6 AUGUST, 2021

Dear Harry,

Hank was your dog. He was devoted to you. A north-of-Englander, like yourself, he was a border collie. Handsome, always eager, with soft brown eyes and remarkable intelligence, he came with the family when we left Newcastle in 1938 and headed south to your new incumbency in Aspley Guise, because your doctor—doctors?—recommended the move.

I remember the feel of his think black coat, highlighted with white. See? Like you, black and white, cassock and dog collar! The first “memory” I have of Hank—a “memory” because it’s only a photograph—is of him sitting on the lawn in Holywell, your first parish, before Newcastle, where Flora was born. Hank is pretending to be lazing in the sun but I know that he’s awake and fully attentive, because that’s his job, to watch over the little baby in the pram beside him.

Border collies need to have a job, don’t they? You taught me that. It’s in their nature. They’re herders. Up north, in the mountains of Northumberland, the shepherds send them off with a whistle into the hills to gather the widely scattered flocks and bring them back down the mountainside to be sheared. When we got to Aspley Guise, Hank had a new job. He’d be sent off, through the village streets, all the way up to Granny Murcott’s house, a mile away, by the woods, where she would attach a little package of sweets (candies, that is) for him to bring back to her grandchildren.

His other job was to look after us when we were little, to see that we never strayed too far from his watchful gaze.

Flora and I were away at school when Hank died. Of old age. You told us he was gone in the car, on the way home from picking us up at the train station. You must have been totally devastated by his death, but you put a good face on it. A father was not allowed to show grief to his children.

Did we cry in the car? I don’t remember. I suspect that even by that young age—I would have been, what? Seven? Eight?—we had learned to keep our feelings to ourselves. But I remember the terrible sense of loss, of emptiness, as you drove us home. I remember how, to relieve the gloom, you told us you had a surprise for us when we got home.

The surprise was Benjy, an adorable little Cocker Spaniel puppy, who jumped all over us, as excited to meet us as we to discover that we had a brand new pet.

We loved Benjy, of course. And Siân (Welsh for Jane, the “gift of God”) the snappy Pembrokeshire Corgi who was Benjy’s successor after he died. But we all knew, secretly, that not one of these two could never, ever live up to Hank. Because Hank was the gentlest, kindest, smartest dog we ever had. Well, that ever lived. I know you loved him, though you'd never admit to loving a dog! And I know that he loved you. He was the family’s dog, yes, of course. But there was never any doubt about whose dog he really was.

I see him walking obediently to heel, ears perked, tail held high, beside the flapping black folds of your cassock. Your faithful dog.

Good memories, then, today. Your son, Peter