Walker

by Shoo Rayner

  For Colum Scriven

  Dog Listener

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Walker

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ‘How many more red lights?’ Mum growled as she screeched the car to a halt. ‘Oh no!’ she groaned, glaring across the street. ‘That’s disgusting. Fancy letting your dog poo right there on the pavement.’

  Walker looked out of the window. A poodle gazed lovingly back at him, while it did its business right in front of Poundland! The dog’s owner pretended she had nothing to do with it. She held the lead behind her back and stared up to the sky as if she had a deep interest in jumbo jets. Then she pulled a pink plastic bag out of her pocket and put her hand inside it.

  ‘At least she’s taking it home.’ Walker thought he really wouldn’t mind having to pick up poo in a plastic bag, if only he could have a dog of his own. ‘I wish I had a dog.’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake!’ Mum rolled her eyes. ‘How many times have we been through this?’

  ‘Millions,’ Walker sighed, ‘millions and trillions!’

  The lights turned green and the car rolled forward. The city streets passed by, full of dogs being walked on leads. He named the breeds as they passed by.

  ‘Labrador … staffy … pug … husky … spaniel…’

  Mum flicked him a glance in the rear-view mirror. She didn’t have to say a word, her look said it all. Walker knew there was no point talking about it.

  They were driving back from visiting Aunt Lizzie and his cousin Poppy for the day.

  Poppy had rats. They weren’t dogs, but at least they were pets – and they were all hers. Stinky, Scratchy, Bella and Blue whizzed around the cage doing tricks, running upside down in their wheel and squeezing through a spaghetti-like maze of plastic tubes that threaded their way up, down and across Poppy’s bedroom.

  ‘She likes you!’ said Poppy, putting Bella on Walker’s shoulder. The rat examined him with her pink eyes and sniffed his face, tickling his neck with her long, white, hairy whiskers. He squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched up his neck when she poked her wet little nose in his ear, as if searching for a secret stash of sunflower seeds inside. He could hear Bella’s tiny breath, almost as if she was talking to him.

  Back in the car, Walker remembered the feeling as he watched a large woman in a blue furry coat walk by with a tiny dog tucked under her arm. Sometimes Poppy would take Bella out for a walk in her coat pocket!

  ‘Maybe I could have a teeny, weeny, itsy-bitsy, little chihuahua,’ Walker suggested. ‘They’re really small. It could live in my pocket. You wouldn’t even know it was there!’

  Every time Walker suggested a different type of dog, praising all the virtues that the breed was well-known for, there was always the same emphatic answer:

  ‘NO!’

  A Labrador? Too bouncy!

  Jack Russell? Too snappy!

  Sheepdog? They need too much exercise!

  Great Dane? Do you know how much they eat!?

  Poodle? Old lady dogs!

  Collie? Too much fur!

  Fur was the problem. If Mum got too close to dogs, she suffered an allergic reaction. Her voice would go all squeaky and she would pant like a terrier that had been chasing its tail all day. She had to carry a syringe full of medicine in her handbag, just in case it got really bad. Walker didn’t want to see her get ill, of course, and knew he had to think of her health first.

  But he couldn’t get over the idea he was meant to have a dog.

  Walker’s dad, on the other hand, just didn’t like dogs. He was a quiet, gentle, cat-loving man. Lucy Lou, a plump tabby cat, curled up on his lap every night, sleeping through all the interesting TV programmes he liked to watch about history and science.

  ‘Poor Lucy Lou!’ he would say. ‘Can you imagine the stress she would be put under if we had a dog in the house?’

  So all Walker could do was dream of growing up and having his own place one day where he could share his life with his very own canine friend.

  The city outskirts sped by. Walker flicked through the pictures of dogs on his phone and sighed deeply. Growing up seemed to be taking forever.

  Mum leaned forward over the steering wheel, peered up through the windscreen and tutted. ‘That man gets everywhere,’ she muttered.

