Your correspondent leads a wearisome and difficult life. You,
no doubt, think that life in the City is all four course lunches and champagne,
but the modest enjoyment of the basic pleasures of life is oft sullied by the
demands and thrusts of vulgar commerce.
Which is why your correspondent was on the crest of a steep
hillside in finest North Yorkshire one recent frosty morning. The keeper was in attendance in his best
estate tweed, the beaters and pickers-up had donned new plastic sacks as
leggings, holes in flat caps had been roughly stitched up, and even a few of
the retrievers had been lightly brushed.
Standing slightly apart were eight fine chaps in eight fine
caps. Not adorned in the discounted products of the local agricultural merchant
these grand fellows, but all kitted out by visits to Messr’s F and Messr’s P and
Messr’s B (correctly, it has been pointed out to me, Signori’s B), and, let us
not forget, Messr’s H&H. Today they
too looked especially well scrubbed, polished and brushed; and even a casual
observer would soon have spotted the reason for all this sartorial elegance in,
behind, and in front of the line. For
there, smoking a small breakfast cigar and regaling his fellow guns with a few
amusing words, was Mr Great.
You might not have recognised him; indeed very few people
would, but to a certain select crowd of City bankers, he is a very well known
face indeed. And to your humble correspondent B and his modest financial institution
it is a face which strikes both fear and hope. Fear, in case he takes his huge
portfolio of transactions away, and hope, that he might not, and the bonuses
will grow ever more straight and strong.
So it is worth keeping Mr Great happy and smiling. Each year
he gracefully accepts our proffered invitations to a lunch and a dinner, a
visit to a private box at Ascot, and a shooting invitation. Competition growing ever more intense for Mr
Great’s business, this year it was decided that the boat should be well and
truly pushed out and that no expense should be spared. One of the grandest shoots in the far North
Riding was booked, as was a dinner and appropriately salubrious accommodations
the night before.
And thus far, so good; though I was rather glad that I had
thought to bring along a couple of colleagues to split the expenses submission
with, the contents of the hotel cellar being unexpectedly good and Mr Great’s
thirst remarkable.
Here we were, a fine morning, a modest wind, and all looking
good with the world. Except that into my mind had come sudden doubt. Which was
occasioned by my looking down into the deep valley and seeing far far; indeed
far, below us tiny yellow tickets on sticks. The pegs for the first drive. At least, I reckoned, one hundred and twenty
feet down from the valley crest where Mr Great was waving his cigar.
Now, Mr Great likes his shooting, and he likes a suitable
pile of pheasants at his peg at the end of the drive so he can show us amateurs
how it is done. But no doubt the cares
of intensive money making mean he does not get as much time as he might like to
get the practice in. And doing most of
your shooting in the Home Counties does not really allow you to get used to the
amount of lead and swing and fancy footwork that some might think ideal for the
40 yard bird. I have seen him hit high
birds. Sometimes. Once or twice. When
given proper notice. Not in a deep
Yorkshire valley with a lifting wind. Low birds are, let us be honest, more his
thing.
I began to contemplate next year’s bonus.
Twenty minutes later the eight chaps were at the bottom of
the valley, the beaters were behind the ridge, and the whistle had been
blown. And ten minutes later I was
wondering how Mrs B might feel about giving up three August weeks on the Amalfi
coast for a sweet self-catering cottage in the Lake District.
Our best shot was, I reckoned, maybe hitting one pheasant
for every ten cartridges. And the rest of the line was looking like a ratio of 20 to 1. Except for two of us, your correspondent
who had lowered his gun to contemplate the occupant of the adjacent peg, his
bank’s most important client, whose ratio, I conservatively estimated, was in
the region of Infinity to 0.
Hugely high curling birds approached, in sparse and
perfectly presented drifts. And practically all of them disappeared over the
other side of the valley in unsullied form.
Hours passed. Or at least five minutes.
Self preservation and the bank’ best interests finally overcame
paralysis. As soon as the final whistle
blew I moved from my peg toward Mr Great. Too slow. He turned proudly and
called to the pretty girl who was picker-up on the hillside above us: “How
many?”
The world suddenly slowed, my feet stuck to the ground, Mr
Great smiled with confident modestly, the picker-up opened her pretty mouth.
“Lie, lie, lie” I silently transmitted across the bracken to her.
But your Yorkshirewoman is of honest and straightforward
stuff.
“NUN” she bellowed.
Mr Great looked around him, perplexed at this sudden
religious fervour: “What?”
“None; all missed”.
Sometimes chance and fortune run together. In my coat pocket
was the £50 note for the keepers tip at the end of the day. Mr Great was
staring up the hillside. The £50 note was in my hand and I waved merrily at the
picker-up.
Bright girl that one. Very quick on the uptake. She has
great potential for a career in the City I suspect.
“NONE FOR MR B. We are still collecting yours Mr Great. Ten,
mebbe a dozen”
“Ah, B, bit high for you, old man, those little birdies. Bit
more practice with the clays on the high tower is my advice”
