Mr Wrong (10 page)

‘Please, Mummy –’

Mrs Bracken did not turn round.

‘Could you undo me please?’

Her mother turned the gas down with a heavy sigh and did turn round. ‘Heavens! Haven’t you had your bath yet? Whatever on earth have you been doing?’

‘I’ve washed – ever so carefully. But, please –’ her mother was now twitching away at the bandages, ‘could the dog have something for his supper?’

‘You’ve just fed that dog.’

‘Before my exercises.’

‘Give him some of your fruit then.’

‘Dogs don’t eat fruit. They don’t like it.’

‘Miss Know-all! He’d eat it if he was hungry enough.’

‘I love him. I don’t want him to feel as hungry as that.’

‘I told you – give him some of your ham.’

‘I’ve already given it to him. And anyway, Mummy, dogs have to have their own food. You know, like dark red meat, and dog biscuits and everything.’

‘If you think I’m keeping that dirty creature in the house –’

Panic-stricken, Fern gave ground. ‘All right, Mummy, actually I’ve washed him so he’s lovely and clean.’

‘What are you standing about for then?’

(‘Because I’m so hungry I could easily eat dog biscuits myself, and after your tea you’re having an enormous real supper so why can’t I, and why can’t the poor dog
have the same? Why shouldn’t we all have enough to eat and a nice time?’) What she actually said was: ‘Nothing,’ and trailed forlornly upstairs. She was dreading having to
face him with nothing.

He was very nice about it, really
good
, she said to herself. His look of expectation about supper turned into a look of expectation about seeing her, and he kissed her with evident
delight at their reunion. It was much easier to go to sleep with someone who felt the same. When she put out the light, he waited a moment, and then crept up to her end of the bed and settled
himself in her arms as though this was how they’d always been together.

The day, though, was not at all like the night. This became cruelly apparent at breakfast the next day. On Fern’s plate was the tomato she would have had with the ham she had given to him.
Beside the plate was her glass of milk and her half grapefruit. It was another cold day, and the sight of this meal minus her two slices of ham made her feel shivery. She hesitated, then asked her
mother if she could have some more ham (there
was
more, in the fridge, as she knew); her mother said no. She asked if she could have a boiled egg then, or some cereal, and her mother said
certainly not, whoever did she think her mother was?

Fern sat at the table, with the dog beside her. Tears filled her eyes and spurted out on to her empty plate. The telephone rang, and her mother surged out of her chair to answer it. As soon as
she had gone, Fern cut a slice of Hovis, and, with her mother’s knife, spread it thickly and quickly with some marmalade. He ate it with discreet speed, and she had time to lick her fingers
and collect the crumbs from the bread-board. Mrs Bracken came back just at the end of this, as though she had been waiting in the wings to be told.

‘Mr Strong
is
considering you for the part,’ she said. Her smile had more teeth in it than she usually bothered to display in the home. Fern knew she was pleased, and wondered
how to get something for him out of it before anything went wrong.

‘There’s many a slip betwixt cup and lip,’ her mother said, as though she knew exactly what Fern was thinking.

‘I gather a child he had in mind went down with measles. He will want to see you again on Friday.’

Today was Tuesday. Surely, before then, she could get him accepted? He needed regular proper food, walks, a collar and lead, tons of love – if
only
she had pocket money! She spent
the rest of the day coaxing, wheedling, trying to get her mother to love the dog, and to do something about him. Her mother accepted these efforts with bland satisfaction, but she continued to
behave as though the dog did not exist. Fern tried to keep him with her, as she was afraid that her mother might be nasty to him if she was not there to protect him, but when he growled at people
coming to classes, she was forced to take him up to her room and shut him in there. By evening there was a real crisis. Fern, having gone without her breakfast, and half her lunch, was desperate
for her tea or supper, and so was the dog. But when she explained this to her mother, Mrs Bracken simply said that
she
had not wanted the dirty creature in the house: if Fern wanted him, she
would have to be responsible.

‘But I haven’t got any
money
!’

‘Oh, it’s money now, is it? Whatever next! First you have a dog and then you want money.’

