Quiet

The routine changed three months ago. It’s ten years since I was brought to this house, years strung together in regular loops of habit like the paper chain I once tore from a Christmas tree so I could run with colours streaming behind me. That was a good day (and then it was a bad one, sat in the cold garden for hours while the boy snuck out with strips of turkey from his dinner). The days are stuck together and repeated in a comforting cycle. It makes me think of what the woman says sometimes; “a lick and a promise.” I don’t know what it means, but I remember the children stringing together those colourful paper chains, and I think that’s what my time is made of. The children don’t come any more. One day there was shouting in the garden and tears in the kitchen. They never came again, and I still miss playing with them. It takes a child to really appreciate a dog. Even on that day the routine remained unbroken. The early morning walk to get the paper, reaching the shop just as the metal shutters creaked open, the woman there always having a biscuit to spare. The longer walk to the allotment after lunch and the chance to sniff out adventure, although in recent times I stayed closer to the shed. Dinner under the kitchen table while they sat above me talking in flat tones about their day, making plans for the next. An evening sat by their feet while they watched the televsion, and the final walk round the block to close out the day. I slept each night in a nest of blankets in the corner.


It’s better than the life I started with - a starved and cowering beginning. My first owners used their feet like angry fists, and I came to fear the whisper and crack of a leather strap being pulled from their clothes. The whole house was scented with violence. One day people came with badges and vans and they were were taken away. Then came the noise of the shelter. They fed me there, and never hurt me, but still I waited for more boots and belts. I was safe but caged, and the noise stilled me. There was a concentration of pain there, however kind and happy the people were. The smell of uncertainty, desperation, anger, fear; I inhaled it all. Others yelped and danced, people came and took them and I never saw them again. I didn’t know what I know now, I thought all homes were like the one I’d been taken from, and I hid in corners when the people came. Then the woman of my new home came with the other woman who used to visit with the children. From where I sat in the shadows, I could hear them speaking.

“I think this is a good idea, Mum. Dad just needs something to do. Chris managed to find him an allotment near your house, and if he has a dog to walk he’ll have to get out of his chair again. He can’t just let this give him an excuse to sit and fester like a bitter old man. He’s 55 for gods’ sake, not 95.”

“I don’t know love, it seems quite soon after everything. I shouldn’t have said anything, he’s not that bad really. We muddle along, I just have to get used to him being under my feet.”

“But Mum, you’ve got to have a life too, you can’t let him drag you down. I know the redundancy was a shock, and the heart attack too, but life goes on. He got a good settlement, you don’t have to worry about money, you should both be enjoying yourselves.”

“We’ll see. Alright then, where do we start with these dogs?”

“I got some information from the website about each one. The terrier looks sweet, I think.”

“Mmmm, probably a bit excitable for your father. I think a quieter dog would suit him. How about this one, the spaniel. Quiet, it says. Placid temprament. I think that would suit him.”

“Quiet would suit him down to the ground, it’s his favourite word. The way he would thunder it at me for the smallest noise when I was a kid.”

“Now you know your Dad worked hard, and he got those headaches...”

“OK Mum. I think he’s just a miserable bugger personally but I don’t want to fight with you. You should call the dog Quiet! Then he can shout it out in the park, remember the old days and feel like he’s still in charge of something.” The women laughed as they walked closer to the cage. Later that week the woman came back, put me in her car and took me to my new home.

That first day there was a fight, the woman keeping her voice soft as the man shouted louder and louder and I could smell the familiar tension. I prepared myself to be beaten but the night ended with my first walk round the block. He walked slower then, and that first night he had to stop twice to rest. I don’t know if it was the walking or the talking that wore him out. I didn’t understand much of what he said, but I don’t think he was talking to me. He was just talking to have someone listen. I stayed quiet and kept by his side. Over the years, I came to hear about every greivance and although the details passed me by, I could feel his anger crackle as he walked with me. Seasons changed but his muttered fury was a constant. He wasn’t kind like the woman, who would feed me fresh strips of steak sometimes and warm my blankets in the winter, but he never was never unkind. I walked by his side year after year and kept to the corners.

You would think from all these years of watching I would have learned a lot about my owners. The truth is all I really have are baffling details – washing on a Tuesday, fish supper on Friday, Wednesdays and Saturdays the man visited the allotment only briefly before coming home and the woman worked in a shop, came home smelling like fresh bread. There seemed no sense in it, but you never can find sense if you ask why. Like me, perhaps they liked the comfort of the routine. Since the woman with the children stopped coming, you can sniff out the sadness. It stretches into each room of the house and lingers around the woman. There is a sigh in her step but she says nothing. She used to come along on the walks on nice days, and I liked it when she came. She would stop to smell lavender or watch a butterfly in the summer and I would have the chance to enjoy the spot she’d chosen. The man walks ahead, after those first nights he never stopped. All I’ve learned about him is that he is angry, and that he makes a lot of noise talking about how he needs his quiet. I don’t think he means me – It is my name and I do belong to him so I think I am his quiet in a way, but I don’t think he needs me. For the most part, he doesn’t seem to notice me at all; I can imagine he would still walk around the block each night even if I wasn’t there.

