Dogsbody

That night Tibbles came and curled up on Kathleen’s bed beside Sirius. “You’re heavy, the two of you,” Kathleen said, heaving them about with her feet. “If you weren’t so warm, I’d kick you off.” She managed to find a space for her feet along beside the wall and fell asleep murmuring, “I’m glad you like one another. But what about poor old Romulus and Remus?”

However, to Kathleen’s pleasure, her puppy now got on well with all three cats. Romulus and Remus were not as affectionate to Sirius as Tibbles, but that was because it was not in their nature. But they liked him. They respected him for rescuing Tibbles when neither of them would have dared. And he was big enough to warm a number of cats at once. It became quite a regular thing – as soon as the cats had ceased keeping out of Duffie’s way – to find all four animals piled together in a heap on the hearthrug, the cats purring and Sirius lazily thumping his tail. Sirius liked this heap. It reminded him of the time when he had wriggled in a crowd of other puppies.

He became very fond of all three cats. They were quaint and knowing. It made him feel cleverer to be friends with them, and it made him feel very clever indeed when he discovered that they could not understand what humans said.

Before long, Sirius was understanding most of human talk. The cats could never learn more than a word or two. They came to depend on Sirius to tell them if anything important was being said. Whenever Duffie went into one of her cold rages, they would come and ask Sirius anxiously what had annoyed her this time. It gave him a pleasant sense of superiority to be able to tell them, even if what he had to say was, “I put mud on the sofa,” or, “Kathleen gave me a bone when there was still some meat on it.”

“It’s a pity,” Tibbles remarked once, reflectively licking a paw, “that she hates you so much. Perhaps you ought to go and live somewhere else.”

“I don’t think Kathleen would like me to go,” Sirius said.

“Kathleen could go with you. She hates her, too,” Tibbles observed.

Sirius knew that. One of the first things he tried to find out, as soon as he understood enough talk, was why Duffie hated Kathleen so. It was not easy to discover, because there were so many things connected with it that he did not quite understand. He had to find out why Basil was always jeering at Kathleen for being Irish, and what it meant to be Irish, and why Kathleen spoke in a clipped, lilting way which was different from the rest of the family.

Then, one night, Sirius heard a man talking on television in the same rapid but singing accent. Up to then, he had not realised he could learn anything from either the television or the radio. He tried to attend to both after that. The radio defeated him. It spoke in a blank, boxy voice, and it had no face or picture to show him what it was talking about, but the television proved easy to follow and much more informative. At length, he had it all sorted out.

The family was English, and they were called Duffield, but Kathleen was from a country called Ireland, where bad things were happening, and her name was Kathleen O’Brien. In some parts of Ireland, Sirius gathered, cars and buildings were sent up in flames, and people were killed by other people when they answered a knock at their front door.

Sometimes the Irish people came and did this in England, too, which accounted for some of the things Basil said. Kathleen’s mother was some kind of relation to Mr Duffield – he of the thunderous voice – but she had left Ireland when the trouble started and run away to America. And Kathleen’s father had been put in prison for taking part in the violence. So Mr Duffield had sent for Kathleen to come and live with them.

Try as he might, Sirius could not connect Kathleen with the scenes of violence he saw on television. She was the gentlest and most reliable person in the household. But it was plain that both Basil and Duffie did.

Duffie’s real name was Daphne Duffield, and she disliked Kathleen for a number of reasons. She had been very angry that Mr Duffield had not consulted her before sending for Kathleen. That started it. Then Kathleen had no money, except a very little her father had once sent her from prison. Duffie went on at great length, whenever she was cross – which was frequently – about having another mouth to feed, and the cost of clothes, and the cost of Sirius, and the cost of all the china Kathleen broke washing up, and a great many other costs. And Duffie disliked Irish people. She called them feckless. She called Kathleen lazy and stupid and sluttish.

Kathleen did all the cooking and most of the housework and dozens of odd jobs as well. But because she was not much older than Robin, she did not always do these things well. Some things she had never done before, some she was not strong enough to do, and sometimes she would start playing with Sirius and forget that she was supposed to be cleaning out the bathroom. Then Duffie came and said all these things, cold and high, making Kathleen tremble and Sirius cower.

