Roy, however, wasn’t thinking about his tea or his mum. ‘Come on, Eric, dogs are supposed to wolf things up!’ Whereupon Eric did eat up, but in his own time. He proceeded to wipe one slightly sticky paw on the grass. He remained thoughtful.
Roy’s exasperation grew. ‘Tear about a bit,’ he said. ‘It is a park, y’know.’ He tossed his jockey cap in the air and caught it on his head. ‘Here – jump this bench!’ Roy gestured towards a park bench, and, in case Eric hadn’t got the idea, jumped it himself. ‘See – easy!’
Eric trotted up to the bench, climbed onto it and sat down. He meant it as a joke, but Roy took it badly. He pushed his hands in his pockets and kicked moodily at a plastic cup which lay on the ground near a litter-bin. Then, after a while, he began to dribble with the cup around the bench. And he said, ‘Come on – tackle me!’
This time Eric didn’t wait, but took up the challenge. He leapt from the bench, chased after Roy, and made a grab for the cup. Roy eluded him. Eric grabbed again; again Roy slipped past. Eric held off, jockeying for position, waiting his chance. Roy showed neat footwork and began a commentary. ‘Now it’s Kenny Dalglish coming through the middle … only Alvin Martin to beat…’ Eric darted in, grabbed the cup in his mouth and scampered off.
Then it was Roy’s turn to chase and Eric’s to dodge about. As soon as Roy discovered it was hard work getting even close to Eric, ‘Dalglish’ was substituted and ‘Shilton’ took his place. ‘And it’s an open goal… the crowd’s going mad… only the keeper to beat.’
Roy now proceeded to hurl himself around in a series of desperate saves at the striker’s feet. He grazed an elbow and a knee but hardly noticed. Eventually, with Eric nowhere near him at the time, Roy gave a leap of pure animal spirits. (Sometimes, even under normal circumstances, the difference between boys and dogs is not great.) Roy tumbled over and over on the grass. He hadn’t had fun like this for days; neither had Eric. In fact, for the moment, the two friends had quite forgotten the situation they were in. They were just a fairly wild boy and a rather civilized dog, fooling around.
Then, suddenly, with Eric off his guard, Roy lunged forward and swept up ball and player in a rugby tackle.
‘Foul!’ yelled Eric, or rather, as it turned out, ‘Woof!’
Then Roy did a lap of honour – ‘This is a cup match, Eric’ – with the cup itself held high. Then something else happened. A child’s pedal car came into sight from the direction of the park gates. It was bright red with a Mickey Mouse face on the front. A small irate boy was running after it – and the driver was Hopper.
The small boy – who was, of course, the owner of the car – was Malcolm Biggs, Kenny’s little brother. Behind him came Kenny himself and four or five other boys. They were carrying items of cricket gear: bat, batting gloves, pad, wickets, bails – and tossing a ball between them.
Hopper came to a halt. His face was flushed; it was hard work pedalling. Malcolm Biggs – usually known as Malky – was frowning, but not crying. He tugged at his brother’s T-shirt and pointed at the car: ‘My, my!’ Malky was two and a half and well able to say ‘mine’. (Being the brother of Kenny, it was his first word.) However, in moments of stress his sense of grammar often deserted him and ‘my’ was the most he could manage.
Kenny looked down at Hopper’s solid body jammed into the little car. He did what he could. ‘Come on, Hopper, you’ll make him cry. You’ll break it!’
Hopper stayed where he was and considered his options: what sort of mood was he in, hostile or friendly? Then, up ahead he noticed Roy, and Roy’s two bags, and Roy’s… dog.
Hopper’s arrival had broken the spell for Roy and Eric. Eric had immediately recalled his plight; Roy had immediately looked at his watch (he was late for tea), and the grass stains on his shirt (what would his mum say?). He picked up the bags and began to slink off. He had no need to speak to Eric; he was slinking off, too. It was the normal Rolfe Street Primary response: when Hopper arrived, you left, if you could.
Hopper, however, had other ideas. ‘Hey, Acker-man, come here!’
Reluctantly, Roy turned and approached Hopper. Eric followed.
‘What’s all this? Them your bags? Where’s Banks?’
