The Plague Dogs

At least one went more easily alone, thought Rowf, plodding up Dunnerdale for the second time in twenty hours; not so much of this damned creep and peep stuff. Wherever Snitter’s got to I’ll find him; and bring him back too—unless he’s dead. And I’ll go the quickest way, exposed or not—he may be in some sort of trouble, or wandering about in one of his mad fits. And if anyone, human or animal, tries to stop me, they’d better watch out, that’s all.

Yet all the time his thoughts, like a dog keeping just out of range of a man with arm raised to throw a stone, were avoiding the question, “What’s going to become of the two of us without the tod?” They had parted with no further words, the tod, chin on paws among the ling, merely staring sardonically after him as Rowf, lacking only provocation to turn back and bite, set off over the north-east saddle of Caw. Straight over the top he went, through the disused slate quarries below Walna and down to the Tongue ‘Us meadows. Here he rested for a short time, heedless whether anyone might see him or not. Then he skirted Thrang and crossed the marshy Tongue itself, dropping down to the road below Birks Bridge. There was much coming and going, or so it seemed, of cars on the road—surely a great many for so lonely a place?—but evidently those in them, whatever their business, were too much preoccupied with it to pay attention to a solitary, furtive dog making his way up the valley along the grass verge.

Rowf had intended to retrace their previous night’s route, but as he neared the spot where they had crossed the road his spirit baulked at the thought of the plunge—alone this time—into the tumbling Duddon, and the unpleasant moments of the struggle across. Though tired, he decided to continue up to the bridge and the shallow water above, where he and the tod had crossed that morning,

He was less than two hundred yards below Cockley Beck when he became aware of the cars and the throng of people. He stopped, sniffing and staring. Little as he knew from experience of the ways of humans outside the Research Station, he could perceive something strange about the behaviour of these men—something which gave him pause. Their purpose was obscure: they appeared to be doing nothing, to have no intention, to be going nowhere. Uneasily, he sensed that they were in some way at check and under strain. Something unusual had thrown them off balance. He went cautiously nearer, pressing himself against the dry stone wall on his off side. His collar caught on a projecting snag and he freed it with a quick tug.

He gazed ahead of him. Some men in dark-blue clothes were gathered round a large, conspicuous white car, talking in low voices and from time to time turning to look at something lying on the ground under a blanket. A little distance away was a group of rougher-looking men, all with guns; farmers, by their smell and—yes! he could tell, now, from their clothes—the very men that he and the tod had watched below Caw that morning. In the moment that he recognized them Rowf started and shied away from the wall. As he did so one of the men flung out an arm, pointing towards him and shouting, and the next moment a shower of pellets rattled among the stones beside his head. The quick whizz of a ricochet mingled in his ears with the sound of the shot. Rowf leapt the opposite wall, ran down the meadow, plunged headlong into the Duddon, dragged himself out on the further side and disappeared beyond the alders.

Monday the 8th November

The noise of the traffic, rising from the treeless, grassless street below, caused the none-too-clean windows to be kept almost permanently shut, thus removing competition from the clacking of typewriters and the ringing of telephones. Also permanent was the low, whining sound of the air conditioning, which extracted some of the cigarette smoke while mingling the remainder with the intake of motor-exhaust-filled air from outside. The daylight, though entering along two sides of the enormous room, was insufficient to illuminate the labours of those whose desks stood (or “were positioned,” as they themselves would have said) near the centre, so that throughout working hours patches of electric light burned with a steady glare. As in a cage of budgerigars, the place was filled with an incessant, light movement and arhythmic, low chatter—an irritant and disturbance never quite strong enough to become unbearable by the various individuals who contributed to it. Each of these, with his or her name displayed on the desk, occupied an appointed place and used appointed possessions—telephone, blotter and diary; electric lamp, soap, towel, teacup, saucer and lockable drawer; with here and there a photograph and here and there a dusty, spindly Rhoicissus rhomboidea or Hedera helix, part-worn but surviving every bit as doggedly as its owner.

