My Dog Tulip (9 page)

When we had retrieved him, I said:

“It's a pity you can't have him with you in the flat. After all, dogs do like company and to busy themselves about their masters.”

Mr. Plum sighed:

“Yes, I'm afraid he mopes. And of course I'd love to have him in with me like I did in my bachelor days, but, well you know what women are, house-proud and so on, and I can quite see the place would get a bit mucky, not that I should mind that …”

But I had left off listening to Mr. Plum's sorrowful reflections. Cutting across our path was a curious figure who instantly caught my attention. This was a rough, thick-set man with the cauliflower ears and battered face of a pugilist. He was wearing a roll-necked sweater and a tiny cap. What riveted my interest upon him, however, was the fact that he was being hauled along by two powerful young Alsatian dogs on a chain. A boy walked at his side. To let such a man pass at such a moment would have been to fly in the face of providence, and I accosted him. He was readily conversable. Yes, he knew all about Alsatians, he bred them as a sideline to his work, and these two splendid young dogs who were trying to get at Tulip, had been reared by him. Craving his indulgence, I described my perplexities and requested his valuable advice. He studied Tulip with a beady eye.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” he then remarked darkly, “if she's a barren bitch.”

“Barren!” I cried. “How can you tell?”

“Ah, I'm not laying it down, but that'd be my guess. Too nervous and 'ighly strung for my liking. But if you showed me 'er pedigree I could tell from that.”

“I haven't got it on me,” I said dejectedly.

“Well, you could fetch it along some other time. Any road, I reckon '
e
wouldn't stand much chance with 'er,” he continued, casting at Chum a disparaging glance. “Too young and flimsy, if you take my meaning. Now if it 'adn't been a Sunday and so many people about and me 'aving the young lad with me an' all, I wouldn't 'ave minded unleashing one of me own dogs on 'er, 'ere and now. They'd soon find out if she was a barren bitch or not!”

“But isn't it too late in her season? It must be her fourteenth or fifteenth day.”

“Seeing as 'ow she's carrying on with that there mongrel,” he replied, “I'd say she could still be done. And if I was you, I'd watch out!”

“Tulip!” I said reproachfully.

We had been followed for some time by a small dog, one of those smooth, tight-skinned, busy and bouncing little creatures who, if dogs wore hats, would certainly have worn a bowler. He had attached himself to Tulip in very nearly the closest sense of the word, and was receiving from her all those marks of favor which she had declined to bestow upon Max or Chum. Indeed, she was clearly vastly amused by this artful little dodger, who was making repeated attempts to jump her, an ambition which I had already been pondering whether he was too small to achieve, and although she skipped her bottom from side to side when I admonished her, she was accepting from him, with an appearance of absent-mindedness, a shameful amount of familiarity. Our oracle observed all this with interest.

“Aye,” said he, “I believe she'd stand for that little bloke where she wouldn't stand for Chum; and if she'd stand for '
im
, she wouldn't get away from
my
dogs once they'd got a grip on 'er.”

All this was extremely tantalizing.

“There aren't really many people about,” I said. “Can't we go over into those bushes? No one would see us there.”

“I'm right sorry to disoblige you. I'd 'ave been pleased to try; but I couldn't do that, not in front of the young lad.” Then, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, he asked: “Did you give 'er a lead at all? You know, prompt 'er, like? There's ways of stimulating 'em up.”

“Vaseline?” I murmured.

“Ah, you knew about that,” said our bruiser disappointedly, and turned to Mr. Plum. “You can stimulate Chum up, too. Did you know? In case you're thinking of putting them together again next time.” Chum had never seemed to me in need of stimulation, but Mr. Plum assumed a suitably vacant expression and shook his head. “That's a pity. It's simple, but it's quite a tip. And I wouldn't 'ave minded demonstrating it on one of me own dogs, if it 'adn't been for the presence of the young lad.”

I had by now conceived so intense a dislike for this sickly-faced youth who, with his yellow complexion and puffy eyes, looked as though there was little he did not already know, at any rate about the art of self-stimulation, that I could hardly keep the venom out of my gaze, and asked irritably whether he could not be sent for a walk by himself. The desire to instruct is a powerful one, and our lecturer could not resist it. He accordingly sent the boy off with one of the dogs, and then, after a cautious look round, demonstrated upon the remaining animal what occurred when one took its member into the palm of one's hand and exerted a slight warming pressure. What occurred requires no further enlarging upon; and after this interesting lesson we took his address and our leave, and that was the end of my first attempt to marry Tulip.

