The Complete Short Stories (50 page)

My mother carries
everywhere in her handbag a small locket containing a picture of Christ
crowned with thorns. She keeps on one table a rather fine Buddha on a lotus
leaf and on another a horrible replica of the Venus de Mio. One way and another
all the gods are served in my mother’s household although she holds only one
belief and that is in the Almighty. My father, when questioned as to what he believes,
will say, ‘I believe in the Blessed Almighty who made heaven and earth,’ and
will say no more, returning to his racing papers which contain problems proper
to innocent men. To them, it was no great shock when I turned Catholic, since
with Roman Catholics too, it all boils down to the Almighty in the end.

Alice Long’s
Dachshunds

The guns clank on the stone, one after the
other, echoing against the walls outside the chapel, as the men come in for
Mass before the shoot. Mamie, whose age is eight years and two months, kneels
in the second row from the back, on the right-hand side, near the Virgin, where
a warm candle is lit. There is no other warmth. Alice Long is kneeling on a
front hassock. Her two brothers from London have come in — tall men in
knickerbockers and green wool stockings that stride past Mamie’s eyes as she
kneels in her place.

Other big men have put
their guns against the wall outside the chapel door. The Catholics from the
cottages have come in. Everyone except the strangers is praying for more snow
and a road blockage to the town, so that poor Alice Long can decently serve roe
deer, roe deer, roe deer for all the meals that the London people are going to
eat. The woods are cracking alive with roe deer, but meat from the town has got
to be paid for with money.

Alice Long is
round-shouldered and worried; she is the only daughter of old Sir Martin, and
is always addressed, to her face, as Miss Long. Her money is her own, but it
goes into the keeping of the House.

Alice Long’s two brothers’
wives have come into the chapel now. They are the last, because they have to
look after their own babies when they get up. Before Mamie’s birth, all the
babies in the House had nurses. The two wives were differently made from the
start, before they became Alice Long’s sisters-in-law, and still look so,
although their tweed coats were made more alike. One is called Lady Caroline
and the other, Mrs Martin Long, will be Lady Long when old Sir Martin dies and
Martin Long comes into the title.

Mamie is watching Lady
Caroline through her fingers. Lady Caroline is big and broad, with bobbed black
hair under her black lace veil; she doesn’t like Alice Long’s dogs, and dogs
are the only things Alice Long has for herself. Alice Long was made to be kept
down by upkeep.

The big clock upstairs
chimes seven. The priest comes in and the feet shuffle. Mamie cannot see the
altar when everyone is standing. She stares at the candle. The service begins.
Will the friends who have come from warm London catch their death of colds?

Mamie stops in the snow. The ends of the
dogs’ leashes are wound round her hands in their woollen gloves, three round
the right hand and two round the left. She unwinds the leads to give her arms
scope, and the dogs take advantage of the few extra inches of freedom,
snuffling and wriggling away from Mamie until the leads pull taut. But she
works them back, lifting her elbows to cup her hands to her mouth.

‘Come out. I can see
you.

No reply.

She repeats the words
and drops her arms, aching from the weight of straining dogs.

There is a thud of
snowfall from the clump of trees. The noise would have been only a little plop
had there been any more sound besides that of the snuffling dogs.

She is taking Alice Long’s
dogs for a walk.

‘She’ll be glad to,
Miss Long,’ said her mother. ‘Tomorrow after school. It’s a half day.’

This morning, her
mother said,
‘Come straight home at two for Alice Long’s dogs.’
To
do so, Mamie has missed her dancing lesson at the convent. She is learning the
sword dance. Alice Long had got her into the convent at reduced fees, and even
those reduced fees Alice Long pays herself. She likes to keep the Catholic
tenants Catholic.

Mamie walks on,
satisfied there are no boys behind the trees. She is afraid the boys will find
her and tease the dogs, laugh at her, laugh at the little padding, waddling
dogs, do them harm before they can be returned to the House.

The snow in the wood is
too deep for low-made dogs. Mamie wanders around the edge of the wood, on the
crunchy path, with little running steps every now and then as the dogs get the
better of her.

‘My dachshunds,’ said
Alice Long lovingly.

The country people
said to each other, when she was out of sight, ‘Alice Long has only got her
dogs. And all that upkeep.’

