Doggerland, a novel.
(Extract from chapter one)
“Please” was a good dog, clearly kind, not above barking or scrapping or sprinkling over his territory, but always brimming with an unabashed and simple love. “You can see it in his eyes,” people in town would say. “An honest, smiling face, not like those other dogs that block up the bad roads and nibble passers-by and seem to act as one gang or coalition...” Of the name “Please” and its hilarious explanation, I was almost certainly told it one night—at one point I was quite the socialite—but if so I’ve since forgotten it, and anyway it carries now so much grosser (greater) meaning than any sweet joke did to begin with. You don’t see his breed too much nowadays, he may have been a Pyrenees Mountain dog, which is to say big and fluffy, with blotched brown white fur and a haggard face and ever-wet eyes. I repeat: he was a big dog. Roomy. If desired, you could hug him without stooping. However he was not intimidating. Actually many people in town approached him as if he were an angel or porcelain bowl sunk into a holy bed, if that makes sense. But because of his size, feeding him, filling him up “in any true sense of the word” was a long uphill struggle. He had met the two sisters (soon owners, guardians, keepers) one green and rollicking evening in the town cemetery. The distant orange lamps crystallised on the shorn grass...they caught each other looking for shelter in a mausoleum and were all very much in love by morning. He was then maybe one or two years old, and we were still brimming with all manners of maniac and trickster rotting in every vacant nook and passing off vials of spit as hair dye, and the threat of the town sliding into some long and complex struggle was often felt, if not openly talked about. It was not an easy or even pleasant life. But even if he could, he didn’t envy those dogs that lived in emerald palaces, who were never cold or hungry and could chase koi around the moat until dawn. I will always argue that as far as his sentiments for the sisters go, he was completely obsessed and in love with them.
As for the eldest sister, Weary, she felt slighted and bruised by the town and the surrounding armies for their sorry position. She very much considered herself a revolutionary and had often driven the three of them into oncoming traffic, so to speak. They had no home, little money, were fairly refused entrance to the good shops (the nice stained-oak dried-meat parlours or tinned food stores owned by your Honest Pams and Peters), reliable disguises for entreé were rare, and sure, Old Crackpot Wiley had thrown them Old Crackpot Dumplings now and again, but the bomb under his house had finally gone off, dumplings inside, so most evenings the three of them went hungry. How many night puddles had the deranged pup spied to lick at, seeing the moon a giant orange cookie? (A sodden whimper bounces under a garden arch, a dark bird swings down and away.)
Regardless, when trawling through Battlefield—the name of our bright blue town—there were certainly a few proven methods the younger sister Geo had found to feed both themselves and the dog (and as we shall see, often just the dog). On Trawly Avenue Mother Spargo left salami trails for passing dogs on the red counter after four; the bins behind Sumlovin’ Deli were so wide as to be effectively sat in until steaming broccoli pie was shovelled in; each Monday outside Siege Food Hall the Petco tinned dog food delivery wagon stopped a tick while the driver flirted with the toll lady, fingered the netted curtain of his carriage and offered her soggy potato cakes. Spring green halcyon days, in retrospect, when any found fish could satiate.
Weary however grew unimpressed and quite anxious about these methods. There was potentially some secret resentment of Please’s wild abandon and energy in finding food, and of course too of Geo’s ability to match it. Though she often said she would do anything for them, would drag herself into the glossy mud, through brambles and glass and all the trimmings. Only the year prior, when food in town was very scarce—a very dark year in fact, I remember the green howls that used to bob up above the squeaking wet wood homes... sick dogs or soldiers—Weary had, in a fit of total desperation, relinquished all control over the group and let Please and Geo steal something or another at a private party in some stranger’s apartment. They were caught, beaten and spat back out into the rain, and Weary had quickly become very wild and depressed (though privately she had savoured the demented thrill of it all...).
Regardless these moments were few and far between. In truth, there really was in those days some balance between what they needed and what they stole.
Then, doom: the day Please discovered the two now-famous bakeries stationed opposite each other on the crest of Hill Rogane, almost the very peak of town, where the rise of the high street breaks out onto Grand Square. One was the failing project of a cruel spiritual lady fairly new to town, the other an old hereditary bakery ruined by the “drunk and rusting son”, labelled as such by almost everybody in the know (for gossip was then a fantastic crutch, it still is), who passed his daylight hours chewing nuts and sneezing. Afore each was a goods display counter, much in the vein of the apple seller pyramiding her wares out in the open air, really just baskets hanging in wooden frames—completely unprotected and in that sense extremely flirtatious—filled to capacity with glazed buns and cakes and so on.
