The Plague Dogs (24 page)

"But did the dog necessarily do it? I can't remember any similar case. On the evidence—"

"Oh, Simpy, and you're a newspaperman? Can't you see it doesn't matter a damn what the dog did? We say it's evident that there was a dog and by the very act of so saying we put the research fellows on the spot to deny it. They're sitting on something they don't want to be forced to say—one can smell that from here, if I'm any judge. Little Eva—the boss—he wants us to discredit Government, right? So that's what we're out for. Our line is first, that Government had to be virtually forced to give the station more money, and secondly, that they stood back and let the station waste it; and then the station imperil the local agricultural economy by letting a dangerous dog escape. Now a life's been lost

—well, what, oh, what more could any newspaperman want?"

"And on top of that," added Mr. Hogpenny fatly, "there's all the schmalz we can do about poor little doggies and hoggies and darling catties and rallies—"

"But that's inconsistent, Anthony," squeaked Mr. Simpson, "if we're taking the line that the Research Station ought lo be doing their work more efficiently—"

"Pooh," answered Mr. Hogpenny, puffing a cloud, "who ever cared a damn about consistency on a national daily? Don't you remember 'Miners Deprive Nation of Coal' and 'Keep Hungarians out of British Coal Pits' on two pages of the same issue? It's emotions that sell popular newspapers, old boy, not logical arguments, as you very well know."

"This particular little game's not really dissimilar from chess, is it?" put in Mr. Skillicorn. "What it comes to is that we feel pretty average sure that if we hopefully position a knight on queen's bishop's fifth, we'll subsequently get some play out of it, even though we can't see exactly what as of now."

(This was how Mr. Skillicorn often talked—and very much how he wrote too.)

"But which knight, I wonder?" asked Mr. Hogpenny, after waiting a few moments to see whether Mr. Simpson to peace and contemplation was dismissed, and quiet of mind, all passion spent.

"We need a good chap—someone who knows how to seize whatever opportunities may offer themselves."

"I'd say Gumm," suggested Mr. Skillicorn. "You mean Digby Driver?" said Mr. Simpson. "Well, Driver, Gumm, whatever you like to call him."

"Why him?"

"Well, he's shown that he's got a flair for making the public dislike anything or anyone he wants them to. That Coulsen business—there wasn't really an awful lot in it, you know-especially the minor offenders—but by the time Gumm had finished with them everyone was absolutely howling for their blood and circulation was up quite a bit. Cheap at the price of two suicides, wasn't it?"

"Can we spare him?"

"I think so," said Mr. Skillicorn, reflecting. "Yes, I don't see why not. He's been on 'English Friends of Amin' for the past week, but he could perfectly well hand that over to someone else and get up to Cumberland right away. The looter the sweeter. This afternoon, in fact."

"How should I brief him, then, Tony, d'you think?" pursued Mr. Simpson.

"To stimulate public speculation and interest over the dog and over Ephraim: you know, 'What is the Sinister Mystery of the Fells?' 'Will Killer Dog Strike Again?' and all that; and to watch for any opportunity that may arise to discredit Animal Research. And any other little larks you can think of, Desmond. But look, I really must be getting on now. I'm supposed to be lunching at the Ivy. Leaf with some clean-air civil servant from DoE. I'm thinking of pushing them around a bit over lead in the atmosphere—there's a fellow at Durham University who's prepared to say virtually anything we want him to. There's embarrassment potential there all right."

He gulped the last of his whiskey and was gone, leaving Mr. Simpson to send for Digby Driver.

Tuesday the 9th November

It was full moon, cloudless, and brighter for being a cold night—the coldest of the autumn so far. From the summit of Harter Fell the peaks of the Scafell range, more than four miles sway across the upper Esk, rose clearly in the silver light—Great End the killer, Crag and Broad Crag, the Pike itself and the long, southern shoulder of the Slight Side. Peaceful they looked in the moonlight, old stumps of great mountains long ago, worn down by ages of storm, wind and ice. Yet for Rowf, wandering back and forth in the dense, coniferous forest of Harter between Hard Knott and Birker Moor, there was no peace and only such little light as fell between the trees and along the open rides between. The movements of roosting birds, the pattering of water, the cracking of sticks and stirring of branches—all imparted to him, in the near-darkness, those feelings of tension and uncertainty which sentient creatures, from men downwards, have always known on strange ground among thick trees. To these, in his case, were added hunger and fatigue.