‘Lady Caroline hates
dogs.’

‘No, she only hates
dachshunds. German sausages. She likes big dogs for the country.’

Alice Long is sitting
with her tea cup in Mamie’s house, which has five rooms plus k.p.b. — standing
for kitchen, pantry, and bathroom — and is semi-detached. Next door are Alice
Long’s Couple. Mamie’s father no longer works on the estate but is a foreman in
the town at Heppleford and Styles’ Linoleum.

‘Lady Caroline can’t
bear them. They’ve been locked in the north wing since Friday. I have to keep
afire going…’

‘That wing’s not
heated, of course.’

‘No. They are
freezing and lonely. I keep putting logs on. I get up in the middle of the
night to see to the fire.’

‘They’ll be all
right, Miss Long.’

‘They need a good
run, that’s all. I won’t have time for the dogs today. But the family goes home
tomorrow or Wednesday…’

Mamie has taken the dogs
out for a run before. She is not allowed to go near the wood but must keep to
the inhabited paths that pass the groups of houses on the estate and lead to
the shop. Near the shop are usually the children from the village school,
throwing snowballs in winter, wheeling bicycles in summer. Mamie has money for
toffee and an orange drink. She wanders by the wood.

Her father has been at
home for three working days. There is a strike. Alice Long sits downstairs. The
father has gone to wait upstairs until she leaves. Then he opens the cupboard
door where the television set is placed in a recess formed by the removal of
one of the shelves. Alice Long has not seen this television set. The people
next door, her Couple, took on a television many years ago, and keep it out in
the living room.

Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi,
Ritzi, and Kitzy.

‘Alice Long’s dogs
are all she’s got to herself’

The dogs go about
together and sometimes all answer at once when Alice Long calls one of their
names. Mamie does not know them apart. They vary slightly in size, fatness, and
in the black scars on their brown coats.

The path has become a
ridge of frozen earth where the field has been ploughed right up to the verge
of the wood. The daylight is turning blue with cold while Mamie struggles with
the leads. One gumboot digs deep in a furrow and the other stabs to keep its
hold on the ridge. The dogs snuffle each other and snort steam. They strain
towards the wood, and Hamilton is suddenly there — Alice Long’s gamekeeper —
coming out of the trees, tall and broad, with his grey moustache and deep-pink
face. He looks at Mamie as if to say, ‘Come here.’ The dogs fuss round him,
cutting into her gloves.

Mamie says, ‘I’ve got to
go that way,’ pointing down towards her home across the field.

‘I’ll see you back at
the House,’ he says, and stoops back into the wood, examining the undergrown
branches.

Hamilton looks after old
Sir Martin when he becomes beyond a woman’s strength.

‘I’m afraid my father
is not very well any more.

‘I don’t know how you
do it, Miss Long.’

Mamie’s mother says that
anybody else but Alice Long would have put the old man away.

Hamilton sees to the
boilers that heat the heated wing. He has too much to do to air the dogs
regularly.

‘Without Hamilton, I
don’t know what we should do. Before your husband left us, we had it easier.’

Mamie has turned away
from the wood. She has taken the path to the houses, looking back all the time
to see whether Hamilton is following her with his eyes, those eyes that are two
poached eggs grown old, looking at her every time he sees her.

She takes the footpath
on the main road. The dogs are trotting now. A car passes, and a delivery van
from the grocer’s shop in the town. She clutches the leads.

‘Don’t let one of
them get run over. Alice Long would be up to ninety-nine.’

She presses, at the
sharp bend, into the high white bank which touches again on the wood, while a
very big lorry, carrying sacks of coal, creeps fearfully around as if bewaring
of the dogs.

Bump on her shoulder,
then bump on her cap come the snowballs. The boys are up there on the bank. She
turns and looks quickly and sees parts of children ducking out of sight with
short, laughing squeals. There are two girls with the boys; she has seen their
hair. One of the girls wears the dark-blue convent cap.

‘Connie, come down!’

‘It isn’t Connie,’ Gwen’s
voice answers.

Gwen should be at the
dancing class. She is learning to do the sword dance with Mamie.

A snowball falls on the
road and bursts open. There is no stone inside it. The dogs are yelping now,
pelted with snowballs! They are up to ninety-nine, not used to this.

