Tea and Dog Biscuits (3 page)

‘I can't remember,' said the man. Then another long pause. ‘Oh yes,' he suddenly said. ‘Elton.' ‘Oh. That's unusual,' I said.

‘Daft name,' he responded. ‘My grand-daughter called him after that singer.'

‘Oh, Elton John,' I said. The conversation was lit now.

‘No.'

‘Oh.'

‘Elton Presley.'

Dorothy and I couldn't help but smile at one another. The very old man closed his eyes. He had given up on trying to converse with me.

A woman encased in full theatre gear, accompanied by two men, came through a pair of swing doors that broke up the mural.

The woman rustled across to the old man and spoke quietly to him. One of the men released the brake on the old man's trolley and with his colleague pulled it to the swing doors. The woman paused to say to us, ‘We'll be with you in a couple of minutes, Mrs Hawkins.'

She knows Dorothy's name, I thought. I was always grateful when they used my wife's name. If they used her name it seemed as if she mattered more. It was an enormous hospital, like a small town, and there was the anxiety that you were just one of a mass of patients. But the staff worked against that. There had been worrying stories in the newspapers about the state of the National Health Service but they bore no relation to what we had seen. The images we had grown up with and held all our lives of knowledgeable doctors and kind, smiling nurses had come to life.

Any isolated lapses had been more than made up for by the reassurance of all the professionals we had met: the quiet, calm voices; the seemingly unhurried manner, especially the doctors; the young lady doctor who had so patiently talked us through all the alternatives to what was going to happen; the surgeon who had crept into the ward late at night, unexpected after his twelve-hour shift in the operating theatre, to sit on my wife's bed, chatting to her quietly for half an hour the night before her operation, before going home at last for his evening meal.

I was recalling all this in the silence that had returned after the swing doors had banged together, eating up the old man.

I was squeezing Dorothy's hand and I stared into her eyes. In comparison with most people her green eyes seem unusually big, or it may be that she is often wide-eyed like a little girl. My own eyes were wet.

I felt privileged that she had chosen me to be her husband. In the months past I had often wished that I could just lift the pain off her, even if only for a while. That we could have passed it backwards and forwards between us when it became too much, that we could have shared it like we had shared everything else.

With only a couple of minutes to go, the time had come to reassure Dorothy, although I knew that, typically, she would be more worried about me than about herself. I couldn't start with what I wanted to say, so I said instead, ‘It's true, you know – you should have been a nurse. You have an angelic face, my Dorothy. If it was me that was in hospital and I opened my eyes and saw you, I would think I had died and gone to heaven.' Without meaning it the dreaded word had come into the conversation. Now I was prompted to say what I had to.

‘If… if this doesn't work out… I won't do anything silly. I'll keep myself busy. I won't waste my life.'

‘You'll find somebody else. You must get remarried.'

‘That's not going to happen,' I said.

We were both crying.

This was more than two minutes. Is it going to be delayed again? We had never got this far before. I closed my eyes and memories from the last few weeks appeared before me. The endless discussions about whether she was strong enough for this ‘procedure'. The waiting: When would we have the result of the test that would tell us? Would the test be decisive? What did the test say? Should she have another test? What if we waited another twenty-four hours? Then the relief when a decision was made: Yes, they think her heart is strong enough.

One of the swing doors was pushed back for the woman in full theatre gear to put her head round.

‘Nearly there,' she said. She screwed up her face in a kindly gesture of sympathetic pain. ‘Sorry.'

The door closed with a bump. We were left to fill more time.

I looked down at the floor. What would I do if I was left on my own?

Dorothy had read my thoughts.

‘Rescue work.'

I looked up.

‘Do the rescue work. In memory of Elsa. And for the sake of all the other Elsas that need help.' She touched my hand. ‘That's how you can give thanks for the fourteen years.'

Elsa… dear Elsa. She had come to me at eight weeks with a broken leg. From the time she recovered, she had made me get up and go and get some healthy exercise, she had helped keep my high blood pressure down and she had always been there with me. She was a German Shepherd dog and she had been the most perfect living thing.

When Elsa had gone the previous autumn I had not been able to face ‘replacing' her and had spent lonely months missing her. A woman who did rescue work heard we had lost her and had rung. I told her it was too soon yet for me to have another dog. But she hadn't been ringing for me to adopt a dog of my own: Would I be a foster parent? She said because it was Christmas she had nine dogs in a garage. This was Cecilia and I discovered later it was really four. Though that was bad enough.

Dorothy and I were not professionals at dealing with dogs. Still, nine dogs in one garage… If we'd had some experience, like running a boarding kennels, then maybe we could have offered to help… But we'd not even had a difficult dog of our own; I'd taken Elsa to training classes just to keep her intelligent brain occupied. Cecilia said the big breeds needed special help; some of the rescue societies weren't keen on taking the guarding breeds such as German Shepherds. We could probably understand why, but then it's those guarding breeds that are more likely to fall into the hands of the wrong types who want them because of their image.

The swing doors opened and the woman in full theatre gear returned with the two men.

I leant over and said to Dorothy quickly, in a whisper, ‘I will.'

She squeezed my hand and I thought she would break a bone. She gave me a huge smile and one of the men took the brake off. They started to wheel her away from me.

She looked round and said, ‘I'll be back and we'll rescue the dogs together.'

Then the swing doors swallowed her up and she was gone.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

What was that? I thought.

