Free Narrow Dog to Carcassonne by Terry Darlington Page A

Monica, a black one. He looked at me. He had a pink tongue—oh just a minute.
    Don’t worry, said the lady on the phone, I’ve got him, he’s going to be all right. My God, said Monica, he has run off, I bet he was on the road, he could have been killed. Where are you? she asked the lady. I’m on the towpath, by a long grey boat, she said, the
Phillip Moy
. There’s a propeller on top and primroses. We looked through the window and there was a lady with a phone to her ear, and Jim held by the collar, wriggling.
    When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable
, must be the truth, said Monica later. There is only one explanation, my dear Watson, that fits the known facts. The lady had been out for a walk and she met a chap who had lost a whippet. A fawn whippet. She promised to look out for him. Then she came across Jim by the boat. She grabbed him and read his collar and rang the phone number. It’s a question of too many whippets, really.
    We sailed away and looked back and there were whippets running over the hills and fields: fawn whippets, black whippets, whippets broken in white and brown, or brindled in colours no potter will catch.
             
    THE WATERWAYS GUIDE SAID ATHERSTONE WAS a pleasant town, with a strong eighteenth-century feeling. A wide towpath with mooring rings, coal barges, warehouses with broken windows, gardens of rubbish. A bed of narcissi coming into bloom. The local youth walked by and shouted and scuffled and went away. Jim and I walked into town.
    The off-licences were netted in steel and the gutters were drifts of cigarette butts. In the newsagent’s the packets carried new warnings—

    If you smoke you will die but first your sexual organs will wither and drop off—If you smoke one cigarette from this packet you are a fucking lunatic—If you smoke you will become incontinent and hair will grow out of your ears and you will be unable to put on your socks.

    Does it make any difference? I asked the lady. No, she said.
    Some youths charged by in a red car. They shouted abuse at Jim and me and pressed on to the next village to kill somebody. A young woman stopped me—A dog like that: would he be a good guard dog? He looks a nice dog but would he look after me? Would he keep me safe, I mean round here? Is he fierce? Does he bark? He can bark, I said, but he won’t. In fact he can talk, but he won’t. But he’s all boy, I mean he’s a spirited dog. Jim laid back his ears, looked up, and grinned abjectly. He’s not very frightening, is he? said the young lady.
    We were inside the pedestrian area but a red car came thumping at us over the kerbs. This is it, I thought—no December years, no France, no Carcassonne—raped and eaten by the youth of Atherstone. But it was a different car. A pale gentleman with bad teeth leaned out. The dog, he lisped, I like that dog—how much would you have to pay for a nice little dog like that? There’s a pretty little dog, he said to Jim, and took out his wallet. Then a woman in the passenger seat started to hit him on his arms and shoulders and he let in the clutch and thumped back towards the road.
    Jim and I strolled on, marvelling at the spherical women with black leggings and their cloned daughters, waddling like coots between the boarded shops. A brown lady offered a happy smile and a leaflet for a kebab house. We stopped for a pint. On the bar was the
Daily Stoat
. It didn’t take me long to read it and I wished I hadn’t.
    What was Atherstone like? asked Monica, as we waited for our lamb shishka to come along the towpath. A pleasant town, I replied, with a strong eighteenth-century feeling.
    That night the local youth let the coal barges off their moorings and drained the pound behind us. They ragged the bed of narcissi and threw the broken flowers across the towpath. Monica gathered them and put them in water and as we left Atherstone the sun shone through them and filled the boat with perfume.

    THERE