Give a Dog a Name (Three Oaks Book 4) Read online

  Beth arrived in time to hear his last few words. ‘I’ve given him a clean bed in the surgery,’ she said. ‘But, John, whoever would do a thing like that? To a spaniel! I can just imagine somebody firing one shot to chase him off. But to follow him up! I think that’s awful!’

  ‘So do we,’ Isobel said gently. ‘But not everybody has a tender heart like yours. This may come as a shock to you, Beth, but some people don’t like dogs very much. Not even spaniels,’ she added firmly as Beth opened her mouth to protest.

  Beth looked unconvinced.

  *

  The following day was one of our quiet Sundays. On one Sunday a month I held what had become known as my Masterclass, to which amateur handlers brought their dogs for help, advice and a chance to chat or to show off their progress.

  But this was not a Masterclass day. In theory, it was an idle day at Three Oaks Kennel, by which I mean that the dogs were given a respite from training and there was little for us to do except to deal with any urgent inquiries, clean the runs, exercise the dogs, feed the puppies and inspect the entire stock for wounds, ticks, fleas, mites, infections, unexpected arrivals into season or the imminence of whelping.

  When Isobel, surprisingly bright-eyed considering her state On the previous evening, walked over in mid-morning, Beth, who had come to us first as kennel-maid and still undertook her original duties, was hard at work in the kennels and runs. The office, so-called, was small, cold and inhospitable, so I was updating some records on the kitchen table when Isobel looked in.

  ‘How’s my patient?’ she asked.

  I put off answering until I had completed an entry. ‘Very sorry for himself,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t put him off his food. He had a good drink and a meal but I had to carry him outside and support him while he emptied himself. Any attempt to move under his own steam makes him yelp.’

  ‘To be expected,’ Isobel said. She went off to check on Horace and came back trying not to look worried. ‘He’s a sensible little chap,’ she said. ‘He hadn’t tried to lick off any of my dressings. But there’s a lot of swelling around some of his joints. And close to the spine. I don’t like that.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘I hope so. I told you, it’ll take time. He can stay in the surgery for now, the warmth may help a little. I really ought to get him X-rayed – it’s time we had a machine of our own. And a diathermy unit.’

  ‘Put them on your Christmas list,’ I told her. ‘Santa may bring you one. Henry might be persuaded to oblige with the other. The partnership certainly can’t. It looks as though we’re going to be short of pups next year. We may have to buy in.’

  ‘Sad but true,’ she said, sinking into the chair opposite. ‘Do you want a hand?’

  We were finishing up when the phone rang. Arthur Lansdyke was calling from Zurich. I handed the phone to Isobel. From the end of the discussion which I could hear (and without understanding more than a quarter of the veterinary terms used) she was offering him comfort which was no more than lukewarm.

  ‘I’m to take him for X-ray,’ she told me when the call finished. ‘I can get it done in Cupar tomorrow. He’s writing to confirm that what Horace needs, Horace gets.’

  ‘Hence the expression, “Lucky dog”,’ I said.

  ‘I hope he’s lucky. If not, he’ll stay lame; and a lame spaniel isn’t much use to a shooting man. Mr Lansdyke says that Horace is the best dog he’s ever had and that he can learn anything short of doing the housework. Does Beth need help with anything?’

  ‘It’s all in hand,’ I said emphatically. Isobel had been happy for me when I married Beth, but I knew that she had had reservations. A wife might not be as willing as an employee to work through the weekends so that the partners could enjoy a little leisure. We never missed a chance to reassure her.

  Isobel looked at me with amusement. She knew that I was exaggerating. ‘Well, I must be off,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Henry for lunch at the hotel. Do you fancy joining us for a drink?’

  ‘We’ll see what Beth wants to do.’

  Beth decided to remain at work but urged me to go with Isobel. Unlike most wives, Beth is always hounding me down to the hotel for a pint or two of Guinness – not because of any hoped-for effect on my virility but because I remain seriously underweight from the illness which had terminated my army career.

  We walked the half-mile to the village.

