It pepped me up too, and I drove on across the Plain. Moggerhanger got his friend back on to the cards, but the game had lost its spirit now that they’d made so much at the races. I tried to speculate on the amount, but didn’t get very far. If I’d won two hundred they must have made ten times as much. This thought was cut off when raindrops poxed up the windscreen, and I reached for the wipers. Grey clouds rolled low across the countryside, but the road was fairly empty and I bowled along near to seventy miles an hour, which wasn’t bad on such a narrow and rotten road.
The dogs stood together and scratched at the carpets. ‘They want to piss,’ said Claud, scooping up a few pounds he’d won. ‘Pull in when you can, Michael.’
There was a lay-by close to Stonehenge, and as soon as I opened the door they shot out with such force that I went down into the wet grass. They found a stump a few yards away, and I thought that if they emptied themselves much more they’d go down flat like balloons. Moggerhanger sat in the car and watched them proudly through the open door, while Lantorn lay with his head back after the hard day’s work and was on the point of going to sleep.
When I went to get them in, Long Tom jumped in the air, spun like an acrobat, came down facing the opposite direction, and went off sniffing from tree to tree. Abel Cain snapped at my hand to bite it when I got close, then thought it might not taste so good, and ran after Long Tom. They romped and scampered happily, and for a while I thought maybe they had a right to ten minutes of fresh air and frolic, albeit wet, before coming back into the stuffy car.
But Claud thought differently: ‘Get them in.’ I knew it was no good running, because how could I hope to catch them when they’d just won me two hundred quid against the fastest dogs in England? I crouched, and went up slowly, calling them pretty names, my hand held out as if a piece of raw steak were spread in it. They looked tempted, but only to torment me, because they turned and ran through a hedge and into the middle of a field. I chased them, aware of Claud’s bull-like roaring behind. Together with Lantorn, who had now been roused, they fanned left and right while I was beating up front. My shoes and trousers were saturated, and rain started to come down heavier.
There was no sign of the dogs, but we kept up the advance, knowing they must be in our flimsy net somewhere. I heard Lantorn coughing on one horizon and Moggerhanger cursing on the other. The afternoon was heavy and quiet but for the dogs’ names being shouted, and the occasional thin drone of a car going by on the road we were fast leaving behind. We were worried in case the dogs should double back and slip through on to it, where they’d be in danger from traffic. But as far as we knew they were still up ahead in the expanding distance. I began to reflect that this job had its good and bad points, to see that if this went on much longer I wouldn’t be able to keep my date with Bridgitte for that night. Owing to the unexpected demands of Moggerhanger I hadn’t been able to see her for a few days, and missed the occasional nestle into her naked body.
The raw wind and the blight-rain put such pretty thoughts away. I waded ahead calling for the dogs, unable to curse and wish them in hell because they had just won me two hundred quid. The great blocks of Stonehenge rose on the other side of some railings, Long Tom and Abel Cain sporting around and under them. Without considering, I lifted myself up, tearing my trousers at the arse and ankle, but doing the great feat of getting over, nearly breaking my abdomen when I landed on the sacred earth of the other side. Long Tom came up to me, and for a second I touched his collar, but he snapped free and ran back to Abel Cain, his mouth open and choking on moist wind as he snapped at his pal’s back legs.
I ran under the stones, around the supports, my lungs creaking and rending. I leapt forward and fell, sprawled along the soaked gravel and soil, damning the painted, perverted druids for all I was worth. Moggerhanger and Lantorn waited at different parts of the fence. ‘Get him,’ Claud called out. ‘Come on, Michael. There’s a bonus when you’ve got ’em in. Good lad. Good lad.’
I swerved, zig-zagged, ran, switched back, reached out, spun, ran again, circled, cut my arm on a supporting pillar so that the blood ran salty in my mouth when I licked it during a pause. Rain poured down. Lantorn had gone back, told to bring the car closer so that the dogs could be bundled in more easily when we caught them. They mocked me, tricked me, tried to bite me. I was their mortal earthly enemy, and they were my devils, cut out of Stonehenge stone and waiting for me to exhaust myself before they could turn and rend me. I fell on to Abel Cain by a ruse, but he snapped so fiercely with his ugly teeth that I was frightened and let go.
The bastards were turning ugly. As far as I was concerned they could take the two hundred quid and pad their rabbit-ribs with it. I thought of giving it up when Lantorn and Moggerhanger came into the enclosure, followed by a keeper who, however, didn’t take part in the round-up but only stood by grinning. I envied him and saw how sensible he was, but the drug that had been pumped into the dogs must have worked off because they seemed calmer. I hoped they were becoming exhausted, so that we could then lift them into the car like so many sleeping pieces of meat.
Moggerhanger spoke to them affectionately, but their eyes were mad and hollow, not of the world beyond the stones of Stonehenge, and with no effort they rallied their energy and were right away from us. Then we were all running without any purpose. I was dreading that they’d extend their field of freedom by getting outside the Stonehenge enclosure again and spreading over the whole of Wiltshire. If that happened they’d be lost for good, because Moggerhanger could hardly advertise in the papers that he’d lost his dogs, when he was not supposed to be out of London. At least I couldn’t imagine Lantorn allowing that, for it might be more than his job was worth — unless Moggerhanger were prepared to employ him at a similar sort of salary.
We ran our guts out till it got dark, and at the end only captured Long Tom, who was kicked savagely into the car by his loving master. Abel Cain was never seen again. We searched and sweated through the mouldy perishing dusk, driving to all points of the compass, then walking inwards like a military search operation. In fact it would have needed an army to track down that lousy dog which was worth its weight in gold to Moggerhanger. At nine o’clock we gave up, sat glumly in a pub saloon hardly able to talk.
Lantorn’s long face was grey with exertion, while Moggerhanger’s was pasty from shock. I just felt knackered, hardly able to get down my sandwich and tomato juice. Moggerhanger said we’d have to come out tomorrow at the slit of dawn to carry on the hunt, but Lantorn said this wouldn’t be possible while he was on bail. I thought Moggerhanger was going to slit him there and then, and both of us make a break for it, but his white gills relaxed into a smile as he downed another brandy and began to look human again. ‘It’ll be worth a few hundred,’ he said, ‘on top of the thousand you got today.’
But I could see Lantorn’s face from where Moggerhanger couldn’t, because he was sitting by his side. Lantorn had remembered what firm he was working for, and his face now showed it. ‘Couldn’t,’ he said, ‘old sport. The super’s back tomorrow and it’s more than my life’s worth.’