My Dog Tulip (3 page)

Miss Canvey was a short, thickset, young woman with bobbed hair, spectacles, and a homely peasant's face. She wore a white overall, not intimidatingly clean, and as she advanced across the large, bare room towards me, I took an impression of calmness and competence. I had spoken sternly to Tulip as we waited, exhorting her to good behavior for a change, but I had no expectation of any improvement and there was none; she accorded Miss Canvey her usual defiant reception—defiance which became the more emphatic the more it was ignored. Miss Canvey approached imperturbably and stood quietly in front of us, looking down at her, while I stumbled through some account of her past and present troubles, punctuated with irritable commands to the dog to pipe down.

“She's like this with everyone,” I said ruefully, “but as sweet as pie to me. I can't make it out.”

Miss Canvey did not speak, but continued to gaze down at the excited animal. Then she asked:

“What's her name?” I told her. “Well Tulip, you
are
a noisy girl, aren't you? What's it all about?” and she extended her hand, back foremost. Tulip paused for a moment to sniff it, then, as the hand was moved closer, retreated, barking more violently than ever. How maddening, how intolerable it was that this creature, usually so attentive and obedient to my wishes, should always let me down in public in this stupid way! Suddenly yelling “Stop it, you brute!” I biffed her on the nose. The blow was harder than I intended. Tulip gave a little cry of pain and rubbed her nose with her paw. Then she rose up on her hind legs and gently licked my face.

“I see,” said Miss Canvey promptly. “You're the trouble.”

“I?” I exclaimed, astonished.

“Just slip the lead through her collar, will you. I'll examine her in another room.”

“Are you sure it will be all right?” I asked anxiously, doing as I was bid.

“Perfectly all right.” And twisting the lead round her strong wrist, she marched firmly out of the room, towing behind her the horrified and struggling Tulip who cast back at me agonized glances as she slid and sprawled across the linoleum. The door closed.

Alone in the surgery I listened apprehensively for sounds—screams from Miss Canvey, cries of pain or rage from Tulip, rushing feet, banging doors—sounds of any sort: none could be reassuring. But the place was as silent as the grave. Then, after what seemed an eternity but was only ten minutes, I heard a scuffling in the passage and a few barks, but of a very different timbre; the door opened and Tulip reappeared, this time with Miss Canvey in tow.

“No sign of worms,” remarked the latter, dropping the lead. “She's in excellent condition.”

“How did she behave?” I asked, while Tulip cast herself into my arms and lavished upon me a greeting more suitable in its extravagance to lovers who had been parted for years.

“Good as gold,” said Miss Canvey.

“Did you tie up her nose?”

“Heavens, no! I never do that.”

“But you had help?” I said, gazing mistily at her.

Miss Canvey smiled:

“Of course not. She was no trouble. I knew she wouldn't be.”

“How did you know?” I asked humbly.

“Well, you learn by experience, I suppose. But it isn't difficult to tell a dog's character from its face. Tulip's a good girl, I saw that at once. You're the trouble.”

I sat down.

“Do tell me,” I said.

“Well, she's in love with you, that's obvious. And so life's full of worries for her. She has to protect you to begin with; that's why she's upset when people approach you: I expect she's a bit jealous, too. But in order to protect you she's naturally got to be free; that's why she doesn't like other people touching her; she's afraid, you see, that they may take hold of her and deprive her of her freedom to guard you. That's all the fuss is about, I should say. It's you she's thinking of. But when you're not there, there's nothing for her to do, of course, and no anxiety. Anyone can handle her then. I'm sure. That's all,” she concluded with a smile. “Dogs aren't difficult to understand. One has to put oneself in their position.”

Miss Canvey could have put herself in any position she wished, for I was already her slave and gazed at her with the veneration with which we behold a saint. I asked her some questions about Tulip's diet, paid the fee—half-a-crown, so far as I recall, was all that this miracle cost—and took my leave. As I was going, she suddenly said:

“Why do you shout at her?”

“I don't know,” I stammered, rather taken aback. “She exasperates me sometimes. She doesn't seem to hear what I say.”

“She can hear a pin drop!” said Miss Canvey briefly. “Look at her ears!” Then on a milder note: “Try not to. It's bad for her. She's very highly strung. Speak to her quietly; she'll do anything you want in time.”

