dog

“Muffin was SO bad,” said Mrs Lovely, hyperventilating at the memory raw from the weekend, “just refusing to give up the sock … and growling … so bad that I said, ‘Robert! Get me a glass of water.’”
Mr Lovely duly obliged and the pair of them had hovered behind the glass of water, scarcely breathing, just cooing, “Muh-fffinnnn, drop darling,” until the snarling and lip curling and sock savaging increased to such a pitch that the Lovelys’ faint bleatings were suffocated by all the noise. So Mrs Lovely breathed deep breaths, swung her arm and threw the water over him.

“It was awful!” she said.
I chuckled.
“Just awful. Pooooooor Muffin! He cowered! He dropped the sock and scuttled; he ran to behind the sofa. Soaking.”
“Only thing you could have done,” said Mrs Brisk. “You can’t have a dog growling at you.”

“We felt terrible. Robert said he felt worse, far worse than when he’s had to wallop the girls.”
We glanced at Muffin who was dry humping a footstool of a dog which lags behind whenever it can to sprawl, a butterfly beneath Muffin’s pin, as it were.
“Muffin!” shrieked Mrs Lovely.

The pain had cast a shadow until Mr Lovely said, maybe ten minutes later, “Do you think we should give him a treat. I hate it when he doesn’t like us.”
“No,” Mrs Lovely had said bravely, perhaps mindful of reportage fall-out with us lot, “No. We can’t reward bad behaviour.”
Mr Lovely trudged upstairs, his heart knocking about somewhere on the floor, and Muffin tiptoed from the back of the sofa and laid his face, damp and mournful, on Mrs Lovely’s knee. Mrs Lovely shed a tear and stroked his nose and kissed his head and smiled a happy smile.
Mr Lovely walked back in. “WHAT!?!” he had shouted, “So you’re allowed to make friends with him and I’m not!”

During this episode of emotional trauma, I had been out walking in the woods with my friend Rachel. She, too, would rescue her dog in a fire before her husband or children. “Oh look at her!” she will say stopping to stare at Belle busily plunged face-first in a mound of piss-soaked grass. “Sweet!”
Any story I’d been relating feels foolish to return to now, so my patience with such scenes is limited.
“I really can’t bear dogs,” I might say.
“Not even mine?” she will say, wide-eyed. “Not even Belle?” There really is no answer to that beyond the bleeding obvious.

The Lovelies, meanwhile, the ménage reunited and loved up, went for a walk, and on their walk they saw that the old railway line was operating. A couple had stopped with their tiny children to wave at steam trains and the Lovelys stopped too, then shuffled on a bit.
“Well, we didn’t want to be taken for paedos,” she said, “with the children and everything. And then! Thomas came chuffing by. With his big blue face? Smiling. And I found that I was crying, I was sobbing.

“Ohhh!!” we said. “Noooo! How saaadddd!”

“Hmm,” she said. “Not Robert’s reaction at all. No, he tried to edge away from me, but was trapped between going too close to the little ones and looking like a paedo – ”
“He wouldn’t have looked like a paedo!” we said.
“‘You’re looking mad!’ he said to me, ‘Stop it, it’s only Thomas!’ but that just set me off more and whether it was because of being mean to Muffin or because the girls will never have that look of joyous innocence again – I don’t know: they only talk to us for £20 for Top Shop – but I was sobbing so hard that I gave myself a headache. Robert had to drive us home.”

I had been looking at old photos of the children on my phone, I knew what sad was. And I certainly knew what Thomas was. It seemed those days would never end. And then they did; a boxful of expensive Brio trains sits in the loft awaiting grandchildren.

Over in the woods, Lolly had done the splendid undreamable. She had gone missing. My step quickened. Rachel’s hand was to her mouth, her blonde curls bounced unhappily, “Look,” she said, “it’s sheer down there, it’s like a cliff?”
“Is that where she was?” I said hopefully peering down the precipice: glorious steep, craggy. Rocks.
“Yes! She was trying to follow Belle.” So irritating, my dog the follower, and inept at that (‘was trying’). “But of course couldn’t keep up.” Of course.
“What’s beyond there?”
“A road.”
I hardly dared believe my luck.
“And while Belle might be able to leap over the wall at the bottom, there’s no way Lolly could.”
I smarted.
“Lolly might look like an old bag of fur, but she could take that wall. Like a donkey winning the National, but she could do it.”
Rachel dared favour me with a pitying look.

“We might as well head on back,” I said in the manner of one preparing to do a runner, gathering myself for a hearty gallop away from the scene.
“But … you’re so calm,” said Rachel, “I’d be sobbing.”
“There’s not really any point, is there,” I said.
I felt like the heartless boy in the village who, on being told his cat was dead, had thought, shrugged, and said, “I reckon I’ll have got over it in two weeks so I’ll just go straight to that stage now. What’s for tea?”
We had all thought this the sign of most terrible moral turpitude.

