Hamlet

Hamlet Painting by Mary Rosamond Hall

One wintery day, a little black and white terrier, wet, cold and collarless, followed my father home from a walk at the beach.  We children fawned over him in adoration.  At the insistence of our mother, signs went up in the neighbourhood and a small ad was placed in the local paper with his description under the words:  Found:  Lost dog.

On the first day, he stayed in the laundry room, accompanied by a pile of blankets and a child or two or three.   On the second day, he was allowed into the back of the house - cozy kitchen, and sounds of piano practice.  He stayed there for two days, until the ad had been published.  I named him.  Having seen Laurence Olivier on our tiny black and white television, soliloquizing in black doublet and blousy, open white shirt (not to be outdone until Colin Firth, decades later), I felt Hamlet was the perfect name.

Finally, the newspaper was published and our black rotary phone remained silent.  Hamlet could be introduced to the rest of the family.  The final test.  The door to the living room and the rest of the house swung open.

It was late in the evening, so all the cats were in.  Whispering embers in the fireplace had drawn them into the room and they were settled around in their usual favourite places.  Pandora and Delilah, the matriarchs, lay with paws curled under their breasts on opposite ends of the back of one sofa, like sphynxes.  Their heads had turned at the sound of the door, and now their eyes opened wide in disbelief.  They remained motionless, as did Hamlet on his side of the threshold that he had not yet dared to cross.  He saw them and recognized their dominant stares.  His head turned to submissively avert his gaze and then he gave a start as he saw, curled up on my mother’s lap, enormous Alpha, and balanced on the arm of the chair, grey Grushenka.  Both stared with obelisk eyes, and Hamlet shrank visibly, sitting down now.  Jeremy and Bacon, on opposite ends of the window seat stood up slowly, backs arching, and Omega, who had been under a chair, darted out like a black shadow and bolted for the open door on the opposite side of the room.  Small (her adult size belying the name she had been given at birth) sat upright in the centre of the carpet where until that moment she had been camouflaged by its Persian design.

His head turning slowly from side to side, Hamlet took two steps backwards and sat down.  The hierarchy had been established.  For years ever after, Hamlet knew his place, like a downstairs servant always trying to quietly melt into the background of the rooms of the house whenever the masters were about.