I thought, Woah! Now I’m a dog maybe I don’t have to get guilty about things, if what Fella had said was true. Now, wouldn’t that be a gas! That’d make bringing up babies a lot easier.
When he was three years old Ed disappeared, we never found out where. Adam used to tease me by saying that he’d seen him sleeping by the side of the road. I cried my eyes out, but secretly I was relieved because I wasn’t interested in him any more. I never liked him so much after he was grown up. I didn’t like taking him out for walks. I couldn’t be bothered, really. I’d stopped loving him. Isn’t it awful, that you can stop loving just like that, just because it’s not convenient any more? I know he was only a dog, but still. He used to make me cross by sitting up and staring at me with his clever brown eyes, begging me, just begging me to take him out to the park when I’d just got home from school and I was tired and didn’t want to go anywhere. It made me furious, but I knew he was only doing what a dog does, and that I was getting cross because I was so guilty for not looking after him properly.
‘I haven’t taken him out today and I’m not going to,’ my mum would say, and I’d say,
‘I don’t care,’ but I did, but I still wouldn’t take him out. It was such a shame because going to the park was the only thing Ed lived for, the only time he really came alive. Sometimes, I used to let him out of the back door on his own, which was an awful thing to do. I used to pretend he’d escaped. Mum and Dad used to threaten to get rid of him if it kept happening. Dad said he’d cause a car crash and people might get hurt and then we’d have to pay.
I never told anyone, but I think I might have let him out that day he disappeared. He could have died on the road and it’d be all my fault.
I had this horrible thought as I was trotting along. It was this: what if Ed had been a person, like me? What if Terry had done the same thing to him? Maybe he knew somehow that the same thing was going to happen to me and that was why he’d come to be my dog. He’d been sent to protect me, but I blew it by letting him out on his own so he got run over!
Then, for no reason at all – and this shows what a truly awful person I am, because it was right in the middle of thinking how I’d betrayed him – I suddenly thought of all the things he’d seen me do. In private. You know? Imagine, if he’d been a person all along. The things he’d seen me do in the privacy of my own room! You know what I mean – having a diddle down there. It made me blush from my nose to my tail! Oh really! I could feel myself going red under my fur. How awful – and he would have been a boy! I used to pretend he was sometimes, when I was small, which is pretty pathetic, but I was only a kid.
And then, you know, I saw the funny side of it and I started laughing to myself. I sat down on the pavement and went, Huf huf huf down my nose, because now I was a dog, I mean – who cares? Dogs come and dogs go. We don’t have to worry about things. You can do what you want. I was finding the whole idea of being ashamed at playing with myself a bit funny. Why feel guilty about that? We dogs, we just do what we want to do. We don’t have to trouble ourselves about who we do it with or who else is in the room at the time. What for? It’s just natural, isn’t it? I sat down and gave myself a good licking right there and then, in the middle of the pavement. I didn’t care if the whole street was looking, and neither did the street. It was great.
My friend Annie reckoned I cried so much when Ed went away because he reminded me of my dad. She always has those sorts of theories. Ed was my dad’s best present to me. When he went away I spent a lot of time comforting myself by cuddling Ed, it’s true, but I think Annie is a bit too clever about that sort of thing even though she’s good to talk to and always has interesting ideas about your feelings.
Thinking about Ed reminded me of all the things that had gone out of my life – Ed himself, my dad, my boyfriend, who I’d chucked last summer. Now even I had gone. It upset me so much I began to howl and groan to myself as I padded along, but pretty soon I noticed how the other dogs and people were watching me. I remembered my mother shouting, ‘Mad dog!’ and I thought I’d better behave like a normal dog. People are devils, they’ll put you down just because they don’t know what to do with you.
The day my dad left home was a terrible day for my family, a tragedy that made everything that had gone before it darker as well as everything that followed. Up to then I’d thought our family was safe, but afterwards, I realised that it had been falling down around us all the time. It made me realise that you can never trust anything, because even when things seem to be all right, there can be terrible things happening behind your back, that can affect your whole life, without anyone ever letting you know.
