Dogsbody (6 page)

He had been dozing there for nearly an hour, when Romulus jumped on him. He hit Sirius like a bomb, every claw out and spitting abuse. Sirius sprang up with a yelp. He was more surprised than anything at first. But Romulus was fat and determined. He dug his claws in and stuck to Sirius’s back and Sirius, for a second or so, could not shake him off. In those seconds, Sirius became furiously angry. It was like a sheet of green flame in his head. How dared Romulus! He hurled the cat off and went for him, snarling and showing every pointed white tooth he had. Romulus took one look. Then he flashed over the sofa arm and vanished. Sirius’s teeth snapped on empty air. By the time he reached the carpet, Romulus was nowhere to be seen.

A bubbling hiss drew Sirius’s attention to Remus, crouched in the open doorway to the shop. Remus bared his teeth and spat. At that, Sirius’s rage flared vaster and greener still. He responded with a deep rumbling growl that surprised him nearly as much as it surprised Remus. A great ridge of fur came up over his back and shoulders and his eyes blazed green. Remus stared at this nightmare of eyes, teeth and bristle, and his own fur stood and stood and stood, until he was nearly twice his normal size. He spat. Sirius throbbed like a motorcycle and crept forward, slow and stiff-legged, to tear Remus to pieces. He was angry, angry, angry.

Remus only waited to make sure Sirius was indeed coming his way. Then he bolted without courage or dignity. He had done what his mother wanted, but not even for Tibbles was he going to face this nightmare a second longer than he had to. When Sirius reached the door of the shop, there was no sign of Remus. There was only Tibbles, alone in the middle of a dusty floor.

Sirius stopped when his face was around the door. In spite of his rage, he knew something was not right here. This door should have been shut. Tibbles must have opened it. She must be trying to tempt him inside for reasons of her own. The prudent thing would be not to be tempted. But he had always wanted to explore the shop, and he was still very angry. To see what would happen, he pushed the door further open and let out another great throbbing growl at Tibbles.

At the sight and sound of him, Tibbles became a paper-thin archway of a cat, and her tail stood above in a desperate question mark. Was this a puppy or a monster? She was terrified. But she stood her ground because this was her chance to get rid of it.

Her terror gave Sirius rather an amusing sense of power. Slow and stiff-legged, he strutted into the room. Tibbles spat and drifted away sideways, so arched that she looked like a piece of paper blowing in the wind. Sirius saw she wanted him to chase her. Just for a moment, he did wonder how it would feel to take her arched and narrow back between his teeth and shake his head till she snapped, but he was sure she would jump out of reach somewhere before he could catch her. So he ignored her. Instead, he swaggered across the dusty floor to look at the objects piled by the walls and stacked on the shelves.

He sniffed them cautiously. What were these things? As curiosity gained the upper hand in him, his growl died away and the hair on his back settled down into glossy waves again. The things had a blank, muddy smell. Some were damp and pink, some pale and dry, some again shiny and painted in ugly gray-greens. They were something like the cups humans drank out of, and he thought they
might be made of the same stuff as the dish labeled DOG in which Kathleen gave him his water. But Sirius could not have got his tongue into most of them. No human could have drunk out of any. Then he remembered the thing on the living-room mantelpiece Kathleen had smashed that morning when she was dusting. It had held one rose. Duffie had been furious.

Sirius understood now. These things were rose-holders and they broke. Let a dog chase a cat among them and the result would be spectacular. Duffie would certainly carry out all her cold threats. It was clever of Tibbles.

Cautiously, carefully, walking stiff-legged in order not to knock anything, Sirius explored the two rooms thoroughly. He sniffed at rows of hand-thrown pottery. He nosed glaze. He investigated damp new clay. He put his feet on a stool to examine the pink and dusty wheel on which Duffie made the things, and snuffed at the oven where she fired them. That was a better smell than most. It brought a queer tinge of homesickness. He went into the shop itself, where rows of shiny pots in dull colors waited for people to buy them. He did not find it very interesting. In fact, the whole place was rather a disappointment. It astonished him that even Duffie could find things like this important. But he was sure she did. The cold dusty smell of the place matched her personality.

Tibbles followed him about like a drifting outraged shadow. How could the creature resist chasing her to go sniffing about like this? But Sirius took no notice of her at all. When he had seen enough, he turned carefully and carefully pit-patted toward the open door. He was going back to the sofa.

