We Think the World of You

by J. R. Ackerley

  “Yes, he couldn’t get no one to mind her, so I had to have her in the end. Not that I wanted her, the scamp.”

  She was certainly a pretty bitch, a few months old, rather large and long-legged, and lavishly affectionate in that fawning, insinuating way puppies have.

  “I’ve just been worming ’er,” said Tom, who had resumed his habitual arm-chair by the fire.

  “Oh,” I said politely. “Did she have worms?”

  “All puppies ’as worms. They’re born with ’em.”

  Evie had now clambered on to my lap and was smothering my face with licks.

  “Dickie should take a lesson in greetings from this,” I said laughing and trying to protect my mouth.

  “P’raps she thinks you’re Johnny.”

  Dear Millie! She often made remarks like this which thrilled me to such an extent that they had upon me almost a physical effect. To be identified with Johnny!

  “Do you know what’s good for worms?” asked Tom.

  “No,” I said repressively.

  “ ’Uman ’air chopped up in treacle. My old grand-dad told me that. There wasn’t much ’e didn’t know about dogs. . . .”

  “Now leave him alone, do!” Millie exclaimed to Evie. “Or I’ll have to put you out!’

  “ ’Ere, Evie!” called Tom, and she scrambled up on to his knees and began to lick his gray, cadaverous face. “Tobaccer’s good, too. I ’ad a dog once what ate up all the fag-ends in the street. If they was burning ’e’d stub ’em out first with ’is paw. ’E kept ’isself free from worms. . . .”

  “Have you still got that picture of Johnny?” I asked Millie, wiping from my lips the moisture of the dog’s tongue. I had suddenly remembered it, an enlarged photograph of him that hung over the mantelpiece in the front room. Millie laughed:

  “Why, did you think I’d throw it away?”

  “Can I go and look at it?”

  “Of course you can.” She was pleased. “You always liked that picture, didn’t you?”

  Indeed yes, I had always liked it and almost a year had passed since I had last seen it. It had been taken during his insubordinate career as a sailor, and I gazed up at it again with a pang. How attractive he had been with his short, strong, lightly balanced figure and springing gait. The whole shaft of his beautiful neck, his wide shoulders and deep chest, his narrow hips, everything that he had had been almost effeminately displayed by that extraordinary close-fitting costume of ribbons, bows, and silks. And what fun he had been, so lively and so gay. . . . Much water, alas, had flowed under the bridge since then. A momentary weak feeling of anger and self-pity took me at the thought of what he had been and what marriage had done to him. Boy though he still was to my older mind, the straight back was now a trifle bowed, but the face was the same and from behind the glass of the picture the limpid eyes looked down at me steadfastly, as reassuringly as they had looked from behind the glass of the visitor’s booth. He had promised a happier future; they seemed to confirm the promise. It was with a feeling of refreshment that I returned to the kitchen.

  I noticed at once that, in my short absence, the window had been closed. The working classes, I reflected with a shrug, have an ineradicable belief that the colds from which they constantly suffer are due to fresh air rather than to the lack of it. With such superficial mental comment did I dismiss an incident to which, I realized when I recalled it some months later, I would have been wiser to pay more serious attention, for it set in a way, the psychological pattern of much that followed. Soon afterwards I took my departure, leaving Dickie’s keep behind and carrying with me a seed cake which Millie had made specially for me.

  “It’s Megan, Frank.”

  Why did she always have to begin like that, I wondered irritably; as though anyone could possibly mistake that sickening Welsh voice.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve had a visit to Johnny.”

  “How is he?”

  “Oh, he’s well. He’s counting the days, he says. It’s the evenings pass slow, that’s the worst part, he says. He says could you send him some books to read?”

  “Isn’t there a prison library?” I asked shortly. Johnny was in Wormwood Scrubs.

  “I don’t know,” said the voice, retreating.

  “What sort of books anyway?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He said you’d know the kind he likes.”

  “Oh, all right.” I was slightly mollified by this admission that he and I had some private understanding from which she was excluded. “Anything else?”

