The Dog Who Could Fly (32 page)

Letting his ears lead him toward the sound of music and laughter,
he nosed carefully through a thick maroon curtain. Beyond him a strange and somewhat alarming sight met his eyes. He was at the rear of the stage on which a band was playing. As the music swelled in volume, he was about to back off the stage in alarm, when he caught sight of what was beyond—a crowd of people milling about and apparently fighting with each other on a wide floor.

Antis could see scores of men in the familiar RAF uniform, each of whom seemed to be wrestling with an opponent who was wearing a dress of many assorted colors. As with his experience at the movie, he’d never seen anything like it before. He stood rooted to the spot, the music blaring in his ears and his mind a mass of confused thoughts and fears. Most worryingly of all he had not the slightest idea where his master was. And then he saw him. There in the thick of battle was Robert, apparently being throttled in a close embrace.

Believing his master to be in mortal danger, Antis went into action. With a deep growl he dived off the platform into the seething throng. Hackles raised, he thrust men and girls aside as he powered across toward his master and his attacker. Before the startled Robert could stop him, Antis sprang at Betty. In his attempt to push her away from Robert, his claws caught in the material of her dress, and an instant later he’d torn it from her shoulders.

Betty was left shocked and stunned, her dress lying in a heap at her feet and her nakedness only shielded by her underclothes. Robert sprang into action. He whipped his tunic from his shoulders and used it to cover the girl. At the same moment he grabbed Antis and held him back from any more such mischief that he might have in mind. But the damage was done. Betty’s mother came storming over, steam coming out of her ears, and with a look that could kill she led the mortified girl from the dance floor.

For Robert and Betty their short romance was over. Neither mother nor daughter would ever speak to Robert again, and Dingwall became one of the few places in the area that Robert was loath to visit.
His and Antis’s relationship also suffered. Robert had been an animal lover practically since birth. He had an innate empathy for all things wild, and for those that had come from the wild. He understood the instincts that drove animals like Antis, who for all his apparent domesticity was not so far removed from his lupine ancestors—wolves. He had never once raised a hand to Antis, yet at the same time he needed to demonstrate to his dog that he had done wrong.

The discipline Robert needed from Antis he’d won through patience, firmness, and love. Accordingly, he chose now the most effective form of punishment he knew, short of physical chastisement. For a whole week he didn’t speak a word to his dog or take him on his daily walks. Antis was mortified. All he’d sought to do was to protect and safeguard his master, and this was his reward. If there was one moment more than any other when the dog wished that he could speak to his master and explain things, this was it.

But at the same time he knew he had disobeyed his master. He’d been told to stay at the camp, but he’d chosen to ignore that instruction and follow. At the end of the day his motive may have been the right one, but he had still done wrong. As he watched his master reading in his bunk, or moving around the hut, with neither a word nor a glance to acknowledge his presence, Antis was distraught.

He was torn between his conflicting needs to obey his master and to safeguard him, and that was what had gotten him into such trouble.

Twenty-two

Tall, dashing, and a decorated war veteran, Robert knew that with his fine-looking and famous flying dog of war at his side he was a catch for the ladies.

I
n September 1942, Robert received his commission as an officer in the RAF. His work at the Air Gunnery School continued as before, and the only noticeable change in life was his and Antis’s move into the officers’ mess. While Robert lectured by day, his dog was free to roam the outskirts of the base, set as it was in wild countryside. Occasionally, he’d pop his head around the door of the lecture
hall to check on his master, before wandering off to enjoy himself once more.

Antis’s favorite spot by far was the bank of an icy brook that tumbled from the nearby hill and gurgled beside the accommodation huts. The trees of a dark forest—the Darreuch Wood—swept down to the opposite bank, and above the forbidding woodland rose the wild and inhospitable folds of Cnoc-Fyrish, the hills all but bare of vegetation on their heights. Antis would spend hours lying by the water, watching the antics of a wild duck and her seven offspring as they took their daily swimming lessons.

At first the mother duck had been hugely alarmed at the appearance of this large and powerful-looking stranger. But over the weeks she seemed to relax, and at last she sensed that he meant them no harm. Soon the tiny ducklings could swim right up to the dog’s nose, and he’d do little more than twitch his muzzle in amusement as he watched over them benevolently, with mother duck rounding up the stragglers at the rear.

Antis’s behavior with those wild ducks typified the nature of the dog. He could chase rabbits with a hunter’s instinct and a burning desire to catch and to kill. He seemed to sense that was fair game, for rarely did he actually overrun one and the rabbits stood a sporting chance. But with anything like those ducklings—the helpless, the vulnerable, or the very young—his protective instincts came to the fore, and he wouldn’t dream of harming one.

•  •  •

Christmas 1942 came and went, ushering in a bitterly cold and frosty January. An icy wind blew off the rolling heights of Cnoc-Fyrish, bringing with it the first gusts of snow. It lay across RAF Evanton, deep and crisp and even, and brought all training flights to a temporary halt. The snowbound huts of the officers’ mess were double-skinned and had proper heating, and Robert was more than a little thankful for it now.

One early January evening he settled down in the room that he shared with his dog, a book in one hand and Antis sound asleep at his feet. The snow was falling, deadening any sound from outside, and the wind had dropped to a whisper. It was wonderfully still. Apart from the odd snuffle or shiver from his dog as he chased rabbits in his dreams, all was quiet. They had been together for three years now, and in spite of their recent misadventures Robert felt closer to his dog than ever before.

Eventually the book fell from his hands as Robert dozed off. He woke with a start, and with no idea how long he had been asleep. A distant sound had torn him out of his slumber. He strained his ears and there it was again. Somewhere out there in the icy wilds a dog was howling. Antis had pricked up his ears. He’d heard it too.

