You Must Be Jo King

by Moira Murphy

  Lucy moaned. She gripped my arm. She was hyperventilating. I told her to take deep breathes.

  Josh said the other kids in the queue had gathered around Lucy and the dog. They were cheering the dog and egging it on. Then the bus came but Lucy couldn’t get on it because the dog wouldn’t get off her leg. He said Vicki Pearson sniggered and said, ‘Everyone knows you’re desperate for a boyfriend, Lucy, but that’s ridiculous,’ and all Vicki’s chav mates laughed and chanted, ‘Who let the dogs out’.

  Mrs Murphy, who drives the school bus had got out of her cab and tried hitting the dog with her bag saying, ‘Get off that poor, innocent child, you rollocking little eejit’. Josh said Mrs Murphy, who was Irish, called everyone a rollocking little eejit. He said Mrs Murphy had called Craig Bolton a rollocking little eejit when he had thrown a water bomb and it landed in her cab and she’d had to pull over. I told Josh I’d got the message and I did NOT want to hear that again.

  He said as Lucy was so upset, Mrs Murphy said it might be better if Josh were to take her home and return to school a bit later when everything had calmed down. Mrs Murphy asked Josh if he had a dog in heat. Josh wasn’t sure, so he just said no. Josh said the bus went off with everyone cheering and shouting through the windows and then the dog got fed-up, got off Lucy’s leg, sniffed about for a bit then ran off.

  Josh said, “Just think, Luce, some of the kids had their phones out so chances are you could end up on YouTube and get loads of hits and become really famous.”

  I steeled myself against the anticipated wrath which I was sure would follow that remark but it didn’t come. Instead she calmly processed that thought. Was a dog sexually assaulting your leg at a bus stop with loads of kids watching and cheering worth the price of fame? She’d have to think about that. In the meantime we had a cuddle and some hot chocolate.

  I wondered if Mrs Murphy was right about Millie being in heat. Perhaps I should go to the library and get a book on dogs. Or google it. Or perhaps I should just get rid of the damned dog. I rang the vet’s and, with somebody else’s luck, Trudy answered.

  “Trudy,” I said, “this might sound a bit silly, but is it possible Millie could be in heat? She’s only about ten months old but my daughter and I have had some strange encounters of the canine kind and it has made me wonder.”

  Trudy said at ten months it was more than possible. She asked if I’d noticed Millie’s vulva becoming soft, swollen and pliable.

  I said, “Eh!”

  She said I should look for tell-tale signs: droplets and stained bedding. She said unless I wanted to breed from Millie I should consider having her spayed.

  Josh tapped my arm and mischievously asked if heat was a dog’s period and if it was, would Millie need a tampon up her bum.

  He was pushing his luck, I ignored him.

  The consideration to have Millie spayed was decided upon in about three seconds and arrangements were made to have the spaying done. I was to wait until Millie’s heat was over and in the meantime I was to collect an ‘Anti-Mate’ spray to use on Millie, to help, in Trudy’s words, to deter unwanted attentions from other dogs. ‘Fastening the stable door after the horse had bolted’ came into my mind and that shocked me. I’m only thirty -nine and I’m already thinking in adages. I’m turning into my mother!

  I thanked Trudy and before I hung up I decided it might be an idea to mention the bowl of mandarin and pomegranate pot-pouri Millie had eaten that morning, in case of repercussions.

  Trudy said most dogs preferred Frolic.

  I put the phone down just as the doorbell rang.

  The man looked normal enough: cardigan with saggy pockets and football buttons, corduroy trousers, sandals over socks, a long bit of hair combed over his bald head, newspaper under his arm.

  “I would like you to treat this as an enquiry,” he said, officiously. “Are you familiar with The Son of Aurora Whirlwind?” I looked at him. This was not the sort of thing I expected to be asked from a stranger on my doorstep. I expected to be asked if I was happy with my gas supplier or did I want my drive resurfaced, because the person asking just happened to have a truck load of tarmac round the corner. He waited for an answer.

  “I haven’t lived here long,” I lied.

  He ignored me. “The reason I ask, is that The Son of Aurora Whirlwind is the kennel club name of my dog, Sultan. A name which any responsible dog owner would be familiar with.”

