Twice Bitten

by Gerald Hammond

  Nobody can be quite sure what happened next, but it seems that the farmer was also looking for rabbits, but on the far side of the bushes. He saw a rabbit. There are rabbit holes just there and bunny probably went to ground. But the farmer saw a grey shape flitting through the bushes, which was almost certainly Mim. Whatever the explanation, Mim heard the sound of a shot and collected about a dozen pellets of Number Six shot.

  The farmer was as horrified as Mim and Rex. He Land Rovered them straight to us at Three Oaks. While Isobel Kitts struggled to remove any pellets which were in danger of aggravating the physical damage, Rex sat with his head in his hands and told the story.

  ‘What put the bloody lid on it for me,’ he finished, ‘was that when we reached the road and were lifting her into the Land Rover, Sanctimonious Pratt drove by. And he wagged a finger at us. He must have thought that one of us had run the dog over.’

  I was duly sympathetic. Timothy Pratt, a freelance photographer and cameraman, was well known locally. He was often nicknamed ‘Sanctimonious’ because of his habit of sermonizing over anyone who he had at a moral disadvantage. He had political ambitions and by strange chance often figured heroically on television in his own film clips. At the moment he was admired without being liked. Millions of viewers had seen him attempting to rescue an injured motorcyclist and being himself burned in the attempt. Whatever characteristics Sanctimonious Pratt might lack, courage was not one of them; but it must have been gall and wormwood to Rex to be admonished by him at such a time and from a safe distance.

  Isobel managed to tidy Mim up without serious harm, but the damage to Mim’s morale could never be repaired and I was forced to agree that she was now totally and incurably gun-shy.

  Daffy, as far as I know, never reproached Rex, but Rex never forgave himself. Daffy was heartbroken. She loved Mim but she had set her heart on bringing a pup of her own to field trial standard. A chronically gun-shy dog would be a total loss for trials and might very well pass on her nervousness to any kennel-mate. Very reluctantly, Daffy and Rex agreed that Mim would have to go.

  Daffy approached Quentin Cove and, although she was perfectly honest about the gun-shyness, received an acceptable offer. Mim was handed over. Daffy was subdued and occasionally tearful for several days but eventually another puppy which Rex, nobly abandoning for the moment his intention of building a sports car from a kit, insisted was properly bought and paid for this time, took her mind off Mim although she never forgot some of the lessons she had learned. They named the new puppy Sarda – the acronym of the Search and Rescue Dogs Association although, as Isobel pointed out more than once, the name would have more properly suited a Labrador.

  For the moment, all seemed well.

  *

  The critical stage in the training of any dog which is to compete in field trials or be sold as a working gun dog is the introduction to live quarry. For this purpose, rabbits are useful and sometimes essential. The dog may have been schooled in all the basic skills, will have learned to quarter the ground, to obey whistles and hand signals, to ignore rabbits in the rabbit pen and to retrieve cold game. It may even have learned the futility of chasing after an airborne pheasant. But a running rabbit is an open invitation to chase. Perhaps the biggest hurdle in training is for the dog to learn to hunt the rabbit out of cover and then to stop dead, just when temptation is at its strongest, until sent for the retrieve. Happily for the dog trainer, most farmers regard the rabbit much as a fond mother regards the common nit. A shooter with a dog, both of whom can be trusted to respect crops and livestock, is usually welcomed.

  That year, myxomatosis broke out again in our neighbourhood. It was not as total as in previous years – the infection is carried by the rabbit flea, which is mostly transferred in tightly occupied burrows, but rabbits now live more above-ground than they used to. And rabbits have developed a resistance to the virus. It was becoming quite common to gather a healthy rabbit with old mixy scars around the eyes. But those bunnies that caught the infection were seriously ill while it lasted. The disease was not communicable to dogs, but rabbits which hopped slowly or sat still were going to teach the dogs nothing that I wanted them to know and much that I hoped they would never find out.

