Plummer - In spite of myself: a memoir

FOR FUFF, BRIGGIE, RAGS, TOADIE, AND PADDY, WITH GRATITUDE AND LOVE

I was brought up by an Airedale. I wont deny it, tis the truth and nothing but, Your Honoura bumbling, oversized shaggy great Airedale. The earliest memory I have of anything resembling a pater familia, bouncer, male-nurse or God is that dear slobbering old Airedale. My sword, my lance, my shield, he never failed to stand at the ready to rescue me from all my early Moriarties! Wherever I happened to beon the floor, in my bath or on the potty, therelooming above me, panting heavily, one large, drooling Airedale reporting for duty, sir! If I went for a ride in my little cart, I would look away and pretend there was no one there at all and then when I did look back, of course he was there. He was always there padding along beside mehow could I miss him? He was my only horizonhe filled the sky. Like Romulus or Remus, I was his cub and he was my Wolf of Rome. His name was Byng.

Me and Byng

He was christened after another shaggy old Airedale, Field Marshal Lord Byng of Vimy, whom my grandparents had known when he was governor general; and also for the very good reason that if any of our household showed guts enough to sit down to tea or play a hand at bridge, the days calm would invariably become a stormy sance as tables, taking on a life of their own, began to shake violently and with one quick loud explosion, Bing! they would catapult themselves ceiling-ward as teapots, cups, toast, crumpets, cards and markers flew madly across the room! My canine patron had, quite simply, decided to rise.

But I like Byng, my dog, because
He doesnt know how to behave
So Byngs the same as the First Friend was
And I am the Man in the Cave
(Apologies to Kipling)

Nothing ever came between usYour Honournothinghe was my world; I knew no other. Until one day, one sobering day, the spell was broken when a meddling family friend pointed out to me that the nice tall lady pushing my pram was my mother.

Mummies and dogs! You can beat em, kick em, treat em as shabbily as you likethey will eternally forgive you and still come back for more. Such degree of devotion is as hard to grasp as it is unshakable. Being a child, I had no comprehension of it. It embarrassed me. I regularly ran away from it; in fact, I still do.

I didnt throw myself into the struggle for lifeI threw my mother into it.

G. B. SHAW

I came into the world that monster of infant monsters, who can clear a room more swiftly than a Sherman tank; that very monster which causes fear, dread, revulsion to seal the lips of those that dare to speak its nameThe Only Child! And being an only child I was more than frequently left on my own. Can you blame em?! A little boys mind can play some pretty macabre tricks on itself. I was so damned terrified of the dark that Mother had to sing me to sleep, snatches of old French songs she particularly loved.

Chante, rossignol,
chante, Toi qui as le coeur gai
Il y a longtemps que je taime,
Jamais, je ne toublierai.

But the terror never left. It stayed through all the early years. Because of books, which Mother insisted I read, my imagination began to take over, and the long winters gave one so much time to dream up horrors. My grandparents tall, forbidding house in the city could be pretty ominous, full of dark corners to jump out of and scare yourself to death. Every time I tried to rob my grandfathers overcoat pocket of change so I could sneak downtown to Bens delicatessen for a smoked-meat sandwich and a Coke, some sudden sound would force me to drop everything and run like hell. My room was on the very top floor and in the middle of the night I would steal from my bed and sit shivering on the uppermost step, clinging tight to old Byng, staring down into the center of the long circular staircase, down into that black hole, that bottomless pit, and waitwait for them, whoever they were, to climb up and get us.