Dogsbody

  In the heat of the moment, Sirius and Romulus found they were communicating with one another.

  “What happened? What went wrong?”

  “It was her fault. She jumped on a shelf. Everything fell off it.”

  “She’s being killed. Do something!”

  “You do something.”

  It certainly sounded as if Tibbles were being killed. There was more heavy crashing, and cold high yelling from Duffie. After that came a dreadful screech, half cat, half human. Remus shot into the kitchen, a fat stripy streak of panic, and made for the waste pail too. When he saw Sirius and Romulus already there, he stopped, looped into a frenzy, glaring.

  “Help! Let me hide! She’s killing us!”

  Duffie was now raving around the living room. “Where’s that flaming CAT?”

  At the sound, Remus somehow packed himself in beside Romulus, quivering as if there was a motor beside him. Sirius found himself being oozed out on the other side. “Hey!”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” shivered Remus. “Oh, ye gods!”

  There was a scream like a steam siren from the next room. Something crashed, probably the new rose-holder. “Damn!” yelled Duffie. “Got you, you fiend!” It was clear Tibbles had been caught. A heavy, sharp thumping began. It was as strong and regular as the noise Kathleen had made when she hung the carpets on the clothesline and beat them with a beater. Duffie yelled, in time with the thumps, “I’ll—teach—you—to—break—my—pottery!”

  Sirius found he could not have this. Whatever Tibbles deserved, it was not being beaten to death. His dog’s hatred of strife in his family fetched him out from under the sink. That, and a strong green sense of justice, sent him scampering to the living room, followed by a gust of amazement from Remus and Romulus.

  Duffie had her sandals planted wide apart on the hearthrug. She had Tibbles dangling wretchedly from one hand, curled as stiff and small as possible, while her other hand clouted away at Tibbles, hard and rhythmically. At the sight, Sirius’s sense of justice became mixed with anger. He would dearly have liked to plant his jawful of white teeth in the bulging muscle of Duffie’s calf. He had to tell himself she would taste nasty, he wanted to bite her so much. He launched himself at Duffie instead, and managed to land hard against her stomach before he fell on the floor. Duffie staggered.

  “Drat you, animal! Get away!”

  Sirius got up and began to leap about Duffie, reaching for Tibbles and barking excitedly.

  “Will you stop interfering!” Duffie shouted, lashing out with a sandal.

  Sirius knew he was not big enough to reach Tibbles. Duffie was holding her dangling high out of reach. But he ran in a swift figure of eight around her feet as she kicked out, and made her overbalance. Duffie loosened her hold on Tibbles in order to catch at the mantelpiece. Tibbles dropped with a thump on all four feet and was off like a white flash upstairs.

  “Damn!” shrieked Duffie, and lunged at Sirius. He ran away around the sofa, expecting to be beaten with a broom again.

  Luckily, they had only been twice around the sofa when the side door opened and Robin, Basil and Kathleen trooped in.

  “What’s going on?” said Basil.

  To the surprise and relief of Sirius, Duffie forgot about him and began to rage long and shrilly about the damage those wretched cats had done in the shop. While the side door was open, Romulus and Remus seized their chance and fled through it. Neither of them reappeared again that day. Sirius supposed it would have been prudent of him to do the same, but he was not really tempted. He was too glad to see Kathleen again. He jumped up against her and squeaked with pleasure.

  While Duffie was busy dramatically throwing open the shop door and pointing to the heap of smithereens inside, Kathleen wrapped her arms around Sirius. “I’m glad it wasn’t you for once,” she whispered.

  It seemed unfair to Sirius that it should be Kathleen who cleared up the broken pottery. But he had noticed that Kathleen always did do an unfair amount of work. He lay and whined in protest outside the shop door, until she had finished and was able to take him to the meadow. Duffie, meanwhile, stumped away upstairs to find Tibbles. But Tibbles had hidden herself cunningly in the very back of the linen closet and Duffie did not find her.