‘Only to feed him with. He
must
have food or he’ll starve to death.’

‘I don’t care what he does. And kindly leave the bread alone. It’s new: far too good for him, and you know you’re not allowed to touch it.’

Frantic, Fern cut up the pieces of ham on her plate, unwrapped the small triangle of cheese and broke it into pieces. The dog ate it in about five seconds, looked at her appealingly and wagged
his tail. He was clearly asking for more.

‘You understand, that’s your lot for the night.’

Fern looked at her mother, and to her utter confusion, saw that Mrs Bracken was almost smiling – as though she was enjoying herself! How could she be? – in such an awful situation!
But it needn’t be like that at all! It was her mother who wasn’t allowing everyone to have enough, while she guzzled away without having to share a thing. And she could do anything she
liked, because of having money and being grown-up. Her eyes filled with tears, and furious that she couldn’t help it, she said as a retort: ‘If you’re not careful, I’ll be so hungry, I won’t be able to see Mr Strong on Friday, and you won’t like that!’

Her mother’s reply was to take the dog by the scruff of his neck, and kick – literally kick – him through the back door into the night.

‘That’s that, then,’ she said. ‘Finish your fruit juice and up to bed with you.’

Fern burst out crying. It was icy cold, and rain or sleet was falling to make things worse. He had nowhere to go; he was lost, and now, without enough dinner, he had been pushed out and he would
either get run over or freeze to death.

Her mother boxed her ears: Fern threw her grapefruit juice on the floor. For a moment they both stood staring at each other, panting, each wondering what outrage the other would commit next.
Then Mrs Bracken seized Fern by her hair and started to pull her out of the room: Fern kicked the bulging calves of her mother’s muscular legs, but owing to the rounded toes of her shoes and
her long hair, her mother easily won. At the top of the stairs, Fern tried once more:

‘If you don’t let him in, I
won’t
eat anything and that will make me no good at the audition. You’ll see.’

‘Silly nonsense.’ Her mother practically threw Fern on to the bed (she was frighteningly strong sometimes), slammed the door, and then locked it. Now, she wouldn’t be able to
creep down when her mother was asleep to let him in! He would be out all night, and would probably go away, if he didn’t die of cold. Cruelty to animals; she would like to have her mother
arrested for it if only they did that sort of thing. Once she was sure that her mother had gone, she cried more quietly out of sheer misery for him. Her bedroom was the wrong side of the house: it
looked out on to a main road, so she dared not call him. She considered trying to escape down a drain-pipe, but there didn’t seem to be one near enough. Eventually she fell asleep for a few
hours, and when she woke up she remembered that there was a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She should have remembered this before, because she ought to have known that her mother
would be Cruel to him, and not waited for her to be it.

Her mother let her out of the room in silence: there was nothing in her face to tell Fern how things were. When she went down to the kitchen, her breakfast was laid out, but before sitting down,
she went to the kitchen door and opened it.

He was there! He had waited. He was wet, bedraggled, and shivering, but his ecstasy at the sight of her had no resentment at all. She flung her arms round his neck and he whimpered with joy.
Surely her mother would see how sweet he was? She had one last try. ‘Mummy – look, Mummy, he waited all night. Please can he come in?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ her mother replied levelly, as she placed her own steaming plate of breakfast on the table.

‘Can I dry him a bit?’

‘As long as you don’t use any of my towels.’

(As though the house was filled with other people’s!)

In the end, she used rather a lot of paper towel, and he did not seem to be very much drier, although grateful for the attention.

She looked at her breakfast – wanting it quite badly – and then began to cut up the ham.

‘If you’re going to mess about with your food, I’ll put it away.’

So that was why she hadn’t seemed angry. She’d been waiting to say that! What she meant was that if Fern tried to give any of her food to the dog, it would be taken away from her. In
fact, he was not to be fed at all. He was to starve to death. That was worse than being cruel – it nearly amounted to murder. If only her mother had actually murdered a person, then she could
ring up the police and have her taken away – as easy as that. But animals didn’t count – except to the Society . . .