‘Carrying his mum’s shopping,’ said Roy. ‘He just – ’
But Hopper hadn’t finished yet; his main questions were still to come. ‘This your dog?’
‘Er… no,’ said Roy.
‘It’s the one you was asking about.’
‘Yes.’
‘Outside the fish shop.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s not yours?’
‘No. He sort of … followed me.’ Roy, ill-at-ease, lowered the bags to the ground and stood twiddling with his cap. Eric did his best to look as though he had just followed Roy. Hopper looked suspicious.
Then Malky – distracted for a time – took up again his plaintive cry: ‘My, my!’
And Kenny said, ‘Come on, Hopper!’
And Hopper, to the dismay of Roy and Eric and the delight of Malky, climbed out of the car.
Then Malky climbed in – beaming at once – and pedalled off.
And Hopper said, ‘I know this dog.’
The next few minutes were an uncomfortable period for Roy and Eric. Hopper was suddenly keen to show off what Eric could do. ‘He’s a smart ‘un!’ He looked around for something to throw. ‘Give us a bail, Dobbo!’
‘No,’ said Dobbo, otherwise Philip Dobson, the owner of the bails and most of the gear except the bat. He and another boy were pacing out the pitch and knocking in the stumps.
‘Give us a bail!’
When the bail was handed over, Hopper said, ‘Watch this, Kenny,’ and tossed it towards Eric. ‘Catch!’
Eric made no move except to raise his head and watch the bail disdainfully, and see it fall.
‘Pretty good,’ said Kenny.
Hopper tried again. Again Eric failed to move. ‘You catch it,’ he thought.
Kenny had a whispered word with Roy. ‘/s it your dog?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Roy.
‘And where is Eric?’
Roy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hard to say,’ he said.
Hopper, meanwhile, had become displeased. ‘What’s all this?’ He looked accusingly at Roy. ‘What you been doing to this dog?’
‘Er … nothing,’ said Roy. He knelt down and pretended to tie his shoelace. ‘Catch it, Eric. Hopper’s gonna beat me up!’
Fortunately, by this time the demands of the game were beginning to take Hopper’s attention. The stumps were in and Clive Smart was taking guard; it was his bat.
‘I’ll bowl!’ said Hopper.
At which point, Roy seized his chance. In a sudden burst of over-acting, he stared wildly at his watch, said, ‘Is that the time?’, grabbed the bags and scurried off. Eric followed.
‘Hang about!’ said Hopper, but it was a halfhearted demand. His suspicions were still aroused, but he also wanted to bowl. Eric and Roy kept going. At high speed they made their way around the pond, meaning to leave by the top gates. Roy suffered in silence the banging of the bags against his ribs. Eric ignored the urge to bark at the ducks as he went by.
When they were well clear, Roy paused for breath and to swop the bags over. ‘Listen – let’s go to my house – I’ll sneak you in.’
‘Woof!’ agreed Eric. He’d thought of that, too. It was the best solution.
Roy shouldered the bags again and glanced back at the cricketers. Clive Smart, it seemed, was out. Hopper was taking guard. It looked like being a long game. Hopper, of course, was not the easiest batsman to dismiss.
11
Roy’s Room
When Eric and Roy came out through the park gates, they almost collided with a girl who was riding her bike on the pavement. It was Joan Spooner.
‘Hello, Roy!’ said Joan.
‘Hello,’ said Roy. ‘Can’t stop!’ And he didn’t; neither did Eric.
Joan hesitated, then turned her bike and rode aft
er them. ‘That your dog?’ she called out.
‘No,’ said Roy, and he laughed. ‘It’s Eric’s!’
Joan came up alongside them. She noted the bags Roy was carrying and the well-trained way the dog was following him. ‘Where is Eric?’
‘He’s around somewhere,’ said Roy. He stopped and waited at a set of traffic lights.
‘What’re you laughing at?’ said Joan.
Roy said, ‘What’re you asking about Eric for?’ And then, ‘He’s your boyfriend, that’s why.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Joan.
Meanwhile, Eric sat listening with a mixture of embarrassment and curiosity. Of course, he knew who Joan’s boyfriend was. It was Roy.
After that the lights changed and Roy and Eric continued on their way; and Joan – somewhat puzzled – continued on hers.