  Again he waited. I wondered if perhaps he’d missed his medication. I looked around. He didn’t seem to have a carer with him, so I was glad I’d kept the chain on the door.

  He went on to say that his occupation over the last few days had revolved around trying to find the source of discontent of The Son of Aurora Whirlwind, aka Sultan. He said his endeavours had proved fruitless, until, that is, while out collecting his newspaper that morning, he had witnessed the unfortunate incident between myself and a particularly aroused Rottweiler. Putting two and two together, he had no alternative but to conclude that the offender must reside in this property. He said The Son of Aurora Whirlwind was well known in the dog world, was impeccably bred, a best of breed champion and much in demand as a perpetuator of the breed. It was inconceivable therefore, that this magnificent animal should be displaying the behavioural instincts of a common-or-garden mongrel, i.e. howling and baying like a wolf at the moon and, uncharacteristically attempting to mount his wife.

  I said I was sorry for his wife, as, from my experience that morning, I knew how she must be feeling.

  “Those sugar-coated sentiments cut no ice with me,” he said, dismissively. “Am I right in assuming you are the owner of a, er, lady dog? And, am I right in assuming that that lady dog is in season?”

  I shrugged, non-committedly.

  “And do you intend to breed from your lady dog? Because if the answer to that is no then in my opinion irresponsible dog owners such as yourself, who allow unspayed ladies to contaminate the atmosphere, should be served with an Anti Social Behaviour Order as you pose as great a nuisance to ordinary law abiding citizens as do Hoodies. “

  I had a madman on my doorstep.

  It was still only 10am yet up until now, one way or another, this had been the longest morning of my life. Being ravaged in public by a rampant, sexually charged canine was not my idea of a spectator sport because I had not, as far as I was aware, suddenly morphed into Lassie. Add to this the implication that I was somehow responsible for the sexual urges of the entire dog population and, with premenstrual, hormonal activity pounding through my veins, the contemptuously, supercilious person on my doorstep should consider himself extremely lucky if he were to walk away unscathed, because at that moment, reaching for the spider plant from the hall table and smashing it off his pompous head while telling him to go away in something four lettered and Anglo Saxon, was what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world. But instead I smiled, and with the utmost restraint I said, “Mr Aurora Whirlwind, why not go the whole hog, take out a court injunction against me then do us all a favour, bugger off and get yourself a life.” Then I closed the door.

  “Who was at the door, Mam?” asked, Josh.

  “Oh, just somebody wanting to tarmac the drive.”

  I came down from my shower to find Lucy back to normal and eager to get to school as Chloe had texted her with some amazing news! Josh said all the stuff he’d had to deal with that morning had taken its toll and it was doubtful if he’d be able to manage going back to school.

  I ruffled his hair and said he’d survive.

  I dropped them off at the school gates, before dropping my clothes off at the dry cleaners. Then I went to work.

  Ian was sulking and ignored me for most of the day. Shaun Elliot had rung in sick which meant the disciplinary had had to be rearranged and that had rendered my lateness neither here nor there and that had peed Ian off.

  In
the afternoon I got a text from Alison to say she would call next Friday night after she’d been to Weight Watchers, if I was going to be in. If I was going to be in! Was she kidding? My mother had more of a social life, than I had. This was good news, I needed some like-minded company and Alison fitted that bill nicely.

  I rang my mother and told her about the visit I’d had from the horrible man and the ASBO threat. My mother said, “That’s all very well but you need to be careful about Aspro, Joanne, it’s been proven to play havoc with the lining of your stomach.”

  12

  THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  It was the day of Millie’s operation. I dropped her off at the vet’s in the morning with arrangements made to collect her when I’d finished work that night. I’d had a horrible day at work. Although I didn’t think it possible, Ian had been even more obnoxious than usual. He was in trouble with both the union rep and the store manager for allegedly sacking someone without following the proper procedures and, in an effort to vindicate himself, which was never going to happen, he’d had me chasing around looking for pretend files and correspondence, which we both knew didn’t exist. It all terminated in the guy being reinstated and Ian being given a warning.

