A Soldier's Friend

by Megan Rix

  ‘I think he wants us to go with him,’ Arthur said, and they went out into the garden and opened the back gate.

  The puppy ran on ahead of them, checking every now and again that they were still behind him, occasionally barking or whining. Why didn’t the children hurry up?

  ‘He’s limping,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I hope he wasn’t hit by a car,’ Arthur said.

  They glanced at each other, both of them worrying that Mouser might have been knocked over; cars travelled so much faster than a horse and cart.

  ‘There’s very few cars about, so it’s unlikely,’ Arthur told her.

  ‘But Mouser might not realize she could get hurt by one; she’s probably never even seen one,’ Lizzie said, putting into words what Arthur was thinking.

  ‘And, knowing Mouser, she’d probably think she could take on a car and win,’ said Arthur.

  Lizzie smiled because that did sound like their fearless Mouser, but she couldn’t bear the idea she might have got hurt too.

  ‘Oh, I do hope she’s OK,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should ask that boy if he’s seen her.’

  Ivor was leaning on a lamp post just outside the park entrance ahead of them. Although Lizzie didn’t really know him, she’d seen him playing football with Oliver before.

  ‘That’s Ivor,’ Arthur hissed. ‘He’s not very nice.’

  Thumbs had gone home for his dinner and Ivor was feeling bitter at not being paid for the cats they’d caught. When he saw the puppy, he pulled a bit of string from his pocket and, quick as a flash, he put a noose round its neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Lizzie asked, outraged.

  ‘I see you found my dog.’ He grinned gummily at Lizzie and Arthur. ‘Been looking for him everywhere, I have.’

  Lizzie stared in horror at the bit of dirty string now tied tightly round the little puppy’s neck. The puppy wriggled and tugged and jumped about, making little yelping sounds.

  ‘It doesn’t look like he recognizes you,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Come on, puppy,’ Ivor said as he dragged the little dog off. ‘He loves pretend playing – trying to get away,’ he said over his shoulder to Lizzie.

  Lizzie bit her bottom lip as she looked at Arthur. He seemed just as horrified as she was. He knew Ivor a little bit from the football games he sometimes joined in, but he’d never really talked to him and had always tried to avoid him whenever he could. They were both sure the puppy couldn’t really belong to Ivor – but then they both knew it didn’t belong to them either.

  ‘Ger’ on with ya,’ Ivor growled, and kicked out at the puppy as it tried to nip his trouser leg.

  As Ivor struggled to drag the puppy along with him, Lizzie and Arthur followed them, unsure what to do. In the end Ivor was almost carrying the puppy by the rope around its neck, the dog’s little feet scrabbling in the air.

  ‘He’ll kill it, holding it like that,’ Lizzie said, and she and Arthur were about to call out when a young apple-cheeked woman, much shorter and rounder than either of the two children, came out of a large building opposite them and saw Ivor with the dog. Her mouth tightened and she put her hands on her hips.

  ‘I see you’ve found another dog, Ivor,’ she called out to him.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Ivor shouted back. ‘’S my dog and I can do what I like with it.’

  ‘If it’s your dog then pray tell what its name is?’ she asked.

  ‘Er …’ Ivor tried flashing his gummy smile as he looked past her.

  He wasn’t frightened of the two children, or the little round woman. But he could see lots of other ladies coming out of the large building behind her and they were starting to look at him too. Interfering busybodies, he thought. But he decided to change his tune.

  ‘Poor little thing must’ve got himself lost.’

  ‘Well then, I suggest you take him to the Dogs Home; it’s just around the corner after all. We’ll come with you, to make sure he arrives safe and sound,’ the young woman said.

  ‘Are you one of those suffer-suffragettes?’ Lizzie asked her as they all hurried down the road. She’d never met one before, but she recognized the rosette with the green, white and purple colours that the lady was wearing on her lapel.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ the woman said, ‘as well as being a nurse and an animal lover.’ She nodded at the little dog who was still squirming in Ivor’s arms.

  ‘My name’s Amelia Davis. Do you know what the suffragettes are, young man?’ she asked Arthur.

  Arthur shook his head, already a bit scared of her.

  ‘We’re women who fight for the rights of women. And do you know what our motto is?’

