Chapter 01

Saturday, Sunday, Monday . . . . the weekend slipped away. Tomorrow I would have to take her back. I could keep her no longer. “I must make a plan,” I said to myself as I turned out the light on the last day. “I’ll think it over before I go to sleep.” But I did not think it over; my mind seemed unable to grasp the fact and I fell asleep without considering it at all. “I must make a plan,” I said to myself the following morning as I drank my tea. “I suppose I’d better ring up Liverpool Street and find out about trains.” But I did not. The morning was bright and beautiful; I stared through the window instead at the boats passing up and down on the river below. Separated from me now not merely by distance but by the memory of that nightmare journey—for that was the obstacle my thoughts gripped on—Stratford seemed as remote as the Hebrides, and to get Evie back to it required, in my imagination, a resolution so dauntless, an effort so stupendous, that I could not even begin to think how it could be accomplished. Conversely, now that she had entered into my life, that other inconceivable proposition, as I had once envisaged it, of keeping her there, appeared, although it had not yet been put to any test, less impracticable. My mind, indeed, if it could be said to be busy at all, was busy with that. To leave her behind in my flat was out of the question. I had deserted her twice on Saturday to do a little shopping, and the change in her expression from jubilation as she bounded with me to the door, to the most poignant dismay and despair when I shut it in her face, had upset me so much that, tired though I was, I had rushed like a madman from shop to shop, muttering audibly at the slowness of other customers, even in one shop earning a rebuke for trying to push in front of them. On neither errand was I gone more than fifteen minutes, yet to my fond and guilty mind they had both seemed interminable. When I returned she was still standing where I had left her, her forehead against the door. . . . But why make plans? My office, after all, was on the way to Liverpool Street. . . . I could as easily ring up from there as from here. . . . I had a room of my own . . . . no harm in trying. . . . I could always take her on if it didn’t work. And I could cover myself against all eventualities by phoning a wire to Millie. This, at least, so far as planning went, was no sooner thought of than done: I said we might be delayed and she was not to worry if we did not turn up today. Perhaps she should have a letter of explanation too, just in case. . . . She would get it in the afternoon if I posted it now. I sat down to it at once, and my pen positively flew along as though the letter had been written for a long time in my head and was only waiting to come out. I described everything that had happened since I left her, the frightful journey, the walk across the parks (“If you could have seen her delighting in her youth and strength you would have understood more clearly what I mean about the wretched life she’s been leading and how frustrating it is”); I told her what Miss Sweeting had said and that I was now asking Johnny through Megan to let me put Evie in a kennel until he was free (“I’m sure he’ll agree. Since he’s a prisoner himself and knows what loss of freedom means he would not be so cruel as to condemn his dog to a similar fate”); and I ended by saying that Evie was still so intensely nervous that I doubted whether I should be able to induce her to enter another train just yet (“If I can’t I must try to work her into my life for a bit longer, though I don’t at the moment see how. But she’s in good health, so don’t worry, and I’ll be writing to you again soon”). Besides being too quickly written, this letter was far too long; I realized that when I took it to the post. Millie was no great reader and used to find, I remembered, as much difficulty with my normal calligraphy as she found with my normal speech; but I had been too carried away to think of using the special childish round-hand I generally employed when writing to her.

As soon as I had done all this I felt extraordinarily light-hearted, almost light-headed. Nothing was resolved, but some tension had been released and it was in the blithest spirits that I set out with Evie, like Dick Whittington and his cat, to walk to London. In my despatch-case I carried a few biscuits to sustain her while I worked and a tin receptacle for water. But I had not gone far before I was annoyed and perturbed to find that the joints of my legs were painfully stiff. I had, after all, covered during the weekend as great a distance as I normally walked in months. When we reached Hammersmith Bridge I looked hopefully about for a taxi to carry us at least as far as Palace Gate; but to walk I had set out and to walk I was obliged. My objective was Gladstone House, a large block of government offices in the neighborhood of Regent’s Park; my own room was on the topmost floor, the sixth. Limping into the vestibule two-and-a-half hours later I gazed longingly, though doubtfully, at the lift. . . . Surely Evie, who had been using the one in my block of flats, could be said to be lift-minded by now? But, alas, as I feared, there was to her all the difference in the world between a self-operating lift that carried no one but ourselves and went non-stop to our destination, and one that not only contained a suspicious stranger in the person of the lift-man, but took on other suspicious strangers at every floor. When we reached the third, with half a dozen nervous people aboard, and I saw another half-dozen waiting to get in, I realized that it was time to get out, that no one would attempt to detain us if we did, and that the lift-man would not feel offended if Evie never used his lift again.

The working day, which had begun so fatiguingly, ended no better. I had entertained a hope that the six-mile walk which had almost worn me out would tire Evie a little too, and that she would be disposed to lie down and doze while I attended to my correspondence. This proved the fondest of illusions. She prowled restlessly about, whining and complaining, or stood staring at me as though she could scarcely believe the evidence of her senses; she uttered loud sighs or even louder cavernous yawns, subsiding from time to time into a heap on the floor, with a startling thud, as much as to say ‘Oh hell!’ only to get up again immediately; she tried, by all her usual tricks of stealing and pretending to destroy my gloves, to draw attention to herself and her wishes; when this did not work she instituted noisy cat-and-mouse games with her biscuits (none of which did she actually eat), hurling them all over the carpet until it was littered with their fragments; and she barked violently with her excruciating bitch’s bark, not only at everyone who entered the room but at every footstep in the busy passage outside. When I cuffed her in exasperation she put her fore-paws on my desk, upsetting the ink on my papers, in order to lick my face forgivingly. She was nevertheless much admired by my colleagues and had, for a time, a novelty value even beyond the department, so that a number of curious sightseers arrived throughout the morning. But she received them all so ungraciously that they did not call again.

Although I had considered the question of her lunch (needlessly, as I have said), I had given no thought to my own; when the time for it arrived the prospect of obtaining any was not bright. I could not take her into the canteen, nor could I leave her shut up for half an hour while I visited it myself. Her feelings, and mine, apart, my room had no key, and anyone might look in on me in my absence. . . . My only chance, it seemed to me, and it involved further physical strain, was to find some small, unfrequented pub which would provide me with a sandwich and a pint of beer. Evie’s intense, petrified anxiety when she saw me preparing to leave, the almost mad stare with which her starting eyes pierced and searched my own for the answer to the only question in the world: “Me too?” unwelcome though it was, touched me as it always did. It also affected me with a sensation of hysteria similar perhaps to her own, a feeling that if I did not take care I should begin to laugh, or to cry, or possibly to bark, and never be able to stop, for I knew that as soon as I settled the matter by clipping on her lead I should be practically raped and then sucked down the spiral staircase like a leaf in the wind. These prospects afforded me so little pleasure in my present state of fatigue that I considered letting her follow me down uncontrolled, but I was afraid she might spiral impetuously out into the dangerous road and be run over. A number of staid officials plodding up from the floors below shrank against the wall as we sped past.

The expedition was more rewarding than I had dared hope. An almost deserted pub on the far side of Regent’s Park supplied me with what I most needed, a couple of pints of refreshing beer, also with a plate of meat-and-two-veg., which I shared with Evie. On our return I decided to let her mount the stairs by herself, for she could not very well spiral out of the roof; and the experiment was interesting in that the twisting staircase seemed to make her as giddy when she was off the lead as it made me when she was on it. She started off with such speed that I wondered whether she might not acquire a permanent curve in her backbone; but the curve she did acquire was in her mind, for when she reached the landings she constantly lost her sense of direction and, circling still, came flying down again without stopping, so that I was forever meeting and parting from her, gaining her, as it were, only to repel and lose her once more.

The success of the break ended there. The afternoon passed much as the morning had done, excepting that I was left more severely alone. My outgoing mail, such little as I managed to write, was not collected unless I placed it on the mat outside my door where the incoming mail was now deposited, for the post-girls were too scared to come in. Even so, Evie heard their timid steps and never failed to issue her warning. I left early and, having once more negotiated Baker Street, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens, had the good fortune to find a taxi at Palace Gate to convey us to Hammersmith Bridge. Evie, when we reached home, was as fresh as a daisy; I was not; but strenuous though the day had been I derived retrospective satisfaction from it nevertheless; at any rate I had brought her through it; she had been initiated into my working life, and, meeting her strange gaze as she reclined on the bed, I told her that I hoped she had learnt a rope or two and would do better on the morrow.

When she woke me I heard a pattering on the roof. The weather was another thing I had omitted from my calculations. What on earth should I do now? Perhaps the rain would stop by the time I was up and dressed. On the contrary it was coming down harder than ever. I knew from experience that one phoned for taxis in vain. I phoned, in vain. Buses were out of the question. How could I walk her to London in this downpour? I stared at her alert, expectant face in dismay. At the base of her ears, in the openings, I noticed, the system of head hair began in a kind of spray. It was as though she had a light gray flower, a puff-ball, stuck in front of each.

Then I remembered the Metropolitan Railway in Hammersmith, which I seldom used, though what I regarded as its cynical humor always entertained me when I did. Fair promise, foul reward! After luring one on with the offer of a choice of stations romantically rural in their names—Royal Oak, Goldhawk Road, Shepherd’s Bush, Ladbroke Grove, Westbourne Park—it then ushered one through some of the ugliest and grimiest districts of Central London. But it presented me with a practical solution now; Hammersmith was a terminus; there were no complications of any kind; a train was always waiting, level with the platform, and it would take us direct to Baker Street. When the rain had abated a little we set out.

Evie behaved abominably. I removed her from the train at Royal Oak, I could no longer endure her piercing and violent challenge to everyone else who got in, nor the cold looks and indignant mutterings cast at me from the other end of the compartment where the rest of the passengers huddled. Why, oh why, I asked myself as I took the intolerable creature out and walked her on through the rain, did she have to go on like that? The same thought recurred to me in my office throughout the day. So obviously brimming with intelligence, so fond of me, why, why, in spite of everything I said to her, did she seem unable to understand that my director and other members of the staff, with whom she saw me constantly in conversation, were therefore friends and could be permitted, they at least, to enter my room without being repeatedly threatened? Before the day’s work was half done she had reduced the whole department to a palpable state of nerves. In the afternoon, in extremity, I fell upon her with an exclamation of rage and gave her the soundest biffing with my hands that she had so far received from me. For a moment she concealed herself beneath my desk; then she emerged and stood looking at me with an expression of such sorrow and, at the same time, such dignity, that, falling forward upon my letters, I sank my head on my arms. “Evie, Evie,” I said miserably as her nose pushed in against my cheek, “what are we to do?” But I knew the answer already. I could not go on. I could not bear another day. I had had enough. The strain and the worry were too great. Her meat was finished and mine too, for I had given her my week’s ration; how could I shop for more? She would have to go back to the Winders in the morning.

Did she sense that decision? She seemed particularly quiet that evening, gazing at me with her longest and her fondest looks. “Forgive me, sweet creature,” I said. She had, indeed, I knew, lavished upon me in these five days her love and care; according to her notions she had done her best to entertain me and guard me from harm; she had been a good companion.

The course of betrayal is often made wonderfully easy. Everything conspired the following day to smooth my guilty path. After phoning a wire to Millie to expect us, I started off early and walked Evie all the way to my office—the last long walk she would get for some time—to glance at my letters. When I descended with her to search for a taxi, one cruised towards the entrance of the building as though it had been ordered. At Liverpool Street a train was waiting for us. It was quite empty. Evie got into it without hesitation. No one attempted to board it at any of the other stops. She herself stood silently on the seat with her back to me looking out of the window as though trying to recollect something that had happened before. We were at Stratford in a trice. On the way back to Millie’s she did not pull as much as usual; when we reached the house she turned automatically in at the gate.

“Come, Evie,” she said, frustrating the dog’s attempt to greet her. Of me she took no notice at all. Uninvited though I was, I followed them down the passage. To my surprise, for he should have been at work, Tom was in the kitchen eating some fish. He took no notice of me either. Dickie, presumably, was with his minder.

“ ’Ere, Evie,” said Tom, getting up with his plate in his hand, “ ’ere’s a bit of fish for you.” Evie slunk under the table. “Come on, old lady,” he coaxed her. She remained where she was. With his disengaged hand he lifted the heavy plush tablecloth. Evie’s eyes shone greenly up at him out of the gloom. This was humiliating and provoking. “Go on in!” he exclaimed vexedly, moving round the table to drive her out; and with the way to the scullery now clear, she slid into it. Tom followed her and shut the door. Millie went over to her stove. I was not invited to sit down.

“The journey was easier than I expected.” Millie, her back to me, made no reply. “I hope it hasn’t put you out, my keeping Evie longer than I said?”

“You know what I think and I haven’t nothing more to say. You promised faithfully you’d bring her back Tuesday and you’ve broke your promise and I won’t never trust you again and we don’t want no more help from you.”

I looked at her in a consternation not unmixed with guilt. She was scarlet in the face.

“Promise? I made no faithful promise. I said I’d bring her back Tuesday; then I thought I’d keep her a bit longer and told you so. Does it matter?”

“Yes, it do matter. And it’s no good you trying now to make it seem it don’t. You took her under false pretenses.”