Duffie always concluded her scolding with, “And I shall have that creature destroyed unless you mend your ways.”

Sirius learnt that he was being used to blackmail Kathleen into doing all the work and being scolded into the bargain. When Kathleen had brought him home as a tiny sopping puppy and Duffie had been so very angry, Kathleen had promised to help in the house if Duffie let her keep Sirius. Duffie held her to it. By the end of the summer, Duffie was doing nothing but make pots and scold Kathleen. And Sirius began to long to sink his teeth in Duffie. When she grew cold and shrill at Kathleen, Sirius would eye her bulging calves and yearn with a great yearning to plant a bite in one. He did not do it, because he knew it would not help Kathleen at all. Instead, he rumbled deep in his chest and shook all over with the effort of not biting Duffie.

He wished Mr Duffield would stop Duffie treating Kathleen so badly, but he soon learnt that Mr Duffield was only interested in the work that took him out of the house every day till evening and only complained if Duffie made him uncomfortable. Duffie was not usually unpleasant to Kathleen in the evenings.

Basil was unpleasant to Kathleen most of the time. Sirius soon gathered that Basil did not really dislike Kathleen. He was just imitating Duffie.

As Sirius grew larger, and larger still, Basil ceased to frighten him at all. Whenever he saw that Basil’s mindless jeering was getting on Kathleen’s nerves, Sirius stopped him. Usually it was only necessary to distract Basil by starting a game. But if Basil was being very bad tempered, Sirius found he could shut him up by staring at him. If he fixed his queer green eyes on Basil’s light blue ones and glared, Basil would round on him and jeer at him instead.

“Shamus Wolf! Sneaking filthy mongrel! Rat redears!” Sirius never minded this at all.

“I read in a book that no animal could look a human in the eyes,” Robin once remarked unwisely.

“Leo’s unusual,” said Kathleen.

Basil punched Robin’s nose. He was about to go on and punch Robin everywhere else, but Sirius rose, rumbling all over, and pushed in between them. Robin ran away and locked himself in the broom-cupboard. Basil was frightened. He saw he could easily turn Shamus Wolf into a permanent enemy, and that would be a waste, since he was far more fun that the stupid cats.

“I’ll take the Rat for his walk, if you like,” he offered. The Rat was only too ready to come. And, as Kathleen was busy trying to scrape dozens and dozens of tiny new potatoes, she agreed.

So Basil and Sirius went and raced round and round the green meadow, shouting and barking vehemently. They met four other dogs and five other boys, and all of them ran up and down in the mud at the edge of the river until they were both black and weary. When they came home, Robin was waiting, rather puffy-eyed, to fling his arms round Sirius and get licked. Sirius licked him tenderly. He was fond of Robin and knew his position was a difficult one. Robin was the only one in the family who liked Kathleen, and he adored dogs. But he was only a little boy. He was scared of Basil and he wanted to please Duffie.

Unfortunately, Sirius had forgotten how muddy he was. Mud went on Robin and got plastered on the kitchen floor as well. Duffie came in and coldly raged. Kathleen was in the middle of cooking supper, but she had to find time to get Robin clean clothes and wash the kitchen floor, while Basil jeered and Robin wavered miserably between jeering too and offering to help. It was one of many times when Sirius felt he would be doing Kathleen a kindness if he ran away.

He did not run away because, as he had told Tibbles, he knew it would make Kathleen unhappy. Besides, there were times when Duffie was safely in her shop when he had great fun. Robin, Kathleen – and Basil too, if he was in the mood – would do a romp-thing in the living-room, of which the aim seemed to be to stuff Sirius under the sofa – only they usually lost sight of the aim and ended simply rolling in a heap.

