The Plague Dogs (44 page)

"Rabies?" said Snitter. "What's that?" Doosta not knaw? A sickness—kind of plague, like—it kills dogs; but it's noan common. Happen he thinks, a's got it—tha smells queer enoof, an' that head on thee: e rat split oop belly."

"But you're not afraid of us, are you?"

"Nay. Ah'd knaw reel enoof if tha had plague or sick like, but that's whit t' gaffer thinks, for sure. Else not 'a run."

"Where have all the sheep gone?" asked Rowf.

The dog looked surprised. "Sheep? We doan't leave sheep ont' fell in snaw. Sheep were browt down yesterday, 'an' damn' cold work it were an' all. That's what we're on with now—lookin' for any more as might 'a coom down [oft] tops lasst neet."

"I see," said Snitter. "So we shan't be able to—yes.''

"So ye're livin' oop an' down ont' fell?" said the dog. "By, ye're thin wi't, poor booggers. An ye're noan reet int' head an' all," it added to Snitter. "Happen ye'll die ~onf fell. Nay, cheer oop, poor lyle fella, it's gan to thaw bi morning, canst tha not feel it?"

A sudden shouting—"'Ere Wag, 'ere Wag—" sounded in the distance and the dog, without another word, vanished like a trout upstream. In the view from the crag, white fell stretched bare as a roof down to the tarn.

"He didn't recognise us," said Snitter after a little, "and; obviously thought we couldn't do any harm."

"We can't."

"My feet are cold."

"They'll be colder if we stay here. We've got to find some sort of shelter. It may thaw by morning, as he said, ' but it's cold enough to freeze your eyes out under this rock."

"What a sad sight that would be," said Snitter. "I couldn't see anything, could I? Not a maggot not a mouse a dustbin round the house. Cheer up, old Rowf. We might find the tod yet, and perhaps there's a bit of the world somewhere that nobody wants. Anyway, wouldn't you rather die here than in the whitecoats' tank? I would. It's little enough dignity we've got left. Of all the things whitecoats stole, that's what I feel worst about, I think. hope we die alone, like decent animals."

Sunday the 21st November to Monday the 22nd November

[Langttrath]

Digby Driver's assessment of Mr. Geoffrey Westcott, though characteristically flippant, exaggerated and uncharitable, had nevertheless been—also characteristically—by no means entirely inaccurate.

While Mr. Westcott had never, in fact, seen the inside of a police court, either in a defendant or any other capacity, there was, notwithstanding, a certain unscrupulousness in his make-up, together with a kind of self-centred, insensitive roughness. He lived largely by his own rules and sometimes stretched even them. Humanity in general he did not care for, preferring objects, especially artefacts; and he was not, as a rule, concerned to conceal this preference. When it came to getting the best out of fine or delicate mechanism, he had penetration and unlimited patience; for people, little or none. He possessed an above-average intellect and strong powers of concentration, but together with his solitary single-mindedness there went a potential (and at times something rather more than a potential) for intolerance and even fanaticism.

He had been the second of six children of a railway linesman, and in the cramped, overcrowded home had, in sheer self-defence, grown up tough and impervious. He had developed a preference for his own company, and a passion for acquiring and mastering technological instruments, so much more satisfying and solacing, in their smooth, controllable predictability, than the emotional inconsistencies of human relationships. During adolescence he grew still further apart both from his indigent parents and his rough-and-tumble brothers and sisters; and met with no opposition—rather the reverse—when, as soon as he had taken his A-levels, he left home and set up for himself. His family, in effect, forgot him.

He secured a good starting job at a bank in Winder-mere, yet it was not long before he came to be generally regarded as a misfit. Dour and quick to take offence, he tended to get on the wrong side of his colleagues and on more than one occasion displayed a total inability to appreciate the client's point of view.

Westcott did not need people or want to get on with them. Living alone and without luxury, his income was already sufficient for more self-indulgence and private enjoyment than as a boy he had dared to hope for. His style took the form of a fairly rigorous regime of denial, directed towards the acquisition of a planned [ission] of fine technological durables. It would, per-be tedious to catalogue his possessions—the prisitic compass, the Zeiss binoculars, the wrist-watch which mid play "Annie Laurie" under water while displaying fluorescent script the date and operative sign of the iac (or something like that), the quadraphonic gramolone which made the sound of a piano seem to come from four directions instead of one (which might have been strange even to poor Westcott if he had ever been le to stop fiddling with the controls long enough to listen with any concentration), the three electric shavers, and so on. Not his least source of pride and joy, however, as his small collection of guns and pistols. These were, course, illegal, but sometimes, taking out one or [an-ier], he would risk a few rounds' fire in suitably lonely and secluded places. He had a good eye and was no bad shot. With the only rifle he possessed—a Winchester.22, he reckoned himself particularly handy, and was fond shooting matchsticks at twenty-five or thirty yards. Some of his money had not been honestly come by.

