Bloodlines (Three Oaks Book 8)

by Gerald Hammond

  I let the dogs loose. They knew better than to wander far or to get into mischief. They were more likely to hang about where the food was, pretending to be on the point of death from starvation.

  Ben Garnet came and stood helping himself from the buffet beside me, but I took my plate and glass to the far end of the barn and lost sight of him—indeed, at one point I was vaguely aware that he was not there to be seen. His absence was positive rather than negative as warmth is more than an escape from cold.

  I had finished my main course and taken some fruit, and I was sipping the last of my one glass of wine. It was a good wine. Freddy Crail had inherited his father’s cellar and even when his finances were at their lowest ebb his wine never let him down. Beth and I were congratulating him on the morning’s sport when the skinny figure of Garnet appeared in the barn’s doorway, black against the brightness outside. ‘Come and bear witness to this,’ he said loudly. He glanced at me but seemed to be speaking to the company at large.

  We trooped outside, curious rather than obedient. Several of the beaters had spilled out of the head keeper’s cottage.

  Next to the Land Rovers a brace of spaniels was locked together in the classic position, bum to bum, of dogs at the culmination of coitus. I recognized Horace immediately. He was in demand at stud, having thrown a succession of successful trials dogs, so that I had seen him often enough in that act. The other was Garnet’s Cleo.

  My first concern was for Horace. ‘Don’t disturb them,’ I whispered urgently. ‘The male can be injured if they part suddenly.’

  But the two must have been engaged in the act for some little time, because a few seconds later they parted quite gently and naturally. Horace, who was quite accustomed to an audience on these occasions, ambled away round the nearest cars, evidently looking for a comfortable resting place. Shortly he would come looking for the restorative biscuits which were his usual reward.

  Garnet grabbed Cleo, lifted her urgently into the back of his car and then turned to me. ‘You did that on purpose,’ he said.

  His anger lacked real conviction and any deed had been Horace’s rather than mine. I would have ignored the accusation. Beth, however, lived in eternal fear that any undue stress would bring on a possibly fatal recurrence of the illness which had terminated my army career and no reassurance from myself or any of my doctors would allay that fear. She flared up immediately in my defence.

  ‘Why would John do a thing like that?’ she demanded.

  Garnet hesitated. It seemed that his thinking had not progressed so far as to suggest any motivation on my part. ‘Sheer mischief,’ he suggested at last.

  Beth ignored that suggestion. ‘Do you know how much we get for a service from Horace?’ she demanded.

  ‘No I don’t,’ Garnet said stiffly, ‘and I don’t particularly—’

  ‘Well, yours will never be worth as much,’ Beth snapped. There was a stir of amusement among the onlookers.

  Garnet had not pursued his vocation, whatever one might care to call it, without developing the ability to keep his temper in the face of insults, but there was a trace of colour in his thin cheeks and a flare to his proud nostrils as he framed his reply. ‘I have never tested the market,’ he replied with an attempt at humour.

  When Beth’s blood was up she could bandy words with the best of them. ‘Now that I’ve put the idea into your head,’ she said, ‘you probably will. But you’ll be disappointed. Three of Horace’s offspring have made champion already. Anyway, how did she get out of your car? Horace is clever but he can’t work door-handles yet.’

  ‘Somebody must have let her out,’ said Garnet. He tried to sound as though he knew something that was hidden from lesser mortals. Then he turned away.

  Beth was angry enough to run after him but I caught her arm. ‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘We can’t be sure of anything. Anyway, he’ll be sorry in the end.’

  She looked up into my eyes. ‘He will? You promise? Faithfully?’

  ‘I promise,’ I told her.

  ‘Well, all right then,’ she said reluctantly.

  One of the guests, a tall man with prominent ears and sunken cheeks, was grinning. I knew him vaguely as the proprietor of a small garage nearby and I thought that if Crail did not owe him for some repairs he might have been invited in order to provide the second Land Rover for the day. ‘I doubt you’ll ever get the better of that one,’ he said. ‘There’s not the least doubt that he meant it to happen, but you’ll never prove it. He’s a sleekit bugger, is Ben Garnet.’ His tone was half admiring.

