Authors: Nicola Barker
Sarah had her spies. A particularly helpful and obliging kennel-maid in her employ was more than happy to spend her working hours – and several more hours overtime – scrutinizing the Bland residence, keeping an eye on Silver, making sure that Sarah was kept abreast of all developments.
On Friday night, Sarah was sitting somewhat gracelessly (her legs up on the desk) in the reception area of Paws for Thought. They were closed. Even allowing for the incident with Anthony earlier on, it had been a most depressing day. Countless clients had made references to the AAS ball and award ceremony. All expressed an enthusiasm to see Silver in the fur, so to speak, with his hair like a waterfall of smooth, creamy, champagne follicles.
Sarah was full of a deep, numbing, inexplicable sense of
foreboding. She sensed that Anthony was up to something, was willing to go to extreme lengths to humiliate her. She stared at her knees and tried to think of something else. Instead she wondered whether cellulite and fat were the same thing, or if cellulite was something more complex that you couldn’t get rid of merely by dieting. Her knees looked dimply. Anthony had always loved her dimples.
The front door of the shop crashed open and Sarah’s obliging kennel-maid ran in, panting, red-faced, slightly hysterical. Sarah removed her legs from the desk and pulled down her skirt. She then strode over to the girl and, taking hold of her shoulders, shook her violently while saying, ‘For God’s sake, tell me what’s happened, tell me what he’s done, tell me!’
The girl’s teeth chattered but she forced out the word ‘razor’.
Sarah gasped. ‘You mean, you mean he’s …’ She gulped, ‘… suicide?’
The girl shook her head and then breathed deeply to try and control her vocal chords. ‘Worse than that. It’s the dog. He’s shaved the dog. Hasn’t shaved the whole dog, though. Only its bottom.’
Sarah dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around her head like someone shielding themselves from a bomb. After a short duration her voice emerged, wavering, muffled, ‘How does it look?’
The kennel-maid sobbed and rung her hands, ‘Oh Mrs Bland, it looks … it looks
awful
!’
Anthony stared smugly out of the kitchen window at Silver, who was trotting around the back garden, the hair on his body swinging regally. He was such a proud dog, a great specimen. Anthony thought to himself, ‘I love him! Everything I’ve done I’ve done for him. He’s my child. This cut is just cosmetic, peripheral, like discipline; being cruel to be kind. Let’s see how Sarah reacts to it though!’
He couldn’t repress a tiny chuckle as Silver turned around and brought his beautifully shaved rump into full view. Anthony’s chest puffed out proudly as he perused his handiwork. It wasn’t just a shaved bottom, it was more than that. Anthony had shaved a large heart shape across the dog’s buttocks which spread over the entire rump area, an area that was now whitish, surprisingly skinny and amazingly unattractive. The base of the heart, its bottom ‘v’, found a lovely focus just under the dog’s anus. Anthony had shaved the tail too, for good measure, which waved around like an obscene, pale, twig.
Silver knew that something strange had happened to his rear end. Occasionally he craned his head round and endeavoured to sniff at it. That part of his body now felt extremely vulnerable and cold. He dreaded winter, when he might be forced to perform his more basic bodily functions crouching in the snow. On such occasions, a bottom really needed hair.
Anthony turned from the window and set about making some popcorn in the microwave.
Sarah had been awake all night. Initially she had debated taking one of her other show Afghans to the ball, pretending that it was Silver. But she was well aware that everybody knew how Silver actually looked. He was the celebrity after all; people had grown accustomed to his beautiful blond hair and proud, serene gaze and gait. He was a star. Anyway, Anthony had to be taken into account. He was obviously planning to make an appearance with the real new look Silver in tow. She knew that everyone would presume that she was responsible for the cut. It didn’t matter whether they found out the truth later. As a businesswoman, Sarah knew that initial impressions are the ones that really stick, the most fundamental, the longest lasting, the most suggestive.
