by Adam Cloake
From the beginning of the evening, however, he could sense that she was resisting his onslaught of charm. It was obvious that she had something else on her mind. She had brought along her own topic for discussion. Then, finally, she reached the point when she had to tell him the truth. She took a sip from her gin, followed by a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry, Terry, but I’ve decided I need to go my own way, once and for all. I took an apartment earlier this evening.”
“An apartment?” had been his reply.
“Yes!” Another sip of gin. “I’m going to be moving into a new place in Ranelagh. I went to a viewing earlier this evening, and I liked it. So, I took it.”
Although the dismay on Terry’s face must have been unmistakeable, she recounted how she had been checking accommodation adverts for the previous week. She was very anxious to get out of her sister's place, and away from both the sister and the tedious, fawning brother-in-law. The new apartment was affordable enough on a nurse’s salary, and was located in the perfect part of the city for her. And, best of all, it was owned and occupied by a dog lover, who seemed to welcome the prospect of a cute little Jack Russell coming to stay.
“The landlord already gave me the keys. I intend to move in tomorrow.” She went on to tell Terry that she would call around to pick up some of her things sometime before lunch. She didn’t say it aloud, but she intended to give him a chance to get out of bed before her arrival.
She seemed especially anxious to be reunited with little Rusty. She hadn’t seen enough of him in the previous week. Her sister’s husband’s fawning was limited in its extent, and the idea of allowing an animal near his Italian furniture was beyond unthinkable.
Helen had clearly wanted to end their conversation at that point, and to get back to her sister’s house to do some packing.
For Terry’s part, his forced reserve had been gradually fraying throughout this barrage of bad news and, at that point, his temper had finally snapped. As Helen was reaching for her bag, he had shouted at her, insisting that she stay where she was and talk to him.
This brought on another of their customarily fierce arguments. Her comments about his drinking and gambling were standard by now; she used to raise them at least twice a week when they were living together. She also mentioned her fury over the incident three weeks earlier, when Terry had provoked a fight with a young man who appeared to be from the Middle East. Terry had hit the youth hard enough to knock him out.
“You got me to run away from an assault,” she repeated, still feeling the hurt and the shame of that night. “We both left that poor man lying on the pavement.”
As he so often did in such uncomfortable situations, Terry responded with a sound like he was gruffly clearing his throat. It was a sound Helen had come to hate.
And, naturally, she brought up the messages from Jenny, the discovery of which had provoked her final decision to walk away. She had seen them on his phone – graphic text messages, and even more graphic photos. Terry had been careful to keep his little liaisons secret from Helen but, on this occasion, he had allowed his discretion to slip.
Now, he was lying here alone on this sofa, an empty double bed in the room above him. Helen was gone. And Jenny – always a short-term project for him anyway – well, she was gone too.
He looked up at the clock. Almost 9.20. She said she would be here before lunch. She would come, remove her belongings, rip a few bits and pieces out of his life, and leave him alone with his wounds.
Terry’s mouth was dry, and the exercise of trying to lubricate it with empty salivary glands was not going to work. He needed water badly, despite his reluctance to lift his head from the cushion. He also needed to pee.
He struggled into a sitting position, nursed his head in his hands for a few faintly glorious seconds, then finally pushed himself to his feet. He was only wearing shorts and a vest, both of which were damp with cold sweat. He slowly put on his blue bathrobe which, since Helen's departure, he kept clumped as a permanent fixture on the floor beside the sofa. His slippers lay discarded in two different parts of the room. Helen had bought him a new pair on their first Christmas together, but he still preferred the ancient ones he had been using for years. There was a big toe hole in each of them, and the right one no longer had a back to cover his heel, but they were still his old reliables. He ambled out of the living room, the right slipper flapping from heel to floor.
He used the small toilet in the hall to relieve himself; he wasn’t fit to climb any stairs just yet. He finished and flushed, then turned to the sink, and the mirror above it. Every hungover morning, he was presented with this face. Time was pummelling his youthful vanity, and the mirror simply exposed him to the truth of how far down he had been pounded. At 34 years of age, Terry had developed a mess of grey hair above each ear. A dearth of sleep, and a glut of anxiety, had drawn light purple rings beneath his eyes, and two decades of drinking and cigarettes had added a yellowish tinge to his gaunt face. Whereas once, his thick, dark eyebrows had made him look broodily handsome – like an Italian film star – they had recently come to resemble something Lugosi or Karloff would have glued on. Two years ago, he would have been certain that he still retained enough youthfulness to attract a woman like Helen. He just wasn’t convinced he could still have done so now, as his looks dissolved and sank into his older, more cynical, self.
With a lighter bladder and a heavier soul, Terry left the bathroom and unlocked the kitchen door. Stepping inside, he chose to ignore the dog in the corner as it strained from the end of the rope tied to the radiator pipe. Rusty had been trapped here since noon of the previous day. His food and water bowls were empty. There were two turds and a pool of urine on the floor, a mess which Rusty had streaked all around the corner of the room. The smell made Terry feel even worse again. As he exhaled, he wondered how much sicker he could possibly get.
