Tea and Dog Biscuits (12 page)

‘Ealing, in West London.'

‘London! You've never brought him all the way from London?'

‘Yes, I have,' the young man said, nodding. ‘That is where I live. I found him outside the house.'

‘London's sixty or seventy miles – how on earth did you come to contact us?'

‘My landlady knows someone called Cecilia. I rang her and she gave me your telephone number. I had phoned the police and they had told me to contact the traffic warden – no, sorry – the dog warden, but when I rang him I got a telephone answer message that the office was shut. I really like dogs – I couldn't leave him there.'

I was about to ask another question when Dorothy intervened. ‘I'm Dorothy,' she said, giving the young man a welcoming smile and holding out her hand.

‘I'm Hideaki,' he said, shaking hands, ‘but everybody calls me Aki for short.'

‘How do you do, Aki? I'm very pleased to meet you,' said Dorothy.

I followed her example, shook his hand, smiled and belatedly introduced myself.

It had been nearly eleven o'clock before we heard a car on the drive. We had almost given up on the young man, thinking he must have changed his mind about bringing the dog. He opened the back of his little hatchback. The dog didn't even lift his head to look at us.

The car's interior light wasn't working. Dorothy said she would get a torch before we tried to move the dog. The light from the little torch showed us enough to shake us.

Dorothy wanted to know how the young man had got the dog into the car. He had lifted him in on his own. His landlady was afraid of dogs and couldn't help him carry it. Dorothy felt that until we could see more it would be safer to stretcher the dog in. She fetched a blanket and gently inched it under his body.

‘Goodness, there's nothing of him,' she said.

The light of the kitchen revealed what had been brought to us: a dog that was skin stretched over a skeleton. He had sores on every leg, his sides and his face. There was pus in the corner of his eyes, a clump of dried pus beneath each eye and stains running away from them like lines of dried tears. The eyes themselves were sunken in his skull. What must have been black fur before was now giving way to grey. What black remained was dull and lifeless.

A dog that was a hundred years old.

What to do?

‘Did you give him anything to eat?' Dorothy asked the young man.

‘Of course, I hadn't got any dog food so I was going to stop and get him a burger but the place I go to shuts Monday night.'

Miserable as we were, Dorothy and I couldn't help but smile.

‘Well, a burger might not have been the best thing to have given him. I'll get him something light. Did you give him any water?'

‘Ah, I should have done, shouldn't I!'

Dorothy fetched a small cereal bowl with water and put it down beside the dog. She gently lifted his head so he could see the water if he wanted it. There was a flicker of interest. A few moments more and he found the strength to lift his head and lap a little. A sign of need. A sign of wanting to go on. Some boiled rice with a little gravy would be next on the menu.

I knelt down and ever so gently stroked him. Was it my imagination or were his eyes showing a little more life since the drink of water? I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude to the young man well up inside me. I put my hand on his arm and squeezed it tightly.

‘On his behalf,' I said, ‘may I thank you for what you have done for him.'

‘I haven't done anything.'

‘You could have left him there.'

‘No, I couldn't have just left him.'

‘Some people would. Someone has done this to him.'

While Dorothy cooked rice in the microwave I felt the need to be polite to this stranger, to make conversation. His slow and hesitant speech prompted me to ask if he had always lived in England. No, he was Japanese, and a student, studying in London. He had studied at language school here for two years before starting university. Dorothy congratulated him on his English.

‘Imagine,' she said to me, ‘going to a foreign country to study. Not just in a foreign language – Aki has had to learn a new alphabet as well!' Her interest in languages was showing.

Another small cereal bowl was put down on the floor, close to the dog's nose. His eyes moved. He took some seconds to gather his strength, then he raised his front half up and dropped his head down to the bowl. A few seconds more and the bowl was empty. He lifted his head from the bowl, turned and looked up at Dorothy. He gazed at her for a moment or two. Then he slumped back onto the floor.

Our young friend was staring at the figure on the floor.

‘You know, where I live in London it's a very respectable street. You wouldn't expect to find this there.'

I wondered if what he wanted to say, but didn't, was that we were supposed to be a nation with a reputation for caring about animals. For at least one traveller from overseas, our image had been damaged for ever.

Melissa had now taken blood samples and gone off with them somewhere, leaving Dorothy and me with the patient.

The rice last night, and some more this morning with a little tinned food mixed in, had given him the strength, with encouragement, to slowly walk. Being left to gaze at him, to take in the state to which he had been reduced, to think about how somebody had just left him like this was depressing and draining. Dorothy tried to take my mind off sad thoughts and relieve the silence.

‘Whenever I see Melissa I always admire her hair,' she said. ‘It's really beautiful. I keep meaning to compliment her on it. But I don't suppose you particularly notice her hair – I expect you're concentrating on her legs!'

I always found visits to the vet stressful. I always dreaded a doom-laden diagnosis. But the stress of my visits, it was true, was relieved somewhat by Melissa, six foot tall, blonde and leggy, wearing shorts throughout the year, including the English winter. One day, when I knew her better, I was going to say to her that I would have expected someone accustomed to Australia's climate to have wrapped up well even in an English summer. I wouldn't comment specifically on her wearing of shorts. She was a professional person and I was a client of the practice. Still, I was grateful that she did wear those shorts.

Melissa and the shorts reappeared.

‘Right,' she said, in a businesslike tone, ‘apart from his skin problems I'm not convinced that his weight loss is due to simple starvation. I'd like to take another blood sample and I'll let you know if I find anything next time I see him. Meanwhile, I'm going to give you something to bathe him in and you'll have to do it every day. And I'm going to give you some cream that you'll have to put on his sores three times a day.'

