We Think the World of You

by J. R. Ackerley

  Yes, it was true, and it had all been useless. I saw it now and how pitiful it was. It had been a mistake from beginning to end, the total struggle, all that love and labor, passion and despair; it had all been hopeless and unavailing; I had lost the fight for him before ever it had begun.

  “Do you see what I mean?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, Johnny. That I should never have interfered.”

  “Now, now, I didn’t mean nothing like that. What I meant was——”

  “That everything was perfectly all right.”

  “I’m not blaming you, mind. It was me own fault, and you done your best, I know. All I’m saying is——”

  “That I’ve spoiled your life.”

  Then the rot set in. The pleasant precarious situation came to an end. Evie hastened it, for in two successive heats the matings she submitted to did not take and she began to be suspected, in the phrase of a breeder, of being “a barren bitch.” With the failure of the prospective goldmine the party started to break up. Appointments with Johnny were less easily made, more frequently forgotten or defeated; yet at the same time he began to put in claims for her oftener than he had done before. . . . Then he failed an engagement that included her. He had taken her for a few days and was to have brought her along to visit me on a certain evening. He neither came nor phoned. That shattered me. If I could get on now without him or without her, a future that contained neither was one I could not enter. I hurried to Fulham. The house was in darkness, the keys were not in their place, no one came to my rattling. And recollecting that other occasion when I had drummed upon the empty house, a cold terror seized me that this was what I was destined to do, that this was my inescapable fate for ever and ever. What could have happened? Where could they be? I hastened over to the pub he frequented and searched it in vain. Then I remembered another, smaller pub he sometimes used, and there he was, alone, standing in the public bar with a pint of beer in front of him.

  “Evie?” I said.

  “She’s indoors. She’s okay. ’Ave a drink.”

  Now, my agitation stilled, I noticed him, and saw that it was the same old story. Always, before coming out of an evening, he smartened himself up, but he was wearing his working clothes; his thick dark curly hair, over the arrangement of which he normally took great pains, was unbrushed; the side of his face was badly scratched. I had seen it many times before and did not have to ask questions. I knew that after their row, over me of course, Megan had rushed off in a rage to spend the evening with her friends, but that the jealousy that had shot her off would soon swing her back to search for him; I knew that he would again refer to her as a “bloody cow,” and that this pub, which he had selected for its less embarrassing publicity, was as far from her as he would ever get; I knew that he would stay here dumbly pouring pints into himself and urinating them out until she came and found him; I knew that the wrangle would be resumed, by her and on a more perfunctory note to cloak the starkness of her triumph, that she would shame him into buying her a drink by demanding it in a voice loud enough to be overheard, that he would stalk sullenly home beside her and copulate with her before dawn, and that peace would then be restored—until he attempted to assert himself again; and I knew that he was pleased to see me and that I was, and always had been, powerless to help him. If he had really needed me he would have come to me in spite of her.

  “Drink up!” said he.

  How boyish he looked with his hair in a muddle—as he used to look, once upon a time.

  “Johnny,” I said, in sudden desperation, “let’s get away from here! Come with me! Do what you promised to do! You can stay the night or as long as you like. We’ll take Evie too! The three of us together! How wonderful it will be! Come! Do come!”

  “Ah-h, I’m not in the mood. Drink up!”

  I was no use to him. I stood him a drink. Then I asked:

  “May I take Evie back with me?”

  “I’ve only ’ad ’er a coupler days. You can fetch ’er Monday.”

  “All right. I’ll be getting along then.”

  “What d’you want to go for? It’s early.”

  “Megan will be here at any moment.”

  “Ah, sod ’er!”

  I turned towards him.

  “Johnny, if you don’t want me, go back to Evie! She’d give you such a welcome! Go now and take her for a nice long walk! How happy you would make her!”

  “She’s all right. I’ll take ’er round before I turn in.”

  I said gently: “But that’s routine. Give her something special tonight, a surprise, a present. She does love you so much.”

  “Ah-h, I feel like getting pissed.”

  “Then you won’t be able to take her afterwards,” I said with a smile.

  “I can always keep me feet.”