At 5 a.m., red eyed, slightly frazzled, the big solution to her problems finally popped into her brain. It had taken its time in coming, but it was worth the wait. She let out a small,
shrill, desperate scream, then sprang out of bed and threw on some clothes.
Since the split she had been living in her mother’s small flat in Pimlico. She dashed downstairs, out of the building and jumped into her Mercedes. She started the engine and pointed the nose of her car in the direction of Paws for Thought and its adjacent kennels. Her fingers and hands were tickling as she pushed round the steering wheel and the gear-stick. She was ready for work. She was ready for action, ready, almost, for anything.
Saturday night. Anthony was waiting outside the large reception hall for the AAS Ball in his station wagon. Silver was sat in the back, his twiggy tail stuck miserably between his back legs. He was a sensitive dog who often felt things too deeply. Sarah had used to say – maybe she still said it, but his doggy ears never heard it now – that ‘Silver’s soul is just too great. He has too great a soul, at least too great a soul for an Afghan.’
Silver was burdened, felt a sensation of weight and dread in his heart which perfectly complimented the sensation of light airiness around his buttocks.
Anthony squinted out of the window and towards the well-lit entrance. Several photographers were hanging about on the steps, waiting for scoops (not of the pooper variety), waiting for guests of honour, important people and important dogs. Anthony finished his packet of ready-salted Hula-Hoops and, after screwing up the packet and throwing it carelessly out of the window, glanced down at his wrist watch. He turned and peered over his shoulder at Silver, saying, ‘Won’t be long now, gorgeous,’ and adjusted his shirt and bow tie.
A sudden commotion to the right of the hall indicated the arrival of the guest of honour. Sarah arrived, surrounded by people, the flashing lights of photographers, shouts, whistles, a surprising volume of noise, interspersed with the odd, occasional, hysterical doggy bark.
Anthony peered across the road, trying to see what she was wearing, what she was doing, but he could only see the top of her blonde bob as she climbed the stairs into the hall and disappeared from sight.
He waited for five minutes, gauging the tickle at the top of his nose, a dangerous, familiar tickle, waiting for a warm trickle of blood, but none came. After the five minutes were up, he opened the car door, climbed out and then opened the back door for Silver. Silver clambered out and waited patiently for his collar and lead to be adjusted. He felt full of a supernatural doggy dread. The evening air felt cold and treacherous.
Anthony sniffed noisily and then made his way towards the brightly lit entrance. Silver followed, dragging his paws, slinking, head hanging.
The hall was packed, brightly lit, full of yells, whistles and a strange, unexpected, buoyant hysteria. Anthony frowned. He had expected this kind of atmosphere after his appearance with the new-look Silver in tow, but not before. As he entered the main hall itself and began to walk up the long, red-carpeted aisle towards the main stage, he squinted short-sightedly forwards to try and see what was happening.
He caught sight of Sarah’s head, her yellow hair. She was wearing a beautiful, white-sequinned dress, a plain, close-fitting dress which made her look – Anthony couldn’t deny it, even to himself – which made her look almost angelic. She glowed.
At the end of three matching white-sequinned leads were three of her best show Afghans from the kennels, all nice dogs, Anthony thought, but not of Silver’s calibre.
He drew closer. The crowd – at last – were beginning to notice him: he sensed a wave of developing interest and enthusiasm generated by his sudden appearance. Now he was within ten or so steps of the stage. Sarah was saying, ‘Thanks to you all, ladies and gentlemen, but most of all, thanks to the dogs that have made all this possible.’
She turned, twirled, span around to face the rear of the stage. The dogs turned with her. The audience screamed in unison.
Each of the dogs had been shaved, shaved in the same way as Silver. Their three heart-shaped blueish patches shone under the bright stage lights. The first dog had a large letter ‘I’ on its bottom, the second the word ‘Love’, the third the word ‘Afghans’.
