Robert had enough experience to realise that the line couldn’t be much longer than the rod, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to land the fish, and so he cut it off at fifteen feet, reasoning that this left some compensating margin for the line that in the future he was bound to lose while cutting knots away from hooks and traces. He rootled around in his treasure drawer and found the brightly painted pike bung that he had once rescued at great peril after spotting it abandoned, tangled up in reeds on the River Wey after the great flood. He pulled the stick out of the middle, laid his line in the slot, and replaced the stick. He resisted the temptation to tie on the trace and the treble hooks of the snap tackle. He had had a hook in his finger before, because of leaving his rod tackled up and ready to go. Uncle Dick had brought the hook through his flesh until it emerged, then he had cut off the barb and drawn it back out. The memory of the agony he had had to endure still made him clench his teeth.
Lastly Robert made a priest, because he knew that he was going to have to bash the pike over the head if he caught it. He found an old hickory broom handle, cut off a foot at one end, and drilled a hole in it. He decided to sacrifice some airgun pellets, and melted a handful in the lid of the tin, using Uncle Dick’s blowtorch. With a pair of pliers he gingerly picked up the lid, swimming with molten silvery liquid, and poured the lead into the hole that he had drilled. He would need the extra weight to make a sufficiently convincing cosh. He left it to cool, and then found to his frustration and disappointment that the lead simply fell out of the hole, because it shrunk when it cooled off. After a half-hour’s despair, Robert had a brainwave, and rummaged in his treasure drawer again. He had a big rusty bolt that he had found on the verge side, and this he glued into the hole vacated by the wilful lead. He smacked his palm with it a few times, and reckoned that it would be heavy enough.
So it was that two days later Robert called in on Mrs Rendall, ostensibly to let her know that he was there, but primarily to activate the flow of tea and peanut butter sandwiches. He had just had the most difficult bicycle ride of his life, because it wasn’t easy cycling up hills with a bag of fishing tackle and a fourteen-foot pole, and all the mad drivers like Miss Agatha Feakes and the nuns from the convent made it that much more nerve-racking and hazardous. He had been glad to catch his breath by stopping and talking to the hedging and ditching man, who, in the attitude of Hamlet cradling Yorick’s skull, had been examining the seized and rusted remains of an ancient gin trap that he had just found in the ditch. The hedging and ditching man had admired the hazel pole, and said that he would have been proud to have made something like that himself, and that if that didn’t catch the Girt Pike then nothing would. When he finally arrived at the Glebe House, Robert was quite exhausted, his legs were aching, and he definitely needed tea and peanut butter before he could begin to catch a fish.
He set up his normal rod, because first of all he had to catch a tiddler to put on the snap tackle. It was a perfect day, balmy, with a light breeze that was propelling wisps of cloud across the face of the sun. The animals and birds seemed especially active and cheerful. With the tea and sandwiches lying pleasantly on his stomach like the weight of a cat in the lap, Robert settled on his tiny folding fishing stool, and hauled in one tiddler after another. There was such pleasure in catching so many sparkling silver roach with their bright scarlet fins that it put the Girt Pike out of his mind. There was no sign of the great fish, and it receded into a distant possibility, a far potentiality, as if he suspected, or even knew, that he was not really old enough, or man enough, or ambitious enough, to catch it. He was also, in truth, reluctant to take one of those jewel-like fish, and impale it on treble hooks. Like all little boys, he had had his moments of gratuitous cruelty, but these beautiful little creatures were too perfect to violate.
He was in that hypnagogic state common in bank-side fishermen, when he became aware quite suddenly that something was happening at his feet. There was a stirring and a swirling in the water. He looked down and saw that the Girt Pike was tugging at his keepnet in an attempt to get at the tiddlers within. The great dark fish, casual, brutal and impudent, was actually within a hand’s reach, and Robert felt his heart leap in his chest. He shouted and leapt backwards, knocking over his stool, and the pike flicked its tail and vanished. When Robert came back to the water, thankful that no one had been witness to his panic and foolishness, he could see the pike near the surface by the lily pad, fanning the water with its fins, and watching him. It must have been three feet long, and was the biggest fish that Robert had ever seen. It seemed impossible that such a creature could have lived in this small pond.
With his hands shaking, Robert took a roach from his keepnet and hooked it on to his snap tackle, just as it said in the books, with one hook through the dorsal fin and another through the lip. He did not enjoy doing this, but he had been taken over by a deep and ineluctable instinct. He knew that it was necessity, and that was all.
He swung the little victim out over the water, dropped it just past the lily pad, and drew it straight past the nose of the pike.
To his amazement and surprise, and so fast that he could not react, the pike lunged forward and took the bait. Robert knew that when a pike took, you had to wait a second before you struck, otherwise you could just wrench the bait out of its mouth, but in this case he was so astonished that he nearly didn’t strike at all. When he did so, he felt the massive weight and strength of the fish at the other end, and began to experience an intoxicating terror that he would never in his life forget.
He would always remember the effort of trying to control his fright, and the temptation to do stupid or counter-productive things. He forced himself not to haul on the fish, not to risk breaking the rod, to let it tire itself out naturally against the spring of the hazel wood. He was amazed and bewondered by the energy and fury of the pike, as it surged one way and then another, bending the rod so that it bucked and leapt in his hands. Robert realised that he did not have his landing net ready, and understood too late that the net was far too small in any case. It was a little folding thing that he had found in the White Elephant in Godalming, and it had been originally intended for trout. He tucked the hazel pole under one arm, and managed to flick the net open with one hand.
He never knew how long it was that the mighty fish hurled itself about. Every time Robert thought that it had given up, the fish suddenly flamed back into furious resistance, rushing hither and thither, shaking its head, diving and leaping. Robert lost all sense of time and entered into another dimension that had something about it of eternity. He was holding on grimly, clutching his hazel pole more desperately than he really needed to, his knuckles white, his eyes popping in his head, and all the muscles of his arms and back aching with the strain. As the fish finally did begin to tire, as the intervals between its furies grew longer, he started to experience the terrible anxiety of not knowing how he was going to cope with such a monster once he had got it on to the bank.