Макс Хейстингс – Country Fair (страница 5)
He came to the Kennet in 1982, at a time when the Chilton Fishery was in poor health, after years in thrall to a Thames Conservancy policy designed to speed flow and improve field drainage for the only rural activity that seemed to matter in those days – growing corn. The estate syndicate could not sell all its rods, and was losing money. Stephen worked at increasing weed growth, putting bends back into the stream. He started rearing his own trout for stocking at the end of the season, ‘Which is a big plus at the beginning of the next one, because you don’t have a river full of gullible fish.’
Today, there is a long waiting list for rods, and Chilton is famously one of the prettiest stretches on the river. Stephen loves the variety of the fishing: ‘Because the main river and the carriers are so different, there’s always somewhere to get out of the wind, always somewhere to find a bit of shade, always somewhere you can get away on your own.’ His own summer day starts at seven when he feeds the fish, walks the dogs and checks his fenn traps – he catches half a dozen mink a year. There are new rods to be shown around, and duffers like me who always need advice on flies. Towards evening there are also occasional poachers, ‘white van men’, usually in their early twenties, never alone, often plying a handline which they can drop in the water if they are spotted, to remove the evidence. They are the reasons for Tiger and Lizzie, Stephen’s German shepherds, without which experience has warned him not to try consequences with intruders. He seldom bothers to call the police, because they come so slowly.
He says that his real pleasure in the job, beyond the beauty of the place, is meeting people. ‘There used to be three old boys who came every Tuesday – a High Court judge, a former Hong Kong governor who’d been in Changi Jail, and a survivor of the sinking of the
In summer, Stephen is a keen bowler for a local village cricket team. When there is no fishing in the winter, he loads and beats a bit. Out of season, he and his wife Fiona also travel, usually somewhere exotic. Two years ago it was Namibia, last time California. Fiona is Australian, from a country district a few hours outside Melbourne. They have been married for ten years, and she is a successful executive with Vodafone. Stephen is full of admiration for her swift rise: ‘She’s clever and she’s Australian, which means she’ll always say, “Let’s give it a go!” We don’t do that here, do we?’
I asked Stephen about the common mistakes he sees fishermen make. ‘They don’t
His big beef, inevitably, is water abstraction. He fumes that the level of water which can be stolen upriver is assessed on the basis of the last calendar year, which means that 2003, for instance, was identified as wet because of what happened in January and February, despite the endless dry months that followed. In 2004, by early spring the river was at a June level, and matters have been worse in 2005. Yet Swindon was permitted to divert even more water than it was taking already – and none of this returned to the Kennet. Here is a sad and familiar story throughout the south of England, a grave threat to the future of our chalk streams. Whitehall planners continue to approve massive housing developments, heedless of how much water our modest river systems can spare for diversion to ever-growing conurbations. If the countryside of southern England loses its rivers – and several are desperately depleted – then a vital artery of rural life will be severed.
I suggested to Stephen that almost all the mistakes people make in life are things they miss out on, not things they do. He nodded. ‘There was this chap who had a rod here – very successful businessman. In five years, he never got to the river once. He was just too busy. Now’s he’s dead. It seems such a waste, not to have done something you really like doing.’ For himself, he says unhesitatingly that he has the life of his choice. He revels in feeling master of his own destiny: ‘This is good. The world comes to you, rather than you having to go to it.’ And those of us who fish with Stephen feel lucky that we should have the privilege of his company and his wisdom for many seasons yet.
The elements influence fishing even more decisively. William Blake observed wryly: ‘The weather for catching fish is that weather, and no other, in which fish are caught.’ One July Monday, I found myself plying a small double across a Scottish salmon river. The gillie frowned gloomily and observed: ‘It’s a fortnight since we had rain. We need the water up a couple of inches.’ On Tuesday a fierce upstream wind made casting difficult even for experts. The gillie shook his head: ‘The two best fishers I know go to sleep on the bank when there’s an upstream wind.’ On Wednesday, heavy thunderstorms stirred the current into cold chocolate soup: ‘It should be great tomorrow if the rain stops and the river starts falling,’ said the gillie in real excitement. The river rose a trifle on Thursday. On Friday, at last it was steady, though highly coloured. We caught some fish on big, bright flies, and thought eagerly of Saturday, when we would have the best beat on the river. But next morning there was more rain and more colour. We landed the odd salmon, but never reaped the sort of grand harvest that on Monday we had been sure must come.
Now, do not interpret this as a fisherman’s whinge. We enjoyed a wonderful week on wonderful water and caught a respectable number of fish. I am simply making the point that ours was the sort of climatic experience every angler knows. Only once or twice in a lifetime do most of us get the chance to fish through several successive days of weather when fish and gauge marry, to yield a bonanza.
Shooting is a bit more reliable, but not much. About one day in three, conditions are the way we want them. The wind is blowing in the right direction, rain is holding off, the sun is not too bright. By contrast, there are those mornings in August when the sun is blazing magnificently, making it a pleasure to walk the hill, but young grouse receive no help from a breeze to lift them forward. After being flushed for the first time, they drop exhausted into the heather well in front of the butts, and refuse to get up again. September and October grouse are stronger and much more challenging, but by then the threat of mist or rain is never far distant. Few sporting experiences match the misery of receiving a priceless invitation to shoot grouse, then spending two days at the foot of the hill waiting for a ‘clag’ to lift.
Come pheasant-time, most of us reckon that a perfect December or January outing means an overcast day with some wind, when in Patrick Chalmers’ phrase ‘the snow-powdered stubble rings hard to the tread’. Yet a white landscape looks more romantic to guns than to keeper and beaters. It is a tough challenge, to persuade birds to leave patches of snow-covered brambles, to keep a beating line tramping a wood in which white lumps of wetness are flopping off the branches onto every beater’s neck. On such days, the sight of dead pheasants precipitates in some of us a spasm of squeamishness. There is a pathos about a bird lying limp amid a cluster of feathers and pink spots of blood on the snow, which seldom troubles the senses in other conditions.