Trigger Warning

Black Dog

There were ten tongues within one head
And one went out to fetch some bread,
To feed the living and the dead.

Old Riddle

I The Bar Guest

Outside the pub it was raining cats and dogs.

Shadow was still not entirely convinced that he was in a pub. True, there was a tiny bar at the back of the room, with bottles behind it and a couple of the huge taps you pulled, and there were several high tables and people were drinking at the tables, but it all felt like a room in somebody’s house. The dogs helped reinforce that impression. It seemed to Shadow that everybody in the pub had a dog except for him.

‘What kind of dogs are they?’ Shadow asked, curious. The dogs reminded him of greyhounds, but they were smaller and seemed saner, more placid and less high-strung than the greyhounds he had encountered over the years.

‘Lurchers,’ said the pub’s landlord, coming out from behind the bar. He was carrying a pint of beer that he had poured for himself. ‘Best dogs. Poacher’s dogs. Fast, smart, lethal.’ He bent down, scratched a chestnut-and-white brindled dog behind the ears. The dog stretched and luxuriated in the ear-scratching. It did not look particularly lethal, and Shadow said so.

The landlord, his hair a mop of grey and orange, scratched at his beard reflectively. ‘That’s where you’d be wrong,’ he said. ‘I walked with his brother last week, down Cumpsy Lane. There’s a fox, a big red reynard, pokes his head out of a hedge, no more than twenty metres down the road, then, plain as day, saunters out onto the track. Well, Needles sees it, and he’s off after it like the clappers. Next thing you know, Needles has his teeth in reynard’s neck, and one bite, one hard shake, and it’s all over.’

Shadow inspected Needles, a grey dog sleeping by the little fireplace. He looked harmless too. ‘So what sort of a breed is a lurcher? It’s an English breed, yes?’

‘It’s not actually a breed,’ said a white-haired woman without a dog who had been leaning on a nearby table. ‘They’re crossbred for speed, stamina. Sighthound, greyhound, collie.’

The man next to her held up a finger. ‘You must understand,’ he said, cheerfully, ‘that there used to be laws about who could own purebred dogs. The local folk couldn’t, but they could own mongrels. And lurchers are better and faster than pedigree dogs.’ He pushed his spectacles up his nose with the tip of his forefinger. He had a muttonchop beard, brown flecked with white.

‘Ask me, all mongrels are better than pedigree anything,’ said the woman. ‘It’s why America is such an interesting country. Filled with mongrels.’ Shadow was not certain how old she was. Her hair was white, but she seemed younger than her hair.

‘Actually, darling,’ said the man with the muttonchops, in his gentle voice, ‘I think you’ll find that the Americans are keener on pedigree dogs than the British. I met a woman from the American Kennel Club, and honestly, she scared me. I was scared.’

‘I wasn’t talking about dogs, Ollie,’ said the woman. ‘I was talking about . . . Oh, never mind.’

‘What are you drinking?’ asked the landlord.

There was a handwritten piece of paper taped to the wall by the bar telling customers not to order a lager ‘as a punch in the face often offends’.

‘What’s good and local?’ asked Shadow, who had learned that this was mostly the wisest thing to say.

The landlord and the woman had various suggestions as to which of the various local beers and ciders were good. The little muttonchopped man interrupted them to point out that in his opinion good was not the avoidance of evil, but something more positive than that: it was making the world a better place. Then he chuckled, to show that he was only joking and that he knew that the conversation was really only about what to drink.

The beer the landlord poured for Shadow was dark and very bitter. He was not certain that he liked it. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s called Black Dog,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve heard people say it was named after the way you feel after you’ve had one too many.’

‘Like Churchill’s moods,’ said the little man.

‘Actually, the beer is named after a local dog,’ said a younger woman. She was wearing an olive-green sweater, and standing against the wall. ‘But not a real one. Semi-imaginary.’

Shadow looked down at Needles, then hesitated. ‘Is it safe to scratch his head?’ he asked, remembering the fate of the fox.

‘Course it is,’ said the white-haired woman. ‘He loves it. Don’t you?’

‘Well. He practically had that tosser from Glossop’s finger off,’ said the landlord. There was admiration mixed with warning in his voice.

‘I think he was something in local government,’ said the woman. ‘And I’ve always thought that there’s nothing wrong with dogs biting them. Or VAT inspectors.’