“You’re not a stranger and I’m not torturing you – just trying to save yourself from getting killed, or injured, or taken into hospital, or thrown into prison. George, honestly, you cannot get behind a wheel in your state. Give me the keys and I’ll drive you home! Sally will follow behind in her car.”
“And have you find out where I live? You’ll never leave me in peace if I do that.”
“We’d find out and not leave you in peace, anyway,” butted in Sally with a grin. “So you might just as well hand over the keys. C’mon, George, let us look after you!”
“Please, George.” Carol held on to his arm and searched his face. Sally was looking at him; Rosie too.
“Oh, bloody hell!” He delved into his pocket for the keys. Of course they were right. He had entirely forgotten about driving, what with everything else on his mind, and had these two not accosted him he would have been in a proper fix about getting home, so they were actually proposing an easy solution. He had to put up a show of resistance, though, however sensible their demands. He couldn’t just let them trample all over him without some protest or other. In the short time he had known these girls, he was determined to try and exert some modicum of control over the situation. He couldn’t allow them to have it all their own way all the time.
He led the two, wandering a little, across to the car park field and towards the Land Rover. As he was doing so he noticed that Smarmy Stephen’s new Renault was still there. Well, at least that meant he could collapse in his own home without battling any more females. He staggered on to reach his own motor.
“Is this your chariot, George?” cried Carol. “Well, that’s more like it! Rugged, battered, full of character…just what you should have! You’re not at all a hopeless case, after all!”
George couldn’t resist a tiny smile. A very different reaction to that of Annabel. “Do you like it then?”
“Oh absolutely, George,” chorused Sally. “This is precisely the sort of wheels that we could have ordered for you. A bit old, cantankerous, no concession whatever to things fashionable but definitely a bit on the wild side and ready to go off into the wide blue yonder at the slightest invitation. Isn’t that so, Carol?”
“Certainly! This is decidedly not an accountant’s car. Nothing like it. George: we love you for this…and I can’t wait to drive it. Gimme the keys!”
Rosie was let into the back; Carol got into the driver’s seat and George clambered slowly into the passenger seat. The car park field seemed to be swirling all around him as he did so. He had a little trouble focusing on what he was doing.
Carol switched on and the Land Rover roared into life. She grinned out of the window at Sally and then across at George.
“Oh look, Sal: three gear levers in pretty colours – red, yellow and black. I wonder which one I should use first…”
“The black one,” growled George. “Don’t touch the others or you’ll never get me home.”
Carol laughed. “Alright, I’ve got it sorted.” She engaged first gear and lurched forward, calling out to Sally as she did so, “I’ll go slowly at first ‘til I get the hang of this. Catch me up, Sal!”
George relaxed and closed his eyes as the Land Rover crept forward, Carol spinning the wheel and directing them towards the exit. He wasn’t sure whether he liked this or not – having this independent, unpredictable and extremely sensuous young female take him for a ride. As he pondered this, he felt a long wet nose interfere with his right ear and looking back, his gaze disappeared into the dark, round eyes of Rosie the greyhound: Rosie, the one who had started all this; Rosie, who was now demonstrating some canine concern for her semi-comatose human friend. George decided that there was something definitely magical about this hound. She had introduced him to her owner, an unstoppable force of nature, under whose spell he seemed to have fallen almost willingly. It was Rosie who had sought him out and stopped him in his wanderings and summoned him to take another direction and he was crazy enough to go along with it: last weekend and this one too, and who knows where next week.
The Land Rover bumped its way over the rutted field and out onto the main road. “OK, George, which way now?” Carol asked.
“Head south,” said George, waking up. “And when you get to the roundabout, take the first turn-off that leads you left, towards the village.”
Two cars, a battered old Land Rover and a sporty red mini, motored along together until a little time later they eventually reached a row of garages at the back of a terrace of Victorian houses at the north end of the village. George directed his chauffeur to stop and leave their chariot where it was. Sally drew up behind and so all got out and assembled between the two vehicles on the tarmac in front of the garages.
George gave his thanks to the two drivers and their dog. “Excuse me if I do not invite you in to my humble dwelling place but firstly I think I need to lie down and sleep after this somewhat exhausting encounter; secondly, I wouldn’t want the neighbours to get the slightest hint of the disreputable company I am at present consorting with; and thirdly, I fear the consequences of what you would get up to if I let you in. I hope you don’t mind?”
“We quite understand, George. No offence taken. And we have plenty of time in the future to ruin your reputation and ransack your property, haven’t we, Sally?”
“Indubitably!”
“And thank you, George, for being such an adorable sport!”
“Yes – just think of the fun and games we can all have together in the weeks to come!” added Sally.
George groaned. He started forward as if to say goodbye but Carol held up a hand.
“You do have that address with you still, don’t you, George? You wouldn’t want to forget to come and meet me after work, would you?”
George fumbled in his trouser pocket. He hadn’t read it yet but he found it curled up, half forgotten, buried in amongst a paper handkerchief. He waved it in front of his newfound associate.
