The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse (8 page)

When he came to, he was on the table with the man in a white coat talking to Anne. He heard them mention Alphonse, whereupon he got to his feet, wagging his tail and looking into Anne’s
face. ‘If only you’d understand, I’m begging you to take me to him! Begging you!’

She did understand. The man lifted him off the table, Anne clipped a lead onto his collar and led (or rather he led her) to the door on the other side of which were the dogs’ cages. Wafts
of Alphonse’s scent came to him and he strained at his lead. The noise that all the other dogs were making meant nothing; he was whimpering from excitement and the joy of being with his
friend again.

Alphonse was lying in a huddled heap at the very back of his cage. He seemed to be asleep, and even when Charley called him, he still lay there with his eyes shut. Anne undid his lead and let
him into the cage. As he reached Alphonse – saying, ‘It’s me – Charley’ – the poodle opened his eyes, and his face, which had looked as sad and dejected as his
whole body, changed to a kind of dazed delight.

‘I thought I was dreaming you. Didn’t want to wake up, old bloke.’ The fur around his eyes, Charley noticed, was wet.

Anne, who had been watching them, pulled a small rough towel out of her overall pocket and gave Charley a quick rub-down which made him feel much warmer. ‘Breakfast soon,’ she said;
‘and you jolly well eat it, Alphonse.’

‘Lie against me, old bloke, and you’ll soon get warm.’ He put a large protective paw around his friend. Charley noticed that he could feel Alphonse’s ribs. ‘Been
off my food lately,’ said Alphonse.

‘So have I.’

‘She brought you back then?’

‘No, I escaped. It was all horrible so I came back here: to be with you.’

Alphonse gave a deep sigh of content. ‘A couple of bony old blokes, aren’t we?’

Charley didn’t reply. He buried his nose deep into the thick curly hair of his friend’s shoulder and fell instantly asleep. He was woken by the clamour of breakfast. Everybody was
shouting – about food, and how they wanted to get out, they weren’t meant to be here – all the usual stuff. When the trolley got to them, the boy who usually did breakfast came
into their cage with two bowls, which he put in the usual place, and as he went back to get the jug of water he said something to Alphonse. Charley, who was already attacking his bowl, looked to
see if the poodle was following suit, but he wasn’t.

‘Don’t you want your breakfast?’

‘Not much. Not really.’

‘Yes, you do. Got to keep your strength up. The Major wouldn’t like you not eating.’

This made Alphonse get painfully to his feet. His back legs were trembling and his coat looked poor.

‘You’re quite right. “None of that nonsense,” he used to say. He didn’t approve of nonsense, and it seemed to be all over the place. Once we were in a shop getting
me a new collar and they offered a lovely red one, which, as I am French, I thought would be just right with my black fur, but he said that was nonsense too, and he bought me a brown one, same as
usual.’ Talking about the Major seemed to animate him, and he walked shakily to his bowl and started eating. Charley, who had finished his quickly, sat beside Alphonse telling him rather
sternly to eat everything up. Then they both had a good drink.

‘Well – now we’d better review the situation.’

‘What situation?’ Charley felt full of food and warm and nearly happy, and not very keen on a situation because they always seemed to be worrying.

‘Well, this Hook or Crook person will come looking for you, won’t she?’

He hadn’t thought of that. ‘She’ll never think I would get here. It’s miles away. She’s not a dog.’

‘She might easily think that someone found you wandering and bunged you in here.’

This gave him a moment of sheer panic. ‘If she comes near me, I’ll bite her. I’ll growl to give warning, and then I’ll BITE her!’

‘No, you won’t. You’ll cringe. You’ll lie down with your tail between your legs and you’ll whine.’

‘Why will I? I’m quite brave enough to bite her.’

‘My dear old bloke, you’ll cringe and whine because then Anne will see that you are afraid of her, and you’re afraid of her because she has been treating you badly. They never
let people take dogs who do that. It’s your best hope.’

Charley was overcome with affection and respect. ‘I would never have thought of that. You really are a poodle in a thousand. TEN thousand!’

‘I know I am. The Major recognised that. It was merely my sense of style that he didn’t altogether grasp. Not a drop of – he called it frog – blood in his
veins.’

