Constable Around the Village (7 page)

“No.” He shook his head and I could see he was shaken. “No, there’s been enough damage. It’s over—I’ll seek
compensation
from the dog’s owner, that’ll do me. I’ll go and see her now.”

And he turned and drove away, a sad and thoughtful man.

A week later, he presented a new black labrador pup to Sidney Chapman. When I called to see him a few weeks later, it had its head on the hearth and its tail thumped the rug, but only for a second.

It jumped up and fussed over me with all the vigour of youth. “He’s called Caesar,” Sidney told me as I went to make the coffee.

Although my professional duties involved all manner of farm animals, I did involve myself with canine matters more than any other. It is true that dogs are an essential and integral part of village life, but the same could be said of cows, horses, pigs and sheep. I had to inspect small groups of these animals from time to time, either to count heads for record purposes or to see if I thought they had some disease
that necessitated a veterinary surgeon’s attention. I found it strange that a policeman’s opinion was sought on such matters but invariably the problem was solved by ringing a vet.

It was one such problem that intrigued me at Cold Hill Farm, and it involved another dog. This was a cur, a common breed in these parts. They are used to guide sheep and are the hill farmer’s constant companion. They are black and white dogs, tough and intelligent little animals with a natural instinct for herding sheep.

The resident cur at Cold Hill Farm was an elderly dog called Shep and he belonged to Mr and Mrs Ambrose Lowe. He had endured a long and hard life on this remotest of farms, spending his years herding moor sheep into their pens and rounding them up for their quarterly count. Year in, year out, poor old Shep had done those tasks and many more. Now he was twelve years old and I think he’d made his own decision to retire.

The snag was that Ambrose wouldn’t let him retire. There was always a great deal of work to be done, always some pressing matter for attention. It was during a busy time that I called at the farm one Friday morning to check the latest intake of pigs for the stock register. As always, Mrs Lowe, whose Christian name I never knew, invited me in for a coffee and a sweet biscuit. As I settled at the rough kitchen table with the couple I noticed Shep asleep near the door which led into the back of the house. He ignored my presence.

After the introductory small talk and a brief chat about the quality of his latest acquisition of pigs, Ambrose asked:

“Does thoo reckon to know owt about dogs, Mr Rhea?”

“Not a great deal,” I admitted.

“Oh,” he said, without further comment.

“Something wrong?” I recognised the countryman’s hesitation to lead into the problem. He wanted me to take the initiative, and turned his head to look down upon the sleeping dog.

“Aye, mebbe. Ah’m not sure.”

“Something to do with Shep?”

“It could be his age,” he said.

Mrs Lowe next spoke up. “He’s twelve, you see, and he’s had a hard life.”

“Is he lame or something?” I ventured, thinking the dog might have a form of rheumatism.

“Nay, lad, nowt like that,” and Ambrose paused to drink from his cup. “I reckon he’s gone deaf.”

“Deaf?”

“Aye, deaf. Dogs do go deaf, thoo knows, quite young sometimes. But awd Shep’s getting on in years….”

“Has the vet seen him?”

“No, he hasn’t, and Ah didn’t feel like calling him all this way if it was nowt.”

“He would tell you one way or the other,” I said
seriously
. “And he might be able to treat the condition.”

Mrs Lowe spoke again. “You see, Mr Rhea, we don’t think he’s really deaf. We think he’s pretending.”

“Pretending?” I almost laughed aloud. “Dogs can’t pretend; they can’t tell lies or be devious, can they?”

“Ah reckon thus ’un is, Mr Rhea,” said Ambrose, who now seemed relieved that his wife had opened up the
conversation
by mentioning their private worry.

“You must have a good reason for thinking that,” I put to them both.

“Aye, we ’ave, Mr Rhea,” said Ambrose. “It’s not a sudden idea, like. Me and our missus have been watching Shep of late, and Ah’m positive he’s up to summat.”

“Tell me more.” I sipped from my cup.

“It’s like this,” he began carefully, speaking slowly with emphasis on the key words. “Ah’ve noticed, over t’ past few weeks, that when Ah tell Shep it’s time to start work, he just lies near yon door and never moves. We’ve both tried him ….”

