Lulu and the Dog from the Sea (2 page)

“It’s very kind of you to wait,” said Lulu’s mother, as she and Lulu’s father followed her to the door.

“Had to,” snapped the cottage owner grimly. “I needed to warn you about that dog!”

“Sam?” asked Lulu, but the cottage owner had disappeared, with Lulu’s parents after her.

Bang!
went the door in a most unfriendly way.

“Why’s she so...” began Mellie, staring.

“Shush!” warned Lulu.

“...angry?” finished Mellie loudly, dropping pieces of kite all over the ground as she spoke. “Don’t worry! She can’t hear! She shut the door. Why do you think she said that about Sam?”

Lulu couldn’t imagine. Sam was behaving perfectly. He had survived the bumps without getting sick, and now he was doing what he always did at the end of a car journey: unpacking his food bowl.

On days when Sam was going for a ride in the car he was only ever given a very small breakfast. Now he wanted the rest of it. He stood up on his teddy bear legs, dragged his bowl out from his mountain of luggage, carried it in his teeth to Lulu, and dropped it at her feet.

It was Lulu’s job to fill it up as quickly as possible.

As usual, she rushed to do it, and as usual Sam stood and watched, stumpy tail wagging, with a smile on his teddy bear face.

From inside the cottage Lulu’s parents could see all this happening. Lulu’s mother asked worriedly, “Why do you want to warn us about our dog? We did tell you we were bringing him.”

“Your dog?” asked the cottage owner, looking out of the window at the happy sight of Sam gobbling dog food. “I wasn’t talking about your dog! He’s a poor old thing, isn’t he? Looks more like a sheep...
That
dog!”

She jabbed a pointing finger in the direction of the sand dunes, where a small sandstorm had just erupted.

The sandstorm rolled down the sand dunes, arrived between Lulu and Mellie in a cloud of dust, seized the packet of dog food that Lulu had only a moment before put down, whirled around, and raced away, all in one astonishing moment.

“
RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!
” barked Sam, nearly falling over with rage.

“
That
dog!” said the cottage owner, rushing out of the cottage with Lulu’s parents behind her. “That dog!” she repeated, pointing to a dusty blur on the sand dunes. “That dog from the sea! He’s a thief! He’s a menace! The people last week lost a whole roasted chicken from under their noses! Nothing is safe from him and no one can get near him. We’ve had the dogcatcher out twice already and he’s never gotten close enough to grab—”

“Oh, poor dog!” exclaimed Lulu.

“Don’t you go encouraging him,” said the woman, turning on Lulu quite fiercely. “He’s not welcome around here! You’ll have to be careful. No leaving out picnics or scraps for the seagulls. He goes through all the trash too. So you’ll have to remember to take the trash can into the house at night!”

“
Take the trash can into the house at night?
” repeated Lulu’s father, staring.

“I’ve warned you and now I need to go,” said the cottage owner.

“Did you say, ‘Take...’?”

“I did,” said the cottage owner, dragging a bike from the hedge. Then she handed Lulu’s mother a large and rather rusty key and rode off.

“
Take the trash can into the house at night!
” exploded Lulu’s father wildly the moment she was gone. “What kind of place is it where you have to do that?”

Lulu and Mellie became helpless with giggles and rolled around on the grass.

“And you’re not helping!” complained Lulu’s father as he stepped over them.

“Oh!” said Mellie. “I love this place!”

“You haven’t seen the inside yet,” warned Lulu’s mother. “And neither have we, hardly! I thought she might stay and show us where things are... and explain about hot water and how the stove works... Oh well, never mind! Who’s coming with me to explore?”

Lulu and Mellie scrambled to their feet and hurried to follow her into the cottage.

It was very clean.

And very bare.

It was just four little rooms: two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room, with a very damp-smelling bathroom tacked onto the back. The water in the faucet was as cold as ice, and the oven (said a neat label that was stuck on the front) was missing a part.

“No wonder Mrs.-on-the-Bike ran away so fast!” said Lulu’s father, and he went outside and looked suspiciously at the chimney to see if it had by lightning. It looked solid, however, and there was no ghost in the attic because there was no attic. There was no upstairs at all.

“Well, at least we all have shoes this time!” said Lulu’s father, cheering up. “So maybe we’ll survive!”

Lulu and Mellie were sure they would. Their bedroom window faced the sand dunes. They pushed it open and the sea wind blew in, and there they were, nearly among the blue-green grasses and gray, orange-berried bushes. Almost next to the little gold paths down which a dog from the sea might swoop like a storm.

“It’s the most perfect place ever,” said Lulu.

Her mother said “Hmmm” to that. She was exploring the kitchen cupboards. She had just discovered that there were not enough mugs for all four of them to have hot drinks at once, and not enough glasses for all four of them to have cold drinks at once either. And she discovered other things about saucepans and forks and spoons that made her say “Hmmm” as well.

“But we
do
have shoes,” said Lulu’s father. “So let’s go and explore!”

So they did.

“I would like to know much, much more about the dog from the sea,” said Lulu.

There was no sign of him in the sand dunes, nor on the wide windy beach. No dog with paper-bag ears splashed in the pools by the breakwaters, or raced across the golf course (where no dogs were allowed). But as they got nearer to the town end of the beach they heard news.

The ice cream and hot dog stand knew him very well. They had lost more than one sausage to his thieving ways.

The lady from the bucket and shovel shop said, “Shocking!”

What else could you say about a dog who helped himself to the most expensive sort of wood-handled shovel? Who lifted it from its box by the postcard stand, galloped off with it clamped in his jaws, chewed it to shreds, left the bits on the sand, and came back, tail wagging, for another!

“But where did he come from?” asked Lulu.

“He came from the back of the Golden Lotus,” said the lady from the bucket and shovel shop.

The Golden Lotus was a Chinese restaurant. There was a whole street of little restaurants in the town. Indian and Chinese and Italian and Thai and a fish and chip shop at the end. And behind the shops was a small messy space, full of crates and boxes, trash cans, recycling bins, and other things like old fridges waiting to be taken away.

It was a big untidy muddle, the shop lady told Lulu, and in the most untidy bit of the muddle, under a pile of crates and cardboard boxes behind the Golden Lotus, the mother of the dog from the sea had made a den.

Three puppies had been born in that den: the dog from the sea and the dog from the sea’s two sisters.

All through the spring they lived together, a wild and happy life. In the daytime they slept, all flung in a warm heap under the crates.

At night they went hunting with their mother. She was a very clever dog, and she knew all the places to find things to eat. Seaside towns with hungry visitors have lots of spare food, either thrown into trash cans or dropped on the streets. The mother dog taught her three puppies how to crawl under the fence near the fairground to get to the large garbage bins. She showed them how to push over a trash can, and how to chase a seagull from a handful of chips. She showed her wild family every single thing it was possible for a dog to eat.