A Dog Called Jack

by Ivy Pembroke

  Max shouted, “Your tea is ready! Come inside!”

  Bill wanted to just say no. Jack trotted out from the shed to stand beside Max’s back door, not going in but stopping and waiting for Bill, tail wagging.

  And Bill didn’t want to disappoint Jack, who looked so excited at the prospect of tea with Max.

  “Fine,” Bill grumbled. He would have the tea. He didn’t have to like it.

  Max had set out tea and a pile of biscuits. He was now in the process of giving Jack some dog biscuits, in exchange for tricks. Jack was rolling over, which wasn’t a trick Bill had known Jack could do. Not that Bill made Jack do tricks for his food. That was just cruel.

  Max, now that there was no canvas in front of him, seemed to think it was time to talk. “You should carve an effigy for Bonfire Night. It could be added to a bonfire.”

  Bill shook his head.

  “Why not?” asked Max. “It would be lovely.”

  Bill said, “I’m not going to any bonfires for Bonfire Night.”

  “And whyever not?” replied Max, as if he disapproved.

  “Why would I go?” countered Bill.

  “Because it’s something fun to do,” said Max. “Because we’d like to have you there.”

  Bill stared at him. “ ‘We’? You mean, you and your . . . what do you call him?” This was what Bill hated: he had no idea what to call the man Max lived with.

  “What do I call who?” Max asked blankly.

  Bill waved a hand awkwardly at the house, hoping Max would draw conclusions from that.

  “Oh,” Max realized. “Arthur. I call him Arthur. Or my husband, I suppose, if that’s what you mean. But no, that’s not who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the street. The street would like to have you at Bonfire Night. I imagine we’ll all wander to see fireworks together.”

  Bill almost laughed. “The street?” he said. As if this street had cared at all about him in years.

  “Of course. It is your street, after all. You’re part of it. You should be there.”

  Bill shook his head. “Bonfire Night is for you lot, that all . . . know each other and share . . . green drinks or whatever.”

  “Really, only Pen does the green drinks,” said Max. “The rest of us think that’s disgusting. And we also all barely know each other. You know just as much as the rest of us do. In fact, you probably know more, because you know more about Jack, and Jack is the glue holding the rest of us together, frankly. You know Jack, and Sam and Teddy, and now you know me.” Max popped a biscuit in his mouth. “So you really ought to come.” As if that settled it.

  Bill privately thought Max was absolutely mad. But Jack seemed to like him, and Bill supposed that counted for something.

  * * *

  Diya was, in her heart of hearts, a matchmaker. She was constantly alert to the possibility of romance around her. She was adept at pairing people up. She had found Darsh and had beautiful children and she thought the same should happen for everyone.

  So Diya, on the pretense of needing to stretch her legs a bit, wandered up and down the coach until she found herself directly next to Miss Quinn, who was helping a group of students with a scene.

  “It is really up to you if you think the shepherd ought to be playing on his mobile while he tends to his flocks,” Miss Quinn was saying to the children, but upon Diya arriving in her vicinity, she smiled at her and said, “Mrs. Basak, what can I do for you?”

  “You should sit with Sam,” Diya replied.

  Miss Quinn’s eyes cut over to where Sam was sitting in his seat, studying his mobile. She said, “Sit with Sam?”

  “Yes,” Diya said firmly. And because Miss Quinn looked as if she was about to make excuses, Diya added, “He probably has some ideas about our situation.”

  Miss Quinn lifted her eyebrows. “Ideas about our situation?”

  Diya nodded.

  Miss Quinn’s lips quirked. She looked as if she was not fooled for a second by Diya’s feeble excuse, but Diya didn’t think she needed to be fooled. Diya just thought she needed some reason to go over there and talk to him. Sam liked Miss Quinn, and Diya was confident Miss Quinn would like Sam back, given the chance.

  Miss Quinn said, “Well, then, perhaps you would like to help these children for a bit while I confer with Mr. Bishop about our situation.”

