Bleeding Hooks Read online

  First, however, Mr. Weston took possession of the stage and introduced Claude in a little speech which needed the glare of footlights and the atmosphere of the theatre to make it appear natural. He ended on a simple note.

  “We all think that he has a great future in conjuring, but you are an intelligent audience, and I will leave you to judge for yourself. May I present my son, Claude the conjuror.”

  Claude, grinning broadly, skipped from the curtained alcove with the grace of a Nijinsky, and was heartily clapped by Mrs. Mumsby from the front row, and cheered by Pussy, Gunn, and Mr. Pindar from the back. The others, seated midway between these biased enthusiasts, preserved the lukewarm attitude of people who fear to commit themselves to indiscretions. But they soon perceived that the enthusiasm was well-deserved. They had all seen better tricks, for his display was old-fashioned in parts, but they had seen nothing to surpass the showmanship of Claude.

  He was undoubtedly a poseur, and yet there was something so naturally frank about his whole bearing that, even in his theatrical garb, he did not fail to be likable. He was a born actor, and his continuous flow of nonsense added greatly to the show. Where other magicians spoke patter which sounded stilted through over-rehearsal, Claude’s comments were uttered with a naiveté which might have been spontaneous. His remarks were as light as thistledown which blew audaciously from his mouth, and floated gently over their heads. And all the time his lovely hands were moving in company with his words, picking endless cards from the air, tearing them to pieces, and making them whole again; taking eggs from Sir Courtney Haddox’s neck, and flags from Mrs. Pindar’s ear; turning water biblically into wine, wine into milk, milk into ink; and making endless clinking chains of round, Chinese rings which had no visible joints.

  Perhaps his greatest achievement was the conversion of Major Jeans from polite scepticism to enthusiasm, which was first made known to the audience by the Major’s acceptance of a forced card with a jump in the air and a delighted:

  “By Jove, the boy’s a marvel!”

  From that moment the entertainment was a success, and Claude embarked on a series of tricks which necessitated the co-operation of members of the audience.

  Mr. Winkley and Mr. Pindar were beckoned, willingly enough, to the front, and asked to take in each hand the ends of two pieces of coloured cord which Claude had knotted together. Over the knot he tied a scarf of rainbow colouring, uttered some mumbo-jumbo so absurd that he did not attempt to give it any meaning, and told them to pull the cords as tightly as possible. Then he flicked off the scarf, disclosing the two pieces of cord in their original smooth lengths, with the two men somewhat foolishly holding the ends.

  “Oh, Mummy!” cried the Major, to the disgust of Miss Haddox who occupied the next chair. “I know how he does it!”

  Claude had not yet missed an opportunity. He did not miss this.

  “For my next trick,” he said, “I shall require the services of a very clever little boy.”

  Major Jeans at once gave his knitted pullover a tug, fingered his tie self-consciously, swallowed twice, got up, and walked over to Claude.

  All small boys are an asset to a good conjuror; those who profess to know how his tricks are achieved are a particularly welcome gift. But no conjuror can ever have been gifted by the co-operation of so clever a small boy as Major Jeans now became. His curious, unbelieving eyes peered everywhere; he questioned every movement, and demanded that things should be repeated.

  “Huh!” he growled when Claude produced a handkerchief from an egg. “I knew it was an imitation one wiv’ an ’ole in it!”

  Claude’s air of disgust at being so cleverly found out was splendid, but even more splendid was the Major’s consternation when the same spurned egg was cracked, and a genuine yolk and white fell into a glass.

  It was all amazingly good fun, and an hour passed too quickly for them all, so that it was a pity that Claude should have chosen to end his performance on a different note. It was, after all, the only mistake he made throughout the whole performance, and it was, moreover, a mistake of youth, and of romantic youth at that.

  He began by asking for the assistance of any lady in the audience, but it was so obvious that he meant Mrs. Mumsby that no one else made any attempt to move. Throughout the entertainment there had seemed a special sympathy between them, as though he had silently appealed for her appreciation at the successful conclusion of each trick, which she in her turn had given by heading the applause.