“Yes, yes! Here it is. Now off you go and leave me in peace!”
Carol and Sally both embraced him, emphasising that he had better get as much peace as he could now, since it would not last. George nodded resignedly and bent down to give one last caress to Rosie, the magical greyhound. Then he watched them all get into the mini and drive off.
He sighed. He walked over to open his garage, got into the Land Rover and parked it in its rightful home. He shut it all up and then turned to go into his back garden via the back gate. He looked at the address he had been given and, halfway up the back garden path, he stopped.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed.
The address he had been given was that of St Bartholomew’s College, in Durham. Carol worked in the same college as that of his wife.
George made straight for the desk draw in the study. Six whiskies or not, he was still too sober to take in this latest shock to his system. He upended the flask.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed again, louder, as if the first time wasn’t enough to signal the horror that he felt enveloping him. “They must know each other!”
The college had been expanding and taking on more staff and students and George was willing to bet that Carol must be one of a new intake – with that personality he would have been certain to have heard of her from his wife who had been working there for decades. Come to think of it, he remembered at the beginning of the academic year that Annabel had been cursing the influence of a number of new faces in the college who had come in like tornadoes, seemingly hired by the Master to shake things up. Carol was certainly a force of nature equal to any tornado.
My God! He had promised to go down and meet this new and far-too-sensual young woman on the road outside the college at about the same time that his own, somewhat more serious and censorious mate would be emerging. This was impossible! He couldn’t do that now. Yet what would happen if, instead, the doorbell rang and this unrestrained and undomesticated wild woman confronted them both in their own house? Equally impossible!
Geo
rge tipped up the whisky flask once more. No way out! It seemed as if he was caught, whichever way he turned. Foggy-headed by now, this was a dilemma that George could not resolve for the moment. He blundered his way into the kitchen and tried to make himself a ham and cheese sandwich – an endeavour which required a certain degree of manual dexterity that for the time being had deserted him. Surveying the mess he had created, he picked up the debris as best he could, put it on a plate and tried not to lose his way into the lounge, despite the wall doing its best to bump into him and spill his platter as he ventured forth. George found his favourite armchair in front of the television and arranged himself in it, although he discovered his various limbs would not go quite where he wanted them to. It seemed as if they belonged to someone else. He tried to eat the sandwich-cum-disaster that he had made. He got some down before the fog in his head swirled thicker and thicker and overcast clouds drew a curtain across his mind.
It was dark when his wife tripped over his sprawling figure on her way in from the back garden. Annabel cursed out loud and George, out of habit, went immediately into defensive mode. He apologised to the unseen figure in the blackness and withdrew his legs. Brushing a collection of breadcrumbs and other assorted foodstuffs off his chest he struggled to his feet and, back under automatic pilot, he tottered out into the kitchen. Ignoring, not even hearing the various indecorous comments made in his direction by his beloved spouse, he did his best to clear things away and then turned somnolently to climb the stairs and go to bed. There, he descended into a silent black hole, illuminated briefly by a bitch with magical eyes into which he gazed hypnotically until the spark deep therein them suddenly snuffed out. He slept.
Birds were singing the morning chorus at full pelt when George next awoke. There was obviously a competition going on between rival blackbirds somewhere as to who would get through to the man of this house soonest. George lay immobile, scarcely able to believe it. The sun had not yet fully risen, his head felt unusually strange, not an insect in the house had stirred but a football crowd of birds outside were determined to rehearse every song in their vast repertoire in their efforts to wake him up. George grunted. He uttered sounds that had never before issued from his throat. He was not a happy man.
But he could not go back to sleep now; his brain wouldn’t let him. Eyes barely focusing, his head complaining, George tried to disentangle himself from beneath the bedcovers and, in doing so, he only succeeded in finding himself on all fours on the carpet beside the bed. He looked round. He gasped. In the full-length mirror he caught sight of a greyhound in the bedroom! He uttered not a sound. It wouldn’t do to wake the wife, sleeping soundly in her own bed on the other side of the room. But what an animal looked back at him! Not a sandy-coloured bitch like Rosie but a taller, big-chested black-coated male with a long white bib running down his front. A handsome beast…though as he looked at him, George thought the dog’s eyes did look a little dazed.
“Like my own,” he considered. “I wonder if it’s been at the whisky?”
Did dogs drink spirits? George wondered as he looked down and prepared to get up from the floor where he had tumbled out of bed.
He stopped moving. Staring down, instead of his arms holding him up, he saw two slim, black dog’s legs immediately below him. Dog’s legs with paws, not hands. Putting his head down, George looked back under his body and there, at the back of him were two more dog’s legs. With paws, not feet.
George sat down with a plop and examined the mirror. There was the black greyhound sitting on its haunches, staring back. George put his head on one side, puzzled by this vision in front of him. The dog with dazed eyes put his head on one side also. George raised a front paw and scratched his head. So did the greyhound in the mirror. George said hello out loud to himself. Well, to his ears he reckoned it was hello but it actually sounded like: “Wuff!”
