“You don’t know it, but you’re ending up on the table,” he warned. “Ted, Betty, me — we’re going to eat you, my hissy friend!”
The goose looked at him. There was venom in his gaze.
7
Old Dog Tray particularly disliked the geese and barked at them ferociously whenever they came near him. The geese ignored this barking, emboldened by the senior goose, who seemed as unafraid of dogs as he was of humans. Tray lay on the grass and watched the geese from the corner of his eye. He would deal with them in due course. They would overstep the mark one day, and he would show them that a dog can only be pushed so far. There were some sheep down the road who also needed to be dealt with. Stupid creatures. Irritating beyond belief to a dog.
8
Ted Norris came to tell Hondercooter about what happened.
“Your dog, Tray,” he said. “You seen him today?”
“This morning,” said Hondercooter. “He’s about the place.”
“Sorry about this, Hondy, but he’s killed two of my sheep. At least I think it’s him. Betty saw something and couldn’t quite make out what it was, but we think it’s your Tray. Really sorry to have to tell you this, you know.”
Hondercooter was silent. He knew how serious this was. In a farming community, if a dog is a sheep-killer there was only one solution.
“Let’s go and look for him,” suggested Ted Norris. “If he’s clean, then it won’t have been him. But if he’s covered in blood...” He shrugged.
“All right,” said Hondercooter. “We can try the barn. Sometimes he goes there. He likes lying in the straw.”
9
They found Old Dog Tray where Hondercooter had suggested he might be — in the barn. And, as predicted, he was lying in the straw. There was blood on his chin and all across the white patch on his chest. There were feathers, too, and the body of a goose, limp and ruffled.
Tray looked up at Hondercooter and Ted Norris. There was guilt in his eyes. Alone of animals, it seems that dogs experience feelings of guilt, although there is some argument as to whether it is real guilt or merely a dread of punishment. Whatever the source of the emotion, that was what Tray demonstrated.
Hondercooter shook his head. He knew what he had to do.
10
Walking back to the house, Ted Norris tried to cheer his neighbour up. He looked about him, at the contented herd of dairy cows, at the well-kept fences, at the neat fields. “You’ve got a really good place here, Hondy,” he said.
Hondercooter nodded. “Yes, it’s a good place. Left it to you and Betty in my will, you know.”
Nothing was said. Ted was surprised, and pleased. It would make him a wealthy man. And every farmer, however much he has, convinces himself that he needs more.
11
The following day there was an accident. A parcel delivery man, bringing a package of veterinary remedies to the farm, spotted Hondercooter on the ground near the barn. He ran over, thinking that the farmer may have had a heart attack or something of that sort. It was not that: Hondercooter had been shot. His shotgun lay beside him, not far from his right hand. A few yards away, lying on the ground watching the delivery man, was Old Dog Tray. He growled faintly when the delivery man appeared, but then he wagged his tail and came up to him, ready to be patted.
12
The police spoke to everybody, including Ted and Betty. “Was Mr Hondercooter depressed, do you think? Was there any reason why he would take his life?”
The answer from everybody was the same. “No, he was a pretty level-headed sort of man. His farm was doing well — you can understand it when a farmer is up to his eyes in debt — people can get desperate then. But none of this applied to Hondercooter.”
There was an inquest, the conclusion of which was that it had been accidental death. The police produced photographs of the ground near Hondercooter’s feet. It looked as if he had slipped, as it was muddy there, and there were marks which looked as if they had been made by a stumbling man.
13
Ted Norris looked after the dairy herd. He went through Hondercooter’s papers in the drawers of his large desk. He found a letter from Bollingworth, the lawyer in Nelson, and he telephoned him. “Mr Hondercooter’s dead,” he said. “I believe you’re his lawyer.”
“Who am I speaking to?” asked Bollingworth.
“Ted Norris. I’m his neighbour.”
There was a silence, which might have been shock, or a moment for recollection. Then, “You’re the principal executor, you know, Mr Norris. And under Mr Hondercooter’s will you and your wife are the main beneficiaries.”
Ted Norris was cool. “He said something about that. I didn’t pay much attention, but he did say something.”
14
Ted and Betty Norris decided that they would go ahead with their Christmas meal in spite of the sad circumstances. They took one of the geese — not the one that Hondercooter had been fattening — and they roasted that. They sat in their dining room, both wearing a paper hat from a Christmas cracker. On the wall behind Betty was the Brueghel. “I love that painting,” she said to Ted. “Brueghel’s very famous, I think. We’d better get it valued.”
“We must find out what they’re harvesting,” said Ted. “Hondy thought it was wheat.”
15
Underneath the table, replete after the dinner of goose scraps fed to him by his new owners, reprieved because Ted could not bring himself to shoot him — not after what had happened — lay Old Dog Tray. A dog’s memory is strange: it is full of smells and random impressions; there is little sense of chronology to it. But he did remember having to defend himself; having deliberately to trip up his master — not something that a good dog liked to have to do. The memory came, and then faded; came back and faded again. And there had been a goose.
An Arm and a Leg
Nigel Bird
Cold air poured in when they opened the doors. It would soon be over. All Carlo had to do was accept his punishment and they could wake up in the morning and start over.
The ride had been at high speed and in a straight line, so they’d either gone south down the A1 or round the Edinburgh bypass. It wasn’t easy to tell in the dark, but he figured south was the more likely when he factored in the roundabouts.
Rolling round inside the back of the van, he’d been reminded of driving his wife and first-born home from the maternity ward at Little France in the restaurant’s Berlingo. Maria had been bumped around as sleeping-policemen and pot-holes took turns to attack the suspension; even with her newly stitched episiotomy, she didn’t utter a noise the whole way. Nor had Chris, the poor child, head bobbing in the seat they’d spent an age working out how to secure.
That was ten years earlier. Since then Maria had given birth to a second child and, when her patience finally wore through, filed for divorce and sent him packing from the family home and business.
If he’d kept away from the booze, he might still have been in line for taking over one of the most successful eateries in the city. He could have been sitting back counting cash and sipping orange juice while his shoulders were rubbed and he watched the Hoops put one past the Jambos or the ’Gers. Instead he was in some God-forsaken place wondering how they were going to take their revenge.