  ‘You know him, then?’ I looked around. For the moment, there was no longer anyone within earshot. ‘You do business with him?’

  He produced another grin, which sat oddly on his eccentric face. ‘No more than I need to. He’s a member of a small syndicate at Kiltillem and I’m the secretary—for my sins. Give him his due, he’ll turn out for a working party though he keeps up his membership mostly so’s he can hand out invites to his posh friends. But when it comes to paying his sub, well, it’s his teeth I might be pulling.’

  ‘I know the type,’ I said.

  ‘They’re beginners compared to this lad. He has a thousand excuses and then some. He hasn’t got a chequebook wi’ him or he’s used the last cheque in it or he’s too busy at the moment or can I take a credit card? I can just see me carrying an Access machine on a working party! Last year he turned up at the first shoot with his sub still unpaid and no chequebook again though he’d been warned.’ The watery eyes held a sudden twinkle. ‘I took him aside and telled him he and his guest—he had a guest wi’m, would you believe?—would be welcome to walk wi’ us, but if either of ’em fired a single shot he’d be prosecuted as a poacher. I thought for a wee minute he was going to call my bluff, but instead he pulled out a roll of notes that would’ve choked an elephant and settled up on the spot and carried on with the day as though nothing had happened. I dare say it’ll be the same this year.’

  I shook my head in disapproval. ‘I couldn’t be doing with that,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘I made him pay cash for his petrol so now he’s taken his custom elsewhere, the Lord be thankit. To be fair, he’s no less friendly now than he was afore. It’s as though such goings-on are normal to him. Some of the other syndicate members wanted to put him out, but his money’s as good as the next man’s when you can get your hands on it. Also, we’re a bittie short of dogs and he has the only good spaniel among the lot of us.’

  ‘Now there,’ I said, perking up, ‘I might be able to help you. We’ve a good litter in the offing.’

  ‘I’ll mention it around,’ he said, ‘but don’t hold your breath. At your prices . . .

  ‘A trained dog costs money,’ I admitted, ‘but by the time I’ve fed them and had them vaccinated and inoculated and put in all the time that’s needed—’

  ‘I ken a’ that fine,’ he said, laughing. ‘But it’s no damn use being told a Rolls is good value for money if you don’t have the bawbees to buy it.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You ask five times as much for a second-hand car that’ll wear out or rust away in another five years. The dog’ll give you ten years of faithful, loving service. There’s no comparison.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ he said. ‘There’s no comparison.’

  ‘A pup would come a lot cheaper,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s what I was suggesting. Your members could buy a pup each to train for themselves and come to my Masterclass, one Sunday a month. Or if there’s enough of you, I’ll lay on a special training class, just for you.’

  A stocky figure with cropped ginger hair had arrived and had been hopping from foot to foot in front of us for the last few minutes. He was the under keeper, a youth usually referred to as Guffy. Ex-RSM Fergusson had been a strong man in his day, but the years and foreign climates had taken their toll and Guffy, who was shared between the farm and the shoot, was there to relieve Mr Fergusson of physical labour and to operate some of the farm’s machinery between times. I h
ad seen him around. He was sturdy, capable and, considering his background, well spoken although liable to lapse into the Scots tongue when upset, but outside of his limited areas of capability he was sometimes on a wavelength all his own. Though I guessed that some government body was funding some or all of his wages, I knew that Mr Fergusson would be hard put to it to manage without him. A relationship between the two was hinted at but never confirmed.

  For all his slow wits, Guffy was a good shot, successful at the clay pigeons and useful at controlling vermin.

  ‘Mister,’ he said, ‘how much do you take for a pup, then? A good one?’

  The garageman chuckled until his eyes filled with tears. ‘You should be in my game,’ he told me. ‘You’re a better salesman than I am.’