  Now, as she stood beside him, smiling encouragement, and glancing from time to time at the audience, Claude began a highly romantic story of a poor youth who loved a rich Princess, which he illustrated with his tricks, giving to Mrs. Mumsby the various articles mentioned in the story, which he produced from the air. And even as Major Jeans had become the perfect foil, so did Mrs. Mumsby become transformed into the epitome of a conjuror’s lady assistant. As each article was produced, she held it up first to the left, and then to the right, showed her teeth in a toothpaste smile, and backed away to place it with surprised hands on one of the little tables. When, finally, Claude produced a shoulder-spray of red roses, the emblem of his love for the Princess, and again kissed her hand, her tears of joy seemed real.

  They all applauded loudly, for the show had been cleverly presented, but they did not go away half-amazed, half-laughing, as an audience should do. It was a trick of showmanship that Claude had not yet learned, and they made allowances for him, yet Mr. Winkley, for one, felt, unreasonably, that the evening had been spoiled.

  They filed slowly away, and Mrs. Mumsby, with a last smile at the young conjuror, joined them fussily. She nodded to Mr. Weston, and touched the nosegay at her shoulder.

  “He’s such a dear boy,” she said.

  Chapter 6

  The Big Lake glinted in the sunshine of the October morning. Light clouds skimmed gently over the blue sky and sent little shadows scudding across the surface of the water. The sun touched the crisp fields at the margin of the lake, and combed its way upwards with a caressing movement towards the barer crowns of the mountains. A light breeze touched the tops of the low bushes, and set their leaves a-quiver; it rolled the water into soft, regular waves across the lake to lap against the gravelled shore.

  The guests from the Fisherman’s Rest walked the half-mile along the rutted lane to the lake, with anticipation in every step. Each one paused for less time than usual at the boggy edge where the boats were beached, while they put up their rods and strung their green lines through the rings of smooth agate, affixing a 2x or 3x cast, as their fancy dictated, with its first three tentative flies.

  “When the wind is in the west, then the fishing is the best,” sang out Mr. Pindar, but for the most part they were too anxious to get out, to waste time in the exchange of morning pleasantries. In any case, the five boats now in use were too far apart, for those ghillies who were disengaged had already hauled their boats high up in the green fields beyond the bog, where they would be safe from the winter storms which might be expected along the west coast of Wales at any time after the first of November. The Lakeside Hotel was already closed, and this end of the lake, which had been so full of bustling activities earlier in the season, was now bleak and forlorn.

  Amid much waving of hands and yelling of “Tight lines!” the boats moved slowly off, and after some sixty or seventy pulls on the oars, continued their journey down the lake by slow, steady drifts.

  By noon they were all moving towards the lower end of the lake, in the bay which was most easily fishable when the wind was in the west, where the boats could lap softly over the waves from the shore towards the islands, where in July the sea birds have their nests, and ply their restless flight for food to the seashore and back, or towards the black edges of rock where the salmon and big trout lie.

  The water was slight and choppy, what few white horses there were being ridden with a light snaffle. The light was bright but not too bright; the wind was steady but not too strong. The fish rose free
ly to the fly. It was, in fact, that rarity of rarities – a perfect fishing day.

  Mrs. Pindar lay in the stem of the boat on the last drift of the bay while Mr. Pindar and the ghillie fished. Mr. Gunn had taken the girl, Pussy, up to Hafod-y-llyn this morning, and Mrs. Pindar had taken his place in the boat.

  As she lay there in complete idleness, her thoughts played around the man in the bows, whose mind was fixed on sea-trout, and his attention on the top dropper of his cast, which he drew expertly through the surface water. She tried to regard him critically, and could find no fault in him.

