Die Like a Dog (2 page)

She swallowed. ‘You're in the woods more often than me, Richard.'

‘True.' He slumped in his chair, then brightened. ‘That's his complaint against me, would you believe it! Says the horse ruins the paths, and the dogs drive the wildlife away. Wildlife! That damn wood's a sanctuary for vermin.'

‘You shouldn't have leased it to the Trust.'

‘I needed the money and that slope's no good unless I cut down the hardwoods and plant spruce. All the same, I've still got the right of way through it; that's what drives Lloyd mad. He can't stop me, nor the dogs. You know, my dear, we've got the edge on them. Any fella, however thick he is, will think twice before he fires a gun at a man, but a dog don't think; a good dog is a killing machine, and ours are the best. I saw to that when I bought 'em.'

Down in the village George Waring of the Bridge Hotel, not content that a gourmet had chosen to spend a week at his pub, was gilding the lily. Complimented on his food, he went into a patter calculated to impress a lady who carried
The Times,
enjoyed a glass of real ale, and whose coarse grey hair had been tapered by a master.

‘... Scotch beef and salmon,' he was reciting with relish, ‘all the vegetables home-grown, all the eggs and poultry free-range,
and
the pork and veal.'

‘Really?' exclaimed Miss Pink. ‘But wasted unless your chef can cook.'

‘Mrs Banks is superlative. A great character, our Lucy. You'll be meeting her; you'll meet everyone in this bar.'

Miss Pink looked around. The recession had hit Wales hard and those tourists who were on the road this lovely day were obviously saving their pounds for the evening's drinking.

‘We're always slack at midday,' Waring said easily. ‘They'll all be in tonight.' He lowered his voice. ‘This is what I like about Wales: the total absence of class. No matter who he is, he comes in here, in my saloon bar, and providing he's neat and he's had a wash after work – they don't all have bathrooms, you know, in this day and age! No baths! No doubt they'd put the coal in it but there you are – so long as they've washed, I'll serve them. They all rub shoulders together: the council roadman, the coalman, farmers, tourists –' Suddenly he became off-hand. ‘I've had two Rolls Royces in that forecourt – and the owners talking to the villagers just like ordinary people.'

‘Really?' Miss Pink's eyes slid away. A woman had opened the door behind him: a slim, pale blonde with her hair in a pleat at the back of her head. Her face was enamelled rather than made-up, the lips carefully outlined, eyebrows plucked to arches, rouge shading high cheekbones. Her eyes were large and blue, their colour echoed in her sleeveless dress. She held a white bag and gloves.

Waring introduced her as his wife and Miss Pink repeated her compliments on her luncheon. The woman smiled absently. At that moment the light dimmed a little as if a cloud had passed across the sun. Mrs Waring's eyes widened. Someone was passing the windows of the bar.

A man entered, removing an old deerstalker.

‘Afternoon, Anna. Waring. Afternoon, ma'am.'

‘Good afternoon, Mr Judson.' The publican's voice was too loud in the empty room. Anna Waring's face was suddenly pink.

‘Going into town, Anna?' the newcomer asked. ‘I'll run you in. Back for tea. That all right?'

‘Well, yes.' The full mouth quivered.

Waring put a tankard of beer in front of Judson. ‘Sixty pence,' he said heavily, and inhaled through his nose. He had side-whiskers trimmed to the shape of mutton chops. Fascinated, Miss Pink watched as a bead of sweat dropped from his eyebrow to slip down the arc of a whisker and be caught by a furtive tongue.

‘A warm day,' Judson told Miss Pink pleasantly.

‘Beautiful. But you'll be needing rain.'

‘Indeed.' He took in the large, solid body in cream linen, the sensible sandals. ‘You'll be a gardener, ma'am.'

She admitted it, her eyes friendly behind thick spectacles.

‘I'm Richard Judson,' he said, without so much as a glance at Waring standing silently a few feet away. His wife had retreated through the door which evidently led to the kitchen.

Miss Pink introduced herself. ‘The valley looks lush enough,' she said, making conversation, ‘at least, here on the meadows.'

He shook his head. ‘The water's too low for the fishing ...'

