Fluke

by James Herbert

  So, I had a proper name. And like I say, it was appropriate: Fluke by name, fluke by nature.

  10

  Rumbo never mentioned that incident again. He was a little distant with me for a few days afterwards, but my final action had at least saved me some grace and, because of our need for each other (which Rumbo himself would never have admitted), we were soon back to our old relationship.

  Lenny had lost interest in me, his plans for making money out of me dashed by my contrariness. Apart from a rueful grin now and again, he really didn’t take much notice of me any more when he came into the yard. The breaker called Georgie took my collar from me and returned it later. Rumbo told me there were scratch marks on the small metal name-plate and I assumed ‘FLUKE’ had been inscribed there. Anyway, that was what they called me in the yard now, and so did the people who petted me in the street once they’d looked at the collar. I was thankful I was no longer known as Horace.

  The winter froze on and times for Rumbo and me got leaner. We still made our daily trips to the fruit market, but our pickings in the shopping-zones had become increasingly more hazardous. The shopkeepers now knew us by sight and would chase us away as soon as we came sniffing around: the cold weather made the housewives more guarded, less friendly. I was fast losing my puppy cuteness (I suppose I was around seven or eight months old by then), and people are less inclined to stop and stroke a gangly mongrel than a plump, furry bundle, so I had become next to useless as a decoy for Rumbo. However, the hardship made us more cunning, swifter in our attacks, and more resourceful in our methods.

  A wild dash through a supermarket usually proved fruitful, provided there was a clear exit. One of us would knock stacks of cans over or generally cause a disturbance while the other would sneak in and grab the nearest edible item at hand. That was always very exciting. A romp around a school playground at lunchtime would inevitably yield a sandwich or two, or perhaps an apple or some chocolate. The pandemonium was lovely. A visit to the local street-market never failed to bring us replenishment for our greedy stomachs. The threats and curses our thieving from there caused were, nevertheless, a little alarming. Moreover, we had become too adventurous, and that led to our downfall.

  One day Rumbo and I had marched boldly into a backyard, encouraged by our noses which had been enticed by delicious cooking smells. An open doorway stood before us and steam billowed out from within; we were at the back of a restaurant, at the kitchen entry. Both of us were overconfident to the point of recklessness; we had been getting away with it for too long. We ambled in.

  It was a high-class restaurant, although you might never have suspected it from the state of the kitchen. I knew it was a good place because of the menu, part of which I could see steaming away on a centre table: roast duckling dripping with orange sauce. It was surrounded by other dishes, but not as mouth-watering, waiting to be carried away into the dining-room (or carried away by two hungry dogs). Apart from the chef, who had his stout back turned to us while he was busy stirring a huge cauldron of simmering soup, the kitchen was empty. Rumbo gave me a quick look, then with one bound was up on the table. I rested my front paws against the table’s edge and smiled smugly. Our bellies would be full today.

  Rumbo nonchalantly worked his way through the various dishes (if he had been a man, he’d have been humming) until finally he reached the duckling. He flicked out his tongue and began licking at the orange sauce. He looked back at me and I swear he rolled his eyes. My mouth was drooling by now and I was hopping from one hind foot to the other in frustration. Rumbo had a few more licks, then his jaws opened wide to grasp the entire roasted bird between them. It was at that moment the door leading to the dining-room burst open.

  We stood paralysed as a waiter in a white jacket and small black bow-tie, carrying a tray full of half-empty dishes, breezed in, calling out a new order to the chef before he was even through the door. The waiter was fairly small for a man (all tall to me, you see) and wore his jet-black hair greasily slicked down. Above his greasily slicked down moustache was a long, curving nose and, above that, two over-large, bulbous eyes which grew even larger and more bulbous when he saw us. His mouth dropped open to a point where it almost matched Rumbo’s and the dishes on his tray slid down the incline he had unconsciously created, slipping over the edge in an avalanche. The terrible crash as they hit the tiled floor set the whole scene in motion again.