“Aye,” confirmed Mrs Lowe. “Ah’ve told him it’s time to fetch t’ cows in, or round up a few sheep, and he just lies there, never twitching an eyelid. We’ve had to kick him into life, you know. Clout him with a mop or summat, and then he’ll stir himself. Bone-idle he is.”

“He could be deaf,” I said. “If he’s always been a good worker before …”

“Aye, lad,” Ambrose raised a finger to emphasise the
point, “but when oor missus tells him it’s dinner-time, he hears that all right! By gum, he does that! He’s up and at his dinner like a flash. We tried whispering, real quiet like, and he never missed a meal. Not once. But you try and tell him its milking time and he has to fetch t’cows in, and he’ll doze there like it would take a bomb to shift him.”

“He thinks it’s time we got another dog, I reckon,” Mrs Lowe offered her opinion. “I mean, in human terms, he’s turned eighty, isn’t he? He should be retired and he knows it.”

“Let’s see how he reacts now,” I suggested. “Will he behave like that while I’m here?”

“He won’t dare do otherwise if he doesn’t want to be caught out!” and Ambrose Lowe put on a coat, took a crook from the corner and made all the noises he would have made under a normal excursion to locate sheep. Then he said, “Come, Shep, come lad.”

I watched the inert form at the base of the door. The dog never moved, not even a flicker of an eyelid or a movement of an ear.

“Shep, come on, time to get sheep,” called his master.

Nothing.

“It’s a rum soort of a gahin on.” I momentarily lapsed into the dialect of the area. “Is he allus like this?”

“Aye, just now. Now Ah’ll get outside and pretend Ah’ve gone, leaving him there. Ooor missus will tell him it’s dinner-time and thoo see what he does.”

I waited as the little drama was acted out. Ambrose left the farmhouse and made the normal noises for such an occasion. Shep slept on. Then Mrs Lowe began to prepare a dog’s dinner. She found his old enamel plate and opened the pantry door to produce some old bones and dog-biscuits from a tin. She placed these on the plate then put it on the floor, making a small noise. I saw Shep’s ears prick at the sound.

“Come, Shep,” she said in a normal voice. “Dinner.”

And he was on his feet in a split second. Wagging his long tail, he moved quickly across the floor and began to wolf down his meal, showing sheer enjoyment and every sign of fitness.

This dog was certainly not deaf and he was most certainly not suffering from rheumatics. But could a dog feign
deafness
in order to avoid work? I doubted it. Surely dogs didn’t possess that sort of cunning?

When he was midway through the meal, Ambrose returned and smiled at the active dog.

“Well?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “He heard Mrs Lowe all right. He must know when you’re going out to work, eh? By the noises you make. He just lies there, waiting for you to call him, then ignores you….”

“He makes a good draught-excluder for yon door, and that’s about all he’s good for these days,” commented Mrs Lowe. “What can we do, Mr Rhea? He’s bone-idle—look at him. He’s getting fatter all the time and more and more lazy.”

I shook my head in bewilderment, then asked, “Have you come across this before, either of you? In other dogs—yours or anyone else’s?”

“Never,” he said firmly. “Never.”

“A vet might have,” I ventured. “Maybe if you rang the vet, he’d have a simple answer. It’s maybe a common
condition
.”

“Them fellers cost money, and Ah’ve enough trouble making ends meet as it is. Nay, I wanted a second opinion and you happened to come along. You’ve confirmed what we thought. So now, would you say he’s having us on?”

“It looks very much like it.” I didn’t dare commit myself totally. How could I say, in all honesty, that this dog was nothing more than a confidence trickster or at least, one of the nation’s shirkers?

I looked at Shep. He had finished his hefty meal and had returned to the space at the base of the inner door, where he lay down, sighed loudly and closed his eyes.

“It’s milking time at half past four,” Ambrose told me. “Ah’ll warrant Ah’ll nivver shift him then unless I clout him. By, he’s takkin a lot of waking up these days.”

I continued to watch the inert canine form and wondered if Shep could understand what we were saying. He gave no
indication that he could hear us or understand us, and then an idea came to me.

“I’ve an idea,” I said. “I think we could teach him a lesson!”

“Ah’ve yelled and cursed him, and we’ve both knocked him to his feet,” said Ambrose. “Ah don’t think there’s owt a policeman can do.”

“Why don’t you both convince Shep that he really
is
deaf?” I suggested.

For a moment, there was no response from the couple, then Ambrose looked sideways at me. “How do you mean, Mr Rhea?”

