by Penny Thomas
‘No indeed,’ he stammered, dropping the thing on the ground with the coins. ‘Just a present from a tart in Pigalle. Worth something to you though, I should think. Real gold. Don’t hurt me.’
And so I fulfilled my destiny. I was born into illusion, violence and blood. That night, masked, with a gun in my hand, I claimed my birthright. The shot was clean, through the head. He stood for a moment like a great, gross puppet, then crumpled to the ground. Real blood is a lusher, more nuanced red than stage blood, I noticed. I felt detached, like a ghost already. I took the locket, left the money, and walked back to the theatre.
I shan’t bore you with police procedurals. Suffice to say I was discovered. Stripped of her starring role in the Grand Guignol, mother had turned to backstabbing to keep her young. This was her tour de force. I was a delicious scandal in the streets of Paris for the shortest of times. Dive actress shoots playboy aristocrat! The audience for my beheading was smaller than my mother’s had been, but then she had been a star in her time and I knelt at the guillotine barely an ingénue. I should like to say the crowd seemed to disappear then, and that in my last moments I remembered my love as he had been before he fell to cowardice. But that would be one lie too far. No, I drank in the whispers and whoops of the people. I bathed in the blue of the sky above me. I smiled to think of my own severed head and the thrill of horror my death would give the baying crowd. The blade dropped, blinding in the winter sunlight.
Consciousness disengaged from the body.
I died.
Shall I pour you a drink? You look like you could use one. There. Take your time. Yes, if you like, I am a poltergeist. It doesn’t really work that way, but it’s as good a definition as any. Time to go? Oh, no. Do you suppose I have a pressing engagement at – goodness, is that the time? I’ll have a drink too. I’ll need one, before I tell you the story of my afterlife. Now that is a story.
Are you sitting comfortably?
The Wish Dog
Maria Donovan
Before she arrived, I boxed up all the spirits and put them in the attic. I hadn’t seen her for nearly fourteen years, until she tracked me down online – and even then we didn’t fall into each other’s arms: for a while we were just virtual friends.
From things she said I gathered that for her the years had not been kind; when she asked if she could come and stay I didn’t say no: I rang her up. It took a minute to tune her voice into my memory. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you still have the dog.’
‘Of course.’ He has his own account on Twitter. I follow him and he follows me.
‘And hasn’t he gone grey?’
Back when she knew him, his face was almost completely black; now it is almost completely white.
‘I’d like to come and see you,’ she said. ‘But you know what they say: “let sleeping dogs lie”.’
‘Never mind the metaphors,’ I said. ‘Thinking literally: I was looking at him today and – you know when they’re young you think it’s about getting some peace for yourself? Then one day you see him struggle just to stand up. “Let sleeping dogs lie”: it’s about giving him some peace now.’
‘You should keep him going,’ she said. ‘Keep him walking.’
‘Oh, I look after him; don’t you worry.’
‘So how about it? I could do with a break.’
I did owe her something, so I said yes. When she texted me with her arrival time, she added, ‘I’ve missed you. Why did we ever fall out?’
As if she didn’t know.
I picked her up from the train station; she was wearing a chunky blue hand-knitted cardigan and big boots; her hair was still long with orange streaks but now it was also grey at the roots. When we hugged she held on to me longer than felt comfortable and I kept patting her back until she let go. Then I helped her with her suitcase and her bags. ‘You should see me when I go away for the weekend,’ I said, loading the car. ‘I’ve always got so much stuff – what with the dog’s bed and food and bowls and everything.’
She peered into the back seat. ‘Didn’t you bring him with you?’
‘He was in his bed, snoring. And I had to go shopping – but we can stop again if there’s anything you want.’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Unless we need to pick up something to drink?’
‘Oh that’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some in.’
We set off. ‘Anyway,’ I said, after some small talk about her trip, ‘I thought you’d stopped drinking.’
