The Plague Dogs: A Novel Page 48

  “How’s the terrier doing, Ronald?” he called.

  “Bit better, I think. It’s not breathing too well, but it’ll probably pick up as it gets warmer. I say, have you spotted those people on the sand dunes over there? Four or five of ‘em—couple of soldiers and one or two others. They seem to be waving at us, for some reason.”

  Peter Scott put his binoculars outside and his head after them.

  “One of them looks like Jim Rose,” he said, “the Drigg warden. That’s the nature reserve all along those dunes, you know. It’s not like him to go waving at passing boats just for the hell of it. Take her in a bit nearer, Ronald, can you? We’ve got time on our hands anyway, until the tide really begins to make. We might as well find out what’s exciting them. Come to that, you could take her gently in until she grounds. Tide’ll soon float her off the sand. She’s got such a shallow draught that we’ll easily get close enough for a word with Jim.”

  Peter Scott took the terrier from Ronald Lockley, wrapped it in a squeezed-out warm towel and laid it on the cabin floor. The bigger dog stopped barking and began first to sniff at it and then to lick its ears.

  “Will you be wanting any more of that beef, Ronald?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Peter Scott picked up a knife, cut the last of the meat off the bone and made himself a sandwich. Holding it in one hand, he allowed the closed fist of the other to drop towards the floor and hang still, close to the terrier’s head. After a long and suspicious pause, the black dog began to sniff it over; paused again; and at last gave it a cautious lick. Peter Scott, looking up, met the amused glance of Ronald Lockley in the stern.

  “D’you think it’s got a name?” he asked.

  As soon as he spoke the dog began to bark again, but ceased as neither of the two men made the slightest movement or sign of alarm.

  “I should think it must be called ‘Rowf-Rowf,’ ” answered Ronald. “It’s said nothing else for the last twenty minutes.”

  “Hallo, Rowf,” said Peter Scott, scratching the dog’s ear. “Have a bone.”

  In the chilly, grey light of the November morning, Mr. Powell sat at the kitchen table, stirring his tea and watching the starlings running on the lawn.

  “Why don’t you turn the light on, Steve?” said his wife, coming in with a breakfast tray which she set down on the draining-board. “There’s no need to make it gloomier than it is, after all. Oh, come on, now, cheer up,” she went on, putting an arm round his shoulder. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Feel I’ve let you down,” muttered Mr. Powell wretchedly.

  “Course you haven’t! Now you listen—”

  “I still don’t understand why they’ve done it,” said Mr. Powell. “I suppose I just can’t have filled the bill for some reason or other. I was so keen at one time, too. Wanted to be a good bloke and all that. I just don’t seem to have been able to manage it.”

  “Now look, don’t upset yourself any more, dear. They’re not worth bothering about, those people, honestly they’re not. I reckon they’ve treated you worse than a dog. Why not forget about it? It’ll all come right, you see; and we don’t have to move just yet.”

  “Is there anything left on that tray that I can give the monkey?” asked Mr. Powell, looking over his shoulder at the draining-board. “He seems a bit better this morning.”

  “The monkey, dear—that’s the only thing that does worry me a bit,” said Mrs. Powell. “I mean, they’re not going to like it, are they, if they find out you took it away? Why not go in early on Monday and put it back? No one’d know, only that old Tyson, and then you could—”

  “I won’t put it back,” said Mr. Powell, “and they can think what they like.”

  “But it’s only one animal, dear, out of thousands. I mean, what’s the good, and they’ve got to recommend you for a transfer—”

  “I can’t explain. It’s not for the monkey’s good, it’s for my good. I won’t put it back. I’m going to keep it.”

  “But it doesn’t belong to us. It’s their property.”

  “I know. Their property.” Mr. Powell paused, drumming his fingers on the plastic table-top. “It’s not—any more than I am. Sandra, love, I’ve been thinking. We don’t want to leave here, do we? I mean, another move for Stephanie, maybe back to some big town, and she likes it here so much. It’s done her good. The doctor was only saying—”

  “But, Steve, wait a minute—”

  “No, hang on, sweetheart.” Among those who loved him and meant him well Mr. Powell could rise, on occasion, to a certain authority—even dignity. “This is what I want to tell you. I’m seriously considering looking for a different sort of job altogether, somewhere round here, so that we don’t have to leave.”

