My Dog Tulip (16 page)
Authors: J.R. Ackerley
It is spring, it is winter, it is summer ⦠Through twilight darkness, through the rain, through sunshine, frost, or heavy dew, I make my way with her across the plateau to the birch woods to give her everything she wants, except the thing she needs. She is four, she is five, she is six ⦠Spots of blood on the silvery shins. The torment, the wonder, has begun again. Like a flower, like a door, the vagina is opening, the house is being made ready, the peremptory, the remorseless summons approaches ⦠It is her tenth day, her eleventh day, her twelfth day. Soon it will be over. Only two days more. Only two days more before desire fails, fecundity failsâopportunity fails. Soon the flower will close, the door will shut, will lock; we shall be free, we shall be safe ⦠How beautiful she is in her shining raiment, her birch-bark body, her sable bodice, her white cravat, her goffered ruff. Exquisite the markings on her face, her turning, turning face, like the wing of a Marbled White butterfly. Perfection of form. Perfection of grace. My burning bitch, burning in her beauty and her heat â¦
“Well, Tulip, I promise you, if ever you meet an Alsatian dog as handsome as yourself, alone and palely loitering in the woods, that will be romance, that will be fate, and I won't stand in your way.”
A safe bet! That very season we meet one and in those circumstances, a noble beast who has probably scented her while out walking with his owners, for the woods must be impregnated with her sexual odor, and returned alone to seek her. She goes to welcome him, her sharp face sharpened with mischief. They savor each other, their noses, their bodies; their uplifted tails wave graciously like plumes. Over her shoulder she turns upon me a gay, inclusive, conspiratorial look. They begin to play. He advances eagerly upon her, trampling with his feet. She retreats, curtsying down, gazing up shrewdly into his face. He presses forward. She fends him off, leaping backwards, switching her bottom from side to side as he tries to approach it, first by one flank, them by the other. They rise up together breast to breast, clasping each other in their arms. They are like two boxers amicably sparring, leading, feinting, guarding, trying for the advantage. He presses on. She turns and flees, her ears laid back. He flies after. How enchanting she is, the coquettish little bitch, putting forth all her bitchiness. Now she halts. She is still. She stands. He mounts her. And before I know that I have spoken, her name is out of my mouth. “Tulip!” With her bright attentive face she comes to me at once. I put her on the lead and take her home. I am profoundly shocked, profoundly shaken. Life has caught me out, and the word that I have uttered rings on and on in my head. The dog does not molest us, nor does he ever cross our path again ⦠.
It is autumn, it is spring ⦠The birch woods, and she is off upon her errands, I upon mine. The solitary place belongs to us. It is our private garden, our temple, our ivory tower. Except for an occasional ranger or woodman we seldom meet a soul. I make my way towards the tree upon which, yesterday, I left my cap. The illusion of happiness, of peace, must have continuity, must have permanence. Moving up between the thin silver pillars that line the way to the second crest, I look down into the grove where, in isolated grandeur, the great birch tree stands. Lord of the woods, like a giant buried upside down to the waist, his huge open legs, green at the thighs, tower sprawling into the air. The narrow track, hedged with high bracken, passes between them over his crotch. It is the heart of the woods, the sacred precinct, and with Tulip beside me I descend into it. The place belongs to us. I know many of its secrets now, many of its joys and sorrows. Tulip is adding to the latter; I regret it, but love is cruel. It pleases her to chase and kill; she must have her pleasure. She must have everything she wants, except the thing she needs. While she persecutes, I protect; thus may I balance the accounts, perhaps, hers and mine, and propitiate the tutelary god. It is spring, and I visit the nesting birds upon whose private affairs we have stumbled. The mallard has built too close to the track; how can she hope to escape detection? When Tulip's rummagings disturbed her, what valor she displayed, feigning injury beneath our very feet to lure us from her eggs. Fortunately for her, Tulip is not interested in birds. They have outsmarted her too often. While the mallard's oriental eye watches me from her prickly bower, I draw the long arms of the bramble more thickly about her and screen her from view. Later on, perhaps, we shall see her leading her brood down to Queensmere. Or we shall not. We may find a cold and rifled nest â¦
“You could destroy the litter ⦔
“Could you?”
