The Victory Dogs

by Megan Rix

  ‘Mummy’s po-ppet, Mummy’s po-ppet,’ the parrot squawked.

  Michael sighed as Henry peeked out of his coat. ‘I should have known,’ he said.

  ‘What’s all that racket for?’ Mrs Ward said suspiciously, and then she gasped as she saw the puppy’s little face.

  ‘I’m calling him Henry,’ said Michael, already prepared that he might have to fight to be allowed to keep him. Only the day before they’d turned a lady away who wanted them to care for her cat. They just didn’t have room for any more animals.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t squeeze so much as another guinea pig in,’ Mr Ward had said, closing the door on the distraught woman.

  They all found it very difficult to turn any animal away, but they had no choice. Their home and garden were full to overflowing. To keep taking in more and more pets would mean they couldn’t properly take care of those they already had.

  Now Michael dreaded his mother telling him he couldn’t keep the puppy.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you adorable?’ Mrs Ward said, taking Henry into her arms. Henry nuzzled his head into her neck. ‘Are you hungry? I bet you’re hungry, poor little thing.’

  ‘Have a carrot, have a carrot,’ squawked the parrot as Mrs Ward disappeared with Henry into the kitchen.

  Michael sighed. Henry was his puppy. He was the one who should be feeding him. He followed them into the kitchen where he found Henry lapping greedily at a bowl of cold porridge.

  ‘Puppies are always hungry,’ Mrs Ward smiled and Michael grinned. At least his mother was clearly smitten and would probably let him keep Henry. He didn’t imagine for one second that his father would be as easy to persuade.

  Henry finished the porridge and started sniffing around the kitchen. Michael thought he was looking for more food, but Mrs Ward didn’t agree.

  ‘Quick, take him outside,’ she said, giving Michael a push towards the puppy. Michael grabbed him as Mrs Ward opened the back door.

  ‘Doesn’t take long for food to go through them at this age,’ she said.

  And she was right. No sooner had Michael put Henry down than he’d done his business.

  Michael thought of the other puppy, the one he’d had to leave behind.

  ‘There were two of them,’ he said.

  ‘So where’s the other one?’ Mrs Ward asked him.

  ‘Still there – I hope,’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh, Michael,’ Mrs Ward said. ‘The poor little thing. You’ll have to go back for it. I’ll watch this one.’

  Michael nodded and took a few pieces of yesterday’s chicken with him to tempt the puppy out from the shadows at the station.

  Mrs Ward stroked Henry’s little furry head and Henry soon found that he didn’t mind being stroked at all. When she stopped, he pushed his head under her hand for more.

  ‘Back already?’ Stanley the newspaper seller said when he saw Michael.

  As he wasn’t officially part of NARPAC this time and didn’t want to be noticed, Michael bought a ticket and headed down the steps like any other passenger, before ducking into the disused tunnel where he had found Henry.

  He pulled the chicken from his pocket and waved it in the air, hoping the puppy would find it too much to resist.

  ‘Puppy, puppy, here, boy,’ he called. But no puppy came.

  He stepped in something sticky and when he looked down he realized it was blood. A lot of blood. Could the puppy have been injured?

  He hurried out on to the nearest platform. A station cleaner was down on the rails.

  ‘Have you seen a puppy?’ Michael asked him.

  ‘Pets aren’t allowed on the Underground,’ the man said. ‘It’s expressly forbidden. There’s signs up saying so. Not that I’ve yet come across an animal that could read.’

  ‘He might be injured.’

  The station cleaner told Michael about the dog that had died on the track.

  ‘Wouldn’t have called that dog a puppy though. Too big and aggressive.’

  Michael went back to where he’d first seen the blood. He tried to follow the trail, but it led nowhere. Perhaps the other puppy had been scared by the accident and run away. Michael finally gave up looking and went home, but he resolved to tell Amy about the second puppy so they could both keep a lookout.

  Henry raced to him as soon as he walked through the door and licked and licked his face. Michael sat down and lifted him on to his lap, but he couldn’t help feeling sad about the other puppy.

  ‘That puppy’s beautiful,’ Mrs Ward said, coming into the hallway, ‘but he’s pongy.’

  ‘We’d be pongy too if we’d lived our whole lives in the Underground,’ said Michael, laughing.

  They went into the kitchen and filled a tin bath with warm water before carrying it outside. ‘Don’t think Henry’s going to like this much,’ said Michael and he was right.

  If Henry had been asked, he’d have told him that water and Henry weren’t supposed to meet. They never had before, but Heggerty was there too and Michael was tempting Henry with pieces of chicken that smelt so good. He went a few steps forward and when Michael lifted him up he didn’t struggle, but when Michael gently lowered him into the bath he did – a lot! Michael held on and soon, between him and his mother, Henry was soaking wet and soapy and then rinsed and clean.

  Mrs Ward lifted him out with a big towel and wrapped it round him.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said as he tried to wriggle out of it. She didn’t want him drying himself by running round the garden and rolling in the flower beds.

  She gave the pup to Michael and he carried him back inside and set about rubbing him dry while Heggerty sat close by and watched. Henry liked the feel of the towel stroking him. He stretched up his neck so Michael didn’t forget to dry underneath his chin.

