A Dog Called Jack

by Ivy Pembroke

  “But she doesn’t believe me about how special he is,” said Teddy. “Which is why I’m asking if you told her about Jack’s acting abilities.”

  Sam blinked at him in surprise. “Jack’s what?”

  “He would be really good in the play. I mean, he is super well-behaved. Don’t you think he’s super well-behaved? He’s not going to do anything. He’ll just sort of be there. Pari and I have even written a whole role for him. He’s going to be the manger dog, and he’ll be very cold in the snow, and the insurance agent will talk about how the manger owner should have had insurance about the snow, only he didn’t because of climate change, but everyone’s going to help anyway because the manger owner was nice and helped out Mary and Joseph.”

  Sam said only, “Your school play has an insurance agent now? Arthur will be so pleased.”

  “Right, and how will the insurance agent have any point at all if Jack’s not playing the manger dog who’s cold in the snow?”

  “You’re right,” Sam said. “Without a dog, an insurance agent has no place in a Christmas play.”

  “Then you’ll talk to Miss Quinn about it?”

  Sam looked reflectively at Teddy for a moment, then said, “We should talk about Miss Quinn, shouldn’t we?”

  Teddy shrugged. “What about her? She’s the best teacher, and now you’re dating her.”

  Sam studied Teddy closely but he looked entirely unconcerned. “And that’s a good thing?” Sam sought to clarify.

  Teddy stared at him as if he were mad. “Why wouldn’t it be a good thing? It’s an amazing thing. No one else has a dad who’s dating the teacher.”

  Sam lifted a dubious eyebrow. “Right, but that doesn’t mean she’s automatically giving you the best grades in the class or anything.”

  “No, I know,” said Teddy. “She’s too amazing for that. That’s why you’re dating her.”

  Sam continued to closely study Teddy. “So she’s not going to give you the best grades necessarily, and I’m not going to talk to her to try to convince her to give you special treatment, for instance, by putting Jack in the school play.”

  Teddy sighed. “Fine. I told Pari it wasn’t going to work.”

  Sam ignored that, preferring instead to focus on what seemed far more important to him. “What I really wanted to know, though, was if it’s okay that . . . she’s not your mum.”

  Teddy looked confused. “Mum is dead.”

  “I know,” agreed Sam, trying to find a way around his words. “She is. And now I would like to see more of Miss Quinn. And she’s not your mum. And is that strange for you?”

  Teddy was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “No. It would only be strange if you wanted to see more of someone who wasn’t awesome. Because you’re used to having awesome people around. Mum was one, and now Miss Quinn is another one. It’s cool.”

  Sometimes it was easy to forget, in the day-to-day humdrum of just being sure to keep your child alive, how miraculous it was to have been responsible for another life entering the planet, and for that life to have spun away from your own to be its own person. But at this moment Sam was struck by that miracle, and by the even keener miracle of Teddy having spun away to become a person Sam liked, a person Sam would have wanted to spend time with even if he hadn’t been his son. And maybe Sam was biased on that point, but Teddy was pretty amazing.

  Sam said, “A good place to be is to be remembering the past but still being excited about the future. Thank you.”

  “For what?” asked Teddy.

  “For being my daily adventure,” said Sam.

  * * *

  The world seemed full of poppies, and to Teddy this was an unusual phenomenon. He watched Max threading some through Mr. Hammersley’s now-hibernating roses and said, “Are they some sort of Christmas decoration?” Max was big on Christmas decorations. Max’s house was slowly turning into a house composed entirely of twinkling fairy lights. Teddy thought it was cool and also obviously way too much work to even ask Dad to do something like that.

  Max looked up from the poppies. Mr. Hammersley also looked up, from where he was standing in the doorway griping at Max whenever he did something with the poppies Mr. Hammersley didn’t like.

  Max said, “Do you not know about the poppies?”

  Mr. Hammersley huffed out, “What do they even teach children in school these days?”

  “Miss Quinn teaches us lots of stuff,” said Teddy loyally. “I guess we haven’t gotten around to the poppies yet.”