It annoyed him to think that the woman he cared about was no longer here, but the terrier that he hated was. He wanted to be angry with Helen, just to match her own anger towards him. Rusty seemed to be accomplishing this for him.
There had been no talk of a dog fifteen months earlier, when she had first convinced him to let her move in. During his time alone, Terry had never bothered to ask himself if he was happy or unhappy with his life. He had simply gone along, with neither people nor animals for close company. But, while he had Helen here, at least in the beginning, he began to feel the warmth of his new situation. He liked having a girlfriend, so he chose to simply accept the practicalities of having her in the same house with him.
As he had expected, she immediately set about making changes to the place – moving furniture, repainting the hall, upgrading the bathroom and kitchen fittings. The fridge, normally packed with meat products, now became home to an assortment of vegetarian meals. Most of these changes had little impact on Terry. He was hardly proud of the way the place had looked before, so he was reasonably happy that there was to be some improvement.
Things were coasting along nicely for the first month. Then came that sunny Saturday in June when she had arrived back from having lunch with friends. He heard her turn the key in the lock. He heard her as she called out her chirpy “Hello”. And he heard the unfamiliar little yelp which followed his own reply. When she entered the living room, Helen had the tiny brown and white animal cradled in her arms.
Terry had been surprised by her temerity in not asking his permission first, although he quickly reminded himself that it was not unlike the decisiveness she had shown every day throughout her tenure. When he asked her about the little whelp, she told him that her ex-boyfriend Steve – of all people – had shown up at the coffee shop. The friends she had been meeting told her that they had already made an arrangement to pop around to Steve’s place to pick up one of his recently-born Jacks. On a whim, Helen had decided to go with them. Once there, she had fallen hopelessly for little Rusty. She decided that she simply couldn’t resist him, that she had to have him, and that she would explain h
er decision to Terry later.
Despite assuring him that she would bring the dog back if he didn’t agree, Helen had spoken as if she would, in fact, be unlikely to brook any such rejection. She spoke about the puppy as if it were some gift from the gods, a new addendum to her heart. She cuddled it in a way that suggested that any enforced separation would be no better than an act of pure cruelty. She even spoke about her ex as if, should Terry refuse to accept the dog, it would look like an immature act of jealousy on his part.
Steve! He hated that guy!
And so, Terry did accept, reluctantly. It was the second major change he had allowed to take place in his home, but he chose to swallow his many objections.
The problems began almost immediately. Since Helen was the only half of the couple going out to work most days, Terry spent more time in the dog's company than she did. Its playfulness, which had initially seemed cute, soon became interminable. It demanded more of his time and energy than he was willing to give. As he tried to watch his secret porn films, Terry found himself regularly interrupted by four sharp paws assaulting his lap. On one occasion, the tip of Terry’s cock was badly scraped by a tiny, unexpected claw.
Helen spent much of her time nursing in St. Vincent’s hospital, often arriving home late, so she had insisted that Terry bring Rusty to the park every day. This meant that, three times out of four, he had been obliged to lie to her, describing the fictitious feats of fetching and catching which had been achieved.
And then there were the temper tantrums – from both man and pup.
At first, “correcting” Rusty’s behaviour had seemed like the normal thing for Terry to do. “Surely a dog needs discipline, just like a child,” he thought. He had known people who had given their dogs some fierce beatings, during the normal run of training, so he was perfectly willing to follow their more experienced example.
“He's a dog!” would be Terry's eternal justification. “He's not like a person. He's designed to take this kind of abuse. He expects it.”
The fact that Rusty wasn’t much bigger than a fully-grown cat, and certainly a good deal smaller than the family Labrador Terry had grown up with, didn't serve at all to dent his resolve to mete out some harsh punishment whenever he felt it was merited. As it was most days.
All this behaviour only made the dog more resolute, more determined to assert itself. Rusty knew that this was his home as well; he behaved as if he had some sort of residential rights. This probably came from the much gentler, and indeed fairer, treatment he received from Helen when she returned at the end of each day, or during the glorious weekends, when she was around to cuddle him for longer.
The dog's life began to develop into two separate time zones – happy and cheerful with Helen, sullen and defiant with Terry.
And this was how he was now behaving, here in the kitchen, his abrading, unending cacophony splitting Terry’s thoughts into fragments. Because he refused to look at his little enemy, Terry failed to notice that the sound was not, in fact, directed at him. The dog’s snout, along with his fury and distress, were focussed out into the hallway, as if it were magnetised.
Terry surveyed the kitchen. It contained so many traces of Helen, from the novelty salt and pepper cruets of Mickey and Minnie – the Mouses – to the wooden dresser holding all the colourful, summery plates, cups, and bowls she had bought to replace the drab, greying ones left behind by his grand-uncle. Even the sink had been transformed. The hot and cold taps had once been like proud soldiers in star-shaped helmets, separately standing to attention over the basin. Now vanquished, their replacements reclined lazily on either side of one silver barrel.
Using these new taps, Terry gulped down a glass of water, followed by a second, and then half of a third. The coldness of the liquid sent a fresh shot of anguish along his forehead. He had to grab hold of his new, improved sink to ride out the stabbing sensation.
