We Think the World of You

by J. R. Ackerley

  “Yes,” said the gruff voice, “shoot her. It’s the kindest thing to do. I know exactly the sort of dog she is, had dozens of ’em through my hands. She’ll never be any good now, take it from me; she’ll be a nuisance to you, herself, and everyone else, besides giving the breed a bad name, which it’s unfortunately got already through mishandled dogs. But don’t have her injected, have her shot, it’s the quickest way. Borrow a gun and do it yourself if you’re fond of her. And do it at once, for you’ll have to do it in the end. Though of course if you want me to take her I will; but I warn you it’ll be a case of stiff fees and no results. Sorry and all that. Good-bye.”

  “Wait!” I cried. But Miss Sweeting had rung off.

  I replaced the receiver. Evie was still sitting beside me, regarding me with such gravity that, for a stricken moment, I wondered if she could possibly have overheard. Petrified I stared into her unblinking eyes. What on earth could I do? Would that infernal woman of Johnny’s report my message correctly to him? She never seemed to have a grain of sense except where her own advantage was concerned. Perhaps I had better try out on him as well one of those letters that might or might not get through. I sat down to it at once.

  The daylight hours we spent mostly in the open air. Evie saw to that. And it was borne in upon me that, without perceiving it, I had grown old and dull, I had forgotten that life itself was an adventure. She corrected this. She held the key to what I had lost, the secret of delight. It was a word I often used, but what did I know of the quality itself, I thought, as I watched her inextinguishable high spirits, her insatiable appetite, not for food, in which she seemed scarcely interested, but for fun, the way she welcomed life like a lover? So extreme was her excitement when outings were proposed that it looked as though she could not bear the very thing she wanted, but, as with her collar in the Winders’ kitchen, must do all she could to frustrate or postpone the fulfillment of her heart’s desire. This she did by removing from me my clothes as fast as I tried to put them on, my socks, my shoes, my gloves, and bounding with them all over the flat in a transport of joy. Hysterical with laughter I would pursue her from room to room, only to find myself continually deprived again of the thing-before-the-last I had managed to retrieve. Then, when I had eventually assembled everything, she would fly into the kitchen and hurl about the vegetables from the vegetable basket, strewing the passage with carrots, onions, and potatoes as though they were flowers upon a triumphal way. She was childish, she was charming, and to me it seemed both strange and touching that anyone should find the world so wonderful.

  Yet at the same time, and although it would seem unfair to criticize the character of a creature the surprising thing about whom was that she had managed to preserve any good character at all, I had to admit that she showed at once certain traits which it was difficult not to regret; she had a tendency to be both a bully and a nag. These features were constantly observable in her behavior towards the human race. Either she was nervous of people, or she simply did not like them, it was hard to tell which; at any rate not merely would she not permit them to touch her, she would not permit them even to approach or address her; from which it naturally followed, since we were always together, that she would not permit them to approach or address me. She challenged, she interrupted, she threatened, and I soon gave up attempting to take her into pubs or shops, she made such deplorable scenes. Her notion of life was perfectly clear and perfectly simple; it was to be out with me all day on the towing-path or Barnes Common, to be always on the move, and to have me entirely to herself. I gratified her wishes in everything; it was, after all, what I had brought her away to do; but it must be added that I derived from it all a sense of personal satisfaction also, for it was a long time, I thought sourly, since anyone had seemed to want my company so much.