‘I have,’ she said. ‘But now I’m here …’
I could feel her looking at me. ‘Remember that time you fell off the wagon?’ I said, keeping my eyes on the road. ‘That’s when you brought home the dog.’ I could feel my heart picking a hole in my chest.
I had thought about telling her my side of the story, but maybe I would wait until nearer the end of her visit.
She didn’t know he was a Wish Dog, that I’d decided I wanted him long before she brought him home, how I’d thought hard about it: what it would mean to walk six miles a day and more, to give him a good and loving home for the rest of his life. I’d been careful in my wishing: I wanted him to be black, medium-sized, thin-coated so he wouldn’t shed hairs, good with children and other animals, a go-anywhere kind of dog. I wanted a boy but I did not want him to have a bad smell.
The night she fell off the wagon was near Christmas. She’d been on it a month so it was quite a hard fall. She came home late and tapped on the door of my room. This was new. Usually she just turned the music up loud and played it till three in the morning, while she searched the cupboards for alcohol and soaked up every last drop in the house. I had given up trying to help her. ‘You’re going to be so angry,’ she slurred.
I went with her to her room and as soon as I saw this little black dog with his head bowed, I had to stop myself saying, ‘That’s him!’
He’d been living under a bush and eating fallen burger buns and chips from the gutter, until two young girls found him and took him to the pub, where people treated him to crisps and cold sausages. My friend was the last to leave and the barmaid persuaded her to take him home. ‘The dog warden’s coming tomorrow,’ said my friend. ‘But he can sleep on my bed tonight.’ The barmaid told me later, she thought if my friend had to care for another living creature, she might take better care of herself.
‘Do you want to keep him?’ I said. ‘Because if you’re not sure, it would be kinder to make him comfortable down in the kitchen.’
I was so calm about it that she agreed. The next day, I got up and took him for a walk and gave him breakfast. At mid-morning the dog warden came and I asked him to wait while I woke her up. She came down, bleary and bedraggled. He asked if she would like to keep the dog and she said, ‘No. No, I like him but – I don’t think I can look after him.’
Slowly, I said, ‘Then, I think, I would like to try.’
She stared at me with bloodshot eyes. ‘The landlord won’t like it,’ she said.
‘He’ll be OK.’ I was a good tenant. He’d known me a long time. I decorated the house. I kept it tidy. I made sure the bills were paid.
The dog warden said, ‘As long as you keep him till after Christmas.’ Before Christmas is their busiest time, he said, when last year’s puppies are abandoned.
‘I will,’ I said.
‘A dog’s not just for Christmas,’ she said.
‘This one might be,’ I countered, but I knew that I would keep him. She started to hate me then: I accepted that. But she seemed to hate the dog too. Mostly she ignored him. Sometimes she laughed because it hadn’t all been easy – not at first. He was so used to being a stray he’d run off after anything: bicycles, horses, other dogs, children, any kind of food. But he always came back. And when I bent down to stroke him for the first time, and sniffed the top of his head, he smelled so sweet and clean, just like my old teddy bear.
‘You do live out in the wilds,’ she said.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I did warn you.’
As we cl
imbed higher we entered the clouds. When we got to the house, tall and detached, rising out of the mist, she said, ‘So you live here all on your own? No neighbours?’
I smiled. ‘Half a mile away. And I have the dog of course. I’d probably like to live in a town again but this will do us until he dies. Unless you want to buy it?’
She snorted and said nothing. We parked at the side and went in at the front gate, past the For Sale sign lying flat on its back in the garden. ‘The wind blew it down,’ I said. ‘No point sticking it up again unless there’s a viewing.’ I unlocked the door. ‘It’s great for now: I only have to open the back door and he’s got the run of the fields all to himself.’
‘A dog is a social animal,’ she said, struggling in with her bags. ‘Isn’t it a bit cruel to keep him here with no friends?’
For all her talk, she took no notice of him when he came to greet her. She just dumped her things in a pile in the hallway and said, ‘Go on then, you might as well give me the tour. I know you’re dying to.’
