Mucky Pups

Stew­pot head-butted the door­bell. He did it in slow mo­tion. He hair-butted it re­al­ly. There was no sound. Mis­judg­ing the dis­tance, he ended up bent over at a right-an­gle, star­ing at the fag-butt floor. It took him a few sec­onds to cot­ton on.

“Coins,” he said, scan­ning the ground.

In the mean­time, Mitch bumped him from be­hind and his head rammed into the but­ton. The cush­ion­ing of his curls de­layed the door­bell, but didn’t stop it let­ting rip a bes­tial buzz, like a bee crossed with a cow. Mitch grabbed Stew­pot round the waist and man­aged to pull him back an inch, let­ting the si­lence bloom for a few sec­onds be­fore ram­ming Stew­pot’s head back into the but­ton.

BUZZZZZZ!

They re­peat­ed the process a dozen times or more, with Stew­pot’s drunk­en moans and Mitch’s grunts of ef­fort comb­ing with the buzzer to make an abom­inable tape loop.

“UGGH!”

“BWEEEooOOOoooURGH!”

BUZZZZZZ!

“UGGH!”

“BWEEEooOOOoooURGH!”

BUZZZZZZ!

“I haven’t got the key,” said Stew­pot.

“Stop twat­ting about, of course you’ve got it.”

“I haven’t, you know. Search me.” He pulled his pock­ets in­side out. A manky tis­sue tum­bled to the floor, a chug­gie wrap­per clung per­ilous­ly to one pock­et, its gum come home, al­beit flavour­less and de­formed. He grinned as more coins pirou­et­ted to a halt, half-heart­ed­ly glint­ing in the street­light. Mitch knew what that grin meant.

“No,” Mitch said.

“Do you want to see an ele­phant?” asked Stew­pot, un­de­terred.

“No, you’ve al­ready done that twice tonight.”

“But we can’t get kicked out if we’re al­ready out, can we? Be­sides, we didn’t get kicked out. We got a warn­ing.”

“We would’ve got kicked out if that bloke hadn’t stuck up for us,” said Mitch.

“Who, Finnegan Wake­man?” said Stew­pot.

Mitch laughed.

“Finnegan fuck­ing Wake­man!” said Stew­pot. “Key­board wiz­ard! What was he talk­ing to you about? He had you cor­nered for ages!”

“He was all right, you’re just jaun­diced. He was talk­ing about books and how much he likes James Joyce. He goes on all that Blooms­day bol­locks. He said that when they’d first start­ed putting their Yes trib­ute group to­geth­er and were look­ing for a name, he’d sug­gest­ed Yes I Said Yes I Said Yes as a trib­ute to Molly Bloom, but the oth­ers thought he was men­tal. He says they only let him stay in the group be­cause he’s a key­board wiz­ard and he could do all that prog-rock stuff no prob­lem. They all had bor­ing ideas for names like Topo­graph­ic Oceans and, check this, Toma­to! Fuck­ing Toma­to! In the end they’d set­tled on Re­sound­ing Yes. He reck­ons they’ve got a re­al­ly good fol­low­ing, a kind of left­over prog-rock barmy army. All those long haired blokes fol­low them around, they even go through when they play in Ed­in­burgh. He says it re­minds him of when Mar­il­lion start­ed.”

“Fuck­ing hell. What a fuck­ing birth­day, watch­ing a fuck­ing Yes trib­ute group in a cloud of patchouli oil and dope smoke. Those women looked like witch­es, es­pe­cial­ly that one you were danc­ing with. She looked like she was made out of whole­meal spaghet­ti. What were you talk­ing to her for?”

“I was telling her about Mungo. She says she used to have the same thing he’s got, she was being all un­der­stand­ing and that. She says Mungo’ll get bet­ter. She says she’s a good ex­am­ple, that she could hard­ly move a year ago and now she was out danc­ing, that she fol­lows Re­sound­ing Yes all round Glas­gow, all these pubs. She says I should tell Mungo, that it’ll cheer him up, give him a bit of en­cour­age­ment. I think it’d give him a re­lapse, to be hon­est.”

“Tell him she was re­al­ly beau­ti­ful and dead into the Stone Roses.”

“Hmm. Put your pock­ets back in. It’s not your birth­day any­more,” said Mitch, shov­ing his watch under Stew­pot’s nose. Stew­pot tried to focus on it.