Dorothy and I exchanged looks. I didn't know what she was thinking, but I was thinking, We've got six other orphans to look after as well – this is getting really time-consuming…

I sat on the floor, on newspaper, in our tiny utility room. The newspaper was because Orphan Number Eight suffered with diarrhoea. He lay beside me, outstretched. I wanted to sit on the floor beside him so I could rest my hand on him. He wasn't sleeping, he just lay there. Outside, it was dark and the summer night had turned chilly. I had put the central heating on so that the boiler in the utility room would keep him warm overnight.

As I sat there with him, all my thoughts of expenditure of time were gone. Never in my life had I felt so sorry for any living thing.

I could see all his ribs, and his hip bones stuck out so much I could grip them. I wanted to stroke him. As my hand slid gently along his back, the ridges in his backbone made bumps for my hand to go up and down. I gave up stroking him.

I struggled to shut out of my mind questions that left me demoralised and dispirited. How could someone have left him like this? And where are they now? Are they relaxing and enjoying a drink down the pub? Or watching the telly perhaps?

I had to preoccupy myself with other thoughts. What shall we name him? The dog wasn't well enough for us to have got to know him, to discover his character so we could think of something that suited him. I would have to find inspiration from elsewhere.

Dorothy put her head round the door. ‘That young man, Aki, is on the phone.'

He had rung, of course, for news of the dog he had found on the pavement. I reported back what we had learned so far from our vet. He asked if we had chosen a name yet. I told him I was getting desperate: a few more hours and he would have been with us a whole day and still nameless. Then I had a sudden thought. ‘What's
your
dog's name?' I asked him.

Tomodachi,' was the reply. ‘It is the Japanese for friend.'

‘Friend?'

I nodded to myself. And that is how it came about that a German Shepherd who lived in England came to be named after a dog who lived thousands of miles away in Japan.

‘Barrie – blood pressure!'

I continued to stare out of the window, despite Dorothy's reminder.

‘Why don't you do something useful while you're waiting? You're winding yourself up. Why don't you make a cup of tea?'

I stalked across the room and threw myself down in an armchair. ‘Look at the time!' The clock on the mantle showed ten minutes past three. A Mr Bradley and his partner had arranged to bring their dog to us at two o'clock. ‘They can't even be bothered to ring us and say they'll be late!'

‘Well, perhaps they're stuck in traffic. Or maybe they've broken down.' Dorothy spoke unhurriedly and quietly.

I sighed. While Dorothy returned to her letter-writing I sat tapping my foot on the floor.

Half a minute later I jumped up. ‘It's no good – I can't sit around waiting for these people to turn up. If they don't come soon they'll make us late for the vet.'

‘Didn't you say you had an essay to hand in for your night class?' said Dorothy. ‘Couldn't you be doing that while you're waiting?'

‘They're bound to turn up just as I get started,' I said.

‘Or what about young Sam? Is he all right for water?'

At four months, Sam – he of the incident with the false teeth – was being fed three times a day, but his water bowl had to be refilled six to eight times a day. It wasn't that he drank a lot, but after a walk or play in the garden, Sam liked to wash his feet – by putting them in the water bowl and shaking them about.

‘Yes, I've given him more water,' I replied. ‘And I've mopped the floor,' I added.

‘Well then, why don't you go and sit with Friend and keep him company?'

Actually, that was a good idea. ‘Yes, I should have been doing that,' I said, ‘instead of standing here twiddling my thumbs waiting for these people.'

I joined Friend in his isolation unit, the utility room. We had been alarmed to learn from Melissa that Friend's skin disease was highly contagious; it was essential to keep him away from the other dogs at all times. We had to wash our hands thoroughly with anti-bacterial handwash after coming into contact with him. We must bathe him every day with the medicated cleanser. We must apply the cream to his sores using gloves. None of the other dogs were to come into contact with his bedding or food bowl. All this to do and these precautions to take and the other dogs to look after. And I had a job to hold down. And so did Dorothy.

Stretched out on his blanket, Friend lifted his head up – and there was just the slightest wag of his tail.

‘Hello, boy.'

He laid his head back down. I sat down on the floor beside him.

The shoulders with no flesh, the scrawny neck, the patches of dry, cracked skin, the claws that needed clipping, the thin legs, a claw that had been ripped and just left, where now there was a growth that had to be dealt with – I had something I wanted to say to him about all this. I picked up a paw and squeezed it gently. Then I leant over him. I did not formulate the words, they just came to me.

‘You're our dog now. And we care about you. What I see is your lovely dark brown eyes. I see your gentle face. And I see this paw. What I see here is a beautiful German Shepherd dog.'

I must have sat with Friend for nearly an hour before Dorothy called through the door, ‘They're here.'

A huge four-wheel drive had pulled up outside our front door, but the couple within seemed in no hurry to get out. Dorothy and I could hear raised voices. We hesitated to go out and greet them.

The man got out after some minutes and slammed his door.

‘Mr Bradley?' I said, trying hard to put on a friendly tone.

‘Yes!' We shook hands. He didn't offer his hand to Dorothy.

‘We'd been expecting you at two,' she said.

‘Yeah, something came up,' said Mr Bradley.

The woman accompanying him joined us: one glamorous female. Lots of make-up, lots of big jewellery and a heavy leather coat that creaked as she walked. And those high heels were really high. I guessed we wouldn't be taking the dog for a walk across the fields before they left her.