Love in a Mist Read online

  ‘Maths, RE … We had news assembly.’

  ‘Oh? What was your news?’

  ‘It wasn’t our year’s turn.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ I thought she sounded rather relieved. ‘What sort of thing do people say?’

  ‘Holidays and stuff. What they did at the weekend.’

  Zinny frowned. ‘What do they do at the weekend?’

  ‘Go to places. Like Harrington House.’

  I knew this would go down well: Harrington House was the local stately home where we’d been a couple of times ourselves. ‘Really? Do they like it?’

  The truth was that most of my schoolmates found the tour of the house boring – ‘interesting’ and ‘very interesting’ were the telltale words – but they did like the other stuff.

  I waited, hoping to get away and listen to my tranny, but Zinny was pleased with the way things were going.

  ‘Let’s see,’ she said, ‘what did we do last weekend?’

  We thought about this. My parents had been out on both Friday and Saturday nights (on the first I went to a friend’s house, on the second Mrs March came round), and had slept in the next morning. On Saturday I’d gone to the beach with my father. On Sunday he’d played cricket and because it was sunny we’d gone along, sitting under the tree behind the bowler’s arm, my mother reading her book behind dark glasses and me coming and going from the swings where I’d made friends with a girl who’d come with the other team.

  ‘Just a nice family weekend,’ suggested Zinny, content to have put a label on it. The slightly dull wastes of daytime had probably seemed restful to them after their late nights.

  ‘Can we have a dog?’ I asked. I tried this from time to time when Zinny was in a good mood. If Dad was around he’d say, ‘Oh yes, come on darling, do let’s!’ But he was only teasing and Zinny usually raised an eyebrow and quirked her mouth in disdain at the very idea.

  This time she said: ‘I suppose we could discuss it.’

  Had I heard her right? For the first time the door had been left ajar, admitting the merest thread of light. I was so gobsmacked I didn’t even take her up on it in case she changed her mind. I scooted off, but I knew I’d have to make headway with my father at the very next opportunity. He could be relied on to say whatever was easiest for everyone on any given occasion. I would need to make my case so that he’d actually feel able to back me up to Zinny.

  Next time he had a weekday at home, we went for our usual walk on the beach after school. A few hundred yards from our house there was a lay-by where people often pulled over to admire the view of the bay. From here there was a precipitous wooden walkway of broad rickety steps with a wobbly handrail that broke off long before you reached the bottom. It wasn’t surprising that the walkway was in a poor state of repair: passers-by couldn’t be bothered to pick their way down between the brambles and sloes to a beach where there were no facilities and where the sea came in to within yards of the cliff at high tide. Round the headland in Salting there was ample parking and a nice high street, plus beach huts, loos, a tea shop that sold homemade local ice cream, and helpful boards giving the times of tides, which anyway didn’t affect the available space the way they did here. Plus, you could walk back to your car without risking a coronary.

  Occasionally in the parking spot we’d catch remarks about our house, along the lines of ‘Nice place … lovely position … but honestly would you want to live here in the winter …?’

  I often thought the same thing myself. I liked the house, and where it was, but in some way I couldn’t work out it didn’t quite ‘go’ with my parents.

  Today we had the place to ourselves. My father had stuffed a plastic bag in his trouser pocket so we could pick blackberries on the way back. He always looked at the sloes and said he had once made sloe gin and might well do so again, but as far as I know he never did. I once tried a sloe and it made my whole face wince and my tongue pucker. He laughed and said, ‘Serves you right.’

  The weather that day was soft, grey and blustery, the wind just enough to keep the rain clouds moving along. The waves bustled and rushed, rearing up and flopping down on the shiny stones and patches of silky grey sand. The bay was no more than half a mile long, with rocks at either end. The rocks to the west were piled up like a ruined castle, good for climbing on; the eastern ones were a long low tumble covered in slimy green weed and bladder wrack, where you could find crabs, anemones and sometimes little fish in the pools at low tide. We turned right, to the west. Because not many people could be bothered to come here the beach should have been clean, but stuff still got washed up by the tide, and blown about from the over-full bin in the lay-by; my father and I would pick up the more egregious items like cans and bottles, and either hide them or, if we could be bothered, carry them to the top and dispose of them. Today everything was pristine apart from a very dead gull, its feathers shimmering with microscopic scavengers.