  Whatever else might happen, it was plain, Evie was not going to let me out of her sight again. I could not go from one room of my flat to another but she instantly followed, as though fearing that if I turned a corner and her eyes lost their grip on me I might vanish quite away. When dusk fell and the curtains were drawn she accepted this, without demur, as the end of the day’s play, and sat peacefully with me in my study, curled up in my big armchair or reclined upon the divan bed, while I read or wrote. There was, however, one quiet little indoor game with which, on the second evening, she entertained me and, to speak the truth, momentarily disturbed my mind. Not that I could have retreated then, even had I wished to retreat, I say to myself looking back; I was already too deeply involved. In any case the whole thing could easily be laughed off. . . . It began simply enough. She was sitting on the divan facing me, staring at me, her long forelegs close together, the paw joints flexed over the edge of the bed. Sitting thus, she suddenly picked up her ball which, with various other objects to which she seemed to attach a value, she had collected about her, and set it on her legs. It rolled down them, as upon rails, fell to the floor and bounced across the room towards me. This was nothing. Pure accident. Merely amusing. The mechanics were easy; our relative positions directed the ball inevitably from her to me. Receiving it into my hand I returned it with a laugh. She caught it in her jaws. But then she set it on her legs again; down them it rolled, bounced across the carpet and reached my hand. Now I looked at her with more particularity and put my book away. The ball was in my hand and she was gazing at me expectantly. For a second I hesitated, as though a cautionary hand had been laid upon me. Then I cast it back into her waiting jaws. She placed it upon her legs a third time. It did not move. Peering down at it, as if in perplexity, she gave it, with her long black nose, a shove, and it began once more its slow conversational journey from her to me. But now, just as it reached the verge—was it simply because she childishly felt she could not after all bear to part with it, or because the hitch that had occurred had vexed her?—she suddenly seized it back with a swift, almost scolding, thrust of the head and replaced it on her legs. It rolled. It fell. It bounced. It crossed the room and came into my hand. Yes, yes, of course, I know; it is absurd to read too much into animal behavior, and afterwards, as I have said, I laughed it off; but at that moment I did take the uncanny impression that, in a deliberate and purposeful way, she had gathered up all her poor resources and, in order to reach me directly and upon my own ground, had managed to cross that uncrossable barrier that separates man and beast. The expression on her face contributed to this fleeting illusion. Some animals have a furrow above their eyes very like that furrow, etched by a lifetime of meditation, that we see upon the brow of sages. In the animal’s case, of course, it is merely the loose skin wrinkling upon the line of the socket bone; but it often imparts to their faces a similar look of wisdom. Evie had this “intellectual” line, and it lent to her expression now an appearance of the profoundest concentration. With her nose pointing down and her ears cocked forward she followed, with the utmost gravity, the progress of the ball as it traveled down her legs, fell over the edge, bounded across the carpet and reached my hand; then, without altering the bent position of her head, she raised her eyes beneath their furrowed brows to mine and directed at me the kind of look that two scientists might exchange after successfully bringing off some critical experiment in physics. Yet, when I returned the ball to her now, it was as though the effort she had been making—if effort it was—suddenly failed; she became a mere dog once more, kicking up her legs and rolling about with the toy in her mouth; and when I offered out of curiosity, to replay the game next evening, I could not get it going; she seemed worried and confused; the inspiration, having done its work, had apparently gone out of her forever.

  But if I could not refix her attention upon that, her eyes seldom left my face. Throughout the evenings as we sat I was conscious always of her presence; looking up I would find her gaze upon me, and each time I would be struck afresh by the astounding variety of her beauty. The device in the midst of her forehead had altered again; perhaps her ducking in the river had exposed detail which coal-dust had hitherto obscured; the b
lack caste mark was diamond-shaped still, but deep shadows had now developed upon either side of it, stretching across her brow, so that in certain lights the diamond looked like the body of a bird with its wings spread, a bird in flight. These dark markings on her chalky face—the diamond with its wing-like stains, the oblique black-rimmed eyes with the small jet eyebrow tufts set like accents above them, the long sooty lips—symmetrically divided it up into zones of delicate pastel colors, like a stained-glass window. The skull, bisected by the thread, was two oval pools of the palest honey, the center of her face was stone gray, her cheeks were silvery white and upon each a patte de mouche had been tastefully set. Framed in its soft white ruff, this strange face with its heavily leaded features and the occasional expression of sadness imparted to it by some slight movement of the brows, was the face of a clown, a clown by Rouault.

