The Dog It Was That Died

by H. R. F. Keating

  Who pretended not to see what was happening.

  ‘Well,’ piped the Bosun, ‘good night, my dear Boycott. Just go and dig out the facts yourself.’

  ‘Drunk,’ Boycott boomed. ‘You must be drunk.’

  The Bosun’s little eyes gleamed in their immense setting of winy flesh.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m drunk as a lord. Drunk and dangerous.’

  He looked round the high schoolroom. Led by Miss Martin, the feather in her hat spry as ever, the meeting was fast dispersing. At the door Austin Boycott turned.

  Roger opened his mouth to shout.

  His tall captor swung him bodily round till he was facing the corner and at the same time clapped his free hand hard across his mouth.

  ‘Long live Boycott,’ shouted the Bosun.

  His bewildered descendant turned and followed the others out.

  A moment of silence.

  The echo of the Bosun’s high-pitched shout dying away, the faint noise of the retreating audience.

  And a new note.

  A deep growling.

  Cuchulain, disturbed at last from his slumbers by the piercing tone of the Bosun’s yell.

  He rose inch by inch to his full height, topping the desks around him. He stretched briefly and suddenly saw Roger caught in the steel claw grip of his burly captor. He moved slowly across the room, his growl rising in intensity.

  All four of them watched him.

  As he got nearer and nearer the coarse hair stood up angrily on his back.

  Suddenly Roger jerked his mouth wider open under the stifling grip of the man in the black coat and brought his teeth sharply down on to his middle finger.

  The man gave a grunt of pain and relaxed his hand.

  Roger pulled his head away and shouted.

  ‘Get him, boy, get him.’

  The huge wolfhound gathered himself up to spring.

  But for all the fierceness of his appearance he was no natural fighter. He had absorbed too much of his master’s willingness to think before acting.

  A quality entirely absent from the Bosun’s character.

  Cuchulain sprang full on to the point of the unsheathed swordstick.

  An instant death.

  The Bosun staggered heavily under the impact of the great dog’s leap, but almost before Roger had realized what had happened Cuchulain was lying on the chalky schoolroom floor with dark blood seeping from the gashed wound at his throat.

  With a wild plunge Roger broke out of the tall man’s grip and flung himself on to the body of the dead wolfhound.

  His hands feeling the still warm flesh under the rough brownish grey hair. His sobbed tears matting the springy coat.

  The Bosun gently placed the bloody swordstick on one of the little desks. From the pocket of his startling black and white overcoat he took a small bottle with a stretched rubber cap and a hypodermic already fitted with a needle. He plunged the needle through the rubber and drew up half a syringe of liquid. He held the hypodermic briefly up to the light.

  The faint yellow of its contents.

  Stooping over the sobbing Roger he jerked back the right trouser leg and rammed the needle hard into the flesh of the calf.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Roger woke up.

  The gradual sensation of returning consciousness. The head, the shoulders, the stomach, the arms, the hands, the fingers, the legs, the feet, down to the toes.

  Cautiously he tried to move. He felt a little stiff but there seemed to be nothing else wrong.

  He lay still for a moment putting together the events before he lost consciousness. One by one they came into his mind. Until the last one of them fell into place: the feel of the dead Cuchulain’s rough coat under his fingers.

  He breathed deeply, letting the air come out of his lungs in a long jet. Physically he felt nothing worse than the slight stiffness. But something still was wrong. Some part of his previous existence was missing.

  He lay quietly thinking about what it could be. Time passed but he was unable to tell how much.

  Then suddenly, for no particular reason, he realized what was wrong. It was totally black.

  For a moment he thought that he had actually been blinded. The prick of sweat rising on the skin of his back.

  He forced himself to be calm. There was nothing to be gained by panic.

  He felt with extended palms at the surface on which he was lying. Stone. Damp, chill and uneven.

  He slowly drew his knees up until the soles of his feet were firmly on the ground. Then inch by inch he heaved himself upwards. Unable to see anything he cringed at every moment expecting to hit some solid object. But at last he was standing erect. He held out his arms wide to balance himself.

  He stood in this position for a long time. Waiting until he felt a basis of reassurance. Forcing himself not to think.

  Then he began painstakingly to turn round. This was the first action he had decided on: to complete one turn of three hundred and sixty degrees.

  It was when he had turned through a hundred and twenty degrees that it impinged on his mind.

  The immediate impact made him stop in his slow circular progress and stay stock still. It required a sustained effort of the intellect to work out the simple train of reasoning. I see something, therefore I am capable of seeing, therefore I am not blind.

  The instant he had toiled to this point he realized what it was he was looking at: the merest chink of dim light extending for about four inches horizontally at a height of about five feet from the stone surface on which he was standing. He set out towards it, moving clumsily in the thick darkness.

  Just as he was stretching out a hand towards it his shins barked against some hard object and he stumbled helplessly forward. He struck his head against what appeared to be a wall in front of him and ended up twisted and sprawled back on the damp stone floor.

