9781529929188

‘Surprising, evocative and richly entertaining’ guardian

‘A marvel’ kaliane bradley

MARK HADDON

PRAISE FOR DOGS AND MONSTERS

‘A marvel of a collection – suffused with curiosity, humanity and mystery, bold in its scope and virtuoso in its telling. Mark Haddon makes stories matter’ Kaliane Bradley

‘These delicately worked and impressively patient stories show us what other visions might reveal themselves when we are not in too much of a hurry to get to the end’ Observer

‘Eight engrossing, inventive retellings of myths . . . Dogs feature throughout, and it is humans who are the monsters.

Highly recommended’ Mail on Sunday

‘Compelling . . . Haddon’s writing is always rock solid and frequently luminous . . . All the stories are complex, surprising, evocative and richly entertaining’ Guardian

‘Haddon is reliably excellent’ New Scientist

‘A gripping exploration of narratives and those who control them . . . The tight prose and descriptive range are remarkable . . . There isn’t much room for redemption in this wise, immersive book: but . . . with a faithful mutt by your side, you’ll (usually) be all right in the end’ Spectator

‘Haddon follows his imagination from the human into the animal realm and beyond, into the divine . . . in these supple and emotionally involving tales’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Run, don’t walk, to pick up this new collection from Haddon . . . With a combination of compassion and authority, the author shows that his command of short fiction continues to keep pace with his novels’ LA Times

‘A potent collection of stories about human foibles and desires . . . This is divine’ Publishers Weekly

ALSO BY MARK HADDON

Fiction

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

A Spot of Bother

The Red House

The Pier Falls

The Porpoise

Poetry

The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea

MARK HADDON Dogs and Monsters Stories

IMy husband had ordered me up to the Long Gallery. He had not spoken to me directly for a week and I did not know whether to expect an apology or a continuation of the angry tirade that had concluded our last meeting, or indeed whether he was about to carry out some of the more lurid threats he had made. It seemed entirely possible that the summons was nothing more than a ruse to get me away from my apartments so that some of his thugs could burst in and cut Paul’s throat whilst I was not there to protect him, so I told the wet nurse to take the boy to some obscure corner of the servants’ quarters and barricade the two of them behind a locked door which she was to open only at my command.

It was early October, a day of high wind and driving rain that sucked the light from the sky and made a musical instrument of every leaded pane. e chimneys sang and the fires danced in the downdraughts. I had lost a great deal of blood during the birth and been too nauseous to eat rich food since. My skin was pale, my cheeks sunken and my step unsteady so that when they saw me some of the servants froze briefly before pausing and bowing, thinking, perhaps, that I was an apparition and not their flesh-and-blood mistress.

I stopped to gather myself on the staircase leading up to the gallery. e wind in the Great Court was twisting, now this way now that, like

some chained, ill-tempered animal so that the high windows were briefly clear enough to show the pewter sky and the wing of the palace opposite, and in the relative quiet I could hear the rusty squeal of the weathervane twisting on the roof above my head, then water was hurled against the glass as if from a great pitcher and the scene vanished.

I climbed the last flight and, in unison, two surly footmen unlatched the heavy double doors to usher me inside. My husband’s elkhounds got to their feet and began barking immediately. I could smell that one of them had pissed somewhere in the room. I waited for them to settle, then walked along the line of portraits of my husband’s forebears who seemed half-alive in the jigging light from the sconces. He was sitting in one of four chairs facing each other at the far end of the room, like a solitary lutenist waiting for the rest of his consort. Attendants stood either side of the far door like caryatids.

‘Why have you called me here?’

‘I have invited someone to join us.’

‘And that person is?’

‘You look unwell.’

Once upon a time I had taken his refusal ever to answer a direct question as a sign of his quick wit, but I was no longer willing to play a game in which my role – indeed everyone’s role – was to remain at a disadvantage, always reaching for a volley that was just out of their grasp. I took a seat and tried not to waste my effort by pondering the nature of whatever drama he had planned. It would be tiring enough in and of itself. Rain smashed against the windows and a log in the fireplace broke and slumped, sending up a great jet of sparks. I heard footsteps on the staircase and my husband casually stood and looked out of the window with his hands crossed behind his back, feigning indifference about the guests he had himself invited.