  “Yes,” Diya agreed. “Good idea.”

  * * *

  Sam looked up from the game he was playing on his phone when someone slid into the seat next to him. Diya, he assumed, until he looked up and it was Miss Quinn.

  “Hi,” said Sam, startled.

  “Hi,” said Miss Quinn. “You are like the shepherd tending his flocks. Playing games on his mobile.”

  “I’m like what?”

  “The Christmas play. It’s a retelling set in modern times.”

  “I see.” Sam put his mobile away and glanced toward the back of the coach, where Diya was obviously spying on them and immediately turned her head when she saw Sam looking at her. Sam turned back to Miss Quinn. “Did Diya Basak send you over here?”

  “She said you have ideas about our situation.”

  “What situation?” asked Sam.

  “So,” continued Miss Quinn, “I more than welcome any ideas you might have about our broken-down coach and our very slow rescue vehicle, but I would also accept ideas about beetroot as I know that those are your specialty.” She smiled, giving the impression that she did not mind his inability to come up with better topics of conversation.

  Nevertheless: “I have other topics of conversation that I stand ready and able to discuss,” Sam said.

  “Do you? I cannot imagine what these might be. No, wait: facts about quinoa?”

  “I can prepare facts about quinoa for our next conversation, if you like,” offered Sam gallantly.

  “This makes me look forward to our next conversation with almost unbearable anticipation,” replied Miss Quinn, eyes impossibly bright, even with a strand of hair falling over her forehead and half obscuring them.

  Sam said, “I hope quinoa has some good facts for me to learn. I wouldn’t want to bore you.”

  “I suspect that would be impossible,” said Miss Quinn lightly, as if that were not a tremendous pronouncement to make, as if it didn’t make Sam feel as if his head had been briefly knocked off his shoulders and might be floating overhead. “Now what were you planning to talk to me about today?”

  “What?” Sam asked, aware that she was expecting a response from him but thoroughly unable to process anything in the face of Miss Quinn’s . . . well, general existence.

  “If your conversational topic wasn’t quinoa, what was it?”

  Sam looked at Miss Quinn, with her dark red hair caught up under a navy blue knitted cap, her smiling mouth, her teasing eyes, and heard himself say, “I have a bat—or possibly bats—living in my attic.”

  Miss Quinn laughed, and Sam decided that was probably going to be his adventure for the day: I made Miss Quinn laugh.

  He wanted to keep her laughing, so he said, “And I don’t even mean that euphemistically.”

  “I should hope not. I don’t even know what that would be a euphemism for, but I fear it might be something you might need a doctor to examine.”

  She was still laughing as she said it, looking relaxed and unguarded. He hadn’t realized how tense she’d grown, over the course of this disastrous stranded coach scenario, and now that he was watching it slough off her, it made him feel bold. That, at least, was the only explanation he had for why he leaned in closer and lifted a single finger to push that fetching strand of Miss Quinn’s hair out of her eyes. It could have been his imagination—but he was fairly certain her breath caught. She gazed up at him, and he experienced that moment, again, that he had experienced when he had first encountered her in the supermarket, that sensation of time slowly running down, halting all around him, to give him room to just notice and live and breathe.

  It was a tactical error, he thought, dazedly, to b
e this close to her. This close to her, this close to the edge, it was so very easy to slip and fall entirely into those eyes.

  He looked at her, his hand still lingering behind her ear, where he’d tucked her hair, and of course that was when the new working coach arrived. Of course.

  There was an entire cacophony of “Miss Quinn!” and she blinked, and he moved backward abruptly, feeling embarrassed to think that he had been considering kissing her on a school coach. Christ, he really needed to stop behaving literally like a teenager, and she said a little breathlessly, “I have to—”

  “Yeah. Yes,” he agreed, as she slid out of the seat.

  She glanced back at him as she exited the coach, one hand fiddling with her star pendant, her expression inscrutable.

  Diya slid back into the seat and said happily, “Well? How’d that go?”