“My dear Millie! What are you talking about? Haven’t you had my wires and my letter explaining the difficulties?”

“Yes, I got your wires and your insultin’ letter. Since you think this ’ouse is ’orrid and nasty and not fit for a dog to live in, I don’t know how you can set foot in it yourself, and you’re not called on to do so no more.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” I said mildly. “But I must say I don’t see how. I’ve certainly never insulted you intentionally. I’ve only been thinking of the dog’s good, I’ve kept you informed and, after all, I’ve brought her back.”

“Millie dear! Don’t call me a liar. I’ve had no letter from you at all.”

“Because I couldn’t keep the poor creature any longer. I told you in my letter that I was afraid she’d be too much for me.” Her angry gaze examined me incredulously still. “When did you write?”

“Well, you’ll find it when you go home, and I don’t take back nothing that I said in it. You promised you’d bring Evie back Tuesday, and you not only broke your promise but you wrote me an insultin’ letter what has hurt my feelings very much. I know my Johnny’s in prison without you keep throwing it in my face, but I won’t have you nor no one call him cruel, for a more tender-’earted boy never lived as never ’urt a animal in his life, and Evie was quite all right here too in this ’orrid house, well fed and well looked after——”

“My dear Millie,” I interposed irritably, “I know that perfectly well, and I’ve never said anything different. All I said was that she was never taken out, and that it wasn’t right. And you yourself agreed it wasn’t right. And if it wasn’t right it was wrong. And since Johnny knows that his dog never goes out——”

“Well, he don’t know,” said Millie defiantly, “for he wasn’t told. Tom told him different.”

“Call it what you like. There wasn’t no call to worry the boy. He’s got plenty enough to worry him already.”

“He’ll have plenty more,” I remarked dryly, “when the dog bites the baby.”

Tom re-entered the room and, without glancing at me, sat down in his arm-chair. His face with its leaden coloring and hollow cheeks looked even uglier than usual. That they were both waiting for me to go could not have been more obvious. Reluctant as I was to leave matters like this, what could I do? It was, after all—their silence conveyed it as eloquently as speech—none of my business. What held me a little longer was simply the closed scullery door. I looked at it and a feeling of physical sickness seized me. She loved me and I had given her up. Could I ask to say good-bye to her? But I was frightened. The anger in the room frightened me. There was nothing left but to say good-bye to them.

Millie had the grace to say good-bye too, though without turning around. Tom said nothing. Neither of them saw me to the door.

Millie’s letter was waiting for me. I picked it up and went into the kitchen. On the floor was Evie’s water-bowl and the vegetable remains of her dinner of yesterday. I emptied and washed both the dishes and put them away. The place was as silent as the grave. On the way to my sitting-room I trod on something in the passage. It was a carrot. A feeling of the deepest dejection overcame me, and I sat for some time motionless in my chair, Millie’s letter unopened in my hand. Then I read it.

Frank,

I received your letter, part of which was insulting, you came here on Saturday and said that as you had some free time, you thought it would be a good idea to take Evie for a weekend with a promise that you would bring her back on Tuesday, you have not only broken your promise to me, but betrayed my trust in you, Evie was quite happy here too, and for 6 months I have fed and looked after her and all through the cold winter weather Tom has not only lost time from work but has gone and lined up in the cold for her meat and now that she has grown into a fine bitch and we have got her free from worms, you come along and take her from us, but she has got to come back. My son who is the owner of the dog, gave her to me to look after, until he could look after her himself and said that no one was to have her, also you got Evie up there and you can bring her back to Stratford and to the life in my house that is so dreadful. And lastly I know only too well that my son is in prison without you throwing it in my face and you are wrong, he loves animal as much as his children and would not dream of having it shut up, like he is himself. I am very annoyed over this affair, but it is not the first time your horrid words has made a lump come in my throat, I shall be home at 12 o’clock Thursday when I shall expect Evie.

Millie.

And 12 o’clock Thursday was the very time I had taken her back. No wonder Millie had thought it cause and effect! What a good thing I had not received the letter first—if she believed I had not. But the genuineness of my denial had impressed her I felt sure. A barge passed silently down the river across my window, as though drawn by an invisible thread. . . . How quiet the flat was, unbearable. . . . I trailed aimlessly back to the kitchen and trod on the carrot again. With a sudden howl of rage and pain I picked it up and hurled it into the dustbin. Bloody cheek, treating me like that! And after all I’d done for them! Stupid people, ignorant and obstinate, daring to assert themselves against me! Anyone would think I’d been trying to steal the blessed dog. Tom was at the bottom of it, of course. “Tom won’t like it when he finds her gone.” What a pity I hadn’t taken her back Tuesday. Millie had been on my side then. Now she wasn’t. Tom had fussed her up. “False pretenses”—he’d put the phrase into her head I was sure. “What did I tell yer? ’E don’t mean to bring ’er back. ’E took ’er under false pretenses. You didn’t ought to ’ave let ’er go, mate. You won’t never see a ’air of ’er no more. ’E ’ad ’is eye on ’er from the start.” I could hear him saying it. “Val’able bitch”—but no, they couldn’t have thought! It was too monstrous! Johnny had offered me the dog in the first place, and had sanctioned my taking her out since. What did it matter to them if I took her for a walk or a week? She wasn’t their dog anyway, and—Millie must know it—Johnny would be delighted for me to have her for as long as I wished, especially considering. . . . But of course he didn’t know! They’d lied to him, or Tom had! And Millie had let the lie pass! “There wasn’t no call to worry the boy.” But that wasn’t the reason at all; it was to save Tom’s ugly mug. “If you and Tom goes on taking her out,” Millie had quoted in that earlier letter. Yes, that was it! He’d promised to take her out and then been too idle to do so, but he’d pretended he was doing so all the same! How disgraceful! How wicked! And he’d had the impertinence to call Megan “sly.” And honest Millie had connived at the lie! But she’d been ashamed! She’d gone as red as a turkey cock! What a crew! So Johnny had no notion what was happening to his wretched dog! But he’d know when Megan saw him and gave him my message. Today was Thursday; she’d probably been already. Well, we would see. . . . Meanwhile what was I to say to Millie? For Evie’s sake I had better be careful. Indeed yes, what a pity I hadn’t taken her back on Tuesday. Yet I would have kept her even longer if I could! The letter misted over as I gazed at it. I would have kept her for ever, for ever and ever. . . . But they were not to know that. . . .

Dear Millie,

I found your letter waiting for me when I returned. I’m so sorry to have upset you by keeping Evie a little longer than I said, but I did not think it would matter. I knew that Johnny would be grateful to me for giving her the exercise she needs and which you can’t give her and Tom won’t, so I thought you would be pleased too, the more so since you often say she is such a nuisance. I never intended to insult your house. I only said it was bad for her to be shut up in it, just as it would be bad for her to be shut up in mine. And I see now that I was wrong to find fault with Johnny, since it seems that he was not told the truth. I can say no more than this, and I shall, of course, respect your wish about sending no further help.

yours sincerely.

Dear Frank,

thank you for your welcome letter which I received safe this morning, I am entirely to blame for going off at you like I did and I am very sorry indeed and hope you will except my apology, Dickie is not at all well, I should have taken him to the doctor today but he seemed so queer as he has a cold and also two more teeth nearly through the poor kid is having a tough time, one side he has like a large egg the side of his face, I have got flannel with camforated oil on it around his throat also enough medicine until Monday. I hope you are keeping well this changeable weather.

all the best and love.

Not a word about Evie! I noticed that at once. Well really! The easy retraction took me aback almost as much as the angry accusation had done. A few days ago I had been practically turned out of their house for a thief and a liar; now, as though nothing of any consequence had occurred, peace was blandly restored, and presumably cash too! I read the brief note again. Dickie and his revolting lump! And not a word about Evie! This lack of reference to the subject of the dispute troubled my already sore mind like an irritation. Not that any news of her that might have been vouchsafed could have afforded me the smallest satisfaction; I could guess about her, alas, all that could be told; but the fact that she was not mentioned affronted me. Was the controversial subject now closed? Was I being tactfully warned off? The equation was wonderfully simple, I thought, glancing over the letter for the third time: now that we’ve got the dog safely back under lock and key, we—and you—will say no more about her! Was that the medicine I was expected to swallow? If so, they would soon find out their mistake! But why hadn’t Megan phoned? This was Saturday; she must have seen Johnny by now. Had she given him my message? Or—what did she know about all this? She was there, of course, when the lie passed. Perhaps she had not liked to give my message after all; it would automatically expose Tom. Was it not possible—the suspicion flashed upon me—that they’d got at her? Now that I came to think of it she’d visited them on the Easter Sunday after she’d phoned me; it would be natural for her to mention my new plan for the dog. Could they have meddled, to save their faces? “There’s no call to worry the boy. The dog’s perfectly all right.” Had they said something like that to her? No doubt there was a conspiracy and Megan hadn’t given Johnny my message at all! Repugnant though the prospect was, I had better go and see her.

The inadequate, stained rep curtains were pinned across the front window as usual, to prevent the nosey from looking in—and Johnny perhaps from looking out, for he once told me that if ever he stood, even for a moment, gazing into the street, Megan would be sure to say “What are you sticking out your eyes at? A skirt, I suppose.” If he ignored her she would come to inspect, and woe betide him if some girl did happen to pass just then, for, protest as he might, he would not hear the last of it for the rest of the day. Outside the house little Rita, aged five, was mincing and posturing up and down the pavement with a doll in her arms, engaged in some private game of make-belief. Whose daughter she was was plain enough; both she and her twin sister Gwen, now fortunately removed to their grandmother in Cardiff, had inherited not only Megan’s features and coloring, but also, it seemed to me, the low cunning which, when they were all together, appeared to unite them in a silent conspiracy.

“Is your mother home from work?” I asked as I passed. Megan, I had gathered from Millie, was helping some crony to run a café somewhere in the Fulham Palace Road. Little Rita studied me for a moment with a dirty finger in her mouth (the wide-eyed stares she bestowed had nothing of the village idiot look of her brother’s), then shook her head. Blast! I thought; should I go home and return later or hang about? Perhaps one of the other tenants would know when she might be expected back. I mounted the steps and rattled the letter-box. Megan opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, with a faint smile, standing aside to admit me. “I was just thinking of phoning you.”

“I can’t do nothing with her,” said Megan complacently. I could do something with her, but I did not say so.

Whatever else might be dubious about Johnny’s wife, there was no question of her condition, I thought with a shudder as I followed her into the front room. It stuck out, as the saying is, a mile. Doubtless the business of creation was a solemn, a sacred, affair; but if I could think of it at all in such terms, I could only think of her as full of another little Gwen-Rita or another Dickie.

I declined stiffly. It was one thing to call, another to accept hospitality. The room, always scantily furnished with such odds and ends as Johnny had managed to add to the marriage suite that Millie had given him and the few objects that had come from me, was even barer than usual. The large clock with which I had presented him soon after he set up house, in the vain hope that he would sometimes glance at its face when he had an appointment with me, the wireless set, the Crusader who turned out to be a cigarette lighter and the metal goose that turned out to be a clothes brush, the gilt mirror and two hideous ornament vases, had disappeared from the mantelpiece and were no doubt back together where they frequently resided severally, in the pawn shop. On the other hand, a photograph of myself that had once held a prominent place until Megan contrived to mislay it was again on exhibition. It was, or had been, a jolly snapshot of myself and Johnny in his naval dress, which I had had enlarged and framed for him. The frame was now occupied by a repulsive colored photograph of Dickie, and I, Johnny cut away, was stuck into a corner beside him. Restoration could hardly go further; clearly Megan thought the world of me now.

“Sit down,” said she in her toneless way, indicating Johnny’s easy chair. I chose an upright one by the table, as signifying a more formal visit and, removing with my finger-nail some congealed baked beans from its seat, placed myself on that. Megan resumed her chair and teacup by a small flickering fire.

“Not too bad. It’s dull on your own, you know.” What did she mean by “you know”? “Isn’t it cold today?”

Women are always cold, I thought, and how did they expect to be anything else, going about as they did with scarcely any clothes on? The very sight of her bare legs chilled me.

“I’ve not long lighted it,” she answered quickly, almost defensively, as though I’d accused her of something. “The lady upstairs lent me a mite of coal.”

“But he must have given a reason. Did you explain to him properly that it’s a kennel and not a friend?”

“It may not be long for him,” I said angrily. “He’s got plenty of four months in his life. But a dog only lives about twelve years. Four months is a large slice out of Evie’s life.” Megan knitted her pallid brows at me. “Are you sure you told him everything I asked you to?”

“I can’t understand him. Why on earth should he mind? I wish I’d seen him myself. When is the next visit due?”

“About her not going out?” said Megan, staring at me with her pale green eyes. I nodded encouragingly. “But I thought you said you’d had her over to Barnes with you?”

I contemplated her for a moment in silence. Her black hair was coiled above one eye in a sort of limp loop. Was the woman half-witted? Or was she fooling me?

“You think it’s enough for a young dog to have a weekend of exercise once in six months?”

“That was good of you,” I said with a kind smile, “after they’d asked you not to.” She squinted at me in her focusing way. “Millie and Tom,” I added.