  Rather short in stature, his body was well-proportioned and sloped to the hips from broad shoulders. His hair, which was glinting brown and tousled in bed, was now black and shining with brilliantine, and brushed into deep, natural waves from the forehead. Black lashes, golden at their tips, turned back from expressive, tender, brown eyes, which denied the firm obstinacy of his chin. From temple to chin, the brown smoothness of his skin was puckered by a long, deep scar, which added some ten years to his age. His face had a look which was lean without being hungry.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden jerk of the ghillie’s wrist, which set the boat rocking. He pulled in the slack of the line fiercely, and reeled it up, as the top of the rod quivered, and dived, and bent. A silver-bodied trout shot up in a spiral-twisting leap from the water, and dived down again in a vain attempt to rid his jawbone of the barbed hook he had so gullibly swallowed. The ghillie dipped the rod in salute, then tightened up again and held it firmly, butt well down, in his roughened hand.

  “Would the lady like to play it now?” he asked almost appealingly, and in response to Mr. Pindar’s encouraging nod, she took the rod, which was now heavy with its writhing and restless burden.

  For three breathless minutes she followed the ghillie’s instructions as best she could.

  “Don’t be too hard on him, ma’am, he’s a good fish, look, let him run. Now reel up on him, no, not too fast, lower your rod when he leaps out of the water; now straighten up. Hold him! Hold him! Give him the butt, keep the butt of the rod right down and hold your elbow in. That’s right. Now reel up a bit on him. No, no, not too much: he’s not played out yet. Go easy. Now reel up slowly. Keep him going, ma’am. Easy now, keep him going. Keep his head up, so that he won’t see the net. Easy now. This way.” He leaned over the gunwale of the boat so far that it seemed that he must lose his balance, slid his net gently under the fish, and lifted the squirming silver streak into the boat, laughing, “I have him now, ma’am. Slack out your line. He was a well-hooked fish, yes.”

  He took the slippery trout in his hands, and hit its black head expertly on the seat in front of him.

  “A good trout.” smiled Mr. Pindar. “What does it weigh do you think? Two pounds?”

  “About one and three-quarters, sir,” replied the ghillie. “It’s a cock fish. Do you see the long, hooked under-jaw, ma’am? That’s what he uses to dig away the gravel where the hen can lay her eggs.”

  “Well make a fisherman of you yet, darling,” said Pindar. “What about a spot of food now?”

  “Is it lunch-time already?” exclaimed Mrs. Pindar, glancing at her watch.

  “My stomach never lies. I don’t need a watch,” laughed Pindar, and the ghillie spat on his hands and dipped his grey oars in the water.

  He did not ask them where they wanted to land for lunch, for there was only one suitable part of the shore in this particular bay. Along the greater part of it, the banks descended by rocky steepnesses to the water, while in other places they overhung the lake, and dripped water from the hills over their mossy ledges. Only at the extreme end of the bay did the land edge the lake in little gritty beaches, where a boat could easily be punted ashore, and hand-pulled to safety. It was towards these miniature beaches that all the boats would eventually make their way from the last drift of the bay, as their occupants felt the need for food.

  The Pindars were the first to land, and after them came Mrs. Mumsby, holding up excited fingers to show an exaggerated number of fish.

  Major Jeans, half-way down the bay, had just lost a fish, and after the first storm of his anger had passed, it had left an air of gloom in the boat, for he openly believed that it was due to bad lakemanship on the part of the ghillie, while the ghillie secretly thought that the Major was losing his touch.

  But the gloom was soon dissipated when, after the ghillie’s warning, “Strike now, Major, and you’ll be in him, man!” Jeans jerked back his hand, and heard the reel scream as a trout pulled out the full length of his line and half the backing. When his efforts to bring the fish back to the boat proved unavailing, the ghillie seized his oars and began to row feverishly after it.

  “Must be foul-hooked, Major,” he shouted. “You were a bit late in the strike, man!”

  “You get on with your rowing, and don’t talk so much,” rasped the Major. “This is a bigger fish than any you’ve ever had in your boat, and it isn’t in your boat yet.”

  Already, in his imagination, he was storing all the details of a titanic struggle to tell to his cronies in the United Services Club on foggy London evenings. But even as the trout made its third long rush for freedom, he felt a sickening slackening of line, and knew that he had one tale the less to tell.

  “Hard luck, sir,” said the ghillie after the Major had spoken his mind on fishing in general, and on those fish in particular which take the fly only that they may dash the hopes of hardworking fishermen.