The morning had started fine, if overcast, the sisters playing races with Please on the corner with the Veteran’s Memorial Fountain and Novel Paradise, when an overwhelming and gorgeous smell...light brown...fluffy...blossomed out over the entire sky and up the poor dog’s nose.
He leapt into the pink grass, the birds dived up. Quick, good God! the new juices screamed. To it, up over the cream plastered walls and thousand steps, to it now! Lap up the rushing ground itself, just to crawl into that stinking high street...like stepping into the red velvet corridor en route to the masquerade ball, over dark carpet, rolling towards hot luxury musk, it beckons you in with a wind-borne kiss...
I beg of you, for these dreams grow complex—attempt empathy with the idiotic dog. Picture for example a hound.
The hound sits obediently before a royal table. He glimpses, from his limited perspective, infinite sparkling culinary jewels teetering at the table edge. He transgresses not. He sits dough-eyed and silent over many, many painful years. A fantastic statue! But, should the King one afternoon knock (in stretching for brandy butter) a holy golden platter towards the mutt’s face, and should in that dream accident a fine crumb hop and spring betwixt nose and nashers into his stupid open mouth, to fizz about his lapping tongue, making him practically urinate from the ecstasy, and sending his aft to the skies with the furious reflexive wagging, how—I demand—resist he this new sacred dish? An impossible task! Send more crumbs this instant, waiter, in fact—tip forward a cutlet, a choice steak! Play frisbee with every platter! The buffet tables are wheeled? Well go now: push, men! Push!
Poor pooch Please, torn by the scruff up to high-scented heaven. From that initial whiff on (I believe it was a plaited vanilla waffle in the one display counter and an orange cheesecake in the two), a trap had been sprung, and his life was immeasurably changed and ruined.
He sprinted up the road and almost graced the holy puddings with his tongue, but the sisters dragged him (foaming at the mouth, spraying hot piddle all over his hind legs, sputtering wet drowned howls) into a dark-bricked alley. He wriggled, scratched, coughed and was almost sick while the girls patted him back to life. It was particularly unclear why those specific bakeries had caught his attention, because by all accounts their baking was sub-par, and much discussed in town as examples of culinary failure, though for different reasons. An hour later in a nearby courtyard Weary waved a supplementary Petco dog food tin—a serious delicacy—before his nose. The brown madder tube slid and fell onto the mottled rug; a fat drop wiggled along the corrugation. But how now could tainted Please even sniff at such grotesque nonsense? Again to that life of bland lifeless “bunk”?He would nibble at the jelly stumps no more! To the bakeries, and quickly!
Geo suggested bluntly that they try to steal the desired puddings. But she quickly added afterwards that the bakers might be waiting for such an opportunity to ensnare and punish a child. The sought-goods were, anyway, incredibly visible. An armed platoon looped past them often, the bakeries being so close to Grand Square, and the town council, and the big orange fountain and ancient castle. Really the army presence in town was simply overbearing, and infractions were punished with endless paperwork and court appearances and enforced military service. Theft, they both decided, would be impossible.
Weary found a different, less high-profile bakery in a low district, and in a phantom twirl lifted three grey scones into her jacket. But these paled in comparison to the first seducing sniff, were rejected, and Please’s desperation only grew worse. It crooned quietly to begin with, but left ignored it soon developed a terrifying and boiling aspect. He had a number of tragic tells. At night he would dream and cry, chatter his teeth and soil the pillow (golden honey on the silk sheet by morning). He would wake up from scented nightmares, desperate to find whatever phantom ingredients had been shoved snugly into the bakery ovens, the anticipation breaking his head apart, but would inevitably come back to the den shamefully, where Geo, now awoken, would chalk it up to “his undying loyalty”. He would bite and chew on almost anything he could, barking madly with tears in his eyes, and soon grew a new polar opposite reputation as an “unfriendly” and “greedy” dog best avoided. The reason for this, Geo tried to explain, was that the tears were warping his vision, he was practically swimming through a blue and wobbling jelly town, and everything around him looked like treats to gorge on. That won’t help one bit, Weary said, and began to check Please’s face routinely and wipe away all manners of gunk and stuff from his eyes, most of it he then immediately licked up off her fingers. Though all that was a contested theory.
There were however some shops that loved the sight of Please (especially when he was unaccompanied by the sisters) and would leave little dishes out on the curb as he came by. But even these he soon tired of and became suspicious of eventually.
