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Sally: Shortbread's Light Bite

Published 9 months ago

Another archive raid for today's Light Bite led me to the rather sad tale of Sally, a beautifully written story from Jacqueline Pemberton.

Sally by Jacqueline Pemberton

The next door neighbours kept their dog in a cage made of corrugated metal sheets and chicken wire. I could see it from my bedroom window, from the kitchen, from our garden. I can't remember when the cage was first constructed or a time when the dog was not captive, running its endless circuit, but the image of that dismal prison is a permanent fixture in my memory.

As the years went by the cage grew darker and the dog, dingier. Its once wavy auburn hair became matted in dried excrement which hung in clumps to the floor. Its eyes, obscured by lank, greasy locks, would occasionally peek through, wild with hurt. Elastic strings of saliva drooled from its red gash of a mouth. She was of an indiscriminate breed; a cross somewhere between Alsatian and mongrel.

Once every few days a bowl of scraps was thrown into the cage. The starving dog would demolish the food in seconds; and continue to polish the bowl in its desperation for more. Once every few months, the cage would be ‘cleaned’; this involved a long handled shovel scraping out the dried dog turds through a trap door at the side.

Brian was the owner of the dog; a small, wiry, pepper-skinned man who once had a job cleaning buses for a week but ever since had been on ‘the sick’. He continued to wear his busman’s badge, as a status symbol, on the lapel of his worn suit jacket long after he had finished with work. Most days he would sit for hours on his kitchen doorstep smoking roll ups, supervising his two young kids, Tracey and Dean as they squabbled and screeched at each other, occasionally interjecting with a swift clip round the ear and a promise to thrash them with his belt when he got them inside. This would usually send one or both of them whining to their mum; she lived in the front room, eating chocolate, reading Mills and Boon, and trying to avoid her husband’s vicious temper. The walls to our 50’s built council house were fairly thin and my family and I were an unwilling party to most of their marital disputes; we knew when the tea was not ready on time or when the custard was too lumpy, the gravy too runny. In all the years they were our neighbours I do not believe Mrs Green ever managed to satisfy the high culinary standards her husband expected. I think all of us, including her, became immune to the catalogue of insulting names he used to hurl. On the very rare occasion she dared to answer back she received a black eye to accompany the cudgel of verbal insults. Both of them must have only been in their late twenties and yet to my adolescent eye, they always seemed middle aged. We lived next door to them for 15 years and the sum total of our discourse would have probably fitted an A4 sheet of paper. This was Suffolk in the 60’s and neighbours rarely spoke directly to one another and even then it would be no more than a grunted ‘mornin’, alright?’

Brian fancied himself as Karate King of Chantry Estate and for a short while attended the martial arts classes at the local community centre. My mum, who used to clean for the centre, saw him once and they both ignored each other. She heard that he was asked to leave because he had not paid his subscriptions although she always thought there were other, more dubious reasons for his departure.

In the compartmentalised world of Brian’s back garden he had built a wooden shed next door to the dog’s cage. He always kept this shed padlocked and was seen sometimes carrying in heavy slabs of wood. He would lock himself in every morning for a thirty minute ‘session’; quite what he did in that time no one was ever sure, although he came out looking red faced and mottled skin; as far from a Jackie Chan look-a-like as can possibly be imagined. There was spite in his eyes, shiftiness in his demeanour; we were always on our guard with him, never quite sure what he was capable of.

Of course there were complaints about the dog’s imprisonment; especially in the early days. Not from my parents, who while they moaned about the stench and the sickening cruelty of it all, were too afraid of Brian’s ‘love-hate’ tattoos to voice their objections and risk any possible repercussions. A braver neighbour dared to report him to the RSPCA. Brian politely explained to the visiting officer that the dog was a much treasured guard dog (something apparently we should be grateful for as it was protecting our property as well as his) and yes, of course, he would ensure that it had regular exercise.

However, nothing changed; I think it may have even got worse, as after the visit Sally seemed to be fed less and was left to tread on her own faeces for weeks on end.I don’t know where the name Sally came from. It seemed an incongruous christening for such a sorry creature. Years later when I made friends at university with a pretty blond girl called Sally; it was at first difficult to address her, without recalling that flea ridden, canine prisoner.

In the early days Sally would bark at every object which moved past her limited range of vision, dashing from one corner of the cage and back again. If the barking persisted for too long Brian would open the kitchen door ‘Sally! Shut yer bloody row up or I’ll give yer sumthin to bark for.’

Eventually the exhausted dog would crumple to the floor of the cage.

Over the years the raucous bark wore itself down to a wounded whelp which scared no one and wasn’t even worth a reprimand from Brian.Sometimes she was so still, just a tangle of matted fur; I thought she must have died. In summer the bog-pudding-stench made us want to heave every time we walked into our garden, and increasingly I played out the front with my friend, Julie.

I was amazed at how many years the dog continued to survive. In winter, icicles hung from the corners of her cage like a Christmas card while Sally shivered in her unloved, unseen corner.

At the end of our row of council houses there was a small plot of land with allotments. Mr. Williams from three doors away, became ill one summer and was unable to tend his allotment. His nephew, David, came to help him and he began to walk down the lane past the bottom of our garden. I was almost fourteen and had just started to dream about boys, although with my greasy hair and irrational blushes I do not believe any boys dreamt of me. David was about twenty and I knew the moment he smiled at me I was in love with him.