The crowd cooed and then cheered. The three dogs waved their tails in unison. Then Anthony noticed Sarah’s bottom. Her own white-sequinned and well-shaped tush had been decorated too, not shaven, but covered in a big Afghan-hair heart which swished and swirled as she hitched and rolled her hips Monroesquely.
Anthony gazed, aghast. Sarah half-turned, caught his eye and said, ‘Anthony has brought Silver, ladies and gentlemen. Our very special guest of honour!’
The audience applauded. Anthony could do nothing but climb up on to the stage, and, clutching Silver’s lead tightly in his sweating paw, bow to the assembled masses. Silver’s tail remained firmly slung between his back legs.
Both Sarah and Anthony had entered (however unwillingly) into the atmosphere of the whole thing. They smiled hollowly at one another and then down at the dog. Silver looked miserable. Sarah frowned and then whispered to Anthony, ‘What’s wrong with him? Normally he loves applause and attention, he adores a crowd.’
Anthony shook his head and shrugged. He tweaked at Silver’s lead, but Silver didn’t respond. Instead he seemed to be deeply preoccupied, squinting, wrinkling up his nose, shaking his head, acting as though he was in some kind of terrible discomfort.
Sarah and Anthony stared at each other worriedly. Silver inhaled deeply, and then, like a temperamental powder keg, let out a sneeze of an almost terrifying violence and ferocity.
The sneeze shot out of Silver’s nostrils, bounced around the four corners of the hall like an airy bullet, and then seemed to return to the stage and gave the appearance of thwacking Silver in the centre of his nose. Silver staggered, coughed, sniffed and snorted, then his nose began, unmistakably, to bleed. The blood didn’t drip, it gushed.
Anthony dropped Silver’s lead and fell to his knees beside the dog, his eyes damp with guilty tears. He said, ‘Oh Sarah, what’s wrong with him? What have I done? This is all my fault, if I hadn’t been so selfish of late …’
Sarah shook her head, and, grabbing hold of his right arm, pulled Anthony up on to his feet again and into a tight embrace. She said, ‘We’ve both been selfish, Anthony. We’ve both been rather childish recently, rather preoccupied. Maybe we haven’t been properly receptive to Silver’s needs during all this fuss and bother. But at least now we know where our priorities lie. This must make a difference, must wake us up to our obligations and responsibilities, both to him and to each other.’
Anthony felt his head clear. He said, ‘I feel as though I’ve been lying in a big pot full of concrete these past few months, frozen, burdened, alone, but now the weight has been lifted. Sarah, I love you, I’ve always loved you. I want to try again, to make a new start with you and Silver.’
Sarah hugged him, confining the heavy weight of his midriff in her soft, alabaster arms. She said, ‘God knows I’ve missed you, Anthony. This is a new beginning.’
A pool of blood surrounded Silver, but the crowd continued to clap and cheer. They couldn’t see the blood flowing on to the red carpet, only the pale fur of the dogs and the embracing couple.
The other dogs sniffed at the pool of blood with speculative interest. One of them tasted it with the tip of his tongue and then withdrew.
Selina Mitchell had never been particularly free-thinking. Since she was fifteen she had been completely under the sway of her dominant and rather single-minded husband Tom and her dominant and rather light-headed friend Joanna. She had always lived in Grunty Fen. If you grow up somewhere with a name like Grunty Fen you never really see the humour in the name, and Selina was no exception to this rule. She never thought it was a particularly amusing place to live. In fact she hated it most of the time. It was physically small, socially small and intellectually small. It wasn’t even close enough to Cambridge to bask in any of the reflected glory; but if ever Selina had cause to write a letter to London or Manchester or Edinburgh for any reason she invariably wrote her address as
Grunty Fen, Cambridgeshire
. She hoped that this created a good impression.
The only scandal that had ever caused real consternation, discussion and debate in Grunty Fen was when Harry Fletcher had started to wear Wellington boots to school (in summer) and the school had been forced to alter their uniform rules in order to acknowledge that Wellingtons were a legitimate item of clothing for school wear. The teachers had seen this new allowance as a victory for the environment over the purity of education, a muddying of the intellectual pursuit. The kids all wore wellies to school for a while and then switched back to mucky trainers after their initial
joie de vivre
had worn off.