Mamie drags them round
the corner and starts to run. The children scramble down after her and catch
up. She recognizes them all. She tries to gather up some snow, but it is
impossible to make and throw a ball with the leads around her gloves.

‘Where are you going
with those dogs?’ says a boy.

‘To the shop, then up to
the House.’

‘They look dirty.’

Gwen says, ‘Do you like those
dogs?’

‘Not all of them
together.’

‘Let them run loose,’
says the other girl. ‘It’s good for them.’

‘No.

‘Come on and play.’

She is scrambling up the
bank, while everyone is trying to pull the dogs up by their leads or push them
up by their bottoms.

‘Lift them up. You’ll
throttle them!’

‘Let go the leads. We’ll
take one each.’

‘No.

Up on the bank, Mamie
says, ‘I’ll tie them to that tree.’ She refuses to let the leads out of her own
hands, but she permits two of the boys to make the knots secure, as they have
learned to do in the Scout Cubs.

Then it is boys against
girls in a snow fight, with such fast pelting and splutters from drenched
faces, such loud shrieks that the dogs’ coughing and whining can scarcely be
heard. When it is time to go, Mamie counts the dogs. Then she starts to untie
them. The knots are difficult. She calls after one of the boys to come and
untie the knots, but he does not look around. Gwen returns; she stands and
looks. Mamie is kneeling in the slush, trying.

‘How do you untie these
knots?’ All the leads are mixed up in a knotted muddle.

‘I don’t know. What’s
their names?’

‘Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi,
Ritzi, and Kitzy.’

‘Do you know one from
the other?’

‘No.’

Mamie bends down with
her strong teeth in the leather. She has loosened the first knot. All the knots
are coming loose. She gets her woollen gloves on again and starts to wind the
leads around her hands. One of them springs from her grasp, and the little dog
scuttles away into the wood among the old wet leaves, so that it seems to slither
like a snake on its belly with its cord bouncing behind it.

‘Mitzi! Kitzy! Blitzi!’

The dog disappears and
the four in hand are excited, anxious to be free and warmed up, too.

‘Catch him, Gwen! Can
you see him? Where is it? Mitzi-mitzi-mitzi! Blitzi-blitzi!’

‘I’ve got to go home,’
Gwen says. ‘You shouldn’t have stopped to play.’

Gwen is Sister Monica’s
model pupil for punctuality, neatness, and truthfulness. Mamie has no ground to
answer Gwen’s reproach as the girl starts to clamber down the bank.

The wood is dark and
there is no sound of the dog. Mamie squelches with the four dogs among the
leaves and snow lumps. ‘Fritzi-fritzi-fritzi mitzi!’ A bark, a yap, behind her.
Again a yap-yap. She turns and finds the dog tied once more to a tree.
Hamilton? She peers all around her and sees nobody.

She should be hurrying
towards the drive, but she is too tired to hurry. The Lodge gates are still
open, although the sky looks late. The lights are on in the Lodge, which has
been let to new people from Liverpool for their weekends. They are having a
long weekend this time. A young woman comes out to her car as Mamie comes in
the gateway with the five dogs.

‘Goodness, you’re wet
through!’

‘I got in a snowdrift.’

‘Hurry home then, dear,
and get changed.’

Mamie cannot hurry. She
is not very well any more, like old Sir Martin. She is not very real any more.
The colour of the afternoon seems strange and the sky is banked with
snowdrifts. She runs in little spurts only in obedience to the pull of the
dogs. But she draws them as tight as she can and plods in the direction of the
House. She turns to the right when she reaches the wide steps and the big front
doors. Around to the right and into the yard, where Hamilton’s door is. She
tries to open his door. It is locked. To pull the bell would require raising
her arm, and she is too tired to do so. She tries to knock. The dogs are full
of noise and anxiety, are scratching the door to get inside. She looks at them
and with difficulty switches those leads in her right hand to her left, winding
them round her wrist, since the hand is already full. While she knocks with her
free hand at the door, she realizes that she has noticed something. There are
only four dogs now. She counts — one, two, three, four. She counts the leads —
one, two, three, four. She looks away again and knocks. It has not happened.
Nothing has happened. It is not real. She knocks again. Hamilton is coming.