  “That was unnecessary,” Sam told her, even though, left to his own devices, he’d been doing a dismal job of having a conversation with Miss Quinn.

  Diya gave him a look that said she knew that, and that her actions had been very necessary. “You probably should have kissed her,” said Diya.

  “I don’t even know her first name,” Sam pointed out.

  Diya looked impressed. Impressed with what a terrible job Sam was doing of flirting, Sam thought. She said, “Wow. You need a lot of help. I might have to enlist the whole street.”

  “Oh, God, please don’t,” said Sam, horrified.

  “You should use the dog,” Diya said. “A lot of women who aren’t me really like dogs.”

  “Are you actually going to sit and give me dating advice? Like I don’t get that enough from my sister? This is the worst field trip of my entire life,” Sam said, “and once when I was eleven we went to the British Museum and I tripped and fell down the stairs and broke my ankle. So I just want you to know where this field trip now ranks.”

  Diya snorted. “I saw what just happened in this seat. You definitely never went on any field trip better than this one.”

  Sam glanced out the window, where Miss Quinn was talking to the new coach driver. She had one hand fidgeting with her star pendant still, but the other one was near the ear Sam had lingered by, absently twirling a strand of hair. The one he’d tucked there, he liked to think.

  “Okay,” he allowed grudgingly. “Maybe.”

  * * *

  Arthur spent a moment admiring the whorls of wood-carving on the front of the bookcase in his shed. “He did this?” Arthur asked.

  “Mr. Hammersley,” Max confirmed, relishing it. “My friend. We are old friends now.”

  “Are you now?” said Arthur. “That was quick.”

  “We had tea together and everything.”

  “Ah, that settles the question then,” Arthur agreed. “Lifelong pals, you two are now.”

  “We are both artists. We understand each other’s souls,” continued Max, really getting on a roll with his ridiculousness.

  “Uh-huh,” said Arthur. “Should I be jealous?”

  “Always magnificently jealous,” said Max.

  “Uh-huh,” said Arthur again. “Let’s eat now, shall we?”

  “You’re so difficult to impress,” Max remarked mournfully, following Arthur across the garden into the house.

  “Hence why you were noteworthy,” Arthur threw over his shoulder as he walked into the house.

  “Ah, that stealth romance of yours,” said Max. “Gets me every time.”

  Arthur chuckled, looking in the fridge and hoping that food might have magically appeared there. “I’m glad you had a good day with your artist friend.”

  “I think I convinced him to go to see fireworks with all of us for Bonfire Night.”

  “Are we all going to see fireworks?”

  “Pen’s note seems to assume there might be some concerted outing.”

  “And Mr. Hammersley will be accompanying us to see fireworks?”

  “Well, if I haven’t convinced him, I’ll convince him eventually.”

  “And I would be impressed, except it’s hardly surprising. You are the most bloody single-minded person alive.”

  “Quoth pot to kettle,” remarked Max, as Jack showed up at the back door for his customary fourth or fifth dinner of the night.

  Arthur ignored Max’s statement, obediently handing him across some dog food to give Jack. He said instead, “I feel I ought to go speak to Mr. Hammersley. Maybe he and I could have a pint and commiserate over the pointlessness of trying to resist anything you wish done.”

  Max, completely unrepentant, merely grinned.

  Street developments, Pen wrote in her blog, after a detailed recitation of her observations regarding resting heart rate. Indian Girl and New Boy are now fast friends. Old Man and Blond Gay Man also appear to be fast friends now. I can’t tell which is the more startling new relationship. Indian Girl and New Neighbor Boy run up and down the street with Jack at their heels. Jack patrols for squirrels; Indian Girl and New Neighbor Boy are on the hunt for bats, apparently. Old Man and Blond Gay Man hole themselves up in Blond Gay Man’s shed, working on a secret art project, I am told.

  Meanwhile Indian Woman has added New Neighbor Man to her list of People She Must Take Care Of. (Granted, her own family can sometimes be far down on that list, but she does mean well.) She frequently brings food to his house. Whether this is because of the new friendship or something else entirely, I’m not sure.