  Then she would move and be something quite different. She might sit in the attitude of the Sphinx, with her thick fur collar flounced upon her shoulders; or she might lower her head to rest it on her outstretched paws, so that, lying there, long and flat, the ears invisibly laid back against the dark upcurving neck, it resembled the head of some legendary serpent; or she might recline on her flank with one silver arm extended, the other doubled up upon its knuckles, in the posture of those heraldic lions that have one paw resting on an orb; or she might make herself so small and compact, withdrawing all her legs beneath her and coiling her long tail close around her, that, with the shaft of her neck rising out of the pool of her body, she looked more like a doe than a dog. I would glance up and meet her gaze which I felt to be upon me, and instantly the tall ears would crumple back and an expression of such sweetness come over her face that it was impossible not to go and caress her, this charming Krishna beast with her caste mark and her long almond eyes. I would have to go to her; she would not come to me. All the fawning sentiment that had characterized her puppy days had gone. Her love was now aloof. I would call her but she would not come. Motionless as a carven image she would sit, her head drawn back, her glowing eyes fixed tenderly and steadfastly upon me, and I would put my book away and go to her, moved by her love and her beauty. Shoot her indeed!

  At night she slept as she pleased, in an arm-chair in my bedroom, or on my bed. If she began on the chair she usually ended up on the bed. It was a double bed, bought to contain Johnny as well as myself, and sometimes she would curl up at my feet, but mostly against the pillow, laying down her head where his head used to lie. She was quite odorless; the faint sweet smell, perhaps, of fur or feather. And when the room was darkened she fell asleep at once. In the morning she would wake me by dabbing a paw on my face; sometimes I would be roused to find her lying with all her length upon me, her forearms on my shoulders, looking gaily down into my eyes. Another day had begun. . . .

  Saturday, Sunday, Monday . . . . the weekend slipped away. Tomorrow I would have to take her back. I could keep her no longer. “I must make a plan,” I said to myself as I turned out the light on the last day. “I’ll think it over before I go to sleep.” But I did not think it over; my mind seemed unable to grasp the fact and I fell asleep without considering it at all. “I must make a plan,” I said to myself the following morning as I drank my tea. “I suppose I’d better ring up Liverpool Street and find out about trains.” But I did not. The morning was bright and beautiful; I stared through the window instead at the boats passing up and down on the river below. Separated from me now not merely by distance but by the memory of that nightmare journey—for that was the obstacle my thoughts gripped on—Stratford seemed as remote as the Hebrides, and to get Evie back to it required, in my imagination, a resolution so dauntless, an effort so stupendous, that I could not even begin to think how it could be accomplished. Conversely, now that she had entered into my life, that other inconceivable proposition, as I had once envisaged it, of keeping her there, appeared, although it had not yet been put to any test, less impracticable. My mind, indeed, if it could be said to be busy at all, was busy with that. To leave her behind in my flat was out of the question. I had deserted her twice on Saturday to do a little shopping, and the change in her expression from jubilation as she bounded with me to the door, to the most poignant dismay and despair when I shut it in her face, had upset me so much that, tired though I was, I had rushed like a madman from shop to shop, muttering audibly at the slowness of other customers, even in one shop earning a rebuke for trying to push in front of them. On neither errand was I gone more than fifteen minutes, yet to my fond and guilty mind they had both seemed interminable. When I returned she was still standing where I had left her, her forehead against the door. . . . But why make plans? My office, after all, was on the way to Liverpool Street. . . . I could as easily ring up from there as from here. . . . I had a room of my own . . . . no harm in trying. . . . I could always take her on if it didn’t work. And I could cover myself against all eventualities by phoning a wire to Millie. This, at least, so far as planning went, was no sooner thought of than done: I said we might be delayed and she was not to worry if we did not turn up today. Perhaps she should have a letter of explanation too, just in case. . . . She would get it in the afternoon if I posted it now. I sat down to it at once, and my pen positively flew along as though the letter had been written for a long time in my head and was only waiting to come out. I described everything that had happened since I left her, the frightful journey, the walk across the parks (“If you could have seen her delighting in her youth and strength you would have understood more clearly what I mean about the wretched life she’s been leading and how frustrating it is”); I told her what Miss Sweeting had said and that I was now asking Johnny through Megan to let me put Evie in a kennel until he was free (“I’m sure he’ll agree. Since he’s a prisoner himself and knows what loss of freedom means he would not be so cruel as to condemn his dog to a similar fate”); and I ended by saying that Evie was still so intensely nervous that I doubted whether I should be able to induce her to enter another train just yet (“If I can’t I must try to work her into my life for a bit longer, though I don’t at the moment see how. But she’s in good health, so don’t worry, and I’ll be writing to you again soon”). Besides being too quickly written, this letter was far too long; I realized that when I took it to the post. Millie was no great reader and used to find, I remembered, as much difficulty with my normal calligraphy as she found with my normal speech; but I had been too carried away to think of using the special childish round-hand I generally employed when writing to her.