  The hotel was an old coaching inn, and the large and rambling bar had been created by throwing together several smaller rooms. The result was an eccentric and rather welcoming charm that attracted customers from some miles around. The bar was busy with Sunday lunchtime drinkers.

  Henry had not yet shown his face. Isobel took a shandy, her usual thirst-quencher after an evening on the tiles, and settled at a corner table. I was about to join her with my pint when a young man near me at the bar gave me a small nod of recognition. I knew his face but the sports jacket and flannels looked wrong and I have never been good at recognising people when I meet them suddenly and out of context unless they have their dogs with them. After a few moments of mentally placing him behind counters and trying to visualise him with a dog, I identified him as the local constable who had replaced our recently promoted sergeant.

  I paused beside him on my way towards Isobel and exchanged a few words about the weather and how he was settling in at the police house. ‘Have there been any recent complaints about sheep-worrying around Cupar?’ I asked him when the courtesy topics were out of the way.

  ‘No, nothing at all,’ he said, before remembering that information should never be given away without a quid pro quo. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  If there had been no sheep-worrying reported, I could speak freely. ‘Somebody brought us in a spaniel with shotgun pellets in him. The owner says that he doesn’t know how it happened, but he may be covering up his own carelessness. If a man takes a shot at ground game in thick covet and the dog’s hard on its heels, accidents can happen. I was just curious.’

  The constable lost interest. The law does not require accidents to be reported which do not entail injury to humans. ‘That’s probably it,’ he said. ‘There’s been no sheep worrying.’

  I joined Isobel and repeated the information. She shrugged. ‘It could have been anything,’ she said. ‘I saw in the paper that a man was fined for shooting a dog that raided his dustbin. Shot it dead.’

  The farmer whose land adjoined ours, Andrew Williamson, was standing at the bar, talking to somebody who had his back to us but frowning at me over the other’s shoulder. Williamson and I had got off on the wrong foot when I arrived at Three Oaks and we had stayed on it ever since. I was not alone in his disfavour. General opinion was that he liked nobody, not even his own wife. When he fell out with her, he was inclined to descend on the inn like a busload of football supporters and drink himself into a stupor; but the Williamsons must have been in harmony just then because he was sipping his way slowly through a half-pint.

  That conversation ended, apparently in disagreement, and the other man loomed over us and then sat down opposite Isobel. His strong features would have suited a larger man – except that his chin was fractionally too near his nose, giving him a toothless appearance although he was by no means short of teeth. He was Dan Sievewright, another farmer from several miles away and an occasional client.

  ‘Yon Williamson’s as daft as they come,’ he said without greeting or preamble. ‘I was coming to see you. Getting low on dogfood. You’ll drop me over the usual order?’

  I had no particular liking for Sievewright with his abrupt and rather hectoring manner and I resented being required to deliver an order which he could as easily have collected for himself or bought in Cupar. But I owed him an occasional favour. He allowed me to train dogs on his land, which was well suited to checking the steadiness of a dog to rabbits or giving a youngster its first introduction to pigeon.

  ‘I’ll bring it over tomorrow,’ I said.

  Isobel, who had been broo
ding, woke up suddenly. ‘If you’re going that way,’ she said, ‘you could take Horace in for his X-ray. I’ll phone for an appointment.’ It seemed that I was everybody’s errand-boy.

  ‘What’s this?’ Sievewright asked. ‘Your spaniels having hip-trouble?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ Isobel said coldly. She had no more liking for Sievewright than I had and the suggestion that we had been careless enough to breed hip dysplasia into our stock was a deadly insult. ‘A client brought us in a dog with some pellets in him. Nobody seems to know how it happened.’

  ‘I could make a guess,’ Sievewright said. Farmers seem to have single-track minds where other people’s dogs are concerned.

  ‘When I bring your dog-meal over, is it all right if I fetch a dog along for a workout?’

  He hesitated and then shook his head. ‘Leave it a week or two,’ he said. ‘We’re planning a family shoot.’