  Late that summer, Dougal Webb made the regular run with a supply of dog-food. He was a thickset young man with black, curly hair, a round and ruddy face and a square jaw. Beth and I both felt, for reasons that we could not put into words, that he was not a man for a young girl, or anybody else, to trust. He was just a little too sure of his welcome, too pleased with himself and certain that his allure would have the desired effect. For Hannah, it did just that. As far as she was concerned, the sun shone out of his every orifice. She could hardly utter a coherent word while he was around. Beth said that this was because he brought with him his own cloud of pheromones and testosterone and God alone knew what else. I couldn’t see it myself. Dougal Webb also had a taste for life’s more luxurious capital goods. I put forward the theory that free spending on a man’s part might be a more powerful aphrodisiac than a whole cloud of personal chemicals. Beth, who was out of patience with me at the time, said that she wouldn’t know about that, never having experienced either of them.

  Dougal Webb was certainly a free spender though more, as far as I could judge, on his own comforts and status than on his lady friends. He dressed well and ran around in a Lotus quite unsuited to life on a farm. He wore a Rolex watch which I frankly envied. At first glance I had supposed it to be a fake, but the movement of the second hand confirmed that it was the genuine article. I had only once seen a similar model, and that had been on the wrist of one of the local landowners.

  Although Dougal was devoted to expensive possessions, he was remarkably thrifty about little things. The abhorrence of waste which had probably endeared him to Quentin as a farm manager extended even to finishing every last crumb on his plate, so although Dougal once explained his lifestyle with a passing reference to a legacy, I guessed that he had known hard times. His visit was timed, as usual, to suit an invitation to the snack which passes with us for lunch, but whether this was due to thrift or lust was uncertain.

  For once, nobody was away competing or engaged in some task too urgent to be left. We all managed to sit down together, so that the table in the big kitchen was crowded around and almost covered with crockery. In addition to Dougal, Sam and the five members of the firm, Henry, Isobel’s husband, had walked over to join us, as was his frequent habit.

  The myxomatosis that was still rife around Three Oaks had struck earlier further south and passed on, leaving a slightly reduced but still thriving population behind. Sam, who was passing through a garrulous phase – or so we hoped – had been almost monopolizing the conversation but I seized on a moment when his mouth was full. ‘I need to do some training on rabbits within the next day or two,’ I told Dougal. ‘Will it be all right if I come and work two or three dogs through your set-aside land?’

  Dougal swallowed quickly. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Mr Cove tells me that he’s let the rough shooting over the farm, so he doesn’t feel that he can let anybody else on. It wasn’t any of my doing,’ he added in what seemed to be genuine apology.

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  The loss of access to one farm was not a serious blow. I had been cultivating farmers for a long time, always asking each for an introduction and recommendation to his neighbours. Although it meant a big outlay on thank-you bottles at Christmas, at least I was never without land to train on. But Henry may have thought that either Dougal or I would appreciate a quick change of subject, because he suddenly asked Dougal, ‘How’s Quentin getting on with Mim?’

  This subject was more sensitive than the other. Hannah was looking at Dougal as though he had been handing down tablets of stone, but I saw Daffy and Sam exchange a look of sadness. Spaniels are very loving little dogs. Once in a while one meets up with one of their number which is exceptionally both loving and giving. Sarda, Mim’s replacement, was
one of these; but Mim had had a special place in Daffy’s heart and Sam’s.

  Dougal shrugged. ‘That’s the spotted one? I don’t have much to do with the dogs. I believe he’s very pleased with her.’

  ‘Is he managing to do anything about the gun-shyness?’ Henry persisted.

  ‘He hasn’t said anything, but I saw him working her with the dummy launcher the other day. I don’t think he can be having too much trouble.’

  I saw Daffy bite her lip. I knew that she was thinking that I was a false prophet. Perhaps, if she had persevered . . .

  After lunch, I caught Daffy on her own. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ I said, ‘or me. If he’s had any success with the gun-shyness it may have been at the expense of something else. And even if Mim becomes a Dual Champion, it doesn’t follow that you could have achieved the same. Just be happy for her.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Daffy said. But I could see that she did not believe it.

