Selby's Secret (3 page)

Selby's first problem was a terrible toothache. His second problem was that somehow he had to tell Dr and Mrs Trifle he had a toothache without coming right out with it in plain English and giving away his secret — a secret that he was going to keep even if it killed him.

“Look,” Mrs Trifle said to her husband. “Look at the cute way Selby can curl his lip back. Isn't that clever.”

“Clever schmever,” Selby thought. “I've got a toothache you silly sausage. Don't look at the lip, look at the teeth.”

Finally, when Selby's lip was almost as sore from curling it back as his tooth was, he put a
paw to his jaw and let out a sound like a werewolf howling at a full moon.

“My goodness,” Dr Trifle said, looking up from the book he was reading,
The Inventor's Guide to Fast-Moving Cam Shafts and Water-Driven Floral Clocks,
“I do believe Selby has a toothache.”

“No kidding, Sherlock,” Selby muttered under his breath. “You're lovely people, both of you, but sometimes you forget that we dogs have our problems too. Now how about doing something about it?”

“The poor old thing,” Mrs Trifle said, looking at Selby's swollen gums. “I'll take him to the vet tomorrow and have the tooth pulled.”

Vet? Pulled? The words raced through Selby's brain like a two-headed goose through clover. “When
they
have a toothache do
they
go to a vet and have it pulled? Not on your tonsils,” Selby thought. “They go to a proper tooth-carpenter and have it fixed. But when it's a poor dumb animal,” he thought, knowing that there was nothing dumb about this animal, “they'd have his tooth pulled as quick as they could
blow their noses. Oh, spare me. I'll have to think of something …”

That afternoon when Mrs Trifle was at a special meeting of the Possum Protection Committee and the doctor was in his workshop making a model of the floral clock at the Bogusville Memorial Rose Garden, Selby sneaked to the phone and dialled Rita Houndstooth, the town dentist.

“With a name like Houndstooth,” Selby said, “she ought to know a little about my problem.”

“Hello,” the voice on the other end of the phone said, “dentist's surgery. Dr Houndstooth here, can I help you?”

“This is Dr Trifle of Bunya-Bunya Crescent,” Selby said, putting on his best imitation of the doctor's voice. “Do you treat dogs?”

There was a deathly silence on the phone and then Dr Houndstooth said, “Good heavens no. Is this a joke?”

“Joke schmoke,” Selby thought, trying to stay calm. “Do you mean to say that if my dog had a toothache, you wouldn't treat him?”

“Oh!” Dr Houndstooth said, and she let out a great scream of a laugh. “I thought you asked
me if I
eat
dogs. Oh,
treat
dogs … well let me see. I've never treated a dog before but I'll have a go. I mean they have teeth like everybody else, don't they?”

“They do indeed,” Selby said, drawing in a deep breath as a stab of pain shot through his jaw.

“He doesn't bite, does he?” Dr Houndstooth asked.

“Bite? Certainly not,” Selby said. “I can assure you that Selby is the most mild-mannered dog on God's green earth. He's a perfect gentle — er … gentledog.”

“Well then, bring him in by all means,” Dr Houndstooth said, wondering if gentledog was one word or two.

“Mrs Trifle will be bringing him in,” Selby said. “But there's just one problem. Mrs Trifle isn't quite herself these days.”

“Then who exactly is she?” Dr Houndstooth asked.

“Well I'm not sure,” Selby said. “It's just that she's under so much pressure because of her work that she often comes out with some very strange things. So when she brings Selby in, just agree with everything she says.”

Selby slammed down the phone, dashed to the typewriter and wrote a letter:

That evening Mrs Trifle found Selby's letter tucked under the front door and the next day she and Selby were off to the dentist's surgery.

“Your letter arrived just in time,” Mrs Trifle said. “We were just about to take Selby to the vet to have his tooth pulled. Maybe you can save it.”

“Yes, yes, Mrs Trifle,” Dr Houndstooth said, sitting her down in a comfortable chair and handing her a seven-year-old copy of
You and Your Teeth
magazine. “You just have a good rest and leave Selby to me.”

Selby lay back innocently in the dentist's chair, looking at the mobile overhead.

