Alice Long’s Dachshunds Read online

  Alice Long’s Dachshunds

  Muriel Spark

  Short story from 'All the stories of Muriel Spark'

  Muriel Spark

  Alice Long’s Dachshunds

  The guns clank on the stone, one after the other, echoing against the walls outside the chapel, as the men come in for Mass before the shoot. Mamie, whose age is eight years and two months, kneels in the second row from the back, on the right-hand side, near the Virgin, where a warm candle is lit. There is no other warmth. Alice Long is kneeling on a front hassock. Her two brothers from London have come in—tall men in knickerbockers and green wool stockings that stride past Mamie’s eyes as she kneels in her place.

  Other big men have put their guns against the wall outside the chapel door. The Catholics from the cottages have come in. Everyone except the strangers is praying for more snow and a road blockage to the town, so that poor Alice Long can decently serve roe deer, roe deer, roe deer for all the meals that the London people are going to eat. The woods are cracking alive with roe deer, but meat from the town has got to be paid for with money.

  Alice Long is round-shouldered and worried; she is the only daughter of old Sir Martin, and is always addressed, to her face, as Miss Long. Her money is her own, but it goes into the keeping of the House.

  Alice Long’s two brothers’ wives have come into the chapel now. They are the last, because they have to look after their own babies when they get up. Before Mamie’s birth, all the babies in the House had nurses. The two wives were differently made from the start, before they became Alice Long’s sisters-in-law, and still look so, although their tweed coats were made more alike. One is called Lady Caroline and the other, Mrs. Martin Long, will be Lady Long when old Sir Martin dies and Martin Long comes into the title.

  Mamie is watching Lady Caroline through her fingers. Lady Caroline is big and broad, with bobbed black hair under her black lace veil; she doesn’t like Alice Long’s dogs, and dogs are the only things Alice Long has for herself. Alice Long was made to be kept down by upkeep.

  The big clock upstairs chimes seven. The priest comes in and the feet shuffle. Mamie cannot see the altar when everyone is standing. She stares at the candle. The service begins. Will the friends who have come from warm London catch their death of colds?

  Mamie stops in the snow. The ends of the dogs’ leashes are wound round her hands in their woollen gloves, three round the right hand and two round the left. She unwinds the leads to give her arms scope, and the dogs take advantage of the few extra inches of freedom, snuffling and wriggling away from Mamie until the leads pull taut. But she works them back, lifting her elbows to cup her hands to her mouth.

  “Come out. I can see you.”

  No reply.

  She repeats the words and drops her arms, aching from the weight of straining dogs.

  There is a thud of snowfall from the clump of trees. The noise would have been only a little plop had there been any more sound besides that of the snuffling dogs.

  She is taking Alice Long’s dogs for a walk.

  “She?! be glad to, Miss Long,” said her mother. “Tomorrow after school. It’s a half day.”

  This morning, her mother said, “Come straight home at two for Alice Long’s dogs”

  To do so, Mamie has missed her dancing lesson at the convent. She is learning the sword-dance. Alice Long had got her into the convent at reduced fees, and even those reduced fees Alice Long pays herself. She likes to keep the Catholic tenants Catholic.

  Mamie walks on, satisfied there are no boys behind the trees. She is afraid the boys will find her and tease the dogs, laugh at her, laugh at the little padding, waddling dogs, do them harm before they can be returned to the House.

  The snow in the wood is too deep for low-made dogs. Mamie wanders around the edge of the wood, on the crunchy path, with little running steps every now and then as the dogs get the better of her.

  ‘My dachshunds,” said Alice Long lovingly.

  The country people said to each other, when she was out of sight, “Alice Long has only got her dogs. And all that upkeep.”

  “Lady Caroline hates dogs.”

  “No, she only hates dachshunds. German sausages. She likes big dogs for the country.”

