A Question of Sanity: Chapter Two B

She heard Jake barking as soon as she opened the car door but that was the least of the noise. There was something very wrong. At her front door, she put her eye to the sensor for the security device to give her clearance but the door swung open without the check being made. Locking the door was as much a habit as brushing her teeth in the morning, or washing the pots after tea. It had been put on the snick so that the locking mechanism wasn’t connecting with the frame. Ellie was sure she’d locked the door when she’d left. The noise was deafening. Leaving the front door ajar, she rushed from room to room. Two of the three downstairs television screens were on full blast, each tuned to a different channel. Only the one in the kitchen was silent. Heavy rock music screeched from the lounge and loud classical rose in combat from the speaker in the study. Every light blazed except those in the kitchen. The heating was on full and the house could have baked bread. The vacuum cleaner was burning its motor out and had been left switched on in the hall, Ellie’s hair dryer screamed on the highest setting and her three electric heaters, one in each bedroom, blasted more heat into the stifling house. As she went towards the kitchen to soothe Jake and turning appliances off as she moved, she was aware of a constant hammering at the front door.

‘Coming,’ she yelled as she instructed George to shut down all the entertainment systems. The silence was instant except for the noise that Jake was making; he was grateful to be let out and jumped around yelping in greeting and vying for Ellie’s attention as she made her way to the door. The smile died on her lips as she opened it and saw Mr Jackson, her next-door neighbour, standing on the step and going redder in the face by the second. Ellie had engaged in several altercations with Mr Jackson, usually caused by Jake when he was an even louder and more boisterousgod than he was currently. Mr Jackson didn’t like dogs. In fact, he didn’t like anything much, apart from complaining. Ellie had tried on many occasions to get on the good side of the cantankerous pensioner, but to no avail. He was happy in his loneliness and misery and God help anybody who tried to deprive him of them. Ellie cringed inwardly.

‘I’m so sorry Mr Ja—’

‘Two hours! Two bloody hours I’ve had to put up with that. I knew you’d show your true colours eventually, missy. Swearing at an old man like that. I fought in the battle of Tora Bora, you know and I’ve got rights. Well, I’ll tell you lady. I’m not standing for it. The police are on their way. Let’s see you talk your way out of this one. And another thing, that dog of yours has been at my Pauline again, God bless her. Can’t you just leave the poor woman in peace?’

Ellie had to admit that the Pauline situation was a problem. Mr Jackson had buried his late wife’s ashes beneath her favourite honeysuckle bush. No matter how high Ellie extended the fence, Jake managed to clear it. When the neighbour wasn’t complaining about the dog, he was complaining about the height of the garden fence and the fact that it blocked the light from his kitchen window.

Jake loved to get into Mr Jackson’s garden and his favourite place to dig was at the root of Pauline’s honeysuckle. He once managed to uncover her urn and yapped excitedly to show the world his treasure. Jake delighted in inciting Mr Jackson to go red and jump up and down shaking his fist. It was Jake’s favourite game, even better than annoying the bees in the lavender bush. Mr Jackson was the perfect toy.

 The irate neighbour was pointing at Jake, who was grinning sheepishly. He had the good grace to drop his ears in shame, and was wagging his tail at the same time. Ellie put a hand to his collar. She knew it was only a matter of time before Jake wanted to take the game up a notch by jumping all over the angry man.

‘You want to keep that bloody dog under control. If he comes onto my property again I’ll take a garden spade to the back of his head. You foul-mouthed wench, the police will bring you down a peg or two, you see if they don’t.’

It seemed the rant would go on forever before Ellie could get a word in. Mr Jackson filled his lungs to continue and Ellie jumped into the space left by the temporary pause in his torrent of words.

‘I am so sorry about Jake, Mr Jackson and I will try, as always, to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.’ She raised her hand with an air of authority to halt her visitor’s next outburst before it began.

‘As to this morning’s disturbance, I can only apologise for that as well. But someone has broken into my house and turned everything on while I’ve been out. I haven’t even had a chance to see if anything’s missing yet. If you saw something, please can you tell me, because I’ve no idea what’s happening?’ Ellie got no further.

‘Well, I’ve heard it all now, you bloody little liar. That’s the line you’re going to take with the police, eh? So you deny gesturing to me with your finger and swearing at me on your garden path this morning? I only came out of my front door to see what all the noise was, and there you were walking down your path and all that blaring music and stuff behind you. I know you only did it to terrorise me. Gives you pleasure, does it? Yelling at an old man like that, you with your goody-goody image. Miss high and mighty author. I’ll tell the police the truth. You won’t get away with it this time. Harassment of an old man, that’s what it is, harassment. And me a veteran of the Tora Boras in Afghanistan, too. You ought to be ashamed. Oh, you think you’ve got the monopoly on being rebellious, don’t you? You young people know nothing. I was a Butlin’s redcoat. I did Ecstasy. I had my nipple pierced and had Newcastle United tattooed on my backside. If I still had my Black Sabbath on vinyl, I’d show you a thing or two about making a racket and terrorising your neighbours. The police are coming, I’m telling you. You’ve had it now.’

True to his word, as he stood yelling at Ellie on the doorstep, a police car rolled up outside her gate. Everything was taking on a nightmarish quality that didn’t make any sense.

