The Return of the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog

by Return of the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog (retail) (epub)

  Dad plays golf as often as he can. He loves it, but I can’t see the point. You get a very small ball and a very long stick. You hit the ball as far as you can. Then you walk after it, and when you find it (which might take some time, depending on where it landed) you hit it again. Then you walk after it, and when you see it you hit it again. Then you walk after it, and when you see it you… and so on, and so on. Every so often the ball might go down a hole. Then you get excited. And after you’ve got excited what do you do next? You hit the ball again and then you walk after it…

  Dad likes clay-pigeon shooting, too. That’s the one where you have a shotgun. You shout ‘Pull!’ and a disc flies up in the air (that’s the ‘pigeon’) and you shoot it down. Now, I reckon Dad ought to play clay golf which is a game I’ve invented for golfers and shooters. The golfer sends his ball whizzing through the air and the shooter has to shoot it down. Brilliant, eh?! It would make golf so much more interesting.

  Anyhow, Dad seems to like the pointlessness of golf and he’s got all these chums up at the club. Every so often they get together for a dinner and sometimes they bring their families along. Aren’t we lucky? As you can imagine, I was so looking forward to it.

  Mum came out of the bedroom and wandered past my door. Wow! She was wearing a dress! I’ve hardly ever seen Mum in a dress. She spends most of her time in a tracksuit or running gear. She does weight training and aerobics and stuff. (Hey, listen, Tina told me this joke, but it’s a bit rude, so don’t tell your mum or dad, OK? What do you call PE exercises in the nude? Bareobics. Ha ha!)

  The golf club is pretty posh. It’s not just for golfers – there’s a swimming pool there and a gymnasium that Mum goes to. You have to pay to be a member and not only that, you have to be examined by a committee to see if you’re suitable for membership. If you’re badly behaved you can get thrown out. (Would you believe not wearing a tie counts as bad behaviour!)

  So Mum was all poshed up and Dad was all poshed up and I was forced into a tie and was trying hard not to look too poshed up. That was how we arrived at the clubhouse, and the first person I saw was – Melinda. Melinda Boffington-Orr. My heart changed gear several times until it was in overdrive. I didn’t care that she was scowling at me. She still looked stunning.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘My dad’s a member.’

  ‘Really? The committee obviously didn’t know anything about you then.’

  This conversation was going so well! I thought that maybe Melinda would have recovered from her sprawl in the mud, but no, she was still seething. I had to make things up to her somehow.

  ‘I did say I was sorry and I did try to warn you. I couldn’t do much more, could I?’

  Before she could answer a large man came wandering across. He was not only tall, he was overloaded. (OK – he was fat.) He looked very smart in a dark suit, but he had a big belly and massive shoulders. He had a chin like a brick and his lower lip stuck out further than his top lip, reminding me very strongly of Roxy. He gave me a cheerful smile. He had a gold tooth that glistened.

  ‘Hello, Melinda. Making a new friend?’

  ‘Not exactly, Daddy. This is Trevor. Trevor from the field, you remember? Trevor with the dog. Trevor the mud expert.’

  Mr Boffington-Orr looked down at me from his great height. The smile had become a dark scowl. (So that’s where Melinda got it from!) ‘Ah, so you’re the lad that ruined my daughter’s jeans? Do you know how much those cost me? Have you any idea? Do I look as if I’m made of money?’

  I was thinking, well, yes, you do look as if you’re made of money. You’ve got a gold tooth for starters. You’ve obviously got a lot more money than my parents. Heaps more.

  I could see Dad in the distance, laughing with an attractive woman on the far side of the room. She took his arm, pulling him towards the dance floor. I groaned inwardly and hoped he wasn’t going to dance. Dad’s a hopeless dancer. Then I saw Mum coming towards us. My heart began to thump. I could feel a Moment of Doom approaching fast.

  ‘Your dog is a liability’ continued Mr B-O. (You don’t mind me calling him that, do you? No, I didn’t think you would.) ‘She should be trained properly. Dogs like that shouldn’t be allowed on the streets.’

  Mum arrived, beaming. ‘Mr Boffington-Orr, what a delight! Trevor, this is…’

  ‘I know,’ I said miserably

  ‘This your son?’ growled B-O.

