The Dog Who Saved the World. Ross Welford

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      It was morning, about nine, and there was a cool, early mist hanging over the beach. There was me, Ramzy, Mr Mash, plus two of the other dogs from St Woof’s.

      I had let Mr Mash off his lead, and he’d run down the steps and across the sand to the shore, where he likes to try to eat the white tops of the little waves. Ramzy was holding on to ugly Dudley who can’t be let off the lead because he has zero recall, which is when you call to a dog and he doesn’t come. Dudley once ran as far as the lighthouse, and would probably have run further if the tide hadn’t been in.

      So there was Mr Mash down by the shoreline, Dudley straining on his leash, and Sally-Ann, the Lhasa apso, sniffing the stone steps very reluctantly. Sally-Ann’s a ‘paying guest’ at St Woof’s and I genuinely think she’s snobby towards the other dogs there, like a duchess having to stay at a cheap hotel.

      At the bottom of the steps was a tall old lady cramming a load of white hair, bit by bit, into a yellow rubber swimming cap. I nudged Ramzy. ‘It’s her,’ I whispered. ‘From the Spanish City.’ At that stage, we didn’t know her name, and hadn’t even met her, although we had both seen her before.

      We hung back at the top of the steps. The old lady snapped on a pair of swimming goggles, shrugged off a long beach robe and started walking across the sand towards the sea. The tide was in, so it was a short walk, but long enough for us to stare in wonder.

      Her one-piece bathing suit matched the vivid yellow of her cap and made her long legs and arms – a rich dark brown – seem even darker. She had almost no flesh where her bottom should be: just a slight swelling below the scooped back of the swimsuit. She moved confidently but slowly and didn’t stop when she got to the water, just carried on walking until the sea was at waist level, then she bent forward and started a steady swim out towards a buoy about fifty metres away.

      What happened about fifteen minutes later was Mr Mash’s fault. By now, Ramzy and I were on the beach. We’d seen the old lady come out of the water and walk back up the sand to where her stuff was. She was a bit scary-looking, and I didn’t want to have to pass her as we went back up the steps, so we stayed by the shoreline.

      I have no idea what Mr Mash could have found even slightly edible about a yellow swimming cap, but suddenly he was running up the beach to where the old lady had dropped it, and he had it in his jaws.

      ‘Hey! You! Get off that!’ she yelled, and then I was running too.

      ‘Mr Mash! Off! Off! Leave it!’ I yelled.

      ‘Give it to me!’ shouted the old lady, and that was it. Mr Mash leapt up at her with the swimming cap in his mouth, and over she went on to the sand, banging her wrist on the steps as she fell. I heard something scrape and the old lady exclaimed in pain.

      ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry! He’s just being friendly!’ I cried, and the lady sat upright, sand sticking to her wet skin where she’d fallen. She rubbed her wrist while, behind her, the daft mongrel slowly chewed her bathing cap.

      On her wrist was a big watch, one of those ones with pointers and numbers, and she was looking at it. Then she held it up to show me a wide scratch on the glass front.

      ‘Your dog did that,’ she said. ‘And what the heck is he doing to my swim cap?’

      ‘I’m really sorry.’ It was pretty much all I could think of saying. I just wanted to run away.

      Ramzy, meanwhile, was wringing his hands and shuffling in the sand like he needed to go to the loo, his mouth pulled tight into a line of fear. His skinny legs were trembling and making his enormous school shorts shake. Dudley was yapping with excitement on the end of his lead, while Sally-Ann sat nearby, facing the other way as if she was trying to ignore the commotion.

      The woman looked at me carefully as she got to her feet and pulled on the long woollen beach robe that reached to her ankles. ‘You’re lucky my watch isn’t broken,’ she said to me, in her strange, low-pitched American accent. Then she added, ‘You’re the two I saw a few weeks ago, aren’t you?’

      I nodded. ‘I … I’m sorry about your wrist. Is it OK?’

      ‘No, of course it’s not OK. It hurts like heck and there’s a great big scratch on the crystal of my watch.’

      ‘I’m very sorry.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you said. I get it. You’re sorry. Jeez, is that dog gonna eat the whole darn thing? It sure looks like it.’ Her huge white Afro bobbed as she talked. She stretched her sinewy neck to peer at me and I think I squeaked in surprise when I saw her unusual pale blue eyes: I don’t think I’d ever seen a black person with eyes like that СКАЧАТЬ