“I’m not blaming you at all, you understand.” After a moment I added: “You see Millie says he doesn’t know.”

“Yes. She says Tom told him different. They thought he had enough to worry him already, she said.” Megan did not speak. “Wasn’t that what they told you when they asked you not to bother him about Evie?”

“I feel certain Johnny would have let me put her in a kennel if he’d understood what was happening to her.”

“P’raps he didn’t know what to think if Tom told him different,” supplied Megan helpfully.

“But you must have been listening! You said on the phone that you’d heard Millie ask Johnny about sending Evie to my cousin.”

I looked at her with distaste. Johnny had often told me that she was as obstinate as a mule, and that if she had once adopted a line of argument that suited her, the most incontrovertible proof of error would not induce her to relinquish it. I did not want to antagonize her. Her disdainful references to Tom suggested another tack.

“I don’t take that notice of him.” With a bloodless hand she pinned back the limp loop, which had come unstuck. “He doesn’t like me, I know that.”

Here, at any rate, was a truth; the first, in all probability, that we had stumbled on.

“Well, we’ve had a few words,” I replied carefully, “but it seems to have blown over. I kept Evie a couple of days longer than I said and they made a fuss. In fact they were jolly rude. I was sorry really, because I’m fond of Millie and didn’t mean to upset her. Tom was at the back of it all.”

“I don’t like that Tom,” said Megan reflectively, scratching her leg. “He’s jealous.”

This remark, as coming from her, stunned me to such an extent that I gaped at her. Then I recovered myself and said:

“You mean he’s jealous of me?” She nodded, with a smirk. “I guessed that. But it’s his own fault. If he’d taken the poor bitch out more and thrashed her less she’d have liked him instead of me.”

Megan gave a single shrill squeal and clapped her hand over her mouth, as she always did when she laughed to conceal the fact that her front teeth were badly decayed. I looked at her in astonishment.

“I? Millie?” I couldn’t take it in. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Nonsense!” I felt my face redden. “I’ve kissed Millie for years in a friendly way.”

“Oh a long time back. But I thought it’d come up again from something I heard Tom say.”

“I heard him say ‘I’ll knock his block off if I see him do it again!’ I don’t like that Tom.”

“He must be mad!” I said disgustedly. Millie! But now that such a monstrous conjunction had been suggested, I remembered some puzzling incidents. “Well, I suppose it’s something to know. Thanks for telling me. I’m surprised that Johnny didn’t.” The subject was embarrassing, to say the least. My gaze wandered round the bare, untidy room. “If Johnny won’t let me put Evie into the country, do you think he’d sell her to me?”

“Sell her?” Megan regarded me attentively. “No, I don’t think he’d do that.”

“You see he’ll never be able to keep her himself. It’s out of the question. He’ll have to get a job as soon as he’s released, and he’ll have his work cut out to keep you and the children—four of them,” I added, nodding at her stomach, “without the trouble and expense of a large dog. How will he feed her, for instance? She needs horse meat, it’s expensive, and Tom has to stand in a queue for it. You can’t see Johnny doing that, can you, even if he had the time? And I don’t suppose you’re going to, are you?”

“Well then. And who’s to take her out? She’s wild. You couldn’t possibly hold her, and Johnny will be at work all day.”

“I’ll give him a good price for her. I’ll give him twenty-five pounds.” I hadn’t thought of the sum; it simply came into my head. Megan goggled at me. “You’d sooner have that than the dog, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s far more than she’s worth, I’m sure. The poor thing’s no good at all now. And a sum like that would be a great help to you both, wouldn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a sensible plan?”

“I don’t want her. That’s to say I can’t keep her, any more than Johnny can. Just those few days with her reduced me to a nervous wreck. But I’m sorry for her. That’s all. I’ve no other interest. I—I can’t bear to think of her. Her loneliness. I can’t bear it. It upsets me. But if she belonged to me, you see, I could fix her up somewhere better. . . .”

“I don’t think he’ll sell her,” said Megan. “But I’ll ask him if you like. I’ll be writing him soon.”

“Yes, do. I shall ask him myself when I see him. But I’ve a feeling it’s terribly urgent. Tell him I’ll put twenty-five pounds into your hands for him the moment he agrees.”

“Oh, I’ll tell him, don’t worry.” And it did seem a message she might possibly get right. “But I don’t think he’ll sell her. He’s soppy about her.”

“You know, sentimental. Tears run down his cheeks when he speaks of her. They do, honest! It’s a scream! He asks after her every time I go, and he only has to say her name and the tears run out of his eyes! Like a baby!”

“Well, if he thinks that much of her,” I said brusquely, “he’d better sell her to me at once, or she’ll be dead by the time he comes out!”

Little Rita was still mincing up and down outside, making her buttocks slide. I scowled at her as I passed. A mistake, as I was to discover to my cost. She stared at me silently with that wide-eyed, baffling look she had doubtless learnt to bestow upon detectives and other unwelcome callers. Before turning the corner I glanced back. She was still standing there, her finger in her mouth, gazing after me.

But I could not rest. The image of the frustrated dog continued to haunt me, and the suspicions that had been fretting my mind, now more outraged than ever, were sharpened by my conversation with Megan. Tom Winder hated me. I had sensed it before, now I had no doubt. A number of inexplicable incidents fell convincingly into place around Megan’s shocking revelation; and in an atmosphere so much more sinister and highly charged it seemed to me absolutely imperative to expose the truth of the matter at once. What were their intentions with regard to Evie? If I asked for her again, what would the answer be? That, to my troubled mind, was all that counted. That was the test upon which everything else depended. Was it really possible that I should be obstructed? How could I find out, without disturbing the peace which Millie’s letter—now in my hand and still unanswered—so disarmingly re-established? Actually there was nothing more I could do for Evie at present. I had only just taken her back, and had not the time, nor, it had to be admitted, the inclination, to have her again. I loved her, but the sweet creature was too much of a good thing; I was not ready for another dose of her yet. Nor did I want to go to Stratford to see her. I wanted to see her, but I did not want to go to Stratford. The very thought of my next visit, still some weeks off, filled me with utter repugnance. Yet although I had no immediate intention or desire to carry her off again, the suspicion engendered in me by this letter and intensified by Megan’s disclosure that I should meet with resistance if I tried, affected me like a fever. How could I find out? How could I frame a reply which, without being objectionable, would force them to put their cards on the table? The subject had become so tender that even to mention Evie might seem to them like taking a liberty, like further interference in their stupid lives. . . . Perhaps, I thought with savage humor, putting the letter down, it would be wiser to let sleeping dogs lie, and wait until I had seen Johnny or received an answer to my proposition. . . . But wait, wait, wait! Life was nothing but waiting! Waiting for this, waiting for that. . . . Did they wait? Not a bit of it! They did as they wished and got what they wanted! Besides—I picked up the letter again—if this soothing peace was genuine how could it be disturbed? With an easy twist of the wrist Millie had set the clock back; my honor had been vindicated, apologies made, she had put herself in the wrong. Presumably, therefore, the status quo was wholly restored—friendship, cash, confidence: confidence, dog. Indeed, why hesitate? This artless acquittal actually dictated its artless reply, the reply of the innocent man. Of course! The trick, if trick it were, was catching! I sat down at once and scribbled off a jolly, even effusive, letter to say how happy hers had made me and how relieved I was that our friendship was unimpaired. I inquired affectionately after everyone’s health, said that I was particularly cheerful myself since I was shortly to receive a visit to Johnny, and ended with a deliberate lie: “There’s a chance of my getting the loan of a car this coming weekend, in which case I should like to run up to see you all. I might also, with your permission, carry Evie off to Barnes in it, just for one night. It would be a good opportunity to get her out into the country, and this time, you may be sure, I shall be most careful to bring her back on the dot.”

Now we shall learn the truth, I thought grimly as I posted it. If the reply was satisfactory I could always say that the car had failed to materialize.

Dear Frank,

thank you for the welcome letter which I received quite safe and how pleased I am that you are in such good spirits and will be seeing Johnny soon, I hope the weather stays fine for you and that you will both have a nice time, Dickie’s face is a lot better you will be glad to hear though his cold still trouble him and I am giving him a sirup which I have from the chemist but “rest assured,” I will soon have him well again. I shall be at home this Saturday if you care to come but do not come on the Sunday as we are going over to Megan’s for the day and I am afraid you will not be able to take Evie out for a while as she is not well.

so cheerio and all the best.

“Not well!” The words struck a chill to my heart. Then I perceived that, in conjunction with “for a while,” a natural feminine unwellness was perhaps intended. I had not thought of that. Could it be true? Or was it an excuse? I made inquiries in the dog world. Yes, it could be true and probably was; Evie was about eight months old, the age when bitches usually endure their first heat. She would be beyond my reach for three weeks. How maddening! Now I would have to wait all that time before I could put my doubts to the test again! Yet Millie’s letter was unexceptionable, friendly, prompt, even sprightly— and she could afford all that, I thought darkly, with such a magnificent checkmate move.

And then, suddenly, the very next day—Megan was out in her reckoning, it seemed—the visit to Johnny arrived! I recognized it instantly, the buff official envelope, and pounced upon it. The slip inside, signed by the Governor, authorized a visit to the prisoner named for twenty minutes any afternoon between 1:30 and 3:30. Johnny! At last! Then I perceived, to my chagrin, that the prisoner named was not Johnny at all but someone called Albert Newby. Fools! Dolts! They had sent me the wrong visit! In a burst of vexation I returned it to the Governor with a terse note to say that a mistake had been made, that the prisoner I knew and wished to see was John Burney, and that I had never heard of Albert Newby in my life. Could the mistake kindly be rectified instantly.

But the amended visit was not returned. Nothing came, no acknowledgment, no reply of any sort. Three days of fruitless waiting passed and I started to fidget in my mind. The fourth day brought no news. Nebulous doubts and fears began to assail me. On the sixth day, in a state of anxiety bordering on terror, I flew down to Megan. Hurrying up the steps I rattled the letter-box. There was no response. I rattled again. And again. How everything conspired to frustrate me! What should I do? As I stood there by the closed door, agitated and at a loss, it seemed to me that the dirty curtains moved slightly. Was it my imagination? With a desperate ferocity I attacked the letter-box once more. Suddenly a window above my head shot up and a floozie looked out. It was “the lady upstairs,” Megan’s friend.

“She’s here,” said the lady upstairs, and Megan’s head popped out too. They were like two hens peering out of a crate.

“I was afraid you were out,” I said. “I’ve been rattling and rattling.”

She was, sitting up at the table in the front room, surrounded by colored chalks with which she was busy drawing what looked like an endless row of upright cucumbers in an exercise book. Sprawled over the table, with her tongue out, she took no notice of us at all.

“Didn’t you hear the door?” asked Megan perfunctorily as we passed. Without detaching her attention from art, little Rita shook her head, then nodded it, then shook it again. I sat down heavily in Johnny’s arm-chair and explained to Megan what had happened, while she studied me with her pale, cold eyes.

“But it was the natural thing to do. I wanted to see Johnny, not Albert Newby.”

“I expect you’d have seen him if you’d gone,” said she with a faint smile.

“It was a trick, you mean?” The hideous fear had ruined me all night. “But how? How?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Megan virtuously. “But there must be plenty of boys there that don’t come from London and haven’t no one to visit them, and perhaps they sell their visits to the London boys for a cigarette.”

“There’s hundreds there, coming and going. The screws never know half their names.”

I groaned with horror. It was so simple, so obvious, as soon as it was explained.

“I expect he thought you’d fluff. Why didn’t you just keep the visit instead of sending it back?”

“But it’s what I do!” I cried despairingly. “It’s what I do! It’s the way I think! If things go wrong I set them right. If memoranda come to my office with mistakes, I point out the mistakes and have them corrected. It’s what I do. I’m not used to this kind of thing.” Megan was examining me with critical detachment. “I’m afraid I’ve got him into the most serious trouble,” I said humbly.

“I shouldn’t worry,” she said kindly. “Johnny’s smart. I expect he’ll think up something.” After a pause she added: “Would you like a cup of tea? I was just going to make one.”

I accepted gratefully. She was sorry for me and I was touched. As soon as she left the room I took a pound note out of my pocket and put it quickly on the mantelpiece under the frame in which Dickie and I lived cheek by jowl. Turning round I caught Rita’s eye, before she reapplied it to her industrious occupation with art. She was really quite a pretty child, I thought, with her pale, elfin, clever little face, and—the mocking reflection occurred to me—she would not have perpetrated my blunder!

I craned my head to look. A sort of turnip had been added to the field of cucumbers. Odious brat! A sudden annoyance took me at having parted with my pound and I gazed at it with a frown. Had she seen me put it there? Could I not get it back? I glanced at her; her head was bent, but I had the feeling that she was watching me. Leaning my elbow on the mantelpiece I gave the distance to the note a swift measuring look; if I lowered my arm . . . . But once again, glancing back at Rita, I could have sworn that, in that brief instant, she had peeped up. Abandoning the hopeless attempt, I returned to my chair and stared dejectedly at the carpet. Megan came in with the tea.

“I don’t know. If I don’t hear soon I shall apply for another visit on compassionate grounds. They don’t like to refuse that.”

