“Max! Where have you got to
this time?”
Harry could only just hear
himself above the crash and rumble of the waves below and the breeze
buffeting and flattening the grass on the cliff top. It was chillier
than last time he had been here, but at least the rain the weatherman
had forecast had stayed away. Max was nowhere to be seen, as usual.
The trouble was, thought Harry,
Max always followed his nose. He seemed to remember every winding
path through the thrift and samphire above the little seaside town
where he had holidayed every summer of his life with Harry and
Maureen. Now he was eager to revisit them all again, haring back
every so often to sniff the air and lick Harry’s hand
apologetically before lolloping back to pick up all the private
messages other doggy friends had left for him over the two years he’d
been away.
When Max was a puppy, Maureen
used to bring tasty liver treats in the pockets of her mauve fleece
jacket to tempt him back from the exciting adventures he was enjoying
down in the gulleys and caves along the shoreline. He could always
find something more interesting to do than come running back to his
master’s voice.
“Harry, you old duffer, Max
knows you don’t mean it!” Maureen would say. “I bought you that
ultrasonic whistle but you always forget to pack it! Lucky I
remembered his favourite snacks. His tummy always wins in the end!”
Maureen was right. Max would
always come bounding back up even the steepest path when treats were
on offer, panting and smiling to get his reward. For that moment, he
forgot about the special smelly seaweed and whatever the gulls had
left on the rocks. Sometimes he brought some of that back on his nose
or his paws but Maureen always had a packet of those wet wipers to
clean him up again.
“We can’t go back to the
guest house with all that flotsam and jetsam on us, can we, Max?”
she’d say.
Harry chuckled as he remembered
how she had used the wipes to tackle a huge blob of rum and raisin
ice cream on the back of his own jacket. He’d blamed that on the
gulls, too, until Maureen poked him and said:
“Harry! It’s not the gulls.
You’ve only gone and sat on your cornet!”
They’d had a fit of the
giggles, then, just like they’d always done together since they
were teenagers. They shared the same sense of humour. That’s what
made Harry notice Maureen at the dance all those years ago; her
sparkly eyes and the way she got his jokes and made even funnier ones
of her own that made him howl with laughter.
Harry blinked, disappointed with
himself.
“Silly soft old sausage,”
Maureen would have said. It was no good keep dwelling on those last
precious few months over that awful winter and getting upset.
“You need a holiday, dad. It’s
no good moping about again in the house all summer. Anyway, you and
Max will have lots of lovely walks on the promenade and then there’s
the crazy golf and the café that looks out onto the seafront. I’ll
phone Mrs Archer for you, if you like.”
Kathy was right, just as grown up
daughters seem to have an annoying knack of being. She was a lot like
her Mum, too, practical and sensible where Harry often seemed in a
muddle and a dream.
“I’ll do it myself, love. Max
needs the exercise, the great hairy lump, now he’s an old dog.”
But when Harry booked himself into the pet-friendly guest house where
he and Maureen had always stayed, he was determined not to avoid
their familiar well-loved walks. Where was the fun staying on the
flat bits? That was for old codgers! Even when the doctor told him he
had diabetes just after he retired, Harry was determined everything
would be just the same. His own dad had “had sugar” as they used
to say back then, and Dad had carried on regardless till the day he
died.
“Mr. Collinson,” his new
young consultant had said more recently, “now your pancreas isn’t
working quite as it should, it’s important you get some gentle
exercise to help the insulin to do its work; just remember always to
carry something sugary with you in case your blood glucose drops too
low.”
Harry had been hopeless at timing
the injections at first, when they told him tablets were no longer
enough to control his diabetes. Sometimes he would go a bit wobbly
and sweaty and Maureen was always the first to notice.
“Do you need a sugar tablet,
Harry? I think you do; you’re getting a bit argumentative and
wibbly wobbly, you know.”
Sure enough, Maureen would fish
out the packet of special glucose tablets from her pocket or her posh
handbag if they were at a dinner dance or a café, and Harry would
soon feel better and raring to go again.
“You’d forget your head if it
wasn’t nailed on with glue,” she joked. “Lucky I remembered to
bring the spare packet with me.”
Harry heard Max’s barking
coming up from the path that descended steeply to the shingle strand
where the limestone caverns dotted the coast like a doggy paradise.
At least he hadn’t fallen in a rock pool, but what if he was stuck
on a ledge? Harry imagined the big yellow rescue helicopter whirring
overhead and the photos in the local rag showing a soppy old Golden
Retriever with a silly smile on its face getting winched to safety
with the locals and holidaymakers whooping and applauding.
Harry had always tried to keep
himself as fit as he could. A few years ago he could have shimmied
down there and been the hero himself.
“You’re always my hero, you
old softy,” he could hear Maureen saying.
Harry felt in his pocket. His
fingers closed on the neat embossed tin with ‘Best Dad in the
World’ on the lid. Kathy had bought it for him as a holiday present
to keep three whole packets of glucose in. It felt very light. Then
he remembered putting the packets on the bedside table ready to pack
into the tin in the morning. They must still be sitting there, along
with the wet wipes he was going to put in his pockets for the usual
little mishaps Maureen always dealt with so sensibly.
“Max! Come on up! Time to go
for walkies back to the cottage!”
Shouting made Harry realise his
voice was going a bit funny as though his cheek muscles and his
tongue were made of rubber and when he looked where the gulls were
wheeling over the sea, they were mixed up with little swirling spots
and squiggles like bits of burning paper blowing up from a bonfire.