As we walked away I apologized to Tulip for hitting her on her beautiful nose, and, in my thoughts, for much else besides. In the light of Miss Canvey's interpretation, how infinitely more hideous that abject struggle in the last vet's surgery now seemed, how heroic her conduct, how mean and contemptible mine. I had apologized for her devotion, and then betrayed it. I recollected, with a shudder, how I had held her head still for the approaching trap. I felt very tender towards her.

After this, we may be said almost to have lived in the surgery of dear Miss Canvey, that Florence Nightingale of the animal world. I walked Tulip over to see her on any pretext, however trifling, and such was the confidence she inspired that very soon I no longer bothered to make special appointments, but dropped in during surgery hours and sat with Tulip in the crowded room awaiting our turn and watching wonderful Miss Canvey at work upon a miscellaneous assortment of sick dogs, cats, rabbits, and poultry. It was an enthralling and uplifting spectacle, and though her white overalls became less and less white and her bobbed hair more and more disordered, she never lost that air of calm authority which it was a positive tonic to breathe. That Tulip ever enjoyed these visits as much as I did, I cannot pretend; but my own freedom from anxiety no doubt affected her too; what resistance she put up seemed more perfunctory, and once inside, she sat by my knee quietly, except for an occasional mew of impatience, until her turn came. Then, of course, when the solid little figure of Miss Canvey approached us, she put on her act, though with less of the old conviction; with a genial word of welcome, Miss Canvey simply took the lead and towed her from the room.

One day I observed among the other pilgrims to this shrine a young working man with his Collie dog, which was muzzled. Miss Canvey was busily engaged in extracting a tintack from the anus of a hen, and it was some time before she noticed him. Then she called across the room:

“Why is your dog muzzled?”

“I don't trust' im, Miss,” said the young man, blushing.

“Take it off,” said Miss Canvey.

She always spoke quietly, though sometimes, as now, rather abruptly; no one ever thought of disobeying her, and the young man complied. When his turn came she examined his dog with her usual coolness and thoroughness; then she took the young man aside and spoke earnestly to him in a corner. I could not catch what she said, but at the end of it he smiled and murmured “Thank you, Miss.” Then he went off with his dog, carrying the muzzle in his hand.

While this little scene was being enacted, I happened to be sitting near the desk where Miss Canvey's kennelmaid was writing out prescriptions, and leaning over, I whispered to her:

“Has Miss Canvey ever been bitten?”

The kennel-maid looked cautiously round before replying; then she said, in a low, hesitant voice:

“Well, she has once, to my knowledge; but I don't think she'd like it known.”

“Please tell me.”

“I didn't actually see it happen,” said the girl, “because I was busy with something else; but I heard a sort of scuffle—it was another Collie she was treating, too—and saw her go quickly out of the room holding her hand. When she returned she had a bandage on her wrist, but she went back to finish what she'd been doing. I asked, ‘Did he bite you?' but all she said, rather shortly, was ‘It was my fault. I was clumsy.' And though I offered to take over the case from her, and so did Mr. Mather when he got to hear of it, she would never let anyone else handle the dog all the time he was ill. He never hurt her again, and they became very good friends in the end.”

“Sublime woman!” I said.

The kennel-maid smiled:

“She's fond of animals, and so they like and trust her. All animals, but specially horses. They're what she likes best.”

Alas, it was true. She loved horses more than dogs, and so I have to speak of her in the past tense, for after we had enjoyed less than a year of her ministrations, her true love galloped her away into a country practice. Happy the horses wherever she is! But my own spirits went into the deepest mourning. Miss Canvey herself, I think, experienced a certain sense of guilt at abandoning us. Looking into my downcast face for the last time, she said:

“I'm not exceptional, you know.”

“You are to me,” I said, with a sigh.

Flushing a little, she said firmly:

“You can tell any vet from me that Tulip is perfectly all right. But she must always be examined away from you. It's you who cause the trouble. Tell them that. She's a nervous bitch, and you make her more nervous. But when you're out of the way anyone can handle her. You can tell them all that from me.”