If it was true what Julie said, that my dad came to say goodbye to us and reassure us that he loved us, then that means they must have planned it. And if they planned it, if they had it all worked out, then why was he still there when I got home from school that day he left? Why were they rowing and shouting at each other so that I could hear all the hurtful things they thought of each other? When I have children, the only thing I’ll keep hidden from them are the horrible rows and the broken promises and cruel words that people think up to say to someone they used to love.
They were in the hall shouting when I got home that day. Julie must be right, I remember knowing that he was going. I remember Adam was there too – he’s like a baby in my memory, although he was seven, just two years younger than I was. He was hanging on to Mum’s legs and grizzling. She had her hand on his back, but she was too busy yelling at Dad to take much notice of anything else.
I pushed past Mum and Dad and ran straight up the stairs. I stopped at the top to call Ed to me, and he came up quickly, his tail between his legs, and I bundled him upstairs and into my room. They stopped shouting for a bit. Maybe they were embarrassed to be caught like that. Then Julie came home and started crying, and my mum shouted, ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ at my dad, as if everything was his fault, and the whole thing started up again.
Then, guess what? I started feeling left out – left out of a stupid row where a family is broken up. I came out of my room holding Ed by the collar so he couldn’t get away from me and came to sit at the bottom of the stairs. So then the whole thing was public, like an audience. My dad even said it.
‘I’ve got an audience to go out on, then.’
And Mum said, ‘Give the bastard a round of applause,’ and she started clapping.
‘Shut up!’ shouted Julie.
‘Don’t talk to my mum like that!’ shouted Adam at her.
I said, ‘Don’t go,’ and everything went quiet.
Dad stood there looking at me. It had all gone so still. I remember how my voice sounded so small, but how it changed everything.
Then he looked at the ground and then he said, ‘All right, I won’t go, not now anyway.’
‘Are you mad? Go on, go now, go now, go now!’ shouted my mum.
Dad stood there, not knowing what to do, looking at me as if I had the whole thing in my hand.
‘Do you want to go through all this again? Just go, you’ve been going all fucking day, go, go, go!’ screamed my mum, and she started holding on to her head and pulling her hair about and rolling her eyes from side to side.
‘You’d better go,’ I said to Dad, because she was scaring me so much, and so he set his mouth into a straight line.
‘Right then, I’ll go,’ he said, and he picked up his bag and went.
About a year later he moved to America and before anyone knew anything about anything, he had a new job and a new family over there. When the letter came my mum came bursting into the sitting room to announce it to us.
‘He had her all the time, it’s only been a year, one single year and now he’s got it all over again, look, a new wife, a new family, a new bloody everything already. See?’ she said, as if that made everything plain – as if none of it was her fault.
But I wish he hadn’t gone to America. Now I never see him any more.
Annie thinks I feel guilty ab
out Ed because they made me tell my dad to go. It’s a stupid theory, I know perfectly well he was going anyway, but it does make me cringe to think about it – me telling my own dad to leave home! I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him or Mum for making me do that. To be fair, both of them spent ages trying to heal the wound; they told me over and over it had nothing to do with me, it was going to happen anyway, and so on. But they would, wouldn’t they? It just means I can’t trust a word they say.
Both Mum and Dad are always saying that I’m more trouble than the other two put together. That might seem a terrible thing to say, but they’re right. See, I’m trouble; I like it. I’m the black sheep, the odd one out. Adam and Julie like bands like Hologram Nights or The Cat Calls or Someone Else, but I just like Acid and House and Garage – the louder the better. I’m like my dad and the others are like Mum. Mum teaches Geography at a high school, but Dad is a business man. He used to own a garage and sold second-hand cars in Oldham. Now he lives in Seattle, USA and sells second-hand Cadillacs to rich Americans. He looks out for himself, but he knows how to live, and how to give. I’d rather be like him than like my mum any day.
‘You’re just common,’ Julie used to say.
‘You don’t care about anything, do you?’ said my mum.
‘Why can’t you concentrate?’ my teachers said. ‘It should be easy for someone as bright as you if you’d just think about it!’