“It’s get­ting on a bit,” he said alarmed. “If we’re going to see Mungo to­mor­row we’ll have to get up early so we can catch a train at a rea­son­able hour.” He seemed very pleased with him­self for hav­ing such a sen­si­ble thought de­spite the ef­fects of all the al­co­hol he’d poured down his gul­let in the name of cel­e­bra­tion.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We’ve got to get in first, oth­er­wise we won’t be able to get up at all be­cause we won’t have been to bed.” One sen­si­ble state­ment de­serves an­oth­er. “Ring the bell.”

“No,” said Stew­pot with states­man-like fi­nal­i­ty.

“Why not?”

“Neigh­bours. They hate me al­ready. Bet­ter not wake them up.”

“But we’ve al­ready been ring­ing the bell.”

“When?”

“Be­fore.”

“When you were shaft­ing me from be­hind?”

“Yes.”

“I won­dered what that noise was...” said Stew­pot, scratch­ing the top of his head.

“Pick your money up,” said Mitch and ap­plied but­tock pres­sure to the buzzer. It was prob­a­bly going to be a long wait; best to be com­fort­able.

Fif­teen min­utes of non-stop buzzing and one numb bum later, a pink dress­ing gown opened the door. The bleached mop on top of it mum­bled some­thing un­friend­ly but let them in all the same. She shuf­fled off say­ing “fuck, fuck, fuck” with every flop of her slip­pers. She looked like she’d had a real fright. Not bloody sur­pris­ing with that ar­se­hole boyfriend of hers, thought Stew­pot.

“Thanks,” said Mitch.

“Yeah, thanks,” said Stew­pot, “you’re a pal.”

They trudged up­stairs, chas­tened. The only per­son they liked in the build­ing had got up to let them in. Stew­pot made a men­tal note to suck up to her a bit more.

Stew­pot tried to focus his eyes on the count­less toys and chil­dren’s trin­kets that filled all avail­able shelf space in his bed­sit. He bent over and ran his fin­ger over the plas­tic cov­ers of the long-play­ing records lean­ing neat­ly against the wall. They made a noise like a lolly stick be­tween the spokes of a push­bike. He want­ed to put some music on, but he was drunk, so he didn’t know what to put on. He fee­bly punched his in­flat­able gi­raffe and looked up at the enor­mous poster of Leif Gar­rett grin­ning cheesi­ly down at him. At that mo­ment, Stew­pot hated Leif Gar­rett’s guts. His health and hap­pi­ness was like fin­ger­nails dragged down a black­board to Stew­pot. He rubbed the end of his nose, mak­ing a squelch­ing sound that Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox, his dog, bound­ed over from his re­cent­ly re­plen­ished bowl to in­ves­ti­gate. As far as Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox was con­cerned, night time was the right time. He was such a rock ’n’ roll hound, but Stew­pot was drunk, the walls were wob­bling. They wob­bled for real when Mitch ac­ci­den­tal­ly slammed the door when he got back from the bog. His en­trance was a cause for cel­e­bra­tion for Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox, just as it had been a few min­utes ago when they ar­rived. Stew­pot had slid side­ways and was now heaped up on the floor, being sniffed and snout­ed, pawed and plead­ed with. Mitch se­lect­ed a record, Smi­ley Smile by the Beach Boys, and stuck it on. He watched the label spin round as “He­roes and Vil­lains” tin­kled out of the speak­ers. He lis­tened to it in­tent­ly, as if he want­ed to know the an­swer to some kind of puz­zle. When “Veg­eta­bles” chomped in, his at­ten­tion was drawn to a shuf­fling sound be­hind him. Stew­pot had ap­par­ent­ly passed out on the floor and Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox was vig­or­ous­ly shag­ging his head. The mass of curls bounce-bounce-bounc­ing down the road be­side him must have been tug­ging at his heart strings for years, but now he’d fi­nal­ly got his chance to get stuck in. His fran­tic mo­tion sug­gest­ing that he knew this would be his first and last chance. Mitch shot across the room like Tarzan after a tiger, and belt­ed Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox with a cush­ion. He then threw the cush­ion after him, hop­ing it would be an ac­cept­able sub­sti­tute. It was. This gave him a chance to haul Stew­pot into se­mi-con­scious­ness and get him onto the bed. Un­aware of his near-miss, Stew­pot sang along with the Beach Boys, his voice more wist­ful and vul­ner­a­ble than it would ever be with his fac­ul­ties in­tact,

Sure would like to have a lit­tle pad in Hawaii...

