Dog in the Dark (Three Oaks Book 1)

  DOG IN THE DARK

  Gerald Hammond

  © Gerald Hammond 1989

  Gerald Hammond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1989 by Macmillan London Limited.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Author’s Note

  Once, when writing an article about gundogs, I rashly changed the name of an offender in order not to embarrass its owner. The result, of course, was an indignant lady complaining to the magazine, and to anybody else who would pay attention, that it was certainly not her Bonzo (or whatever the name was) who chased the hare or crunched the pheasant. The details are vague by now but the scars remain.

  So let me state that, just as the human characters are fictitious, if any of the canines represented here have ever had real-life counterparts these have belonged to myself or my family. Even so, the resemblances are mostly in name. Let’s say rather that many of the dogs in this story are dogs I would have liked to own.

  My own fancy is for Labradors, but Labs are too predictable for such a story as this. In turning over to spaniels, I leaned heavily on the writings of Peter (P. R. A.) Moxon. If my facts are correct, the credit is his. Any errors are all my own.

  G. H.

  Chapter One

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that I was not leaving the judges behind and at that moment the Gun to my right fired a shot.

  The stewards with their red flags had allowed the spectators up close for once and a momentary recurrence of stagefright distracted me. When I looked forward again, the low sun was in my eyes. I could not pick up any falling bird against the moving branches and whirling leaves of the wood ahead. Had he missed, or taken a rabbit or a low bird? I had not heard the whirr of a rising pheasant but a stiff breeze was sighing among the dead leaves and in my ears as I turned. We were down to four dogs now. This was only a Novice Stake, but I was in a position to take Mistleton Moonbeam a step further on the long road to becoming a Field Trials Champion. Dear God, I told myself, don’t let me blow it now!

  ‘Get that bird from here,’ said the nearer judge. He was Joe Little and I had run under him before – a fair judge but sometimes severe. I thought that he knew that I had missed the fall and was giving me a hint. Well, there was nothing for it but to hope that Moon had marked the bird.

  The little spaniel had dropped at the sound of the shot. I gave her the signal to go out and she scampered forward, straight as a ruler. I began to breathe again. Short of the trees, she jinked to one side and checked at a patch of brambles. The bird, I decided, was a runner, but she was onto it.

  Moon bobbed down and then started back towards me, but instead of the pheasant which I expected she was carrying a rabbit, plucked from its ‘form’ or ‘seat’. There was a snicker of amusement from among the spectators.

  My heart pounded. Disaster was very close. If I had to take it from her, we would be put out. I gave her the ‘stop’ whistle and when she squatted down I signalled her to ‘drop it’. She paused and gave me one of her ‘I hope you know what you’re doing’ looks but she released her hold. The rabbit nearly gave me heart failure by crouching for a few seconds as if injured but then bolted for the wood. Moon sat tight, watching it away in disgust. No penalty. There was even a thin spatter of applause.

  I gave her a few seconds to forget about the rabbit and then sent her back to her original line. I could only see her head but she seemed to have picked up a scent. She put on a turn of speed and vanished into the wood.

  There was nothing to do but wait. She could have scented another rabbit – they were almost as thick on the ground as the leaves in the air and she would have had the scent of rabbit fresh in her sensitive nose – but there are times when you can only trust the dog.

  ‘It fell near the big clump of gorse,’ the judge said at last.

  I only nodded. Give her a little more time, I told myself. She had passed close downwind of that gorse. If a shot bird had been in there, even in that blustery wind, she would surely have scented it. But there was dead ground between the gorse and the trees. If I whistled and if the bird were a runner, I might be handling her away from it . . .

  Her white markings showed through the undergrowth. She was coming back. She emerged into the open with a cock pheasant struggling in her jaws and returned to me at a gallop, her stump of a tail an almost invisible blur. She delivered the bird sitting – an unnecessary refinement but one which usually pleases the judges. Before wringing its neck, I held it up so that the judges could see that it was alive – it has been known for an unscrupulous competitor to go through the motions of killing an already dead bird in order to distract the judges’ attention from the damage inflicted by a hard-mouthed dog.

  Joe Little checked between the feathers, looking for signs of shot. ‘I think we’ve seen enough,’ he said and the other judge nodded. They conferred.

  Ten minutes later they announced their findings. Moonbeam was the outright winner. I was too elated to take in the other placings and the Certificates of Merit, but there would be time enough to read the details later in the sporting press. I thanked the host and his head keeper, went up to receive our award and then slipped away. Moonbeam danced all the way to the car. She knew that she had done well. Perhaps my mood had communicated itself and she certainly knew that her evening feed was due, but dogs develop an uncanny instinct for competition. She would have been much less boisterous if we had been unplaced.

  There was a large hotel a few miles down the road. I pulled in, as much because I was exhausted and chilled through by the wind as to cadge some hot water for Moonbeam’s dinner. It was a place of fake antiques and with oak beams stuck on as an afterthought, but it was warm. I ordered the lightest snack on the menu for myself and then carried Moon’s dinner outside. When the kennel-meal had soaked up most of the water I fed her in the back of the car.