  “He said to give you his best.” The remark jarred on me. “I’ll be writing to him tomorrow; shall I give him any message?”

  “Yes, give him my love,” I said. And put that in your pipe and smoke it, I thought as I set the receiver down.

  It was two months before I returned to Stratford. When my second visit fell due I had a week-end engagement elsewhere, and the suggestion that Millie might meet me at Aldgate one evening instead was declined; she couldn’t leave Dickie, she said. So I sent the money by post. But a number of letters from her kept me au fait with his progress, the colds they all constantly exchanged, and the state of the weather. These letters, and the telephone calls from Megan, chiefly served to remind me, however, of the communication I did not get, wanted, increasingly missed, and regarded myself, indeed, at the very least, as having earned: a letter from Johnny. From him direct I had not heard at all.

  At the end of February I took the long bus ride again. It was a fine, sharp, sunny afternoon.

  “And how are all the colds?” I asked as I followed Millie down the narrow passage.

  “Tom’s not too well. He’s been having trouble with his back.”

  This meant his piles, I knew. The kitchen was like an oven.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, extending my hand to him. “My nephew seems in good form anyway,” I added, looking warily at the child’s backview.

  “He’s lovely!” said Millie proudly. “What do you think of him, Frank? He looks better, don’t he? See how fat and rosy his cheeks are! Look who’s come to see you, Dickie-bird!”

  Dickie, who had been happily engaged in beating the arm of his chair with a spoon, turned round. His wretched little face at once began to pucker.

  “Now, now!” I said, putting up my arm in mock self-defense. “What’s wrong with me, anyway?”

  Tom chuckled from the fireplace.

  “He don’t mean nothing,” said Millie hastily. “P’raps it’s your specs,” she added. “He’s not used to them things.”

  “That’s an idea!” I took them off. Dickie dissolved into tears. “Yes, it’s the specs,” I concluded clownishly, restoring them to my nose. But Millie seemed a bit put out, so I changed the conversation to the subject which was, in any case, uppermost in my mind, by asking: “Have you heard from Johnny.”

  “No, I’m expecting a letter any day,” said she, coaxing the child back to good humor. “Have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. I’ve had the promise of a letter, but no letter. The only news I get of him is second-hand from Megan. She scoops the pool, it seems.”

  “They don’t allow him much in the way of letters, poor boy,” said Millie abstractedly. “That’s where it is.”

  Her loyalty to Johnny was constant and sometimes exasperating. She too had suffered many a disappointment over him in the past, and the lovingly prepared supper, put back into the oven to keep hot for him when he was late, had often stayed there all night; yet she never could bear to hear him criticized and instantly sought round for excuses. But I was not to be balked of my prey.

  “Yes, I know that; but it comes to about a letter and a visit a month, and since he’s been there three months now, that’s three visits and three letters at least, and she’s had the lot.”

  “He ought to write to you after all you’ve done for him,” said Millie, spooning bread-and-milk into Dickie’s face.

  “And to you for that matter. Why the devil should she get e
verything?”

  “I suppose she thinks she comes first, being his wife,” said Millie placidly. “There’s her condition, too.”

  “I’m sure she’s making the most of it,” I replied peevishly.

  “She tells me she’s going to apply for special visits on passionate grounds, and she reckons she’ll get them, so we may all see and hear more of him then. She was over here last Sunday, her and little Rita, and they’d just been up to see him. What do you think of Rita, Frank?”

  This was Millie’s little game again; she knew perfectly well what I thought of Rita and thought the same, but did not like to be the first to begin upon her destruction. I was feeling too hot and limp to play.

  “I try not to think of her.”