As a matter of fact—you may be surprised to learn—Dr. Boycott had had no hand in this place. No, indeed; it was not one of his experiments to discover who could endure what for how long and ascertain in what manner it might affect them. This was, in fact, a part of England where the folk were all as mad as he: it was that admired exemplar of modern working conditions, the open-plan main office of the London Orator, lynch-pin of the Ivorstone Press, a great daily newspaper syndicated, indicated and vindicated all over the world, watchdog of liberty, cat’s cradle of white-collar banality, ram’s horn of soft pornography, crocodile’s tear of current morals, gulf and maw of the ravined salt-sea shark and personal monkey-wrench of Sir Ivor Stone himself. Below, over the main door, the porter of which was R.S.M. O’Rorke, Irish Guards (retired), doyen of the Corps of Commissionaires and arguably the only honest man in the place, were blazoned Sir Ivor’s arms, above his rebus motto, Primus lapidem iaciam. Immediately above projected the elegant bow window of the small conference room, where (refreshed by drinks kept in a cocktail cabinet made to resemble two rows of leather-bound books on shelves) important visitors (for example, those who spent a great deal on advertising in the Orator) were received and the editors and subeditors met to discuss policy among themselves.

And this, in fact, is what they are doing now, on this fine November morning. Far beyond London, red and yellow beech leaves are pattering into the lake at Blenheim, at Potter Heigham great pike are on the feed and the west wind is blowing sweetly across Lancashire from the Isle of Man, but he who is tired of London is tired of life (though Dr. Johnson might have had second thoughts after a few days with the Orator). Gaze, reader, through the window—at the mock oak-panelled walls, at the portrait, by Annigoni, of Sir Ivor, over the Chair, at the grate-full of cosy living fire of solid smokeless fuel (supplied by Sir Derek Ezra and his merry men), the reference books on the side-table—Who’s Who, Burke, Crockford, Wisden, Vacher’s and the Local Government Directory—the writing desk with headed stationery ready to hand beside the signed photograph of Miss “Comfy” Effingbee, that popular screen actress (who some little time ago opened the building as effortlessly as her legs, while recuperating in England from her third and anticipating her fourth “marriage”), the bell that really works and will summon a real manservant, the wainscot, the pargeted ceiling, the expensive and ugly carpet, the—but hush! There are three men present and one of them is speaking.

“The thing is,” said Mr. Desmond Simpson (sometimes referred to by his subordinates as “Simpson Agonistes,” on account of his habit of talking round every potential decision until his colleagues were ready to scream), “the thing is, if we put an energetic reporter on to this and make a big thing of it—you know, daily sitreps, ‘Exclusive from the Orator’s man in Cumberland,’ ‘Latest developments,’ ‘Orator invites readers’ views’ and all that; and then the whole thing folds in the middle—you know, fizzles out in some sort of anticlimax and back to square one—then perhaps we lose circulation—”

“I’ve thought about all that,” replied Mr. Anthony Hogpenny, M.A. Oxon., eighteen stone in a white jacket with carnation button-hole, who was smoking a large cigar with that air of detached and confident superiority that large cigars can so effectively complement, “and I’m convinced the idea’s perfectly viable. We’ve got to send someone with the ingenuity not to let it fold, whichever way it may happen to break.”

“But suppose a farmer shoots the dog next week, for example?” pursued Mr. Simpson. “Surely that’s bound to be the end of it, and perhaps just when we’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense building up—”

“No, no, dear boy,” put in Mr. Quilliam Skillicorn, pink-gin-flushed, epicene and somewhat elderly, once styled by himself “the meteoric Manxman,” but more recently referred to, by the sub-editor of a rival daily, as “the rose-red cissie, half as old as time.” “I mean, just think of the lovely build-up that’s there already. First of all you’ve got the recommendation of the Sablon Committee that more public money ought to be spent on medical research. So after any amount of prodding—far too much of it from their own back-benchers—the Government finally accept the report and give this silly arse place more money. No one has the teeniest idea what the scientists are doing with it up there, and half the amenity organizations in the country hate their guts for starters, simply because they’re in a national park. Then there’s local talk of sheep-killing and apparently the station won’t say a word in reply to questions from farmers and the local press. So after a bit this splendid Ephraim man tries to help, purely out of the kindness of his tiny heart—all events, that’s our line, and anyway what’s wrong with the public image of a good man of business?—and gets himself shot dead, apparently by the horrid dog that escaped—what a story, too!—”

“Ah, but was it?” interposed Mr. Simpson, his voice squeaky with the pangs of doubt. “Was there a dog involved in the shooting at all?”

