‘Can’t hear you.’
‘I saw the Dogman,’ he hisses. ‘In the field with the sheep. There was a dog.’
‘There’s always dogs.’
‘Not his dog. A little white dog.’
‘Okay. So there was a dog.’
‘It was chasing the sheep. He shouted at it to stop. He shouted, You little shit.’
‘That’s not bad. We’ll have that.’
Not too impressed so far. But Jack knows there’s more. This is the beautiful moment.
‘The dog wouldn’t stop barking, so he hit it. Then he ran off. He hit it with his stick. He killed it.’
The climax. Toby says nothing, but Jack knows he’s got him all right. Even Toby can’t be cool about that.
‘And no one knows but me. No one saw but me.’
‘Well, Jacko,’ says Toby at last. ‘You know what this is?’
‘What?’
‘It’s a sign. Woe to the world.’
Jack laughs aloud in sheer delight. Now Toby is going to make it into one of his cracky games and he’ll be by his side right at the heart of it. All mental together.
‘Woe to the world!’ he echoes.
‘None shall escape the wrath of the Dogman,’ says Toby, the gravity of his manner reproving Jack’s laughter. ‘First the dog. Then all mankind. But!’ One hand raised. One finger pointing skyward. ‘His true disciples will be spared.’
‘You and me, Tobe.’
‘We are his true disciples, Jacko. But does he know it?’
This is Toby in full flow. Jack marvels as he listens. Where does he find these ideas?
‘The Dogman doesn’t know you saw him, Jacko. He doesn’t know you’re keeping his secret. He doesn’t know you’ve told me. We could have him put in prison. But we won’t, will we?’
‘No.’
‘Because we’re his true disciples.’
‘You and me, Tobe.’
Jack knows he shouldn’t push it, but it excites him so. Richard and Angus are just burning to ashes with curiosity, they can see even from over by the trees that Toby’s off on one of his joyrides.
‘But he has to know, Jacko. He has to give us a sign that we’re among the chosen ones.’
He pushes his hands deep into his pockets and scowls at the ground. Jack remains respectfully silent. Toby is making a plan.
Angus shouts out, ‘Can we come back now?’
Toby shakes his head. Jack, Toby’s new closest associate who alone knows what’s going on, shouts back to them. ‘Not yet.’
Oh how sweet to be on the inside.
‘If the Dogman knows we’re not telling on him he’ll be grateful. And if he’s grateful, he’ll show it.’ Thus Toby reasons aloud. ‘And grateful people give things to the people they’re grateful to. That’s all true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ says Jack.
‘So the Dogman has to give us a gift. That’ll be the sign.’
‘A gift?’
‘He has to give us money, Jacko.’ He says this gravely, as if it’s more a burden than a present. ‘Money will be the sign.’
‘I don’t think he’ll want to give us money, Tobe.’
Jack is beginning to feel uneasy about the way things are going.
‘Not money to spend, Jacko. Money as a sign. Twenty pounds each.’
‘Twenty pounds!’
‘Here’s what you do. You write the Dogman a letter saying you saw him kill the dog, but you’ll keep his secret if he gives us the sign. Which is twenty pounds each.’
‘That’s like – isn’t that blackmail?’
‘Only if we want the money to spend. This money’s for a sign.’
‘He’ll tell our parents.’
‘We don’t put our names, duh.’
‘So how does he give us the money?’
‘The sign.’
‘The sign, then.’
‘We say in the letter where to put it.’
‘Where?’
‘You don’t have to be in the club if you don’t want, Jacko. Me and Angus and Richard can write the letter.’
Toby stares past him. Jack can see how close he is to shutting him out. It’s like a door closes in his eyes and he doesn’t see you any more. You play Toby’s way or you don’t play.
‘No, I want to do it. I’m the one who saw him.’
‘That’s why you have to write the letter.’
‘All right.’
