The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse (5 page)

Freddie, reminding himself that he was a hero and extremely brave, nodded again – he was trembling too much to speak.

The sorcerer said some words that Freddie could not understand, and then his voice got so faint that it didn’t matter, because everything somehow faded into dark rushing air – and
then stopped.

‘
C
harley! Up!’

He got slowly out of his basket, stretching his long back legs luxuriously and wagging his tail. Poppy called him like that every morning. Now she was sitting up in her bed, holding out her
small thin arms and calling, ‘Come on, Charley. Good boy – you know you can do it.’

Every morning he pretended to her that he couldn’t make it – went through one or two false starts before he leapt, with graceful ease, onto the bed and stood over her with his front
paws each side of her shoulders while he cleaned her face in an ecstasy of affection. She screwed up her eyes and tried to push his face away, but not very hard, and he knew she did not mean it.
She smelled sweetly of biscuits she called digestives; whenever they were on the tea table, she secretly gave him delicious morsels. It was her morning smell, and it didn’t seem to have much
to do with whether she’d been eating them or not. Smells, he decided, were his favourite thing, which was just as well because his life was absolutely full of them. Of course some were awful:
Poppy’s father smelled of the cigars that he smoked, and – worse – of some drink he drank a lot, but out of faithfulness to Poppy Charley submitted to his rather sporting pats and
having his ears carelessly pulled.

He had made his way under the duvet, and now lay with his head on her shoulder, his bony back pressed against her side and his arms and hind legs stretched stiffly out. Poppy put an arm around
his neck; ‘Oh, Charley, I do love you such an enormous amount. I wish I had coffee-coloured fur like you, and lovely glowing eyes and a beautiful friendly tail!’

He was unable to tell her that he loved her just as she was, but his tail thumped and he gave a deep sentimental sigh and hoped that she understood. Soon, he knew, the person who was not
Poppy’s mother – as she didn’t seem to have one – would come hurrying in, ordering Poppy to get dressed for breakfast (people had far more meals than dogs). For weeks and
weeks Poppy had had to go to school for most of the day; the woman – Poppy’s father called her the housekeeper – would walk with her to the bus stop. Once he had followed them,
and when Poppy got on the bus he sprang onto it as well and there was an awful fuss; the housekeeper dragged him off and scolded him and tied her scarf to his collar and was horrible to him all the
way home.

Anyway while Poppy was out at school he slept a lot in his basket on the blanket she had knitted for him, but he always woke at five minutes to four because he knew she was nearly home. She
would have tea while he sat beside her getting discreet pieces of cake or biscuit, which he swallowed with equal discretion.

Then they would go for a walk – or in his case a run. Where they lived was not really country, but their house was on the edge of a very large park where there were deer, and people went
riding. Sometimes Poppy rode a pony, who always wanted to kick him, and he enjoyed bounding around him, always just out of reach. On fine days they would go to Poppy’s favourite tree, a very
large old oak whose lower branches made for easy climbing, and he would sit guarding her. Sometimes she would bring a ball, which she would throw for him to retrieve. No matter how many times he
slogged back with it, she would throw the ball again. He couldn’t see the point of it himself, but she seemed to enjoy it. He really didn’t mind what they did as long as they were
together. Naturally they liked some different things: she didn’t share his deep interest in lamp posts, railings, street corners, and other dogs’ bottoms, for instance, and he
couldn’t see the point of books at all. Years ago, he dimly remembered, he had tried chewing one, but he hadn’t enjoyed it: Mrs Keeper had hit him with a slipper and – much worse
– Poppy had cried, so never again. They had a very different approach to people; when he had met someone once, he could forever afterwards tell who they were from a mile off, but Poppy always
had to see them close up and would touch them, or talk about what they looked like. She did once (and he would never forget it) say that she loved the smell of his warm fur – the best thing
that anyone had ever said to him.

This particular morning, which was Freddie’s first day of being a dog called Charley, was full of feelings that didn’t seem to go with one another. On the one hand it was a morning
like any other of the countless mornings when he had woken up with Poppy calling him; on the other hand he kept feeling that something quite different was going to start happening at any moment
– something new and awful.

He wanted to warn Poppy, but how can you warn someone if you don’t speak their language, and anyway you don’t know what you are warning them about? All he could do was stick close to
her. He had to have his morning potter in the garden, but he practised his guarding growl, and by the time Poppy was having her breakfast he was sitting watchfully beside her.

There seemed to be a lot of commotion in the house; people he didn’t know kept tramping up and down the stairs with boxes and cases, and the drive outside filled up with a van and two
cars. He knew it was the holidays because Poppy wasn’t wearing her school clothes. He put his head rather anxiously in her lap.

‘It’s all right, Charley. We’re going to the most lovely place. It’s got palm trees and beautiful blue sea and sunshine. My father is going to work there, so I
won’t have to go to my boring school any more.’ She bent down and kissed Freddie’s nose and he kissed her back. But he still felt anxious.

She went on talking. ‘We’re going to fly in an aeroplane. I haven’t been in one since I was a baby – before I knew you, Charley. Isn’t that exciting? Dad said that
you wouldn’t be able to fly in the cabin with us, but they have people to look after dogs, so you will be fine.’

Although Freddie didn’t understand what she was talking about, he knew that she was trying to reassure him and that meant that something was not quite right. Then they both heard Mrs
Keeper calling Poppy. Poppy took his face between her two hands, pressing them against his whiskers, and then she kissed him a lot – starting with the top of his head and working down to his
cold black nose, and then up and down each side of his face and he became aware that he was making small whimpering noises that didn’t at all tell her what he felt, which was nothing but
love. He knew then that Poppy was his life; to guard and care for, to follow and watch. Poppy was what he was for – if the world only had Poppy in it, it would be enough for him.

