The Plague Dogs: A Novel Read online

  “Williamson sounded hellish angry,” said Mr. Furse, the assistant editor of the Lakeland News, downing the last of his second pint. “In fact, I couldn’t really get an awful lot of sense out of him, for that reason.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you be?” replied Mr. Weldyke, the editor. “What’s his damage—three sheep, did you tell me, and a chicken pen smashed in or something? Oh, nice of you to come over, Jane. Two pints as before, please.”

  “Ay, but I mean he doosn’t have to take it out on me, now, dooz he?”

  “Y’ shouldn’t be standing in the road, should you?” said the editor. “Anyway, what’s your notion—are you going to do a piece on it?”

  “Short piece, ay, might as well. ‘Mysterious sheep losses in Dunnerd’l’—you know the sort of thing. Thanks, Jane. Cheers, Mike! But it’ll all blow over. Happen fella whose dog it is knows very well already; and he’s keeping his mouth shut. If it goes on, he’ll maybe go out himself one night by moonlight, find it and get rid of it—shoot it himself, as like as not, and no one the wiser.”

  “But you said Williamson was accusing the Animal Research place at Coniston. Did you ask them about it?”

  “Oh, ay—rang ‘em up. They’d nothing to say at all. ‘No comment’ Just what I’d say in their position. I can’t see much point in pushing any harder where they’re concerned, can you? I mean, God knows what they have to do to all those poor brutes up there. I know it’s in a good cause; you’ve got to have science and progress; but I mean they very probably don’t know from day to day what’s dead and what’s dying and just how many they have got. You can bet your boots the N.F.U. wouldn’t want them pushed around—they must be far too useful to farmers in general. So it follows that we don’t, doesn’t it? Ours is a farming area and our readers are farmers.”

  “Ee—yes, I can see that,” replied the editor reflectively, looking out at the men striding like scissors down Market Street to get out of the rain. “So we cover it without mentioning the research station, right? N.F.U. or no N.F.U., farmers are entitled to expect this sort of thing to be covered in their local paper. If there is a dog gone feral, playing merry hell in Dunnerd’l or Lickledale or somewhere, we ought to find out as much as we can and print it, if only so that local chaps can get together and organize a hunt with guns if they think it’s worth while.”

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Nice to see you. How are you?”

  Mr. Weldyke and Mr. Furse looked up to encounter the smile of a dark, very much dressed man of about forty-five, who affably waved a hand beringed with two large stones set in gold. (His other was holding a double whisky.)

  “I couldn’t help hearing what you were saying,” said this gentleman ingratiatingly. “We haven’t actually met, but you’ll remember my name, business-wise—it’s Ephraim, manager of the Kendal branch of Suitable Suits. You’ve kindly printed a lot of our advertising, of course, as you’ll recall.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Mr. Ephraim,” said Mr. Weldyke, his gaze, as it returned for a few moments to his pint, encountering en passant a dove-grey waistcoat adorned with mother-of-pearl buttons and a thin, long-and-short-linked gold watch-chain. “Nice to meet you. Are you going to join us?”

  He drew back a chair and as he did so his eye caught Mr. Furse’s for the briefest of moments. That eye said, “I don’t have to tell you that local newspapers never disoblige their regular advertisers.”

  “Well, thanks, if I may. Only for a moment.”

  “We’ve just slipped out for a jar and a snack. It’s my round—that’s whisky you’re drinking, isn’t it? Good. And can I get you a pork—” (Mr. Furse kicked him under the table.) “I mean, they have some good chicken sandwiches, or there’s hot Scotch eggs in that glass thing there, if you prefer.”

  “No, no, thanks, I’ve had lunch. I’ll only stay for a quick one with you.” As Mr. Furse departed from the bay-window table to attract Jane’s attention once more, Mr. Ephraim went on, “It was just an idea that occurred to me, Mr. Weldyke, for a little stroke of business—business with benefit to the community, one hopes, and perhaps a bit of sport as well. As I said, I couldn’t help hearing what you were saying about the wild dog down Dunnerdale way and how the farmers might be wanting to organize a hunt. Now my idea is this. By the way, is it quite convenient to put this before you now? Have you time?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly, Mr. Ephraim. We should be most interested to hear your idea.”

  “Ah, you’re back quickly, Mr. Furse. Easy to see you’re a favoured customer, eh?”

