Mackerel feathers; there had been a mackerel feather rig I thought: a clunking lead weight, and a disarticulated rod, grinding around on incidental sand on the boot floor. As I searched for a torch, the memory from years before swept away the interim and enveloped me.

Driving around barefoot we were, sure we were going somewhere. Coltish youngsters de-snagging the hooks from the flesh and the denim as the car slewed gently to a halt on the grass and we all climbed out. The smell sand, sea and cigarettes. And the ability to stand up straight after half an hour bent double and tossed about crammed in the Clubman Estate. A long long time ago. Back there and then.

The light was going fast, the way it sometimes does, as if it had suddenly made up its mind and decided it was time. The disinterested motorway traffic was hypnotic, pulsing past with a monotonous hiss. I began to doubt my wisdom in stopping as I peered into the carpeted luxury boot. Nothing like the ridged metal floor boot in the Mini I was remembering. I pulled the torch free. No fishing gear here. I’d pulled in on the hard shoulder because I’d had a half glimpsed something bouncing off a lorry up ahead. I thought initially it might have been a person wearing a donkey jacket, leaning out, and then falling, so I pulled in to the inside lane, braking hard, and scanned the ground. Nothing. About to accelerate off again, and not wanting to impede the cars behind, my better self had niggled and made me stop. And I decided to check it out. The car had purred to a stop and I turned it in at an angle to minimise shunt if gawkers happened to hit it. Torch in hand, I reckoned it was about 500 yards back. I briefly considered reversing back, but feared running over any body. Once bitten.

Walking back along the hard shoulder in the gloom against the on-coming traffic was strangely isolating. My mind free-wheeled. I knew what had made me think back to the one particular day, so deeply ingrained in my less than untroubled past? It was the day when I started to grow up. Or rather when I grew up with a start. We had been having a ball. The long hot summer had been just about perfect. There was this girl. Of course there was. The feathered hook caught on her jeans pocket and I pulled it off as we scrambled out onto the grass, and we walked hand in hand into the snug in the bar, surrounded by the happy summer crowd. Later, I said I’d drop her home. I borrowed a Dune Buggy and we set off along the beach. Barefoot and fancy free. Except. Except we started rowing. Hilarious (drunken) rowing which degenerated into one arm wrestling as she tried to clatter me and I tried to hold her off, and the buggy slewed as I tried to steer under duress. One minute we were laughing and fighting and the next she fell off the buggy with a shriek. I braked and looked back. Couldn’t see a thing. I called out but she didn’t answer. I figured she was deliberately keeping quiet just to wind me up and was probably giggling under her breath just a few feet away. I whacked the buggy into reverse, looking over my shoulder, and ran her over without ever seeing her.

I reached the spot, more or less, where I thought I had seen the ‘apparition’ and started covering the ground more or less systematically. After fifteen minutes futilely flashing the beam, I felt a bit foolish and decided I must have been tricked by the fading light. I started to make my way back, when even further in the opposite direction, I spotted, on a final look back, a moving mass. We were now moving towards each other and slowly I made out it was a dog. An awkward lanky dog on three legs. I approached cautiously and got a wagging tail. It looked like a long–haired greyhound, but smaller. It struck me as a big puppy, I don’t know why. Perhaps the big head and stick limbs. Anyway, we drew level, his nose to my knee, big dark eyes looking absolutely trusting and expectant, as far as I could tell. I felt a bit at a loss. The options were few. I couldn’t just walk away. We walked away, or rather I walked and he limped along. Every time I looked down, he was looking up. We got to the car. I opened the boot and threw the torch in. Then in the headlights I had a look at the leg. It was broken. As a layman I could tell because there was a bone spike sticking out mid forearm (I think forearm). The dog was in fact a bitch, and was pretending to be unconcerned. I looked into her eyes and spoke rubbish as reassuringly as I could. I gently straightened the leg. She tensed and gave a little groan. I stopped. Gently putting the leg down, I opened the car door thinking I might dream up a splint from somewhere when the creature leapt past me into the passenger seat. Decision made. We set off and she curled up as if she was at home, a fixture in my life. As we crossed the Severn Bridge, I remembered a horse vet I had met at the races there and pulled into Chepstow. It was a bit late, but I gave him a ring. He wasn’t upset about the time; he was just not delighted it was a dog, being a superior horse vet! An hour later we were back on the road, me, a sleepy dog, and a plaster cast. Hunky-dorey, but something was chipping away at the back of my consciousness. The vet had said “come back in three weeks and I’ll check the cast. It can come off in six weeks”. Six weeks! What was I going to do with a dog for six weeks? I knew there were various exit strategies, dog orphanages (this one was a Lurcher puppy aged about 10 weeks, apparently: He had said ‘Lurcher’ in a vaguely dismissive voice), and city pounds and so on, but I now felt responsible, at least for six weeks. Somebody would take her off my hands, wouldn’t they?

