9
Dog Rescue
Mr Carker put an advertisement for his Easy Pets business into the papers every month. The advertisements were very glossy and there were pictures of the particularly beautiful or rare dogs which could be hired. In the latest advertisement there was a mention of the Tottenham terrier, a new breed of which there were very few specimens in England, and it said that Easy Pets was the first rental agency which had such a dog on its books.
This advertisement was read by a Miss Gertie Gorland, a tall, thin woman who lived with her brother Harold, who was also tall and thin.
The Gorlands ran a hotel by the seaside which was doing badly, and a steam laundry which was doing badly, and a delicatessen which was not only doing badly but had actually gone bust, and when they saw the advertisement they had a brainwave. “We could breed Tottenham terriers,” said Gertie. “Set up a puppy farm. If they’re so rare, people will pay fortunes for them.”
So they went round to Easy Pets and arranged to hire out Fleck for a couple of hours. They wanted to make sure that this new breed was not fierce or liable to attack strangers.
When they saw Fleck they quickly stopped worrying about his fierceness. He was curled up in his cage and scarcely looked up when they came in – there is nothing like misery for making one tired – but when Kayley put on his collar and lead, he followed them dutifully out into the street. To tell the truth, he didn’t care who he was with or where he was going.
The Gorlands hadn’t gone far when they decided that the Tottenham terrier was not likely to catch on as a fashionable pet. No one stopped them and asked them where they had got that dear little dog, no heads turned – and out in the strong light they had to admit that the terrier was an odd-looking creature with his short legs and bat-like ears.
When they had walked for a while, Gertie said she was hungry, and Harold said he was hungry too. Tall, thin people need a lot to eat.
“We could see what he’s like in crowded places,” said Gertie, looking down at the dog.
So they turned into a well-known department store where there was a grand restaurant which permitted one to bring in dogs. The owners had been forced to do this because a lot of famous people ate there who refused to be parted from their pets.
When the waiter had shown them to their table, the Gormans put the loop of Fleck’s lead under the leg of Gertie’s chair, and when he had smelled the hundred or so pairs of uninteresting feet and the over-rich smells of the food, Fleck crawled under the table and went to sleep.
“I’m not being difficult,” said Hal. “It’s just that I don’t mind whether I have a blue tuck box or a brown one. I would mind if I could, but I can’t. It doesn’t make any difference.”
Albina sighed. “I don’t know what to do with you. I’m spending a fortune to make sure you’re properly kitted out for your new school, and you just stand there like a dummy.”
They were in a famous department store, buying Hal’s school uniform for Okelands. They had already bought four pairs of navy blue trousers, six white shirts, two striped ties and a cap with the Okelands motto on it. The motto was in Latin and usually Hal would have asked what it meant but now he didn’t care. If it said, “Go Out and Kill People With a Hatchet” it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing mattered to Hal any more.
After the tuck box came the scarf and the blazer and the socks…
When everything had been paid for, Albina decided to go round the store. Although she didn’t need a wedding dress she took Hal through the bridal department, and though she already had eighteen nightdresses she took him through lingerie, and though she never gardened, only got the maid to hose down the gravel, she went through the gardening department, fingering wheelbarrows and tubs of artificial roses.
In the jewellery department she bought herself a diamond bracelet, and after that she was in such a good mood that she said she would take Hal out to lunch in the restaurant which was famous for its exotic and unusual food. Hal had eaten there before and been sick afterwards but he followed his mother and the waiter to a table covered in a pink cloth, with a vase of lilies in the centre. The smiling waiters wore tailcoats and an orchestra played softly on a dais.
“Now isn’t this nice,” said Albina. She took the huge menu the waiter offered her and became absorbed in it.
“I think we’ll have—” she began.
But she didn’t go on.
Three tables away, Gertie was just dipping her spoon into her tomato soup when a kind of earthquake hit the store.
The Tottenham terrier who had been lost to the world leapt to his feet and pulled so hard at his lead that Gertie’s chair fell over and she went crashing to the floor, followed by the plate of soup, which landed upside down on her blouse.
And as she lay kicking and screaming, Fleck took off.
This exhausted little dog who had hardly been able to put one foot in front of the other raced across the room like a bullet from a gun, passed the first table – felling a waiter who was carrying a tray of glasses and a bottle – and the second table, where a man tried to catch him and toppled over backwards, and crashed violently into the third…
… where a boy had jumped to his feet, knocking over the vase of flowers, which rolled on to the floor and tripped up a lady making her way to the toilet.
The head waiter, hurrying in through the double doors from the kitchen to see what had happened, found everyone screaming and complaining and mopping at their clothes. Everyone except a young boy and a small dog, who saw nothing but each other.
“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Albina to her husband when he came home that night. “They had to send for a security guard to carry the wretched dog away, howling and struggling, with his head twisted towards Hal. And yet Hal just sat in the taxi on the way home without any fuss. He didn’t cry or anything, and he seems quite resigned to going away to school. He’s asked if he can spend a night with Joel tomorrow to say goodbye. That was the friend he made in his first school – do you remember? Rather a common little boy, but I’ve said yes.”
“Well, it looks as though he’s growing up at last,” said Donald. “We’ve obviously done the right thing, not letting him wear us down. I’ll go and say goodnight to him.”
Going up to his son’s room, Donald saw that Albina had been telling the truth. Hal seemed calm and quiet, he hardly mentioned having met Fleck in the restaurant, and said he was looking forward to going to school and that he was glad to have a chance to say goodbye to Joel.
And indeed Hal was calm and quiet, because he now knew exactly what he was going to do. One of the things which people had told him was that Fleck would have forgotten him. Well, they had been wrong about that, and it seemed to him that they were wrong about most of the things that mattered.
Hal was tired of living in a grown-up world. It was time to make his own world where things were right and fair and as they ought to be.
Mr Carker was in a towering rage. He stamped through his office, cursing and swearing. The restaurant had sent in a huge bill for the damage that the little dog had done. Gertie Gorland was suing him for the price of her blouse, which had been entirely ruined by soup. The businessmen whose suits had been damaged when the waiter’s tray fell on them were asking for hundreds of pounds to buy new ones, and the lady who had fallen on her way to the toilet was going to send him her medical bills.
“I won’t have it,” raged Mr Carker. “I’ll fight everyone. I won’t pay a penny to those rogues! As for that blasted dog, he’s out of his mind. It’s probably inbreeding – you get that in these pedigree animals.”