  “Oh, me and Mike here practically support th’ place. Cheers!”

  “Good health! Success to journalism! Well, now, we’re anxious to expand business a bit in that western area—you know, get some fresh custom, let the locals know who we are and all that. Of course, I know hill-farmers aren’t millionaires, but even they’re spending a good deal more on clothes than they used to and we feel there’s a potential. Affluent society, you know, and all that. What I feel we’ve got to do is meet the country farmer half-way—show him we’re offering value for money and nothing up our sleeves—let him see we’re human, you know. So—tell you what I’ll do! Suppose we were to organize this dog hunt—with your help on the publicity side, of course. Just thinking aloud, we’d provide six—well, say five cartridges for every man taking part, and offer each gun, up to twenty, his choice of either two hard-wearing shirts or a pair of good, serviceable trousers. And then for the one who actually kill the dog—have to think how we’re going to be sure he’s killed the right one, of course—a ready-made two-piece suit, with a free fitting thrown in. You do the photographs—the lucky farmer shaking hands with me over the body and all that, eh? What you’re thinking, eh?”

  “Well, I should think it’s worth it from your point of view, Mr. Ephraim. From ours, it’s a whale of an idea. There’s one or two details we’d have to work out, of course—”

  “Of course, of course. But we’re wanting to move fast, eh? The dog might stop raiding or maybe someone else shoots it before we do—you know?” (Mr. Ephraim waved his hands expressively.) “You get something in the paper Wednesday, our Mr. Emmer goes round the farms Thursday, gets it all set up for Saturday—I’ll be out there myself, of course—”

  “Fine, Mr. Ephraim, fine. Now look, can you just come back for a minute to the office? Then we can get the thing roughed out, and young Bob Castlerigg can get to work on a piece—you’ll see it before publication, of course—”

  Fridaythe 5th November

  “Where did you say we were going, tod?” Snitter shivered in the chilly evening rain and sniffed at the sheep-rank turf, where even now a few late tormentils and louseworts were in bloom. They were crossing Dunnerdale.

  “Ower to Eshd’l. Bootterilket groond—ay. Noo whisht a bit! Haald on!” The tod looked one way and the other, north to the Leeds mountain hut at Dale Head and south to Hinnin House and the dark, coniferous plantation rising up the fell behind it. Other than cows, no living creature was in sight. The tod slipped across the road in front of the gate and cattle-grid and Rowf and Snitter followed him along the line of a dry stone wall which led them across the pasture and down to Duddon tumbling noisily over its stones among the ash trees. On the bank, Rowf checked.

  “Water? Look, I told you—”

  “Haddaway! There’s mair stones than watter. In w’ goin’ fer a duck!”

  The tod slid almost daintily into the edge of the main channel, swam the few yards across and ran over white stones to the peaty bank on the farther side.

  “Oh, look!” said Snitter suddenly, “a fish—a big one!”

  “Ay, sea troot. It’s upstream they go aboot noo.”

  Snitter, fascinated, watched the iridescent trout as it almost broke surface in a shallow place before vanishing into deeper water.

  “D’you ever eat fish, tod?”

  “Ay, Ah’ve had a few deed ’uns as th’ folks has thrown oot.”

  “Dead? Where d’you find them?”

 
; “Middens—dustbins. Are ye comin’?”

  Rowf set his teeth, hit the water with a splash and was out on the further bank. Snitter followed.

  “My head’s an umbrella, you know,” said Snitter. “It opens and shuts all right—it’s open now, actually—er—forbye there’s a rib broken. The water runs from front to back and trickles down inside the crack.”

  “Mind yer a fond boogger, ye, an’ not ower strang neether, but yer ne fyeul.”

  “Thanks, tod,” said Snitter. “I really appreciate that.”

  They skirted the edge of the plantation along the foot of Castle How and turned westward again, leaving Black Hall to the north.

  “I’m sorry,” said Snitter three quarters of a mile later, as they reached the crest of the steep slope. “I’m not built for this, you know. The dilapidation—no, the degradation—I mean the destination—oh, dear.” He sat down and looked about him in the failing light. “Wherever have we got to?”

  “Hard Knott. Bootterilket’s doon bye. Yon’s Eshd’l, ye knaw.”

