by Duncan Ball
Selby slipped into the costume, stood on his hind legs and then hurried to the smiling clerk at the Happytime Airlines counter.
“And where are we off to today in our little doggie suit?” the clerk asked, grinning down at Selby.
“I don’t know about you but I’m off to Paradise Cove,” Selby said. “Make it a half fare, I’m under twelve years old.”
“Anything you say,” the clerk said, taking the money that Selby had placed on the counter and then smoothing his hair with his fingers. “We know how to make people happy on Happytime Airlines. And you’re in luck today, our in-flight snackette is South Seas Caress. Ummmmmmmmm.”
“What is South Seas Caress?”
“Why, coconut custard, of course,” the man said, handing Selby his ticket. “Now have a Hap-Hap-Happytime.”
“We’ll see about that,” Selby mumbled as he raced for the plane.
“What a cute little outfit,” the friendly stewardess said, showing him to his seat. “Let me fluff up a pillow for you.”
“Oh, look! It’s true,” Selby said, looking out the window."The people do look like ants.”
“I’m afraid those are ants,” the stewardess said, putting the pillow behind Selby’s head. “We haven’t taken off yet. Now sit back and relax. If you need anything, just push the call-button.”
“Oh boy! Oh boy!” Selby thought. “This is the life, flying the happy skies of Happytime Airlines and being looked after by happy people.”
Just then the plane tore down the runway and turned up sharply into the sky and in a few minutes a stewardess came down the aisle pulling a squirming boy.
“Why can’t I fly the plane?"Willy screamed. “Why can’t I have a go?”
“Oh, no! Aunt Jetty’s sending the brat to Paradise Cove to stay with the Trifles!” Selby thought."The nerve of her!”
“We showed you the cockpit,” the stewardess said, looking in a hand mirror and putting on another layer of lipstick, “and now I’ll give you a Happytime Airlines colouring-in book.”
“I don’t want a stupid colouring-in book!” Willy said, suddenly stopping and staring at Selby. “Hey, mister short man, why are you wearing a dog suit?”
“Is it against the law?” Selby asked in a low voice.
“Yes it is!"Willy wailed. “Yes it is against the law!”
“Ease off, kid,” Selby said, pretending to read the safety instruction card.
“Take your head off,” Willy whined. “I want to see you.”
The smiling stewardess brushed her hair until it was in one perfect piece and then gave it a quick spray.
“I’ll leave you boys to play,” she said, starting away. “I have to prepare the South Seas Caress.”
“Take it off, mister stupid!” Willy squealed, grabbing the head of the costume. “Take your head off!”
“Hey! Let go!” Selby yelled, struggling against Willy’s iron grip."You’ll rip it!”
“But I want to see your face!”
“Back off or I’ll push the call-button and you’ll be dragged back to your seat,” Selby said, pushing the call-button to get someone to drag Willy back to his seat.
Suddenly a steward appeared, straightening his necktie and polishing a button on his sleeve.
“Is there something you wish?” he asked, smiling down at Willy who was now on top of Selby and tugging at his costume.
“Yes!” Selby screeched. “Tie this little monster up and gag him! If you want me to smile awhile, that’ll do it.”
The steward stopped smiling for a minute and then burst out laughing.
“Oh, ho ho ho ho ho. For a minute I thought you were serious,” he said as he blew a microscopic piece of lint off his shoulder. “Keep right on having a Hap-Hap-Happytime, boys. See you later.”
“Won’t anyone take a guy in a dog suit seriously,” Selby thought as Willy lifted the head of his costume for an instant.
“So it’s you!” Willy yelled. “You talked! I knew you could talk! Hey, everybody,” Willy yelled to the passengers, “look at the talking dog!”
Everyone put their newspapers down for a second and then pulled them back up again. Then, in the instant that Willy’s back was turned, Selby got up and started slowly down the aisle.
“Hey! Don’t you try to get away from me!” Willy screamed, running after him. Willy twirled his lasso in the air and Selby broke into an awkward run just ahead of him.
“I’m done,” Selby thought. “I can’t handle him myself. Somehow I’ve got to get the cabin crew to keep him away from me.”
