Narrow Dog to Carcassonne Read Free

mess about. A great deal was going to depend on the engineers of Bordeaux.
    We locked and drifted to Loughborough, without impatience, periscoped by grebes, and crowds of Queen Anne’s lace waved from the banks.
             
    WHEN A BOAT ARRIVES MOST TOWNS SAY OH my God, you’re here already, I’ll just get a few things out of the children’s room. Others throw a stone or a curse, and some redecorate and wait for you in the parlour. Loughborough shows you to the garden shed, throws in a bun and locks the door.
    Jim and I picked our way through a brickyard and on to the main road. The first pub turned us away without apology, and at the second there was no room for us in the inn. At the third I paused at the door and pointed down at Jim. A couple of people at the bar nodded furiously so we went in.
    What is it? asked one of the nodders. A whippet, I said. The nodder was a small man, illustrated with tattoos and covered in white powder. I’m Ken, he said, and this is Mario—I’m a plasterer. What’s his name? Jim, I said. Gin? asked Ken. No, Jim, I said. My mother had a dog called Gin, said Ken, it’s a small world—why do you call him Gin? My wife likes a drop of Gordon’s, I said, giving up. I was a mercenary in Africa, said Ken, I saw terrible things.
    Mario broke in. Why your dogga so thin? It’s a whippet, I said, it’s the breed. They don’t like food except pork scratchings—they live on them in the wild. I am waiter, said Mario. You not believe the food goes out the back. I will give you some every day for your dog and then he will not be such a small thinna dog. Jim looked up at him with starved and grateful eyes. I am sixty-five, said Mario. I was in the war in Italy. I saw terrible things. Can I have bagga scratchings? he called over the bar.
    Clive rang when you were out, said Monica—he wanted to tell us about their new boat. He’s having portholes. Portholes? I said—portholes? For cheap good looks he gives away the world. Each of our windows can hold a full cloud. Is it for this that the canal hero Robert Aickman cruised the dying waterways comforted only by his beautiful secretary Elizabeth Jane Howard? Was it so generations to come could sail the silver highway in blind portholed poncing boats, full of washing machines and televisions, never to see the sunset canal incarnadine, and the fish rising like rain?
    Clive says portholes are a good thing, said Monica, they are more secure. Let them steal all I have, I said. I wish them well—I shall not care if I can see the sky. That isn’t what he meant, said Monica. He said that when we are going across the Channel a wave would smash our big windows like an egg, and what are we going to do about it?
             
    I’VE FOUND THE WHIPPET CLUB BREED STANDARD, said Monica.
Balanced combination of muscular power and strength, with elegance and grace of outline
. Goodness, Jim, who’s a pretty boy?
    All forms of exaggeration should be avoided
. I never knew a living thing that exaggerated more, I said. He is a screamer. He can’t say hello without going for the Oscar. If he wants something he pretends he has broken his wrist.
    Highly adaptable
, said Monica. Not on boats he isn’t, I said.
    Free gait, hind legs coming well under body for propulsion. Forelegs thrown well forward low over the ground, true coming and going
. True at going, I said—he is no good at coming back.
    Jim was by the door. It was time to go to the pub and he had broken his wrist.
             
    LEICESTER IS FAMOUS FOR ITS VANDALS, SO IT’S a case of dive at dawn and keep going until you drop dead or get to Kilby Bridge. But Monica and I have been less worried about vandals since we visited the mouth of hell.
    The mouth of hell is in Manchester, where hardly flows the filthy Rochdale through a waste of concrete. The address of the mouth is 111 Piccadilly—Rodwell Tower, which gropes the clouds and broods over its terrible secret. Under it the fire, the