  But after this his exploration was swifter and more effective. He got to his feet again, feeling out all about him with outstretched fingers. Soon he located the object over which he had stumbled: a low stone bench or shelf. And above it a few moments later his searching fingers feeling over the brick wall came into contact with a different material. He touched it rapidly all over and was able to assure himself with a sense of triumph that somewhere about four feet above the stone bench there was a patch of boarding, fixed closely together but at one point admitting a muted gleam of light.

  It seemed that he was in a cellar with a single squat boarded-up window high up on one wall.

  Bit by bit he carried out further explorations. He discovered that most of his clothes had gone. He was dressed only in vest and trousers. He confirmed his suspicion that he was imprisoned by making a complete circuit of the pitch black cellar. As far as he could discover it was a small squarish place about eight feet by eight. He located the door, which was totally immovable and let through not a gleam of light. There was no furniture except for the stone bench running along the whole of the wall under the blocked window and a chemical lavatory in one corner.

  It was dank and chill.

  When he had completed his explorations he made his way to the bench and sat down heavily. He felt entirely exhausted. For a long time he sat without moving. He felt too tired to think and there was little enough to think about. He did not know where he was, he did not know how long he had been there, he had no idea how long the Bosun intended him to remain like this, or what he intended to do eventually.

  What seemed like hours passed, although every now and again he was assailed with a sharp fear that in fact only a few minutes had gone by. If they had felt so interminable how was he going to endure a long imprisonment?

  There was no way of telling the time. His watch had gone with his clothes. For long spells he tried counting out the seconds. In this way he proved to himself that several periods of ten minutes had passed. But soon he found he had muddled himself up over how many of these spells he had recorded. There was no way of checking. At last he gave up all attempt
to keep the time.

  He tried thinking about his experiences since he had found Eric’s body slumped in the big armchair in his flat. But recalling events which seemed to bear no relation to his immediate situation gave him an overwhelming sensation of pointlessness and after a while he made a deliberate effort not to think of them any more so as to keep the waves of despair at bay.

  He dozed occasionally, and each time he did so awoke to find that he had momentarily lost all sense of place. Each time he reconstructed his surroundings with painful care.

  For a short spell he banged monotonously on the door. He even shouted for help. But he knew before he began that the Bosun would hardly have put him in a place where he had only to make a little noise to attract attention.

  At last an event broke the black silence all around him. Without the least warning the door suddenly grated open. Roger looked wildly towards the point from which the sound had come. He thought he detected a grey patch in the blackness and even the vague silhouette of a figure.

  He leapt up and started forwards. But the long hours of sitting in apathy had deadened his responses. He stumbled and fell from sheer feebleness.

  When he scrambled to his feet again the darkness was total once more. He stood for a long time without moving, staring at the place where he thought he had seen the grey oblong that indicated the door was open. Had it meant that? Had he imagined the whole incident? Or dreamt it?

  It was much later when he was making yet another aimless exploration of his cell that he knocked against a tin pannikin on the floor somewhere near the door. He got down on his hands and knees and discovered that the floor was definitely wet rather than just slimily damp.

  He reconstructed what must have happened. Painfully working through the puzzle. The pannikin must have contained drinking water. He felt in it with minute carefulness. Yes, there was a dribble of cold liquid in it still. Obviously he had spilt the rest when he had accidentally discovered the little pan.

  Suddenly he felt obsessedly thirsty. He put the pannikin to his lips and sucked up every drop of water in it. Still he felt his thirst unassuaged.

  After a while he could bear it no longer. He knelt on the stone floor again and began licking at the little puddle where the pannikin had been. The water tasted dusty and bitter. He thought it must be thick with coal dust.

  Towards the end of his dog-like scavenging he bumped into a second pannikin. He was luckier this time and did not upset it.

  Holding the flattish metal dish with extreme care he sat cross-legged on the damp floor and put a finger in it to see what it held. He discovered some thick stuff, about the consistency of cold porridge. He scooped a bit up on the end of his finger and cautiously put it in his mouth. It was obviously food of some sort, but it had scarcely any flavour and without being able to see it he was totally unable to tell what it was.

  The feel of it on his tongue made him hungry and he scooped out the contents of the pannikin and shovelled them greedily into his mouth with his cupped hand. After this he went back to the stone bench, which was drier than the floor if no warmer, and slept for a little.

  After what seemed a shorter time than before he heard the door grate open again. He was lying on the bench dozing but managed to get up and get across the floor more quickly than on the first occasion. As he reached the door a hand pushed him hard backwards. He fell over.

  ‘Who’s there? Who is it? Who are you?’ he shouted.

  The door had closed again.

  With more care than before he explored the area of the floor near the door and came across two pannikins, one filled with water and the other with the same anonymous food.

