Seating myself on a fallen tree I light a cigarette. She sits too, and addresses herself once more to her meal. I hear the crunch of the tender bones and the skull, bone still warm with the lust of the young creature's life. She devours it all, fur, ears, feet; not a trace of her banquet remains. Now she knows she is both thirsty and hot and, with her loping stride, leads me down to the nearest stream and flops into it. Reclining on one flank she laps the shallow water, letting her long tail float out upon the surface: she is momentarily conscious of her condition and is cooling her swollen vulva, her nipples and her anus. Fern drapes the banks of the pool she has chosen, the early sun slants across her through the branches of a mountain ash, the water sings over its pebbly bed: it is Africa and she is a jungle beast come down to the river to bathe. From one flank to the other she shifts; delicious the cool stream flowing about her heated parts; when she emerges she will not shake herself, she has learnt that also, to keep the refreshing liquid clinging about her; she will be hot and dry again soon enough—
IT IS SUMMER, it is spring... I keep her out two hours, three hours, four hours ... She is on the go all the time. Can nothing tire her sufficiently? Ah, would that I could keep her here forever, so happy and so free... The journey back presents no difficulties. The 85 bus from the top of Roehampton Lane suits us now. We may have to wait about for an agreeable conductor, but the stop is countrified, no dogs will harass us here. The bus drops us at Putney Bridge, from where we set out. We still have that five hundred yards to walk home and must expect, at this late morning hour, to encounter a dog or two who will notice and follow her,— but now it does not matter—I have worked it all out—she is exhausted, she is muddy and wet, the streams will have washed away the potent emanations of yesterday. Soon we are through the cellar window and back in the flat. I dry her and give her some milk, warm if the weather is cold. Then I shave and wash, make myself some coffee and set off for work. Tulip is curled up contentedly in my armchair when I go in to bid good-bye to her.
"Ah, Tulip," I say, "what a lucky girl you are! What other bitch in your condition has so wonderful a time? Now rest till tomorrow morning, when we will do it all over again...."
But Nature will not be cheated, fooled, bribed, fobbed off, shuffled out of the way. I still have to return in the evening, and, dodge it as I may, I know what I shall find, a burning creature burning with desire. "Heat" is the apt word; one can feel against one's hand without touching her the feverous radiations from her womb. A fire has been kindled in it, and no substitute pleasure can distract, no palliative soothe, no exertion tire, no cooling stream slake, for long the all-consuming need of her body. She is enslaved. She is possessed. Indeed, especially towards the peak—it is the strangest, the most pitiful thing—her very character is altered. This independent, unapproachable, dignified and single-hearted creature, my devoted bitch, becomes the meekest of beggars. Anyone will do who will supply her with a crumb of physical comfort. Some years later I take her with me everywhere in this condition, and in the quiet public house restaurant where I often eat my lunch, she will go from table to table looking not for food but for love. Leaning her flank against the knees of the other customers, she gazes up at them with humble eyes. People are often flattered when animals seem to select them for affection, and women especially will exclaim with pleasure when Tulip behaves like this. If they know her already they will exclaim with surprise: "Why, look at Tulip! What's come over you, dear? I never knew you so friendly before." Nor, in a few days, will they know her so friendly again, unless they happen upon her six months hence. But now she is a poor beggar cast upon the mercy of the world. They stroke her. If they stroke her head, that is not what she wants; she will shift herself further round to present them with her rump, and stand there meekly, with lowered head, while their hands move over it. When they stop, she will thank them with a grateful look and push it at them again. Human beings are extraordinarily ignorant about dogs. These amused and flattered people do not notice the coiling tail; if they noticed it they would not know what it meant; if they knew what it meant they would probably be less flattered and amused.