For the past two days he had been searching for Snitter, by daylight reckless of farmers or shepherds and by night of stumbling and injury in the darkness. After his flight from the men at Cockley Beck, he had picked up Snitter's scent near the top of Hard Knott Pass and followed it upward to the steep rocks on Harter's north face. There he had lost it, wandered till nightfall and then, as mist and rain set in, taken shelter under an overhanging crag The head of Etkdale, from Harter Fell and slept for a few hours. But he had woken with a start, trailing in his nose the wisp of a dream and believing Snitter to be nearby. Bounding down into the heather, he had found only a yow that ran bleating away in the moonlight. Between that night and the middle of the following day he had, nose to ground, encircled the whole of Harter, from the dreary upland of Birker Moor (that wilderness where, in December 1825, poor young Jenkinson, as his tombstone opposite Ulpha church door tells, died in the pelting of the pitiless storm) to the steep banks of Duddon gorge; and so north and round once more by the west. Once he had snapped up a rat and once had routed out and nosed through an ill-buried package of hikers' rubbish—hard bread, fragments of meat and a mouthful or two of soggy potato crisps. Nowhere had he come upon any fresh scent of Snitter. At last, feeling that he had made as sure as he could that Snitter must still be somewhere within the circuit he had made of the mountain, he had started out to hunt him down but then, exhausted, had lain down and fallen asleep once more. When he woke it was early next morning and he set out again, running, as long as the chilly, lustreless daylight lasted, backwards and forwards across the open slopes and searching under the crags.

As twilight closed in—the already-risen moon brightening in the southern sky as daylight waned—he entered the all-but-bare larch woods and began sniffing his way up and down. From time to time he stopped, threw up his head and barked loudly; but the only response was the clattering of disturbed pigeons and the echoes, "Rowf! Rowf!," thrown back from the distant steep of Buck Crag.

There stands a house on the southern edge of this forest—Grassguards, they call it—a dead place now, solitary, untenanted these many years, a shelter for the wandering sheep of Birker Moor, a roosting-place for owls and the pitiless, lamb-blinding crows that frequent the fells. Sometimes, in summer, visitors on holiday look after themselves for a week or two in the roughly furnished dwelling-house, which is reached by no road or lonnin. But the dank barns stand empty, no rooster crows or dog barks and all winter and spring the loudest sounds are the rain, the moorland wind and the wide beck—

Grassguards Gill—pouring between and often over the stepping stones a few yards from the door.

Hither, in the speckled moonlight, from Harter plantations to tfie northern bank of the beck, came Rowf; lame of a paw, muddy of coat, froth of a jaw, hoarse of a throat, taken apart, down of a heart.

And here, as he lapped at the water and lay down exhausted on the crisp, thinly frosted grass, he caught suddenly the faint but unmistakable smell of a scalp wound and of medical disinfectant; and then, fresh and close by, the odour of a smooth-haired dog. At once he leapt up, barking once more, "Rowf-rowf!

Rowf-rowf!"

He was answered by a feeble yelp from the further side of the water. Setting his teeth, he crossed, jumping awkwardly from stone to wet stone. The barn had a half-door, the upper part of which was ajar. Rowf threw himself at it, scrabbled a moment, climbing, then dropped down on the earth and round cobbles of the floor within.

Picking himself up, he made his way across to where Snitter was lying on a patch of straw beside an old heap of slack coal. He pushed at him with his head, but before he could speak Snitter said, "Oh, are you here too, after all? I'm sorry—I'd hoped somehow you'd be left out of it—"

"Of course I'm here, you fool; and a nice jolly outing I've had finding you. I'm tired out and half-starved as well. What happened to you?"

Snitter got up shiveringly, his muzzle brushing against Rowf's shaggy flank.

After a few moments he said, "It's strange. You'd have thought we wouldn't be hungry or thirsty any more, wouldn't you? But I'm both."

"Well, so I should blasted well think, if you've been lying here all this time. How did you get here?"

"Well, I fell, Rowf, of course. And I suppose you fell too, didn't you?"

"Fell? Don't be stupid. I've run miles. This pad's bleeding—smell it."

"Rowf, you don't understand what's happened, do you? You don't know where we are?"

"Well, suppose you tell me. Only buck up—we both need something to eat."