Mr. Plum saw us home and I invited him up for a glass of sherry; but although he was clearly tempted, he thought, after studying his watch, that he had better not, it might make him late for his Sunday dinner, and, well, you know, when one was married that didn't do. I had already learnt that it didn't do to be late for tea, so I did not press him and he hurried off, this good, kind, once adventurous, now lost young man to his doom, while I ascended in the elevator with mine.

If there were lessons to be drawn from this failure to mate Tulip, I was far from certain what they were. With plenty of leisure now, a full six months, in which to prepare for the next event, I felt I should have been in a position to profit from experience and plan something better. But the only concrete fact that seemed to have emerged was that the vet who had said that mating dogs was not as easy as one might think had not exaggerated. Perhaps it would be safer, after all, to hand the business over to professionals, and I went so far as to answer the advertisement of one of them, the owner of a stud dog of great fame, not only for the antiquity of his lineage, but also for the number of decorations he had won for gallantry on the field of battle, and made a short journey with Tulip into Surrey to see this noble beast, whose name was Sultan and whose semen cost ten guineas.

In order to save us the additional trouble of a bus ride to his house, the owner had agreed to meet me at the station. Since it was a Sunday morning before opening time, our confabulation, such as it was, took place in the station yard. It was disappointing. He brought with him only a photograph of his distinguished animal; Sultan himself had had a busy Saturday, he said, and was feeling rather tired; and although it was of no great importance that I should see him, I had that mild curiosity which most of us feel to view celebrities in the flesh—or the fur. Moreover, since pedigree Alsatians are always photographed in the same position and attitude, sideways, with their tails down, their heads up, and one hind leg in advance of the other, they all look to my inexpert eye pretty much the same. However, I enjoyed chatting to my breeched and gaitered friend about dear Tulip's sexual problems, and took from him the impression I was growing accustomed to receive from professional people in the dog world, that he regarded me as imperfectly right in the head. But I minded this less than the view he took of Tulip, whom he described as “rather too long in the barrel.” Nevertheless, I was glad to have his assurances that I had only to phone him and he would bring Sultan to Putney any day, at any time, and at the shortest notice. I do not think I ever seriously intended to avail myself of Sultan's services, but it was nice to know that I might do so if I wished. I wanted as many rods in the next fire as I could muster; but at the same time there seemed to me—I had felt it all along—something unnatural about bringing two dogs, total strangers, together for an hour or so for the purpose of copulation, not to mention having to stimulate them into taking an interest in each other. I perceived that I might be influenced in this feeling by the fact that my royal bitch was, of course, so infinitely superior to anything else in her domesticated species that she seemed scarcely to belong to it at all. I perceived, too, or thought I perceived, the danger of translating human emotions into beastly breasts. But whether or not my recent fiasco with Tulip could be attributed to such personal causes, that neither of her two suitors had been attractive to her, there was no doubt that in normal times she displayed decided preferences in her canine relationships. There were two or three mongrels in my district for whom she had a special fancy; to one in particular she was so devoted that it was quite a romance. It was even quite a menace. Ordinarily far less interested in dogs than in many other things, and possessed of an exemplary road sense, she was nevertheless liable to cross the street, without permission or precaution, if she perceived this favorite of hers upon the other side. He was a very small and rather wooden terrier, with a mean little face streaked black-and-white like a badger, and I had only to pronounce his name, which was Watney, for her to prick up her ears and lead me excitedly to the public house in which he lived. Hastening across the Saloon Bar to the counter, she would stand up on her hind legs and peer over it to see if he was there. The publican, who was privy to the romance, would let the little dog out, and Tulip would greet him with all her prettiest demonstrations of pleasure, curtsying down to him on her elbows in her play attitude, with her rump and its waving tail up in the air. Every now and then, as he rotated around her, she would place a paw on his back as though to hold him still for contemplation.