  ‘He ruined my daughter’s clothes. Him and his dog.’

  ‘What?’

  There it was, the MOMENT OF DOOM. Boffington-Orr gave a more than full description of events. I say it was more than full because B-O himself had not actually been there and now he was exaggerating rather a lot. Melinda added her scathing comments from time to time, just to make sure I was totally scuppered. Not that it mattered because now B-O was staring across the room. He kept sticking one finger between his neck and his collar and making strange thrusting movements with his big chin, so that it jutted out even further.

  Dad was on the dance floor, swinging his arms and legs like a deranged baboon. (It’s the only way he knows how to dance.) The attractive woman was laughing and encouraging him. He took hold of her hand and they began to twirl round. Mum and I both sighed at the same time.

  ‘If only he could see what he looks like,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Do you know that man?’ growled Boffington-Orr.

  ‘Of course. He’s my husband.’

  ‘Your husband! I might have known.’

  Boffington-Orr strode towards the whirling couple, but it was too late. All of a sudden the dancers made one fast move too many They got completely entangled, tripped each other up and crashed to the floor in a giggling, squirming heap. B-O only got there in time to haul the woman to her feet. Dad climbed to his knees, still chuckling.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ demanded B-O.

  ‘Dancing,’ laughed Dad.

  ‘That wasn’t dancing. That was mauling.’

  The woman put a hand on B-O’s shoulder. ‘Darling, we were just having fun.’

  Darling! Uh-oh. That must be Mrs B-O!!

  ‘Your behaviour was disgusting,’ snapped Boffington-Orr, addressing my father. ‘And that is just what I have come to expect from your family You’re a bunch of yobs.’

  ‘Just a moment…’ began Dad, but B-O wouldn’t let him finish.

  ‘You come here and make an exhibition of yourself, mauling my wife. No wonder your son doesn’t know how to behave, pushing my daughter in the mud, and that dog of yours ought to be put down.’

  It felt as if a deep, deep hole had just opened right beneath my feet. I could feel myself falling. ‘Dad?’ I croaked.

  Even my dad was shocked. He took a step back from B-O. ‘Just hold on there, I don’t think you should make comments like that about our dog. Streaker might be a little wild at times but…’

  ‘A little wild? She ruined Melinda’s clothes. She might have bitten her.’

  ‘Streaker has never bitten anyone!’ I shouted.

  ‘Keep quiet, Trevor,’ snapped Dad. He turned to Melinda’s father. ‘I’m sorry your daughter’s clothes were damaged. If you send them to our house we shall see what we can do to clean them. As for Streaker, I think you should keep your comments about her to yourself.’

  Mr Boffington-Orr drew himself to his full height – which was pretty impressive. Now his voice took on an ultra-cold quality – so cold it felt as if large icebergs were tumbling from his mouth and crushing everyone as he spoke.

  ‘You consider your position carefully. Evidently you have no idea who I am. I am the new chairman of the golf-club committee. I also happen to be the new police superintendent for this town. Get that dog trained, or you’ll be hearing from me again, and you won’t like that, I can promise you.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ Dad answered, just as coldly.

  ‘Yes. In fact, I will tell you what’s going to happen. There’s a dog show
coming up soon and the Police Federation is sponsoring it. Your dog can take part.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dad laughed. ‘You can’t possibly be serious.’

  ‘Oh, I am,’ the superintendent smiled. ‘Think of it as a Community Service Order for your dog. I shall expect to see your mutt there. My sergeant down at the station is entering his three Alsatians. I shall expect your dog to beat at least one of them. If she doesn’t you can kiss goodbye to your membership of this golf club. And it will be very bad news for your dog, too. I’ll not have dangerous dogs in my town.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ exploded Dad.

  ‘Dangerous,’ repeated B-O, in a threateningly quiet voice.

  There was a long silence. You don’t mess with a police superintendent, especially when they’re also chairman of the golf club. That’s what Dad was thinking. I could tell.

  B-O gave a grim smile, draped one arm round Melinda, imprisoned his wife with the other, turned away and they walked off. You could almost hear them sniggering to each other.

