A Dog's Life(9)

We went into the rarely opened front room. The cutlery gleamed on the dining table, which was covered with a pristine, lace-trimmed cloth. Adza sat down daintily, accepting the gin and tonic she was offered and sipping it with exaggerated finesse. George merited a fierce glare from his wife as he guzzled his beer, the porcelain blockade causing him to splutter.

The rib of beef my mother had prepared was accompanied by roast potatoes, cauliflower in a white sauce, peas, runner beans and glazed onions. There was gravy, of course, in the pretty Victorian gravy boat that only appeared at Christmas or on special occasions. We sat down to eat. The teeth were now giving George agonies of embarrassment as he attempted, and failed, to employ them for chewing. They clacked together and the meat fell back on to the plate.

‘How can I put that poor man out of his misery?’ my mother asked me in a whisper in the kitchen. ‘He looks like a carthorse with those bloody great gnashers stuck in his face.’

‘This is delicious, Mrs Bailey,’ Adza remarked as my mother finally seated herself at the table.

‘I hope there’s enough.’ This was her constant hope, constantly voiced.

‘No, there isn’t, Maudie,’ David quipped. ‘Where are the carrots? And what have you done with the cabbage?’

George’s continuing agony was more than my mother could bear. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony, George.’ (She called him George because she couldn’t cope with his surname, Llewellyn.) ‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable? Those teeth are a hindrance, aren’t they? Why don’t you take them out?’

Never was a denture removed with such speed, such keenness. At last we could hear what George was saying. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bailey,’ he enunciated. ‘I can enjoy your food now.’ And enjoy it he did, scooping up several helpings, his gums disposing of the meat, vegetables and three large portions of sherry trifle and custard. Adza’s fury was barely contained, though she contrived to wear a dulcet smile whenever my mother drew her into conversation. The hated denture was in a handkerchief, in his pocket, and there it remained for the rest of that long summer afternoon.

A year or so afterwards, Adza began to exhibit the symptoms of the cruel disease, Huntington’s chorea, that would kill her. The patient, devoted George held the cup to her lips so she could drink the tea he brewed for her. Her hands were in a perpetual tremor. Her speech became impaired, and a look of total helplessness seemed permanently set on her once-pretty features. Her life ended in dementia, though the last words to the younger son who was at her bedside suggest she had retained some of her wits: ‘I want David here, not you,’ she declared forcefully. Arthur, thinking that David would be pleased to hear how much Adza needed him, informed his brother of her parting message when he arrived later that day. David was torn apart. The train from London had stopped many times in open countryside, and he had missed his connection. She had been dead for hours when he reached the hospital. He was to relive that nightmarish journey, and its desolate conclusion, on various occasions in the years to come. The words ‘I want David here, not you’ assumed the quality of a curse for him, a terrible reminder of his inadequacy as the favourite son. I once heard him say it in his sleep.

‘God moves in a mysterious way…’ The news of Adza’s death somehow reached Dublin. David received a black-bordered card with a gold cross in the centre. Inside was the message that Adza was now in the Catholic heaven where she belonged. The Williams family were praying for her immortal soul, and X-number (I forget how many) Hail Marys had been said.

David tore the card into pieces, which he then threw into the lavatory bowl. He pissed on them before flushing them away.

The final humiliation came in the form of a letter, banged out on an ancient typewriter with a superannuated ribbon, from a Dublin solicitor. I read it out to him. It transpired that an uncle had opened a trust fund for David and Arthur, the money to be paid to them when Adza was restored to the faith. Now that she was gone to rest it was safe to assume that she was with her Catholic forebears. A cheque for £3,500 was enclosed.

‘Tear it up,’ David shrieked.

I reminded him, calmly, that he owed a couple of thousand pounds in income tax. I advised him to sign the back of the cheque, making it payable to the Inland Revenue. He did so, and never heard from Dublin again.


Elsa, David’s dance teacher, lived with her sister Lila in a house in Bayswater that had been built specifically for one of Queen Victoria’s more favoured servants. They spent most of every day in the kitchen, where Lila toiled contentedly at the stove, surrounded by a succession of mangy cats. The sisters disapproved of vets and doctors, believing that nature knew best and that medical assistance was necessary only in extreme circumstances. The flea-ridden creatures would slink in from the wild, overgrown garden in absolute confidence that food was there for the miaowing. They would leap on to the table on which Lila was rolling pastry or stuffing a chicken and be certain of a tasty titbit. ‘Is angelita hungry?’ The question had only one answer, as the cats demonstrated each time it was asked. If two or more were present, it was left to Elsa to separate them, sometimes with a broom handle, as they pounced on the scraps Lila tossed in their direction.