(set on't Yorkshire Moors, with a hint of Royston Vasey)
All About the Dogs
Eight years being the time since my partner, Geoffrey, vanished,
I’ve decided to have him declared dead. I’m told you can do it, as nobody’s
heard from him for more than seven years.
Three weeks after his vanishing, I’d been to police and
reported him missing, because I were worried. I weren’t actually much worried
about Geoff. I were more concerned for the dogs, all three being a bit under
the weather after something they’d eaten up on the moor and I weren’t sure how
much the vet’s bill would be.
Me and Geoff had chosen the three dogs for their wild looks.
Mackeson's a brownish border collier crossed with god knows what, he's powerful
jaws for a collie. Spitz is a big boy, looking like a huge, grey, shaggy bear
with great long legs and a curling tail. Geoff said he could be a shih tzu
great Dane cross, but I think he were joking. I always reckoned that would be physically impossible,
Spitz must be something like a wolfhound and mountain dog cross. The third dog,
Delilah, has massive black curls and fetches half the moorland home tangled in them.
She's possibly a giant cockapoo, if you look at her through squinting eyes.
They were all rescues, of course, Spitz being the oldest. The
vet reckons he’s now about eleven, which he says is a good age for such a large
dog. The others were half-grown pups when we got them a year or so before
Geoff’s disappearance. We’d agreed Spitz needed company especially as we were
both out working, he’d been a bit destructive, demolishing shoes, doors, two sofas
and a stray cat, we’d found that half eaten in the front garden. Of course
Geoff were soft on the dogs, he insisted on blaming foxes. Some people might
have believed him, but I knew who’d come in with cat’s tail in his mouth.
Geoff loved to walk with all three dogs on his free days.
Summer or winter, they’d all ramble for miles on the moors and if we were
lucky, Geoff would come home with a few rabbits or game birds in his kitbag. Once he arrived
with a lamb in the bag, he said Spitz had only spooked it and made
it run, he wasn’t deliberately hunting it. Geoff was in denial.
Our stone house had been built for senior workers in near-by quarry. It wre typical for Yorkshire, with a useful, high-ceilinged cellar, it had a huge stone table in the centre for butchering meat. Geoff would often, when he drove back across moor, find carcases struck down by careless motorists. Hares, rabbits and pheasants were quite common, deer were a good find and obviously sheep killed by a truck were no value to the farmer.
Geoff would skin them, slice the carcass into useable chunks
and fill the big chest freezer in the corner. He’d worked in a tannery before
we moved here for his new job as quarry manager, so he knew what to do with the
hides. We had some nice sheepskin rugs about the house, it was lovely to sink
my toes into soft fleece when I got out of bed on a cold winter morning. I’d
also made several winter hats with rabbit skin, very cosy and I even had
deerskin mittens. We were lucky that new quarry manager didn’t want the house
so we were allowed to stay, just me and the dogs. I’d never be able to
get that freezer out.
When Geoff fell down cellar steps he broke his neck and
smashed his face in on the stone floor. I didn’t know what to do for the best.
Ambulances never came up here, quarry accident victims got picked up by air
ambulance and I didn’t want that. All the noise would really get the dogs riled
up. I went up and down the steps a few times to look at him, being careful
not to fall, although I would have landed on Geoff so it would have
been a soft landing. Geoff were a tall man, and twenty-five stone of him, that’s
why he fell so hard. I patted his head, he didn’t move but he made a gurgling
noise, that were revolting, so I left him until the next morning.
So that were when I discovered I’d also left cellar door
open and Spitz down there, chewing on Geoff’s face. I told him he were a bad
boy and shut him outside, but he gave me an idea. Geoff were too heavy for
me to move, but he'd showed me how to butcher a carcase. I filled the freezer
and burnt the less good bits, and all of his clothes except his shoes, those
were good dog chews.
I suppose I kept him too long, but it took the dogs a good
while to get through all that fatty meat. It didn’t feel wrong Geoffrey had loved
his dogs so I knew he’d be happy for them. But meat frozen for eight years
obviously didn’t agree with their elderly doggie stomachs, especially poor old
Spitz. I never actually tried any, I like lamb.
At least now I can have him declared dead so I can get some
of his money freed up, then I'll afford the vets and to feed the dogs
properly. All I need to do is decide what about the last of Geoff. There’s one
arm left, bottom of the freezer. Maybe I’ll carry it up to top of the moor,
for the crows. Geoff approved of crows, natures’ cleaner-uppers, he called
them.
*
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