The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse (7 page)

They also discussed Charley’s situation at length and Alphonse, after some thought, said, ‘You know, she might call people here and ask whether you’ve turned up.’

‘How will I ever know that?’

‘Well, they’ll ask what your name is and then they’ll come and call you Charley, and then they will know. It’s just a thought,’ he added, as he saw – and
could hardly bear – the expression of wild hope in Charley’s eyes. ‘Don’t count on it – it’s only a small idea,’ he said later.

Charley said that he wouldn’t, but of course he did.

On the third day more people came looking for dogs, among them two oldish-looking women. One of them, seeing Charley curled up at the back of the cage as usual exclaimed, ‘Oh – a
lurcher! I’ve always wanted a lurcher. They are so heraldic – like medieval embroidery!’ She asked Anne if she could have a better look, and Anne came and made him come out of the
cage, holding him by his collar. Charley stood trembling with his tail between his legs. ‘Poor thing! He looks so miserable. He clearly needs a good home!’ The woman stroked Charley,
ruffling up his fur the wrong way; he didn’t like the smell of her at all. The woman talked to Anne for a bit and then they went away.

‘That was a near thing,’ Charley said.

But Alphonse said he didn’t think so at all. ‘They’ve agreed to go and look at her home, and if they think it’s all right, she’ll take you. She said she lived in a
large house near a park and it has a back garden. It could be worse, you know.’

‘No, it couldn’t. I don’t like her and I’d far rather be with you anyway. If she’d take both of us—’

‘My dear old bloke, she won’t do that. I told you – I really don’t care. I’ll miss you, of course, but don’t worry about me.’

Charley was full of horribly mixed feelings. He knew it was good to be called a bloke, but he realised that when he had said that he would far rather be with Alphonse, he was thinking only of
himself and hardly at all about his lonely intelligent heartsick old friend. He wanted to howl – about everything: about Poppy being gone, about his first real friendship being stopped, about
how awful it must be for Alphonse with Major Hawkins Jones being dead . . .

‘Would you like a bit of a groom?’

He knew that Alphonse – like most dogs – had bits around the bottom of his ears that his paws and tongue couldn’t reach.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’

Charley recognised that this must be one of the Major’s sayings; he often couldn’t understand what on earth they actually meant, but in this case he could tell that Alphonse would
like a bit of grooming, so he set about it.

Two more days went peacefully by; more people came and looked at more dogs, and one rather dangerous-looking man said he would like Charley, but when he had gone Alphonse said
that Anne had said he was already bespoke.

‘It means that you are going to that woman,’ Alphonse told him, and indeed, that is what happened. The next morning he just had time to touch his friend’s nose before he was
reluctantly dragged away. ‘You’ll be all right, old bloke,’ were the poodle’s last words, as Charley was led down the long passage back to the place where Mrs Keeper had
left him.

When Charley was unhappy and afraid, he shook. He stood now – trembling. He looked at Anne, silently beseeching her to save him, but she, all smiles like his new owner, was busy fixing the
brand-new collar that the owner had brought. Her name seemed to be Hoot, or Coot, as Anne kept repeating that when they talked – and did not seem to notice how he was feeling. Hoot or Coot
kept patting him and pushing his fur the wrong way, and when she tried to lead him out of the door he wouldn’t budge, and Anne had to take over. Do you know what it’s like when you feel
rotten and sad about something but somehow you can’t tell anyone about it? Well, Charley was like that. He was leaving the last place that had any connection at all with Poppy – Mrs
Keeper, horrid though she was, had brought him from Poppy’s house to here – and he was leaving the first dog friend he had ever had – Alphonse. He felt his heart would break.

Anne put him in the back seat of Hoot’s car and gave him a final pat. He licked her hand – giving her one last desperate look – but she shut the car door and stood waving at
Hoot as the car started its journey.

The car smelled strongly of Hoot – a mixture of her hot skin smell and a kind of sweetish scent, plus wafts of tobacco that reminded him of Poppy’s father, and that made him feel sad
even more than he felt sick. He sat bolt upright during the drive with his nose resting on the crack of the open window. Something told him that he’d better watch where they were going, in
case he got a chance to escape.

