The Plague Dogs (8 page)

from the long-forgotten sensation of damp earth between his pads, from the twinkling light, moving branches and leaves, the coloured fragments all about him in the grass— harebell and lousewort, scabious and tormentil—and the smells and rustling sounds of other, unseen creatures. A rabbit crossed the track and he dashed after it, lost it, hunted back and forth and then forgot it as he stopped to sniff at a dor-beetle under a blue-and-green-banded fungus growing between two stones. At length he ran back to Rowf, who lay gnawing on a stick.

"There are cats here, anyway. Sort of cats. Long ears, but you can chase them."

The stick snapped and Rowf let the broken end fall from his mouth. "Nothing to eat."

"There will be. How the wind sends the leaves running across the trees! Then where do they go?

Never mind, there are always more." Snitter raced away again. Rowf, hearing him crackling through the undergrowth on the other side of the brown, turbid beck, followed more slowly.

A mile below, they came out on the road skirting the east side of Coniston Water. The wind had died completely and all was lonely and deserted, with never a car on the road so early. The lake itself, where they glimpsed it between the trees, lay so clear and smooth that the stones, sunken leaves and brown weed within its shallow, inshore depths appeared like objects in a deserted room seen through the windows from outside. Yet at their next glimpse these had disappeared, their place being taken, under a burst of pale sunlight, by the reflections of moving clouds and autumn-coloured branches along the shore.

"Look, Rowf, look!" cried Snitter, running down towards the water. "Everything keeps still in there! I wouldn't be mad if I was in there—things would keep still—covered over—my head would be cool—"

Rowf hung back, growling. "Don't go down there, Snitter! Keep away if you've got any sense.

You can't imagine what it's like. You couldn't get out."

Snitter, about to plunge, ran back up the bank but, still fascinated, went sniffing up and down along the edge, covering three times the distance of Rowf. Once the canvas dressing on his head caught in a long bramble and he wrenched himself free with a red blackberry leaf hooked into the black sticking-plaster. He ran along the shore with a shifting and rattling of loose pebbles, lapped thirstily, splashed in and out of a shallow place, shook himself and scampered back to the road, scrambling clumsily up and over the dry stone wall and dropping down into the wet grass along the verge.

"All the same, old Rowf, it's better out here than in the pens. I'm going to make the most of it.

Only the flies in my head—they keep buzzing. And I feel like smoke. My feet are cold as a gate-latch."

Still surrounded on all sides by the early morning solitude, they came to the northern end of the lake, ran past the turning that leads to Hawkshead, crossed School Beck bridge and so on towards Coniston. Soon they found themselves approaching a little group of three houses, two on one side of the road and one on the other. The sun had risen clear of the clouds in the east and in the gardens, as they came to them, they could hear bees droning among the phlox and late-blooming antirrhinums.

Rowf, coming upon an open gate, lifted a leg against the post, then made his way purposefully along the garden path and disappeared round the corner of the house.

The clang of the falling dustbin-lid and the overturning of the bin were followed by the sound of a first-floor window being flung open, then by threatening cries, the thudding of feet running downstairs and the sharp clack —one, two—of drawn bolts. Rowf's big shape reappeared, black and bristling, backing away from a man in a brown dressing-gown and felt slippers, his face bearded white with shaving-soap. As Rowf stood his ground the man stooped, picked up a stone from the flowerbed and flung it. Rowf ran back through the gate and rejoined Snitter in the road.

"I'd have fought him—I'd have bitten his ankle—"

"Oh, go and bite a policeman!" said Snitter. "Bite a postman, go on! You would spoil it, wouldn't you? It's not the right way, Rowf!"

"That bin—there was food wrapped up in paper packets, like the tobacco man's—"

"You should have put yourself in and shut the lid down. Why ever did I go to the trouble of getting you out? You've got treat men properly, Rowf, if you want—Did he hit you with that stone?"

"No, or I'd have gone for him. I tell you—"

"Oh my dam, this chicken-wire round my head!" cried Snitter suddenly. "I'm blind! I'm blind!"

He flung himself down on the road, clawing and grabbing at his head, which jerked back and forth horribly, like that of a clockwork toy.

"The flies—the flies are going to eat me! The road's black and white—the lorry's coming, the lorry's coming, Rowf!"

