Stairlift to Heaven (25 page)

After cooking the second of the spiked meatballs, in fact deliberately overcooking it in an effort to make it as solid as possible and thus less prone to disintegrating in flight like one of Barnes Wallis’s early attempts at the Bouncing Bomb, and after allowing it to cool down sufficiently, I took it out into the garden and prepared to propel it into the Pollitt’s back garden.

The Trouble was out so this time I had to manage without her assistance, but as this also meant managing without her criticism I wasn’t too put out about it. Once again I tossed a trial pebble before unleashing the meatball. On Friday the pebble had hit the dog. Unfortunately this time it didn’t, leastwise the dog didn’t start howling any louder. Confident I’d judged the distance correctly I quickly followed the pebble with the meatball. By the time I’d gone upstairs to check on the result the dog was champing away hungrily on the meatball. I looked on in the certain knowledge that it would soon be taking forty winks, or more likely four hundred winks, and that I’d soon be able to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet again and get on with Inflatable Hugh. I got my binoculars out to get a better sight of the beast departing for the Land of Nod. However, as well as the dog my binoculars picked out something on the ground nearby. At first I thought it was a large dog turd but then recognised it as the raw meatball I’d thrown the day before. It had been there all day without any of the Pollitts noticing it, or more likely noticing it and wrongly identifying it as just another of the dog’s multitude of turds, as I had. Having finished the meatball the dog stood there salivating and licking its lips. Then, no doubt having acquired a taste for beef mince meatballs it set about eating the previously ignored raw meatball. Making it a dozen sleeping pills it had swallowed. Having quickly polished that off as well the dog stood smacking its chops and looking around hopefully for another meatball.

Once the dozen sleeping pills had kicked in I expected it to start getting drowsy, and maybe stagger about drunkenly for a bit before giving up the ghost, lying down, and going to sleep, but no, after about thirty seconds it simply dropped to the ground like a stone. There was a single violent twitch from its hind legs as it rolled over onto its back, then no further movement, not so much as a flicker. I watched it for a good ten minutes and it didn’t move a muscle. It looked as dead as a doornail to me, which could very well have been the case after swallowing a dozen sleeping pills all at one go. It’s certainly quietened it down though.

It was still in exactly the same position when I looked again about six-o-clock. The Pollitts had all arrived home by this time but none had apparently noticed the lack of life in the dog; either that or they’d noticed and didn’t give a toss. Probably the latter.

The following day I answered the door to an angry-looking Wayne Pollitt.

“What do you know about what happened to our fucking dog?” he demanded.

I am an accomplished liar when the occasion demands, especially when faced with an irate man big enough to eat me for breakfast I, so I feigned complete innocence. “Has something happened to your dog?” I said, a picture of neighbourly concern.

“It’s been asleep since yesterday and all day today. The vet says it’s in a fucking.”

“I see.” I thought for a moment, as if addressing myself to the problem of bringing the dog out of its coma. “You could try singing to it.”

“What?”

“What’s its favourite piece of music? ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window’ perhaps?” I searched my brain for other dog songs. “‘Old Shep’ maybe?”

His bloodshot eyes bore into me. “Are you fucking mental?”

“Not at all. It’s a proven fact that if you play their favourite pieces of music to people in a coma it quite often brings them back to consciousness. There was a case in the papers only the other week. A couple constantly played James Blunt songs to their mother and she came out of the coma after three days. Mind you it put the couple and one of the nurses
into
a coma but….And if it works for people there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for dogs.”

Pollitt eyed me balefully. “Anyway, what do you know about what happened to it, Mr Clever fucker?”

I remained cool. “What makes you think I know anything about it?”

“Because you’re the twat what complained about it, aren’t you.”

“I regularly complain to the window cleaner that he’s missing the corners but I’ve never yet felt the need to put him into a coma for it.”

He made a fist and brandished it under my nose. “If I find out it was you had anything to do with it I’ll fucking well chin you.”

“Very well. But you won’t. Have a nice day.”

The following day brought good news and even better news. The good news was that the Pollitt’s dog had finally come out of its coma. Whether this had anything to with Wayne Pollitt or any of his clan singing ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window’ or ‘Old Shep’ into its earhole isn’t clear; probably not. More likely it was one of the other methods the Pollitts usually employ to stir it into action, such as kicking it or tickling its testicles, which brought it back to the land of the living. (The reader might be surprised to learn that I consider the dog’s return to consciousness as good news. However, although an intolerant man when it comes to dogs barking I am not an evil or vindictive person, and I certainly didn’t want the dog to die. Granted I could have done with it staying in a coma for a little longer - about five years would have been nice - but then I’m only human.)

The even better news is that the dog spent all day in the back garden, with all the Pollitts out of the house, and didn’t bark once. Perhaps, after its traumatic experience, it was simply taking time to build up its energies before returning to full barking and howling mode, but hopefully not. Maybe due to its enforced sleep something has happened to it psychologically, and it now felt it could get by without having to bark and howl its fool head off all day. I couldn’t even induce it to bark. In an effort to do this I lobbed several small rocks and half a red brick at it and although they didn’t hit it some of them landed quite close, but if it noticed them it didn’t give any indication, and made not so much as a murmur.

