We Think the World of You

by J. R. Ackerley

  “Oh are you?” I exclaimed. “I am glad! Is Megan standing down then?”

  “Not so far as I know. I expect she’ll come too.”

  “But, Millie, this is wonderful news! How did you fix it? Did you ask her to take you?”

  “Ask her!” said Millie grandly. “I don’t ask no one’s permission to see me own son! I told her we was coming.”

  “That’s the stuff!”

  “Why don’t you go with her one time? You could, you know. But perhaps you wouldn’t like that?”

  “No, I wouldn’t!” How maddening it all was! She hadn’t understood a single word I’d said! Not one single word! “That’s the whole point! He ought to take away from her and give to me, give me something for myself, letter, visit, both, why not? Like a token, a present, just for myself. It’s all give and no get. They ought to make a sacrifice——”

  “Mum, mum, mum,” said Dickie.

  “There he go again!” said Millie with a cackle.

  “Can Evie come in now?” I asked angrily.

  “Yes, let her in. I think she knows you’re here.”

  There was no doubt of that! Uttering ecstatic cries, the pretty creature swooped upon me with such joy that I quickly sat down in Tom’s arm-chair, partly in order not to be knocked down, partly to try to confine her emotional display to the least vulnerable corner of the room. “Evie! Evie!” I said, laughing under her affectionate lickings and pawings, “calm yourself, do!” But it was some time before she had exhausted all she had to say. Then, while I stroked and fondled her, she lay quietly panting with the upper part of her body on my lap, her face thrust beneath my jacket against my ribs.

  “Is she all right?” I asked. “Her nose seems rather hot and dry.”

  “She’s been a bit constipated, but Tom gave her some castor oil and she’s better today.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t get out enough,” I said. Evie had now left me and was trying to pull her lead off the wall.

  “That’s what it is,” said Millie. “She doesn’t get out enough.”

  “Has she been out today?”

  “No, it must be a coupler weeks since Tom took her last.”

  I stared at her incredulously.

  “Do you mean the dog hasn’t been out of the house at all for two weeks?”

  “It must be that,” said Millie. “I keep asking Tom to take her, and he keep saying he will, then he get stuck in his chair and he don’t.”

  “But really, Millie, that won’t do. How often has she been out since I last took her?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be more than two or three times,” she said, after a moment’s reflection.

  “Millie dear! That’s over a month ago! It’s not right. It’s dreadful.”

  “Of course she has the yard,” said Millie a little defensively.

  “My dear friend, whatever’s the good of the yard to a dog like her? It’s like keeping a racehorse in a stable. No wonder she’s constipated!”

  “It’s quite right what you say, Frank. She ought to go out more. I’d take her meself, but she do pull, she pull worse than ever. I tried one day but she pulled me over like a rolling-pin.”

  “Of course you can’t take her. But why doesn’t Tom?”

  “She pull him too.”

  “But he could let her off the lead. She’s no trouble. I told him.”

  “He wouldn’t like to chance that,” said Millie; “it’s dark when he takes her.” Then: “Tell you the truth, Frank, I don’t think he fancies it, and I don’t blame him in a way. He comes in tired from work and when he’s had his tea and got set by the fire he don’t feel like turning out again, specially these cold nights.”

  “Yes, I daresay; but someone’s got to take the poor brute out.”

  During this interchange, Evie had been moving between me and her lead as though trying to connect us. Now she was sitting on her haunches beneath it, regarding me with a fixed, unwavering stare. The dark device in the midst of her light gray forehead was more sharply defined, I noticed. It was diamond-shaped. It was a black diamond and it had the appearance of being suspended there by a fine dark thread, no more than a pencil line, which ran back from it right over the top of her pale poll midway between the tall ears. Wolf, fox, great cat, she had an extraordinary dignity, the dignity of a wild beast, the dignity of an aristocrat. Her incongruity in this tiny working-class kitchen was quite shocking.

  “I must take her myself,” I said crossly. “I haven’t much time.”

  “You don’t want to do that. Sit quiet and have a cupper tea. I’ll get on to Tom again to take her when he comes in.”