  “They’re in remembrance,” Max said, resuming his threading of the poppies. “For all the people we’ve lost in wars.” He glanced at Mr. Hammersley.

  So Teddy glanced at Mr. Hammersley, too. He looked frowny in a way he hadn’t just a moment before, and he’d still been frowny then—that was generally Mr. Hammersley for you—but it was a different sort of frowny now.

  Mr. Hammersley said briskly, “Too many people. Too many people lost. Too many people who never even made it to a graveyard. Too many people who are just poppies, and they don’t even tell them about it in school.”

  “I’m sure they—” Max began, but Mr. Hammersley closed the door, disappearing inside.

  Jack, concerned for Mr. Hammersley, got up from where he’d been keeping watch at the end of the path and stood in front of the door, whining a bit, tail wagging faintly.

  Teddy said to Max, “I didn’t mean to upset him.”

  “You didn’t,” Max said kindly. “It wasn’t you. It’s Remembrance Day coming up, that’s all. He’s been on edge about it. I asked him and he admitted he lost his dad in the war, so you can see how it’s a tough time for him.”

  “Hello, you two,” said Pen cheerfully, coming by in the middle of one of her many runs and pausing to look at Max’s handiwork. “It’s gorgeous. I’m glad Mr. Hammersley won’t be alone this Remembrance Day. Ordinarily he goes to the church and just sits there, thinking about everything. He goes on the day itself, not even on Sunday, just making him more alone.”

  “He thinks about all the people lost?” said Teddy.

  Pen smiled at him, but it was a sad smile. “Exactly. People lost in war, his friends he’s lost over the years.”

  Teddy gave Jack a comforting pat on the head and thought about this.

  * * *

  “Poppies!” Miss Quinn said in school, handing out sheets of red construction paper. “That’s what we’ll be focusing on today. Remembrance Day, after all, is right around the corner. The day when we pause to remember all of the brave men and women who have given their lives to secure the lives we know and enjoy today. We will all be making poppies in remembrance, and then your assignment will be to give these poppies to a person of your choosing, who you think might need a reminder that they’re remembered, as a symbol of the fact that you’re thinking of them. Sometimes, as people grow older, it’s easier for them to imagine that no one cares about them anymore, that the sacrifices of their past have grown obsolete.”

  Brian raised his hand. “What’s ‘obsolete’ mean?”

  “It means pointless. Lacking in relevance any longer.”

  Everyone started cutting up the red construction paper and Miss Quinn walked around the classroom, making comments and ooh-ing and aah-ing over everyone’s work. Teddy thought hard as he worked on his own poppies.

  Miss Quinn, as she arrived at his desk, said, “Those are lovely poppies, and you look very deep in thought.”

  “Does ‘obsolete’ mean not thinking you have any friends anymore?” asked Teddy.

  Miss Quinn looked at him closely. “Well. I suppose if you think that all of your friends are behind you, yes. Maybe. It could make you feel obsolete, to have lost everyone you started out with. But you can always make new friends.”

  “Exactly,” said Teddy. “My neighbor, Mr. Hammersley, he lost his dad in the war and he’s old, so he’s lost a lot of friends and stuff, too, over the years. He doesn’t really have anyone around anymore. And I guess usually he spends Remembrance Day by
going to the church, all by himself, to remember them. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could go to the church to remember them with him? So that he would know that maybe he lost a lot of friends, but now he’s got some new friends, and we can remember the past but still be excited about the future. You know?”

  Now Miss Quinn looked thoughtful. “I do know. And I think that’s a really lovely idea, Teddy.”

  * * *

  Sam read over the latest From the Teacher’s Desk column in the Turtledove Chronicle and said to Teddy over dinner, “You’re going to a church for Remembrance Day?”

  “Yeah,” said Teddy. “We learned all about it in school, and I told Miss Quinn that it would be nice if we could go and sit with Mr. Hammersley while he sits all by himself and thinks about his dad who died in the war and all his friends he’s lost.”

