The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse (6 page)

‘I thought you were. A poodle, I mean; I didn’t know about the French part.’

‘And you are a lurcher. Your name?’

‘Charley. I’m not meant to be here, I—’

‘Everyone says that,’ Alphonse said wearily.

‘No, but I’m meant to be in an aeroplane with Poppy. But a wicked woman didn’t take me to the aeroplane – she brought me here. Poppy said we were going to a beautiful
island and she’s always truthful; it’s horrible Mrs Keeper who looked after the house where Poppy lived who lied. She hated me.’

‘Was she meant to be going with you?’

‘No. It was just Poppy, her father and me.’

‘Ah, well – doubtless she was jealous. Anyway, you won’t be staying long here.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Lurchers never do. Also, the lady who brought you said it wouldn’t be for long.’

While Charley was wondering how on earth he could know what she’d meant, Alphonse said, ‘I can’t speak it, of course, but over the years I have learned to understand a good
deal of Masterspeak. I am highly intelligent, you see. And for the last eighteen and a half months I have had a good deal of time on my paws. I am going to lie down because my bones ache and I am
unusually old. You’ll find water in the corner over there if you want a drink. There’s no more food till breakfast.’

Charley was very tired, and his stomach rumbled because he was hungry, but it was a great relief to have someone to talk to. The barking had died down – there were dogs whimpering and
whining a bit: occasionally, an Alsatian a few cages along made a desolate howling sound. Every now and then he could hear an aeroplane, and each time he thought of Poppy flying miles away from him
and expecting to find him there when the aeroplane landed, and how she would feel when she discovered that he wasn’t, and this made a pain in his tummy and he was too sad to sleep.

‘I can feel you are very miserable. You’d better tell me about it – get it off your chest.’

Alphonse spoke very quietly; after a questioning look, Charley moved until their noses were almost touching.

‘We don’t want to wake the others,’ Alphonse said.

So Charley told him the whole story. Mainly he told him about Poppy and how much they loved one another. Poppy had no mother, he explained, and her father was so busy organising things that he
had very little time left for her. This also meant that he had never seemed to notice how horrible Mrs Keeper really was, as she always smiled at him and called him Sir Edward. As Charley told it,
he could see that she had been so angry because she wasn’t asked to go to the island with them. Charley said that he knew she had always hated him, but how could she be so cruel to Poppy?

Alphonse simply looked at him pityingly. ‘Human nature,’ he said, ‘tends to be worse than any other kind. I tremble to think what they would be like if they didn’t have
us.’He shifted his position on the hard floor. He was clearly in pain.

‘There are exceptions, of course. You have Poppy, and I have Major Hawkins Jones M.C.’

Charley tried hard to understand this. He didn’t have Poppy – she was miles away – and there was no sign of Major Hawk— or whatever his name was. But before he could ask,
Alphonse said, ‘Major Hawkins Jones is dead. We were taking our usual walk on Hampstead Heath, when he seemed to stagger and then he dropped down. He was trying to breathe. Then he just said,
“Sorry, old bloke – afraid this is it.” He tried to reach out to touch me, but his arm just flopped, and his head fell to one side and he didn’t move any more.’

Charley was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. He noticed that Alphonse was trembling and his large brown eyes were full of grief. ‘What did you do?’ he asked at last.

‘I stayed with him, of course. It was winter, and there was a frost. To begin with I thought I could revive him if I lay across his chest to warm him up, but he got colder and colder. In
the end I just lay beside him with my head against his face. It got dark and started to snow. I tried licking the snow off his face, but in the end I got too cold to move.’ He was silent for
a while as they both thought of that dreadful night.

Eventually Charley, unable to bear it, asked, ‘Then what happened?’

‘People came. A keeper saw us and then several people came with a large white van and lifted my Major onto a bed thing. I tried to stop them, but I was frozen stiff and I couldn’t
stand – only growl. I wanted to go with them, but my legs wouldn’t work properly. I whined and begged them to take me too, but of course, although I understand Masterspeak, I
can’t speak it. They put me in another car and brought me here, to the refuge. I heard them saying that they hoped to find me a new home, but people don’t want a really old dog
(I’m fifteen) so I’ve just stayed. They gave me this larger cage in the end because I’m good at calming down any very nervous new arrivals. Like you. That woman who brought you in
sometimes takes me out for walks, but I’m so stiff and sore in my legs that I don’t really enjoy it. And I don’t mind being shut up. I don’t really care about anything
without Major Hawkins Jones. A dog doesn’t have much to live for when his person is dead.’

