My Dog Tulip (15 page)

So it is 6:45 on a summer's morning. I am unwashed and unshaven. Some tea is in my stomach. We have not crossed the front doorstep of our block of flats. Dogs will not therefore congregate there and annoy the porter and the other tenants by urinating in the vestibule as they used to do. A cellar window which I have discovered at the rear of the building has given us egress. Through it we have emerged, morning after morning, always at precisely the same time, Tulip running free. Except for the unusual earliness of the hour and the oddity of our means of exit, there has been nothing to discompose her, nothing to suggest to her mind the exceptional, and therefore perhaps the deceitful. If she has been surprised, as sometimes, in the searching look up and down the road she at once casts, she appears to be, at the persistent doglessness of the landscape—for she is now, of course, particularly drawn to her own kind—will not this have seemed to her more the merest bad luck than anything to be blamed upon me? And whatever momentary disappointment she may have suffered, has it not been instantly stifled by anticipation of the joys that lie ahead?

We are safe. We are free. The bus trundles up Putney High Street and stops alongside No. 2. The Pines, where Swinburne lived. Up Putney Hill it goes, and now we are running by the edge of the Common. We can dismount anywhere here, but there are some points better avoided —rangers' cottages and their dogs—and in time I know all the safest tracks. Once over the road we are among trees and bracken, lost to the world of dogs and of men. Crossing the open plateau with its golf course, we give a wide berth to the Windmill, where Lord Cardigan fought his duel in 1840, where Lord Baden-Powell wrote part of his
Scouting for Boys
in 1908, and descend into the birch woods on the far slopes.

This is our goal, our haven. Here, where the silver trees rise in their thousands from a rolling sea of bracken, Tulip turns into the wild beast she resembles. Especially at this early hour the beautiful, remote place must reek of its small denizens, and the scent of the recent passage of rabbits and squirrels, or the sound of the nervous beating of their nearby hidden hearts, throws her into a fever of excitement. The bracken is shoulder high, but soon she is leaping over it. Round and round she goes, rhythmically rising and falling, like a little painted horse in a roundabout, her fore-legs flexed for pouncing, her tall ears pricked and focused, for she has located a rabbit in a bush. Useless to go straight in after it, she has learnt that; the rabbit simply dives out the other side and is lost. Her new technique is cleverer and more strenuous. She must be everywhere at once. She must engirdle the crafty, timid creature and confuse it with her swiftness so that it knows not which way to turn. And barking is unwisdom, she has discovered that too, for although it may add to the general terrorizing effect of her tactic, it also hinders her own hearing of the tiny, furtive movement in the midst of the bush. Silently, therefore, or with only a muted whimpering of emotion, she rises and falls, effortlessly falls and rises, like a dolphin out of the green sea among the silver masts, herself the color of their bark, battling her wits with those of her prey. The rabbit can bear no more and makes its dart; in a flash, with a yelp, she is after it, streaking down the narrow track. Rabbits are agile and clever. This one flies, bounds, doubles, then bounces like a ball and shoots off at right angles. But Tulip is clever too. She knows now where the burrows lie and is not to be hoodwinked. The rabbit has fled downhill to the right; she sheers off to the left, and a tiny scream pierces the quiet morning and my heart. Alas, Tulip has killed! I push through the undergrowth to the scene of death. She is recumbent, at breakfast. Casting an anxious glance over her shoulder at my approach, she gets up and removes her bag to a safer distance. I follow. She rises again, the limp thing in her jaws, and confronts me defiantly. How pretty is her willful face! It is a young rabbit. Shall I take it from her? I can if I wish. She will yield it up, reluctantly but without rancor. Tape-worms and coccidia lurk in rabbits' livers and intestines. Never mind, let her keep it; it is a well-earned prize, and now, particularly, she must have everything she wants … .