“I think so.”
“Life is tenacious. They die hard.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you changing your mind, anyway?”
“I don't know. She is so pretty.”
“So you would destroy her pretty babies?”
“Not all. I would leave her two to draw off her milk.”
“Three. One of two might die, leaving only one.”
“Then three.”
“Four would be safer.”
“Then four.”
“Ha-ha! You amuse me. And how would you abstract the rest?”
“I keep trying to think ⦔
“She would know. Close all the doors between, her tall ears would hear the little shrieks!”
“Don't! It's what I dread.”
“Poor fellow! But please explain: what has her prettiness to do with it?”
“It will be lost.”
“What is that to you? Or to her? Unless, as I suspect, you want one of her babies for yourself to carry on when she is dead?”
“Oh no! Not all this responsibility again! I don't think I could.”
“You don't think! Would it not be true to say that you are woefully lacking in decision?”
“Woefully. It's the frustration really. I hate to see it.”
“Then you'll be mating her and destroying her litters every time she's in heat?”
“No, no! Just this once.”
“Every time you don't you'll have to see frustration.”
It is summer, and heath fires have broken out. The sultry air is acrid with the smell of burning. Inexorable fires that smolder away below the peaty soil, flickering up from time to time a momentary flower of flame as they gnaw their way towards the roots of the trees. Dear Willow, foremost ever with tidings of spring; my Sweet Chestnut, who lays down for me every autumn a carpet of the palest gold; how can I help you? I stamp and stamp along the devouring edge, puffs of ash spurt up beneath my feet. Out! Out! It is out ⦠But when I glance back the wisps of death are rising once more.
“If they don't die of one thing they die of another,” the woodman says. “Trees go sick, just like we do, they all have their diseases. Some go sick in the foot, some in the head. I can always tell a sick tree. They bleed too. The birch bleeds red, like us. See.” He thrusts his finger into a hole in the tree he is logging and brings out a thick orange slime. “I won't ask you to smell it. When you're sawing up a birch and get a pocket of this under your nose it doesn't do to bend over it too long, it turns the stomach. It's a birch disease; you'll see it about if you look, a black mark ten foot or so up the stem and this stuff spilling out of it. A woodpecker started this one going, I reckon. He pecks and he pecks, and if he pecks a hole the rain can settle in, the tree goes bad inside.”
“Is he an enemy of yours, then?”
“The woodpecker? He has to live. We all have to live. He has his troubles like the rest of us. Oh no, I wouldn't care to speak against the birds. I like the birds and they like me. I've had them coming down to me many a time as I work. When there's snow on the ground I just clear it away with my foot, like this, and they dive in. They're grateful if you help them, and they help you in return. I'm on my own most of the time and they tell me when anyone's coming. They fly over to tell me. The squirrel he tells me too. Just like your dog tells you ⦔
It is winter. It is her thirteenth day. It was on her thirteenth day that she was fertilized, three years ago. Today she could be fertilized. Probably not tomorrow. Tomorrow may be too late. The door will close, will lock. Soon it will be over. Soon it will be too late ⦠I pick up the broken glass that is everywhere to be found and upon which Tulip sometimes cuts her feet. I pick it up throughout the year wherever I notice it, but it is only now when the high summer seas of bracken have sunk to a low brown froth that I can see it where I fear it most, at their roots. Here, where she was so lately pouncing ⦠The scattered fragments of broken bottle are bad enoughâso sharp that, cautiously though I gather them, I often prick my fingersâbut in their midst I sometimes find the butt-end still planted upright in the turf where boys stuck it, the other day or years ago, as a target for their stones. Its splintered sides stand up like spears. I gaze at Tulip's slender, long-toed feet in dismay. The little knuckly bones that curve over the four front pads are more delicate than a bird's claw. And the