Nightmare on Hyde Park
Petronella Wyatt
Inearly killed the dog the other day. It was early in the morning and we had been walking in Hyde Park. The mist had yet to ascend and it covered the park like silver foil. Things had come to a pretty pass. I wasn't even sure where the pass was — the underpass from the park to the Lanesborough hotel, that is.
Or where the dog was, come to that. The dog has one of those leads that spools out like a ball of wool a la Theseus and the Minotaur. This is so it can run around and then, by releasing a switch, be brought to a juddering stop like a dog in a cartoon. Eventually I jerked it back to the hotel lobby. The sweet smell of baked bread hung in the air. I hurried the dog towards the lift. I got in and pressed the button for the second floor.
It was only when I had reached the second floor that I realised that the dog wasn't in the lift. Terror and incredulity vied for possession of my soul. If the dog wasn't in the lift, where was it? I looked up at the ceiling hoping to see it there. Perhaps it had crawled up the wall using hidden suction pads? I looked downwards. I was still holding the handle of the lead in my right fist. The elasticated thread was quite taut and had disappeared under the lift door. There was only one possible explanation. The dog had never gotten into the lift in the first place.
I realised then what must have happened. I had slammed shut the lift doors, with the dog on the outside. Instead of the lead snapping, the wretched thing had held. The dog had been dragged up the outside of the lift door where it had strangled itself to death. I could visualise its small white figure, its choking for breath, its paws waving pathetically in the air. Then nothing. Niente.
I was a murderer. Not only that, I was the murderer of someone else's property. Half of the dog belonged to my mother. Perhaps that half was now severed from the other, like the bodies of people you read about with names like Bourbon WindischGraetz who ram into trees while skiing. I recalled my mother saying to me, a short time back, that she loved the dog more than anyone in the world — here she looked at me in a disagreeable manner — and would kill anyone that harmed a hair on its head.
• That resolve was now about to be tested. In the meantime I thought that, for decency's sake, I had better retrieve the dog's body. My fingers wavered over the lobby button. As I vacillated, someone stepped into the lift. It was my mother. She looked at me crossly. 'What are you doing with Mimi's lead?' she asked. Time for some masterly prevarication. I was taking Mimi for a walk.I can see that. But where is she? Why isn't she in the lift?'
As the lift began its inevitable descent to the lobby, I had no answer. The lead in my hand grew slack. The doors slid open. My eyes were as tight shut as a miser's fist. Then something barked. It was obviously the dog's ghost. I opened my eyes. The ghost wagged its tail and licked me. Its tongue was wet. Surely ghosts didn't have saliva. There was only one possible explanation: the dog was alive. The lead must have extended a full 15 feet and then snapped off at the collar. My mother glared at me in rebuke: 'How could you have left the dog behind in the lobby? Somebody might have kicked it.'
I spent the rest of the morning in the bathroom. My nerves felt as raw as meat in a butcher's shop. There seemed no surcease to my nightmare. Encouraged by all the attention it had attracted, the dog climbed into the bidet. Would the hotel smile on this? I doubted it. This was not just your common or garden bidet, but a bidet among bidets, fashioned from the finest porcelain. Sans dog, the bidet is the most underrated of inventions. The British seldom know what to do with it, except to wash their feet. The thing appeared in France, apparently, sometime in the 17th century. I imagined it was invented by a Monsieur le Comte de Bidet anxious to take fastidiousness to the highest pinnacle. So I looked it up. How unromantic the truth is. Apparently it comes from the word bider, meaning to trot. Fathomless, as it were. What a pity it can't be reinvented by our own Alain de Bottom.
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