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’ll 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?