Seating myself on a fallen tree I light a cigarette. She sits too, and addresses herself once more to her meal. I hear the crunch of the tender bones and the skull, bone still warm with the lust of the young creature's life. She devours it all, fur, ears, feet; not a trace of her banquet remains. Now she knows she is both thirsty and hot and, with her loping stride, leads me down to the nearest stream and flops into it. Reclining on one flank she laps the shallow water, letting her long tail float out upon the surface: she is momentarily conscious of her condition and is cooling her swollen vulva, her nipples and her anus. Fern drapes the banks of the pool she has chosen, the early sun slants across her through the branches of a mountain ash, the water sings over its pebbly bed: it is Africa and she is a jungle beast come down to the river to bathe. From one flank to the other she shifts; delicious the cool stream flowing about her heated parts; when she emerges she will not shake herself, she has learnt that also, to keep the refreshing liquid clinging about her; she will be hot and dry again soon enough … .

It is summer, it is spring
…
I keep her out two hours, three hours, four hours … She is on the go all the time. Can nothing tire her sufficiently? Ah, would that I could keep her here for ever, so happy and so free … The journey back presents no difficulties. The 85 bus from the top of Roehampton Lane suits us now. We may have to wait about for an agreeable conductor, but the stop is countrified, no dogs will harass us here. The bus drops us at Putney Bridge, from where we set out. We still have that five hundred yards to walk home and must expect, at this late morning hour, to encounter a dog or two who will notice and follow her; but now it does not matter—I have worked it all out—she is exhausted, she is muddy and wet, the streams will have washed away the potent emanations of yesterday. Soon we are through the cellar window and back in the flat. I dry her and give her some milk, warm if the weather is cold. Then I shave and wash, make myself some coffee and set off for work. Tulip is curled up contentedly in my armchair when I go in to bid good-bye to her.

“Ah, Tulip,” I say, “what a lucky girl you are! What other bitch in your condition has so wonderful a time? Now rest till tomorrow morning, when we will do it all over again … .”

But Nature will not be cheated, fooled, bribed, fobbed off, shuffled out of the way. I still have to return in the evening, and, dodge it as I may, I know what I shall find, a burning creature burning with desire. “Heat” is the apt word; one can feel against one's hand without touching her the feverous radiations from her womb. A fire has been kindled in it, and no substitute pleasure can distract, no palliative soothe, no exertion tire, no cooling stream slake, for long the all-consuming need of her body. She is enslaved. She is possessed. Indeed, especially towards the peak—it is the strangest, the most pitiful thing—her very character is altered. This independent, unapproachable, dignified and single-hearted creature, my devoted bitch, becomes the meekest of beggars. Anyone will do who will supply her with a crumb of physical comfort. Some years later I take her with me everywhere in this condition, and in the quiet public house restaurant where I often eat my lunch, she will go from table to table looking not for food but for love. Leaning her flank against the knees of the other customers, she gazes up at them with humble eyes. People are often flattered when animals seem to select them for affection, and women especially will exclaim with pleasure when Tulip behaves like this. If they know her already they will exclaim with surprise: “Why, look at Tulip! What's come over you, dear? I never knew you so friendly before.” Nor, in a few days, will they know her so friendly again, unless they happen upon her six months hence. But now she is a poor beggar cast upon the mercy of the world. They stroke her. If they stroke her head, that is not what she wants; she will shift herself further round to present them with her rump, and stand there meekly, with lowered head, while their hands move over it. When they stop, she will thank them with a grateful look and push it at them again. Human beings are extraordinarily ignorant about dogs. These amused and flattered people do not notice the coiling tail; if they noticed it they would not know what it meant; if they knew what it meant they would probably be less flattered and amused.

It is what I myself have to face when I return. I have had it all before, of course, as readers of this history may exclaim: but with what a difference! Then I was working to help her; now I am bent upon frustrating her. If I saw her state at all then as a plight, I could contemplate it with equanimity, with cheerfulness; I cannot bear it now. I cannot bear it, I cannot avoid it, she obtrudes it constantly upon my sight. “Help me,” she says, gazing at me with her confident animal eyes; but I no longer wish to help her, I wish to frustrate her, I wish her to have everything in the world she wants, except the thing she needs. She presses up against me. I put down my hand and stroke her, her soft ears, her pretty head, her backbone, her coiling tail. The tail is sign enough of her physical torment. So rigid is it that a small effort is required to disengage it from the flank to which it clings. When I draw it through my hand it recoils upon her body like a steel spring, and whips, as though imbued with a life of its own, from side to side. How cruel a trick, I think, to concentrate, like a furnace, the whole of a creature's sexual desire into three or four weeks a year. Yet is she worse or better off than ourselves who seek gratification of it, without respite, over the greater part of our lives? She rises up and clasps my leg.