The battery in the front door bell had long ago died on us and we didn't always hear somebody rapping on the door – but I couldn't fail to hear this, even though I was asleep.

Bang! Bang! BANG!

I looked at the clock: not yet eight o'clock. Whoever's banging on the front door at this time on a Sunday morning? In Little Wilberry?

It had taken Dorothy and me more than a year's house-hunting to find our cottage and its village. We had lived on a ring road in the city for years and felt we had earned a respite from the traffic. We longed for some peace, space, trees, fields, hedges, country lanes, wildlife. In the tiny East Anglian village of Little Wilberry and its countryside we had found all this.

The turning off the main road some three miles distant led only to our village and so we had no cars speeding through en route to somewhere more important. And the narrow, winding, patched-up road had made the village an unattractive prospect for developers. We still had five working farms in Little Wilberry, which gave some employment to a proportion of the village's small population. A handful of people worked away from the village, as I did, but many other residents were enjoying retirement.

This resident had been hoping to enjoy a Sunday morning lie-in.

Not fully awake, I pulled on trousers, found slippers, went downstairs and tugged at the front door, which was still sticking from the winter. Thankfully, the banging had stopped.

I pulled the door open to come face to face with a big, excited black dog up on his hind legs, pawing the air, almost filling the door frame. I stepped back.

At the other end of the black dog's lead was a man with his feet splayed out to give him grip, the end of the leather lead tightly wrapped around his hand.

The black dog dropped down onto all fours and lurched forward into the hall, pushing me aside, jerking his human after him. The man grabbed the doorpost with one hand and hung on, trying not to collide with me.

‘You take in dogs?' he said.

‘Um… We're probably
going
to take in dogs.' I thought, How does he know? Dorothy's still in hospital and we haven't decided yet.

‘He's a lovely dog…' the man said.

The lovely dog turned sharp left behind me, his lead rubbing hard against the back of my legs. I think he wanted to explore our cottage.

‘… but I can't keep him.'

It was raining, so I felt I ought to ask man and dog in. We went through to the kitchen. There the man wound his end of the lead twice more round his hand, to shorten it and get an even better grip.

‘I'm sorry if I've disturbed you on a Sunday morning,' he said.

‘It's OK,' I said.

‘He's a lovely dog,' the man said again. ‘But I can't keep him.'

The dog was pulling forward, straining at the end of the lead.

‘Do you want to let him off?' I suggested.

‘It's probably best if I hang on to him in here,' the man said.

Having just woken up, my mouth was dry. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, or a coffee?' I asked.

‘No. I'm fine, thank you.'

Well, I needed one badly so I took the kettle across to the sink to fill it. This gave me a little bit of time to gather my thoughts. I switched the kettle on and turned back to the man. I was about to explain that Dorothy and I had discussed embarking on rescue work with dogs, with a view to rehoming them, but hadn't yet finally decided as she was still in hospital. That if we did go ahead it wouldn't be until she was out of hospital and well on the road to recovery. But before I could say this the man held out his free arm to shake my hand.

‘I'm John,' he said.

I shook his hand. ‘I'm Barrie.'

‘I know.'

I wanted to say, How do you know?

‘I've rung about twenty places,' he said. ‘No one will take him. I've used up three vouchers on me mobile.'

An awkward pause.

I looked across at the dog. He was so tall that his head was nearly level with the work surfaces in the kitchen. He was sniffing his way along them.

‘Let him off,' I said.

John laughed what seemed to be a forced laugh. ‘If you say so.'

He unclipped the lead and the dog immediately jumped up and put his feet on the work surface, sniffing the bread bin.

‘Get down!' John shouted.

The dog ignored him. His owner grabbed the dog's collar and pulled him back down onto the floor.

‘He's a devil for food,' he said. ‘Never known a dog like him. Do anything for food.' He shook his head.

I noticed the dog's hip bones were protruding and his ribs showed. I recalled that our vet had once told us that you should be able to feel a dog's ribs, but not see them.

‘Helps himself, does he?' I said.

‘Oh, yes.' John chuckled nervously to himself.

I asked him if he wanted to sit down. He thanked me and sat down on a kitchen chair but didn't take his eye off the dog.

Neither of us spoke for a minute or two. While he watched what his dog was up to, I looked at John. It was difficult to estimate his age: thirties perhaps? He had wrinkles on a face that seemed too young to have deep wrinkles. He wore what I guess was a suit jacket, too long for him, over soiled jeans. In those moments of silence he began to rub his hands together as if he were washing them.

‘He's enormous, isn't he?' I said, breaking the silence. ‘How old is he?'

John chuckled to himself again, without looking up. ‘Eleven months.'

‘He's huge for eleven months,' I said.

‘He's easy enough to handle, if you just remember he'll do anything for food.'

I was about to say that if Dorothy and I did decide that we would try the rehoming work – although it would be in our spare time – we might be able to take this dog in the not-too-distant future. I was about to say this when John looked up from watching the dog. Our eyes met.

‘Don't change his name,' he said. Then he hesitated. Perhaps he thought that sounded as if he was presuming we would take the dog, which it did.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, ‘but…'

‘When I was a squaddie my best pal was a dog handler. His dog Monty was shot. When I got this lad, I named him after him.' Now he looked away from me and down at the floor. He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘It was in honour of him.'

The big, black dog went up to John, put his head against his arm and nudged him. John put out both his arms and cupped the dog's head in his hands.