Now. Let us go back a little in time. When Harry arrived at the Shrapnel Academy he was taken downstairs and shut in a disused laundry room, together with a bowl of water. He went amiably enough. He recognised, when he saw it, a definite chain of command – and this one went from Victor to Shirley to Joan Lumb to Blackthorne – into whose care Joan Lumb had placed him, with the obvious consent of Victor, who stood placidly by while he, Harry, was led away. Each transaction the dog noted, and accepted. All these people he could now include in the list of non-enemies (Harry did not aspire to actual friends) and the more non-enemies he had the better. If anyone attacked one of his non-enemies, they would then become enemies and fair play for what he most loved doing – growling, crouching, bristling, leaping, biting, tearing, rending, throwing living flesh in all directions, and all in legitimate defence of the non-enemy. Keeping the peace! Oh, terrific!
Harry settled down to sleep on the blanket provided – if a dog has nothing else to do it sleeps, and the laundry room was swept, scoured and empty and devoid of interest – when presently the door opened and a certain young woman, Agnes, was pushed inside. Agnes was a used and abused ex-child-prostitute from Korea. When Agnes wept, groaned or showed her private parts too often and too much it was the staff’s custom to shut her away for a time until she regained her composure. And no doubt this community care was a better alternative for Agnes than any offered in the world outside: that is to say, if not deported, then drugged and locked up in some secure hospital for lunatics. Which Agnes plainly was: it could not be denied that she had finally, while in the Shrapnel Academy, lost her wits.
Joan Lumb had taken Agnes on in her better, more lucid days, to be the girl who cleaned out the upstairs lavatories. It had soon become clear that Agnes was not fit for upstairs work. She upset the young gentlemen by popping her stolid head round corners and smiling and beckoning, when they had other things on their mind, and even if they hadn’t, certainly wouldn’t wish to make do with the likes of Agnes. Now, if it had been Muffin, or Hilda, smiling and beckoning that would have been another story. As it was. complaints were blushingly made.
So Agnes lost her job; that is to say, Joan Lumb fired her, and assumed her to have packed her bags and gone. Of course she merely did without her wages and joined the other illegal occupants living in the servants’ quarters of the Shrapnel Academy off the scraps of the upstairs’ table. Where else was she to go?
Agnes, disturbed by the changing atmosphere of the staff quarters, by the increasing mutterings for revenge and justice, had done what she always did when upset – that is to say, taken off all her clothes and smiled. She was pushed unceremoniously into the laundry room, to stay there until she felt better. Hastings, from the Philippines, an electrician by trade but now a gardener, did the pushing, unaware that Harry, or Peacebarker, was already occupying the room. He pushed Agnes into the dark and switched on the light only as he closed the door behind her. If she was left in the dark she would sometimes start screaming.
Harry opened his eyes and stared at Agnes. Agnes sat down in her normal crouching position and stared back. Harry was tired and he had been fed. He shuffled and snuffled, decided Agnes was a non-enemy and went back to sleep. His body seemed warm, soft and indifferent, so Agnes moved over and lay against him and went to sleep too. The room was not particularly warm: the central heating system at the Academy (oil-fired) did magnificently for the upper floors, but here down below was only just adequate. But then, why should it not be so? Servants cannot expect to live so well as masters.
Presently the door opened and Yew entered. Yew came from the Bombay Police Force, from which he had been dismissed for putting out the eyes of suspects with bicycle spokes. In one hand Yew carried an open can of dog food: in the other he carried a long, curving, sharp dagger.
I don’t know why it seems worse to put out eyes with bicycle spokes than by any other means, but it does. Which is why, of course, that kind of thing’s done. Terror is an excellent means of crowd control, as the Assyrians discovered long ago. Of course civilisation has come a long way since then. It is greatly to the credit of the Indian authorities that Yew was dismissed from his post (the Assyrians would merely have promoted him), and less, how shall we put it, vivid ways of crime prevention re-introduced. His ways, of course, were more effective. They do, incidentally, say that after ten years of chopping off the hands of Iranian thieves, it is now possible for a vendor of gold bracelets in that country to set them out on the ground in a crowded market, go away, and find them all there, untouched, when he returns hours later. I offer this to you only as a piece of interesting information: I don’t expect you to come to any conclusions. I suspect there are none to come to. None at least satisfactory to the humane spirit.