"What happened to you when I—you know—when I—when the air all blew to pieces? Oh, Rowf, I'm so very sorry! I know it's all my fault, but I couldn't help it— not either time. The first time was the worst, of course—my master, I mean—but this time, too—I don't know who the poor man with the car was, but he was a sort of master—a very sad man."

"What master? What blew to pieces? What are you talking about?"

"Rowf, you still don't understand, do you? We're dead, you and I. I killed us both. We're here because I've destroyed everything—the world, for all I know.

But the explosion, Rowf; you must have felt that, wherever you were. Can't you remember?"

"You'd better tell me what you remember."

"I was coming back, following you, and all the grass and stones in my head were very loud—

sort of humming, like a strong wind. And then this dark man called me, and I was on a road, like—like the other time. I went to the man and got into his car, and then—then everything smashed to pieces.

smashed it. I did it; like the other time. So then I ran away before the white bell-car could come."

"That must have been the white bell-car that I saw, I suppose. I was looking for you."

"It all comes from me, Rowf. It comes out of my head. I killed the man. I believe I've blown the world to bits—"

"Well, that's wrong for a start. You haven't. How d'you think you got here?"

"I told you—I fell, like you. Falling into my head. I've been falling for two days."

"Well, if you'll come outside with me, Snitter, you'll find you're wrong."

"No, I'm not going out there. It's all stones and flying glass, like that other time. You couldn't know, of course, but it's all happened before."

"Snitter, can't we get out of here and go and find something to eat? I'm famished."

"I'll tell you. I'll tell you all about it, Rowf. Listen. A long time ago, when there were towns—

when there was a real world—I used to live with my master in his house. He bought me when I was only a puppy, you know, and he looked after me so well that I can't remember missing my mother at all.

And I never really thought of my master as a man and myself as a dog—not in those days. There were just the two of us. Well, of course I knew really, but it was easy to forget, because I always used to sleep on his bed at night; and then in the morning a boy used to come and stuff a lot of folded paper through a hole in the middle of the street-door downstairs. When I heard that, I used to go down and pick the paper up in my mouth and carry it upstairs and wake my master. He used to take biscuits out of a box and give me one, and make himself a hot drink; and then we always played a kind of game with this wodge of paper. He used to open it up very wide—it was all black and white and it had a kind of sharp, rather wet smell—and spread it out in front of him while he sat up in bed, and I used to creep up the bed and poke my nose underneath. Then he used to pretend to be cross and pat it and I used to take it away and wait a bit and then poke it under somewhere else. I know it sounds silly, but I always thought how nice it was of him to get that boy to bring a fresh lot of paper every day, just so that we could play this game. But he was always so kind.

"Then after a bit he used to go to a room where there was water and cover his face with sort of sweet-smelling, white stuff and then take it all off again. There was no sense in it, but I used to come too and sit on the floor, and he used to talk to me all the time. I thought I ought to keep an eye on him.

One of the best things about having a master is that half the time you've no idea what he's doing or why, but you know he's very kind and wise and you're part of it and he values you, and that makes you feel important and happy. Well, anyway, he used to go downstairs and have something to eat and then he used to put on his old brown overcoat and his yellow scarf and put me in the car and we used to go to another house a long way off. There were houses in those days. It was before everything was spoilt.

Anyway, my master used to stay there all day and there was a bell that used to ring on his table, and people used to come and talk to him and there was an awful lot of paper, but for some reason I wasn't allowed to play with that paper. There was a fire in winter and I used to lie on the carpet. It was really very comfortable, only I didn't like that bell on his table: I was jealous of it. I used to bark at it. I don't know, but I think it must have been some kind of animal, because when it rang he used to talk to it instead of to me. He couldn't have been talking to anybody else, because usually there was nobody else there at all. "My master hadn't got a mate. I don't think he wanted one, but there was a woman with grey hair and a red-striped apron who used to come into our house from another house across the street and clean all round. She used to get out a sort of humming, whirring thing on little wheels and push it about. It had a sort of long, black rope coming out of the back that used to go all across the floor, and one day when it was moving I grabbed it and began to gnaw it, just for fun, and she made an awful fuss. She was kind as a rule, and as far as I remember that was the only time she ever got cross with me. She bustled me out of the room and after that she never used to allow me into any room where she was pushing this humming thing. I think actually that was a sort of animal too, because it used to eat up scraps of paper and any other little, tiny things there were on the carpets. I wouldn't have liked to eat them, but then just look what birds eat, come to that. Or hedgehogs. It didn't really smell much like an animal, though.