by Maria Goodin
“Why on earth would I want to talk to a dog? I’d have to be out of my…hey! Come back! Don’t just leave him here!”
But Ewan is already halfway down the garden path, whistling as he goes.
The dog and I stare at each other. “You’re not coming in.”
It lets out a whining noise and lays its head on its paws. For a moment, I imagine I might have hurt its feelings and even feel a tiny bit guilty.
“Oh, don’t be so soppy.” I go to shut the kitchen door. “I’m not talking to you. I’m not as daft as your owner.”
The dog looks at me accusingly.
“Your new owner, I mean,” I say hastily. “Not Mr. Gorzynski. I’m sure he was perfectly sane and didn’t waste his time talking to you.”
Suddenly the dog lifts its head up and lets out a long, high-pitched wail.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” I ask, taken aback. “Stop being silly. What would Mr. Gorzynski think if he could see you?”
The dog lets out another loud, long wail.
“Why do you keep doing that whenever I say the name Mr. Gorzynski?”
Again the dog wails, and I cover my ears. I am about to shut the door when something occurs to me.
“Oh. You’re missing Mr.—your old owner.”
The dog lays its head back on its paws and looks depressed.
“Is that why you’re howling all night? You miss him?”
I sit down on the back step and pick a leaf off the top of the dog’s head cautiously in case it turns and bites me, but it just looks up at me with sad, dark eyes. Tentatively, I try stroking its ear. It is soft and warm. I stroke it some more. I peer down the garden to make sure Ewan is nowhere in sight and look around for any other people who might be lurking behind bushes just waiting for me to humiliate myself. When I am sure there is no one about to witness my foolishness, I speak to the dog in a quiet voice.
“Don’t be sad. You have to remember the good times. The times you went for walks together, and sat cuddled up on the sofa, and lay in the garden in the sunshine side by side. You have to remember playing together in the park and dozing in front of the fire or just sitting in front of the TV together.”
I lay my head on my knees, both of us in similar dejected poses, and continue to fondle the dog’s ear.
“All those nice things you used to do with Mr.—with your old owner, no one can take those away from you. You’ll always have those memories stored up here.” I tap the top of the dog’s head. “And when you feel sad, you can always snuggle up with one of his old sweaters, and, in a way, the person you’ve lost will be there with you.”
The dog closes its eyes.
“It’s sad, isn’t it, to lose someone you love so much? But you have to be strong. You have to be a strong dog. Because you have the rest of your life ahead of you, and your old owner wouldn’t want you to be sad. I know it’s hard to imagine you will ever be as happy as you once were, but you have to carry on and try to make the best of your life.”
The dog starts to snore softly. I see a tear splash onto the patio by my feet and realize it must be mine.
“You just have to be brave,” I whisper.
***
“Bloody animal,” curses Mark, dropping his bag in the hallway and brushing down his neat, cream-colored summer trousers.
“It’s just a bit of mud,” I tell him, closing the front door. “He was just excited to meet you.”
“Meg,” he says in that tone that tells me he is about to make an important point and that I should listen carefully. “I’ve just spent four hours in traffic. I don’t expect to have a dirty hound lunge at me the moment I open my car door. These are dry-clean-only, you know. And the dry cleaners is only open until five o’clock during the week, so I’ll have to leave work early and—”
He sneezes loudly.
“—and you know I’m allergic to animals and—”
Ah-choo!
“—and what’s that damn gardener doing letting his dog run riot anyway?”
Ah-choo!
“It’s really quite a nice dog,” I say, trying to help Mark brush off his trousers.
“He’s made holes all over your front garden, did you know that?” Mark asks, pushing my hand away.
“Yes, well, he’s a digging dog, hence the name. Apparently he comes in very handy, but I think Ewan’s having a bit of trouble taming his enthusiasm.”
“Who on earth is Ewan?”
“The gardener.”
“Oh, him. Well, that mutt is definitely not a pedigree, and he’s probably riddled with disease. Dogs carry fleas, ticks, mites, tapeworms, roundworms…I can’t imagine why anybody would want one. Unless you’re a shepherd, owning a dog is completely unnecessary in this day and age.”
“Well, some people like having animals for company,” I say tentatively.
“Company is what other human beings are for.”
“Perhaps some people find it easier to talk to animals rather than human beings. Perhaps when they’re feeling down or lonely—”
“Meg,” Mark says sternly, “only sad, desperate people talk to animals.”
I fiddle with a strand of hair, embarrassed, and try to block from my mind the long conversation I had with Digger this morning. What on earth got into me? I had only meant to say a few gentle words to the sorry-looking animal, and an hour later I still found myself sitting there rambling on about my mother, my childhood, my dreams, my anxieties, my fears for the future…It’s all Ewan’s fault. I would never have done something so ridiculous if it hadn’t been for him.
“People who talk to animals,” says Mark, checking his trousers closely for any remaining flecks of dirt, “are the same people who talk to God. Or fairies. Or themselves. They are people who are unable to relate to other human beings. Or who are unable to manage their feelings any other way. People like your mother.”