  “What happens now?” asked Rowf.

  “Hang on a bit till neet-time, then we can run doon th’ fell an’ take th’ forst yow ye fancies. By, yer a grrand provider.” The tod looked at Rowf admiringly. “Ah’ve getten a full belly runnin’ wi’ thoo.”

  “Going to make us wait, are you?” said Snitter, sitting back on his haunches in a wet brush of ling. “You’d better sing us a song, tod, to pass the time. Do tods have songs?”

  “Ay, we do, noo an’ agen. Ay, Ah mind our aald wife made up a bonny ’un, lang time back.”

  “Your dam? Did she? What’s it called?”

  The tod made no reply. Snitter recalled its confusion when he had asked its name and hastily went on, “A bonny ’un?”

  “Ay, it wez a canny bit song. She wad sing it on shiny neets.”

  “Well, never mind shiny neet,” said Snitter. “Can ye not remember noo? Come on, Rowf, you ask him.”

  “Oh, may as well,” said Rowf. “Can you smell that yow down there? I’ll tear it, you see if I don’t.”

  “Ay, it’ll be varry soon felled an’ fettled when us gets at it. Just tappy lappy doon th’ bankside an’ grab it b’ th’ slack o’ th’ neck.”

  “Well, sing up, then, tod,” said Rowf. “If it’s going to be that easy, you’ve got something to sing about.”

  The tod paused a while, rolling on its back and scratching on a patch of stones. Snitter waited patiently, the rain running down his nose from the trenched gash in his head. He could be no wetter. A car churned slowly up the pass and as its sidelights topped Fat Betty Stone and it started to creep away downhill in low gear, the tod began.

  “A hill tod it wor layin’

  Atop a roondy crag.

  An’ niff o’ powltry doon belaa

  Fair made its whiskers wag.

  Th’ farmer’s canny lad, ye ken;

  Geese fast i’ th’ hemmel, ducks i’ th’ pen.

  Then fyeul shuts henhoose less one hen!

  Begox, yon tod wez jumpin’!”

  “Terrific!” said Rowf. “Go on!” The tod obliged.

  “Next neet th’ farmer’s woman,

  By, ye shud hear hor bubble!

  ‘Ah’ll skite th’ Jugs off yonder tod

  That’s puttin’ us te trouble!’

  She’s roond th’ stackyard i’ th’ rain,

  She looks i’ th’ barn an’ looks again.

  She nivver stopped th’ back-end drain!

  Hey-up, yon tod wez jumpin’!”

  Snitter yapped happily and after a few moments the tod launched into the final spasm.

  “Th’ light’s gan oot i’ th’ farmhoose.

  It’s gey an’ quiet it seems.

  The aald chep’s flat-oot snotterin’

  An’ dreamin’ bonny dreams.

  An’ when yon sun comes up agin,

  There’s hank o’ feathers clagged to th’ whin,

  But nowt to show where tod got in!

  By, mind, th’ gaffer’s jumpin’!

  “There’s mist o’ th’ tops te hide ye.

  There’s bracken thick o’ th’ fell.

  Streams where th’ hoonds won’t track ye.

  Ye’ve lugs, me tod, an’ smell.

  There’s shiny neets ye’ll lowp and lark

  And randy run te th’ vixen’s bark.

  Ca’ canny, else yer fer th’ Dark

  Yon fettles aall yer jumpin’!”

  “What became of your mother, tod?” asked Snitter.

  “Hoonds,” replied the tod indifferently, and began licking one paw.

  As night shut down the rain slackened, though the salty wind persisted, carrying their scent away eastward. From far out at sea, beyond Eskdale, the west yet glimmered with some streaks of day. Nothing could now be seen in the deep cleft below, but from the sharp-eared and keen-scented three the blackness concealed no movement of the Bootterilket Herdwicks among the rustling bracken below. Two yows together were moving slowly down into the bottom, while a third lagged further and further behind. At a final glance from the tod the hunting pack spread out and, with practised smoothness, began their encircling descent.

  “—playin’ bluidy ‘ell,” said Robert Lindsay firmly, while carefully keeping his voice below the level of the conversation in the bar. “They are that—and theer’s not a doubt they’re dogs, ‘Arry—cann’t be nowt else. Livin’ systematically off o’ sheep.”

