With a strength of purpose remarkable in so indolent a boy he had walked her all the way back from Stratford to Fulham. It could be argued that no other course was open to him to get her there, for he would not have had the courage to tackle the train if he had thought of it; yet it remained for him an extraordinary feat of energy and devotion. There was no question now, it seemed, of considering the Winders’ feelings and returning her to them; apart from the fact that Tom was dying of cancer, she had taken to standing on her hind legs against the fence at the bottom of the yard, barking at the trains that passed over the embankment and the neighbors had complained. What I had been expecting of her, if I had been expecting anything, I did not know; but she seemed not at all changed. She had been with Johnny for a week, and although he tried to make light of the problems she presented he admitted they existed and that, in spite of everything that had been said to him about her, he had not realized what she was like. But he had the future all mapped out; when he started work on the following Monday he was going to get up half an hour early to give her a walk first; if his job lay close at hand he’d pop home for dinner and nip her out again then; and in the evenings, when he’d had his tea and cleaned himself up, he’d take her for a good hour’s run. Her food was to be “the same as we ’as ourselves,” and he was going to get busy at once about finding her a mate. . . .
But when the happy afternoon drew to its close and he put on his clothes to go, she did not follow him. Standing between us in the passageway she watched him take down the lead from the rack.
“Come on, old girl,” said he, but she did not move, and as soon as this happened I knew that I had known that it would happen, that it had all been decided long ago. With her ears flattened back upon her dark neck, and in a curious crouching attitude, a kind of turntail attitude, yet obstinate too, for her front legs were already braced against any attempt that might be made to drag her forth, she gazed up at him with the unflinching look of a wild beast. He stared at her in surprise.
“Come along, old lady,” he said gently, but the only stir she made was to glance swiftly back at me; then she fixed her eyes watchfully on him again. I made no move either; the contest was none of mine, it lay between him and her; but as I leaned up against the jamb of the door I felt that I was not witnessing anything that was happening now, but remembering something that had been enacted in a dream. He took a step towards her; she at once turned and went back past me into my sitting-room.
“Well, would you believe it?” he said, and made to follow her. But I put my arms around him and, halting him on the threshold, drew him towards me.
“Let her stay with me for the weekend, Johnny. It’s our due.”
“Looks as if I’ll ’ave to,” said he with a grimace. And “Would you believe it?” he repeated, though more to himself than to me, and made again to go in after her.
“No!” I said.
“That’s all right, Frank,” he replied quietly. “I just want to say good-bye to ’er.”
I did not enter with him, but I saw what passed between them. Evie was entrenched in the chair, her chin resting on the rampart of the arm, her alert gaze watching the door; when Johnny appeared, her tail began to thump the seat and she looked up at him with a sweet, humble look.
“You faithless woman!” he said reproachfully, and sitting on the arm beside her he fondled her for some time in an abstracted way. Then taking her head between his palms he bent down and kissed her. She licked his hand. She loved him, I could see; but when he came out she remained where she was. Ah yes, I felt sorry for him; I felt for him the pang I saw he felt for himself; he must have known at that moment that he had lost his dog as he had lost his son, but love him too as I did, there was nothing now that I could do about that. Even if I had forced her out—and I knew I could not expel her from my life a second time—he had seen her make her choice, and since there was no doubt that, in his way, he did think the world of her, she hardly could be and, I fear, never was the same to him again. Yes, I saw all that, though not so clearly as, alas, I saw it later, for I saw something else besides, I saw that she loved us both and that, whichever image lay uppermost, we were closely connected in her heart as we had lately been connected in her eyes; like a camera, like a casket, she contained us together, clasped in each other’s arms; she was a stronger, a living bond between us.
The prompt return of borrowed dogs to their owners—it was another of the lessons I had lately learnt; I took Evie back to Johnny on the Monday morning and, as though nothing had happened to ruffle it, the future life he had planned for her was put into practice. But I visited them frequently thereafter, and soon things began to turn out as I had foreseen, and a number of things turned out that I might have foreseen if I had studied the signs more diligently. The energetic timetable he had set himself under my critical eye was short-lived, as I knew it would be, partly through his own laziness, partly through one of those extra factors I had not foreseen: Megan became jealous of the dog. Johnny’s work did not lie close at hand as he had hoped, and was it likely, when he returned in the evening after being away all day, that she would tamely submit to him going off again for an hour to take Evie for a walk? Besides what else might he not get up to, idling about among other idlers in the Fulham Rec.? Rows started.
“The dog’s all you think of,” she would say. “You think more of her than you do of me and the children.”
“She ’as to ’ave a piss, don’t she?” Johnny would retort in a voice of rage, and the flat would resound with argument and recrimination.
