Chewing the Cud Read Free Page B

terribly cut all across his legs and broad chest, had suffered no irreparable harm and mended in due course. But at the time it was Billy we were worried about as we dashed up, convinced that a fall onto hard ground at speed from that height must have broken something, a leg maybe, possibly his scrawny neck.
    And then we heard, coming from within that great pile of fallen sheaves, the familiar tones, even shriller than usual, and the familiar language, infinitely worse than ever, and out he popped like a little polecat. And seeing that he was all in one piece, we laughed till we cried. And the harder we laughed, the worse he swore.
    I wouldn't put it past Billy Ball to be alive today, even though he'd have to be about a hundred and ten. But all the horses are long gone, and no hoof rings upon the cobblestones of the stables.
    It was cold steel that ended my apprenticeship on Tytherington Farm. We were threshing barley at the side of a field called the Pig Ground (don't listen, Foxianna, I always thought). Excused, for once, being on the dust, I had been up in the pitch hole of the straw rick, feeding the sheaves to Albie. And when he had finished topping, I jumped down onto the wagon bed so that he could fill in the hole. Somebody, carelessly, had left a two-grainprong leaning against the side of the wagon, points up, and as I swung off the bed to the ground, one tine went clean through my leg between the bone and the Achilles tendon and stuck out four inches clear on the other side.
    I can't say it hurt that much going in, but it did coming out. Albie stood behind me and locked his arms round my chest, and Tom and Henry laid hold of the handle. And it was one, two, three, heave, and goodbye to the Wylye Valley.
    I didn't see Tytherington again for five years. Caesar may just have come and seen and conquered. I went abroad and fought and came home full of holes. But that's a very different story.

Chapter 3
M YRLE AND THE W AR
Who know no doubts or fears!
Then sing tow, row, row, row, row, row,
The British Grenadiers.
    N ow let's go back a little bit in time. By the end of 1936, I had spent four years at my prep school, Beaudesert Park in the Cotswolds, and had just completed my first two terms at Marlborough.
    I spent a lot of my school holidays with Jamie and his sister, Margaret, who lived just up the lane from me. We called ourselves the Red Hand Gang, a title whose blood-thirstiness was unwarranted, since all we did was to play endless card games or board games or, mostly, to wander around the countryside in a carefree way that no parentsthese days could possibly allow. The gang's name came from the initiation ceremony (each scratched a finger with a pin and mingled the blood with that of the others) and certain tests had to be passed, such as leaping across ditches or climbing trees. My brother, Tony, was admitted when he reached the age of four or so, but with easier requirements (narrower ditches, shorter trees, no bloodshed).
    On Christmas Day 1936, something happened that was to affect the whole of the rest of my life and, in due course, a large number of other lives.
    I had been given an air rifle as a Christmas present and was trying it out, firing out of an upstairs window at the trunk of the old crab apple tree on the other side of the lawn, when, to my annoyance, I was required to stop and be introduced to a strange girl.
    Mother and Father always had a large number of people, family and friends, for drinks on Christmas morning, and on this particular morning a couple who had recently moved into the district came with their two daughters. I didn't take much notice of the elder dark-haired one — she was sixteen, for goodness' sake, and of no interest to someone of my age. But the younger one was fourteen, like me, and she didn't look too bad as girls went. She had fair hair and large brown eyes and wasn't giggly or silly like most girls.
    More important, it turned out that she bred budgerigars, which interested