing in their nests. With pitchpipe to hand and a bundle of music before them Dan and Martin would begin. The dog would snooze on the rug before the fire; Meg would snooze amply in her armchair until roused by the sudden terrific tinkling of her shop-bell. She would waddle off to her dim little shop—every step she took rattling the paraffin lamp on the table, the coal in the scuttle, and sometimes the very panes in the window—and the dog would clamber into her chair. Having supplied an aged gaffer with an ounce of caraway seed, or some gay lad with a packet of cigarettes, Meg would waddle back and sink down upon the dog, whereupon its awful indignation would sound to the very heavens, drowning the voices even of Dan and his son.

“What shall we wind up with?” Dan would ask at the close of the lesson, and as often as not Martin would say: “You must sing ‘Timmie.’ ”

This was “Timmie,” and it had a tune something like the chorus to “Father O’Flynn”:

O Timmie my brother,

Best son of our mother,

Our labour it prospers, the mowing is done;

A holiday take you,

The loss it won’t break you,

A day’s never lost if a holiday’s won.

We’ll go with clean faces

To see the horse-races,

And if the luck chances we’ll gather some gear;

But never a jockey

Will win it, my cocky,

Who catches one glance from a girl I know there.

There’s lords and there’s ladies

Wi’ pretty sunshadies,

And farmers and jossers and fat men and small;

But the pride of these trips is

The scallywag gypsies

Wi’ not a whole rag to the backs of ’em all.

There’s cokernut shying,

And devil-defying,

And a racket and babel to hear and to see,

Wi’ boxing and shooting,

And fine highfaluting

From chaps wi’ a table and thimble and pea.

My Nancy will be there,

The best thing to see there,

She’ll win all the praises wi’ ne’er a rebuke;

And she has a sister—

I wonder you’ve missed her—

As sweet as the daisies and fit for a duke.

Come along, brother Timmie,

Don’t linger, but gimme

My hat and my purse and your company there;

For sporting and courting,

The cream of resorting,

And nothing much worse, Timmie—come to the fair.

On the third anniversary of Martin’s homecoming Dan rose up very early in the dark morn, and leaving his son sleeping he crept out of the house followed by his dog. They went away from Thasper, though the darkness was profound and the grass filled with dew, out upon the hills towards Chapel Cheary. The night was starless, but Dan knew every trick and turn of the paths, and after an hour’s walk he met a man waiting by a signpost. They conversed for a few minutes and then went off together, the dog at their heels, until they came to a field gate. Upon this they fastened a net and then sent the dog into the darkness upon his errand, while they waited for the hare which the dog would drive into the net. They waited so long that it was clear the dog had not drawn its quarry. Dan whistled softly, but the dog did not return. Dan opened the gate and went down the fields himself, scouring the hedges for a long time, but he could not find the dog. The murk of the night had begun to lift, but the valley was filled with mist. He went back to the gate: the net had been taken down, his friend had departed—perhaps he had been disturbed? The dog had now been missing for an hour. Dan still hung about, but neither friend nor dog came back. It grew grey and more grey, though little could be distinguished, the raw mist obscuring everything that the dawn uncovered. He shivered with gloom and dampness, his boots were now as pliable as gloves, his eyebrows had grey drops upon them, so had his moustache and the backs of his hands. His dark coat looked as if it was made of grey wool; it was tightly buttoned around his throat and he stood with his chin crumpled, unconsciously holding his breath until it burst forth in a gasp. But he could not abandon his dog, and he roamed once more down into the misty valley towards woods that he knew well, whistling softly and with great caution a repetition of two notes.

And he found his dog. It was lying on a heap of dead sodden leaves. It just whimpered. It could not rise, it could not move, it seemed paralysed. Dawn was now really upon them. Dan wanted to get the dog away, quickly, it was a dangerous quarter, but when he lifted it to his feet the dog collapsed like a scarecrow. In a flash Dan knew he was poisoned, he had probably picked up some piece of dainty flesh that a farmer had baited for the foxes. He seized a knob of chalk that lay thereby, grated some of it into his hands, and forced it down the dog’s throat. Then he tied the lead to its neck. He was going to drag the dog to its feet and force it to walk. But the dog was past all energy, it was limp and mute. Dan dragged him by the neck for some yards as a man draws behind him a heavy sack. It must have weighed three stone, but Dan lifted him on to his own shoulders and staggered back up the hill. He carried it thus for half a mile, but then he was still four miles from home, and it was daylight, at any moment he might meet somebody he would not care to meet. He entered a ride opening into some coverts and, bending down, slipped the dog over his head to rest upon the ground. He was exhausted and felt giddy, his brains were swirling round—trying to slop out of his skull—and—yes—the dog was dead, his old dog dead. When he looked up, he saw a keeper with a gun standing a few yards off.

“Good morning,” said Dan. All his weariness was suddenly gone from him.

“I’ll have your name and address,” replied the keeper, a giant of a man, with a sort of contemptuous affability.