Charley didn’t understand that at all. Why would a poodle have any frog’s blood? Anyway . . . ‘I’ll cringe,’ he said.

‘Show me!’

‘That’s not a really cringing cringe,’ he said, after Charley had done his best.

‘Well – you show me!’

Instantly Alphonse cowered away from him, his whole body abject with fear, his usually kind brown eyes rolling and showing the whites as though in panic, and uttering small whimpering cries of
terror: ‘Please don’t hit me again; I beg you, beseech you – don’t!

‘More like that,’ he said in his ordinary voice.

Charley was deeply impressed. ‘What does beseech mean?’

‘It means kind of double beg. Now, you have another go.’

So then they played a game of taking it in turns to frighten each other until Charley got quite good at it and Alphonse said that he was tired and needed his rest. ‘At least we’re
prepared,’ he said.

‘For the worst?’

‘It’s the only thing we can prepare for. It comes from being a dog. No power. And precious little choice.’

‘We can hope for the best.’ Charley was sleepy now and did not at all want to think about the worst.

Anne took them for a brief walk. Alphonse tried to run so that Charley could get some exercise, but Charley stuck to walking or a sedate trot to suit Alphonse. They both
enjoyed the fresher air, and Alphonse said that while Anne had stroked Charley’s head, she’d said he would never have to go back to ‘that woman’ again. When she stroked
Alphonse’s head she said, ‘You two; you’re inseparable, aren’t you?’ They both kissed her hands and wagged their tails and Charley stood on his hind legs because he
wanted to put his arms around her neck, but she just smiled and wouldn’t let him. When they got back their cage had been cleaned out and there was nice cold water in their bowl. There was the
usual shouting and yelping from the cages – ‘What about me? Let me out! I want to go home!’ – but Charley had become used to it, and anyway it died down as soon as Anne had
collected the next group of dogs for their walk.

They had a short sleep comfortably curled up together, and when they woke Alphonse proposed a game.

‘It’s called the best and the worst,’ he said. ‘You think of the best that could happen, and then I think of the worst.’

Charley thought as hard as he could.

‘Poppy coming back and finding us and taking both of us in the aeroplane to her island.’

‘Mrs Keeper and Hoot creeping back here in the night and dognapping us.’

Charley felt the fur on the back of his neck stand on end.

‘My turn now. Major Hawkin Jones’s sister suddenly turning up and saying she wants two dogs to protect her from wicked people and we are just the ticket.’

‘The sister turns up but says she can’t afford to keep two dogs, so she takes you and I’m left here.’

‘The trouble is,’ Charley said, after the true misery of being in the refuge without Alphonse had struck him, ‘that the Worst seems so much more likely than the
Best.’

‘That’s a dog’s life. Do you think you could deal with the fur at the back of my ears? And I’ll try to think of a game that’s more cheerful.’

So Charley set about grooming his friend (whose fur had got into a sad state in his absence), finishing by washing his face with such affectionate vigour that Alphonse ended up on his back with
his paws boxing Charley’s face. After a bit of rolling about, Alphonse said he gave in and they both had another good sleep.

Charley dreamed. He was in his bed in Poppy’s room and she was calling him; ‘Charley! Up, Charley; you know you can do it!’

He woke quite suddenly, and just had time to realise that he was in the cage with Alphonse – that he had been dreaming – when he saw that Anne had come into the cage.

‘Charley . . . ?’ she was saying. ‘Are you by any chance Charley?’

He was – indeed he was. He rushed to her – he was saying,
yes!
yes!
yes!
a hundred times – wagging his tail, licking her hands, his eyes glowing with
excitement and joy. He was Charley – Poppy must have found him – he would soon be with Poppy again . . . He turned to his friend; Alphonse was sitting bolt upright gazing at him, an
expression in his large brown eyes that Charley had never seen before – of so much love and sadness . . . He went up to his friend and touched his nose.

‘It’s the best,’ Alphonse said, his voice so husky and small that Charley could hardly hear him.

Then they both became aware of the man in a white coat standing outside the cage. He and Anne started talking, and Alphonse, his ears pricked, listened. What he afterwards told Charley was
something like this.

‘You see what I mean? They really should stay together.’

‘My dear Anne, they won’t want to take on a totally unknown dog – an old dog at that.’

‘We could at least ask them. Explain.’

