One Dog and His Boy

12 The Murgatroyd Family Wedding

The children had walked for several hours and it seemed as though London would never end. They were no nearer a road where lorries might slow down and give them a lift. Hal had had no sleep and very little food. He was completely exhausted, and even Pippa was secretly wondering if they should give up.

They reached a big petrol station with a café attached. It was part of a concourse and was completely jammed with a row of cars and lorries and caravans which seemed to belong together.

The children flopped down on a bench by a messy ornamental pool and the dogs had a drink. From the lorries and caravans came unexpected noises – the stamping of hooves, the sound of a parrot squawking, snatches of music. On some of the caravans were red circles and a picture of a clown’s head. Scrawled on the sides were the names of the places they were going to: Todcaster, Berwick, Aberdeen… And above them, in big letters: Henry’s Circus for Today.

“Why is it a Circus for Today?” Hal wondered, and Pippa said it was because they were only allowed to have animals that did tricks anyway, like dogs and horses, not lions or tigers or sea lions.

“They tried having circuses without any animals at all but no one went to them so they brought back all the animals that are tame already.”

Wandering between the caravans were gaily dressed people, and mechanics in grease-stained overalls. A woman in a red shawl carried a baby in her arms. Now there was a sort of stirring and everyone began to go back to their cars or caravans. The circus, it seemed, was getting ready to move on.

It was at this moment that they noticed that Francine was missing.

It was an awful moment. The dogs had kept together throughout the journey; the children had hardly needed to check where they were. Now, though they called and searched, the poodle was nowhere to be seen.

“Find her,” said Pippa to the other dogs. “Come on, Otto, you’re a rescue dog. Find Francine.”

The dogs put their heads down. It was difficult with so many smells coming from the parked vehicles, not to mention fumes from the petrol pumps. Then Otto took off towards a trailer parked near the end of the row and galloped round to the other side. They all followed him – and stopped dead.

At first they just thought they were seeing double. There was not one black poodle on the grassy verge, there were two. The second poodle was black like Francine and clipped in the same way – he could have been her twin – but as they stared they saw that he was slightly bigger, and a male.

But it was what the two dogs were doing that made them gaze with open mouths.

The dogs were dancing. Not tottering about on their hind legs as dogs sometimes do, but properly, beautifully dancing to the sound of an accordion played by a tall man in overalls. They pirouetted, they turned, they looked into each other’s eyes, held by the music. The big male poodle was absorbed, but Francine was transformed; her eyes shone, her head tilted to catch every drop of sound. They could see how happy she was, how exactly where she wanted to be.

The man put down the accordion and picked up a hoop that had been lying on the grass and held it up. He was a big man; the hoop was high. The male poodle went first, flying through it effortlessly. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, Francine followed.

Even in mid-air, with her ears blown back by the breeze, she seemed to be smiling with pleasure.

But now the man had caught sight of them.

“Well, well,” he said, “that’s one of the best trained dogs I’ve seen. She’s got the measure of Rupert all right. I didn’t have to tell her anything; she just took off. Looks as though she was trained by Elsa. You can always tell Elsa’s dogs; they’ve got that natural look.”

Pippa nodded. “Yes, that’s right,” she said, to Hal’s amazement.

“And this’ll be her new act?” said the man, looking at the other dogs. “Trust Elsa to train a St Bernard; they hate the noise and fuss of a circus usually. But Elsa could train a brain-dead earthworm. You travelling with her?”

“Yes. She’s our aunt. Well, sort of…” said Pippa, while Hal continued to stare at her.

The man grinned. “‘Sort of’ is right – she must be on her fifth husband. But what’s she doing here? Last time I heard she was doing the season in Bournemouth.”

“I’m afraid that fell through,” said Pippa.

“Oh it did, did it? Well that’s a piece of luck for us. We need a dog act. Petroc’s Poodles have let us down – Petroc’s had to go to hospital. I’m just looking after Rupert here till he gets back.” He gestured to the poodle standing very close to Francine. “But where’s Elsa’s van? I didn’t see it come in.”

“It broke down,” said Pippa. “There was a sort of horrible scraping noise. Elsa wasn’t at all pleased.”

“I bet she wasn’t. Swearing fit to bust, I’ll wager.”

“Yes, she was. She told us to come on ahead and tell you.”

“Did she then?” said the man, whose name was George. “Well, we’re just off. You’d better jump in that lorry over there for now. There’s plenty of room and it’s full of hay. We’ll sort you out when we get there. Wait till I tell Mr Henry – he’ll be over the moon, Elsa’s dogs falling into his lap like that.”

He had a word with the driver and let down the tailboard. The children climbed aboard and so did the dogs – except for Francine, who stood still and looked at Rupert, while Rupert looked at her.

“Come on, Francine,” called Pippa.

But the two poodles just stood very close together and did not move.

“All right, you can go with them,” said George to Rupert, and the two dogs jumped in together and lay down side by side.