  They were going past a huge poster of Arlington Wherewithal which read: ‘You too can be as rich as me!’ Arlington Wherewithal was a famous businessman, who happened to live in Foxley, the village where Walker lived with his mum and dad. Arlington’s giant image stared down at them. His piercing blue eyes glittered under his wild, bushy eyebrows.

  ‘Why’s his picture up there?’ Walker asked.

  ‘Oh, it’ll be another of his TV programmes or money-making schemes,’ Mum sighed. ‘People give him money so he can tell them how he got so rich. Then he gets even richer!’

  Walker had known Arlington Wherewithal all his life. Not personally, like a family friend, but Arlington opened fêtes and did other things around Foxley. He made speeches and gave the prizes at Walker’s school and always made sure his picture appeared in the paper. He was always on the TV too, telling everyone they could all be as rich as he was – if they just pulled their socks up!

  Walker often saw Arlington walking his dogs through the village. He had two pointers. They were gun dogs, taught to fetch the birds that Arlington shot each year. In the shooting season, Foxley village reverberated to the din of Arlington’s shotguns blam-blamming away in Foxley Woods.

  Arlington lived in Foxley Manor, an enormous country mansion. He’d made a fortune from building loads of new houses on the edge of his land, making the village three times bigger than it used to be. He’d made sure they were well hidden behind Foxley Woods so he wouldn’t have to see them.

  Something caught Walker’s eye, making him forget all about Arlington. He strained to look out of the window. The seat belt snapped tight, holding him back.

  On the pavement, a woman was walking six, no, wait … seven dogs! A Labrador, Dalmatian, two sausage dogs, a Pomeranian, a West Highland terrier and a miniature bulldog. They trotted happily together on their leads, looking like a bunch of five-year-old kids on a school outing.

  ‘She’s got seven dogs!’ Walker exclaimed. ‘That is so unfair!’

  ‘They’re not hers,’ Mum said, calmly.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Look at her bag.’

  A square bag dangled from the woman’s shoulder. Printed on the side was a silhouette of someone walking three dogs. The message underneath read – ‘Walkies! Get the app and book your dog a walk right now!’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Walker asked.

  ‘She walks dogs for other people,’ Mum explained. ‘Busy people who don’t have time to walk their own dogs, so they pay people to do it for them.’

  ‘What!?’ Walker’s eyes popped wide open. ‘You mean you can get paid for walking dogs? Well! Now I know what I want to do when I grow up! When can I leave school?’

  Mum shook her head in dismay. ‘Dogs! Dogs! Dogs! That’s all you ever think about!’

  Walker was silent for the rest of the journey home. He was thinking deep thoughts and planning a cunning plan. Maybe there was a way to sort of have a dog of his own?

  Walker lay on his bed. He had cut out and stuck pictures of his favourite dogs all over the ceiling, right above his pillows. The rest of the room was filled with dog stuff – dog duvet covers, dog books, a collection of nodding dogs on the windowsill, even a dog that wagged its ears and tail when the sun was shining.

  It was true, he really was a little obsessed with dogs. He knew everything about them, but could never get close to one. He was like a scientist who knows all about the moon, but has n
ever been there.

  He knew the names of all the breeds. He’d watched thousands of videos about dogs. Cute dogs, grumpy dogs, clever dogs – they were all there on the internet. Once in a while he would come across a film about dogs that had been badly treated. Some of those videos brought tears to his eyes and made him really angry. How could people do such things to those gorgeous living creatures?

  He saw dogs who had been left all alone in crates, never cleaned or fed. And films about puppy farms, where puppies were bred in horrible conditions just to make money. The mothers gave birth to litter after litter until they were worn out and ill. Often the puppies died soon after they had been bought, because they had terrible diseases.

  How could people be like that? And how could they have dogs and he couldn’t, when he would so love and look after a dog of his own? If ever he saw animals being mistreated, he would do something about it. If they couldn’t stand up for themselves, he would have to stand up for them instead.