“When I catch you,” Willy squealed, “I’m going to take your head off and everyone will know you’re a talking dog! You just wait!”
A grinning steward and a stewardess stepped out of the way, straightening their suits and watching as Willy chased Selby round and round the inside of the plane.
“Why do all these Happytime Airlines people have to be so happy all the time,” Selby thought, squeezing around a food trolley. “If they were normal grumpy people they wouldn’t put up with Willy for a second. I wonder if there’s a Grumpytime Airlines …?”
“Yaaaahhhhooooo!” Willy screamed and he jumped over the trolley, making the steward and stewardess laugh with delight.
Selby rounded a corner and dived under a seat.
“I can’t believe all this silly smiling stuff,” he thought as he crawled from one seat to the next. “It’s got to be an act.”
“Come here, talking doggie!” Willy yelled. “Wild West Willy will find you!”
“It’s just not normal for people to be this happy all the time,” Selby thought, suddenly reaching out and tripping Willy. “They’ve got to have their limits.”
Selby watched as Willy went flying down the aisle and crashed headfirst into a food trolley, throwing little plastic bowls of South Seas Caress in every direction.
“That’s funny!” Willy laughed. “Look at the funny gooey people. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.”
There was a deathly silence as an angry stewardess picked a handful of coconut custard out of her hair.
“You monster!” she screamed. “You’ve ruined my hair!”
“And my uniform!” the steward cried, scraping custard off the front of his suit. “Now it’ll have to be dry-cleaned!”
“That does it!” said the stewardess as she grabbed Willy by the hair. “Goodbye smile-awhile! Put a gag in the brat’s mouth while I tie him up with his rope.”
“I didn’t do anything! No, don’t put that gag in my mmmmooooonnggggguuu!” the struggling Willy cried.
Selby slipped back into his seat and watched as they carried Willy to his seat and strapped him in. A cheer and a round of applause went up all around the plane.
“Well I’ll say one thing for Happytime Airlines,” Selby said as he fluffed his own pillow and put on some headphones to listen to the movie, “they certainly know how to make people happy — all of them but Willy, that is.”
SELBY IN LOVE
It was a sunny spring day and Selby lay in the shade of his favourite bush, finishing a book he’d found called Love Dawns Eternal. A warm wind sprang up just as he read the last paragraph.
For a year I’d worked for Howard Cooper, the master of Cooper’s Rest. He was a man both silent and strong. Howard, whose dark looks cried out for a woman’s love, my love. And now, as I was about to board the coach and leave forever, I turned back a loose strand of hair and Howard caught a glimpse of my rose-coloured fingernails. Then his eyes penetrated my soul and he gently clasped my hands. His quiet voice whispered in my ear, “Oh Dawn, my rosy-fingered Dawn, you are the one I’ve waited for these many years. Please don’t go. Stay on and be my wife.”
“Oh, that sends shivers up my spine,” Selby said with a sigh. “Imagine. For all that time Howard didn’t even notice her and then his eyes penetrated her soul (sigh) and he fell instantly in love (sigh). Oh, isn’t love wonderful,” Selby thought as he tripped lightly into the house and lay dreamily on the carpet. “I only wish it co
uld happen to me. Why can’t I find someone like Dawn to fall in love with?”
And then it was that Selby heard out of the corner of his ear, Mrs Trifle say to Dr Trifle, “Did you know that your old friend, Ralpho, is having a rather successful tour of country towns?”
“Ralpho? The Ralpho?” Dr Trifle asked, referring to his old friend Ralpho the Magnificent, failed inventor and sometimes magician. “I thought after the disastrous show he put on here for the boy scouts and girl guides, he would have gone out of the magic business for good.”
“For everyone’s good,” thought Selby, who remembered rescuing Ralpho from his robot-mummy.
“He not only didn’t quit,” Mrs Trifle said, “he seems to have added a talking dog to his act.”
“A talking dog?” Selby wondered. “How can it be? I’m the only talking dog in Australia and perhaps the world.”
“A talking dog?” Dr Trifle asked. “How could it be? There aren’t any talking dogs in the whole world — not even in Australia.”
