The day we chose Cleo was almost exactly like this. Then too, we had a thunderstorm that crackled and grumbled its way across the city early in the morning and then vanished leaving wall to wall sunshine and steaming vegetation. That day too, Daddy wore his dark glasses and whinged about being dazzled by the fierce glare from the shiny, wet roads and me and Rosie had an argument in the back of the car, but I don’t remember what it was about. It was two years ago, but it might as well be the same day. Even this place looks the same. Over there – under the stately, arching branches of those two flamboyants – that’s the run of cat pens where we found her. Cleo, who was this tiniest scrap of black fur amongst so many cats and so many dogs, and so many Eyes. That’s what I do remember most vividly. All the Eyes, watching me, all the way round, pleading with me to rescue them.
Dad maintains control of the inspection – up this row of pens, down the next, repeat – to ensure it’s methodical. When we’re nearly back to where we started, I tug on his sleeve.
“I’m so excited because we’re going to get our dog, but sad too. Whichever one we choose, all the others will have to stay here.”
He goes, “Yes?” like he means, have you just realised that?
Rosie’s bouncing around impatiently, going, “Come, there’s more!” and Dad says, “We’re not taking them all, Tessa, so don’t even think about it.”
Mummy’s in a hurry to push us past the next pen. She calls, “Listen! Puppies!” and I only get to glimpse a lone Rottweiler standing at the back in the shadows. I’m sure Daddy had Rottweilers on his original list of suitable dogs. He lingers slightly, but she’s going, “Here we are – look! Aren’t they sweet, girls? We’re looking for a puppy, aren’t we Bob?”
The plastic notice fixed to the wire mesh door with black cable ties reads ‘LULU. Rescued in Hatfield. Long haired Alsatian bitch approximately five years old. Good with children. Puppies can be adopted with her or separately’. The puppies making the noise are a yipping, snarling huddle of three, involved in some kind of catch-me-if-you-dare game of black and tan fur, tiny teeth and hairy paws. There’s their mother in the corner and lying next to her is one other puppy. He has his front paws outstretched and his back ones tucked under, just like the Sphinx, and he’s watching us. He tilts his head and his little puppy tail starts waving about like he wants to be friends but isn’t too sure. He – or is it a she? – is lighter in colour than the others, a sort of a reddish-tan with just a little bit of black. When me and Rosie crouch down to get on the same level, the other puppies ignore us and carry on squirming about in a heap, but the Sphinx one leaps up, waddles to us and rolls over, so close to the fence that its furry coat pushes through the mesh. He’s definitely a he.
I stick my forefinger through a hole to tickle his tummy and croon, “Ooh, you are a skellum!”
Rosie’s giggling and scratching the top of his head as best she can without actually trying to force her hand through the fence.
“Yes?” she whispers in my ear. All I need to do is nod.
She’s on her feet, throwing her arms around Daddy.
“We’ll have this one, and his name is Skellum.”
That’s Rosie for you. She’s only seven but she considers herself a maker of family decisions.
Daddy says, “Are you asking me or telling me, my girl?” and Mummy says, “What about that chocolate Labrador puppy you said you would call Coco…” but me and Rosie are giving each other that Look. It’s not questionable. Skellum is the one.
He doesn’t look like much of a guard dog to me. Maybe Daddy will get him a spiked collar when he’s big enough and send him for attack training like they do with the police dogs. Thing is, it’ll be my fault if he does. I was the one who suggested getting a dog after we had the bars put on the windows, but only because me and Rosie’ve always wanted one and I figured it was clever of me to put the idea in his head right at that time. The Yellands down the road bought that Dobermann just after they got burgled, didn’t they? I don’t like that dog. I won’t go in their garden without Mum or Dad now.
Dad disappears and comes back with a ginger-haired girl in a blue coat. She’s thin and pale and she has a key attached to a purple plastic tag. We now have the avid interest of all the puppies and it takes some crazy minutes for the girl to separate Skellum and gather him up in her arms while we keep the others at bay. I’m the one left in the pen when the gate’s slammed shut in front of three eager snouts. Now Lulu’s ambled over to me and she shoves her cold nose into my left hand.
“Here, let me…” Dad, bending over to see under Skellum’s furry body, eases the key off one of the girl’s fingers. Rosie and Mummy are off, trotting in pursuit of her, and he’s watching me expectantly. But I can’t just walk away from Lulu, having taken her son.
