My Dog Tulip (11 page)

Most of our walks, therefore, ended in ill-temper, and I was thankful to get home where a self-operating elevator raised us safely out of reach of our oppressors whose baffled gaze observed our ascension from the doorstep. This elevator was a boon, for they had not the reasoning power to associate its upward trend with the staircase opposite; they were led entirely by the nose, and since there was no smell of Tulip on the stairs, which I was careful never to use while she was in this condition, they never used them either and, being unable to work the elevator or to rise above themselves in any other way, remained where they were. Ill-temper was then succeeded by remorse and anxiety. Apart from the injustice of the punishments I had awarded poor Tulip, might not these displays of rage and violence harm her in other ways, make her, for instance, aggressive where she had been friendly, so that she would continue to go for her own kind under the impression that this was what I wished her to do? In fact this did not happen, but I believe, from what I see of the effect of human folly on other dogs, that it might have done so if a solution to my difficulties had not at last been found.

In the months that followed this second failure to mate Tulip my mind was ceaselessly engaged in planning for the future, and soon I had three more suitors lined up for her, all belonging to people with leisure to afford them a proper courtship. I had not worked out the mechanics, but my intention was to let her make her own choice among these three. An unforeseen fate ruled otherwise.

The human emotions that brought about her change of residence from London to Sussex do not belong to this history, which concerns itself with the canine heart; but a few words of explanation are necessary. A cousin of mine, who had no fixed abode, had rented a bungalow in Ferring for the winter months. Aware that I had been looking in vain for holiday accommodation that would accept an Alsatian dog, she invited us down to stay. We went. Newly painted white with a broad blue band round it, like a ribbon round a chocolate box, “Mon Repos” was a trim little place. It had a garden fore and aft which my cousin, whose knowledge of gardening was slender to the point of invisibility, had undertaken to “keep up.” The front one contained a rockery with flowering shrubs, among which were tastefully disposed figurines of the Seven Dwarfs. It was quite the prettiest bungalow in Witchball Lane. That we had not, however, been invited entirely disinterestedly soon appeared: my cousin confessed to being nervous of staying in “Mon Repos” alone. Arguments were therefore advanced, when the end of my holiday approached, for prolonging a situation that suited her: Tulip was enjoying herself, it was nice for her to have a garden to play in, and the walks round about were superior to anything that Putney had to offer; she was looking better already for the change; why not leave her there to profit from the wonderful sea air and come down myself at weekends to join her? The value of sea air to canine health was an idea that had not occurred to me, but I saw that there was some small substance in the rest of the argument. On the other hand I did not want to be separated from Tulip throughout the week and believed that all her present amusements combined were as nothing to her anxiety not to be separated from me; nor had I the slightest inclination to make a railway journey to “Mon Repos” every weekend. But when women have set their hearts on something, the wishes and convenience of others are apt to wear a flimsy look; my own point of view, when I ventured it, was quickly dismissed as selfishness. I was sorry for my cousin and consented. I only stipulated that Tulip must be removed to London before her next heat, which was due in March. This was agreed to.

To recall the weeks that followed is no pleasure, but since this is the story of Tulip's love life they should not be passed over in silence. An alarm clock woke me at 6:45 every Monday morning; I then had half an hour in which to get up and catch the bus at the top of Witchball Lane for the station a couple of miles away. Tulip, who slept always in my room, would get up too and follow me about as I tip-toed between bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. I knew, without looking at her, that her gaze was fixed unswervingly upon me, that her tall ears were sharp with expectation. I knew that, the moment she caught my attention, they would fall back as though I had caressed her, then spring up again while she continued to search my face with that unmeetably poignant inquiry in which faith and doubt so tragically mingled: “Of course I'm coming with you—aren't I?” Avoiding her eyes for as long as I could, I would go about my preparations; but the disappointing had to be done at last. As I picked up my bag in the bedroom, she would make her little quick participating movement with me through the door, and I would say casually, as though I were leaving her for only a moment, “No, old girl, not this time.” No more was needed. She would not advance another step but, as if the words had turned her to stone, halt where she was outside the bedroom door. Now to go without saying goodbye to her I could not, though I knew what I should see, that stricken look, compounded of such grief, such humility, such despair, that it haunted me all the journey up. “Goodbye, sweet Tulip,” I would say and, returning to her, raise the pretty disconsolate head that drooped so heavily in my hands, and kiss her on the forehead. Then I would slip out into the darkness of Witchball Lane. But the moment the door had closed behind me she would glide back into our bedroom, which was on the front of the bungalow, and rearing up on her hind legs at the window, push aside the curtains with her nose and watch me pass. This was the last I would see of her for five days, her gray face, like a ghost's face, at the window, watching me pass.

