The Plague Dogs (36 page)

"You know, chief," said Mr. Powell, "something tells me that that press release of ours may not have been terribly fortunately timed."

Tuesday the 16th November

"A major disaster," said the Under Secretary, "I would imagine, though it's early to tell as yet. It could hardly have come at a worse time, with criticism running so high, over public expenditure to implement the Sablon Committee recommendations. The Assistant Secretary stood gazing out of the window. It was T. S. Eliot's violet hour, when the eyes turn upward from the desk, and the street below was full of clerks, typists and executive officers hurrying to St. James' Park underground and the buses of Victoria Street.

The starlings had already come in and, after their usual § cackling and squabbling, more or less settled down along the cornices. There had been a kestrel over the park that afternoon. Did the kestrels ever take starlings, he wondered. Hardly; but they probably took sparrows. It was to be hoped so, for there was something disappointing and dignified about the idea of their coming into London merely to pick up rubbish. Sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on garbage. Come to think of it, Shakespeare must have seen them taking garbage. Then that line might be a kind of unconscious extension of the iterative image hawking in Hamlet.

"When the wind is southerly—"

"If you've had time to reflect, could I have the benefit of your views, Michael?" (Could you?)

"Well, I think it might be extremely awkward all round, Maurice, if the papers are intent on making a meal of this plague business."

"Let us see whether our respective minds are in accord. Why do you?"

"Well, we can't deny that the dogs escaped #nd that initially the station kept quiet about them.

We can't deny that the station have got a bloke on germ warfare and that inter alia he's working on bubonic plague. And apparently we can't deny that the dogs, while escaping, may have gone somewhere near where that work's being done."

"I agree. But now, tell me two things. Could the dogs in fact have had any contact?"

"Well, almost certainly not. Boycott says it's out of the question."

"And is it?"

"I honestly can't tell, Maurice, unless I were to go up there myself and have a look round. But apparently the plague lab's kept locked and it can be proved that it was locked that night."

"But fleas—cracks—doors—"

"Precisely. Of course the fleas weren't loose, but how can anyone swear for certain—how can the Secretary of State stand up in the House and say that one might not have been?"

"And secondly, can dogs in fact carry bubonic plague?"

"Well, I'm advised not. But it's like all this advice you get from technical officers, you know.

When you get right down to it and lean on them, they begin qualifying. 'Well, they conceivably could, but it's very unlikely.''

'We can't positively say it could never happen in any circumstances, and so on."

"So for all practical purposes there's nothing to worry about, but nevertheless it's gone sour on us to the extent of providing nuisance value to a hostile and malicious press?"

"That's the way I see it."

"Oh, dear." The Under Secretary drew meditatively on his blotting-pad. "Gone to the demnition bow-wows."

"I don't think even Mr. Mantolini could give us much help in this case."

"Well, you may perhaps have to go up there, depending on how things develop." (At twelve hours' notice, I bet, in the event.)

"I'll be seeing the Parliamentary Secretary about it, though I'm not sure when—probably Friday.

Perhaps you'd better come along too, Michael. I'm afraid it may be going to be difficult to convince him that all this couldn't have been avoided. How close is our liaison with Lawson Park? Shouldn't we have been told at once about these dogs having escaped?"

"Hardly. They have a great many projects and experiments up there and the dogs weren't particularly important until this press attack started."

"Yes, I know, I know, Michael" (O God, here we go again!), "but you must try to see things from a Minister's point of view. I can't help feeling that very often you seem unable to appreciate—oh well, never mind." (I do mind, damn you, and why don't you either say something I can answer or else keep quiet?)

"You see, what's really so very unfortunate is this press release that the station appears to have put out unilaterally, without reference to us. They issue a statement admitting that two dogs escaped, as though there were now nothing more to be said, and in the. event this virtually coincides with a piece in the Orator accusing them of trying to keep quiet about the plague work. It looks bad."

"I know. It's a pity they did that."

"But should they have, Michael? Shouldn't there have been an agreed drill under which they referred their proposed statement to you before releasing it?"

"I've repeatedly tried to arrange one, but as you know, these chaps always put up a great deal of resistance to anything that suggests to them that they're being controlled and restricted by Whitehall."