“Well,” I began, “I noticed that you made a lot of noise getting ready to go out. Banging doors, tapping your crook on the floor, that sort of thing. And your missus, well, she banged his plate down, there was a noise when she opened the pantry door and got the stuff out … and there’s the words you use, like dinner, food, cows and so on. He knows what they all mean. He’s a clever dog.”

“Aye,” agreed Ambrose.

“Well, whenever he’s lying there, you should do
everything
very, very quietly. Make no noise at all. And if you talk to him when he’s awake just shape the words, don’t speak them. Put his dinner down silently and don’t tell him it’s ready … make him
think
he’s gone deaf.”

“By lad, that’s a capper!” grinned Ambrose. “Aye, we can do that, can’t we, oor missus?”

“It won’t be easy, Mr Rhea, will it? I mean, he’ll hear other noises, won’t he, and we might forget
sometimes
….”

“I don’t think it will take very long to get him puzzled about it,” I ventured. “A day or two. It might cure his idleness.”

“Right, we’ll try it.”

I hadn’t time to remain behind on this occasion in order to see how this middle-aged rural couple went about their deception. Knowing the pair, it would have been a treat to observe them both mouthing silent words at each other and putting everything down in total silence when the dog was there—which was most of the time. When I told Mary about
it, she laughed until the tears ran down her face, and said she thought I was crackers. I began to wonder who was daft—me or that lazy dog!

The Lowes weren’t on the telephone so I couldn’t ring them to ask about Shep’s deafness cure, so I was delighted when I had to pop over to the farm later that week to see about a movement licence for some pigs.

I arrived at my usual time, just before eleven, and knew there’d be a cup of coffee and biscuits. Mrs Lowe saw me coming and, as I parked the motor-cycle against a wall, she beckoned me to enter. She also placed a finger across her lips, indicating silence. She then came out to meet me, closing the outer door very, very quietly.

“By,” she said, “our Shep’s right puzzled.”

“You’re still giving him the treatment?” I exclaimed.

“We are,” she confirmed. “Ambrose said we should keep it up until you came next time, so you could see if it worked. So here you are.”

“It should be interesting,” I smiled. “Where is Ambrose?”

“He’ll be in any minute for his elevenses,” she said. “Any road, he’ll have heard your bike.”

She took me into the kitchen where Shep lay in his usual place at the base of the door, performing his role as a draught-excluder and forgetting he was a working farm dog. As I entered, he looked quizzically at me, but Mrs Lowe smiled and mouthed the words, “Would you like a coffee?”

Feeling something of an idiot, I answered “Yes” in an exaggerated silence.

She went about the chore and I noted that she did
everything
in total silence. She had become expert at her new skill. The cups and saucers made not a sound, the kettle was boiled in the kitchen and everything was done completely without noise. Within five minutes, Ambrose entered and it was like watching a silent film. The couple went about their daily domestic chores in a remarkable way and I saw the puzzled dog watching this charade. He shook his head several times, and looked at me as if to ask what on earth was happening. Ambrose smiled, sat down and carried on a weird conversation with me, saying absolutely nothing and
I responded in like manner. If Sergeant Blaketon came in now….

To complete the performance, Mrs Lowe got Shep’s dinner ready. Out came a tin of dog-biscuits, some old bones and scraps, and a tin of dog-meat. His old enamel plate was placed on the floor in total silence and then she looked at him. He looked at her and shook his head, and she mouthed the words, “Come, Shep, dinner.”

Shep looked at me and then at her, struggled heavily from his prone position and ambled across to eat the meal. As he licked the plate there was a faint noise as it scudded about the floor, but he appeared to ignore this. Then, having eaten, he returned to the door, curled up and lay down, but this time kept his large brown eyes open, watching us all in turn.

Ambrose smiled at me and mouthed the words, “Now, let’s see if all this performance has fettled him.”

Getting up from the chair, he went over to the crook in the corner, banged its ferrule on the floor and, in a normal voice, said, “Shep, come along. Time for work.”

The dog lay there for the briefest of moments before leaping to his feet with a delighted bark. In no time, he was panting at the door wanting to be out. The ruse had worked perfectly. Or had it?

That weekend, in the Brewers Arms at Aidensfield, I heard Ambrose telling the tale to his drinking companions.