  I shrugged. A farmer has every right to say who may shoot over his land and when, but I was surprised. Apart from the rabbits and an occasional visiting flock of pigeon, the farm held only a single small covey of partridges and two or three pheasants which had wandered in from further afield; and as far as I knew his only family was the brother who shared his farm and with whom he was usually at loggerheads. I was going to ask what he expected to put in the bag when he recognised somebody at the other end of the bar and left us with no more farewell than to remind me about his dogfood.

  Chapter Two

  One of the few advantages of being self-employed, I sometimes thought, was that Monday mornings were no different from any other morning. My outlook on that particular Monday morning may have been jaundiced by the knowledge that somebody was shooting spaniels in the neighbourhood, but the morning seemed to be all that a Monday morning was supposed to be – dull and dispiriting without even being wet enough to make an excuse for rushing through the work and then stretching out in front of the fire with a good book or a cosy wife. Even the morning mail failed to produce replies to recent letters to the Kennel Club about registrations. I wondered whether London hadn’t been bombed out of existence, and the Scottish media either had not yet found out or did not consider the news to be worth reporting. Both hypotheses were perfectly credible.

  A large bag of kennel meal and a smaller bag of beef cracknel went onto the back seat of my old estate car. Isobel had left a note for the surgery where she had been a partner before her marriage, detailing the X-rays to be taken. Horace had gratefully accepted a handful of biscuits but I had to carry him out into the garden and then to the car. I wondered whether he was genuinely unable to walk or had merely decided that he preferred to be carried everywhere.

  I took a back road towards Cupar. Along the way, I passed the farm that Dan Sievewright shared with his less dour brother, but I drove on. After another mile, I passed the end of a driveway almost hidden between trees. I had passed that way a hundred times before without noticing it particularly, but with Horace and his master fresh in my mind the neat sign ‘Kilcolm’ caught my eye. That was the address that Arthur Lansdyke had given me. I slowed the car. The roof of a substantial house showed through the trees.

  In Cupar, Isobel’s one-time partner, now an elderly man but still a competent professional, read her notes and asked after her health and the state of the business while settling Horace under a new-looking X-ray machine. He refused to comment to me on another vet’s patient, but he confirmed that he knew of no recent instances of sheep-worrying.

  I used my voice and hands to soothe Horace until he relaxed and lay still under the X-ray camera.

  As I had expected, the X-rays would not be ready until after midday, which would give me time to have a word with one of the Sievewrights while delivering the dogfood. If somebody was shooting spaniels in the area, I would be easier in my mind if I knew who and why. There had been one or two instances, although not very recent, of malicious dog-poisoning. I settled Horace back on the dog-bed in the rear of the car and drove out of Cupar again.

  The farmhouse at Easter Colm stood within a few yards of the road. I parked at the door and while I waited I admired the last of the roses in the farmhouse garden. Several new bushes had been planted. The brothers were both single and it was George who usually attended to the garden. Although neither brother seemed to take any pleasure in the garden and other neighbours had told me that there was never a flower in the house, the garden was always immaculate – in contrast to the farmhouse, which was in a dilapidated state with dark scars of rot showing through the paint of the windows and one or two slates standing up in the guttering.

  I had seen Dan tinkering with a tractor between the barns as I arrived, but I was sure that George, his brother, would put in an appearance. Neither brother ever let the other make a move about the place unsupervised. I already had Dan’s opinion and I would value another from George.

  But it was Dan who emerged, frowning and wiping his hands on a rag, from between the nearer barn and the calf-shed, with his two collies at heel. I got out of the car to meet him. The dogs sniffed suspiciously at my legs and then decided to ignore me.

  ‘You’ve brought the dogfood,’ Dan said.

  ‘I wasn’t going to take you away from your tractor. I thought George might come out.’

  ‘George is away,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ I said. This was unheard of. George was the home-lover, rarely leaving the farm except, rumour had it, to make assaults on the virtue of any girl or lady for miles around who happened to have caught his fancy.

  ‘Yes, really.’ Dan tried, unsuccessfully, to mimic my accent, which army life had Anglicised. Then he decided to be more communicative than usual. ‘There’s a farm for sale over in the west. This place isn’t big enough for both of us.’