  Arthur didn’t, but that didn’t matter because she didn’t wait for him to answer.

  ‘Deeds not words,’ she said.

  Arthur didn’t say another word all the way to Battersea Dogs Home, which was near the railway station and bordered by the main tracks from Victoria. He had often wondered what went on at the home when he passed it.

  As they reached the gates, Ivor suddenly stopped and said: ‘Oh, look at the time. I forgot I have a very important appointment I can’t be late for. Here, miss, you take him in.’ Then he thrust the struggling puppy into a surprised Lizzie’s arms. She could feel his little heart beating very fast.

  He’s terrified, she thought as she held him close and stroked him. ‘It’s all right, you’re going to be all right now,’ she said gently.

  Amelia pursed her lips as she watched Ivor run off and then she banged on the Dogs Home gate.

  ‘This is my brother Kenneth,’ Amelia told Lizzie and Arthur, when a man leaning on a walking stick opened it a few minutes later. Kenneth was less round and a little taller than Amelia. He had a dark bushy beard and kind brown eyes that were very much like Amelia’s eyes. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Mellie.’ Kenneth grinned as he tried unsuccessfully to brush the many dog hairs from his jacket.

  Lizzie smiled at the nickname the man had for the rather stern-looking lady called Amelia.

  ‘Come on in.’

  Chapter 5

  Lizzie and Arthur had never been through the gates of the home for lost and starving dogs before, although everyone in the area knew of it, and they hadn’t realized just how big it was. Five railway arches were used as dog kennels and there were other buildings on the site as well as land to exercise the dogs on.

  ‘Battersea hasn’t seen fit to employ women – yet,’ Amelia said, giving Kenneth a stern look, but speaking to Lizzie and Arthur, ‘although it was founded by one. It doesn’t turn its nose up at female volunteers though.’

  ‘Now then, Mellie,’ Kenneth said. ‘Don’t you go getting on your high horse. Who’s this little chap?’

  ‘We don’t know his name,’ Lizzie told him.

  ‘He and our cat, Mouser, went off together this morning,’ Arthur added. ‘They’re friends. But now we don’t know where our cat is.’

  ‘Cats are quite able to take care of themselves, in my experience,’ Amelia said. ‘I’m sure it’ll come home when it’s hungry.’

  ‘Cat and dog friends, that’s unusual,’ Kenneth said. ‘Usually cats are a bit wary of dogs, and with good reason.’

  ‘You haven’t met our cat. She’s not afraid of anything,’ Arthur grinned. He was proud of Mouser.

  ‘We think this puppy came to tell us something was wrong,’ Lizzie said quietly, although now, even as she said the words, she thought how silly they sounded. It was just a puppy after all.

  ‘He jumped over our back fence and barked at the kitchen door,’ Arthur added.

  Kenneth took the puppy from Lizzie and he whimpered and looked back at her.

  ‘We think he’s hurt,’ Arthur said.

  ‘He was limping,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Trembling like a leaf, poor little lamb, but I don’t think there’s much wrong with his leg. Have to be careful with puppies though. This one can’t be more than six or seven months old.’

  ‘He’d have been wors
e than trembling if he’d ended up in the dog-fighting ring that I think that young man, Ivor Dawson, was heading for,’ Amelia said. ‘Wouldn’t have stood a chance, the poor wee thing. I’m sure the patients at my hospital would love him though. I wish they could meet him.’

  ‘Ivor told us the puppy was his at first,’ Lizzie told Kenneth, and Amelia rolled her eyes.

  ‘A highly unlikely story,’ she said.

  The little dog whimpered.

  ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll keep an eye on him,’ Kenneth told them. ‘But he’ll need a name. Do you two want to do the honours as you’re the ones that saved him?’

  Lizzie smiled and whispered to Arthur. They’d often talked about what they would call a dog if their mother ever let them have one, which they both knew was extremely unlikely.

  ‘Sammy,’ they both said. ‘We want to call him Sammy.’

  ‘Suits him.’ Kenneth smiled.

  The puppy sniffed at Kenneth’s jacket and then tried to get his head into Kenneth’s pocket.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Arthur laughed.

  ‘He’s trying to get to my sandwich,’ Kenneth told them. ‘This little chap’s hungry.’