As they approached Roy’s house, Roy began to make elaborate plans for getting Eric past his mum and up to his room. But when he came to the back door – with Eric hiding in the garage – it was locked. And when he took the key from its usual place (under the mat) and entered the kitchen, a note on the table said, ‘Gone to Mrs Turner’s – back soon’. Mrs Turner was a pensioner who lived a few doors away. Roy’s mum did her shopping now and then.
Roy moved swiftly, fetched Eric from the garage and hurried him upstairs. It’s an odd fact that, as a boy, Eric had hardly ever been in Roy’s house, and never at all in Roy’s room. Roy’s mother didn’t encourage him to bring his friends home. She was a tidy woman. She may have felt that Roy’s mess was as much as she could manage.
Roy slammed his bedroom door and fell on the bed. He was worn out. His elbow and knee had begun to sting. His brain was racing. Eric, politely, wiped his feet on the bedside rug and leapt up to join his friend. He was worn out, too. At the same time he was much relieved to be off the street. He remembered a dream he occasionally had of going to school in only his vest. This could’ve been worse!
Eric sat up and looked around. Roy’s room was extremely full. It was full of clothes and comics, skates and model aeroplanes and fishing rods. Football posters covered the walls and a Hornby train set covered the floor. There were various abandoned collections of one thing or another; dead hobbies – a weaving kit, for instance, and a half-finished entry for a ‘Blue Peter’ painting competition. Because Roy rarely threw anything away, there was even (if you looked hard enough) a one-armed teddy and a couple of baby books.
Roy stretched out and put his hands behind his head. ‘Now what?’ he said; and then, ‘Hey, what about Hopper!’ He threw his jockey cap in the air and caught it. ‘Bet you’re glad you’re not a poodle, hey – or a chihuahua!’
Eric lay on the bed, his head on his paws and stared noncommittally at Roy. He was thinking about Joan Spooner. Roy had nearly given the game away there.
Roy said, ‘Listen, what if–’
At that moment there were noises downstairs: a door closing; footsteps in the hall. Then a voice called out, ‘Roy – you up there?’
Roy leapt from the bed, made a grab for his bag, opened the door, shouted ‘Coming, Mum!’, shut the door, took his grass-stained T-shirt off, put a clean one on – and left the room.
Then, almost immediately, he popped his head round the door. ‘I’ll be back in a bit,’ and left again. And returned again: ‘Whatever you do – don’t bark!’ And was gone.
Eric – once he had recovered from Roy’s comings and goings – sat staring at the bedroom door and considered his situation. He was hungry, thirsty, dusty, and, of course, a dog. He was worried about his mum, who by this time would have his tea on and be worried about him. He was worried about Roy’s mum. What if she came in?
Roy, meanwhile, having laid the table at a phenomenal speed (even for him) was now eating his tea, and – whenever his mum’s back was turned – stealing Eric’s. The tea was cold chicken, salad, tomatoes and potato crisps. There was plenty of bread and butter, and – warming in the oven – an apple pie which Mrs Turner had sent. Roy’s mum was in and out doing various jobs: emptying his bag; fetching frozen peas from the freezer.
‘Have some bread and butter,’ she said as she passed his chair. And later, ‘Use your fork!’
Roy bolted his food and wrapped Eric’s scraps in paper hankies and crammed them into his pockets. When his mum went out to empty the pedal-bin, he left the table and raced upstairs. Eric was on the floor beside the train set. With no great enthusiasm, he was pushing a carriage along with his paw.
‘Got you some tea,’ said Roy. He emptied his pockets and arranged the hankies with their contents on the bedside rug. There was a piece of squashed chicken, some crumbled crisps, a flat tomato and a ball of bread and butter.
‘Eat up!’ said Roy. ‘I’ll be back,’ and he left.
Eric sniffed the food, discovered the full extent of his hunger, and ate the lot. After that he continued his exploration of Roy’s room. He found a headless Action Man under the bed, and encountered a dreadful pong from one of Roy’s socks. He found a comic on the floor which he began to read. Then Roy returned, this time with apple pie.
Eric ate the pie and Roy watched. It was exciting, smuggling food for a friend; but more than that — Roy discovered – it was surprisingly satisfying just to see him eat it.