  Once Henry was fairly dry, Michael set about brushing him before his dad and Sky came home.

  ‘We’re going to make you irresistible so he’ll have to let you stay,’ Michael told Henry as he brushed his fur until it shone.

  Mrs Ward and Michael exchanged a look. They both knew it might not be enough that Henry looked adorable. They simply didn’t have room for any more pets.

  By the time Mr Ward and Sky came home an hour later Henry looked quite different to the puppy Michael had smuggled out of the Underground, and he smelt a lot sweeter too!

  ‘We’re back!’ Mr Ward called out. ‘Ellie’s put us all through our paces and if Lieutenant Colonel Richardson isn’t impressed – well, he should be. Ellie and Amy have been working like troopers.’

  Michael wished he could have been at the class to help them, but Henry needed him more. He wished he could have found the other puppy too.

  Sky raced into the kitchen and Henry fell totally and instantly in love with her. His tail wagged so hard it looked like it was going to fall off. He nuzzled his face to hers, barked and did a play bow to her before finally rolling on his back to show her his soft puppy tummy.

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Mr Ward.

  ‘Isn’t he a poppet?’ Mrs Ward said, winking at Michael.

  ‘He is indeed, but where did he come from?’ Mr Ward asked. He sat down and patted his knees so that Henry went to him. ‘I see he doesn’t have a collar, but he looks too well cared for to be a stray – although he is on the thin side.’

  Michael had never been able to lie to his dad and very soon the whole story came out. And all the time it was being told Henry sat in front of Mr Ward with one ear up and one ear down as if he were listening too. Mr Ward wasn’t pleased when he heard where the puppy had come from.

  ‘You can’t just take your pick of a pack of feral dogs.’

>   ‘He wasn’t part of the pack. There were two puppies. I don’t know where the mum was, but they weren’t even in the same part of the station as the rest of them. They were on their own.’

  ‘And what happened to the other puppy?’ Mr Ward asked. ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Michael admitted. ‘I went back to look, but there wasn’t any sight or sound of him when I called.’

  ‘You know you shouldn’t …’

  Michael nodded. He knew. ‘But what would’ve happened if I’d let them take him?’ he said.

  His father and he both knew only too well what had happened to hundreds of thousands of pets at the start of the war.

  ‘What’s going to happen to the others – those that have been taken back to the shelter?’

  They both knew no one was going to claim any of them. None of the dogs, as far as they could see, had had a collar with an identification tag on it.

  Michael pressed his face against Henry’s soft puppy fur. ‘They’ll just be destroyed.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Mr Ward and he told Michael about the directive they’d just received. ‘Any stray dogs that have the potential to help with the war effort are to be assessed.’

  There was a chance, albeit a slim one, that one of the dogs from the station might pass the assessment.

  Henry pounced on Mr Ward’s shoelaces and tugged at them as if they were worms.

  ‘We’ll have none of that, thank you,’ Mr Ward said firmly, but his eyes were smiling.

  Henry sat back and looked at Mr Ward consideringly, his head to one side, as if he understood every word that was said and was taking it all in. Mr Ward laughed and Michael knew Henry wasn’t going to be heading for the animal shelter that night.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve, Dad,’ said Michael.

  Mr Ward looked over at his wife and he could see she was almost as desperate to keep the pup as their son was. It was hopeless. He’d said no more animals and they didn’t have room for a pup.

  ‘Just over Christmas,’ he said sternly, and missed the look that passed between mother and son because the parrot started squawking, ‘Merry Christmas, me … rry Christmas,’ as it lifted one leg and then the other off its perch in a pacing movement.

  ‘Merry Christmas to you too,’ Mr Ward told the bird.

  Chapter 14

  Howl was in a bad way. As badly injured as some of the soldiers Daniel had seen at Dunkirk. His breathing was shallow and ragged. In the windowless room Daniel tended to Howl’s wounds as the puppy trembled and cried out, his paws scrabbling feebly as if he were begging Daniel to take the pain away.

  ‘You’ll be OK, Soldier, at ease now,’ Daniel said.

  He’d stayed out of the way during the whole feral dog round-up, not wanting to be seen by the men from NARPAC. But he hadn’t realized they would try to take the puppies too and now one of them was missing and the cat that had looked after them was dead. He’d found Howl lying beside her and had buried her beside her friend, the mother dog.

  He felt so guilty as he bathed Howl’s wounds and bandaged him up as best he could with what he could find. If he’d known the pups were in danger, he’d have come out to try and help them, whatever the consequences.

  ‘That’s it,’ he told Howl. ‘Nearly done.’

  He did his best, but his torn sacking bandages weren’t very clean and he was worried that whatever he did it wouldn’t be enough to save the pup’s life.

  He squeezed some water into the corner of Howl’s mouth; just a little, so it wouldn’t choke him.

  ‘That’s it, Little Soldier, easy does it.’

  Then he lay down beside Howl so he’d be there if he should need anything and to soothe him when he cried out in pain. He didn’t know if the puppy was going to live or die. Howl was in shock from all the blood he’d lost and he shivered and whimpered in delirium as he lay on the sacking in the windowless room.