I thought at first that the engineer and his son had arrived before those intended guests on account of some emergency, a flooding perhaps, given the weather. My husband let them stand at the end of the room for an uncomfortable length of time, then turned and shook his head as if roused from some reverie by their appearance. ‘Gentlemen, forgive me. Join us. Take a seat.’ So they were indeed our guests, though quite how I was to be involved in a conversation about hydrology or the construction of bridges I had no idea.

Now that I had the opportunity to see the two men at close quarters as they walked towards us it struck me how weak a family likeness they shared. e father was renowned, my husband had said on numerous occasions without ever stooping to suggest that he shared this opinion, for the brilliance of his mind. ere was something of the rodent about him, wiry, furtive, dishevelled. I don’t think he’d been in this room before. Certainly, he was taking careful note of its architecture and contents as they walked its length. I wondered idly if he were looking for an escape route should one prove necessary. He was a good head shorter than his son who could have carried his father under his arm as easily as a rolled tapestry. I doubt the son had ever needed to look for an escape route. I have known several young men of his kind, who mistook the goodwill generated by their handsome looks and radiant physical prowess for fundamental qualities of the world. ey burnt brightly and briefly at court before crashing to earth, victims of intrigues and duplicities of which they were utterly unaware and against which they were powerless to fight.

As they were taking their seats the son turned to me and said, ‘It is good to see you. We were all greatly worried about your health.’ e inappropriateness of this direct address was so utterly guileless that my husband was caught off guard and forced to be gracious in return. ‘You are kind.’ I liked the boy immediately.

Once we were seated my husband waited for everyone to become still. ‘Gentlemen . . .’ e word sounded less respectful this time around. He lowered his voice and leant forward with his elbows on his knees as if we were in a tavern and about to play a round of cards. ‘My wife has given birth to a mooncalf.’

e words struck me like a slap across the face. e appearance of the engineer and his son had sent my thoughts in another direction entirely and my guard was down. I sat back in my chair and recited, silently, some lines of Sidney to calm my mind.

Come Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, e baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, e poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release . . .

‘It is a repellent chimaera, part human, part ape, part God alone knows what.’

‘ e child is a boy.’ I could not help myself. My husband turned to look at me. ‘His name is Paul.’

‘We give names to dogs.’ He held my eye. ‘It means little.’ He turned to the engineer. ‘If it lives it brings dishonour upon me and undermines my authority. As would the rumour that I had killed my own son. Sadly, my wife is sentimental and will not allow it to . . . pass away in its sleep.’ He filled the pause with an airy gesture as if to show how clean his hands would be after some soulless factotum had done the murder on his behalf. ‘ e child must live. And yet the child must not live.’ He looked into the fire. ‘I am told, repeatedly, that you are an ingenious man, that buildings, excavations, waterworks, canals are merely specific instances of your general genius. I am told that there is no problem you cannot solve.’ Rain lashed the glass. ‘So I would like you to solve this one for me.’

I do not believe that this was a genuine proposal. Rather, I believe my

husband hated the idea of another man in his orbit being constantly touted as brilliant and was pleased at having found a way of humiliating both him and me at the same time. Only later would I look back and realise that my husband had done something crueller still. e engineer and his son were in a foreign country with neither friends, family nor connections. ey were, for all the engineer’s vaunted brilliance, employees, and they were being given information which could not be allowed to spread beyond these walls. It was a death sentence.

If the engineer was aware of this at the time he seemed untroubled. He slipped into cogitation the way a swimmer slips into deep water, the ripples dispersing and the surface becoming still. I had the eerie sense that he had left us and gone to another place altogether, searching, hunting, thinking.

e son’s eyes burnt a hole in the polished wooden planks of the floor. At length the engineer resurfaced and said quietly but firmly to my husband, indicating the attendants, ‘Tell your men to leave us.’ Either he was not intimidated by my husband or his absolute engagement with the so-called problem had rendered my husband’s intentions irrelevant.

