Station Jim

by Louis de Bernières

  Jim loved the patting and hugging he got from Mrs Leghorn as she laughed at him, and, being a natural entertainer, he repeated the bucket trick the next day, and again when the children and Mr Leghorn came home. Their delight was wonderful to him, and even more wonderful was the big digestive biscuit that Alfie gave him as a reward.

  That was the fatal move. In dog mathematics it meant bucket = biscuit. If anyone said ‘Bucket, Jim!’ it was pretty much the same as anyone saying ‘Biscuit!’

  The odd thing is that because the bucket was so heavy, not only did Jim develop a very strong neck and jaws, but the tips of his sharp white teeth began to go blunt. When Arthur told Mr Ginger Leghorn about it, he prised open the dog’s mouth, had a look, and said, ‘That’s bad news, that is! What if he gets in a fight and can’t look after himself ?’

  So Mr Leghorn went out and came back from the ironmonger’s with a much smaller galvanised iron bucket. Around the rim he tied the sleeves of an old shirt. He got some contact glue and painted it all around the inside rim, and stuck on a nice wide strip of thick black rubber made of an old inner tube.

  Fortunately Jim much preferred this bucket. When you woofed into it, it made a higher note than the big bucket, and you could carry it around, bumping into things, for very much longer. He soon discovered that it was less like hard work if, instead of holding the bucket in his jaws, he just inserted his whole head into it and wore it like a helmet.

  People used to call round on the Leghorns just to see Jim clanging into things with his bucket on his head, and he even made the local paper. There was a lovely photograph in it of the whole family standing proudly behind, with Jim sitting in front, bucket on head. The caption read: ‘Meet Grinner the Local Dogmop, Master of Comedy. We Love Him, Say Family.’

  JIM AND SNIFFY

  Once, when Christmas was not too far away, Jim went missing and was not seen for two days.

  Mrs Molly Leghorn grew more and more distraught, as did Mr Ginger Leghorn and the children. Over and over again, Mrs Molly Leghorn would say, ‘Oh, I’m sure he’s just out having an adventure, I’m sure he’ll be back soon,’ but she did not really believe it, and neither did Mr Ginger Leghorn when he replied, ‘Course he will. Dogs are always wandering off, aren’t they? You can’t just keep them locked in the house all day. It’s not natural, is it?’

  The children were upset and tearful, and Tildo was wandering about making that special miaow that cats have when they are looking for their kittens.

  On the third day, Mrs Molly Leghorn said, ‘Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it? I just know it has. What are we going to do?’

  Mr Ginger Leghorn put a card up in the post office saying

  Has enywon seen our dog Jim? He is medjum small and black an tan and has been missin three days. Please reply to Number 4 Railway Cottiges.

  The children went up and down the street knocking on doors and asking if anyone had seen Jim, but nobody had. They came home with heavy hearts, and little Sissy and Albert were both crying.

  ‘What about that acker of yours with the tracker dog?’ suggested Mrs Molly Leghorn to her husband.

  ‘What? Smiffy and Sniffy?’

  ‘Yes, those two. I bet they could find him.’

  ‘You’re brilliant,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn, and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ she said, ‘I’m a respectable married woman, I am.’

  Mr Ginger Leghorn put on his bicycle clips, took a hurricane lamp and set off on his bicycle for Smiffy’s house, which was two miles away in the countryside just outside of town.

  Smiffy was a blacksmith and farrier who could make almost anything in metal, and was known to have a great way with horses. When he worked at night you could see the sparks ascending prettily into the air above his house, almost like Roman candles. He lived alone, and on the evening that Mr Ginger Leghorn arrived, he was frying chops above the charcoal of his brazier because there did not seem to be any point in lighting a stove in the kitchen when you already had a perfect fire out in the forge. He had a large potato wrapped in clay, cooking at the front end of the furnace, where it was not too hot. In the winter Smiffy sometimes slept in the forge, to take advantage of the lingering heat. He lived most of his life in an orange glow, wearing not much more than a thick leather apron, covered in soot and grime, and as happy as any man could ask. The only time he was ever smartly dressed was when he went out with the yeomanry, along with his friend Mr Ginger Leghorn. On those days he would set up a big galvanised bath, fill it with water heated on the brazier, and he would emerge from it looking clean and handsome indeed.