  After supper that evening, Duffie angrily shut herself in the shop and worked away at her potter’s wheel to replace some of the breakages. When she heard the wheel whirring, Tibbles dared at last to emerge. Very sore and ruffled and hungry, she limped downstairs and into the living room. Only Sirius saw her. Robin, Kathleen, Basil and the thunderous voice were all crowded around the table over some kind of game. Sirius was on the hearthrug with a tough raw bone propped between his paws and his head laid sideways, grating deliciously with his back teeth. He looked at Tibbles across his nose. Tibbles stopped short in the doorway, seeing him looking.

  “It’s all right. It’s quite safe,” Sirius told her. “She’s in the shop. And there’s a whole lot of scraps still down in the kitchen.”

  Tibbles did not reply. She stepped off delicately to the kitchen, shaking each front paw with a lady-like shudder before she put it down. Sirius, in a dog’s equivalent, of a shrug, went back to his bone.

  Quite a while later, when Sirius had done with the bone and was snoozing, Tibbles limped out of the kitchen and came slowly over to the hearthrug. Though she looked rather less wretched, she was still very ruffled. She sat down, wrapped her tail across her front feet and stared fixedly at Sirius.

  “I still hurt. It’s all your fault.”

  Sirius raised an eyebrow and rolled one green eye up at her. “It was your fault, too. But I’m sorry. I was afraid she was going to kill you.”

  “She was,” said Tibbles. “She loves those silly mud pots. Thank you for stopping her.” She raised a front paw and licked it half-heartedly. “I feel awful,” she said miserably. “What can I do?”

  “Come over here and I’ll lick you,” Sirius suggested, greatly daring.

  He expected Tibbles to treat the suggestion with contempt, but, instead, she got up and, casually, as if she did not care particularly, she settled down between his front paws. Most astonished and very flattered, Sirius gingerly licked her back. She tasted clean and fluffy.

  “Farther up and over to the right,” Tibbles said, tucking her paws under her gracefully.

  Half an hour later, Kathleen looked up from the cards. “Goodness gracious!” she exclaimed. “Just look at that now!”

  Everybody looked, and exclaimed to see Tibbles tucked up like a tuffet between the forepaws of the dog with the dog’s head resting against her. Tibbles had flat wet patches all over the tabby part of her back from being licked. When she saw them looking, she raised her head and stared at them defiantly. “And why shouldn’t I sit here?” Then she turned her pink nose gently to Sirius’s black one and settled down to purring again.

  Sirius’s heavy tail flapped on the carpet. He felt warm and proud to have this lovely white cat purring against him. He looked down at her small humped shape and wondered. It was familiar. So, in a dim back-to-front way, was everything that had happened that afternoon. Some time, in a misty green past, there had been a time with three other beings when he had flown into a rage, only then, as far as he could remember, the disaster had been his and not his Companion’s.

  Then he remembered, and with great sadness. Once, somewhere else, he had had a Companion, as small and white and nearly as elegant as Tibbles. He had loved this Companion with all his heart, and given her anything she wanted. Then he had been forced to leave her. He could not remember why, but remembering just that was bad enough. He was glad Tibbles was there to make up for it a little. And Kathleen. Sirius cast an eye up at Kathleen, sighing. He had Kathleen and now Tibbles. Perhaps he should not be sad after all. But deep down inside him there was such green misery that he could have cried, if dogs could cry.

  That night Tibbles came and curled up on Kathleen’s bed beside Sirius. “You’re heavy, the two of you,” Kathleen said,
heaving them about with her feet. “If you weren’t so warm, I’d kick you off.” She managed to find a space for her feet along beside the wall and fell asleep murmuring, “I’m glad you like one another. But what about poor old Romulus and Remus?”

  However, to Kathleen’s pleasure, her puppy now got on well with all three cats. Romulus and Remus were not as affectionate to Sirius as Tibbles, but that was because it was not in their nature. But they liked him. They respected him for rescuing Tibbles when neither of them would have dared. And he was big enough to warm a number of cats at once. It became quite a regular thing—as soon as the cats had ceased keeping out of Duffie’s way—to find all four animals piled together in a heap on the hearthrug, the cats purring and Sirius lazily thumping his tail. Sirius liked this heap. It reminded him of the time when he had wriggled in a crowd of other puppies. He became very fond of all three cats. They were quaint and knowing. It made him feel cleverer to be friends with them, and it made him feel very clever indeed when he discovered that they could not understand what humans said.