“Will you let me know as soon as you get news? I shall be worried to death until I hear.”

“Yes, I’ll phone you. Do you want a cup?” she asked, turning to Rita. Without looking up, the child wagged her head in assent. “Haven’t you a tongue in your head?” Megan inquired phlegmatically. Since it was still sticking out, the question was superfluous, and Rita appeared to take it as such for she did not deign to reply. “Johnny’s mother gave her those chalks she’s playing with. They was over Sunday.” She laughed. “Dickie won’t have nothing to do with me now. He won’t so much as look at me. He peeps at me out of the corner of his eye and if I look he looks away. It’s a scream! But most of the time he cried to be taken home. ‘Home!’ That’s what he calls it.”

“Did they say anything about Evie? I wanted to take her out, but Millie said she was in heat. It could be true, but I wondered. I keep imagining that I’m being prevented from seeing her.”

“Yes, they said she wasn’t well.” Megan paused, then tittered. “I don’t think you’ll get hold of her again.”

“I’ll put the R.S.P.C.A. on to him!” I cried. Then, with an effort, I brought it out: “Look, I must see Johnny. If you get a visit to him first I would like to go with you. Do you mind?”

And how time dragged! The rest of that upsetting day passed, the next and the next. When I returned home in the evenings from work I dared not leave my telephone in case Megan rang, yet I could not concentrate my attention on anything indoors. What dire consequence of my stupidity had befallen Johnny? Deprivation of privilege, loss of remission, solitary confinement, bread-and-water: my mind, a prey to every kind of hideous imagining, however improbable, was ceaselessly engaged with his inevitable punishment. And in my dreams I saw him thrashed, the belt taken off, the lash laid on his honey-colored flesh. To have exposed his deception to the Governor himself! If I had actually designed to injure him—and the knowledge that I had, in fact, been angry with him shattered me the more—I could not have put him more successfully on the spot. At length, after four days of the utmost wretchedness, I could bear it no longer and hurried over to Megan’s, but rattle at the door as I might no one came. On the following day I went again, with the same result, and as I stood there drumming upon the shut house, which might or might not be empty but which vouchsafed no response, a feeling of total despair overcame me, of the loneliness of life, the impossibility of human communication, the futility of all endeavor. Knock, knock as one might against the heart of man, it gave forth only a hollow mockery of sound.

Putting up my jacket collar, for a drizzle of rain had started to fall, I turned away.

Megan and little Rita were coming down the street towards me! Rushing to meet them I cried:

“What a mercy! He wasn’t punished at all, then?” She shook her head, amused. “Was he angry with me?”

“Well, he was a bit browned off and he asked why you’d sent the visit back, but I told him what you’d said and that you was upset, and he said to give you his best and tell you not to worry.”

I could almost have kissed her. Then I noticed her appearance. She was all dolled up, her face thick with slap. She was wearing a two-piece costume, a black tunic, and light gray skirt, so unsuitable to her compassionate grounds that she could only have put it on purposely, to accentuate them. Neither garment, indeed, could any longer contain her swollen stomach; safety pins secured them where they failed to meet. Over her head was draped a scarf with “Into Battle” printed round its borders; tanks, planes, and soldiers crawled on her black hair, and the long barrel of a howitzer pointed down her forehead into her left eye.

That was the time when I had been rattling at her door. I stared at her. The nearest public telephone, the one they generally used, was just round the corner in the Fulham Palace Road. I had passed it on my way to visit her. Could she have been actually in it as I went by? Or had she rung up from some other box? Or was it simply a lucky shot? Or, darker suspicion still, had she been lurking all the time in the silent house, knowing who knocked and bent upon not sharing the visit in her pocket? I stared at her steadfastly. If my eyes could have torn her open she would have fallen apart at my feet.

“I didn’t apply. I was just going to when it came. It was the official visit.”

The official visit! I had forgotten all about it! And it had gone, of course, to her, not to me. It struck me then, with the force of a blow, that I had been conceded nothing after all. The visit I had had and bungled had not been an official one, Megan had not stood aside for me, nothing had been given up. I might do what I could for them, nothing would be done for me. Like the letter I had received and ignored, the visit had been something extra, something squeezed in, something that could be spared without loss to themselves, a sop, a fob. . . .

“Yes, I told him. He wouldn’t hear of it. He—” She suddenly spluttered, clapping her hand to her mouth. Of course! Of course! How could I have been so naïve? Was it likely that Johnny in prison would allow me to hand twenty-five pounds to his wife to “keep” for him till he came out? A fine joke he must have thought it!

“Are you coming in?” Megan asked, looking up at the weeping sky. I mumbled an excuse and left her.

Dear Millie,

I expect Megan will have told you by now about my misfortune over the visit to Johnny. It was sent in the name of some other prisoner, and I thought this a mistake and returned it for correction. But it was a trick of Johnny’s and if I’d gone I would have seen him. I was terribly worried because I thought I’d got him into trouble, but luckily he managed to get out of it. It has been a great disappointment to me too. I’m afraid I shan’t be able to come up and see you this weekend, but could I come the following Wednesday, when I’m beginning a week’s holiday? I’m going down into the country afterwards and would like to take Evie with me if I may. She will be over her indisposition by then and it will be good for her. I would bring her back to you the weekend after. I hope you are all quite well and that Dickie’s health has ceased to be an anxiety to you.

I brooded over this letter one evening a few days later. It seemed a perfectly good letter, easy, frank, friendly, well-intentioned. By pretending ignorance of Tom’s remark—and they could hardly suppose that Megan had repeated it to me—it would discover what weight, if any, was to be attached to it. And everything depended upon that. No dog, no money! I said to myself. The date of the proposed visit had been carefully selected. Evie would be completely off heat by then, so that excuse could not be used again, and Millie’s half-day would avoid a meeting with Tom. I dreaded seeing him. The acutest embarrassment overcame me at the thought of meeting either of them, but him I dreaded. How he must have chuckled at the failure of my mission to Johnny! Then the proposition itself was close to the truth. I had made no actual plans for a holiday, but I was terribly run down, I longed to get away, and had now a quite urgent desire to see Evie again and to take her with me. . . . The only thing was, ought I not, perhaps, to put Dickie’s keep into the envelope too? No, why should I? No dog, no money! Yet, on the other hand, it was what I had always done in the past when I had had to postpone my monthly visit; it would be the normal thing to do, and I wanted everything to seem normal. . . . I brooded. To withhold the money; that would probably look to them what in fact it would be, blackmail, threat. Might it not put their backs up? And surely it should be my policy to give them every pretext for generosity. . . . I brooded somberly. Then I put the money in. For Evie’s sake, I said. But it was more than that, I knew; it was a propitiatory sacrifice, for the truth of the matter was that I was scared stiff.

Dear Frank,

thank you for your welcome letter and for Dickie’s keep all of which I received safe and for which I thank you, I was sorry to hear of the loss of your visit. I do not think I would have known either what to do if I had received a visit like that in a wrong name, but “all’s well that ends well” and “who knows” but that you may have the luck of another visit sooner than you think seeing that Megan will not be able to go much longer, I will be at home Wednesday if you would care to come but Johnny has wrote me that Evie is not to be taken out of this house until he comes to fetch her himself so I don’t think you will be able to take her, and perhaps its as well seeing she is so tiresome at times. The weather is more settled now isn’t it, it looks as though summer has come at last.

Dear Millie,

I’m sorry, but I really must have an explanation of your letter. Am I to understand that I am no longer allowed to take Evie out at all? If that is what Johnny is now saying, then he has changed his mind, for not long ago he wished me to take her as you know. If I am now forbidden to take her there must be a reason for it, and I must know the reason. It sounds as though I am no longer trusted. Am I no longer trusted? Your letter makes me very uncomfortable.

Dear Frank,

I cannot for the life of me understand, why it is that you, all of a sudden, have taken such an interest in Evie, and I would not like to be bad friends with you or you to take any offense with this letter, but I must say that the sooner you lose that interest, the better our friendship will be. In fact I don’t see what it has to do with you, as Tom and I keep and feed her and she gets taken out now of an evening, and as she was left in my care I am responsible for her.

As soon as I received this letter I flew down to Megan. Little Rita and her terrible twin-sister Gwen, weekending from Cardiff, were sitting on the steps in the sunshine whispering together over some pebbles they had laid out between them. Absorbed in their sorcery they did not look up. Megan opened the door.

“You were quite right!” I exclaimed, as I followed her into the front room. “They won’t let me take Evie out at all now!” I flourished the letters in her face. “Not at all! Millie says that Johnny’s written her to say that neither I nor anyone else may take her out of the house until he fetches her himself. I don’t believe a word of it! He never said such a thing, did he?”

“Upset them!” I shouted. “All this bosh about not upsetting people! He’s not to be upset! They’re not to be upset! The only one who doesn’t matter is the poor bloody dog! What happens to her is of no consequence, I suppose?” Megan goggled at me. “But I don’t believe it! I don’t believe Johnny ever said such a thing! I don’t believe they had a letter from him at all!”

“Yes, they had a letter, because they told me so when I was up there last Sunday. But they never showed it me.”

“Do you mean the subject never came up at all? Not even about Johnny’s refusal to sell her?”

“Can’t you ask for an earlier one on compassionate grounds? I want to go with you.”

“I see.” Beyond her shoulder, through a gap in the rep curtains, the two children were visible crouched together like witches over their pebbles on the sunlit doorstep. I brought my terrified gaze back to her with an effort. “Well, I must really ask to go with you on the next official visit. It’s essential for me to see Johnny now.”

She meant, presumably, the infant forming in her belly. I picked up my hat and walked out of the house without another word.

It was the loveliest spring. Day after day dawned the serenest, sweetest unclouded blue, and going to and from my work I thought constantly of Evie shut up in the Winders’ back yard. Indeed, I thought of nothing else; it weighed upon my heart like some settled sorrow, and the very beauty of the weather, this springing time of the year, wrung me the more. I recalled her bright face, so eager and so gay, with the flying bird on its forehead, and the communicative looks she had fastened upon me. I remembered the strange game she had played with me in my flat and, with a pang, the last I had seen of her as she slunk, in that abject way, into the Winders’ scullery. That she had relied upon me I felt sure. That she was awaiting my return I had no doubt at all. I knew that she loved me and listened for me, that whenever a knock came at the door her tall, shell-like ears strained forward with the hope “Is it he?” Impotent rages shook me, and my mind was ceaselessly engaged in retracing the steps that had led to this impasse and seeking ways of recovery or revenge. How deeply I now regretted having sent Millie her month’s money! Well, she would get no more and we would see then where the shoe pinched! On the other hand I also regretted not having sent Johnny that five pounds he had wanted weeks ago for his tobacco; if it had opened up communication between us it might have been worthwhile, for I still found it hard to believe that he really understood what was going on, or that, if I had managed to tell him myself, I should have failed to convince him. Could I not get at him somehow with my version of the story? Books seemed to reach him; what if I sent him one and slipped a letter in? Even if it fell into official hands it could not matter. . . . I did this and, copying out the letter, posted it to him separately also as another of those unofficial communications that might or might not get through. And the beautiful days slid silently by. . . . How could I get even with Tom? Why not put the R.S.P.C.A. on to him, as I had threatened to do? He would not like that! I hovered indecisively over the telephone for some days; then I rang the Society and spoke to an Inspector. I explained the circumstances of the case and asked if there were grounds for interference. Certainly, said he; what was the name and address? But I did not give it. I knew I could not. I told myself that to draw official attention to Evie might do her more harm than good; but the truth was that I feared that nothing of whatever I hoped for from Johnny’s promises for the future could survive such an act. Nevertheless it was with a feeling of consolation that I put the receiver down, as though I had taken upon life itself a subtle revenge.

And then the most delightful idea occurred to me, and my imagination played happily with it for some days. I would steal the dog! It was perfectly easy. They were all going off to see Johnny on the next visit; Evie would be alone in the house. What sweeter time to take her from them than when they were enjoying the happiness denied to me! There was that unused, dustbin-cluttered pathway at the back, the flimsy wooden gate . . . . When dusk fell—for they always made a day of such expeditions and would certainly repair to Megan’s for tea on the way home—I could slip in unobserved. Evie would not bark, she would know who it was and fly silently into my arms. What gladness! What delight! Even if she were in the house, the scullery door-latch would present no difficulty. Then I would loosen and move a stake in the fence to make it appear that the imprisoned animal had broken out and away at last. Returning from their selfish pleasures and their schemings against me they would find her gone! And they could never know. They would suspect, but they could prove nothing. I would stow her away somewhere in the country and visit her—aye, visit her at any rate!—whenever I liked. . . . Or join Johnny in Wormwood Scrubs, my imagination added, which would surely be to gain my ends in another way, for it would give me that access to him that I had so long lost, so long desired. This thought afforded me a certain ironic amusement and, recollecting my indignation over his remark about my cousin, I reflected that there wasn’t, after all, much to choose between us; he was a crook in fact and I was a crook at heart: in my case the courage was wanting. . . .