‘You tell him to put the signs in a jar and tie a long piece of string to the jar and sink it in the Drowning Pool and tie the end of the string to a tree.’
Jack is dumb with admiration. Toby summons the others.
‘So what’s going on?’ says Richard.
‘Jacko’s going to sort it,’ says Toby. ‘Don’t ask because you won’t be told.’
Jack hears this with a fierce thrill. Their frustration is his feast. Their ignorance is his power.
‘No one will ever know,’ says Toby, ‘except me, Jacko, and the Dogman.’
He raises his arm and bends it at right angles over his head. This is the salute he’s invented for the club.
‘Dogman rules!’
The other three make the salute.
‘Dogman rules!’
Jack writes the letter in Religious Studies while old Jimmy Hall is going on about the Garden of Eden. He writes it with his left hand to disguise his writing.
Dear Dogman. We saw you kill the dog. We will never tell if you give us a sign. The sign is £40. Put it in a jar in the Drowning Pool tied by a string to a tree. Dogman rules!
Toby approves the letter.
‘Now put it in his door.’
‘But he’ll see me!’
‘No, he won’t. You think he stands there all day looking at people who come to his door?’
‘I don’t go into the village. Not for no reason.’
‘So think of a reason, duh.’
32
Who can she call? In her time of greatest need Aster Dickinson calls Victor Peak, her gardener. He comes and picks up the little white furry body and carries it back to her house. His silence is what she needs, she accepts it as his own tribute to her grief. He lays Perry in the low chair by the fire and sits with her for a while. Then once again understanding her needs, he goes.
She slips into a half-sleep, and waking thinks it was all a dream.
‘Perry? Where are you?’
He lies in his chair, unbearably still.
It’s so like when Rex left and that was her fault too, thirty years ago but it might have been yesterday. He slipped out of her life with his face averted as if he thought she would hit him, which she now regrets she didn’t. And yet she was to blame then as she is now. She is hollowed out by the inescapability of it all, the way she kills the things she loves. She loved Rex, well you do, you make your choice, not that there was much choice back then. You make your bed and you lie in it and he’s there beside you. Then one day when you thought it could never happen you’re pregnant and from then on you’re tied together, you and this man and this baby, or that’s what you think. You’ve got his name and the baby’s got his name and how can he wriggle his way out of that? That’s love, isn’t it? Not the being cosy and comfortable and whatever it is he wanted and claimed he never got. It’s the iron bond of new life, our child, our Elizabeth, whose life has naturally turned out bad, her man left even before the child was born, so what hope is there for Alice? At this rate when her time comes she’ll be impregnated by some boy whose name she never quite catches and who she never sees again.
She knew Perry was dead as soon as she found him, after a long hour tramping the valley where he had run on ahead of her. The way his head lay in the lush grass, the angle very slightly wrong, forever wrong. Not an accident, how could it be an accident, but who would do such a thing?
My fault, she thinks, helplessly hounded by guilt. She recalls the countless occasions on which she hit him with her stick and every blow now falls on her own unprotected flanks. She tortures herself wit
h the memories. I said I’d kill him and now I have.
You’re the best friend I ever had, Perry.
The day passes. So long as she doesn’t leave her chair she still has him. She wants to die too, go with Perry wherever he’s going, walk after him as he runs through eternal valleys.
Elizabeth comes and says what she can but it makes no difference.
‘He can’t stay here, Mummy. Victor can dig him a grave in the garden.’
Later the rector comes. Someone has told him. He kneels down by Perry’s chair and for a moment she thinks he’s going to say a prayer over Perry but he’s only looking. She avoids meeting his eyes, not wanting to bring upon herself his clumsy attempts at consolation.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Dickinson,’ he says. ‘But you will see him again, you know.’
She frowns, caught by surprise. No other statement could have held her attention as this does.
‘There is a theory that animals don’t have souls.’ The rector speaks in a ruminative way, as if to himself. ‘But of course, we can’t know that. They live and die, as we do. I don’t see why they wouldn’t have souls, if we have souls. And if they do, then their souls must live on after death, just as ours do.’