He had certain shady acquaintances and had more than once lowed himself, his car or his rooms to be made use of these people.

Mr. Westcott possessed at any rate one friend and that his landlady, Mrs. Rose Green, a middle-aged widow, time an odd relationship grew up between these two, 'ho had both experienced so little of what most people regard as affection. In winter, Mrs. Green would after a fashion reassure Mr. Westcott by pooh-poohing his fears of infection—for in this regard he was inclined to indulge mild neurosis.

When he was setting off for a long day the Pillar or the Scafell range, she would make him sandwiches and admonish him to be sure to return punctually in the evening for oxtail stew. When she had a mind spend a Saturday morning shopping in Keswick, Kendal even Preston, Mr. Westcott, if he were not bound for tops, would drive her there and back in the Volvo. cy had little conversation—Mrs. Green was not a or talkative woman—but that in itself rather in- creased than diminished their mutual respect.

For chat and laughter they felt, by and large, contempt.

The indignity, inconvenience and loss which Mrs. Green and he had suffered from the Plague Dogs aroused in Mr. Westcott all the brooding resentment of which he was capable (which was quite some), and this. his dealings with Digby Driver had done nothing to allay? It was true that Driver had paid him quite well for the photographs, but while interviewing him Driver had—like many others before him—found himself disliking Mr. Westcott, who counted and pocketed the money without a word of thanks and tended to answer questions with a glowering and defensive "What? Well, for the simple reason that..." Driver had therefore begun to needle him, lightly but deftly, in his best Fleet Street manner, in his own mind comparing Westcott's reactions to those of a bull pierced by banderillas.

Mr. Westcott had parted from Driver with the surly feeling—which he had been meant to have—that some of these smart London fellows thought they were too damned clever by half. Although on the following day the police had succeeded in persuading him that he could with safety resume the use of his car, they had not, of course, cleaned up the mess of eggs, butter and mud which had soaked well into the back seat, while the germicidal fumigator used by the local authority had had a noticeable effect on the upholstery (already torn in two places by Rowf's claws). Moreover the delicate valve-tuning, over which he had taken such pains, had been impaired by whoever had driven the car back to Winder-mere.

Among his final questions to Digby Driver, before they parted, had been, "Why don't you go out and settle the damn dogs yourself, instead of writing newspaper articles about them?" To which Driver, perhaps a trifle stung, after all, by the thrust, had managed to reply only "Oh, we're content to leave that to burly dalesmen like you."

The following night—the Sunday—Mr. Westcott was sitting alone in his room, morosely watching colour television and wrapping himself in two blankets when the gas fire (greedier in cold weather, like all lodging-house metered fires) had consumed the last shilling earmarked its consumption until next day. (He was not going to the sinking fund intended for the purchase of a wet and scuba equipment.) The image of the pestilential gs, macabre in appearance and lethal in effect, came walking across his peace of mind as the Red Death through irregular apartments of Prince Prospero's castellated [abbey]. In his mind's eye he saw himself relentlessly pursuing them over the Scafell range, tracking them across Helvellyn's snowy wastes, following them from the larch fijopses of Eskdale to the plunging falls of Low Door. In his imagination their bodies, each neatly bullet-pierced through heart or brain, lay warm and still at last upon the fell. To hell with the Orator, with photographs, interviews are public acclaim. This ought properly to be an austere, individual vendetta, hunter against hunted, the putting of salubrious and necessary stop to the dirty brutes who had the audacity to spoil his car and gobble up three for four pounds' worth of meat and groceries. Having shot them, he would not even bother himself to go up to the lies. He would simply walk away and go home.

By eleven o'clock his mind was made up. Monday and Tuesday were both, of course, working days, but under Employment regulations he was entitled to take up to not than two days' sick leave of absence without a medal certificate, and after his known ordeal and at this itry time of year no awkward questions were likely to asked. True, if enquired for he would not in fact be at Mne, but in all probability he would not be enquired, and in any case Mrs. Green would if necessary cover for him. He would need to brief her to that effect fore he set out. As for the chance of being seen on the Is by anyone who might tell the bank, it seemed too late to take into account.

