As I have said, Pugh's personal idiosyncrasies had gained ground. I scarcely saw him during my stay. He had arrived at the conclusion, which I might have foreseen if I had given the matter thought, that rest and relaxation were the key to efficient health, the art of life, so that the only problem that appeared to trouble him was whether, for half an hour or more, both before and after every meal, it should be "Head-down" or "Bed-down," by which he meant whether it would be more rewarding to nap on a sofa or to undress and return to bed. Earnestly recommending me to follow an example which, he declared, would enable me to derive the maximum amount of benefit from my short stay with him, his phrase was "One rises like a giant refreshed"; and, indeed, that did seem to be the effect upon himself, for at those rare moments when he was not horizontal he would stalk about the farm buildings with great vigor, making many pertinent remarks in his military voice and spreading consternation among the cows. The house, which he had built himself, managed to be bleak without being actually cold; the wide wooden staircase, with its low treads to reduce leg-strain, was uncarpeted and so was the gallery above, on to which the bedroom doors opened. I had been allotted the bedroom of the absent Mrs. Pugh, a large room, strewn with a number of small mats and rugs, which adjoined the Captain's and communicated with it. Besides the bed, it contained, I was glad though not surprised to find, a comfortable sofa for Tulip: there was a sofa in every room, including the dining room and bathroom.
When Pugh finally retired, at an early hour, he observed that he was a light sleeper and therefore hoped that Tulip was a sound one. He added that he always slept with his passage door and window wide open in order to obtain the maximum amount of fresh air. In fact Tulip is a very quiet sleeper, though she will usually pay me one visit in the night and put her nose against my face. Perhaps I cry out in my dreams—or do not, and she wishes to reassure herself that I am not dead. It was, therefore, well precedented when she wakened me at about 2 am on this particular night. I patted her drowsily and recomposed myself for slumber. But Tulip did not go away. Instead she rose up on her hind legs and pulled in an urgent kind of way, with her paw, at the shoulder I had turned towards her. Looking up, I could discern in the gloom the shape of her head with its tall ears cocked down at me as she stared intently into my face. What could she want? I fumbled about on the side-table for my matches and lighted the candle (the farm was too remote for electricity), whereupon Tulip hurried over to the door and stood in front of it, looking eagerly back at me.
"What's up, old girl?" I asked uneasily.
She made a little whinnying sound, pawed excitedly at the door and again turned her brilliant gaze upon me. Hell! I thought, can she possibly want to pee or something? She scarcely ever needed to relieve herself at night; she had done her duties often throughout the day, and (I looked at my watch) it was only four hours since I had taken her for a final tour of the grounds before Pugh locked and bolted his front door. Could she really want to go again? Not that in other circumstances I would have hesitated to take or let her out; but how in the world was I to get her past my host's open door at the head of the staircase and down the slithery wooden stairs which, I had already noticed, rang like a sounding-board beneath her tapping claws, without waking him? Even then, and all by the light of a candle, there was that heavy oak door at the bottom to be noiselessly unlocked and unbolted
"Tulip dear," I said to the earnest face, "you don't honestly want to, do you?"
Then her knell, and mine, sounded. The cat, still imprisoned in the potting-shed in the garden outside, yowled, and Tulip's bright eyes shifted to the window. So that was it! On all our numerous excursions round the grounds, during Pugh's bouts of "Head-down" or "Bed-down," she had made a bee-line for this shed and taunted the cat, who had consolidated an already impregnable position by entrenching itself among some flower-pots on an upper shelf. Doubtless its maledictions had been provoking her while I slept. I extinguished the candle and settled back on my pillow. But Tulip was instantly beside me, clawing at my face and arm.
"Don't be tiresome, Tulip! Go back to bed! We'll visit the cat in the morning."
She left me then, but she did not go to her sofa. She returned to the door, snuffled at the bottom of it, and then subsided heavily against it with a sigh. But almost at once she was up again and prowling about the dark room.
