Original subtitles

There's only one way to tell a story.

And that's over a drink.

Paid for, preferably, by somebody else.

And in a pub like this, that's not difficult.

In the summer, the tourists.

In the winter, the weekend people from our nearby towns.

All of them wanting the same thing.

To feel part of the countryside.

To feel part of people like me.

Anyway, I talk.

And they listen.

But what they're never sure about is whether what I'm telling them is the

truth. I can see it in their eyes.

I'm in the middle of a story

and there's this uncertainty.

A sort of half-belief.

A kind of wanting to believe but not being sure about it.

But the joke is, my private joke, you'll understand, is that all of it, every

single word of it, is gospel.

The people who live here in the village don't doubt me at all.

The older ones have known me from a boy.

I was a bit of a character, even then they tell me.

As for the young ones well They know about the poaching or think they do

Sometimes I think they know more about me than I know myself But tall tales

always get taller in the talent, don't they?

They want a hero.

Well, why not me?

Better than some these days.

So I'd never deny a thing, nor admit it, neither.

Hold the gun.

I'll give you a cartridge to put in there.

Yes.

Bring the gun together.

Cop the gun.

Now, you're ready to fire.

Yes. Right.

And I dressed like a bit of a hero.

A touch of the gypsy.

And why not?

An old army jacket.

But that's not just for show.

One inside pocket, big enough for a ferret.

And another one, even bigger.

Big enough and more for one of Lordy's ducks.

Just waiting for me down there along the estuary.

On one of those misty mornings when it's all still and reddish grey.

And nobody else in the world seems alive.

Save me.

My favorites are those lovely fish in Lordy's stream up there beneath the

trees.

I'll tell you about tickling for sea trout.

First, make sure no one's about, especially one of Lordy's keepers.

You know, of all the talents in the countryside, tickling to me is the one.

It's got something to do, I reckon, with the hunter being completely out of his

element and the hunted completely at home in his.

Just you try wading through a stream without causing a ripple.

There's a gentleness about it, too, and a lovely sense of style and skill.

Fish look lazy in a stream, nose to the flow of it.

Just the flick of a tail, the merest twist to keep them just where they want

to be.

But don't you believe it.

Sea trout and salmon, wild animals, survivors.

Where have you come from, old friend?

Out of all the estuaries and the rivers and the streams, what miracle brought

you back to this one?

The water in which you were born.

My hand slides in to caress you.

My touch is as soft as a maiden's kiss.

No escape this time, old friend.

Fingers in the gills.

And then, the explosion.

Mind you, nobody, not even me, can make a living out of poaching.

So I do other things as well.

Nothing nine to five. That's for other people.

Just things I enjoy.

And then, only when I feel like it.

I spend a fair amount of time down by the water, under this great Soarin'

railway bridge that Brunel built.

You know, there used to be a chap who lived here.

who could throw a stone right over it.

Extraordinary.

I've got this old shed down by the estuary.

Only taken to locking it up in the last year or so, come to think of it.

That's a sign of the times.

But anyway, like I was saying, this is where you can often find me.

Fixing up a bolt.

Carving a bit of wood.

Painting an inside.

Mending a bit of rigging.

Things I've taught myself.

Things I like.

Things people will pay me for.

And then, towards evening, home.

This is my place.

Better now than it was.

I've done a fair amount of work on it.

But it was the setting I always liked anyhow.

The trees and the stream.

And I'll tell you a funny thing.

I'd known this place ever since I was a boy.

But I'd never been inside it.

And when they said I could have it, I stood outside and I knew exactly what it

would be like inside.

And especially this fireplace.

I opened the door, and there it was.

Stone for stone.

Strange, wasn't it?

But you know, I've learned that lesson from the countryside.

You can never be sure that things are just what they seem to be.

I've seen magic done.

Don't laugh.

Magic with the most common of hedge plants.

Even with a twig like this, I've strangled with honeysuckle.

Such twigs have magic powers, but only if you cut it in the right way.

White magic, black magic, coincidence,

suggestion, call it what you will, but I've seen it work.

Village people will often come to me to charm away their warts, and it nearly

always works.

It's simple if you know how.

I'm going to draw this here circle, all right? A magic circle drawn in the grass

with a hazel stick.

Well, then, I want you to step into this circle through that gap there.

Come on in here now.

Come right in.

I'm going to close the circle.

All right.

Now, you want to get rid of this wart.