It is what I myself have to face when I return. I have had it all before, of course, as readers of this history may exclaim: but with what a difference! Then I was working to help her; now I am bent upon frustrating her. If I saw her state at all then as a plight, I could contemplate it with equanimity, with cheerfulness; I cannot bear it now. I cannot bear it, I cannot avoid it, she obtrudes it constantly upon my sight. "Help me," she says, gazing at me with her confident animal eyes; but I no longer wish to help her, I wish to frustrate her, I wish her to have everything in the world she wants, except the thing she needs. She presses up against me. I put down my hand and stroke her, her soft ears, her pretty head, her backbone, her coifing tail. The tail is sign enough of her physical torment. So rigid is it that a small effort is required to disengage it from the flank to which it clings. When I draw it through my hand it recoils upon her body like a steel spring, and whips, as though imbued with a life of its own, from side to side. How cruel a trick, I think, to concentrate, like a furnace, the whole of a creature's sexual desire into three or four weeks a year. Yet is she worse or better off than ourselves who seek gratification of it, without respite, over the greater part of our lives? She rises up and clasps my leg.
"Ah, Tulip, you know you didn't like it last time. Don't you remember how frightened you were? And those poor children of yours, how bored you got with them!"
But Nature has her in thrall:
"You shall mate! You shall bear! And now! Now! My time is short and must not be wasted!"
"Help me," she says, pressing against me, staring up into my face, bringing me her trouble. I cannot bear it. With a rough word I send her from me. She goes, dejected, rebuffed (dogs are expert at inflicting remorse), and sits on the bed at the other side of the room facing me. Unendurable the hopeful gaze watching for signs of relentment, the sorry sighs she heaves. A smile would bring her over, even a look. I avert my face. But she cannot rest. Nature will not let her rest. Soon she has slid off the bed, and by a halting, circuitous route, reached me again to replace herself in my line of vision. The tall ears are erect now, the head drawn back, the gaze level. I meet it, in spite of myself. We stare into each other's eyes. The look in hers disconcerts me, it contains too much, more than a beast may give, something too clear and too near, too entire, too dignified and direct, a steadier look than my own. I avert my face. Raising a paw she bangs me on the knee.
"No, Tulip."
But delicately finding room for her fore-feet on the seat of my chair, she rises up towards me and sets her cheek to mine... Darkness, which quickly extinguishes canine activity, is slow to affect her now. I go to bed early to end the dismal day, but she is instantly beside me, sitting upright against my pillow, her back turned, shifting, licking, panting, shifting, peering at my face, pulling at my arm. Sweet creature, what am I doing to you? I stretch out my hand in the gloom and stroke the small nipples which, I have decided, shall never again fulfill their natural purpose. Panting, she slackly sits while my hand caresses her, her ears flattened, her head dropped, gazing with vacant eyes into the night beyond the windows. Gradually she relaxes, subsides. Gradually, my hand upon her, she sleeps ...
How do other people cope? All bitch-owners must have the same problem, though the luckier ones have it less frequently. Tulip is fairly normal and regular, a six-or seven-month bitch, but there are many deviations; some bitches are quite erratic and unpredictable, some have only one heat a year, and I am told of one who lived healthily to the age of thirteen without ever coming into heat at all. Fortunate owner! For some reason Nature missed her out. No doubt, too, the degree of intensity varies from breed to breed, from bitch to bitch, but every private owner must have the same problem in some sort, and I ask about. The answers come readily enough. "Send her to kennels. That's what we always do." "Haven't you a spare room to shut her up in?" "Have her altered." And then th
e voice I most fear and detest: "Kick her out of the way, the dirty bitch!"
I listen, but I cannot act. How can I put her from me? Situated as I am, I see that I never should have taken her at all; I cannot mend that now. She is my friend, an honored member of my household. Years of devotion, years of habit, bind us together. When she is hurt, it is to me that she comes, holding out her paw. When she goes home it is into my door that she turns. It is true that she is now more amiable to strangers than is her wont, but as I think of that I remember also her desperate, her frenzied agitation whenever she loses sight of me in the streets. I cannot send her from me. And how can I tamper with so beautiful a beast? Yet I am tampering with her. I am frustrating her.
