Soldier Dog Read online

  Stanley would have to pull Soldier apart from Rocket, to pull the son from the mother. Stanley bit his lip, braced himself and knelt. Rocket placed her nose on his lap, her trusting eyes searching his face. Stanley looked away as he tugged Soldier, feeling the resistance as the pup pulled at the teat. He held Soldier’s plush puppy coat to his cheek, smelling his milkiness, remembering the horror of losing a mother.

  ‘I won’t let them take you, I’ll find a way,’ he whispered. Turning and rising he fumbled his way to the back of the trap.

  The trap joggled over the yard towards the arch.

  Stanley gasped. There was Rocket trotting along beside them, questing snout reaching upward. Stanley winced – he should have locked her up, hadn’t been thinking straight – of course she’d follow her pups. Da turned Trumpet to the left. He was taking the drive that curved across the park, the drive the Chorleys called Park Drive. Still Rocket kept pace with the trap, at an airy trot, her feather-light paws barely disturbing the glaze of drizzle on the ground. Stanley lifted his hand to her in a motion to stay, hissing, ‘Go back, Go back.’

  Trumpet lumbered onward, and still Rocket followed.

  ‘Go back, girl,’ hissed Stanley again.

  They’d left the park and were almost at the new lake. Desperate now, Stanley stood and motioned again. ‘Go back, Rocket, go back.’

  Da’s head turned. He saw Rocket.

  ‘Home. Go home, girl,’ he yelled.

  Rocket stopped.

  ‘Gerraway. Back! Go back, girl.’

  Da whipped the old horse onward. Rocket cringed and recoiled two reluctant paces. There was a crack as Da’s whip lashed Trumpet’s rump with shocking violence. The trap gathered speed. But there was Rocket again alongside, effortless and gossamer and lovely. Da lashed the ground inches from her nose. Rocket flinched, then followed, now at a hesitant, bewildered trot, tortured between her instinct for obedience and her anguish for her brood. Da turned to Stanley.

  ‘Are you still gawpin’? I’ll clout you too . . .’

  The puppies skidded across the trap, drawn ever away from their mother by Trumpet’s awkward, uneven canter. Da jerked his arm up as though to hurl a stone. Rocket recoiled, quivering. She stayed there, one foreleg lifted and poised. There by the edge of the lake, in the unnatural, deathless shade of the spruce, she stayed and raised her nose to the grey sky, and howled.

  Trumpet laboured up between the dry stone walls of Birdy Brow, then down between the humps of gorse where the ground was harder, the windswept thorns twisted and tortured.

  They reached a simple stone bridge and joined a straight, Roman sort of track, known as the Ribble Way, running through tussocky grassland. Ahead lay the Bowland Hills. Boulders dotted the treeless bog, the colours of the shrub heath muted by the veil of mizzle. Above, outraged clouds scurried across the enormous sky.

  The road began to climb. This was a long way for an old horse. Stanley strained to see through the mist and the drizzle – something was going on ahead; it was difficult to see what. They drew closer. Some sort of gathering.

  Da pulled up on a saddle of land that had been concealed as they’d climbed from below. Several other traps stood about. Ponies were tethered close by. Rough-looking men milled around holding large dogs on short ropes. Each dog had a form similar to Rocket’s, but with a different coat and marking, all greyhound crosses: lurchers.

  Some men sat on straw bales, smoking pipes and watching. Others stood shouting and arguing around a roped enclosure with a loudspeaker and a hard board painted white with numbers on it. Da dismounted, leaned over the trap and hissed, ‘Criminal dogs and criminal men.’ He gestured to the huddle of men around the white board. ‘Respectable men are at church on a Sunday, while the tinkers and the poachers are out and about with their thieving dogs.’

  Apart from the gathering, and away from the loudspeaker, sat the man Da had come to see. Stanley knew him by sight. A large, handsome man, Darkie Lee was a figure of local legend, said to be able to take a hare in its form with his bare hands.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Da growled as they picked their way closer.

  Lee wore a black felt hat and woollen tunic with the sleeves pushed up. His eyes were trained on some bacon on a neat kindling fire. Around him a herd of barefoot children ran pell-mell. To his left, sat an iron-grey, one-eyed, wolf-like dog. Something nasty had happened to that missing eye, a tear on barbed wire perhaps. Lee raised his cap, but not his head, nor his eyes. Da squatted, on the near side of the fire, to talk to Lee. The dog growled. That growl was a warning of his loyalty to Lee. It growled again. The dog couldn’t see Da’s eyes because of his cap, and dogs, Stanley knew, like to see a man’s eyes. He stepped forward and lifted Da’s cap off. Da gave an irritated shrug. Holding the cap, Stanley stepped back.