“How can you tell all those lies?” asked Hal when they were under way. “You must be mad.”

“They’re not lies,” said Pippa. “They’re stories.”

“I can’t see the difference,” said Hal.

“That’s silly! If you’re reading a book with people having adventures you don’t think you’re reading a lot of lies. You’re just glad there’s something going on.”

Hal was not reassured. Elsa with her five husbands and her bad language sounded absolutely terrifying.

“I expect she carries a whip and cracks walnuts with her teeth,” he said.

But, as Pippa pointed out, they were driving steadily in just the direction that they wanted to go.

“Todcaster’s only thirty miles south of Berwick. You said nothing mattered except getting Fleck to your grandparents and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

And she leant back against a hay bale and closed her eyes and went to sleep.

It was almost dark before they reached Todcaster, the first town in which the circus was to perform. It was an industrial town surrounded by moorland and as the children tumbled out of the lorry they could feel the slight chill in the air which meant that they were truly in the north.

George was with them almost straightaway.

“Haven’t heard anything from Elsa, have you?” he asked, and Pippa said no.

“Aunt Elsa doesn’t believe in mobile telephones because she read somewhere that they give you canker of the ear.”

George shook his head. “Daft as a brush; she always was. Still, we need a dog act and hers will be the best. I suppose we’d better fix you up with somewhere to sleep in case she doesn’t make it till morning. The dogs can sleep in the lorry, but you’ll want somewhere a bit more comfortable.”

He went off and came back with a nice round-faced woman whom he introduced as Myra.

“She’s got a big caravan. You can kip down with her just for one night.”

“That’s right. There’s room for two little ones,” said Myra. “We brought up four kids in our camper.”

It turned out that Myra was a fortune teller. When the circus came to rest she smartened up her caravan and put on her hooped earrings and her purple headscarf and told people what was going to happen to them. She called herself Mystic Myra and was very popular because she never told people anything nasty.

“It’s not that I believe in it,” she told the children. “It’s a load of codswallop if you ask me, but it does no harm and every little helps where money’s concerned.”

Myra’s husband was called Bill. He’d been a sword swallower, but one day when he was doing his act, two swords had become crossed in his insides and he’d been rushed off to hospital to have an operation. Now he helped George, who was the chief mechanic.

Bill and Myra couldn’t have been friendlier. They cooked a lovely corned beef hash for the children and showed them where they would sleep and even found enough scraps for the dogs, who settled down for the night in the lorry. All except Fleck. The Tottenham terrier had tried to keep quiet, but when he realized that Hal was not coming he began to whine and then to shiver – and even though the others looked at him reproachfully, he couldn’t stop himself from howling dismally. Ever since Albina Fenton had tried to tear the flannel from his mouth and carried him back to Easy Pets, Fleck lived in a world where nothing and nobody was safe.

In the caravan, Hal heard him and put down his knife and fork.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling embarrassed. “He’s very young…”

“Oh well, you’d better bring him in then,” said Myra good-naturedly. “I reckon he’s not much more than a pup. Though what Elsa would say, spoiling him like that…”

So Fleck was brought in and curled up at Hal’s feet with his flannel and fell instantly asleep.

The following day was a Sunday and it was spent getting everything ready for the performance on the following day. To Hal and Pippa, who had never seen a circus, let alone travelled with one, everything was exciting and amazing. The Big Top seemed to go up in an instant… One minute there were great folds of canvas lying on the ground, and the next moment the huge dome went up, the flag on the top unfurled to say “Henry’s Circus” – and they were in business! They had borrowed leads for all the dogs so that they could wander about without getting in the way, and wherever they looked there was something going on. The liberty horses, coming out of their vans and stepping across to the stables, the acrobats warming up on mats outside, the clowns unpacking their gear…

They watched and wondered, trying to keep out of the way. Otto alone didn’t care for what was going on. He was descended from the great Barry, a St Bernard who had saved so many people from the snow that when he died he had been stuffed and put in a museum. When you have an ancestor like that, the noise and glitter of a circus is hard to bear, and he plodded along with a weary look in his bloodshot eyes. Li-Chee snuffled along behind him, his long hair brushing the ground, and from time to time he sneezed the fringe out of his eyes. But Francine’s feet scarcely touched the grass. She almost danced; her eyes shone. If ever there was a dog who was exactly where she belonged, it was the poodle – and Rupert never left her side.

But now George called them into his camper and asked again if they had heard from Elsa.

“Mr Henry’s waiting for his dog turn. Can you get them to do something without her?”

“We could try,” said Pippa. “But it’s always Elsa who sets them off. We just watch.”

“Well, you think,” said George. “We open tomorrow, and if there’s no sign of Elsa, we’d better be sending you back. Can’t have children gallivanting all over the countryside on their own.”

“Could we have a little time to think about it?” asked Pippa. George said yes, they could.

“What are we going to do?” said Hal, as he and Pippa made their way back to the caravan. “We can’t possibly make them do tricks.”