  “Is that what Mr. Hammersley said he was going to do?”

  “It’s what Pen says he does. Pen knows basically everything everyone does.”

  “That doesn’t sound alarming at all,” said Sam, contemplating the permission slip that had accompanied the Chronicle, for the church trip in a couple of days.

  He had not, since Bonfire Night, contacted Libby in any way. It had only been a few days, after all, and he seemed to recall there being complicated rules about who could ring whom and when. He had her number now, programmed into his mobile, and he could call it at any time. But she also had his number, and she hadn’t rung him, so they seemed to be in a mutual stand-off over communication, from Sam’s point of view. Which didn’t seem a good way to start a relationship.

  He couldn’t decide if he was supposed to be the first one to get back in touch. And he was surrounded by people he could ask for help now, but he was embarrassed to ask any of the neighbors and thus betray how pathetically out of practice he was with all of this, and he was trying not to ask Ellen out of a sense of self-preservation. Ellen would immediately squeal at a pitch that would likely knock out Sam’s eardrums and possibly the rest of the street’s, too.

  Sam mulled it over, and then realized Teddy was talking to him. “What was that?” he asked, forcing his gaze away from the permission slip.

  “I asked when you think we should put our Christmas decorations up,” repeated Teddy, with exaggerated patience, to emphasize what a trial his dad could be.

  Sam said, “Oh. Yeah. I was thinking about that.”

  “In America,” Teddy said, “we always waited until Thanksgiving. But they don’t have Thanksgiving here and everyone’s putting stuff up all over the street.”

  “To be fair, Max is responsible for almost every Christmas decoration that’s up right now. So the definition of ‘everyone putting stuff up’ is mainly Max.”

  “Still,” said Teddy.

  Sam looked across at him, and thought how Teddy had said In America. Not back home, the way he might have mere weeks earlier. Sam said the idea he’d been considering for a few days.

  “I was thinking we might have Thanksgiving.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Teddy.

  “They might not have it here, but we could still have it. I could make us a turkey, and we could invite the rest of the street, and we could have a tree-trimming party.”

  Teddy lit up. “Really?”

  Sam was pleased. “Yes. Do you like that idea?”

  Teddy nodded. “Will you invite Miss Quinn?”

  Sam laughed.

  * * *

  That night, after Teddy had gone to bed, Sam contemplated the permission slip again. He gave his permission and signed it, that being the easy part, and then he turned it over and considered what to say.

  In the end, he really could think of nothing to say. Should he ask her out again? On the back of his son’s permission slip? Should he just leave it alone? But how would she interpret the ongoing silence? How was she interpreting it already?

  Frustrated, Sam eventually settled for picking up a pen and drawing a series of cascading lines on the paper. Then he looked at his handiwork and said out loud, “Oh, hell,” because they looked terrible.

  So he scrawled at the bottom, These are meant to be fireworks. —S

  And then he thought, horrified, that this had been a terrible move on his part, and what was he thinking? But it was too late now: it was Teddy’s only copy of the permission slip and it had to be handed in so Teddy could go. Otherwise Teddy would be monumentally disappointed.

  Sam banged his head gently on the desk in frustration.

  But two days later, the edition of the Turtledove Chronicle that Teddy brought home had the back covered with much more artfully drawn fireworks, these in bursts of color because Libby had been clever enough to use crayons.

  “That’s a message from Miss Quinn,” Teddy said, when he noticed Sam smiling at the fireworks. “Are you using me to date my teacher?”

  Sam grinned at him. “ ‘Using’ ” is such a harsh word.”

  * * *

  It used to be that Bill had felt the hollowness of all he had lost heavily, on a daily basis. These days, for unclear reasons, he found himself thinking less of his old friends.

  But on Remembrance Day, he got up and dressed very carefully, in the finest clothes he could muster. His mother had always made him dress up in his best clothes for Remembrance Day; he had always kept up that tradition. Jack had stayed over the night before—Teddy had brought him by specially—and he watched Bill’s unusually detailed bathroom activities with interest.

