A Dog's Life(2)

She continued to address me as David, and I gave up insisting on my identity. Five years after the real David’s death, I wrote a poem about my dual existence. I gave it the title ‘After-Life’:


Marjorie thinks I’m you, not me.

She calls me by your name. I’ve stopped

Correcting her. Some might say

I’ve given up the ghost.


Marjorie knows that one of us is dead.

She asks how long it is since I passed on.

‘Five years,’ I answer. She tells me I’m

At rest now, with the saints and angels.


Marjorie dotes on animals. She believes

They’re silent witnesses for God, spying

On our behaviour. Their once-dumb tongues

Speak in that heaven I’ve gone to.


Marjorie’s mad. Marjorie smells. Marjorie’s

Best avoided. I only meet her when

I’m turning corners. Then I hear

You’re looking well, considering; and young.

Marjorie moved out of the district, though she appears occasionally – dogless now – to do a little shopping and chat to old acquaintances. She walks with a stick, and is shabbier than ever, her hair like an unruly bird’s nest. I was on my way to Hammersmith Hospital on a November afternoon in 2002 when I saw a familiar figure in a tatty overcoat shuffling towards me. ‘Hullo, David,’ I heard. I was not myself again, for the first time in ages. I told her where I was heading, and that I had to keep an appointment with the chief cardiologist. She suddenly clutched my arm with her free hand. ‘Don’t go there,’ she advised. ‘They’ll murder you in there, like they tried to murder me. I wouldn’t go there, David. Be very careful. I want to die when God sees fit, not when they do.’

I freed myself from her grip, insisting that I didn’t want to be late.

‘Take my advice, David. Be careful. Your heart belongs to you, not them.’

‘After-Life’ was published in The Times Literary Supplement in September 1991. Some weeks later, in Rome, I was flicking through La Repubblica when I noticed my name and two lines from the poem. The author of the piece seemed to think that I’m a devout Roman Catholic and a devotee of St Francis of Assisi. Marjorie’s belief that animals are ‘silent witnesses for God, spying/On our behaviour’ was now attributed to me. I was Paul, to be sure, but I was also Marjorie, the scruffy mystic.

*


Thanks to Circe, I made the acquaintance of Jane Gregory and her dog, a pretty piebald mongrel named Liquorice. She and Liquorice became best friends, but they occasionally fell out with each other, as best friends do. It was wonderful to watch Liquorice bounding across the grass to greet her, and delightful to see them swimming together in the small pond in the Conservation Area of Ravenscourt Park. They would flop into the sometimes stagnant water when the heat was too much for them, emerging sodden and dripping. Jane and I backed away as they vigorously shook themselves dry.

Jane is a successful literary agent, who represents the kind of authors I seldom read. She is red-haired, and of a fiery disposition. I trembled with fear on those occasions when she marched over to a brutish-looking individual with a large Alsatian or a Staffordshire bull terrier, trumpeting ‘I have a spare bag if you need it.’ The dog was invariably shitting on the open grass, where children played and grown-ups sunbathed. The offender would often accept the bag Jane was holding out to him with varying degrees of reluctant or embarrassed gratitude. She waited until he had picked up the turds, pointing to those he had missed or overlooked. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ she’d say when the spot was relatively clean again. ‘Don’t forget to bring your own bags next time.’

There was one spring day, not to be forgotten, when the sky turned green for a few moments. We looked up to see a flock of parakeets, and wondered if we were experiencing an optical illusion of a particularly unusual kind. But no, they were definitely parakeets, as their squawking reminded us. Where had they come from? Not far, probably. I learned in due course that a pair of these exotic creatures, male and female, had flown out of captivity as long ago as the 1920s. They had built their nest in the grounds of Chiswick House, the exquisite folly modelled on Palladio’s Villa Rotonda at Vicenza by the third Earl of Burlington between 1725 and 1729. Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay and Handel were among its earliest visitors. The discriminating birds had chosen this beautiful setting in which to breed. Their descendants must have migrated during the cold, foggy London winters, since it’s impossible to imagine them surviving otherwise. Anyway, there they were, en route to Chiswick, perhaps – a free, happy, voluble family.