Mitch thought about the lyrics. But there wasn’t much to the song re­al­ly. There were hard­ly any words, just some hum­ming. So he fell asleep.

Next morn­ing, Mitch went down­stairs for a show­er. The bath­room was dis­gust­ing, but at least he wouldn’t feel grub­by all day, it was worth the ef­fort. He got down­stairs with­out any prob­lems. But now he had two flights of stairs to ne­go­ti­ate with­out rous­ing any of the as­sort­ed head­cas­es and mis­fits that lived be­hind those once white doors... No move­ment from the foul-mouthed Aus­tralian cou­ple whose ar­gu­ments often spilled over onto the land­ing, and al­ways ended with a long lin­ger­ing show­er to­geth­er, soap suds and sponges ce­ment­ing the frag­ile peace for an­oth­er week or so. He wouldn’t have mind­ed shar­ing a show­er with her him­self. She smiled at him most of the time, so he thought he might be in with a chance if it wasn’t for that wanker of a boyfriend. She let them in last night, Mitch re­mem­bered. Jesus, they must have been drunk... Hadn’t he been snog­ging with some fun­ny-look­ing woman ear­li­er on? Per­haps not, but he’d def­i­nite­ly been talk­ing to some ropey look­ing char­ac­ters. How had they ended up at a Re­sound­ing Yes gig? There’s re­al­ly not much to do mid-week. It’s best to have birth­days at the week­end, he de­cid­ed, even though it’s cheat­ing.

He was be­gin­ning to feel a bit cocky as he start­ed up the last flight of stairs. Sud­den­ly a door flew open and a primeval squeal dis­lodged a bit of plas­ter from the ceil­ing. It was the Loony Woman, an age­ing ca­su­al­ty of city life. This morn­ing she was treat­ing the house­hold to a spir­it­ed ren­di­tion of her pe­cu­liar folk song:

“There’s some men in their motor cars!

They’re un­der­neath the win­dow in their motor cars!”

Mitch wheezed a sigh of re­lief. She wasn’t on the warpath. An­oth­er of her in­ex­plic­a­ble chants was “Spray your body!” Per­haps she imag­ined that her own over­pow­er­ing body odour be­longed to some­body else. Some­body who fol­lowed her every­where, some­body who never moved from her elbow. No one would ever know what she thought, un­less they learn how to do psy­chi­atric au­top­sies. Mitch wished her good morn­ing as if he had just bumped into a favourite toothy nun, and slipped quick­ly into Stew­pot’s room.

“There you go, boy,” Stew­pot chimed, hand­ing Mitch a cracked and grub­by mug filled to the brim with murky tea.

“Thanks, ar­se­hole,” Mitch said.

“Ar­se­hole?” asked Stew­pot sound­ing like Heidi look­ing for a lost lamb, “Why do you want to go and call me that, you ugly bug­ger? I’ve made you a nice cup of tea!”

“Sorry, it just slipped out. I was think­ing about the land­lord.”

Stew­pot’s rub­bery fea­tures cloud­ed over. “Fuck­ing ar­se­hole. His pal’ll be around soon for the rent, the wee shit­bag. We’d bet­ter be on our way be­fore he comes. I’ll go for a quick show­er.”

“Spray your body!” chirped Mitch.

Stew­pot re­peat­ed “spray your body” five or six times at the top of his voice as he bound­ed back up the stairs after his show­er, caus­ing Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox to emit his first con­sump­tive bark of the day. But the Loony Woman didn’t stir. Stew­pot shiv­ered slight­ly as he rum­maged around look­ing for the hairdry­er. A talk­ing Rev­erend Ian Pais­ley doll was perched hap­pi­ly on top of it. Stew­pot flung the doll across the room, just miss­ing Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox. It land­ed next to his David Trim­ble space­hop­per. “FENIAN!” bel­lowed the doll in a tinny voice un­suit­ed to bel­low­ing. Stew­pot an­swered back and Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox sniffed it. Stew­pot bent down to plug the hair dryer in. He switched it on at the sock­et. Christ­mas tree lights draped around the room began to flash on and off.