  He lay there, staring at the pictures, dreaming up his plan. The dog-walking lady he’d seen earlier had changed everything…

  Just at that moment, Ellie Snapchat, at Number 42 the High Street, called from her kitchen, ‘Pixie! Din-dins!’

  Pixie, a cheerful Border terrier, woke from a deep, sleepy dream in which she’d been chasing rabbits across white fluffy clouds. She raced down the hallway into the kitchen, skidded on the shiny wood-effect floor, crashed into the oven door, as she usually did, and rolled over three times.

  Landing upright, right in front of her bowl, she wolfed down half a tin of Arlington’s Chumpkin Chunks in five seconds flat. Then she raised her head and looked at Ellie as if to say, ‘What’s for pudding?’

  At the bottom of Number 36’s garden next door, Google the Bedlington terrier leaped up and down at the fence, barking louder than a school disco.

  Someone was on the other side of the fence. Google could hear them talking. They were invaders, robbers, ne’er-do-wells! Google knew his job was to protect his master’s castle. They might be cut-throats or axe-murderers!

  Google raced up the garden and barked at the patio doors, but no one took any notice. He barked at the barbecue under its green cover. He barked at the toy car, that had been abandoned upside down on the path like a miniature road traffic accident. Then he tore back to the bottom of the garden, jumping up and down, up and down, scratching the wooden fence panel, barking, barking, barking!

  Arlington Wherewithal’s head appeared above the fence panel. His fierce, cold, blue eyes stared down.

  Google froze and stared back. They looked at each other for a few, long, silent seconds.

  Arlington jerked his head and said, ‘BOO!’

  Google was so surprised, he put his tail between his legs, ran up the garden and hid under the barbecue covers, where he stayed, shaking and whimpering, until he could hear that the nasty man had gone, his cruel laughter fading away.

  In Number 34, the house that didn’t look like any of the others in the row, Jenny Little hid behind the curtains in her sitting room and peered out of the window.

  Arlington Wherewithal was having an animated discussion with another man on the other side of her garden fence. He pointed right at her house, then at a map. Jenny knew they were up to no good.

  The other man took pictures of Jenny’s house and garden on his phone. He snapped photographs of her leafy vegetable plot, her colourful flower garden and the dear little greenhouse where her juicy tomatoes were growing nicely. He filmed the small round pond with its tiny waterfall, where her fish swam lazily by, waiting for her to feed them.

  The man pointed towards her fruit-laden apple trees. Jenny could hear them. They spoke in loud, bossy voices as if they owned the place. The man said, ‘They’ll need chopping down!’

  Jenny’s dog growled.

  ‘Come away from the window, Stella,’ Jenny hissed. ‘Don’t let them see you.’

  Number 34 the High Street was one of the few houses that Arlington Wherewithal had not built. It was one of the old, village houses, built long, long before Arlington moved to Foxley Manor.

  The new houses had been made to look like they were old, but they’d been built close together, with smaller gardens and just enough room to park a car down the side of the house.

  Number 34, or Hazeldean as it used to be called, was different. Hazeldean was a detached, wooden house standing in its own large garden, which Jenny loved and tended, making a haven for insects, birds and butterflies. Jenny made jams and jellies from the fruit and scented bags and potpourri from the flowers in her large flower beds.

  Arlington Wherewithal wanted her house. He had always wanted her house. There was nothing else in the world he wanted as much. Arlington was used to getting his own way. He thought money could buy anything.

  So he made Jenny an offer that he thought she could not refuse. He offered her so much money for her house and the land that anyone else would have said, ‘Thank you very much!’ and gone off on a world cruise to celebrate.

  But not Jenny. Her great-grandfather had built the house with his bare hands, way back in the old days when it was common land and the law in the village said that if you could clear a piece of land, build a chimney, light a fire and get smoke coming from the top, within twenty-four hours, the land was yours to live on forever.

