Righty-o... This is my first story, so, as always, critiques appreciated all around.
This is set during the hard times of the Second World War, and is about the struggles of a teen and his relationship with his trusty dog.
I suppose this could relate to the phrase 'a dog is "Man's Best Friend"'
---12th September, 1940
The sounds of explosions echoed through the devastated city of London, as darkness fell. There was an infinite tangible feeling of panic and fear that held the civilians in a vice-like grip, who were too scared to even think of what would become of the future.
What future? Andrew thought as he peered out the barricaded window from behind the rugged moth-eaten curtains in anxiety. The bomber planes has been coming and going at random intervals for days on end now and they showed no sign of giving up. It had all started five days ago, on the seventh of September and still they came. Who knew how long this could carry on? He sighed dismally.
Only when the Nazis reached their decision, and had had their need for revenge sautéed.
These days were full of inevitable danger, and there seemed no escape, not even for him…
‘Andrew! Get away from there!’
His mother came hurrying in the darkened room in a dull pinafore dress, looking anxious. She redrew the curtains, leaning past him in her frightened haste to do so, and then bundled him out the room.
‘But, Mom-‘he protested, trying to extricate himself. His mother then rounded on him in the corridor.
‘What are you doing? Do you want to get yourself killed?’ she questioned angrily. ‘Oh, what will your father say? You might as well just walk out there during the sirens and then who knows what could happen? Day after day, never ending…’ She was already shuffling towards the pantry, her words trailing.
Andrew shook his head after her. His father was dead – killed by an unexpected sniper – and yet his mother had this weird way that he was still with them.
He then realised that he had never really known his father. Being fifteen, he was a person of solitary disposition but he was thought to have the malleable mind of a child. Child, he was not.
He looked out the window again. The sky was now a deep blue-purple: the smog that settled there smothering the platinum stars in a thick, blanket that looked almost iridescent of the descending sun. The town below, indeterminable in contrast with the sky, was silent now, devoid of life. All that could be heard for miles was the resounding booms throughout the East London suburbs.
He was just about to leave the room when there were a few high pitched barks, and a large golden retriever with a glistening coat bounded into the room, bearing a blue, red and white striped bandana round its neck.
“Gail! Come here, girl!” he called, holding out a bedraggled soft toy for her to seize.
Instead, the dog ran dangerously close to their silvery chest that stood close to the front doorway, repeatedly barking. Andrew winced, as his mother returned, now presumably even more riled.
She walked over to the dog, and, to his horror, seized Gail by the scruff of her neck. The dog quietened immediately, and, although Andrew knew that it didn’t pain her, he still felt a stab of concern.
“There. See, I can control your pet better then I can control you.”
Her voice was full of apathy as she released his dog – his, because he wanted a responsibility – and he started as he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of new, profound hate – though faint – in the intelligent, knowing eyes of Gail. She had never completely liked his mother.
Now she had given her a reason to dislike her even more.
As Lynda – that was his mother’s name, but of course, he didn’t use it – retreated once more, he put his head to one side, ruminating. He glanced at the sepia photograph of his father on the oak chest, with its gilt frame.
Andrew remembered always wanting to have something to call his own; he had a distant memory:
He sees that all the other children down his road are running and shouting, playing out in the afternoon sun. They all seem to be playing some kind of chasing game dashing away from each other, yelling “tag, you’re it!”
Even the new girl, two doors away – a foreigner, judging by her dialect, something Andrew has never heard before – is allowed to join in.
Andrew had heard some of the other adults telling each other- in whispers- that it was “some kind of scourge: a trap”. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about, nor what the children were playing that day. He wasn’t allowed out.
But father told him to promise to be a good boy, and he would be rewarded.
Andrew was old enough to know what a reward was, but what exactly did it mean?
A reward could come in so many forms: a pat on the head, like if you helped an elder, or an invalid. Or in a more physical form, like when Callum, from the Wright family, got a toy steam locomotive from his papa, for helping him with real steam engine work. Andrew remembered how proudly Callum carried his brand new toy, and, although Andrew didn’t really care for steam engines or the steam trains much, he couldn’t help but feel a tad envious of it, with its shiny brass pistons and real moving wheels. It even had a little clay model of the driver, and real small pieces of coal in its tender.