  Chapter Two

  Soon after that, autumn came round again, the shooting season opened and we were too busy to think about Quentin Cove. My own shooting engagements were infrequent, but I was picking-up several times in most weeks. The job of the pickers-up is to observe from behind the standing Guns and to use their dogs to collect any fallen birds other than those gathered by the Guns themselves. The opportunity is not to be missed, offering the trainer the ideal chance to give his dogs a final polish while at the same time having to himself the most enjoyable part of the day’s sport and even being paid for it – albeit a comparative pittance. Trustworthy handlers and dogs are in demand by shoot organizers, to put birds in the bag and to give a merciful end to any not killed outright by the shot.

  Along with shooting season, the season of field trials came rushing at us. Keeping our name before the shooting public and a series of field trial champions in our dogs’ pedigrees was the only way to convince the shooting man that one of our stock would be a more dependable purchase than the untried progeny of the bitch next door. Isobel, who had a remarkable talent and temperament for handling dogs under competition conditions, was competing almost every weekend. This, unfortunately, tied up at least one other member of the firm, because Isobel, who had a very poor head for those inevitable celebratory drinks, had succumbed once too often to temptation and had lost her driving licence – to the general relief because, even sober, she had been the sort of driver who causes other motorists to wake up in the small hours, gibbering.

  It was my responsibility to bring the dogs through the successive stages of training and to send them off with Isobel as prepared as they could be to acquit themselves well in competition. At the same time, it was necessary for the other dogs which I was training to sell as workers, the guests in boarding and the virtual prisoners in the quarantine kennels to be fed and watered, cleaned and groomed and, with the exception of those in quarantine who had to make do with an illicit period of chasing a ball in the quarantine courtyard, walked. And during all this activity it was inevitable that any brood bitch who had failed to conceive in the spring and was now in an interesting condition would pick the most frantically inconvenient moment to produce her litter.

  During the occasional brief intervals in this frenetic activity, we were much too tired to give more than a passing thought to absent friends. It was not until late October that Mim was brought to our notice again. By then, the first rush of activity on the grouse moors was over and estates were giving that year’s pheasants a little more time to mature, so that there was a comparative lull. My picking-up engagements were at a standstill, but I had three dogs to prepare for imminent competitions. The local rabbit population was still very low and unlikely to increase until spring. One of my favourite farms had been heavily poached by ferreters and another had received its annual visit from a team who shot at night by lamp from the back of a Land Rover. I was driven to try some of the farms where active game-shooting took place but, as I feared, I would not be welcome at that time of year. As a next-to-last resort I phoned Alec Hatton.

  Alec’s farm, Lincraigs, lay between Ardrossie, Quentin Cove’s farm, and Marksmuir, the wide-spread estate of Sir Ian Bewlay. Without compromising on the efficiency of his farming, Alec ran a small shoot with a syndicate of middle-income executives mostly from Glenrothes. He managed the shoot very well and at a modest subscription, by making use of volunteer labour from among his members, tucking small patches of game crops into every otherwise unusable corner of his land, releasing a modest number of pheasant poults and depending on an inward migration of birds from the much larger numbers reared and released for the commercial shooting on Marksmuir.

  Alec hesitated. He was usually a generous man although he always managed to sound grudging. It was only a mannerism. ‘The morn’s morn?’ he said. ‘Aye. That’ll be fine, if you’ll go round and dog the boundaries. Turn my birds back, like. Speak to me after.’

  Dog training with a gun is best not done solo. The act of shooting distracts from the dog handling and rabbits in particular are adept at breaking out of cover on the far side from the lone hunter. Beth always resisted my going off alone in case one of my blackouts overtook me while I was out of reach of ready help. Isobel, who would normally have come along to work the dogs while I used the gun, had seized on what would probably be the last quiet spell before February to take Henry away on a visit to a relative in Oban.

  ‘Who’s coming with me?’ I asked the world in general.

  Beth was usually willing to come along and to shoot, quite competently, while I got on with the training, but Sam had developed a cough. ‘You go,’ she told Daffy. ‘Hannah and I can manage the chores.’

  Daffy nodded happily.