  ‘You’re a clever little bastard,’ I told her. ‘We’ll try to get you an entry in an Open Stake next month, and if you do well in it we’ll maybe find you a handsome husband and take a litter off you in the spring. You’ll enjoy that,’ I assured her. But she was intent on guzzling her dinner and responded only with a token wag of her docked tail. At other times, she gave me her full attention and all the loyalty in the world. I only wished that she could give me a little of her appetite.

  My own snack was waiting for me in the bar. I carried it to a corner table and settled down. There was soporific Muzak playing and I could easily have leaned back and fallen asleep. I never felt less like eating but I knew that only food would give me the energy to face the long drive home.

  I was pushing the last of the food around my plate when a figure loomed between me and the lights of the bar. I looked up. Joe Little was standing over me. ‘I thought I recognised your car outside,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  ‘You’re welcome to,’ I said. I was not feeling much like company just then, but to alienate a prominent judge would be about as advisable as insulting one’s dentist.

  He went back to the bar and returned with a laden tray, put down a substantial meal and a pint for himself and then pushed another pint in front of me. ‘It is lager you’re drinking?’ he asked.

  ‘It is.’ I had reservations about drinking another pint on top of the half-pint I had had already, but I could probably leave some of it behind without being too obvious about it. ‘Thank you. But I should be buying you the drinks.’

  He laughed and shook his head. Amusement sat well on his square but kindly face. ‘That would smack of corruption,’ he said. ‘And there’s no need for any quid pro quo. That’s a good little bitch you have there. If you do your part, she’ll make Champion within another year, you mark my words. You earned the win, between you. Am I right in thinking that you already have a winner? Champion Mistleton Sunbeam,’ he added, in case I had forgotten.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Sunbeam and Moonbeam. They’re full sisters. My sister-in-law named them.’

  ‘One of my clients saw her in last year’s Championship Stake. Very impressed, he was. If you’re thinking of breeding from her, he wants you to put a dog pup aside for him and train it.’

  ‘I thought you only went in for Labradors,’ I said.

  ‘Not so much of the “only”,’ he said with a snort of laughter.

  ‘All right, I thought you specialised in Labradors.’

  ‘You spaniel men think that when God had created the springer and its near relatives he should have knocked off for a dirty weekend.’

  ‘I have always suspected that he did,’ I said.

  ‘And Labradors were the result.’ Having scored a good point, Joe took a pull at his pint and beamed at me. ‘Many a Labrador owner keeps a spaniel or two for the dirty work. What do you say?’

  ‘Sunbeam’s in pup now,’ I told him.

  ‘The sire?’
/>
  I told him and he whistled. ‘I bet that cost you an arm and a leg,’ he said.

  ‘Not really. He has pick of the litter. Your client can have second choice if he confirms straight away.’ I was waking up again, warmed by our talk. I finished my snack and began on the pint of lager.

  ‘I’ll tell him.’ Joe was silent for a minute while he made some inroads into his steak and chips. ‘Ever thought of turning fully professional?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes, of course I have,’ I told him. ‘Three or four people have been after me to train dogs for them.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘There’s no space for expansion where I am. I’m living with my brother and his wife. If I could find a suitable place within my means . . .’

  Until then he had only been keeping the conversation going rather than letting it lapse into one of those awkward silences, but I saw his interest quicken. ‘If you mean that,’ he said, ‘there’s a place for sale near me. A farmhouse and barn with a few acres around them, not going at a giveaway price, but reasonable.’

  I had heard such words rather often during the previous year, from friends. Frequently they had been used to describe an overpriced slum with inadequate ground space and much dangerous traffic nearby. But Joe Little had his feet on the ground and he knew the world of dogs. I felt a stirring of cautious interest. ‘There’s reasonable and reasonable,’ I said. ‘It would have to be very reasonable to be anything other than a pipe-dream. I have a small pension and a little capital, but I’d have to build kennels and lay out some money on bitches. I don’t know . . .’

  ‘It’s up to yourself,’ he said, ‘but I think you could make it.’ He talked on, juggling figures in the air from his considerable experience – capital, turnover, profit. He made them sound very convincing, but my tired mind refused to take them in. ‘One good thing about dogs, the generations come around quickly,’ he went on. ‘With people, you wait nearly twenty years; but if you keep the bitches from your first two litters you’ll have a breeding stock from a very good line in a few years. Sooner, if you do a little trading.’

  ‘You make it sound very easy,’ I said. ‘And in normal circumstances you’d probably be right. But I honestly don’t think that I’d have the stamina to start something like that from scratch.’

  He nodded sympathetically. ‘I heard that you weren’t keeping well. Amazing how good a grapevine the trials world has. But, in fact, it shows. You were in the army, weren’t you? Stopped an Argy bullet in the Falklands?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact—’

  He was not listening. ‘But you’ve been walking around all day today. If you can walk, you can train. That’s what you’re good at. You enjoy the training side above anything else, or am I wrong?’

