A Dog's Life (3 page)

The cat, a sulky tortoiseshell named Alice, lived almost permanently in the garden while Circe was confined to the house. She hissed at her rival, who reacted with indifference or frantic tail-wagging, depending on her mood. She was a puppy and pleased with her young life. I would be pleased, I knew, when it would be possible to take her to the park. I yearned for that happy time. I had promised David that I would have the carpets cleaned professionally the moment her necessary imprisonment was over. The stale smell lingering in every room would be expertly dispatched.

The vet, Michael Gordon – who shares my interest in, and admiration for, the writings of Primo Levi – saw Circe a second time and declared her fit and safe to meet other dogs. He advised me to mix vegetables in with her food. I followed that advice for sixteen years, feeding Circe once a day, in the early evening. She stayed lean and energetic as a result, unlike some of the lethargic animals she met on our travels.

The day of her freedom dawned, and I was yanked towards the park for the first of many times. She somehow knew it was there. There was some training to do along the way and she learnt very quickly that the pavement was not to be fouled. Within a week, she understood that she wouldn’t be slapped or chided if she made for the gutter.

Catching her, bringing her to heel, was not so easy. I often needed the assistance of my fellow dog owners, who laughed as they attempted to catch hold of her. Circe was intent on staying free, especially in the winter when she ran faster to keep warm. I lived in terror that someone would leave the gate of the Dogs Only area open, thus ensuring her certain escape. And that is precisely what happened one morning. She sprinted off at an alarming speed, forgetting the ball I was throwing to her. I chased after her, bellowing her name. Fortunately for me, she caught sight of a luckless jogger and chose him as her target. She yapped as she ran beside him, and then – to the man’s justifiable annoyance – tried to nip his ankle. He stopped and grabbed her by the back of the neck, and I took possession of her.

‘Have you no control over that bloody thing?’

The truth was that I hadn’t, and I was so grateful to the jogger that I couldn’t contradict him.

‘Not yet,’ I said, panting. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘So you bloody should be,’ he snapped, recommencing his run.

I was suitably humbled, and dragged the uncomprehending offender home.

In Richmond Park, some weeks later, I let Circe off the lead so that my two godsons could play with her. Their parents, David and I sat on the grass drinking white wine and eating smoked salmon. We watched the boys taking turns to throw the ball, and smiled with delight at Circe’s impatience when they teased her by holding on to it a little too long for her liking. The game was proceeding happily until a running man hove into view. And he really was running, not jogging. Circe saw him and found it impossible to resist the thrill of pursuit. The man was listening to music through earphones and was oblivious to her barking. I gave chase and ran like a demon for twenty minutes while the long-distance runner and Circe forged ahead. It was she who stopped on this occasion, having worn herself out with the effort of scampering alongside a man who ignored her.

She remained on the lead for the rest of the afternoon – to her, and the boys’, irritation. And I, at the age of forty-seven, had taken sufficient exercise in the blazing heat of late July.

‘You don’t frighten her. She’s got you where she wants you. She owns you, not the other way round.’

I shouted at her when I was angry, and she frequently continued to disobey me. Neither David nor my great friend Vanni Bartolozzi had cause to shout. Their voices, seldom raised, had bass notes she listened to with apprehension. They told her she was doing wrong, and she believed them.

‘What’s his name?’

The question was asked first when she was an energetic puppy, propelling me along the street in her desperate need to reach the park.
His
name was still being enquired after in her lively old age. People assume that all dogs are male, until informed otherwise.

‘Her name is Circe.’

‘Susie? That’s nice.’

Some, children mostly, heard me correctly.

‘
Sir-sea
.
Sir-sea
. Who’s she?’

She was a Greek goddess – some say a witch – who lured Odysseus, the great hero at the siege of Troy, on to her island. She turned at least half of his sailors into swine.

‘Pigs,’ I translated.

‘Why did she do that?’

‘Only she could tell you. It was in her nature, I suppose.’