  The chef whirled, clutching at his heart, the waiter screamed (I think he was Italian), Rumbo grabbed the duckling, and I (what else?) wet myself.

  Rumbo leapt from the table, slid on a slippery patch on the floor, lost the duckling, scrambled to retrieve it, yelped as the hot soup-ladle thrown by the chef skimmed across his back, grabbed the duckling again by the parson’s nose end, and scurried for the exit.

  The waiter threw the now empty tray at Rumbo, choked back a sob, gave chase, skidded on the same slippery patch, sprawled on his back, and managed to get his legs tangled up in dog and duckling.

  The chef moved his hand from his heart to his mouth, roared with furious anguish, lumbered forward, slid on the tray which covered another slippery patch left by the skidding orange-sauce-covered duckling, landed heavily (he was very stout) on the little waiter’s chest, and bellowed and hacked at dog, duckling, waiter and all.

  I ran away.

  Rumbo crept furtively into the yard about five minutes after I’d arrived there. He crawled through our own private entrance at the back of the yard behind a huge pile of wrecks – a one-foot-high hole torn in the corrugated-iron fencing at its base – still grasping the now cold roast duckling between his jaws. The young bird looked a bit worse for wear: a pièce de résistance that hadn’t resisted too well. Nevertheless, to two hungry mongrels it was still a gastronomic triumph, and after we’d sucked every bone clean (I warned Rumbo not to crunch the bones – too splintery, I told him) we had a good chortle over our success. The smirks were wiped from our faces a couple of days later, however.

  A uniformed policeman arrived at the yard and asked one of the breakers if there were two black mongrel dogs on the premises. Rumbo and I edged out of sight behind a decaying Ford Anglia and looked at each other nervously. It was obvious the shopkeepers had got together and registered a complaint to the local cop-shop; perhaps the restaurateur had instigated the action. It certainly hadn’t taken the police long to track us down. We peeped from behind the old car and saw the breaker pointing nervously towards the Guvnor’s office. The young policeman strolled casually over to the hut, examining the various cars parked alongside it. The Guvnor was having one of his now regular meetings with his cronies.

  The plod knocked at the door and the Guvnor appeared. We watched his smiling face as he dealt with the policeman’s inquiries, showing a disarming charm that had never been apparent to us before. His hands made gestures of surprise, alarm and concern; he nodded his head gravely, then shook it equally as gravely. Then he was back to smiling and smarming, his cigar never once leaving the corner of his mouth during the discourse. With one last smile of assurance from the Guvnor, the young policeman turned and strolled from the yard.

  The Guvnor smiled benevolently at the policeman’s back until he had disappeared through the gate: then he turned his gaze towards the rest of the yard, a look of sheer thunder on those now rock-like features. He spotted our snouts protruding from the wreck and marched towards us with stiff, determined strides.

  ‘Run, squirt, run!’ Rumbo warned me.

  I wasn’t quick enough. The Guvnor grabbed me before I had a chance to make a break for it. He began to flail at me with a closed fist, keeping a firm grip on my collar as he did so. I’d always felt the Guvnor had a contained cruelty about him (this didn’t necessarily make him a cruel man) and now it was let loose and I was its recipient. I howled in pain, and was grateful that a dog’s sensitive cells are unevenly distributed over the body otherwise some of these blows would have hurt even more.

  Rumbo stood and watched from a distance, anxio
us for me and fearful for himself.

  ‘Come ’ere, you!’ the Guvnor bellowed, but Rumbo wasn’t having any. He darted even further away. ‘You wait ’till I get ’old of you,’ my assailant shouted. Rumbo skipped from the yard.

  The Guvnor’s anger had been flushed now, but his meanness still remained. He dragged me to the back of the yard, collecting a length of rope on the way, then tied me to a wreck wedged beneath a pile of other wrecks.

  ‘Right,’ he snarled as he looped the rope around the empty window-frame of the car. ‘Right!’ He gave me one last wallop before he marched off, muttering something about the last thing he needed was the law snooping round. ‘Right,’ I heard him say as he slammed the hut door shut.

