Die Like a Dog

by Gwen Moffat

  There had been vague but brilliant blues and pinks, and shapes soft as coloured mists. The scene resolved to a vast stretch of sea, a vertical buttress of rosy rock and Seale, poised on the edge of nothing, turned towards them, gesturing. ‘I was explaining,’ came her laconic voice, ‘that this was not the best place for a picture.’

  A black wall superseded the blinding sea but the water was still there, sparking diamonds hundreds of feet below. Near the top of the wall a high sun picked out points like a floodlight and there she was again, illuminated, brown as a nut in a white bikini, arched backward in the act of surmounting an overhang. The rope was the palest thread, scarcely visible in the gloom below. ‘Cornwall,’ she said. A pin would have been heard to drop.

  The show lasted an hour. In bed that night it occurred to Miss Pink that Seale must be the poorest speaker in the business. The pictures seemed merely to elicit her remarks, as if she, like the audience, stared at each new situation and said the first thing that came to mind. The cool words dropped into a rapt stillness. ‘I wasn’t too happy at that point,’ or, as angry clouds came boiling over a knife-edge of ice on the Matterhorn: ‘That was hairy. The ice was rotten too. It was over a thousand feet to the glacier.’ Flash. A pattern of crevasses as in an aerial view, gaping blue and green like the jaws of putrid cadavers. Miss Pink’s brain cut in: it wasn’t the right glacier, but another, more appropriate in the context. There was more craft to this show than was apparent to the layman.

  Flick – and the screen was clumped with the fringed bells of soldanella: pale mauve, blooming in the snow.

  They winged round the Dolomites like eagles, looking down through thin air to matchstick trees beyond – too far beyond the following party: bright crash hats a couple of hundred feet below. They stared across a chasm to a sheer tower with minute figures clinging to the rock. They zoomed in on the leader but although they could now see his boots and hands, even the telephoto lens failed to bring up the holds. Click – and it was the same man, the same position but in profile with the cliff dropping out of the picture: exposure without end.

  They were transported to the Himalayas where Annapurna was a fluted triangle of pink ice in the dawn, to the Andes and the terrible soft snow of a southern face. Avalanches were explained most casually, and avalanches came rolling towards them so that Miss Pink thought she heard the rumble and cringed in anticipation of the blast.

  And then they were in California, and the remarks became a dreamy commentary as Seale – and they – lived for an indeterminate period in a world of pale and soaring walls, of domes and spires and monstrous overhangs, and knew the shameless arrogance of looking straight down three thousand feet to a mortal world below. They lived with giants: brown, near-naked men with headbands like Indians, bearded and pale-eyed. They inhabited a dream world, everybody’s dream world.

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  Seale had come out on the inn’s terrace to discover Miss Pink alone on a garden seat.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m still enjoying the sensation of having done climbs which I could never have done in a million years.’

  ‘You must have seen hundreds of pretty slides.’

  ‘I have, but yours aren’t pretty. How do you produce a collection like that?’

  Seale shrugged. ‘I mix with good climbers, good photographers. We exchange slides. I take pictures of people on parallel routes and vice versa. As you see, it works.’

  There was a step on the terrace. Judson had followed her. He stood in front of them like a schoolboy.

  ‘What can I bring you, ladies? It should be champagne.’

  But it was brandy. ‘Not much difference in cost,’ Seale commented when he’d gone back to the bar. ‘Not overloaded with money either, to judge from his fences. It’s I who should be buying the drinks; I made a packet tonight.’

  ‘You deserve every penny of it,’ Miss Pink said fervently. ‘They were bowled over.’

  ‘Well, nothing happens here, does it? I mean, the highlight of the past decade was the cook here peppering the barman with popgun pellets and Judson buying a couple of guard dogs. The incidents,’ she added mischievously, ‘were not related.’

  ‘The cook!’

  ‘Took the barman home with her one night and he misunderstood the situation, went back a second night, was thrown out, so he got drunk and made another attempt. She took a shotgun to him.’

  ‘Did she do any damage?’