The first time he saw the dog’s cage I was amazed at his daring. He shouted across at Brian who was just emerging from his Kung Fu shed, ‘Oi! What do yer think yer playing at, keeping a poor dog caged up like that?’ Brian pretended he hadn’t heard and carried on walking towards the house albeit at a slightly faster pace, and with an even redder face than usual.

‘You should be locked up yerself, see how you like it; yer a disgrace.’

‘Fuck off,’ Brian retorted as he quickly slammed the back door behind him.

Mr. Williams was a gentle Suffolk soul who hated any ‘trouble’ and I imagine it was for his sake David did not openly confront Brian again. Instead he acted in secret to ease the poor animal’s suffering. He began to visit Sally at night when nobody expected him, bringing her food, water and affection. I was a very light sleeper and I used to leave my curtains open so that I could see the night sky. I would look forward to these night visitations.

The slim figure dressed all in black reminded me of the Cadbury’s ‘And all because the lady loves milk tray…’ advert. Ridiculous as it now seems I did feel a tinge of jealousy; I wished that he was visiting me and not a dog.

We had hardly ever spoken, sometimes he would exchange brief pleasantries with my dad over the garden fence about the weather and the Town’s football performance, I would blush deeply in the background, both wanting yet dreading him noticing me. From the beginning, Sally trusted him and she would wag her straggly tail as soon as she caught his scent. He did not seem to mind the stench from the cage and I could hear the murmur of his tender words and imagine the touch of his gentle pats. He would kneel at the entrance to her cage, giving Sally the kindness and attention she’d been deprived of all her life. When he left he always promised he would come to visit her next week and bring her some more ‘vitals’. The visits went on for over a month and Sally’s coat seemed to regain some of its gloss; even her circuits of the cage seemed less manic.

I’m not sure when Brian realised he had an intruder whom his prized guard dog licked rather than bit.

But one night he was waiting for him.

It was the usual Wednesday visit; I was camouflaged behind my net curtains and Sally’s tail was wagging in the moonlight. David climbed over the fence whilst balancing a bowl of chunky moist dog food under one arm. He also carried a scoop and bag to clean the cage as best he could.

‘Hello my lovely, here’s something to put the meat back on those bones’.

‘Leave my fuckin dog alone yer bastard!’

I had never seen Brian move so fast, like the ‘jumping jack’ fireworks I had been terrified of when I was a little girl, he shot out from his garden shed to where David was kneeling down opening the door of the dog’s cage. In his hands he carried a wooden bat. Just as David turned round there was a dreadful crack as he hit him on the side of the head. A low moan escaped from his lips as he fell forward into the opening of the cage.

Why didn’t I do something? I am ashamed of the silly schoolgirl cowering behind her curtains. I could have banged on the window, shouted, or at least gone to my parents and they could have halted the horrific sequence of events which followed.

Brian stood above David waiting for him to regain consciousness, posed to bludgeon him again.

Then Sally snapped. She saw her sole benefactor, the only person who had ever shown her kindness and filled her hungry belly with food, lying sprawled out before her, blood oozing from the vicious cut on his head.

She went straight for Brian’s throat as if finally that shrewish visage was so abhorrent to her she had to rip it off. She was out of the cage and dragging her master with her like a rag doll. In her stretched open jaws she seemed to hold most of his head with just a matted fringe of mousey hair protruding.

It reminded me of a nature documentary where you see smallish creatures swallow prey double their size by gradually expanding their throats. I imagined Brian’s wiry body being gulped down piece by piece into Sally’s body; first the neck and shoulders, then the pigeon chest with its dirty string vest and nylon shirt, then the grey-vein legs with their bony knees. Eventually one pathetic stocking foot with a hole in the big toe would be dangling, like a napkin, from Sally’s engorged lips; all that was left of pathetic Brian. One big belch and he would be gone, just a dribble.

When Sally had finished gnawing at Brian’s head it was a swirl of purple and red like the palette of a frantic artist. I could not distinguish his features apart from a fish mouth sucking air. Like Forest Gump Sally ran and she didn’t stop running. No matter that she left a scene of blood and carnage; this was her chance for freedom. She took the fat juicy bone of liberty between her teeth and flew with it, streaking down the lane, moonlight glimmering on her glossy mane as if she had just stepped out of a Winalot advert rather than 5 years of captivity.

Ironically, it was the neighbour who had previously reported Brian to the RSPCA who, on hearing the commotion, came across and called the emergency services. Brian’s wife had been in bed reading ‘Moonlight Enchantment for Marianne’ and been totally unaware of what was happening in her own back yard.

Thankfully, David and Brian’s state wasn’t quite as bad as my horror scene depicts. After a few weeks in hospital and some excellent suturing to sew his loose ear, torn nostril, and split lips back into position, Brian was almost as good as new, although every time he started to speak his tongue would loll over his cleft lip and he would dribble a lot

David thankfully had a hard head and only suffered from mild concussion; he was sent home from hospital the next day. I never saw either David or Sally again. Soon after the confrontation Mr. Williams sold his allotment to a fellow gardener who was keen to extend his green empire. David never walked past the bottom of our lane again.

There were contradictory rumours about what happened to Sally. Some said that after so many years of captivity she could not cope with freedom. After her escape, she spent all night and the next day running havoc through the estate, until later that evening she was hit and killed by a bus.

Another, happier story is that somehow, Sally found her way to David’s allotment and waited there until he came for her. The two of them escaped to a better place where there were no cages, no Brian’s and they lived together, almost happily ever after.

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