‘You don’t do anything you don’t want to,’ said Adam.
‘You don’t care about anyone except yourself.’
That was Simon, my old boyfriend, who said that. He loved me. I loved him, but what he never realised is this: love comes easy to people like me. I need a better reason to stick with a boy than just love.
It’s right that I don’t think. I just do. I don’t like thinking, or reading. Now that I’m a dog I expect I’ll forget how to read altogether and you know what? I don’t care. As for feelings – well, they’re things that just happen, aren’t they? I want to have a good time. I had friends like Annie with all her psychology, and she’s great, you know, she’s my best friend, or she used to be, anyway. But the people I feel most alive with are people like Wayne, Dobby and Michelle – people you can know and then forget about all in a week. The sort of kids my mum wouldn’t let in the house, who just want to run out on the streets kicking cans and getting touched up and sticking chewing gum on to old ladies’ hair while we’re queuing in a shop. I did that once. I did it to another old dear with smoke. I was standing behind her with a mouthful of fag smoke and I bent till my mouth was on her curls and I breathed slowly out so the smoke oozed out of her hair like her brains were cooking. We all ran out of the shop yelping like – well, like dogs, really.
As I padded along up the Wilmslow Road, I started thinking again about the alchie, Terry, and I began to see that really, we had a lot in common. We’d both lost our dads – and at about the same age, too. We both felt guilty about what had happened. We didn’t fit. I could understand his rage and how lonely he must feel. If my rage had the ability to turn people into animals, half of Manchester would be on four legs by now. Actually, I think he was very restrained only to do it every now and then. I could think of a thousand people I’d like to turn into dogs. I’d have got angry on purpose with them if I could do what he did.
By this time I was getting hungry again. First thing, I turned my paws in the direction of home to go and get a sandwich or something, then I thought – that’s out! Then I stood on three legs and started patting my sides. If you’d seen me you’d think I was going crazy, but all I was doing was trying to pat my pockets to see if I had any money in them to buy myself a chocolate bar or something. Bonkers! I still wasn’t used to being a dog yet.
I sat down in the road and all these thoughts went through my head, like gravel pouring out of the back of a lorry – go home and get a sandwich, go into a shop and buy something, go round to a friend’s and beg something, go to the school canteen and get a lunch – bang bang bang! All utterly impossible! I didn’t believe it at first, that those ordinary things should suddenly have become impossible, and the same thoughts came back. I had to go through them all four or five times before it really dawned on me that all the usual ways I had of getting food had stopped dead, just like that. People were tripping over me in the street, so I got up and went to sit by the wall. I felt like crying. I was useless as a person, and now I made a useless dog, too. Only a baby can’t feed itself. Even if I had money, who’d sell anything to a dog? Once I’d found Terry – if only he’d agree to be my master! – he’d feed me until I was myself again. But in the meantime, what was I going to do?
I thought of that rabbit Fella had given me, but I was miles away from the allotments. Withington isn’t exactly full of rabbits.
Then I had this great idea – a cat! Get a cat! Yeah! There’s not many rabbits on the streets, but there’s plenty of cats. All you can smell in town sometimes is cats. Of course, I know what you’re thinking – whoever saw a dog catch a cat? They bark at them and they chase them but they never catch them. Cats’re just too quick. But I was different – I was a dog with brains. I was certain I could catch a cat, if I only had the right plan.
I started to nose about and found a fresh trail soon enough – the ground was almost warm. I followed it up as quietly as I could. I remembered how cats always slide along the ground when they’re hunting and I started to do the same, which made me chortle to myself – a dog hunting cats like a cat! But it was exactly that sort of thing that was going to give me the edge. I found him soon enough, sitting on a garden wall just ahead of me. I crept along, dashed in through the open gate and managed to hide myself behind some bushes next to the front door.
That cat had it coming. I made my plan in the fraction of a second it took me to get in through the gate and into the bushes. I was going to call him to me. It should be easy. Pursing my lips tightly as if I was eating a lemon, and using my tongue half as lips and half as tongue, I was certain that I could still perform human speech – well enough to fool a cat, anyway.