‘We could. If only they had someone in this country to see the poodle, they just might agree – but as it is . . .’

‘Well, they said they’d call us to see whether we’d identified the lurcher; I could talk to them then. The little girl will be so pleased I think she would agree to
anything.’

‘She may, but unfortunately little girls don’t make that sort of decision. You’ll just have to find the poodle another friend . . .’ They were walking away and Alphonse
couldn’t hear any more.

The two dogs looked at each other. Then Charley, who had not lost his exhilaration, said, ‘They were talking about you coming with me! Weren’t they?’

‘Talking about it, yes. But the man is quite right: Poppy’s father won’t see the point of having a second dog – and he’s the one who’ll decide.’

‘If only I could talk to Poppy – get her to see how much it matters . . .’

‘But you can’t. You can’t talk to her any more than I can. We’re not in charge, Charley. We’re dogs. We can’t choose things. It’s all part of being a
dog.’

A shock. He had always known that he loved

Poppy, but now he knew that he also loved his friend. It was like having a second heart, and the vision of being led away from him, leaving him lonely and sad, was more than he could bear. He
made a heroic decision.

‘I won’t go without you,’ he said.

The poodle, who had been lying with his head between his paws, lifted it now to look at him.

‘My dear old bloke, I’ve been trying to explain: it’s no good you saying things like that. You can’t choose what happens and nor can I.’ He put out a shaky paw to
stroke Charley’s face. ‘But I shall always remember that you said that. Always. It was brave and charming of you.’ A moment later he said, ‘I’m tired, Charley, really
bone tired.’

They had a sleep, as they always did, with Charley’s arm around Alphonse’s shoulder and his head burrowed into the soft curly fur of his chest . . .

He was running on dazzling white sand, and Alphonse was running as well – splashing easily and fast through the shallow edge of a greeny blue sea, and a yellow silver sun
was pouring down onto their hot fur, and he was completely happy because he knew that Alphonse felt the same.

Then, just as he began to realise that the hot sunlight was fading, the sea and the sky becoming darker, Alphonse left his side and plunged into the sea. Charley barked, but there was no answer,
and almost at once he could not even see the dark head of his friend. He ran into the sea to follow him, but at that moment it became completely dark, everything black, and he was conscious of
feeling bitterly cold, and when he shouted despairingly for Alphonse, his voice was so small that he could scarcely hear it. Gradually a grey light was there, he was shivering, and everything
around him seemed enormous . . .

‘That seems to have been quite a serious adventure.’

He licked one of his soaking paws; it tasted of salt. Two black eyes were regarding him; it was the sorcerer toad. He was speechless with shock. He wasn’t Charley any more, and just when
everything had seemed so marvellous, he had lost his friend Alphonse – and he was back to being a mouse. Tears rushed to his eyes; he longed with all his heart to be Charley and to be with
his friend.

‘Your time was up. You didn’t remember about Freddie at all, did you? Well, I didn’t want you to. This time I wanted you to really understand about being a dog.’

‘I want to go back to that. I want to be back with Alphonse.’

The toad waited while he wept. Then he said, quite gently for a toad, ‘I’m afraid it isn’t possible to be Charley forever.’

‘Why? Is he dead? Are they both dead?’

‘No, no. They are on their way to the island, to Poppy.’

‘So Alphonse won’t feel that I’ve left him?’

‘No. He’s still with Charley. You were just Charley for a week, which is what you asked for. And thanks – partly to you – they – all three of them – will be
together. Isn’t that good?’

He thought of Alphonse and how much he loved Charley.

He thought of Charley and how much he loved Poppy.

Then he thought that if you loved someone, you wanted them to be happy, and if they were all together on the island, they would be. He blinked the last tears from his eyes.

‘Yes,’ he said; ‘it is good. ‘It’s what I wanted most, for us – I mean them – to be together. It’s just – well – I don’t know.
I’m not looking forward to being the same old feeble mouse.’

The toad’s mouth widened into what Freddie had come to recognise was a smile.

‘Ah! But you won’t be.’

‘I don’t want to be turned into another someone else!’

‘I thought I’d made it clear that I’m not spending any more of my sorcery on that. You won’t be the mouse you were before. You will be a very different mouse now. Think
of all you’ve learned.’