The Deer Shelter

By Phil Clarke

Luke Conway is a schoolboy who struggles academically, but has a close affinity with nature and the outdoor life. This leads him to trespass on the Cordenwood estate, where Thornton is the feared and respected head gamekeeper. He is also a veteran of the Falklands War, whose psychological scars he is struggling to overcome. With the help of Angie Neale, the beautiful but lonely Careers Co-ordinator at Luke’s school, Thornton and Luke are thrown together in work on a student placement scheme on the Cordenwood estate. However, disaster strikes, and Luke finds himself seriously injured and close to death. Will Thornton, haunted by his past, finally subdue his demons and make the right moves in rescuing Luke?
Phil Clarke’s gripping first novel explores the inner strength and human spirit of two very different individuals, and how they combine to overcome the traumas of war and social disadvantage across the generations. As a bitter winter wind sweeps across the estate, the ruthless leader of a gang of professional poachers threatens to destroy everything, with Thornton’s long-repressed nightmare now looming large and casting its shadow over every exciting page, right up to the climax at the deer shelter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amolibros
• Release date: May 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781908557018

Phil Clarke

Isabel Lloyd and Phil Clarke have spent the past 10 years preparing for the apocalypse. They've done this by teaching themselves to grow fruit and vegetables, and watching every episode of The Walking Dead – some of them twice.

Book preview

The Deer Shelter

by Phil Clarke

Published in ebook format by Amolibros at Smashwords 2011

Contents

Notices

About the Book

About the Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Notices

Copyright © Phil Clarke 2011

Published in ebook format by Amolibros at Smashwords 2011

Amolibros, Loundshay Manor Cottage, Preston Bowyer, Milverton, Somerset, TA4 1QF

www.amolibros.com | [e-mail]

The right of Phil Clarke to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted herein in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

With the exception of certain well-known historical figures, all the other characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely imaginary

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

About the Book

Luke Conway is a schoolboy who struggles academically, but has a close affinity with nature and the outdoor life. This leads him to trespass on the Cordenwood estate, where Thornton is the feared and respected head gamekeeper. He is also a veteran of the Falklands War, whose psychological scars he is struggling to overcome. With the help of Angie Neale, the beautiful but lonely Careers Co-ordinator at Luke’s school, Thornton and Luke are thrown together in work on a student placement scheme on the Cordenwood estate. However, disaster strikes, and Luke finds himself seriously injured and close to death. Will Thornton, haunted by his past, finally subdue his demons and make the right moves in rescuing Luke?

Phil Clarke’s gripping first novel explores the inner strength and human spirit of two very different individuals, and how they combine to overcome the traumas of war and social disadvantage across the generations. As a bitter winter wind sweeps across the estate, the ruthless leader of a gang of professional poachers threatens to destroy everything, with Thornton’s long-repressed nightmare now looming large and casting its shadow over every exciting page, right up to the climax at the deer shelter.

About the Author

Phil Clarke worked in secondary schools for thirty-three years, becoming a head teacher in 2001. He is now an education consultant and writer.

Chapter 1

Luke felt more tired than ever before. He knew he must get up, but his body rebelled. Every time he tried, the dull ache gnawing at his shoulder blade turned to fire, deep in his flesh. He’d forced himself so many times not to make a noise that it was now automatic, which was just as well as he no longer remembered why it was important. He lay back in almost complete darkness, his shivers more than just a response to the cold winter’s night. The soft repeating sound with its abbreviated echo was still there in the darkness, as regular as a grandfather clock. It was somehow soothing, and as he listened his eyelids became heavier and started to close. A vivid image flashed through his mind, of his mother begging him not to go, with his sister clinging to her dress and crying. His dead father took her place, and without speaking motioned Luke to sit down, here beside him on the settee at home. He turned to look at the television. Luke followed his gaze to a scene he recognised, one he had seen many times in the films he loved to watch.

Someone was kneeling beside an injured person on the ground, and saying in an urgent voice, over and over again, Don’t go to sleep. Stay awake. Come on, open your eyes! You’re not going to sleep.

Luke’s head jerked back up, dispelling the image and sending a fresh wave of pain through his shoulder. He clenched his teeth to avoid crying out, and tasted a distinct saltiness in his mouth. His brain cleared momentarily, and, in the sudden flash of clarity, he remembered the emergency survival bag he’d been required to carry in his outer coat pocket all the time. He paused as he realised the pain would again rise to a climax as he tried to get the bag from the pocket, and he knew somehow he would manage only one attempt. He rehearsed the actions in his mind, pulling out the bag and arranging it so that he could get at its contents. His courage nearly failed him as he recalled the pain with his previous attempts at movement, but he steeled himself with one last resolve.