I felt the bump; I will never forget it. I thought it was a rock. Then there she was in the headlights twisted up in the sand, and I couldn’t get off the buggy fast enough. I threw myself down on my knees beside her and tried to straighten her out. Sober now. There was blood, lots. Some from one ear. A big gash across her abdomen, the blouse stuck to the skin with rapidly tacky drying blood. One leg bent under her; broken (in four places, it transpired). I couldn’t make out if she was breathing. I lifted her into the buggy and could feel the broken bones grinding together as I straightened the leg but she was out for the count. I drove as gently as I could to the gates and up the drive. At the door, I rang the bell and steeled myself. Her father and I were not mutual admirers. He was an American who called himself Irish. I was just Irish. He was rich, successful, had a beautiful wife and was a bully. I wasn’t, didn’t and wasn’t. But I wasn’t creepy like so many were because he was rich, and his daughter thought I was fun, which also got up his nose. Up to this point it was a stand-off. Carrying his damaged daughter into the hallway, the stand-off was over.

The house got crowded. The ambulance came and went. The police came. More and more people came. I was centre stage and silent. Shocked. Everyone waited for news. News was scarce. After a while the crimson faced furious papa and a concerned and dutiful Chief Inspector came purposefully out from the conference in the drawing room and I was to go with the latter. It was a long night. A few things fell out in my favour. The beach was private property, not a Public Highway. The father flew daughter to Switzerland to have the leg plated by an ‘expert’, alienating local police and medics alike. I wasn’t allowed to see her. No charges in the end. A lecture instead. In the autumn, I went to college in Dublin, she in California. She up on crutches, me down on guilt.

By the time we got to Pembroke the pup was wide-awake. She stood up on the seat and stretched, arching her back, and then curled up again in reverse direction. We cruised into the holding yard. There were still some hours to go before the ferry loaded. I put the seat back and snoozed. When I awoke, she was stretched out with her head across my chest, asleep. We drove up the ramp and on board. I knew there were kennels on the car deck, but was a bit unhappy about leaving my new charge there with strange dogs and stevedores for company, the sole option. I had a car rug in the boot, so I made a bed for her and went on up to the cabin. Four hours later the Tannoy heralded Rosslare and shortly the car deck was re-opened. I headed down to the kennels. The rug was there. The pup was not.

Of course, I needed to find out what had happened, how it turned out. To say sorry. To draw a line under it in so far as I could. The next year we all went down to the beach again for the summer. The big house where she had lived last year stayed empty. As the summer petered out, I realised she was not coming. I wrote a letter and gave it to the agent to forward. I was young enough and naïve enough and guilty enough to write a poignant letter saying the sort things one probably shouldn’t lightly put in writing. I spoke from the heart in a way I would never have dared in the flesh. I wrote it, re-wrote it, and sent it. Then nothing. No response at all. Then, at Christmas, one of the girls got a Christmas card from her, with a note inside for me. I didn’t get it ‘till mid January when we all went back for Hilary Term. The note said “...I got your beautiful letter. I found it in my father’s desk! He doesn’t know I’ve read it. I am not allowed to see you, so we didn’t come to Ireland this summer. I will be in Paris for New Year, flying back to the US on Jan 06th. My folks fly out on the 4th. I’ll have the apartment to myself for two days! Can you make it? I’d love to see you ….” By the time I got the note, the opportunity was two weeks in the past.

I made a cursory search around the car deck, but it was hopeless. She could have been anywhere, been taken by anyone. Without opening doors and boots, there was no way to know where she had gone. I threw my bag in the boot and opened the door and then I saw a plastered leg emerge from under the car. There she was, tail swinging tentatively, eyes gleaming, as game as they come. I stood back and indicated with my head she should hop in, and hop in she did on the double, stick leg and all, and curled up on the passenger seat, as if she did it every day. I looked at her and decided I had better give her a name. I realised it meant she had crept under my heart’s radar, though I tried to tell myself I was doing no more than anyone would do with an injured creature. I didn’t know how to go about choosing a name. I dismissed the Luckys and Spots. I decided after a few minutes on Cassidy. After Hop Along. I said Cassidy out loud, and she looked up at me. I reckoned she was Cassidy now. We had not far to go.

