Die Like a Dog (4 page)

‘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 Waring 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.

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 here 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?'

‘What does the Trust have to say about that: his bringing the dogs with him?'

‘Someone's coming to see him next week.' Lloyd glowered at his oily hands. ‘Why am I telling you all this?'

‘Because I saw the marten.'

‘Oh yes.' He looked out over the tree tops, biting his lip. ‘You may be the last person to have seen it.'

‘Oh come. If it's driven away, it will find a den elsewhere.'

‘Huh!
This
is the Reserve. This is the place where the animals are supposed to find protection because everywhere else they're losing their habitats or their food, or they're trapped or hunted or shot.' He drew out the last word and his eyes widened.