  His last sentence might be true, but in the circumstances it also had a taste of a bad Western film. Farm management should never be by two equal partners unless their responsibilities are clear-cut and separate. Otherwise, every decision becomes subject to endless argument.

  ‘You must have been doing better than most, if you can afford to expand,’ I said.

  He grunted. ‘There’s ways. Sale and leaseback. If he decides to take it on, I’ll not be needing as much meal from now on.’

  ‘The house will seem empty.’

  ‘I like it that way.’

  I gave him the bags of dogfood and he paid for it without offering a word of thanks for the free delivery.

  ‘Do you get many wandering dogs around here?’ I asked him.

  ‘A few.’

  ‘How about Arthur Lansdyke’s spaniel?’

  ‘That bogger!’ He glanced at my car, where Horace was rolled into a tight liver-and-white ball. ‘Is Horace the yin as got himself shot? Can’t say I’m surprised. A dog’s either a wanderer or it’s not. Aye raking about, is that one. How’s he doing?’

  ‘He may not do any more raking about for a long time, if ever. We don’t know yet.’

  ‘That’ll make a change. Mr Lansdyke’s away a lot, at the Glenrothes factory or away round the world. As for that wife of his . . .’

  ‘He’s married?’ I wondered why I had supposed that Mr Lansdyke was single and then realised that I had assumed it because a man with a wife at home had no need to book his dog into kennels.

  ‘Oh aye.’ Sievewright seemed amused. ‘He’s married. That’s for sure. But she can’t abide dogs and especially that yin. Often, he’ll take the dog into Glenrothes with him, but if he’s tentless enough to leave the dog at home when he goes abroad it’s my belief she lets it out a-purpose, hoping it’ll get itself run over or caught chasing the lambs.’

  That explained why Horace had been booked into kennels. ‘When the dog’s on the loose,’ I said, ‘where does he usually make for?’

  ‘Comes past here, sometimes, looking for food. Ignored the sheep so far, I’ll say that much for him.’

  ‘Was he here on Saturday?’

  ‘Not that I noticed. He may well’ve passed by on his
way to Mr Ellingworth’s place. That fat, glaikit cocker spaniel of his is on heat again. You can shoot over the farm if you want,’ he added. ‘Wi’ George away we’ve had to cancel the shoot.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back within the next few days. I’ll let you get on with your tractor now.’

  ‘You’re not doing me any favours,’ he said gloomily. ‘It’s taken them ten days to get the part and now I’m boggered if it’ll fit. Ah well, can’t stand here havering all day.’ He turned away without another word and carried the bags into the house.

  My watch told me that the X-rays would not be ready yet. I decided to pay a call on Tony Ellingworth who lived, with his wife and a multitude of young daughters, another half-mile back along the road towards home in what had once been the small manse to a since-demolished church but was now the hub of a smallholding. From Easter Colm I could see the trees that marked his boundary.

  I had met Ellingworth on several occasions. Once, he had burst through the hedge while I had been giving a spaniel some training on the rabbits which infested the set aside land just beyond his boundary to upbraid me for my cruelty in shooting the rabbits – this despite the fact that the same rabbits regularly decimated his vegetables and that he had no objection to eating the lambs obtained from the few sheep he managed to graze, provided that somebody else did the butchering for him. Another time, he came to Three Oaks to scrounge free advice about the health of his spaniel.

  I had no personal quarrel with Ellingworth although he represented a type of hypocrite which I particularly disliked. He seemed to me to live in a dream-world of self-deception. He was a leftover of the waning fad for self-sufficiency, but his efforts at raising produce for consumption by his family were so disorganised that I could only assume that he had private means. He had come from some city to live in his own vision of the countryside, without making the least effort to understand country ways or the reasons for them, just as he was a birdwatcher without any understanding of ecology or the effects of climate and predation on food-chains. In short, any study that he had made of the wildlife he professed to love had been made in the school of Walt Disney and his loud support for every ‘green’ issue was no more than lip-service.