  Daniel stayed close.

  ‘Hush, Soldier, hush now,’ he told the puppy, thinking back to how he’d tried to comfort his fellow soldiers who’d been injured at the front, even when their injuries were so bad there was little chance of survival.

  After five days of marching, they’d finally arrived at Dunkirk beach only to find there were hundreds of thousands of other British, French and Belgian soldiers there already.

  A red-headed infantryman called Fletcher had shown Daniel a photograph of the girl he was going to marry.

  ‘She’s called Mary – but she doesn’t like it when I call her Mary, Mary, quite contrary,’ Fletcher said with a grin as they sat together on the sand.

  The rumour was that the German army would be there any day and Daniel could hear the drone of aircraft in the distance. But the allied soldiers were ready for a fight, whatever the outcome. Around Fletcher and Daniel men boasted bravely to each other, even though they knew the odds were against them.

  ‘Just let them come.’

  ‘They’ll see how real men fight.’

  ‘They won’t know what hit them when I get my hands on them.’

  But it wasn’t the army they needed to worry about. The attack came from the air and they didn’t stand a chance against the German planes. They had no anti-aircraft guns on the beach; soldiers ran out from their scant cover and shot desperately up at the sky with their rifles.

  Daniel was still holding Mary’s photograph when the planes came. One minute Fletcher had been living and breathing and the next second he lay dead beside him.

  But he wasn’t going to let Howl die. Daniel had seen enough death, more than anyone should have to.

  ‘You hang on in there, Soldier,’ he said as Howl whimpered in pain.

  If the puppy could just make it through the night then there was hope.

  A few yards away, out on the station platform, the first of the people seeking shelter were arriving for the night, but Daniel was too busy to notice or care.

  ‘Keep clear of the edge,’ the station staff warned them. They didn’t want anyone to fall on to the track, full of Christmas merriment, to be hit by an early-morning Tube train.

  Even though it was Christmas Eve, Amy was there as usual with her mother and father and Grandpa. She’d come straight to the station from tidying everything away after the dog-training class and demonstration practice.

  She smiled when she saw the Christmas tree that was really a potted plant decorated with bits of coloured paper by her mother.

  She wished Jack could be there with them too. She’d never had a Christmas without him before. And she’d had very few, that she could remember, without Misty either. She wasn’t looking forward to this Christmas much, if she were honest, but she put a smile on her face and called ‘Merry Christmas’ back as people greeted her.

  Most of the people wore home-made paper hats and there was an air of festivity about the station in spite of the war.

  A few hours later the Christmas spirit was in full swing as people sang carols and Christmas songs and danced. No one forgot England was at war and had been bombed every night since September, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have fun too.

  Amy watched as two little girls skipped back and forth along the platform, laughing together. A toddler sitting on his mother’s lap sucked on a wooden peg doll while his mother darned socks and joined in with the singing.

  What Amy would have liked more than anything as her Christmas present was to have found Misty and to have Jack back home again. But as each day had passed it seemed less and less likely that Misty would ever be found, and Jack wouldn’t get leave for several months yet.

  Everyone cheered when a Tube train with Women’s Voluntary Se
rvice ladies serving tea and buns pulled into the station. It even had a Santa Claus onboard!

  Soon everyone was joining in with a rousing chorus of ‘Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town’ followed by ‘Jingle Bells’. Amy joined in too.

  Henry’s first Christmas Eve was completely different to his brother’s.

  ‘If he’s going to stay then he’ll have to obey the house rules,’ Mr Ward told Michael and Michael readily agreed. ‘And the first thing you can do is house-train him,’ his father continued as he saw Henry disappearing behind the sofa to do his business.

  ‘Henry, no!’ said Michael, but it was too late.

  Although Misty had taught her puppies to only ‘go’ in one area of the station, they hadn’t been house-trained for life with humans. Henry had never even been outside the station before Michael took him home, so the concept of going outside to do his business was completely new to him.

  Fortunately though, there was Sky, and as soon as she saw what Henry had done she growled and snapped at him before pushing him outside, sending a far clearer message than any of the Wards could have done.

  From then on, if Henry wasn’t sure of anything, he always looked to Sky for help. Michael was sure Henry would be more than willing to learn anything at all if it meant he got to spend more time with her.

  ‘Come on, Henry, let’s play,’ he said and Henry’s tail wagged as Sky joined in too.

  The first thing Michael taught Henry was to fetch a toy and bring it to him for a treat. Henry was very fond of treats and got the idea in no time at all. Michael then taught him basic obedience: to sit, stay and come when he was called. Henry was a quick learner.

  ‘He’s so smart!’ Michael told his mother.

  During his first few hours Henry also learnt that it was OK to chase after a ball, but not OK to chase after the chickens or goats, that guinea-pig food did not taste as nice as dog food and that Heggerty didn’t want him sleeping in her bed.

  ‘Here, Henry, you sleep here,’ Michael told him, patting the bed he’d made from some old blankets that he’d put next to Sky’s bed. ‘Lie down, Sky.’