“There were muddy paw-marks and dog’s hairs on the back seat of the car, and Ephraim himself didn’t own a bow-wow. The farmer’s wife says that after the gun went off she heard a dog howling—”

“But did the dog necessarily do it? I can’t remember any similar case. On the evidence—”

“Oh, Simpy, and you’re a newspaperman? Can’t you see it doesn’t matter a damn what the dog did? We say it’s evident that there was a dog and by the very act of so saying we put the research fellows on the spot to deny it. They’re sitting on something they don’t want to be forced to say—one can smell that from here, if I’m any judge. Little Eva—the boss—he wants us to discredit Government, right? So that’s what we’re out for. Our line is first, that Government had to be virtually forced to give the station more money, and secondly, that they stood back and let the station waste it; and then the station imperil the local agricultural economy by letting a dangerous dog escape. Now a life’s been lost—well, what, oh, what more could any newspaperman want?”

“And on top of that,” added Mr. Hogpenny fatly, “there’s all the schmalz we can do about poor little doggies and hoggies and darling catties and ratties—”

“But that’s inconsistent, Geoffrey,” squeaked Mr. Simpson, “if we’re taking the line that the Research Station ought to be doing their work more efficiently—”

“Pooh,” answered Mr. Hogpenny, puffing a cloud, “who ever cared a damn about consistency on a national daily? Don’t you remember ‘Miners Deprive Nation of Coal’ and ‘Keep Hungarians out of British Coal Pits’ on two pages of the same issue? It’s emotions that sell popular newspapers, old boy, not logical arguments, as you very well know.”

“This particular little game’s not really dissimilar from chess, is it?” put in Mr. Skillicorn. “What it comes to is that we feel pretty average sure that if we hopefully position a knight on queen’s bishop’s fifth, we’ll subsequently get some play out of it, even though we can’t see exactly what as of now.” (This was how Mr. Skillicorn often talked—and very much how he wrote too.)

“But which knight, I wonder?” asked Mr. Hogpenny, after waiting a few moments to see whether Mr. Simpson to peace and contemplation was dismissed, and quiet of mind, all passion spent. “We need a good chap—someone who knows how to seize whatever opportunities may offer themselves.”

“I’d say Gumm,” suggested Mr. Skillicorn.

“You mean Digby Driver?” said Mr. Simpson.

“Well, Driver, Gumm, whatever you like to call him.”

“Why him?”

“Well, he’s shown that he’s got a flair for making the public dislike anything or anyone he wants them to. That Coulsen business—there wasn’t really an awful lot in it, you know—especially the minor offenders—but by the time Gumm had finished with them everyone was absolutely howling for their blood and circulation was up quite a bit. Cheap at the price of two suicides, wasn’t it?”

“Can we spare him?”

“I think so,” said Mr. Skillicorn, reflecting. “Yes, I don’t see why not. He’s been on ‘English Friends of Amin’ for the past week, but he could perfectly well hand that over to someone else and get up to Cumberland right away. The tooter the sweeter. This afternoon, in fact.”

“How should I brief him, then, Tony, d’you think?” pursued Mr. Simpson.

“To stimulate public speculation and interest over the dog and over Ephraim: you know, ‘What is the Sinister Mystery of the Fells?’ ‘Will Killer Dog Strike Again?’ and all that; and to watch for any opportunity that may arise to discredit Animal Research. And any other little larks you can think of, Desmond. But look, I really must be getting on now. I’m supposed to be lunching at the Ivy Leaf with some clean-air civil servant from DoE. I’m thinking of pushing them around a bit over lead in the atmosphere—there’s a fellow at Durham University who’s prepared to say virtually anything we want him to. There’s embarrassment potential there all right.”

He gulped the last of his whisky and was gone, leaving Mr. Simpson to send for Digby Driver.

Tuesday the 9th November

It was full moon, cloudless, and brighter for being a cold night—the coldest of the autumn so far. From the summit of Harter Fell the peaks of the Scafell range, more than four miles away across the upper Esk, rose clearly in the silver light—Great End the killer, Ill Crag and Broad Crag, the Pike itself and the long, southern shoulder of the Slight Side. Peaceful they looked in the moonlight, old stumps of great mountains long ago, worn down by ages of storm, wind and ice. Yet for Rowf, wandering back and forth in the dense, coniferous forest of Harter between Hard Knott and Birker Moor, there was no peace and only such little light as fell between the trees and along the open rides between. The movements of roosting birds, the pattering of water, the cracking of sticks and stirring of branches—all imparted to him, in the near-darkness, those feelings of tension and uncertainty which sentient creatures, from men downwards, have always known on strange ground among thick trees. To these, in his case, were added hunger and fatigue.