“Ah, Tulip, you know you didn't like it last time. Don't you remember how frightened you were? And those poor children of yours, how bored you got with them!”

But Nature has her in thrall:

“You shall mate! You shall bear! And now! Now! My time is short and must not be wasted!”

“Help me,” she says, pressing against me, staring up into my face, bringing me her trouble. I cannot bear it. With a rough word I send her from me. She goes, dejected, rebuffed (dogs are expert at inflicting remorse), and sits on the bed at the other side of the room facing me. Unendurable the hopeful gaze watching for signs of relentment, the sorry sighs she heaves. A smile would bring her over, even a look. I avert my face. But she cannot rest. Nature will not let her rest. Soon she has slid off the bed, and by a halting, circuitous route, reached me again to replace herself in my line of vision. The tall ears are erect now, the head drawn back, the gaze level. I meet it, in spite of myself. We stare into each other's eyes. The look in hers disconcerts me, it contains too much, more than a beast may give, something too clear and too near, too entire, too dignified and direct, a steadier look than my own. I avert my face. Raising a paw she bangs me on the knee.

“No, Tulip.”

But delicately finding room for her fore-feet on the seat of my chair, she rises up towards me and sets her cheek to mine … Darkness, which quickly extinguishes canine activity, is slow to affect her now. I go to bed early to end the dismal day, but she is instantly beside me, sitting upright against my pillow, her back turned, shifting, licking, panting, shifting, peering at my face, pulling at my arm. Sweet creature, what am I doing to you? I stretch out my hand in the gloom and stroke the small nipples which, I have decided, shall never again fulfill their natural purpose. Panting, she slackly sits while my hand caresses her, her ears flattened, her head dropped, gazing with vacant eyes into the night beyond the windows. Gradually she relaxes, subsides. Gradually, my hand upon her, she sleeps …

How do other people cope? All bitch-owners must have the same problem, though the luckier ones have it less frequently. Tulip is fairly normal and regular, a six-or seven-month bitch, but there are many deviations; some bitches are quite erratic and unpredictable, some have only one heat a year, and I am told of one who lived healthily to the age of thirteen without ever coming into heat at all. Fortunate owner! For some reason Nature missed her out. No doubt, too, the degree of intensity varies from breed to breed, from bitch to bitch, but every private owner must have the same problem in some sort, and I ask about. The answers come readily enough. “Send her to kennels. That's what we always do.” “Haven't you a spare room to shut her up in?” “Have her altered.” And then the voice I most fear and detest: “Kick her out of the way, the dirty bitch!”

I listen, but I cannot act. How can I put her from me? Situated as I am, I see that I never should have taken her at all; I cannot mend that now. She is my friend, an honored member of my household. Years of devotion, years of habit, bind us together. When she is hurt, it is to me that she comes, holding out her paw. When she goes home it is into my door that she turns. It is true that she is now more amiable to strangers than is her wont, but as I think of that I remember also her desperate, her frenzied agitation whenever she loses sight of me in the streets. I cannot send her from me. And how can I tamper with so beautiful a beast? Yet I
am
tampering with her. I am frustrating her.

A few people who adopt none of these measures but get their animals, somehow or other, through their difficulties as I do, say: “Luckily it doesn't last long. It's soon over.” Soon! Will the wretched season never drag itself out? And even when it seems safely past, its ghost rises accusingly from the grave. Two months later, when she could have been having a litter, she thinks she is pregnant. Her lower teats begin to secrete milk. She moves restlessly about the flat choosing her place, making her plans. Lying awake in the night I hear her, sometimes in the bathroom, the smallest, darkest room in the flat, scratching away at the linoleum; sometimes out on the terrace, mysteriously prowling among the weathered ruins of her old box, scratching, scratching at the decaying wood, making a nest for children that will never be born … .Soon it will be over. The ghost rises. Soon it will start again … Must I have this recurrent nightmare forever? Do bitches have change of life? It seems they do not. And is it my imagination that the more I frustrate her the more protracted, the more insistent, her heats become? As though Nature were saying: “You escaped me last time. You shall not escape me this!”