  Smiffy’s dog was a bloodhound, a big floppy sad-eyed animal with long droopy ears and big paws, and it could find anything just about anywhere once it had caught a whiff of whatever it was after. When he was looking for something he would put his head up and do ‘belling’, which is the name for the very musical and mournful howling that is a bloodhound speciality, and which they particularly enjoy. His name was Sniffy, of course, and he was quite often borrowed by the local police for their occasional searches for missing people and escaped convicts who had fled across the moor.

  When Mr Ginger Leghorn had explained his problem, Smiffy agreed that he and Sniffy would call round at the railway cottage in the morning. Mr Ginger Leghorn would be at work, and the children at school, but Mrs Molly Leghorn would be there, doing some of the washing that she had taken in. She used the mangle when the children were out, because they liked to pretend to put their fingers into it, and it nearly always gave her kittens.

  In the morning Smiffy gave Sniffy a good smell of Jim’s old army blanket, and said ‘Good boy, Sniffy! Go seek!’ and Sniffy put his nose to the ground and set off straight out of the back door. He went to the fence and sniffed at a gap under it, so Smiffy opened the gate and called Sniffy through. Sniffy quartered the ground, and then set off up the hillside. He went round the hill, down it, and then back up, and then stopped at a large hole, where he belled very majestically before putting his nose back to the hole and testing it with some very delicate sniffs. Then he belled again.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Smiffy. ‘Now you wait here. Stay! Do you hear me? Stay! I’m off to get a spade. Back in a mo.’

  Smiffy trotted off and returned breathlessly some ten minutes later, with Mr Leghorn’s spade over his shoulder. Sniffy lay down and relaxed, watching Smiffy digging away at the hole, and occasionally sniffing to see what else was going on in the world.

  Smiffy found Jim’s backside some four feet down, and after some careful digging with the spade and then with his hands, he pulled Jim out.

  Jim was in a terrible state and hardly responded at all. It was not hunger, but thirst that had almost killed him, and he was barely conscious. Smiffy abandoned the spade, thinking he would come back for it later, and put Jim round his shoulders rather in the way that the Good Shepherd carries a sheep in the illustrated Bibles that people used to have in those days. ‘Come on, Sniffy,’ he said to his dog. ‘Let’s get this little blighter back home! And don’t you get the idea to go digging.’

  Sniffy got to his feet and followed his master, thinking aromatic bloodhound thoughts that were infinitelybeyond the olfactory understanding of humans. Smiffy left a note for Mrs Leghorn on her kitchen table: Sniffy found him all right, but he’s in a state. Got him at mine. When she came home with a pat of butter from the corner shop, she saw the note and bicycled round to Smiffy’s forge.

  When she got there, Mrs Leghorn looked at the young dog in dismay. He was half dead. She and Mr Leghorn were not exactly poor, but they were not rich enough to afford a vet either. Between them they earned just about enough to keep going, with one day trip on a charabanc every year.

  ‘He’s got no light in his eyes!’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Smiffy. ‘It’s thirst. If you think about it, he’s had nothing for nearly three days now.’

  Mrs Molly Leghorn had a brainwave, and wen
t home and fetched the cake-icing syringe from her kitchen drawer. She put the nozzle into a bowl of water from the pump, and sucked it in. Smiffy opened Jim’s mouth gently, and Mrs Leghorn squirted the water down the back of his gullet. She did it several times, and Jim seemed to perk up quite quickly.

  ‘Better not do too much at once, missus,’ said Smiffy. ‘I’ve heard it’s best to take it slowly. Least, that’s what they tell us in the yeomanry.’

  ‘Well, you can kill with kindness, that’s for sure,’ said Mrs Molly Leghorn.

  Smiffy picked Jim off the table and tried to set him on his feet. ‘Not quite ready yet,’ he said, putting him back on the table.

  But by the time Mr Ginger Leghorn returned that evening, Jim was definitely ready, and was back at home. He had eaten some lights from the butcher, and some stale bread soaked in milk, and was fast asleep under the table with Tildo perched on top of him, in his usual place.

