7

Charlie meets Dora

Charlie didn’t usually go to the village shop with Mr Trundle, and Mr Trundle didn’t usually go to the shop on foot. Indeed there were people living in the locality who might have been forgiven for assuming that Archibald Trundle was welded to his van seat, so rarely did he leave it unless actually on a job. But times were hard, and the brakes needed fixing. Mr Trundle had resolved to save his available brake power until he had something more important to do than buying bread.

‘Come on Charlie Boy!’ he called, ‘let’s take a walk.’

Horrified at the possible threat to his dignity should he be seen, Charlie flatly refused to wear a lead, but grumpily followed the old man the few hundred yards to the village store.

On the same day Dora was delighted when Mrs Featherstone decided to try and make herself fitter in time for Christmas, and taking a bright red lead from the peg in the kitchen, invited Dora to leave her two daughters and go with her while she jogged along to collect the papers from the shop.

Dora, Meg and Allie were not used to going for walks. Mrs Featherstone knew nothing about dogs, and whilst Emily tried to convince her of the importance of exercise for the Jack Russells, her mother refused to let her daughter go any distance on her own.

‘It’s not safe out there darling,’ Mrs Featherstone would say.

Emily was cross. ‘But Dora would bite anybody we didn’t like the look of,’ she said, ‘if I asked her to.’

But Mrs Featherstone stood firm. Emily told Dora that she couldn’t wait to grow up and leave home, when she planned to set up her own pest control business, paid for by her father. It was to be called Emily’s Expert Rodent Removal, or EERR for short.

The village shop operated at a slow pace, as all the customers needed time to gossip, so Dora was tied to a post at the side of the building - something she hadn’t expected and didn’t like. And trust that tall handsome dog to turn up and witness her humiliation. She pretended not to see Charlie coming, just as his spirits rose at the chance of having a laugh at her expense.

But it wasn’t to be Charlie’s morning. As he stuck his head round the corner of the shop building, ready to make a rude remark, a sudden movement on the grass verge only two metres away caught his eye, as did the large rat who had been about to come and check for scraps around the shop’s dustbin, but reversed in alarm when it saw the two terriers standing so close. Charlie jumped back at the same instant that Dora jumped forward, straining at her lead.

‘Get him, quick!’ she called to Charlie, who tried to gather his courage and look as if that was what he wanted to do.

‘Not big enough for me to bother with,’ he said then in an offhand way. But he knew that Dora had seen his fear, and she knew that he knew that she’d seen it too. Charlie felt himself flush with shame and frustration.

Where was Mr Trundle? Charlie returned to the shop door and tried to peep between the stickers, adverts, and old tape that covered the glass. But Mr Trundle was deep in conversation with Mrs Featherstone. Charlie could hear them.

‘Snares Farm eh?’ Mr Trundle was saying, ‘that’s a big job that is, indeed it is you know. You’ll need some very experienced terriers for that! Two or three females just won’t do it.’

‘D’you really think not?’ Mrs Featherstone was looking concerned. ‘But my girls seem to be very good. I’m getting lots of requests to lend them out round the village. And I even got a call from the Mayor of Uffington, who just recently came to supper with us you know, and he wants my dogs to help out round the housing estates.’

‘Is that so?’ Mr Trundle’s croak became even croakier as he stared in amazement at this woman who appeared quite unaware that she was taking away his livelihood.

Charlie wondered whether Mr Trundle was about to lose his temper. ‘Have you ever been to Snares Farm?’

‘Oh no!’ said Mrs Featherstone. ‘Rats are not my thing at all. Now my daughter Emily, she’s interested. Perhaps she should go and take a look. I could give her a lift and wait in the car.’

‘Oh, I don’t think a child should go in there!’ Mr Trundle’s kind nature got the better of him. He wouldn’t wish any child that experience.

‘Oh well,’ said Mrs Featherstone breezily. ‘I’d better get off. Thanks for the advice but I’m sure we’ll be fine!’

Mr Trundle collected his bread and came out of the door as Mrs Featherstone jogged off up the street with Dora trotting beside her. Depressed and downhearted for their own different reasons, he and Charlie trudged home.

Although Charlie sympathised with Mr Trundle’s problems, and hoped that soon the Featherstone terriers would make a mistake and the tide would turn against them, he was far more concerned with his own private grief. How could he be the head of a gang of professional pest control terriers, and not able to deal with a single pest himself? He knew he had to face his fears. The problem was beginning to keep him awake at night, and the arrival of Dora and her family in the village made it more likely that soon, everyone would know that Charlie, handsome and intelligent as he was, was in fact a scaredy-cat dog.

He also knew that Dora had guessed that he had a problem, and that made everything worse.