  ‘He was running too fast. I think the hospital dug a few pellets out of his backside. He didn’t bring a charge. She’d already spread the word round that it was attempted rape. Everyone knew the truth but George Waring didn’t want any bother at the pub, and the cook doesn’t give a hoot for her reputation. The barman left.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Who told you this?’

  ‘A fellow who works in the woods and wardens the Nature Reserve. He was in the hall tonight; he saw to the lights for me.’

  ‘What did he think of the show?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  Judson returned with the drinks.

  ‘You rang my wife,’ he said to Miss Pink. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Did she get the dog back?’

  ‘Oh yes, no trouble. He’s quite tractable.’

  Seale turned on him. ‘That black Alsatian that got out this afternoon? He’s wild as hell.’

  He paused. ‘He attacked you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how can you judge his nature?’ The tone was easy, amused.

  ‘Evans said your dogs were trained to kill.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Evans. He suffers from delusions of grandeur. Surely a girl who lives your kind of life isn’t bothered by stray dogs round her tent?’

  ‘Not bothered, just wary. I’d sooner face a wild animal, even a grizzly, than a feral Alsatian.’

  ‘Feral?’

  ‘Domestic beast gone wild.’

  ‘But my dogs –’

  ‘Forget it,’ Seale said, bored. ‘Did you like the show?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was fierce, put out. ‘I enjoyed it. But I can’t understand how you come to be frittering away your time on these self-destructive activities when you could be doing something positive with your life.’

  ‘Such as?’ She was smiling. She’d heard it all before.

  ‘With your energy and courage? Why, you could be anything –’ He pondered, at a loss.

  ‘Difficult,’ sympathised Seale. ‘What is on a par with rock climbing?’

  ‘It’s the useless expenditure of resources,’ he persisted, and frowned at his own pomposity. ‘This kind of vitality is needed; you could be at the peak of any job you gave your mind to.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked out at the deepening dusk.

  Miss Pink sipped her brandy. Judson stared at his hands hanging between his knees. A compact young man came out on the terrace, glanced sideways and met Seale’s eyes. She rose and, without touching or speaking, they walked down the steps to the lawn that sloped to the river bank.

  ‘Who is that young man?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘Lloyd.’ Judson was curt. ‘Joss Lloyd. Lives on my property.’

  Miss Pink murmured something about a chill in the air and stepped into the bar. She saw Gladys Judson sitting alone on a sofa and joined her. They enthused about the show.

  ‘Where is she now?’ asked Mrs Judson, looking round the room as if short-sighted.

  ‘Down by the river. With a young man called Lloyd.’

  ‘With Joss Lloyd? Yes, they have something in common.’

  ‘What is that?’ Miss Pink asked, for something to say.

  ‘Youth.’ The tone was unexpectedly dry.

  Judson came in looking flushed and sullen, and crossed to the bar. His wife’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘We shall be starting the haying at any time,’ she said.

  ‘Warm work.’

  Miss Pink had followed the thought process without effort: heat, hard work, bad temper. Anna Wa
ring was handing him a large brandy. Her lips moved. He frowned and turned his back on her, surveying the room. His wife was saying, with enthusiasm: ‘The food is all right here? Lucy Banks has her off-days.’

  ‘Superlative so far,’ Miss Pink said. ‘Too good. Cream in everything, and with everything.’

  They started to discuss food with feeling: of all subjects the least likely to cause friction.

  It was half an hour before Seale came in, alone. She paused on the threshold and looked round the room as if she had forgotten what she had returned for – but she had to go through the hotel to reach her van on the forecourt. She saw Miss Pink and came across to say goodnight prettily, like a very young girl. Her eyes were languid.

  ‘What are your plans?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘The next lecture?’

  ‘That’s in Ebeneser tomorrow. I’ll make this place my base for a while.’

  They looked up at her blankly. Her eyes went past them to the front door. ‘So I shall see you again,’ she said, and smiled.

  The drinkers parted to let her pass but before they could draw together again, Judson was pushing through, jostling elbows and spilling beer. People looked after him angrily and one or two glances were directed at the sofa where Miss Pink sat with her companion.