  4 Best-Groomed Dog?

  Dad’s been going about the place looking as if war has been declared and he’s just discovered enemy submarines in his bath. He might get thrown out of the golf club! The shame of it! The disgrace! Then he’d get all furious and start shouting about that bullying, arrogant Boffington-Orr. And of course I’d catch it because of Streaker.

  ‘She’ll have to be trained properly’ Dad kept snapping. ‘Either that or we shall have to find a new home for her. We could put her into a dogs’ home.’

  This wasn’t anything new to me. Every time Streaker did something really awful Dad suggested putting her into a home. But this was Trouble – Big Time!! It came with capital letters and exclamation marks and frowns added. Dad felt he was personally under attack and was seriously considering re-homing Streaker.

  I couldn’t think what to do. There was only one person I could talk to – Tina. I took Streaker up to the field, sat on a log and waited. Tina was bound to show up with Mouse sooner or later, and she did. She sat down next to me, and Mouse sat down next to her. It would have been nice if Streaker had come and sat beside me and made a full set, but she was trying to be a squirrel. She was leaping up the trunk of a tree, trying to climb it and then wondering why she kept falling backwards and landing on her bum in the bushes.

  I was really pleased to see Tina, but she seemed a bit cold towards me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Walking the dog. If you remember I always walk the dog here.’

  ‘Oh. You still walk her then.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’ve come up here to train Mouse for the dog show,’ Tina said coolly.

  ‘Why are you still on about that?’

  Tina shuffled her feet and when I looked at her face I was surprised to see she’d gone red.

  ‘Because I thought it would be fun to train our two dogs together and because… because I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are friends. We’ve been friends for ages.’

  ‘Trevor. Try not to be stupid. I mean – friends’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, still completely in the dark. ‘Friends.’ Inside I was thinking: Help! What’s she on about now?

  Tina shuffled her feet a bit more. The grass below was getting a really tough deal from Tina’s feet. ‘I saw you with that girl,’ she muttered.

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The one with the long hair – the long, blonde hair, and the boxer dog.’

  ‘That was Melinda Boffington-Orr,’ I said. ‘She’s beautiful.’ If looks could kill I’d be dead. Tina’s eyes were turning into flame-throwers and I was shrivelling beneath their gaze. ‘What? What did I say?’

  Tina took a deep breath. ‘It doesn’t matter, Trev. It’s not what you say, it’s what you think.’

  ‘But I wasn’t thinking anything!’

  ‘Well maybe that’s the problem, Trev. Maybe you should start thinking.’

  I frowned. ‘What are we talking about?’ I asked eventually. ‘I’ve sort of completely lost the plot.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Tina. ‘So, what’s been going on with Melinda then?’

  Ah! Now I could tell Tina the whole story, so I did. She laughed a lot at the bit when Melinda fell in the mud – I’m not sure why. She laughed again when Dad fell over with Mrs B-O. She said that Dad and I were like peas in a pod. (How could she say that!) Then I got to the bit about Mr Boffington-Orr being the Most Important Person In The Universe.

  ‘I hate people like that,’ Tina declared.

  ‘He’s too big for his boots. Come to think of it, he’s just too big. You should see his chin, it’s like the shovel on a JCB.’

  Tina was quiet for several minutes. Mouse curled up at her feet. (Actually curled isn’t the right word because St Bernards can’t do curling. They can only do throwing-themselves-on-the-floor-in-a-big-messy-lump.) Even so I found myself wishing that Streaker was more like Mouse. I stared across the field, wondering where she was now. She’d stopped doing squirrel impressions long ago. A lady walking round the far edge of the field suddenly vanished with a startled cry. Ah, that’d be Streaker. I sighed.

  ‘So your dog’s in trouble again,’ Tina observed. ‘And she’s got to take part in the dog show after all.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘If she gets reported to the police or anything things could get quite nasty for her.’

  I nodded. ‘Suppose so.’

  A little smile crept across Tina’s face. ‘So it would be a really, REALLY good idea if Streaker did some more training. It could save her life.’