  A few minutes later the door opened again and the Guvnor’s cronies filed out, climbed into their various cars and drove off. After they’d gone the Guvnor appeared, roared for Rumbo and, when nothing happened went back inside. I had the feeling we wouldn’t see old Rumbo for some time.

  I tugged and pulled the rope, calling for the Guvnor to come back and let me loose; it was no use, he wouldn’t listen. I was frightened to pull on the rope too hard because the cars towering above me looked precariously balanced; I could never figure out how the piles of cars in the yard never toppled. My calls turned into angry shouts, then piteous whining, then sorrowful whimpers and finally, much later on when the yard was deserted, sullen silence.

  It was dark when my companion decided to return. I was shivering with the cold and miserable with the loneliness.

  ‘I told you to run,’ he said, coming out of the night.

  I sniffed.

  ‘He’s got a terrible temper,’ Rumbo went on, sniffing round me. ‘Last time he tied me up, he left me for three days without any food.’

  I looked at him reproachfully.

  ‘Still, I can always bring you bits and pieces,’ he added consolingly. Suddenly he looked up. ‘Oh-oh. It’s beginning to rain.’

  A raindrop splattered against my nose.

  ‘Not much cover here for you, is there?’ he commented. ‘Pity the car door’s shut – you could’ve climbed in.’

  I studied him quietly for a few moments, then looked away.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think I could find you anything this time of night.’

  My head became dotted with rain-spots.

  ‘Pity we ate that bird all in one go. We should have saved some of that.’ He shook his head wistfully.

  I peered under the car I was tied to and saw there wasn’t enough room to squeeze beneath it. I was becoming wetter.

  ‘Well, squirt,’ Rumbo said with false jocularity, ‘no sense in both of us getting wet. Think I’ll get out of the rain.’ He looked at me apologetically. I regarded him disdainfully, then turned my head away again.

  ‘Er . . . I’ll see you in the morning then,’ he mumbled.

  I watched him shuffle away. ‘Rumbo,’ I said.

  He looked back at me, his eyebrows raised. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do me a favour?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Get neutered,’ I said mildly.

  ‘Good-night,’ he replied, and trotted off to our nice warm bed.

  The rain began to beat a rhythmic pattern on my body now and I curled up as small as I could, hunching my neck into my shoulders. It was going to be a long night.

  11

  It was not only a long night but a disturbing one too. It wasn’t just the discomfort of being drenched, for my fur held the moisture and formed a snug coating, keeping the worst of the chill away; but my sleep was nagged by memories.

  Something had triggered the thoughts off and I didn’t know what; it hid away somewhere in my mind’s periphery. I saw a town – a village? I saw a house. Faces swam before me: I saw my wife, I saw my daughter. I was in a car; the human hands on the steering-wheel before me were my own. I drove through the town. I saw the angry face of a man I knew; he was also in a car and driving away from me. For some reason I followed. It was dark. Trees, hedges, flashed by, flat and eerie in the headlights. The car in front of me pulled in, turned into a narrow lane. I followed. It stopped; I stopped. The man I knew left his car and walked towards me. In the harsh glare from my headlights I saw his hand was outstretched – he was holding something? I opened my door as the hand pointed towards me. Then everything became a crystal of brilliant, glittering light. And the light became dark; and I knew nothing more.

  Rumbo dropped a half-eaten roll in front of me. I sniffed at it and pulled out the thin slice of ham squashed between its crusty covers with my teeth. I gulped the meat down, then licked the butter from the bread. Then I ate the bread.

  ‘You were yelping in your sleep last night,’ Rumbo told me.

  I tried to remember my dreams and after a while the fragments became whole pieces.

  ‘Rumbo, I haven’t always been a dog,’ I said.

  Rumbo thought before he spoke, then he said, ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘No, listen to me, Rumbo. Please. We’re not the same, you and I, not like other dogs. You’re aware of that. Don’t you know why?’

  Rumbo shrugged. ‘We’re just smarter.’