  Judson overtook the girl and put his hand on her arm. She turned and looked at him inquiringly. Miss Pink felt a quick movement beside her. Embarrassed, she looked across the room and saw Anna Waring, in the act of scooping empty glasses from a table, staring at Judson’s back, small white teeth worrying her full lip, and fury in her big blue eyes.

  Chapter 3

  The sun had burned the dawn mists off the meadows by the time Miss Pink came striding up the glen next morning. As she passed Seale’s camp she caught a glimpse of scarlet and a movement in the shade of the sycamores but she did not leave the road. It was too early for social calls.

  The meadows were on her left; on her right the oakwoods climbed the slope and shortly she came to the entrance to the Nature Reserve: a small gate at the top of a bank. Between gate and road the slope was of earth, eroded by water and the passage of shod horses, or one horse that had passed that way many times. This was where she’d entered the Reserve yesterday. This morning she regarded the broken ground with disapproval and passed on.

  Ahead and just below the road conifers and splashes of colour showed among the hardwoods. There was the grey stone of a chimney, a flash of sunlit slates; this was the Judsons’ house, Parc. She hoped that the dogs were securely chained, felt a sense of outrage at the hope and then reflected that, viewed objectively, it was indeed monstrous that one couldn’t enjoy a walk in a Welsh combe for fear of attack from a wild beast. Deep in thought she heard the click of a latch; bearing down on her was a solid woman in winged spectacles and a blue overall. Behind her and the gate the white walls of a cottage were framed between clumps of lupins. They were opposite the end of the Judsons’ drive and Miss Pink uttered the thought that most concerned her:

  ‘Good morning. Are the dogs loose?’

  The woman gaped, then recovered herself.

  ‘No,’ she said, taking the other’s measure. ‘Are you calling on Mrs Judson?’

  ‘Not at the moment, but in any event I feel easier now that I know where the dogs are.’

  ‘If they were loose Mrs Judson would have phoned me. I look after them.’

  ‘The dogs? Oh, you help in the house.’ Miss Pink smiled at the euphemism. ‘And you’re –’

  ‘I assist Mrs Judson.’ The tone was a rebuke. ‘I’m Mrs Evans.’

  ‘Ah. I met your husband.’ Miss Pink was bland.

  ‘He is the bailiff for the estate,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘I’m sorry about the dogs. Evans has seen to it that it won’t happen again.’

  ‘I’m sure he has,’ Miss Pink murmured.

  ‘Guard dogs are essential,’ she was informed. ‘You don’t know who’s about these days.’ Behind the butterfly frames the eyes were cold. ‘It’s all over, isn’t it? Riots, looting, arson. I feel like going out and buying an Alsatian myself, that I do. We’ll all be murdered in our beds, I tell Evans. Heavy metal, did you see? Cowards in public, of course, but Evans was as well coming home in the car. You don’t walk up this lane at night alone no more.’

  ‘Heavy metal?’ Miss Pink was bewildered.

  ‘In the hall last night. You were there. You saw.’

  ‘I saw a punk rocker: green and orange hair.’

  ‘Heavy metal,’ Mrs Evans corrected firmly. ‘They carry knives, bicycle chains, ball bearings for throwing under horses’ hooves, hoses for stealing petrol. I blame it on the TV. Copy-cat violence. No one’s safe. We’ve got it here, you know. Oh yes,’ she nodded sagely, turned and looked meaningly up the valley. ‘What can you expect with parents like they got? Single parent families!’ She gave a snort of contempt and turned back to Miss Pink. ‘I’ll say no more. You’ll see if you’re here for any length of time.’

  ‘You have no children yourself.’

  Mrs Evans’s face was suddenly tragic. ‘No. No children.’ She looked pointedly at Miss Pink’s left hand. ‘I’ve quite enough to do looking after a husband.’

  Now who, Miss Pink thought, moving on with a feeling of release, smelling the wholesome honeysuckle again: who lives further up the valley?

  She came to the house soon enough, or rather, its drive: docks and dandelions pushing through the tarmac, a sagging gate with no name, an avenue of yews that had not been clipped for years. The house was invisible beyond the yews.

