Page 6 of A Sky Full of Stars
‘Spaniels aren’t the same,’ the woman replied, slightly mutinously. Nevertheless, she passed him the lead and a pouch of small, savoury scented miniature bone-shaped treats.
‘Won’t be a tick,’ Tristan replied. For some reason, he wanted to find this dog, and it wasn’t just because animal and woman were trespassers. He could see the concern in her eyes, and her very real worry for her pet. He suddenly wanted to bring the dog back to her.
‘Comet, did you say his name was?’ Tristan asked.
The woman nodded.
Tristan smiled for the first time since they’d encountered one another. ‘Leave it to me.’ He glanced down at himself. ‘After all, I’m more sensibly dressed for walking through a junkyard!’ He wanted to say more to reassure her, but he realised that the best thing to do would be to get her dog back.
Striding off, Tristan took a left to follow the side wall of the building and called Comet’s name once, then twice. Frustratingly, there was no response, not even a whimper. At least that hopefully meant the dog hadn’t fallen foul of a rusty nail or bedspring to the paw, Tristan thought. Eyes peeled for the sight of a small black dog in the shade of the building, he glanced back behind him and could just see the woman making her way gingerly, footstep by careful footstep, through the unkempt grass.
‘Stay there!’ he called back to her. ‘Honestly, you don’t want to be wandering around here if your shoes aren’t armour-plated.’ He was only half joking. The first time he’d visited the site after the planning decision had been made was on a grim mid-November day. He’d been wearing brogues with virtually no grip on the soles. Not only had they ended up covered in mud and rendered unwearable, but when he’d removed them that evening, he’d found a rusty section of barbed wire embedded in the heel. A tetanus jab hadn’t been on his list of things to do when he took on this job, and so he’d been careful ever since to avoid wearing anything other than stout boots when he’d come to Observatory Field, whatever the weather.
‘Comet!’ he shouted, feeling irked now. Where was this bloody dog? From behind him, he could hear the woman shouting the dog’s name, too. She clearly hadn’t trained the spaniel very well: his recall was shocking. Continuing on, turning another corner so that he was at the back of the building, he suddenly caught sight of a pair of black furry haunches, wriggling frantically and whimpering in fear and frustration.
‘There you are,’ he murmured, picking up the pace. Raising his voice, he called back to the woman. ‘It’s all right. I’ve found him.’
Hurrying towards the dog, it didn’t take Tristan long to realise that the stupid thing had got its head caught inside a cracked and mould-ridden plastic drinks bottle. Unable to see where he was going, Comet had jammed the bottle between the bricks of the foundations of an old shed and was struggling to free himself. Despite his earlier irritation, Tristan’s heart sped up with a mixture of alarm and sympathy.
‘It’s OK, boy, I’ll get you out.’ Speaking softly, keeping his voice low, he approached the dog carefully. Even the most docile of canines could get aggressive and snappy if it was afraid, and Tristan didn’t want a nasty bite. Stooping down, he reached out a hand, and ran it along the dog’s silken black back, muttering soothing nonsense as he tried to get the dog calm enough to begin the process of removing him from the jammed bricks, and then the bottle.
‘It’s all right, Comet, easy now,’ he said as he carefully manoeuvred the bottle out from the gap between the bricks. That was the easy bit, he thought. He didn’t want to risk getting a nasty nip from the frightened animal. Smoothing down the dog’s fur with one hand, he tried to remove the bottle from the dog’s head, but it was jammed over his ears. If the lid had still been on it, the poor creature would have suffocated. Tristan felt a flare of anger at people’s thoughtlessness and carelessness. Did those idiots who blithely dumped their rubbish here ever think about the consequences of their actions?
Mindful that Comet might bolt if he took his hands away, Tristan clipped the lead the woman had given to him to the dog’s collar. Then, slipping the loop of the lead over his wrist, he reached into his pocket to retrieve the penknife he always carried with him on his visits out in the field. Flipping the blade out, he made an incision into the plastic, worryingly aware of the dog’s flesh and Comet’s panicky wriggling. He kept up the flow of gentle chatter as he slowly sliced through the bottle until, with relief, he’d cut it enough to pull it from the dog’s head and free him. Breathing out fully, Tristan ruffled the dog’s ears.