What she saw, or smelt, in this dreary little dog I never could understand. Disillusioned women often upbraid their husbands with: “You only like me for one thing!” and this might well have been the case between Tulip and Watney. During her heats he practically lived on our doorstep and, when she appeared, clung like a limpet to one of her hind legs—he could reach no higher—while she patiently stood and allowed him to do with her as he would and could. But when, in the long intervals between, she visited him in his pub in all her fond and radiant beauty, he never found for her more than a moment to spare. Having trotted round her once and ascertained, with a sniff, that there was nothing doing, he would retire stiffly on his apparently hingeless legs to his duties behind the bar (he guarded the till and rang the bell at closing time)—duties which he totally neglected when she was in season—leaving her sitting, frustrated and forlorn, in the Saloon.

“Never mind, Tulip dear,” I would say, as she turned her mournful gaze upon me. “It's the way of the world, I fear.”

The nicest thing for her, therefore, it seemed to me—assuming she was not a barren bitch—would be to find her an Alsatian Watney. It was possible, of course, that Sultan himself might be that very person and that she would take instantly to him—love at first smell; but gratifying though this would be in one way, such a coincidence would also suggest that if I had only persevered in my search I might have found at last, by trial and error, some other instantly acceptable and less costly husband.

But when I shelved Sultan in my mind and took stock of my alternatives, the prospect was not rich. There was, in fact, only one hopeful line, and on a Sunday morning in the spring I set out with Tulip and her pedigree to call on my bruiser friend.

“Everyone knows me,” he had said. “You just ask where Chick lives when you're down my way and anyone'll tell you.”

It was a working-class street and a small untidy house; Chick, who was engaged in his back garden, where kennels and vegetables sprouted together, received us there cordially. But alas, his circumstances had changed; he had sold both his dogs and had nothing left but the old bitch, their mother. Nor did his examination of Tulip's pedigree, which he studied attentively, tracing the strains in her blood with a thick dirty finger and every now and then wheezing out a foreboding “Ah!”, provide the decisive answer to the question of her barrenness which he had led me to expect. But the visit was not entirely negative, for he gave me some advice. A talkative man who liked to have an audience, his successful hobby of dog-breeding—some of his dogs had won prizes—had brought him into contact with notable people. There were frequent allusions to Major this and Colonel that, other luminaries in the breeding world of whom he was surprised and pained to find I had never heard:

“Well, they all know Chick. If you bump into them you just mention my name. You won't need no more introduction than that.”

The particular advice he gave me was never to send Tulip to kennels for mating. This, of course, was another possibility that had vaguely crossed my mind; it was what so many of my acquaintances seemed to do. But he spoke very strongly against it. All sorts of things went on in kennels that weren't right, he said, when he had sent the young lad back into the house to give Mum a hand with the Sunday dinner; breeding was a profitable business, so bitches had to be bred from whether they liked it or not; if they weren't willing they were helped, if they wouldn't be helped they were forced, and many a time he'd seen them muzzled and put into a sling to prevent them resisting. All this was very bad, said he, especially for nervous bitches like he reckoned Tulip to be … The advice pleased me, it chimed with my own ideas; yet as I walked her away I reflected that this beautiful animal had herself been born in a kennel and had therefore, perhaps, been conceived in this very way. 
[1]

It was during this time that Miss Canvey re-entered my life, and I carried my problem to her. She was immediately helpful. She had two or three Alsatian-owners on her books whom she was willing to approach; but she added what seemed to me a far more satisfactory proposition: her own kennel-maid possessed an Alsatian, named Timothy, of whom I could have the use, a possible advantage of this choice being, said Miss Canvey, that she herself would supervise the operation. On the other hand, it had to be admitted, Timothy, though “quite good,” was not a highly-bred dog, and perhaps I ought to see him before making up my mind. But my mind was already made up. What could be better than to hand the whole thing over to dear Miss Canvey? I inspected Timothy nevertheless. He was the smallest Alsatian I had ever seen, no larger in height and build than Tulip herself; but he was nicely shaped in his small-scale way and had an extremely intelligent face. He was reputed to be as devoted to his mistress as Tulip was to me, which may have explained why, when the two animals were given a preliminary opportunity to meet, they took of each other no notice whatever. But never mind, the matter was now in Miss Canvey's capable hands. She told me to phone her as soon as Tulip's heat began, and with everything so ideally arranged I gave up hunting for other dogs.