  “Oh, ay?” Old Tyson drew on his pipe and looked down, swilling the remaining third of his pint round and round the pot.

  In response to all hints and leads he had so far remained uncommunicative. Robert, with reluctance, decided that, much as he disliked asking direct questions, there was evidently going to be no alternative to taking the bull by the horns.

  “Weel, ‘Arry, it were joost as bank chap i’ Broughton were sayin’ as tha’d told Gerald Gray at Manor soomthing about dogs gettin’ out o’ research place, like.”

  “Oh, ay?”

  “Well, it’s serious matter, ‘Arry, tha knaws, is sheep-killing, an’ a bluidy lot o’ woorry for thim as has sheep ont’ fell. It is that. Happen Gerald were wrong—”

  Tyson re-lit his pipe, took a pull at his pint and again gazed reflectively into the almost empty pot. Robert, whose sympathetic imagination knew intuitively just how far to push his man, waited in silence, eyes fixed on the tiled floor. Among his many gifts was that of sitting still and saying nothing without seeming in the least put out or causing any embarrassment.

  “Theer’s plenty Ah could saay gin Ah were stoock int’ box,” said Tyson at last. “Ah’m noan dodgin’ owt, Bob, tha knaws. But Director oop at Lawson says to saay nowt, an’ Ah divven’t want to lose job, tha knaws. It’s reet enoof job, is that, an’ suits me joost now.”

  “Ay, it’s reet good job, ‘Arry; it is that. Ye’d not be wanting any trooble.”

  There was another pause.

  “Theer’s organized hunt tomorrow, tha knaws,” said Robert. “Got oop by tailor chap in Kendal, for advertisement like. Ah’ll be gooin’ along, joost for a bit o’ sport.”

  “Oh, ay?” said Tyson.

  Silence returned. Robert finished his light ale.

  “Well, this wayn’t do, bidin’ sooppin’ ale, Ah’ll joost have to be gettin’ along now,” he said, rising briskly to his feet with a clatter of nailed boots on the tiles. “Ah’ve still a bit to do milkin’ cows, owd lad. ‘Appen if tha had lost dog out o’ yon plaace, tha’d knaw it’d not be woon to be chasin’ sheep; so no bother, like.”

  He nodded and made to move towards the door, from beyond which sounded an intermittent popping and banging as the young of Coniston celebrated the debacle of Guy Fawkes. At the last moment Tyson touched his sleeve.

  “Woon on ‘em were fair devil of a beeäst,” he murmured into his beer, and immediately, without putting on his glasses, began studying the evening paper upside down.

  Saturday the 6th November

  “I
t’s too much for me,” said Snitter. “Haddaway hyem, tod. And you, Rowf. I’ll have to follow you back later.”

  It was perhaps an hour before first light. The night’s hunt along the steep, western slopes of Hard Knott had proved the longest and most exhausting they had yet undertaken. Without the tod’s uncanny ability to tell which way the quarry was likely to have fled, they would certainly have lost it in the dark and been obliged to begin the whole hard task once more. Rowf, kicked and battered yet again before the death, had broken up the kill ferociously, his own blood mingling with the sheep’s as he gnawed hoof, gristle, bone and sinew in his ravenous hunger. The splinters of broken bone, pricking Snitter’s belly as he lay down to sleep, recalled to him the guinea-pigs’ tiny remains in the ashes of the furnace-chamber.

  Waking in the night with a vague sense of menace and danger, he had found himself so chilled, stiff and lame that he began to doubt whether he would be able to manage the return to Brown Haw with the others. He felt strange. His head was full of a far-off ringing sound that seemed to come between his hearing and the wind and he had, looking about him, a renewed sense of detachment and unreality-symptoms which he had come to know all too well. For a time he limped up and down while the others slept on, then lay down again and dreamed of an enormous, explosive crash, of disintegration and terror and of falling endlessly between the sheer walls of a putrescent cleft smelling of disinfectant and tobacco. Starting up, he felt his ear nipped between pointed teeth and found the tod beside him. “Yer weel woke up oot of that, kidder.”

  “Oh—a dream! You didn’t hear—no, of course not.” Snitter struggled up. “Was I making a noise?”

  “Ne kiddin’. Ye wor rollin’ aboot an’ shootin’ yer heed off. Fit te be heard a mile, hinny.”