Open Writing

In my memoir ‘Highlights among the Shadows’ http://www.openwriting.com/archives/highlights_in_the_shadows/ I neglected to mention an important family member, Jack. He CAME into our family when I was just a toddler, my sister only a baby.

A family friend had offered my father the pick of a litter of pups. Being soft-hearted, Dad picked out the runt with only one eye. Apparently the feisty little fellow had baled up a mature tomcat who had swiped him across the eye, thus blinding him.

Dad announced, when he brought him home aged six weeks, he would be named, ‘One-eyed Jack.’ Later, he we called him just ‘Jack’.

Like my father, Jack was of mixed heritage. I am assuming that Jack’s mother was a short-haired terrier of some distinction owned by the family, and his father a local pariah dog. His wiry hair was mainly black with white spots, one right over his blind eye. He grew into a stocky average-sized dog with a very placid nature. He suffered without complaint when my sister and I pulled his tail and ears and jumped on him, especially when he was asleep.

It has been too many years for me to remember him clearly. The two images of him I do recall, were snapshots taken of him by my father.

One showed him asleep with our cat, ‘Kitty-Miaow,’ so named by my sister, curled up against him, both fast asleep. They had become great companions after an initial sizing up by Jack. I do remember both of them spending hours in the garden playing chasings and hide-and-seek.

The second photo was of Jack with a sailor’s hat set at a jaunty angle over his blind eye held there by elastic and a sailor’s blue and white navy jacket, complete with square bib, draped across his muscular shoulders.

It was the custom in the colonial days of the British Raj in India, for people both adult and young to attend fancy dress parties and dances. In many group photographs taken of people in Victorian times, even those at Rajah’s and Mogul palaces, they are seen dressed in costume. Some of the outfits were very elaborate, probably costing a great deal of money. Jack had been to one of these affairs given for pets. I cannot imagine him winning a prize, but I could not think of his being anything more apt. There he was standing with his slightly bowed forelegs apart, head up and with what appeared to be a cheeky grin on his face.

Jack hated two things. The first was his weekly bath. He had the ability to vanish whenever it was due. I saw him on one occasion peeping around a corner of the house at my mother and the methrani, our cleaner. It took a stern voice from my mother for him to come slinking to her looking as if he was about to be sentenced to purgatory. Once he was bathed and dried he would perk up and race off to find some smelly object to roll in to disguise his scent.

What Jack hated more than anything were jackals. If one wandered into the garden at night looking for scraps, he, who was kept on a leash, would go into a frenzy of barking, disturbing the neighbours and us and, of course, scaring off the jackal.

In 1938 my parents decided to leave India for Great Britain, where four of my father’s five sisters had migrated to a year earlier. Having no intention of returning to India, the dilemma of what to do with Jack arose. Fortunately, the family who had given Jack to us as a puppy had offered to take him back.

We set sail in March 1938 from Bombay. Our stay in Britain would only last six months. My father had found it very difficult to find suitable employment and war against Germany and its allies was becoming more and more imminent. My father’s ex-boss at the railway workshops in Khargpur in India wrote to him, suggesting that he return forthwith as his services would be needed. Many of the men had been either called up, or were leaving of their own accord to serve in the armed forces. Dad’s abilities would be needed, his boss had said, as he had the rare quality of working happily with the native population. We sailed back in October that year.

On our return, one of our first duties was to see how our much-loved dog, Jack was doing with his new family.

We were not to realise that this would lead to his terrible death.

Poor Jack could not decide where his loyalties lay, with us or with his new family. Consequently he would go back and forth from their home to ours. No sooner would he be with one family, he would go back to the other. This went on for days and days. It soon became obvious that the poor dog was becoming quite distressed.

My parents were determined to leave India once the War had ended, as India’s Congress Party had become violent in its demands to end Britain’s colonial rule that had gone on for over 200 years. The future for my father and us children, my parents realised, would most certainly be in jeopardy if, or more likely when, this would occur.

The day the decision was made that Jack would stay with the other family he was put on a long leash during the day in their yard and that night on a shorter one on the back landing of their two-story house near the bathroom upstairs.

The following morning Jack’s lifeless body was found hanging off the landing. The only explanation, it was suggested, was that he had seen a jackal come into the garden late at night and in his determination to try and get at it, had worked his way through the rails and had fallen. Both families stood in tears when he was buried in their backyard.

I have accepted this explanation up to now; however, Eric Knight wrote in his book, ‘Lassie Come Home,’ that Lassie’s desire to be with her family was so strong, that she travelled over a thousand miles to be back with them. This was, no doubt, based on a factual incident, showing that animals, particularly dogs, are capable of very powerful feelings. I have even heard of a dog that pined to death refusing food or drink while lying on his master’s grave. I now wonder if what we have always believed was the real reason of why Jack died. Sadly, I will never know.

‘One-eyed Jack’ was my first pet and will always be remembered by me as a dearly-loved extremely loyal family member.

© Clement 2009