Once it had passed, he opened the fridge door and looked inside.
Vegetarian lasagne!
Vegetarian chilli!
Vegetarian blah blah blah!
He shut the door.
What he needed was proper food. A juicy burger. Maybe two. A large plate of chips. Perhaps a few sausages on the side.
He needed to get out of this house. Only then could he add some fresh, soothing alcohol to the stale memory that was rotting in his veins. Helen had her own keys. She could come and go before he returned.
And, of course, she would be taking the dog with her. For good.
Finally, he turned to look at Rusty. The dog was still straining, still pushing towards the door on his two hind legs, his front paws clawing at the air, as if trying to injure it.
And he was still making that savage ruckus. Was it ever going to stop? Ever?
Suddenly, surprising himself, Terry’s jaw flipped open, and he began to bark as well. He bent over, his arms held rigidly behind him, and thrust his face down towards the dog. He barked. Blood rushed to his face. Veins forced their way to the surface of his forehead. He barked. And he barked. All his fury was directed at Rusty. But the dog only shot him a quick questioning glance, before returning its focus to the doorway. Then Rusty switched sounds, changing to a low, threatening growl. It was a sound Terry had come to hate.
The growl made Terry stop his own barking. Still feeling the fresh blood pounding in his face, he walked quickly out of the kitchen, and went back to the living room. His trousers lay on the carpet, their legs splayed drunkenly. He picked up the trousers, and pulled the leather belt through its rungs. Wrapping the belt’s buckled end around the knuckles of his right hand, he marched back to the kitchen. The expression on Rusty’s face changed. He knew some important change was about to take place. Terry untied the rope from the copper pipe, scalding the back of his thumb in the process. He gave a little yelp of his own at this, and stuck the thumb in his mouth. Then he roughly yanked the dog out to the hallway, each tug on the rope causing Rusty to cough.
“At least you’re not barking anymore, you little bastard!” Terry snarled.
He threw open the cellar door, which was opposite the living room, and descended the ten wooden steps into the dark area beneath. The thin leather weapon hung from his tightly closed fist, the dog’s rope clenched in the other.
He brought the dog to the far corner of the musty room. A rusted hook jutted from the wall, about four feet above the floor. Terry tied the rope firmly to the hook, muttering as he did so.
The room’s only opening, apart from the door, was a tiny window further along the wall. Below the window was an old stove, which Terry’s uncle had discarded down here years earlier. Despite the roughness of his handling, Rusty now seemed preoccupied with this stove. He began growling in that direction.
“Last chance!” Terry snapped.
This silenced Rusty for a moment. He looked up at his master, the brown of his face interrupted only by the white moon around his little left eye. The man and the dog stared at each other – a sort of truce. Within seconds, however, Rusty’s attention had shifted back to the stove. He started barking again, this time more savagely than before.
“I’m going to shut you the fuck up, even if it kills me!” Terry said, his teeth clenched. He folded the thin belt, making a loop halfway along its length. He raised the belt above his shoulder and, with a grunt, he swung.
The leather arced sharply down towards the little animal.
Rusty yelped in pain and confusion as the belt connected with his haunch, biting into him.
Terry raised his arm again, and delivered another blow.
He did it again. And again. Three times. Four times. Five times.
Each stroke felt to Rusty like the edge of a blunt sword blade. He tried to pull away from the pain, tried to run into the centre of the room. But the rope was too short. He could only huddle closer into the corner. The wall reduced the effects of the lashes, but not by much. His yelps began to sound more like screams.
Terry whipped him nine times in all. When
he stopped, and stepped backwards, it felt like his pores had puked out all their cargo of sweat onto his skin. But it wasn’t a cooling sweat, as it should have been. His forehead still blazed, his rage as hot and as fierce as ever. He was too drink-sick to be exerting himself like this. Now short of breath, he inhaled and exhaled rapidly to cool himself down, feeling the cottony dryness in his mouth and throat.
Rusty continued to whine, still feeling the aftereffects – the pulsing sting of the lashes along his back and sides. He stared up at the man, wondering why he had given him this much pain, and if there might be more to follow.
Terry, who suddenly felt like he needed more, then answered this question.
Again, he lashed out.
Although feeling thirsty and unwell, and anxious to be gone out of the house, which used to be all his, he swung the belt five more times, finding a new ferocity he didn’t have before.
The dog, despite being prepared for this new agonising shock, fired out five fresh yelps, each one higher and more pitiful than the last.
Finally, Terry stopped, allowed his arm to flop down by his side. He took a few steps back, still panting drily. There may have been some shame in his laboured breathing, but not enough to counter the pleasure he felt for dealing with this morning's big problem.
The dog was only whimpering now, darting over and back at the end of the rope, as if trying to outwit the pain.
Terry turned and slouched towards the stairs, the belt now hanging flaccidly from his fingers.
He had climbed almost to the top step when the barking suddenly started again. The dog still sensed danger in the room. Despite all its ill treatment, he was still loyally mindful of his duty to alert his master. Whatever Rusty was trying to communicate, however, was lost in the toxic mire of Terry's rage. He didn't care what the reasons might be; the dog was defying him. The punishment clearly wasn't complete.
