Someone to Look Up To

by Jean Gill

  ‘Which is always a good way to start. In fact the only way to start,’ declared her mother.

  I padded after Elodie, determined not to let her out of my sight, and after the pleasures of walking and grooming, I settled beside her as she bashed a computer keyboard. I dozed as she muttered, ‘another Behaviourist who thinks we should behave like dogs and bite them back ... a ‘dog whisperer’ ... like to see someone whisper in the ear of some of the dogs I saw in the S.P.A....‘totally natural training’... so a collar and lead are totally natural are they but a muzzle apparently isn’t...‘speak to your dog in a language he understands’... oh, not the old ‘eating before he does’, I’ll scream if I hear one more person turning food into rivalry with humans...what will they turn into a ‘privilege’ next? The air the dog breathes? Do they really think a dog’s so stupid he doesn’t know that a human is not a dog?!! OK perhaps we can learn some things from the way dogs treat each other but I thought the point was in the inter-species contact not trying to turn me into a dog... barking mad they are.

  You won’t believe this one! This couple have a problem with a dog territory-marking round the house and this Behaviourist advises them to urinate into bottles, keep the urine in separate bottles for a fortnight then sprinkle drops from the two different bottles round the house. So for a fortnight the dog carries on as usual, and then, if you accept the idea that a dog can’t tell human pee from dog pee, then he does what dogs do when they sniff another dog’s urine – he cocks his leg even more! I mean, can you see me asking Mum and Dad to piddle in bottles, keep it for two weeks, then sprinkle it on Mum’s beloved furniture.’ And so she went on and on for so long, I almost missed the change in tone.

  ‘That’s more like it. No hitting, no shouting... gentle dog training... but he openly says he uses whatever level of constraint is necessary... works with difficult and dangerous... and with puppies...no dog is irrecuperable... it is never too soon for a dog to learn – nor too late...Michel Hasbrouck and the dogmasters - sounds like Achilles and the Myrmidons in that film, or a sixties pop group... pity it’s a man – they can rely on physical strength instead of technique, because they’ve got it... but I think this is still the one, and he trains people to be trainers... Izzie,’ I perked up my ears, ‘we’re going to go and see Michel Hasbrouck. One and a half days together having fun near Paris. And then I’m going to keep going until I’m a dogmaster.’ Fun sounded good. Dog training was usually a doddle so that was all right too. My ears relaxed again. And then grew very very relaxed as slim fingers massaged the base, getting rid of the little itches in all those channels between the bones, smoothing the crimped hair on the ears themselves, teasing a little knot that had appeared since grooming, just behind my left ear.

  ‘I want to be someone you can look up to,’ Elodie told me, holding my brown stare with her serious hazel eyes. And there it was. The something Stratos had worked out but applied to the wrong Human. The something all dogs want. Love is the starting point, the only starting point, but we need to look up to someone. And Elodie would be that someone, I knew it, with or without this Michel Hasbrouck, whoever he was. She was more than halfway there, we were more than halfway there together. I thought back over my life, over how I had got here, over ‘here’.

  If I am lucky, I am only halfway through the great adventure of life. I am still learning about you humans, with your strange ways. And so my story ends, at a new beginning. Of course I can’t tell you all this in words so I will do what dogs have always done. I will lay my head on your lap and let you read my eyes. And when my final Choosing comes, just stroke my head as I leave this world and say the words of farewell for me. When you look at the stars, remember me, Sirius of the Soum de Gaia, not such a bad dog after all.

  If you enjoyed this book, please share your thoughts in a review, however short.