And things only deteriorated. Her involvement with the angry neighbour and the two police officers was a fiasco. Ellie repeated her version of events several times. Each re-telling caused Mr Jackson to go a deeper shade of purple. Harry Jackson was a pain in the backside, but Ellie had to admit to the police that she’d never known him to tell lies. Because he’d seen Ellie after all the appliances had been turned on, and spoken to Ellie on the garden path, the policeman said he had little option but to believe him.

The male police officer said that he recognised Ellie from the sleeve of one of her books. However, if she thought this would curry her any favour then she was mistaken. He knew that Eleanor Erikson wrote psychological-horror mysteries and had a following in some subversive cultures. The officer seemed to think that this made her a raving lunatic who may well be prone to psychotic episodes. Once he realised who she was, he retreated a step and changed his tone of voice to adopt the attitude he might take with an escaped convict, guilty of hacking up little old ladies in a supermarket. If the whole stupid experience wasn’t so humiliating, it would have been hilarious.  The ordeal was drawing to a close and Ellie was lucky to get away with an informal caution to keep the peace and was told not to irritate her law-abiding and long suffering neighbour any further. As a side note, he also requested that she keep her dog under control.

 Jake, who had grown bored with the humans, realised that all attention was focused on him. That was odd. He hadn’t heard the Jake word.

Hm, lots of humans looking at Jake. How many? Um, two eyes. And um, yes, four. Um, four eyes. What’s next, whine…oh, Jake Good Boy, whine…but Jake can’t think numbers too good. Lots of eyes, that’s it, lots of eyes watching Jake, must be time to play. Oh Jake likes playtime.

Jake took a flying leap at the policeman. In the process, he bumped into the lady officer and almost knocked her flying. She stumbled backwards onto the lawn and trod in the deposit that Jake had left behind the police officer’s backs. Meanwhile, he’d grabbed the sleeve of his new friend the policeman, and was ragging it fiercely, all the while growling and wagging his tail at ninety miles an hour.

‘See?’ said Mr Jackson, delighted at the new turn of events. ‘That bloody dog’s vicious. It’s a killer, a killer I tell you. How can I set foot out of my front door when she could set that devil-dog on me at any time? I live in fear of my life, and me a Tora Bora veteran, as well. That animal should be taken away and destroyed.’

Ellie had been meekly taking the whole debacle on the chin and wearing it well. But the suggestion of somebody destroying her dog was too much. For the second time that day, she let go with both barrels. She stopped trying to drag Jake off the policeman and turned to rag-out her neighbour. Ellie’s face was centimetres from her antagonist’s, her features distorted in a decal of rage.

‘Well you nasty, spiteful, venomous, withered old bastard.’ At this point she had to take a breath and re-stock on adjective missiles. Jackson took a step backwards and Ellie took up the space with one forward. Her finger came up between them to stab her point across, and Jackson flinched as though she was going to hit him.

‘That’s right, you feeble, twisted, pathetic little pariah of a man. You’d better be scared. You’ve pushed me too far this time.’

While this barrage of words was taking place, both police officers were battling with Jake. WPC Sally Woods was wiping the side of her shoe on the edge of the grass as she hauled backwards on Jake’s collar. As she leant forwards over Jake’s neck her cap dislodged and fell to the path in front of the excited dog. Quick as an eagle on a mouse, Jake dropped the policeman’s arm, picked up the cap and was off across the lawn, dragging WPC Woods back through the already trodden-in dog-do as she clung to her cap.

‘You think you’re such a hero, don’t you? You’re no hero. You’re nothing more than a bloody joke in the village. Do you know something, Mr-Sanctimonious-Bloody-Jackson? Even your precious wife couldn’t stand the sight of you. Many times she told me what a pain in the arse you are.’

She watched as tears formed in Harry Jackson’s eyes, she’d gone too far. It was true, Pauline used to chat to her about her husband’s, ‘annoying little ways and maddening habits,’ but she always followed that up by saying that it just made her love him and want to look after him. Ellie knew of few couples who were more devoted. It was only after Pauline had died that Harry shut himself away and turned his anger on the world that had taken his Pauline. Ellie remembered when she’d first moved into Cherry Tree Cottage. Harry would give her freshly picked strawberries despite the fact that she had her own strawberry patch. She felt ashamed and contrite.

At the same moment as her outburst spent itself and fizzled in the wake of its gasses, Ellie felt the firm grip of PC Ferguson on her upper arm. He threatened arrest if she didn’t calm down and she allowed herself to be led inside the house.

Jake stopped his game to watch his mistress being led away and he followed. Maybe there’d be food, biscuits perhaps, or sausage. Jake liked Sausages best.

Ellie listened to the lecture and stern warnings of the police while Mr Jackson, who had taken it upon himself to step into the house uninvited along with everybody else, watched on smugly. Jake was worried. All thoughts of food and play were chased away as he wrangled with new input that needed sorting. Jake put his nose to the floor in the kitchen and followed a scent round the room. He traced it to the back door and whined. The smell was one that he could only describe to himself as a not-Ellie smell. It confused him and he whined again. Nobody took any notice of him so he snuffled for a few more seconds at the back door, and then went to his bed to flop down in a sulk. Jake didn’t like being ignored, especially when he smelled a not-Ellie smell in the kitchen.

After the police and her hero-of-the-moment neighbour had left, Ellie collapsed in a chair at the dining room table. She started to cry as she asked herself the question. Am I going mad?