Lady

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘That’s not true, I had kids, I slept like a log,’ said Mitch.

  ‘If you slept, I bet your wife didn’t.’

  The two dogs started to argue about it, but I interrupted and asked them to get on with the story. Fella lay down again with a sigh and Mitch went on.

  ‘Anyway, you can imagine how it went. Turned his mother into a dog! He mustn’t think such things! Of course he hadn’t, it was nothing to do with him! The dog who ran into the road and the disappearance of his mother were unconnected. Everyone did their best to convince him that what he knew to be true, was false. When the mother didn’t return the police were called in. Then of course it was the shrinks and the doctors, all trying to winkle out of him what really happened. What chance did the boy have? Pretty soon he came up with a story to satisfy them – he told them a bad man had come to the door and taken his mother away. He said the bad man kept calling his mother a bitch over and over again, which explained the connection about dogs.

  ‘In front of little Terry’s horrified eyes a huge, nationwide murder investigation was started up. Interviews with the police on the TV, reconstructions of the imaginary crime, big headlines, public appeals for information, the lot. It went on for weeks. Of course, the murderer was never found, the body never recovered. Terry pretty soon convinced himself that the kidnap story was true – how could all those adults be wrong about something so important? The authorities were very good. He had therapy, counselling, no trouble was spared, no expense. How were they to know they were just making things worse?

  ‘The father was under suspicion for a while, but eventually things settled down. The child’s grandmother helped look after Terry while his dad continued his job. He got on with his life, managed to keep things under control. It may be that he did it again during those years. Terry says not, but when you talk to him, there are hints. A schoolfriend, a teacher, a child he met in the playground – who knows? But the next big one for him was when he was nine years old.

  ‘After a few years, his father married again. Terry got on well with his stepmother, everything seemed almost back to normal. Fairly soon, a new baby sister came along, who he says he doted on.

  ‘It was another fit of fury that did it – it always seems to happen when he loses his temper. It was something to do with his little sister, he thinks – some fit of jealousy. It was his dad that got it this time – he was doomed really, right from the start. Every kid gets cross with his dad sooner or later. Whatever, there was some argument about the baby, a tantrum, and then the father suddenly found himself on all fours …’

  ‘Canified!’ yodelled Fella. ‘“I told you, Daddy, I told you, but no one believed me!”’ he said, once again mimicking a little boy’s voice.

  ‘The father must have understood everything at once,’ said Mitch. ‘He launched himself in a rage of his own (maybe it runs in the family) straight at his son, bowled him over and in a second had his teeth at his throat.

  ‘Enter the stepmother, hearing the ferocious growls and snarls of the terrified animal. She sees her stepson on his back with a dog at his throat. She runs across the room without a thought for her own safety and kicks the father off the boy. Later, miraculously it seems, they discovered not a scratch on the child. The father, even in his fury, was unable to hurt his own son. The dog was forced across the room surprisingly easily with a broom and locked in the toilet. The boy was screaming inconsolably. You can imagine how desperately the poor stepmother rushed around the house looking for her husband, who had been there only seconds before. If she only knew how close he was! The police were called, the dog was taken away, despite desperate pleas from the distracted child.’

  ‘What happened to the dad?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think? There’s only one fate for a savage dog who has no owner. The wretched man was put down.’

  I whimpered and let my head sink on to my paws. Fella licked my muzzle sympathetically as Mitch went on.

  ‘And so the whole cycle began all over again. No one could understand what had happened to Terry’s dad. Where had he gone? Everything seemed to be going well – and yet he had disappeared just as his wife had done before him. Terry by this time was old enough to understand that the adults had all been wrong right from the start – his mother had been turned into a dog, it was him who’d done it, and now he’d done the same thing to his father. He was in possession of a terrible, uncontrollable power. He also understood that no one was going to believe him. He did his best for a long time to keep his story to himself, but his stepmother, distraught though she was, was no fool. She guessed that he was keeping something to himself. Under close questioning, he did tell her the truth.’

