THE TELEPHONE BELL

Chowchow in the twenty-first century

The telephone rang.

Two things happened at once. Mrs Hampton went to answer it. It might have been her brother in law’s house but wherever she was she liked to be the one to answer the phone. And at the same time Chowchow almost jumped out of his skin.

The sound of a phone ringing was so far away from his experience of the world and its ways that he suddenly felt his whole world had gone madder than it had seemed moments ago. First there were no trees, none of the familiar things of his ancient forest world, nio comforting smell of the undergrowth and decomposition then there was this ringing sound. It was unnatural, reminded him of nothing, and it was loud.

What kind of creature made a sound like that? Was it dangerous? Was it like many of the beasts of his forest, a constant and ever-present threat to him? Might it want to eat him, end his days as a dietary treat for a hitherto unsuspected creature of the wilds in much the same way as hogs and bears do? And what was more important, how could he get away from it?

He saw the French windows that led to the world outside. It wasn’t his world, it was all wrong, but there was a lot of green in it, and he knew about green.

The woman, the creature like Sally (in his head he called her by her name even though his throat wasn’t quite up to pronouncing its syllables properly) was going to touch whatever creature was filling the room with an unnatural and insistent ringing noise, the sort he knew would drive him mad if he heard it for one moment more.

And there was the world outside.

He didn’t know it was outside because he didn’t know that he was inside and with the exception of his nests back home as ports in a storm and the rudimentary shelter they offered him at night he had never been inside in his life. Where he was now scared him almost as much as the bell, and he took the only option open to him. He must escape, even if it was to go to the green place he could see quite plainly when he looked at it. And he was determined to do that right now

He had no experience of glass, of course, not any concept of double glazing. So when he threw himself towards the green lands he threw himself into the glass French Window leading to the world outside, and collapsed from it with a mighty crash as it stopped him dead still.

Four and a half million years of evolution would be needed before he could adapt to the existence of French window, but he didn’t know that. He had no idea what evolution was. He barely understood simpler things, like days and nights and the slight variations between the seasons.

He reached out for the green stuff growing in ordered profusion only feet away from where he lay, barely conscious, and his fingers brushed against and tried to clutch something that wasn’t there when he reached towards it. He heard the Sally creature’s voice, and the abominable bell stopped ringing as the larger female picked up something and barked into it.

He was lost in a totally alien environment, and he was left with only one option.

He curled himself up, making as small a target of himself as he could, and irrationally, he howled.

“Shut the bloody thing up!” demanded Uncle Colin, showing anyone who was at all interested that empathy had yet to find its way into his psyche.

“I can’t hear myself think!” shouted Mrs Hampton as she tried to make some kind of sense of whateveer was being said on the phone.

Chowchow kept on howling, his voice more used to open forests than enclosed twenty-first century rooms sounding loud even to him.

Sally went up to where he lay, bruised and still barely conscious, and put on arm round him.

“It’s all right, Chowchow,” she said quietly, and she gently stroked his fur. He looked up at her through his big brown frightened eyes and seemed to gather some reassurance from her. This strange female might help him. His howling stopped and he whimpered instead.

“What do you mean, it’s been in front of your gate for a fortnight?” demanded Sally’s mother of the thing she was holding to her mouth. “We only arrived this morning and I was at with the sixth form until then! What do you mean, the police have been involved? What’s it got to do with the police if I park my car in front of my brother-in-law’s house?”

Then Mrs Hampton slammed the phone down and glared at Uncle Colin. “That woman next door says we’ve been here for two weeks!” she complained. “She says they haven’t been able to reverse out of their drive because I was parked in front of it, she claims, silly woman, that I’ve been there for a fortnight! I tried explained that I only came here this morning...”

“Maybe they’re right,” murmured Colin.

“How can they be?” demanded Mrs Hampton, “I distinctly remember dropping Sally off here on my way to school, and I came back at lunch time to make sure she was all right only yo find you had no idea where she was… That was only a couple of hours ago. I parked in front of their drive because some idiot had your space, and I knew I‘d only be a few minutes and it wouldn't matter.”

“Time’s a funny thing,” said Uncle Colin mildly.

“It’s what?” demanded his sister-in-law., “what do you mean by saying it’s a funny thing?.

“Well, murmured Uncle Colin slowly, “you must remember we took a trip back to that monkey’s time, when he represented, I should thing, the most advanced life-form on the planet. Then we came back, but not exactly back, if you see what I mean. Time slithers and dithers and gets mixed up and whilst it does that we sort of lost a week or two. Pretty good bearing in mind we were the best part of four and a half millions years in the past not half an hour ago!”

“Oh Sodom and Gomorrah,” groaned the woman, staring helplessly at Uncle Colin and wishing, for not the first time in her life, that she’d never met him. Or his brother, now resident in the churchyard.

© Peter Rogerson, 17.11.19