There was an ironic fragment of truth in what the lady said.
The dog only accepted Bill as a temporary companion, unable to comprehend that Bill's brother was never coming home. It continued waiting—for the familiar footfall, for the imminent return of a voice it knew and devotedly listened for. The dog regarded the present as a state of waiting. Its life was in suspension, a kind of 'this will have to be got through until everything returns to the way it really should be.' Its pointless patience was matched only by its growing detachment.
I sat with Bill for a couple of hours, and I ran out of tape. It was among the last times I visited him in his house, having left home myself—returning to Stoke only at holidays.
I accepted Bill's offer of a cup of tea before leaving. Snow lay on the ground outside, and temperatures had plunged. He showed me into the kitchen-cum-living area at the rear of his house, where I looked again at the collected fragments of his life.
The old radio with its bakelite casing and valves on a high shelf, the unsliced loaf on the table, the open fire with a butter dish nearby, and the photographs on the mantel.
Bill as a youngster,
Bill as a boy,
Bill's dog,
Bill's dog, lying in a dark yard more than half a century ago. Lying near a door. A narrow little yard.
"Typical of him, that was," Bill remarked when he saw me looking at the picture again.
"Old Bram, he lay out there every day, come whatever the weather, you know! He couldn't let go. Waited for Frank to come back. Waited until the day he died himself, that dog. He'd only move when I went and opened the back door, then he'd stroll in, and wait until he could go out and wait again."
Bill stood alongside me, picked up the little frame, and looked down his nose at it.
"Do us a favour and pass us me glasses," Bill asked. "It'd take me half the day to get over there to get them. My bloody feet are no good to me these days, particularly in this weather."