“Bol­locks to Christ­mas,” mut­tered Stew­pot under his breath and flicked the cor­rect switch this time. The ma­chine whined like a plas­tic pig hav­ing its throat slit. He start­ed to dry his sea­weed curls, look­ing like a drunk­en sailor in a de­sert­ed dis­cotheque, the flash­ing lights il­lu­mi­nat­ing his fa­cial con­tor­tions and sta­t­ic-fried hair.

Mo­ments later his mag­nif­i­cent sur­plus of curly locks was ready to face its ador­ing pub­lic. Look­ing like one of the Jack­son Five dressed up from a Tony Jack­lin jum­ble sale, he winked at him­self in the mir­ror, did a bit of Elvis karate and sex­i­ly beck­oned Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox and Mitch to fol­low him out of the door.

“Be care­ful,” thought Mitch, but de­cid­ed against telling Stew­pot about get­ting his head shagged by the dog last night. It all seemed un­re­al in the half-light of his hang­over.

Mitch and Stew­pot trun­dled down­stairs, mak­ing as much noise as they could to get on the neigh­bours’ nerves. Stew­pot heaved the heavy door open and Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox cat­a­pult­ed out, des­per­ate to re­lieve him­self. The boys stood in si­lence, squint­ing in the dingy au­tum­nal sun­shine.

Tor­ren­tial traf­fic swarmed all the way down the road in both di­rec­tions, to the city cen­tre and to­wards the coast. Trees coughed and shed their leaves like glob­ules of blood-spot­ted phlegm. Birds splut­tered from one pre­car­i­ous branch to an­oth­er, ac­com­pa­ny­ing them­selves with shrill and fran­tic whis­tles.

An old woman shuf­fled her shop­ping trol­ley up the slope and wait­ed for three leather jack­et­ed youths to slith­er out be­fore heav­ing her way into Penny Pinch­ers. The twen­ty-four hour su­per­mar­ket, whose bright yel­low front di­vorced it from the soot-stained ten­e­ment that housed it, sold bright­ly coloured pack­ets that were the op­po­site of the lives of its cus­tomers. They were all too fucked up on drugs or old age to make it a bit fur­ther up the street to the Pron­to Su­per­store, smoother on the sens­es and fi­nances.

Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox looked at Stew­pot and Mitch mourn­ful­ly as he crouched down to make his daily con­tri­bu­tion to the dog­muck moun­tain that had grad­u­al­ly re­placed the flower beds.

Ten min­utes later he was still giv­ing them the same des­o­late stare as his morn­ing dump began to con­tort it­self into mon­strous pro­por­tions. A fog start­ed to form on Stew­pot’s fa­ther­ly face.

“Fuck!” he groaned

“Jesus!” Mitch whis­tled, nei­ther in ad­mi­ra­tion nor de­spair, be­fore in­di­cat­ing down the road with a jerk of his head. They moved a safe dis­tance away.

“Don’t want to be im­pli­cat­ed in the Ti­tan­ic dog­gy-doo scan­dal now, do we?” blurt­ed Mitch. Stew­pot’s face dis­solved into a daft grin.

“No way, boy!”

Just as Mitch was light­ing up his first cig­a­rette of the morn­ing, Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox came bound­ing hap­pi­ly over, wag­ging his tail like a Union Jack at the Queen’s Sil­ver Ju­bilee street party. He was clear­ly pleased with him­self for hav­ing heaved out such a mag­nif­i­cent turd. Mitch just looked at Stew­pot and said that it was about time he weaned Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox off sweets and choco­lates and gave him nu­tri­tion­al dog food like Woofy Boy. In the tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tise­ment, a tum­bling troupe of com­put­er en­hanced hounds per­formed a song as dance rou­tine to rival any­thing in My Fair Lady or Jesus Christ Su­per­star.

Stew­pot hailed a taxi and they all tum­bled in. The dri­ver turned out to be the biggest dog lover in Scot­land. He hadn’t seen what Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox had just lov­ing­ly sculpt­ed to wel­come the res­i­dents of 117 Tun­dra Ter­race to the out­side world.