  Alice Long is sitting with her teacup in Mamie’s house, which has five rooms plus k.p.b.—standing for kitchen, pantry, and bathroom— and is semidetached. Next door are Alice Long’s Couple. Mamie’s father no longer works on the estate but is a foreman in the town at Heppleford and Styles’ Linoleum.

  “Lady Caroline can’t bear them. They’ve been locked in the north wing since Friday. I have to keep a fire going. . .“

  “That wing’s not heated, of course.”

  “No. They are freezing and lonely. I keep putting logs on. 1 get up in the middle of the night to see to the fire.”

  “They?! be all right, Miss Long.”

  “They need a good run, that’s all. I won’t have time for the dogs today. But the family goes home tomorrow or Wednesday . . .“

  Mamie has taken the dogs out for a run before. She is not allowed to go near the wood but must keep to the inhabited paths that pass the groups of houses on the estate and lead to the shop. Near the shop are usually the children from the village school, throwing snowballs in winter, wheeling bicycles in summer. Mamie has money for toffee and an orange drink. She wanders by the wood.

  Her father has been at home for three working days. There is a strike. Alice Long sits downstairs. The father has gone to wait upstairs until she leaves. Then he opens the cupboard door where the television set is placed in a recess formed by the removal of one of the shelves. Alice Long has not seen this television set. The people next door, her Couple, took on a television many years ago, and keep it out in the living room.

  Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi, Ritzi, and Kitzy.

  “Alice Long’s dogs are all she’s got to herself”

  The dogs go about together and sometimes all answer at once when Alice Long calls one of their names. Mamie does not know them apart. They vary slightly in size, fatness, and in the black scars on their brown coats.

  The path has become a ridge of frozen earth where the field has been ploughed right up to the verge of the wood. The daylight is turning blue with cold while Mamie struggles with the leads. One gumboot digs deep in a furrow and the other stabs to keep its hold on the ridge. The dogs snuffle each other and snort steam. They strain toward the wood, and Hamilton is suddenly there—Alice Long’s gamekeeper—coming out of the trees, tall and broad, with his grey moustache and deep-pink face. He looks at Mamie as if to say, “Come here.” The dogs fuss round him, cutting into her gloves.

  Mamie says, “I’ve got to go that way,” pointing down towards her home across the field.

  “I’ll see you back at the House,” he says, and stoops back into the wood, examining the undergrown branches.

  Hamilton looks after old Sir Martin when he becomes beyond a woman’s strength.

  “I’m afraid my father is not very well anymore.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, Miss Long.”

  Mamie’s mother says that anybody else but Alice Long would have put the old man away.

  Hamilton sees to the boilers that heat the heated wing. He has too much to do to air the dogs regularly.

  “Without Hamilton, I don’t know what we should do. Before your husband left us, we had it easier.”

  Mamie has turned away from the wood. She has taken the path to the houses, looking back all the time to see whether Hamilton is following her with his eyes, those eyes that are two poached eggs grown old, looking at her every time he sees her.

  She takes the footpath on the main road. The dogs are trotting now. A car passes, an
d a delivery van from the grocer’s shop in the town. She clutches the leads.

  “Don’t let one of them get run over. Alice Long would be up to ninety-nine.”

  She presses, at the sharp bend, into the high white bank which touches again on the wood, while a very big lorry, carrying sacks of coal, creeps fearfully around as if bewaring of the dogs.

  Bump on her shoulder, then bump on her cap come the snowballs. The boys are up there on the bank. She turns and looks quickly and sees parts of children ducking out of sight with short, laughing squeals. There are two girls with the boys; she has seen their hair. One of the girls wears the dark-blue convent cap.

  “Connie, come down!”

  “It isn’t Connie,” Gwen’s voice answers.

  Gwen should be at the dancing class. She is learning to do the sword-dance with Mamie.

  A snowball falls on the road and bursts open. There is no stone inside it. The dogs are yelping now, pelted with snowballs. They are up to ninety-nine, not used to this.

  Mamie drags them round the corner and starts to run. The children scramble down after her and catch up. She recognises them all. She tries to gather up some snow, but it is impossible to make and throw a ball with the leads around her gloves.

