Fionnuala, my wife, loves reading. I sometimes think she’s pretending because she reads so quickly, but every now and then she will leave a book at my bedside table, muttering “You might like this”, and I will plod through it for months and never shut up about it.
Sophie’s Choice, The Kite Runner, The Cellist of Sarajevo. And the latest one, Life of Pi.
In it the narrator is trying to write a novel when an old man in a tea shop says he will tell him a story that will make him believe in God. And he does.
Well, I have one as well.
It all began when a serious Genghis called round to ours one Saturday and spoke quietly to Fionnuala in the kitchen. As he left, he glanced at me through slitted eyes, and I looked with a sense of foreboding at Fionnuala. “Genghis needs a wee bit of help, Fabien.”
“Not minding a dog again?”
It was Mrs Davison, next-door neighbour to Genghis. I had mended her fence before, but minding her new pup was too much.
“I can’t be sitting in a stranger’s house all day. It’s weird.”
“Well, we are doing a rota and we need everyone.”
“What’s wrong with the dog?”
“It’s very young and it’s not eating. This dog must not die.”
Before I could ask why, there was a knock on the door and a man with a lanyard selling broadband started boring me while Fionnuala sped off in the car.
My turn was after Mass the next morning and as I sat listening to the reader mumbling – First mumble is a mumble from St Mumble to the Mumbles – I was still puzzling over what Fionnuala had said. And as the choir sang softly, I wondered at the strange people I was sitting with. Soft and hard, sometimes at the same time, and strange and cunning and kind.
At the house the pup was an unbelievably tiny, tan little thing, with big eyes and a sad expression. A Disney movie star.
“Thank you, Fabien, for helping.” Mrs Davison was looking at the pup. “I don’t think it’s gonna make it. It won’t eat a thing. I’ve tried everything but the vet says there’s nothing can be done.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“She doesn’t know. But I think it’s a broken heart. His mother died shortly after he was born, and the two other pups died too.”
She explained how she had been given the mother as a present to cheer her up. “My niece got me it from a friend who was emigrating. They didn’t know it was pregnant and she wasn’t fit to have the litter and the whole thing was such a mess. This chap here is the only survivor.” I looked at the dog with its lost face. “He’s traumatised.”
I sat down beside it and offered his bottle but he wouldn’t touch it.
I had an idea. “Have you any Baileys, Mrs Davison?”
“Yes, I have. Do you want ice?”
“Oh, just bring the bottle,” I said.
I put a little Baileys on the teat and the dog sniffed and looked up. He sniffed again and then took a little lick. I quickly put another wee drop on the bottle and before long it was guzzling away.
“Oh, goodness.” Mrs Davison was afraid to move.
“Something I saw on All Creatures Great and Small,” I whispered. “The old one.”
“So, the dog won’t die?” I was now sitting up in bed savouring Life of PI.
“No,” Fionnuala replied. “Thank God.”
“Why was it so important?”
She never looked up. “Mrs Davison has had a bad run. Her husband died a few years ago and her only son this year. Her own dog of 12 years died two weeks ago and then the new dog. If the pup died, what would she have done?”
And she put out the light.