For the past two days he had been searching for Snitter, by daylight reckless of farmers or shepherds and by night of stumbling and injury in the darkness. After his flight from the men at Cockley Beck, he had picked up Snitter’s scent near the top of Hard Knott Pass and followed it upward to the steep rocks on Harter’s north face. There he had lost it, wandered till nightfall and then, as mist and rain set in, taken shelter under an overhanging crag and slept for a few hours. But he had woken with a start, trailing in his nose the wisp of a dream and believing Snitter to be nearby. Bounding down into the heather, he had found only a yow that ran bleating away in the moonlight.

Between that night and the middle of the following day he had, nose to ground, encircled the whole of Harter, from the dreary upland of Birker Moor (that wilderness where, in December 1825, poor young Jenkinson, as his tombstone opposite Ulpha church door tells, died in the pelting of the pitiless storm) to the steep banks of Duddon gorge; and so north and round once more by the west. Once he had snapped up a rat and once had routed out and nosed through an ill-buried package of hikers’ rubbish—hard bread, fragments of meat and a mouthful or two of soggy potato crisps. Nowhere had he come upon any fresh scent of Snitter. At last, feeling that he had made as sure as he could that Snitter must still be somewhere within the circuit he had made of the mountain, he had started out to hunt him down but then, exhausted, had lain down and fallen asleep once more. When he woke it was early next morning and he set out again, running, as long as the chilly, lustreless daylight lasted, backwards and forwards across the open slopes and searching under the crags. As twilight closed in—the already-risen moon brightening in the southern sky as daylight waned—he entered the all-but-bare larch woods and began sniffing his way up and down. From time to time he stopped, threw up his head and barked loudly; but the only response was the clattering of disturbed pigeons and the echoes, “Rowf! Rowf!,” thrown back from the distant steep of Buck Crag.

There stands a house on the southern edge of this forest—Grassguards, they call it—a dead place now, solitary, untenanted these many years, a shelter for the wandering sheep of Birker Moor, a roosting-place for owls and the pitiless, lamb-blinding crows that frequent the fells. Sometimes, in summer, visitors on holiday look after themselves for a week or two in the roughly furnished dwelling-house, which is reached by no road or lonnin. But the dank barns stand empty, no rooster crows or dog barks and all winter and spring the loudest sounds are the rain, the moorland wind and the wide beck—Grassguards Gill—pouring between and often over the stepping stones a few yards from the door. Hither, in the speckled moonlight, from Harter plantations to the northern bank of the beck, came Rowf; lame of a paw, muddy of coat, froth of a jaw, hoarse of a throat, taken apart, down of a heart. And here, as he lapped at the water and lay down exhausted on the crisp, thinly frosted grass, he caught suddenly the faint but unmistakable smell of a scalp wound and of medical disinfectant; and then, fresh and close by, the odour of a smooth-haired dog. At once he leapt up, barking once more, “Rowf-rowf! Rowf-rowf!”

He was answered by a feeble yelp from the further side of the water. Setting his teeth, he crossed, jumping awkwardly from stone to wet stone. The barn had a half-door, the upper part of which was ajar. Rowf threw himself at it, scrabbled a moment, climbing, then dropped down on the earth and round cobbles of the floor within.

Picking himself up, he made his way across to where Snitter was lying on a patch of straw beside an old heap of slack coal. He pushed at him with his head, but before he could speak Snitter said, “Oh, are you here too, after all? I’m sorry—I’d hoped somehow you’d be left out of it—”

“Of course I’m here, you fool; and a nice jolly outing I’ve had finding you. I’m tired out and half-starved as well. What happened to you?”

Snitter got up shiveringly, his muzzle brushing against Rowf’s shaggy flank. After a few moments he said, “It’s strange. You’d have thought we wouldn’t be hungry or thirsty any more, wouldn’t you? But I’m both.”

“Well, so I should blasted well think, if you’ve been lying here all this time. How did you get here?”

“Well, I fell, Rowf, of course. And I suppose you fell too, didn’t you?”

“Fell? Don’t be stupid. I’ve run miles. This pad’s bleeding—smell it.”

“Rowf, you don’t understand what’s happened, do you? You don’t know where we are?”

“Well, suppose you tell me. Only buck up—we both need something to eat.”

“What happened to you when I—you know—when I—when the air all blew to pieces? Oh, Rowf, I’m so very sorry! I know it’s all my fault, but I couldn’t help it—not either time. The first time was the worst, of course—my master, I mean—but this time, too—I don’t know who the poor man with the car was, but he was a sort of master—a very sad man.”

“What master? What blew to pieces? What are you talking about?”