  “You mean, not laboratory work at all?”

  “That’s it. It’ll mean a financial drop, I know that, but all the same I’d like to give it a whirl. Could be teaching, might even be farming. I’m going to talk to Gerald Gray at The Manor—he knows a hell of a lot about the neighbourhood—”

  “It’s a big step, Steve—”

  “I know that all right. In jee-oppardy.” She laughed. “Just let me go on thinking about it, will you? I won’t do anything pree-cipitate, I promise,” added Mr. Powell, as though there might be some danger of his being deposited at the bottom of a tank. “It’s just—well, I don’t know—it’s just that I feel, well, sort of that everyone’s—well, everyone’s sort of entitled to their own lives, sort of—” said Mr. Powell, frowning and stabbing with a wet forefinger at the crumbs on the table. “Anyway, not to worry.” He got up and kissed his wife affectionately. “How’s Stephanie this morning?”

  “She seems a bit under the weather,” said Sandra, still in his arms. “She ate her breakfast all right, though.”

  “I’ll go up and read to her,” said Mr. Powell. “I’ll just see to the old monk—”

  “You go on up, dear. I’ll feed the poor little feller. No honest,” said Sandra, as Mr. Powell hesitated. “I’m going to get really fond of it. Oh, Steve,” and she put her arms round his neck again. “I’ll back you up, darling, honest I will. I think you’re terrific! Straight up, I do.”

  Mr. Powell, filled with the sustaining notion that he was terrific and pondering on whether it would be feasible to keep his establishment together while he took a teacher’s training course, went upstairs.

  Stephanie, whose bed was by the window, was looking out at the bird-table and the lake beyond. As her father came into the room she put a finger to her lips and pointed at the nut-bag hanging outside. Mr. Powell came to a stop, craning his neck. Seeing nothing remarkable, he smiled at her, shaking his head.

  “Nuthatch, daddy, but he’s gone. And a scobby.”

  “Scobby—what the dickens is that?”

  She laughed. “It’s what Jack Nicholson calls a chaffinch.”

  “Is it, now? Well, I never heard that before. How’re you doing, pet?” He sat down on the bed.

  “Sort of—it does—sort of hurt a bit this morning. I expect it’ll be better later.”

  “Like one of your pills?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He emptied the tumbler and fetched fresh water and the pill-bottle. She swallowed, grimacing, and then began to brush her long hair, first one side and then the other.

  “Daddy, you know—” She paused, again looking out of the window.

  “What, love?”

  “I am going to get better, aren’t I?”

  “Course you are! Good grief—”

  “It’s only that—oh, daddy,” and she suddenly looked up, flinging back her hair and putting down the brush. “I sometimes wonder whether they won’t be too late for me. They won’t find out in time.”

  “Yes, they will,” answered Mr. Powell with laudable conviction.

  “How d’you know?”

  “They’re finding out more and more every day.” He took the dying child in his arms, laid his face against hers and rocked her to and fro. “They’r
e doing masses of experiments all the time, they know more than they’ve ever known—”

  “How do they find out with the experiments?”

  “Well, one way they can find out a whole lot is to make an animal ill and then try different ways to make it better until they find one that works.”

  “But isn’t that unkind to the animal?”

  “Well, I suppose it is, sort of; but I mean, there isn’t a dad anywhere would hesitate, is there, if he knew it was going to make you better? It’s changed the whole world during the last hundred years, and that’s no exaggeration. Steph, honest, love, do believe me, I know they’re going to be able to put you right.” He rumpled her hair affectionately.

  “Oh, daddy, I’ve just brushed it!”

  “Oops, sorry! Well, if you can complain you must be feeling better. Are you?”

  She nodded. “Will you read to me now?”

  “I surely will. Dr. Dolittle’s Zoo.” He picked it up from the bedside table. “You know, there’s only a bit of this left. We shall finish it this time. D’you want to go straight on with the next one, Dr. Dolittle’s Garden?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “O.K. Now, where had we got to?”

