Paws and Whiskers (32 page)

‘No,’ he replied.

‘No, of course you didn’t,’ she went on. ‘You’re not like that. You saved them because they were crying out for help. You gave them their lives back, and that was a truly wonderful thing to do. But now you have to let them go. They’ll be well looked after, I promise you.’

Patrick ran out then, unable to stop himself sobbing. He went to the toilet, where he always went when he needed to cry in private. When he got back, the box and the puppies had gone, and so had the man in the peaked cap from the RSPCA.

Mrs Brightwell told Patrick he could have the rest of the day off school, so that was something. His mum and dad took him home in the car. No one spoke a word all the way. He tried to hate them, but he couldn’t. He didn’t feel angry, he didn’t even feel sad. It was as if all his feelings had drained out of him. He didn’t cry again. He lay there all day long on his bed, face to
the wall. He didn’t eat because he wasn’t hungry. His mum came in and tried to cheer him up. ‘One day,’ she told him, ‘one day, we’ll live in a house with a proper garden. Then we can have a dog. Promise.’

‘But it won’t be Best Mate, will it?’ he said.

A little later his dad came in and sat on his bed. He tried something different. ‘After what you did,’ he said, ‘I reckon you deserve a proper treat. We’ll go to the football tomorrow. Local Derby. We’ll have a pizza first, margherita, your favourite. What d’you say?’

Patrick said nothing. ‘A good night’s sleep is what you need,’ his dad went on. ‘You’ll feel a lot better tomorrow. Promise.’ Everyone, Patrick thought, was doing an awful lot of promising, and that was always a bad sign.

From up in his room Patrick heard them all evening whispering urgently in the kitchen below – it was loud enough for him to hear almost every word they said. His mum was going on about how she wished they didn’t have to live in a flat. ‘Never mind a dog,’ she was saying, ‘Patrick needs a place where he can play out. All kids do. We’ve been cooped up in this flat all his life.’

‘It’s a nice flat,’ said his dad. ‘I like it here.’

‘Oh, well then, that’s fine, I suppose. Let’s stay here for ever, shall we?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, you know I didn’t.’

It wasn’t a proper row, not even a heated argument. There were no raised voices, but they talked of nothing else all evening.

In the end Patrick bored of it, and anyway he was tired. He kept closing his eyes, and whenever he did he found himself living the day through again, the best of it and the worst of it. It was so easy to let his mind roam, simply to drift away of its own accord. He liked where it was taking him. He could see Best Mate, now a fully grown greyhound, streaking across the park, and he could see himself haring after him, then both of them lying there in the grass, the sun blazing down, with Best Mate stretched out beside him, his paw on his arm and gazing lovingly at him out of his wide brown eyes. Patrick fell asleep dreaming of that moment, of Best Mate looking up at him, and even when he woke up he found himself dreaming exactly the same thing. And that was strange, Patrick thought, very strange indeed.

Best Mate was still lying there beside him, only somehow he looked much smaller than he had before, and they weren’t outside in the park in the sunshine, and his nose was cold and wet. Patrick knew that because Best Mate was suddenly snuffling at Patrick’s ear, licking it, then crawling on top of him and licking
his nose as well. That was when he first dared to hope that this was all just too life-like to be a dream, that it might be real, really real. He looked up. His mum and dad were standing there grinning down at him like a couple of cats that had got the cream. The radio was on down in the kitchen, the kettle was whistling and the toast was burning. He was awake. This was happening! It was a true and actual happening!

‘Mum rang up the rescue centre last night,’ his dad was telling him, ‘and I went and fetched him home first thing this morning. Are you happy now?’

‘Happy,’ said Patrick.

‘A lot, or a little?’ his dad asked.

‘A lot,’ Patrick said.

‘And by the way, Patrick,’ his mum was saying as they went to the door, ‘your dad and me, we’ve been talking. We thought having a dog might make us get on and really do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Get a proper house with a little bit of a garden. We should have done it a long time ago.’

And that was when the giggling started, partly because Best Mate was sitting down on Patrick’s chest now, snuffling in his ear, but mostly because he had never been so happy in all his life.

That same morning – it was a Saturday – they
went out and bought a basket for Best Mate, a basket big enough for him to grow into, a bright red lead, a dog bowl and some dog food, and a little collar too with a brass disc hanging from it, engraved with his name and their phone number, just in case Best Mate ever got himself lost. In the afternoon they all walked up the hill through the iron gate and into the park, with Best Mate all tippy-toed and pulling on his lead. Once by the bench at the top of the hill Patrick and Best Mate ran off on their own, down to the pond where they scared the ducks silly, and then back up through the trees to the bench where his mum and dad were waiting. It was better than footie, bike riding, skate-boarding, kite-flying, better than all of them put together. And afterwards they lay down on the crisp autumn leaves, exhausted, and Best Mate gazed up into Patrick’s eyes just as he had in the dream, so that Patrick had to squeeze his eyes tight shut and then open them again just to be quite sure that the whole day had really happened.

I had measles very badly when I was six years old, and had to spend weeks in bed. I wasn’t allowed to read in case it strained my eyes, so I was incredibly bored. I played fretful games with my paper dolls and listened to the radio – we didn’t have a television then. When my dad came home from work he could sometimes be persuaded to read to me. He valiantly worked his way through all three
Faraway Tree
books, and then in desperation went to the set of Dickens novels that stayed unread in the bookcase. He started reading
David Copperfield
aloud.

I was too young to understand all of it, but I loved the first few chapters, especially the passage where young David plays with little Em’ly in the boathouse at Yarmouth. I laughed at the part where the grown-up David starts courting Dora. She strikes me as a
highly irritating heroine now, so coy and girly and helpless – but I still adore her jealous little dog Jip.

The following is the passage where David meets Jip for the first time.

DAVID COPPERFIELD

It was a fine morning, and early, and I thought I would go and take a stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, and indulge my passion by dwelling on her image. On my way through the hall, I encountered her little dog, who was called Jip – short for Gypsy. I approached him tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth, got under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn’t hear of the least familiarity.

The garden was cool and solitary. I walked about, wondering what my feelings of happiness would be, if I could ever become engaged to this dear wonder. As to marriage, and fortune, and all that, I believe I
was almost as innocently undesigning then, as when I loved little Em’ly. To be allowed to call her ‘Dora’, to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition – I am sure it was the summit of mine. There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this still, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it, let me laugh as I may.

I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner and met her. I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and my pen shakes in my hand.

‘You – are – out early, Miss Spenlow,’ said I.

‘It’s so stupid at home,’ she replied, ‘and Miss Murdstone is so absurd! She talks such nonsense about its being necessary for the day to be aired, before I come out. Aired!’ (She laughed, here, in the most melodious manner.) ‘On a Sunday morning, when I don’t practise, I must do something. So I told Papa last night I
must
come out. Besides, it’s the brightest time of the whole day. Don’t you think so?’

I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammering) that it was very bright to me then,
though it had been very dark to me a minute before.

‘Do you mean a compliment?’ said Dora, ‘or that the weather has really changed?’

I stammered worse than before, in replying that I meant no compliment, but the plain truth; though I was not aware of any change having taken place in the weather. It was in the state of my own feelings, I added bashfully, to clench the explanation.

I never saw such curls – how could I, for there never were such curls! – as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As to the straw hat and blue ribbons which was at the top of the curls, if I could only have hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession it would have been!