She went to her room and changed into a well-washed pair of jeans and an Aertex shirt. Picking up an anorak she crossed to the window. Her room looked down a sloping lawn to the river and there was no sign of any other building. The village of Dinas had grown up at a point where a long glen came into the main valley, and the inn had been built on the fringe of the community, beside the bridge over the big river. Miss Pink looked outwards from the village then, up the side combe, but she could see very little of that for the trees.

Great burgeoning sycamores almost obscured the meadows while on the other side of the water, which was wide and shallow, and showed too many dry boulders in its bed, oaks climbed steep slopes and hid everything: paths, glades and ruins, and the mountains that were set back beyond the wooded skyline.

Miss Pink didn't mind the trees. In that area of Cornwall where she had made her home there were woods, but they were scanty, and battered by Atlantic gales; this Welsh combe, with its steamy heat, its rhododendrons and rampaging lushness, had the exotic quality of a foreign land – and it held a wealth of wildlife.

She looked at the sky. She saw no clouds but she put the anorak in her rucksack all the same; she'd been a mountaineer for too long to set out on a walk in Wales totally unprepared for a change in the weather.

She left the inn, turned right at its gate and strolled to the centre of the bridge. From one of the embrasures she looked down into the golden water where trout, like plump arrows, drifted over pale slabs. A larger movement caught her eye and she glanced up to see a heron spread its wings and flap slowly downstream to land and take up its station like a garden ornament in the shallows on a point.

She continued along the minor road that served the combe. Behind her, on the far side of the big valley, she could hear the hum of traffic on the main road. Here, nothing moved, nothing mechanical; there were glimpses of cattle under shady trees, immobile but for the flick of a tail; a curlew called, a wren sang a few loud bars and stopped as if disconcerted. There was a continuous purr of unseen insects, and every now and again she smelt the powerful scent of honeysuckle.

There was a strip of meadow between the lane and a line of willows that must mark a stream. Kingfishers? wondered Miss Pink, and, coming to a gate, waded through buttercups to a high bank overgrown with gorse. Beyond the gorse the bank dropped to a deep pool while, on a turfy ledge between the top of the bank and the water, lying on its side with one leg broken and pointing to the sky, was an old cooking stove. She frowned. One gas stove. No old tyres, plastic fertiliser sacks, disgusting mattresses. Just one stove. It looked like a gesture of some kind.

She turned upstream to follow the faint trod of a fisherman's path. The stream was narrow, nothing like the size of the river it would shortly join, but it was deep, artificially deepened, she guessed, to keep it from flooding the meadows. She saw no kingfishers but there were moorhens and a family of mallard and, from high on the wooded slopes above, came the poignant mew of a buzzard. Through the mewing came the strains of music.

There were no houses near, only trees, the yellow gorse, the glinting water. She was walking into the sun. She stopped and shaded her eyes. The trees climbed the slopes, the buzzard soared on a thermal, a small cloud drifted from the mountains that were now visible – and the music was exquisite in its familiarity, its intimate involvement with the scene. She identified it then and waited for the end, when she walked on and found, hidden in the trees and merging with the shadows, a dull green mountain tent, a little red van, and a girl sitting beside a now silent transistor, her head on her knees, quite still.

Miss Pink surveyed the thick, sun-bleached hair, the bare feet, stained jeans and shirt, the van. Leaning against its open door was a five-foot projector screen. She took a step forward and a blackbird fled, scolding. The girl lifted her head. Her eyes were shining, her teeth gleamed. She looked beautiful, and drugged.

‘A blackbird that likes Schubert?' Miss Pink asked, smiling.

‘Who wouldn't? Have you been listening?' There was nothing slurred about the words. ‘I've just discovered Schubert's Great. My education was neglected musically. I'm so glad. How do you do? I'm Seale.'

‘I'm Pink.' Miss Pink chuckled. ‘Did I see your poster outside the Post Office: M. Seale:
ZERO TO TWENTY THOUSAND FEET
?'

‘That's me. Tonight in the village hall. Eight o'clock. Fifty pence. Climbing from Cornwall to the Himalayas via Yosemite and the Alps. It's a good show.'

‘I wouldn't miss it for anything. Are you on a tour?'

‘A lecture tour? Never. I'm barn-storming. I roll up to a village with my posters, stick 'em up, book the hall, come back in two or three days, collect the gate money, do my spiel, pay for the hall and push on to the next place. The commitment's only for two or three days ahead.'