  “She don’t have much to say for herself, do she?” said Millie with a laugh. “They’re a pair! but Megan mostly lets me know before she goes to see Johnny, I will say that, and now that she’s started to get open visits, as she calls them, instead of seeing him behind them windows, which I wouldn’t care to do, I like to give her a packet of cigarettes to take him, which isn’t allowed I know, but she manages to pass them somehow, and poor old Johnny do miss his smoke. Then she comes up afterwards and brings us the news. Give her her due she takes trouble over that. But she don’t say much when she do come, and what she do say seems a bit ’eartless to my way of thinking, if you know what I mean. He looked fatter and better than when he went in, that’s what she told us; but I’d have to see him for meself before I’d believe that, for it can’t be ’ealthy in them ’orrid places. And he had a job washing up in the kitchen what earned him a few pennies, she said that and that she was pleased they was teaching him something useful for when he come home. But she never offered to help me with the washing-up, I noticed that, not that I’d have let her if she had. She’s not what you’d call company, and it stands out more now that she don’t have Johnny to take things off of her. I don’t know if she’s shy.”

  “What ’er!” put in Tom from the fireplace. Millie cackled.

  “A fat lot you know about it,” she remarked. Then to me: “He don’t take a blind bit of notice of her while she’s here. He just sit and read his paper and leave it all to me.”

  “Is it possible you don’t like her, Tom?” I asked, mopping my forehead. Millie’s balanced judgments were far from suiting me and, rash though it was to draw him out, his ejaculation seemed to open up more profitable fields.

  He munched on his pipe before delivering himself.

  “She’s sly. I sized ’er up first time I set eyes on ’er, didn’t I, mate?” This was to Millie. “I always said she’d do Johnny no good.”

  “Hear, hear!” I applauded. “You never spoke a truer word, Tom. But what I can’t understand is Johnny’s own behavior. He was fed to the teeth not long ago with her infernal jealousy, and from the names he called her you’d have thought he positively hated her. In fact he told me once he was sick to death of her and meant to leave her. Yet as soon as this business happens he’s all over her again. It’s maddening!”

  “Yes, you was saying she was jealous of you,” said Millie encouragingly.

  “Well, she’s ’is wife for better nor worse,” observed Tom, suddenly moody, “and you can’t come between man and wife.”

  “I can!” I said pertly, for the remark seemed uncalled for.

  “Ah—” began Tom; but Millie at once chipped in with: “That’s enough from you!”

  I was momentarily taken aback by this brief interchange, but I ignored it and put an end to the silence that followed by saying mildly: “Well anyway, I think it’s time someone else got a look in; besides, I was his friend long before she was his wife.”

  The perspiration was now trickling down my back, and Millie’s face too, I noticed, was shiny and red. Signs of discomfort in Tom one did not expect; he did not appear to have a bead of moisture in his whole body. Dare I ask for the window to be opened? Better not, perhaps. They preferred their frowst. . . .

  “Millie dear, it’s awfully hot in here. Would you mind if I opened the window for a moment?”

  “Yes do. I was just thinking it was getting rather warm meself, and I know you like a bit of fresh air.”

  “A bit of fresh air!” I thought. If I was condemned to spend the rest of a fine afternoon in this cauldron of a kitchen, I would fill it as full of fresh air as it would hold; and leaning over the huge table, which occupied about a third of the floor space, I grasped the lower sash and flung it up. The result was startling, to say the least. A sort of wolf, which must have been sunning itself in the yard outside, rose up on its hind legs and, planting its forepaws on the sill, gazed inquiringly in at us.

  “Heavens!” I cried, falling back. “Don’t tell me that’s Johnny’s dog!”

  The creature was immense—or at any rate looked so in its present attitude. It was also strikingly handsome. Its light gray vulpine head was long and sharp, and surmounted by extraordinarily tall ears. The winter sun sinking behind shone through the delicate tissue of these remarkable erections, turning them shell-pink.

  “She has growed, hasn’t she?” said Millie.

  But she had scarcely spoken when, with a single bound, Evie vaulted lightly over the sill into our midst, capsizing some tea-cups with her long bushy tail. There was an immediate outcry.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” exclaimed Millie. “She’s broke the ’andle off of one of me cups!”

  “’Ere, Evie, out you go!” said Tom, shutting the window.

  “No, let her stay,” I said in a smothered voice, for the animal’s sociability had forced me down into a chair, where I was trying both to return her greeting and to prevent her waving tail from doing further damage.