The girl ran to the other side of the deserted road; he frowned: if that had been him his mother would yelled at him.
The new girl was very brave, running across the road like that, receiving a mixture of shocked and awed looks from the others as she chanted “¡Apuéstele no me puede agarrar! ¡Soy el más rápido que hay!” throwing her hands in the air.
” Mi padre dijo tan”, she added nonchalantly, as a way of the children getting her point.
Obviously, not one of them understood her. But she, though different, was accepted, as the others followed her lead, rampaging across the road like a herd of mustangs.
Andrew couldn’t watch them anymore. He turned away from the window, and sitting on the floor, wished like mad for his father to return. That was all he was asking for.
Seeing his father was a reward enough now.
Same here thought Andrew, finishing the memory. What he would have given to just be accepted into that group was something old now.
There seemed to be no-one to know, what with the area around them so desolate – it was as if no-one was even alive. Rather, they were just…waiting. For what?
For revenge? For a saviour?
…For hope?
As if sensing his doubt, Gail licked his hand, as if to say Hey, don’t fret. You’ve got me, and you’re family. At least someone understood him.
People seemed to often underestimate dogs. But Gail was the reason that he at least had a purpose to keep living throughout this terrible time, no matter what.
He then remembered the very first time…
The next Thursday, while he is playing with a wooden spinner on the floor, Andrew starts as there is a sharp rap at the door. Three times.
He knew that knock: it had a special owner. He goes to get up, and then remembers that he should never answer the door, his mother told hi, because it might be a stranger, and Andrew knew that you should never greet, let alone talk to someone you weren’t familiar with.
But he knows that knock; he knows that this person isn’t a stranger.
Not in the slightest.
Andrew’s nine-year old face lights up with joy, as his father strides in the house, dressed in his piloting uniform – and carrying a cloaked bundle.
Although Andrew’s demeanour changes, he keeps it in mind to be in control and be respectful to his father.
“Hello, son,” his weary-looking father greets him, hefting the bundle onto the oak chest near him. The bundle moves.
“Father!” Andrew cries, as he leaps into his now outstretched arms. He smells of leather and the pungent fuel that was used to power the jet planes.
“I missed you much, I really did”, he tells him eagerly.
“Oh, me too.” He indicates the still bundle on the side, as he puts his son down. “And, like we both promised to each other, I have your gift.” He leans closer, crouching down so he is level with him. “Assuming you have been good, of course”, he smiles
Andrew’s mother walks sprightly into the room.
He turned. “Lynda. How have you been?” he asks her.
Andrew notices that her hair had been let loose, in long flaxen curls, so different from the taut over-neat bun that she wore it in.
His father walks over and embraced her. Andrew then turns away, as he kisses her lightly on her cheek.
“Yes, he’s been as good as anything”, his mother replies, smiling at proudly.
“Good. Because now you have proved you deserve your reward”.
Andrew feels his heart quicken: this is what he has been working for.
The bundle is put on the floor: he crouches next to it as it made a high-pitched squeak. Well, o f course it wasn’t the bundle.
He prods it warily; it unfolded slightly so he caught a glimpse of a patch of gold-brown. It looked like hair…or fur, maybe.
His father pulled back the crevassed fold and revealed the thing inside.
It was tiny, no larger than one of the big oak leaves that fell n their back garden.
It seemed to be blind too, its eyes closed as it manoeuvred around on its short legs.
“A puppy?” Andrew realised. His voice, however, was not full of the questioning a child often displays when unsatisfied or even disappointed with their gift.
“It’s a golden retriever, only five days old,” his father put in. His face deepened into a frown of concern. “Why, don’t you like it?”
“No… It’s brilliant. It’s just…well…” Andrew trailed. He was thrilled with this, he couldn’t possibly be happier. “Thank you”, he says, looking up at his father gratefully.
“Well, she’s your responsibility now. Something you can call your own and look after, for a change”.