Rowf, pressed against the garden wall, watched helplessly as Snitter got up, staggered slowly to the other side of the road and once more fell down. He was about to follow him over when he heard the sound of an approaching car. As it came closer he slunk back into the gateway.

The car slowed down and stopped. The driver remained at the wheel while his passenger, a young man in fell boots, a blue roll-necked jersey, anorak and yellow woollen cap, got out and stood beside the car, looking down at Snitter in the road.

"Reckon it's took badly, Jack. Bin roon over, d'ye think?"

"Nay, not roon over, it's bin to't vet, look, has that. Yon dressing on it head. Oughter be kept close soom-wheers, bi rights, ought that. Moosta got out."

The young man went up to Snitter who, with closed eyes, was lying limply on his side.

Murmuring gently and reassuringly, he extended a closed fist towards his nose. Snitter half opened his eyes, sniffed at his knuckles and wagged his tail feebly.

"It's got this green collar, Jack, but nowt on it— nobbut a noomber. It cann't have coom far, it's that bad. Let's joost put it int' back of car, like, to get it off rooad, and then I'll assk at woon of t'ouses.

Happen soomun'll know whose 'tis."

He bent down and lifted Snitter in his arms. In the same moment Rowf hurled himself across the road and leapt for his throat. The driver gave a cry of warning and the young man, dropping Snitter just in time, flung up his left arm, which Rowf's teeth seized below the elbow of the anorak. As the young man staggered back, the driver leapt out of the car and began beating at Rowf's head with a pair of heavy driving-gloves. Snitter, yelping from his fall, was already twenty yards up the road when Rowf released his grip and dashed after him, leaving the driver rolling up his friend's sleeve and searching his pockets for an iodine pencil.

"I told you, Snitter, I told you! You think you know everything about men. I told you—"

"They were all right—they were masters. It was my head—all on fire—I couldn't see—"

"They were whitecoats—surely you know that? They were going to take you away, take you back—Snitter, are you all right?"

"I think—yes—I think so." Snitter sat down and looked doubtfully about him. "I wish the mouse would come back. I never know what to do without him."

"There are more houses further along this road—see them?" said Rowf. "That's one lot the men haven't taken away, anyhow—or not yet. Let's go down there—you'll feel better once we get among some houses."

"That cairn—Dusker—he was dead, you know," said Snitter. "I saw the tobacco man take his body out of the pen last night. He lay down, same as me—"

"When did he die?"

"You weren't there. I think it must have been yesterday afternoon, while you were in the metal water."

"What was wrong with what I did just now?"

"You mustn't rootle about in dustbins, however nice they smell. Not if masters are anywhere near. It makes them angry, for some reason. The proper thing, if you want to get food out of a man, is to go and make friends with him first, and then with any luck he gives you something. Mind you, I never had to do that with my master. I was always fed regularly. I knew where I was—in those days—oh, what's the use? But that's how you do it. You do the man before the food—not after, I'll show you, when we get to these houses." At this moment, as they were entering Coniston, they both heard the sound of another car behind them, but still some way off. At once Rowf turned and slunk away down a nearby side-lane (or "lonnin," as the Lakelanders call them), between grey, lichened walls. After a moment Snitter followed him, in and out of the docks and goose-grass beside the track, disturbing clouds of bluebottles and two or three tortoiseshell butterflies fluttering torpid in the autumn air.

Around them grew, little by little, the smells and quiet sounds of a country town beginning the day—

the soft, intermittent whirr of an electric milk-float, clinking bottles, a slammed door, a called greeting answered, smells of wood-smoke, of frying, of chickens released from the henhouse. Snitter, overtaking his friend, led the way by back gardens, yards and patches of waste land, always looking about him for some likely-looking man whom they could approach.

After some time spent in wandering, lurking, jumping garden walls unseen and dashing across open roads when there seemed no help for it, they found themselves near the left bank of Church Beck, not far from where it runs under the bridge in the centre of the town. The beck was loud, running strongly after the night's rain, carrying down its rocky bed a brown spate from the crags of Wetherlam, from Low Water, Levers Water and the eastern heights of Old Man. Rowf, giving it one look, slunk back towards the garden wall they had just scrambled over. "Rowf, wait!"