“Vet,” he thought as Dr Houndstooth started to put him to sleep with gas. “Can you imagine?
They were going to send me to the vet to have my tooth pulled. This is more like it.”

A warm and wonderful feeling spread through his body as the gas started to work and
Selby felt just a little like whistling the theme song from
The Lucky Millions Quiz Quest.
Then, suddenly he was awake and his tooth was fixed. He lay back in a happy daze and, without thinking, began to sing:

“What was that?” the dentist said, spinning around like a windmill in a cyclone. “Who said that?”

Selby realised his mistake and gave her a blank stare.

“It was you, wasn't it?” the dumbfounded dentist said, staring at Selby's innocent face.

It was a stealthy paw that crept out and slowly turned on the radio that stood on the bench next to the dentist's chair. Slowly, he turned the sound up and then just as slowly he pulled his paw back under the dental bib.

“Oh,” Dr Houndstooth said with some relief. “I must have left the radio on. For a
second I thought you — a dog — were actually singing. What a scream!”

“That was a close one,” Selby thought as he climbed down from the chair and headed for the waiting room. “Any closer and everyone would have had something to scream about.”

“This reptile cage must be fixed at once,” Mrs Trifle said to Postie Paterson, Bogusville's postman, amateur actor and keeper of reptiles at the Bogusville Zoo. “It's simply not fit for any sort of animal — not even a snake.”

“But who will look after Bazza the boa constrictor while I fix the cage?” Postie asked.

“I will,” said Mrs Trifle. “Put him in a box and bring him round to my house this afternoon. Make it early though because Dr Trifle and I have to go out at about three.”

Just before three o'clock Postie Paterson arrived at the Trifles' house with a big box and
put it down on the carpet next to where Selby lay, pretending to sleep.

“Bazza loves opera,” Postie told Mrs Trifle. “He was born in the trunk of a touring opera company, The Western Plains Bel Canto, and they used him in an opera when he was little.”

“Not a singing part, I trust,” Mrs Trifle said to be funny, knowing that animals couldn't sing — but not knowing that Selby could not only talk, he could sing the complete opera
Cleopatra and the Asp,
which he used to play on the stereo when the Trifles were out of the house.

“No, of course he didn't sing. He was just a prop. He was in an opera called
Cleopatra and the Asp
,” Postie Paterson said, not seeing Selby's ears shoot up. “You see, Cleopatra committed suicide by having a poisonous snake bite her. In the opera the soprano used to pick Bazza up, pretend he bit her and then sing to him for half an hour as she died. Of course boa constrictors aren't poisonous so they could use the same soprano night after night. Even now when I play
Cleopatra and the Asp
Bazza goes limp all over and I swear there are tears of joy in his eyes.”

“So how did a talented snake like this end up in the Bogusville Zoo?” Mrs Trifle asked.

“He outgrew the part,” Postie said. “He got so heavy that even the baritone couldn't lift him. The opera company was touring out here at the time so they just had to leave him.”

“Speaking of leaving,” Mrs Trifle said, “we have to go right away. I hope Bazza will be safe there in his box.”

“Perfectly,” Postie said. “Nothing to worry about. I'll get back to the zoo and fix the cage. I'll pick up Bazza tomorrow.”

“Snakes,” Selby said, peering in the air holes in the top of Bazza's box when Postie Paterson and the Trifles had left the house. “Sheeeeeeeesh! They give me the creeps. But,” he added, “Bazza must be special to have played lead snake in
Cleopatra and the Asp.
“

And Selby would have left it at that if he hadn't suddenly thought of the last episode of his favourite TV nature show,
Go and Grab ‘Em,
with Flash Finlay, who could outrun most wild animals and trick the rest into letting him catch them. In that show, Flash Finlay was covered from head to toe in carpet snakes.

“If snakes were warm and had fur,” he had said at the end of his program, “people would forget about keeping cats and dogs as pets and keep a snake instead. So until next week let me leave you with this suggestion: snuggle a snake tonight.”

