Maybe starting a dog obedience school was the answer. Except you’d have an even harder job convincing these dipshits that they needed to sort out their dogs’ behaviour than that they needed to spend some serious money on a gardener. That was yuppies for you. He’d never had this sort of trouble with the aristocracy, in the good old days. They understood that you only get what you pay for. And they knew how to bring up a dog.
Good days, good days. Would they ever come again? Not bloody likely. Class, real class, was getting the chop everywhere you looked. The queen would be out on her arse next. The new millennium cleared for spotty little queers in oversized suits, and clueless foreign females with too much cleavage.
Forty-five miles an hour! Lord love a duck!
Isserley glanced surreptitiously at her passenger, trying to figure him out, for he had lapsed into silence and sat with his arms folded over his chest. He looked exactly like a hitcher she’d given a lift to about a year ago, who’d talked non-stop about the Territorial Army all the way from Alness to Aviemore. In fact, for a few moments she was sure it was him, until she remembered this wasn’t possible: she’d stung that particular vodsel shortly after he’d got around to telling her how his devotion to ‘the TA’ had cost him his marriage and taught him who his true friends were.
Of course she knew that these creatures were all exactly the same fundamentally. A few weeks of intensive farming and standardized feeds made that clear enough. But when they wore clothes, styled their hair into odd patterns, and ate strange things to distort themselves into unnatural shapes, they could look quite individual – so much so that you sometimes felt, as with human beings, that you’d seen a particular one somewhere before. Whatever the vodsel from the Territorial Army had done to make himself look the way he’d looked, this one here must have done something very similar.
He had a thick moustache which was curtailed severely in line with the outer limits of his great red mouth. His eyes were bloodshot and full of stoically endured pain which only tsunamic revenge and the grovelling apologies of world leaders could hope to cure. Hard wrinkles added a sculpturesque emphasis to a frowning forehead, under a symmetrical haircut combed back like a rinsed paintbrush. He was well-muscled, but with a thickening around the waist and a fawn-coloured leather jacket that had started to flake, and jeans that had fluffy fray-holes where keys and the hard edges of wallets had worn through.
Isserley bit back on the temptation to come right out and ask him about the Territorial Army, and found it surprisingly difficult. Again she blamed Amlis Vess; his ethical posturings and phony courage had annoyed her so deeply that she was finding any hint of it in another creature hard to tolerate. She wanted to ferret out this vodsel’s hare-brained passions, rudely yank them out into the light, before he had the chance to bore her with preambles.
She longed to sting him, to get it over with, which she knew was a very bad sign. It showed she was in danger of blundering towards an act of resolute foolishness not so very different, perhaps, from what might be expected from someone like Amlis Vess. As a matter of professional and personal pride, she must not sink to his level.
So, ‘Tell me,’ she said brightly, ‘What job were you hoping to get back there?’
‘I’m doing a bit of landscape design, just to tide me over,’ he replied. ‘My real profession is whatyou’dcall on hold just now.’
‘What is your real profession, then?’
‘I breed dogs.’
‘Dogs?’
‘Pedigrees. Sighthounds and scenthounds mainly, though I was getting into mastiffs and terriers towards the… the last few years. But crème-de-la-crème animals, yunderstandwhatI’msaying? Prize winners.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Isserley, letting her forearms droop forward at last. ‘I suppose you’ve supplied dogs to some well-known and influential people?’
‘Tiggy Legge-Burke’s had one of my dogs,’ the hitcher affirmed. ‘Princess Michael of Kent’s had one. Lots of people from show business. Mick McNeill out of Simple Minds. The other bloke from Wham. They’ve all had one.’
Isserley had no idea who these people were. She’d only ever watched television to learn the language, and to check if there were any police investigations being mounted into lost hitchhikers.
‘I suppose it must be difficult to train a dog and then let it go,’ she commented, trying not to let her loss of interest in him show. ‘It would get attached to you, wouldn’t it.’
‘Not a problem,’ he said pugnaciously. ‘Train them, hand them over. One master to another. Dogs have no problem with that. Dogs are pack animals. They need a leader, not a bosom buddy – well, not a two-legged one, anyway. People get too sentimental about dogs. Comes from not understanding the first thing about them.’
‘I’m sure I don’t understand the first thing about dogs,’ conceded Isserley, wondering if she had missed the right moment to ask him where he wanted to be dropped off.
‘First thing to understand,’ said the hitcher, coming to life, ‘is that to a dog, you’re pack leader. But only if you remind them who’s boss, same as a pack leader does. In a dog pack, there’s no such thing as a soft boss, yunderstandwhatI’msaying? Take my Shepherd bitch, Gertie. I’II go up to her when she’s sleeping on my bed, and just push her off, wham! onto the floor, just like that.’ He shoved his massive hands forward violently, and accidentally triggered the clasp of the glovebox, which sprang open and discharged something furry into his lap.
‘Jesus, what’s this?’ he muttered. Fortunately he picked the wig up himself, saving Isserley from having to grope for it in his crotch. Taking her eyes off the road for an anxious second, she snatched the clump of hair gently out of his hand and tossed it backwards into the darkness of the car’s rear.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, removing the gift box of chocolates from the overcrammed glovebox and snapping it shut. ‘Help yourself to one of these.’
She was proud of herself for handling so many challenges while driving, and couldn’t help breaking into a smile.
‘You were saying?’ she enquired as he fumbled with the cellophane. ‘You push your dog off the bed…’
‘Yeah,’ he rejoined. ‘That’s to remind her, this bed is mine. YunderstandwhatI’msaying? Dogs need that. A dog with a weak leader is an unhappy dog. That’s when they start to chew carpet, piss on your sofa, steal food off your table – like kids, desperate for a bit of discipline. No such thing as a bad dog. Clueless owners, that’s what it is.’
‘You seem to know such a lot about dogs, you must have been a very good breeder. Why are you designing landscapes just now?’
‘The bottom fell out of the dog-breeding business in the early nineties, that’s why,’ he said, his tone suddenly sour.
‘What caused that?’ she said.
‘Brussels,’ he declared darkly.
‘Oh,’ said Isserley. She struggled to see the connection between dogs and the small green spherical vegetables. She was almost certain that dogs were wholly carnivorous. Perhaps this breeder had fed his dogs on sprouts; if so, it was no wonder his business had ultimately failed.
‘Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs and Krauts,’ he elaborated meaningfully.