‘Dog number 2154,’ said Richardson. The Colonel cast a paternal eye over the sheepdog Birdie was giving to Trigger. ‘Pharaoh . . . He’s got brains – that big square skull has plenty of room for brainpower.’
Stanley looked at the rough-and-tumble dog, at the intelligent beam of his eyes beneath the grizzle fringe, and felt a prick of envy. He looked at the remaining dogs. What would be left for him? Not the Airedale – Birdie was already handing him to Trigger – but the huge brindled dog was still there, and so was the tall wheaten one.
‘This is Bandit. An Airedale,’ the Colonel was saying. ‘He’ll be a soldier through and through, spirited, loyal and ridiculously brave.’ Stanley glanced at the gallant, dashing Bandit then his eyes shot back to the Colonel, his heart in his mouth.
Birdie was giving Trigger another dog – the handsome, bearded, wheaten one. Stanley bit his lip. There was only to be one for him – the brindled one, striped like a tiger in brown and gold. There were not enough dogs to go round and the Colonel had picked Stanley to receive only one. That truculent giant had been picked especially for him. His chance of getting to France would be hopeless with just one dog. With that dog.
Richardson moved along to Stanley. Stanley straightened up and squared his shoulders, defying the Colonel to look at him. The Colonel read from his ledger. ‘Bones.’
‘Dog number 2153,’ said Birdie.
‘Bones . . . A great Dane . . . a headlong mountain of a dog, this one. Well, do your best . . . It’ll be hard to win his trust – he was a guard dog. Then he was abandoned – like so many others – because of rationing, because his owners couldn’t feed him. He’s a suspicious animal, mistrustful. He’ll be a difficult case but try to channel that ferocity of his.’
The Colonel’s eyes finally rose from Bones to Stanley, then shifted to the middle distance. Birdie handed Stanley a lead as the Colonel continued, ‘You see, I’m forced to take whatever comes. I just can’t get enough good dogs.’ He took a long sad breath. ‘I’m still applying for more and, well, they might still come in.’ He looked again at Bones and said, ‘Bones might well be unsuitable for this kind of work. Danes make better tracking dogs than messenger dogs, but, well, let’s see – you know, if a dog loves you, he’ll do anything for you.’
The Colonel was on the point of saying more when he looked again directly at Stanley and paused. With a sorrowful shake of his head, he thought better of whatever he was going to say, turned to Birdie and, as they walked away, Stanley caught the drift of his whispered words.
‘It’s not right . . . so young . . .’ Still shaking his head, the Colonel made his way back to the centre of the line. ‘Fidelity. Courage. Honour. These are the qualities we hope to find in a dog, these and the homing instinct. Now, this instinct exists in all dogs, but the cultivation of it will form the kernel of your training here.’
Stanley looked at Bones. The showy black and brown brindle of Bones’s coat had the dangerous sheen of a savage and unpredictable jungle animal. Headstrong, thought Stanley, seeing the deep jaws, the incisors that could rip anything to shreds. Stanley wondered whether he did, after all, have a natural love of dogs, because if he had, it seemed to have deserted him now. It was the bulk and heft of Bones that was so off-putting. Da’s dogs had always been as light as shadows and he could feel nothing but revulsion for this drooling giant.
As the Colonel spoke, a self-important young plover with browny-grey winter plumage trotted urgently across the sand a few feet away. Bones cocked his large head, brows raised appealingly, ears pricked, all that surly truculence suddenly evaporated. He raised a stout forepaw as if to play. The dog had no more sense than a skittle, thought Stanley, exasperated, watching Bones paw the ground in invitation to the plover. The bird trotted off. Bones’s head drooped, his eyes blinking mournfully in the direction of the now distant plover. It amused Stanley that Bones looked marvellously ferocious but was really so gentle.
‘Silly Bones.’
The triangular ears collapsed, downcast against his cheeks. That head was so expressive, the fleeting changes from surly suspicion to playfulness to disappointment, all so easily read, and Stanley was surprised to feel a glimmer of affection for this clumsy, playful giant.
Richardson was still speaking.
‘Dogs are four times faster than humans. They can swim across shell holes and canals. They can find their way at night and run as fast at night as by day. They are not shell-shy. They can exercise the homing instinct within only one week of arriving at a new area, picking up one individual scent and following it – despite thousands of competing smells – across ground that is impassable for horse, man or machine.’
Stanley smiled to see yet another sudden change in Bones, now sitting as tall and still as an imperial statue. Stanley noticed the surprising majesty of him, the acute sense he had of his own dignity.
‘Bones,’ whispered Stanley.
The dog’s high, close-set ears tightened so that they touched each other, twin sails atop his square skull. He smacked his jowls and blinked up at Stanley, then shuffled his haunches back, to sit on Stanley’s toes, nestling against Stanley’s legs.
‘The dog must want to be with you. If he wants to be with you,’ Richardson was saying, ‘then he will be faithful, courageous and honourable. Not only that, but he’ll be pulled, as though by magnetism, through falling bombs, through hurricanes of fire and fields of rolling tanks, by his longing to be with you. If he loves you, he will rush home to you, even through blizzards of flying steel.’
‘Flying steel.’ Stanley took a deep breath, and whispered to Bones, ‘We will do it together, and show them all, you and I.’
The dog cast his head around, saw Pharaoh, set his jaws and began a deep, grumbling growl. A little intimidated, Pharaoh’s large, soft paws edged backwards. Stanley smiled – Bones was guarding him, all of his great weight now leaning as heavily and defensively as a bulwark against Stanley’s legs. Stanley braced himself against the weight of the dog, a little charmed by the dog’s ready acceptance of his new master, and his determination to protect him.
‘Yes,’ he breathed, ‘you will be faithful, courageous and honourable.’ He looked up at the Colonel, and added, with a flint of anger, ‘Or we will never get to France and to Tom.’
The days raced by.
Each day the six-thirty reveille was followed by roll call at seven, then breakfast. At eight the keepers groomed the dogs. At nine there was a general parade of staff, trainers, orderlies, keepers and highly excited dogs. The rest of the day was spent on fitness exercises and the Homing Instinct run with only one hour free before the evening lecture.
After three weeks of fitness training, the first of the war training exercises, the Firing Infantry, had been introduced. This would accustom the dogs to rifle fire. Two days ago there’d been just one gun, yesterday two. Today there’d be six infantrymen. Stanley joined the line of keepers standing a couple of hundred feet away from a row of infantry. The Colonel’s orderlies approached to lead the dogs away to their far side. At Birdie’s whistle the dogs would be released, the infantry would fire blanks, and the dogs were to run into the firing line and through to their keepers.