Judging by his tone he understood how Andrew had to cope with his mother. They were, after all, married, so he knew her even more than Andrew did.
“So, do you want to hold her?”
Andrew nods eagerly; in awe of the glistening, breathing mass his father is now placing in his arms. He smiles as it scrabbles for purchase, latching to his arm. It yawns, showing its toothless gums and tiny mouth. It licks his hand; Andrew feels the roughness of its soft-looking pink tongue.
He feels that realisation rivet through him: this was his chance to prove himself – to himself.
Looking upon the miniature dog in the crook of his arm, he felt a sense of odd foreboding.
“Gail”. Andrew finds the words just slip out of his mouth though intended.
His father stands up and frowns again.
“What?”
“Gail”, he repeats.” I think that’s what her name should be”
And with that, there was a beginning of a fecund relationship, a chance for him to wipe away the chalky slate and start afresh.
It seemed to Andrew that, as they both progressed in their life they could always be deemed similar.
Andrew smiled: he recalled the day that Gail was just two years old, him being eleven. They both had tried to get the oat cakes out of the tin in the kitchen, working together.
The next thing they were both in a heap near the larder, covered from head to toe in flour. Funnily, no-one got a sharp remark: his parents were both doubling over with laughter in the doorway while they sat there looking bemused.
Well, now, it was hard to tell.
Just as the other adults as well as his parents told him, he was no longer the “sweet little self-same boy” that he was seen as.
Enduring through what seemed like an age that was reminiscent of dreams, it was not just the world around him that was slowly developing.
He had that unhealthy look of someone who’d grown a lot in a short amount of time; Andrew was sickened with being compared to a sunflower when he was sure that, evidently, half of the adults that said it didn’t even know what the plant even looked like…
Except his father, who shared his journeys with him. He reviewed the vast, mountainous terrains he saw, barren landscapes with but a sparse town scattered round its perimeter.
Andrew shook his hair out of his startling emerald-green eyes. It was lengthening rapidly now, gaining a distinct coppery sheen.
His eyes he gained from his father. The same as with his physique: the broad shoulders, long torso – every commented on his athlete-like build.
But then, he was on two sides. It was obvious to him but everyone else that he had gained his mother’s slenderness. This did not, of course make him girl-like, but there was a touch of being willowy about him.
Being lean and long-limbed, but gangly, gave him a superfluously androgynous appearance, which others, even his parents, regarded as “normal”.
Andrew shifted his weight from one foot to the other: He had been remaining in the same spot for quite a while now.
He never really considered himself an outcast, but…
He sighed, trudging out of the steadily darkening room - blacking-out the windows was compulsory now, meaning a decrease in use of electrical appliances. Andrew found that weird, although, from his distant childhood, his very being was wanting him to be a misnomer, being there where everyday people were free to speak to him - but always…in the shadows; he could never be that.
Yet he never wanted to be a clone, a deprived faceless soul in the sea of many…
He looked to where Gail was curled on the carpet, that was riddled with holes - with imports so restricted even thread to mend things was hard to come by- and felt an unexplainable hurt.
Was he boring everyone now, even his dog?
Well, everything and everyone had differences…
Ever since knowing Gail, it seemed they shared a bond, so if one was parted from the other, then their lives would be severed.
Gail didn’t seem to care. Most people disputed animals, they undermined their intelligence, Andrew though angrily.
He turned his gaze away from Gail, retracing his path to the window.
“Andrew! Supper!” His mother’s sharp voice rang out from the kitchen.
His gassy stomach churned as if in response: with the rations also stricter then ever before, all he was eating was vegetables, vegetables, and more vegetables.
He reluctantly went to move away from the window - supper was, at least, a distraction, something different from the ongoing day he’d had.
He was nearly out the doorway when his ever-lingering gaze fell upon the window, as he glimpsed movement outside.
There was a heavy rumbling sound that reverberated inside the building, as a Heinkel He 111 soared overhead, scattering pigeons off the rooftops.
Andrew watched its course for a few seconds and, leaving the room, wondered when the world was going to end.
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