  I should have seen it coming, shouldn’t I? I expect you could see what Tina was working towards all the time. The trouble is, I couldn’t. She always manages to catch me out and before I know it, BAM! She’s hit me with the unanswerable argument. She looked straight at me, victory in her eyes.

  ‘Wouldn’t it?’ she repeated. ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea?’

  ‘All right,’ I groaned. ‘Maybe it would be sensible, but what kind of training should she do?’

  Tina suddenly perked up. Now she was full of smiles and encouragement. ‘Why don’t you bring Streaker over to my house and we can work on both the dogs together.’

  ‘OΚ, what are you doing with Mouse?’

  ‘I told you, he’s entered for best-groomed dog.’

  ‘Tina! How am I supposed to groom Streaker? She’s not a pedigree. She’s just an ordinary mutt.’

  ‘The trouble is, you’re looking at Streaker the wrong way. You were telling me earlier that Melinda B-O is a bit snooty, but you also said she was beautiful. So she has a beautiful outside, but an ugly inside. Appearances are deceptive. Maybe some things can look ugly from the outside but be beautiful on the inside.’

  ‘So when the judges at the dog show come along and start examining Streaker, what do I do – turn her inside out? Get all her guts out and spread them around and say: “Look! Isn’t it pretty! Sorry about the blood everywhere, but she has such pretty kidneys!”’

  Tina stopped dead, hands on hips. ‘Trevor, you know perfectly well that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘No, but what you said was funny, that’s all.’

  ‘The thing is, if people can be like that then animals can be too, I’m sure. We can groom Streaker and prettify her. Come on, up to the bathroom. Mum’s next door helping the neighbour make a birthday cake. His wife will be ninety tomorrow so it has to be a special cake apparently, very soft, easy to eat, because she hasn’t got any teeth left.’

  We headed upstairs with the two dogs. Streaker got very excited when she saw water running into the tub. Streaker doesn’t often get bathed in our house. I had a sneaking suspicion that she would not get bathed very often in Tina’s house after this either, but I didn’t tell her. Why spoil the fun?

  ‘Give me a hand with Mouse. He can’t get in on his own.’

  Boy oh boy! That dog weighed a ton. No, I tell a lie
– ten tons. I practically broke my back lifting him. Mouse sat down and a big wave of water slopped over the top. Tina got some shampoo – ‘Hair Care for Big Dogs, with Fig Oil and Dandelion Milk for Added Bounce and Extra Shine. Also contains Calcium Supplement for Strong Bones’. I pointed out that hair doesn’t have bones in it.

  ‘I expect the calcium soaks in somehow and gets to the bones that way’ Tina said.

  ‘I expect it’s a rip-off,’ I said.

  ‘Rub it in all over,’ muttered Tina, and we got to work, lathering up Mouse.

  Q. What do dogs do when they get wet?

  A. They give themselves a good shake.

  And the bigger the dog is the wetter it gets, and the bigger and wetter they are the more they have to shake. And the more they shake the further all the water gets flung. Bathing Mouse was like sitting next to the Niagara Falls. Wet.

  As we worked up the shampoo Mouse seemed to get even larger. I think Tina might have squirted on a bit too much. He was beginning to look like a major accident in a soap factory.

  ‘The shampoo has to soak in for ten minutes,’ Tina explained, just as Mouse gave himself another grand shake and coated the walls (and us) with big flecks of shampoo.

  ‘Oh good,’ I said, flicking shampoo from the end of my nose. ‘My hair will be so nice and shiny by then. And so will my skin and my clothes and the bathroom walls and the ceiling and –’

  ‘Shut up, misery guts,’ interrupted Tina. ‘We’ll do Streaker while we’re waiting. There’s room in the tub for both dogs.’

  Tina was right about the amount of room in the bath. However, she hadn’t allowed for the fact that Streaker moves about quite a lot. In fact it is probably what Streaker does best of all – move about. She’s a real expert, and she can do it without stopping for hours. Once Tina had squirted Streaker with a bit of shampoo it was impossible to get hold of her at all. She just kept slipping out of our hands. It was like trying to find a giant bar of soap in the water. Every time we grabbed her she just went – bloooop! – and shot out the other end.