  “Where are you going with those dogs?” says a boy.

  “To the shop, then up to the House.”

  “They look dirty.”

  Gwen says, “Do you like those dogs?”

  “Not all of them together.”

  “Let them run loose,” says the other girl. “It’s good for them.”

  “Come on and play.”

  She is scrambling up the bank, while everyone is trying to pull the dogs up by their leads or push them up by their bottoms.

  “Lift them up. You’ll throttle them!”

  “Let go the leads. We’ll take one each.”

  Up on the bank, Mamie says, “I’ll tie them to that tree.” She refuses to let the leads out of her own hands, but she permits two of the boys to make the knots secure, as they have learned to do in the Scout Cubs.

  Then it is boys against girls in a snow fight, with such fast pelting and splutters from drenched faces, such loud shrieks that the dogs’ coughing and whining can scarcely be heard. When it is time to go, Mamie counts the dogs. Then she starts to untie them. The knots are difficult. She calls after one of the boys to come and untie the knots, but he does not look around. Gwen returns; she stands and looks. Mamie is kneeling in the slush, trying.

  “How do you untie these knots?” All the leads are mixed up in a knotted muddle.

  “I don’t know. What’s their names?”

  “Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi, Ritzi, and Kitzy.”

  “Do you know one from the other?”

  "No."

  Mamie bends down with her strong teeth in the leather. She has loosened the first knot. All the knots are coming loose. She gets her woollen gloves on again and starts to wind the leads around her hands. One of them springs from her grasp, and the little dog scuttles away into the wood among the old wet leaves, so that it seems to slither like a snake on its belly with its cord bouncing behind it.

  “Mitzi! Kitzy! Blitzi!”

  The dog disappears and the four in hand are excited, anxious to be free and warmed up too.

  “Catch him, Gwen! Can you see him? Where is it? Mitzi-mitzi-mitzi! Blitzi-blitzi!”

  “I’ve got to go home,” Gwen says. “You shouldn’t have stopped to play.”

  Gwen is Sister Monica’s model pupil for punctuality, neatness, and truthfulness. Mamie has no ground to answer Gwen’s reproach as the girl starts to clamber down the bank.

  The wood is dark and there is no sound of the dog. Mamie squelches with the four dogs among the leaves and snow lumps. “Fritzi-fritzi-fritzi mitzi!” A bark, a yap, behind her. Again a yap-yap. She turns and finds the dog tied once more to a tree. Hamilton? She peers all around her and sees nobody.

  She should be hurrying toward the drive, but she is too tired to hurry. The Lodge gates are still open, although the sky looks late. The lights are on in the Lodge, which has been let to new people from Liverpool for their week-ends. They are having a long week-end this time. A young woman comes out to her car as Mamie comes in the gateway with the five dogs.

  “Goodness, you’re wet through!”

  “I got in a snow-drift.”

  “Hurry home then, dear, and get changed.”

  Mamie cannot hurry. She is not very well anymore, like old Sir Martin. She is not very real anymore. The colour of the afternoon seems strange and the sky is banked with snow-drifts. She runs in little spurts only in obedience to the pull of the dogs. But she draws them as tight as she can and plods in the direction of the House. She turns to the right when she reaches the wide steps and the big front doors. Around to the right and into the yard, where Hamilton’s door is. She tries to open his door. It is locked. To pull the bell would require raising her arm, and she is too tired to do so. She tries to knock. The dogs are full of noise and anxiety, are scratching the door to get inside. She looks at them and with difficulty switches those leads in her right hand to her left, winding them round her wrist, since the hand is already full. While she knocks with her free hand at the door, she realises that she has noticed something. There are only four dogs now. She counts—one, two, three, four. She counts the leads—one, two, three, four. She looks away again and knocks. It has not happened. Nothing has happened. It is not real. She knocks again. Hamilton is coming.