“Rowf, you still don’t understand, do you? We’re dead, you and I. I killed us both. We’re here because I’ve destroyed everything—the world, for all I know. But the explosion, Rowf; you must have felt that, wherever you were. Can’t you remember?”

“You’d better tell me what you remember.”

“I was coming back, following you, and all the grass and stones in my head were very loud—sort of humming, like a strong wind. And then this dark man called me, and I was on a road, like—like the other time. I went to the man and got into his car, and then—then everything smashed to pieces. I smashed it. I did it; like the other time. So then I ran away before the white bell-car could come.”

“That must have been the white bell-car that I saw, I suppose. I was looking for you.”

“It all comes from me, Rowf. It comes out of my head. I killed the man. I believe I’ve blown the world to bits—”

“Well, that’s wrong for a start. You haven’t. How d’you think you got here?”

“I told you—I fell, like you. Falling into my head. I’ve been falling for two days.”

“Well, if you’ll come outside with me, Snitter, you’ll find you’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not going out there. It’s all stones and flying glass, like that other time. You couldn’t know, of course, but it’s all happened before.”

“Snitter, can’t we get out of here and go and find something to eat? I’m famished.”

“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all about it, Rowf. Listen. A long time ago, when there were towns—when there was a real world—I used to live with my master in his house. He bought me when I was only a puppy, you know, and he looked after me so well that I can’t remember missing my mother at all. And I never really thought of my master as a man and myself as a dog—not in those days. There were just the two of us. Well, of course I knew really, but it was easy to forget, because I always used to sleep on his bed at night; and then in the morning a boy used to come and stuff a lot of folded paper through a hole in the middle of the street-door downstairs. When I heard that, I used to go down and pick the paper up in my mouth and carry it upstairs and wake my master. He used to take biscuits out of a box and give me one, and make himself a hot drink; and then we always played a kind of game with this wodge of paper. He used to open it up very wide—it was all black and white and it had a kind of sharp, rather wet smell—and spread it out in front of him while he sat up in bed, and I used to creep up the bed and poke my nose underneath. Then he used to pretend to be cross and pat it and I used to take it away and wait a bit and then poke it under somewhere else. I know it sounds silly, but I always thought how nice it was of him to get that boy to bring a fresh lot of paper every day, just so that we could play this game. But he was always so kind.

“Then after a bit he used to go to a room where there was water and cover his face with sort of sweet-smelling, white stuff and then take it all off again. There was no sense in it, but I used to come too and sit on the floor, and he used to talk to me all the time, I thought I ought to keep an eye on him. One of the best things about having a master is that half the time you’ve no idea what he’s doing or why, but you know he’s very kind and wise and you’re part of it and he values you, and that makes you feel important and happy. Well, anyway, he used to go downstairs and have something to eat and then he used to put on his old brown overcoat and his yellow scarf and put me in the car and we used to go to another house a long way off. There were houses in those days. It was before everything was spoilt. Anyway, my master used to stay there all day and there was a bell that used to ring on his table, and people used to come and talk to him and there was an awful lot of paper, but for some reason I wasn’t allowed to play with that paper. There was a fire in winter and I used to lie on the carpet. It was really very comfortable, only I didn’t like that bell on his table: I was jealous of it. I used to bark at it. I don’t know, but I think it must have been some kind of animal, because when it rang he used to talk to it instead of to me. He couldn’t have been talking to anybody else, because usually there was nobody else there at all.

“My master hadn’t got a mate. I don’t think he wanted one, but there was a woman with grey hair and a red-striped apron who used to come into our house from another house across the street and clean all round. She used to get out a sort of humming, whirring thing on little wheels and push it about. It had a sort of long, black rope coming out of the back that used to go all across the floor, and one day when it was moving I grabbed it and began to gnaw it, just for fun, and she made an awful fuss. She was kind as a rule, and as far as I remember that was the only time she ever got cross with me. She bustled me out of the room and after that she never used to allow me into any room where she was pushing this humming thing. I think actually that was a sort of animal too, because it used to eat up scraps of paper and any other little, tiny things there were on the carpets. I wouldn’t have liked to eat them, but then just look what birds eat, come to that. Or hedgehogs. It didn’t really smell much like an animal, though.

