Bill was a retired, lifelong bachelor. He lived alone in a small terraced house two doors down from us. I visited his home on several occasions, and it seemed largely unchanged since the 1950s. Some items appeared untouched since the 1930s, apart from the occasional silverfish or woodlouse.
In his small converted kitchen, which housed a huge, solid armchair with newspapers protruding from beneath its cushion, hung a picture of a dog among one or two other small photos. Upon closer inspection, these were:
- A grey-toned snapshot of seventeen-year-old Bill in a flat cap, sitting on grey grass with a winsome girl wearing her hair in bangs and a cloche hat.
- A sepia photo of a young boy in Edwardian dress, his head tilted back slightly despite a stiff collar, with a too-small school cap perched on his head. Bill claimed it was him, but it looked like a different person altogether.
- Almost lost among the clutter of pipe cleaners, matches, spills, bits of wire, tea coupons, and old Yale keys was a very small, dark photo of a black mongrel dog lying in a backyard. A white stripe down its nose and between its ears was one of the few details making it distinguishable from the surrounding gloom.
"This was Bram," Bill told me, "my dog. Or my brother Frank's dog, if we're being precise about ownership."
Over the years, my family had four dogs. We had no photographs of the first two. Yogi was gone before I could remember him. Rex came next—my only memory is drawing on him with a biro when I ran out of paper, which he seemed to love. Rusty ran away and was never seen again, and Benny... well, he deserves his own story.