All right, then. What I'm going to do, I'm going to cut this potato, and I'm

going to rub it on there.

Then, take a common or garden potato, cut him in half, and rub it on the wart.

Right. Where's that wart?

You're right on me, buddy.

Here's one.

And there's two.

Pure wool wrapped around the potato and the whole thing buried in a secret place

at midnight.

The great thing is to never tell a living soul where.

Right then, boy.

Now, what I want you to do, take that potato home, bury it in your garden at

12 o'clock tonight, mind, all right?

Yeah.

And then forget all about your work.

Go on then, off you go.

Half my life, and more, I dare say, in the daylight and the dark, has been

spent along the hedgerows and in the woods, by the rivers and the streams,

the salt flats and the coppices.

Show me a hedge, and I'll show you where a thrush will build.

Show me a copse, and I'll show you where a pheasant will roost.

I was reading in the paper the other day about some fellow up north who was

calling himself the king of the poachers. King?

He wouldn't even be a prince.

He had a list of convictions as long as your arm.

A poacher, a real poacher, I mean, should go through his life from his

cradle to the grave without even having the finger of suspicion pointing at him.

I can't say that, but I've never been in court.

One Christmas, I gave Lordy himself a brace of pheasants, and all he said was,

to each his own.

And I'll tell you something else.

Never in the whole of my life have I ever killed just for the sake of

killing.

I think about that a lot when I'm in the woods.

250 pheasants a day.

That's not sport.

That's murder.

Slaughtering things that you can't recreate.

Not for me.

One evening, just after dusk it was, and don't you believe anything they tell you

about a poacher's moon?

A fallacy, that is.

Moons are for keepers, not poachers. Well, one evening just after dusk, I was

in the woods.

And I looked up, and right there in front of me was this fox.

No more than ten yards away.

A beauty.

And we stood there, just like that.

He looking at me, and me looking at him.

I brought up the gun, and there he was, straight down the barrels.

And I said to myself, well, well, old friend, we're after the same thing,

aren't we?

A nice plump duck.

But if I don't get one, there'll be some bread and cheese.

But what will there be for you?

I lowered the gun.

He kept looking at me for, well, it must have been ten seconds or more.

Then he turned away.

He didn't run, just a sort of loping walk.

Things like that have happened to me more than once.

It's as if you build up a sort of understanding, a sympathy almost.

frightening in a way killer and victim all the power one-sided the

victim almost knowing resigned willing you to pull the trigger

there's

nothing tastier than a pheasant that you've caught yourself and I should know

I've had a few

Poachers are born, they say, not made.

Once a man said to me, if there was one pheasant in a four-acre wood, you could

walk straight to him.

And he was right, you know.

I could.

Except for one time.

For a whole week, Nothing went right for me.

Not a pheasant, and I've never had trouble with them. In fact, there are so

many ways of taking pheasants that I'm surprised there are any of them left.

Not a fish, not a duck, not even a rabbit in a snare, and they're easy

enough.

But for this whole week, nothing.

Even my favorite ferret failed.

And it wasn't as if anything had changed.

Same woods, same tracks.

I know the place like the back of me hand.

Every tree, every bush, every twig almost.

And I did all the same things.

But for a whole week, nothing.

I said to myself, nothing's changed with you, old son.

You're doing it like you've always done it.

So what the hell's going wrong?

And it was then that I saw the fire.

Not a big one.

One flame.

Orange in the dark.

I moved towards it.

And quite suddenly, it went out.

You know how it is.

You think you've seen something, and suddenly, it isn't there anymore.

But I'd seen that fire.

I was sure of it.

And I crept to where it had been, to a clearing in the elders.

There was a circle there, scraped in the mud.

I was wary of crossing it, knowing about these things.

And as I did, I felt a distinct chill come over me.

There were the ashes.

I reached down and touched them.

They were cold.

Stone cold.

And so was I.

The next night, the same thing. All the snares empty.

And I'd set them.

I swear to you, with all the care of an apprentice, me, an apprentice, but

that's what I'd done.

I don't like saying this, but the fact of the matter was that I'd begun to

doubt myself.

I went back over all the things I'd learnt and taught myself, and I did

them, for the first time in years, by the book.

Nothing that is except the fire.

And then, as I made the move towards it, it disappeared.

For nights after that, the same thing happened. A different place, but always

the same fire.

And the woods were different, too.

There's always sound in a nighttime wood.