It was too much for Tibbles. Determined to carry out her plan,
she dashed at Sirius and clawed his face. Then she leaped for a high shelf in the place where pottery was stacked thickest.

That was her undoing. She was in too much of a hurry to judge her jump properly, or perhaps she was simply confident that Sirius would be blamed for anything that broke. She missed the space she was aiming for and collided with a mighty purple vase. Slowly and imposingly, the vase tipped over, knocked Tibbles sideways and fell into a heap of pots beneath. Tibbles just managed to hook her claws into the very end of the shelf, where she hung, scrabbling underneath the shelf for a foothold. Sirius bolted, with the smash ringing in his ears. He had a last sight of Tibbles desperately hanging and scrabbling, and the other end of the shelf tipping sharply upward.

4

S
irius shot soundlessly across the living-room carpet. His hind legs were instinctively lowered and his tail wrapped under them. Duffie was pounding downstairs. From the shop came smash after crash after smash. Pots were sliding down the sloping shelf, over the helpless Tibbles, and breaking one upon another in a heap by the doorway. As Duffie burst into the living room, Sirius shot into the kitchen, shot across it to the space under the sink and crammed himself in behind the waste bucket. Romulus was hiding there too. He spat half-heartedly at Sirius, but both of them knew the situation was too serious for fighting. They both crouched, trembling, packed side by side into the slimy space, listening to the dreadful noises from the shop.

In the heat of the moment, Sirius and Romulus found they were communicating with one another.

“What happened? What went wrong?”

“It was her fault. She jumped on a shelf. Everything fell off it.”

“She’s being killed.
Do
something!”

“
You
do something.”

It certainly sounded as if Tibbles were being killed. There was more heavy crashing, and cold high yelling from Duffie. After that came a dreadful screech, half cat, half human. Remus shot into the kitchen, a fat stripy streak of panic, and made for the waste pail too. When he saw Sirius and Romulus already there, he stopped, looped into a frenzy, glaring.

“Help! Let me hide! She’s killing us!”

Duffie was now raving around the living room. “Where’s that
flaming
CAT?”

At the sound, Remus somehow packed himself in beside Romulus, quivering as if there was a motor beside him. Sirius found himself being oozed out on the other side. “Hey!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” shivered Remus. “Oh, ye gods!”

There was a scream like a steam siren from the next room. Something crashed, probably the new rose-holder. “Damn!” yelled Duffie.
“Got you, you fiend!”
It was clear Tibbles had been caught. A heavy, sharp thumping began. It was as strong and regular as the noise Kathleen had made when she hung the carpets on the clothesline and beat them with a beater. Duffie yelled, in time with the thumps, “I’ll—teach—you—to—break—my—pottery!”

Sirius found he could not have this. Whatever Tibbles deserved, it was not being beaten to death. His dog’s hatred of strife in his family fetched him out from under the sink. That, and a strong green sense of justice, sent him scampering to the living room, followed by a gust of amazement from Remus and Romulus.

Duffie had her sandals planted wide apart on the hearthrug. She had Tibbles dangling wretchedly from one hand, curled as stiff and
small as possible, while her other hand clouted away at Tibbles, hard and rhythmically. At the sight, Sirius’s sense of justice became mixed with anger. He would dearly have liked to plant his jawful of white teeth in the bulging muscle of Duffie’s calf. He had to tell himself she would taste nasty, he wanted to bite her so much. He launched himself at Duffie instead, and managed to land hard against her stomach before he fell on the floor. Duffie staggered.

“Drat you, animal! Get away!”

Sirius got up and began to leap about Duffie, reaching for Tibbles and barking excitedly.

“Will you stop interfering!” Duffie shouted, lashing out with a sandal.

Sirius knew he was not big enough to reach Tibbles. Duffie was holding her dangling high out of reach. But he ran in a swift figure of eight around her feet as she kicked out, and made her overbalance. Duffie loosened her hold on Tibbles in order to catch at the mantelpiece. Tibbles dropped with a thump on all four feet and was off like a white flash upstairs.

“Damn!” shrieked Duffie, and lunged at Sirius. He ran away around the sofa, expecting to be beaten with a broom again.

Luckily, they had only been twice around the sofa when the side door opened and Robin, Basil and Kathleen trooped in.

