'Without Hamilton, I don't know what we should do. Before your husband left us, we had it easier.'

Mamie has turned away from the wood. She has taken the path to the houses, looking back all the time to see whether Hamilton is following her with his eyes, those eyes that are two poached eggs grown old, looking at her every time he sees her.

She takes the footpath on the main road. The dogs are trotting now. A car pa.s.ses, and a delivery van from the grocer's shop in the town. She clutches the leads.

'Don't let one of them get run over. Alice Long would be up to ninety-nine.'

She presses, at the sharp bend, into the high white bank which touches again on the wood, while a very big lorry, carrying sacks of coal, creeps fearfully around as if bewaring of the dogs.

b.u.mp on her shoulder, then b.u.mp on her cap come the s...o...b..a.l.l.s. The boys are up there on the bank. She turns and looks quickly and sees parts of children ducking out of sight with short, laughing squeals. There are two girls with the boys; she has seen their hair. One of the girls wears the dark-blue convent cap.

'Connie, come down!'

'It isn't Connie,' Gwen's voice answers.

Gwen should be at the dancing cla.s.s. She is learning to do the sword dance with Mamie.

A s...o...b..ll falls on the road and bursts open. There is no stone inside it. The dogs are yelping now, pelted with s...o...b..a.l.l.s! They are up to ninety-nine, not used to this.

Mamie drags them round the corner and starts to run. The children scramble down after her and catch up. She recognizes them all. She tries to gather up some snow, but it is impossible to make and throw a ball with the leads around her gloves.

'Where are you going with those dogs?' says a boy.

'To the shop, then up to the House.'

'They look dirty.'

Gwen says, 'Do you like those dogs?'

'Not all of them together.'

'Let them run loose,' says the other girl. 'It's good for them.'

'No.

'Come on and play.'

She is scrambling up the bank, while everyone is trying to pull the dogs up by their leads or push them up by their bottoms.

'Lift them up. You'll throttle them!'

'Let go the leads. We'll take one each.'

'No.

Up on the bank, Mamie says, 'I'll tie them to that tree.' She refuses to let the leads out of her own hands, but she permits two of the boys to make the knots secure, as they have learned to do in the Scout Cubs.

Then it is boys against girls in a snow fight, with such fast pelting and splutters from drenched faces, such loud shrieks that the dogs' coughing and whining can scarcely be heard. When it is time to go, Mamie counts the dogs. Then she starts to untie them. The knots are difficult. She calls after one of the boys to come and untie the knots, but he does not look around. Gwen returns; she stands and looks. Mamie is kneeling in the slush, trying.

'How do you untie these knots?' All the leads are mixed up in a knotted muddle.

'I don't know. What's their names?'

'Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi, Ritzi, and Kitzy.'

'Do you know one from the other?'

'No.'

Mamie bends down with her strong teeth in the leather. She has loosened the first knot. All the knots are coming loose. She gets her woollen gloves on again and starts to wind the leads around her hands. One of them springs from her grasp, and the little dog scuttles away into the wood among the old wet leaves, so that it seems to slither like a snake on its belly with its cord bouncing behind it.

'Mitzi! Kitzy! Blitzi!'

The dog disappears and the four in hand are excited, anxious to be free and warmed up, too.

'Catch him, Gwen! Can you see him? Where is it? Mitzi-mitzi-mitzi! Blitzi-blitzi!'

'I've got to go home,' Gwen says. 'You shouldn't have stopped to play.'

Gwen is Sister Monica's model pupil for punctuality, neatness, and truthfulness. Mamie has no ground to answer Gwen's reproach as the girl starts to clamber down the bank.

The wood is dark and there is no sound of the dog. Mamie squelches with the four dogs among the leaves and snow lumps. 'Fritzi-fritzi-fritzi mitzi!' A bark, a yap, behind her. Again a yap-yap. She turns and finds the dog tied once more to a tree. Hamilton? She peers all around her and sees n.o.body.

She should be hurrying towards the drive, but she is too tired to hurry. The Lodge gates are still open, although the sky looks late. The lights are on in the Lodge, which has been let to new people from Liverpool for their weekends. They are having a long weekend this time. A young woman comes out to her car as Mamie comes in the gateway with the five dogs.

'Goodness, you're wet through!'

'I got in a snowdrift.'

'Hurry home then, dear, and get changed.'

Mamie cannot hurry. She is not very well any more, like old Sir Martin. She is not very real any more. The colour of the afternoon seems strange and the sky is banked with snowdrifts. She runs in little spurts only in obedience to the pull of the dogs. But she draws them as tight as she can and plods in the direction of the House. She turns to the right when she reaches the wide steps and the big front doors. Around to the right and into the yard, where Hamilton's door is. She tries to open his door. It is locked. To pull the bell would require raising her arm, and she is too tired to do so. She tries to knock. The dogs are full of noise and anxiety, are scratching the door to get inside. She looks at them and with difficulty switches those leads in her right hand to her left, winding them round her wrist, since the hand is already full. While she knocks with her free hand at the door, she realizes that she has noticed something. There are only four dogs now. She counts - one, two, three, four. She counts the leads - one, two, three, four. She looks away again and knocks. It has not happened. Nothing has happened. It is not real. She knocks again. Hamilton is coming.

'Their food's in there,' Hamilton says, not looking at the dogs but opening the door that leads from his room to another, more cluttered room. He lets the dogs scuttle in to their food without counting them. He does not remove their leads but throws them on to the floor to trail behind them. Finally, he shuts the inner door on them. He sits down in his chair and looks at Mamie as if to say, 'Come here.'

'I've got to go home.'

'You're wet through. Get dry by the fire a minute. I'll get you a lift home.

'No, I'm late.'

