Eva Ibbotson: One Dog and His Boy

“Well, perhaps.” A Tottenham terrier. It had a good ring to it. “But mind you, if he hasn’t been hired by the end of the week, then he goes. If you can’t take him there’s always the cat and dog shelter. I won’t have an animal here that doesn’t earn its keep.” And as Kayley bent down and stroked the dog through the bars: “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

At the door Mr Carker turned. “You’d better find a name for him and get it put on his cage.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kayley again.

But she already had a name. She had found it when she looked into the mongrel’s eyes. They were dark and trusting and full of intelligence – but they were not completely equal. On one eye was a splodge, a single fleck of gold.

“He’s called Fleck,” she said.

But Mr Carker had already gone.

Left alone in Room A, the dogs looked at their new roommate. They were kind and caring dogs and they were worried.

The Tottenham terrier, or whatever he was, was altogether too hopeful and too excitable for life as a rental dog with Easy Pets.

“Calm down,” Otto wanted to say. “Take it easy. Just sit in the front of the cage; don’t throw yourself at people.”

But Fleck could no more calm down than he could fly. He was here with new friends, at the beginning of a great adventure. He wasn’t quite certain what the great adventure was, but it would be to do with someone who would come for him, and who would love him and whom he would love. The little mongrel didn’t understand that Mr Carker would send him away if he had not been borrowed by five o’clock on Friday and if he had done he would not have worried because he was absolutely certain that somebody would come.

A mongrel and a cross-breed are not the same thing. A cross-breed is a mixture of two breeds only, and is considered quite respectable – like a labradoodle – but a mongrel can have six or more different strains of dog in him. And in Fleck’s case the six strains, whatever they were, all seemed to be breeds that were used to serving people and looking after them and belonging.

At ten o’clock, Otto stopped trying to calm Fleck and all the others dogs fell silent because that was when, outside the window, a guide dog called Grace came past, taking her blind mistress to the shops. Grace was a golden retriever, and while all the others admired Grace for her skill and her hard work, Otto did more than that. Otto really worshipped Grace.

Soon after that Mr Carker brought in a man in a chauffeur’s cap and Queen Tilly was taken away to have her special jacket put on – one with press studs down the back so that people could open it to see that she really was hairless all over – and then the chauffeur carried her to a waiting Rolls-Royce, where a lady who was going to show her off at a coffee morning in her mansion was waiting.

Renting out Queen Tilly always put Mr Carker in a good humour because he got so much money for her, and when he passed Fleck’s cage he laughed.

“No one’s come for the Tottenham terrier, I see,” he said to Kayley. “And no one will, if you ask me – I’ve never seen such an ugly little brute.”

He was one of those people who think that dogs can’t understand anything that humans say and Kayley had to stay behind and pet Fleck before he was his old self.

It was a long day for the small white dog. Otto was taken away in the middle of the morning by the headmistress of the school whose children had asked for a dog for the day as their end-of-term treat, and Honey was borrowed by a man who was meeting a rich friend at a country club and wanted to look sporting. Then Francine went off with the lady who was still hoodwinking her new boyfriend, making him believe that the poodle was hers.

Early in the afternoon a couple came who had been told to lose weight and go for walks and they thought taking exercise might be less boring if they did it with a dog.

“This is a nice dog,” said Kayley, showing them Fleck, “he’s got a lovely nature.”

But the man said he was an odd-looking creature and if they had to go to the park they might as well take something with a bit of class, and they went through into Room B and picked out a Saluki with long silky ears and an arched back.

Then Li-Chee was taken away to have his ears syringed and only Fleck was left. He tried hard to amuse himself but it was very lonely without the other dogs, and though his cage was comfortable it was still a cage, and without meaning to, he began to howl softly.

In a second, Kayley was in the room.

“Oh hush, Fleck. Please be quiet. Mr Carker really hates dogs to howl.”

She fondled his head, and he stopped at once – but there was no hope now that anyone would come for Fleck that day; the hiring stopped at five. And that meant there were only two more days for the Tottenham terrier to earn his keep and become an Easy Pet.

It was always late when Kayley got home. Mr Carker did not live in the Easy Pets building – he and Mrs Carker had a very elegant flat a few streets away – and it was Kayley’s job to make sure that the dogs were safely in their compound, and the building was locked and the burglar alarm put on at the end of the day. And even when all that was done she had an hour’s journey on the tube.

But she did not come home to an empty house – far from it. Kayley lived with her mother, her grandfather, her twin brothers, who were still at school, and her ten-year-old sister, Pippa.

The O’Brians were poor. Kayley’s father had been killed in an accident on a building site, and though her mother had a job sewing for a wealthy lady called Mrs Naryan, and her grandfather had his pension, money was very short. The little house was shabby, the carpets were threadbare, greasy smells from the burger chain next door wafted through the window, but when Kayley came home she was hugged and petted, and when her family asked how she got on, they really wanted to know because they thought that her job as kennel maid to the Carkers was the most interesting you could imagine.

And the person who hugged the hardest and wanted to know the most was ten-year-old Pippa.

“Did your plan work?” she asked now. “Has Mr Carker let him stay?”

Fleck had spent the night at the O’Brians’ and all of them wanted to know about the stray.

“He’s given him till Friday night. If nobody borrows him by then he’s going to send him away.”

Pippa was a sturdy, cheerful girl – but now her face puckered up.

“To the cat and dog shelter?”

Kayley nodded.

“Well, I think it’s wicked. He knows perfectly well they can only keep the dogs for three weeks and then if no one’s given them a home, they have to have them put down. It’s just a sneaky way of getting other people to do your dirty work.”

Pippa knew all about the dogs that Kayley looked after. On Sundays she went along to help Kayley with the cleaning and the feeding; and she was determined, when she was old enough, to follow in her sister’s footsteps.

“He’s got to let Fleck stay,” she said now.

“If only he’d see…” said Kayley. “Mind you, Fleck shouldn’t really be a rental dog – he’s a bit mad, the way he goes on about people. He’s like Snow White when she sings that song. You know: ‘One Day My Prince Will Come’. He’s convinced his prince will come – or his princess. You should see his eyes every time someone comes into the room.” She shrugged. “Anyway, we’ve got to make up a pedigree for him before the morning. Mr Carker wants one to put over his cage.”