"I'll be damned if I wait! That water—"

"Never mind the water. There's a shop full of food not far off. Can't you smell it?"

"What's a shop?"

"Oh, you know—a shop—a shop's a house, Rowf, where there's meat and biscuits and things and men who want them go and get them. Actually it's usually women, for some reason, but—oh, never mind. This one can't be far off. You're right, these houses are doing me a world of good. We'll find a master before long, you see."

Snitter, following his nose, led the way along the street and soon tracked down the shop which had wafted to him its tidings of cold meat, sausages, cheese and biscuits. It was an up-to-date grocer's, new and smart, its separate delicatessen and cheese counters conveniently arranged across the floor from the shelves of jam, shortbread, biscuits, potted meat, tins of soup, anchovies and teas in pretty packets and tins. It was not yet open, but the doors were standing ajar and a youth in a sacking apron was cleaning the tiled floor with a mop and pushing the water out on the pavement, while a young woman in a white overall was looking over the shelves and checking and rearranging some of the stock.

Snitter came to a stop on the opposite side of the road. "Now watch me, Rowf, and remember—

men first."

"Don't like men."

"Don't be silly. Of course we've got to find a man to look after us. A dog has to have a master if he's going to live properly. Poor old Rowf, you've just been badly treated by the wrong sort of men."

"It's a bad world—"

"Oh, try the other lamp-post for a change. Come on! This is going to teach you a thing or two.

You'll like it."

Snitter ran across the road and put his head between the open doors. The young man in the sacking apron, looking up, saw his black cap, backed by the shaggy bulk of Rowf behind him. He stood staring a moment, then laid his mop aside and called over his shoulder into the recesses of the shop.

"Eh, Mr. T. P "What's oop?" replied a voice.

" 'Ave y'ever seen dog owt like this? It's got cap on! Theer's two on 'em tryin' to coom in, like.

Seem to know wheer theer at an' all. Are they owt to do wi' thee?"

At talk of dogs on his premises the proprietor, a conscientious and fastidious man, who was washing his hands with disinfectant soap as part of his normal routine before opening shop, dried them and came hurrying for- ward between the shelves, buttoning his clean, white, knee-length shop coat as he went. Seeing, in passing, the ham knife lying where it should not have been on the cheese counter, he picked it up and took it with him, tapping the flat of the blade against his left hand in nervous haste.

"Where, Fred, where?" he said. "Where? Oh, I see. Good gracious, no, I've never seen them in me life. Have you, Mary? Mary? Are they anything to do with you?"

The young woman, carrying the stock sheets clipped to her fibreboard, also approached the door.

"Whatever's that on it head?" asked the proprietor, staring.

As he came into full view from behind the shelves and, hands on knees, bent down to look at Snitter, both dogs turned and pelted down the street like the hounds of spring on winter's traces. Round the nearest corner they went, past the Black Bull and up the lane beyond. After two hundred yards Snitter stopped and pressed himself against the wall, panting. "Did you see, Rowf? Did you?"

"He was a whitecoat!"

"He had a knife!"

"He smelt of that stuff!"

"Scissors sticking out of his front pocket!"

"There was a woman whitecoat too, carrying paper, one of those flat board things they have when they come to take you away!" ' "Oh Rowf, how dreadful! That must be another white-coats'

place! Perhaps the town's all whitecoats, do you think? There seemed to be hardly anyone else about. A whole town of whitecoats!"

At the thought they began to run again.

"I'm not going back there! I bet they do throw dogs into that running water, whatever you say."

"That man must cut them up on those glass tables in there. It isn't a shop at all!"

"Let's get away! Come on, we'll go up here. It smells lonely."

"Yes, all right. Why, these are rhododendrons, Rowf! Rhododendrons!"

"Never mind."

"No, I mean it's all right. I tell you, we're bound to find some proper men some time today, before we're done."

"You'll kill us, Snitter—or worse. I'd rather keep away. I never got any good from a man yet."

They were making their way up a walled lane—almost a road—skirting the hillside above Coniston. Below them, at the foot of a steep slope covered with trees and undergrowth, they could hear the big beck shouting like a mountain torrent and from time to time caught sight of its white water foaming between the rocks of the ravine. So loud, indeed, was the noise that when a lorry came jolting towards them round a bend in the lonnin they were startled, having heard nothing.