pads themselves: I used to suppose them made of some tough, resistant, durable substance, such as rubber or gutta-percha; but they are sponges of blood. The tiniest thorn can pierce them, a sharp edge of glass, trodden on merely at walking pace, can slice them open like grapes. How they bleed! And what an age they take, by slow granulation, to heal! Together they fit, indeed, to form a kind of quilted cushion; but dogs spread their toes for pouncing, and in between is only soft furry flesh and all the vital tendons of the leg. One pounce upon this bottle, with both front feet perhaps ⦠I pick it up. I pick it all up, every tiny fragment. I seek it out, I root it up, this lurking threat to our security, our happiness, in the heart of the wood; day after day I uncover it and root it up, this disease in the heart of life. I dispose it where it can do least harm; I bury it at the foot of the trees, I cast it into the midst of the densest thorn or furze. But not into this holly thicket, for last year a man entered it to die. So deep did he burrow into his green unwelcoming shroud that it was many days before his body was found, his empty phial beside him. Not at the foot of this oak, with its curtsying stem and long proffered arm ⦠Again the choice was made. Who made it? Carrying his rope with him from Kingston at night, he moved up through the dark woods, clambered here and dropped off into space. It gave the ranger who found him “quite a turn” to see him standing there, his feet off the ground, so steady and so still. Who? Why? The failed, the frustrated lives pass on, leaving no trace. The place must be full of ghosts ⦠And young Holland, where did he die? Where is the swamp into which he drove his face? Lost, lost, the inconsiderable, anguished deed in the blind hurry of time. The perfect boy face downwards in a swamp ⦠The doctor who performed the autopsy remarked that the muscles and limbs were absolutely perfect, he had never seen a better developed boy in his life, nor, when he split open the skull, such deep gray matter. Ah, perfect but imperfect boy, brilliant at work, bored by games, traits of effeminacy were noticed in you, you were vain of your appearance and addicted to the use of scent. Everyone, it seemed, wished you different from what you were, so you came here at last and pushed your face into a swamp, and that was the end of you, perfect but imperfect boy ⦠.
[1]
The cold night mists are still dissolving from the naked grove. The ground is brittle with frost. Out of their ragged green trousers the huge legs of the giant birch sprawl above my head. I pause for a moment upon his crotch and gaze fearfully upward. It looks no worse, the black mark and the thin trickle of blood, too high to reach, too high for my eyes at first to be sure, until I perceived the repulsive white fungi, like brackets, sprouting about it. He is sick, the great tree, he is doomed. It is a secret between us, but not for long will he escape the woodman's notice. They will cut off his legs, I think, as I pass between them prodding for glass. They will throw him down, the Lord of the Woods, I say to myself as I linger at the edge of the grove looking back. There is a sudden scurry of noise, and Tulip flies across the ride on which I stand, her nose to the ground. Out of the tattered undergrowth on one side, into the tattered undergrowth on the other, she rushes; she has come, she has gone, silence claps down again, it is as though she never had been. Excepting that, caught upon the cinders of the ride in front of me curls and wavers in the frozen air the warm white fume of her breath. I watch it as it clings, writhes, wavers, slowly dissolves. She has been, she has gone, nothing now remains. Soon it will be over. Soon it will be too late â¦
[1]
The Times:
June 30, 1926.
“None of the dogs I see here ever has any sexual experience,” said a prominent and busy West-end vet to me the other day. I was not surprised, though faintly shocked to hear professionally stated a conclusion I had already reached. “Clients often ask me if I can't find wives for their dogs, but (he shrugged) what can I do?” After a moment he added: “Some breeds are sexier than others. Poodles and Airedales, for instance.”