“Hmmm,” said George to himself. “This is rich. Seems like I’ve changed into a greyhound overnight.” To say that this was a novel turn of events was something of an understatement. George had been drunk before. He had passed out before; but whenever he had come-to in the past he had always come-to as the same sort of person, all be it a little more dishevelled, as he had been earlier. He had never changed species before, at least he thought he hadn’t; his memory clearly was not at its best yet.
George turned and examined himself more closely, trying to get his eyes to behave as they should. Yep, a tall, black dog…and very well-equipped by the sight of it, he reckoned, lifting a leg to display his masculine parts. He was pleased with what he saw. He slowly commenced some doggy exercises: bending down; sitting up; twisting this way and that; learning to control his various limbs, joints and muscles, seeing if any creaked and groaned like he was accustomed to in his human form. Great! Everything seemed to be in perfect working order. But enough of the self-examination; this was early morning and George needed to have a pee.
Problem: how to do that?
George padded out to the bathroom. The door was closed to, but thankfully not shut. George inserted a nose in the small gap between door and door jamb and pushed. He entered the bathroom. The toilet seat was up. But how was he going to do this? He tried to get up and sit on the toilet but he slid suddenly backwards and for one awful moment he thought he would end up getting stuck in the pan – half in, half out. George gave a cry of horror – but it was a strangled canine howl which he instantly stopped in mid-flow. There was no way he wanted to wake Annabel. With a scrabbling of feet, George got back off the toilet and tried to figure a better way to answer nature’s call. He was a tall dog, fortunately. Nothing for it – he sidled up, lifted a leg and aimed as best as he could, doggy style, over the top of the porcelain and into the interior of mankind’s most sanitary convenience. Aaah, relief! When he’d done, he examined the result. George was a careful, fastidious creature – both as man and dog. He wasn’t one to wave his wand to all parts, shaking the drops off everywhere and leaving his mark for others to clean up. How’d he do this time? Not bad, if he said so himself. Unaccustomed as he was to relieving himself as dogs do, he had managed to aim pretty well and hit the target with no extraneous incriminating evidence. George was proud of himself. So early in his dog’s life and already he had established unerring control of his masterful physique. He lifted a paw and pressed the flush. Job done!
Next on his mind was breakfast. George sallied forth from the en-suite bathroom, out of the bedroom (the bedroom door was never shut – Annabel didn’t like being closed in with her husband) and then he scampered down the stairs and into the kitchen below. Eggs and bacon was definitely not going to happen, but what else could he eat? He wasn’t sure what his taste buds would approve of in his new quadruped form – eggs and bacon did seem attractive but he reluctantly had to try and forget about that. What else? Most of the food seemed to be stored in cabinets way above his head. Beneath the sink were only detergents, cleaning materials, various polishes and bin-liners. No joy there. George reached his front paws up onto the kitchen counter and cleaned up various bits of bread, ham and cheese that he had left there the night before. Hmmm, they tasted alright. He wasn’t so keen on the cheese, though. He got back down and searched in the lounge. More debris from his pseudo-sandwich was scattered on the floor about the armchair. He hoovered those up. Annabel would be pleased, he thought. But he was still hungry.
The fridge! He had to get inside and see what treasures he could gain access to there. It took a little while before his front paws could get purchase on the fridge door. These appliances were certainly not dog-friendly, he surmised – probably by design. But after scrabbling about for an age he managed to get his nose inside and now – what was there he could open?
Fortunately, the plastic wrapper in which the ham had been packaged had been savaged by drunken hands only a few hours ago and so for a determined greyhound with an inquiring tongue it was not difficult to finish off the contents. He smacked his lips. That felt better! Now – there was a carton of
milk that was open and half full. Did he fancy that? Well he wasn’t a cat – perish the thought – but he’d give it a try. In this case it was impossible to drink the contents without spilling any – just trying to pick it up in his jaws meant squeezing a fair shower all over the place but he nonetheless drank most of it and, again, housetrained as he was, he could lick up much of the milk that was scattered around in various puddles.
George sat down and took stock of progress so far. Had he eaten and drank his fill? Yes, he thought so. He’d managed to invade this manmade reserve and satisfy his most basic needs and if he wanted any more he reckoned he could always come back. Today was Monday and the house would be empty as Annabel and he would be out at work.
Work? He couldn’t go to work as he was. No matter that he prided himself on being an athletic, handsome and intelligent greyhound, adept at finding his way around the house, he could hardly sit in his office at work and function normally as an accountant. Mind, that was an interesting thought. Could he do that? He could still read OK – the ingredients and instructions on the milk carton made sense as they always did – he could presumably still analyse a balance sheet and make decisions on the basis of what he saw…but communicating with others would be a problem, presuming that they would let a black greyhound into his office in the first place. No, they never would. He should stop thinking about that.
Could he handle a computer? That might be possible. Interesting word: ‘handle’ – this was clearly related to the word ‘hand’ and as such discriminated against all creatures without such appendages. Minority groups should protest about such discriminatory language! Why couldn’t he pawdle a computer? He’d give it a go.
Greyhound George Page 3