Selina had been a quick-witted student – by Grunty Fen standards – and had been one of the few children at the village school bright and determined enough to go to teacher training college. At seventeen she had packed her suitcase and had
gone to Reading to learn how to be a teacher; to spread discipline and information.
At seventeen she had thought that she would never return to Grunty Fen again, but inevitably she went home during her vacations to visit her parents and wrote long, emotional letters to her boyfriend Tom, who had tried to stop her going to college in the first place by asking her to marry him.
After three years at college Selina had returned to Grunty Fen, ‘Just until I decide where I really want to go.’ Eventually she had married Tom and had started teaching at the village primary school.
She disliked children and didn’t want any of her own. Tom liked children – probably because he wasn’t forced into a classroom with thirty of them every day – but he realized that if he wanted to hang on to Selina (she was one of the intellectual élite) then he would have to bow to her better judgement.
Time rolled by. Selina’s life was as flat as the fens and just about as interesting. Nothing much happened at all.
Joanna, Selina’s best friend, had lived a very similar sort of life except that she had enjoyed little success at school and had never attended teacher training college. She had got married at sixteen to John Burger whose family owned a large farm to the north of Grunty Fen, and had borne him two children before she reached twenty. She had always been wild and mischievous, but in a quiet way, a way that pretended that nothing serious was ever going on, or at least nothing seriously bad. Joanna was the bale of hay in Selina’s field. She made Selina’s landscape moderately more entertaining.
Joanna didn’t really know the meaning of hard work. Most country women throw in their lot with their husbands and work like automatons on the farm. But Joanna had more sense than that. She preferred to stay at home ‘creating a friendly home environment’ and cultivating her good looks.
At the age of thirty-nine she aspired to the Dallas lifestyle.
She spent many hours growing and painting her nails, making silk-feel shirts and dresses on her automatic sewing machine and throwing or attending Tupperware parties.
Joanna was Grunty Fen’s only hedonist, but hedonism wasn’t just her way of life, it was her religion, and she tried to spread it like a spoonful of honey on buttery toast.
They were in a café in Ely, a stone’s throw from the cathedral, eating a couple of cream éclairs with coffee. Selina was making fun of Joanna but Joanna didn’t seem to mind. She pulled the chocolate away from the choux pastry with her cake fork as Selina said laughingly, ‘I still can’t think of that birthday without smiling. My fortieth, and I thought it would be some sort of great landmark. I was so depressed. I opened Tom’s present and it was a home first aid kit. Of course I said how lovely it was. Then, trying to hide my disappointment, I opened your present, firmly believing that it would contain something frivolous and feminine. But inside the parcel there were only ten odd pieces of foam, all neatly and pointlessly sewed up around the edges. Neither of us knew what the hell they were. I thought they might be miniature cushions without covers. Tom thought they were for protecting your knees during cricket games, a sort of knee guard. I even thought they might be falsies.’
Joanna smiled. ‘This must be one of the only places in the world where a woman of forty doesn’t understand the basics of sophisticated dressing. I thought you could sew the shoulder pads into all your good shirts and dresses. It’s a fashionable look, Selina, honestly.’
Selina shrugged her non-padded shoulders. ‘I will sew them in eventually, I promise.’
Joanna grinned to herself. She looked rather cheery. Usually before, during and after the consumption of a cream cake Joanna panicked about its calorie content and moaned about its probable effect on her midriff.
As Selina waited for the inevitable outburst she said, ‘If we didn’t come to Ely every few weeks for a chat and a break I’m sure I’d go mad. Ely. Imagine! This small, insignificant town has come to symbolize freedom and independence to me. It’s rather sad; it’s like the Americans symbolizing freedom with a sparrow instead of a bald eagle.’