  “No, I must take her. She’s asking me.”

  “Just as you please.” Millie was disappointed. “Johnny’ll be grateful, I know. I had a boy come along last week wanting to take her.”

  “A boy?” I said sharply. “What boy?”

  “Some young lad,” said Millie vaguely. “He live down the road, I think, but I don’t know him.”

  “But what did he want? Why did he come?”

  “He see her out with Tom, or something, and took a fancy to her, so he ask if he could walk her out too. A bit of sauce I thought it, but I daresay he meant no harm.”

  “Millie!” I cried. “You don’t mean you refused?”

  “Well, he was only a young lad and I couldn’t take the risk of something happening to her. She’s Johnny’s dog and he give her to me to mind, so she’s my responsibility as you might say.”

  “But, my dear Millie,” I exclaimed exasperated, “something will happen to her if she doesn’t get out! She’ll go sick or mad. Do find out about the boy and let him take her. It’s the very thing.”

  “I couldn’t do it without Johnny’s permission. I’d have to ask him first.”

  “He’s sure to say yes.”

  “I’d have to ask him. Tell you the truth, Frank, I sometimes wish I’d never had her, and I wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of her. Of course she’s a nice dog and baby likes her, but oh she’s a devil! Nothing’s safe from her, and now she’s took to pulling me washing off of the line! All down in the dirt it was last week when I come in from shopping and I had it all to do over again. Oh she do play me up! I daresn’t leave her out in the yard no more.”

  “Then she doesn’t even get the yard!”

  “Not when me washing’s up. She has to go in the scullery then.”

  “It’s all because she doesn’t get out enough. You understand that, don’t you? Since she has no chance to use up her energy outside, she uses it up inside.”

  “It’s quite right what you say, Frank,” said Millie. “It’s what I keep telling Tom.” A sudden gust of laughter shook her. “She had Tom’s slippers last week! You remember, them red ones I give him for Christmas? ’Ow she got ’em I don’t know, for I puts everything out of her way when I goes out. But she ’ad ’em all right! You should have seen them when I got back! There wasn’t nothing left of them!” Another immense gust. “And you should have seen Tom’s face when he come home and found what she done! Laugh! You couldn’t ’elp but laugh! Oh, but he did pay her for that! He took off his belt to her. ‘You didn’t ought to ’it ’er like that, Tom,’ I said, ‘it’s not fair. It’s your own fault for not taking her out more.’ But he only told me to mind me business. Oh he did give it ’er!”

  For a moment I could not speak. I was trembling with rage and indignation. Then I said violently:

  “How disgusting!”

  Millie glanced at me in a startled way.

  “Of course he was sorry afterwards,” she said in her slow voice. “I could see that. He made an extra fuss of her that evening.”

  “Does he beat her often?” I asked, with a sick feeling, looking at the brilliant and extraordinary face by the door.

  “I wouldn’t say often,” replied Millie mildly. “He gets a bit ratty with her at times when he’s in a bad mood or his back’s been playing him up. But you mustn’t go thinking Tom’s a cruel man, for he’s not. He’s
a kind man at heart, and he’s fond of her. Oh yes, he thinks the world of her, he do.”

  “Just like your Johnny does of me!” I said, getting up.

  It’s the ears of course, I thought. They compelled, those tall shafts constantly turned upon me, an attention they seemed unremittingly to give. Yet was it due only to that, this feeling I had with her again of being not merely watched but communicated with?

  Our walk had been much the same as the last, excepting that, since she was larger and, as Millie had implied, more frantic in her excitement, the strain upon my arm had been greater. In the alley-way, as soon as I had freed her, she had relieved herself of an evil-looking grey porridge of excrement. Then we had happened in our ramblings upon an extensive bomb-site; half of what had once been a great block of council-flats had been demolished, providing what seemed to be the only open space, besides the Rec., in the neighborhood. There, amidst the rubble and the rubbish, some stunted grass had managed to sprout, and picking my way through the debris to the center, where the ground was clearer, I had seated myself upon a piece of fallen masonry and lighted a cigarette to calm my agitation. My hands, I noticed as I cupped them round the match, were quite black from stroking the dog.