  Mr Leghorn took a marrowbone round for Sniffy, and a big pipkin of home-brewed beer for Smiffy, which he helped him to drink before he wobbled slowly home again on his bicycle.

  Mr Ginger Leghorn said, ‘Well, it just goes to show what happens when you haven’t a proper job of work to do. If you’re a dog you end up down a bunny hole, and if you’re a man you end up drunk on a bench, or thieving, or something, and if you’re a woman you spend all day in bed. That dog’s got to have a proper job.’

  ‘A proper job? Like Sniffy?’ said Mrs Molly Leghorn. ‘But what could Jim do?’

  ‘I’ve thought of one already,’ said Mr Leghorn.

  ‘Tildo hasn’t got a proper job,’ said Sissy.

  ‘Yes he has,’ replied her father. ‘He’s self-employed, and half the time we don’t know what he’s doing at all. It’s like being a spy. Top secret.’

  JIM’S NEW JOB

  Ginger Leghorn gave Jim a good brushing, and fastened the collar and box around his neck. Jim whined and worried at it with his paw, but Ginger pushed it downwards, said ‘Good dog’, and gave him a biscuit. Very soon Jim realised that if he put up with the box, he would get biscuits. In dog mathematics, in other words, box = biscuits.

  After Jim had become used to the box, Ginger trained Jim to shake hands. He would make him sit, say ‘Paw!’ and lean down and lift Jim’s right paw with his hand. He would hold it for a few seconds, and give him a little corner of biscuit. Sometimes Ginger would say ‘Shake hands!’ and perform the same manoeuvre, and sometimes he would say ‘Say please!’ until Jim realised that paw = shake hands = say please = biscuits. Naturally, Jim would adopt a pleading expression without any training at all.

  The truly difficult job was training Jim to bark a soft thank-you when he was given a coin. It was easy when he was given a biscuit instead. Mr Leghorn spent many hours on his hands and knees in front of Jim, with a box hanging around his neck, barking as the children repeatedly presented him with a coin. The dog found this very entertaining, but never got the message, so, in the end, Mr Leghorn gave up, saying, ‘Well, you can’t have everything. Can you?’

  One morning Mr Ginger Leghorn called Jim and fastened the collar and box around his neck. ‘Say goodbye to Jim,’ he said to the children, and they patted him on the head and said, ‘Have a good day at work, Jim. See you later, Dad.’

  ‘Toodleoo, my nitty little ankle-biters,’ said Ginger. ‘See you later. Come along, Jim!’

  So, watched by Tildo from the windowsill, and waved off by the family, Jim and Ginger went down to the railway station to catch the 7.20.

  Many of the locomotives had to stop for several minutes at the station in order to take on coal or water, and so, when the 7.20 stopped, Ginger and Jim got into a carriage and began to work their way along.

  You can always tell if someone likes dogs. They hold out a hand for the dog to sniff, or they say something a little stupid like ‘Who’s a lovely boy then?’ or they say ‘I used to have a dog a bit like that, and do you know what he used to do?’ In a word, it is very easy to find out who might feel like giving a dog a coin for his collection box, and who can resist a brown-eyed dog who holds up his paw to say ‘please’?

  Jim’s first contributors were Mr and Mrs Hamilton McCosh of Eltham, a handsome Scottish couple who were travelling first class to play a week’s golf at Trevose Head. He gave Jim a half-crown, and she gave him a florin. They had a large and badly behaved dog with them, appropriately called Bouncer, who wanted to play with Jim, causing such a kerfuffle that Ginger had to drag Jim out before he was squashed. Sadly, this inaugural generosity of the McCoshes was not often matched by subsequent donors, not many of whom were speculators who had just had a windfall.

  Almost everybody loved the black-and-tan dog with the Railway Widows and Orphans Fund collecting box around his neck, and were touched when Ginger said ‘Say please, Jim’ and the dog put up his right paw. Most were happy to shake his paw and put a few coppers, or just a farthing, in the collection box. Jim and Ginger collected a shilling’s worth in the second carriage they tried. After that, they just had enough time to work another carriage, and got ninepence halfpenny. Some people even gave Jim a little corner of their sandwich, or a broken biscuit from their handbag, but before long Jim became contented with a pat on the head or a good ruffling of the ears. He quickly grew to love his new job.

