Status Updates From The Gamekeeper

‘By the time the gamekeeper had arrived at the fence, the magpie had threaded its way through the branches—flown away across the field at the other side of the hedge. The gamekeeper looked up at the place where the magpie had flown in through the curtain of blossom and shook his head—he was left standing, shaking his head at events and swearing. ‘The bloody hooligans.’ In one of the fields, a tractor—cutting silage.’

‘There was incessant cawing communication which intensified—fledgelings—A skylark woke him up. The cascading notes dribbled into his sleep, until he realised that he was awake and listening. The field had to be cleared—chicks sometimes choke & die from eating dry grass stalks—rotting heaps of hay might cause the development of fungicidal diseases—aspergillosis and moniliasis. Buttercups were in flower in the meadow.’

‘—on the radio. ‘It’s only a paper moon/ Sailing over a cardboard sea.’ It was bluebell time—thickly they coloured—darkening to indigo in the shadow of the trees. The air was sweet with the scent of bluebells—He might have sung too if he had not been a gamekeeper. But he could not sing when he was working. How would he catch anybody? They would hear him coming a mile off. New fronds of bracken—unwinding under trees.’

‘What happened in the sky was important. The weather and the birds which occupied the sky above their territories were important factors in their work. He was not interested in lapwings—Sinatra, ‘When love congeals / It soon reveals’ on the radio. The horse chestnut buds—sticky as a toffee apple. Some of the buds were unwrapping and revealing pale clusters of down-covered leaves. Life quickly returned to the fields—’

‘Most—novels are a more intimate form of soap opera. Hines’s is more like a handbook—Because this work follows the seasons—when we reach the end we are back at the beginning. He breeds pheasants, so the Duke and his associates can shoot them. Shoot & do nothing else. They do not carry or load their own guns—The book invents its own meaning—stronger than any other & which Hines probably calculated less. (John Berger)’