  “Let her be, Tom, if Frank don’t mind,” said Millie. “We’d not long put her out before you come. She’s a proper turk. Now get down do!” for the dog had transferred attention to her.

  “But however do you manage?” I asked. “She’s so large!”

  “To tell you the truth, Frank, I don’t know how I do manage. And if it’d been anyone but Johnny I wouldn’t have took her. Which isn’t to say she’s not a nice dog, for she is, and her and baby get on together a treat, don’t they, Tom? You ought to see them laying on the rug of an evening, it’s a picture. But oh she do make a lot of work!”

  “You don’t ’ave the worst of it, mate!” remarked Tom dryly.

  Millie went off into one of her squalls of laughter.

  “He has to line up for her meat! But I can’t do everything. Evie’s his job and Dickie’s mine, aren’t you, love? Nor he don’t have to clear up after her neither! And she’s a bastard! You can’t leave nothing laying about, for she’s sure to have it. Oh, Frank, I was sorry, I didn’t know whether to tell you, she had that doll you brought Dickie for Christmas. I couldn’t find it nowhere, and then I come across it in the yard with all its insides pulled out. Oh, she had fretted it! I was disgusted with her.”

  “Ah well,” I said laughing. “I’m glad it amused someone, for Dickie didn’t think much of it.”

  “He did,” said Millie, without conviction. “He played with it after you’d gone.”

  Evie was now sitting bolt upright on one of the chairs, surveying us with the liveliest expression. She was certainly an extremely pretty dog, I had never seen a prettier, stone gray with a black tunic and her face most elegantly marked. Her nose and lips were sooty, as also were the rims of her bright brown eyes, above which tiny black eyebrow tufts were set like accents, and in the middle of her forehead was a dark vertical streak like a Hindu caste mark.

  “She must be quite valuable,” I said.

  A crafty look came over Tom’s lean face.

  “Ah, she’s good, she is! Johnny didn’t make no mistake in ’er case! ’E ’ad ’is wits about ’im then. ’Er puppies’ll fetch ten to fifteen quid apiece, and she can ’ave a dozen and more at a time. I knows about them dogs. I ’ad to do with them in the Army. I——”

  “Where on ea
rth did he get her?”

  “ ’E said she was give ’im!” said Tom with a chuckle.

  “And if he said so she was!” flashed Millie. “I won’t have you call the boy a liar behind his back!”

  Evie was now standing up on her hind legs on the other side of the room, pushing with her nose into some miscellaneous garments that were hanging on the wall.

  “What is she doing?” I asked.

  “Her lead’s up there,” said Millie. “I expect she wants to go out. She hasn’t been out for a coupler days. Tom hasn’t felt up to it. Why don’t you take her now, Tom? Your back’s better, and it’s time she had a bit of a run.”

  “She’s all right,” Tom grunted. “She ’as the yard.”

  In the course of life, I have noticed, a number of critical turning points are reached which are only recognizable as such retrospectively, long after they are passed. This moment, I was to perceive later, was a turning point in mine.

  “I’ll take her,” I said.

  “Do you want to?” said Millie. “Johnny’d be pleased, I know. But she’ll pull you over! Oh, she do pull! I used to take her meself, but I can’t hold her no more. She’s a demon!”

  “I expect I can manage.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “I’d like to,” I replied, and truthfully; any chance to escape from this suffocating kitchen was more than welcome.

  “Will she go with you?” put in Tom, with his dry laugh. “They’re one-man dogs, they are.”

  Spiky fellow! Why was he always picking at me? Perhaps she wouldn’t go with me, but why the jeer in his voice? It was the same tone he adopted to point his advantage over me with Dickie, and implied that if the dog too made me look an outsider and a fool nothing would give him greater satisfaction. It put my back up.

  “One can but try,” I said coldly, getting up.

  “Have a cupper tea before you go?” said Millie. “The kettle’s on the boil.”

  “Could I have it when I come back, dear? That is, if we go.”

  “Just as you like. I’ll get the lead.”

  Whatever Evie’s ultimate decision about going out with me might be, she was manifestly delighted to see her lead unhooked from the wall.