‘You live like that?' Miss Pink was amused. ‘I mean, that's how you earn your living?'

‘I'll do anything. You name it. I'll stay with this scene until I'm bored, or until October, whichever comes first.'

‘Then what?'

‘Why, Yosemite.' The girl exhaled in a long sigh. ‘Have you seen Yosemite?' It was like the title of a song, the way she said it. ‘You'll see it tonight.' Her face held that look of rapture which Miss Pink had thought was drugs.

‘But where is your home?' she pressed.

Seale gestured to the tent and, as an afterthought, to the van, ‘Here. This is home.'

‘No parents?'

‘Oh yes! I've got parents. My father's in New York, and my mother's in Paris: married to a deputy. Oh, Raoul's all right, it's just the company they keep. And Paris!
And
New York,' she added glumly. ‘I like all my parents; it's just that I can't stand their life-styles.'

‘Were you – trained to do something?' How clumsy I am, thought Miss Pink, I can't compete in the face of all this vitality.

Seale studied her, then smiled engagingly. ‘I'm twenty-four,' she said. ‘I read Modern History and English. What were they training me for? God knows. Since then I've picked up how to work a camera from one man, how to climb from another. I can ride and ski and sail. What am I trained for? You tell me. Does it matter? Oh dear, you don't mean what is my contribution to society, do you?'

Miss Pink laughed. ‘Not really. I was probing. Do you suffer much from that question – about society?'

‘Not now. I've learned to switch off and play dumb. It works. People think climbers are mad anyway; they think women climbers are madder still. Hello, we have company.'

The visitor was undistinguished. Of middle height and middle- aged, he looked drab. His clothes had a faintly military air: dull brown trousers, faded khaki shirt, olive anorak despite the warm afternoon. The face was plain, unsmiling, the eyes cold under a black beret swagged like that of a Marine.

‘And who gave you permission to camp here?' The intonation was local, the voice as cold as the eyes, imbued with contempt. He didn't look at Miss Pink, who shifted her weight and cocked an eye at the girl.

‘Good afternoon,' Seale said. ‘What's your name?'

‘I'll ask the questions. You're on private land. Can't you read?'

Seale said: ‘If you'd stop and think a moment –'

‘Cheeky!' He spun it out like a music hall artiste. He shot a glance at Miss Pink to see how she was taking it. Satisfied that he had all her attention he went on loftily: ‘I don't use force. If you're not gone by the time I return, I'll have the dogs with me.'

‘Dogs?' Seale's voice rose. ‘You need more than one?'

It went over his head. ‘Alsatians,' he said, and smiled for the first time. ‘Guard dogs. Trained to kill.'

‘That's dangerous talk,' Miss Pink put in firmly. ‘And you must not try to frighten visitors. I'm sure Mr Judson would object to that kind of behaviour on his land. Let's have no more of it. You were asked your name.'

He stared at her. Seale said: ‘Judson? A big guy with a great red nose?'

‘That's him,' Miss Pink said.

Seale's eyes sparkled. ‘Yes, he would own guard dogs.' She looked at the man. ‘He employs you? I don't believe that. Well, come on, what's your name?'

‘Evans. Handel Evans.'

‘Okay. I don't want to see you round this tent again, with or without your bloody dogs.' She nodded in dismissal and turned to Miss Pink.

‘Most of the places I've been will be familiar to you: the Alps, Cornwall, the Himalayas ... Let's have a cup of tea –' she rose gracefully and went to the back of the van. ‘Off you go, Evans,' she said, not unpleasantly.

‘I don't know the Himalayas,' Miss Pink admitted, watching the man hesitate, then turn and walk away. ‘Poor fellow,' she observed.

‘Rubbish. Think of the poor trippers he must put the fear of death into: families sitting on the river bank having a picnic. Driving them away with threats of killer dogs! If that guy Judson does employ him there can't be any labour pool in this village.'

‘He probably works well under supervision. That attitude is a kind of chain – like great fleas and little fleas, you know. Evans will be bullied by Judson so he bullies the trippers.'

‘Sod him.' Seale was cheerful. ‘I met Judson. He sent me to this place. He looks like a guy who'll come back.'

‘Evans?'