  ‘That’s right,’ Lee said. ‘A good dog’s always suspicious of a hat if he doesn’t know the man.’

  Beyond Lee, two lurchers, one brindled, one black, were straining at their collars. A team of beaters were driving a wild hare a hundred yards or so ahead of the dogs. The crowd tensed. The springs in the dogs’ collars were released. The collars flew open and the dogs sprang forward, the hare zigzagging ahead with breakneck changes of direction.

  With a sudden spring, the brindled lurcher seized its prey, and in seconds the race was over, the dog turning and trotting smoothly back, holding his leggy, long-eared prize. That dog, thought Stanley, that could be a Laxton dog if its coat were longer. Da coughed and grunted.

  ‘Pups. Rocket’s pups, but rough-coated. Some sort of cross.’

  Lee’s hawk-like eyes returned to the fire and he flipped the bacon. He slurped tea from a tin mug, removed the bacon from the fire, emptied his mug, and rose, indicating Da’s trap with the merest inclination of his head.

  Stanley leaped up and ran to the trap – he must get there first and hide Soldier. He whistled and Soldier sprang up and scampered over to him. Before Da and Lee reached the trap, the wriggling Soldier was hidden in Stanley’s coat.

  Lee leaned his elbows on the trap and inspected the cargo. Soldier buried his snout in Stanley’s armpit, snuffled furiously then scrabbled to break free. Stanley squeezed him with his arm, willing him to be still. Lee adjusted his hat.

  ‘You’ve brought ’em on good. Nice condition on their coats. Shining eyes.’ Lee’s own roving, glittering eyes stopped on Stanley.

  ‘Their dam ran twenty-one courses in good company, and led in eighteen on ’em.’ said Da.

  A longer silence followed. There were the sounds of a fight breaking out somewhere among the straw bales.

  ‘They’re yours if you’ll have ’em,’ Da said to Lee. He gestured to the pups in the trap, looked mystified for a split second, then glowered and swung round, ripped open Stanley’s coat, yanked Soldier out and hurled him into the trap. Lee moved his head neither to right nor left but his hooded eyes were hard and penetrating as they flickered to and fro.

  Soldier bounded across the trap. Stanley’s arms curled around him and Soldier sheltered there. Lee’s eyes rested on Soldier.

  ‘I’ll not take the queer one.’

  ‘Nought wrong with ’im.’ Da bristled.

  ‘Nought wrong, but they’re always softer, the white ones. Aye, and a hare turns from a white dog faster than from any other.’ Stanley squeezed his arm around the puppy, brimming with hope – he might keep Soldier, might bring a pup back to Rocket.

  Lee gave a discreet wink at Stanley.

  More to himself than to anyone else, Da growled, ‘His dam won twice on the Withuns.’ He snatched Trumpet’s reins, ready to climb up into the trap.

  Lee smiled at Stanley, a disarming smile of sporadic gold teeth. Still watching Stanley, he whistled. A fierce, raven-haired girl materialized beside him. Stanley stared at her and at the catapult she held. She stared back, unimpressed. Lee lifted Bentley by the scruff of her neck and held her up – Tom’s dog, that was to be Tom’s dog.

  ‘A good rough coat. That’l
l protect her from the wire on the fences.’

  Da winced – Lee used dogs for poaching; that was why he liked the rough coats.

  ‘Eh, an’ look at her tawny eye. A tawny eye’s a sign of a good, hard dog.’ Lee handed Bentley to the catapult girl. He lifted Socks and Biscuit. Stanley saw Biscuit’s tiny wet nose, the eyes live with terror, and felt sick; she was so small.

  ‘They’re only s-six weeks—’

  ‘Aye, six weeks is grand.’

  Stanley looked at the catapult girl. She looked, he thought, as though she might stew puppies for dinner.

  Da was sitting in the trap, glowering into the heather. Hugging Soldier, Stanley raised his collar against the sharp wind and climbed up. Lee adjusted his hat, putting an end to the business.

  ‘Look after them,’ said Stanley.