  I just wanted to collect the dog, go home, have something to eat, do the obligatory half hour of nagging the kids to do their homework then sit in front of Crimewatch with a glass of chilled Chardonnay. But until then, while waiting for Millie to come round from the anaesthetic in the recovery room, I would settle for a few minutes quietly flicking through the magazine I’d picked up from the table in front of me, an enthralling read entitled, ‘Your Pet-Your guide to Pests and Diseases’.

  Of course, it goes without saying that a few quiet moments was never going to happen because, although there were plenty of vacant seats in the waiting room, a man chose to sit beside me and not only to sit beside me but also to tell me about the operation his dog, Susan was having done to flush out her ears. Why do people do this? Did I have ‘bore me to tears with stories about your dog’ tattooed across my forehead?

  The man said his dog was an Irish Wolfhound and this one, Susan, was his twelfth (it seems he had always kept two at a time). Apparently he’d had an obsession for the breed since he was eight years old when one had licked him on the cheek. I stifled a yawn, like I said it had been a long day. He then proceeded to fish about in the inside pocket of his jacket before producing a wallet which was stuffed full of photos of the damn things and which, one by one he pushed in front of my face. This is Shirley, this is Wendy, this is Becky, this is Ruby… on and bloody on… this is Emma, this is Lottie, oh, and this is my wife. I didn’t get a look at the one of his wife because he looked at it for a minute, then, as if he’d been enlightened by some sort of divine intervention he seemed to check the picture of his wife against the one of Lottie. Was he comparing them? Surely not. I looked at him a bit more closely and Mr Aurora Whirlwind came to my mind. Were they related? The mad-as-hatters. Yet again he looked normal enough: Farmer Giles type; pink cheeks, sandy coloured wiry hair, tweedy jacket with leather elbows covered in dog hairs.

  Then, as a moth-eaten, gangly thing with soulful eyes and about the size of a donkey wobbled its way out of the recovery room, he gathered up the pictures, stuffed them back into the wallet and with the wallet inside his jacket, he hurried over to the dog. He hugged and kissed it. He produced a stuffed toy rabbit from his jacket pocket which he held to the dog’s cheek while he made comforting there, there, noises.

  Surely his wife couldn’t look like that! If she did no wonder she wasn’t with him. She was probably holed up in a kennel somewhere, or in Ireland chasing wolves.

  As Susan and the man wobbled their way outside and into the man’s mud-caked, Land Rover, a floppy, rolling eyed, get-me-outa-here, Millie, was led from the recovery room by Trudy, who produced a massive plastic cone thing which she euphemistically, it seemed to me, called a collar and which she tied around Millie’s neck. This, I was told was designed to stop Millie attacking her stitches.

  Getting droopy Millie and the collar into the car proved to be no mean feat. In her drug induced state it seemed she no longer recognized the concept of a car, preferring instead to flop about in the car park.

  Treats were no inducement and as I had to be careful of her stitches, by the time I’d managed to lift her in, the collar, which had the cutting edge of a machete, had sliced into my finger, torn my tights and ripped a hole in the seat cover.

  She tried circling the back seat before eventually giving up and flopping onto it. I watched her through the rear view mirror as I started the engine. She looked back at me through drooping eyelids, as if she would rather be dead and I felt a twinge of guilt. But then I bucked up, told her and myself it had been done for the best. Neither of us would any longer have to put up with unwanted sexual advances from rampant members of the opposite sex and that just had to be good news. Hadn’t it? She exhaled a long, mournful sigh that sounded like, yeah, yeah, just ‘cos you’re not getting any. This was true. Well not from my own species anyway.

  13

  GREASE IS THE WORD

  Josh said, “Mam, why’s Millie’s head in a lampshade?” and both him and Lucy laughed their heads off at Millie in her collar. The laughter didn’t last long though. In fact it ended abruptly the next day when the anaesthetic had worn off and Millie was bounding around back to her normal self, except misjudging distances and objects and banging the collar into everything and anyone foolish enough to get in her way. Lucy, not for the first time that day, stood on a chair begging me to get Millie out of the way so she could get down without risking her tights being ripped to shreds or worst, her legs.