She ate her breakfast – there was no point in nobody having it, and she had to think what to do and if she got too hungry she wouldn’t be able to think about anything. After
breakfast, and after classes began in the Studio, she knew her mother would have gone out to shop and have coffee and more cakes with someone or other. So, she asked to be excused, went quickly to
the telephone and dialled the operator (she was so bad at spelling that looking things up was hopeless). The Royal Society etc. it turned out to be called. She memorized the number (she was good at
remembering things) and got on to them.

It took her some time to explain what she wanted. They seemed to find it difficult to understand why, if she was
there
– where the dog was –
she
couldn’t do
anything about it. ‘I’m a minor,’ she said more than once; ‘you see I can’t stop any of it because I’m a minor.’ In the end they agreed to come.

The same thing happened at lunch. Her mother said that if she did not immediately get on with her meal, it would be taken away. She took her supper out of the fridge while her mother was on the
telephone and hid it until she could take it up to him (she was keeping him out of the way – in her room as much as possible).

Mrs Bracken came back from the telephone. ‘Mr Strong will be seeing us this evening with a friend of his,’ she said. ‘I’ll wash your hair.’

This was a familiar but horrible business. First a trickle of icy water on her head – icy to scalding – then soap in her eyes, nothing to get it out with, then feeling that she was
drowning as her mother poured huge enamel jugfuls of water of indiscriminate temperature over her, then being violently rubbed with a specially harsh towel followed by the near-weeping pain of
being combed out with a steel comb and her mother’s temper on edge, to the final misery of being screwed so tightly into curlers that it felt as though her hair was being very slowly pulled
out by the roots . . . it was one of the worst spots of the week. The whole process took a little over an hour but it seemed to change the whole day. When it was all over, her mother made her sit
at the kitchen table and do homework of one kind or another.

The kitchen was the warmest room in the house, and Fern liked being there. She would also have liked to have the dog with her on this of all afternoons, but she dared not do it, in case her
mother ordered him out of the house. All the afternoon, she longed for and dreaded Them coming!

They turned out to be one youngish man. There had been a Keep Fit class in the studio that afternoon, so Mrs Bracken didn’t answer the door-bell when it rang. Nor did Fern. She had put a
head-square on, but her curlers still bulged and peeped from under it. The class was over and people were arriving and departing continuously, but when Fern heard a man’s voice asking for
Miss Bracken she knew who it was, and went to meet him. She asked him to wait in the kitchen. ‘I’ll fetch the dog,’ she said and ran very quietly and quickly up to her bedroom:
with any luck, her mother would be still snoring her ‘short afternoon rest’ away.

The dog cringed when he saw the Inspector, as he called himself. That did not seem to matter, however; the trouble was that he kept asking questions that Fern couldn’t answer properly. Who
did the dog belong to? If she, Fern, liked him, why couldn’t he stay with her? What did Fern think was wrong with him anyway? He seemed all right – a bit on the thin side, but if he was
a stray . . . At this moment, Mrs Bracken entered the kitchen. She had an expression that Fern knew and hated. There was no more problem about answering questions.

‘My mother wouldn’t give him any food, you see. So he hardly gets anything, except some of mine. It isn’t enough for either of us.’

‘And what, may I ask, are you doing here?’

‘He’s an Inspector about cruelty to animals.’

‘The R.S.P.C.A., madam.’

Mrs Bracken’s face went blank.

‘I don’t remember asking you to come.’

‘No, madam, it was your daughter.’

Mrs Bracken turned her impassive gaze towards Fern: then she shut the door. ‘Oh yes?’ she said, and sat down in her mealtime chair.

‘The situation is perfectly simple, madam,’ said the young Inspector, but having said this, he could think of nothing more.

‘The dog’s a stray,’ said Mrs Bracken. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘I understand that your daughter is quite—’

‘It’s nothing to do with her, either. I’ve told you – the dog just walked in here, dirty thing, and has hung about ever since.
I
haven’t given him the
slightest encouragement.’

‘It’s my fault. I gave him a lot of encouragement. I liked him.’

‘No collar or nothing?’ suggested the Inspector, hopelessly.