I don’t mind admitting to my own bias: I believe, though cannot prove, that Champ was with his “mum” (as we’re told she thinks of herself), Sally Lambert, walking along the lode path in Swaffham Tilney, Cambridgeshire, at 4:15 pm on 17 June, as his family say he was. I am firmly #TeamChamp. I’ve done my homework—read every word available online about both the Lamberts and the Gaveys—and I know which family I believe is more likely to be lying through its teeth.
It’s interesting that no one from the Champ-Is-Guilty squad has come forward to defend Tess Gavey’s character. Her online detractors report that she’s an envious, spiteful girl. At least two octogenarian grandmothers have felt compelled to master the internet in order to contribute a Tess Gavey anecdote to the online furor, and those two accounts fit perfectly with all the others we’re seeing from parents who escaped to Hampstead, Hull, and several points in between in order to dodge persecution by Tess Gavey. It can’t be a coincidence, surely, that the common feature shared by all the tales about Tess that have surfaced so far is a granddaughter or daughter leaving a school she previously loved in order to get as far away as possible from Tess’s peculiarly vicious brand of covert cruelty.
That’s who Tess Gavey is. Apparently it’s who she has always been. Add to this a false accusation that might result in the lawful execution of a beloved furry family member, and I don’t blame the Lamberts one bit for planning and enacting asuccessful getaway, having first decided to ignore the official machinery of justice in favor of their own idea of what that word means. I don’t doubt for a moment that Tess’s presence in my village would see me fleeing the contaminated area as soon as it was practical to do so.
But, wait—let’s say I’m wrong: wrong about Tess, and wrong to believe Champ didn’t bite her. (I was lucky enough to attend an excellent grammar school in the 1970s, where I learned that we might, any of us, at any time, be mistaken and that people could even disagree with us most vehemently and that wouldn’t constitute a breach of our fundamental rights. We could argue the toss, and win or lose based on who had the superior set of arguments at their disposal, and there was no need for anyone to accuse anybody else of an annihilatory lack of affirmation or similar nonsense.) My point, of course, is that I positively enjoy thought experiments in which I make myself wrong, so let’s do one now…
Let’s say Champ Lambert is guilty, and Tess Gavey is a blameless and honest victim of his terrier teeth, as well as of endless unwarranted online character assassination. Even if we assume those circumstances apply, I’m afraid the vast majority of the pro-Tess contingent look no more sane or rational. Champ Lambert happens to be a dog, yes, but he is not—crucially—an American Bully, or anything to do with the question of whether or not American Bullies are dangerous enough to warrant the outlawing of the breed. Thematically, his story has no greater a connection with that particular debate than it does with, say, a Laurel andHardy movie or the mutiny against Captain William Bligh on HMSBountyin 1879. Why is it, then, that so many who are gleefully drooling at the prospect of Champ being caught and put to sleep are also active members of the campaign to make American Bullies illegal? And how are they able to be so certain that Champ did it? Note: Most of these strangers who have never clapped eyes on a Lambert or a Gavey in their lives seem certain enough to assure us all that there is “simply no doubt.” Could it be that their ability to think sensibly about the specifics of a unique situation is impeded by their deeply ingrained habit of cheering on the position in any contretemps that is most palpably anti-dog, no matter the specific facts of the case?
I’d like to believe that even if I or a loved one had recently been mauled, mutilated, or maimed by mastiffs, I would nevertheless retain enough discernment to see that the Champ Lambert story isn’t about dangerous dogs if Champ is innocent,as the Lamberts claim, and has never bitten anyone in his life. If that’s the case—and my gut tells me it is—then this story belongs to a quite different genre. It’s a parable about wrongful accusation and its horrific consequences. We ought all to be thinking not about American Bullies but about the tragic Dreyfus affair, or the grotesquely unjust chemical castration of scientific hero Alan Turing, or the hanging of poor Derek Bentley, whose special educational needs sadly cannot now be redefined to include the need not to be murdered by the state for a crime he neither committed nor properly understood. Yet this obvious fact isignored by hundreds of online warriors who need to pretend it’s all about dangerous dogs because that’s the topic they happen to be obsessed with.