  Guffy’s question put me on the spot. The boy had a knack with animals but his mental circuits were incomplete and there was no doubt that he could be heavy-handed at times. I was in the business of bringing dogs into the world but not to cast them adrift to be mishandled. Sometimes we lost business because I was overly fussy about the good intentions of prospective clients, although Beth and Isobel were solidly with me. I had made up my mind that no puppy of mine would fall into Guffy’s hands.

  I told Guffy the range of prices, depending on the breeding of the pups and the successes of the breeding line; but I gave him a strong hint that our puppies were all earmarked for several years ahead.

  His face fell and then he cheered up. He was a naturally happy boy. ‘Maybe Mr Garnet’ll be looking for a good home for a pup,’ he said. ‘They’ll be braw pups, those.’

  ‘You have a care,’ the garageman said. ‘He may be looking for a good home but he’ll care more about the price he gets than about how good the home is.’

  ‘And read anything before you sign it,’ Beth added, ‘in case it says something about a pound of flesh.’

  Guffy looked confused. ‘What are you at?’ he asked.

  ‘Awa’ hame and read the Good Book,’ said the garageman, who seemed to be muddled about the source of Beth’s reference. Guffy looked puzzled, as well he might.

  Chapter Two

  Winter was late beginning but when it came at last it arrived with a vengeance, as though the weather gods wanted to make up for accidentally giving us a long and lovely autumn. We braced ourselves. Could spring be far behind? the poet Shelley asked. We knew only too well the answer, that this far north and on a latitude as far from the equator as that of Cape Horn—yes, it could be a hell of a long way behind and it probably would.

  Personally, I rather enjoy bad weather in limited doses. There is a perverse pleasure to be had from dressing appropriately and then going out to face the worst that the elements can throw at you, and an even greater pleasure in staying at home before a bright fire while the storm rages outside.

  That is for myself, considered in isolation. But when you enter the world of dogs, different considerations arise immediately. I except Labradors, which are as near waterproof as a dog can be. But spaniels . . . Nature, I think, designed spaniels and sponges on the same day. Few dogs can get as totally saturated or look, when wet, as insanitary and second-hand and yet as pleased with themselves.

  To make matters worse, snow is to spaniels as water is to fish. In the kennels we had our breeding stock. We had pups and young dogs in training. We had clients’ dogs which had been left to be trained. And we had boarders, the dogs left by owners who had gone abroad for skiing holidays when they could have had better skiing, and much cheaper, at home. They all required exercise, those in training even more than the rest. (The dogs in the quarantine kennels still had to be fed, cleaned, mothered and kept free of little parasites, but at least walkies were strictly forbidden.)

  A wet dog in an outside kennel is as prone to rheumatism and arthritis as its human counterpart. Even when aided by the drying cage which we had constructed and which could blow-dry two simultaneous spaniels while the next pair was being given a preliminary towelling and the previous pair was being brushed, our two kennel-maids were hard driven in a bad winter. As they themselves admitted, they could eat like starving tapeworms and not put on an ounce. There was no call for anorexia nervosa at Three Oaks Kennels.

  Training—my speciality—had to continue, somehow. The youngsters could be taught elementary obedience in the big barn but dogs at a more advanced stage needed space. In the conditions, retrieving lessons were very difficult. Retrieving may come second in a spaniel’s repertoire but it is a very important second.

  Two days after the snow stopped falling, I was heading for the gate to the adjacent field more or less accompanied by Accer (short for Acacia), a young black and white male springer. Beauty had returned to the world. The day was perfect. The wind had dropped and a low sun was throwing blue and golden shadows across the unmarked snow, turning the shrubs into strange sculptures and draping the branches of the trees. The world was muted. Beth’s bird table was doing boom business.

  The beauty of the day was not at the forefront of my mind. Accer showed promise but had proved slow to learn the to-and-fro hunting pattern of the springer in open ground, preferring always to lead the way, thereby putting up only game which would anyway have been put up by his handler. I had taken to walking a zigzag pattern until the penny had dropped at last and I wanted very much to keep it where it had fallen, but for the purpose I would have to find a place where the snow was shallow enough for brisk walking on both our parts.