Tears sprang to his eyes as he forced himself to open the pocket and take out the bag. He transferred it with difficulty from hand to hand, taking several deep breaths while he thought through the task of how he would manipulate it in the darkness. Gingerly he opened it out with one hand, gripping part of it with his teeth to keep it steady, then felt for the drawstrings he knew were round the neck. Having found them, he traced around the neck and identified where the hood was joined. He pulled up the body of the bag in little folds until he could tell there was only a short distance between the open neck and the bottom of the bag, where his feet would rest. He drew his knees up in front of him as far as possible, and started the slow and agonising process of getting into it, or more accurately gradually working the bag around his body.

He’d lost all idea of time by now, and desperately wanted to sleep, but he persevered and eventually managed to fit the bag over his body, completing the process by pulling the hood up and over the back of his head. He pulled the drawstring and felt the material come together round his neck. Exhausted, with pain lancing through his shoulder and chest, he felt huge disappointment as the bag seemingly made little difference to the coldness gripping his body. Then at that moment, with his morale at rock bottom, he heard a different noise, and realised with despair he was no longer alone. He held his breath and tried to peer into the darkness as the shuffling noise became louder with something moving slowly, and closer to where he lay. The shuffling stopped and was replaced by a gentle lapping noise. He let out his breath in a soft sob, and, as he sank down on his side, finally surrendered to merciful blackness.

Chapter 2

The early morning chill showed as wispy clouds in Luke’s shallow breathing, as he looked up and down the footpath. He made up his mind that no one else was there, no one to share the sense of renewal the dawn of a new day brought, away from the sprawl of terraced houses invading the countryside, all to accommodate increasing numbers of coal miners over a century ago. He again felt that surge of excitement and nervousness from the extra adrenaline pumping round his body, as he dropped down and slid under the canopy of holly running alongside the path. Anyone walking along it wouldn’t be able to see that the mass of prickly leaves was at this point largely hollow, a fact discovered by Luke several years ago when looking for birds’ nests. Since then, he had often used this as his den and as an occasional access to the estate bordered by the hedge.

It was a large and varied expanse of countryside, owned by Lord Cordenwood, a descendant of a mine owner who’d made his fortune at the end of the nineteenth century, meeting the demand for coal to power the steam-driven cotton mills. It was now predominantly a shooting estate, with copses and farmland, ideal for raising pheasants. A good annual income was received from leasing the land to arable farmers or making it available for various sporting activities. From late autumn to the end of January, there was organised shooting, with rough shooting on weekdays, and the legendary invitation shooting days at weekends. In the spring and summer, there was fishing in the small river flowing through the estate, whose source was in the nearby limestone hills. The river’s lower levels had once been badly polluted by industrial waste from mining and other activities, but here it was gin-clear, oxygenated by a series of small weirs built for that purpose. Hence it was able to support a good head of game fish, with the natural mixture of wild brown trout and grayling supplemented each year by re-stocking with rainbow trout. Fly fishermen paid a handsome price for the right to fish on the estate, and anyone on the list to join could expect to wait in excess of five years for the privilege.

Luke had visited the river often, and on each occasion had been spellbound by its beauty. Once or twice he’d come upon an angler, and had settled down in the undergrowth to watch. Although many of his contemporaries at school seemed to have low boredom thresholds, with the need to move on to other things at short and regular intervals, Luke was able to focus intently on whatever attracted his interest, and consequently spent several hours watching as the anglers cast their flies and occasionally hooked a fish. He himself went coarse fishing with a group of friends to his local reservoir, and there experienced the primeval thrill of first a bite, then the hooked fish trying to escape. He recognised the same galvanising effect on the fly fishermen, as they tried with varying levels of skill and success to play the fish to a position where it could be netted. He had decided, with some trepidation, he must try this for himself.

That trepidation was not caused by doubt at his ability, rather by the possible consequences of discovery by Thornton, the estate’s head gamekeeper. Thornton’s reputation was fast becoming legendary. Prior to his arrival some three years earlier, poaching on the estate had been rife. Soon, however, in addition to some high-profile cases in the courts, resulting in swingeing fines and several custodial sentences, there were dark rumours about instances where would-be poachers had tried to take Thornton on physically, and received a good thrashing for their trouble. These stories, together with Thornton’s efficiency in securing the estate boundaries, meant that poaching on the estate had all but dried up.