“Often in the middle of the day, and always in the evenings, when my master had finished at this other house, we used to go for a walk. Sometimes it was just across the park, but other times we’d go into the woods or along the river, a long walk, chasing about after water-rats or grey squirrels, and my master used to throw sticks for me to fetch. Some days, every so often, he didn’t go to the paper house at all, and unless he wanted to dig in the garden we’d go out walking for hours. And then sometimes at night, when we were in by the fire—he had a sort of flickering box he used to look at—that was another thing I never really understood, but it must have been all right if he liked it—we used to hear the cats yowling, out in the garden, and I’d cock my ears and sit up, and he used to laugh and click his tongue; and then he’d get up and open the back door and out I’d go like a bang-whappy-teasel, wuff! wuff! and over the wall they’d go flying! O Snit’s a good dog! Ho ho!

“We were always jolly and I don’t know whatever my master would have done without me to carry up that paper in the mornings and fetch the sticks he threw and bark when people came to the door and chase the cats away. And I tell you, I wasn’t like that miserable tyke next door, who used to scratch up the garden and overeat himself and refuse to come when he was called or do anything he was told. I’ve never been snobbish, but I wouldn’t smell him down a ten-foot rat-hole. We managed things properly in our house. I used to be fed every evening when we got home for the night, and that was that, except for the morning biscuit and perhaps just a sort of favour-mouthful before we went anywhere in the car. I used to get brushed regularly and sometimes I had stuff put in my ears; and twice my master took me to be looked at by a whitecoat—a proper, decent whitecoat. In those days I never knew there was any other sort. I was never allowed to sit on chairs—only the bed, and that had a nice, rough, brown blanket across the bottom—my blanket, no one else’s. I had my own chair. It was an old one, you know, but I made it a whole lot older. I fairly tore the seat out of it! I loved it. It smelt of me! I always used to come when I was called and do what I was told. That was because my master knew what he was doing—he sort of made you want to do what he wanted, somehow. You were glad to—you trusted him. If he thought a thing was all right, then it was. I remember once I hurt my paw—I couldn’t put it to the ground, it was so painful, and all swollen up, too—and he put me up on the table and kept talking to me all the time—just quietly and kindly, you know—and he took hold of it and I was growling and curling my lip and he just kept on talking gently and then suddenly I—I—nipped him—I couldn’t help it. But he took absolutely no notice at all—just kept on talking away, the same as before, and looking at my paw. I felt so ashamed of myself—fancy biting him!—and then he pulled a huge great thorn out of my pad and put some stuff on it—that was the first time I ever smelt that smell. I wasn’t afraid of it in those days.

“I’m not sure, but I think some of the other men, and the women too—you know, the ones my master used to talk to; his friends, and the people who used to come to the paper house—I think they used to tease him a bit, sometimes, about not having a mate and about living by himself with just me and the grey-haired woman to look after him. Of course you can never really understand what they say to each other, but I’ve seen them pointing at me and laughing, and it was just an idea I got. My master didn’t seem to mind. He used to scratch my ears and pat me and say I was a good dog and so on. When he picked up his stick and the lead I always knew we were going for a walk and I used to dance and jump all round the street-door and fairly bark the place down.

“There was only one person I didn’t like and that was my master’s sister. I knew she must be his sister, because she looked so much like him and she sort of smelt a bit like him too. Sometimes she used to come and stay at our house and when she did, oh liver and lights, didn’t we catch it! You could tell from a sort of gritty softness in her voice—like—like charcoal biscuits strained through a doormat—that she thought everything was all wrong. And I could never find my things—my ball or my bone or my old woolly rug under the stairs—because she used to tidy them all away. Once she pushed me hard-banged me, really—with a broom, when I was asleep on the floor, and my master jumped up out of his chair and told her not to do that. But mostly he seemed almost afraid to say a word. I’m only guessing, again, but I believe she was cross with him for not having a mate and he sort of felt perhaps he ought to, but he didn’t want to. If that’s right, of course it would explain why she didn’t like me. She hated me, Rowf. She used to try to pretend she didn’t, but I could smell it all right and I used to act up and cower away from her so that other people must have thought she ill-treated me. Well, she did, really: and in the end—in the end—

“Do you know, it’s a funny thing; I knew my own name, of course, but I never knew my master’s name. Perhaps he hadn’t got one, any more than the tod; but I knew her name all right, because my master always used it so much. I’d smell her coming through the gate and then my master would look out of the window and he always used to laugh and say the same thing—’Heercums Annie Mossity.’ Sometimes I used to growl, but he didn’t like that. He wouldn’t let me treat her disrespectfully, even when she wasn’t there. You had to behave properly to humans—all humans—in our house. But I always used to think that that name was too long and grand altogether for the likes of her, and to myself I always left out the ‘Heercums’ and thought of her as ‘Annie Mossity’—or just plain ‘Mossity.’ My master spoke sharply to me once for dancing about and wagging my tail when she was leaving and he was carrying her bag down to the door. I couldn’t help it—I knew she was going and it couldn’t be too soon for me. And when she’d gone there always used to be something extra nice that she wouldn’t have allowed—the leavings of a cream trifle, or something like that.