  Accer cared nothing for peace and beauty. He greeted the outing with enthusiasm, wanting nothing more than to excavate a stick or stone from under the snow and throw it in the air, hurling himself up and after it with abandon. I let him blow off steam.

  To tell the truth, I was facing the outing with rather less enthusiasm. Accer was one of those maddening young dogs that can seem to learn a lesson only to have forgotten it by morning. Maturity would bring the remedy, I kept telling myself, and each dog must learn at its own pace. In the meantime, I dared not give up.

  We had reached the gate and I was bringing Accer under control of a sort when I heard the sound of a vehicle on the far side of the house and then Beth’s voice calling me. I turned back with, if anything, a sense of relief.

  Beth met me at the back corner of the house. Like myself she was shod in wellingtons and clad in waxed cotton. Her cheeks were rosy. So also was her nose. She looked about eleven years old. ‘Ben Garnet’s arrived,’ she said in a stage whisper.

  I nearly turned around again. Even trying to drum the elements of his job into Accer was better than parleying with Garnet. But Beth obviously expected me to do my duty and I could hardly let her down.

  ‘Kennel Accer for me?’ The frost was still sharp and our breaths were steaming.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Lunch soon. Don’t be too long. And remember what you promised me. Come on, boy.’ Surprisingly, Accer went with her.

  I found Ben Garnet leaning against the bonnet of a new-looking Subaru estate which I had not seen before. He straightened up and greeted me with a smile as though we had always been the best of buddies. ‘Good morning,’ he sang out. ‘How are you keeping? No recurrence of the old trouble?’

  I assured him that I was keeping well. I refrained from a reciprocal enquiry, preferring not to be assured of his continuing good health. He glanced towards the house but I was damned if I was going to invite him inside. ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing that will cost you money,’ he said. He spoke lightly, but I had a feeling that he was not joking.

  ‘Yes?’ I said. I waited.

  ‘A signature.’ He produced a green paper, apparently out of thin air. I recognized the Kennel Club’s Form One. ‘Your dog put my bitch up the spout.’

  Beth’s parting remark suddenly made sense. I had almost forgotten the incident at Lord Crail’s shoot. Now it struck me that the other Lord had delivered Garnet into my hand, testicles first. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘I can quite see that you have a problem.’
r />   He looked at me sharply. ‘I have?’

  ‘You certainly have. Because I’m not signing.’

  ‘But without your signature I can’t register the pups.’ He spoke as if explaining something simple to a child who had failed to grasp it first time around.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You can’t. Is that all you wanted? I have to get on.’

  ‘Come on, now,’ he said smoothly. ‘You can’t leave a neighbour in the lurch.’

  ‘You’re not my neighbour and I can.’ To my eternal shame I was rather enjoying myself.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘For a start because you put them together deliberately, which makes it a self-inflicted wound. We were very down on self-inflicted wounds in the army. For another thing, because I’ve no way of knowing that she wasn’t served by other dogs in addition to Horace.’

  ‘That didn’t happen,’ he said. He was displaying the excessively frank and open expression of one to whom the truth is as alien a territory as the surface of Mars.

  ‘You may know that,’ I said. ‘I certainly don’t.’

  ‘You can take my word for it.’

  ‘If you were me,’ I said, ‘would you take the word of somebody with your reputation?’ (I expected him to flare up at that. If somebody had said as much to me I would have hit out first and worried afterwards about my fitness for a fight. But Garnet never even blinked.) ‘A third reason, if you really need one, is that I have a rooted objection to my bloodline being taken over and mass-propagated in competition with me.’

  He was shaking his head, almost pityingly. ‘All that I and my friends want is a handful of pups to train for rough-shooting.’

  ‘And you’d sign an undertaking that none of them would ever be bred from or entered in field trials?’