Silence. Then I heard plop-plop-plop. I fumbled for my matches now with such haste that I knocked over several objects on my table with a loud clatter. When the candle was lit, Tulip was coming towards me from the other side of the room. Wagging her tail and gazing at me with soft, glowing eyes, she kissed my cheek. And, indeed, she couldn't have helped it. I saw that at once when I got out of bed to look. She couldn't have retained it for a moment longer. But—I was deeply touched—she had selected her place with as much care as the lay-out of the room allowed. Avoiding all the rugs, she had laid her mess on the linoleum and as far from me as she could get, against Pugh's communicating door.
I was more than touched. I was dreadfully upset. My pretty animal, my friend, who reposed in me a loving confidence that was absolute, had spoken to me as plainly as she could. She had used every device that lay in her poor brute's power to tell me something, and I had not understood. True I had considered her meaning, but she was not to know that for I had rejected it; nor could I ever explain to her that I had not totally misunderstood but only doubted: to her it must have seemed that she had been unable to reach me after all. How wonderful to have had an animal come to one to communicate where no communication is, over the incommunicability of no common speech, to ask a personal favor! How wretched to have failed! Alas for the gulf that separates man and beast: I had had my chance; now it was too late to bridge it. Oh yes, I could throw my arms about her as I did, fondle and praise her in my efforts to reassure her that it was all my fault and she was the cleverest person in the world. But what could she make of that? I had failed to take her meaning, and nothing I could ever do could put that right.
She lay now on her sofa watching me swab it up. For that had to be done at once. What did she think as she observed me take all the trouble which, one might say, she had tried so hard to avert? For it needed a good twenty minutes to clear the mess up, and numerous visits to the WC half-way down the stairs, with the paper linings of Mrs. Pugh's chest-of-drawers. Poor Pugh! It was not, I fear, with the look of a giant refreshed that he appeared at the breakfast table later. He said kindly that it was of no consequence. But it was. Tulip was never asked again.
DID SHE LOSE some confidence in me at that moment? I have often sadly wondered. But I cannot be sure. For the next time we went visiting I was rather unwell and took a drug to make me sleep. I shall never know, therefore, whether she tried to wake me or not. Her problem this time was both easier and more difficult. It was a far grander house than Captain Pugh's, with a lot of unoccupied bedrooms, one of which communicated with mine. Since the communicating door on this occasion was ajar, Tulip's main strategic problem of removing herself from my presence was solved; she had only to push the door open and go into the next room. On the other hand, the house was carpeted throughout with handsome Indian carpeting. There was not an inch of linoleum or skirting-board anywhere. It so happened, however, that in this large adjoining room there was a solitary rug, small, cheap and suitably brown, spread upon the pile carpet in front of a dressing table, and Tulip selected this for her purpose. (Did she try to wake me first? Or did she say to herself, "Alas, he wouldn't understand"? How I wish I knew!) At any rate, she made this delicate choice for cleanliness, unobtrusiveness and protective coloring, and thereby defeated her own ends. For the housemaid who brought up my breakfast the following morning and had already learnt to approach any place where Tulip lay with circumspection, thoughtfully decided not to enter our room at all. Instead, she carried my breakfast into the adjoining one by its passage door and, quietly crossing it, placed the tray upon the dressing table. She then retraced her steps and, coming round to my own passage door, tap
ped upon it to tell me what she had done. What she had done was only perceived later in the day, and then a bottle of ammonia and several hours' hard work were required before the poor girl's retraced steps across the white carpet were wholly obliterated.