  She stood before me now in the failing light of this early March evening, gazing at me intently. How pretty she was! How elegantly tailored her neat sable-gray, two-piece costume! Her sharp watchful face was framed in a delicate Elizabethan ruff, which frilled out from the lobes of her ears and covered all her throat and breast with a snowy shirt-front. She stood like a statue—no, she was too lightly poised for that; more like a dancer or—what was it she recalled, confronting me there in her spruce turn-out, compelling my attention with her still, level gaze? An advertisement perhaps? And for some reason— absurd association!—I remembered the poster of that engaging young uniformed woman who, case of Sanitas in hand, begs to be allowed to come and disinfect one’s telephone. I smiled at Evie. What did she want? What was she trying to say?

  “What is it, my pretty?” I asked, holding out my hand. Her tall ears at once lay back, her face took on an expression of sweetness and gentleness, and she came forward a step or two to touch it with her nose; then she retreated again, her ears re-erected, her tail moving slightly from side to side as it hung, regarding me steadily. Of course, of course, she wanted to play. I found a stick and threw it; she flew after it like an arrow and brought it back. But with a charming flirtatiousness she would not let me have it; she offered it, then with a teasing merry look withdrew the offer from my grasping hand. She was asking to be chased; I chased her, secured the stick from her jaws without difficulty and threw it again. How she loved running, using her muscles, her strong young limbs! If Tom or the rebuffed boy took her out every day on the lead round these mean streets what use would that be to her? She ought to be bounding a daily ten miles over grass. She ought to be in the country.

  I played with her abstractedly, thinking of her life. Millie and Tom were both at work all day; she must be left entirely alone from about eight o’clock in the morning until six in the evening, except when Millie popped home in her lunch hour, as she sometimes did, to do a little shopping. What in the world did the dog do with herself all that time? Roll on her back in the coaldust, no doubt, from the state of her fur, to kick about in the air the legs she had no other means of using. Then at last the great moment of her day would come when they both returned home, for that would be company at least; and how she would greet them, how she would thank them for that! They would admit her to the kitchen now while they had their tea, so that she could entertain them by making a pretty tableau with baby on the hearthrug—if she had been good! But my mind recoiled from the thought of that ugly runt taking off his belt to the playful, affectionate creature. Then hope constantly springing, constantly dashed. . . . She would gaze longingly at her lead on the wall, go over to it to investigate it with her black nose, employ all her little arts to draw attention to her needs, and get nothing, nothing, be told to be patient, to “lay down,” which was all she ever did. . . . Day after day, day after day, nothing, nothing; the giving and the never getting; the hoping and the waiting for something that never comes, loneliness and frustration. . . . I ground out the hideous words aloud as I hurled the stick for the last time.

  Heavily I returned to my concrete seat, but she did not want me to sit down, and first she had my gloves out of one of my pockets, then, when I had gratified her desire that I should retrieve them, my beret out of the other. She capered off with that, keeping a sideways eye upon me in the hope that I would pursue her again, but a feeling of such melancholy, such despair, had overcome me that I could not get up. Finding me uncooperative, she dropped it and, coming upon her stick where she had left it, suddenly began to play by herself. Pouncing upon it with an access of extraordinary ferocity, she flung it up into the air and, as it fell, fled from it with her ears back and her tail between her legs, as though it had stung her. Then, at some distance from it, she whirled about and crouched, staring at it intently. The mesmeric concentration of her gaze, the tenseness of her attitude as she lay there, like some wild beast at full length, her flat lowered head just clear of the ground, were so dramatic that I too stared at the stick, expecting to see it move. Now with infinite stealth she stalked it. Still crouching, she advanced upon it, slowly, inexorably, her long sharp nose pointing at her victim, until, with a sudden bound, she leapt upon it, seized, cast it into the air, and flew fearfully from its descent once more—to begin the process all over again. I watched her spellbound, this great catlike creature playing her game of make-belief in the twilight. No doubt it was a game she had devised to while away the lonely hours in the Winders’ back yard.

