Chapter 21
Dog gone
After Bear Shirt disappeared down the M-way heading south, we waited for two nights before we decided it was safe enough to move around normally and let the dogs out.
We’d had whole a day locked up in the Bunker, discussing the who and the what and the why of the visitor, trying to see how dangerous they might have been or still be.
The girls never doubted it was another Russian and were happy to stay hidden until the threat was far away.
I wasn’t sure, and I found myself feeling more trapped and claustrophobic than I normally did when we cancelled a day and stayed undercover.
But having a new person to talk and speculate about was enough to make the time pass quickly, despite the fact that Cat seemed to be less and less keen to join in the conversation.
Which was strange. At the time I felt it was almost as if she was envious of my having seen the stranger so closely while she hadn’t.
It was just her habit, I thought, Cat liking to know everything so she could keep ahead of stuff that might endanger us.
And if she couldn’t know everything, she certainly liked to know more than me or the girls and in this case she only had my words with which to build a picture. She didn’t like that, I think.
Anyway, when we let the dogs out two mornings after I’d been trapped in the tank, it just seemed like a normal day.
Freya came out and sat in the sun with Storm and the babies.
Cat and I had of course scouted around making sure we still weren’t being crept up on before anyone else came into the open.
Freya didn’t say she was happy to be out in the fresh air and sunlight, but from the way she fed the babies and held them without complaining I could see her spirits were as lifted as any of us.
And that was how the aftermath of the near-meeting was.
Fine. Uplifting even. At first. Nothing to start with, which should have alerted me to trouble in the offing, because a whole new stranger couldn’t just mean nothing to our world, even if they’d moved on south, never to return.
It affected the balance of things. So what actually happened again did so in threes, because of course despite the fact that at first nothing happened, then some things did, and then everything changed.
The first nothing that happened was almost less than nothing, because it was a sort of taking away, a subtraction. And though like everything it put Freya on edge, it was really just a return to the way things had been before it had barrelled into our lives, drawn by Digger’s being in heat.
The dog who might have been called Jip just went.
It hung out with us for a while that first morning, with no urgency in at all its body, lolling happily in the sun beside Digger by the doorway to the Bunker which was, at that time of day, a sort of trap for the sun.
And then the wind changed and Digger got up and wandered down the hill a bit and peed by the tank and he followed her, cocking his leg where she had just been in the way dogs seem compelled to do, and pausing to eat some grass as she walked ahead.
And then in an instant his whole body stiffened, and then he bounded forwards, sniffing his way to the front of the tank where Bear Shirt had climbed up.
The dog quartered back and forth, nose to the grass, excitedly following an invisible scent-trail with a series of deep and increasingly excited huffs.
He bounced up on his back legs and sniffed higher on the tank, where Bear Shirt had hoisted up onto the front plate, and then he dropped down and began to criss-cross his way back along the path they’d had taken from the bench where I’d watched him sit.
The dog’s tail was now thrumming with excitement.
Cat came and stood next to me, alerted by the dog’s sudden burst of energy.
That’s where the stranger sat and ate, I said. And drank. On the bench.
She grunted. The dog was looking more and more excited. The huffing inhalations had given way to a high-pitched whining that got the attention of Storm and Freya who came to see what the noise was all about.
That’s where the stranger was, I explained again.
You think he’s excited because there was a stranger there, or because there’s where someone who wasn’t a stranger was? said Storm.
The dog turned and looked at us, cocking its head, and then barking once.
It’s trying to tell us something, I said. Think its—
No, said Cat. No…
The dog turned, looked at Digger, and then just bolted, streaking away through the clumps of scutch grass, heading for the M-way like its tail was on fire.
… he’s saying goodbye, she said.
Digger didn’t follow the dog. Which was, again, strange looking back on it.
She just watched it go, shifting her weight from side to side, as if she was torn between chasing and staying, and then the dog disappeared round the curve of the hill, and she turned back and trotted up the slope towards us as if nothing momentous had just happened.
I still don’t know why she didn’t disappear with him.
Why she chose us. It makes no real sense, but it’s what she did, and somewhere it’s a choice she must have made for her own dog reasons.
I know that I’m glad she did. And I don’t have to know the why of it to be glad.
I’m glad now, and I was glad then, and I think Cat was as sad as I was to see the other dog go, despite herself.
She clicked her tongue and shook her head.
We never even had time to give it a name, said Cat.
I remembered Bear Shirt swinging up onto the front of the tank, talking to the baby doll’s head.
Jip, I said.
Cat looked a question at me.
I think his name is Jip, I said. I think he’s who Bear Shirt was looking for. I heard them talking to a Jip who wasn’t there. I thought they were Russian, and maybe they were, but if so, I think they were a Russian who lost their dog, and now that dog’s gone after them.
Good, said Freya, who’d been listening to all this. It’s good he’s gone. He can follow the scent trail and find him. Then the Russian bastard won’t have any reason to come back sniffing around for us.
I don’t think they were actually Russian, I said.
You don’t know what they were, said Freya. That’s the point.
Storm nodded and pointed at Cat.
It’s like Cat says, she said. What you don’t know can kill you.
She shrugged as if she wanted to apologise for the truth of it.
Didn’t look like a killer, I said, remembering that weird bump I felt when I looked into their face, how open and sad it had been.
Neither do you, said Freya. But here we are.
Cat kept quiet through this exchange, but as the girls turned and went back up the hill to where both the babies were now beginning to grizzle in anticipation of their next feed, she smiled up at me and clapped me on the shoulder.
Hey, she said. Cheer up. If the dog comes back, he comes back. And if not, it means he’s happier where he is.
I know, I said. I’m fine.
I expect dogs can have special people just like people can, she said.
Only-ones, I said.
Exactly, she said.
I still feel split about Bear Shirt, I said. I know I was right to stay hidden, but there’s a bit of me thinks it was a mistake.
Cat got that itchy, irritated look back behind her eyes again.
Spilled milk, she said. Don’t worry about it. And on the good side, it might cheer Freya up. She really didn’t like that dog.
She doesn’t like anything, I said. You see how tough she is with the babies sometimes.
She’s just tired, said Cat. That’s all. And Storm’s surprisingly good at taking care of her.
I wonder if she could hear the same thing in her own voice that I could, which was that she was trying to persuade herself as much as me.