Forever Shales

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A short excerpt from Forever Shales

I was so distracted by the upcoming holiday that I let my guard down, and I narrowly avoided another incident with the cook. You see, she didn’t have to sharpen her kitchen knives herself. She could have had one of those knife-sharpening contraptions, but she always insisted, “They don’t work as well as an experienced ‘and an’ a whetstone.” Being a servant to a wealthy family, a man stopped by once a week, and with his whetstone he would sharpen all her knives to a soldiers envied perfection. Usually, the kettle went on the hob, and as he sharpened he would relay to Cook and Armstrong the latest gossip, picked up second-hand and third-hand from the kitchens of Hackney’s mansions and houses. He would drink two cups of tea and demolish several biscuits before he would be finished. It was a thirsty job, was gossiping. They called him Mr Finchey.
      “Mr Finchey,” she would say, as she let him in by the tradesman’s entrance, “we’ll ‘ave a nice cup’a tea, an’ thou canst fill us in on wots new.”            
     Mr Finchey was quite tall, and a bit dirty-looking, if you know what I mean. A bit like old Toothless George, though Finchey’s clothes were in better shape. He had an annoying habit of smacking his lips after every sip of tea, and he always dipped his biscuits into his tea first, before taking a bite. I think it was because he didn’t have any teeth at all, but just a large, gaping hole surrounded by loose, wet, flabby lips.
     On this particular knife-sharpening day she had requested that a certain few knives be extra sharp, as she had a “job to do”. When Finchey was all done he said, “E’re you are, Eliza, moy luv. These ‘ere noives are sharp enuff to butcha’ your very o’n cow. ‘Ere, you ain’t finn’ink of doin’ som’ink dodgy, are ya?”
     I didn’t pay much attention to what was being said. I didn’t really understand much of it, and I didn’t take the time to think about what had been said, nor to make sense of it. Besides, it was difficult deciphering Finchey’s words. He was a right cockney! Sometimes I had to think really long and hard to understand just one sentence when people were speaking, let alone a whole slew of sentences, and him speaking cockney made it even more difficult. 
     Finchey left, not wasting an extra minute as he had other houses to visit, and shortly later, when it all was quiet downstairs, I tiptoed below to get a drink.  Thinking Cook had gone into the pantry, I thought that if I nipped down to the kitchen I’d be back up the stairs before she could see me, but instead of silence I heard her footsteps coming quickly across the stone floor. Before I could escape, she was there – large knife in hand.  She waved her favourite knife in the air, the one she used, two-handed, whenever she chopped up large vegetables or joints of meat on the table. After the incident when she had stabbed me in the side of the ribcage, I became more aware of the fact that I could easily go missing for an entire day, and then appear as the main course, served from our best Minton, in the form, of, say, a giblet pie with gravy and vegetables, or a beef curry with rice. Did I have an overactive imagination, or was this an actual possibility? I could just imagine her gloating. A secretive, gleeful expression on her face as Armstrong served up the pie or curry, and someone in the family asking, in an enquiring voice, “What of Shales?  Any news of him? We hear he’s gone over the hedge again. Wonder when he’ll be back?” All the while, Eliza, the cook, would be below in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea, and out of my bones planning soup for the next day. There wouldn’t be anything at all left of me – not one jot of my existence. Nobody would know what had happened to me, or that they had eaten me! My innocent bones to be carted off by the dustman.
     She slowly crept towards me as water dripped from my lips and plopped back into the bowl. Ploppety plop . . . plop.
     “I’ll cook you, I will. I’ll cut you up in li’l pieces o’ meat, and nobody ‘ll know.   I’ll serve you up fow dinner!” 
     Her face told me she meant it and she wasn’t larking about. She came towards me, blocking off my escape route to the stairs. I was terrified and I felt my hackles bristle, and I went into my defensive stance: feet squared evenly on the floor and head slightly lowered, with a slow, deep growl coming from between my bared teeth.  I now knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to get away from her. I turned quickly and ran to the back of the kitchen, where the door to the trade . . .



 More excerpts, for your reading enjoyment, can be found in past issues of The Sheepdog.


I am currently working on my second novel, which is nearly finished (another year or so!). Illustrations will have to be done, which take time. At about 600 pages or more, this one is a "large" work. For those who love King Arthur, they will truly enjoy reading about him from his pet dog's point of view. Contains no sex and no swearing, just excellent writing. Notes and ideas for my third book are already being taken down.

Forever Shales, written by me, Deborah Berkeley, is a 475 page historical novel. Told from the perspective of a dog, Shales the Boarder Collie will delight you as he “tells all” about his Victorian family. This book is uniquely illustrated in the “old style”, giving the reader the sense that it was written decades ago and not recently, and there is no sex, and there is only one instance of swearing. It can easily be purchased online through Amazon books, or go to the publisher's online store at www.melrosebooks.com