For a second I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face, but then I remind myself that of course Mark is absolutely right. I nod, silently chastising myself for my own behavior. I certainly won’t be talking to that damn dog again.
“Yes,” I agree, “it’s just the sort of silly thing she would do.”
“And look at you,” he tuts, picking a few dog hairs from my blouse. “You’re a complete mess as well. You must insist he leave that mutt at home.”
I hastily examine myself for more offending hairs. I spent ages trying to make myself look nice, picking out clothes that Mark might like.
“You’re right,” I say, feeling annoyed now at both Ewan and Digger. “I will tell him.”
“Anyway,” says Mark, forcing a smile, “let’s forget all that. I’ve brought you a little gift.” He unzips his bag. “Close your eyes.”
A gift? Mark doesn’t buy gifts. He thinks they are “a gratuitous material substitute for affection.” The only thing he has ever given me was a ballpoint pen, which he felt would help tame my slightly unruly capital letters. I close my eyes, feeling quite excited. Will it be flowers? Chocolates? A second later, I am bending over with the weight of a pile of books that have just been thrust into my arms.
“All the practical advice you need for the months ahead, so you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
I look through the titles: The Complete Guide to Inheritance Tax; Financial Planning for the Under Thirties; So Someone Died and Left You Their Stuff…
“I think that one might be a bit tongue-in-cheek,” says Mark, “but there’s still some excellent advice in it.”
“Wow. Mark. I don’t know what to say.”
Mark smiles proudly. “The other two are lighter reading. For when you just want to put your feet up and relax. One Thousand Things You Never Knew about Stem Cell Research and Monkey Man, Monkey Woman: Musings on Darwin’s Origin of Species. Plus, I thought this one might come in handy.”
“It’s by some guy who used to be in the Special Air Services. It’s all about interrogation techniques.”
Mark plonks the book on top of the stack that I am already struggling to hold.
“Parts of that one might be a little extreme for domestic purposes, though, and I wouldn’t recommend reading it right before going to bed.”
I gaze at the scary-looking military man on the front cover and wonder what Mark is expecting me to do. Wire my mother’s extremities to the microwave? Threaten her with an electric mixer? I know exactly what has brought this on, and in a way it’s my own fault. I may have slightly deceived Mark by suggesting that, as agreed, I contacted the Camden council (when I didn’t) and said I wanted to speak to someone about a Chinese takeout (which doesn’t exist) and that I quoted the law that Mark told me to quote (which I can’t even remember) and that after many, many attempts I hadn’t gotten anywhere and was forced to give up. This resulted in much indignation on Mark’s part about the state of local government offices and an adamant decision that if one method for obtaining the truth doesn’t work, rather than wasting time, you simply find an alternative. I am assuming that donning a balaclava and threatening my mother into submission is the alternative.
He smiles at me, awaiting my response.
“What can I say?” I smile. “Thanks.”
“I knew you’d be pleased. I thought long and hard about the kind of books that would be both practical and keep your spirits up.”
He leans his face toward me, and I kiss him quickly on the lips while struggling under the weight of the books.
“It’s a good job you know me so well,” I say gratefully.
***
“Shall we take our dessert outside?” I ask after Mark and I have eaten a rather poor example of a vegetable lasagna, prepared all by myself in my mother’s absence. Having been in rather good spirits all morning, she suddenly seemed to take a turn for the worse as soon as Mark arrived and immediately took to her bed, leaving me to put my recent cooking lessons into practice. I have to admit, I may not be a natural. Fortunately, when it came to transferring ice cream into two bowls, I fared much better.
“It’s a little chilly outside,” says Mark.
He’s right. Today is the first of October. The long, hot days have gone, the evenings are drawing in, but I refuse to believe the summer has ended. I am determined that I will not let it go.
“No, look, it’s still warm,” I insist, flinging open the back door, a chill breeze immediately bringing out goose bumps on my skin. “We could snuggle up under a blanket on a sun lounger. It will be romantic.”
“It’s not good for the digestion, eating like that.”
“Okay, we’ll sit on the bench, then.”
“You know I’m not keen on eating outside. All those little flies…”
“It’s too late in the summer for flies.”
“It looks like it might be starting to spit rain.”
“What harm will that do?” I ask, suddenly feeling strangely impulsive. “It’s just a little water. It will dry.”
Mark looks at me as if I have gone mad, and for a moment I wonder if I have. I feel desperate to eat outside, just like my mother and I have done almost every day during the summer. French toast in the bright morning sunlight, bacon-and-avocado sandwiches in the midday heat, linguine with seafood as we watch the sunset.
“Let’s make the most of the summer,” I plead.
“The summer’s over,” says Mark, spooning into his ice cream at the kitchen table. “It’s nearly dark.”
I gaze outside and realize that I can’t see the end of the garden. The apple trees are no more than murky silhouettes in the fading light. I pull my cardigan closer around me, shivering. My heart sinks.
