Die Like a Dog Read online

  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’v
e 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?’

  ‘No. Judson.’

  Chapter 2

  ‘COME IN!’ George Waring looked up from a ledger as the office door opened, then rose in a fluster. ‘Miss Pink! What can I do for you?’

  ‘You’ve no telephone?’

  ‘No public phone. You may use this one.’ He indicated the instrument on his desk.

  ‘You can make the call. Will you ring Mr Judson and tell him there’s an Alsatian loose in the Nature Reserve – a large black animal. That is his, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is, ma’am. Did it attack you?’ His eyes were shining.

  ‘No. I saw it in the distance and it was running away from me, probably after a rabbit. Fortunately it didn’t see me.’

  ‘Judson isn’t back from town. He took my wife.’ He thought better of the wording. ‘He gave her a lift and they’re – she’s not back. The police ought to be told.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Those are guard dogs,’ he went on. ‘They’d kill a child – or an adult if it comes to that.’

  His hand hovered over the receiver but he didn’t pick it up.

  Miss Pink said meaningly: ‘Then there is no time to lose.’

  ‘Er – no.’ He dialled, talking meanwhile. ‘The trouble is: you’ve got to have protection these days, or that’s what Judson says; so much vandalism, arson, burglaries – why, there’s hardly one holiday cottage round here that hasn’t been broken into. And it’s not all nationalism by any means – oh no, that’s only the excuse; some of it’s kids certainly, but I maintain – I always have and I always will – that a lot of it is grudge crimes. And they’re put down to nationalism – there: number’s engaged.’ He crashed the receiver back on its rest. ‘Always the same in an emergency, isn’t it?’

  She strode up the road to its junction with the highway where the public telephone box stood beside the Post Office. She was quite sure that either he’d dialled the wrong number or hadn’t given the person the other end time to answer. His gabbled monologue had drowned all sounds on the line. He was afraid of offending Judson. He welcomed trouble but he preferred that someone else should be the instigator.

  The Post Office was also a general store. A dumpy woman with mild eyes was behind the counter stacking jars of jam. Yes, she said in astonishment, there was a Mrs Judson, and gave Miss Pink the number.

  The telephone rang for some time before it was answered by a woman.

  ‘Mrs Judson? My name is Pink. I’m staying at the Bridge Hotel. I saw a black Alsatian running loose on the Nature Reserve about half an hour ago.’

  ‘Oh dear. That must be ours, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I was going to ring the police but there’d be a delay before they could get here, and if you could deal with it yourself –’

  ‘No, don’t call the police. I’ll go up there now.’

  ‘Is it safe? I mean, will the dog attack you?’

  ‘Of course not; it’s never attacked anyone.’ As if it had occurred to her that there was always a first time she added hurriedly: ‘At the hotel, you said? I’ll get in touch ... Thank you so much – please excuse me –’

  The receiver was dropped on its rest. Miss Pink went back to the store. A thin man with a drooping moustache and angry eyes stood beside the dumpy woman. They had the appearance of waiting. She satisfied their curiosity; the more people who knew that there was a savage dog loose, the better. Their heads turned as one and they stared through the shop window at the hanging woods receding into the early evening haze.

  ‘I knew it,’ the man said. ‘I always told you, didn’t I? We’re going to have a killing in this valley with them dogs –’

  ‘Ssh!’ The woman was tense, her eyes – no longer mild – darting to Miss Pink. ‘He’s exaggerating,’ she said.

  ‘I am not exaggerating!’

  Miss Pink decided that it was high time to introduce some common sense into this matter of the dogs.

  ‘Why aren’t they kept under restraint?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, they are –’

  ‘They get out –’ Both spoke at once, and stopped.

  ‘Have they ever done any harm?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘Not yet.’ The man was grudging. ‘They will unless –’

  ‘Sydney!’ It was a warning. Suddenly the woman became confiding – wheedling was more like it, Miss Pink thought: ‘We love this valley; the people are so kind ... We’re a very small community but not isolated, not inward-looking. A lot happens here, you know: people ask what we find to do in the winter-time but –’ she gave a little false laugh, ignoring the man who was glowering at her, ‘– in fact we can’t wait for the summer to finish so that we can get down to the business of living – and knowing each other again instead of just making money.’