She looked into Joanna’s face. Joanna was smiling. It was as if she was listening to a song that no one else could hear. Selina stared at her in silence for a minute or so and then said, ‘What is it, Joanna? I’m sure you’re up to something.’
Joanna’s eyes were vaguely glassy. Selina frowned. ‘You’ve not been taking those tranquillizers again, have you?’
Joanna laughed. It was a sort of throaty, gutsy laugh. ‘Oh Selina, if only you knew. If only! What’s Tom like in bed at the moment? Has it improved since our last little chat?’
Selina shrugged and her cheeks reddened. ‘Nothing much has happened in that department. Are you enjoying that cake?’
She had finished hers several minutes before, but Joanna was still (uncharacteristically) pushing her cake around her plate. Selina added quickly – to distract Joanna from intimate territory – ‘School’s been awful. Felicity has been sitting in on classes. It’s to do with the new assessment rules from the education authority. The classroom is no longer my kingdom. It’s been taken over by men in little grey suits. Of course Felicity loves it all. She even had the cheek to offer me a few tips on my teaching technique the other day. I’m surprised she was capable of taking any of the lesson in. Most of it she spent fiddling with her hearing aid. Anyway, everyone knows that Heads are incapable of controlling classes and that’s why they become Heads in the first place. Maybe I’m just bitter, but the thought of that old crone deigning to tell me how to handle a class! She said something like, “Be freer, Selina, be more adventurous, take risks!” I tried to tell her that the syllabus had destroyed all elements
of spontaneity in the classroom. If the kids want to cope with the workload nowadays it’s all blackboard, chalk and copying.’
As Selina finished speaking Joanna shuddered slightly. Selina smiled. ‘Ghost walk over your grave?’
Joanna shook her head and then giggled furtively. ‘Look Selina, it’s not that I’m not interested in what you are saying about school – God knows, my two did well enough under your tuition and they thought you were a great teacher – it isn’t that I’m not interested, but I just must change the subject for a moment.’
As Joanna spoke, she leaned towards Selina conspiratorially and her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘Selina, I’m wearing Dual Balls.’
Selina frowned. ‘What do you mean? Is it a girdle of some kind, or some sort of skin ointment?’
Joanna never ceased to amaze her with her violent enthusiasms and frivolity. She pushed a slightly greying brown curl behind her ear and thought abstractedly, ‘I must have my hair cut, it’s almost touching my shoulders now.’
Joanna’s chair scraped along the floor as she pulled it up closer to Selina. Selina could smell her perfume – something heady like Opium – which flushed through the air like bleach through water. Joanna whispered again, ‘I’ve got Dual Balls, Selina. I’ve had them in since I left the house. It’s been incredible.’
Selina shrugged, ‘You’re going to have to explain this to me, Joanna. I don’t know what Dual Balls are.’
Joanna bit her lip and stared at Selina through her heavily mascaraed lashes for a moment, then she said, ‘I got them from an underwear catalogue. I ordered them and they came in the post. John doesn’t know anything about them.’
Selina cleared her throat nervously, ‘Are they something rude, Joanna?’ Joanna winked saucily. ‘I should say so. They’re like two small round vibrating grapes. Battery operated.’
Selina took a sip of her coffee to try and deflate the tension, then said, ‘Have you got them in your bag?’
Joanna snorted loudly and several people at other tables turned and stared at them both for a moment. Selina felt slightly embarrassed. Joanna soon recovered from her fit of hilarity and whispered, ‘They’re not in my bag, stupid. I’ve got them in my fanny.’
Selina was not initially so much shocked by the idea of Joanna’s little vibrating grapes as by her casual use of the word ‘fanny’. It was an old-fashioned word. She had once had a great aunt called Fanny, a gregarious, light-hearted aunt who had always seemed very old to her as a child; old, frail but charming.
