A Dog's Life (20 page)

He was wearing the most flamboyant of all his flamboyant outfits a few days before he was murdered in December 2000. This was his masterpiece, no doubt of it, and unlikely to be eclipsed. A thin, lithe black man, who always walked with a spring in his step – he sometimes seemed to be bouncing along the road – was dressed in a grey suit. But this was no ordinary grey suit. This was a grey suit with a familiar story to tell. As he came towards me, I saw the smiling Marilyn Monroe of the Andy Warhol collage. Her hair, her eyes, her teeth, all glowing, were there on his jacket and trousers – each part of her face concertinaed with the movement of his arms and legs.

The black-and-white photography was now a uniform grey. He had chosen a lace-frilled black shirt and a floppy black silk handkerchief to offset the prevailing greyness. He had no wish, ever, to appear drab. Grey and black were colours, and on him they looked colourful. They certainly seemed so on that mild winter morning. He was striding to the market as usual, in search of the fabrics with the outré designs he had made his own. What would he find to replace Marilyn, his
pièce de résistance
? (It was, as far as I, his silent admirer, was concerned.) Whatever he found, it was not to be transformed – lovingly tailored by his sister, I learned later – into one of his incomparable suits.

He came across as a man of means – albeit modest, for the materials available in Shepherd’s Bush market are not those favoured by the master tailors of Savile Row. He nevertheless behaved like a devotee of
haute couture
, because he never wore the same suit twice. (His sister must have spent the greater part of each working day toiling at her sewing machine.) But what were his means? How could he afford to live a life of such obvious leisure?

It would be easy to describe him as a dandy, but the word smacks too much of the elegant and the stylish. The dandy is invariably well dressed, and often quietly so, the distinction of his garments unobtrusive, like the prose of the great classic authors. You couldn’t help noticing the young man’s shirts, in a variety of garish shades; his natty bowlers and fedoras; his two-toned shoes; his umbrellas and canes. He was parodying the elegance of the rich as best he could, and his best was frequently considerable. He caused me to gawp, and he made me smile.

No, the word for him is ‘dude’. He reminded me of James Cagney, swaggering cockily whether as winner or loser in the gangster movies of the 1930s: of George Raft in the middle sequence of
Scarface
; of Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson in
Guys and Dolls
. Like them, he had a touch of the tawdry, and gave off more than a passing hint that he probably wasn’t on the right side of the law.

His killer, or killers, contrived to make his death look like suicide. The police had to cut him down. The reason, the cold reason, for his death was drugs.

Circe barked at him once – out of appreciation, perhaps. He paid her no attention. He paid nobody attention on his daily walks among us. His mind must have been pleasantly occupied with something or other, for he was never gloomy or sad. He was happy in his body, I reckoned, and that’s as much happiness as anyone wants, or can expect.

When she was about ten years old, Circe’s front paws started to grow larger. The vet, Michael Gordon, diagnosed arthritis, and set her on a course of antibiotics. He warned me that if the disease spread, her legs would give way and she would have to be put down. He spoke, as ever, with genuine concern and a certain sadness that such a vigorous life should be brought to an end in this cruel fashion.

But the arthritis didn’t spread, and the pills did their beneficent work. The paws stayed the same, causing children to remark on her big feet. Her energy was unabated. She ran as she’d always run, defying exhaustion until it claimed her. Exhaustion came sooner now, but not
that
soon.

Then, in her fifteenth year, Circe’s bladder became uncontrollable. She looked at us guiltily as urine flowed from her. She had been fastidious about the necessary functions even before puppyhood was over, dragging her walker to the kerb whenever she felt the need to vacate her insides. She never fouled the pavement. But now that she was helpless, her sad brown eyes made her loss of dignity apparent.

Once again, Michael Gordon recommended a magic cure, in the form of a syrup that tightened her sphincter. She stopped peeing in the house, and woke us in the middle of the night by scratching at the door to indicate that she wanted to go out as quickly as possible. Her self-esteem was restored. We lived with this considerate routine of Circe’s devising for several months.