Whilst I was doing this Atkins called round and when I’d explained to him what I was trying to achieve he offered to return home and get his shotgun to see if both barrels of shot in the dog’s behind would get it barking again. I thanked him for the offer but told him that both barrels of shot in the dog’s behind would almost certainly not only get it barking again but keep it barking for a very long time, and that was the last thing I wanted. Atkins said that if this happened he also had a .303 Lee Enfield rifle amongst his arsenal of weapons and could quickly and humanely put the dog out of its misery. I thanked him and put Atkins’s suggestion on the back burner.

It made a move towards the front burner the following morning when the dog started barking again. It wasn’t barking very often, it must be admitted, and only for short spells and in a very muted manner, and it still hadn’t started howling again, but I felt sure it was only a matter of time before it would be at it again.

The Trouble said, “You know what’s wrong with that dog, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied. “What’s wrong with it is that I only gave it a dozen sleeping pills instead of two dozen and a drop or two of cyanide and a space cake for good measure.”

“What’s wrong with it,” she went on, ignoring my opinion in favour of her own, as usual, “is that no one ever takes it out for a walk. Barking is its way of drawing attention to itself, in the hope that someone will get the message and take it out for a walk.”

I chewed on this. She was probably right. A daily walk might indeed quieten the brute down a little if not silence it altogether. A bullet would achieve the same object and with more certainly but....

The Trouble interrupted my thoughts. “Why don’t
you
take it a walk?”

“Me?”

“Well it’s you who’s doing all the complaining. And I don’t imagine that any of the Pollitts are ever going to take it for a walk.”

I mulled over the idea for the rest of the day. The following morning I decided to take The Trouble’s advice. I go for a walk every day as a matter of course so it wouldn’t be as if I was putting myself to any inconvenience.

I’m pretty good with dogs and didn’t anticipate any problems. I didn’t get any at first. When I went through the gate and into the Pollitt’s garden the dog stopped barking immediately and started wagging its tail. I went up to it, patted it on the head and stroked it a couple of times to show it I was friendly. So far so good. I then attached the piece of rope I’d brought with me in lieu of a lead to its collar. It was then that things started to go pear-shaped as the moment I did this it set off for the garden gate at a speed that would have left the Road Runner coming in a poor second.

I could probably have coped with a road runner but this was a big strong dog and as I held on to the rope its breaking strain was tested to the full and not found wanting. Consequently my arm was almost wrenched out of its socket and both my feet left the ground at the same time. I was now on my knees, being dragged along the Pollitt’s lawn towards the gate. I managed to stagger to my feet only just in time to avoid being dragged into the ornamental stone bird bath, and was dragged instead into a fully-laden clothes drying carousel, where my head became entangled in the washing lines. Fortunately I managed to grab hold of the carousel’s central column with my spare hand otherwise my head could very well have been pulled clean off my shoulders.

The dog ploughed on regardless of my plight. Fortunately the carousel couldn’t have been mounted very securely as after only token resistance the dog, assisted by me, pulled it clean out of the ground. I was now being dragged along the lawn again in a melee of carousel and Pollitt’s sundry clothing.

Why I didn’t let go of the lead the moment the dog took off I have no idea. Why didn’t the bricklayer in Gerard Hoffnung’s famous ‘The Bricklayers Lament’ let go of the rope when the barrel of bricks lifted him off his feet? Indeed why didn’t Atkins let go of the lasso when the goose attacked him on the canal? I distinctly remember having to shout to Atkins “Let go of the rope you bloody fool!” before he was inspired to take this rather obvious action. All I can think of is that it must be something instinctive that takes over from rational thought when danger threatens, the natural inclination being to hang on to something rather than let go of it.

After common sense had eventually prevailed and I let go of the rope I hauled myself to my feet and took stock of myself. My right arm felt as though it had had a tug-of-war team pulling on it for the last half hour; my neck was throbbing from being almost strangled; thanks to my unnatural exertions my bad back had started up again; and I was covered from head to foot in dog shit.

The dog stood at the back gate looking anxiously at me and wagging his tail. It could have wagged it until the cows came home as far as I was concerned. My dog-walking days were over; enough was enough.

As if my injuries weren’t bad enough my pain was made even harder to bear the following day when the Pollitt’s simply upped and left, just as quickly as they had arrived. I later found out that they’d only been renting the place for a month, or rather the council had been renting it for them whilst their council house was being redecorated after one of Catherine Zeta Pollitt’s birthday party guests had torched a gatecrasher and set the house on fire.

****

October 1 2010.
VIAGRA.

I saw on the television news this evening an item about baby Lewis Goodfellow, who weighed only 1lb 8ozs when he was born sixteen weeks premature last September with seriously underdeveloped lungs, and was given Viagra to treat this condition. Noting that seriously underdeveloped lungs would seem to be a desirable quality in a new born baby, if the nocturnal howlings my own three offspring when they were babies were anything to go by, and that it might be not a bad idea to keep the Viagra pills as far away from baby Lewis as possible, I watched the rest of the news item. It informed me that the prescribed male impotence drug worked by opening some of the small blood vessels in baby Lewis’s lungs to help carry oxygen around the little mite’s body. Now, six months later, he is finally at home with his delighted parents.

I myself can testify to the benefits of Viagra and I couldn’t help wondering if as well as opening the blood vessels in little Lewis’s lungs it had also done for him what it does for me. Less than a year old and able to get an erection, eh; he’s going to be a little terror when he starts playschool.