“She’s got a nametag, I said, the grim truth settling, “and she’s chipped.” My pace slowed. Always some blot on the landscape, trouble in paradise.
“Belle doesn’t like wearing a nametag,” said Rachel, “and isn’t the chipping cruel?”

We walked down through the woods enjoying the path doing its requisite meandering, strolling through the dutiful shafts of sunlight. All was good although the thought of the chip hung heavy, and then there was an untidy noise, as of a donkey manhandling the jumps at the National and it was Lolly, bustling near. Belle jumped up and they bounced on their hind legs, knitting their front paws together. I must confess it was quite nice to see the drunk old fur coat again.
“Oooh, look,” said Rachel. “Belle! Isn’t she sweet. Such a kind-hearted dog. She’s pleased to see her, look.”

where's my small ... boy?

F10 went missing last night. The classic props were all there – the open gate onto the back … the chain and padlock dangling from the hasp … a cricket bat tossed aside suggesting the stepping stone in the journey from garden to field to off, off and beyond.
The front gate was open too. This was wrong. It is always to be kept shut to keep the ghastly dog in, although it’s time I questioned the wisdom of this. Off you go love, the big road’s that way. Most poignant of all were a pair of scruffy little socks left scattered on the grass, clues to his final moments.

Which way to go? With panic building, I scanned the field, then faux-sauntered out of the front. The saunter was necessary to convince me that all was still normal. I strolled down to the right. And then back and to the left. A trot became a bit of a sprint (all terms are relative).
Given the recent shenanigans, various endings were playing out in my head. Had I given him a decent last half hour, a decent life being too much to claim. Yes, I told myself, we’d had a nice walk with the dog. We’d taken a cricket bat (he has rounders today, I thought that some practise might help), I had been throwing it at him, he’d been thwacking it. We had played catch. I had been kind and encouraging. I had said things like “oh, good throw” and “my fault, too high.” Angels were busy in heaven with my brownie points. Even when we had to tussle with the dog to let slip half a shagged-out blackbird it had all been quite pleasant. Relative terms, remember.

Then we'd returned home. While he stayed outside to play at bowling, I had felt I deserved a glass of wine. Some might like to pause here to ponder, with an admiring moue, on the late hour, 8.30, of the first glass of the day. We can forget the small but necessary gin at 7, too tiny to mention.
And here the reflections, all taking place in seconds, morphed into the imminent police investigation. If the road continued not to proffer up my son, I’d have to be on the blower, 999. The sirens, the heavy shut of the door, the swagger of the policeman hoicking up his trews, the belt loaded with cuffs and phones.
“So, Milla, you were drinking wine and you checked on your child .. when?”
“5 to 9,” I mumble in my mind.
The sarcasm is heavy. “A whole 25 minutes elapses, how extremely good of you, Milla, to remember him at all. Let me top up your glass.”
The sergeant and the constable exchange glances, sigh heavily. Lips are pursed. The At Risk register will be consulted, and amended.

My sprint intensified, which means that speed would possibly be detectable by an alert passer-by, an Old seized by a need to vacuum the car.
Up ahead a blur of blue. Some tuneless whistling reaches me. F10 strolling back.
“Oh, hi, mum,” he burbled huskily.
I scooped him to me.
“Where were you!?!” I said, my face buried in his ledge wig.
“Oh, you know, I was looking for my barbecue man.”

His barbecue man is, what? 3cm tall. He is from a Lego barbecue kit (featuring lights, a parasol and a leg of chicken, all eminently losable, naturally) and occupies a domain of joy shared with a ring, a rabbit …. He has developed a huge back-story and doles out chicken to all and sundry with impressive regularity. We’re all rather sick of it to be honest. Mmmm, more chicken. Yum. It had fallen out, he assumed, while off on the walk so he had gone back, in the gathering dusk, to search through long grass in three fields for his Lego man.

His childhood has been littered with such hunts. “Where’s my pirate’s foot … where’s my small mazagine” being perennial and plaintive cries from his early years. When a pirate’s foot belongs to a Playmobil man and the small mazagine is the instructions to the Playmobil man, no, we never knew where they were, but we measured out our hours in looking for them. The sticky possession of important items vital to his being. Sometimes the memory of them would echo in my head, lulling me to sleep. It’s become a catch phrase for anything misplaced nowadays.
“You know not to go anywhere without telling us!” I said.
“But my man …!”
Some things transcend rules.

Lego man was found among the socks. Thrilled he was. He squeaked. Then put it down. “And where’s the barbecue?” he said, heading towards the gate.
Give me strength.