‘You don’t want a cup of tea?’
‘No no,’ she said. ‘Lead on.’ Her eyes were everywhere: we did upstairs first – she picked a bedroom and I showed her where the dog slept at night so she wouldn’t trip over him if she went to the bathroom – then down to the kitchen, the sitting-room and the conservatory. The dog followed us trying to sniff her trousers, getting under our feet each time we turned around. We entered the study last: full circle back to the front hall. I wanted her to admire my wall of books, my desk, my woodburner, my cosy sofa, my freestanding floor lamp, but she stopped dead on the threshold and gasped. She wouldn’t follow us in. Instead, she shuddered and put up her hands like a mime artist finding a wall. ‘Oh! I can’t go in there,’ she said. ‘I can feel a terrible chill – as if there’s a … a presence. I’m very sensitive to these things.’
I, who had already crossed over, gave her a look. ‘Or you might be sensitive to the almighty draught coming through the letterbox.’
She folded her arms. ‘You don’t believe in ghosts?’
‘Look,’ I said, firmly. ‘This house is a hundred years old. Someone will have died here. So let’s just say that if there are any ghosts they must be happy.’
Still she wouldn’t come in: too stubborn to admit that a current of cold air could just be a current of cold air. ‘Whatever,’ she said, turning away. ‘I need a drink.’
Clouds pressed against the windows. Sparrows and blue tits chased each other on and off the bird feeders hanging from a gnarly old willow. We sat in the conservatory sipping beer while the dog went to fetch her a toy. Again she looked around as if she’d come to value the furniture.
I thought if I had a drink too then she might stop when I did. All I had downstairs was beer and wine. I had to hope she wouldn’t sniff out the hard stuff in the attic. She could hardly let down the ladder in the night and if she did, well, I might just push it up again and leave her there. ‘Cheers,’ I said and we clinked bottles. ‘It’s a shame it’s foggy,’ I said. ‘We have a great view of the sea from here, and the mountains, on a clear day.’ I swept my arm to indicate the panorama we were missing.
‘Oh, I’m sure,’ she said.
The dog, who had come back with a ball in his mouth, followed my arm and went on looking at something neither of us could see. Lately I’ve come upon him staring at his own shadow on the wall. Sometimes, I have to turn him round and give him a little push to make him go in the right direction. She didn’t want to talk about the dog; she wanted to ask how much the house was worth, what did I plan to do next.
The dog dropped the ball at her feet. ‘He’s trying to impress you,’ I said. ‘Oh, it’s gone under the sofa.’ She reached down and pulled the ball out covered in fluff. I decided to show no embarrassment. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I forgot to dyson under the furniture.’
‘At least you have a Dyson,’ she said. ‘At least you have furniture.’
She held the ball between finger and thumb and looked at it before offering it to me and saying with unreasonable sarcasm, ‘Don’t you want to go out and throw the ball for him?’
‘Haven’t done that for a while,’ I said. ‘Too much strain on the joints, stopping suddenly. And now he wouldn’t see it anyway.’
‘You’re saying he can’t run after a ball? Surely you can get him to do anything you like?’
Her laugh was hollow and unpleasant; but I had decided to ignore any bad behaviour.
‘I wouldn’t make him play fetch just to show that he’ll do what I want.’
She looked out of the window. The silence went on and I didn’t fill it with nervous talk. Show no weakness, that’s what I thought: she’s up to something. ‘Funny,’ she said at last. ‘I expect you know that a fetch is a kind of ghost: the ghost of something still living.’ She turned to me and leaned in. I didn’t let myself be her mirror. ‘I had a friend once,’ she said, ‘and when she was ill she felt something looming over her, running up behind her. She saw herself running past. Not long after that, she died.’
This, I thought, is going to be a long weekend. She used to be just a mindless drunk: now she is pompous, solemn and mean. ‘Maybe that’s why the dog barks at his own reflection in the glass sometimes,’ I said.
