Free The Death of William Posters by Alan Sillitoe Page B

until his appearance sped them apart. One, with a handsome grey tail and upright back, had a small red disc for an eye, after fighting the rival which had already made off. The other eye must have been uninjured, for the squirrel flitted among a confusion of trees and bushes without tearing its hide.
    Apart from mistily remembered bus-rides as a child, the only times he had seen the country was from his car-screen, stopping now and again to eat sandwiches with the window open, or dashing across fifty yards of greensward to gulp down pints in some sheltering pub. Now he not only lived in it, but spoke about gardens and poaching with men in the Keaner’s Head when he sometimes called there. Words like covert, lodge, hill, grange, flew from him – and only a month ago he had been at his machine, driving a car, in bed with Nancy, bawling at the kids. Yet in those days the dominant feeling was that of not living his proper and allotted life, of being enmeshed in a totally wrong sort of existence no matter how plain and real it was said to be. The present life at least was too new to give any such feeling.
    Even so, his mind was at all points of the cardiac compass, unsettled and drifting. Out of the wood, he walked along an open lane, beet fields on either side. A Land Rover was coming and he stepped aside for it. A lean-faced man of about fifty called: ‘Where are you going?’
    Frank looked at the grey, non-penetrating eyes, and said nothing. The man spoke: ‘This is a private road. If you go any further you’re liable to be shot at by one of my keepers. I’d turn back if I were you.’ His head withdrew, quicker than any argument that could follow, and the car rumbled towards a distant farmhouse.
    He mentioned it to Pat. ‘It must have been Waller,’ she said. ‘He’s not really so bad. He farms all the land down by Panton Moor, and owns the woods near Clayby. He breeds pheasants by the hundred, and his friends come up from London to shoot. He’s rich, one of a shipping family in Hull, and doesn’t get on with people around here though – the people at the Hall I mean. He’s one of the better ones, believe it or not. His children are great friends of Kevin’s. Waller lent him a pony last summer.’
    â€˜He still sounded a right bastard to me,’ Frank said, thinking that maybe William Posters wasn’t dead after all, not by a long way. ‘He’s no right to have land that nobody else can walk on.’ Old Bill Posters of course would never have been caught, would have smelt the set-up and gone through gorse and pheasant farms in his usual sly way, so that even the watchdogs wouldn’t have stirred, and he’d have come out with a cockbird in every pocket and a hangdog daisy in his buttonhole.
    They sat at the evening meal: grilled steak and salad, bread and cheese. Lights were on, blinds drawn, and the fire humped red. ‘You see,’ she continued, ‘he gets a bit jumpy because people sometimes come in their cars from Scunthorpe and Grimsby, scare his pheasants and anything else that moves.’
    â€˜I was on a peaceful stroll. Next time I won’t be.’ She saw him eating too well to be as angry as he made out. The walk must have seen to that. ‘If he’d known you were staying here he might not have been so brusque. He thought you were a stranger.’
    â€˜Ah!’ he smiled. ‘You mean he smelt fifteen years of overalls on my back! The Lincolnshire wind hasn’t got rid of it yet. You’ve only got to stray a bit off a lane in England and you’ll find a notice stuck in front of you saying trespassers will be prosecuted.’
    â€˜You’ll just have to ignore them, if you feel like it.’
    â€˜But it’s still no good that you’ve got to.’
    â€˜If you feel free, you are free.’
    â€˜That’s the mentality of a slave. You’ve got to know that you are