Thereafter, amid these shifting images of love and hatred, a kind of lassitude fell upon me. I forced myself away on a week’s holiday and derived benefit from it. I began to forget. The thought of Evie troubled me less and less, was more easily shrugged off; the obligation under which, it seemed to me, she had put me lost its strength. May passed, June got under way; I thought of her now scarcely at all, only when distasteful reminders called up the fading grief. Millie wrote from time to time, at first with a naïve pretense that my unresponsiveness—for I answered nothing—was accidental; then with an equally naïve request for explanation; then with reproaches for once again breaking my promises. The shoe pinches! I thought callously. Towards the end of June she capitulated; since she could no longer afford to keep Dickie she would have to give in (“how you will laugh”) and let me have Evie after all (“but I hope that this time you will keep your word and return her at the end of a week”). I had won. But I no longer wanted my victory. I no longer wanted the dog. I no longer wanted anything. The letter was easily found fault with: “Still bargaining with me . . . . still suggesting that I don’t know how to behave. . . . she’ll have to send Dickie back now and serve her right . . . . it’ll be parting with Johnny for the second time . . . . perhaps she’ll understand now what parting with him meant to me. . . .” Later on the “lady upstairs” phoned to say that Megan was going into hospital. She could have gone into the morgue for all I cared. And then I received an official visit to Johnny. Megan’s pupping, I thought. He can spare me a moment now. I won’t go! But I did.

It was a curious thing, but the moment his neat, light figure came into the room where we were all waiting, I experienced again the sensation which the sight of him managed so often to convey, of being somehow or other at fault. As I watched him standing there, searching about with his beautiful eyes, and tasted silently, though for no more than a few beats of the pulse, the happiness of being singled out by him; as I waited quietly until the eyes found their mark, and the light of recognition sprang, and the lips moved in a slight intimate smile, and then there he was, bearing down upon me with his springing gait, I felt strangely abashed and confused, so that long though I had sought and planned for this interview, I found myself with nothing whatever to say, only:

In the momentary doubt that this question posed, I recollected the confusion over identities that had occurred during our interview in the police station cell; but looking now at his rather pale and puffy face with the shadows beneath the eyes, I understood to whom he referred and that I had failed in a duty.

“I just wondered. I’ve ’ad a letter from ’er, but not for three days.”

“Oh, she was doing well, she said. It was another boy, you know. They say ’e’s smashing, the nurses and that. She’s going to ’ave ’is photo took as soon as she can and send it to me. I mean to ’ave ’im christened ‘Frank.’”

“Oh thank you, Johnny. That’ll be fine.” He began to gnaw at his thumb. He had very well-shaped hands, slender yet strong, and I noticed that the nails, which he had always tended to bite, had been eaten down to the quicks. “I’m sorry, Johnny. It was careless of me. I ought to have asked after her before I came. I didn’t think.”

“It don’t matter. Only I was expecting another letter and—you know ’ow it is—you get thinking in a cowson of a place like this.”

“I done me nut. I applied for permission to go and see ’er, and you’d think they’d grant you a thing like that, now wouldn’t you? But, ah they’d shit ’emselves, the bastards, before they’d do anything for you!” His face was improved by the flush of this momentary choler. Megan had been granted extra visits whenever she’d asked for them; “they” did not seem to me to have behaved too badly; but I did not say so, for I did not wish to talk about Megan.

“I’m pleased to see you too, Frank.” The response was instant and warm. “And I’m sorry not to ’ave seen you before. It wasn’t that I didn’t think of you, because I did. I’ve thought of you a lot in ’ere and all what you’ve done for me. But I ’ad to try to please everyone and I couldn’t do no more than that. I done me best.”

I nodded. He was perfectly sincere, and sitting there, face to face with him, I had no desire at all, when the words fell between us, to pick any of them up. He had had his shots at me; what did it matter whether they came from the right hand or the left? I could not even remember clearly now what it was that had upset me so much, and I had an uncomfortable feeling—the sight of him conveyed it—that there was something in all this that I had missed, other realities besides my own. Now that I was with him at last, I found it difficult, even distasteful, to recall what my own reality had been.

“Well, I was a bit mad at first. I thought you’d understand, see? But I’ve forgot about it now.”

“Well, it took us by surprise, if you know what I mean. When the Governor sent for us we knew we was in for something, but we didn’t know what. I thought of a lot of things, but I never thought of that. It come back on us too quick, see? That’s where it was.”

“That’s all right,” said he kindly. “You wasn’t to know. I saw that afterwards. Where it is, you’re always on the fiddle in ’ere, and after a bit you see everything like that, as a fiddle, and so you get to think that everyone else must see things the same way as you do.” I nodded. Then I nodded more vigorously. It was, indeed, a profound truth, and the very one that had been troubling my own mind. “I wouldn’t ’ave minded for meself, but there was me mate too. You see ’e never wanted to sell me the visit, ‘e was windy, but I swore it was safe and that nothing could ’appen—well, I didn’t think nothing could. So it looked bad for me, like as if I’d grassed ’im.”

“It was me luck. I said the first thing what come into me nut and it turned out good.”

“Oh, I said I was sorry for ’im ’avin’ no one to visit ’im, so I give ’im your name and address on the chance you’d come.”

“ ’E arst ’oo you was, and I said you was a good-’earted old geezer as took an interest in charity and ’elping people. I said you was known to me relatives and was always gaspin’ to do something for me.”

“And he swallowed that?” Indeed, I thought, looking at his charming, open, boyish face, who could have helped it—or at any rate have failed to welcome a reasonable excuse to probe no further?

“Well, ’e didn’t like it, but ’e couldn’t do nothing else, could ’e? After all, it might ’ave been.”

“About you keeping Evie longer than you said and ’er flyin’ off the ’andle.”

“Where it is,” said he gently, “you made things a bit awkward for ’er, see? She ’as to live with Tom and you made things a bit awkward. That’s where it is.”

“I expect so.” I didn’t want to go back into it. “I never meant to upset her, Johnny, but. . . . You didn’t get any letters from me, I suppose? I wrote two or three, long ones.”

“I stuck one inside a book not long ago. You didn’t get that either? Bulldog Drummond the book was called.”

“They were all the same letter anyway, so someone must have got bored reading them, if they were read at all.”

“Johnny,” I said earnestly, “are things going to be all right between us now?”

“He didn’t, Johnny,” I said wearily. “It was a lie. No one took her but I. She was a prisoner like you. Didn’t Megan tell you? I asked her to.”

“Couldn’t you have let me send her into the country, like I asked?” I said dully.

“’Ow could I? It wouldn’t ’ave been fair on them. Perhaps it was a mistake to put ’er there in the first place, only I didn’t know what else to do with ’er. But I couldn’t take ’er away from them again after they’d ’ad the trouble of ’er and got fond of ’er, now could I?”

“That’s only Mum’s way of talking. She didn’t mind. She likes ’aving ’er there, and so does Tom. ’E thinks the world of ’er.”

Was it the phrase? Was it the phrase? At any rate I suddenly saw her, clear as crystal, bright as dawn, her strange eyes fixed intently upon me.

“He thrashed her and never took her out!” I cried aloud. “Was that fair on the dog?”

“I told ’im not to ’it ’er,” he mumbled in a low thick voice. When he raised his eyes again they were brimming with tears.

“Well, he did hit her!” I said brutally. “He took off his belt to her, the swine! And although she begged him to take her out, he was too bloody lazy!”

“ ’E ain’t been ’isself lately, that’s where it is. ’E gets a bit irritating at times. That trouble ’e ’as with ’is back passage, Mum says the doctors say now it’s bad, it’s a growth.”

“Don’t!” I said angrily. To have my hatred of Tom so unfairly undermined was too much.

“Mum says Evie’s all right,” said Johnny, glaring at me through his tears.

“Is she?” I said more gently. “I find it hard to believe, but I don’t know.”

“No, they wouldn’t let me. They said you didn’t want me to. Oh, Johnny, you never said that, did you?”

“No, Frank.” Then he added mildly: “They didn’t like what you said about the R.S.P.C.A.”

“Ah, Rita!” I said, with a bitter laugh. “I might have known!” So something had been said up at Millie’s after all, in spite of Megan’s denials. I reflected for a moment. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I’m afraid I’ve been tactless over all this and made things worse for you than they were. But your dog was so pretty and so lonely.”

“Did Mum write you? I told ’er to and to say you was to ’ave Evie for your ’oliday.”

“I’m keeping the rest of that for you now, Johnny. Do you remember what you said?”

“Of course it does,” he said laughing. “I promised, didn’t I? Did Mum write you?”

“Yes, she did, Johnny. I’m afraid I didn’t answer.” After a moment I added: “The good-hearted old geezer was a bit browned off.”

“Now, now, you don’t want to take no notice of that. I didn’t mean nothing by that. You can ’ave Evie for your ’oliday if you like, Frank, so long as you bring ’er back at the end of it.”

“Oh do! Oh do!” I said earnestly. “Don’t leave her there a second longer than you can help!”

“’Ow can I ’elp it? I can’t do nothing else. You don’t understand. It’s the same with Dickie. I can’t just go and take ’im away from them. They’re stuck on ’im now, and Megan says ’e thinks more of Mum than ’e do of ’er. So what can I do? I don’t want them to ’ave ’im, any more than I want them to ’ave Evie. I want me family and me dog with me. But I can’t take everything away from Mum as soon as I come out and leave ’er with nothing, now can I? They don’t ’ave much in their lives and they’ve been good to me while I’ve been inside. I’ll ’ave to be fair to them.”

“Leave the child and take the dog,” I said gravely. “The child wants to stay, the dog doesn’t.”

“I bought ’er,” said Johnny with a grin. “It was the first thing I done when I’d made a bit of money screwin’. Of course I didn’t tell them that, for they knew I didn’t ’ave the cash, so I said she was give me.”

“I wanted ’er. I saw ’er in a shop winder, and I meant to ’ave ’er. I put down a deposit on ’er, and then I screwed the first ’ouse to get the rest. I’m mad on them dogs, didn’t you know? I ’ad one when I was a kid. Didn’t Mum tell you? I thought the world of ’er, I did. ’Er name was Evie too. I done me nut when she died. She ’ad some thing went wrong with ’er insides. Oh, I done me nut! You ask Mum. I wouldn’t eat. I never ate for days. Oh, I went mad! Mum’ll tell you.”

I nodded, looking at his flushed face, flushed with the sentimentality of self-dramatization. Then I connected.

“I give fifteen quid for ’er. She’s good, she is. I mean to breed from ’er when I get out.” Then he added: “Megan told me you wanted to buy ’er, Frank. But I wouldn’t sell ’er. I’ve thought of ’er every day since I’ve been in ’ere. Every day! I wouldn’t sell ’er to no one, not for nothing. I wouldn’t sell ’er for a thousand pounds!”

“That’s all right, Johnny. I wasn’t going to ask again. But you’ll never be able to keep her. You’ve no idea. She’s a wild beast.”

“I’ll manage some’ow. Would you like ’er for your ’oliday, Frank? Shall I tell Mum to write you again?”

“All right. I’ll bring ’er along as soon as I’ve got ’er. And I’ll stay with you the ’ole day. That’s a promise.”

“Come on!” said he, turning on all his charm like a light. “They won’t take no notice.”

“Johnny, I can’t!” A notice on the wall forbade visitors under penalty of prosecution to pass anything to the prisoners, and a large screw—Millie’s perhaps—was standing almost at my elbow. Johnny observed the furtive glance I cast at him.

“Christ!” said Johnny with disgust. “Never mind. They’ll ’ave to do.”

I fumbled in my pocket and, coughing and sweating in an excitement which, I afterwards thought when the recollection of it amused me, was probably no less pleasurable than his own, I passed my packet under the table. Johnny’s slender hand closed firmly and unfumblingly upon it.

This interview, when the emotional pleasure of seeing Johnny had worn off, left me feeling unaccountably tired and flat, and as my thoughts, in the succeeding days, reverted to it and wandered dully among its shoals and shallows, I found myself afflicted by a despondency which had nothing to do with the perception that I had been put, to a large extent, in the wrong. Say what one might against these people, their foolish frames could not bear the weight of iniquity I had piled upon them; they were, in fact, perfectly ordinary people behaving in a perfectly ordinary way, and practically all the information they had given me about themselves and each other had been true, had been real, and not romance, or prevarication, or the senseless antics of some incomprehensible insect, which were the alternating lights in which, since it had not happened to suit me, I had preferred to regard it. They simply had not wished to worry Johnny, and, it was plain enough, he had had much to worry him already; he had cared about the fate of his dismal wife and family, as Millie had cared about Dickie, and, for all I knew, Tom about Evie; the tears Johnny had shed over his dog had been real tears and, there was no doubt of it, he had terribly missed his smokes. Their problems, in short, had been real problems, and the worlds they so frequently said they thought of each other apparently seemed less flimsy to them than they had appeared to me when I tried to sweep them all away. It was difficult to escape the conclusion, indeed, that, on the whole, I had been a tiresome and troublesome fellow who, for one reason or another, had acted in a manner so intemperate that he might truly be said to have lost his head; but if this sober reflection had upon me any effect at all, it produced no feeling that could remotely be called repentance, but only a kind of listlessness as though some prop that had supported me hitherto had been withdrawn. Yet Johnny had been perfectly nice; what better proof of his affection could I have than the thought that had come to him in the solitude of his cell of calling his new child by my name? And I could have his dog. And soon I should have him. . . . Indeed, I had everything, except the sense of richness, and when the phrase “I ’ad to do me best to please everyone” recurred to my mind, I wondered why so admirable a sentiment made me feel so cross. Beneath such a general smear of mild good nature, I asked myself, could any true values survive? Where everything mattered nothing mattered, and I recollected that it had passed through my mind while I spoke to him that if the eyes that looked into mine took me in at all, they seemed to take me for granted.