"H'm. No doubt they do." (And you're thinking that I ought to have been able to push them off it if I had arty ability.) "Well, let us trust that the hope is not drunk wherein we dress ourselves—"

"Well, I dare do all that may become a man." The Assistant Secretary's goat was not altogether ungot.

"I'm sure you do, Michael. And now, good night. Perhaps you wouldn't mind asking James to look in for a moment, would you?"

(What's your P. A. for, you sod?)

"Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, We drove afield..."

Wednesday the 17th November

Rowf, raising his muzzle cautiously above the bracken, had time to glimpse nothing more than the distant bar of moonlight twinkling and gleaming across water before ducking quickly down again at the sound of men's voices a good deal closer than he cared for. He glanced at the tod, crouched small, tense and watchful among the fronds, and at Snitter gnawing on a stick to contain his hunger and wagging his head like some crazy, ill-made scarecrow in a high wind.

It was now the fourth night since they had come to the Helvellyn range. They had killed two sheep, out with greater difficulty than before, and tonight Rowf had refused to attempt another, insisting instead on a farmyard raid. The tod had demurred, pointing out that the weather was too fine, still and clear for hunting round human dwellings, but in the face of Rowf's angry impatience had finally given in. To Snitter it was plain that the tod was unable to make head or tail of Rowf's total lack of its own natural bent for coldly weighing one consideration against another and then acting to the best advantage. At the time when it had first joined them, it had never known a creature like Rowf and accordingly had not reckoned with his ways, but now it had come to distrust and fear his impulsive nature and above all his impetuous anger, which it could not understand. Snitter hoped that it was not beginning to regret the bargain it had struck with them.

He would have liked to ask it, and to try to smooth things over, but discussion was not the tod's strong point.

The wind was carrying plainly the smell of poultry from the henhouse in the farmyard. Rowf lifted his off-side front paw and tried his weight on it. It was as tender as ever and, cursing, he lay down again. His hunger moved sluggishly in his belly, dulling his spirit as drifting clouds obscure the sun.

His companions in desperation, he thought the one, whose very talk he could barely understand, more crafty and self-interested than any cat, whom he now knew he hated for its sly, calculating cunning; who would desert them both without the least compunction whenever it might decide that it would suit it to do so; the other his friend, the only creature in the world who cared a fly for him, but who seemed to grow more addle-pated and more of a liability with every precarious day they survived.

It was for these that he had to go on, night after night, mustering his diminishing strength for yet another plunging, battering encounter, using up what little was left of his courage and endurance, until the time when there would be none left—whereupon the tod would depart and Snitter and himself would either starve or be cornered and killed. No, he thought, the tod had been right enough; he was no wild animal, nor, after all, had it proved possible for him to become one. Though he might never have had a master, yet by his nature he needed the friendship of other creatures as the tod did not.

The reek of the tod excited him, in his hunger, to a slavering rage. Why couldn't I have died in the tank? thought Rowf. That was what my pack leaders wanted: at least, I suppose they did; and I let them down. Now I'm neither a decent dog nor a thorough-going thief like the tod. Oh, blast this leg! If it goes on hurting like this I shan't even be up to breaking into a hen-roost.

The two of us could try to eat this damned tod, I suppose, come to that. Then there's cats. Cats run loose in farmyards.

You could eat a cat at a pinch. I wonder whether I could kill one and get it out before the place came round our ears?

He turned again to Snitter. "Are you ready, Snitter?"

"Oh, yes," answered Snitter, with a grisly pretence of jaunty carelessness, "but why not wait a bit? There's a flood of sleep coming to cover the houses, you know. Blue and deep—a deep sleep. I'm calling it, actually. You see—" He stopped.

"What do you mean? You mean you can—"

"Call it? Yes, I call it the sea. The tod told me. A deep-blue sleep."

Rowf, a trifle light-headed in his emptiness, remembered the man whom Snitter had killed and the strange power which, according to his account, had seemed to come pouring from his head. "I say, Snitter?"

"Yes?"

"Can you really make things happen—you said you could—you know, alter things and turn them all upside-down? You can't really, can you? That man just died, didn't he? It was only one of your queer turns that made you think you killed him?"