She grew increasingly deaf, she who had once been able to bark at the presence of another dog two streets away. The syrup lost its magical properties, and the guilty looks multiplied. She was entering an undignified old age.

Jeremy and I decided that it was in Circe’s interests, rather than our own, that her life should, at last, be ended. I phoned Michael Gordon’s surgery and made an appointment to take her in when he was on duty. I couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger, however kindly and experienced, injecting her with the drugs that would ease her out of the world. The terrible deed was almost done.

We rose early that summer morning in 2001. It was going to be a bright, sunny day. A final run in Ravenscourt Park seemed the pleasantest, tenderest way of saying goodbye to her.

It was with dismay that we found that the park was closed – had been cordoned off, in fact. The adjacent streets were jammed with police cars. It appeared that a small girl had gone missing, and the park was being combed for any clues to her whereabouts.

There is a pocket-sized strip of green in an apology for a park only yards from the house. That’s where we threw the ball for her to retrieve with something of her former speed and dexterity. Although our intentions were humane, we felt like murderers as she ran backwards and forwards in all innocence. Jeremy consulted his watch. It was time to be off.

I stroked Circe’s head and ears while Jeremy drove us to the vet. Michael Gordon was waiting for us. Circe wagged her tail as he said hello to her. She was given her first injection, and then he carried her to a nearby room, where he laid her on a table. We sat beside her, stroking her in turns until her eyes closed on us. She received a second, fatal, dose and we went on sitting beside her, unable to control our tears.

We left her eventually. Jeremy set off for work, and I walked home, oblivious to the sunshine. She’d had a charmed life, I assured myself, and a happy one. I remembered my own good fortune on the day David sent me to buy a new sieve and I acquired a puppy as well. A foolish, madcap, impractical decision it seemed at the time. But now I fully understood that it had been a wise one, and a blessing.

On 22 September 2002, I spent a wonderful day on a boat in the Danube Delta. This is Romania’s most substantial beauty spot, and the sun blazed down on it. Wildlife thrives there, though all I saw as I chatted with British and Romanian friends was the occasional flock of – to me – unidentifiable birds. The wildest inhabitants come out at night, when the boats are safely moored.

Late in the evening, I went for a last drink to the country retreat owned by the Writers’ Union in Neptun, a town on the Black Sea. I had noticed, on previous visits, a pack of stray dogs in the gardens. The writers threw them scraps, which they instantly devoured. I learned that, in late October, when the retreat closed for the winter months, the animals – there were cats, too – would be left to fend for themselves, with no one to give them the odd pieces of chicken or fish or steak they had enjoyed in the spring and summer.

A black-and-white mongrel puppy, with impossibly long floppy ears, came to where I was sitting. Oh God, I thought, I’m back in the market, gazing dementedly at an entrancing creature. I stroked her black coat and white belly and admired the white spots above each eye. I decided that I would try to rescue her and bring her home, somehow, to England.

At three a.m. on the morning of 23 September, I awoke from an uneasy sleep, gasping for breath. At eight I was in the local hospital, having an ECG and wearing an oxygen mask.
A woman doctor informed me that I had suffered heart failure and that I would be transferred to the big hospital in Constan
ţ
a for tests. I could not fly without the assistance and company of a qualified nurse or doctor.

I passed a single night in the Intensive Care ward. I peed constantly into cut-off Fanta or Coca-Cola bottles, listening to the screams of a man with skin like alabaster dying in the next bed. The nurse on duty, Valentina, gave me a sedative, and when I came to some hours later, the screams had abated, and three women – his wife and daughters – had lit candles over his body, lighting him, Orthodox fashion, to a better world.

I returned to London, where I was treated with great care and skill at Hammersmith Hospital. A Romanian doctor in the Cardiology Unit translated the copious notes, accurate in every detail, that her counterpart in Constan
ţ
a had written.

I hope the puppy is being cared for, but I doubt it. If only I had seen her earlier. If only I’d had the strength to go through with the whole complicated business of rescuing her. I would have called her Dido.