This was soon black hell, near-constant discomfort but for the seconds anything was mashed in his mouth. Compared to those fantastical bakery smells this never satisfied, the feeling dimmed almost instantly, and by evening the dog was bent over his vibrating stomach like a terrified wasp, eyes totally void of all vitality, vampiric and yellow (hidden in a stair cupboard to strike). Now at night, the puddings merely sniffed at during the day grew faces and span with purple ribbons, a left leg shoots up in the air here, brisé, turn, woah! The right slams down on his head, “Bury me with your snout!” the phantom bun wails...“Miserable pig! Hairy thing! Slap those rubbery gums together! Disgusting brute! Chew, chew, chew!”
What the doctor, the vicar, the gold-plated angel calls for, is gentleness, patience, deliberation, serene mastery of the self, a sober steadfastness and measured will. What was he? An iguana? A trap-door spider? You see it everywhere, that dogs have been cleansed of want, forced from birth to become rooted marble. Observe the street corner: see the hairy lurcher, his haunches stiffened, molars glistening in anticipation...drip drip...steady doggie...literally chomping at the bit...humping the empty air in front of him with his tongue rolling around at the sight of a stale muffin...a godawful rotten toffee stuck to the undertaker’s shoe, a banana peel jittering in the wet gutter! And even then he refuses to nibble! Even at floor food he is frozen stuck to the pavement! Against all earthly impulses!
Observe the dinner mate dog under hypnosis: table laid, she hunches before a lemon-stuffed turkey with the concentration of a field sniper, breath held before the President’s right-hand man...finger on the trigger...squeeze... make history damnit! Kill! But no! In God’s light she must remain, staring like a quivering zombie, a corpse! And the taunts! “Gosh, such restraint Luna, such zealous control of your impulses!” her giggling orderly cries, delighted by the invisible muzzle. Will you stoop at nothing, demon? What’s left? The pup banished to live out the rest of her days in a distant monastery? Licking at a bowl of olives trapped in fresco? At powdery, flavourless daubing?
Bark ye! Prick up your ears wretched dogs of Battlefield, sliding out your dens and sewers like the Devil’s hounds, covered in soot and wet jibberish, sniffing at the grease lacquered bacon factory, and under Founder’s Throw, and up the brown bend by Apple Chimneys, Siege, and Pokrass Square, but unable, inept, impotent! Dogs, fixed in your cages, gold, dark metal or mental air... I order you to break free! And to God above, I plead, my God that has punished these beasts every waking second, forced them to want something they can only have in select contexts, let them off for one second...one slender day!
Please: don’t hesitate! To the bakeries...dive in! If it be your very last bite, throw your whole sweating head in there! Into the dark of the beartrap you go, crunch down on one final strawberry and digest everything in the afterlife. Quick, the sisters are flagging behind on their walk, distracted in pinching belts to sell on later, might Please just poke his nose in? Just out of the natural curiosity of the mind? Late afternoon, display counters empty, he slams his thick head straight into the swinging bakery doors. Pow! Boom! “No help needed thanks, just window shopping!” Now shovel, shovel to your hearts content caramel cakes, banana muffins, chocolate brioche, what immense pink pleasure to be leapt at in giving in! Give a dog its bone! Throw him the whole stinking carcass! What is he to do but eat? But satisfy his endless hunger? Eat! All that floweth in must surely floweth back out—the tavern can never be full! The courtyard draught doors swing endlessly! Bye bye sweet guests! Mind your heads on the way out! Smell you later! What? Are you hungry, again, poor mutt? Then open up, open wider! Give your jaw a workout! Your stomach is infinite! Spiders, flower pots, benches, libraries! Drown whole nations under your steaming saliva, devour the world!
“Argh! Cut loose cursed pooch! Get bit!” the raging baker screams, approaching with raised red pestle. Buns uplifted, Please clips his wobbling jowl on a decorative bronze umbrella stand on his way out. A chromatic drool spatter marks the wall, and sure, lick your finger, detective, raise it to your nose, let your blown fury tilt up your baker’s hat...he’s long gone! And he’ll just strike again, again and again!
...but this could not go on. One day one of these impulsive actions would get the dog killed. Weary in particular was becoming visibly distraught at the situation, she was spending more time alone, sometimes walking the streets until late at night and arguing with strangers in cafes. If she passed a group laughing she’d stare at them scornfully, as if the sounds were painful. When she returned she would be extremely agitated and angry (but never at a clear target). She would stare at Please and fidget. After this she would become very emotional, though in an odd strained way that Geo didn’t know how to console. During one of those grim evenings Geo argued that Please’s needs could be sustained, but only if they treated the situation seriously, instead of shying away from it. Though she said this giggling, and then wriggled away from the lilac lamplight to cry. Weary reluctantly agreed. They would perform a true robbery on the bakeries. As they tried to sleep, the thought rushed over both of them: had there really ever been another way?