Charley felt very sad for poor Alphonse, but he was also confused. ‘You said I had Poppy and you had Major Hawk—’ he couldn’t manage the whole name – ‘Jones.
But you haven’t got him if he is dead!’

‘Oh yes, I will always have him. He is always in my mind, you see. I think of him all the time. But of course it isn’t the same with you. Your Poppy is alive, and you have a chance
– a small chance, I admit – that she will find you. But even if she doesn’t, you will always know that you love her.’

Charley wanted to ask how Poppy could possibly find him, but Alphonse looked so weary and sad that he simply put his head on the poodle’s outstretched paws in silent sympathy, and they
both slept.

Charley was woken early the next morning by the other dogs shouting with excitement because a man was wheeling in a trolley that smelled strongly of food. Food! He realised
that he was famished, as he had not eaten anything since the half-biscuit that Poppy had given him at breakfast yesterday. (It seemed far longer than that – more like weeks.)

It took him a few seconds to realise where he was – in this place with the awful smells of dog fear, dog excitement, dog desperation. Everyone seemed to be barking, yapping, yelping
– some from excitement at the smell of food, some because they wanted someone to talk to them, some because they simply wanted to be let out – to be free. Charley felt something of all
these things, but at that moment food was the most urgent.

Alphonse and he were at the end of the aisle and were the last to be fed. The man put two bowls in their cage and filled up their water bowl from a jug. The barking was followed by the fainter
sounds of the inmates’ metal tags clinking against their bowls. Neither Charley nor his new friend had barked, and the man gave each of them a pat on the head. The food was mostly very dull
biscuits with some chunks of tinned meat. It did not taste like the food he had been used to, but he was too hungry to care. When he had finished, he noticed that Alphonse had only picked a few
pieces out of his bowl and was drinking quite a lot of water. Then the poodle wandered to a far corner at the back of the cage and squatted. ‘This is where we do this sort of thing,’ he
said. ‘Don’t want the place to become a pigsty.’

Charley didn’t know what a pigsty was, but he didn’t want their cage to become anything that Alphonse didn’t like. So he took the hint.

Then the moment that nothing was actually happening, his misery rolled over him like a horrible fog. He had lost Poppy and he could not think how to find her. If she had stayed in the country,
he thought, he would have found her somehow. He would not have stopped searching until there was nowhere left for her to be except the place where in the end he would find her.

He thought about this meeting – how she would be – asleep in a wood, on her pony looking for him, in the potting shed where they used to hide from Mrs Keeper when it was raining . .
.

‘It’s all right, old bloke.’ And he realised that the soft howling noise was him and there was a horrible ache in his chest.

Alphonse had moved up to him and was sympathising with his kind eyes. ‘It will get better,’ he said. ‘They’ll find you a good home.’

Charley wanted to say that the only good home for him would be with Poppy, but he was too choked up to speak.

‘I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll play a little game together . . .’

So they did. For the next few days they took it in turns to tell each other exactly what their days had been like with their beloved owners. Charley found it comforting to be able to tell
Alphonse every little thing about Poppy that came into his mind (and he was surprised how much that was), and he learned a very great deal about life with Major Hawkins Jones.

‘Every morning,’ Alphonse would begin in a dreamy voice, ‘the Major would let me out in the back garden of our flat, and when I came back there would be the wonderful smell of
bacon frying. He always had a cooked breakfast – sometimes with tomatoes, sometimes with fried bread, but always bacon – except Sundays; he always had sausages on Sundays, and I got one
as well. “There you are, old bloke,” he would say when he’d cut it up for me.’

Charley interrupted to ask what old blokes were.

‘Oh, they were the good people, the ones the Major approved of. There weren’t many of them – the Major said a lot of them had died. Old blokes were good; then there were
whipper-snappers, who were mostly young and made a noise, and then there were scum, and they were just plain awful. The Major used to read about them in his newspaper every morning while he was
drinking his bright brown tea – I had a saucer of that as he thought it was good for my coat, but really I just liked having the same as him. We lived on our own except occasionally an old
bloke would drop in for tea or another dark brown drink. But we really didn’t need other people. Major Hawkins Jones got a large floppy paper every morning which he read, and then he did the
crossword with a pencil on the paper. Judging from the bits he read aloud from the paper, no wonder it was called the
cross
word. Once he said that the whole country was going to the dogs;
I could tell he felt this would be awful, and judging by most of the dogs I met on the Heath, I certainly wouldn’t want everything going to them, but it worried me that he might think I was
just one of them, which I wasn’t. I was a poodle in a thousand.’