Soon afterwards, into my now almost somnambulistic life, a letter from Millie came, an abject, begging letter. Since she had been unable to keep Dickie he had had to be returned to his mother who was now out of hospital; but the child was terribly unhappy, he did nothing but cry all day and would not eat, would I be so kind as to help her? The letter moved and shamed me; I should not have reduced her to that. Poor Millie; I had no desire to see her again, but she was a good creature and I had made her a promise. How could I expect other people to keep their promises to me if I did not keep my own? I sent her a friendly note and enough money to cover the arrears and take her up to the day of Johnny’s release. Besides, I reflected, was I not perhaps doing something for Evie too, for if the Winders were able to retain the child it might be easier for Johnny to abstract his dog.

And then, weeks later, he himself phoned, wildly elated; he was just out, was off to fetch Evie at once and would be over to see me soon. Instantly, with the sound of his voice, the exhaustion, apathy almost, that had clogged my spirits for so long, vanished and the old nervous, anxious excitement took its place. Johnny! Johnny and Evie! “Soon” dragged itself out to a week, and how I managed passively to wait I do not know, but I had, after all, been receiving lessons in patience, and wait I did. Then he rang again; it was a Friday evening. “I’ll be bringing Evie over tomorrow, Frank. Be with you at two. Okay?”

I had always in the past made elaborate preparations, frequently wasted, for his reception; now I made elaborate preparations for them both. Besides the drink and food, and the present of money I knew he would be glad of, which I gathered together for him, I set the flat lovingly for her as well. Her bowl, her ball, her biscuits, her blanket, everything was put back as it had been before; I stood for two hours in a queue to procure her a succulent piece of horsemeat, and I stocked the vegetable basket with all manner of vegetables for which I had no personal use. And when the time of their arrival drew near, I went out on to my verandah so that I might steal from Time the extra happiness of watching them approach. I knew that he would walk her and the way that he would come, down the towing-path and along The Terrace, and since this stretched below me in all its length, curving away, as the river curved, as far as the eye could reach, I should be able to see them at a considerable distance making, from their respective prisons, their returning way into my life. If Johnny came at all he was always late, and today was no exception; half-past two struck, and “Not this day,” I said aloud, as though someone stood beside me under the great arch of the sky. “Take all my other days, but not this one.” And then, suddenly, there they were, emerging from among the trees and elder bushes of the towing-path, tiny like figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope, Johnny and Evie, or rather Evie and Johnny, for before they reached the end of the path where it turns into road, I saw him bend and attach her to her lead, and then she came as I remembered her, the pretty sable-gray sprawling bitch, spurning the ground and dragging after her the sturdy, backward-bent figure of her master. With bated breath I watched them approach, growing larger and larger, until they were almost beneath me: and Johnny never looked up. How strange, I thought as I gazed down at them, drawing them towards me with my eyes, that he did not look up. “Ah, Johnny, look up!” I murmured, but he did not look up, and I recollected then that he never looked back at parting either; it was as though I existed for him only at the point of contact. But if there was nothing in his bearing to suggest that the particular direction in which he was moving had for him more interest than any other, Evie, to whom my gaze shifted, gave another impression. And “She remembers!” I said to myself. “I’m sure she remembers!” They reached the entrance to the flats. Craning over the balustrade I watched them arrive. “Now!” I whispered. “Now!” and she turned into the doorway without hesitation, pulling Johnny in after her.

I hurried out to await them on the landing. Johnny made no attempt to use the lift; I heard them plodding and scuffling up the four flights of stairs.

“Evie! Evie!” I cried, and either he released her or she tore herself out of his grasp, for she came bounding up towards me trailing her lead.

If it was true, as Millie had once touchingly suggested, that Evie, in the first instance, had mistaken me for Johnny, it did not look as though she had afterwards mistaken him for me. There seemed no confusion in her mind now, and if the joy with which she greeted me lacked something of the wild abandonment of her Easter welcome, that was no doubt due, I thought, to the fact that here, upon my ground, her enthusiasm was less concentrated, more dispersed; there was my flat as well as myself with which to renew acquaintance. Into this, after she had kissed me, she hurried, re-entering all its rooms and finding again the toys and paraphernalia she had had before; when Johnny and I followed her into the sitting-room she was already in occupation of what she used to regard as her arm-chair, as though she had never left it.

It was the most enchanting, if imperfect, day; it contained all the ingredients, desirable and undesirable, that had long been part and parcel of my friendship with this boy. He was excited, he was affectionate, he was gay; he behaved not merely as though there were something he couldn’t sufficiently thank me for, but as though there were something he could never quite make up; he was so much the same as he had been in the beginning, when he and I were all that counted, that the difference, when it appeared, that what he was now doing was simply and still his “best to please everyone,” hardly seemed to tell. For he soon declared that he could not stay as long as he had hoped, not more than three hours, Megan was unwell, she had been poorly since her confinement and had come over dizzy, he explained, not meeting my eye; but he would make up for it by bringing Evie again very soon, that was a promise; and then, of course, there were the allusions to financial difficulties which I had foreseen and provided for, and which I now welcomed as I must welcome anything that could help to bind him to me. Happiness had to be paid for. But the four hours—I managed to extend them to four—that he spent with me were so delightful, making up as they did, it seemed to me, for all the frustrations and sorrows of the past and whatever frustrations and sorrows were to come, that he could have had the very shirt off my back, which, indeed, soon joined his upon the floor. It was now, as the rest of our garments followed, that Evie began to exhibit an increasing perturbation as though whatever was happening before her eyes was having, upon the confidence she had hitherto shown in the distinctness of our identities, a confusing effect. Uttering little quavering cries of doubt and concern, she sat first upon our mingled clothes, gazing at us with a wild surmise, then upon our mingled bodies, excitedly licking our faces as though she would solve her perplexing problem either by cementing them together with her saliva or by forcing them apart. She lay with us throughout the afternoon, her fur against our flesh, and we talked of her most of the time.

With a strength of purpose remarkable in so indolent a boy he had walked her all the way back from Stratford to Fulham. It could be argued that no other course was open to him to get her there, for he would not have had the courage to tackle the train if he had thought of it; yet it remained for him an extraordinary feat of energy and devotion. There was no question now, it seemed, of considering the Winders’ feelings and returning her to them; apart from the fact that Tom was dying of cancer, she had taken to standing on her hind legs against the fence at the bottom of the yard, barking at the trains that passed over the embankment and the neighbors had complained. What I had been expecting of her, if I had been expecting anything, I did not know; but she seemed not at all changed. She had been with Johnny for a week, and although he tried to make light of the problems she presented he admitted they existed and that, in spite of everything that had been said to him about her, he had not realized what she was like. But he had the future all mapped out; when he started work on the following Monday he was going to get up half an hour early to give her a walk first; if his job lay close at hand he’d pop home for dinner and nip her out again then; and in the evenings, when he’d had his tea and cleaned himself up, he’d take her for a good hour’s run. Her food was to be “the same as we ’as ourselves,” and he was going to get busy at once about finding her a mate. . . .

But when the happy afternoon drew to its close and he put on his clothes to go, she did not follow him. Standing between us in the passageway she watched him take down the lead from the rack.

“Come on, old girl,” said he, but she did not move, and as soon as this happened I knew that I had known that it would happen, that it had all been decided long ago. With her ears flattened back upon her dark neck, and in a curious crouching attitude, a kind of turntail attitude, yet obstinate too, for her front legs were already braced against any attempt that might be made to drag her forth, she gazed up at him with the unflinching look of a wild beast. He stared at her in surprise.

“Come along, old lady,” he said gently, but the only stir she made was to glance swiftly back at me; then she fixed her eyes watchfully on him again. I made no move either; the contest was none of mine, it lay between him and her; but as I leaned up against the jamb of the door I felt that I was not witnessing anything that was happening now, but remembering something that had been enacted in a dream. He took a step towards her; she at once turned and went back past me into my sitting-room.

“Well, would you believe it?” he said, and made to follow her. But I put my arms around him and, halting him on the threshold, drew him towards me.

“Looks as if I’ll ’ave to,” said he with a grimace. And “Would you believe it?” he repeated, though more to himself than to me, and made again to go in after her.

“That’s all right, Frank,” he replied quietly. “I just want to say good-bye to ’er.”

I did not enter with him, but I saw what passed between them. Evie was entrenched in the chair, her chin resting on the rampart of the arm, her alert gaze watching the door; when Johnny appeared, her tail began to thump the seat and she looked up at him with a sweet, humble look.

“You faithless woman!” he said reproachfully, and sitting on the arm beside her he fondled her for some time in an abstracted way. Then taking her head between his palms he bent down and kissed her. She licked his hand. She loved him, I could see; but when he came out she remained where she was. Ah yes, I felt sorry for him; I felt for him the pang I saw he felt for himself; he must have known at that moment that he had lost his dog as he had lost his son, but love him too as I did, there was nothing now that I could do about that. Even if I had forced her out—and I knew I could not expel her from my life a second time—he had seen her make her choice, and since there was no doubt that, in his way, he did think the world of her, she hardly could be and, I fear, never was the same to him again. Yes, I saw all that, though not so clearly as, alas, I saw it later, for I saw something else besides, I saw that she loved us both and that, whichever image lay uppermost, we were closely connected in her heart as we had lately been connected in her eyes; like a camera, like a casket, she contained us together, clasped in each other’s arms; she was a stronger, a living bond between us.

The prompt return of borrowed dogs to their owners—it was another of the lessons I had lately learnt; I took Evie back to Johnny on the Monday morning and, as though nothing had happened to ruffle it, the future life he had planned for her was put into practice. But I visited them frequently thereafter, and soon things began to turn out as I had foreseen, and a number of things turned out that I might have foreseen if I had studied the signs more diligently. The energetic timetable he had set himself under my critical eye was short-lived, as I knew it would be, partly through his own laziness, partly through one of those extra factors I had not foreseen: Megan became jealous of the dog. Johnny’s work did not lie close at hand as he had hoped, and was it likely, when he returned in the evening after being away all day, that she would tamely submit to him going off again for an hour to take Evie for a walk? Besides what else might he not get up to, idling about among other idlers in the Fulham Rec.? Rows started.

“The dog’s all you think of,” she would say. “You think more of her than you do of me and the children.”

“She ’as to ’ave a piss, don’t she?” Johnny would retort in a voice of rage, and the flat would resound with argument and recrimination.

But beneath it all, I noticed as time wore on, undercurrents of chaff were discernible. Yell at her as he did, red in the face with pumped-up indignation, Johnny was not wholly unsuited by Megan’s objections. His tea, in any case, had always come first and, after his day’s work, he was, of course, much in need of it; but Evie had not left the house since eight o’clock in the morning, for no one could hold her but he, and owing to the violent impetuosity of her behavior, which both endangered her life and frightened people in the street, she could not simply be let out like a cat; there was no back yard for her here as there had been at Millie’s, and now it was six in the evening. Indeed, I was accustoming myself to seeing other people’s points of view and was therefore able to perceive Johnny’s when I dropped in around that hour, yet I could not myself, however tired and thirsty I might be, have sat down to my tea in such circumstances before taking the animal out, if only for five minutes, first. But in Johnny’s philosophy, it seemed, Evie’s bladder and bowels must wait until he was ready for them to open. And since she herself was remarkably obliging at holding everything up, he spent, as time passed, longer and longer over his tea. Megan noticed this too, and quickly took its satisfactory measure. When she wished to be particularly aggravating she would draw attention to it:

“Give us a chance!” Johnny would exclaim, half-annoyed, half-amused. “Can’t I swaller me tea first?”

It was I who, calling for her at odd times, mostly took her out at last, on those long, countrified walks she loved, and if Johnny was there to observe the way she flew out of his house with me and related it to her behavior to him in mine, he did not allude to it. It was I too who, in order to save her digestion from Megan’s abominable fries, procured her meat, standing for hours, sometimes in the rain and later in the cold, in those immense queues of frantic animal lovers which, at that period, were one of the sights of London. I did not mind. Nothing that I did for Johnny’s dog seemed too much trouble. Yet it was, from my own point of view, a far from satisfactory state of affairs, and in the conflict which, I had always known, would break out again between Megan and myself, of the approach of which, indeed, there were already premonitory signs (whether the new child was ever actually christened “Frank,” or christened at all, I never ascertained, but although Johnny began calling him “Frankie,” Megan dubbed him “David” and that became his name), I too was learning the wisdom of the serpent. While Johnny continued to house his dog I seldom saw him unless I called; since there was scarcely time for her, there was clearly less for me; but if she lived with me—and I was now borrowing her again for single nights and for weekends—then I foresaw that I could get him too. And apart from the many claims I already had to keep her, I was, I perceived, the true master of a situation in which his interests were deeply involved: I was in a far better position than he to breed from her. This was a trump card that could hardly fail to impress not only Johnny but Megan. If Evie was to be the goldmine of expensive pedigree puppies, which, it was increasingly plain, was a project that occupied the forefront of Johnny’s mind, how was the mating to be arranged? Fees for the hiring of a stud dog were far beyond his means, and what likelihood was there of a boy in his circumstances and neighborhood happening upon someone who owned a suitably blue-blooded sire and was willing to lend him for nothing? Renouncing, therefore, all claims to past promises, such as that holiday with him, of which, I now guessed, he would be grateful not to be reminded, I made him a proposition. Evie should live with me so that I could look after her more easily; but since I could not cope with her during the week, I should leave her every morning at his place, calling for her on my return from work. If he wanted her at any time to stay with him, he could always have her and for as long as he wished. Finally, I would mate her for him, undertaking all the expense, and the proceeds of the litters should belong wholly to him. He agreed, as I knew he would; after all that I had done for her, and for him, it would have been difficult for him to refuse; what difficulty there was lay in telling, from the quiet “Okay, Frank” with which he let me have my way, what his true feelings were.