But beneath it all, I noticed as time wore on, undercurrents of chaff were discernible. Yell at her as he did, red in the face with pumped-up indignation, Johnny was not wholly unsuited by Megan’s objections. His tea, in any case, had always come first and, after his day’s work, he was, of course, much in need of it; but Evie had not left the house since eight o’clock in the morning, for no one could hold her but he, and owing to the violent impetuosity of her behavior, which both endangered her life and frightened people in the street, she could not simply be let out like a cat; there was no back yard for her here as there had been at Millie’s, and now it was six in the evening. Indeed, I was accustoming myself to seeing other people’s points of view and was therefore able to perceive Johnny’s when I dropped in around that hour, yet I could not myself, however tired and thirsty I might be, have sat down to my tea in such circumstances before taking the animal out, if only for five minutes, first. But in Johnny’s philosophy, it seemed, Evie’s bladder and bowels must wait until he was ready for them to open. And since she herself was remarkably obliging at holding everything up, he spent, as time passed, longer and longer over his tea. Megan noticed this too, and quickly took its satisfactory measure. When she wished to be particularly aggravating she would draw attention to it:
“Aren’t you going to take the dog out! I thought she had to have a piss?”
“Give us a chance!” Johnny would exclaim, half-annoyed, half-amused. “Can’t I swaller me tea first?”
It was I who, calling for her at odd times, mostly took her out at last, on those long, countrified walks she loved, and if Johnny was there to observe the way she flew out of his house with me and related it to her behavior to him in mine, he did not allude to it. It was I too who, in order to save her digestion from Megan’s abominable fries, procured her meat, standing for hours, sometimes in the rain and later in the cold, in those immense queues of frantic animal lovers which, at that period, were one of the sights of London. I did not mind. Nothing that I did for Johnny’s dog seemed too much trouble. Yet it was, from my own point of view, a far from satisfactory state of affairs, and in the conflict which, I had always known, would break out again between Megan and myself, of the approach of which, indeed, there were already premonitory signs (whether the new child was ever actually christened “Frank,” or christened at all, I never ascertained, but although Johnny began calling him “Frankie,” Megan dubbed him “David” and that became h
is name), I too was learning the wisdom of the serpent. While Johnny continued to house his dog I seldom saw him unless I called; since there was scarcely time for her, there was clearly less for me; but if she lived with me—and I was now borrowing her again for single nights and for weekends—then I foresaw that I could get him too. And apart from the many claims I already had to keep her, I was, I perceived, the true master of a situation in which his interests were deeply involved: I was in a far better position than he to breed from her. This was a trump card that could hardly fail to impress not only Johnny but Megan. If Evie was to be the goldmine of expensive pedigree puppies, which, it was increasingly plain, was a project that occupied the forefront of Johnny’s mind, how was the mating to be arranged? Fees for the hiring of a stud dog were far beyond his means, and what likelihood was there of a boy in his circumstances and neighborhood happening upon someone who owned a suitably blue-blooded sire and was willing to lend him for nothing? Renouncing, therefore, all claims to past promises, such as that holiday with him, of which, I now guessed, he would be grateful not to be reminded, I made him a proposition. Evie should live with me so that I could look after her more easily; but since I could not cope with her during the week, I should leave her every morning at his place, calling for her on my return from work. If he wanted her at any time to stay with him, he could always have her and for as long as he wished. Finally, I would mate her for him, undertaking all the expense, and the proceeds of the litters should belong wholly to him. He agreed, as I knew he would; after all that I had done for her, and for him, it would have been difficult for him to refuse; what difficulty there was lay in telling, from the quiet “Okay, Frank” with which he let me have my way, what his true feelings were.
We jogged along like this for nearly a year, and it gave me, as I had calculated, the best of both possible worlds; it gave me Johnny’s dog and it often gave me Johnny. It was, indeed, while it lasted, the happiest time of my life. Every morning that I had to go to work I walked her over to his flat and parked her there; every afternoon or evening I called for her and walked her back. His keys were left, by arrangement, in a window-box by the door, so that I might let myself in without disturbing Megan. and I would take Evie into the front room and shut her in. She fell in with this routine at once as though she perfectly understood—indeed, it was immensely touching the way she fell in with everything—and made no attempt to follow me when I left. But as she lay down obediently upon the bedding of old coats that Johnny had spread for her comfort, she fixed on me always, when I bent to kiss her, so wistful a look, which said as plain as words “You will come back, won’t you?” that I never felt easy in my mind until I found her again. Johnny himself I seldom saw on these occasions; as seldom did he see his dog; and all this was as I wished, for it was in my own flat that I wanted him to meet us and I was always inventing reasons to get him there. Not that he should need persuasions, I thought, only such business excuses as would enable him to extricate himself with as little dispute as possible from the jealous possessiveness of Megan, for how could he resist the prospect of the welcome that awaited him, not from me—I knew he could resist that—but from Evie? After me he was, and remained, her favorite man, the only other person that she loved. She had perceived instantly the truth about him, that, as Millie had once angrily declared, he was a gentle, tender-hearted boy, and that he thought the world of her. She never barked at his approach, as she barked at the approach of everyone else; she knew unerringly his step upon the stair, even his odor in the downstairs hallway if he had lately passed through ahead of us, and her snuffling murmurs of excitement communicated the joyful news to me. And then, when she found him, how she greeted him, whimpering and sighing in her delight, licking and licking his handsome face! It was, I always thought as I watched, with a passionate participation, these passionate demonstrations of her love, a proof both of his tenderness towards her and of the essential sweetness of his nature that he never turned his face aside. Over his beautiful lips and eyes, into his nostrils, the dog’s tongue would go, as though she could not lick him enough, as though she, too, knew how delicious was the taste of his flesh, and he never drew back or turned his face away, but let her lick her fill. And yet this love she lavished upon him, did it not contain the seeds of sorrow? He was second best, he knew it and that he never could be more to her than that, and the more therefore she laid it on, this one-man dog of his to whom he was not the one man, the more he must have felt what he had lost. Indeed, I saw it, for when she had done making love to him he would make love to her. He knew—it was what he was good at, the conferring of physical pleasure—exactly where and how to touch her, and as soon as his hand descended she would roll over on her side and open her legs, and his strong yet gentle fingers would move over her stomach, manipulating her nipples and her neat, pretty genital, shaped like the crown of a daffodil, in a way she enjoyed, while he whispered little affectionate obscenities into her ears. “Is this it, gal? Is this what you like?” he would say, and she would sigh and swoon away beneath him. Yet she never followed him; and though sometimes, when we saw him part-way home along the towing-path, he would test her again, out of a lingering curiosity, perhaps a lingering disbelief, by inviting her to go with him, she stayed at my side; but she would look back from time to time at his small receding figure, a sweet thing he never did for us. Yes, she knew he thought the world of her; but possibly, I reflected, she guessed, as I now did, what the world amounted to, and that what he had just done for us was, of all things she wanted, the most she would ever get, and that she could not count even on that.