I crouch beside her and wrap my arms around her with my face in her coat because it’s the only way I can avoid those soft, deep brown Eyes.
“Don’t make me cry. I’ll take care of him, I promise.”
Daddy’s hovering and I can feel his impatience. We’ll have to leave it here. I stand up and walk away from the dog.
“I wonder if she understands what I’m saying? Look at her. Does she trust us? There must be some way we can communicate without words.”
He’s doing just that now. His thumb and his head are all telling me “out”. Then he says, “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. It’s just a dog.”
Sometimes there’s just no point.
*
The air in the office is sharp and tangy with disinfectant. Daddy signs the form that says we can adopt Skellum and the receptionist lady with the lilac hair says, “Vet in six months’ time for the booster vaccinations and he has to be neutered as soon as possible and you can make your donation here.”
She taps the plastic dog sitting on the desk with the end of her pen. It has sad eyes that are boring directly into mine. The Eyes again, even if they’re not real ones.
Daddy stuffs a ten-dollar note into a slot in the box that the dog is wearing round its neck, but that’s not the end of it. We can’t take Skellum home just yet because all of them – Mum and Dad, the receptionist lady and the fat man in the white coat – get to talking on and on, the way adults do.
I wanted to ask if neutered means the same as spaying, but the moment has gone. Fifteen minutes go by, then twenty, twenty five. Rosie’s sitting on the red, shiny bench seat under the window, paging through an old copy of National Geographic she found on the counter with one hand while the other one is down deep in the cardboard pet box, scratching Skellum’s ears. I read all the notices about lost dogs, pedigree cats for sale, guinea pigs free to good homes, pet-sitting services, dog grooming services and puppy training classes and am just sighing internally while thinking the very white walls look like they were only painted yesterday, when I notice Daddy performing those moves the grown-ups do when they don’t want us kids to hear something. He checks us out over his shoulder, shuffles round to present his back to us and lowers his voice.
I haven’t registered a word they’ve said so far, but of course now I prick up my ears and start to listen, sliding down slowly to perch on the end of the bench seat closest to them. Skellum’s fallen asleep and Rosie’s making cooing noises and managing to talk to me at the same time about where we’re going to take him for walks, which toys we’re going to give him first, what games we’re going to play. It’s hard to blot out her nattering and catch snippets of what Daddy’s saying:
“Pursued… unexpected… Centenary… other gangs… isolated attack… I mean, it’s not the first time… skirmishes…”
If I move a little to the left, I can see past him to the old man in the white coat. He’s leaning against the frame of the door that leads to the surgery, with his arms folded like he’s getting comfortable and his round glasses halfway down his nose. He has very red cheeks and a big toothy smile, but he’s one of those people who can smile and look a bit nasty at the same time. His voice is louder than Daddy’s.
“Well, these munts are so poorly organised, hey. They just don’t stand a chance against the security forces. Good thing. It’s just one of those half hearted attempts at being rebellious.”
Rosie’s gone quiet so I get all of Daddy’s reply. He shakes his head. He says, no, he’s heard this was different. Apparently planned. And, he’s heard there are gangs still active in the area.
He’s right, because Timothy said his dad said they’re still causing.
The vet’s laughing. He scratches at a mosquito bite on his arm. “Well I reckon we should leave them alone and let them fight each other up there, all these different factions, hey? Incompetent bastards.”
By ‘them’, I assume he means the gooks. Timothy told us it was the gooks that carried out the attacks, but he never mentioned any factions. What are those? And why are we calling them gooks?
Rosie chooses this moment to reach out and prod me and go, “Oi. Did you hear me?”
I hiss at her, “Shhh!”, and all four of them jerk their heads round. The vet says, “Oh, sorry. Pardon my French.”
They all say that when they swear. It’s so stupid. Bastard isn’t a French word anyway – even I know that and I’ve never learned any.
And I’ll bet even if they knew I was listening to their conversation they’d never guess that I know exactly what they were on about.
*
Rosie’s being her usual annoying self, pacing around, everywhere at once, twitching nearly as much as Skellum’s nose.
“Look at him, Tee,” she says, and I go, “Aw, Skellie,” because he’s there, fast asleep in his new bed with his little nose resting on his little paws, eyelids and whiskers busy.