“Now one day—one day—” Snitter paused, whining, and rubbed his maimed head against the straw. A gust of wind stirred an old sack hanging from a nail above their heads, so that it flapped slowly, like the wings of some great bird of prey. “One evening—it was very late last summer, almost autumn—we’d got back from the paper house. My master had taken his eye off me and I’d slipped out into the garden and gone to sleep in the sun, all among the rhododendron bushes by the gate. In summer they have great, pink flowers, you know, Rowf, half as big as your head, and the bees go buzzing in and out of them. This was a special place I had of my own—a sort of secret lair. I always felt very safe and happy there. It was sunset, I’d woken up and I was thinking about supper and feeling rather alert and active—the way you do when you’re hungry, you know. And then, between the leaves, coming down the path, I heard footsteps and caught a glimpse of my master’s yellow scarf. Sure enough, there he was going towards the gate, with a bit of paper in his hand. I knew what he was up to—the big red bin game. I’ve told you how men are always playing about with bits of paper. You said they even used to do it while they were watching you in that tank. It’s the same for them as sniffing things is for us. And the arrangements in the street are the same for them as they are for us—lamp-posts for dogs and bigger, round, red bins for the humans’ paper. I’ve never been able to understand why some masters—not mine, thank goodness—didn’t seem to like their dogs having a pee and a sniff round the dog-posts, when they do just the same themselves with the red bins. We’re all creatures, after all, and they’re only laying claim to territory and asserting themselves, same as we do. When a man goes out for a bit of a walk—in the evening, usually—he often takes a bit of paper with him—it’s got his smell on it, you see—and pushes it into one of the big, red bins; and if he meets another man or woman doing the same, he generally talks to them for a bit and sort of sniffs about, just the same as we do.

“Anyway, I’ve told you how good my master was, and he had just as healthy an enjoyment of paper as ever a dog had for a sniff round a post. And sometimes when he got home from the paper house in the evening, he used to sit down and scratch about with even more paper, and then he’d go out and push it into the red bin up the road.

“Well, it was plain enough that that was what he was doing this evening. He nearly always used to call me to go with him, but I suppose he hadn’t been able to find me anywhere about the place and thought it didn’t matter as we’d be going for a longer walk later. Anyway, out through the gate he went. So after a minute or two I thought, why not slip out after him and catch him up, just for fun—you know, give him a bit of a surprise? So I waited till he’d turned the corner at the end of the street and then I came out of the rhododendrons and jumped right over the gate. I was pretty good at jumping. It was a trick my master had taught me. He used to call out, ‘Hoop-la, sugar lump,’ and I’d jump clean over the table and get a lump of sugar for it. Well, anyhow, I jumped the gate and then I ran up the road and round the corner after him.

“The big red bin was on the other side of the road and you had to be rather careful crossing this particular road because of all the cars and lorries and things. Whenever my master took me with him he used to put me on a lead and he always used to cross the road at the same place, where it was painted black and white. I must have crossed there any number of times—we never crossed anywhere else. I saw him, in front of me, just coming up to it, swinging his stick, with the bit of paper in his hand, so I said to myself, ‘Now to surprise him,’ and I ran past him and out on to the black and white bit of road.”

For a while Snitter said nothing, lying, with closed eyes, on the damp straw. Rowf waited silently, almost hoping that he would tell no more and thus, by desisting, perhaps avert or change what he knew must be some dreadful outcome. Who has not, as a sad story approaches its climax, found himself thinking in this way? The archons of Athens punished for lying the barber who first put about the news of the Syracusan disaster; for if he were treated as a liar, would it not follow that he must have been lying indeed, and therefore that it had never taken place?

After a time the moon, moving westward, shone directly upon the spot where the dogs lay. As though the light had broken in upon and put an end to Snitter’s attempt to hide from the close of his story, he opened his eyes and went on.