  I came at the topic obliquely. ‘Did you have any pets when you were young?’

  ‘Umm …’ He paused and kicked at a clump of seaweed. ‘Let’s see …’

  ‘You had that rabbit,’ I reminded him. This was not a new conversation.

  ‘Oh yes.’ He stooped to pick up a shell, studied it and discarded it. ‘Correct.’

  ‘Thumper.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory, Floss.’ We both knew I didn’t have a particularly good memory, it was just that we were on familiar territory.

  ‘Did you look after him?’

  ‘Not if I could help it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I told you, because he was a vicious brute.’

  ‘But he was a rabbit!’

  ‘Rabbits aren’t all fluffy cuddly bunnies. Ask any vet.’

  We’d been through all this before. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He met a sticky one.’

  ‘Were you sad?’

  ‘Stop it, Floss.’

  ‘What?’

  He continued to walk but put his hand on the top of my head and rubbed gently back and forth as if erasing my thoughts. ‘You know jolly well what. No dog. Your mother’s not keen and it’s not fair to keep on about it.’

  ‘But she’s not not keen. Not so much as she was. She said we could all think about it.’

  ‘Did she?’ He pulled a face. ‘Well, now we have.’

  I remember we had nearly reached the castle of rocks. Even on completely calm days there would be spouts of spray around its base, and you could hear the fierce hissing and sucking of the sea; in the gullies between the rocks the trapped water banged and smacked around, trying to get out. What usually happened was that I ran on ahead and climbed up as far as I could – at ten years old I was still in the ‘Look at me!’ phase when all that was required of my father was to stand at the bottom and wave admiringly.

  But just as we reached that point, a dog appeared.

  I mean it literally appeared, manifested itself, materialized out of some concealed alley through the rocks about halfway up and hurtled dangerously down the uneven sprawl towards us. We scarcely had time to react before it was upon us, a medium-sized, brown and black wire-haired dog with sticky-out eyebrows and a beard and a pointed tail that went round and round like a propeller as it greeted us.

  ‘Hey, what’s all this, who are you, where’s your collar?’ enquired my father pointlessly and amiably as the dog leapt around us, grinning and panting and planting its wet gritty paws on our legs.

  I knew exactly what it was all about. The collarless dog had been sent in answer to my prayers.

  ‘Where’s your owner?’ asked my father, tousling the dog’s head; the dog didn’t answer. ‘Be here soon I expect, eh?’

  I climbed up the rocks, and the dog followed, then tore back to my father, then up again, barking enthusiastically. It was an indefatigable animal, full of beans and the joys of spring.

  ‘Careful he doesn’t knock you over!’ called my father. ‘Floss – hear me? Be careful!’

  I knew he wouldn
’t knock me over. He was as surefooted as a goat and wanted only to keep me company.

  ‘Can you see anyone over there?’

  I pulled myself up on to my best vantage point, where I could see the narrower strip of beach on the far side. It was completely empty as I knew it would be.

  ‘No! Nobody here!’

  The dog stood next to me, gazing in the same direction and panting happily. Then suddenly he rushed down on to the other beach and charged crazily back and forth, picking up a stick on the way and shaking it.

  ‘Right!’ called my father from behind me. ‘He’ll know his way home. Come on.’

  Hearing my father’s voice the dog dropped the stick, looked up with his head cocked and then charged back up to where I was standing.

  ‘Damn, did you call him? You’re not encouraging him, Floss, are you?’

  ‘No!’ I shouted back happily. Something told me I didn’t need to do any encouraging.

  ‘Come on down now. If we set off in the opposite direction he’ll soon lose interest and go back where he belongs.’