  ‘I remember how he looked when he told me that,’ put in Fella. ‘It was, like, his last hope, you know? He still hoped that someone would believe him and help him make sense of what he’d done.’

  ‘But of course, she couldn’t accept it,’ said Mitch.

  Poor Terry! I thought. He’d more or less killed his own mum and dad and there wasn’t even anyone he could confess to!

  Mitch scratched behind his ear. ‘All he could do was wait for it to happen again. He knew how important it was for him to keep his temper – but he was only nine years old! He did his best, but the result of bottling everything up when he was so upset had exactly the opposite effect. It happened again. One day his stepmother heard screams and howls of despair, went up to the room where her daughter slept and found not a child, but a puppy lying in the cot. That was enough for her. I don’t know whether she believed the boy or not, but she’d had enough. She took Terry round to his grandparents and left him there. He never saw her again.

  ‘Shortly after, both grandparents disappeared. We can guess where. Then Terry began a miserable round of children’s homes, some good, some bad – but they all had this in common: every new life that he set up, every new relationship that he made was doomed. Foster parent after foster parent disappeared. Again and again he was sent back to various institutions, and gradually his behaviour grew so disturbed and strange that no one wanted him any more. After the homes came the young offender institutions, then the prisons, and now, the street. The only things he can form decent relationships with these days are dogs.’

  ‘And cans of Special Brew,’ said Fella scornfully. ‘Actually he can’t even keep a decent relationship with a dog. He’s too guilty about what he’s done, poor sod. It’s ruined his life. Every time he gets close to someone – bang! They get turned into a dog. Makes a reeeeeeal mess of your social calendar.’

  ‘Poor sod! Poor us!’ exclaimed Mitch. He seemed to be overwhelmed by his own story and laid down his head with a whine.

  In the silence that followed, I turned over what he had just told me in my mind. It was impossible – and yet I knew for myself that it had really taken place.

  ‘Has anyone ever turned back into a person again?’ I asked.

  I saw Fella glance at Mitch who shrugged. ‘We’re not sure,’ he said, but at the same time Mitch said,

  ‘I think so. If he can do it one way, why not another?’

  ‘Who knows what’s possible?’ growled Fella. ‘Who knows how many little kids there are who can do any sort of miracle? But is that what you really want?’ He sat up, and peered intently at me. ‘You know what the best thing that ever happened to me was? This. Being a dog. It smells better, it tastes better, it feels better. You don’t have your stupid human judgement getting in the way. A dog’s days are short, but his moments are pure. Just now you’re still in shock, but you wait a few weeks – you’ll find out. You think what’s happened to you is awful, some sort of disfigurement, some sort of handicap. It’s not. It’s a miracle. You are more than you have ever been before. You’re wonderful and beautiful – no really, every dog is beautiful. Take my advice. Don’t worry about being human. You’re better off as you are.’

  I could hardly believe what I was hearing. ‘You like being like this?’ I asked. Who on earth would rather be an an
imal than a human being? But Fella nodded.

  ‘You better believe it,’ he said. I looked across to Mitch to see what he thought. He caught my glance, looked sideways at Fella, and then shook his head.

  ‘I can’t forget my old life,’ he said. ‘If I could let go of the past, maybe I’d be happy. But I can’t. I had a wife, I had two lovely kids. My family was everything to me. A dog can never have those things, not in the same way. It’s drop ’em and then move on for a dog. And then, what about my career? What dog ever had a career? I had a good job. I was a teacher, head of department. I had respect!’

  But Fella was growling away under his breath.

  ‘See what I mean? He was a teacher, and he still is – still thinking, Could-do-better, must-work-harder, must do this, must do that, all that shit. You don’t deserve to be a dog, Mitch, you shoulda stayed trapped as a man, it’s wasted on you. You got nothing to worry about any more, and there you are still worrying about it. Stoopid!’

  ‘But I had so much! What torments me is, it’s still there, but I can’t touch it. Every day I see my wife and my kids. I still love them. And the kids I used to teach going to and from school, my friends, my colleagues at work – they used to turn to me for advice, you know. Now, they’re all completely beyond my reach. It was different for you, Fella. You had nothing.’