“I was about half-way over when I heard my master, behind me, shout, ‘Snitter! Stop!’ I always obeyed him, as I told you, and I stopped absolutely dead. And then—then there came a dreadful, squealing noise on the road, and in the same moment my master ran out and grabbed me and threw me bodily right across into the opposite gutter; and as I fell I heard the lorry hit him—oh, what a terrible noise it made! I heard his head hit the road—if only I could ever forget it! His head on the road!

“There was glass all over the place. A piece cut my paw. A man got out of the lorry and people came running up—first one or two and then more and more. They picked my master up—his face was all covered with blood—no one took any notice of me. And then there was a bell ringing and a big white car came and men in blue clothes got out of it. I told you how my master used to talk to that bell in his room and I suppose they’d brought this other bell—it was a very loud one—to try to get him to talk: but he never did. He just lay still as death in the road. His eyes were shut and there was blood all over his clothes. They all knew—you could see they all knew. The lorry driver kept on shouting and crying—he was hardly more than a boy—and then a blue man saw me wandering about and grabbed me by the collar. The grey-haired woman with the apron had come—everyone from our street seemed to be there—and she put me on a lead and took me back to her house. She wasn’t kind any more—she acted as though she hated me—they all did, they all did! She shut me up in the coal cellar, but I howled so much that in the end she let me out and left me in the kitchen.

“I can’t remember it all, but I never saw my master again. I suppose they put him in the ground. They do, you know. That’s what they do. The next day Annie Mossity came. She stood in the kitchen doorway and just looked at me. I’ll never forget it. You’d have thought anyone would have had a word for a dog as lost and miserable as I was. She said something to the grey-haired woman and then they shut the door and went away. And the next day she came back with a basket and put me in it and drove me off in her car—it wasn’t our car, anyway; it smelt of her—and she took me a long way and then she gave me to the whitecoats. And I believe she took the trouble to do all that because she wanted something horrible to happen to me.”

After a long time, Rowf asked, “Is that why you’ve so often told me you’re falling?” Snitter made no reply and he went on, “It’s a bad world for animals. You might just as well have fallen—out of the sky, I mean. There’s no going back there, where you’ve come from, is there? Never. But at least it’s over, Snitter. It can’t happen again.”

“It can—it does,” whispered Snitter. “That’s the dreadful thing. Men can do worse things than hurt you or starve you—they can change the world: we’ve seen that they can, you and I. But what I understand now is that they’ve done it through me. Annie Mossity—what she wanted to happen has happened. I don’t know what she told the whitecoats to do, but I know now that everything bad comes out of my head, and that it happens again and again. That’s where the bad things start and then they come out into the world, like maggots coming out of meat and changing into flies. When you and I got away from the whitecoats’ place, we thought the men had taken all the nouses and gardens away. But it was really I who destroyed them. The lorry driver that morning who threw stones at me—he knew who I was; and that man with the sheep-dogs—so did he. What happened to my master has happened again; the white bell-car—you said you actually saw it there, by the bridge. The man with the kind voice—the dark-faced man beside the car at the bridge—I killed him. I tell you, there isn’t a world at all now except this wound in my head, and you’re in there too, Rowf. I’m not going outside again—not any more. If I can die and stop it all, then I’ll stay here and do that. But perhaps I’ve died already. Perhaps dying—perhaps even dying doesn’t stop it.”

“The tod’s left us,” said Rowf. “He wouldn’t come with me to look for you.”

“Do you blame him?”

“It’s his nature, I suppose. We’ll just have to do the best we can without him. Some of what you’ve said may be true, for all I know. I can’t understand it, really. There’s no way out for us, I’m sure of that, but at least I mean to stay alive as long as I can, like the tod. And as for dying, I’ll fight before I’m killed.”

“They’ll shoot you, Rowf. When the gun—the dark man—”

“They tried—a man standing near the white bell-car—he tried.”

“The noise breaks the world to bits, like a stone dropping into the top of the water. But then it all comes together again and goes on, like the water. And that can happen again and again.”

“Stop chewing that!” said Rowf fiercely. “No one’ll steal it—it’ll still be there when you get back. Come with me, come on! Once we’ve found some food you’ll know you’re not dead.”

“Hunt sheep?”

“No chance of that—I’m exhausted. I couldn’t make the kill. It’ll have to be dustbins, and somewhere where there are no dogs to give the alarm. After that, we must decide what we’re going to do.”

A second time he jumped the half-door and Snitter, feeling now that sense of relief and acquiescence which often follows the telling of a grief, followed him. Slowly, with no clear sense of purpose or direction, they plodded away southward, towards the bleak summit of High Wallowbarrow outlined against the moonlit sky.