  In the morning, there was a thin covering of fresh snow, the first since the early spring, but the roads were passable. I had hardly slowed the car outside the cottage where she lived with Rex before Daffy was out of the door and running down the path. Sarda was too young to progress beyond obedience training and the retrieval of dummies but, with the prospect of her own dog to bring on for competitions, Daffy was as keen as any young pup to learn. In wellingtons and a full set of Barbours, she looked almost normal or perhaps even a member of the Establishment.

  Twenty minutes later we passed Ardrossie Farm and the clutch of new buildings, dominated by silos and a square aluminium tower, out of keeping with the ancient countryside, where the dog-food was made. As we bounced up the potholed farm-road to Lincraigs Alec Hatton, a distant figure on a tractor, waved to us.

  Lincraigs Farm covered a large acreage and to dog the whole boundary would have taken more time than we could spare. But I could guess that it was the boundary with Marksmuir that concerned Alec. A farm track took us that way and I parked beside an enormous black-wrapped sausage of straw a hundred yards long. Evidently Alec was taking the fullest advantage of the new technology.

  It was a marvellous day. Unexpected sunshine struck a sparkle from the snow without being warm enough to trigger a thaw. Beyond the boundary, Marksmuir was heavily wooded with beech and birch and rowan. On Lincraigs, tree strips and small copses had been preserved. A mild autumn had seen the leaves turn but they had not yet fallen. That first, light powdering of snow outlined the branches against a blue sky, and among the tracery the leaves glowed in the sunshine, gold and brown and orange and scarlet. It was a day to remember. Daffy had brought a camera for the sake of the dogs. An enlarged print of one of her shots hangs over my desk as I write. In the foreground, a rowan blazes with berries while beneath its branches a spaniel, with one paw raised and eyes alight, awaits the command, ‘Get on!’ The picture may be pretty rather than beautiful. It may belong on the lid of a chocolate-box. But it can still bring a glow to my heart.

  But we were not there to enjoy the scenery. Daffy put away the camera and took my gun from me. She was becoming a more than competent shot.

  The snow made scenting difficult but it held a record of every creature that had set foot on it. In particular, it saved us wasting ti
me hunting for rabbits where there were none. It also showed the arrowhead footprints of many pheasants. Most of them had been drawn over the boundary from Marksmuir into a long and narrow strip of kale along the boundary of Lincraigs and towards grain-filled feed-hoppers strategically placed among scattered gorse-bushes. The deliberate tempting of a neighbour’s birds across the boundary was perfectly legal. It would have been generally denounced as un-neighbourly, but while Daffy knocked over the occasional rabbit, I worked the dogs, one at a time, with a clear conscience and sent pheasants onwards towards the two small woods at the heart of the Lincraigs shoot. Sir Ian Bewlay had never been among my favourite people and I was tickled by the thought of how the wandering would have infuriated his thrifty spirit.

  In the cold air, sound travelled. On Gifford Hill, which humped up to the south of us, foresters were felling the conifer plantation, clearing the roots and waste branches by building the foundation for a huge future bonfire. In the process, a house was emerging where previously I had only seen a roof and chimneys. The sound of the foresters’ voices came clearly between the bursts of chainsaw.

  The spaniels seemed to be enjoying the beauty of the day. They worked with zest but stayed under control, making only occasional tries to test their handler’s firmness as spaniels always will.

  Between Lincraigs and Gifford Hill ran another back-road and where the boundary met the road stood a small but stoutly built cottage with a slated roof and walls of stone. The small garden was tidy but the flowers were over and the vegetables almost finished. I had seen the place before but never its occupant. That morning, as we reached the road a figure was entering the garden gate, a woman of around sixty. She was very small and even in her youth could never have been a beauty, having a flat nose, a disproportionately large mouth and a noticeable squint. The spaniel at work just then, Pru, being even more sociable than the rest, pushed through the hedge and went to make her acquaintance and she squeaked with delight and went down on her knees to pet the dog. (This was a breach of discipline on the part of Pru but it was too late to do anything much about it; the dog had already been rewarded with praise.)