The dog whined. He tugged at the worn leather lead, his breath struggling in hoarse gasps from his open mouth. It was Sunday, 13 August. The eighth day. Seven-thirty in the morning. Cooler than yesterday or the day before, but bright sunshine angling down through the chestnut, the ash and the oak, warming the white fronds of meadowsweet, so that even at this early hour its honey smell hung in the air.
The dog pulled and jerked again, burying his nose underneath the tussocks of rough grass that grew on either side of the path running along beside the canal. He stopped, his head down, his feathery black tail pointed, tense, draughts of air filling his nose with the scent of a thousand possibilities.
The elderly man with him bent down slowly, his knees creaking, cartilage and bone scraping painfully against each other in the quiet morning. He steadied himself with one hand on his stick. With his other hand he caught hold of the dog’s collar, forcing his shaking fingers to release the lead’s metal catch. The dog licked his hand, his long tongue curling around the swollen arthritic knuckles, then rushed away down the track, his tail sculling now, like a short black oar, behind him.
The man followed slowly. He spoke quietly to himself as he paused here and there, poking his stick into a pile of old tin cans, pulling down a large bunch of elderberries, hanging dark purple, almost black like small overripe grapes, watching the dragonflies whose petrol iridescence darted over the canal’s murky water.
Ahead, twenty feet away the dog had stopped, poised on the bank. Excitement ran through his small body, waves of tension rippling along his shiny black back. His feet scrabbled in the dry, dusty grass. He moved from right to left, twisting and turning, then he whined again, and barked. The old man caught up with him. There was a piece of elder branch in his right hand. He held it up above the dog’s head, waving it from side to side, then threw it in a looping arc into the water. The dog barked again, braced himself, and leaped in, his head breaking the surface, ripples spreading out on either side from his paddling front paws.
‘Jude,’ the old man called. ‘Here, boy.’ And he whistled, a thin quavering sound.
The dog grasped the branch, his lips drawn back, his white teeth exposed. He turned and began to swim towards his master.
‘Good boy. Good dog,’ the old man called.
And then the small black body disappeared, under an ash tree that was hanging out from the bank. Afterwards the old man wasn’t sure, couldn’t be certain when he realized what was in the plastic bag that Jude had found, had begun to tear, had ripped open. It was only after he had called and whistled, and Jude had climbed up beside him on the grass, his wet tail flopping from side to side, that he noticed the dog had something caught between his teeth. And when he prised open his mouth and pulled out the black strands, it was then that he saw the shape of what was lying beneath them in the water, and it was then that he began to run, crying out for help, the dog rushing and jumping along beside him, leaping up to pull at his jacket and lick his face.