And they’re not the only witless wonders having their loud, sweary say on the subject of Champ’s “obvious” guilt; next we have the anti-colonialists, incensed because the Lamberts’ special song about their adored pet—“Land of Cute and Furry”—is one that takes its tune from the famous “Land of Hope and Glory.” Depressingly, that musical national treasure is now viewed by a certain subsection of society as a paean of praise for the exploitative cruelty of colonialism—and the very same idiocy that led our “enemies within,” as I like to call them, to form that misguided view now drives them to extend their condemnation to include lovely Champ. I kid you not: I’ve seen commenters claim that of course Champ must have half chewed off Tess Gavey’s arm because what else would you expect the pet dog of conscience-less colonizer sympathizers to do? And after Sally Lambert’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Ree, told the world that her mother never reads a newspaper or watches the news, and would have no clue what the wordcolonialismeven meant, did such comments stop or increase? Take a wild guess.
All of the above, my friends, is not the bad joke it deserves to be. Instead, it’s the predicament in which we find ourselves after twenty-seven years of first a Labor government, and then a version of the Tories that’s been indistinguishable from Labor, destroying this once-greatcountry. And what delectable choices do we have on offer when we go to the ballot box on 4 July? Rishi Sunak, who wants himself and his wife to be able to hang on to their billions but doesn’t care if his socialist-in-disguise cronies tax away any financial cushion you or I might have managed to secure for ourselves? No, thank you. Sir Keir Starmer, who has recently presented to the British public a manifesto more left-wing than any it has ever previously been offered?
It’s enough to make anyone want to go on the run, frankly. And yes, I do think the huge groundswell of support for Champ Lambert and his family has a lot to do with the desire of so many of us to get the hell out of Broken Britain and away from those who would break it further and beyond repair. Let’s face it: Very few of us are able to think straight these days, though some among us are more aware of their prejudices than others. Either way, I’m glad the Lamberts have fled in an attempt to save their dog. Good luck to them in their attempt to defy the regime. I hope they end up somewhere freer and more civilized than where I find myself stuck, and I only wish they’d taken me with them.
***
These next bits are all conversations between the Lamberts. I don’t know where they come from, but presumably around the time Sarah Sergeant turned up with her Bonnie plan. As with some of the free-floating bits I stuck in before, this is Sally Lambert narratingin first-person again. (Large, I’m more and more convinced Sally wrote this manuscript and at a certain point changed her sections to third person so that it felt less like she wrote it.)
***
Why am I convinced that the next words out of Ree’s mouth are going to horrify me?
“And?” I prompt, wishing I could turn and run in the opposite direction, but I can’t. I’m hemmed in, in a small room. Well, it’s not small, actually, but any room feels tiny when you’re aching to escape.
“She’s got a Welsh terrier, a bitch. As in female dog, not a bitch like Tess Gavey. She’s called Bonnie. She’s nearly fifteen years old.”
“And fading fast, according to Sarah,” says Corinne.
“And…they’re here?” I say. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To speak to you. To us.” Corinne speaks slowly and gently, as if she’s tending to a delicate wound. Is that how she sees me? What she’s saying—what they’re all saying—makes sense on one level but, more fundamentally, clashes so profoundly with my understanding of the world that I can’t extract any sort of stable meaning from it.
Something about this is so, so wrong.
“If this woman’s here to see me, that means she knows I’m here, that we’re here, with Champ,” I say. “And…I’m guessing she knows why?”
“Mum, it’s really nothing to worry about.” Ree puts her hand on my shoulder. “Sarah’s a hundred percent on our side, and no one who isn’t has the slightest clue where we are, I promise.”
“But what’s this Sarah Sergeant woman doing here with her Welsh terrier? Who is she? What does she want?”
“No, Bonnie isn’t here,” says Corinne. “Bonnie’s too old and weak to travel.”
“I don’t want to hear about dogs who aren’t okay,” I say. Is this the best she can come up with, trying to make me sad about someone else being maybe about to lose their furry baby? Am I supposed to feel less alone?
“Mum,” Ree says. “Stop panic-babbling and listen. Sarah Sergeant just wants to speak to you, okay? She wants to talk to you about an idea. You don’t have to agree.”
“How does she know, though?” I look at Corinne. “Is she one of the people you pay to do things?”
A look passes between Ree and Corinne, who gives a firm nod. Ree looks at Toby next. He nods too, though less decisively.
What the hell is going on? A fraction of a second later, Mark asks that exact question. He’s clueless like me.
