Listening, trying to identify the sounds, unable to place them right away. Not the soft cooing of a wood-pigeon digesting its early-morning feed, not harsh enough for the cawing or chattering of a corvine. An alarm call certainly. Beware, Man the enemy approaches. Stay hidden.
Jon stepped forward, Sylvia still clinging to his arm. She wanted to go back, maybe wished that she had taken his advice and stayed behind in the first place. Maybe next time she would listen; she had learned a valuable lesson even if it had almost cost her her life.
Something above him moved, a backward shuffle along a thick bough which took the bird closer to the trunk of the tree, framed it in a shaft of bright sunlight which somehow managed to penetrate the dense foliage, the principal actor in a who dunnit play spotlighted for the surprise of a hushed audience, the ultimate climax.
Jon Quinn saw a thick bunch of light-brown feathers, a huddled form which was both familiar and unfamiliar, his brain slow to reach a conclusion because something just wasn't quite right. Not an owl seeking refuge from daylight; it could have been a roosting pheasant except that pheasants don't perch in trees except during the nocturnal hours. Its size fooled him for a moment, and then he knew, saw three or four more birds close by on the next branch. Warren hens!
'It's the missing hens!'
And again something wasn't quite as it should be. Huge birds which had gained at least a couple of pounds in weight since he had last collected the eggs in the hen-house a few days ago. Birds which normally flew no more than two or three feet up on to their perches now sat five or six yards up in the trees. Alert, wary, no longer clucking a welcome and coming to him in expectation of a handful of corn. Birds which were wild, feral like that damned goat on the other side of the hedge. You found yourself instinctively cowering, throwing up your hands to form a shield in case they suddenly flew at you and tried to peck your eyes out.
'They're . . . not like hens,' Sylvia Atkinson muttered and clung on to Jon's arm. 'They look . . . sort of wild'
It was true. The birds on the branches above regarded them with hostile red-eyed glares. Their plumage was no longer the sleek light-brown feathers belonging to the Warren variety, instead thick and ruffled, matted with dried mud, evidence of scaly-leg on their legs. Bewilderment, edging back into the foliage, clucking softly in alarm.
'They're scared to hell,' Jon said. 'So scared they don't even recognise me. Like those goats.'
But there was more to it than that. The poultry had undergone some kind of drastic physical change, lost their accustomed domestication during the short time since he had last seen them, were virtually game birds of the wilds.
'Well, they're not going to come down while we're here,' he sighed, 'and we can't waste any more time standing here looking at them.' They're repulsive, frightening; they won't ever come back to the buildings and I don't want them to. 'Let's go and take a look at the calves in the other field.'
He didn't want to go and lookRight now he would have seized upon any excuse to retrace their steps back to the house, return to the safety of that claustrophobic cellar. It would have been only too easy. But he would not be able to forgive himself if he did that, not just because he had yielded to sheer cowardice but because some kind of morbid curiosity drove him on. Everything out here had changed, even the fresh growth of grass and foliage had a different look about it, a coarser tough texture, throwing off Man's concerted efforts at cultivation, the use of sophisticated husbandry. A reversion to primitive wildness. He shivered, held Sylvia's hand tightly and wished again that he had brought the shotgun along. Next time he would.
Walking slowly now, eyes scanning the ground ahead of him. The belt of firs was petering out, the hawthorn hedge on their right tall and straggling. It had always been rough; he had been meaning to lay it ever since they had come to live here but it was one of those jobs which he had never got round to. Gaping holes had been plugged with cut-off tin sheets or pieces of left-over wire-netting, improvisation sufficing, but there came a time when you realised that you were fighting a losing battle. This place had got in a shit-awful state. Now it seemed that it had won.
Another gate, a loop of binder twine holding it to the rough-hewn post. Jon Quinn rested a hand that trembled slightly on the top bar, had to make a conscious effort to look into the field beyond.
Charolais calves, four of them grazing just inside the tract of rough pasture. He knew they would not be normal, steeled himself to run a glance over them. Coffee-coloured beasts but their smooth coats no longer had that silky eye-pleasing look about them. Rough and mangy, plastered with mud where they had chosen to spend the night out rather than return to the shelter in the far corner. Nervous, ears flicking, sensing an enemy, as wary as highland deer even before they saw the two humans by the gate.
Heads tossed, hind legs kicked in the air, and then they were stampeding, a headlong flight in the opposite direction, bellowing their terror as they ran.
'I thought as much,' Jon muttered, clutching the gate with both hands. 'It was too much to hope for ... hey . . .' his eyes narrowed and he felt his pulses beginning to pound again.
'What is it, Jon? For God's sake what's wrong now?'
'Four of them,' he whispered, 'but there should be five.
Calves invariably stay together. We'd better go and look for the fifth.'
'No!' She was pulling at him now, using every ounce of her puny strength to drag him back. 'It isn't safe to go in there. I don't want to. They might attack us, like that goat did'.
'He was a billy, the male of the species.' Jon did his best to smile reassuringly, knew that he made a hash of it because he felt his lower lip trembling. 'The nannies didn't bother us so there's no reason why these heifers should. We don't have any bull calves and these are only youngsters anyway, no more than three months old. You can see how scared they are. I'm going, but you can stop here, if you want.'
'I'm coming with you.' She began to climb after him, her torn overalls snagging on the rusted bars of the gate. No way was she going to be left here alone. That mad billy goat was only in the adjoining field and suppose he found a weak part in the straggling hedge. And those hens in the trees behind, they were wild and fierce like birds of prey. Sylvia Atkinson was determined not to let Jon Quinn out of her sight.
The fields sloped down to a dip that was hidden from their view. Uneven tussocks that had had the butt grazed out of them by generations of livestock over the years, sour ground that would never be lush again without reseeding, but that wasn't Jon's way; a natural pastureland was his ideal but right now there was nothing natural about anything.
The four calves had run down into the dip, splashed their way through a patch of boggy ground and were cantering up the other side. They stopped, turned back to look. Calmer, moving away at a walk. Uneasy but their panic had subsided now that they had put some distance between themselves and the intruders in their field.
Jon slowed his pace, he did not want to alarm the calves any more than was necessary. Beyond his own boundary hedge the land sloped sharply upwards, Bill Gwyther's fields, always dotted with peacefully grazing sheep except during the winter months when the flock was moved lower down close to the farm buildings. The sheep were still there but today they were huddled together in a corner, a bunch of plaintively bleating frightened animals that sought safety in numbers.
What the hell's got into them, Jon thought, they can't even see us from up there. Something's frightened them. Up above Gwyther's land the skyline terminated in a line of dark even firs, the beginning of some five hundred acres of Forestry Commission woods that followed along the ridge and down over the other sides. Artificial woodlands, symmetry that was not consistent with this wild landscape, thousands of rows of trees with only the odd self-set seedlings out of place. A dark forbidding world where it never got properly light, no undergrowth able to grow below the branches. You could get lost up there if you forgot your bearings. A world of silence virtually devoid of wildlife.