Free Narrow Dog to Carcassonne by Terry Darlington

stove roars and the wind generator moans and trees sigh and whistle.
    We are in bed, warm in our steel Anderson shelter, when the Jerry rain machine-guns the roof. The storm rocks Jim in his cradle, and behind the stove Monica’s horse-brasses clink and glow—
the antique shapes of kings and kesars straunge and rare
.
             
    IF YOU FALL UPON HARD TIMES, OR EVEN IF you don’t, you need not starve in Rugeley: a Lilliput town of squares and flowers. Every other shop is a charity shop, selling CDs of Milt Jackson playing upon the vibraphone, orphan volumes of the
Oxford History of England
, T-shirts from ruined car dealers and little glasses with Spanish dancers. In the indoor market they do all-day breakfasts for a pound. The tea, the tea—it’s made from the bits that are left on the factory floor, the bits with all the flavour. The eggs are sunny side up and so is the service. The bread is real bread, the white floppy bread we had in the war, and the margarine is made from boiled cows, none of your sunflower lite crap. The bacon is chewy and salty—excuse me, I must visit the fridge. Goodness, that’s better. South to Fradley, in light snow.
             
    THIS SPRING WE WOULD TAKE A DIFFERENT route—the Coventry Canal and the Oxford Canal and down the Thames to London. At Fazeley Junction near Tamworth Jim and I went to the newsagent and when we came back Monica had gone ahead. Jim could tell she had not gone towards Birmingham, and pulled me down the Coventry Canal and at a fast walk we caught her up.
    Sometimes when I follow another boat on a still morning I can tell if they are having tea or coffee—I can tell if their bacon is smoked. For a dog it must be like that all the time. Jim knows what has happened in the past because it leaves traces. He can hear things we can’t hear and he can see in the dark and he can see into the future. He knows what I am going to do before I know myself. He can tell where I am going to sit, and gets there first. He knows forty minutes before I take him to the pub. Dogs tell by changes in your brain waves, and by your quick, nervous movements.
    At Polesworth we moored on the side of a hill and walked round to the main street, always seeing the canal a couple of hundred yards away across the valley. The big second-hand bookshop had gone—why it was ever there we could not guess, because Polesworth is a small village and poor. We walked on in the spring sun and saw Jim across the road. As he was on his lead at my feet and I was holding the lead this puzzled us. We looked again and he had gone so we followed the imposter up a lane towards the church.
    There were two imposters, both fawn like Jim: the ears, the whip tail, the muscle, the delicate feet—two imposters just the same. And there was another whippet, a bitch. No potter could have caught her brindling in his glaze, no painter her sadness, no sculptor her grace. Jim greeted his fellows with enthusiasm. Their owner seemed unmoved. They are mine, he said—whippets.
    Going back to the boat we saw whippets round corners, behind hedges, and just over the valley, nearly out of sight. By my troth, Monica, I said, this is a funny place. There are three dozen whippets in the world and most of them are here.
    Back at the boat we let Jim off for a run. We don’t often let him off on his own, but there was a long field and no road nearby. We went into the boat and had a cup of coffee, musing upon the whippets we had seen, and on the whippets we had seen before them.
    It was only a chap with whippets, I said. People have whippets. We’ve got one ourselves. I know they are not common but they exist—I mean where did Jim come from—there must have been at least two in Grimsby or he could not have taken place. It was just a chap with whippets and the others were imaginary—nervous whippets. It’s the Channel stretching our nerves. We didn’t really see them, they were round corners and things. I saw one, said