The year turned, the date of our departure drew near, and my cousin's mind got busy, as I guessed it would, with the problem of obstructing it. She really could not see the necessity for taking Tulip away. Why should she not have her heat in Ferring?

“Because I've fixed up her love affairs in Putney.”

“None of your dogs could possibly be as good as Mountjoy, and Mrs. Tudor-Smith is frightfully keen on the marriage.”

This was a high card. Mountjoy belonged to some people a little further down Witchball Lane. He was an Alsatian of such ancient and aristocratic ancestry that Mrs. Tudor-Smith had been heard to declare that his genealogy went back even further than her own. She had paid as much as a hundred guineas for the privilege of possessing him. He gave, indeed, in his appearance and manners, so instant a conviction of the bluest of blood that it would have been both superfluous and impertinent to ask to see his pedigree. More like a lion than a dog, with his magnificent tawny coat and heavy ruff, he was often to be viewed in the grounds of the bungalow in which he resided, or just outside its gates, standing always in the classic attitude as though he had invented it. Perpetually posing, it seemed, for cameras that were his customary due and were doubtless somewhere about, he gave the impression not so much of looking up or down Witchball Lane as of gazing out over distant horizons. He had neither any objection nor any wish to be stroked; he accepted caresses from strangers in the aloof manner in which a king might receive tribute from his subjects; when he felt he had done his duty by the human race, he would stalk majestically back into the house; and if he had ever emitted any sound louder than a yawn I had not heard it, certainly nothing so coarse as a bark. But it was not on account of his nobility that he was more advantageous than my Putney dogs; I was not greatly interested in the canine
Debrett
; it was simply that his situation with regard to Tulip made everything far easier. To get one animal to the other was a matter of only a minute's walk; they were already on friendly terms and often in each other's company.

I hesitated. Cashing in on this, my cousin added:

“If you want a second string, Colonel Finch says you can have Gunner whenever you like.”

During my weekends in Ferring I had met many of its dogs and their owners, and although Gunner was a far less impressive card than Mountjoy, he too was an Alsatian and therefore eligible for Tulip's hand. Gunner was an unlovable dog, as ill-favored as the hyena he somewhat resembled and of bad local character. His master, who doted on him, always averred that he was a positive lamb and would not hurt a fly, but his habit was to lie all day in the Colonel's porch on Ferring front and charge out like the Light Brigade at every dog that passed. Constant was the hot water into which Gunner got his master. It was the commonest thing, as one walked down the path by their bungalow, to hear the Colonel's dominating voice on the further side of the hedge assuring some other dog-lover, whose animal had just been stampeded into the sea, that it was only Gunner's little bit of fun. And, indeed, there may well have been some truth in this, for the Colonel's own sense of humor was of a similar cast, and since we are said to get like our pets, perhaps
vice versa
, master and dog may have grown to understand one another in an imitative kind of way. The very first time I met Colonel Finch, he gave Tulip an appraising look and rapped out at me:

“Hm! Pampered bitch, I can see! I bet she sleeps on your bed!”

Much taken aback by this unprovoked attack, I confessed apologetically:

“I'm afraid she does. It's wrong, I suppose. Where does Gunner sleep?”

“On the bed, of course!” roared the Colonel, delighted to have teased me so successfully. “The best bed in the house!”

But Tulip failed to take of Gunner's “little bit of fun” the tolerant view I took of his master's. Having received from him, as
their
first introduction, one of his famous broadsides before he perceived her sex and attempted to recover his mistake by a belated display of awkward gallantry, she never accorded him the condescension she showed to Mountjoy, and I did not therefore pin much hope on Colonel Finch's lamb. Nevertheless, with my resolutions now weakened—they needed little to undermine them, for, in truth, I was not looking forward to Tulip's next heat—I said:

“In any case, you've no idea of the difficulties. You couldn't cope.”

“You're exaggerating,” said my cousin. “If you can cope, so can I.”