You know, a stir of branches, the snapping of a twig.

But the strange thing was, and I'm not sure I was really aware of it at the

time, but every time I saw those fires, there was bird song in the air. And

birds don't sing at night, do they?

Each time I saw the fire, I'd move towards it, 200 yards, 100,

25, but any closer and the fire would go out.

Then, on the seventh night, I went into the woods again, making this time

towards the stream where I tickled the salmon and trout.

There was a sliver of a moon, I remember, and a stillness that was

uncanny.

I looked up, and there was the fire.

I had to cross the stream.

So I took off my boots and hung them around my neck.

No sound, just a swirl of water and the hairy birdsong.

Once across the stream, I was quite near the fire.

I could see it distinctly.

The dancing flames, the swirling smoke.

Closer than I'd ever been.

So careful, I swear I never made a sound.

And then, quite suddenly, the man appeared,

moving into the firelight.

to where I was, and he beckoned.

I think I was frightened. I'm not quite sure now, but I know what I really was.

I was bloody annoyed that a poacher as good as I reckon I am, well, it's the

worst thing that can happen to a poacher, that he can be seen by anybody

when he's been using every trick he's ever learned not to be seen.

But nothing for it, I thought.

He didn't look like a keeper, so I got up and walked towards the fire.

Around it, as before, was the circle, scraped in the earth.

I stopped at the edge of it.

The man looked at me across it.

That's not for you, he said, and told me to join him.

It's a fine night.

It is a fine fire.

I've been waiting for you.

Waiting for me?

What do you want with me?

Shall I help you?

We sat together talking by the fire.

For how long?

I'm still not sure.

An hour, maybe. Perhaps two.

The fire blazed on.

It worried me.

It could be seen for miles, I was sure.

And Lordy's keepers, I knew from experience, were likely to be much

closer than that.

The man...

seemed to read my mind. There's only two people in this world that can see that

fire, he said, and that's you and me.

And it was then that I began to think that this was no place for me to be.

What's your name, then?

Lookdown.

Lookdown? Why?

I dragged my eyes from his face and looked down.

And where his feet should have been.

There were two cloven hooves.

Slowly, he stood up and then came towards me.

I was terrified, but I couldn't move.

It was as if I'd been struck by lightning. The hole in my shoulder

seemed to burn.

A hot iron couldn't have been worse.

I don't know how long I was unconscious, but when I came to, he'd

gone.

And that's when I ran.

Uncaring of noise, uncaring of anything.

Keepers to hell with keepers. Across the stream, in and out of the rhododendrons,

dodging the dark trunks of the dark trees, blundering, blundering,

blundering. A professional poacher who... Not me.

Not Ben.

From that day on, everything seemed to go right with me.

It was as if I was one of the chosen ones, one of the favoured.

Nice one.

With the booty.

Will do.

A whole fortnight it had been, and I'd taken nothing.

But now, nothing got away.

I couldn't fail, and all the old tricks began to work again.

In time, the burning sensation left me shoulder, but the mark didn't.

It turned from red to black.

And I know you're not going to believe this.

It took on the shape of a cloven hoof.

I hid it from everybody.

Never ever did anybody, even on the hottest of hot summer days, nobody saw

me without a shirt on.

But in the woods, I was infallible.

It was at that precise moment that I stopped being a poacher.

It was all too easy. The sense of adventure had gone.

It was like being a burglar in a town with no locks.

It was as if a special power had been conferred upon me.

And if it had, well, I knew where it had come from, and I wanted no

more of it.

From then on, I walked the countryside, like a landlord, like Lordy himself.

I looked at it, and I loved it, but I took nothing from it, except for what's

always there, the beauty.

for those who have eyes that want to see.

Of course, it was harder for the dog than me.

He wanted to be up and doing, all this sitting about under trees and looking.

I don't think he ever understood.

Last spring in the pub, I told this story, just as I've told it to you.

And I looked at the eyes, and in them, I saw what I knew would be there.

Disbelief in some, a sort of grudging half-belief in others.

Except for one man.

And in his eyes, I saw something else.

Not belief nor disbelief.

Just the look of somebody who's used to be in the center of attention and for

the past half hour or so hadn't been.

As you know, I carry his mark to this day.

Oh, I knew what he was going to do.

After all, there was only one proof of my story.

And I thought, to hell with it. And I said to myself, don't you bother, old

son. I'll do it for you.

You want to see?

So, see.