  As soon as I had done all this I felt extraordinarily light-hearted, almost light-headed. Nothing was resolved, but some tension had been released and it was in the blithest spirits that I set out with Evie, like Dick Whittington and his cat, to walk to London. In my despatch-case I carried a few biscuits to sustain her while I worked and a tin receptacle for water. But I had not gone far before I was annoyed and perturbed to find that the joints of my legs were painfully stiff. I had, after all, covered during the weekend as great a distance as I normally walked in months. When we reached Hammersmith Bridge I looked hopefully about for a taxi to carry us at least as far as Palace Gate; but to walk I had set out and to walk I was obliged. My objective was Gladstone House, a large block of government offices in the neighborhood of Regent’s Park; my own room was on the topmost floor, the sixth. Limping into the vestibule two-and-a-half hours later I gazed longingly, though doubtfully, at the lift. . . . Surely Evie, who had been using the one in my block of flats, could be said to be lift-minded by now? But, alas, as I feared, there was to her all the difference in the world between a self-operating lift that carried no one but ourselves and went non-stop to our destination, and one that not only contained a suspicious stranger in the person of the lift-man, but took on other suspicious strangers at every floor. When we reached the third, with half a dozen nervous people aboard, and I saw another half-dozen waiting to get in, I realized that it was time to get out, that no one would attempt to detain us if we did, and that the
lift-man would not feel offended if Evie never used his lift again.

  The working day, which had begun so fatiguingly, ended no better. I had entertained a hope that the six-mile walk which had almost worn me out would tire Evie a little too, and that she would be disposed to lie down and doze while I attended to my correspondence. This proved the fondest of illusions. She prowled restlessly about, whining and complaining, or stood staring at me as though she could scarcely believe the evidence of her senses; she uttered loud sighs or even louder cavernous yawns, subsiding from time to time into a heap on the floor, with a startling thud, as much as to say ‘Oh hell!’ only to get up again immediately; she tried, by all her usual tricks of stealing and pretending to destroy my gloves, to draw attention to herself and her wishes; when this did not work she instituted noisy cat-and-mouse games with her biscuits (none of which did she actually eat), hurling them all over the carpet until it was littered with their fragments; and she barked violently with her excruciating bitch’s bark, not only at everyone who entered the room but at every footstep in the busy passage outside. When I cuffed her in exasperation she put her fore-paws on my desk, upsetting the ink on my papers, in order to lick my face forgivingly. She was nevertheless much admired by my colleagues and had, for a time, a novelty value even beyond the department, so that a number of curious sightseers arrived throughout the morning. But she received them all so ungraciously that they did not call again.

  Although I had considered the question of her lunch (needlessly, as I have said), I had given no thought to my own; when the time for it arrived the prospect of obtaining any was not bright. I could not take her into the canteen, nor could I leave her shut up for half an hour while I visited it myself. Her feelings, and mine, apart, my room had no key, and anyone might look in on me in my absence. . . . My only chance, it seemed to me, and it involved further physical strain, was to find some small, unfrequented pub which would provide me with a sandwich and a pint of beer. Evie’s intense, petrified anxiety when she saw me preparing to leave, the almost mad stare with which her starting eyes pierced and searched my own for the answer to the only question in the world: “Me too?” unwelcome though it was, touched me as it always did. It also affected me with a sensation of hysteria similar perhaps to her own, a feeling that if I did not take care I should begin to laugh, or to cry, or possibly to bark, and never be able to stop, for I knew that as soon as I settled the matter by clipping on her lead I should be practically raped and then sucked down the spiral staircase like a leaf in the wind. These prospects afforded me so little pleasure in my present state of fatigue that I considered letting her follow me down uncontrolled, but I was afraid she might spiral impetuously out into the dangerous road and be run over. A number of staid officials plodding up from the floors below shrank against the wall as we sped past.