Roy said, ‘Hey, Eric, you could’ve pinched that ball!’ He was remembering the cricket match. ‘Run off with it, or fetched it from the pond’ – where it usually ended up. ‘You could’ve -’
‘Roy!’
‘Coming!’ said Roy. He pulled a face, gave Eric a pat, and left.
Eric finished the pie and brushed the crumbs from his mouth. He resisted the urge to chew one of Roy’s slippers. He snuffled once more under the bed. ‘I wonder if he’ll bring me a drink,’ he thought. He practised miming thirst with an exaggerated panting. He trod on a marble.
Then, suddenly, in the gloomiest corner of the room where the bed met the wall, Eric felt a wobbly sensation in his legs, and had a strong conviction something was about to happen: something did. Seconds later, he experienced the now familiar tingling — like a mild electric shock, or pins and needles – in his paws; and an itch around his neck; and – this was new, or perhaps he hadn’t noticed it before – a buzzing in his ears. He shut his eyes. His body wavered in the air like heat haze. In no time at all Eric the dog had dissolved and disappeared; Eric the boy had emerged to take his place.
Eric’s first response to the change was to bang his head against the underside of the bed. He remembered the shrinking feeling he’d had at the baths. Of course, that was it; he did shrink when he turned into a dog (‘So where does the rest of me go?’) and enlarged when he turned back. And if he was under a bed at the time, he got stuck there; well, almost.
Eric flattened himself to the floor and with difficulty wriggled his way out. He looked around for his bag. When he opened it, he was dismayed to find his T-shirt tangled up with his wet trunks, his towel with dirt on it from his plimsolls, and only one sock. Eric – with a mixture of concern (‘What’s Mum going to say?’) and relief (‘I’m a boy!’) – began to get dressed.
Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, Roy’s problems were increasing. At first his mum had been too busy getting the tea on for herself and his dad to notice him. Gradually, however, her suspicions had become aroused. But it wasn’t Roy’s actions that did it: the amount he ate, the speed he ate at, and the fact that he seemed constantly on the move — all this was usual. What wasn’t usual was his conversation. In an effort to camouflage his own excitement and avoid his mum’s attentions, Roy had overdone it. ‘Had a nice day, Mum?’, ‘Lovely tea!’, and ‘How’s Mrs Turner?’ (especially, ‘How’s Mrs Turner?’) were simply not remarks Mrs Ackerman was accustomed to hear.
Finally, she set aside her mixing bowl and studied Roy. (He was loitering near the biscuit tin.) The first things she noticed were his grazes: elbow and knee. Then, as she applied the TCP, she noticed something else. ‘Roy, where’s your T-shirt?’
‘I�
�ve got it on,’ said Roy.
‘I mean the one you went out in.’
‘Er… well,’ said Roy.
‘Stop mumbling!’
‘It’s in my room.’ Roy shuffled uneasily. ‘I, er … had this accident.’
‘What accident?’ said his mum; and then, ‘Go and fetch it!’
As Roy left the room, Mrs Ackerman put the seal on her disapproval. ‘And take that cap off!’ she said.
From now on things moved rapidly. Roy arrived in his room and discovered Eric. He was sitting on the bed reading a comic. Roy was openly amazed and secretly disappointed. Eric was shivering a little in his wet T-shirt and worrying about his lost sock. A conversation began. The subjects included the sock, the transformation, Hopper, Joan Spooner, and – finally – how to sneak Eric out of the house. Then – bang!– the bedroom door flew open and Roy’s mum discovered Eric.
Eric leapt to his feet. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Acker-man!’
And Roy said, ‘Here’s Eric!’
Mrs Ackerman merely frowned.
‘I, er … had this accident,’ said Eric. He indicated his wet T-shirt.
‘Did you?’ said Mrs Ackerman.
‘Roy said I could… I could wait here till it dried.’
‘Did he?’ said Mrs Ackerman.
‘I didn’t want to bother you, Mum,’ said Roy.
Then Eric grabbed his bag and said, ‘Well, I’d better be going – thanks Roy!’
And on the stairs, Roy said, ‘Don’t mention it.’
And at the back door: ‘See you tomorrow!’
After that Eric scuttled up the road and Roy took his time closing the door. He made rapid efforts to anticipate his mother’s line of questioning. She was waiting for him, arms folded, in the kitchen.
Woof! Page 5