“So where might you be want­i­ng to go, sir?” he asked the bushy tailed king of co­quetry in a kind voice. Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox thumped the taxi floor with his tail and cocked his head on one side with all the adorable aplomb of Shirley Tem­ple. The dri­ver laughed like a first time grand­par­ent with a new baby in his arms. Mitch let the pan­tomime con­tin­ue for a lit­tle longer be­fore timid­ly sug­gest­ing that Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox want­ed to go to Cen­tral Sta­tion. The dri­ver, still chuck­ling to him­self, turned the meter on (“No doggy dis­count?” in­quired Stew­pot) and hurled the taxi into the stam­ped­ing traf­fic. Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox snug­gled up to Stew­pot and set­tled down, a look of smug sat­is­fac­tion skip­ping around his snout.

Ten min­utes later they ar­rived at the sta­tion. Stew­pot and Mitch both looked at Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox.

“Come on, cough up!” said Stew­pot to the dog.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” boomed the dri­ver, “like a Saint Bernard dog hand­ing round the brandy, eh? Like a bloody great Saint Bernard! Ha ha ha ha ha!” the diesel en­gine tick­ing im­pa­tient­ly in the back­ground. Mitch gave the hys­ter­i­cal heap of a man a crum­pled fiver and wait­ed pa­tient­ly for him to re­cov­er from his laugh­ing fit and give him the change. The ra­di­ant dri­ver de­liv­ered an emo­tion­al farewell to his four-legged friend. Such was his ad­mi­ra­tion for the fluffy fella that he didn’t even no­tice that he hadn’t been given a tip.

Stew­pot and Mitch stood in the tick­et queue look­ing at all the leaflets. Sco­trail were of­fer­ing cheap day re­turns to Oban.

“Oh I do like to be be­side the sea­side,” sang Mitch.

Sang Mitch.

“What a fuckin’ swizz!” spat Stew­pot.

“You know your trou­ble? You’re jaun­diced,” stat­ed Mitch flat­ly.

“Look! Half a bloody hour in Oban! Some spe­cial offer. I’d soon­er go and feed the bloody ducks in the bas­tard park.”

He was right. A grand total of thir­ty-five min­utes to enjoy the charms of Oban. About enough time to have a quick rum­mage through the rub­bish bins on the plat­form.

It was their turn at the tick­et win­dow. They were going to Troon to see Mungo, an old friend who was re­cov­er­ing from a long bout of ill­ness. Mitch had de­cid­ed to go and see him, now that he had been chucked out of hos­pi­tal, and Stew­pot had been roped in, “to see if we can give him a re­lapse!” as he put it. They were re­al­ly tick­led by this idea.

They head­ed for their plat­form, tick­ets in hand, Stew­pot doing the Tra­vol­ta strut as he dodged in and out of what he called “busi­ness bas­tards”. Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox went wild and woofed, pulling on his lead like Moby Dick with a har­poon up his back­side. Mitch laughed. They were on their way.

Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox was once a help­less lit­tle puppy, all waggy tail and piss­ing on the car­pet. Stew­pot now con­sid­ers him to have Lassie-like pow­ers and un­flinch­ing loy­al­ty. The part about loy­al­ty is true, as Mitch found out one day when he tried to get Stew­pot in a head­lock. Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox bit him fair and square on the thigh, about an inch from his knob. The spe­cial pow­ers are a prod­uct of Stew­pot’s over-ac­tive imag­i­na­tion. Not all dogs wait until they’re told be­fore cross­ing the road, but it’s not that un­usu­al ei­ther.

Stew­pot’s fa­ther, a spir­it­ed Tom Jones im­per­son­ator from Ire­land, had been given the puppy by some­one at the bis­cuit fac­to­ry where he worked. Gerry and his wife, Elaine, were staunch Catholics. They showed their grat­i­tude to God by sin­gle-hand­ed­ly re­pop­u­lat­ing the Fife town where they lived and worked. Nine months after their wed­ding day, plop! Out popped daugh­ter num­ber one, quick­ly fol­lowed the next year by an­oth­er, and an­oth­er, and so on. Six daugh­ters, all healthy and happy. By a freak of ge­net­ics, the sev­enth child was a boy. Wel­come to Fife, Stew­pot! (or Stu­art, as his moth­er in­sists on call­ing him). He soon lost his spe­cial sta­tus as youngest child, an­oth­er girl being born a year later. But he never lost his priv­i­leged po­si­tion as the only boy, and he never lacked fe­male at­ten­tion. Girls al­ways want­ed to moth­er him, and he al­ways en­joyed their kind­ness.