  We were no use to him, either of us. He thought the world of us both, and we were no use to him at all. She lonely in his kitchen, I lonely in my flat, and neither of us any use to him, lonely in his pub. That was what I saw, standing beside him in the sad little place; and it was true. A few days later he remarked, with a laugh, that someone was wanting to buy her.

  “Johnny!” I cried. “Give her to me! She belongs to me!”

  I tried to meet his eyes, but they would not meet mine.

  “I can’t do that,” he muttered, gnawing his nails.

  Now I could not look at him either as I said:

  “Well, if you sell her, you can sell her to no one but me.”

  “Who said I meant to sell her?” he replied irritably.

  Nothing more was said just then, but he had frightened me over a wide area; by the time the subject came up again, as I feared it would, I had decided upon my answer. Evie had already been valued, at his request, by a breeder we had visited together, who had hazarded the rough figure of “about thirty or forty pounds.” This was in her gold-mine period when we were seeking a husband for her; her value now could be nothing like that. But when a little later Johnny told me that some pub acquaintance of his was “absolutely crazing” him to sell her and had even called round to ask him to name a price, I could risk it no longer. What his intentions really were I did not know, but they must now be put to the fatal test. I said:

  “If you ever decide to sell her, Johnny, it must be to me, and I will give you forty pounds for her any day.”

  He did not reply. But the next day—alas, poor Johnny, I knew that if it happened at all it would be the next day, it was what I both dreaded and desired—he came over unannounced.

  “Did you mean what you said about the forty quid?”

  “Of course.”

  “Give it me,” said he roughly.

  In this way Evie became my dog. But since I was still in the same predicament of being unable to keep her single-handed, I stipulated, as part of the bargain, that the old arrangement should continue until I could make other plans. It had never been satisfactory and for Evie herself I had long regarded it as actually bad; she was a creature much in need of the stabilizing influence of a settled life and a home of her own where she could function confidently in her canine way, and the divided life she had been leading, in which she never could feel sure to whom she belonged, must be very frustrating for her: but in any case the affair was doomed. Now that the dog had passed, I, in Megan’s scheme of things, could pass also; an outward show of politeness was maintained, but behind it she was working my total destruction. So everything went back to what it had been before; Johnny scarcely ever came to see me; if I wrote to him my letters were intercepted and suppressed; the keys began to be forgotten, so that either I could not put the dog in or could not get her out, and sometimes spent an agitated hour or more hanging about their street with little Rita for unhelpful company. Megan was not clever enough to see that she was waging war against an adversary who had already capitulated. Her interferences in my life with Johnny no longer aroused in me the black and murderous passions they had once aroused; it was only when she started to withhold the keys that I per
ceived that my connection with them both was at an end. On one of my last rare meetings with Johnny, when Evie had done lavishing upon him her unfailing, her wonderful, greeting, he remarked as he stroked her glowing head:

  “You ’ad the best of the bargain.”

  I knew, of course, to what bargain he referred; but when I looked across her body into the eyes that had once affected me so deeply and now affected me no more, and nodded, it was not of that bargain that I was thinking.

  And that, it might be thought, is the end of the story; but of course it was only the beginning. A new character, even, has to be introduced, though luckily for the dramatic unities a not entirely fresh one, for she has already played a small peripheral part.

  During the two years whose events this history has attempted to relate, the fortunes of my country cousin suffered a serious reverse. It was a reverse I might have prevented if I had not been too distracted to give her that advice over her financial affairs which she had requested at the time of Miss Sweeting. In the result she speculated unwisely and lost a considerable part of her income. As her nearest relative she had always looked to me for help. Nearest and dearest: the most salient thing about my cousin Margaret was that she thought the world of me. It had, indeed, long been her wish to enter and manage my life; it had long been my concern to fend her off. The bachelor is often considered fair game to those relations, particularly the female part of them, whose own lives have become empty or straitened: poor, helpless fellow, the formula runs, he needs a woman’s care.

