Muriel Spark - Alice Long’s Dachshunds

The guns clank on the stone, one after the other, echoing against the walls outside the chapel, as the men come in for Mass before the shoot. Mamie, whose age is eight years and two months, kneels in the second row from the back, on the right-hand side, near the Virgin, where a warm candle is lit. There is no other warmth. Alice Long is kneeling on a front hassock. Her two brothers from London have come in—tall men in knickerbockers and green wool stockings that stride past Mamie’s eyes as she kneels in her place.

Other big men have put their guns against the wall outside the chapel door. The Catholics from the cottages have come in. Everyone except the strangers is praying for more snow and a road blockage to the town, so that poor Alice Long can decently serve roe deer, roe deer, roe deer for all the meals that the London people are going to eat. The woods are cracking alive with roe deer, but meat from the town has got to be paid for with money.

Alice Long is round-shouldered and worried; she is the only daughter of old Sir Martin, and is always addressed, to her face, as Miss Long. Her money is her own, but it goes into the keeping of the House.

Alice Long’s two brothers’ wives have come into the chapel now. They are the last, because they have to look after their own babies when they get up. Before Mamie’s birth, all the babies in the House had nurses. The two wives were differently made from the start, before they became Alice Long’s sisters-in-law, and still look so, although their tweed coats were made more alike. One is called Lady Caroline and the other, Mrs. Martin Long, will be Lady Long when old Sir Martin dies and Martin Long comes into the title.

Mamie is watching Lady Caroline through her fingers. Lady Caroline is big and broad, with bobbed black hair under her black lace veil; she doesn’t like Alice Long’s dogs, and dogs are the only things Alice Long has for herself. Alice Long was made to be kept down by upkeep.

The big clock upstairs chimes seven. The priest comes in and the feet shuffle. Mamie cannot see the altar when everyone is standing. She stares at the candle. The service begins. Will the friends who have come from warm London catch their death of colds?

Mamie stops in the snow. The ends of the dogs’ leashes are wound round her hands in their woollen gloves, three round the right hand and two round the left. She unwinds the leads to give her arms scope, and the dogs take advantage of the few extra inches of freedom, snuffling and wriggling away from Mamie until the leads pull taut. But she works them back, lifting her elbows to cup her hands to her mouth.

“Come out. I can see you.”

No reply.

She repeats the words and drops her arms, aching from the weight of straining dogs.

There is a thud of snowfall from the clump of trees. The noise would have been only a little plop had there been any more sound besides that of the snuffling dogs.

She is taking Alice Long’s dogs for a walk.

“She?! be glad to, Miss Long,” said her mother. “Tomorrow after school. It’s a half day.”

This morning, her mother said, “Come straight home at two for Alice Long’s dogs”

To do so, Mamie has missed her dancing lesson at the convent. She is learning the sword-dance. Alice Long had got her into the convent at reduced fees, and even those reduced fees Alice Long pays herself. She likes to keep the Catholic tenants Catholic.

Mamie walks on, satisfied there are no boys behind the trees. She is afraid the boys will find her and tease the dogs, laugh at her, laugh at the little padding, waddling dogs, do them harm before they can be returned to the House.

The snow in the wood is too deep for low-made dogs. Mamie wanders around the edge of the wood, on the crunchy path, with little running steps every now and then as the dogs get the better of her.

‘My dachshunds,” said Alice Long lovingly.

The country people said to each other, when she was out of sight, “Alice Long has only got her dogs. And all that upkeep.”

“Lady Caroline hates dogs.”

“No, she only hates dachshunds. German sausages. She likes big dogs for the country.”

Alice Long is sitting with her teacup in Mamie’s house, which has five rooms plus k.p.b.—standing for kitchen, pantry, and bathroom— and is semidetached. Next door are Alice Long’s Couple. Mamie’s father no longer works on the estate but is a foreman in the town at Heppleford and Styles’ Linoleum.

“Lady Caroline can’t bear them. They’ve been locked in the north wing since Friday. I have to keep a fire going. . .“

“That wing’s not heated, of course.”

“No. They are freezing and lonely. I keep putting logs on. 1 get up in the middle of the night to see to the fire.”

“They?! be all right, Miss Long.”

“They need a good run, that’s all. I won’t have time for the dogs today. But the family goes home tomorrow or Wednesday . . .“

Mamie has taken the dogs out for a run before. She is not allowed to go near the wood but must keep to the inhabited paths that pass the groups of houses on the estate and lead to the shop. Near the shop are usually the children from the village school, throwing snowballs in winter, wheeling bicycles in summer. Mamie has money for toffee and an orange drink. She wanders by the wood.

Her father has been at home for three working days. There is a strike. Alice Long sits downstairs. The father has gone to wait upstairs until she leaves. Then he opens the cupboard door where the television set is placed in a recess formed by the removal of one of the shelves. Alice Long has not seen this television set. The people next door, her Couple, took on a television many years ago, and keep it out in the living room.

Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi, Ritzi, and Kitzy.

“Alice Long’s dogs are all she’s got to herself”

The dogs go about together and sometimes all answer at once when Alice Long calls one of their names. Mamie does not know them apart. They vary slightly in size, fatness, and in the black scars on their brown coats.

The path has become a ridge of frozen earth where the field has been ploughed right up to the verge of the wood. The daylight is turning blue with cold while Mamie struggles with the leads. One gumboot digs deep in a furrow and the other stabs to keep its hold on the ridge. The dogs snuffle each other and snort steam. They strain toward the wood, and Hamilton is suddenly there—Alice Long’s gamekeeper—coming out of the trees, tall and broad, with his grey moustache and deep-pink face. He looks at Mamie as if to say, “Come here.” The dogs fuss round him, cutting into her gloves.

Mamie says, “I’ve got to go that way,” pointing down towards her home across the field.

“I’ll see you back at the House,” he says, and stoops back into the wood, examining the undergrown branches.

Hamilton looks after old Sir Martin when he becomes beyond a woman’s strength.

“I’m afraid my father is not very well anymore.”

“I don’t know how you do it, Miss Long.”

Mamie’s mother says that anybody else but Alice Long would have put the old man away.

Hamilton sees to the boilers that heat the heated wing. He has too much to do to air the dogs regularly.

“Without Hamilton, I don’t know what we should do. Before your husband left us, we had it easier.”

Mamie has turned away from the wood. She has taken the path to the houses, looking back all the time to see whether Hamilton is following her with his eyes, those eyes that are two poached eggs grown old, looking at her every time he sees her.

She takes the footpath on the main road. The dogs are trotting now. A car passes, and a delivery van from the grocer’s shop in the town. She clutches the leads.