I suddenly feel overwhelmed by a foreboding sense of change. I cannot recall having ever felt so powerless. I have always prided myself on being capable and strong and in control. But what good are these things to me now? I cannot stop the light from fading, nor the breeze from cooling; I cannot stop the flowers wilting, nor the leaves from falling from the trees. Autumn will come, followed by winter and spring, and when summer finally comes around again, I won’t recognize it. There will be no scent of baking wafting out of the open windows of this house, no tubs of homemade ice cream stacking up on the freezer trays. There will be no berry picking as my mother and I chatter about our lives, no lazing in the garden side by side. There will be no nonsense stories about summers gone by, how July 1991 was so hot we baked a steak-and-Guinness pie on the windowsill and all the houseplants started sprouting pineapples and mangoes. There will be no one to ask me again and again, Have you got enough sun lotion on? or Don’t you think you should be wearing a hat? Without all this, how will I even know it is summer at all?
“It’s not that dark yet,” I tell Mark hopefully, staring out into the garden. “There’s still some light left.”
Behind me, Mark noisily scrapes his spoon around his bowl. “Not for long.”
Defeated, I close the kitchen door. “No, not for long.”
chapter twelve
Fueled by a mouthful of my mother’s mint cake, I crawled all the way from Tottenham High Road to Enfield Chase. Or so she says. Crawled in the sense that I was on all fours. In terms of my speed, I pretty much rocketed there.
For anyone who doesn’t know, mint cake is comprised of boiled sugar with peppermint essence, formed into squares and dipped in melted chocolate. It should never be left within the reach of greedy little babies who will grab and consume anything they can lay their chubby hands on, and this was my mother’s mistake.
“I was just so exhausted,” she says. “Being a single mother can sometimes be extremely hard work, you know? So I made a batch of mint cake, like I often did in those days, to give me that extra boost of sugary energy I needed to get me through the day. I only let you out of my sight for a second, and the next thing I knew, the police were on the phone telling me that after a high-speed chase they had caught up with you in Enfield.”
From piecing together reports from the police, local witnesses, the driver of the 192 bus, and an animal control officer, my mother ascertained that I had undergone quite an adventure for a one-year-old.
It seems that after helping myself to a square of mint cake, I must have acquired the energy and strength that it took to propel myself up to the front door handle and let myself out of the flat. I then rolled at high speed down three flights of stairs, tumbling past Mr. Ginsberg, who later said I was such a blur he had mistaken me for a football and shouted up the stairs at those “bloody kids from flat twenty-six” that the next time he caught them kicking a football around, he would confiscate it and never give it back. I had then crawled at what was later calculated to be approximately twenty miles per hour along the pavement of the busy main street, causing pedestrians to leap out of the way and a street sweeper to tumble into the gutter, before joining the traffic on the B154. At the Church Street intersection, I paid no attention to the traffic lights and cut straight across in front of the oncoming 192 bus, causing the driver to slam on his brakes and radio back to the bus station to say he had just narrowly avoided an accident with a high-speed baby and could someone possibly come and relieve him of his duty, as he was feeling shaken and unfit to drive. By the time he put the radio down, I was already long gone and somewhere in Enfield town center, where an RSPCA officer on patrol had spotted me and was after me in his van, leaning out the window and trying to catch me in a net. Meanwhile, the angry street sweeper had called the police, who came screeching around the corner in two patrol cars just as I eventually ran out of energy outside Enfield Chase railway station and skidded to a halt with steam coming out of my ears. As soon as one of th
e policemen gathered me up in his arms, I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up for three days.
“I was so embarrassed,” my mother says, “when the officers turned up on my doorstep with you. I hadn’t even noticed you were gone! You were absolutely filthy and had squashed bugs stuck to your forehead. You smelled funny, as if something was burning, and the officer said you had obviously overheated, so I put you in the fridge while I made the nice policemen a cup of tea. At first they seemed quite angry with me, but when I explained about the mint cake and gave them a square to try, I could see they were impressed. They both said they got terribly tired on the job, especially doing the night shifts, and that if they had something like my mint cake to keep them going, they could catch twice as many criminals. So that’s how I started providing mint cake to the Metropolitan Police force.”
Ewan takes another bite of his hard mint cake and smiles at my mother.
“And did it work?” he asks. “Did they catch more criminals?”
“Oh, yes. There was a dramatic fall in crime that year, but of course nobody ever admitted it came down to the policemen having more energy.”
“It came down to the major reforms that took place in the police force that year,” I tell Ewan drily. “They introduced new legislation—”
“That’s just a cover story, darling,” interrupts my mother, waving her hand dismissively. “You mustn’t believe everything people tell you. It was all because of my mint cake, you mark my word.”
I shake my head and sigh. “If you say so, Mother.”
“Well, it’s definitely worked for me,” says Ewan, finishing his mouthful and brushing his sticky hands on his scruffy jeans. “I’m ready to go again.”
In a united effort, we three have spent the last two hours gathering all the fruit in the garden in order to cook it, preserve it, freeze it, or give it away before the change of season. There is so much that the kitchen counters are already covered with strawberries, apples, plums, raspberries, lettuces, onions, peas, tomatoes…We have used every bit of equipment we can find to gather them in, from bowls and saucepans to plastic basins and even an old sunhat.