  Before long, Sirius was understanding most of human talk. The cats could never learn more than a word or two. They came to depend on Sirius to tell them if anything important was being said. Whenever Duffie went into one of her cold rages, they would come and ask Sirius anxiously what had annoyed her this time. It gave him a pleasant sense of superiority to be able to tell them, even if what he had to say was, “I put mud on the sofa,” or “Kathleen gave me a bone when there was still some meat on it.”

  “It’s a pity,” Tibbles remarked once, reflectively licking a paw, “that she hates you so much. Perhaps you ought to go and live somewhere else.”

  “I don’t think Kathleen would like me to go,” Sirius said.

  “Kathleen could go with you. She hates her, too,” Tibbles observed.

  Sirius knew that. One of the first things he tried to find out, as soon as he understood enough talk, was why Duffie hated Kathleen so. It was not easy to discover, because there were so many things connected with it that he did not quite understand. He had to find out why Basil was always jeering at Kathleen for being Irish, and what it meant to be Irish, and why Kathleen spoke in a clipped, lilting way which was different from the rest of the family. Then, one night, Sirius heard a man talking on television in the same rapid but singing accent. Up to then, he had not realized he could learn anything either from the television or the radio. He tried to attend to both after that. The radio defeated him. It spoke in a blank, boxy voice, and it had no face or picture to show him what it was talking about, but the television proved easy to follow and much more informative. At length, he had it all sorted out.

  The family was English, and they were called Duffield, but Kathleen was from a country called Ireland, where bad things were happening, and her name was Kathleen O’Brien. In some parts of Ireland, Sirius gathered, cars and buildings were sent up in flames, and people were killed by other people when they answered a knock at their front door. Sometimes the Irish people came and did this in England, too, which accounted for some of the things Basil said. Kathleen’s mother was some kind of relative to Mr. Duffield—he of the thunderous voice—but she had left Ireland when the trouble started and run away to America. And Kathleen’s father had been put in prison for taking part in the violence. So Mr. Duffield had sent for Kathleen to come and live with them.

  Try as he might, Sirius could not connect Kathleen with the scenes of violence he saw on television. She was the gentlest and most reliable person in the household. But it was plain that both Basil and Duffie did.

  Duffie’s real name was Daphne Duffield, and she disliked Kathleen for a number of reasons. She had been very angry that Mr. Duffield had not consulted her before sending for Kathleen. That started it. Then Kathleen had no money, except a very little her father had once sent her from prison. Duffie went on at great length, whenever she was cross—which was frequently—about having another mouth to feed, and the cost of clothes, and the cost of Sirius, and the cost of all the china Kathleen broke washing dishes, and a great many other costs. And Duffie disliked Irish people. She called them feckless. She called Kathleen lazy and stupid and sluttish.

  Kathleen did all the cooking and most of the housework and dozens of odd jobs as well. But because she was not much older than Robin, she did not always do these things well. Some things she had never done before, some she was not strong enough to do, and sometimes she would start playing with Sirius and forget that she was supposed to be cleaning out the bathroom. Then Duffie came and said all these things, cold and high, making Kathleen tremble and Sirius cower.

  Duffie always concluded her scolding with, “And I shall have that creature destroyed unless you mend your ways.”

  Sirius learned that he was being used to blackmail Kathleen into doing all the work and being scolded into the bargain. When Kathleen had brought him home as a tiny sopping puppy and Duffie had been so very angry, Kathleen had promised to help in the house if Duffie let her keep Sirius. Duffie held her to it. By the end of the summer, Duffie was doing nothing but making pots and scolding Kathleen. And Sirius began to long to sink his teeth in Duffie. When she grew cold and shrill at Kathleen, Sirius would eye her bulging calves and yearn with a great yearning to plant a bite in one. He did not do it, because he knew it would not help Kathleen at all. Instead, he rumbled deep in his chest and shook all over with the effort of not biting Duffie. He wished Mr. Duffield would stop Duffie treating Kathleen so badly, but he soon learned that Mr. Duffield was only interested in the work that took him out of the house every day till evening and only complained if Duffie made him uncomfortable. Duffie was not usually unpleasant to Kathleen in the evenings.

