“Oh yes. Oh yes.”
The father left. Gordon took a book at random from a shelf, sat down and turned the pages casually. It was a history of marine engineering. The library was on the opposite side of the hall from the living room, but its window also looked on to the back garden and sometimes Gordon heard an occasional shout or laugh or bark from those on the lawn. He told himself grimly, “I’m giving her a chance. If she wants me she can come to me here. In fact if she has ordinary politeness and decency she’ll be bound to look for me soon.” He imagined the things she might say and the things he would say back. Sometimes he consoled himself with a piece of rock from the tin.
Suddenly the door sprang open with a click and he saw coming through it towards him, not Nan, but the dog. It stopped in front of him and grinned up into his face. “What do you want?” said Gordon irritably. The dog wagged its tail. Gordon threw a bit of rock which it caught neatly in its jaws, then trotted out through the door. Gordon got up, slammed the door and sat down. A little later the door opened and the dog entered again. “Ye brute!” said Gordon. “Right, here’s your sweet; the last you’ll get from me.”
He escorted the dog to the door, closed it carefully, turned a key in the lock, then went back to the chair and book. After a while it struck him that with the door locked Nan wouldn’t get in if she came to him. He glanced uneasily up. The door was open and the dog stood before him, grinning with what seemed, to his stupified eyes, triumphant amusement. For a moment Gordon was too surprised to move. He noticed that the animal was grinning with its mouth shut, a thing he had never seen a dog do before. He raised the book as if to throw it.
“Grrr, get out!” he yelled. The dog turned jauntily and trotted away. After thinking carefully Gordon decided some joker must have unlocked the door from outside: it was the sort of pointless joke Kenneth liked. He listened carefully and heard from the lawn the voice of Kenneth and the barking of the dog. He decided to leave the door open.
Later he found it too dark to see the page of the book clearly and put it down. The noises from the lawn had subtly altered. The laughter and shouting were now not continuous. There were periods of silence disturbed by the occasional shuffle of running feet and the hard breathing of somebody pursued, then he would hear a half-cry or scream that did not sound altogether in fun. Gordon went to the window. Something strange was happening on the darkened lawn. Nan was nowhere to be seen. Kenneth, Gibson and Clare were huddled together on the bare table-top, Clare kneeling, Kenneth and Gibson crouching half-erect. The white dog danced in a circle round the table among over-turned chairs. Its activity and size seemed to have increased with the darkness. It glimmered like a sheet in the dusk, its white needle-teeth glittered in the silently laughing jaws, it was about the size of a small lion. Gibson was occupied in a strange way, searching his pockets for objects and hurling them at the shrubbery at the far end of the garden. The white dog would run, leap, catch these in its mouth while they were in the air, then return and deposit them under the table. It looked like a game and had possibly begun as one, but obviously Gibson was continuing in an effort to get the dog as far away as possible. Gordon suddenly discovered Nan was beside him, watching, her hands clenched against her mouth.
Gibson seemed to run out of things to throw. Gordon saw him expostulate precariously for a moment with Kenneth, demanding (it appeared) his fountain pen. Kenneth kept shaking his head. He was plainly not as frightened as Gibson or Clare, but a faint embarrassed smile on his face suggested that he was abashed by some monstrous possibility. Gibson put a hand to his mouth, withdrew something, then seemed to reason with Kenneth, who at last shrugged and took it with a distaste which suggested it was a plate of false teeth. Kenneth stood upright and, balancing himself with difficulty, hurled the object at the shrubbery. It was a good throw. The white dog catapulted after it and at once the three jumped from the table and ran to the house, Kenneth going to the right, Gibson and Clare to the left. The dog swerved in an abrupt are and hurled toward the left. He overtook Clare and snapped the hem of her dress. She stumbled and fell. Gibson and Kenneth disappeared from sight and two doors were slammed in different parts of the house. Clare lay on the lawn, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, her clasped hands pressed between her thighs and her eyes shut. The dog stood over her, grinning happily, then gathered some of the clothing round her waist into its mouth and trotted with her into the bushes of the shrubbery.
Gordon looked at Nan. She had bowed her face into her hands. He put an arm round her waist, she laid her face against his chest and said in a muffled voice, “Take me away with you.”
“Are you sure of what you’re saying?”
“Take me away, Gordon.”
“What about Clare?”
Nan laughed vindictively. “Clare isn’t the one to pity.”
“Yes, but that dog!”
Nan cried out, “Do you want me or not?”
As they went through the dark hall, the kitchen door opened, Nan’s mother looked out, then shut it quickly. In the front garden they met Kenneth and Gibson, both shamefaced and subdued. Kenneth said, “Hullo. We were just coming to look for you.”
Gordon said, “Nan’s coming home with me.”
Kenneth said, “Oh, good.”
They stood for a moment in silence, none of the men looking at each other, then Gibson said, “I suppose I’d better wait for Clare.” The absence of teeth made him sound senile. Nan cried out, “She won’t want you now! She won’t want you now!” and started weeping again. “I’ll wait all the same,” Gibson muttered. He turned his back on them. “How long do you think she’ll be?” he asked. Nobody answered.
The drive back into the city was quiet. Gordon sat with Nan in the back seat, his arm around her waist, her mourning face against his shoulder. He felt strangely careless and happy. Once Kenneth said, “An odd sort of evening.” He seemed half willing to discuss it but nobody encouraged him. He put off Gordon and Nan at the close-mouth of the tenement where Gordon lived. They went upstairs to the top landing, Gordon unlocked a door and they crossed a small lobby into a very untidy room. Gordon said, “I’ll sleep on the sofa here. The bedroom’s through that door.”
Nan sat on the sofa, smiled sadly and said, “So I’m not to sleep with you.”
“Not yet. I want you too much to take advantage of a passing mood.”
“You think this is a passing mood.”
“It might be. If it’s not I’ll see about getting a marriage licence. Are you over eighteen?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Er … do you mind me wanting to marry you, Nan?”
Nan got up, embraced him and put her tear-dirty cheek against his. She laughed and said, “You’re very conventional.”
“There’s no substitute for legality,” said Gordon, rubbing his brow against hers.
“There’s no substitute for impulse,” Nan whispered.
“We’ll try and combine the two,” said Gordon. The pressure of her body started to excite him, so he stood apart from her and started making a bed on the sofa.
“If you’re willing, tomorrow I’ll get a licence.” He had just settled comfortably on the sofa when Nan came to the bedroom door and said, “Gordon, promise you won’t ask me about him.”
“About who?”
“You can’t have forgotten him.”
“The dog? Yes, I had forgotten the dog. All right, I won’t ask … You’re sure nothing serious has happened to Clare?”