  Miss Pink, aware that her stare had become fixed, looked at the man to see if he would argue the point.

  ‘Summer gets a bit heated,’ he said inanely.

  It was a pathetic bit of by-play to make her stop asking questions about Alsatians, but the woman had rather more wit than her husband. There was a sound of tyres on gravel and a boy propped a bicycle against the window and stepped into the shop. At sight of Miss Pink he paused and the excitement in his face faded. Suddenly he was dull, oafish, and Miss Pink’s mind sharpened.

  ‘Don’t prop your bike against the glass, Dewi,’ the woman said, long-suffering.

  ‘You’ve been told a dozen times.’ The man showed a flicker of temper.

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  The boy slouched outside. There was a gentle sigh from behind the counter. Miss Pink indicated a poster in fluorescent red in the window.

  ‘Do you think this show will be worth going to?’

  ‘Why, yes.’ The woman’s eyes shone. ‘She came here; that’s a girl: M. Seale. She put the poster up herself. She’s travelled all over the world. She’s a rock climber. She lives in a tent! Can you imagine that – just like a gypsy? Although she lives in America most of the time – in California.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ the man said. ‘You’ve only got her word for it.’

  His wife ignored him. She was staring at the mountains above their forested plinth across the valley.

  ‘She said women have more sense of adventure than men,’ she said softly.

  He gave a guffaw of angry laughter and Miss Pink turned in some embarrassment to find the oafish boy in the doorway, his head cocked like a blackbird’s, a wry smile on his lips. But even as she turned, his jaw dropped and he asked dozily: ‘Tea ready, Mam?’

  The lecture hall was a small wooden building boasting the bare necessities: a few tubular steel chairs, a power point, and dark curtains that only just met in the middle. Despite the postmistress’s contention that everything happened in this valley, the community must have been starved of live entertainment for they had turned out in force; about seventy of them, Miss Pink calculated, but then she noticed a tattered hair style in orange and lime and realised that Seale had attracted some visitors too.

  Richard Judson was across the aisle from her and he introduced his wife, a large, plain woman upon whom the name of Pi
nk appeared to make no impression. No one said anything about dogs. She couldn’t see the Warings; no doubt they were occupied at the Bridge, although their cook was present, a woman so far only glimpsed through a doorway as she shouted at a diminutive coloured man: ‘Sour cream, yer daft bugger; sour cream!’

  Miss Pink recalled the name: Lucy Banks. She had turned in her seat to chat with Noreen Owen, the woman at the Post Office. Mrs Owen and her companions looked somewhat self-conscious at being the focus of Lucy Banks’s attention but they had little choice unless they moved.

  The cook was quite elderly but very well preserved, with raven hair coiled massively and held in place by diamanté combs. A deep tan was set off by a low-cut frock like a green skin and she had a throaty Lancashire accent in which, at this moment, she was telling everyone within a twenty-foot radius how to stuff guinea fowl.

  There was an eruption of scuffling and furious cries from a tangle of small boys in the front row, subsiding momentarily as Handel Evans – in grey flannels and a blazer with an insignia on the breast pocket – walked down the aisle and paced the front like a Guards corporal. Seale, who had been twitching curtains into place, turned, collected eyes, and moved in front of the big screen.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘And thank you for coming.’

  There was a burst of giggles from the front row. She said, in a cool, clear voice that carried to the farthest corner: ‘One more sound from you and I’ll bash your heads together.’

  There was a concerted gasp and a sigh, perhaps of pleasure. ‘There’s no introduction,’ Seale went on. ‘I can’t talk, I let the pictures do that. No questions while the show’s on, please, but you can ask as many as you like at the end. Okay? Lights!’

  She was walking to the side where her automatic control would be. The screen lit up and the room lights went out. Someone had been briefed beforehand. Miss Pink wondered who that could be – or was the girl not alone? Then she saw what was on the screen and her eyes widened. It had been deliberately out of focus, she thought. Very clever.