“I know that, dear,” Mrs Trifle said. “He rang to invite us to his show and he said that his dog was a real version of your talking robot-dog.”
“My what?”
“The poor man was so flustered when he was here last that he went away with the impression that Selby was some sort of robot.”
“Now I remember,” Dr Trifle said, trying to snap his fingers the way people do sometimes when they remember something. “He said he was going to build a robot-dog like that horrible mummy thing. He’s undoubtedly got a stuffed-toy dog with a tape recorder in it. My guess is that it’ll look like a toy and it’ll sound like a tape recorder and it won’t fool anyone. But I have to admit, that mummy wasn’t bad before it went out of control.”
“There’s an article about Ralpho here in the newspaper,” Mrs Trifle said, holding up a copy of the Bogusville Banner. “In it he says Lulu was found —”
“Lulu?”
“His talking dog. The article says that Lulu is a real live talking dog who was found walking aimlessly in the jungles of the Amazon.”
“That’s the sort of thing Ralpho might say to get people to go along and see his act, don’t you think?”
“Well, maybe,” Mrs Trifle said. “But if that’s true, he’s managed to fool everyone in the towns he’s been to on his tour and Melanie Mildew as well.”
“Melanie Mildew?” Dr Trifle asked.
“She’s the one who wrote the article,” Mrs Trifle said, “and I don’t think she’s easy to fool.”
“Gulp,” Selby thought, “neither do I. I wonder if there could be any truth in this.”
“I just wonder if there could be any truth in this,” Dr Trifle said. “I guess we’ll have to trot along tonight and see for ourselves.”
“Yes,” Mrs Trifle said, “and Ralpho asked us to bring Selby along. Why not, he might enjoy it.
That night the Trifles and Selby sat in the front row of the Bogusville Bijou as Ralpho’s show went terribly wrong. First one of his juggling rings got caught on a light and wouldn’t come down. Then he tried to juggle three bowling pins but one hit him on the head and the other two landed on his toes. And when he talked to his ventriloquist’s dummy his mouth was moving so much that the audience screamed with laughter, making it impossible for anyone to hear anything.
“Quiet please!” Ralpho yelled as he put the dummy away and got out a whip. “Now if I may have a volunteer from the audience I will demonstrate how I can take a pencil out of someone’s mouth at ten metres with the crack of this whip. Come on, speak up. Who will it be?”
For a minute, no one moved and then a voice cried out,"Well it won’t be me! Fair crack of the whip, Ralpho, you’d take my head off and leave the pencil!”
“Poor Ralpho,” Selby thought as the audience burst into laughter, “he’s just not a showman.”
“Okay,” Ralpho said, pulling out a pistol, “I guess that brings us to the trick-shooting part of my act.”
Suddenly there was a stampede for the exits which only stopped when Mrs Trifle leaped to the stage and grabbed the microphone.
“Come back, everyone! Please! Order! Order,” she yelled. “Ralpho’s not going to do his trick-shooting act, are you Ralpho?”
“I don’t know why no one likes my trick shooting,” Ralpho muttered to Mrs Trifle. “It’s always so exciting. I think so anyway. Okay, I’ll bring out the talking dog and finish the act.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mrs Trifle said, stepping aside, “can we have a big hand for Lulu the talking dog!”
Ralpho reached down and lifted a small dog onto the table in front of him.
“Hmmmmmm,” Selby thought, pricking up his ears. “That doesn’t look like a stuffed toy. It looks like the real thing. But of course it can’t be. It’ll be interesting to see how Ralpho fakes the talking part.”
Ralpho pulled a watch out of his pocket.
“Excuse me, folks,” he said, looking at his watch,“but I’ve got a train to catch in just a few minutes and I don’t want to miss it.
“Now let me tell you about Lulu. She was found wandering aimlessly in the jungles of the Amazon by a butterfly collector from Ballarat who later sold her to me,” Ralpho said. “He was on his way out of the jungle after collecting seventy-two new species of butterfly when he happened across her. He reached down to pat her and she said in perfect English, ‘Excuse me, sir, but I’m lost.’ Didn’t you, Lulu?”
