Chapter thirteen
On Wednesday morning, I loaded Tomsk into the car with his towels, his lead, his special teddy – and a present for him to give to an old friend.
Pam Woodward had phoned a few days earlier, to tell me that her own vet, George Fenwick, would be available to assess Tomsk for suitability as a visiting therapy dog if I brought him with me to my next story session.
When I told her I knew George – because he was the co-owner of the kennels that had rescued Tomsk – she was delighted by the coincidence.
‘It’s a sign!’ she said. Pam, I realised, loved a sign. She’d have got on well with Ashley.
I hadn’t bargained for me and Tomsk becoming care-home volunteers, but if George gave Tomsk the all-clear, it would solve the problem of leaving him in the car.
Tomsk didn’t mind, not if there was a walk afterwards, but my car was starting to smell like a mobile kennel and two air fresheners weren’t even touching the sides.
At Rosemount, I parked up next to a mud-splattered Land Rover with the Four Oaks Vets sign on the side. A Border collie was staring at us from the passenger-seat window, silent but curious.
Tomsk swept his tail from side to side and I wondered if he remembered the dog from the brief time he was at the rescue.
There was so much I didn’t know about Tomsk’s past (to my utter misery, he still cowered if he saw a man in a particular kind of hat) but as soon as he saw George chatting with Lewis on the front steps, the wagging suddenly turbocharged, and I was towed across the gravel by the happiest canine steam engine ever.
Lewis broke off the conversation immediately. ‘Beth!’ He beamed and spread his hands out in welcome. ‘You’ve brought the sunshine! Hello, Tomsk!’
‘Tomsk, eh?’ George looked amused.
‘After the Womble. I had one as a kid.’ It had been Mum’s; once I’d cleaned Tomsk up, the shaggy grey hair and the pointy nose that wrinkled in confusion were almost identical.
‘He’s looking magnificent.’ George reached down to welcome his old pal, who shoved his nose straight into his hands. Even after five years, the gratitude was still as warm as ever.
Lewis evidently wasn’t expecting such a huge dog to move so quickly, and he jerked backwards into a plant pot, which wobbled on its plinth with an ominous grinding noise.
Automatically, George stuck his own leg out to stop it crashing on to the stone steps.
‘Whoops!’ said Lewis.
At the word ‘whoops’ Tomsk immediately sat down and looked at me. He heard it a lot. Such was his size that he often accidentally wagged mugs off coffee tables, and only knew about it when there was an unexpected crash in his vicinity.
‘Sorry, sorry, Lewis!’ I pulled Tomsk back to my side, and looked at George. ‘Is that an automatic fail before we’ve left the car park?’
‘Not at all. Good calm reaction,’ said George. ‘To the plant and the nervous visitor.’
‘Yes! That was my fault.’ Lewis was busily shifting the pot back into place. ‘Health and safety fail, should have checked these pots before now!’
‘Not a dog person, Lewis?’ asked George mildly.
‘I’m not not a dog person,’ he gabbled. ‘Just not used to dogs this size. I didn’t have a dog growing up.
Parents in the forces. Boarding school .
. .’ I’d never seen Lewis like this. He’d gone red, and was struggling to project his usual calm competence.
It was quite endearing to see him flapping. ‘Sorry, I’m . . . Ha-ha! Hello there!’
He reached out to pat Tomsk’s head but when Tomsk, encouraged, lifted his nose to show he hadn’t taken it personally, Lewis jerked his hand back. Then with an effort, he stretched it out again and tapped Tomsk’s head twice, as if his head was a gameshow answer button.
Tomsk looked up at me, bewildered.
George decided enough was enough. ‘OK, so Tomsk and I will go for a walk, meet some people, have a chat, and we’ll see you a bit later. Rachel says I’ve to take a lot of photos.’
I gave him the lead, and George ruffled Tomsk’s floppy ear with that ‘good boy’ affection that said more than words. And without a backward glance, my one-woman hound trotted off in the direction of the walled gardens.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I had no idea he was so easy to steal.’
Lewis indicated that he, too, was heading back towards the house, but I should go first. ‘Ha! He’s absolutely lovely. The dog, of course, not George. I mean, George is also tremendous. But Tomsk, yes. What a sweetheart. So . . . big!’
I eyed Lewis as we walked up the path; he still wasn’t quite himself. He seemed to be concentrating on his breathing. ‘It took me a while to get used to having a small horse around, too.’ I touched his arm. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not one of those owners who expects everyone to worship their dog.’
‘No, it’s so kind of you to volunteer him. It comes up, over and again, when I’m talking to people about how we can make this feel more like their own home – our residents miss their dogs.’