Three months ago the woman started going to a doctor; the man muttered a lot about shrinks and quacks but I don’t know what little ducks had to do with it. After a time, those Monday appointments became part of the routine, and then routine started to change.

“I think I’ll take the dog this morning, I fancy a walk down to that new sewing shop so I can pick up your paper on the way.”

The man was briefly silent, and the woman took this chance to clip a lead to my collar and walk out the door. I never needed a lead with the man, because he never gave me any choice but to follow, but she seemed to know I might need some guidance today. It was nice to be on this walk with her. The woman talked so long at the newsagents that I got two biscuits. I didn’t miss the creak of the shutters but the man was angry that he didn’t get his paper until later. Walking to the allotment, the man seemed angrier than normal, but I kept pace with him and took a nap by the cabbages while he attacked the earth with a measure of spite it had done nothing to deserve. I eyed the spade and kept my distance. In the evening, I ate my dinner under the kitchen table while they talked about their day and made plans for the next. Then came the hours by the television, and although the man kepting clicking to change the picture and the woman stared ahead unseeing, but it felt familiar enough. Over time, the walk around the block became longer than before and the man sipped from a metal flask. By the end of the second week the walk had stretched to an hour, walking in circles in the dark. A couple of times the man stumbled and I caught the sour heat of his breath as his face came closer to mine. He would stand up straight after each fall and slur about uneven pavements. I walked by his side, watching for these cracks, but I never saw them.

He stopped going to the allotment, and that changed things even more. I never knew who would be taking me on my morning walk, and during the day I would find a spot in the garden to provide some neutral ground. The man in his chair, the woman working in the kitchen; neither place seemed the right choice although if the woman made a stew the smell would bring me to her. After he hadn’t been to the allotment for some time despite her encouragement and his assurances, the woman went out even though it wasn’t a Wednesday or a Saturday. The night walks continued in their shambling fashion, but all the change unsettled me. My dinner continued to be placed under the kitchen table each night and I ate to the familiar sound of their voices, but I could sense a sourness that could only mean a fight. I started to keep a watchful eye out for the flash of a buckle and stayed far from their feet. Then the night came when there was no dinner, and I went to look for the woman. I found her standing over the man in his chair and I knew this was the start of a fight.

“I’m sorry Michael, but after forty years of your bullying I’ve had enough. I haven’t seen my daughter for a year because of that stupid fight about her going back to work after having the kids. I’m missing my grandchildren growing up, I’m scared to say anything in case I’m the next person to be shut out –“

“Now Victoria, you know very well why she shouldn’t go back to work. It’s in all the papers how the kids grow up to be thugs. I was right about that. If you’d listen –“

“All I do is listen, Michael.” She spoke so softly I had to move closer into the room to hear, and was overcome with memories of a little girl tenderly brushing my coat, the boy who threw a ball in the garden. All those times when the woman with the children had come to the house, she was wrapped in that happy aroma and I thought that meant they were here again. I barked; loud and clear for the first time since I whimpered out of my first home and started for the garden to find them.

“Now look what you’ve done, you’ve wound up the bloody dog with all your arguing. Quiet!” he roared.

“That bloody dog hasn’t made a noise since we brought him home. He’s like me, scared to be anything other than quiet and still in case it upsets you. Well I’ve had it. I’m leaving you Michael. I need some peace and quiet.”

I turned at my name. I never knew if they meant me or not, the man talked about needing quiet but when I barked in happiness he looked at me as if it was a betrayal. I had to wait to be invited, see who needed their quiet the most. The woman had a suitcase by her side and the lead in her hand, and when I saw that I knew. Once again she put me in her car and drove me to another new home. I barked happily as I ran towards the boy in the garden.

“Mum,” he yelled to the woman who used to visit, “Is he my Quiet now?”

She laughed as she shouted back, “Chance would be a thing, but yes love, he’s yours now.”

In this new home there is shouting and noise, and there isn’t much of a routine; but I never pick up the scent of violence and I feel safe enough to bark if I want to. At night I sleep at the foot of the boy’s bed and dream of the man walking round the block without me, still talking angrily about how he needs his quiet. I don’t know if he was ever talking about me.