as far as I was concerned, was the most appalling aspect of owning a dog. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to cope with it, but took the package and put it in my coat pocket.
‘Well. I should be going. Um, thank you,’ I said, rather stiffly, when I’d got to the door.
Angela came over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘No. Thank you. You’ve done a great thing. I promise you’ll end up enjoying it. There are loads of dog walkers in the park, a whole pack of them, and they’re great fun. I’ll introduce you.’
Gingerly holding Bob’s lead as we walked home, I flicked through my little Rolodex of worries – what if the animal bolted? Would I be yanked off my feet? How would I stop her? Then the bewildering list of food that was toxic to dogs and must be kept away from her – chocolate, grapes, onions – what else? Toxic like the lake in the park. Recalling Angela’s promise, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to mix with the dog walkers there, lonely as I was. I’d seen them, and they’d seemed a tad eccentric, always getting into fights with cyclists, and parents, and pretty much anyone who didn’t appreciate their pets as much as they did. But I’d done it now, so we’d have to get on with it. Hopefully Bob would be cheaper than an alarm system. Maybe even better company.
We arrived back and I unlocked the door, listening out for intruders as we went in. Bob immediately started sniffing around the house, tail wagging, scoping it out. I went through to the kitchen and made myself some tea, then took it to the living room where I found her curled on the sofa. Angela said she’d never been allowed on furniture and I certainly had no intention of letting her adopt any bad habits.
‘Off!’ I said sternly, holding one finger in the air and feeling like Barbara Woodhouse. Bob stared at me and scratched behind one ear with her back leg.
She probably had fleas. I went over to the sofa and pushed her. She resisted for a second, then tipped off in a sudden flurry of limbs. Scrabbling to regain her balance and dignity, she retreated to a position by Leo’s armchair and eyed me warily. She should have somewhere to lie down, at least. I looked around the room but there were no rugs of any kind, so I sacrificed my sofa throw, arranging it in a bed-shape on the floor near the fireplace. She stepped on to it, turning round and round before settling down with an inordinate sigh. It was a shame there was no fire in the grate, maybe I’d make one up tomorrow.
Picking up Mel’s book, I read for a while, occasionally looking up to check on Bob, who was sprawled in a running position, snoring, nose and legs twitching furiously. It was strangely soporific, and gradually the book slid onto my lap as I dozed.
Awoken by a loud and prolonged yawn from the fireplace, I looked at my watch and saw it was after midnight. Bob was watching me, head on one side. She yawned again.
Creaking to my feet, I shuffled to the door, turning back to look at her on her makeshift bed.
‘Well. Goodnight then. Stay.’ Bob’s tail thumped the floor.
I pulled myself upstairs to get ready for my own bed, but just as I was preparing to switch off the lights there was the scrabble of claws and a second later, her face appeared at the door.
This was not part of the plan at all. She had to be on the ground floor, deterring intruders, not lounging around in my bedroom. ‘No!’ I said firmly, leading her back downstairs. She followed me, tail wagging, then sat expectantly in the living room as I wondered what to do. In the end I dragged a couple of chairs from the dining room and made a barricade at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe I could buy one of those gates people got for toddlers. More expense.
I went back up to my room, and closed the door, listening out for her whining or scratching, but heard nothing. Angela had said she was a very good dog. One just had to be firm. I went to sleep thinking about where we would walk the next morning, and if we might meet Otis. He could throw a stick for her, and she could wait outside the playground while we played on the swings.
I slept deeply, and in the morning when I awoke, two things struck me at once. One: Bob was curled at the end of my bed, snoring loudly, hairs all over the covers, the door to my bedroom still closed. And two: for the first time in my life, ever since Fa-Fa told us the story about the ripper who sang nursery rhymes from the wardrobe before he cut up his victims, I hadn’t checked the cupboards before I went to sleep.
Cave canem. Beware the dog.
‘Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light.’
Pythagoras
It was the summer of 1958 and I was looking up at the roof of the Senate House and musing how they had got the car up there. A peculiarly Cantabrigian student stunt. It was gone by then, of course, but it took nearly a week, and in the end they had to hack it to pieces to get rid of it. It was a shame, really – I liked it perched on the apex, its incongruity somehow reassuring. Anything was possible.
I was a lofty graduate, working as an archivist in the University’s Classical Faculty Library and wondering what to do next. Unlike my contemporaries, I wasn’t being pressured by my family to get married now I had a degree. Henry was busy trying to break into politics, and Mama was as likely to tell me to find a husband as she was to suggest I get a tiger as a pet. As a young girl, my mother – then known as Lena Schorel – had sneaked out to hear Sylvia Pankhurst speak, and was very put out when the First World War began, because it cut short her fledgling career as a suffragist. She had also been rather disappointed when women finally got the vote, because she so enjoyed fighting the good fight.
Neither my brother nor my mother were at all interested in my marital state, and with no other family to speak of, I was left to my own devices. Perhaps my father would have had a say in the matter, but William Jameson was one of the casualties of the Second World War, and we rarely spoke of him, because the loss felt like too sharp a thing to touch. Fa-Fa had died just after the war ended, marching out one morning to buy tobacco and dropping like a stone in the street. He’d have liked that – nice and clean, no messing about. Jette had retreated even further into her shell after he died, and when she quietly passed away just after I went up to Cambridge, it was barely remarked upon. Maybe by that time we’d become inured to death. Aunt Sibby only cared about her animals, so my mother took over the house in Lancaster Villas, which became a kind of campaign base for various activists. If I’d gone back there, no doubt I’d be dragooned into joining one of her causes.
But what did I want to do? I wasn’t sure, walking down King’s Parade that evening in August, clutching a pile of books to my chest and mulling it over. Then I saw Leo Carmichael walking towards me, his golden hair fiery in the sun, and remembered he was all I ever wanted. For a second, the flood of memories nearly floored me and I swayed, dizzy with it. Whispering to my mother in the drawing room; the cold and bright light; prone in bed, staring at the ceiling, ignoring the stale sandwiches. He could not know, he could never know, how much this meant. I hugged the books tighter, preparing to look unconcerned and uninterested. As he approached, for a second I thought he didn’t recognize me, but then his face cleared and he smiled with what looked like genuine pleasure.
‘Milly!’ he said, grabbing my hand and pumping it enthusiastically. Of course I dropped my books, and we spent the next minute scrabbling round for them on the pavement. By the time they were back in my arms, my hair was mussed and I was breathless with effort and embarrassment.