It was because of all this, I felt sure, that he seldom exercised the right he had to take her from me. I put no hint nor hesitation in his way; on the contrary I sometimes reminded him of his right, for as well as the sense of sorrow I felt for him, I had, in the very gladness I felt for myself, a sense of guilt, that I, and Millie too for that matter, had managed somehow to despoil him of his possessions at a moment when he had been powerless to defend them. His possessions or, less concedable, more outrageous, some part of himself that he did not wish to give, something that his heart was unwilling any longer to submit to ours. At any rate, whatever it was that we had done to him and whatever he felt, whether he knew that, in spite of my reminders, I found it increasingly hard to part with Evie, or whether he himself found it increasingly hard to face the fact that, when she was with him and love him as she did, she was always listening for me, he did not ask for her much. And so it passed, this strange, sad, pretty time in which she lived between us and held us reticently together; for came a day when we had a conversation which shed over the whole past a bleak and bitter light. He began it.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong about all this, Frank. I’m not saying that. But there’s two ways of looking at it.”
“Oh, Johnny,” I said, “I’m sure there are. But looking at what?”
“Well, it’s like this. If I ’adn’t got nicked screwin’ and Evie ’ad lived with me as my dog, she’d ’ave ’ad a different life from what she’s ’ad with you, if you see what I mean; but that’s not to say she wouldn’t ’ave been just as well off.”
“I suppose that would depend upon the kind of life you gave her.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Not to my way of thinking. That’s what I mean. Whatever it was, she’d ’ave got used to it and been just as well off.”
I turned this over in my mind.
“As happy?”
“Yes, as ’appy. What you’ve never ’ad you never miss. If I’d ’ad ’er all along, I’d ’ave brought ’er up me own way. I’d ’ave took ’er out first thing in the morning for ’er piddles, then she’d ’ave ’ad it until I come in for me tea. After that I’d ’ave took ’er up to the pub and she’d ’ave sat there quiet beside me while I ’ad a few pints and a game of darts. Then she’d ’ave walked ’ome be’ind me afterwards. Weekends I’d ’ave took ’er farther.”
Evie had now developed talents; she had become a skillfu
l rabbiter, pelting a daily fifteen miles in Richmond Park. I was about to say this when I saw that it was, of course, the very thing he meant. The conversation had begun to worry me. I said lightly:
“Ah, Johnny, none of your poor dogs gets all he wants from you, and we love you just the same.”
But he was not to be deflected. It was as though he was determined to make nonsense of the past.
“It’s all what you’re used to, see? Of course it wouldn’t do now, because she’s ’ad a different way of life and she’d miss it. But if she’d ’ad my way instead, she’d ’ave been just as ’appy, for she wouldn’t ’ave known no better.”
Perhaps it was true. I did not want to look. I was happy again myself—and I knew that my happiness was vulnerable. What he was inviting me to look at was the world he thought of his creatures, and it was his world, not ours. Into it we were required to fit, patient and undemanding, awaiting our sops, the walk, the letter, the visit, the descending hand. Evie herself had managed to escape from it. As for me, I did not want to look. I said, vaguely teasing:
“Then you do think mine better?”
“No, I wouldn’t even say that. I didn’t mean it that way. What I mean is, ’ow many dogs, town dogs, gets as much exercise as Evie gets? Not one in a ’undred. Not one in a thousand. Now do they? Lots of them never do no more than sit about outside the shops and ’ouses where they belong, yet you can’t say they’re un’appy, for they don’t know nothing else, and you can’t say they’re un’ealthy, for they grows old like any other dog what’s ’ad a different life. . . .”
We Think the World of You Page 14