  The Railway Widows and Orphans Fund was Ginger Leghorn’s favourite charity. In fact it was the favourite charity of all the railwaymen, because there was such a terrible need for it. In those times people died of all sorts of horrible diseases that are easily cured these days, and besides, on the railways, there were a great many fatal accidents. There were more train crashes, and you might easily fall out of a train because you could open the doors while it was still moving, and sometimes the doors even fell open on their own. People could get buried under heaps of coal, and quite often the men working on the tracks would get hit. Life was very insecure, all the way round, and this meant that someone had to look after the poor families that were left behind with no money. All over the country, there were dogs like Jim who collected contributions from passengers, and they were, quite coincidentally, very often known as ‘Station Jim’. Sometimes they travelled with the guard, and sometimes they lived at a station, and hopped on and off the trains when they were waiting for passengers to get on or disembark.

  The great aim for the Railway Widows and Orphans Fund dogs was that they should learn to work the carriages on their own, thus freeing their owners to do their jobs. Ginger Leghorn was assistant stationmaster, and could not really spare much time for leading Jim through the carriages, so before long he was putting Jim in through the door at the front end of a carriage, and calling him out through the door at the other end when the train was ready to leave. Ginger would put his hand under Jim’s box to see how heavy it was getting, and every now and then he would take it into the stationmaster’s office and empty it out into the big collection box that they had there.

  Occasionally there would be a horrible person who would shoo Jim away, or even take a kick at him, but for the most part he became very popular with the passengers, who loved his extraordinary grin, and would become worried if he was not there. Jim became really a little too fat from all the snacks he was given, and in the holidays Ginger would usually leave him at home so that the children could play with him up on the hillside, and get him fit again. Ginger thought it was cruel to deprive Jim and the children of each other’s company at holiday time.

  Sometimes Jim travelled all day in the guard’s van, among the bicycles, trunks, mailbags and sets of golf clubs, and came to know all the branch lines and little country stations that we used to have. Somehow his itinerary was always worked out so that he returned before it was too late, and found his own way home, laden down with coins, when he would whine and scratch at the door to be let in, so that Ginger had to screw a large brass plate across it to protect the paintwork.

  Many of the guards had their own cats who kept them company in their van, and those were the ones where
Jim was never to be found, because although he was respectful and affectionate with Tildo, he was very much less considerate of other cats, and a spat with a cat is an alarming thing on a train in motion.

  Before long Jim was known all over the GWR, whose employees were so proud of it that they called it ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’.

  The odd thing was, that when people did present Jim with a coin, he soon began the habit of giving a small woof of appreciation, and everybody said, ‘What a polite dog.’

  THE POSTMAN’S LEG

  Just down the road from the Leghorns’ house was an old pub that had been a coaching inn for two hundred years. Here the carriages would arrive to change horses for the next leg of their journey, and passengers would alight or get off. There were iron rings set into the walls and doorposts so that people could tether their horses, and there was a stone trough donated by the Drinking Troughs for Animals Society. Inscribed around the rim in Gothic lettering were the words For Kindness’ Sake, Let the Dogs and Horses Drink, and the Lord Shall Reward You, For They Are Our Brothers and Sisters.

  At the centre of the courtyard stood a tall and stout post, and this is where Bonaparte the pub dog had his kennel. He was called Bonaparte because he was so big and strong that he could have pulled your bones apart if he had wanted to. He was a mastiff; his head was enormous, his jaws were like gin traps, his chest was broad and his legs rippled with muscle. In Britain and Ireland you don’t often see dogs as big and powerful as this any more, but if you were to go to Turkey you would see them out in the countryside, guarding the sheep. In the days when wolves were a danger, these dogs would wear iron collars with long spikes, so that no wolf could take them by the throat. The Turkish shepherd dogs are light grey and black, and Bonaparte was the same size, but brindled like a boxer. Like a boxer, his fur was shiny and short.