She didn’t really know how to reply to Joanna, how to disguise her intense unease and embarrassment. Luckily Joanna had other things on her mind. After a few seconds’ silence she squeezed Selina’s arm and said, ‘I’m going to nip into the toilets and take them out, then you can have a proper look at them.’
Selina’s expression was querulous. Joanna noticed as she stood up, and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Selina, I’ll give them a good wash before you have to have any contact with them.’
Selina sighed. ‘Joanna, please be discreet. This is only Ely after all, not San Francisco.’
Joanna didn’t reply.
Once she’d gone Selina relaxed and drank a large mouthful of her coffee. She stared out of the window at the cathedral. She thought, ‘God, I feel old. Maybe it’s teaching. It just beats all the enthusiasm out of you. I’m sure I never used to feel this way. The kids are no better or no worse than they were twenty years ago. It must be me that’s changed.’ She sighed and waited for Joanna’s return.
After about five minutes Joanna emerged from the toilets looking furtive but self-satisfied, like a large tom cat on the prowl, about to spray an unsuspecting territory with his rank
odour. Selina thought, ‘This room belongs to Joanna. She doesn’t give a damn about anything.’
Joanna sat down next to her again and Selina said straight away, ‘I don’t know where you get these ideas from – or your nerve for that matter – look at you, as bold as brass!’
Joanna smiled and patted her chestnut perm with one of her bright-pink-fingernailed hands, ‘Don’t look at this hand, look at the other one under the table.’
Selina moved backwards slightly and stared down at Joanna’s other hand which held the Dual Balls like a couple of freshly laid eggs. Selina said, ‘They’re bigger than I thought they’d be and attached to each other. I imagined that they’d be a sort of flesh colour, not that strange off-white.’
Joanna raised her eyebrows, ‘Flesh
is
off-white, Selina. Are Tom’s balls a very different colour to these?’
She smiled provocatively. Selina shook her head disapprovingly. ‘Tom’s …’ – she couldn’t use the word – ‘Tom’s aren’t anything unusual, Joanna, and I certainly don’t make a habit of trying to use them like you’ve just used those. Also, his don’t use batteries and they aren’t attached by a small piece of cord.’
Joanna smirked. ‘You wish Tom’s balls were like these. They’re very effective, and so discreet. I think the thrill of using them is trebled by the fact of wearing them out. It’s so arousing.’
Selina grimaced. ‘Walking can’t be easy with them in. Why don’t they just drop out?’
As Selina spoke Joanna switched the balls on. She waited for Selina to finish talking and then said, ‘Why don’t you try them and see?’ The balls vibrated vigorously in her hand. They sounded like a quieter version of an electric razor. Selina was sure that everyone could hear. She whispered frantically, ‘For God’s sake Joanna, switch them off.’ Joanna frowned. ‘I worry about you, Selina. You’re becoming very old-maidish, very schoolmarmish. You don’t have any spirit of adventure any more.’
Selina didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I’ve never had any spirit of adventure and you know it.’
Joanna nodded. ‘I suppose that’s true. No backbone, no spontaneity. No interest in what’s state of the art …’
Selina raised an eyebrow. ‘Where did you come across that little phrase? Something on television, something American I suppose?’
‘You wouldn’t have the nerve to wear these out, no way,’ Joanna interrupted.
Selina smiled. ‘I’d have enough nerve, Joanna, just too much sense. I don’t need something like those. I think they’re horrible. Now switch them off.’
Joanna turned and stared out of the window at people passing by. An old lady staggered past pulling her shopping trolley. Joanna pointed at the woman, ‘I bet she’d wear them out. I bet she’s got more spunk in her little finger than you’ve got in your entire body.’
Selina almost smiled at this but then stopped herself. ‘Possibly. Look, the waitress is coming over with the bill. Please turn them off.’
Joanna didn’t turn them off, but started instead to lift up the hand containing the vibrating balls until they were almost at a level with the surface of the table. Selina was excruciatingly embarrassed. ‘Joanna, switch them off and put them away. You’re embarrassing me.’