CHAPTER 18 FOOTBALL SKILLS

 

“See you tomorrow Del!” I had said waving at Bruce, who was waiting with Derek for the Women’s Institute to arrive for a booking until 8pm.

According to Derek it started as a mostly uneventful evening.

The Womens’ Institute had their meeting and he and Bruce sat in our office next door to the library. He said they only came out to ask where the toilets were once. He directed them to the toilet in the office on the other side of the entrance hall. When they returned he started reading the Daily Mirror.

Bruce, who had been lying on the floor quite contentedly, now sat up, staring down the corridor, ears bolt upright, back rigid, lifting his paws one by one.

Derek said he watched him closely. Bruce was watching someone…or something down the hall corridor! He looked like he was trying to make sense of something.

Derek said it took a great deal of nerve to bend to the left and look down there but when he did, he saw nothing. He put his hand out to stroke Bruce but the dog ducked his head, not wanting to lose sight of what it was looking at.

Derek said he heard a noise, quiet at first but then it continued and increased in volume, a constant noise like a marble or something rolling across the floor.

He looked at Bruce who was staring even harder at something, moving from paw to paw faster.

Then, it happened.

A netball slowly rolled into the room stopping between Bruce’s front legs. Dennis said he nearly passed out, he could feel the blood drain from his face but he watched as Bruce rested his head on the top of the ball and then stood up and nudged the ball out of the room and into the foyer.

Derek had told me that Bruce was an expert dribbler with a ball and had kept 12 men at bay in the car park of the working mans club next to West Hams ground which was then in Upton Park. For over 20 minutes they could not get the ball off him.

Out in the foyer Derek watched Bruce run around with the ball, serving left and right, spinning around, heading the ball when it bounced in the air after hitting a chair for around ten minutes. Derek started to smile, his love for watching Bruce having fun took the place of his first question: where did the ball come from? It didn’t take long for him to realise something else.

Bruce was ducking, swerving, spinning around and nudging a ball, but Derek suddenly understood that he was playing against someone or something that only he could see!

To Dennis, there was only Bruce. Why did he keep stopping, defying someone else to try and take the ball away from him?

After a further few minutes, Bruce nudged the ball back into the office and lay down next to it, looking down the corridor. Dennis left with the Womens Institute and put a lead on Bruce and walked him home. His mind was all over the place. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.