Corduroy Mansions

14. The Names of Dogs

William had treated himself to a taxi - this was, after all, a special mission and he needed time to think. He would need to come back by taxi too, since he was unsure about taking a dog on the tube. William reflected on the fact that while dog-owners notice the dogs of others and what they are doing, non-dog-owners tend not to be aware of what dogs are up to and what rules, if any, they obey. Had he seen dogs on the tube? There was a guide dog who travelled regularly on the Victoria Line; William had once spoken to its owner, breaking the rule of silence that made strangers of multitudes, and had heard how this intelligent dog could distinguish the various lines by their smell. The Victoria Line, the owner claimed, smelled quite different from the Northern Line or the District and Circle Lines; but only a dog would know.

Guide dogs, of course, were different, and usually not subject to the same rules as lesser dogs, but when it came to recalling whether he had seen ordinary dogs travelling on the tube, he was not sure. But then he remembered: he had seen a dog on the Northern Line a while back, being carried by its owner, a middle-aged woman in a low-waisted green dress who had talked to the dog throughout the journey. William remembered this because he had been struck by the conversation between woman and canine. The woman had looked into the dog’s eyes as she addressed it, and it had looked back at her with every indication of understanding and agreement. He had thought: she yearns for conversation, here in this great city, and only the dog will oblige.

But even if the dog-sharing arrangement were agreed that day, he would not want to travel back on the tube with a dog who would still be a stranger. And what if one had to pick up one’s dog to travel on an escalator? He was not sure he would be able to lift this Freddie de la Hay, who could for all he knew be a very large dog, the size of a Rottweiler perhaps and with a disposition to match, who would respond to William’s attempts to pick him up by savaging him, right there in the tube station, at the foot of the escalator beside the admonitory notice, Dogs Must Be Carried. What a scene that would be, as the crowds, anxious not to be delayed, stepped around the scene of carnage, one or two muttering, ‘Well, you shouldn’t bring large dogs on the tube.’

The thought made William worry. In his eagerness to enter into this arrangement, he had forgotten to ask for any information about Freddie de la Hay. All he knew was that he was a Pimlico Terrier, a breed that he had never seen, nor indeed heard of before. And as for his name . . . He looked out of the taxi window as he mused on the subject of canine names. From one point of view, the name of a dog said nothing about the dog itself and everything about the owner. But then, mutatis mutandis, that was the case with human names too, except in those comparatively rare cases where people chose to call themselves something other than the name imposed on them by their parents. John Wayne was really Marion Morrison - not a name by which a macho film star might wish to be known. And Harry Webb, had he sung under that name, might never have been as successful as he was as Cliff Richard. Such changes were understandable and necessary, perhaps, if creativity were to flourish. Of course, the new names chosen were usually much more suitable than those given at birth. John Wayne was clearly a John Wayne rather than a Marion Morrison. And the same must be felt by those boys who were called Beverley but became something else, out of sheer self-defence.

William remembered one such from school, a small boy with an intensely freckled face whose second initial was B. When it was discovered that this was for Beverley, a name that is technically available for both boys and girls, his life had become a torment of derision. Such is the cruelty of children, and of boys in particular, displayed in full vigour when difference or weakness is discovered. William tried to dredge the full name out of his memory: George Beverley Jones. That was it. And this George Beverley Jones had suddenly disappeared one day, absent from school - driven out, no doubt, sent somewhere else where the name might not follow him. Even now, in his taxi to Highgate, William felt a flush of embarrassment and regret at the ancient childhood cruelty. He had been one of those who had called out Beverley! in the corridors; everybody had.

Of course it was easy for parents to make a mistake, even if they chose popular names. What is unexceptional at one time might at another be ludicrous, or simply unfashionable. Elderly ladies called Euphemia - and there must be very few left - had been nothing unusual as girls, and no doubt never dreamed that their name would later come to be regarded as quaint. In fifty years’ time, the same conceivably might be said of the legions of Kylies, who already might be feeling a certain suspicion that they were touched with the mark of a particular decade. While Euphemia could be shortened to Effie or even Ef, there was not much that one could drop from Kylie. One might become Ky, perhaps, he mused; there was a certain ring to that.

River Phoenix, thought William. Now there was a name! Rover Phoenix would be the canine version, and it was just as effective, just as redolent of whatever it was that made River Phoenix such a desirable name. Rover Phoenix would be a good-looking dog; compact, decisive, with a baritone bark and a light in his eye. An American dog, no doubt; certainly a dog who would go down well in California, in the back of an open-topped car, his ears catching the wind. Rover Phoenix.

Mind you, he reflected, there are traffic jams in California, and we should not imagine that open-topped cars there proceed with much greater dispatch than London taxis, caught, as William’s taxi now was, in a slow-moving line of grumbling, irritable humanity. Even so, he was nearing his destination, and he felt a curious sense of anticipation, tinged with the realisation that what he was doing was somewhat absurd. Why should he be forced to get a dog in order to persuade his son to move out? It seemed quite ridiculous. It was Marcia, again. He always allowed himself to be persuaded by her to do things he really should not be doing.

He should stop the taxi; he should ask the driver to turn it round and go home. He could phone the dog’s owner and explain that he had decided that they should not go ahead with the whole ridiculous scheme. He could so easily do that.

But then the taxi driver half turned in his seat and said, ‘Number eight, wasn’t it?’ And William said yes, it was.

As they stopped at the front gate, somewhere inside the house a dog barked.