  But Major Jeans glanced at the nearing shore of the bay where two boats already lay unoccupied and bellied over, and indicated with a jerk of his thumb that he was ready for lunch.

  “It was foul-hooked I think, indeed,” reiterated the ghillie, as the Major helped him to beach the boat.

  “Foul-hooked, my grandmother’s false teeth!” retorted the Major. “It broke my asterisked cast!”

  Claude sat in the bows of the fifth boat, and sang all the songs he could remember from Walt Disney’s films. Like many other people he gave the credit for their composition to the cartoonist, for whom he had the greatest admiration, “because, like me, he is an artist”. When he caught a trout, which he did on an average of one in two or three drifts, he stopped singing, and whistled softly, while the little monkey sat at the bottom of the boat, wearing his scarlet woollen coat, and patted the bodies of the dead fish.

  As they reached the end of the last drift of the bay, he put his rod down, stretched himself stiffly, and began to massage first his hands, and then his knees in their greenish riding breeches.

  “Stiff, stiff, I’m stiff, I’m a big stiff,” he sang, to a “Snow-White” tune. “It’s about time you caught a fish, Dad,” he went on, leaning forward to count the trout in the boat. “Do you know that I’ve caught three to your one? And on a perfect day like this.” He looked at his father over the ghillie’s broad shoulder. “You look a bit tired,” he said. “I hope you haven’t been overdoing it again. Let’s go and have lunch.”

  General Sir Courtney Haddox played his fifth trout with increasing exasperation.

  It really was most annoying to catch trout, day after day, when you were after salmon. You’d think that any self-respecting trout would ignore anything so large and gaudy as a salmon fly, but no! it seemed to attract all the tiny fish in the lake. It was especially annoying because old Jeans thought him a fool for going for salmon in October. The proper time to get them, the Major said, was in May and June. But he knew different. He remembered one season when he had brought in a salmon every day for a fortnight, and he’d be damned if he’d fish for trout just because everyone else did. He couldn’t see any sport whatever in trout-fishing; a salmon was the king of all fish, and one sixteen-pounder was worth all the trout you could catch in a season. Anyone could get trout, even beginners like young Weston, even Mrs. Mumsby, but you had to be a good fisherman to hook and play a salmon. It was your wits against his all the time: he might be sulking under the ledges for an hour, gradually fraying you
r cast, if you hadn’t the requisite skill to inveigle him out into the open water. Let Jeans and Winkley bring in their large baskets of trout – he was the best salmon fisherman in the hotel and didn’t think it boasting to say so. If he’d hooked the salmon that Gunn and Pindar had been bragging about yesterday, he’d have landed it even if he had only had a ten-foot rod; he’d have landed it if he’d hooked on a bent pin dangling at the end of a piece of stick! Let him just bring in one salmon before the end of the season: that would wipe the eyes of all the others, and justify at last Ethel’s outlandish praise of his fishing.

  His ghillie eyed him a trifle sourly.

  He didn’t really like fishing with the General, but his love of money had induced him to push himself into his favour, for Sir Courtney tipped lavishly when he left. Also, his other clients were usually impressed when they knew that he ghillied for General Sir Courtney Haddox, and their tips became increasingly large. But he often wondered whether it was really worth it, for it was a tiring job. For one thing, the General would fish for salmon at the end of the season, when they were black and out of condition, and never took the fly freely. For another, he would not allow his ghillie to fish in the boat at the same time as himself because he said it ruined the water for him. And so he had to sit on his behind all day, leaning idly on one oar, while he gazed endlessly at Sir Courtney’s dipping line.

  Sir Courtney thought he was a good fisherman, mused the ghillie, and what he didn’t say in praise of his own fishing, his sister did. But he hadn’t the adaptability of the best fishing gentlemen. Today, for instance, when the water was ideal for sea-trout, and the breeze altogether too light for salmon, Sir Courtney had insisted on fishing the ledges, almost as if he had an appointment there. In consequence, he was catching nothing but tiddlers of a size which any self-respecting child would have returned to the water.