Cleo’s a bit freaked out; she’s still in the spare bedroom, where she’s been since we came home.
I jump to my feet. “I’ll go see if Cleo’s eaten her food. She’ll need to go out too. I can let her out the patio doors.”
Daddy’s in the doorway. “Good girl, Tessa. And it’s bedtime, Miss Rosie.”
He’s leaning against the frame, with his arms folded, smiling, just like the red-faced vet was earlier. I’m not quite sure why I say it; it just comes out.
“We heard about those farm attacks at school you know. Timothy told us on the first day of term.”
I can’t tell the story like Timothy did. He rambled a bit. He said, “So these gooks attacked a farmhouse, right. Did you guys hear about it? Up at Centenary, hey? They came over from Zambia. They ran away, but then came back again to shoot up the next door farm as well. The family from the first farm had gone to hide there so they got revved twice. Revved twice, hey! Revved big time. And this little girl got hurt. Not bad. She’s still alive. She didn’t, like, get her head blown off or anything. No, so those gooks ran away, man. My dad says the army okes chased them off with the RPGs, blam, blam, blam!”
When Jess asked, “What’s an RPG?”, Timothy sighed several times and rolled his eyes and said, “I don’t believe… you don’t… really?”
David said, “Rocket propelled grenade,” to Jess, then, to Timothy, “I doubt that Tim. It’s an anti-tank weapon.”
I tell Dad this now. “Timothy said they used RPGs. But they’re anti-tank weapons.”
I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t know how to use one. Timothy does. He showed us – well not literally of course, but by waving his hands around a lot. Predictably all the boys immediately conjured up some imaginary RPGs and charged off to kill gooks, making explosive noises as they did so.
Dad’s looking at me as if I’ve just told him I’ve seen an alien spaceship in the back garden.
“Timothy told you this?”
“You never said anything about it. It happened back in December.”
“Can’t I sleep in the kitchen?” asks Rosie.
Mum stops scraping the lamb chop bones off the plates into the bin and looks utterly incredulous.
“Of course not! Teeth, please. Now.”
Dad pushes away from the door frame and heads off in the direction of the lounge. “Don’t worry Tessa. It all happened way out in the sticks where there’s a few problems sometimes with in-fighting. The army has some guys out there. They’ll sort it out. It’s a one-off, like the vet said.”
Pursuing him, I can’t believe he knows so little about it.
“Oh, but no, it wasn’t. The people whose farm it was moved to another farm and then they got attacked. And then, some soldiers were killed by landmines in the area. And you know you said last week that our border with Zambia has been closed? Well I know why. Timothy’s dad says it’s because of the insurgents, come over from Zambia to fight against our government. So Mr Smith closed the border to make a point.”
I did have to consult the dictionary to find out exactly what insurgents are, but I don’t tell him that.
“Insurgents?” He whips round and paces back towards me, shouts loudly with laughter, then clamps a hand over his mouth when Rosie pokes her head round the kitchen door and hisses, “Skellum’s asleep, Daddy!”
“Rosie… Teeth!”
He beams at me. “Where did you learn that? Timothy’s dad? Look, they’re not a problem, my girlie, just a bit of a nuisance. Mr Smith has had an argument with Mr Gorilla, so that’s why he closed the border.”
I sidle past him. I’m beginning to wish I’d kept quiet.
“I’ll go to Cleo now.”
He thinks I’ve got a problem with it but I haven’t. I’m not the least bit worried. I’ve got no idea why those farms were attacked in the first place. I just remember being mightily relieved that something so exciting had happened during the Christmas holidays because it meant no-one was talking about me. There may well have been lots of gossip about Tessa-And-The-Policeman in the last week of school of course, but with me getting Jess’s chest infection I don’t know and I’m hoping I never find out.
Now the angry face is floating in my mind again. If I’ve got any problem, it’s because that horrible Friday last year and gooks up in Centenary and closed borders and parents who tell me not to worry about something they’re clearly keeping quiet all seem to be connected up somehow.
Mr Gorilla. He reckons Kenneth Kaunda looks like a gorilla. Thanks Daddy. Now I really do have the feeling that my traffic policeman is watching this from somewhere and thinking to himself, See how the father talks? That’s why the girl ignores me when I speak to her.