I had a problem. This girl I liked liked me. Liked me even though I had run her over and nearly killed her. This girl had invited me to Paris and I’d missed the boat. It appeared I couldn’t write to her at home with guaranteed success. I wanted to see her. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted more. The question was what to do about it? In the end, I decided to fly to California at Easter. This was an expensive and untoward venture for me, but I knew where she was a student and I knew her name, so I figured, how hard could it be? Quite hard was the answer. I had underestimated the campus size and the university’s reluctance to divulge personal information. I was quite sure if someone had turned up at my college from 6,000 miles away and asked for me, people would have fallen over backwards to help them locate me. Money and time were running out when I met an ‘Irish’ cop in a diner who having listened to the saga, suggested he could get her address for me if she had a driving license, and she did, and he did. On the doorstep I arrived but there was no one there. I wandered about waiting for inspiration and someone told me they (meaning the students) would all be away for another week at least. I had to get back to lectures, so I scribbled a note, explaining about Paris, put it through the letterbox, and vamoosed.

The next summer, now two years since the accident, she turned up at the bar. We were all in there drinking when she walked in. With her father. I caught her eye and backed off. She said hello to everyone and had a drink, and then they left. At closing time, I slipped away and set off down the beach, alone. After about half an hour I was level with her house. I sat on the sand, looking out to sea, and lit a cigarette. Her house was in darkness. It was dark, apart from the stars and the cigarette tip. I had smoked less than half when she quietly crept up behind me and put her hand over my mouth. I looked around and saw her finger raised over her mouth. She took my hand and we walked up the beach in silence. After about a hundred yards she stepped in front and put her arms around my neck. We kissed for a bit, and then we talked. It was like the accident never happened; she blamed herself as much as me, which was generous, and her father was the one who bore a grudge. The major damage was caused by a rock with which she had collided, though being run over didn’t help. A great worry and guilt burden lifted, and I was euphoric. We wandered into the dunes with mutually unspoken intention and the approaching daylight chased her home. The next night we met again, and the third night she was gone. I guessed Daddy twigged.

Cassidy’s foot was swelling up. At first, I thought I was imagining it. My friend in Chepstow had warned me he hadn’t cast a dog’s leg since he was in Vet College twenty years earlier, and if it was a mite too tight the circulation could be compromised and the foot might swell up (and eventually fall off!). By the time I was sure, it was twice as big as the other foot. Another detour. I had promised to be there for breakfast, and it was now seven a.m. I had an hour at most. I turned around and headed back along the main road.

We lost touch then. I graduated and moved away for a bit. She graduated and stayed on for a Masters, and eventually a PhD (or a D.Phil. as they call it). We exchanged letters intermittently via her university addresses. Then I heard she was engaged. I wished her luck, at least technically. Then I got engaged and the letters stopped.

I found the local vet practice and although not yet open, the vet was a girl who sometimes came to the bar, and I knew her fairly well. She quickly cut the cast loose around the end and told me if it didn’t sort it out to come back in the evening to have the cast re-done. Then she asked me if the dog had been fed. I had no idea, but not in 12 hours. She filled a bowl with kibble and offered it to Cassidy. I never saw food go down faster! And a second one, and then a drink. We once again hopped in the car and headed on. I was hungry myself.

Some years later my engagement had come to nought and I was able to spend a few weeks down at the beach. It was there I heard her father had died. There was talk about the house being sold. Then someone said no, the daughter was keeping it on. So, I dropped her a line. She said she too had failed to seal the deal with her engagement, and as an academic she had a long summer vacation and would be down at the beach for the summer, starting this year. And should I feel like turning up, she would cook me breakfast one morning. I did, and she did.

For a few years we met in the summer. Then summer and Christmas. And now the plan was every morning, all things being equal. This is why I was travelling to the ferry in good time in the first place, with a diamond ring in my pocket, and why I was now tearing along the beach road at a fair old lick, with Cassidy looking apprehensive as the speed increased. We pulled up and Cassidy got out on the gravel and shook herself. Then she shadowed me as I walked, her cheek just brushing my leg. The front door was open. We went in and made our way through to the kitchen. She looked up and smiled, and saw Cassidy. “Don’t tell me,” she said “you reversed over her too?” We laughed; I assured her I was not guilty.

And we never looked back.

© Dave Cuffe 2025

2025

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