‘Can she turn me into a pig?’ the ten-year-old wondered.

‘You’re that already,’ his older sister responded.

The impatient Circe wanted an end to this tiresome conversation, and pulled vigorously on her lead.

‘We have to go. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,
Sir-sea
,’ the boy and girl chanted, and then giggled. They were to become, as they got older, two of her most devoted admirers. They told their mother, who was greatly amused, that they knew a dog – she looked like Lassie – who could turn men into pigs.

‘Was it just sailors, Mister?’ The boy needed clarification. ‘Or was it anybody?’

‘In the story it’s just sailors.’

‘That’s a relief,’ said their mother, giving a mock sigh. ‘Your dad’s safe, then. I was ever so frightened for him, in case he should bump into – what’s her name?’

‘It’s
Sir-sea
,’ the daughter was quick to tell her.

‘She really does look like Lassie. Come on, you two, you’ll be late for school.’

Circe reacted with disdain or incomprehension when addressed as Lassie. She was aware of the name she had been given, and duly answered to it. (The original Lassie, in
Lassie Come Home
and other movies, was a dog. His genitals were trussed up and his hindquarters cosmeticized, Hollywood fashion.) She allowed herself to be patted and stroked, always, by those who called her Lassie, without bothering to find out if she was known by something else.

‘She’s not Lassie,’ I would say, when I could be bothered to. ‘Lassie was a thoroughbred. She isn’t.’

A snooty woman had reminded me of her mongrel’s status when Circe was about nine months old and not growing to be quite as tall as the average border collie.

‘I think you should know,’ she boomed, striding across the grass to where I was throwing the ball for Circe to retrieve, ‘that your bitch is neither a sheltie nor a collie. Did you part with money for her?’

‘I did.’

‘You were swindled.’

‘It wasn’t very much.’

‘I should hope not,’ she snorted, walking off with her pedigree Labrador.

Swindled? For forty pounds? Here was the canine class system at its deadly work. My beautiful hybrid, my intelligent bitch, hadn’t been interbred to the point of idiocy. She was her own mistress, and I was – at certain gullible times – her willing Odysseus, ready to have myself tied to the mast on her silent instructions.

‘She’s a mongrel,’ the woman remarked contemptuously, slamming the gate behind her.

‘So are you,’ I shouted. ‘So are we all.’

I was to listen to this animal fascism – purity of the breed stuff and nonsense – very rarely in the sixteen years of Circe’s life. David had been astute to detect a Circean quality in her, for not all domestic animals, in common with all human beings, have the power to enchant.

‘Your dog’s smiling,’ was a frequent observation.

And it was true. She was baring her teeth without menace, without anger. She was displaying them, benevolently, to whomever was delighting in her charm.

David spent almost a year in Circe’s exuberant company. Whenever he felt well enough, he would come to the park and watch as she evaded capture with all the quick-witted brilliance and energy at her command.

Between May 1985 and January 1986 he re-created the miracle of Lazarus (without Christ’s assistance, but rather with the dedicated skills of the men and women in the Intensive Care Unit at Westminster Hospital) no fewer than four times. He was not prepared to make a fifth attempt at surviving, and died towards the end of March. Another return from the beyond was not even to be contemplated.

We were introduced to each other in the summer of 1964, and by the end of the year we were sharing a flat on the top floor of a Victorian house in Paddington, previously owned by the notorious pimp and shady property developer Peter Rachman. David was working in the wardrobe at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and I was at Harrods, no longer resting between acting engagements. My theatrical career, such as it was, was over.

David had once tried to dye his hair with a product that burnt his forelocks away. He had green eyes that darted with happy mischief or ferocious anger. He was small and slightly built, yet he had the power to terrify bullies or thugs. He had exquisite manners when he wasn’t incensed by someone’s boorish or grand behaviour. I remember an evening when a famous poet and his wife invited us to dinner. The other guests were a charming French journalist and Kingsley Amis and his then wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Amis was in a foul mood, insisting on eating eggs, bacon and sausage instead of the ‘foreign muck’ being prepared. The poet’s wife was in a tizzy in the basement kitchen. When she came into the sitting room looking flustered, Amis quipped, ‘You must be stewing something in Albanian goat’s piss to judge by the smell.’ On the instant David said, ‘That was bloody rude, Mr Amis. I think you should apologize.’