Well, Harry, Agnes and Yew. This is how the scene goes. Harry opens his eyes. Harry is no fool. He knows a defensive weapon when he sees one. He’ll have to beware. It practically has ‘Peace’ written all over it. That is to say, Harry’s eternal peace. Harry stands, throwing off Agnes, effortlessly. He’s a really big, sinewy dog, who grew from a puppy into, with a little help on the way, a war machine. Harry snarls, growls. Yew wishes he had something longer than the dagger, such as a bicycle spoke. But bicycle spokes are too flexible: good for eyes; not right for piercing hair and skin. Harry takes no notice at all of the dog food. Yew tosses the can away and stands crouching, wary, arms akimbo, the dagger poised, waiting for Harry to spring. Harry doesn’t: Harry circles.
Agnes slips out of the door. Yew, distracted, looks after her briefly: Harry chooses the moment to spring from the back; Yew has grossly underestimated his victim. Harry, unlike the citizens of Bombay, is simply not scared of Yew. It is easier to frighten a human being than a dog. A healthy-minded dog attacks to preserve his master, or his territory. That his master may be Hitler makes no difference to him: that the territory is disputed, how can he know? (Up go the bristles, off goes the dog, and there’s the postman refusing to deliver the letters, the milkman to leave the milk!) But a human being is all doubts as to the rights and wrongs of anything and everything: guilt paralyses him. The inquisitor advances; he scarcely needs the thumb-screws: the soul shrinks, resolve weakens. But Harry, being a dog and guiltless, and what’s more the kind of dog who reckons he’s man’s equal, sprang at Yew’s shoulders without hesitation, bore him to the ground and, had not Yew instantly crouched in that position children are taught to assume under desks in case of nuclear or terrorist attack, would have had his throat torn out. As it is, from this position, while Harry noses and nuzzles towards available flesh, Yew manages to manoeuvre his dagger so that the dog’s soft and almost hairless belly is first lightly pierced: then, as the animal twists to see what the matter is, Yew turns on his side, gets his elbow free, jabs harder and rips. The dog’s entrails fall out: it is all perfectly disgusting. Yew is on his back now, and the dog is moaning and groaning and falling all over him, but hasn’t quite forgotten about enemies and so forth, because he dies self-righteously growling his antagonism, not moaning his own pain, his fate. When it is over Yew is in a very nasty, bloody state indeed and goes to have a shower, and to calm his mind by meditating for five minutes before Kali’s shrine (set up in one of the pantries) before returning to skin the dog, which he does with the ease born of practice. He carves the carcass into pieces, and places the haunches here, rump there, in mimicry of the living animal, in a long wicker basket which he brings in for the purpose. The poor dull-eyed handsome head he places at one end. He carves out the tongue: this is a delicacy he will reserve for Acorn. He carries the basket, and its still warm contents, into the kitchen and sends for Matilda the Mexican girl to wash out the laundry room. Matilda is used to death, and does what Yew says. Most people do.
Barnyard the Chinese chef prepares a simple bouillon in which the chunks of dog are immersed and simmered. There is no time to waste if the meat is to be properly tenderised and reduced to pâté in time for the late-night sandwiches. These are to be served with cocoa at around midnight. The meat ought of course to be properly marinated before being cooked. Hilda, who has briefly left her post at the bedsides of Serena, Piers and Nell to have a whiff of marijuana – the smell would be noticeable and unnatural upstairs, though ordinary enough down here – and look at poor Miriam’s new baby, which is being suckled by Olive, whose own baby is nine months old and ready for weaning, protests at this lack of decorum. What way of cooking meat is this? It is an insult to the animal concerned, and the palate of those who eat it. A marinade of soya sauce, chilli and fresh ginger would sanctify the death. Why can’t the guests have the pâté tomorrow, served on toast, if necessary, for breakfast? Why does it have to be in the sandwiches served with the late-night cocoa? Why, in other words, is Acorn in such a hurry? What are his plans?
No one knows. They will simply do as Acorn says. The dog is dead, the deed is done: too late now not to go on. Harry simmers.
Hilda weeps a little; big tears welling slowly in her lovely eyes. She fears that Acorn’s project is ill-omened. No plan can go properly if started in such an improper way. But what can she do? The blizzard now howls round the Shrapnel Academy as if there were not just one but a hundred demons outside clamouring to get in. She’s frightened. She throws a handful of cumin and some fresh ginger into the pot and says a brief prayer over it and goes back upstairs, into enemy territory, to sit by the sleeping white children. She walks slowly and calmly, into terror, not away from it. She is accustomed to hardship: it is more natural to her to endure, than to be comfortable.