‘But I suppose you couldn’t tell him that.’ By now Charley felt that Alphonse was the best dog he had ever met.

‘I made myself clear. I looked at him for a long time without saying a word, and then I walked across the room and sat with my back to him until he came and apologised. “A figure of
speech” he called it, but it didn’t ring true to me: there are speeches with words and there are figures for things like how much money – am I boring you?’

‘Only a bit.’ Charley always tried to be honest, even if it was difficult – like now.

At that moment frenzied barking broke out because people were coming through the door at the far end of the passage.

‘They’re coming to look for a dog – to choose one and take it home with them, and all the dogs hope it will be them.’

‘Might they choose you?’ Charley felt suddenly frightened.

‘No – they never choose me. I’m too old; not worth the vet’s fees, I heard one of them say. They might choose you though.’

This was almost as alarming a prospect. ‘I only want Poppy as my owner. She is my owner.’

‘The trouble is,’ Alphonse said sadly, ‘that they have a choice, and we don’t.’

Charley went to the back of the cage and pretended to be asleep. ‘Lie in front of me,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps they won’t notice me.’

At the end of the day three or four dogs had been chosen – people seemed to want small ones – but they did not leave their cages. ‘They go and inspect the future owners’
homes first. They take a lot of trouble.’

In the early evening the woman – Alphonse said she was called Anne – put them both on leads and took them for a walk in a small park nearby. Alphonse ambled – walks hurt his
legs, he said, but Charley desperately wanted to stretch his, and pulled hard at his lead while trying to make reliable noises about coming back when he was called. ‘Oh – all right
then,’ Anne said, and let him go. He did two galloping circuits around Anne and his friend, and then went back to them, hot and smug. ‘What a good dog!’ she said as she took them
back.

Two more days went by like this. Charley learned a lot more about Major Hawkins Jones. He had a rather growly voice; he loved richly buttered crumpets, which they had for tea in winter, and very
hot curries (Charley couldn’t think what they were); he took ages to do the shopping while Alphonse sat outside the shops – ‘Bit short of cash this week,’ he would say
almost every week. On Fridays they queued at the place where he got his pension money. That day he would usually buy a chop or a kipper, though mostly he ate beans or sardines on toast. But he
always bought meat in tins for Alphonse, and biscuits and occasionally a bone if the butcher was in a good mood. Once a week he took his sheets and shirts and things to the launderette and they
waited while things got washed and dried. They went for two walks on the Heath every day, and once a year they went to stay with the Major’s sister Constance in a cottage in a place called
Rye. Alphonse loved it there – the different walks and getting to swim in the sea and at least three bones in the week that they were there. But the Major had what he called pros and cons: he
went through them every year while he stuffed things into his very heavy leather suitcase that had to be strapped shut with one of his belts as the clasps to shut it were broken. The pros were lots
of hot cooked food: shepherd’s pie, kedgeree, toad-in-the-hole, rice pudding, blackberry-and-apple crumble – things like that. A very nice pub down the lane where he could have a pint
with a lot of other sensible blokes who thought the world was not what it used to be; his sister to whom he could read bits out of the paper that enraged him. Cons: Constance went in for some
newfangled contraption – duvets, they were called, instead of sensible blankets and an eiderdown. Every year she presented him with either three pairs of socks or a pullover she had knitted
for him; the socks were of very scratchy wool that brought him out in a rash, and the pullovers were several sizes too small, or else, when he protested, so enormous that they hung around him like
a tent. He had to be grateful for these offerings. But the worst con was the awful cat. They both hated the cat, a huge ginger with a bright pink nose and a shady expression. In spite of the
endless saucers of food that he demolished several times a day, he tried to steal Alphonse’s daily meal (he only had one) and at night he brought in endless unfortunate mice, young birds and
once even a grass snake in a helpless swag between his jaws. He was a bully and a killer.