  He felt less hungry than when he had first been fed and decided to conserve part of his supplies to spin out the time till the next visit. He drank some of the water and carried the tin dish back to the bench. Then he went and fetched the food. When he had put it safely beside the water he made a fresh systematic exploration of his cell. He located the first water pannikin where it had slid into a corner, but he could not find the slightly greasy food dish. He thought he had left it near the door; doubtless the person who had brought the new supplies had succeeded in getting hold of it and had taken it away.

  He judged by his state of hunger that he was now to get fed at least at fairly frequent intervals. He settled down with unexpected contentedness to wait for the next delivery of supplies. He decided that he would not attempt to rush the door when it opened. Instead he would sit quietly where he was on the bench and do his best to see who it was who came in.

  The hours went by. The waiting time seemed to get longer and longer. He convinced himself more than once that the door was about to be opened, but there came not the slightest sound. He finished his supply of water and pappy food. Still nothing happened. He suddenly felt hungry and in a very short time was almost mad with the need to eat.

  So when at last the door was opened he forgot all his calm resolutions about carefully observing his gaoler. He made a wild rush towards the dim figure and was again contemptuously pushed over on to the slimy stone floor. He ate all the new supply of food ravenously and with shame.

  The interval before a third meal arrived was again terribly long and again Roger’s patience was exhausted before it arrived. But the next time he was taken unawares after a very short interval. And another meal came hard on the heels of this one.

  At one stage Roger had entertained an idea of measuring time by the number of meals that he received. But this system of utterly irregular and capricious delivery only made him even more confused. All he could be sure of was that several days must have passed. It might have been two. It might have been five. He was totally uncertain.

  Some facts he did discover with the passing of time. He was eventually able to make out that he had two gaolers and that they were Collins and the towering man in black. But their turns on and off duty seemed to form no recognizable pattern. Another possible clock had to be written off.

  Never in any circumstances did either of them take any notice of him whatsoever. After he had shouted at Collins by name they ceased to take precautions to stop him recognizing them, but they never otherwise acknowledged his existence.

  He became eaten up with self-pity. He was miserably cold in the dampness of the cellar with so few clothes. His beard had grown uncomfortably long. He smelt. The unvarying pappy food did not agree with him. He was able to sleep only in short spells before he was woken by painful stomach cramps.

  As time went by he ceased to speculate in any way about his fate. He simply accepted that he would live for ever in this timeless, chill and pitch dark vacuum.

  Occasionally he mused for long periods, hours or perhaps even days, on two sorts of events in his past. Nothing else from his former existence came into his mind, but these two trains of thought had for him the distant vividness of scenes remembered from works of fiction.

  In the first he took long imaginary walks with Cuchulain, walks they had once taken together but transformed now into a sort of poetry. The Dublin streets through which they went became a paradisal landscape, pure and unchangeable. Tirelessly he roamed through them with the big dog moving ahead of him at the end of his familiar leash. Endless vistas opened out ahead of them as they came to each new corner and closed quietly behind them as they passed. They had no destination and needed none.

  In the second sort of reverie he found himself remembering in immense detail trivial conversations he had had with Professor O Nuallain in the days when they had both been working at the School. No one else ever figured in these long, intense periods of recollection – only himself and the prophetic eyes of his former chief.

  The actual words they had each spoken were drably platitudinous – observations about the weather, banally polite comments on the news of the day. But in Roger’s mind now they took on an intense quality as if every syllable had been thought out and destined for no other place than those they had occupied in the pattern of the whole.

  He w
ould fix on some minor point and brood over every aspect of it. One day, he recalled, Professor O Nuallain had said something to him about a scheme to grow vegetables on land cleared of peat for the new power stations. The professor had said it sounded a good idea. And this was now enough for Roger. The scheme, whether it was only a proposal or whether it had been begun he never knew, took on for him all the glory of a great enterprise. He savoured it, he worked over it, he became lost in it.

  And suddenly, quite without warning as usual, the door of his cell was opened and instead of leaving him his unvarying food his two gaolers came across to the bench where he had been lying.

  Without a word the big man caught hold of him by the right arm, lifted him impersonally to his feet and moved him towards the door.

  A light piece of furniture.

  Collins hovered on his other side waiting to seize his left arm in case of need. But there was no need: Roger was far too dazed to act in any way.

  He allowed himself to be propelled through the door which he had thought he might never see the far side of. He lacked the capacity even to register that events were at last breaking up the unmarked continuum of his existence.

  Outside the cell he dimly apprehended that there was a passageway. At the end of it Collins scuttered up a short flight of steps, took a big iron key out of his pocket and unlocked a door facing them.

  A blast of undimmed electric light hit Roger between his eyes. He shut them tight and lowered his head in pain, but the light seemed to burn redly right into the centre of his head. He twisted and turned in the unflexing grip of his gaoler but nothing he could do diminished the fierceness of the inescapable light.

  It was several minutes later that he realized he had been sat on a chair, strangely soft after the unyielding chill of his prison bench, and that he was no longer being held. He kept his eyes firmly shut and his head lowered and listened hard. The impact of the light hurt a little less now and he was able to concentrate on analysing his new situation.