  He didn’t, of course; I knew he wouldn’t. We went all the way to the far end of the beach, alternately ignoring him and, in my father’s case, shooing him away, but to no avail. I was careful not to say anything, though at one point my father looked down at me with a comical frown and said, ‘Floss, you don’t know this dog, do you?’

  ‘No!’ I said, hoping I sounded aggrieved.

  ‘OK.’

  He picked up a stick and hurled it as far as he could into the sea. He was a cricketer: he could throw miles.

  ‘Come on.’ He grabbed my hand and towed me towards the steps – I could hardly keep up. I glanced back and saw the dog’s head bobbing on the surface of the waves, a long way out. My father tugged. ‘Don’t worry about him, he’s fine!’

  We were only a short way up when the dog overtook us, dropped the stick on the next step and had a massive shake, spraying us with sea water. My father first yelped in outrage, then roared with laughter. It was an absolutely delicious moment.

  ‘Right,’ said my father, still chortling. ‘Point taken, I give up.’

  He was wearing a soft, frayed webbing belt, and he took this off and threaded it round the dog’s neck. It made a very short lead, but the dog became docile and walked nicely, so my father handed the end of the belt to me. The dog seemed content, as if the makeshift lead were a place of safety. I thought I might die of happiness as the three of us made our way up to the road.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Well he’s clearly run away from someone or somewhere; he’s well looked after. I’m going to look up the numbers of local vets and ask them to put something on their notice boards. There must be a system for lost dogs.’

  I wondered what Zinny would say, but decided not to mention her. This had been my father’s decision and his only; I’d had nothing to do with it. When we got home we dried the dog with an old tea towel, and put down a bowl of water in the kitchen. I petted him (it was a him: he had a willy with a sprout of hair like a jaunty feather) while my father sat at the table with the handset and the yellow pages, looking up vets and making calls. It was clear from his end of the conversation that they didn’t hold out a lot of hope. The very first one asked what breed the dog was, and of course we didn’t know, so my father said it was a mongrel, and described the colour as black and tan, which was near enough. Not having a collar was a problem; I suppose if he had had one we’d have been able to contact the owner ourselves. Dad left our name and phone number, and after three calls he put the handset back and lit a cigarette while he gazed at the dog. This was a sure sign of discombobulation: Zinny was very against his smoking and was trying to make him give up. He flapped his hand in front of his face, and I opened the window.

  ‘OK,’ said my father, ‘here’s what I suggest. We leave Towser here for half an hour and pop over to Salting. We can put a postcard in the post office window, and the newsagent’s, and I suppose we’d better pick up some dog food and some sort of collar from somewhere.’

  All this made my heart leap, but I stayed poker-faced.

  Or so I thought. ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ said my father. ‘I wonder if we have time for me to dig out the Polaroid and take a photograph …’

  I knew what he meant: he meant did we have time before Zinny got back. Of course we couldn’t find the Polaroid to begin with, until he slapped his hand to his forehead and went to rummage in his bedside drawer.

  Something about the camera in front of my father’s face made the dog jump about excitedly, but I got hold of his scruff and kneeled down next to him and made him sit.

  We waited for the damp print to scroll out of the camera.

  ‘Not a bad mug shot,’ said my father. ‘For a dog.’

  We put the folded picnic rug down on the floor as a bed, but the dog just stood there, gazing glumly at us, tail swinging, as we closed the kitchen door.

  ‘Would it be better to take him?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely not; we don’t know how he’d behave in the car. We shan’t be long.’

  We weren’t. My father bought a packet of postcards in the post office, asked the girl to stick the photo on and scribbled a few lines including our phone number. Then we dashed into the Co-op and bought four tins of dog food. Four! No joy with collars and no time to look.

  ‘We’ll have to improvise,’ said my father.

  We jumped back in the car and whizzed back out of town, forking left on to the coast road that led to our house.

  ‘Oh no,’ said my father. ‘Damn.’

  Zinny’s green mini was in the drive.

  The kitchen door was still closed, and the house was quiet. I closed the door behind us.

  ‘Zinny!’