  I was still on a bit of a guilt trip about putting a dumb animal through the ordeal of an operation and Millie, being that dumb animal, not only knew this but took full advantage. She decided she couldn’t quite reach into her feeding bowl because of the overlap of the collar and she looked so sorry for herself that Josh, losing the toss of a coin, was assigned the job of hand feeding her and holding her water bowl to her mouth so she could lap from it, a process which meant that everything within splashing distance got soaked which included Josh. It was obvious Millie thought hand feeding was no more than her due after what she had been through, but Josh said it made him want to puke. Lucy said watching Millie trying to lick her stitches made her want to puke. (And this from the girl who has aspirations of becoming Michaela Strachan’s sidekick in a wildlife conservation.)

  Millie took to standing square in front of the television, just to be annoying, but knowing, for the time being anyway, she’d get away with it. I wondered she wasn’t brazen enough to take charge of the remote control. I went round repairing torn wallpaper and touching up paintwork and quietly cursing the dog and the damn collar and trying to remember if I’d ever had a decent life.

  But then, Friday night brought with it, Alison, who brought with her, a bottle of wine and a big bag of Kettle crisps. She was fresh from Weight Watchers and was celebrating a two pound weight loss. Alison, plump and pretty as always and looking glamorous in her wide-legged white pants and floaty orange kaftan, was now sporting a swishy new hairstyle, which I was really jealous of as it’s all I can do to stop my unruly mop from imitating Violet Elizabeth’s damned ringlets.

  Millie, full of her usual exuberance but with the destruction capability of an Exocet missile, charged down the hall to greet her.

  “Aargh! What the hell is that!?” yelled Alison, who, as she turned to face the wall in a gesture of self preservation, dropped the crisps. Millie, who up to that point had been luxuriating in the guilt-driven indulgence of being hand fed, without any hesitation, forgot about the restraints of the collar, grabbed the crisps and ran with them to her basket where she proceeded to tear open the packet and devour the lot and no-one, fearful of the risk to life and limb, was brave enough to stop her. Thereafter, Josh was relieved to be re
lieved of his hand feeding duties.

  Lucy and Josh had their respective friends, Chloe and Jack staying for supper and they had asked for, and were being allowed, the treat of a pizza delivery while I was cooking something special for Alison and me. The pizzas were delivered and paid for and the kids took them upstairs.

  I opened the wine. Alison bemoaned the loss of the crisps. She said while some people wanted to smoke cigarettes with alcohol, she wanted to eat crisps. I told her to think positively; little pickers wear bigger knickers, and she said she couldn’t get knickers any bigger. She said the next step would be to go commando.

  “Jo,” she said, “you know when I go for a bikini and leg wax and to put up with the pain, I have to think of it being done in a good cause, because that night I’ll be going to bed with David Beckham? Well, lately, when I think of David Beckham, he morphs in my mind into Richard Madeley. What do you think that means?”

  “Hmmm, it probably means you have a secret yearning to be Judy Finnigan.”

  She wrinkled her nose and said damn, that’s what she had been thinking. We laughed, wine induced laughter.

  We calmed down and she showed me a tattoo she’d had done on her stomach, just above her belly button, a tiny rose. I said she’d need to be careful she didn’t get pregnant or she might end up with a bloody big hydrangea. She said, hell! She hadn’t thought of that.

  We were off again. We laughed our way into the kitchen, propped ourselves onto kitchen stools and opened another bottle. I asked how her romance with Nigel was going?

  She said, “Don’t ask.” She said, most things she could turn a blind eye to, his dancing for instance, was exceptionally cringe worthy, but she usually got round that by pretending he was somebody she’d just picked up and who she didn’t know from Adam. Then there was his insisting on using Nature’s Way toiletries because they’re not tested on animals. She said she agrees with the sentiment, she just wishes he wasn’t so damned sanctimonious about it. But, she said, it’s the little things, like the other day when he came in with a packet of seeds to grow his own herbs and a book on the power of herbs for healing. Then the other night, she’d asked him to call at the garage on his way home because she was desperate for a bar of fruit and nut, but – and it wasn’t as if she wasn’t grateful for the thought and all that – he had gone miles out of his way to Holland and Barratt and bought organic cocoa stuff instead. He had said it was the principle of the thing. She said try talking principles to your hormones when they’re screaming out for fruit and nut… they just did NOT want to know.