“The Terrier’s Rest”
A Ghost Story for Christmas
The first flakes of snow danced in the headlights as the Landrover approached the turnoff to Buckley village.
“Pull in here love, I’ll walk to the village, I could do with some fresh air after spending all day in that bloody office!”
“Watch your language!” Jenny smiled, nodding towards their daughter Lily in the back seat. “I’ll give you a toot when we have finished our Christmas shopping and don’t you drink too much, I know how you and Dave are when you get together!”
Tom leaned into the car kissed her and turned to Lily in the back seat “You look after that pup and keep it warm, it’s not a toy mind” he tried to say sternly, but unable to suppress a smile. Despite the gloom in the vehicle he could see Lily’s eyes shining with the excitement of Christmas and the arrival of the pup that morning.
“Don’t worry Dad I’ll look after him. Like you said, it will be good for his socialising.” He knew she would look after the pup. She was growing fast, just turned 12 and she shared his love of animals and had invariably treated them with respect, even when she was a little girl.
“Socialisation not socialising!” She always made him laugh. “Enjoy the Christmas Market and don’t spend too much” With a wave he closed the door and they drove on to the bright lights of Crompton Christmas Fair and he turned towards Buckley.
He knew the village well enough, though he hadn’t been back for years. The snow was getting thicker and the strengthening wind blew it in his face, shaking the trees as he started down the hill. It was only a ten minute walk and the first thing he would see as he turned the bend at the base of Buckley Wood would be old Joe Davies’ cottage and beyond that the lights of the main village street (the only village street if truth be told) and the welcoming warmth of the King’s Arms pub.
His mood fell a little as he rounded the bend and saw old Joe’s cottage in darkness and close to the gate an Estate Agent’s sign proclaiming “For Sale” to the passing World. The cottage looked much the same as he remembered it, though the hedge was unkempt and the metal gate was rusting with age and lack of paint. Off to the right of the cottage was the large oak tree with bench beneath where he had spent many a happy hour in the past.
He and Dave had first met Joe about twenty years previously when they started doing a bit of rabbiting in the area. He was “Old Joe” even then, a bit of a loveable rogue (some said poacher), who helped them find where the rabbits were and smoothed the path with the local farmers. Joe kept pretty much to himself, but he had a good heart and many an elderly villager benefited from the odd rabbit or trout or a bit of surplus fruit and veg from his garden.
At the end of a successful (or unsuccessful) day’s rabbiting, Joe, surrounded by a dog or three, would entertain them from his favourite seat under the oak tree with tales of the old days and the conversation often turned to local legend and folklore as Joe’s imagination was fuelled by several pints of cider.
In the winter, all three would usually adjourn to a place in front of the fire at the King’s Arms. Good memories he thought as he stared once again at the old cottage and wondered if that was why Dave had bought the King’s Arms after leaving the army. He hadn’t seen Dave for almost two years and was looking forward to seeing his old friend again. Better get on he thought and as he turned once again towards the village the road was deserted and silent apart from the wind whistling through the trees.
Just as he turned to go, he was startled nearly out of his skin, just feet away it seemed, a dog started barking loudly. There had been no sign of any dog while he had been standing there and although dogs didn’t bother him, the sudden sound was unexpected to say the least. There was complete silence again now. He couldn’t see a dog or even hear a dog moving. He peered over the cottage gate. Why would there be a dog in an empty cottage he wondered? He even tried calling, but no response.” Bloody dog” he muttered and set off for the pub, the wind sticking snow to his coat as he walked.
The pub was a cheery sight as he approached, with a Christmas tree in the window and smoke rising from the chimney showed there was a real fire burning in the hearth. He was in a hurry to get inside and only just noticed as he entered that the King’s Arms was now called “The Terrier’s Rest”. Dave and his dogs he thought, with a smile. The next few hours passed quickly as they do when sat in front of a fire reminiscing with an old friend over a pint or two. Jenny had phoned to say she was on her way and would be there soon.
“Why did you change the name of the pub Dave, I can’t see any dogs here?”
“Ah, that’s a long story said Dave” with a grin.” You remember Old Joe up at the cottage? Well the last 10 years or so he only had the one dog, a Jack Russell Terrier. Well every morning that dog would come to the kitchen door and beg a sausage as we were cooking breakfast and then take off back to the cottage. About this time last year just before Christmas, the dog turned up as usual one morning and started barking and acting like Lassie in one of those old films. You didn’t have to be a genius to know something was up, so we followed the dog back to the cottage and found Old Joe dead, sat on that favourite bench of his under the tree.”
Tom shook his head “poor old Joe, he was a good man. What happened to the dog?”
“Ah, that’s the really interesting part of the story. The year or so before he passed away old Joe wasn’t a well man and he knew it. He often said to us that if anything happened to him, we should find a good home for his dog, made us promise it in fact. Of course we did find a good home for the dog out Newton way and we thought that would be the end of it.
“Then, Christmas Eve last year one of the lads was walking past the cottage first thing in the morning there lying on the old bench in Joe’s garden like it was resting, was the old dog, but it wasn’t resting it was stone-cold dead, frozen solid. Now as you well know, Newton is more than 20 miles from here, but the dog came back, wouldn’t be parted from old Joe it seems. We buried the dog under the tree where we scattered Joe’s ashes.
“Well that dog became a bit of a local celebrity so we changed the name of the pub to commemorate him and old Joe and the publicity ain’t bad either. One of the old dears in the village is a bit of an artist and she did a painting of the dog on a sign for us, did you see it?”
“No” said Tom, half-distracted by the lights of their Landrover pulling into the car park “I had better go Jenny is here, I’ll have a look on the way out. We’ll do this again soon”. Tom reached for his coat not really listening to Dave chatter on, when something Dave said caught his attention. “That Nelson was a bugger of a dog, he would wait quietly behind the hedge next to Joe’s gate, like a rabbit in lamplight and just when you had gone past he would bark like hell and scare the life out of you. He had loads of us like that and when you looked back it looked like the little sod was smiling. No harm in him mind” he added with a laugh.
Tom finally managed to say his last goodbye to Dave and pushed open the door to the pub. He could see the snow was falling even thicker in the headlights of the Landrover and he could also see the sign Dave had mentioned mounted on a post. It was a fair representation of a mainly white Jack Russell Terrier, lying on an old bench under and oak tree. It had a single black patch around its right eye and a black left ear.
Tom was still staring up at the sign when Jenny’s voice broke into his thoughts “What’s up Tom, aren’t you coming home”. He turned, smiled and got into the vehicle and they started for home. Jenny was recounting the great time they had at the Christmas Fair and the wonderful things they had bought, but Tom’s mind was elsewhere.
As they approached the old cottage on the way out of the village he asked Jenny to pull over. He partially wound down the window and looked again at the cottage and the old oak tree, its branches shaking in the strengthening wind and through the branches a bright December moon was racing through the clouds.
“What’s wrong Tom” she asked “can I hear a dog whining?”
“No, it’s just the wind” he said and turned to look at Lily fast asleep in the back, the puppy asleep in her lap. The mainly white Jack Russell puppy which Lily had picked that day because it had a black patch over its right eye and it’s left ear was black. Lily had named it too. She decided to call it Nelson.
“There’s nothing wrong. Let’s get home, we have presents to wrap and a pup to sort out and spoil rotten”. They laughed and in the back the pup briefly opened one black-rimmed eye and smiled.
John Howells
December 2013
Posted in loving memory
with permission of his executors
Comment