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  For a FREE ebook of ‘One Sixth of a Gill’, please visit www.jeangill.com and sign up for my newsletter. This collection of shorts was a finalist in the Wishing Shelf and SpASpa Awards

  A book with ‘Wow’ factor - Geoff Nelder, Aria

  A fantastic array of wonderful prose, from bee-keeping to Top Tips on Dogs! A FINALIST and highly recommended - The Wishing Shelf Awards

  A rare treat - J.G. Harlond, The Empress Emerald'

  An eclectic mix - quite unputdownable - B.A. Morton, 'Mrs Jones'

  Five-minute reads. Meet people you will never forget: the night photographer, the gynaecologist's wife, the rescue dog. Dip into whatever suits your mood, from comedy to murders; from fantastic stories to blog posts, by way of love poetry.

  Fully illustrated by the author in black and white; Jean Gill's original photographs are as thought-provoking as her writing. An out of body experience for adventurous readers. Or, of course, you can 'Live Safe'.

  Not for you

  the blind alley on a dark night,

  wolf-lope pacing you step for step

  as shadows flare on the walls.

  About the Author

  I’m a Welsh writer and photographer living in the south of France with a big white dog, a scruffy black dog, a Nikon D700 and a man. I taught English in Wales for many years and my claim to fame is that I was the first woman to be a secondary headteacher in Carmarthenshire. I’m mother or stepmother to five children so life has been pretty hectic.

  I’ve published all kinds of books, both with conventional publishers and self-published. You’ll find everything under my name from prize-winning poetry and novels, military history, translated books on dog training, to a cookery book on goat cheese. My work with top dog-trainer Michel Hasbrouck has taken me deep into the world of dogs with problems, and inspired one of my novels.

  With Scottish parents, an English birthplace and French residence, I can usually support the winning team on most sporting occasions.

  My recommendations, if you would like to read another of my books:-

  The Troubadours Quartet

  Winner of The Global Ebook Award for Best Historical Fiction

  Book 1 ‘Song at Dawn’ is FREE!

  1150: Provence

  On the run from abuse, Estela wakes in a ditch with only her lute, her amazing voice, and a dagger hidden in her underskirt. Her talent finds a patron in Aliénor of Aquitaine and more than a music tutor in the Queen's finest troubadour and Commander of the Guard, Dragonetz los Pros.

  Weary of war, Dragonetz uses Jewish money and Moorish expertise to build that most modern of inventions, a papermill, arousing the wrath of the Church. Their enemies gather, ready to light the political and religious powder-keg of medieval Narbonne.

  Set in the period following the Second Crusade, Jean Gill’s spellbinding romantic thrillers evoke medieval France with breathtaking accuracy. The characters leap off the page and include amazing women like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Ermengarda of Narbonne, who shaped history in battles and in bedchambers.

  Chapter 1

  She woke with a throbbing headache, cramp in her legs and a curious sensation of warmth along her back. The warmth moved against her as she stretched her stiff limbs along the constraints of the ditch. She took her time before opening her eyes, heavy with too little sleep. The sun was already two hours high in the sky and she was waking to painful proof that her choice of sleeping quarters had been forced.

  ‘I am still alive. I am here. I am no-one,’ she whispered. She remembered that she had a plan but the girl who made that plan was dead. Had to be dead and stay dead. So who was she now? She needed a name.

  A groan beside her attracted her attention. The strange warmth along her back, with accompanying thick white fur and the smell of damp wool, was easily identified. The girl pushed against a solid mass of gian
t dog, which shifted enough to let her get herself out of the ditch, where they had curved together into the sides. She recognized him well enough even though she had no idea when he had joined her in the dirt. A regular scrounger at table with the other curs, all named ‘Out of my way’ or worse. You couldn’t mistake this one though, one of the mountain dogs bred to guard the sheep, his own coat shaggy white with brindled parts on his back and ears. Only he wouldn’t stay with the flock, whatever anyone tried with him. He’d visit the fields happily enough but at the first opportunity he’d be back at the chateau. Perhaps he thought she was heading out to check on the sheep and that he’d tag along to see what he was missing.