We jogged along like this for nearly a year, and it gave me, as I had calculated, the best of both possible worlds; it gave me Johnny’s dog and it often gave me Johnny. It was, indeed, while it lasted, the happiest time of my life. Every morning that I had to go to work I walked her over to his flat and parked her there; every afternoon or evening I called for her and walked her back. His keys were left, by arrangement, in a window-box by the door, so that I might let myself in without disturbing Megan. and I would take Evie into the front room and shut her in. She fell in with this routine at once as though she perfectly understood—indeed, it was immensely touching the way she fell in with everything—and made no attempt to follow me when I left. But as she lay down obediently upon the bedding of old coats that Johnny had spread for her comfort, she fixed on me always, when I bent to kiss her, so wistful a look, which said as plain as words “You will come back, won’t you?” that I never felt easy in my mind until I found her again. Johnny himself I seldom saw on these occasions; as seldom did he see his dog; and all this was as I wished, for it was in my own flat that I wanted him to meet us and I was always inventing reasons to get him there. Not that he should need persuasions, I thought, only such business excuses as would enable him to extricate himself with as little dispute as possible from the jealous possessiveness of Megan, for how could he resist the prospect of the welcome that awaited him, not from me—I knew he could resist that—but from Evie? After me he was, and remained, her favorite man, the only other person that she loved. She had perceived instantly the truth about him, that, as Millie had once angrily declared, he was a gentle, tender-hearted boy, and that he thought the world of her. She never barked at his approach, as she barked at the approach of everyone else; she knew unerringly his step upon the stair, even his odor in the downstairs hallway if he had lately passed through ahead of us, and her snuffling murmurs of excitement communicated the joyful news to me. And then, when she found him, how she greeted him, whimpering and sighing in her delight, licking and licking his handsome face! It was, I always thought as I watched, with a passionate participation, these passionate demonstrations of her love, a proof both of his tenderness towards her and of the essential sweetness of his nature that he never turned his face aside. Over his beautiful lips and eyes, into his nostrils, the dog’s tongue would go, as though she could not lick him enough, as though she, too, knew how delicious was the taste of his flesh, and he never drew back or turned his face away, but let her lick her fill. And yet this love she lavished upon him, did it not contain the seeds of sorrow? He was second best, he knew it and that he never could be more to her than that, and the more therefore she laid it on, this one-man dog of his to whom he was not the one man, the more he must have felt what he had lost. Indeed, I saw it, for when she had done making love to him he would make love to her. He knew—it was what he was good at, the conferring of physical pleasure—exactly where and how to touch her, and as soon as his hand descended she would roll over on her side and open her legs, and his strong yet gentle fingers would move over her stomach, manipulating her nipples and her neat, pretty genital, shaped like the crown of a daffodil, in a way she enjoyed, while he whispered little affectionate obscenities into her ears. “Is this it, gal? Is this what you like?” he would say, and she would sigh and swoon away beneath him. Yet she never followed him; and though sometimes, when we saw him part-way home along the towing-path, he would test her again, out of a lingering curiosity, perhaps a lingering disbelief, by inviting her to go with him, she stayed at my side; but she would look back from time to time at his small receding figure, a sweet thing he never did for us. Yes, she knew he thought the world of her; but possibly, I reflected, she guessed, as I now did, what the world amounted to, and that what he had just done for us was, of all things she wanted, the most she would ever get, and that she could not count even on that.

It was because of all this, I felt sure, that he seldom exercised the right he had to take her from me. I put no hint nor hesitation in his way; on the contrary I sometimes reminded him of his right, for as well as the sense of sorrow I felt for him, I had, in the very gladness I felt for myself, a sense of guilt, that I, and Millie too for that matter, had managed somehow to despoil him of his possessions at a moment when he had been powerless to defend them. His possessions or, less concedable, more outrageous, some part of himself that he did not wish to give, something that his heart was unwilling any longer to submit to ours. At any rate, whatever it was that we had done to him and whatever he felt, whether he knew that, in spite of my reminders, I found it increasingly hard to part with Evie, or whether he himself found it increasingly hard to face the fact that, when she was with him and love him as she did, she was always listening for me, he did not ask for her much. And so it passed, this strange, sad, pretty time in which she lived between us and held us reticently together; for came a day when we had a conversation which shed over the whole past a bleak and bitter light. He began it.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong about all this, Frank. I’m not saying that. But there’s two ways of looking at it.”

“Well, it’s like this. If I ’adn’t got nicked screwin’ and Evie ’ad lived with me as my dog, she’d ’ave ’ad a different life from what she’s ’ad with you, if you see what I mean; but that’s not to say she wouldn’t ’ave been just as well off.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Not to my way of thinking. That’s what I mean. Whatever it was, she’d ’ave got used to it and been just as well off.”

“Yes, as ’appy. What you’ve never ’ad you never miss. If I’d ’ad ’er all along, I’d ’ave brought ’er up me own way. I’d ’ave took ’er out first thing in the morning for ’er piddles, then she’d ’ave ’ad it until I come in for me tea. After that I’d ’ave took ’er up to the pub and she’d ’ave sat there quiet beside me while I ’ad a few pints and a game of darts. Then she’d ’ave walked ’ome be’ind me afterwards. Weekends I’d ’ave took ’er farther.”

Evie had now developed talents; she had become a skillful rabbiter, pelting a daily fifteen miles in Richmond Park. I was about to say this when I saw that it was, of course, the very thing he meant. The conversation had begun to worry me. I said lightly:

“Ah, Johnny, none of your poor dogs gets all he wants from you, and we love you just the same.”

But he was not to be deflected. It was as though he was determined to make nonsense of the past.

“It’s all what you’re used to, see? Of course it wouldn’t do now, because she’s ’ad a different way of life and she’d miss it. But if she’d ’ad my way instead, she’d ’ave been just as ’appy, for she wouldn’t ’ave known no better.”

Perhaps it was true. I did not want to look. I was happy again myself—and I knew that my happiness was vulnerable. What he was inviting me to look at was the world he thought of his creatures, and it was his world, not ours. Into it we were required to fit, patient and undemanding, awaiting our sops, the walk, the letter, the visit, the descending hand. Evie herself had managed to escape from it. As for me, I did not want to look. I said, vaguely teasing:

“No, I wouldn’t even say that. I didn’t mean it that way. What I mean is, ’ow many dogs, town dogs, gets as much exercise as Evie gets? Not one in a ’undred. Not one in a thousand. Now do they? Lots of them never do no more than sit about outside the shops and ’ouses where they belong, yet you can’t say they’re un’appy, for they don’t know nothing else, and you can’t say they’re un’ealthy, for they grows old like any other dog what’s ’ad a different life. . . .”

Yes, it was true, and it had all been useless. I saw it now and how pitiful it was. It had been a mistake from beginning to end, the total struggle, all that love and labor, passion and despair; it had all been hopeless and unavailing; I had lost the fight for him before ever it had begun.

“I’m not blaming you, mind. It was me own fault, and you done your best, I know. All I’m saying is——”

Then the rot set in. The pleasant precarious situation came to an end. Evie hastened it, for in two successive heats the matings she submitted to did not take and she began to be suspected, in the phrase of a breeder, of being “a barren bitch.” With the failure of the prospective goldmine the party started to break up. Appointments with Johnny were less easily made, more frequently forgotten or defeated; yet at the same time he began to put in claims for her oftener than he had done before. . . . Then he failed an engagement that included her. He had taken her for a few days and was to have brought her along to visit me on a certain evening. He neither came nor phoned. That shattered me. If I could get on now without him or without her, a future that contained neither was one I could not enter. I hurried to Fulham. The house was in darkness, the keys were not in their place, no one came to my rattling. And recollecting that other occasion when I had drummed upon the empty house, a cold terror seized me that this was what I was destined to do, that this was my inescapable fate for ever and ever. What could have happened? Where could they be? I hastened over to the pub he frequented and searched it in vain. Then I remembered another, smaller pub he sometimes used, and there he was, alone, standing in the public bar with a pint of beer in front of him.

Now, my agitation stilled, I noticed him, and saw that it was the same old story. Always, before coming out of an evening, he smartened himself up, but he was wearing his working clothes; his thick dark curly hair, over the arrangement of which he normally took great pains, was unbrushed; the side of his face was badly scratched. I had seen it many times before and did not have to ask questions. I knew that after their row, over me of course, Megan had rushed off in a rage to spend the evening with her friends, but that the jealousy that had shot her off would soon swing her back to search for him; I knew that he would again refer to her as a “bloody cow,” and that this pub, which he had selected for its less embarrassing publicity, was as far from her as he would ever get; I knew that he would stay here dumbly pouring pints into himself and urinating them out until she came and found him; I knew that the wrangle would be resumed, by her and on a more perfunctory note to cloak the starkness of her triumph, that she would shame him into buying her a drink by demanding it in a voice loud enough to be overheard, that he would stalk sullenly home beside her and copulate with her before dawn, and that peace would then be restored—until he attempted to assert himself again; and I knew that he was pleased to see me and that I was, and always had been, powerless to help him. If he had really needed me he would have come to me in spite of her.

How boyish he looked with his hair in a muddle—as he used to look, once upon a time.

“Johnny,” I said, in sudden desperation, “let’s get away from here! Come with me! Do what you promised to do! You can stay the night or as long as you like. We’ll take Evie too! The three of us together! How wonderful it will be! Come! Do come!”

“Johnny, if you don’t want me, go back to Evie! She’d give you such a welcome! Go now and take her for a nice long walk! How happy you would make her!”

I said gently: “But that’s routine. Give her something special tonight, a surprise, a present. She does love you so much.”

We were no use to him, either of us. He thought the world of us both, and we were no use to him at all. She lonely in his kitchen, I lonely in my flat, and neither of us any use to him, lonely in his pub. That was what I saw, standing beside him in the sad little place; and it was true. A few days later he remarked, with a laugh, that someone was wanting to buy her.

Nothing more was said just then, but he had frightened me over a wide area; by the time the subject came up again, as I feared it would, I had decided upon my answer. Evie had already been valued, at his request, by a breeder we had visited together, who had hazarded the rough figure of “about thirty or forty pounds.” This was in her gold-mine period when we were seeking a husband for her; her value now could be nothing like that. But when a little later Johnny told me that some pub acquaintance of his was “absolutely crazing” him to sell her and had even called round to ask him to name a price, I could risk it no longer. What his intentions really were I did not know, but they must now be put to the fatal test. I said:

“If you ever decide to sell her, Johnny, it must be to me, and I will give you forty pounds for her any day.”

He did not reply. But the next day—alas, poor Johnny, I knew that if it happened at all it would be the next day, it was what I both dreaded and desired—he came over unannounced.

In this way Evie became my dog. But since I was still in the same predicament of being unable to keep her single-handed, I stipulated, as part of the bargain, that the old arrangement should continue until I could make other plans. It had never been satisfactory and for Evie herself I had long regarded it as actually bad; she was a creature much in need of the stabilizing influence of a settled life and a home of her own where she could function confidently in her canine way, and the divided life she had been leading, in which she never could feel sure to whom she belonged, must be very frustrating for her: but in any case the affair was doomed. Now that the dog had passed, I, in Megan’s scheme of things, could pass also; an outward show of politeness was maintained, but behind it she was working my total destruction. So everything went back to what it had been before; Johnny scarcely ever came to see me; if I wrote to him my letters were intercepted and suppressed; the keys began to be forgotten, so that either I could not put the dog in or could not get her out, and sometimes spent an agitated hour or more hanging about their street with little Rita for unhelpful company. Megan was not clever enough to see that she was waging war against an adversary who had already capitulated. Her interferences in my life with Johnny no longer aroused in me the black and murderous passions they had once aroused; it was only when she started to withhold the keys that I perceived that my connection with them both was at an end. On one of my last rare meetings with Johnny, when Evie had done lavishing upon him her unfailing, her wonderful, greeting, he remarked as he stroked her glowing head:

I knew, of course, to what bargain he referred; but when I looked across her body into the eyes that had once affected me so deeply and now affected me no more, and nodded, it was not of that bargain that I was thinking.

