Fred was the runt of a litter of pekingese puppies. He arrived at my parents’ house with his much more glamorous sister Lottie. They were so small that their tails had not yet fluffed out and were like little fingers sticking up. I was about six at the time and was enchanted with Lottie’s white paws.
Fred looked as if he was facing into a high wind, his little face an expression of permanent outrage. He was terrified of loud noises, which, as we lived in the flight path of Farnborough airport, was not ideal. When a plane went over, he would go into a fit and flatten himself against the ground (which was not very far, considering how short his legs were, so the effect was not as dramatic as perhaps he hoped).
My parents had met over their shared love of pekes. Although now very out of fashion, lapdogs had a certain cachet in the 1950s. My father was a copywriter in an ad agency and used to take his dog into work. My mother (who was a secretary at that stage, later a copywriter herself) was asked to take up a cup of tea for the creative and a saucer of milk for his dog. She thought the idea was ridiculous. When she arrived at his office, there was the peke and there was Roger, reading the Racing Post. He asked her for a tip, which she duly gave him. When the horse won, he asked her out for lunch. Between the horses and the ridiculous dogs, they were clearly made for each other.
Fred was often poorly and wouldn’t eat. One or other of my sisters and I would spend a lot of time feeding him his supper from a saucer, by hand. His bark was more like a newborn baby’s sneeze. He had a fine red coat, so you would forget how tiny he was until he was given a bath, at which point a fine fluffball was transformed into something more like a furious hamster.
My parents called their pekes “honorary cats” (neither of them liked cats). Even as puppies, they would never do anything so vulgar as chase a ball or a stick. My father would take them out for a walk in the afternoon and invariably return carrying Fred under one arm, like a fur handbag.
Like many weaklings, Fred had a developed sense of comedy. He would parade around on his tiny legs with a feather in his mouth, until somebody noticed and made a fuss of him. Sometimes, he would sit for ages with a shuttlecock in his mouth. We never knew whether Fred realised how funny it was for a flat-faced dog to be wearing what looked like a false nose, but how we laughed.