  ‘Useless dog,’ she gave a feeble kick in his general direction. ‘Can’t even do one simple job. They say you’re too fond of people to stay in the field with the sheep. Well, I’ve got news for you about people, you big stupid bastard of a useless dog. Nobody wants you.’ She felt tears pricking and smeared them across her cheeks with an impatient, muddy hand. ‘And if you’ve broken this, you’ll really feel my boot.’ She knelt on the edge of the ditch to retrieve an object completely hidden in a swathe of brocade.

  She had counted on having the night to get away but by now there would be a search on. If Gilles had done a good job, they would find her bloody remnants well before there was any risk of them finding her living, angry self. If he had hidden the clues too well, they might keep searching until they really did find her. And if the false trail was found but too obvious, then there would be no let-up, ever. And she would never see Gilles again. She shivered, although the day was already promising the spring warmth typical of the south. She would never see Gilles again anyway, she told herself. He knew the risks as well as she did. And if it had to be done, then she was her mother’s daughter and would never - ‘Never!’ she said aloud - forget that, whoever tried to make her. She was no longer a child but sixteen summers.

  All around her, the sun was casting long shadows on the bare vineyards, buds showing on the pruned vine-stumps but no leaves yet. Like rows of wizened cats tortured on wires, the gnarled stumps bided their time. How morbid she had become these last months! Too long a winter and spent in company who considered torture-methods an amusing topic of conversation. Better to look forward. In a matter of weeks, the vines would start to green, and in another two months, the spectacular summer growth would shoot upwards and outwards but for now, all was still wintry grey.

  There was no shelter in the April vineyards and the road stretched forward to Narbonne and back towards Carcassonne, pitted with the holes gouged by the severe winter of 1149. Along this road east-west, and the Via Domitia north-south, flowed the life-blood of the region, the trade and treaties, the marriage-parties and the armies, the hired escorts sent by the Viscomtesse de Narbonne and the murderers they were protection against. The girl knew all this and could list fifty fates worse than death, which were not only possible but a likely outcome of a night in a ditch. What she had forgotten was that as soon as she stood up in this open landscape, in daylight, she could see for miles - and be seen.

  She looked back towards Carcassonne and chewed her lip. It was already too late. The most important reason why she should not have slept in a ditch beside the road came back to her along with the growing clatter of a large party of horse and, from the sound of it, wagons. The waking and walking was likely to be even more dangerous than the sleeping and it was upon her already.

  The girl stood up straight, brushed down her muddy skirts and clutched her brocade parcel to her breast. She knew that following her instinct to run would serve for nothing against the wild mercenaries or, at best, suspicious merchants, who were surely heading towards her. She was lucky to have passed a tranquil night - or so the night now seemed compared with the bleak prospect in front of her. What a fool to rush from one danger straight into another, forgetting the basic rules of survival on the open road. To run now would make her prey so she searched desperately for another option. In her common habit, bedraggled and dirty, she was as invisible as she could hope to be. No thief would look twice at her, nor think she had a purse to cut, far less a ransom waiting at home. No reason to bother her.

  What she could not disguise was that, common or not, she was young, female and alone, and the consequences of that had been beaten into her when she was five years old and followed a cat into the forest. Not, of course, that anything bad happened in the forest, where she had lost sight of the cat but instead seen a rabbit’s white scut vanishing behind a tree, as she tried to tell her father when he found her. His hard hand cut off her words, to teach her obedience for her own good, punctuated with a graphic description of the horrors she had escaped.

  All that had not happened in the dappled light and crackling twigs beneath the canopy of leaves and green needles, visited her nightmares instead, with gashed faces and shuddering laughter as she ran and hid, always discovered. Until now, she had obeyed, and it had not been for her own good. Fool that she had been. But no more. Now she would run and hide, and not be discovered.

  She drew herself up straight and tall. No, bad idea. Instead, she slumped, as ordinary as she could make herself, and felt through the slit in her dress, just below her right hip, for her other option should a quick tongue fail her. The handle fitted snugly into her hand and her fingers closed round it, reassured. The dagger was safe in its sheath, neatly attached to her under-shift with the calico ties she had laboriously sewn into the fabric in secret candle-light. She had full confidence in its blade, knowing well the meticulous care her brother gave his weapons. As to her capacity to use it, let the occasion be judge. And after that, God would be, one way or another.