Tulip entered her heat on the first of March, and even I never envisaged the consequences that rapidly developed. Within a few days “Mon Repos” was in a state of siege. My cousin began by thinking this rather amusing, and sent me cheerful accounts of the “sweet” little Scotties and Sealyhams who had come to call. She found it less amusing when they accumulated and would not go away; when the larger dogs took to scrambling over the white-washed wall in front, which, by repeated leapings against the winter jasmine that had been carefully trained to ornament it, they could just manage to do; when their smaller associates, not to be outdone and left behind, contrived to smash the flimsy latch of the gate by constant rattling at it, and all camped out all night, quarrelling and whining, among the Seven Dwarfs. Nor did she find it amusing when the other ladies of Ferring, deprived of and anxious about their pets who returned not home even for their dinners, called round to retrieve them, not once but every day and a number of times a day, in a progressively nastier frame of mind. The soft answer that turneth away wrath is no part of the diplomatic equipment women claim to possess; my cousin was not one to be spoken to sharply without giving as good as she got. Very soon to the sound of Tulip's excited voice within and the replies of her devotees without was added a recurrent chorus of equally incontinent human voices raised in revilement and recrimination. And my cousin found it less amusing still when she tried to take Tulip for walks and fell into the error I had made of attempting to beat off her escort, which resulted not only in a more formidable incursion of enraged owners complaining that she had been seen ill-treating their pets, but, more affectingly, in her clothes and flesh getting torn. Before the first week was over, Tulip was not taken out at all; but now there was no lovely elevator to waft her out of sight, sound and scent of her admirers; good though she always was, no desirable and desiring bitch could be expected to behave with restraint in a small bungalow all the windows of which presented her with the spectacle of a dozen or so of her male friends awaiting her outside; she barked at them incessantly, hastening from window to window; they barked back; then, like the siren, she would break into song; the expensive net curtains were soon all in tatters, and these, in the end, I had to replace.

I could not replace “Mon Repos” itself. By the close of the affair it is no exaggeration to say that it was practically wrecked. The walls still stood, of course; but what walls! A tepid rain had been falling for some time to add to the general melancholy of the scene, and their fresh white paint was liberally stippled with filthy paw marks where the excited creatures had tried to clamber in at the windows; the pale blue paint of the doors, at which they had constantly knocked, was scratched and scored; the Seven Dwarfs were prostrate in a morass that had once been a neat grassy border. Siege became invasion. The back of the bungalow held out a little longer than the front; its garden was protected by a fence; but as Tulip's ready time approached and the frustrated besiegers realized that this was where she now took the sea air, they set about discovering its weak spots. This did not take long. By the time I was able to come down for my second visit during this period, to stay now and supervise the marriage, they had already forced their way in at several points, and my cousin was hysterically engaged in ejecting dogs of all shapes and sizes from dining room, sun parlor and even in the night from her bedroom.

Into the midst of this scene of chaos Mountjoy, at the appropriate moment, was introduced. Tulip had not seen much of him during her wooing week; the Tudor-Smiths had thought it undesirable that he should mix in such low company; she was pleased to see him now. As soon as he made his wishes clear she allowed him to mount her and stood quietly with her legs apart and her tail coiled away while he clasped her round the waist. But, for some reason he failed to achieve his purpose. His stabs, it looked to me standing beside them, did not quite reach her. After a little she disengaged herself, and assuming her play attitude, began to flirt in front of him. But he had graver ends in view. Again she stood, with lowered head and flattened ears, her gaze slanted back, apprehensively, I thought, to what he was doing behind. This time he appeared to have moved further forward, and now it did look as though he would succeed; but suddenly she gave a nervous cry and escaped from him once more. They tried again and again, the same thing always happened, whenever he seemed about to enter her she protested, as though she were still a virgin, and pulled herself free. And now it was quite upsetting to watch, his continual failure to consummate his desire and the consequent frustration of these two beautiful animals who wished to copulate and could not manage to do so. Nor could I see any way to help them, except to lubricate Tulip, which I did, for they seemed to be doing themselves all that could be done, except unite. It was, indeed, very moving, it was sorrow, to watch them trying to know each other and always failing, and it was touching to see Tulip give him chance after chance. But of course she was getting tired, she was panting; compared with him she was a small, slender creature, and it could not have been anything but burdensome for her to have the weight of his massive body upon her back and the clutch of his leonine arms about her waist. Yet, at the same time, he was as gentle with her as he could be; he took hold of he in a careful kind of way, or so it looked, maneuvering his arms tentatively upon her as though to get a purchase that did not grip her too hard; and sometimes, when she made a nervous movement or uttered an anxious cry, he would dismount and, going round to her head, put his nose to hers as if to say: “Are you all right?” But at last, in his own weariness, his jabs got wilder and wilder, quite wide of the mark; finally she would have no more to do with him and, whenever he approached her, drove him away.