  And now the trouble was that I did need care, though not for myself. The connection was all too patent: since the responsibility for assisting my cousin had fallen on me, the economic temptation presented itself of getting some return for my money by employing her to mind my dog. It was, in the event, a temptation I would have been wise to resist and, sensing the dangers, I did not succumb to it at once. I began by advertising for a boy. Evie was already an object of awed admiration to the local children; might not a steady one be found who would be glad to earn a little pocket money by helping me with her? But although a stream of willing urchins called, I could not bring myself to entrust her to any of them—and was therefore able to add another point of view, poor Millie’s, to those I was collecting. In the end I took on my cousin in the capacity of kennel-maid and, since I could not afford her a separate establishment, housed her in my flat.

  This entailed considerable sacrifice on my part. My flat was small. It comprised virtually only two rooms, my bedroom and my sitting-room, for the lobby that separated them and which I used as a dining-room was scarcely more than an extension of the passage. In order to fit my cousin in, therefore, I had to relinquish one of these rooms. I bestowed upon her my bedroom, retreating myself into my sitting-room which contained a small divan bed and thenceforward became my bed-sitting-room. Evie, of course retreated with me; but it was at once apparent that these innovations, which I myself was prepared to endure entirely for her sake, did not please her.

  It would be no overstatement to declare that from the moment Evie achieved her ambition, which was to get me to herself in a home of her own, her true character was instantly revealed. There had been indications of it before, but I had misread them. Her persistent hostility to strangers may well have been compounded of various emotions, nervousness, suspicion, and a desire to protect me; but all these, I now realized, were overridden by something infinitely stronger, an intense, possessive jealousy.

  Directly Margaret arrived, Evie laid down the law. The law was simple and, in my judgment, reasonable; she was prepared, since it appeared to be my wish, to put up with my cousin and allow her about the flat—with one proviso: our room, hers and mine, whenever I was at home, was strictly private. This suited me well, I value solitude and, suspecting that my cousin did not, had already apprehended that I might have to struggle to preserve what little remained to me. This prospect made me rather uneasy, for, to speak the truth, I was nervous of Margaret. She was one of those people whose virtues (and she was far from being without them) are apparent only when they are getting their own way; opposed there was something cold and ruthless about her. And I was wary of her for another reason, for the very quality in her which I have already mentioned, that she thought the world of me. I did not therefore altogether relish providing that display of firmness which, I foresaw, might be required before a modus vivendi was reached. Evie provided it for me.

  She would not permit my cousin to set foot in my room. More, with a female instinct for female stratagem, she would not permit any of those first moves—that thin edge of the wedge—which might lead to this result. She challenged my cousin’s right to knock upon the door, even to approach it, even to call to me through it. All these maneuvers were instantly greeted with a volley of violent and hysterical barking. Her mind, indeed, when I was at home, was entirely occupied with this anxiety, this menace—as she appeared to regard it—to her marital rights. It was extraordinary, it was fascinating, to watch her. As soon as I shut us both in, she would take up an invariable position on the bed which, standing as it did against the wall by the door, gave her a strategic command over the latter. Arranging herself in a vigilant attitude upon the end nearest the door and facing it, she would lie, or rather crouch, there listening. I would look up from my book and see her, absolutely still, wonderfully beautiful, her long nose pointing down to the bottom of the door, her head tilted, her great ears cocked forward, attentively following my cousin’s movements outside. If she detected in these, to me inaudible, sounds what seemed to her the smallest tendency to vacillate, to veer, she would instantly utter a sharp warning bark and, raising her head, stare fixedly at the ceiling. This curious motion puzzled me for a time; then I perceived the reason for it. The door was draped inside by a long curtain that bulged out over a miscellany of garments which were hanging beneath it, and Evie could not therefore see the door itself or the handle. Moreover, a constant slight draught kept the curtain always stirring a little. Consequently it was difficult for her to tell, by looking at it, whether the door itself was moving; but this she could ascertain by studying the ceiling, upon which, when the door opened, a widening arc of light was instantly cast from the dining-room outside. The moment she saw this, for which she was perpetually waiting, she would launch herself off the bed in a passion of vocal rage and, planting herself on the threshold, her tail lashing from side to side, bar my cousin’s entry.