He was starting to feel quite weak and shaky and although the wind
was cool and bracing on the cliff, he was getting so sticky hot he
felt he wanted to peel off his jacket and sit down on the ground.
As though he was a million miles
away, he could still hear Max barking above the sound of the waves
that seemed muffled, somehow, as though his ears were full of singing
cotton wool.
The familiar woofing started
getting nearer and nearer.
“Good boy, Max. I’ll be up in
a minute, I’m just having a little lie down,” Harry heard his own
voice saying, as if he was a stranger with detachable lips. He
couldn’t remember actually laying down, but his body had taken over
somehow, trying to conserve his energy for fight or flight. He had
never ever let his blood sugar get so low before, or rather Maureen
hadn’t. She always saw the signs long before anybody else even
noticed, including Harry himself, and brought out the sugary
lifesavers.
Then something warm and wet was
tickling his hand where it lay palm down on the prickly grass that
felt like little spiky tufts of that artificial stuff greengrocers
used on their stalls. His brain was whizzing round trying to make
sense but he felt so weak he could only think of giggly silly things
as if he was drunk. He hadn’t been drunk more than once in his life
when he was just a tiny bit tipsy at a neighbour’s wedding as a
very young man. After he met Maureen he never bothered with more than
a glass of shandy, so how did he know this felt like being drunk? He
remembered then the glossy leaflet the nurse at the Diabetes Centre
had shown him describing the symptoms of a ‘hypo’ attack when
your blood glucose is too low.
“Be careful as people can
sometimes mistake a hypo for being drunk,” the leaflet had spelled
out in large underlined capitals.
What if somebody found him like
this and called for the police? The tickling got even more slobbery
on the back of his hand and he could hear a woman’s voice, now,
close by, though his eyes wouldn’t seem to open to let him say
hello.
“Are you alright there?” The
owner of the voice was kneeling by Harry’s head. “Well, obviously
not. Are you diabetic, by any chance?”
Harry managed to nod, but he
wasn’t sure which way was up and down, so his head ended up
flopping around in a way he hadn’t quite planned, but he did manage
to tell the lady his name.
“Alright now, Harry, you’d
better have some of these jelly sweets,” the lady attached to the
voice was saying, very gently but matter-of-fact. “First we’d
better see if you can sit up and swallow properly or I’ll have to
call for an ambulance to get you off to A&E. Thank goodness I
have this terribly sweet tooth and I carry a big bag of jellies with
me whenever I go for a walk. I’ve just been exploring those caves.
I felt rather like a smuggler! My grandson calls me Dora the
Explorer. Cheeky monkey.”
The voice went on saying
soothing, funny things that kept Harry chuckling and concentrating.
She helped him sit up and as soon as she was sure he could manage
them without choking, she fed Harry some of her jellies. At first his
mouth was so numb he couldn’t taste anything but soon the different
fruit flavours came through. Gradually, he began to feel much better
and they sat at the side of the footpath, with Max trying to sit
between them, begging for a sweet of his own by putting his paw on
Dora’s wrist.
“Quite an intelligent dog,
aren’t you, Mr Max?” said Dora as the three of them made their
way back along the cliff top path.
“If he was clever he wouldn’t
keep going AWOL and leaving his lord and master stranded miles from
nowhere,” joked Harry, “but he’s sharp enough to know which
side his bread’s buttered when he wants something.”
They both laughed as Max nuzzled
his nose into Dora’s pocket.
“He knows which side pocket the
sweets are in, you mean,” she chortled. Harry found himself rather
taken by Dora’s laugh.
“How did you know I was a
diabetic?” Harry was suddenly curious. Dora smiled.
“I’m a retired nurse.
Endocrinology was my specialism so I’ve worked in a lot of diabetic
clinics in my time. I used to come to the little fishing village in
the next cove every year with my husband Stan. When he passed away I
decided I just couldn’t face the same old same old. I started
coming here when I needed a break. I love walking the cliff and
exploring the caves. Usually I have the place to myself but today Max
kept running up and barking at me. I realised he must have somebody
waiting with a lead somewhere so in the end, when he wouldn’t be
shooed away, I thought I’d better climb back up here in case he got
lost or stranded when the tide came in. Dog’s know, you know.”
“Max knows when he’s onto a
good thing, that’s for certain,” Harry smiled as Max managed to
tweak a jelly out of Dora’s pocket when she wasn’t looking.
“I mean some dogs know when
their owner’s in trouble; sort of a sixth doggy sense. You can
train some dogs to alert people when they start going hypo, or get
help if they are prone to seizures.”
Harry grinned and patted Max’s
head.
“Can’t teach an old dog new
tricks, eh, Maxy?”
But he wasn’t so sure about
that any more.
A few summers later, after
endless emails and long phone calls and meetings in country pubs with
Max in tow, Harry and Dora were walking on the cliffs again. They
stood for a moment, close to each other, in the special place where
Harry had had his little lie down, as they always called it, just
listening to the seabirds squealing and crying as they rode the air
currents over the ocean.
A dog was barking somewhere on
the beach. They could hear its owner calling it and whistling for all
he was worth. Dora squeezed Harry’s hand tenderly the way she did
when words weren’t quite enough. They thought of Max, always
running on ahead, nose quivering towards hidden horizons, but always
coming back when Dora rattled the liver treats that she kept in her
pocket next to Harry’s special sweets.