Methodically he checked and laid out his fell boots, thing and equipment—thin and thick socks, Mackintosh overtrousers, scarf, gloves, anorak, Balaclava helmet, vacuum flask, map, whistle, prismatic compass, binoculars light pack, together with the four-foot-long, water-rope-and-alpenstock bag which had never housed alpenstock but which he used to carry in concealment Winchester.22, together with its telescopic back-sight thing and equipment—thin and thick socks, Mackintosh overtrousers, scarf, gloves, anorak, Balaclava helmet, vacuum flask, map, whistle, prismatic compass, binoculars and light pack, together with the four-foot-long, water-rope-and-alpenstock bag which had never housed alpenstock but which he used to carry in concealment Winchester.22, together with its telescopic back-sight (in padded bag) and the screwdriver for mounting it. The tobacco man himself could not have been more deliberate in his preparations. When all was ready he undressed, washed briefly in tepid water, set his alarm clock for the usual time and went to bed wearing his socks, with his overcoat piled on top of his eiderdown.

At breakfast Mrs. Green clicked her tongue and shook her head, but made no effort to dissuade him. It never occurred to either of them to go in for anything so articulate or demonstrative as the discussion of opinions or the rational influencing of each other's point of view. One might say, "Pass the salt," or "I'm not leaving until this afternoon," but one did not say, "I see this matter in rather a different light from you and will try to explain why." Nor did it occur to them that if Mr. Westcott were to succeed in killing one or both of the dogs he might not, in the current state of publicity, be able to return as obscurely as he had set out. Neither was that kind of person. There had had to be sausages for Sunday dinner—of that Mrs. Green was still fully conscious—and apparently Mr. Westcott was not going to take it lying down. Good for him. She was also conscious of the need, in Mr. Westcott's interest, for a well-buttoned lip. By twenty to ten he was on his way in the Volvo.

Mr. Westcott commenced by returning to the scene of the attack. He parked the car in the same place and waited to see whether the dogs would reappear. After half an hour they had not done so and he began considering his next step. On that morning two days ago, he reflected, they had apparently come down the fell from the east—probably more or less down the line of Fisher Gill. He had read in the paper of the panic caused by their appearance at a Glenridding farm a few days before. So it seemed most likely that they had some sort of lair in or under the Helvellyn range, somewhere between Thirlmere and southern Ullswater.

Mr. Westcott got out of the car, locked it, shouldered his pack and set off up Fisher Gill, in and out of the grass tussocks, over the soaking, spongy peat and moss and the last of the almost-melted snow. He was glad that he was going to have to make a search. He even hoped that turn out to be a long, hard one. He was deter-to find and kill the dogs. It was an entirely personal Conflict between himself and them, the spoilers of his sessions, the wreckers of scientific order. It ought not unduly easy, for he meant to prove to himself—or someone—what he was worth in defence of his little i. The dogs might have proved too much for everyone Keswick to Hawkshead. They were not going to jve too much for him. the course of the next five and a half hours, until fall of early darkness, Mr. Westcott covered thirteen les. He was lucky enough to have no mist. Having ibed Sticks Gill up to the pass, where he saw but, since snow was almost gone, could not follow for more than. few yards the vestigial tracks of two dogs, he spent little time in searching with his binoculars the area ireen Stang and the reservoir. It was devoid of everything but curlews and buzzards, and at length he turned ith and strode easily up to the summit of Raise. From re he made his way along the whole ridge—White and Low Man to Helvellyn itself—continually stopping to observe the slopes below. He paid particular attention to the sheltered Red Tarn basin between Striding ge and Catstycam, where once, long ago, a terrier bitch kept herself alive for three months, guarding the body her master fallen from a precipitous height above. leone had told him that the place was haunted, though neither Wordsworth's nor Scott's poems on the incident—of which he had once taken the trouble to get hold and read—told what had finally become of the dog. Still bootless, he continued for two miles south to lywaggon Pike and, having stopped for about fifteen rates to eat, began the rather tricky descent to the east, the narrow, still-frosty Tongue. In these conditions part-frost, part-thaw, the Tongue was more than a dangerous, which was why Mr. Westcott chose it. He Id have attempted the north face of Scafell if he had ight that to do so would give him a shot at the dogs.; course, whether involving fatigue, discomfort or actual jger, was going to remain unpursued, provided it held the promise of success. More than once he slipped.