After the episode of the greengrocer's wife, it is a pleasure to record that at this time sympathy and moral support came from the least expected quarter. I was in need of both, for Tulip and I had been invited to the house for several days. Now that she had improvised a WC for herself, would she not return to it every night? And what could I do to circumvent this? Should I, for instance, strew sheets of brown paper in front of the dressing table where the rug had been? But the housemaid, upon whom the brunt of the business had fallen, assured me that it was quite unnecessary to take precautions of any kind. This good-natured girl, it transpired, had had much to do with dogs in her time, and she stoutly maintained that Tulip would not repeat the offense, that the only reason why she had committed it at all was that dogs are highly nervous and excitable creatures, and that travel, when they are unused to it, often upsets their digestions. Her diagnosis and prediction were perfectly correct. Tulip never did it again.
THE STORY HAS an even happier ending. If I did forfeit any of Tulip's confidence at this period, I have reason to believe that I recovered it later. For the events I have related took place many years ago when she was young and a shade irresponsible, and our love was new. There came a day, however, when we were walking in Wimbledon woods and she suddenly added my urine, which I had been obliged to void, to the other privileged objects of her social attention. How touched I was! How honored I felt! "Oh, Tulip! Thank you," I said.
And now she always does it. No matter how preoccupied her mind may be with other things, such as rabbiting, she will always turn back, before following me, to the place where she saw me relieve myself—for nothing that I do escapes her—to sprinkle her own drops upon mine. So I feel that if ever there were differences between us they are washed out now. I feel a proper dog.
TRIAL AND ERROR
SOON AFTER TULIP came into my possession I set about finding a husband for her. She had had a lonely and frustrated life hitherto; now she should have a full one. A full life naturally included the pleasures of sex and maternity, and although I could not, of course, accommodate a litter of puppies in my small flat, that was a matter to which I would give my attention later.
The prospect of mating her presented no other serious problem. Slender though my knowledge was, it seemed sufficient. Bitches came into season or, more vulgarly, heat twice a year. The heat lasted for three weeks. During the first week the vagina gradually opened; during the third it gradually closed. Mating was accomplished at the peak, in the second week. It was all plain sailing. Indeed, such difficulty as I envisaged lay in the opposite direction, in preventing her from being mated—in protecting her, that is to say, from the attention of undesirable suitors. Undesirable suitors were stray dogs of other breeds, or of no breed at all; for although I had no profit-making interest in the matter, so beautiful a creature as Tulip should certainly have children as pretty as herself. The only question that remained to be settled therefore was the choice of a suitable mate—the question, in fact, that confronts us all, but simplified in the case of bitches by the availability of a stud system of dogs for the hiring. Partly out of thrift, however, I discarded this solution. Why pay a fee for hiring a husband when there were quantities of good-looking Alsatians about who might be borrowed for nothing if one got to know their owners? But how did one get to know their owners? Tulip's next heat—the third of her life, but the first since she entered mine—was close at hand. I could not rely upon a chance encounter. Might not a vet help? Any vet would probably include an Alsatian or two among his patients; it would be easy for him to sound the owners and put me in touch. All this a local vet obligingly did. He provided me with the address of a Mr. Blandish who lived in Sheen and owned a good Alsatian named Max whom he was willing to lend. Vets at this early period of my life in the dog world seemed to mc an impatient race, but I trespassed further upon this one's time to inquire whether there were any particularly favorable days in the second week for putting the two animals together. That, said he, was a question the bitch herself would decide, but the ninth to eleventh days were considered normal. He added that I should find out whether Max had had any previous sexual history. Why? I asked. With a weary smile the vet replied that mating dogs was not always so simple a matter as I seemed to suppose, and that since Tulip was inexperienced it would be helpful to have a sire who knew the ropes. He then turned his back on me.
THE HOUSE WAS large, solid and detached, and that it was probably the right one was indicated, as I pressed the bell, by a short rumble of gruff barks within. Max was then revealed as a heavy, handsome dog with the grave deportment of the old family retainer. His stolid figure silently barred my entry, until a quiet word from his master authorized him to admit me. When I was invited into the sitting-room he followed after and, assuming a dignified posture on the hearth-rug, kept me under close surveillance: the house and its management clearly belonged to him. To have offered him any kind of familiarity, it was plain, would have been as shocking a breach of etiquette as if one had attempted to stroke the butler.