  After that there was a ruin with a mountain ash growing from the remaining chimney stack, and nettles halfway up the walls, while just past it a tolerable surfaced track climbed the wooded slope. It was marked with the imprint of wide tyres. She turned uphill and lengthened her stride. Almost immediately she saw a nest box and realised that she must still be within the bounds of the Reserve. A flycatcher flitted to the hole and slipped inside. As she watched, it reappeared and rushed off without a glance towards her, all but colliding with its mate. Miss Pink sighed at such industry.

  Pigeons crooned through the chorus of songbirds. She walked quietly in the dust of the track and, except for a nervous jay, the birds ignored her. The rabbits were in their burrows this late in the morning and she was thinking that, apart from the remote possibility of a fox, she would see no mammals until the evening, when the track crossed a path that contoured the slope: a narrow trail edged with dog’s mercury. Along the beaten earth a small animal came running towards her until, suddenly aware of her presence, it halted with straddled fore feet and spread claws – formidable claws. A long pale throat rose serpent-like to support the pointed mask, black-whiskered, black-eyed, with fine white guard hairs framing triangular ears.

  They stood immobile, unbreathing, and then the marten rippled aside, there was a scuffle of leaves, a movement like a zephyr through the ground cover, and it was gone.

  Miss Pink walked on, the track curving back on itself, until she caught a smell that wasn’t strange, but out of context: fried bacon. She emerged from the trees on a green alp where a battered Land-Rover stood beside a small cottage. Grass came right up to the shabby walls, and the man called Joss Lloyd was sitting on the turf oiling a pair of boots with a toothbrush.

  She introduced herself and in the course of conversation asked what mammals he had on the Reserve. He gave her the expected breakdown: rabbits, stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, one badger sett, the passing fox.

  ‘No pine marten?’ she asked innocently.

  He tensed. ‘Did someone tell you there were pine martens here?’

  ‘No one.’ She was smug. ‘It approached me about half a mile down the track.’

  He stared at her and his astonishment gave way to a kind of hopelessness. His was a transparent face.

  ‘So the dog hasn’t driven it away yet,’ she said gently, and watched the astonishment return.

  ‘You haven’t been here a day! How did you know –?’

  ‘I’ve been h
ere long enough. And it was I who told Mrs Judson that the dog was loose yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘And I reported it,’ he said viciously. ‘Rang the secretary of the Trust and demanded that he call Judson. I lost my cool. But what can I do?’ He spread his hands. ‘The animal’s a ravening wolf – no, if it was a wolf, I’d be protecting it. It’s a – a – it’s obscene.’

  Miss Pink said quietly: ‘An Alsatian could never catch a marten –’

  ‘That’s not the point! This is a Nature Reserve. It’s my job to protect the wildlife – Good God, yesterday two of my mates went – I was out with some friends and I shot a couple of crows because they’d been living on my fledglings for three seasons and I’d finally got permission to get rid of them. These dogs go rampaging through the woods every day driving all the animals to ground, disturbing them so they can’t feed ... The crows were no trouble compared with them!’

  ‘Both dogs got out?’

  ‘I mean, they’re both out when Judson goes through. He rides round the Reserve almost every day. There’s a right of way over it, you see; he retained that when he leased the land to the Trust. So he can make a mess of the paths and I have to build them up again. Have you seen the walkers’ entrance on the road? I had all that slope dug out in steps twice, ready to be shored up with logs, and overnight he went up and down that slope on that f – blasted horse of his ... I’ve given up. People have to climb the slope as best they can. But now – the marten. Can there be a pair? I’ve searched for the den. Suppose the dogs found it first?’

  ‘Keep a sense of proportion. What do the officers of the Trust say? They must be concerned, to say the least.’

  ‘Someone spoke to Judson on the phone. His wife had got the dog back by then. Judson said it wouldn’t happen again. He apologised. To the secretary, that is; not to me, never to me. I’m the navvy that rebuilds the paths his horse tears down. I’ve been on to the secretary again; I said they’d got to stop him bringing his dogs through when he’s riding. If he does it, all the trippers will bring their dogs. It’s not allowed on other Reserves – dogs off the lead – why should it happen here?’