Amis mumbled a few words and fell silent.

I had met the famous poet when David and I were still living in our Paddington eyrie. He had been kind to me, praising my early novels, and he would later secure me a well-paid job at the universities of Newcastle and Durham, where I was writer in residence. By way of expressing my gratitude, I invited him and his wife to dine with us, for David was an excellent and inventive cook. They duly arrived, climbing the six flights of stairs that led to the flat. They walked into our tiny sitting room, and the poet’s wife stared at the pictures, the ornaments, the furniture. Then, ignoring her hosts and turning to her husband, she exclaimed, ‘Just think, darling, only two nights ago we were in New York with Igor and Véra.’

We were too stunned by this lofty put-down to enquire which Igor and which Véra she was referring to. It says much for David’s graciousness that on the night of the Albanian goat’s piss witticism he came to the wife’s aid at the stove, rescuing the meal she was preparing for those not averse to foreign food. He was to regret this act of simple decency, as I shall relate.

David had trained to be a classical dancer, but his looks and height meant that he would be confined to character roles. He was told by his teacher, Elsa Brunelleschi, that he could never be a
danseur noble
. He was, briefly, a chorus boy at the London Palladium, attracting several sugar daddies, who took him for supper at the Savoy Grill or the Café de Paris. His expertise as a tailor and cutter, with a faultless eye for what looked natural on a dancer, singer or actor, ensured him a job at the Royal Opera House, where he was healthily disrespectful to the stars and designers who treated the staff as menials.

He displayed his republican mettle whenever Princess Margaret attended the dress rehearsal of a new ballet. Her Royal Highness sat in the stalls, with a lackey or two beside her to light her cigarettes and top up her glass with whisky. Anyone passing in front of her was required to bow or curtsey, as often as a dozen or more times. David refused to bow, explaining to his boss that to do so would be to waste precious minutes. The success of the show did not depend on the presence of the royal dwarf, he reasoned. I cherish this memory of him, the sole person at Covent Garden who refused to toady to the privileged martinet, smoking where others could not smoke, drinking where mere mortals could not drink. She was lucky. If he
had
bowed – or curtsied – he would have let out, in one form or another, an appropriate raspberry. Some are born not to bow or scrape, and he was of their exalted number.

It was his close friend Jean who kept me informed about David’s small, but necessary, acts of rebellion. Jean, who somehow managed to fend off the unsubtle advances of a famously randy tenor and the very specific sexual requirements of a great bass from Bulgaria, revealed that David had ordered Rudolf Nureyev to take a long shower with lots of soap before he, David, would continue with the fitting. ‘You stink, Rudi,’ he complained. ‘And your jockstrap is disgusting.’ The startled Nureyev complied, returning in half an hour, smelling fresh and sporting a clean truss. ‘That’s better, isn’t it? We can both breathe now, can’t we, Rudi?’

David was at Covent Garden when the Kirov Ballet performed in the summer of 1966. He went into the lavatory one morning and was struck by the sight of a handsome Russian dancer clutching his penis in a state of obvious anxiety. ‘Help’ was the only word the man seemed able to speak. The penis, David saw, was inflamed. ‘Interpreter,’ David remarked, whereupon the dancer gestured wildly to indicate that the interpreter, who was also Russian and a member of the company, must not know about his problem. The dancer zipped up his fly and followed David into the corridor, where David found his boss and explained that the Russian had the clap and must be treated at a nearby hospital. Outside the Opera House he flagged down a taxi and told the driver to take them to St Thomas’s. The Russian was making little moaning noises, and David patted his arm to assure him that all would be well.