And that, it might be thought, is the end of the story; but of course it was only the beginning. A new character, even, has to be introduced, though luckily for the dramatic unities a not entirely fresh one, for she has already played a small peripheral part.

During the two years whose events this history has attempted to relate, the fortunes of my country cousin suffered a serious reverse. It was a reverse I might have prevented if I had not been too distracted to give her that advice over her financial affairs which she had requested at the time of Miss Sweeting. In the result she speculated unwisely and lost a considerable part of her income. As her nearest relative she had always looked to me for help. Nearest and dearest: the most salient thing about my cousin Margaret was that she thought the world of me. It had, indeed, long been her wish to enter and manage my life; it had long been my concern to fend her off. The bachelor is often considered fair game to those relations, particularly the female part of them, whose own lives have become empty or straitened: poor, helpless fellow, the formula runs, he needs a woman’s care.

And now the trouble was that I did need care, though not for myself. The connection was all too patent: since the responsibility for assisting my cousin had fallen on me, the economic temptation presented itself of getting some return for my money by employing her to mind my dog. It was, in the event, a temptation I would have been wise to resist and, sensing the dangers, I did not succumb to it at once. I began by advertising for a boy. Evie was already an object of awed admiration to the local children; might not a steady one be found who would be glad to earn a little pocket money by helping me with her? But although a stream of willing urchins called, I could not bring myself to entrust her to any of them—and was therefore able to add another point of view, poor Millie’s, to those I was collecting. In the end I took on my cousin in the capacity of kennel-maid and, since I could not afford her a separate establishment, housed her in my flat.

This entailed considerable sacrifice on my part. My flat was small. It comprised virtually only two rooms, my bedroom and my sitting-room, for the lobby that separated them and which I used as a dining-room was scarcely more than an extension of the passage. In order to fit my cousin in, therefore, I had to relinquish one of these rooms. I bestowed upon her my bedroom, retreating myself into my sitting-room which contained a small divan bed and thenceforward became my bed-sitting-room. Evie, of course retreated with me; but it was at once apparent that these innovations, which I myself was prepared to endure entirely for her sake, did not please her.

It would be no overstatement to declare that from the moment Evie achieved her ambition, which was to get me to herself in a home of her own, her true character was instantly revealed. There had been indications of it before, but I had misread them. Her persistent hostility to strangers may well have been compounded of various emotions, nervousness, suspicion, and a desire to protect me; but all these, I now realized, were overridden by something infinitely stronger, an intense, possessive jealousy.

Directly Margaret arrived, Evie laid down the law. The law was simple and, in my judgment, reasonable; she was prepared, since it appeared to be my wish, to put up with my cousin and allow her about the flat—with one proviso: our room, hers and mine, whenever I was at home, was strictly private. This suited me well, I value solitude and, suspecting that my cousin did not, had already apprehended that I might have to struggle to preserve what little remained to me. This prospect made me rather uneasy, for, to speak the truth, I was nervous of Margaret. She was one of those people whose virtues (and she was far from being without them) are apparent only when they are getting their own way; opposed there was something cold and ruthless about her. And I was wary of her for another reason, for the very quality in her which I have already mentioned, that she thought the world of me. I did not therefore altogether relish providing that display of firmness which, I foresaw, might be required before a modus vivendi was reached. Evie provided it for me.

She would not permit my cousin to set foot in my room. More, with a female instinct for female stratagem, she would not permit any of those first moves—that thin edge of the wedge—which might lead to this result. She challenged my cousin’s right to knock upon the door, even to approach it, even to call to me through it. All these maneuvers were instantly greeted with a volley of violent and hysterical barking. Her mind, indeed, when I was at home, was entirely occupied with this anxiety, this menace—as she appeared to regard it—to her marital rights. It was extraordinary, it was fascinating, to watch her. As soon as I shut us both in, she would take up an invariable position on the bed which, standing as it did against the wall by the door, gave her a strategic command over the latter. Arranging herself in a vigilant attitude upon the end nearest the door and facing it, she would lie, or rather crouch, there listening. I would look up from my book and see her, absolutely still, wonderfully beautiful, her long nose pointing down to the bottom of the door, her head tilted, her great ears cocked forward, attentively following my cousin’s movements outside. If she detected in these, to me inaudible, sounds what seemed to her the smallest tendency to vacillate, to veer, she would instantly utter a sharp warning bark and, raising her head, stare fixedly at the ceiling. This curious motion puzzled me for a time; then I perceived the reason for it. The door was draped inside by a long curtain that bulged out over a miscellany of garments which were hanging beneath it, and Evie could not therefore see the door itself or the handle. Moreover, a constant slight draught kept the curtain always stirring a little. Consequently it was difficult for her to tell, by looking at it, whether the door itself was moving; but this she could ascertain by studying the ceiling, upon which, when the door opened, a widening arc of light was instantly cast from the dining-room outside. The moment she saw this, for which she was perpetually waiting, she would launch herself off the bed in a passion of vocal rage and, planting herself on the threshold, her tail lashing from side to side, bar my cousin’s entry.

All this, as I have said, suited me nicely. But it did not suit my cousin. Having gained, upon any terms, the object of her desire, a foothold in my flat, she planned, as I feared she would, to become mistress of it, and it was deeply mortifying for her to find another, self-constituted, mistress already installed, and one, moreover, of a character as determined as her own. It was not long, therefore, before she developed a point of view, which of course I saw: even if the discernment of points of view had not now become a speciality of mine I could hardly have failed to notice hers, I heard it so often. Evie never behaved like this in my absence; she was quiet, docile, amenable; she accepted everything without demur and did not even oppose my cousin’s entry into the sacred but now deserted chamber. It was therefore disgusting, it was the basest ingratitude, to be turned on by the dog—“After all I’ve done for her!”—the moment I came back; and it was all my fault, I spoiled Evie, I let her do anything she liked, I ought to pet her less and punish her more, I ought (this, I sadly noted, was one of my cousin’s favorite words) not to allow her to sleep in my room, I was turning her into a beastly dog, jealous and treacherous. . . .

Let there be no doubt of it, I was extremely grateful to my cousin. She was kind to Evie, and the services she rendered me, not only by setting me free for my work and holidays but by setting me free with an easy mind, could not, I gladly admit, have been better performed by anyone else. She was, in short, what I knew she would be, a perfectly reliable kennel-maid; and that, after all, was the capacity in which I had engaged her. But it was not the capacity in which she saw herself. All her complaints about Evie were entirely, were delightfully, true; the animal was not the same in my absence; but they were not the truth. The truth was that, like Megan, she was jealous of the dog. She could not bear that Evie should have privileges denied to her. She could not bear to be excluded by her. The thought of the animal inside my room and herself outside gnawed at her vitals. The closed door that shut her out stood always before her, a frustration, a persecution, an affront, and a challenge. She was forever plotting to get into the room simply because she knew she was not welcome in it; and Evie was forever plotting to keep her out. It was the strangest, the most prodigious, thing I ever saw, this duel that was fought between my cousin and my dog. I would leave the room for some purpose and Evie who went with me everywhere, would follow at my heels. This provided my cousin with the opportunity for which she lay ceaselessly in wait, her need to enter the room having become so obsessive that merely to slip into it, this citadel of my love, even at such an apparently undefended moment, seemed to her a compensation and a score. Upon some small pretext or other, therefore—to empty an ashtray, to remove a used cup, duties for which she had not been engaged but which she liked to regard as within her scope—she would make her little housewifely dart. But Evie’s jealousy appeared to have equipped her with human faculties and a cunning equal to her adversary’s; she sensed my cousin’s intentions almost before they entered the realm of action. With lowered head and a movement of quite uncanny stealth she would turn and glide rapidly back along the passage wall, thrust herself roughly past my cousin’s legs, nipping at her feet as she went, so that my cousin yelped with pain, and intercept her on the threshold.

Then my cousin changed her tactics. She tried to win the dog away from me with love. And now, alas for the lessons of life, alas for human faith, my heart misgave me. Had I prepared my own undoing? I had wanted Evie happy in my absences, and they were becoming longer and more frequent; my cousin was feeding her daily and doing for her all the things I used to do myself; she was seeing far more of her than I. Indeed, it was all as I had desired and planned; excepting that I did not want to lose my dog. When I thought of losing her I trembled with the kind of internal cold that seems the presage of death. I loved her; I wished her forever happy; but I could not bear to lose her. I could not bear even to share her. She was my true love and I wanted her all to myself. I was afflicted, in short, by the same fear that had haunted poor Johnny in his prison, the fear that he might lose his second Evie as he had lost his first. One night she was missing from my room. I woke suddenly in the dark early hours; the air was strangely cold; the chair was empty. Where could she be? I got up and hunted the flat; she was nowhere to be found. My cousin’s door was closed; she was inside my cousin’s room; she had chosen my cousin. I returned to my bed and lay down on it in the darkness. “This is the end,” I thought. “She loves my cousin more than me. I can never care for her again. I am alone in the cold, cruel world.” Then in the distance I heard, like the sorrow of a ghost, the faint whistling sigh she made through her nose when she was grieving. Creeping back to my cousin’s door I gently turned the handle. Evie at once emerged and reentered my room. She had not been on my cousin’s bed, she had been lying by the door; my cousin had enticed and shut her in against her will. I knew then that she was my dog forever and ever, and I fell asleep with the peacefulness of a child.

But peace for my poor cousin there was none. As my confidence increased, so did her resentment. Unable to corrupt the animal with love, she pitted herself once more against her, trying her strength by provoking the very situation she could neither brook nor ignore. She was always calling out to me through the closed door, or rapping upon it, or even opening it and entering the forbidden chamber. The arc upon the ceiling would widen and, with the ferocity of a tigress, Evie would launch herself off the bed. It was pandemonium. It was worse, it was murder. But my cousin was not to be baulked. She was determined to enter the room. She was prepared, if necessary, to die in the attempt. With an expression of disdain on her pale stony face she would stand there in the doorway, while Evie’s shrieking jaws snapped at her dangling, motionless hands. Resignedly awaiting the opportunity to make herself heard and without so much as a glance at the maddened dog, she would stand there, or even move further forward, pushing against the animal’s snarling mouth, in her own eyes a martyr, in mine an avenging fury. For I knew she had nothing to say, nothing that could not wait; she had another end in view; she desired me to punish my dog. To force this issue she was gambling now with her highest card, her very life; I fancy she never guessed how thoughtfully I considered it. But tremendous courage and resolution are required to watch someone actually torn to pieces before one’s eyes without intervening. As will already have been perceived from these confessions, I do not possess such courage and resolution. Upon this, no doubt, my cousin banked. She knew that I would intervene and the form the intervention would take; between seeing her destroyed and striking my dog I had no other alternative. Words were ineffectual, if heard; I would have to drive Evie off with blows. That was what my cousin willed and that was what I did. Yes, I often struck my faithful dog for her inestimable faithfulness, for performing the duty of guarding my solitude which I wished her to perform, while the cold figure of my cousin stood silently by willing this revenge and viewing my corrections with a jealous inquisitorial eye to see that they were met. And every curse that I gave the sweet creature, every blow that I laid upon her body, was a lie—and from any educative point of view happily a useless one, for Evie’s jealousy was as indestructible as my cousin’s, and the whole scene would be re-enacted, in precisely the same way, the next time my cousin tried it on, even if it were only a few minutes later.

I hardly remember for how long these two formidable females, the hairy and the hairless one, struggled for my possession. It was certainly more than a year. Naturally it was rather distracting; it was also extremely instructive. I perceived that the intolerable situation from which I had escaped in Johnny’s house was being reproduced in my own, though with a difference. The difference, of course, and it was an undeniable improvement, was that I was now the subject instead of the object of jealousy. Poor Margaret was the latter, and it did not fail to secure for her both my sympathy for her sufferings and my respect for her valor to note that she occupied the odious position I had occupied before. Nor did I omit to pay the final tribute: I saw Megan’s point of view. The treacherous little Welsh runt of a couple of years ago, how could I help now but regard her as a female of heroic stature, as ruthless, uncompromising and incorruptible as Evie? Both were prepared to fight tooth and nail and to the finish to secure to themselves, and to themselves alone, the love of their chosen male. And both of them won. After a time my cousin retired, broken in health, crushed in spirit, leaving Evie in undisputed possession of my life.

Since then she has set herself to keep everyone else out of it. None of the succession of visiting helps I engaged to supply my cousin’s place stayed longer than a few days; even the sparrows and pigeons that try to perch on my verandah are instantly put to flight; no fly enters and survives; she would know if I stroked another animal on my way home for she smells me all over directly I return and I should suffer from remorse if I hurt her feelings; she cannot actually read my correspondence, but she seizes it all as it falls through the letter-box and tears it to shreds. Advancing age has only intensified her jealousy. I have lost all my old friends, they fear her and look at me with pity or contempt. We live entirely alone. Unless with her I can never go away. I can scarcely call my soul my own. Not that I am complaining, oh no; yet sometimes as we sit and my mind wanders back to the past, to my youthful ambitions and the freedom and independence I used to enjoy, I wonder what in the world has happened to me and how it all came about. . . . But that leads me into deep waters, too deep for fathoming; it leads me into the darkness of my own mind.