  He pulled the sandwich from his pocket and broke off a crust.

  ‘Here you go then.’

  Sammy gobbled it up as Amelia hurried away and came back with a bowl of chopped meat and biscuits. Kenneth put the puppy down and he ran to the food and began gulping it down.

  ‘Slow down there now, Sammy, or you’ll make yourself sick,’ Kenneth said.

  But the puppy had already finished almost all of the food and was licking the bowl clean to make sure there wasn’t even the tiniest bit left.

  ‘He was very hungry,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Almost starving, I’d say,’ said Kenneth. ‘It’s lucky for him he ended up here.’

  ‘Very lucky indeed,’ Amelia said as Sammy drank from the water bowl.

  For the first time since they arrived, Lizzie realized she could hear lots of other dogs, big and small. Some of them were barking, others whining. One was making a howl that sounded almost like he was crying.

  ‘That’s Toby,’ Kenneth said as he noticed Lizzie looking around. ‘He’s been making that noise since he arrived here three days ago. Pining to go home, I think, poor thing.’

  ‘Will he get to go home?’ Arthur asked him.

  Kenneth shook his head. ‘Probably not. The police brought him in when they found him wandering the streets. Looked like he might have been hit by a vehicle of some sort. Toby’s not his real name, but we have to call him something.’

  ‘What sort of dog is he?’

  ‘A tan-coated, slobbery summer dog.’

  ‘What’s a summer dog?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘It’s a term people use for mixed-breed dogs, as in summer this and summer that,’ explained Kenneth, which made Arthur smile.

  ‘How many dogs do get to go home?’ Lizzie said.

  Kenneth frowned. ‘Hard to say exactly, but not enough, that’s for sure. Some of our long-term resident dogs have gone to help with the war effort. The army came to us first when they needed them. The men that work here couldn’t wait to join up too. There used to be thirty of us kennelmen up until a month ago, but ten have enlisted so far and it looks like more will be going soon, so we need as much help as we can get.’

  ‘We’ll help,’ Arthur said, and Lizzie agreed.

  ‘Much appreciated,’ Kenneth told them. ‘I’d join up myself but for this.’ He tapped at his right leg with his walking stick. ‘Had an accident when I was a boy.’

  ‘Fell out of a tree,’ Amelia said, ‘trying to rescue a cat and broke his leg.’

  ‘Never set right,’ Kenneth told them.

  ‘Cat was fine,’ Amelia added. ‘Got itself out of the tree without any help and ran off home.’

  ‘Told them I was fit to fight, but they showed me the door,’ Kenneth said, shaking his head.

  ‘Good thing too, you’re needed here,’ Amelia told him.

  The talk about cats made Arthur wonder if maybe Mouser had been handed in.

  ‘Have you had any grey tabby cats brought in today?’ he asked.

  Kenneth wasn’t sure. ‘But we can go and ask,’ he said.

  He found a collar and lead for Sammy and, once he’d put them on him, he gave the lead to Lizzie. Sammy looked up at her and wagged his tail as they all headed over to the cat area.

  The cats were housed in a separate building to the dogs, but they had to pass the dogs’ kennels to get to it. When they went into the cat area, it seemed to be a lot calmer with a lot less noise than had been coming from the dogs’ kennels.

  Sammy looked in at the different cats as they went past their cages, but although some of them looked a bit like Mouser none of them were her.

  Most of the cats weren’t as keen to be friends with Sammy as he was to be friends with them. They hissed or headed over to the back of their cages when they saw him coming.

  Nevertheless, Sammy gave a hopeful half-wag of his tail at some of the cages and was very interested in the different cat smells around him.

  ‘How long have you had cats at the home?’ Arthur asked Kenneth.

  ‘Almost as long as the dogs have been here. There were seven hundred and eighty-seven in 1907 – the year I started working here,’ Kenneth told them. ‘Don’t know exactly how many there are now. But some of them will be going to France and Belgium to become trench cats soon.’

  ‘We thought that was just a rumour. Do they really have cats at the front? Why do they need trench cats?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Because of the rats,’ Kenneth told her. ‘And as an early warning if there’s a poison gas attack, of course.’

  ‘Shh, Kenneth,’ Amelia said, looking at Lizzie and Arthur’s stricken faces. ‘There won’t be any poison gas attacks.’