  That’s what great-grandfather Little had done. He cleared what was now Jenny’s garden and built a chimney in twenty-four hours. He built the rest of the house around the chimney in his own time. He dug the foundations by hand, sawed all the timber and nailed every plank and hammered on every roof tile.

  The house was special. Very few houses from those days survived. One day, someone realised how rare Jenny’s house was. An historic building preservation order was made to protect it, so no one could knock it down. Jenny had all the legal papers to say it was hers and hers alone. They even made a TV programme about Hazeldean.

  Number 34 was not for sale.

  But Arlington was not a man to take no for an answer. When he wasn’t smiling at a camera or giving prizes at the village fête, Arlington was a bully. A mean, brutish, conniving, tricky, deceitful bully.

  Jenny sank into her armchair and peeped through the gap in the curtains again. ‘He’s up to something, Stella,’ she said. ‘Arlington’s got a new plan and I really don’t think I’ve got the strength to fight him anymore.’

  Stella put her head in Jenny’s lap and looked up with big, brown, trusting eyes.

  Jenny smiled and scratched Stella’s golden fur behind the ears. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, ‘I think you understand every word I say.’

  ‘Can I put this card up in your window, Mr Bonus?’ Walker asked.

  Mr Bonus brushed his thick moustache, picked up the card Walker had placed on the shop counter and read it aloud in a strong Lithuanian accent.

  Mr Bonus read it again. ‘I don’t understand. Explain, please.’

  Walker told him that he was setting up a dog walking business. People would pay him to walk their dogs.

  Mr Bonus looked confused. ‘Why they pay you to walk dogs? My dog, Boss, he’s happy in back yard keeping out the bad men. He don’t need walking.’

  Walker explained that most people liked to take their dogs for a walk every day, but some were too busy, so they would pay him to walk them.

  ‘Hmm!’ Mr Bonus gave an appreciative nod. ‘That’s crazy, but that’s good business. For notice card in my window, I charge one pound for two weeks.’

  ‘Oh!’ Walker was crestfallen. He picked up his card and looked at it wistfully. He hadn’t thought he might have to pay to put it in the shop window. His business was going to fail at the first step.

  He’d worked so hard on the card too. He’d drawn a great stick-man picture of a responsible-looking person walking a stick-dog that was carrying a stick in its mouth – he really liked that little joke. He’d added his home phone number and address and printed some smaller copies on the computer, so he could give the
m to people walking their dogs.

  Walker was particularly proud of ‘Competitive Rates’. He’d seen the phrase on other adverts, it sounded very professional. He had no idea how much people would be willing to pay him.

  Mr Bonus smiled. ‘I like this. I like to see young person be entrepreneur – be businessman. I make you business offer. I put card in shop window for free. You get business … then you pay me!’ Mr Bonus spat on his hand and held it out across the counter. ‘Deal?’

  Walker thought for a moment, smiled, spat in his palm and shook Mr Bonus’s hand firmly. ‘Deal!’ he laughed.

  Outside the shop, Walker watched Mr Bonus pin the card to the board in the window. He smiled to himself. He was in business! Soon he would have as many dogs as he could cope with – even if they were part-time.

  Through the shop’s wrought-iron side gate, Boss, the shop’s Alsatian guard dog, watched Walker pass along the pavement. Then he dropped his head and continued pacing up and down the back yard.

  Boss was so bored. When he wasn’t pacing up and down, up and down, he lay in his kennel and dreamed of the day a real bad man might climb over the wall so that he could sink his teeth into their big, bad bottom!

  The next day, Mum and Walker popped into the shop on the way home from school. Anje, Mr Bonus’s daughter, was behind the counter in her school uniform. She went to Walker’s school.

  ‘Hey,’ Anje laughed. ‘Got any customers yet?’

  ‘What’s this?’ Mum asked, confused.

  Walker knew he should have let his parents know about his plans, but he just sort of forgot. ‘I’ve started a dog-walking business,’ he said, looking down and talking to his shoes. ‘Mr Bonus let me put a card in the shop window.’