She stuck out her jaw and said nothing, squinting off into the mist, mouth turned down.
She didn’t want to come for a walk. When I fed him, she stood over me. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ she said.
‘I think I know how to take care of my own dog!’
She just looked at me. I thought, it’s all right for her: she can leave whenever she likes; I have given her the bus timetable; there are taxis. But I can’t go.
We went out the next day and didn’t take the dog. She seemed relieved. ‘Too hot for him in the car,’ I said. She wanted to go to the pub and was impatient with me for needing to get home again. I told her: ‘The boy will be bursting.’
I walked him round the fields without her and then we settled in for the evening. The day had been clear and as the red disk of the sun slid under the sea, she asked me, the words slopping out of her mouth. ‘Why did you want me to come here?’
I smiled and asked her, ‘Why did you want to come?’
‘Maybe I just wanted to see the dog again. It’s been…weird and, if I’m honest, a bit creepy.’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Now you’re offended.’
‘Not at all. I don’t like to bear grudges.’
‘Ah, so it’s still about that.’
‘About what?’
‘Oh you know. You know. The disappearing dog? Come on!’
I said nothing.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘at first I thought you just wanted to show off. This place. Lady of the Bloody Manor. But now – you just want to get back at me, don’t you?’
‘For what? The Worst Weekend of My Life? You think I’m still angry about that?’
‘What else?’ she said.
I was silent, tenderly probing my own feelings. I could see this annoyed her more than ever.
‘It was an incident,’ I said. ‘We should never have allowed it to spoil our friendship.’ I was being careful because we had at least one more night to spend under the same roof. ‘In a funny way,’ I said, ‘I realise now, it was as much my fault as yours.’
One morning, a few months after his arrival, the dog and I had a falling out. I was in a hurry to get off to work and he was more interested in the neighbours’ bins than in coming back to me. I had to go and grab his collar, put him on the lead and march him home. When I left that day I remember we looked at each other with very little liking. I thought, maybe I had made a mistake. Maybe I didn’t want this dog after all. Still, I hurried back in my lunch hour to let him out.
When I got home, he was gone.
The back door was locked. I looked in every room, under the beds and even in the cupboards. Nothing. She was out too, so I thought, maybe she’s taken him. I tri
ed not to get angry.
The neighbours from across the street saw me on the pavement looking up and down. They told me they’d seen him hanging around at the front of the house and then he chased a bicycle down the road, barking; the cyclist tried to kick him and nearly fell off; they didn’t see what happened to the dog.
I ran down the street to where the houses ended and the lane began, past the allotments to the bridge, then back through the fields and home, hoping to find him waiting for me.
She was in the house.
‘Is he with you?’ I gasped. ‘Have you seen him?’
She looked furtive. She told me she had opened the back door and he had jumped over into the neighbours’ yard. ‘Their gate was open,’ she said, ‘so he got out.’
‘So he was in the alley. Why didn’t you just get him back?’
She shrugged. ‘I was late. I had to go.’
I wanted to shake her. ‘How could you?’ I said. ‘That poor little dog.’
I phoned the dog warden in case he had been found. I looked for him in all our favourite haunts and then rushed home in case he had returned. What if he came back and couldn’t get in? What if he thought I didn’t care? I put up notices in corner shops and gave dog walkers my number. I left the door open at night and went outside and stood in the quiet dark street, looking at the stars and wishing with all my heart for him to come back. I could not settle or think of anything else.
Late on Sunday afternoon I was once again outside the front door, wondering how I could go to work on Monday, when far away in the distance I saw a black dot. It grew bigger and bigger, hurrying down the middle of the street, sprouting ears and legs. There he was, coming straight towards me, head down as if he thought he was in trouble. I bent down and he came straight in and tucked his head under my arm. ‘You’re back,’ I cried. ‘You’re back!’ He was filthy and exhausted. I fed him and gave him a bath and he slept until the following day. When I went to work I made sure he was safe in my room. He and I did not fall out again. We always kept an eye on each other.