‘Tell you what, Charley,’ Poppy said, ‘you have eyes that actually glow.’

It was the last thing she said to him. Mrs Keeper swept in, scolding as usual; she seized Poppy’s arm and practically dragged her out of the room; she seemed to be in a particularly bad
temper. Of course Charley started to follow them, but she slammed the door in his face. He scratched on the door and barked and barked, and then he heard Poppy crying and he scrabbled harder at the
door, but it was no use. Some doors have handles that you can push down with your paw, but this door had a round handle that he couldn’t manage. He heard noises in the hall, several voices
besides Mrs Keeper’s. He knew they were all going somewhere and taking Poppy with them. He ran to the other side of the room, where the window looked out on the place with the cars, and at
that moment he heard the door handle to the room being turned and he dashed back, but the door didn’t open and he heard Poppy burst into loud sobs and Mrs Keeper talking to her. Charley
rushed back to the window. There was a ledge under it – too narrow for him to sit on, but if he put his front paws on it, he could see out. Mrs Keeper was now dragging Poppy to the car.
Charley barked and barked and he knew Poppy heard him because she called his name, but Mrs Keeper stuffed her into the car and slammed the door and the man in the car drove off. Mrs Keeper stood
watching the car till it disappeared out of sight. Then she turned back to the house: she had a horrible smile on her face and Charley knew she was wicked and he wanted to bite her. But Poppy had
said that he would be going in the aeroplane with her and he trusted her. So he decided to be very meek and careful with Mrs Keeper as she seemed to be the only person who could take him to
Poppy’s aeroplane.

But she didn’t, of course. She left him locked up in that room for hours, and although he felt too anxious to want any food he got terribly thirsty. He tried drinking out of a bowl with
flowers in it, but it tasted horrible. In the end he lay down by the door so that if anyone opened it he could get out.

It was a very long time indeed before Mrs Keeper opened the door, but she seized Charley before he could escape her. She put the loop of a piece of rope around his neck that
got too tight when she pulled it, which she did until he was nearly choking. Then she took his lovely collar off and threw it in the fireplace. Charley could not understand why she was doing these
things, but he didn’t have time to think, because she dragged him outside to her car, which was very small and filled with suitcases. She pushed him into the back and tied the rope to a door
handle; it was very uncomfortable as she made the rope so short that he could not sit on the seat, nor could he lie on the floor properly because of all the luggage.
We must be going to the
aeroplane
, he thought, because that was what Poppy had said would happen. Mrs Keeper drove for a long time; she was muttering to herself and Charley sensed that she was very angry about
something. They drove through streets with houses everywhere and a great many cars and the air smelled dark brown and he began to feel sick.

He also began to know that she was not taking him to Poppy. He had always known that she did not like him, but now he felt her hatred: her mutterings sounded spiteful and he felt really
frightened of her.

Eventually she stopped the car by a wall, got Charley out and dragged him through a door, the other side of which was a large building. Even before they entered, he was overwhelmed by the
terrible smell – well, there were two smells really; one was a sort of cleaning odour – a bit like what they used to clean the lavatories in Poppy’s house, only much, much
stronger. The other was horrible in a quite different way – it was the awful smell like at the vet’s, of animal anxiety and fear – only this was coming from many, many dogs.
Charley made one desperate lunge to escape, but it only made the rope tighten around his neck till it nearly choked him again.

As they went through a second much larger door, Mrs Keeper bent down and loosened the rope. On the other side were a man and a woman. Mrs Keeper started talking to them in the smarmy way she did
with Poppy’s father, what Poppy had called her lying voice, and the woman wrote down some things, and then she gave Charley a pat on the head; he thought she was going to hit him and he
cringed, and Mrs Keeper laughed in an artificial way and handed the rope to the man and then she went. It was a relief, but it was also awful, because she was Charley’s last link with Poppy
and how could these people who did not know either Poppy or him get him to her aeroplane?

Charley was panting from thirst and the woman got a good large bowl of cold water for him, and he drank nearly all of it.

They both talked to him kindly while they removed the rope and put a collar on. Charley felt then that if only he could tell them what he wanted they would help him, but of course he
couldn’t.

They took him to a small room and lifted him onto a black table and a man in a white coat looked into his ears and mouth and put some cold thing on bits of his chest and then felt all along his
body and he thought they all seemed pleased.

Then the woman led him down a passage and through a door at the end. The moment she opened the door a frenzy of barking broke out – it was deafening. Dogs shouting, ‘Look at me! . .
. Help me! . . . Let me out of here! . . . Please come to me! . . . I want to go home!’ Some of them were just howling. They were all in small cages down both sides of the passage and they
all rushed towards the woman and Charley with awful hope, standing on their hind legs with their faces pressed against the bars. All the cages seemed full, but at the end there was a bigger cage
with just one large black dog lying in it. His coat was curly with bits of grey in it. He did not bark, but got to his feet and walked stiffly towards the woman who had opened the cage door. She
stroked his head and talked to him while he gazed at her. He looked as though he understood everything she was saying.

Then she unclipped Charley’s lead and pushed him gently into the cage, said something to both of them and left.

For a minute they both stood looking at each other and then did the usual sniff dogs do with strangers. Charley asked the black dog his name.

‘Alphonse. I’m French – a poodle, in case you didn’t know.’