As he spoke, back on the familiar ground of Improving Rosemount, I could see his natural control returning.
It had been an effort though. That jumpy reaction made me wonder if he’d had a bad experience at some point.
A bite, or a scare as a child? Yet he was prepared to suffer some personal discomfort so the residents who missed canine company could enjoy a visit.
It wasn’t just box-ticking; Lewis genuinely cared about making life better for other people.
We’d stopped, so he could hold the front door open for me, but I felt a sudden impulse to let him know I’d seen that momentary discomfort. ‘It’s so important, what you’re doing.’
‘What I’m doing?’ Lewis raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘Caring about the little things, as well as the big ones.’ I hugged my beautiful new notebook close to my chest. ‘I’ll make sure Tomsk never goes anywhere he isn’t welcome and hopefully . . .’ I smiled. ‘He might show you just what great company dogs can be.’
Lewis held my gaze. The lustrous moustache distracted from the fact that he had kind eyes; they weren’t unlike Tomsk’s. Brown and gentle. Trusting. ‘I hope so,’ he said, after a microscopic pause that made me wonder what he’d been thinking.
I felt myself smile, and he smiled back.
‘We’re all rowing the same boat,’ he said. ‘I’m just barking the orders.’
‘Barking!’ I pointed at him. ‘I see what you did there.’
He looked bemused for a second, then laughed, way too generously for the crapness of my pun.
We walked into the house together; Lewis insisted he was heading in the same direction, even though I hadn’t told him where I was going. ‘Pam showed me the story notes you’ve already written up – you must be working overtime!’
‘I don’t have a lot on right now.’ A white lie.
I didn’t have a lot of social life on right now, which freed up my evenings for writing up rambling stories of cinema matinees and National Service, three-day weeks and miners’ strikes.
Some volunteers, it had to be said, were better at winnowing details from the residents than others; the 1970s, in particular, were a notably arid era for fun in Longhampton’s recent history.
Still, Martine’s ten p.m. check-ins added some more colour to prosaic accounts of the old railway routes and milk rounds: with a little encouragement, she’d painted vivid pictures of the town’s ancient traditions, the May week parades, and the Blossom Queens on their flower-covered floats, and the candlelit wassailing, and the noisy St George’s Day dragon run.
I asked her if she’d been a carnival queen and Martine made a noise that I’m sure was accompanied by an even more outraged expression.
‘Absolutely not! I was far too busy studying for my O levels.’ Then she’d paused, and said, ‘And I don’t think my father would have liked it,’ in a more ambiguous manner.
‘Carrie emailed me to say her feature about the story sessions will be in the paper this week,’ Lewis added, as we reached his office. ‘Hopefully it’ll drum up some volunteers to lighten your load.’
That brought my attention back to the moment, with a deep cringe.
I wasn’t looking forward to that feature running.
Lewis had swallowed my hastily invented excuse about working from home, but in truth it wasn’t that.
The very idea of appearing in the paper filled me with such a toxic mixture of shame, guilt, self-loathing, horror and embarrassment, with a whole sprinkling of different shame – shame that I was shallow enough to care.
I’d seen one photograph of myself sitting in a pub with Ashley two years ago and it had stuck in my head like a splinter.
Squashed thighs, a lifesaver ring of belly fat, tiny little head like a diplodocus.
Since then, I’d avoided all lenses and, to a lesser extent, mirrors.
There were three big mirrors in Martine’s flat, and I’d turned them to face the wall.
‘Good! Great! Anyway,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘I’m here to talk to Nigel Callaghan this morning. Anything I should know?’
‘Nigel? Oh, he’s great fun. He’ll keep you on your toes!’
‘Really?’ What did that mean?
We’d rounded the corner to his office, where Pam was standing outside with one of the nurses.
‘Hello, Pam, hello, Kemi!’ Lewis beamed at them both. ‘Beth’s here to talk to Nigel Callaghan about his fascinating life.’
‘Dear Lord in heaven,’ said Kemi.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nigel’s not the easiest of our residents,’ Pam explained.
‘In what way?’ This wasn’t sounding good.
She contorted her face in an effort to find a positive spin. ‘We try our best, but I don’t think he’s suited to communal living—’
‘He is a tricky old man,’ Kemi interrupted. ‘He is rude for no good reason. No,’ she corrected herself, ‘he is rude because it entertains him.’
Pam’s eyes swivelled involuntarily towards Kemi.
‘Is he local?’ If local, a good half-hour could be spent having the Longhampton cinema hierarchy explained to me.