Mr. Blandish, who was hearty, prosperous, middle-aged and bald, seated himself beside me on the sofa and gave me a cigarette.
"Matches! Matches!" he then exclaimed, in a petulant voice. "Are there no matches in the house!"
Considerably startled by this outburst, I said soothingly: "Oh, never mind. I think I've got some."
But before I could begin to fumble, Max had lumbered to his feet and, with a swaying motion of the hips, crossed the room. Picking up an outsize box that was lying on a stool, he brought it to his master. Mr. Blandish accepted it without comment and lighted our cigarettes, while Max stood obsequiously at his elbow.
"Thank you, Max," he then said, in a negligent manner, and handed the box back to the dog, who replaced it on the stool and gravely resumed his watchful position on the rug.
This unnerving incident was not permitted to interrupt the Blandishes' flow of polite conversation. They plied me with questions about Tulip and expressed their delight at the projected alliance. They had had Max for six years and had always wished for an opportunity of this kind; his happiness was their only concern in the transaction. These remarks gave me the opening I needed to put the question the vet had advised me to put, but the alarming exhibition of canine sagacity I had just witnessed had so shaken me that I hardly knew how to frame the inquiry in Max's presence. Avoiding his eye, I stammered:
"Then will this be his first experience of—with the opposite sex? The vet seemed to think there might be difficulties unless—"
But Mr. Blandish displayed no sense of delicacy.
"Oh, you needn't worry about that!" said he, with a guffaw. "Max knows his oats all right!"
I coughed.
"He's been married before, then?"
"He's never been churched, it's true," said Mr. Blandish, "but when we were down in the country a couple of years ago, he happened upon a stray bitch in heat—not at all a classy one, either—and had his wicked way with her on the spot. He'll be delighted to repeat the performance with Tulip, I can assure you!" he added gleefully.
"Oh, then that's all right. It was only that, Tulip being a virgin, the vet thought—"
"Leave it all to me," said Mr. Blandish gaily. "I've got a very reliable little book—not that Max will need to look anything up in it!"
I was then invited to bring Tulip along for a formal introduction to her betrothed. When I got up to go, Max preceded me into the hall and, interposing his bulk between myself and my hat, required another permissive word from his master before I was able to pick it up, in case, Mr. Blandish explained, I took the wrong one.
THE FORMAL INTRODUCTION was effected a few days later, and if Tulip failed to make a bad impression on the Blandishes, it was not, I thought, for any want of
trying. Of the kind of impression she made on Max there seemed to me no doubt at all. The sound of his throaty rumble as we advanced up the drive announced that he was on duty, and the opening door disclosed him, planted squarely on the threshold as before, his master's hand upon his collar. The affianced pair gingerly sniffed each other's noses, and Max's tail rose higher in the air and began to wave majestically from side to side: he was clearly preparing to do the canine honors. Much gratified by this exhibition of tender feeling, Mr. Blandish bade us enter, and both animals were released in the hall. But no sooner had Max approached Tulip, in the most affable manner, to extend his acquaintance with her, than she rounded vigorously upon him and drove him down the passage into what appeared to be the pantry with his tail between his legs. From then on, it seemed to me, she behaved abominably. She investigated all round the Blandishes' sitting-room in a thorough, dubious and insulting way, as though she could scarcely believe her nose, and then refused to sit or lie down, but constantly interrupted our conversation by nattering at me to take her away, staring at me imperiously with her exclamatory face. When I pretended not to notice her, she tried to pull me out of my chair by her own lead, which I always carried clipped round my neck. To the Blandishes and their overtures of friendship she paid not the slightest heed; they might, indeed, not have been present; and whenever Max was emboldened to emerge from the pantry to join us, she instantly chased him back into it again.
My Dog Tulip Page 5