  “Tommy Stubbins and the others had gone to talk to the Doctor about old Mr. Throgmorton’s will.”

  “Oh, yes. Right, make yourself comfortable. This is Tommy Stubbins talking to the Doctor.

  “ ‘ “Now, don’t you see, Doctor,” I ended, showing him the scrap of parchment again, “it is practically certain that when this piece is joined to the rest that last line will read ‘an Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,’ or some such title. For that is the cause in which this man had already spent great sums of money while he was alive. And that is the cause which the wretched son, Sidney Throgmorton, has robbed of probably a large fortune. Doctor, it is the animals who have been cheated.”

  “ ‘We all watched the Doctor’s face eagerly as he pondered for a silent moment over my somewhat dramatic harangue.’ ”

  “What’s a harangue?”

  “Well, a harangue,” said Mr. Powell, “it’s sort of—well, if I make a very intense, excited sort of speech, about animals or something—”

  Gripped by a searing cold which seemed to enclose him as a spider’s web a fly, Snitter soared and circled slowly, wings outspread in a bitter, windy sunset. There was no stopping, no descending. Like a leaf spiralling above a drain he turned and turned, himself motionless yet borne on towards some terrible, still centre. And here, he now perceived, stood Mr. Ephraim, killer and victim, slapping his knee and calling to him without a sound in the freezing silence. Behind him, one on either side, stood Kiff and the tod; while far below, the pewter-coloured waves crept stealthily down the wind.

  His eyes were filmed with ice and, now that he knew that he was dead, he peered through it, without fear of falling, at what lay beneath him in the twilight. The world, he now perceived, was in fact a great, flat wheel with a myriad spokes of water, trees and grass, for ever turning and turning beneath the sun and moon. At each spoke was an animal—all the animals and birds he had ever known—horses, dogs, chaffinches, mice, hedgehogs, rabbits, cows, sheep, rooks and many more which he did not recognize—a huge, striped cat, and a monstrous fish spurting water in a fountain to the sky. At the centre, on the axle itself, stood a man, who ceaselessly lashed and lashed the creatures with a whip to make them drive the wheel round. Some shrieked aloud as they bled and struggled, others silently toppled and were trodden down beneath their comrades’ stumbling feet. And yet, as he himself could see, the man had misconceived his task, for in fact the wheel turned of itself and all he needed to do was to keep it balanced upon its delicate axle by adjusting, as might be necessary, the numbers of animals upon this side and that. The great fish poured blood as the man pierced it with a flying spear which exploded within its body. The striped cat melted, diminishing slowly to the size of a mouse; and a great, grey beast with a long trunk cried piteously as the man tore its white tusks out of its face. Still on towards the wheel he circled, and between him and the wheel Mr. Ephraim called him silently to fellowship with the dead.

  Suddenly the whole vast scene began to crumble and gradually to disappear, like frost melting from a window-pane or autumn leaves blowing—some, others and more—from trees on the edge of a wood. Through the growing rents and gaps in the vision he could glimpse wooden planking and smell—for of course, it had been an olfactory as well as a visual apparition—oil, tar and human flesh. The appalling cold, too, was slowly breaking up, penetrated by needles of warmth as birdsong pierces twilight.

  Whining with pain and the shock of return, Snitter struggled, fluttering eyes and nose to admit incomprehensible smells and images. Relapsing into darkness, he felt himself nevertheless once more drawn upward, as though out of a well. The pain, as feeling was restored to his numbed limbs, seemed unbearable. The wheel, the sky and the sunset were nearly gone now, faint as an almost-vanished rainbow, giving place to smells of canvas, rope and a salty wind that blew and blew. Someone was scratching his ear.

  He raised his head and looked about him. The first thing he saw was Rowf, gnawing a large bone. He stretched out and gave it a cautious lick. It tasted of meat. Obviously they were both dead.

  “Rowf, I’m terribly sorry. The island—”

  “What about it?”

  “The Isle of Dog. It wasn’t true. I made it up to try and help you. It was made up.”

  “It wasn’t. (Runch, runch, crowk.) We’re going there now.”