A few people who adopt none of these measures but get their animals, somehow or other, through their difficulties as I do, say: "Luckily it doesn't last long. It's soon over." Soon! Will the wretched season never drag itself out? And even when it seems safely past, its ghost rises accusingly from the grave. Two months later, when she could have been having a litter, she thinks she is pregnant. Her lower teats begin to secrete milk. She moves restlessly about the flat choosing her place, making her plans. Lying awake in the night I hear her, sometimes in the bathroom, the smallest, darkest room in the flat, scratching away at the linoleum; sometimes out on the terrace, mysteriously prowling among the weathered ruins of her old box, scratching, scratching at the decaying wood, making a nest for children that will never be born.... Soon it will be over. The ghost rises. Soon it will start again... Must I have this recurrent nightmare forever? Do bitches have change of life? It seems they do not. And is it my imagination that the more I frustrate her the more protracted, the more insistent, her heats become? As though Nature were saying: "You escaped me last time. You shall not escape me this!"
IT IS SPRING, it is winter, it is summer... Through twilight darkness, through the rain, through sunshine, frost, or heavy dew, I make my way with her across the plateau to the birch woods to give her everything she wants, except the thing she needs. She is four, she is five, she is six... Spots of blood on the silvery shins. The torment, the wonder, has begun again. Like a flower, like a door, the vagina is opening, the house is being made ready, the peremptory, the remorseless summons approaches ... It is her tenth day, her eleventh day, her twelfth day. Soon it will be over. Only two days more.
Only two days more before desire fails, fecundity fails— opportunity fails. Soon the flower will close, the door will shut, will lock; we shall be free, we shall be safe ...
How beautiful she is in her shining raiment, her birch-bark body, her sable bodice, her white cravat, her goffered ruff. Exquisite the markings on her face, her turning, turning face, like the wing of a Marbled White butterfly. Perfection of form. Perfection of grace. My burning bitch, burning in her beauty and her heat...
"Well, Tulip, I promise you, if ever you meet an Alsatian dog as handsome as yourself, alone and palely loitering in the woods, that will be romance, that will be fate, and I won't stand in your way."
A safe bet! That very season we meet one and in those circumstances, a noble beast who has probably scented her while out walking with his owners, for the woods must be impregnated with her sexual odor, and returned alone to seek her. She goes to welcome him, her sharp face sharpened with mischief. They savor each other, their noses, their bodies; their uplifted tails wave graciously like plumes. Over her shoulder she turns upon me a gay, inclusive, conspiratorial look. They begin to play. He advances eagerly upon her, trampling with his feet. She retreats, curtsying down, gazing up shrewdly into his face. He presses forward. She fends him off, leaping backwards, switching her bottom from side to side as he tries to approach it, first by one flank, them by the other. They rise up together breast to breast, clasping each other in their arms. They are like two boxers amicably sparring, leading, feinting, guarding, trying for the advantage. He presses on. She turns and flees, her ears laid back. He flies after. How enchanting she is, the coquettish little bitch, putting forth all her bitchiness. Now she halts. She is still. She stands. He mounts her. And before I know that I have spoken, her name is out of my mouth. "Tulip! " With her bright attentive face she comes to me at once. I put her on the lead and take her home. I am profoundly shocked, profoundly shaken. Life has caught me out, and the word that I have uttered rings on and on in my head. The dog does not molest us, nor does he ever cross our path again....