She listens in some perplexity. No one has ever said such a thing to her before. People think because she’s an old lady that she must be a believer, but all she believes in is loss and loneliness and knowing you’ve done it to yourself. If there was a God in heaven Rex would have suffered in punishment for the pain he caused. Instead he’s living his comforted life in Maidenhead.
‘I don’t think so,’ she says.
‘Who’s to say? It’s a matter of humility, I tend to think. A matter of accepting how very little we truly know. Once you take that step, you open up a universe of possibility.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’
‘No, I’m not good at making myself clear. I think the thing is we have a way of not allowing ourselves to believe what we would so dearly like to believe, because it seems somehow too easy. Too convenient. But the truth is what it is, quite independently of our wishes. Just because you want so much to see Perry again, that does not in itself mean you won’t.’
But I don’t deserve to see him again. One more loss in a life of loss.
‘He may live on somewhere. He may be watching you now, hearing your voice, feeling your grief.’
Oh, too sweet, too easy. If only it were so.
‘If you close your eyes and think of him as he was when he was alive, maybe you’ll feel his spirit.’
Oh, Perry. My only friend.
Mrs Dickinson closes her eyes and remembers. She hears Perry’s snuffling yelps from behind the front door when she comes home. She feels his paws on her legs, bouncing up at her, making those little squeals that were his way of talking. She puts her hand to his face, his cold nose, his licking tongue.
Oh, Perry. Don’t leave me.
‘Talk to him,’ says the rector.
To her own surprise she hears herself begin to speak, her eyes still tight shut.
‘Dear Perry. I’m sorry I shouted at you. You’re the best friend I have. I miss you terribly. The house is too quiet without you. Please come home. Don’t leave me here on my own.’
Silly old fool, what am I saying? But it’s good to cry at last. Warmth of tears.
‘Does he seem closer now?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can talk to him any time you want.’
‘But he doesn’t hear me. He can’t hear me.’
‘We don’t know. We know so very little. It might be so.’
Let it be so. The need too great. Rather an old fool than the silence of for ever. She bows her head. A kind of acquiescence.
‘Do you think you can let him go now?’
He means the body. Yes, let him go. This isn’t Perry. Perry was always in motion, always under her feet, always running in circles, bounding, twitching, alert even when seeming to be asleep, a passing cat would have him springing from his chair, yipping at the closed window.
My defender, my guardian, my companion.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says.
She looks to the rector with a new humility, newly respectful of his wisdom.
‘A burial, I think. A headstone, if you wish it.’
Because he says ‘a headstone’ she thinks he must mean in the churchyard. The notion pleases her.
‘I’d like that,’ she says. ‘A simple service first.’
‘A service?’
‘Before he’s buried in the churchyard.’
‘Ah.’ He hesitates. ‘I’m not sure that’s possible.’
‘But if he has a soul, like us?’
She can’t quite say why, but this idea is taking hold of her. If Perry is buried in the churchyard, with a church service and a headstone, then he must have a soul. And if he has a soul, she will see him again.
‘You don’t think a grave here in your garden, near to you?’
‘People aren’t buried in gardens.’
‘No, no.’
She can see his reluctance. People aren’t buried in gardens. Pets aren’t buried in churchyards.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘What difference does it make?’
But he’s looking at her thoughtfully, and she knows he understands. It makes all the difference in the world.
‘After all,’ he says, ‘why not? We don’t need to make a fuss about it. Why don’t you come to the churchyard tomorrow morning, quite early, perhaps eight o’clock? We can say some prayers, and find a quiet corner of the churchyard, and lay Perry to rest.’
After this he departs. Mrs Dickinson sits in her chair by the fire as before, but something has changed. It’s a matter of humility.
‘We don’t know, do we, Perry? We don’t know anything, really.’