Luke had never seen Thornton, which made him more nervous. He’d been planning this visit to the river for some time, and now he had got to this point was tempted to put it off. He ran through his preparations again. He saw in his mind the pool below the small weir where he’d seen the large fish, and where fishermen had repeatedly tried to lure it, but without success. He desperately wanted to catch that fish, and had gradually worked out how. The telescopic rod and reel he’d found in a second-hand shop had been hidden in a plastic bag in the roots of the hedge. The four-kilo-breaking-strain nylon line was pre-threaded in the rings, ending in a loop secured to the reel handle. Also in the bag was another looped length of line, on which was a small float, weights, and a barb-less hook, a rig Luke had tested successfully at the reservoir before wrapping round a piece of cardboard cut from a cornflakes packet. It would take very little time to assemble this rig, connecting the two loops on the river bank, and Luke was satisfied he could carry the bag under his coat. It had taken longer to work out how he would tempt the fish. He knew he wanted to use a bait and considered maggot or worm, but had a feeling he’d have only one chance at this. It was likely the fish had survived previous attempts with both types of bait by poachers, in addition to the numerous types of wet and dry flies unsuccessfully cast in its direction. His visits to the library to read fishing books or search the internet had eventually thrown up an old chub-fishers’ trick of using wasp grubs. The full tin in his pocket was the outcome of a conversation with an allotment owner and a hair-raising expedition with him to raid the wasps’ nest under his shed.

He checked the small catapult nestling in his pocket wrapped in a towel, where there was also moistened breadcrumb ground bait. He peered out of the holly hedge. The short patch of meadow grass to the woodland bordering the river was where he’d crossed many times before. His heart bounded even faster as he checked for any sign of life, and after a moment, when all time seemed to stop, he sprinted out and over into the trees. Once there, he paused and got his wind back, as he realised he hadn’t breathed in once during the dash across. He felt through the coat that his bag of tackle was still there, and moved off without rushing towards the pool and its quarry. He stopped to look and listen, but instead of the elation he usually felt at the shafts of sunlight through the canopy of leaves, or the birds and other animal life, now he felt only nervous. He fought back the urge to reverse his footsteps, and pressed on. As he approached the river, he heard an extra noise, a kind of swish, and his heart again started to beat against his breast. He sank onto his stomach and peered forward. He could not quite make out the riverbank, and so waited and listened. Eventually, he heard another familiar sound, the snatch of a reel ratchet as the line was pulled off, and he knew then that someone else was there, fishing the same pool. He squirmed forward slowly until he could make out the water through the undergrowth, and swivelled his head to look along the bank down river. He saw the glint of tapered line reach out across the pool. The dry fly on the end of it settled with hardly a ripple in the outfall from the small weir. He felt alarm. The unseen fisherman was very skilled, and Luke wondered if his dream would be dashed at the very moment he hoped it would be fulfilled. He lay motionless as he watched and waited to see what happened next.

In the pool, the large brown trout held station at the edge of the current, using its fins to keep its head steady as it scanned the water, coming over the weir for food. The fly drifted down on the current and created a distortion in the surface, attracting the trout’s attention. It moved effortlessly up towards the fly, but as it approached its eye picked up a small metallic glint. Some years earlier, the fish had taken a fly and been hooked on the edge of its mouth. After a desperate fight it had tired, but in one last-ditch attempt to break free, it had managed to reach a sunken root at the edge of the pool. The line had caught round the root, and the change in angle dislodged the hook. This experience had sensitised the fish to similar stimuli, and so now, as it had many times since then, it turned round and resumed its original position.

The fly continued to drift along the edge of the eddy, and further down passed over a recently stocked rainbow trout, which powered upward with a thrust of its tail and took the fly in a swirl of water. The angler struck, his rod arching upwards as the tension in the line suddenly increased with the hook plunging into the side of the fish’s mouth. The fish took off into the main current in a vain attempt to fight the unrelenting pull on its body. After a few minutes, the angler was able to work it into the shallows down river from where he had cast, and with an extending landing net lifted it from the water. The man was now in full view. Luke watched as he examined the trout before dispatching it with a swift blow to the rear of the head, using a small but heavy cosh called a priest. The fish was placed in a creel slung from his shoulder, and now the angler moved on along the river bank, working his way upstream, no doubt pleased with the supper he’d secured.

Luke remained motionless as he waited until the man was out of sight. He looked around and listened for at least twenty minutes before rising to a crouch and moving forward. He found a space between some bushes downstream of the pool, close to where the man had been, and took out the