  “Their food’s in there,” Hamilton says, not looking at the dogs but opening the door that leads from his room to another, more cluttered room. He lets the dogs scuttle in to their food without counting them. He does not remove their leads but throws them onto the floor to trail behind them. Finally, he shuts the inner door on them. He sits down in his chair and looks at Mamie as if to say, “Come here.”

  “I’ve got to go home.”

  “You’re wet through. Get dry by the fire a minute. I’ll get you a lift home.”

  “No, I’m late.”

  He pats his knee. “Sit here, deane, lass.” He has a glass and a bottle by him. “I want to give you a drop. Come on. I don’t want sex.”

  She perches on his lap. He has not counted the dogs. Alice Long will be up to ninety-nine, but it’s Hamilton’s fault from now. Hamilton has taken the dogs.

  “Now sip.”

  She recognises whisky.

  “Take a good swallow.”

  He gives her a lemon drop to hide her breath, then gives her a kiss on her mouth while she is still sucking the sweet.

  “I’m going now. I hope the dogs are all right.”

  “Oh, the dogs, they’re all right.”

  He takes her hand and goes to find one of the workmen who are mending the House. Alice Long is not home yet from her meeting, and she will not miss the workman for a few minutes.

  Mamie climbs into the foreman’s car beside the workman. The seat is covered with white dust, but she does not brush it off the seat before sliding onto it. Her clothes will be spoiled. She feels safe beside the driver. The whisky has given her back a real afternoon.

  “What’s the time, please?” she asks.

  “About twenty past four.”

  The man backs and turns. Hamilton has gone into his quarters. The car skirts the House, turning by the large new clearing where, in the summer, the tourists’ coaches come.

  “You can’t get many up here in Northumberland. They all swarm to the old houses in the South. Here, it’s out of the way . . .“

  “Well, it’s an experience for those who do come, Miss Long. Especially the Catholics.”

  The House was once turned into a hospital for the wounded English soldiers after the Battle of Flodden, which the English won.

  The House was a Mass centre at the times of the Catholic Persecution. Outside the armoury, there is a chalice in a glass case dating from Elizabethan times. It has been sold to a museum, but the museum allows the family to keep it at the Hous
e during Sir Martin’s lifetime. Mamie has been inside the priest hole, where the priests were hidden when the House was searched for priests; they would sometimes stay there several days. The hole is a large space behind a panel that comes out of the wall, up among the attics. You can stand in the priest hole and look up at the beams, where, in those days, food was always stored in case of emergency.

  The workmen are mending the roof.

  “Did you see the priest hole?” Mamie feels talkative.

  “What’s that?”

  “A place where the priests used to hide, up in the roof. It’s historic. Haven’t you seen it?”

  “No, but I seen plenty dry rot up there in that roof.”

  The gates are closed. The man gets out to open them; then he drives off again.

  Is it possible that one of the dogs is lost? Mamie is confused. There must have been five. I found the lost one, tied to the tree. But then she sees herself again counting them outside Hamilton’s door. One, two, three, four. Only four. No, no, no, it’s not real. Hamilton has taken the dogs. It’s for him to count.

  The workman says, “Do you like the Beatles?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re great. Do you like them?”

  “So-so. I’d like just one day’s earnings that the Beatles get. Just one day. I could retire on it.”

  Sister Monica has said that there is no harm in the Beatles, and then Mamie felt indignant because it showed Sister Monica did not properly appreciate them. She ought to lump them together with things like whisky, smoking, and sex; the Beatles are quite good enough to be forbidden.

  “I like dancing,” Mamie says.

  “Rock-’n’-roll stuff?”

  “Yes, but at school we only get folk-dancing. I’m learning the sword-dance. It’s historic in the Border country.”

  All the rest of the week, she hurries home from school to see if Alice Long has been to see her mother about the missing dog.

  I counted. One, two, three, four. But I had five when I left the wood. I brought five out of the wood, and up the hill. I had five at the Lodge. I must have had .