  ‘No,’ Kenneth quickly agreed. ‘But if there was one the cats and dogs, being so much smaller than the soldiers, would feel the effects of it first and it’d give the soldiers time to react.’

  ‘Like canaries in mines,’ Arthur said slowly. ‘As long as the birds keep singing, the miners know they’re safe.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Amelia brusquely. ‘Now are any of these cats yours?’

  Lizzie shook her head.

  Although quite a few of the cats were grey as well as ginger, tabby, black-and-white, white and Siamese, none of them was Mouser.

  ‘Do you want to have a look round the rest of the home and see where your pup’ll be sleeping?’ Kenneth asked Lizzie and Arthur, hoping it might distract them from their missing cat.

  ‘Yes, please,’ they said, and they headed away from the cats and kittens to the kennels for the dogs. Before Kenneth had even reached the door to open it, there was a cacophony of barks from inside.

  ‘One starts and then they all do,’ he said.

  Sammy cowered away, ducking behind Lizzie’s legs. ‘It’s all right,’ Lizzie told him. ‘They won’t hurt you.’

  As they passed each of the dog’s cages, the dogs inside them hurried to the cage gate, barking and whining and wagging their tails winningly. Some even put their paws out.

  ‘That’s Toby,’ Kenneth said as a large tan-coated, mixed-breed dog hurried over to them, making the whining sound they’d heard earlier.

  Lizzie swallowed hard at the obvious desperation of some of the dogs. It was so sad seeing them in cages like this. There was every type of dog she could imagine and some that she hadn’t even thought of. They should be in homes being loved and cared for, she thought, like Mouser. She hoped Amelia was right and that Mouser would come home when she was hungry. Mouser had gone off before, once even for a few days, but she’d always come home, so Lizzie thought it probably wasn’t time to panic.

  ‘Some of the dogs do get to go home or are rehomed somewhere new,’ Kenneth said as if he were reading Lizzie’s thoughts. ‘Although not as many as I’d like. We had another summer dog – quirky-looking thing – that went home a week ago.
I’ll never forget how happy he was to see his owner. As he got to the gates, he turned back, looked straight at me and barked.’

  ‘Just like he was saying thank you,’ said Amelia, who’d heard the story a few times already, and winked at Lizzie and Arthur.

  ‘And then do you know what he did?’ Kenneth said.

  Arthur shook his head.

  Kenneth’s eyes turned misty at the memory. ‘He ran back and licked my hand.’

  Sammy looked up at Kenneth as if he were listening to the story too.

  ‘Some of the medium and larger dogs are going to help with the war effort, aren’t they, Kenneth?’ Amelia said pointedly.

  ‘What’ll they have to do?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘Guard the soldiers and their ammunition and warn them if the enemy approaches,’ Kenneth told him.

  ‘I don’t like dogs having to go to war,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Kenneth. ‘But they’ve used dogs in wars for as long as there’s been wars – and that’s a long, long time.’

  They walked on through the kennels and, wherever they went, dogs looked at them with pleading eyes.

  ‘Do you get two dogs from the same family sometimes?’

  Kenneth nodded. ‘And we’ve had more than one case when a pregnant dog’s been brought in and her pups have been born here.’

  ‘Puppies are so sweet,’ Lizzie said, looking down at Sammy.

  ‘But it’s hard for them to survive on their own,’ Kenneth said. ‘Since the start of the war more and more dogs are being abandoned. I’ve had some owners, desperate owners, take off their dog’s collar, put a bit of string round the dog’s neck instead, like your puppy had, and bring it here, claiming it’s a stray, when it was clearly a family pet. Breaks your heart to see.’

  ‘Breaks the dog’s heart too, no doubt,’ Amelia added softly.

  They came to an empty cage with a bowl of water in one corner and a blanket at the back.

  ‘This one’s free,’ Kenneth said as he opened the door.

  Lizzie let go of the lead and Sammy ran in and started to drink the water. Kenneth closed the door and bolted it.

  Sammy stopped drinking and raced to the cage door. He didn’t want to be shut in. He wanted to go with Lizzie and Arthur. But he wasn’t quick enough to get out. He barked his high puppy bark and all of them heard and turned back. But they didn’t have a choice.