‘You don’t look like you’re hurt,’ he said, ‘but I bet your mistress will be checking every inch of you over. Let’s get you back to her, shall we?’
Not wanting to risk the dog’s paws on the ground, Tristan scooped Comet up in his arms. The dog smelt a bit whiffy from whatever moulds and cultures had been residing in the bottle, and Tristan grimaced as Comet pushed his face upwards and gave his rescuer a stinky lick of gratitude.
‘Thanks,’ he said dryly, wondering how many washes it would take to get the mud and mould stains out of his green polo shirt. ‘Perhaps I’ll send your mistress my laundry bill!’
7
Charlotte was dying to follow this rather intimidating stranger who’d strode off to find Comet. Her heart, which had reached Usain Bolt levels of racing whilst she’d been caught in between the gate and the fence, had sped up even further when her eyes had met his across the sturdy steel padlock. It was just fear and worry about what scrapes Comet had managed to get into, she told herself firmly. After all, the dog could have stumbled upon anything if the guy who’d got her out of the fence was to be believed. Looking around her, now that she was inside the compound that made up the observatory, she realised he hadn’t been exaggerating. When he’d told her to stay put, much as she was desperate to follow him and find Comet, she knew she’d be risking tetanus at the very least. Evidence of campfires, rusty tin cans, ancient rubbish sacks that overflowed with such dubious contents as dirty disposable nappies, vegetable peelings and old cans of lager and Somerset’s speciality, cider, completed the grim, depressing picture. She’d been to see Banksy’s art installation and parody theme park ‘Dismaland’ a few years back where it had been installed on the sea front of Weston-Super-Mare: Observatory Field would have given the mysterious artist a run for his money.
Shifting impatiently on the spot, Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief when she finally saw Comet’s saviour coming back with a black, wriggling bundle in his arms. She blinked rapidly as she felt tears prickling her eyes, and although she wanted to dash over the remaining ground between them, she continued to heed his advice.
‘Here he is, at last,’ the man said as he and Comet reached her. ‘I think he’s all right, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to give him a bath and keep an eye on him for a day or two. Are you on holiday here? Do you have a regular vet where you live who could check him over, just in case?’
So many questions in such a short space of time made Charlotte’s head spin, although that could just be the relief at getting Comet back safely. She nodded, shook her head, and then realised she must look like a total idiot.
‘No, er, yes, and thank you,’ she stammered as the man gently returned Comet to the ground. She noticed the streaks of mud all over the guy’s dark green polo shirt. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she continued. ‘He looks like he got into a right state.’
‘He got his head trapped in a broken plastic bottle. These lowlifes who dump their rubbish here don’t give animals a second thought.’
The cosy notions about the observatory that Charlotte had been harbouring in her imagination had all but gone by this point. If this was what it was like on the outside, God only knew what it was going to be like inside! She resolved to buy a pair of steel toe-capped work boots to make this trip in future. She also wondered how on earth she was going to stop Comet from hurting himself if she brought him to work with her.
‘Well,’ she stammered. ‘Thank you for rescuing him.’
‘As I said, you shouldn’t be poking around in here. It’s private property; parts of it are derelict and a lot of it is dangerous. The only reason it’s still standing is because some boffins from the university are coming to remove anything of so-called historical significance from the records room before it gets demolished. It’s certainly no place for tourists or walkers.’
Charlotte’s hackles rose again at his dismissive tone. ‘I’m not a tourist,’ she replied shortly.
‘And not a serious walker, either,’ the man replied, ‘if those sandals are anything to go by. Which begs the question… why are you trespassing?’
At that moment, Comet emitted a distressed whimper. Immediately, Charlotte dropped to her knees to examine him. ‘What is it, boy?’ she said gently. ‘Did you run into something that hurt you?’ Ignoring the mud and the stench from whatever it was he’d been rolling about in, she smoothed back his ears, and saw that he had a cut inside one of them. ‘The plastic from the bottle must have nicked him. I’d better get him home and get the wound cleaned.’
‘And the rest of him,’ the guy replied. ‘And I’d better lock the gate back up, or God only knows who else will come along and decide to break in.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Some people never learn.’