  ‘It’s more than that. We still have the feelings, the thoughts of men. It’s not just that we’re more clever than other dogs – we remember how we were!’

  ‘I remember being a dog always.’

  ‘Do you, Rumbo? Don’t you ever remember walking upright? Don’t you remember having hands, having fingers that you could use? Don’t you remember speaking?’

  ‘We’re doing that now.’

  ‘No, we’re not – not in men’s language anyway. We’re thinking now, Rumbo, we’re making sounds, but our words are more thoughts than those sounds. Don’t you see that?’

  He shrugged again and I could see the subject bothered him. ‘What difference does it make? I understand you, you understand me.’

  ‘Think, Rumbo! Use your brain! Try to remember how it was before.’

  ‘What’s the point.’

  This stopped me for a moment. Then I said, ‘Don’t you want to know why? How?’

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘But, Rumbo, there has to be a reason. There must be some purpose to this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know why.’ There was frustration in my voice now. ‘But I want to find out!’

  ‘Listen, squirt. We’re dogs. We live like dogs, we’re treated like dogs. We think like dogs . . .’ I shook my head at this, but he continued: ‘. . . and we eat like dogs. We’re a little more intelligent than others, but we keep that to ourselves . . .’

  ‘Why don’t we show them we’re not like the rest?’ I burst out.

  ‘We are like the rest, squirt. We differ only in small ways.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘It is true; you’ll find out. We could show men how clever we are – lots of animals do. They usually end up in the circus.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing! That’s only animals learning tricks.’

  ‘Did you know they’re teaching a chimpanzee to talk? Is that a trick?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  Rumbo looked flustered.

  ‘It was something you knew in the past, wasn’t it, Rumbo? Not as a dog, but as a man. You read about it.’

  ‘Read? What’s read?’

  ‘Words. Words on paper.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, paper can’t talk!’

  ‘Nor can dogs.’

  ‘We’re talking.’

  ‘Not in the same way as men.’

  ‘Of course not. We’re not men.’

  ‘What are we?’

  ‘Dogs.’

  ‘Freaks.’

  ‘Freaks?’

  ‘Yes. I think we were men, then something happened and we became dogs.’

  There was an odd look in Rumbo’s eyes. ‘I think the rain last night soaked into your brain,’ he said slowly. Then he shook his body as if to shake off the conversation. ‘I’m g
oing to the park now. You could chew through the rope if you want to come.’

  I slumped down on to the ground; it was obvious, as far as Rumbo was concerned, the discussion was over. ‘No,’ I said resignedly, ‘I’ll stay here till the Guvnor lets me loose. We don’t want to make him any angrier.’

  ‘Up to you,’ said Rumbo and trotted off. ‘I’ll try and bring you something back!’ he called out as he squeezed through the hole in the fence.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to myself.

  When the Guvnor turned up later that day he came over to see me. He shook his head a few times and called me a few more names. I tried to look pitiful and it must have had some effect, for he was soon untying the length of rope from my collar. He felt the dampness on my back and advised me to have a run to dry myself off. Accepting his advice, I shot out of the yard and made for the park where I knew I would find my companion. His trail was easy to follow but my progression from lamp-post to lamp-post was much more fun than just making straight for the park.

  I found Rumbo sniffing round a little bitch, a skittish Yorkshire terrier, her lady owner anxiously trying to shoo my ragged friend away. Complex thoughts had gone: I couldn’t understand Rumbo’s interest in these silly lady dogs, but I did enjoy a good game. And this looked as though it could be a good game.

  The weeks sped by – they may have been months – and I became lost in my canine world again, only occasionally being troubled by tormenting memories. Snow came, melted, was gone; winds swept in fiercely, spent their anger, and left meekly; the rain rained. The weather couldn’t depress me, for I found its different moods interesting: I was experiencing things in a new way, with a different outlook; everything that happened was a rediscovery. It was like the feeling you get after recovering from a long debilitating illness: everything is fresh and often startling; you observe with more appreciative eyes. You’ve known it all before, but familiarity has dulled things for you. That’s the only way I can describe it.