“That’s correct,” the dog said suddenly in perfect English.
“It’s got to be a trick. She’s hardly moving her mouth,” Selby thought, suddenly remembering that he hardly moved his mouth when he talked. “She can’t be a real talking dog. There simply aren’t any — well, except for yours truly.”
“Tell the audience more about yourself,” Ralpho said.
“There isn’t really anything to tell, Mr Magnificent,” Lulu said. “I have amnesia and can’t remember anything before I met the butterfly collector.”
“So there you have it, folks,” Ralpho said. “The only talking dog in the world!”
“My goodness,” Dr Trifle whispered to Mrs Trifle loud enough for Selby to hear as well. “This is the most sophisticated piece of gadgetry I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. I wonder how he’s doing it? I think we can rule out the use of a super high-frequency oscillating converter.”
“Can we?” Mrs Trifle asked.
“Yes. And we can also rule out lambda wave transmission through thixotropic media.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. And he couldn’t be using smart-quark excitation because I don’t suppose he’s ever even heard of it,” Dr Trifle said.
“Do you know those silly dolls that have a string you pull to make them talk?” Mrs Trifle asked."I think it’s one of those.”
“Hmmm, good point,” Dr Trifle said, looking for a string but not seeing any.
“I know what you’re all thinking,” Ralpho said, glancing at his watch again. “You think that Lulu has a string I pull to make her talk. Not true, is it Lulu?”
“No, it certainly isn’t, Mr Magnificent,” Lulu giggled.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Ralpho said, “I need a different sort of volunteer. Could you please bring your dog up here, Dr and Mrs Trifle?”
Mrs Trifle picked up Selby and put him on the table next to Lulu.
“Hello, how are you?” Lulu said, and Selby felt himself go all weak at the knees.
“I can’t believe it,” Selby thought as he looked deep into Lulu’s eyes. “It sounded like she actually spoke to me!”
Ralpho looked at his watch for a moment and then said, “What do you think of the mayor’s dog, Lulu?”
“He’s very handsome,” Lulu said, batting her eyelids.
“I can’t believe it!” Selby thought. “Here I am face to face with another talking dog! A friend at last! Maybe even a girlfriend!”
“I think he thinks you’re very pretty,” Ralpho said.
“Do you th
ink so, Mr Magnificent?”
“Oh, wonder of wonders!” Selby thought. “This is the most beautiful day of my life.”
“Go ahead, little doggie,” Ralpho said to Selby. “Don’t be shy. Talk to her. She won’t bite. Ha ha ha.”
The audience giggled and then burst into spontaneous applause.
“Lulu is a thinking, feeling and talking dog just like me!” Selby thought. “I’ve got to talk to her before Ralpho races off to catch that train. But — but — but if I do my secret will be out. Who knows — I could end up in Ralpho’s show!”
“I like you,” Lulu said, blinking her eyelashes at Selby."Do you like me?”
Selby saw a tiny smile cross Lulu’s lips and his mind raced like a speeding train.
“Oh, no! Her eyes just penetrated my soul!” he thought. “If I don’t talk to her now I’ll miss my chance. She’ll never know that there’s another talking dog in the world!”
Selby was just about to say: “My name’s Selby and I believe that you and I are the only talking dogs in Australia and perhaps the world,” when suddenly Lulu said, “Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, with me, with me, with me, with me —”
There was a murmur in the crowd as Ralpho kicked something under the table and then there was a terrible scratching noise.
“It’s not a talking dog at all!” someone screamed. “Ralpho’s got a record-player under the table! Look!”
“I see!” Dr Trifle said to Mrs Trifle. “He knows exactly when she’s going to speak and he asks her questions just before she answers. It’s the oldest trick in the book.”
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Ralpho said, turning bright red and running off with Lulu as the audience roared with laughter.
“It’s a pity about that record-player getting stuck,” Mrs Trifle said later when they were walking home. “Poor old Ralpho almost had me believing that there was a real talking dog right here in Bogusville.”
“Yes,” Dr Trifle said. “He certainly gave us all something to think about for a minute or so.”