“We’ve come such a long way,” said Pippa. “If they send us back now, you know what will happen. The dogs back in their cages for ever – Fleck too – and the police probably… I don’t think I can bear it. There must be something we can make them do.”

Myra was tidying the caravan, getting it ready for people who wanted to have their fortunes told. “Petroc’s poodles used to do a turn jumping on and off the backs of the liberty horses as they galloped round the ring,” she said. “But I suppose your dogs wouldn’t do that.”

And the children, remembering the lordly horses with their silken manes, said no, their dogs probably wouldn’t do that.

“Well, what’s Elsa’s show then? Is it ‘The Murgatroyd Family Go to Their Wedding’? I always liked that, with the dogs in their cart on the way to the church. People may say it’s old-fashioned but it always goes down well, especially with a bit of business from the clowns.”

“Yes,” said Pippa, “that’s what it is … sort of.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult, then. If Elsa doesn’t get here in time you could borrow some of Petroc’s stuff. He left it all in his van. There’ll be a cart of some kind you can use and a hamper full of costumes. I’ll look it out for you.”

An hour later, the children and the dogs were standing at the entrance to the circus ring. Two of the clowns, Tom and Fred, had found Petroc’s cart and Myra had dragged out his dressing-up hamper and gone back to her caravan.

“Well, we’ll leave you to get on with it,” said Tom. “Just call us when you’re ready and we’ll fit our business in with you. Then we can have a proper run-through.”

They went off. Hal opened the hamper and looked at the gaudy clothes with disgust.

“What gives people the right to dress up animals and make them look as silly as they are themselves?” he asked.

Pippa did not answer, and when Hal looked at her he saw that her face was rigid and she was as pale as death.

“I can’t,” she gulped, staring at the empty expanse of sawdust, and the rows of tiers stretching upwards. “I’ve absolutely no idea what to do. I must have been mad.”

“But we’ve said—”

“I can’t,” said Pippa again. “I absolutely can’t.” She was almost crying. “We’ll have to come clean. I’m very sorry.”

The dogs had been waiting patiently, wondering what was going on. Now Francine stepped forward. She dived into the hamper, picked up a wreath of white flowers in her mouth and laid it on the ground.

“She must have done this before,” said Pippa.

They put the wreath over the poodle’s head and she sat up on her hind legs, every inch a bride. If Pippa did not know what to do, Francine quite clearly did.

After that, somehow, they managed to carry on. They found a tiny bonnet for Li-Chee, who was to be the baby, and a frilled hat for Honey, who was to be the mother. But Otto took one look at his hat and turned away.

“We can’t make him dress up – not Otto,” said Hal.

“We won’t have to,” said Pippa, “not if he’s just pulling the cart.”

Rupert, of course, was the bridegroom. There was no trouble about getting him to put on a bow tie and a silk waistcoat. He, like Francine, knew that dressing up was part of the job.

They decided that Otto should pull the cart round the ring twice, with Francine and Li-Chee and Honey on board. They would stop at the church, which the clowns would set up, and Rupert would be sitting there, waiting for his bride. The wedding would take place out of sight behind a curtain, and then the bridal party would come out again and drive to the wedding banquet in another part of the ring and the show would end with the two poodles dancing together.

“That part will work at least,” said Pippa. “There can be a spotlight on them, and then it can go out suddenly and everything will be over.”

But even such a simple routine was unbelievably difficult for the dogs to learn. Getting Otto to pull the cart round the ring took ages. He trembled with outrage, but Pippa was patient. Gradually he went round; his eyes were full of despair, but he went. Li-Chee grumbled in his throat but when Pippa said, “Please, Li-Chee, please,” he sat still in his seat. Honey looked round from under her frilled hat as if asking why this was happening to her, but she too sat where they put her. Francine, standing straight on top of the cart, kept the other dogs in check.

But Fleck wouldn’t leave Hal.

“It’s no good. He’ll have to stay with you,” said Pippa.

Hal agreed, but sadly. “He was such a joyful dog when I first got him,” he said. “But now…”

“He’ll be joyful again, you’ll see,” said Pippa. “He’s just lost his confidence.”

They rehearsed for most of the morning, and then the clowns came back. Whatever they thought privately about “The Murgatroyd Family Go to Their Wedding”, they kept it to themselves.

“We’ll come on first, getting the feast ready, trying to blow up balloons and all that,” said Tom. “There’s plenty of chance there for a bit of business – that’ll loosen everybody up. And we’ll have a word with Steve about the music. You’ll want the Wedding March where they go into the church, I expect, and then a waltz when the poodles do their dance.”

“Yes,” said Pippa. “Thank you. I hope it’ll be all right.”

Fred looked at her worried face.

“Of course it’ll be all right,” he said. “And anyway, with a bit of luck Elsa’ll be here in time to put in the finishing touches.”

The children looked at each other.

It wouldn’t need a bit of luck for Elsa to come and do that – it would need rather a lot.