It must, indeed, be clear enough from the foregoing pages that for the urban dog at any rate expectation of sex is slender in the extreme. He is equipped for it, but the equipment is not used. There is a human conspiracy against himâa conspiracy I could hardly fail to notice since I was taking part in it myself. Charitably disposed in my sense of security on Wimbledon Common, it was but another step from self-congratulation at having kept Tulip successfully out of his way to ask myself what, in that case, he did. Could the answer be anything but “Nothing”? No doubt a grandee dog, of interest to the breeding industry, could gain occasional reentry for stud purposes into the kennel from which he emerged. But the thousands of other dogs, the less highly bred, the mongrels, what about them? Bitches, in any case, are far fewer than dogs; though thought to be more faithful, they are also more trouble and, increasingly now when the flat is superseding the private house, the problems they present are undesirable, if not impracticable. Small prospect, then, of the urban dog picking up stray females in the street; I and my fellow bitch-owners were taking care of that. And the smarter his postal address the fainter his hopes. In working-class areas, where greater laxity and muddlement prevail, his chances of self-help are somewhat better; but even a working-class dog must surely think himself singularly fortunate if once in the course of his life he happens upon a stray bitch, of accessible size, in heat and at a consenting moment of her heat, unanointed with “Keepaway,” irradiated chlorophyll, eucalyptus oil, or some similarly repellent preparation, and unescorted by other and perhaps stronger dogs with whom he will have to dispute his claim. Even then the technical trial-and-error problem of intromission, increased by lack of practice, remains to be solved. Stray matings, of course, do occur; but when it is considered that the animals are then immobilized for half an hour or more and can scarcely be expected to have exercised much tact in their choice of a suitable site, if any choice exists, the fact that one seldom sees dogs copulating in the streets might seem circumstantial evidence of the rarity of the event. If seen, human intervention, never far off and now in the shape of a bucket of water, is likely to put to hard-won success a premature end. I have twice seen the application of this curious remedy for canine sex, andâlet us be charitableâits employment may sometimes be due to ignorance. An intelligent retired police-sergeant told me that he himself had always supposed it to be “helpful,” an act of kindliness. When two dogs were found “stuck together” in the street, something, he thought, had “gone wrong,” human aid was needed to get them out of their difficulty, the bucket of water was the prescribed, the efficacious, thing. It is necessary to add that he disliked dogs and had not therefore troubled to acquaint himself with their problems. But hatred tooâthe Abbé Tolbiacâlends impulse to the douching hand; the possible rupturing of the bitch by having shocked out of her the instrument which Nature has purposely constructed to remain indefinitely locked within is of small concern to the outraged puritan mind prating of public decency and the corruption of the young. Whether country dogs fare better in this matter I do not know.
All that remains for the town dog then is that his owners will buy him a wife or fix up something for him by private introduction. Excepting where a little sideline breeding for profit is the motive, the likelihood of either troublous course being pursued is small. Out of curiosity merely, as I go about in the dog world, I pop my question: “Has he ever been married?” The answer is usually no. There is often good-will; the obstacles are too great. Some people, generally the owners of breed dogs, claim to have tried and failed: “Matter of fact I did find him a bitch once, but he wouldn't look at her”âor “she wouldn't look at him.” Bitches, to whom also I apply my question, naturally come off rather better, at any rate when pedigree; they have their establishments if litters are required; but in their case too the answer is often no. Some people believe they hate sex; others regard it as unnecessary, or odious, or positively dangerous. Some, hugging to themselves all the love, which dogs feel only for the human race, will not allow that there is a sexual instinct also. To this large category belong those nervous women who, far from being sympathetic to intimate canine relationships, prevent their creatures, male or female, even from speaking to their own kind. Never off the lead, they are twitched away from all communication with other dogs, in case of fights, contagion, or “nasty” behavior, they are so greatly loved. Men, too, frequently exhibit the deepest aversion to such poor sexual satisfactions as are left to their beasts. I meet it constantly, the intolerant reaction to the natural conduct of a dog and a bitch. No sooner does some canine admirer begin to pay Tulip court than the master's stick will stir, the reproof will be uttered: “Come off it, Rex! Now stop it, I say! How often must I tell you?” Nor can “the feelings of others,” though they may occasionally be the modest motive, always be advanced in excuse, for the same thing happens when there is no one else about. “Do let them be!” I sometimes expostulate. “They're doing no harm.” But the stick stirs. One gentleman, fidgeting from foot to foot in the solitude of Putney Common, exclaimed: “I
hate
to see dogs do that!”