Eventually the car stopped outside a tall house with railings and steps up to the door.

‘Come along, Muffin!’ Hoot cried as she dragged him out.

‘Your name is Muffin,’ she told him, and kept repeating the idiotic name. Alphonse had said that it was a large house with a garden. What no one had mentioned was that Hoot or Coot
lived in a very small flat on the ground floor of the large house. There were two rooms – one that looked out onto the street and one at the back that looked out onto the garden. There was a
small kitchen and a tiny bathroom. The whole place was rather dark and smelled – apart from Hoot’s smells – of damp earth.

He stood, shivering, while she unclipped his lead and fetched two bowls from the kitchen, one with water and the other with some food. ‘There you are, Muffin.’ She took him by the
collar and dragged him over to the bowls, trying to push his nose into the food, but he didn’t feel like eating. He sensed that this was making her cross, but then her telephone rang and she
talked into it for a long time. He looked around the small back room that contained a bed and other furniture and, in the corner near the window that looked onto the garden, a large cardboard box
with a blanket in it. After a bit, he lay in that.

She seemed pleased about that, and came over and ruffled his fur; ‘Good boy, Muffin.’

Later she opened the window (which came down to the ground) and let him out into the garden. It had walls down its long sides and some kind of fencing at the bottom. He looked carefully to see
if there was any way out, but there wasn’t, unless he could jump over the fence, but there was a steep sloping bed in front of it that meant he would have to jump from a standing position.
Also the fence was covered with some climbing plant that, when he nosed it, turned out to be thorny.

‘Muffin! Muffin?’

She was calling him. He had a quick pee and, after leaving it long enough for her to realise that Muffin was not his name, he walked slowly back to the house. ‘Good boy!’ she said in
her treacly voice.

She talks to me as though I am a stupid baby,
he whined miserably
. Poppy never talked to me like that. Nor Alphonse
. At the thought of them, a fresh wave of misery overcame
him. As soon as he was inside, she shut the window and left the flat. He had a drink of water, but couldn’t face his food. He heard her car drive off and then all was silent. He went
miserably to his box and, sitting upright in it, he lifted his head and howled.

It was hours before she came back, and he pretended to be asleep. As she undressed she kept saying he was a good boy and she came and ruffled his fur up the wrong way before getting into her
bed. He didn’t sleep much, but when he did doze off, dreams of escaping flitted through his mind, and he woke because he was twitching with the excitement of bounding along – free. It
wasn’t much fun waking up in the cardboard box with the Hoot smell, which seemed worse in the morning.

Hoot let him out in the garden, and when he came back she was dressed and drinking some black drink that he recognised as coffee. She put some food down for him and then left. He heard her car
starting up and driving away. He was alone in this silent locked-up place.

Hours later she came back, put him on a lead and walked him in the street for a bit and then he was back in the flat again and she went off in her car again. She didn’t come back for
hours. In the evening she returned and took him for another dreary walk. He couldn’t even run, which would have cheered him up a bit, because she never let him off the lead.

And that was what the days were like. He ate hardly any food and simply couldn’t respond to her advances – patting him and telling him what a good Muffin he was. He sensed that this
was making her cross, but he really didn’t care.

And then, out of the blue, he had an enormous stroke of luck. Or possible luck. Two men – an old one and a young one – turned up one morning before Hoot left. Hoot seemed to know
them well. She took them to the kitchen. He heard her talking about him and then talking a lot more, and then she rushed out, rushed back and threw them some keys. ‘Goodbye, Muffin,’
she called as she left the flat.

He had been lying quietly in his box, but as soon as she had gone, he went to the kitchen. He wanted the men to like him, so he wagged his tail and looked into their faces. They stroked him and
spoke in kindly voices. The younger one, who was rather spotty, was making tea, and the older one, who had a beard, was unpacking a bag full of hammers and things. Then Beard said something to
Spotty. Spotty got up from the floor where he had been laying out parts of a washing machine and went out of the flat. Charley followed him to the door, which he left open, and watched to see if he
left the main front door open as well. He did, but only a crack, and Charley was afraid that by the time he would have managed to push it wide enough to get through Spotty would be coming back up
the path that led to the street. So he sat by the flat door, trying to look as though the last thing he wanted to do was escape.