  “Millie dear, I’ve just had a splendid idea. I’ve got a cousin down in the country, and I’m going to ask her to take care of Evie until Johnny comes out. She’ll get all the exercise she needs there and you and Tom won’t have the bother of her any more.”

  “Perhaps your cousin won’t want her,” said Millie after a pause.

  “I’m sure she will. She’s got a cottage with a garden and nothing whatever to do. She’ll be delighted. And Evie will be in clover.”

  “Of course, she’s a good ’ouse dog.”

  Is it because the working classes fill our prisons with thieves like Johnny that they in particular seem so often to suppose that their own miserable property requires protection?

  “She’s not a house dog, Millie,” I said patiently. “She’s a sheep dog. She’s bred for an active open-air life and she’s not getting it here.”

  “That’s quite right what you say,” said Millie placidly.

  “In any case I’ve never heard her bark,” I added.

  “She do bark. I expect she knows your step. Now sit down and have your tea before it gets cold. Come, Evie” (opening the scullery door), “you’ve had your good time, now go and lay down.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?” I persisted. “You said just now you’d like to see the back of her.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind for meself. Dickie’s all I live for. But I’d have to ask Johnny first.”

  “Why, on earth?” I said testily. “It only wastes time, and anyway it’s not for him to decide. I mean he’s left us his muddle to cope with and we must cope with it as best we can.”

  “I’d have to ask him first,” said Millie calmly. “I couldn’t do nothing like that without his permission.”

  “You really think it necessary?” I asked, controlling myself. “You see if I’d accepted charge of her in the beginning, as he asked me to, it’s what I would have done, for I couldn’t have given her a proper life either. I’d have decided the matter for him. And after all, he’s bound to agree when he knows the kind of life she’s leading here. Also it would be greatly to his advantage for her to go to my cousin; she’d get some training there, which she’s badly in need of.”

  “It’s quite right what you say, Frank, and I’ll tell Johnny when I see him. He�
��ll be pleased at all the trouble you’ve took. But you see he gave her to me to mind, so she’s my responsibility as you might say. Now that’s enough about Evie. You’ve not drunk your tea yet. Have a bit of this cake. I made it specially for you. And give over worrying! It killed the cat, they say.”

  She was bored with the subject, I could see, and wanted to talk about other things, Dickie no doubt: but the dog’s plight and silent proximity behind the scullery door continued to disturb my thoughts. When I got up to go I felt I wanted to say goodbye to her, but in view of Millie’s small display of impatience I saw that it might be unwise to admit this. I asked instead if I could use the lav.

  “You know where it is,” said she.

  Except for the threads of failing daylight that outlined the ill-fitting yard door on my left, it was pitch dark in the scullery when I had closed the kitchen door behind me. Where the electric light switch was I could not remember, and I stood for a moment motionless in the gloom. There was a slight movement on my right, a soft nose—cooler I was glad to feel—touched my hand, and Evie rose silently up out of the shadows to welcome me. I fumbled the yard door open, and she led me out with something of the air of a country hostess showing one over the grounds. It was a narrow strip of yard, a dozen paces long, perhaps half as many wide, and contained a heap of dusty coal, Tom’s allotment tools and the props of Millie’s washing line. At the far end was a gate, never used, on to a weedy, dustbin-cluttered passageway that strung the back yards of this row of small houses together. A long black ridge across the evening sky was the embankment of the London and North Eastern Railway.

  The outside sanitation was by the gate and I thought I might as well use it. Evie had left me; I could hear her rummaging near the coal-heap at the other end of the yard. When I emerged she was facing me outside the lavatory door, gazing up at me with her brilliant black-rimmed eyes. But how very odd she looked, as though she were putting out her tongue at me! Then I saw that it was not her tongue; she had something in her jaws, something red. I stretched out my hand for it and she gently yielded it up. It was a piece of Tom’s Christmas slippers, warm from her breath. She had dug it up for me from some secret hiding-place. I bent down and kissed her. Sweet creature! She, at all events, had brought me a present.