When Tulip is actually in the canine newsâthat is to say when she is on the verge of heat or just coming out of itâincidents are more frequent and more serious. The little dog approaches her and begins to flatter her. This she graciously permits. The master, who is stationary ten paces away watching the rowing crews on the river, notices and calls his dog. Both animals are safely on the sidewalk, they are clearly on the best of terms, the master is in no hurry. But the amount of totally unnecessary interference in canine lives, the exercise of authority for its own sake, has to be seen to be believed. The little creature cannot tear himself away. The master calls more harshly. The dog wags his tail but cannot go. Sensing trouble, I summon Tulip and put her on the lead.
“It's not his fault,” I say mildly. “I'm afraid my bitch is just coming into heat.”
The master gives me a brief look but no reply. He calls a third time, and now that Tulip has been withdrawn, the little dog rejoins him, wagging his tail.
“Come here!” says the master, the lead dangling from his hand.
The little dog approaches, very humble, very apologetic, looking winningly up into his face. What he sees does not reassure him. He comes to a nervous halt.
“Come here!” says the master, upright in his Aquascutum.
The little dog creeps forward to his very feet. The master lashes out. With a yelp the little dog shrinks away.
“Come here!” says the master.
Inch by inch, on his stomach, the little dog crawls once more up to his master's boots. The lash descends. Now the master is satisfied. A lesson has been taught. Two lessons, one lash for each: obedience, propriety. He squares his shoulders and their interrupted walk is resumed.
But in all my questionings about the sexual lives of dogs, I have never met anyone else who deliberately threw, as I did, a pedigree bitch to a mongrelâthough I have met a few pedigree bitches who managed to throw themselves to mongrels and got families thereby. The trial-and-error stories I hear, from which after one failure, owners draw the perhaps convenient conclusion that since bitch refused dog or dog refused bitch, dog or bitch does not really like sex at all, are always intrabreed matches. The inference may be true; but I often wonder nevertheless whether the result would have been the same if the animals had been allowed to choose for themselves. A woman biologist, when told that Tulip had appeared to prefer a mongrel sire, remarked: “Shows her good sense.”
[1]
I had not failed to notice, from the beginning of this history, the alacrity with which dog-owners responded to my pimping propositions. None of them required a fee, none of them wanted that other recognized due for sire-service, the first pick of the litter; they simply wanted their dogs to copulate, and they were remarkably eager to secure this result. Such keenness, together with the vet's statement quoted above, might be taken as evidence of conscience, of a humane concern for a dog's needs and welfare. This is often the sincere motive. But I fancy that less disinterested considerations sometimes complicate it. I have said earlier that the bitch is more trouble than the dog. Is it true? By trouble is meant, of course, sexual trouble. That the bitch is certainly a trouble when she is in heat will not be disputed by readers of these pages; but she is in heat for, at most, six weeks in the year. For ten and a half months she might be said to be absolutely sexless. In a dog, on the other hand, and particularly in certain breeds of dog, sexual discomfort is liable to obtrude itself at any time. He is then an embarrassment to the ladies and a source of inconvenient wonder to the children. It is difficult to know what to do with the poor fellow except kick him under the table or turn him out of the room. Nor is that all. Fear enters. Fear of pets is far more prevalent than is realized; the larger the pet the greater the fear. May the animal not go “funny” through frustration? Perhaps he does.