He had to do something about it. Leaving Snip behind with instructions to distract Mr Trundle if he started to want his dogs, he took himself off the following evening to try a bit of home-made therapy. As it happened, Mr Trundle’s daughter Mary had once studied psychology at the Open University, and Charlie had overheard many of the (rather boring) quotations which she’d read to her father while he slept by the fire. Now he tried to remember the basic rules for dealing with a phobia, in this case a phobia about rats, and he worked out a programme for himself:

Evening 1

1.Find a rat

2.Look at it

3.Come home again

Evening 2

1.Find a rat

2.Look at it

3.Touch it

4.Come home again

Evening 3

1.Find a rat

2.Look at it

3.Catch it

4.Come home again

He called his system ‘Charlie’s Courage by Stages’, or CCBS for short, and he set off for the back of Dr Gilligan’s house without delay – a place bound to offer the practice he needed. And sure enough, he’d not been there two minutes when a particularly challenging example – long whiskers, fat tail – came skittering along in the ditch.

Charlie gave it a hard stare and ran home. So far, so good.

All night he imagined himself to be brave. In waking dreams he pounced first on a mouse, then on a hamster, two weasels, one stoat, and finally a large grey rat.

The following evening, scared but determined, he arrived at the same ditch just in time to hear Emily Featherstone saying, ‘OK Dora, that was just great. Well done for catching all seven of them!’ His heart sank.

Charlie tried to pretend he’d just been passing by in a hurry, but Emily nabbed him.

‘Hey there! It’s Charlie isn’t it? Oh, I’ve heard so much about you! Mayor Barnsley was telling Dad what great ratters you and your friends have been, and I must say you’re very handsome.’

Emily leaned down to stroke Charlie’s head.

‘Have been? Have been?’ Charlie couldn’t bear it. STILL ARE! He wanted to shout, as he heard a snuffle of laughter coming from Dora.

‘I wish we had this boy as well, don’t you?’ Emily carried on talking to her dog. ‘Just think what a team we’d make!’

Emily missed the fits of giggles this brought about in Dora. And missed too the furious look on Charlie’s face, as he could hardly answer back, and nor could he carry on with Stage 2 of Charlie’s Courage by Stages. He ran home in a rage to find Snip.

‘We are at war.’ he said when he got there, and flopped down on the rug. But whilst he may have sounded war-like, inside he felt very sad.

While Charlie was trying to deal with his fear of rats, Spud was on a mission of his own. Getting to know Allie. Instinctively Spud knew that if the rest of the gang even heard that he liked her, they would have a good old laugh at his expense. Look how they treated his wonderful stories about his own wonderful parents? They laughed, or fell asleep.

So once Herbie was safely watching detective stories on telly with Mrs Nockerty, he would slip out and hurry the short distance to the Featherstone house, to see if he could talk with her. Funnily enough she was often hanging about with her sister Meg at the end of the long back garden at the same sort of time, doing very little. Her sister Meg would see him first, and she would nudge Allie, then tactfully wander off to leave them alone together.

Allie would pretend not to care that Spud had turned up again, and was often rude, but he had seen her looking at his ears and surely there was admiration in her expression? He thought her perfect.

‘Och, hello there,’ he would say.

‘What d’you want? You were here last night in case you don’t remember.’

‘Fancy a walk up the back field?’

‘No I don’t.’

‘There’re loads of rabbits there.’

‘Oh alright, if you’re scared.’

And the two terriers would trot off up the track in the summer evenings, chatting together about Scotland, and what it’s like having your portrait painted. Allie was a tough dog, and she wasn’t easily impressed, but she could see that Spud was a strong dog too, and that he admired the same qualities in her. But one evening Dora was in the garden as well.

‘So you’re one of Charlie’s Gang,’ she said to Spud. ‘Scared-of-rats Charlie!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Spud, appalled. ‘Charlie’s one of the best ratters in the country, and he knows more about tactics than anyone. We’re a team. And we’d be grateful if you’d stop pinching our jobs.’

‘Now look here,’ said Dora, crossly. ‘It’s hardly our fault if we keep getting sent to sort people’s pests out. We can’t help it if we’re better than you lot.’

Spud was torn between his fury at what Dora had said and his anxiety to get on well with her as the mother of his future partner. He tried to explain.

‘Of course you’re not better!’ he said, ‘but pest control is our business. You’ve seen what it says on the company’s van. NO PEST TOO BIG and THAT is the TRUTH!’ (Actually, as we know, it said ‘no pest too small,’ but never mind.)

Stung by Dora’s attitude, Spud went home. What can Allie’s mother have meant? Surely Charlie wasn’t scared of rats. How could he be?