Free Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson Page B

doubtfully – more of a beast-with-two-backs kind of girl herself.)
    The Cats are murdering sleep, the walls rumbling with their engine purrs – prut-prut-prut as they snore their way to oblivion. The other occupants of Arden sleep less soundly. I can hear Charles’ restless dreams – silver-suited spacemen wading through the nothingness of space and riveted tin rockets landing in the dusty craters of the moon, like something imagined by Méliès. Vinny’s dreams are less audible, the noise of unoiled hinges, and Gordon isn’t dreaming at all, but Debbie’s baby dreams echo emptily around the house – fluffy, pink marshmallow dreams of stuffed rabbits and ducks, romper suits and pudgy putti bodies.
    ‘Where’s Charles?’ Gordon asks, as he passes me on the stairs. ‘He seems to have disappeared.’ He’s incongruously cheerful for having just made such a statement.
    ‘Where’s Charles?’ Debbie shouts at me from the dining-room, where she’s vacuuming the curtains with the nozzle attachment from the Hoover (she looks like an anteater). It’s nine o’clock at night and sensible people are sprawled in front of their television sets. Like Vinny who’s shouting abuse at Hughie Green from the comfort of her armchair.
    ‘There’s somebody at the back door,’ Vinny says to me when I sit down. She leans forward and gives the fire a vicious poke. She’s probably imagining sticking the poker into Mr Rice’s head. Mr Rice has gone a-wooing and Vinny, who has got it in her head that there’s some kind of ‘understanding’ between her and Mr Rice, is very, very annoyed. This understanding – or, more properly, misunderstanding – has arisen from a casual compliment from Mr Rice to the effect that Vinny would ‘make someone a wonderful wife’. He might have meant the bride of Frankenstein’s monster but he certainly didn’t mean himself.
    ‘There’s someone at the back door,’ the bride of Frankenstein’s monster repeats irritably.
    ‘I didn’t hear anyone.’
    ‘That doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody there.’
    Reluctantly, I go and investigate. There is a strange scratching noise coming from the back door and when I open it, a hopeful whine directs my eyes downward to a large dog which is lying Sphinx-like on the threshold. As soon as I make eye contact with it, it leaps up and launches into its canine routine – head cocked to one side in a winning way, one paw raised in greeting.
    It’s a big ugly dog with fur the colour of a dirty beach. A dog of uncertain genetic origin, a touch of terrier, an ancient whisper of wolfhound, but more than anything it looks like an outsize version of the Tramp in The Lady and the Tramp . It has no collar, no name tag. It’s the essence of all dog. It is Dog.
    It keeps waving its huge heavy paw around in a determined effort to introduce itself so I bend down and take the proffered paw and look into its chocolate-brown eyes. There’s something in its expression … the clumsy paws … the big ears … the bad haircut …
    ‘Charles?’ I whisper experimentally and the dog cocks one of its floppy ears and thumps its tail enthusiastically.
    I suppose a better sister would have set about weaving him a shirt from nettles and throwing it over his furred-over body so that he could be released from his enchantment and resume his human form. I give him some cat food instead. He’s absurdly grateful.
    ‘Look,’ I say to Gordon when he comes into the kitchen.
    ‘Have you seen Debs anywhere?’ he asks, scratching his head like Stan Laurel.
    ‘No, but look – a dog, a poor, lost, homeless, hungry, lonely dog. Can we keep it?’ and Gordon, who looks as if he might have been playing the game of Lost Identity from The Home Entertainer says vaguely, ‘Mm, if you like.’
    Of course, I know the Dog isn’t really Charles under an enchantment and anyway he comes back from wherever he’s been in time to drink Horlicks with Gordon. Neither Vinny nor Debbie are