The cat was sitting on the wall, innocent and plump. I made a few practice whispers and then …
‘Puss, puss, puss, puss, puss. Here, puss,’ I called. Well, it was pretty good. I thought so anyway, but Puss was not impressed. He yelped and leaped to his feet, back arched, fur on end. His head turned slowly round to stare at the bushes where I was hidden as if he hardly dared imagine what was hiding there. I kept as still as if I was turned to stone – which wasn’t easy. Every fibre in my body wanted to give chase, but I knew if I did that he’d be gone in a blink.
‘Here, puss, here, want some fish? Have some milk, pussy-pussy,’ I called. Hidden in that bush I made the most outrageous promises to that cat, but the stupid thing didn’t know whether to believe or not. He began to back off, still swelling up like a furry balloon, hissing and spitting. And at that moment the door opened and a woman came out.
It was pure chance, but my heart leaped in hope because she had a tin of cat food in her hand. The cat was obviously hers and she wanted it inside. Now she’d do the calling for me! I was right next to her. All I had to do was keep still and let her bring the cat to me. But keeping quiet! Oh, it was so hard!
‘What is it, Smokey? What’s the matter? Come on, puss! Oh, dear!’ she said, because the cat was behaving as if it had seen Satan himself. ‘Come on, Smokey, dinner time,’ she said. And suddenly it was all just too much. I couldn’t contain myself.
‘Yes, yes, come and get it, Smokey, dinner time, dinner time!’ I roared. The words leaped out of my lips; I sounded like something from hell. The woman screamed, jumped back and slammed the door; the cat yowled and lit off like a firework. There was no point in hiding any more, and I burst out of the bush and jumped for him. The little shit was up the pipe and on to the conservatory roof next door before I could draw breath. As I stood underneath barking at him the tin of cat food came whizzing out of the window and struck me on the shoulder. Looking ba
ck, I saw the woman shouting shoo at me. Her face was as pale as milk.
‘Thanks!’ I barked. I have no idea whether she understood me or not. I grabbed the tin of food in my mouth and limped off down the road into Withington. I had a sore face from where my mother had hit me with the frying pan, and now I had a bruised shoulder as well from the tin. But I had food. When I was far enough away, I dropped it and spent ten minutes pushing it up and down the road with my nose, trying to get at it. Fortunately, the tin was opened, but it was hard work with no spoon and no hands to hold it even if I had one. I tried holding a stick in my mouth and digging it out, but it was slow work. In the end, I had to leave half of it still inside. That little snack had just made me hungrier than ever. What a pathetic creature I was! I needed comfort and food. I had to find Terry. I needed a master as soon as possible.
four
By the time I got to Copson Street I was miserable. My shoulder was bruised where the cat food tin got me, my eye was throbbing, my pads were bleeding and I was starving hungry. I picked up Terry’s trail at the refuge and followed it past Withington along the Wilmslow Road into town. He hadn’t gone far. I found him sitting on a bench next to Sainsbury’s with a can of Special Brew in his hand and his coat pulled up to his ears against the early morning chill. There was an old bloke sitting next to him with his elbow on his knee, holding tight to a can of his own.
I was scared. I sat down a little way off where I could get a look. What power this man had! If he could control it, he could rule the world. I sat there and stared through the legs of the commuters going for the bus, and the pedestrians on the street, and I had a vision of a war where Terry was General. What a battle! Squads of soldiers suddenly turning into dogs! Their shouts would become barks and they’d fall forwards on to their four feet. The packs on their backs would squash them and they’d have to wriggle out from underneath, and stand around whining and looking surprised. Some of them would try to grab their guns and grenades with their teeth or their paws. A dog trying to fire a gun! There’d be dogs barking inside the tanks, trapped, planes coming down from the sky with a yelping poodle at the controls, trying to seize the joystick in its teeth. Boats spinning aimlessly in circles, machines falling silent! What a weapon! Forget atom bombs, forget bacteriological warfare! Dog them all!
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