He was quite right to wait. Spotty came back very quickly; he carried a paper bag that smelled delicious. He went to the kitchen and Charley followed him to the door. Beard was sitting on the
floor cleaning something with a small stiff brush. A mug of steaming dark brown tea sat on the floor between his legs. After Spotty had poured himself another steaming mug, he sat opposite him and
unwrapped the contents of the paper bag. The smell became unbearably wonderful, and Charley realised how hungry he was. He edged himself into the kitchen – there was only just room for him
– and gazed longingly at the stack of thick meat sandwiches that Spotty and Beard were chewing. He made a tiny whimpering sound. It worked. Spotty broke off pieces from his sandwich and gave
them to him. Charley’s tail beat the floor in gratitude. By the time they had finished, he had had the best part of two sandwiches. He licked both their hands to thank them, and they patted
him and said he was a good dog. He went into the front room and had a long drink of water, and then lay down by the door with his head between his paws. He was much too nervous and excited to sleep
as he realised that his one chance of escape would be when the men had finished their work and went back out to their van.

He was wrong. He heard them clattering about with their tools, and then they sounded as though they were arguing, and finally as though they were having a full-scale row. Then Spotty came out
– you couldn’t see his spots because he was so red in the face from rage. He stormed out of the flat, leaving both doors wide open. Charley didn’t hesitate. He slipped through the
flat door, and the front one. Then he paused. The back doors of the van were open, but all he could see of Spotty was his bottom and his boots. He was burrowing well into the back of the van.

Charley ran – as fast as he had ever run in his life. He did not stop until he was several streets away from Hoot’s prison flat. His instinct had been to go back to Poppy’s
home, but he told himself that a) she would not be there, and b) horrible Mrs Keeper might be.

Eventually he reached the small park where Hoot had taken him once for a dreary walk on the lead. He found some bushes to hide in while he got his breath back and thought what to do.

This did not take him long. He knew – almost at once – that he must get back to the refuge place to be with Alphonse, his only friend, who at least knew how badly he was missing
Poppy. It seemed a long way away, but he was sure that somehow he would find it.

He waited until dusk before he set out. He no longer trusted any people, and he was especially afraid of people in cars in case they were Hoot coming to look for him. Mostly he trotted
purposefully in what he thought was the right direction, but whenever he saw anyone he ran down the nearest side street. When it got dark and the street lights came on, there was nothing for it but
to run. After some crashing noises in the sky it began to rain. The rain got worse and he was soon soaked, but the good thing about this was that there were hardly any people in the streets, and
they were all too concerned with getting out of the wet to notice him. He ran for miles until he was really tired and thirsty. He drank some water out of quite a nice puddle, but the moment he
stopped running he began to shiver. Then, suddenly his nose picked up the smells of the refuge place, and there was the wall with the gate in it that Hoot had taken him through. He knew he could
not jump over the wall, as apart from being too high, it had an extra fence of wire on top of the brick. He was shaking with cold now, but the rain had stopped and it began to be less dark. How
could he get in? Then he remembered that Mrs Keeper had pressed a knob and talked to the gate and it had said something back and then opened. He stood on his hind legs to find the knob – yes!
There it was – a round thing with a button in the middle. He tried pushing it with his nose, but that didn’t work. He tried leaping up to push the knob, but his paws were the wrong
shape to get at the button. He could not think what to do. It was getting light quite quickly now; the street lamps had gone out and there began to be traffic – cars and buses and people on
bicycles. He was terribly afraid that Hoot would turn up and stuff him into her horrid-smelling car. He was shaking with cold, his coat had not dried and he felt too weak to go on trying to press
the difficult button. His despair was so great that when he saw two oldish women walking along the pavement towards him he decided on a final desperate plan. When they were a few yards away, he
began scrabbling at the door and making noises that were a mixture of whining and yelps. They stopped. They made kindly noises, and one of them patted him. Then, wonderfully, one of them pushed the
button, and, after a pause, he heard Anne’s voice. Then the door opened, and he bounded in – up the path to the second door, which he pushed open. This final effort was too much for
him, and he collapsed.