  Chapter 10

  The Year 4 Turtledoves will be celebrating Halloween! Please have your child wear his or her costume to school on October 31. Boo!

  —Miss Quinn

  “So,” said Pari, “how many bats do you think there are living in your attic?”

  They were supposed to be working on their Christmas play, but talking about the bats again seemed like a better idea.

  “I don’t know,” said Teddy. “Probably a hundred.”

  “Wow,” said Pari, suitably impressed.

  “And they’ve got to stay there forever because you can’t move bats without permission, or something.”

  “Is your dad going to ask for permission?” asked Pari.

  “Maybe,” said Teddy. “I guess it depends on whether he feels like being lazy or not.”

  “My mum is never lazy,” Pari said. “I never see my mum sit still. Maybe she can ask about the bats for your dad.”

  “Does she know a lot about bats?”

  Pari shrugged. “She says your dad likes Miss Quinn, though.”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Teddy agreed. “She makes him smile a lot. Which is nice.”

  “She says he needs a lot of help, though.”

  “Help?” echoed Teddy.

  “I overheard her talking to my dad, and she said your dad is hopeless.”

  Teddy snorted. “I feel like my Aunt Ellen would agree. Your mum and my Aunt Ellen should hang out sometime.”

  “Do you think any of the bats are vampires?” asked Pari, getting back to the more important subject.

  Jack looked up from where he’d been snoozing on the floor, as if this was a very important topic of conversation.

  “No,” Teddy said wisely. “No such thing. They’re just little flying mice.”

  Jack, reassured, put his head down and went back to snoring.

  “Too bad,” Pari said. “I was thinking we might use some of them for a costume.”

  * * *

  Sam looked at the Turtledove Chronicle, read the message about the Halloween costume, and swore. Halloween. He probably should have been thinking about Halloween. Oops.

  Over dinner that night, after they had relayed the day’s adventures (Sam: Managed to get Roger to stop sending every single e-mail with a high importance alert; Teddy: Remembered for the first time to add one of the UK’s hidden u’s into a word without any prompting), Sam said, “You’re having some kind of Halloween celebration in school and this reminded me that we haven’t even talked about what you want to be for Halloween.”

  “I want to be a football play
er,” said Teddy.

  Sam blinked. “Football as in . . . ?”

  Teddy rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “American football, Dad. Regular football.”

  “Here football is not—”

  “I know the vocabulary. But I want to be a regular, American football player for Halloween. And it’s my Halloween costume. That means I get to be whatever I want. Isn’t that the whole point of the day?”

  Sam couldn’t deny that. It was supposed to be a day to be whatever you wanted to be. If Teddy wanted to be an American football player, then Sam supposed he couldn’t argue with it. “You’re right,” he agreed. Now he just had to figure out where he was going to find an American football player costume.

  Sam decided it would be wiser to change the subject. “How are things going with the play? You and Pari getting your scene in order?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. Pari said her mum says you’re hopeless.”

  “Well,” said Sam, a little offended, “I think that’s uncalled for.”

  “I think she’s going to try to help you out with Miss Quinn.”

  Oh, thought Sam. Well, he supposed in that context, he was fairly hopeless. But... “Define ‘helping out.’ ”

  Teddy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Sam frowned.

  * * *

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Sam said, when Ellen arrived with her arms full of random detritus, some of which, Sam hoped, might become an American football player costume.

  “Cutting Halloween a little close, aren’t you?” she said, as she dumped everything in a big pile on the kitchen counter.

  “Yes, yes,” Sam said impatiently, digging through it. “I know. Can we skip the lecture? Haven’t time for the lecture. Have to piece together an entire American football player costume from scraps of things that are definitely not American football uniforms.”

  “It would all be much easier if he just went as an actual football player. You know, a normal football player. A real football player.”

  Sam sighed. “Trust me, I do not want to get into yet another debate over which version of football is the ‘real’ version.”