Without a word or a look to his master, the dog was suddenly on his feet. He crossed to the door and stood with ears thrown forward, head erect and body tense, facing the direction of that ghostly sound. Thinking he must need a pee, Robert got out of the chair and unlatched the door. It opened onto a corridor, with a door at the far end leading outside.

Normally, Antis would trot down its length and wait for Robert to open the far door, if he couldn’t manage it himself. But now he had stopped dead on the threshold of their room. The door at the far end lay partially open, a shaft of moonlight thrown across the floor, the snow outside glistening an unearthly blue-white in the light.

Antis gazed at the open door, the moonlight glinting in his eyes.

Then he raised his head and answered the call from the wild with a howl of his own.

It was deafening, especially in that confined space. Several doors flew open as fellow officers tried to ascertain the source of the racket. But before anyone could say anything, Antis was off. He flew down the length of the corridor, bounded into the snow, and was gone. Robert followed, reached the doorway, and gazed outside. He felt a
strange sense of urgency bordering on panic, as if he knew already all was not right with his dog—or at least, not as Robert understood things should be.

Antis stood rigid, a coal-black silhouette against the crystalline mass of white, his body taut like a statue and his muzzle raised toward the nearby hill. He was barely twenty yards away, but Robert could sense how distant his dog’s mind was from him right then, and how great was the danger that he was about to lose him.

“Antis, come here, boy,” he tried. “Come here.”

He saw the ears flick back a second as his dog registered the sound of his master’s voice, but the head didn’t move a fraction of an inch. It remained glued to the distant hillside.

Robert called again, an edge of insistency creeping into his voice. “Antis, come here! Now, boy!”

In answer the big, powerful animal kicked out with his hind legs and raced away, his paws flicking up puffs of snow as he thundered into the trees, his thick tail streaming out behind him. Away high on Cnoc-Fyrish a bitch was calling for a mate and Antis had seen fit to answer the call.

For all of the following day Antis remained missing. Countless cadets offered to walk the slopes of Cnoc-Fyrish, once a thorough search of the base and surroundings had turned up not a sign. Robert himself had traced Antis’s paw prints as far as he could, before a fresh fall of snow had obliterated his dog’s passing. But the direction of travel had been quite clear: from what Robert had seen, Antis was headed for the bleak and snow-swept high ground.

Another day passed, and still no sign of Antis. When he wasn’t busy lecturing or out searching the snowfields, Robert made desperate inquiries as to where his dog might be. Could the mystery howl have come from a bitch on some neighboring property? Might Antis be ensconced there even now, lovesick but at least safe from harm?

His heart sank when he learned who the most likely culprit—indeed,
the only one—might be. Several years back a German shepherd bitch had gone wild, and she’d lived in the wilderness of nearby Darreuch Wood. The bitch had been shot by a gamekeeper, but at the time she had a litter of pups who were some four months old. One had survived, and she still roamed those woods, hunting to survive. If Antis had answered the call of any female of the breed, it would be hers.

In a sense, who was Robert to complain if his dog chose a female companion over his master? Hadn’t Robert favored Pamela, briefly Ann, and then Betty and one or two others over his dog? And how many times when his faithful companion had come after him had Robert scolded and punished him for imposing his protective instincts on his master’s amorous adventures?

If Antis was gone for good—choosing a bitch over Robert’s love and human companionship—so be it. That wasn’t the worst of it. What tortured Robert more than anything was the thought of what Antis’s fate would likely be, out there in the harsh snowbound wilderness. Antis knew how to chase rabbits and to watch over ducklings. He was far from being a dog that lived by his killer hunting instincts. What were his chances of being able to last the bitter winter in the wild?

More to the point, Antis had teamed up with a wild dog—one born to the wild—but he himself was an irredeemably people-friendly animal. There was no way that Antis would keep his distance from any human who might venture into their domain. The first gamekeeper that laid eyes on him would very likely shoot him, and unlike farmer Williams protecting his sheep, any gamekeeper would likely shoot to kill.

As Robert knew well, he didn’t own his dog’s soul. At the end of the day he was a free agent, and if he chose another, so be it. But he feared that Antis’s amorous liaison could well prove the death of him, and he was beside himself with worry.

By the evening of the fifth day he was beginning to give up hope of ever seeing his dog again. He went to bed that night alone in his room, with Antis’s blanket folded neatly beside him. For a second time in their years together he reached out in the night, fingers hoping beyond hope to make contact with a warm flank of hair. But Antis was gone, and the little sleep that Robert got was plagued by dark dreams.

The following day a group of cadets was returning from their lunch when they spotted a four-legged form moving down the lane toward them. There wasn’t a man at RAF Evanton who hadn’t heard of the famous dog’s disappearance, and they realized in an instant that it was Antis. They’d spent long hours with Robert searching for the dog and they could barely believe that it was him. But the thrill of the wild was still in Antis’s blood, and as the cadets rushed forward to grab him he made a leap over a nearby fence to escape.

Weakened from his days in the wilderness, Antis mistimed the jump. He landed belly first on the iron railings and ended up impaled on the sharp spikes. As gently as they could, the cadets lifted him free and rushed him to the sick bay, one of them setting off at a tangent to summon Robert. By the time Robert reached the sick bay, Antis was already on the operating table being examined by RAF Evanton’s medical officer.

The MO shook his head worriedly. “I’m sorry, Robert, but this is beyond me. I can give you the name of a good vet in Inverness, but I’ve got to warn you . . .” He threw a pained look at Robert. “I don’t give a great deal for your dog’s chances.”