  Lee leaned over the back of the trap. Smiling his white and gold smile, he said, ‘If a dog loves you, he’ll do anything for you.’ Da cracked the whip. The trap lurched away. Lee adjusted his hat once more and sauntered off, dangling the tiny pups from the scruff of their necks.

  Rocket was waiting where Stanley last saw her, ears pinned against her skull, foreleg poised, her pitiful, expressive form reflected in the black lake. Trumpet lumbered on. Rocket sprang forward and tore round the trap in joyful hoops. Holding Soldier, Stanley jumped down. He knelt, opened his coat and watched with prickling eyes as Rocket licked and nosed her son. She grew wary and still, her son trotting ecstatic circles round her, his porridge coat glowing in the deep shade, his tail a circling blur. Rocket paused her licking and nosing, looked up after the trap, sniffed the air, then dropped her tail and began again, wounded and watchful, to caress Soldier.

  Tuesday, 4 September 1917

  Lancashire

  The little pup followed to heel but that was only because of the brace of rabbit hanging from Stanley’s left hand. Stanley reached the Park Drive gatehouse and hesitated. He preferred the farm drive, but Da might be there at the lake again and Stanley had something he was looking forward to giving him. From his coat pocket, Stanley took a reed whistle.

  ‘This is to train you,’ he said to the pup. ‘And to bring you to heel . . . and to make you sit.’ He blew. ‘This is for when you are ready to be trained.’

  Up on the moor, Stanley had cut two, one for himself and one for Da. He’d made them the way Da had taught both him and Tom. Da might help to train Soldier, the way he’d once trained Rocket.

  They reached the lake. Da was there, hunched beneath the rigid spruce, Rocket a few feet away. How long had Da been there? Why?

  ‘D-Da . . . L-look, I’ve made you a whistle . . . to train Soldier . . .’

  Da didn’t turn at his son’s voice. Stanley raised an uncertain hand to his lips to blow. The notes bubbled a clear and bright and haunting fountain. Soldier’s ears pricked. Stanley blew again. Soldier cocked his head, then capered away to Rocket at the edge of the lake. It was a good whistle, Stanley was thinking, he’d cut it well. He stepped forward, smiling, holding out the whistle – then froze in Da’s sudden, arctic glare.

  ‘I’ll drown it. Mark me, I’ll drown it.’

  Stanley’s heart thumped a tattoo. Da was stooping, fingering a stone. Stanley leaped towards Soldier. Da hurled the stone. It landed inches from Soldier in the shallows of the lake. Confounded with rage and disbelief, Stanley whirled around to his Da. Throw a stone at a puppy? His own father? Then he could do it, would do it: would drown Soldier.

  Da stomped away. Stanley turned back to Soldier and saw him, innocent and small and light against the deep, black water. In a vortex of horror and nausea, Stanley imagined a slender bubble rise on the surface of the lake, and another, and another – and a weighted sack dropping through dark water.

  The twilight deepened. Still holding the rabbits, Stanley made his way to the game larder. When he’d skinned them, he turned to wash his bloodied hands. To the left of the sink, on the tiled wall above, hung a small mirror. Stanley was surprised by his reflection – did he really look so young? He leaned into the murky glass. A minute passed as he studied himself. His hair was too long and it flopped over his forehead. He straightened up. He was fourteen, but he was tall, taller almost than Tom. If he lifted his chin, squared his shoulders, could he look fifteen? Sixteen? Seventeen? What was the difference between a fourteen- and a seventeen-year-old face? Stanley rubbed his chin. A beard would help. If he looked older, he could enlist.

  Also reflected in the glass were Tom’s cap and coat, hanging on a nail. On an impulse, Stanley turned, crossed the room, unhooked them. He put on the cap and turned to the glass, pushing his hair off his face. Looking at himself from all sides, he tried the coat. The length of the sleeves was good, but it was broad across the chest. Stanley buttoned it and rubbed the dust from the glass with his cuff. That was better.

  It wasn’t easy, he thought, to tell what sort of age he was now. Anyway, all sorts of men had signed up. Shepherd, the old History teacher, had been too short in 1914, but then he’d been tall enough by 1916. Lara Bird’s father was almost an old man but they’d taken him too. Recruitment officers were given a sixpence for every man they signed up – that’s why they’d signed them up, because of the sixpence probably. Stanley stood to attention, clicked his heels and saluted, fingers to the edge of Tom’s cap.