"I don't know, Rowf. Sometimes I feel sure that that's really what I did without meaning to, and then the feeling disappears, so that I—well, I can't even remember what it felt like to feel like that. It's muddling."

The wretched dog seemed upset. Rowf gave him a playful nip.

"Come on now, Snitter, I didn't mean it seriously—it was only a joke. But if you really can do these things, why don't you—well, why don't you make all the men afraid of us, for instance? Ho, yes, that's the idea!" Rowf paused to relish it, then began to elaborate. "Make them all run away—make them call their dogs off, open their gates and—and send us home carrying a nice, warm chicken? Now that really would be something! Couldn't you do that for us, Snitter, hey?"

Snitter raised his split head and licked his friend's nose. "I'll try, Rowf; but I don't really know whether I could manage all that."

"Neither do I, old chap. I only wish you could."

"You mustn't think I—oh, Rowf, you were only making fun of me!"

"No, no, of course I wasn't! I know you could do all that quite easily if you wanted to—it's just that tonight's not convenient—that's it, isn't it?"

"Bidin' there yammerin' aboot nowt—"

"Oh, shut up, tod! Let us alone!"

"Ay, Ah will thet. Ah's off t'see if w' can bash our way into th' henhoose.

Nay, marrer, let me do't mesel'. Ye'll ownly clitter an' clatter till th' farmer comes, an1 that'll mean another neet wi' ne meat, an' mebbies worse."

Before Rowf could reply the tod had melted away with its usual silence. A few moments later they caught sight for an instant of its slim, dark shape slinking across a patch of moonlight where the lonnin led into the farmyard.

"Hush, Snitter," said Rowf quickly, "lie down again!" For behind the thin shelter of the bracken patch Snitter had stood up and was capering slowly from paw to paw, giving low whines and wagging his stumpy tail.

"Well, Rowf, I was only doing my best to—you know, (you said to make the men give us—this is what they call a tincantation—but I don't really know quite how to go about it—"

"It was a joke, Snitter, for goodness' sake! Now pull yourself together—we're going to risk our lives in a min-ttte, and that's real—it's not a game. Even you can tell the difference if you try. You're hungry—that's real. And jn there are hens, and they're real, and a man, possibly with a gun, and he's real. Got it?"

"Yes, Rowf."

"Well, don't forget it."

There was a rustle in the fern and the tod reappeared.

Its jaws were faintly glistening, yellow and viscous, and cohere was a smooth smell, at once creamy and lightly savoury, that made both ravenous dogs slobber. Rowf licked at its mask.

"What's that you smell of?"

"Chucky-eggs, hinny. Th' wez a layaway nest F th' rttles roond th' back. Th' aald clucker wez away an' aall.

Aa's taken th' lot an' nipped ootbye sharp as a flash. Ye canna gan in there t'neet—it'd be nowt but th' Dark fer th' bowth o' yuz. There's two chaps bletherin' away i' th' hemmel an' a woman forbye. If th' hens or th' dergs wez te kick up a row they'd be strite doon on ye, and if ye wor in th' henhoose they'd hev ye afore ye could torn roond. Mebbies they'd have a gun an' that'd be yer lot. Howway on oot of it noo! We'll try elsewhere."

The tod's air of artful self-possession, its srrfell, the smell of the eggs, his own fume of hunger

—Rowf felt his teeth on edge to burst his dripping mouth.

"You crawling, sneaking little rat! You go in there and eat your head off and then you come back and tell us we're not to! You stinking, underground—"

He leapt for the sharp-nosed, grinning mask, but in the instant that his weight fell on the patch of long grass from which it had been protruding, it was no longer there. Heedless now of how much noise he made, he thrust here and there through the undergrowth, drew blank and came pushing his way back to Snitter, who had not moved.

"Goes in there, stuffs itself full of eggs and then, oh yes! it's ready to go home, the dirty little—"

"He didn't say that, Rowf. You're even more light-headed than I am. All he said—"

"I tell you, I'm finished with it—and for good this time. It's just a filthy scrounger. We don't need it to help us to stay alive—we never did. It just hangs about and eats what we kill—"