It is autumn, it is spring... The birch woods, and she is off upon her errands, I upon mine. The solitary place belongs to us. It is our private garden, our temple, our ivory tower. Except for an occasional ranger or woodman we seldom meet a soul. I make my way towards the tree upon which, yesterday, I left my cap. The illusion of happiness, of peace, must have continuity, must have permanence. Moving up between the thin silver pillars that line the way to the second crest, I look down into the grove where, in isolated grandeur, the great birch tree stands. Lord of the woods, like a giant buried upside down to the waist, his huge open legs, green at the thighs, tower sprawling into the air. The narrow track, hedged with high bracken, passes between them over his crotch. It is the heart of the woods, the sacred precinct, and with Tulip beside me I descend into it. The place belongs to us. I know many of its secrets now, many of its joys and sorrows. Tulip is adding to the latter; I regret it, but love is cruel. It pleases her to chase and kill; she must have her pleasure. She must have everything she wants, except the thing she needs. While she persecutes, I protect; thus may I balance the accounts, perhaps, hers and mine, and propitiate the tutelary god. It is spring, and I visit the nesting birds upon whose private affairs we have stumbled. The mallard has built too close to the track; how can she hope to escape detection? When Tulip's rummagings disturbed her, what valor she displayed, feigning injury beneath our very feet to lure us from her eggs. Fortunately for her, Tulip is not interested in birds. They have outsmarted her too often. While the mallard's oriental eye watches me from her prickly bower, I draw the long arms of the bramble more thickly about her and screen her from view. Later on, perhaps, we shall see her leading her brood down to Queensmere. Or we shall not. We may find a cold and rifled nest...
"You could destroy the litter..."
"Could you?"
"I think so."
"Life is tenacious. They die hard."
"Yes."
"Why are you changing your mind, anyway?"
"I don't know. She is so pretty."
"So you would destroy her pretty babies?"
"Not all. I would leave her two to draw off her milk."
"Three. One of two might die, leaving only one."
"Then three."
"Four would be safer."
"Then four."
"Ha-ha! You amuse me. And how would you abstract the rest?"
"I keep trying to think..."
"She would know. Close all the doors between, her tall ears would hear the little shrieks!"
"Don't! It's what I dread."
"Poor fellow! But please explain: what has her prettiness to do with it?"
"It will be lost."
"What is that to you? Or to her? Unless, as I suspect, you want one of her babies for yourself to carry on when she is dead?"
"Oh no! Not all this responsibility again! I don't think I could."
"You don't think! Would it not be true to say that you are woefully lacking in decision?"
"Woefully. It's the frustration really. I hate to see it."
"Then you'll be mating her and destroying her litters every time she's in heat?"
"No, no! Just this once."
"Every time you don't you'll have to see frustration."
It is summer, and heath fires have broken out. The sultry air is acrid with the smell of burning. Inexorable fires that smolder away below the peaty soil, flickering up from time to time a momentary flower of flame as they gnaw their way towards the roots of the trees. Dear Willow, foremost ever with tidings of spring; my Sweet Chestnut, who lays down for me every autumn a ca
rpet of the palest gold; how can I help you? I stamp and stamp along the devouring edge, puffs of ash spurt up beneath my feet. Out! Out! It is out... But when I glance back the wisps of death are rising once more.
"If they don't die of one thing they die of another," the woodman says. "Trees go sick, just like we do, they all have their diseases. Some go sick in the foot, some in the head. I can always tell a sick tree. They bleed too. The birch bleeds red, like us. See." He thrusts his finger into a hole in the tree he is logging and brings out a thick orange slime. "I won't ask you to smell it. When you're sawing up a birch and get a pocket of this under your nose it doesn't do to bend over it too long, it turns the stomach. It's a birch disease; you'll see it about if you look, a black mark ten foot or so up the stem and this stuff spilling out of it. A woodpecker started this one going, I reckon. He pecks and he pecks, and if he pecks a hole the rain can settle in, the tree goes bad inside."
"Is he an enemy of yours, then?"
"The woodpecker? He has to live. We all have to live. He has his troubles like the rest of us. Oh no, I wouldn't care to speak against the birds. I like the birds and they like me. I've had them coming down to me many a time as I work. When there's snow on the ground I just clear it away with my foot, like this, and they dive in. They're grateful if you help them, and they help you in return. I'm on my own most of the time and they tell me when anyone's coming. They fly over to tell me. The squirrel he tells me too. Just like your dog tells you..."
My Dog Tulip Page 12
