Alice Long’s Dachshunds Read online

Alice Long will be up to ninety-nine. She will come to Mamie’s house to make enquiries:

  “Hamilton says she only brought four.

  “Hamilton says he didn’t count them, he just took the leads from her hand.

  “Hamilton must have been drinking and let one of them slip out of the door.

  “I’ve only just counted them. One must have been missing since Monday. When Mamie. . .“

  By Friday, Alice Long has not come. Mamie’s mother says, “Alice Long hasn’t dropped in. I must take a pie up to the House on Monday and see what’s doing.”

  On Sunday afternoon, Alice Long’s car stops at the door. “Come in, Miss Long, come in. Have you no family down this week-end?”

  Mamie’s father shuts away the television, puts on his coat, says good afternoon, and goes upstairs.

  Alice Long sits trembling on the sofa beside Mamie while her mother puts on the tea.

  She says, “It’s Hamilton.”

  “The same thing again?”

  “No, worse. A tragedy.” Alice Long shuts her lips tight and pats Mamie’s hair. Her hand is shaking.

  “Mamie, go out and play,” says her mother.

  When Alice Long has driven her car away, Maxnie comes in with the ends of her skipping-rope twined around her gloves. Her father comes down, takes off his coat, and opens up the television. “Oh, don’t turn it on,” says her mother, in anguish.

  Mamie eats some of the remnants of cake and sandwiches while she listens.

  “Hanging in the priest hole—all of them. She looked for them all night. Hamilton’s gone, cleared off. It’s the drink. The police have got a warrant out. They were found hanged on the beams after Mass this morning. Didn’t I say poor Alice Long was looking bad at Mass? I thought it must be her father again. But she’d been up all night looking for the dogs, and at Mass she still didn’t know where they were. It was after Mass they found them, herself and Mrs. Huddlestone. Think of the sight! Five of them hanging in a row. Poor little beasts. Hamilton disappeared yesterday. They’ll get him, though, just wait.”

  “He’s a bit of a lunatic,” Mamie’s father says.

  “Lunatic! He’s vicious. He ought to be hung himself. They were all Alice Long had. But he’ll be caught!”

  Her father says, “I doubt it. Not Hamilton. Even the roebuck called him Pussyfoot.” He laughs at his own joke. The mother turns away her head.

  Mamie says, “How many were hanging in the priest hole?”

  “All of them in a row.”

  “How many?”

  “Five. You know she had five. You took them out, didn’t you?”

  Mamie says, “I was only wondering if there was room for five in the priest hole. Did she really say there were five? It wasn’t four?”

  “She said all five of them. What are you talking about, no room in the priest hole? There’s plenty room. He’d have killed six if she’d had six. She was so good to him.”

  “A shocking affair,” says her father.

  Mamie feels weightless as daylight. She waves her arms as if they are freed of a huge harness.

  “Five of them.” I counted wrong. I didn’t lose one. There were five. She skips over to fetch the shining brass pokers from the fender and places them criss-cross on the linoleum to practise her sword-dance. Then she starts to dance, heel-and-toe, heel-and-toe, over-and-across, one-two-three, one-two-three. Her mother stands amazed and is about to say stop it at once, this is no time to practise, children have no heart, Alice Long pays your school fees and I thought you loved animals. But her father is clapping his hands in time to her dancing-one-two-three, heel-and-toe, hand-on-hip, right-hand, left-hand, cross-and-back. Then her father starts to sing as well, loudly, tara rum-turn-turn, tara rumturn-turn, clapping his hands while she dances the jig, and there isn’t a thing anyone can do about it.

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