Then she uttered the last words I was ever to hear from her lips, and which, although I was too stunned by the sickening blow they dealt me to take in their full implication at the time, afforded me, in retrospect, a glimpse, the most revealing I ever had, into the depths of her heart. Fixing me with a significant look, she said:

“Never let anyone feed Tulip but yourself!”

Dear Miss Canvey, she was a romantic, of course; yet with her rather matter-of-fact air of sturdy capability she managed to convey a quite different impression, and it was only after she had gone that I was able to perceive how profoundly romantic she was. Indeed, if she had stayed, I might never have perceived it at all, for how should I have known that the two different dogs she insisted upon my possessing, the Tulip who lived always at my side, and that other Tulip with whom she had made herself privately familiar, were, to all intents and purposes, the same? This concept of hers, in fact, that I was guarded by an unapproachable tigress who became, in my absence, the meekest of lambs, had almost everything to recommend it; it worked and it pleased; it enchanted me, and so far as Miss Canvey herself was concerned, it appealed, I feel sure, to something so deep in her nature that I believe she might have gone to almost any lengths to keep the two Tulips apart. Moreover, a bewitching air of mystery enwrapped it; a transformation rite had to be performed, with Miss Canvey as High Priestess, and an act of faith was required on both sides; for just as I could never know Miss Canvey's Tulip except by repute, since she existed only in my absence, so it was an essential part of Miss Canvey's program that she also must take—or rather leave—my Tulip for granted.

This may sound fanciful; but how else can her last terrible injunction be explained unless on the grounds that she wished to perpetuate the romantic situation which she herself had created and cherished, and which, she divined, satisfied in me, too, some profound psychological need? How truly those last insidious words found their mark! For I could not feed Tulip myself! I was too busy, and such offices, as Miss Canvey herself knew, were already in process of being delegated to a housekeeper, lately engaged for the purpose. Had I made a ghastly mistake? Was I now about to lose my Tulip, that savage lover and protector whom Miss Canvey had striven so hard to preserve for me intact? Should I find myself soon with Miss Canvey's Tulip, that reduced, spiritless, abject creature, anybody's stroke, while my housekeeper enjoyed the fierce flattery of mine? That this obsessive fear haunted my life for many months was proof enough how well Miss Canvey had sized me up. But—she would be the first to rejoice—she had not sized up Tulip. Indeed, how should human beings suspect in the lower beasts those noblest virtues which they themselves attain only in the realms of fiction? Tulip was incorruptible. She was constant. It mattered not who fed, flattered, or befriended her, or for how long; her allegiance never wavered; she had given her heart to me in the beginning, and mine, and mine only, it was to remain forever.

Miss Canvey therefore underrated her, and it was left to Mr. Brasenose of Brighton to whom I next had recourse for veterinary aid—Tulip's nails needed cutting—to imply that she had overrated her too. Mr. Brasenose was a cheerful young man who whistled while he worked, who continued to whistle, indeed, throughout Tulip's customary hostilities, and when I had recited to him Miss Canvey's magic formula, which I had learnt by heart, all he said was:

“Oh, I shouldn't bother to go. I expect Tulip would prefer you to stay.”

This was so far from being an aspect of the matter that had occurred to me, that it needed a moment or two to take it in; by the time I had focused it and, as it seemed to me, its total and reckless wrongheadedness, he had got his clippers out and was saying, “Just hoist her on the table, will you?” in so casual a manner, as though she were a sack, that I found myself complying. The operation was not performed without difficulty; Mrs. Brasenose, indeed, had to be summoned by her husband from an inner apartment to help me prop Tulip up on the table and retrieve those various portions of her anatomy which, like the fringes of a jelly on too small a plate, kept escaping over the edge; but at any rate it was performed, by the merrily trilling vet, and with as little concern for Tulip's protests and struggles as if he had been cutting the nails of a mouse.

Thus opened another chapter of Tulip's medical history, and the last; although I continued faithfully to repeat my formula to all the vets we subsequently visited, none of them paid to it the least attention. This strange heedlessness upset me at first; not on their account, of course; if they chose to ignore Miss Canvey's advice, that was their lookout; but was it fair to Tulip to impose on her this additional strain of worrying about me when she had trouble enough of her own? Upon reflection, however, I was less sure; since the ruling passion of her life was to keep me always in her eye, might she not actually prefer me to stay?