  Bill turned to him finally, fastening his poppy on. “How do I look? Pretty smart, right? I bet you didn’t know I could clean up so nicely.” He leaned over carefully to scratch behind Jack’s ears, which made Jack’s tail wag madly. Bill said, “I used to spend much more time dressing myself up, in the old days, when there was a reason for that.” He glanced at himself in the mirror, at the glint of red where his poppy was fastened, and then took a deep breath. “All right, Jack. Time for you to go on patrol while I go on my way.”

  Jack tried to follow Bill up the street, and Bill had to stop and shoo him away. Sometimes the dog could be daft, Bill allowed. Eventually—and every year it seemed like the walk took longer and longer—Bill reached the local church and sat himself in one of the pews. He took a deep breath of the church-scented air and closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked around him. The church was, as usual, deserted. Everyone had been there for services on Sunday, but no one was there today.

  But then, even as he finished having the thought, a slight scuffling started, and then got louder and louder, and then Bill watched, astonished, as a solemn, serious, silent group of children marched into the church and slid into pews and bowed their heads. The teacher at the front of them, a pretty ginger who looked vaguely familiar to Bill, although he couldn’t place her, smiled at him.

  Bill looked back to the pews of children, and recognized with a start Teddy and the little Indian girl, sitting right next to each other.

  Bill stared at the pair of them, and then the larger group. All of these children, here on Remembrance Day. Remembering. Where he was normally alone, the only person in the dim and dusty church, there was now an entire group of people keeping him company. Bill had no idea what to make of it.

  Eventually, in response to a signal Bill didn’t see, the children rose and began filing over to him, each of them handing him a paper poppy. Teddy came last, beaming a smile at him and winking as he left, and then, just as suddenly as they had come, the children marched out of the church.

  Bill listened to the scuffling sounds of the small army of children marching out of the church, and stared at his hands full of poppies, and realized that, for some reason, he was crying.

  Chapter 13

  Please join us for a

  traditional American

  Thanksgiving feast! I will even make a turkey!

  Sam and Teddy

  Sam, in the end, broke down and rang Ellen. Who basically screeched in response that yes, it was appropriate for him to ask Libby to at
least coffee after sticking his tongue down her throat at Bonfire Night. Which was rather more graphic a description of the kissing than Sam would have liked—and not at all accurate—but he decided to trust Ellen’s assessment of the situation. So one night, after putting Teddy to bed, he took a deep breath and pressed send on Libby’s number in his mobile.

  Anticlimactically, she didn’t answer, and Sam wondered wildly if she’d seen that it was him calling, and didn’t want to talk to him, and then her voice mail clicked on, and Sam considered hanging up, but it was far too late—she would see that he had called, so Sam just said, after the beep, “Hi. It’s Sam. Bishop. And I . . . didn’t know if maybe you wanted to go for coffee sometime. Or something.”

  Libby rang him back an hour later, saying cheerfully, “Sorry. I was at yoga,” which made Sam feel like a lazy slob who had basically not exercised since moving back to England. “Coffee sounds wonderful. When were you thinking? Next weekend?”

  “Yes,” Sam agreed, although he hadn’t even thought far enough ahead to consider that question. He was really and truly rubbish at this.

  They settled on Friday at 7 p.m. and Sam, in preparation, went to the Basak house the next day.

  Diya was standing outside, frowning critically at her house, and she gestured to Max and Arthur’s house as he walked up. “They’re showing off. Look at that house. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  “Well,” said Sam. “It is Christmas.”

  “And now he’s going to turn the old man’s house into another Christmas tree.”

  It was true. Max was whistling away in Mr. Hammersley’s front garden, happily ignoring all of Mr. Hammersley’s suggestions as to where the lights ought to go. Jack was lying on the front step next to Mr. Hammersley, watching the proceedings with interest. For the moment, it was apparently more interesting than the squirrels.

  “I might have to put up some lights,” grumbled Diya. “This is ridiculous.”

  “We do live on Christmas Street,” Sam pointed out. “Maybe we should go all-out for Christmas.”