Or they would all go out to the meadow and throw sticks for Sirius to fetch out of the river. Sirius fetched the stick, but the rule was that he would not bring it to be thrown again. They had to catch him first. He was an expert at dodging. He would wait, with the fringed elbows of his forelegs almost on the ground and the stick temptingly in his mouth, until all three children were almost upon him and putting out their hands to seize the stick. Then he would bounce between them and be away to the other end of the meadow before they could move.

The very best times were when Kathleen and Sirius, not to speak of Tibbles, had gone to bed in Kathleen’s room. Nobody went to sleep for at least an hour. First Kathleen and Sirius had a silly game which went very quickly round and round Kathleen’s bed. Kathleen tried to crawl and keep her face hidden at the same time, laughing and laughing, while Sirius ploughed rapidly after her, trying to lick her face and giving out panting grunts, which were his way of laughing. They played this most nights until Tibbles had had enough and boxed Sirius’s ears. Then Kathleen would settle down with a book and talk. She liked reading aloud, so she read to Sirius. Sometimes she explained the book as she read it. Sometimes she just talked.

As Sirius understood more and more human talk, he learnt a great deal from this – more than he learnt from watching television. Tibbles would sit, placid and queenly, washing herself, until she sensed something was interesting Sirius particularly. Then she would ask for an explanation. The odd thing was that, in her own way, Tibbles often knew more than Kathleen.

One night, Kathleen was reading a book of fairy stories. “They’re fine stories,” she explained to Sirius, “but they’re not true. Mind you don’t go believing them now.”

Sirius liked the stories too, but he was not sure Kathleen was right. He had a notion some of them had more truth in them than Kathleen thought. Kathleen said suddenly, “Oh, listen to this, Leo!” and she read, “Of all the hounds he had seen in the world, he had seen no dogs the colour of these. The colour that was on them was a brilliant shining white, and their ears red; and as the exceeding whiteness of the dogs glittered, so glittered the exceeding redness of their ears. Fancy that, Leo!” Kathleen said. “They must have looked almost like you. Your coat is sort of shining sometimes, and your ears are nearly red. They were magic dogs, Leo. They belonged to Arawn – he was king in the Underworld. I wonder if you’re some relation. It doesn’t say anything about the colour of their eyes, though.” Kathleen leafed on through the story to see if there was any more about the dogs.

“What was that about?” Tibbles asked. Sirius told her. He was excited and puzzled. As far as he knew, his green thoughts came from nothing like an Underworld. And yet Kathleen was right. The description did fit him. “Yes,” Tibbles said thoughtfully. “They are a bit like you, I suppose. But they’re whiter and their eyes are yellow.”

“You mean – these stories are true?” Sirius asked her.

“I don’t know,” Tibbles said. “I’m talking about nowadays. I’ve no idea what it was like when the place was full of kings and princesses and magicians and things. Maybe some of the things she reads you could have happened then.”

“Don’t they happen nowadays?” said Sirius.

“I didn’t say that.” Tibbles got up irritably and stretched. Stretching, with Tibbles, was an elegant and lengthy business. It began with a long arching of the back, followed by the lowering of her front legs to stretch her shoulders, and finished with a slow further lowering of the back to get the kinks out of each back leg separately. Sirius had to wait till she had finished and curled up again. Then she said, “The trouble with humans is that it’s all or nothing with them. They seem to think anything impossible could happen in the old days. And just because these are new days, they tell you none of it is true. Now I’m going to sleep.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Soon after this, Kathleen had to spend most of every day at school. School, Sirius discovered, was a place where she learnt things. He thought this was absurd. Kathleen did not need to learn anything. She was the wisest person he knew. Basil and Robin had to go to school too, which was not so absurd, but they had to dress up in special grey clothes with red stripes round the edges in order to go. Kathleen went in her usual, shabby clothes. Sirius learnt that this was because she went to the ordinary school nearby, whereas Basil and Robin went to a school on the other side of the town which charged money for taking them. Duffie earned the money by making and selling those mud pots, but of course she would not spare any money to send Kathleen too. Because Kathleen’s school was nearby, she was usually home first, which suited Sirius very well. And he remembered dimly that this had been the way of things before, when he was very tiny and still being fed from a bottle.

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