33
The cameraman is called Ray. His assistant is called Mo. The sound man is Oliver. The sparks is Pete. The make-up girl is Rowan. Then there’s Milly, Henry’s PA, and Christina, his researcher, and Decca, their abbey minder. So throw in the director and the star, currently pacing the flagstones under the abbey walls, and there’s eleven of them gathered in central London, ringed by the traffic forever roaring round Parliament Square, tracing the footsteps of the iconoclasts of 350 years ago.
It should be a time of excitement, or at least satisfaction, for Henry. His project is finally under way. But he is too anxiously aware of all that can go wrong to enjoy the moment. Oliver is not happy with the spikes of sound from the passing buses. Ray tells him the light is too flat. The crew vehicles are parked by Church House and Milly isn’t completely sure they have permission. Rowan wants to spray Aidan Massey’s hair with fixative to stop it blowing in the wind, but Aidan says hairspray makes him look like Margaret Thatcher. A crowd is gathering on the pavement to stare at their activities, and Christina is talking to them, keeping them from calling out, but all it takes is one idiot. Once these exteriors are done it’ll be much easier shooting inside the abbey, though then there’ll be ten times the hassle with lights.
Big Ben strikes the hour. The bing-bong-bing-bong goes on for ever.
‘We don’t like that,’ says Oliver.
‘Losing light,’ says Ray. ‘I’m down a stop since we set up.’
A woman in the crowd of onlookers has spotted the star.
‘It’s Aidan Massey! Look! Over there!’
Clouds rolling in from over the park. If it starts to rain we’re fucked. Ray’s telling Pete to walk a light-fill during the track and now Pete has to run a new cable. A road digger starts up somewhere in Victoria Street.
‘We don’t like that,’ says Oliver.
This is the moment Aidan Massey chooses to make some changes to the script. Henry beckons Christina to join him for moral support, and the three of them huddle by a buttress and look at Aidan’s changes. He’s added two words. Or rather, he’s added one word twice.
/> ‘The spoken word thrives on repetition,’ he says.
The added word is ‘sexy’. He’s only had this script for three weeks. He’s only let them set up and lay tracks and rehearse and do his make-up and agree the camera moves, and now that at last they’re ready for the take he’s actually giving some attention to the words he’s going to say.
‘That’s fine, Aidan. You do that. No problem.’
One fucking word. Jesus! He catches Christina’s eye.
‘And on the subject of sexy,’ Aidan says, ‘those are very tight jeans you’re wearing, Christina.’
The poison dwarf thinks he’s a ladies’ man. He truly does.
‘Losing light,’ says Ray.
Henry looks up at the gathering clouds. Not that there’s anything he can do about it except worry. He can’t lose today’s shoot, the budget’s too tight.
‘Let’s go everybody. You good for a take, Aidan?’
‘Ready when you are, maestro.’
The machinery of filming grinds into action at last. Preparation is everything. When it’s time to roll there’s nothing to do but watch and listen.
My lines coming from his mouth. My ideas projected by his handsome head, filling the camera frame, making it bulge at the edges with Thatcherite hair. A little knot of highly focused professionals trotting slowly along one wall of Westminster Abbey on a dull day in May.
‘Back in the seventeenth century people took idols seriously,’ Aidan confides to the camera. ‘We’re not talking golden calves. We’re talking our innate human desire to see what we worship. An image. A picture. A beautiful face. A beautiful body. Yes, this is all about sex. Idols are the sexiest of sexy images. Back then they called idolatry “spiritual fornication”.’
Cut. Thank you, Aidan. You were great. Fabulous. How was it for you, Ray? Oliver? But we can live with that, can’t we? Well done everybody. Once more for luck.
Christina whispering.
‘You’d almost believe he understands what he’s saying.’
Share a quick smile. At least one other person knows the truth. Aidan’s right about the jeans. Run the track again. Traffic wardens peering at the minibus. Big Ben groaning towards a bong. Crowd getting boisterous.