Bill, Bingo and Bram

Bill Smith had a way with dogs, a kind of power over them. They would sit in awe of him, would listen to him, would slink away sheepishly if they had growled near him. It was a skill I had cause to be thankful for once or twice. The odd thing was, that Bram, the last dog Bill owned had died in 1925 - fifty years distant.
     Bill was a retired, life long bachelor. He lived alone in the small terraced house next door but two from us. On a number of occasions, I visited Bill's house, and it seemed that it hadn't really changed much from the 50s. There were hints that some articles had been undisturbed apart from the occasional silverfish or visiting woodlouse, since the 1930s.
     He had a picture of a dog in the small converted kitchen which housed his huge solid pillowed chair, newspapers protruding from beneath its seat cushion. It was among one or two other small photos. On closer examination these were:
     A grey snap of seventeen year old Bill, grey in flat cap, sitting on grey grass with a winsome girl wearing her hair in grey bangs, and a cloche hat.
     A brown photo of a young boy in Edwardian dress, his head tilted back slightly, despite his stiff collar, with a too-small school cap perched on his head. Bill said it was him, but it looked like another person altogether.
     Almost forgotten amid the clutter of pipe cleaners, matches, spills, bits of wire, tea coupons and old Yale keys was a very small dark photo of a black mongrel dog, lying in a back yard. A white stripe down its nose and in between its ears was one of the few ways it was distinguishable from the background gloom. This was Bram, Bill told me, his dog.
     "Or my brother Frank's dog, if everyone had their own."
     Through the years, my family had a total of four dogs. We actually had no photographs whatever of the first two.