  ‘I had nothing because I chose nothing, not because I wasn’t able to get it,’ said Fella, all the time watching me out of the corner of his eye to see whose advice I was going to follow. I could see he wanted me to stay with them. I was flattered. But I’d already made up my mind.

  ‘I could have had the job, the qualifications, you know that,’ Fella went on. ‘But what for? I never wanted to be a human being anyway. I mean, no one asked me, you know? I wasn’t, like, given a choice – it was just dumped on me. And I knew, you know, all along I knew I wasn’t cut out for it. There was something wrong. I was like one of those people born in the wrong body, only in my case, it wasn’t the wrong sex, it was the wrong species. Transspecies, that’s what I am. Being born into a human body was like being born in a prison cell for me. You wake up each morning, you get on with your life, but all the time you have this feeling – is this it? Is this really it? This flabby body, this dull nose? Worry worry worry. Work wife kids dead. And that’s if you’re lucky! I mean, that’s what people actually want out of life! And if you’re not lucky then it’s booze drugs dead. I mean, who cares? You know? You know what I mean?’

  I nodded carefully. The thing was, I knew exactly what he meant – in fact, that could have been me talking! I must have said that sort of thing, or at least thought it, for half my life. On the other hand, I didn’t want to agree with him because – you know – because agreeing with him would mean agreeing to be a …

  ‘So what’s so great about being a dog, anyhow?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s so great? You ask that? Your nose! Your mouth, your feet under you – the whole goddamn thing! The freedom to be yourself! You know what I mean? If you wanna sniff it, you sniff it. If you wanna lick it, you lick it. The hunt – eh? Imagine that! Hunting with the pack! When you hear the pack in full cry – now, that’s living! Sniffing down the edges of the pavement! Bitches on heat! Hot wet blood! Cats! Man, that’s living!’

  I found I was lifting myself off the ground I was so excited, my legs tense under me, ready to leap forward as if that cat was right there under my nose. Carefully, so no one could see, I lowered myself down. I could see Fella watching me, so I shrugged as if it didn’t really matter to me all that much.

  ‘Cats, yeah, it’d be good to catch a cat before I get back to being myself,’ I admitted.

  Fella smiled as if he could see right through me. ‘One day, they’ll have the technology to turn people into dogs, just like they have sex change ops today. You’ll see people coming out of the closet then, you bet! Yeah! At the moment people just know something’s wrong but they don’t know what it is. How could they? But when the option is put in front of them – you’ll see. There’ll be packs of us wandering about then! And it won’t just be dogs! It’ll be, I dunno, horses! Wolves! Bears! Cats maybe. Now, that’d be some hunt!’

  ‘That’s not a hunt, that’s murder!’ snapped Mitch, who’d been growling away under his breath at this talk. ‘You’re not a dog, Fella – you’re a man in a dog’s body. It just happens to suit your lifestyle. You never cared for anyone, you never wanted to be responsible for anything or anyone. That’s not a life. That’s just existing from day to day.’

  ‘Exactly,’ laughed Fella. ‘What could be better? Day to day is all anyone ever has. You wanna spend the rest of your life worrying about what happens tomorrow and regretting what happened the day before, fine – but not for me. No way. I’d rather die in a ditch tomorrow than spend one second worrying about it. Living for now – that’s what I call life!’

  All the time, Fella was watching me, hoping for me to come out on his side, but tempting though it was, I couldn’t do it. If I’d known that my wild ways were going to end up like this, I’d have given them up a long time ago. Me, I wanted my life back, no matter how boring and dull and stressful it was going to be.

  I got to my feet and went to peer out of the door. The dawn was underway. I could hear cars going past on the nearby road.

  I looked over my shoulder at my two new friends. ‘I’m going to find Terry. I want to be myself again.’

  ‘Liked school, did you?’ sneered Fella.

  I shook my head. ‘I just want it back. All of it – the good bits and the bad bits. Everything. I know my life wasn’t much, but it was all I had. Half my problems were my fault anyhow.’