“What’s going on?” said Basil.

To the surprise and relief of Sirius, Duffie forgot about him and began to rage long and shrilly about the damage those wretched cats had done in the shop. While the side door was open, Romulus and Remus seized their chance and fled through it. Neither of them reappeared again that day. Sirius supposed it would have been
prudent of him to do the same, but he was not really tempted. He was too glad to see Kathleen again. He jumped up against her and squeaked with pleasure.

While Duffie was busy dramatically throwing open the shop door and pointing to the heap of smithereens inside, Kathleen wrapped her arms around Sirius. “I’m glad it wasn’t you for once,” she whispered.

It seemed unfair to Sirius that it should be Kathleen who cleared up the broken pottery. But he had noticed that Kathleen always did do an unfair amount of work. He lay and whined in protest outside the shop door, until she had finished and was able to take him to the meadow. Duffie, meanwhile, stumped away upstairs to find Tibbles. But Tibbles had hidden herself cunningly in the very back of the linen closet and Duffie did not find her.

After supper that evening, Duffie angrily shut herself in the shop and worked away at her potter’s wheel to replace some of the breakages. When she heard the wheel whirring, Tibbles dared at last to emerge. Very sore and ruffled and hungry, she limped downstairs and into the living room. Only Sirius saw her. Robin, Kathleen, Basil and the thunderous voice were all crowded around the table over some kind of game. Sirius was on the hearthrug with a tough raw bone propped between his paws and his head laid sideways, grating deliciously with his back teeth. He looked at Tibbles across his nose. Tibbles stopped short in the doorway, seeing him looking.

“It’s all right. It’s quite safe,” Sirius told her. “She’s in the shop. And there’s a whole lot of scraps still down in the kitchen.”

Tibbles did not reply. She stepped off delicately to the kitchen, shaking each front paw with a lady-like shudder before she put it down. Sirius, in a dog’s equivalent, of a shrug, went back to his bone.

Quite a while later, when Sirius had done with the bone and was snoozing, Tibbles limped out of the kitchen and came slowly over to the hearthrug. Though she looked rather less wretched, she was still very ruffled. She sat down, wrapped her tail across her front feet and stared fixedly at Sirius.

“I still hurt. It’s all your fault.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow and rolled one green eye up at her. “It was your fault, too. But I’m sorry. I was afraid she was going to kill you.”

“She was,” said Tibbles. “She loves those silly mud pots. Thank you for stopping her.” She raised a front paw and licked it half-heartedly. “I feel awful,” she said miserably. “What can I do?”

“Come over here and I’ll lick you,” Sirius suggested, greatly daring.

He expected Tibbles to treat the suggestion with contempt, but, instead, she got up and, casually, as if she did not care particularly, she settled down between his front paws. Most astonished and very flattered, Sirius gingerly licked her back. She tasted clean and fluffy.

“Farther up and over to the right,” Tibbles said, tucking her paws under her gracefully.

Half an hour later, Kathleen looked up from the cards. “Goodness gracious!” she exclaimed. “Just look at that now!”

Everybody looked, and exclaimed to see Tibbles tucked up like a tuffet between the forepaws of the dog with the dog’s head resting against her. Tibbles had flat wet patches all over the tabby part of her back from being licked. When she saw them looking, she raised her head and stared at them defiantly. “And why shouldn’t I sit here?” Then she turned her pink nose gently to Sirius’s black one and settled down to purring again.

Sirius’s heavy tail flapped on the carpet. He felt warm and proud to have this lovely white cat purring against him. He looked down at her small humped shape and wondered. It was familiar. So, in a dim back-to-front way, was everything that had happened that afternoon. Some time, in a misty green past, there had been a time with three other beings when he had flown into a rage, only then, as far as he could remember, the disaster had been his and not his Companion’s.

Then he remembered, and with great sadness. Once, somewhere else, he had had a Companion, as small and white and nearly as elegant as Tibbles. He had loved this Companion with all his heart, and given her anything she wanted. Then he had been forced to leave her. He could not remember why, but remembering just that was bad enough. He was glad Tibbles was there to make up for it a little. And Kathleen. Sirius cast an eye up at Kathleen, sighing. He had Kathleen and now Tibbles. Perhaps he should not be sad after all. But deep down inside him there was such green misery that he could have cried, if dogs could cry.