Once the men were gone the engineer raised his hands and paused for a few moments as if he were about to conduct a piece of music. ‘ ere is, in the royal stables, an exceedingly beautiful bull, nine hands high, with a soft, golden coat entirely free of blemishes, a gift, I believe, and a very valuable one.’

I glanced at the boy and saw that he was as puzzled as I was.

‘Go on,’ said my husband.

‘A year ago, your wife conceived an unnatural passion for this animal.’ He looked directly at me while he was saying this but with no sense that I was a person looking back at him. I wondered if I had heard him correctly. ‘Unable to keep her feelings secret she came to me and asked me to help her have intercourse with this bull.’

and swaddled in advance, and seeing only blood and slime and what looked for all the world like several portions of wet meat in the hands of the first midwife, my presumption was that something had gone terribly wrong and that I was looking not at a newborn child but at a part of my own body which had torn free. If I had possessed the energy to feel violent emotion of any kind I would have been terrified, but I had been in such pain over so many hours that I was clinging to wakefulness like a shipwrecked sailor grasping a shattered barrel and all I could do was to let go and pass into a great enveloping darkness, not caring whether it was sleep or death, only that it required nothing of me.

When I came round there was no blood or slime or wet meat and the nurse was cradling what I could clearly see was a living child. I briefly entertained the suspicion that they had obtained this baby from elsewhere and were taking advantage of my naivety to convince me that I had given birth to it, but when I reached out and she handed the child to me I felt a great wrenching in my abdomen and knew with an adamantine certainty that he was mine. I pushed the blanket aside so that I could see him properly. He had the softly folded face of a bat and the most exquisite fingers. Far from feeling that a part of me had been removed I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was whole. I lifted him and kissed his tiny mouth and he farted loudly and damply and, after a brief pause to check that I was not going to consider it disrespectful, everyone in the room began to laugh.

I am tempted to write, I did not realise that there was anything wrong with Paul until . . . but I still do not know if there was anything wrong with him. I believe it is entirely possible that all the wildness and the damage were the results of his being treated like an animal and that the healthiest of children would have fared no better if they were tortured in a similar manner.

It was when my husband did not visit that I began asking questions,

and it was the evasiveness of the answers I received which made me anxious. e wet nurse said, after being pressed repeatedly, ‘He does not look like other babies.’

I replied, affecting a knowledge that I did not have, that all babies looked different just as all people looked different.

She stared at her hands. ‘He looks different in a way that does not bode well. And he has no great strength in his limbs.’

‘He drinks. He smiles. He cries.’

She was silent for a long time before saying, ‘I believe that we are all God’s creatures. I believe that we are equal in His eyes, the rich man and the poor man, the nobleman and the cripple.’ She glanced at me to ascertain whether she had said something offensive. I nodded at her to continue. ‘But men do not always act as if this were true. So you will have to fight to protect your son.’

I wanted to thank her for speaking openly but I felt so great a sinking of my spirit that I dared not speak.

My husband did not visit. He condemned our son having never seen him, never held him. And this is one of the many hard lessons I have learnt from this whole sorry story. ere is nothing more terrifying than the monster that squats behind the door you dare not open.

ey took Paul away three nights after our meeting in the Long Gallery. I woke to find one of the palace guards sitting on the side of my bed with a hand over my mouth. He smelt of vegetable stew and urine. I could hear Paul screaming. I tried to fight the man off but he only squeezed my jaw harder. ‘If you leave this room tonight we will slit the boy’s throat. Do you understand?’

I nodded as best I could. I heard Paul’s echoing screams grow fainter as he was carried further and further away through the palace.

in my memory. e truth weighed as nothing against the childish excitement I had heard in their voices. And if the story had reached the laundry, it was doubtless everywhere, lodged in the mind of the dignitary to whose drone I was politely listening, being shared among the gaggle of ambassadors who went silent at my approach . . . and I was powerless to stop it.

e engineer and his team worked in the kitchen courtyard for a month. A deep square pit was excavated, a low brick wall laid inside the perimeter, a stout roof built over it and the earth and cobbles of the courtyard re-laid to hide it. e floor of the resulting dungeon was bare stone sloping towards a gravel soakaway. ere was a stone water trough and, above it, a dripping spigot. e space was seven or eight yards across and just high enough for a short man to stand upright. A narrow flight of stone steps led steeply down from the cobbles of the courtyard to a padlocked hatch. is was the only way for light to enter the dungeon. e space itself was so dark that you could see nothing through the bars except, on bright days, a few pale stripes of sunlight falling onto the stone floor inside. is was where my son, the monster, would live.

