Key in hand and still looking frightened, Antonio went down to the room which had so often witnessed my post-lagoon ablutions. Coming back he said, ‘No, non c’è nessuno.’ ‘There is no-one.’
THE SILVER CLOCK
Nerina Willoughby (so named because her parents, now dead, had liked the flower) had inherited their large house, as was right and proper, for she was their only child. Perhaps on that account she had never married; and was used to being, if not the idol of two people, at least their main object, the centre of their thoughts, and although she had had more than one offer of marriage, she had refused them. She was now thirty-one. Better be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave, so ran the proverb; Nerina was good-looking, in a rather austere way, and well-off; her suitors were much younger than she, as perhaps Penelope’s suitors were. So far, no middle-aged or elderly prétendant had presented himself, and lacking this rather doubtful incentive to matrimony—for though she was sure she didn’t want to be a young man’s slave—she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be an old man’s darling. Her parents had doted on her, their ewe-lamb, much as a middle-aged husband might. But their devotion, in season and out of season, fretted her and demanded of her an obligation of gratitude to which she couldn’t always respond and which gave her a feeling of guilt.
Independence, independence! Independence from human ties which are often, as they say, a bind. Better be by oneself, if sometimes lonely, than attached to another human being, probably more selfish than oneself, whose every move of oncoming or withdrawal, and the emotional strain and re-adjustment they entailed, must be met by a corresponding reaction on her part.
And so Nerina, who was far from wanting in affection, in fact too sensitive to its demands and too little inclined to impose her own, took to dog-breeding.
With dogs you knew to some extent where you were. They had their tricks and their manners, as the doll’s dressmaker said; no dog was like another, each had to be studied; each had to be cherished; they gave what they had or withheld what they had; but they were, for Nerina, at any rate, objects of devotion on whom she could spend her care and affection without feeling that, sometime or other, they would try to get the upper hand of her. Difficult they often were; but they depended on her, as much as she on them; she never had to say (for at heart she was a disciplinarian) ‘I must give way to Rex’ (or whatever his name was) as so often women had to, with their husbands.
So Nerina was absorbed in the dogs; they were her interest, her occupation, almost her religion. In this she did not differ from many people who find in animals something they miss in human beings. A sort of rapprochement, not always to be relied on, for animals have their moods, as well as we, and sometimes more so, and the discipline, or self-discipline, which we try to impose on them, doesn’t always work. An old friend, an animal-lover, once said to her, ‘Cats don’t see why they should do what you want them to do.’ She was not averse to cats, and she recognized and accepted their independence of attitude.
But a dog, it is unnecessary to say, is not like a cat, it is essentially a dependent creature, and needs a great deal of attention paid to it, for which, as a rule, it repays a great deal of attention in return. The relationship is reciprocal but the onus of responsibility lies on the dog’s owner. A dog cannot take itself for a walk, or if it does, it is liable to get lost or run over. At stated hours, therefore, it has to be taken out for exercise or to relieve nature which, for some reason, dogs seem to find a more pressing, as well as a more satisfying outlet for their feelings than do other animals.
Nerina’s dogs, large shaggy creatures, though not the subject, I hope, for a ‘shaggy dog’ story, were almost a whole-time job; for besides the daily demands of each adult, for food, exercise, and so on, there were births, marriages and deaths. There were also illnesses; for dogs, perhaps owing to their long association with human beings, were subject to all kinds of epidemics; classic distemper was the most frequent and the worst, but there were always new ones cropping up—hard-pad, for instance—and happily dying down, almost as suddenly as they appeared. Nerina had to be always on the watch, by day and night, for some outbreak of ill-health in the kennels; and so did the vet, for although by this time she had almost as much experience of dog-ailments as he had, she relied on his trained opinion, and, to some extent, on the remedies he prescribed.
This was a bad day in the kennels, for some of the dogs, fifteen of them in all, old, middle-aged, young, and newly-born, had developed symptoms for which she couldn’t account and they were clearly spreading She had, as so often before, summoned the vet, for even if she knew as much about their ailments as he did, it was always better to be on the safe side. However, he couldn’t come; he had been called out by the R.S.P.C.A. to separate some fighting swans, or rather to attend to the needs of one who seemed to be dying from the encounter. He didn’t want to let down Nerina, who was a good client of his, still less to offend her, for there were other vets besides him, but, as he told her on the telephone, ‘you wouldn’t believe how often I am called out to deal with fighting swans, especially at this season, when they are mating. I daresay that if they weren’t monogamous, they wouldn’t get so excited, but they know that if they have set their hearts on a certain female to be their partner for life—their very long life—they say to themselves, “It’s either him or me.” You would hardly believe how savage they can be—no holds barred. It’s twenty miles away, and I shall probably arrive too late, but I may be in time to give the loser an injection, if he’ll let me, and the winner a good kick. I don’t know why people are so fond of swans—they wouldn’t be if they had to assist at their matrimonial proceedings. I’ll come on to you directly afterwards, but it may be an hour or two. Meanwhile, from what you say, some salicylate of bismuth might allay the symptoms.’
Nerina had already administered this medicament, and was walking up and down the kennels, which were at a short distance from the garden, which itself was a long distance from the road, to see how effective it had been in staunching the alarming flow from the poor animals’ insides, when she looked up and saw five or six youths, between seventeen and nineteen, who were following her movements with eyes that were cold and hard under their long hair.
They were trespassing, of course; but Nerina was too much absorbed in the plight of the dogs to pay much heed to them. She thought of offering them, sarcastically, a dose of salicylate of bismuth, but they appeared not to need it (though her kennel-ground had been used, in the past, by interlopers who had been ‘taken short’); and she tried to dismiss them from her mind.
But they didn’t go away; on the contrary, they came nearer, and as though by a pre-conceived plan, kept pace with her, almost step by step, and only a few yards away, on her sentry-go as she looked into the various kennels to see if the dogs were responding to treatment.
However, after a time this double perambulation, which had the air of an ill-natured mimicry, began to get on her nerves, and deflect her attention from the welfare of the dogs, which was her chief concern.
It was half-past seven in the morning. When she had the dogs to see to, she was oblivious of time; it might have been half-past five. The kennel-maid was away ill; the household, such as it was, was not yet astir; the gardener wasn’t due until nine o’clock. Nerina was completely alone.