‘Nature includes the note of death and of blood. It is all around us.’

‘We don’t have to love it, and seek it out and long for war so we can have more of it.’

‘Do we do that?’

‘Have you never wanted a war?’

‘I suppose there is something in every man that answers to the call of battle.’

‘There you are then.’

‘There I am. But I shall not, if I can possibly help it, shoot young Osbert’s duck.’

‘That I do believe.’ She smiled at him.

His answering smile faltered slightly, but before she had time to wonder why this might be her husband had approached to say, ‘Are you taking a hand of bridge, my dear?’

‘No, I hate games. It’s my lack of competitive spirit again – we’ve just been talking about it. I shall fetch my needlework and sit by the fire with Ida.’

‘Let me get it for you.’

‘Thank you, Bob, that would be nice of you.’

She stood up. Lionel Stephens did the same.

‘I have some boring briefs to go through. I think I’d better take the opportunity. Otherwise it means doing them before breakfast and that’s not my favourite time of the day.’

Evening had given way to night as Tom Harker waited for his rabbit, motionless beside the gate, one finger resting on the top strand of the net which he had stretched along the fence which bordered the wood. He could hear the bitch busy in the undergrowth. She had put up one rabbit but it had run out on the other side of him, beyond the net; one short high whistle had stopped her as she began to give chase, and brought her back to the brambles and bracken on the outskirts of the wood. She was working the ground thoroughly – among so many fallen leaves she sounded like an animal three times her size – but so far without further success. Tom was beginning to feel cold. He would have liked to light his pipe, but believed that rabbits were put off by the smell of tobacco smoke. He had many theories about the habits of the creatures he hunted; some of the theories he could prove and some he could not, but nothing could shake his faith in them. Rabbits preferred a dark night, he thought, and a wind from the north or east. Tonight was not dark enough – a view which Flo, waiting with her lantern on his doorstep, would not have shared.

Tom shifted his weight from one foot to the other – the only movement he made, and that was soundless – and was thinking he should have brought the ferret when there was one short yelp from the bitch and a louder crashing in the undergrowth. He felt the top of the net jerk. Keeping his hand on it he quickly followed it along the fence until he felt a downward drag. He dropped on his knees. The rabbit was struggling vigorously, each kick entangling it more closely in the loose net. It was just beginning to scream. Seizing it firmly at the back of the neck, Tom knifed it once, hard, through the net. It was immediately still. He unravelled it and put it into one of the big inside pockets of his long jacket. He went back to the gate and neatly rolled up the net, removing the pegs with which he had fastened it to the ground as he came to them. Net and pegs went into the other pocket. The bitch was already at his feet, fawning in her sheepdog way. He wasted no time on congratulations but turned and walked with long strides back up the hill towards the road.