“Want to hear some music?” Selby said, putting the first record of
Cleopatra and the Asp
on the stereo and then peering down the air holes in the box again to see if there were tears of joy in Bazza's eyes but not seeing any. “Blimey,” Selby added as his own eyes got a little watery. “Such a small box for a big snake. No wonder you're not having much fun.”

Selby opened the top of the box and looked straight into Bazza's sad eyes.

“Oh, Baz,” Selby said, “don't look at me like that. You're breaking my heart. Come on out of there you big sausage,” he added, tipping Bazza out onto the carpet like so many metres of rope.

Selby lay back listening to the heavenly strains of
Cleopatra and the Asp
and thinking how proud Flash Finlay would have been if he knew that one of
Go and Grab ‘Em's
greatest
fans had taken his advice and was snuggling a snake. All of which might have been perfectly okay if there hadn't been a cold wind blowing under the door.

“I'll tell you what, Baz,” Selby said, still looking for tears of joy in the snake's eyes but still not seeing any, “how about doing something useful like blocking that draught.”

Selby struggled to lift Bazza with his front paws without success. He then put his head under the snake and started to lift and push him in the direction of the door.

“Phew!” Selby said, struggling to push the great limp Bazza to where the draught was blowing in. “No
(puff)
wonder you had to
(puff puff)
retire. You weigh a
(puff)
tonne.”

Suddenly the record finished and the stereo turned off and just as suddenly the now-not-so-limp Bazza wound himself slowly around Selby's neck with his other end winding around Selby's legs.

“Ah — er — Bazza,” Selby said, trying to unwind the snake but finding that he was winding even faster, “would you mind stopping that?”

Selby flipped his head around and untangled Bazza from his neck, only to find that the snake's other end had taken two turns around his middle.

“If (gasp) I can only (gasp) get to the stereo and put on the next (gasp) record,” said Selby, gripped by snake and panic.

But Bazza was too heavy and Selby was stopped dead in his tracks next to the telephone.

“I've got it!” Selby said, snatching the phone and dialling the
Go and Grab ‘Em
show.

“Go and Grab ‘Em
,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “Flash Finlay speaking.”

“I took your advice, Flash,” Selby said, “and snuggled a snake.”

“Good for you,” Flash Finlay said cheerily, “that's the spirit. Thank you for calling —”

“Wait!” Selby interrupted. “I've got a bit of a problem.”

“And haven't we all these days,” Flash said.

“Well my problem's a bit (gasp) different from most,” Selby said as Bazza took another turn around his waist. “You see, the snake I (gasp) chose to snuggle is a boa constrictor and he's squeezing me.”

“No, no, no,” Flash said. “He's not squeezing you —

“He blinkin' well is, you know —” Selby said.

“No, he's
constricting.
That's what boa constrictors are all about”

“Squeezing, constricting, what's the difference?” Selby said. “He's wrapped himself around my waist and he won't let go.”

“Do you realise that a full-grown boa constrictor is capable of reducing a medium-size mammal to one large mouthful?” Flash said. “Why, I was on an expedition to the westernmost reaches of the Amazon a couple of years ago and I had with me my favourite tracker-dog. Next thing I knew the dog had strayed from the path and —”

“All right! All right!” Selby screamed.

“Don't you want to hear what happened to my dog?”

“No! Just … tell me … how to get this … monster off me,” Selby said, just barely able to choke out his words.

“I don't know,” Flash said. “That's not my department. I suppose you could try grabbing him with both hands and unwinding him.”

“And what if I don't have … (growk) … any (screek) … (glug),” Selby said as Bazza squeezed his throat. Now all Selby could do was make a bubbling, scraping sound and a high-pitched scream followed by another scream and another.

Slowly Bazza began to relax his grip, and Selby realised that his screams sounded just like the song of the dying soprano in
Cleopatra and
the Asp.
He kept screaming and singing till the snake had let go and lay limp at his feet on the carpet — this time with real tears of joy in his eyes.

“Hello! Hello!” said Flash Finlay's voice on the dangling telephone as Selby picked it up again. “Are you all right there?”

“Quite good, wouldn't you say,” Selby said, calmly pushing Bazza back into his box, “considering I haven't sung that part of
Cleopatra and the Asp
for over a month.”