  “What d’you mean? Where are we—oh, my legs! The bones are going to burst, I believe! Oh—oh, Rowf!—”

  “This man isn’t a whitecoat, that’s what I mean. And he’s not taking us back to the whitecoats, either.”

  “No, of course not. No more whitecoats now.”

  “He’s a decent sort. I trust him. He pulled me out of the tank.”

  “Rowf, I saw—I saw a wheel—How do you know you can trust him?”

  “He smells—well—safe. He’s taking us to the Isle of Dog.”

  Outside the cubby-hole where they were lying, Rowf’s man cupped his hands to his mouth and began shouting. Rowf, gripping the bone, got up and carried it as far as the man’s rubber boots, where he lay down again. After a few moments Snitter followed, scrabbling off the warm cloth in which he had been wrapped. Everything was moving up and down in a most confusing way and the smell of oil lay over everything like a pungent blanket. Another man, talking gently to him, bent down to pat his head.

  “My dam, these are real masters!” said Snitter. “I suppose they must be dead, too. I wonder why we’re all rocking about like this? I shall have to get used to it. Everything’s different here, except the wind and the sky. I hope that wheel’s gone.”

  Rowf’s man stopped shouting and was answered by another voice from some distance away. Rowf had put his front paws up and was looking out in the same direction as the man. Trying to join him, Snitter, still half-numbed, stumbled and fell back, but was at once picked up and held in his arms by the man with glasses who had patted his head.

  There were the waves—white, sharp chips like broken plates—and beyond, not very far off, sand, blown dunes and the long spikes of marram grass blowing, blowing against the sky. There were men, too; a little group on the sand, and one of them down on the water-line, shouting to Rowf’s man.

  “Oh, Rowf, look, two of them have got brown clothes and red hats!”

  “It doesn’t matter any more. We’re all right with this man. We’re safe.”

  “I’ve never heard you say anything like that before.”

  “Well, you have now.”

  There was a gentle scraping, a slight lurch and then everything stopped rocking and became still. Rowf’s man climbed over the side into the water and began splashing away towards the sand-dunes.

  “Why’s one of those men lying down on the sand like that?”

  “Which one? Where? Oh!—”

>   Snitter stared and stared, waiting for the figure to disappear. It did not. Rowf’s man, wading away, passed between them. When he had gone by, the recumbent figure was still there, and in that moment saw Snitter; and called him by name.

  Snitter went over the side in a welter of waves and sea-drift, Rowf barking, gulls swooping and the voice calling from beyond a white foam of rhododendrons all in bloom. And as the morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness, so his rising senses began to chase the ignorant fumes that had so long mantled his clearer reason. Water prickling in the ears, and long strands of brown, crinkled weed slippery under the paws. Snitter shook himself, ran up the beach like a streak of quicksilver and found himself clasped in the arms of his master.

  Even Shakespeare, with all his marvellous achievements at his back, apparently felt unequal to depicting the reunion between Leontes and his Perdita, whom he had believed lost and mourned as dead. He showed better sense than his critics. So forgive me—I make a broken delivery of the business on the sand-dunes at Drigg. I never heard of such another encounter: a sight which was to be seen, but cannot be spoken of. They looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed. A notable passion of wonder appeared in them, but the wisest beholder could not say if the importance were joy or sorrow.

  I have often thought (and this is me again now) that it is strange that no event or happening, however marvellous or splendid, can transcend the limits of time and space. They were hours and minutes that Leander spent with Hero, and certain musical notes necessarily comprised the song the sirens sang. The finest wine can be drunk only once; and the more words that are used to describe it, the sillier they sound. But perhaps, as Major Awdry would no doubt maintain, an animal living entirely in the immediate present (and believing himself dead) might feel the tide of joy even more intensely—if that were possible—than his master (who knew he was alive).

  As Mr. Wood’s tears began to fall upon Snitter’s lifted face and slobbering tongue, Peter Scott, John Awdry and the others turned aside and strolled up the beach, looking out to sea and talking with careful detachment about the tide, the Orielton’s draft and the Ravenglass anchorage.