Every moth­er in the world will tell you that the sad­dest thing in life is when your chil­dren fly the nest. Gerry and Elaine had put the day off for many years by hav­ing a large fam­i­ly. But the day had come, and Elaine was sad. Gerry was only too pleased to ac­cept the offer of a puppy. He thought it would mend his wife’s bro­ken heart, and he was al­most right. He thought it would give him a bloody good ex­cuse to go for long walks around the town or across the golf course, and he was right.

Now the puppy was in­stalled in the house. The en­tire fam­i­ly, hus­bands, boyfriends, nephews and nieces, were sum­moned to the small house on Garibal­di Close to choose a name for the new ar­rival.

The scene was an up­date of a wed­ding photo that oc­cu­pied pride of place on the man­tel­piece. Taken some time in the early sev­en­ties, it showed the bride in a breath­tak­ing mi­ni-skirt, and the groom in a pur­ple blaz­er and lilac slacks. Both are smil­ing, both are very happy. The rest of the fam­i­ly are gath­ered round, stray Bay City Rollers and the girls from Rock Fol­lies, the cast of Get on Board With The Dou­ble Deck­ers scur­ry­ing around at their feet. The vicar smiled placid­ly, his buck teeth and an­gel­ic de­meanour com­bin­ing to vis­i­bly fright­en some of the chil­dren. He has got what looks like the rem­nants of an egg sand­wich all down the front of his cas­sock.

Stew­pot is just vis­i­ble in the bot­tom left hand cor­ner, with a tremu­lous face like Oliv­er Twist ask­ing for more food. His soon to be leg­endary curls are hard­ly no­tice­able. They are left in the shade by the high quota of early sev­en­ties hair dis­as­ters on dis­play. All human folly is here. There are enor­mous side­burns, mon­u­men­tal quiffs and even a yeti-tas­tic left­over hippy, not un­like Finnegan Wake­man, come to think of it. The women look as if an ad­dic­tive new form of make-up is being pumped into Scot­land to make sure no­body rebels against the gov­ern­ment. Fife’s finest hair­dressers had kept them­selves busy con­coct­ing a wide range of hel­met heads and com­i­cal pea­cock­ery.

The dog nam­ing cer­e­mo­ny in­volved a sim­ple lucky dip. Each per­son wrote their favourite name for the dog on a slip of paper. They were put in a school pumps bag that hadn’t been used for years, and shak­en about. The odour of plim­solls and mem­o­ry of school PE lessons filled the room as the drama un­fold­ed. The small­est child pre­sent (apart from the sleep­ing baby), Hen­der­son, who was four years old, was in­vit­ed to pick the name out of the hat. He un­fold­ed the paper and looked sheep­ish. He tried to read it out, but couldn’t, so he buried his face in his moth­er’s ample bosom. Gerry him­self took over, boom­ing good-na­tured­ly,

“And the win­ner is... Mis­ter... Billing­ton Fox?”

He looked di­rect­ly at Stew­pot. It wasn’t the first time he had been knocked for six by his son’s bizarre be­hav­iour, but even so he was un­sure what to say or do.

“That’s right, old chap! Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox it is!” cried Stew­pot in tri­umph. The tiny Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox thanked Stew­pot for his new name by pee­ing on his favourite mul­ti-coloured jumper.

The train jolt­ed to a sud­den halt in Troon sta­tion, throw­ing Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox off bal­ance. He had be­haved like a dis­tin­guished sen­a­tor for the en­tire jour­ney, look­ing at the pass­ing fence posts. The boys shuf­fled out onto the plat­form. His tum­ble had snapped Mis­ter Billing­ton Fox back to his usual self. He barked shril­ly and leapt about like a drunk­en kan­ga­roo at a kook­abur­ra’s wed­ding re­cep­tion. Mitch tried to walk away, not wish­ing to be as­so­ci­at­ed with such an em­bar­rass­ing out­burst, but the whirling dog dervish fol­lowed him, jump­ing up, try­ing to grab his arm. His good be­hav­iour on the train had been a fiendish plan to lull the boys into a false sense of se­cu­ri­ty.