It was the engineer’s son who told me these details. He had little choice but to be party to a project that promised to be his and his father’s best chance of staying alive and returning home but he remained profoundly uneasy. He was nervous of revealing his hand to anyone but he had an open manner which made concealment pointless, and was clearly angry with a father who dismissed his son’s moral principles as unhelpful indulgences.

Having finished work in the kitchen courtyard they began excavating a plot outside the palace walls beside the stable block, digging into a broad, grassy mound and covering the hole with a pair of padlocked double doors made of oak, from which barrowloads of earth were

removed and into which barrowloads of stone and timber were taken over the coming months. is would be the entrance to the underground maze.

Except that there was no maze. ere was never going to be a maze. e doors and the dungeon in the kitchen courtyard would never be connected. ‘My father says that mazes are puzzles for children. You can find your way in and out of a maze with nothing more than a ball of twine and a clear head.’ ere was, instead, behind the double doors, a long tunnel which bent sharply three times. ‘After the third turn the darkness is absolute. I’ve been down there myself with no candle, no lamp. Within a few minutes you begin to feel as if you are floating. It is hard to retain one’s balance. A few steps further and there is a sheer drop into a very deep pit. My father is installing spikes at its base.’

I confessed that I did not understand. ‘Why go to such lengths when no one in their right mind is going to venture into such a place?’ e boy was silent for a long time. ‘ ere is no maze and yet there is a maze.’ He made a gesture not unlike those his father sketched onto the air of the Long Gallery during our first meeting. ‘It is a story of a maze. My father made a few drawings. He mentioned it casually to a few people. Now everyone is talking about it. ey cannot let go of the idea. ey are bewitched by it.’

‘I still fail to understand how this benefits anyone.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Prisoners will be sent through those doors. e doors will be locked behind them. Everyone will assume that they have been eaten alive by your son.’

I could barely speak. ‘He is a baby.’

‘And he will grow into a creature who is half-bull, half-man who sits at the centre of a fantastical underground maze and eats human flesh, and the story will spread far and wide and people will be terrified and they

over the cobbles and down the steps and gripped the iron bars of the grille set into that little hatch and stared into the dark. I wish I could say that I tried to offer some words of comfort to my son, but I could only stare into the darkness from which his screams were coming and cry out his name, over and over, not even knowing whether it was a word he would recognise, until I had no voice left and could do nothing but weep.

After a time whose length I could not measure I dried my eyes with my sleeve and looked around and the kitchen staff who had been watching me scattered like mice. I cared little for having abased myself. I told my son that I loved him and that I was sorry, then I sat back against the stone wall of the sloping steps and the rotund pastry cook, whom I recognised, came out bearing a pair of figs and a crust of bread in a little tin bowl.

‘For your son.’

I threw the bread and figs into the cell. e bread hit the stone floor and rolled away into the dark but one of the figs lay in the striped patch of light near the hatch. I watched it for a long time and the vision of the tiny hand which appeared momentarily to retrieve it felt like a nail being driven between my ribs.

I came to the courtyard every day. I sang songs, I told stories. I went to the estate workshops and acquired a little knife and some chunks of white pine and whittled a figure of a man and a woman and a menagerie of creatures which I conceived of as the passengers on Noah’s Ark and I posted them through the grille. I was thinking, perhaps, of how it is possible to survive a disaster so absolute it destroys the entire world.

My husband was told about my routine and sent a chamberlain to inform me that my behaviour was unseemly. I said that if I ran naked through the palace covered in my own excrement it would be more seemly than what my husband had done to his son, and that he should use these exact words when delivering my answer.