  Basil was unpleasant to Kathleen most of the time. Sirius soon gathered that Basil did not really dislike Kathleen. He was just imitating Duffie. As Sirius grew larger, and larger still, Basil ceased to frighten him at all. Whenever he saw that Basil’s mindless jeering was getting on Kathleen’s nerves, Sirius stopped him. Usually it was only necessary to distract Basil by starting a game. But if Basil was being very bad-tempered, Sirius found he could shut him up by staring at him. If he fixed his queer green eyes on Basil’s light blue ones and glared, Basil would round on him and jeer at him instead.

  “Shamus Wolf! Sneaking filthy mongrel! Rat red-ears!” Sirius never minded this at all.

  “I read in a book that no animal could look a human in the eyes,” Robin once remarked unwisely.

  “Leo’s unusual,” said Kathleen.

  Basil punched Robin’s nose. He was about to go on and punch Robin everywhere else, but Sirius rose, rumbling all over, and pushed in between them. Robin ran away and locked himself in the broom closet. Basil was frightened. He saw he could easily turn Shamus Wolf into a permanent enemy, and that would be a waste, since he was far more fun than the stupid cats.

  “I’ll take the Rat for his walk, if you like,” he offered. The Rat was only too ready to come. And, as Kathleen was busy trying to scrape dozens and dozens of tiny new potatoes, she agreed.

  So Basil and Sirius went and raced round and round the green meadow, shouting and barking vehemently. They met four other dogs and five other boys, and all of them ran up and down in the mud at the edge of the river until they were both black and weary. When they came home, Robin was waiting, rather puffy-eyed, to fling his arms around Sirius and get licked. Sirius licked him tenderly. He was fond of Robin and knew his position was a difficult one. Robin was the only one in the family who liked Kathleen, and he adored dogs. But he was only a little boy. He was scared of Basil and he wanted to please Duffie.

  Unfortunately, Sirius had forgotten how muddy he was. Mud went on Robin and got plastered on the kitchen floor as well. Duffie came in and coldly raged. Kathleen was in the middle of cooking supper, but she had to find time to get Robin clean clothes and wash the kitchen floor, while Basil jeered and Robin wavered miserably between jeering too and offering to help. It was one of many times when Sirius felt he would
be doing Kathleen a kindness if he ran away.

  He did not run away because, as he had told Tibbles, he knew it would make Kathleen unhappy. Besides, there were times when Duffie was safely in her shop when he had great fun. Robin, Kathleen—and Basil too, if he was in the mood—would do a romp-thing in the living room, of which the aim seemed to be to stuff Sirius under the sofa—only they usually lost sight of the aim and ended simply rolling in a heap. Or they would all go out to the meadow and throw sticks for Sirius to fetch out of the river. Sirius fetched the stick, but the rule was that he would not bring it to be thrown again. They had to catch him first. He was an expert at dodging. He would wait, with the fringed elbows of his forelegs almost on the ground and the stick temptingly in his mouth, until all three children were almost upon him and putting out their hands to seize the stick. Then he would bounce between them and be away to the other end of the meadow before they could move.

  The very best times were when Kathleen and Sirius, not to speak of Tibbles, had gone to bed in Kathleen’s room. Nobody went to sleep for at least an hour. First Kathleen and Sirius had a silly game in which they went very quickly around and around Kathleen’s bed. Kathleen tried to crawl and keep her face hidden at the same time, laughing and laughing, while Sirius plowed rapidly after her, trying to lick her face and giving out panting grunts, which were his way of laughing. They played this most nights until Tibbles had had enough and boxed Sirius’s ears. Then Kathleen would settle down with a book and talk. She liked reading aloud, so she read to Sirius. Sometimes she explained the book as she read it. Sometimes she just talked. As Sirius understood more and more human talk, he learned a great deal from this—more than he learned from watching television. Tibbles would sit, placid and queenly, washing herself, until she sensed something was interesting Sirius particularly. Then she would ask for an explanation. The odd thing was that, in her own way, Tibbles often knew more than Kathleen.