He pats his knee. 'Sit here, dearie, la.s.s.' He has a gla.s.s and a bottle by him. 'I want to give you a drop. Come on. I don't want s.e.x.'

She perches on his lap. He has not counted the dogs. Alice Long will be up to ninety-nine, but it's Hamilton's fault from now. Hamilton has taken the dogs.

'Now sip.'

She recognizes whisky.

'Take a good swallow.'

He gives her a lemon drop to hide her breath, then gives her a kiss on her mouth while she is still sucking the sweet.

'I'm going now. I hope the dogs are all right.'

'Oh, the dogs, they're all right.'

He takes her hand and goes to find one of the workmen who are mending the House. Alice Long is not home yet from her meeting, and she will not miss the workman for a few minutes.

Mamie climbs into the foreman's car beside the workman. The seat is covered with white dust, but she does not brush it off the seat before sliding on to it. Her clothes will be spoiled. She feels safe beside the driver. The whisky has given her back a real afternoon.

'What's the time, please?' she asks.

'About twenty past four.'

The man backs and turns. Hamilton has gone into his quarters. The car skirts the House, turning by the large new clearing where, in the summer, the tourists' coaches come.

'You can't get many up here in Northumberland. They all swarm to the old houses in the South. Here, it's out of the way ...'

'Well, it's an experience for those who do come, Miss Long. Especially the Catholics.'

The House was once turned into a hospital for the wounded English soldiers after the Battle of Flodden, which the English won.

The House was a Ma.s.s centre at the times of the Catholic Persecution. Outside the armoury, there is a chalice in a gla.s.s case dating from Elizabethan times. It has been sold to a museum, but the museum allows the family to keep it at the House during Sir Martin's lifetime. Mamie has been inside the priest hole, where the priests were hidden when the House was searched for priests; they would sometimes stay there several days. The hole is a large s.p.a.ce behind a panel that comes out of the wall, up among the attics. You can stand in the priest hole and look up at the beams, where, in those days, food was always stored in case of emergency.

The workmen are mending the roof.

'Did you see the priest hole?' Mamie feels talkative.

'What's that?'

'A place where the priests used to hide, up in the roof. It's historic. Haven't you seen it?'

'No, but I seen plenty dry rot up there in that roof.'

The gates are closed. The man gets out to open them; then he drives off again.

Is it possible that one of the dogs is lost? Mamie is confused. There must have been five. I found the lost one, tied to the tree. But then she sees herself again counting them outside Hamilton's door. One, two, three, four. Only four. No, no, no, it's not real. Hamilton has taken the dogs. It's for him to count.

The workman says, 'Do you like the Beatles?'

'Oh, yes, they're great. Do you like them?'

'So-so. I'd like just one day's earnings that the Beatles get. Just one day. I could retire on it.'

Sister Monica has said that there is no harm in the Beatles, and then Mamie felt indignant because it showed Sister Monica did not properly appreciate them. She ought to lump them together with things like whisky, smoking, and s.e.x; the Beatles are quite good enough to be forbidden.

'I like dancing,' Mamie says.

'Rock - 'n'- roll stuff?'

'Yes, but at school we only get folk dancing. I'm learning the sword dance. It's historic in the Border country.

All the rest of the week, she hurries home from school to see if Alice Long has been to see her mother about the missing dog.

I counted. One, two, three, four. But I had five when I left the wood. I brought five out of the wood, and up the hill. I had five at the Lodge. I must have had ...

Alice Long will be up to ninety-nine. She will come to Mamie's house to make inquiries: 'Hamilton says she only brought four ...'

'Hamilton says he didn't count them, he just took the leads from her hand ...'

'Hamilton must have been drinking and let one of them slip out of the door ...'

'I've only just counted them. One must have been missing since Monday. When Mamie ...'

By Friday, Alice Long has not come. Mamie's mother says, 'Alice Long hasn't dropped in. I must take a pie up to the House on Monday and see what's doing.'

On Sunday afternoon, Alice Long's car stops at the door. 'Come in, Miss Long, come in. Have you no family down this weekend?'

Mamie's father shuts away the television, puts on his coat, says good afternoon, and goes upstairs.

Alice Long sits trembling on the sofa beside Mamie while her mother puts on the tea.

She says, 'It's Hamilton.'

'The same thing again?'

'No, worse. A tragedy.' Alice Long shuts her lips tight and pats Mamie's hair. Her hand is shaking.

'Mamie, go out and play,' says her mother.

When Alice Long has driven her car away, Mamie comes in with the ends of her skipping-rope twined around her gloves. Her father comes down, takes off his coat, and opens up the television. 'Oh, don't turn it on,' says her mother, in anguish.

Mamie eats some of the remnants of cake and sandwiches while she listens.

'Hanging in the priest hole - all of them. She looked for them all night. Hamilton's gone, cleared off. It's the drink. The police have got a warrant out. They were found hanged on the beams after Ma.s.s this morning. Didn't I say poor Alice Long was looking bad at Ma.s.s? I thought it must be her father again. But she'd been up all night looking for the dogs, and at Ma.s.s she still didn't know where they were. It was after Ma.s.s they found them, herself and Mrs Huddlestone. Think of the sight! Five of them hanging in a row. Poor little beasts. Hamilton disappeared yesterday. They'll get him, though, just wait.'

'He's a bit of a lunatic,' Mamie's father says.

'Lunatic! He's vicious. He ought to be hung himself. They were all Alice Long had. But he'll be caught!'

Her father says, 'I doubt it. Not Hamilton. Even the roe-buck called him p.u.s.s.yfoot.' He laughs at his own joke. The mother turns away her head.

Mamie says, 'How many were hanging in the priest hole?'

'All of them in a row.'

'How many?'