The story goes…

at exactly 8.35 every morning since we came to my father’s house my father’s dog has gone to sit at the front door where she whines with one paw up on the old scratched place and scratches more of the varnish off on to the mat.

This morning when she goes to sit there I fetch the lead and open the door.

She bounds out and waits for me at the garden gate. Then she bounds to my car in the loading bay, she knows which car it is. She sits waiting next to it on the pavement.

Whenever I take a corner the wrong way, go left when she wants me to go right or right when she wants me to go left, she barks until I turn the car around and go the way she wants. I start to judge which way to turn by watching the turn of her head and the angle of her ear. When we get to the street by the river she snorts and stands up in the passenger seat wagging her tail and I know it’s time to stop.

I put the lead on and let her out.

She pulls me towards the common.

She walks the edge of the cattle grid at the gate between the street and the park with a dainty placing of her paws so no paw falls through the grid.

Then she sits down on the path and looks at me and I understand I’m to let her off the lead.

Joyful dog running across grass.

I walk the path myself under the trees with all their leaves open. The colour of things hits me like something I’ve lacked. The river, clay-colour close up, sky-colour far off, widens and curves, like assurance, like something going its own road, an open road lit by the light it catches and sends back out from itself.

How have I lived here all these decades and never been here and seen this place before? I know, because of a temp job a couple of years ago when I filled in for someone on leave at the council and saw the number of applications from companies who wanted to cover the common in houses and flats in just the fortnight I worked there, that this common is the town’s

plague pit, where they mass-buried their dead seven hundred, six hundred, five hundred years ago.

Here we are today on the surface of things.

A church bell tolls the distance.

I stop to read the Combined Sewage Overflow warning notice.

Swans, so many everywhere; two pass on the water shepherding six small cygnets. Further down the river a couple of swans are sitting in the river both holding, what is that, dark against the white tailfeathers? is it a foot? they’re each holding one foot up and out of the water, are they warming their feet in the sun? A man wearing a broad brimmed hat is sitting on a bench playing chords on a guitar. A swan is standing on the other side of the path. It’s watching and listening to the man play.

Woodsmoke rises from the chimney of a riverboat. The pleasure the scent of it gives me takes me by surprise. Further along the bank in a gap between the boats a man is fishing. Slightly further along from him a grey heron, as if with the man but keeping politely out of his way, is standing watching the place where the man’s fishing line meets the surface of the water. There are magpies shouting. There are crows, moorhens, seagulls shouting. There are people walking dogs, people taking the tarmac path or following their noses along grass paths. There’s a rope swing hanging off a tree and a barer patch that curves round the tree made by all the people who’ve swung on it. There are cows grazing across the common. They’re all facing the same way. Animal magnetism. They wander across the tarmac in front of people on bikes, in front of the joggers; their eyes are big, gentle, ready to be mistrustful, their spirit is something between bullish and mischievous and their heft, up close, is magnificent.

My father’s dog is barking across the grass, jumping at somebody on a bike and now running back towards me still barking the almost cheeky-sounding high yelpy string of barks, and the person on the bike is coming towards me too, cycling alongside.

She’s young, and bright, the person my father says hello to on his dogwalks.

She stops at the right distance. She doesn’t get off her bike. She stays on the seat, puts one foot on the grass to balance herself.

Are you walking Shep? she says.

I am, I say.

Where’s Shep’s owner, I mean his usual walker? she says. Is he okay?

He’s my father, I say. He’s in hospital. Not the virus.

Thank God, she says. But oh no. Is he, is he, okay?

Not out of the woods yet, I say. Under observation.

Then I add,

heart stuff. But he’s much much better than he was.

I’ve been worried, she says. I’ve been watching for Shep most days, Shep always chases my bike when I go past, for fun I mean, we always have a laugh, I love it when a dog laughs, and I was worried not to see him or your father and that’s weeks now, because I always see them, even on the days when the weather’s really bad, we always shout a hello to each other.

Yes, I say.

Will you pass on my best wishes to him? she says.

Course I will, I say. Thank you.

She turns her wheel, points the bike towards the path away from town.

She calls over her shoulder as she goes.

Tell him hello from me.

I’ll tell him, I say.

She heads off swift as a swift.

But then she brakes, stops, balances on one foot again on the path and turns her head to call something else to me over the heads of other people walking the common this morning.

And to you too, she says. Good to meet you.

Hello.

I call it back.

Hello.