  All this, as I have said, suited me nicely. But it did not suit my cousin. Having gained, upon any terms, the object of her desire, a foothold in my flat, she planned, as I feared she would, to become mistress of it, and it was deeply mortifying for her to find another, self-constituted, mistress already installed, and one, moreover, of a character as determined as her own. It was not long, therefore, before she developed a point of view, which of course I saw: even if the discernment of points of view had not now become a speciality of mine I could hardly have failed to notice hers, I heard it so often. Evie never behaved like this in my absence; she was quiet, docile, amenable; she accepted everything without demur and did not even oppose my cousin’s entry into the sacred but now deserted chamber. It was therefore disgusting, it was the basest ingratitude, to be turned on by the dog—“After all I’ve done for her!”—the moment I came back; and it was all my fault, I spoiled Evie, I let her do anything she liked, I ought to pet her less and punish her more, I ought (this, I sadly noted, was one of my cousin’s favorite words) not to allow her to sleep in my room, I was turning her into a beastly dog, jealous and treacherous. . . .

  Let there be no doubt of it, I was extremely grateful to my cousin. She was kind to Evie, and the services she rendered me, not only by setting me free for my work and holidays but by setting me free with an easy mind, could not, I gladly admit, have been better performed by anyone else. She was, in short, what I knew she would be, a perfectly reliable kennel-maid; and that, after all, was the capacity in which I had engaged her. But it was not the capacity in which s
he saw herself. All her complaints about Evie were entirely, were delightfully, true; the animal was not the same in my absence; but they were not the truth. The truth was that, like Megan, she was jealous of the dog. She could not bear that Evie should have privileges denied to her. She could not bear to be excluded by her. The thought of the animal inside my room and herself outside gnawed at her vitals. The closed door that shut her out stood always before her, a frustration, a persecution, an affront, and a challenge. She was forever plotting to get into the room simply because she knew she was not welcome in it; and Evie was forever plotting to keep her out. It was the strangest, the most prodigious, thing I ever saw, this duel that was fought between my cousin and my dog. I would leave the room for some purpose and Evie who went with me everywhere, would follow at my heels. This provided my cousin with the opportunity for which she lay ceaselessly in wait, her need to enter the room having become so obsessive that merely to slip into it, this citadel of my love, even at such an apparently undefended moment, seemed to her a compensation and a score. Upon some small pretext or other, therefore—to empty an ashtray, to remove a used cup, duties for which she had not been engaged but which she liked to regard as within her scope—she would make her little housewifely dart. But Evie’s jealousy appeared to have equipped her with human faculties and a cunning equal to her adversary’s; she sensed my cousin’s intentions almost before they entered the realm of action. With lowered head and a movement of quite uncanny stealth she would turn and glide rapidly back along the passage wall, thrust herself roughly past my cousin’s legs, nipping at her feet as she went, so that my cousin yelped with pain, and intercept her on the threshold.

  Then my cousin changed her tactics. She tried to win the dog away from me with love. And now, alas for the lessons of life, alas for human faith, my heart misgave me. Had I prepared my own undoing? I had wanted Evie happy in my absences, and they were becoming longer and more frequent; my cousin was feeding her daily and doing for her all the things I used to do myself; she was seeing far more of her than I. Indeed, it was all as I had desired and planned; excepting that I did not want to lose my dog. When I thought of losing her I trembled with the kind of internal cold that seems the presage of death. I loved her; I wished her forever happy; but I could not bear to lose her. I could not bear even to share her. She was my true love and I wanted her all to myself. I was afflicted, in short, by the same fear that had haunted poor Johnny in his prison, the fear that he might lose his second Evie as he had lost his first. One night she was missing from my room. I woke suddenly in the dark early hours; the air was strangely cold; the chair was empty. Where could she be? I got up and hunted the flat; she was nowhere to be found. My cousin’s door was closed; she was inside my cousin’s room; she had chosen my cousin. I returned to my bed and lay down on it in the darkness. “This is the end,” I thought. “She loves my cousin more than me. I can never care for her again. I am alone in the cold, cruel world.” Then in the distance I heard, like the sorrow of a ghost, the faint whistling sigh she made through her nose when she was grieving. Creeping back to my cousin’s door I gently turned the handle. Evie at once emerged and reentered my room. She had not been on my cousin’s bed, she had been lying by the door; my cousin had enticed and shut her in against her will. I knew then that she was my dog forever and ever, and I fell asleep with the peacefulness of a child.