  While my father waited, I took the bag of dog food through to the kitchen. The dog was standing exactly where we’d left him, and leapt for joy, tail thrashing, nearly knocking me over. I put the tins on the table and went back into the hall, careful to shut the door again behind me. My father was fiddling about outside with the car; it occurred to me that he felt just as unsure of himself as I did. This struck me as encouraging – he and I were together in this situation which made it two against one.

  ‘So.’ Zinny came out of their bedroom. She had changed out of her work clothes, and was wearing a yellow shirt that tied at the waist, and black trousers. ‘Who’s going to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘He was lost and he wouldn’t leave us alone.’ I was inspired, I knew what to say. ‘And he’s got no collar so we brought him back. We thought he might cause an accident,’ I added. We had thought no such thing, but it was the kind of thing adults said.

  ‘I see.’

  Nico came in, looking rather sheepish. I could tell from his face that unlike me, he was not inspired.

  ‘Hi darling, sorry about the visitor.’

  ‘Flora’s been explaining.’

  ‘He was very wet and very lost, we didn’t have much option … We’ve put out notices, haven’t we, Floss?’

  I nodded furiously. ‘That’s what we were just doing.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Zinny, ‘good. He seems a perfectly nice animal, I don’t suppose it’ll be long. Just so long as I don’t have to have anything to do with him.’

  ‘I’ll make tea, shall I?’ said my father, going into the kitchen and closing the door after him. I knew he’d feed the dog; I was a bit jealous but didn’t give in to it.

  Instead I followed Zinny into the living room. She picked up the paper, kicked off her shoes and sat on one end of the sofa with her long legs curled up next to her. I couldn’t quite believe it. Was that it? What had she said?

  Oh well … a perfectly nice animal …

  Did that mean everything was all right? That if no-one claimed the dog he could stay? I wasn’t going to ask.

  ‘Do watch telly if you want to,’ said Zinny.

  ‘It’s OK thanks.’

  She looked at me over the pap
er. ‘What?’

  ‘I said it’s OK. Thanks. I don’t want to.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and help Daddy bring the tea through?’

  ‘OK.’

  I could feel her watching me as I went. In the kitchen the dog was noisily wolfing down his food (still can-shaped, he hadn’t mashed it up) out of a plastic mixing bowl which wasn’t up to the job, so food was going all over the place.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said my father, ‘I’ll clear it up.’

  ‘I will.’ I peeled off several squares of kitchen towel and knelt down by the dog, wiping and pinching to collect the bits. To my surprise, he growled. I saw the white of his eye, and his top lip curled back threateningly.

  ‘Best not to disturb him when he’s eating,’ said my father unnecessarily as I jumped up in alarm. Seconds later the bowl was empty and the dog was hoovering up the stuff on the floor, tail wagging happily enough. We stared at him. My father pursed his lips.

  ‘I suppose he should go out.’

  ‘I’ll take him.’

  My father re-attached the belt. ‘Be careful of the road.’

  The small garden of our house was at the front, laid to grass with a shingle path and a single wind-twisted Scots pine. A low wall made of pebbles mixed with cement separated it from the road – there was no footpath. As the dog and I stood there, gazing at each other expectantly, I was conscious of my parents’ faces turned my way. The window that was on the latch was opened further and my father leaned out.

  ‘Why not take him up the hill a little way? But don’t for heaven’s sake let go of him, will you?’

  I was already on my way. Let go of Towser? That was never going to happen, never!

  FOUR

  1989

  When I was twenty I was working at the Dorset Arms Hotel in Lyme, living in as a junior housekeeper. I say junior, but actually I was doing rather well, moving up on the inside of the full housekeeper Mrs Collings. Fortunately she was nice, and encouraging. It was tacitly acknowledged between us that I was better at dealing with the guests (whom she regarded as a necessary evil, always messing up the beds, complaining about the TVs and leaving unmentionables in the bathroom bins), but there was nothing you could teach her about readying a room. Her half-hour induction course was a swift, economical exemplar of time-and-motion put into practice, after which the place would be fully functional and spotless.