  ‘Typical human reaction,’ scoffed Fella. ‘Could have been! Should’ve been! All my own fault! You really wanna go back to that way of thinking? Listen – there’s a whole life out there! Smell it!’

  For a second my nostrils flared as I tasted the wealth of life coming in through the open door of the shed, and I was tempted, I admit that – I was tempted. But then I shook my head firmly.

  ‘I miss my friends, I miss school, I miss my mum, I miss everything. I don’t know much, but I know this much: I’ll never be happy as a dog. That’s all.’

  Fella rolled his eyes and sighed, but he didn’t try to stop me. I thanked them for their advice, and I left them as the dawn was spreading over the houses. I padded silently as a fox along the pavements to Copson Street to try and find Terry, or at least to pick up his scent and begin tracking him down.

  three

  My tireless feet carry me.

  I’m a passenger with feet like these.

  Who needs cars?

  Who needs the wind?

  When you have tireless feet

  You can double back a thousand times,

  you can go anywhere.

  Distance doesn’t count,

  You poor, flat-footed ape.

  Terry wasn’t on Copson Street that day, but he’d left trails all over from Sainsbury’s to half way up the Palatine Road. You couldn’t miss it – sweet sweat, beer and pee, same as all drunks; but there was something else to his scent which I can’t describe to an animal as nose-blind as a person. It was indescribable. It was the smell of what he could do.

  The freshest trail led to the refuge on the Palatine Road. The sky was the colour of pale cheese. I lay down to wait but all the people passing by kept watching me and it made me nervous, so I got up and began to walk. I wasn’t worried about being back on time to meet him, I knew I’d catch up with him. When you have a nose like mine, who needs appointments? I’d find him when I wanted to.

  As I roamed the streets of Manchester, I thought about the story Mitch told me. It was a terrible thing, but one bit of it kept making me laugh. It was the part when the stepmother had gone to her cot and found not a baby, but a sweet little puppy lying there instead. That brought back fond memories for me, because when I was a little girl, I had a puppy that I loved and I used to do just that very thing with him – lay him in m
y toy pram and wheel him about like the baby he was. When he still had his big puppy feet and his flat little puppy face, and his round little pink puppy tummy and his little puppy widdler, I used to think that he was the most lovable thing in my whole life.

  His name was Ed. My dad gave that puppy to me. He used to chase bits of stick and spoons tied to string round the house like he was a kitten, but to hear him growl you’d think he was a lion instead. I used to put him in the pram and tuck the blankets up around his chin, and put a little bonnet from one of my dolls on his head and put a dummy in his mouth. He lay there for hours and let me wheel him around in the pram. I even tried to breastfeed him from my flat little pimples, but he just licked my face. He let me burp him though. He was so gorgeous. He made me laugh, but I was deadly serious about him as well, and it made me furious when Mum and Dad used to laugh at me playing with him.

  Julie used to scold me, she said it was cruel, but Ed liked it. He never put up with anything he didn’t like. He could be a very naughty baby, sometimes. I spent ages trying to find ways of putting nappies on him but he always chewed them up. My friend Annie came round with some tiny newborn nappies that she’d got through the post. They were a free sample because her mum had had a new baby the year before and they were always getting things like that. We spent ages trying to get Ed to wear it, and when he did for a little while we were dying to get him to do a widdle.

  ‘I’ll change him, it’s my nappy,’ said Annie, and of course I said that it was my puppy.

  ‘Just because he’s your puppy doesn’t make it your widdle,’ said Annie. I offered to let her change him if he did a poo, but she said no, so I said I’d do the widdle as well, then, so I got her there, didn’t I? But then Mum came in and made us stop in case he got the habit round the house. He chewed my Gabby doll’s head off one afternoon when he got locked in my bedroom, and I smacked his bottom and put him in the cupboard while he cried and I felt so guilty afterwards I wanted to jump out of the window. I don’t know how people ever bring children up, I don’t know how they manage to smack and punish them. Even though I know it’s necessary, it would break my heart. I’d just feel so guilty.