All these factorsâembarrassment, fear, snobberyâcame curiously together once in my own experience. The years of worry and distress described in the last chapter gradually wore my resolution down; I began to revolve plans for mating Tulip again. Could I not find some local side-line Alsatian breeder who would not only mate her but house her while she whelped and suckled? The litter should be his, I would also pay board and lodging and visit her daily.
One day I observed in the street a young working man with a pretty male Alsatian so similar to Tulip in color and marking that, although I had been told that one could not breed for color, “made for each other” was the thought that sprang to my mind. I accosted the owner and got the usual eager response. He was not merely willing, he was actually on the look-out for the very thing that I proposed. Later on I visited him. But either he had misunderstood or misled me: botheration over litters was no part of his plan. All he wanted was sex for his dog, and he wanted that badly. He, his wife and sister were at work all day; the dog was left behind for long hours to guard the small council house in which they lived. A friendly creature, no doubt he grew lonely. Dogs love company. They place it first in their short list of needs. This great wolf-like beast was so emotionally over-wrought when his human friends returned that he went quite mad with excitement and exhibited then and for the rest of the evening an unbecoming eroticism that deeply disturbed them, the more so since they were the objects of it. I take this to be a commonplace in canine-human relationships. Knowing nothing, in spite of constant efforts to inform them, of the Expulsion from Eden, dogs remain lamentably innocent and uninhibited in their emotions; worse, they are all too liable to confuse sex and pleasure and, having no outlet for the former, to address the whole boiling to their beloved owners. Tulip herself, when I offer her some delicious prospect such as an unexpected walk, will often try to rape me as we go down in the elevator, a demonstration of gratitude I should regard myself as churlish to rebuff. But normally such behavior is ill-received and checked. This young man was both ashamed and alarmed by his dog's love. A bitch, he thought, might cool his ardor off.
When I got up to go, I noticed through his window a large concourse of dogs on the far side of the road and commented idly upon the number his district seemed to contain. He said angrily:
“Yes, there's a rotten old cow lives over there with a dirty bitch, and she's always letting her roam about loose when she's on heat to upset the dogs. I've reported her to the police once, and I've a jolly good mind to do so again.”
“But isn't that the very thing you want?” I asked with surprise. “Why not let your own dog out to have a go at her?”
“What, with
that
thing!” he exclaimed with indescribable scorn.
With the failure of these new plans for mating Tulip, the end of the long journey was at last in view. The interminability of her heats when I was frustrating her, the urgency of the fleeting moment when I was trying to serve her, I could bear neither of them any more. I had interfered too much in her life already. I would interfere no longer. I would neither hinder nor assist. I wanted no further authority in her personal affairs. Whatever the consequences might be she must have
carte blanche
. She must take her chances, suit herself. She must go free ⦠. But safety first: in order that she should not be douched and ruptured, other dogs should not be whipped, I should not be fined for allowing her to copulate in public, and the English race should not be affronted,
carte blanche
had to be modified: time, place, and the loved one must come together. Time now could be any time, place should be reasonably private and would have to be reached, the loved one must be left to luck. In her eighth year then I set forth with her in her seasons on this path of qualified freedom. And now everything was easy, life, mind, she made it so. She was, after all, by designation, a sheep dog, with some special aptitude for taking charge; as soon as I gave her leave to take it I saw that I need never have troubled myself at all. Trotting along beside me, her bright loving gaze constantly on my face, she read unerringly my wishes. Importunate dogs molesting her in public had to be put in their place; at a sign from me she put them there. Wrinkling up her black lips and clashing her crocodile jaws, she flew at them with a fine pretense of vexation. They rebounded of course, for they understood her perfectly; when the offense was repeated she scattered them again. It was, indeed, the very thing she had tried in vain to do for me in the past, when I had foolishly supposed my intelligence to be greater than hers. But as soon as we had gained more secluded surroundings I took no further part in her affairs. I did not look for dogs. I did not avoid them. It was up to her now, and she had her chances. Boxers, Labradors black and golden, Spaniels, mongrels, we had their company on various walks, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups.