Wulfgar the black fox is famous throughout Dartmoor. To the boy known as Stray, a reflection of the young Brian Carter himself, he is an almost mythic hero. But for the poacher and trapper, Scoble, the black fox epitomises the evil which has haunted him all his adult life. Scoble’s mission is to kill all foxes and Wulfgar in particular. Repugnant, semi-reclusive, he is a man without redeeming features. Bravely, Carter shows us how this came to be. There is no room for sympathy, but there is understanding.
Golden lichens plugged the cracks and chinks in the wall, and the countryside was the colour of a firecrest. The day had been hot enough to ripple distances, but after sunset the temperature dropped rapidly. Curlews and lapwings fluted across the dusk and he hunted field corners where the rabbit runs were furrows in the dew.
Carter’s writing is fantastic, deeply eloquent in evoking Dartmoor and its wildlife. The foxes’ interactions with other creatures are well-written, their conversations often as amusing as they are profound, although I sometimes found this tendency towards anthropomorphism to be the novel’s weakest element, and the frequent digressions into shamanistic vision and origin myth became a little too profuse for my taste. For me, the foxes’ lives alone are rich enough to confer magical status upon them. Not only are they apart from humanity, but above it. For a fox, killing is necessary; a keen instant in which his own survival is ensured. Man’s way of killing confounds him. This contrast between necessity and choice runs as a constant, wider theme at Wulfgar’s side; stark references to manmade death are all the more chilling for their almost casual inclusion.
Written in the late 1940s, the book hearkens back to both world wars. The legacy of pain and death handed down from one generation to the next is inescapable for some, a catalyst for change for others. There is cruelty and suffering here, but it is not a pessimistic book. There is hope.
The countryside writer John Lewis-Stempel has compared Brian Carter’s novel with BB’s Wild Lone — a favourite novel for my entire reading life. I could not place it quite so high, for Wild Lone has a purity which puts it in a class of its own. But this in no way detracts from Carter’s achievement. His book heightens the senses. I found myself observing wildlife with greater acuity and accuracy because of it. The story haunted me long after reading.
(The title of this piece is taken from A Line Made By Walking by Sara Baume.)