  By now, the oncoming chink of harness and thud of hooves was so loud that she could hardly hear the low growl beside her. The dog was on his feet, facing the danger. He threw back his head and gave the deep bark of his kind against the wolf. The girl crossed herself and the first horse came into sight.

  If you want to read about my life in France, try How Blue is my Valley. Humorous travel/autobiography about my first year living in Provence and how it compared with Wales.

  ‘Laugh out loud in many places... such a vivid picture of fields of lavender, sunflowers and olive trees that you could almost be there with her.’ Living France Magazine

  The true scents of Provence?

  Lavender, thyme and septic tank.

  How can you resist a village called Dieulefit, ‘God created it’, the village ‘where everyone belongs’. Discover the real Provence in good company...

  If you like romance, try Snake on Saturdays.

  ‘One of the best books I’ve read this year.’ Nicolle, goodreads

  Helen Tanner lives alone and likes it that way. She runs her own business, spends her evenings out with friends, and tries to think as little as possible about the tragedy she has left behind. Until, that is, a dark-haired vet walks into her shop and into her life.

  Her first unpromising encounter with Llanelli vet Dai Evans turns into a tumultuous affair which brings about irrevocable changes for both of them. Dai becomes closer to his farming family, and helps them through the BSE crisis, while Helen is forced not only to consider a new future, but to face up to a troubled past.

  If you like biographies and true war stories, try Faithful through Hard Times.

  ‘A most unusual military history book. There are few military non-combatant accounts of life in the Second World War, fewer still from an Other Rank. Based on words and feelings recorded at the time it is probably unique.’ - Don Marshall, Military History Enthusiast

  This is not a WW2 memoir. It is a riveting reconstruction from an eye-witness account written at the time in a secret diary, a diary too dangerous to show anyone and too precious to destroy.

  The true story of four years, 3 million bombs, one small island out-facing the might of the German and Italian airforces - and one young Scotsman who didn’t want to be there.

  If you like Young Adult that works for adults too;
if you’re left-handed or know a leftie, try On the Other Hand

  A mix of gripping story with fascinating facts on left-handedness. Everyone should think left-handed - or so 14 year old Jamie thought when she tied her hand behind her back for a day-long protest in school, against persecution of left-handers over the centuries. Her best friend Ryan publicised their cause with a new series of articles in the school magazine but just when their campaign is going well, Ryan’s Mum drags him off from Wales to live in America. There he faces bullying at its most deadly and Jamie has to live from one email to the next to know whether her friend is coping. Teachers’ resource materials available free from www.jeangill.com/

  Jean Gill’s publications

  Novels

  Someone to Look Up To (lulu) 2011

  the story of a special dog

  The Troubadours Quartet

  Book 3 Plaint for Provence (The 13th Sign) 2015

  Book 2 Bladesong (The 13th Sign 2015)

  Book 1 Song at Dawn (The 13th Sign ) 2015

  The Llanelli Saga

  Book 2 San Fairy Anne (lulu) 2010

  Book 1 Snake on Saturdays (Gomer) 2001

  Jamie and Ryan Books (middle grade)

  Book 2 Crystal Balls (lulu) 2010

  Book 1 On the Other Hand (Dinas) 2005

  Non-fiction/Memoir/Travel

  How Blue is my Valley (lulu) 2010

  A Small Cheese in Provence (lulu) 2009

  Faithful through Hard Times (lulu) 2008

  4.5 Years - war memoir by David Taylor (lulu) 2008

  Short Stories and Poetry

  One Sixth of a Gill (The 13th Sign) 2014

  From Bed-time On (National Poetry Foundation) 1996

  With Double Blade (National Poetry Foundation) 1988