We arranged that his dog and my bitch should meet in Ravenscourt Park on Thursday afternoon. The animals duly met, with Circe making obvious overtures. The thoroughbred regarded her coquettish behaviour with disdain. He turned his back on her. She indicated with startling clarity exactly what she wanted of him, and he wandered off. He chased a squirrel, and then a pigeon, and then he lay on the grass, his eyes on his bewildered master. Circe barked and barked to no avail, for the dog was not to be roused.
The stallholder shook his head. ‘It’s not going to happen, is it?’
‘Probably not.’
By this time a couple of other dogs, both very interested in Circe’s exertions and contortions, had arrived. They were shooed off and collected by their embarrassed owners before harm was done.
So the mating game wasn’t played. The stallholder and I shook hands on our failed pact and parted. I took Circe to the conservation area, where she had a cooling swim in the pond.
When she was her normal self again, I had her spayed. Yet lustful notions continued to assail her. Their object was a docile Alsatian, owned by Tony and Andy, two brothers who lived in the street. Whenever she saw him she would lie on her back and open her back legs invitingly, to the great amusement of the boys. She often tried to fellate him, and Circe and Max had to be pulled back on their leads. She remained faithful to Max until the end, rubbing her nose against his to assure him he was the only dog in the world for her.
Toby and Jumbo
There were many grand funerals in London in 1823, but one of the grandest – certainly the most unusual – was given in honour of a beggar named Billy Walters. Billy had one leg and played the violin. He was also black. It is indicative of his charm, his musical skills and his courteous demeanour, that the city streets were crammed with mourners, the overwhelming majority of whom were white.
Billy was the envy of London’s regular vagrants, who were either moved on by the police or carted off to the workhouse. The more inventive and resourceful among them blackened their hands and faces and whatever parts of the body that were visible in order to attract some of his sympathetic custom. Hair must have been problematical for them, and blue or green eyes. These pretend-Negroes, it is safe to assume, lacked Billy’s panache, his talent on the fiddle, as well as his missing limb. They could not match his success, hard as they tried. He was genuine, and they were fakes.
Another black mendicant who is remembered, if only faintly, in works of social history is Joseph Johnson. He was almost as celebrated in the capital as Billy, and is credited as being the first known beggar to make use of a dog. Joseph’s canine accessory was called Toby and the inseparable couple stirred hearts to pity. Two pairs of dark, sad eyes proved more financially rewarding than one.
‘Toby’, in fact, became one of two generic names for a begging dog. The other was ‘Jumbo’, which was given to plumper, healthier-looking beasts. A skinny black beggar, with his bones showing through his flesh, would keep Jumbo by his side to show his compassionate patrons that he had neglected his own welfare in his pet’s interests. Apprentice beggars could choose between a Toby or a Jumbo before they decided to earn their living in the great outdoors.
London’s beggars are still emulating the wily Joseph Johnson today. You can see them with their dogs in doorways, outside and inside Underground railway stations, and most of the animals look pitiful. Each time I notice one I think of Circe and the melancholy expression she assumed when she was temporarily deprived of a sock or ball. Perhaps we could have amassed a tidy fortune together, similar to that enjoyed by Billy Walters or by Joseph Johnson and his succession of faithful Tobys.
Una Vita Nuova
‘Circe understands Italian,’ Vanni remarked with a grin. He had been caring for her while I had taken a week’s holiday in Egypt. ‘She’s a dumb linguist, thanks to me.’
It was true, after a fashion. In seven days she had learnt that Vieni qui, spoken with authority, was the same as ‘Come here’, and that Giù meant ‘Get down’. She understood, too, that when Vanni said Cattiva it was to indicate that she was behaving badly, and Tu sei bella, accompanied by a gentle pat, could only mean that she was beautiful and on her best behaviour. She was now, perhaps, the only bilingual dog in the park.
Vanni attended David’s funeral and stayed with me for some weeks afterwards. We had been friends, the three of us, since the spring of 1968. Earlier that year, I had been given an award for my first novel, and one of the conditions of the prize was – and still is – that the money be spent abroad. (I had planned to go to Rome, and was taking Italian lessons from an elderly man who lived in a gloomy basement flat near Baker Street. He only once spoke to me in English during the six-week course. ‘Hullo,’ he said as he opened the door when I arrived for my first lesson. ‘This is the last English you will hear. Buon giorno.’) But Vanni persuaded me to stay in Florence, his native city. I would meet his family and friends, and improve my Italian.