  He seemed to have me weighed up. ‘How do you know that?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘Instinct.’ He stopped and thought about it. ‘Your bitch works as though she was trained by somebody who had his heart in it. That’s as well as I can put it. Let me tell you something.’ He put aside his knife and fork and pointed at me. ‘Never mind what anybody else tells you, if you can train, you can make a living, because that’s where the money is. The puppy-factories have ruined the bottom end of the market but pups from winning strains always sell. Trained dogs sell better. How many Best English guns have you seen around?’

  ‘Quite a few.’

  ‘All right, so a good gun will last for ever. But how many Range Rovers do you see?’ I opened my mouth to answer but he rushed on. ‘Hundreds. A man’s a fool if he’ll pay that much for a car and grudge a tenth of the price for a good dog. He’ll get a damned sight more pleasure out of the dog. And then there’s always the other kind of a fool with a bank account who’ll pay you to undo the mistakes he’s made with his own dog. Get yourself a partner with a little capital, take on a kennel-maid for the rough work and you’re in business. You might not make a mint, but you’d have a good life and a steady income.’

  He made it sound a tempting alternative to continuing the abuse of my brother’s hospitality and a life of comparative aimlessness but I could feel the old inertia creeping up on me. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. And I knew that I would think about it, regretfully, cursing on my own lack of drive.

  ‘You’re tired,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come back with me now? Have a good night’s sleep at my place and take a look at Three Oaks in the morning? Leave your car. I’m delivering a dog near here tomorrow, so I can bring you back again.’

  I knew that Joe lived somewhere in Fife. It lay in the wrong direction, but after a tiring day the prospect of being driven the shorter distance by somebody else instead of tackling the long drive on my own was very tempting. If I phoned my brother, he would walk and feed Sunbeam for me. ‘It’s very kind of you—’ I said doubtfully.

  He tried to look indignant but his face was not made for it. ‘I hate to see a young chap pottering around in an amateur way when he could be having a go,’ he said. ‘Especially an ex-officer. And if we’re going to have a puppy explosion, I’d rather see dogs bred and trained by somebody who knows what he’s doing instead of pups sired in the back garden by the dog next door and half-trained in the shooting field by incompetents. That’s not kindness, it’s my interfering nature.’

  Chapter Two

  Joe owned a modern house, well designed and lovingly furnished. Either there was money in the family or a breeding and training kennel could be made to pay. Joe’s plump wife, as friendly as himself, seemed accustomed to sudden visitors. She readied the spare room and then gave Joe a report on the happenings of the day while she produced a late supper, almost without taking her eyes off the television.

  When we arrived, the scenery was no more than silvery trees in the headlights and vague shapes looming in the distant dark, but I looked out of my bedroom window in the morning to see that we were in an undulating countryside of small fields, scattered trees and occasional random woodland. It was very unlike the bare and heavy hills of the west coast where my brother had his business and more akin to the softer scenery of the Lothians where I had grown up. Something told me that this was an area in which I could put down roots. I made up my mind not to let such sentiments cloud my judgment but I knew that the intangible factor of ‘feeling at home’, while a bad basis for decision-making, could have a profound effect on the quality of life.

  Joe showed me his neat kennels and his complement of Labradors, and I met Mr and Mrs Fettle, the elderly couple who looked after the daily management. Joe seemed to have plenty of time to spare. ‘But,’ he said with a sideways glance, ‘you can fully train a Labrador while a spaniel’s still scratching itself.’ He was waiting for me to point out that the Labrador, being a retriever and therefore expected to do no more than wait beside its master until there was quarry to be fetched, had little to learn beyond what a puppy did naturally, while a spaniel had to hunt without chasing, distinguish wounded game from that which was sitting tight and resist the constant temptation to chase. I denied him the satisfaction. There was even a vestige of truth in what he said. Because of their eagerness and sheer joie de vivre, spaniels can be hard work.

  We drove to Three Oaks Farm through a straggling village which was mostly one long street of houses of various sizes and ages, a single shop, a prosperous-looking hotel and a church which was almost hidden behind trees from the passer-by.

  Place-names are often illusory, being long out-dated or corruptions of words with quite different meanings, but not always. I could see the three large oaks on the skyline not far from the road, and when we turned off I found that they still stood within the new boundary.

  The buildings presented a broad front to the visitor. The house itself was traditional – a single storey of grey-brown stone with a high roof of blue slates and large dormer windows lifting like frogs’ eyes in silhouette. There was a substantial extension, also in stone and slate, to one side and separated from the house by a recessed porch sheltering the kitchen door. This asymmetry lent the place a pleasantly cockeyed expression, rescuing it from the severity of the typical Scottish farmhouse built to stand for ever against the worst of winters. To judge from the bolts and bars, the central front door had been little used. The house was dull and grimy, but it was dry.