  ‘Seventeen, sir.’

  Soldier leaped to his side and Stanley looked at him, distraught, realizing – you couldn’t join the Army with a puppy. He couldn’t join Tom.

  No, he couldn’t do that . . . but he and Soldier must leave at first light and take their chances together.

  Early the next morning

  Lancashire

  A howl split the dawn. Stanley sprang out of bed and yanked the curtains open.

  The coach-house doors were open, the trap gone. What was Da doing up so early? Tethered to the bars of the kennel was Rocket, her long neck outstretched. Her howls circled upward, haunting the thin air. The glistening cobbles reflected the shivering sky.

  ‘I’ll drown it. Mark me, I’ll drown it.’

  Da’s words were icy and precise in Stanley’s head. A lightning surge of anger shot from his scalp to his fingertips. Fool, fool, fool! He should never have left Soldier alone, not for one minute; he should have slept in the stable, keeping guard.

  Stanley hurled himself, missing, stumbling down, the stairs, and charged into the yard. He flung the kennel gate open, slamming it against the stone wall. Scattered, broken straws were brown and sodden, trampled into the wooden boards, the hessian bedding gone – Da had taken the sack.

  Rocket hurled out a primeval yowl, which juddered against the streaming buildings, and twisted the pit of Stanley’s belly.

  ‘I’ll drown it. Mark me, I’ll drown it.’

  He choked and gagged. The tiny dog with the oatmeal coat and whirring tail. Stanley ran barefoot, maddened, blistering. He saw a golden straw on the ground – straw from Soldier’s bedding – and clutched it up. Following straws, he raced along Park Drive, stopping to grasp at them. On he ran, snatching at clues, a child on a sinister, demented treasure hunt. There – there were wheel marks tracking the mud. Stanley followed them, knowing where they’d lead.

  At the far end of the lake stood the trap. There was Trumpet and there was Da – he’d seen Stanley, was leaping into the trap, lashing the old cob into a canter from a standing start. The trap disappeared into the dark spruce. Stanley ran screaming to the trap, running, still screaming, his feet bleeding. He heard the lash of a whip, Da’s shout as he urged Trumpet on. Stanley stopped on the flattened grass where the trap had pulled up at the water’s edge. Nauseous with horror, he moved slowly towards the edge of the lake, inching his eyes up from the trampled reeds to the stone ledge where the water was deepest. This was where he’d seen Da so often. Hour after hour, Da came and stood here; here, where the water was blackest, he’d chosen to drown the tiny Soldier. The surface was blank. Not a ripple. Stanley retched and turned and ran, howling, to the cotta
ge.

  Back in the yard, Stanley knelt by Rocket. He saw the rope that tethered her. Da might tether his dog but he couldn’t tether his son. Stanley would leave, could never live with Da again, never pass that lake again. He put his cheek to Rocket’s flawless coat and fingered her silky ears.

  ‘Stay with Da. He does love you . . .’

  Stanley yanked Tom’s best coat and cap from the hook by the door and stuffed the postcard of the collie into his pocket. He slipped one of the reed whistles into a Bryant & May matchbox and that too he put in his pocket, flinging the second on to Da’s red chair.

  He emptied the tin of kitchen money, ripped a sheet of paper from his Grammar exercise book and wrote:

  At the door, one hand in his pocket, Stanley stopped to look one last time at the room. He saw the whistle on the chair. Da would see the whistle his son had made him, might see in it all the love and hope he’d destroyed. The whistle in the matchbox – that one he’d keep himself, forever, in memory of Soldier.

  PART II

  Early afternoon, the same day

  Liverpool

  The bus pulled up in Queen Square. This was the last stop. Stanley was forty miles from home, forty miles from Da. Full of purpose, he stepped down. He’d enlist. There was no Soldier. There was nothing to hold him back. He’d join the Army, and he’d do it today. Trams and taxicabs trundled past. A huge poster – at least seven yards long – covered the side of a passing tram, presenting the silhouette of a muscular arm and a clenched fist, under it the words, ‘LEND YOUR STRONG RIGHT ARM TO YOUR COUNTRY. ENLIST NOW’.

  Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, had asked for ‘Men, and still more men until the enemy is crushed’. The Army was desperately short, and if it could take half the old folk in Longridge it could take him.