BEL RIA

by

SHEILA BURNFORD

   Also by Sheila Burnford

THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY
FIELDS OF NOON
WITHOUT RESERVE
ONE WOMAN'S ARCTIC
MR NOAH AND THE SECOND FLOOD
                                      BEL RIA
      Dog of War

 Sheila Burnford

 McCLELLAND AND STEWART
@ 1977 by Sheila Burnford

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or other devise, without the prior permission
of the Copyright owner

ISBN 0- 7710-1785-5

The Canadian Publishers
McClelland and Stewart Limited
25 Hollinger Road, Toronto M4B 3G2

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd
52 Bedford Square, London WCiB 3EF

1977

Printed and bound in Canada by john Dewil Company
In Memoriam
1939-1945
                                      The author makes grateful acknowledgement to the following: The Canada
 Council of Arts, the Imperial War Museum, the B.B.C. Written Archives, and
 Ministry of Defence (Navy Department).
 'Let Hercules hims,--If do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will
 have his day.'

Hamlet V 1 (313)
 Part One
                  1

 Its flaking red paint almost obscured by dust, an old swayback grey horse
 between the shafts, the caravan stood out even among the bizarre lines of
 transport that filled the last free roads of France that bright June
 morning in 1940. Alone it creaked along against the civilian refugee
 traffic, the endless frieze of handcarts and ancient perambulators,
 wheelbarrows and farmcarts, the weary disillusioned people. All were on
 the open road, but only the caravan belonged by custom to the open road,
 only those who lived and had their world by it were true vagrants. It was
 this outlandish rightfulness that turned the caravan into an affront to
 the fleeing homeless. Only a few short weeks ago such passers-by would
 have stirred interest, curiosity, and even sometimes envy of a here today
 and gone tomorrow existence, but today there was only a sullen resentment
 and distrust of strangers who took a road leading back toward the
 approaching enemy.
  Even the little dog that led the caravan was different. There were other
  dogs on the road that day, but taking their mood from their owners they
  padded along as dispiritedly as the heels that moved before them, tails
  low, panting, grey and formless as the (lust. This alien dog that alone
  passed the other way took vivid form: head and tail held high, trotting
  along with important cheerful intent, sometimes almost prancing, at a
  carefully kept distance ahead. It appeared to lead the horse, for the
  reins lay slack in the hands of an ancient man huddled in layers of
  shawls on the wide scat. A tiny

                  1I
 monkey, perched on his shoulder, gazed intently ahead as though making up
 for his lack of interest.
  Walking at the side by the ditch, a tall black-clad granitefaced woman led
  a shuffling, shabby bear, which occasionally sank back on its hindquarters
  with muzzled head swinging low, and refused to move. Each time, after a
  brief glance back, but apparently unsummoned, the dog halted the horse by
  sitting down before it, then ran back to bark encouragement while the woman
  alternately tugged on the chain and prodded the brown bulk with her foot.
  When the bear was once more on the move, the dog returned to rouse the
  horse and the whecls creaked into action again. A young donkey on a rope
  halter tied to the back of the caravan completed the procession.
  Hard-pressed by the German spearheads thrusting to close the gap between
  them and the last escape route in France, there was still an intermittent
  stream of military traffic and troops passing on the opposite side of the
  road, heading for St Nazaire on the Britanny coast. The remnants of
  Operation Panther and the weary stragglers from the general retreat across
  France after Dunkirk threaded through the painfully slow civilian
  congestion with frequent hold-ups while brokendown vehicles were manhandled
  out of the way. On the northbound side, only a rare rearguard squadron of
  light tanks, armoured cars, or the occasional army truck being driven back
  to the wrecking dump pulled out to pass the caravan, so that almo~t always
  it was the civilian traffic opposite that had to give way or take to the
  ditches, and this sometimes engendered outright hostility.
  The woman and ihe old man appeared either deaf or totally indifferent to
  1he verbal abuse from across the road; at each enforced halt they and their
  animals seemed to freeze into stony ir-imobility, waiting only for some
  signal to reactivate thern. But whether this was communicated by the woman
  or b~ the leader, the dusty little dog, who sat back squarely on his
  haunches as though propped there by rigid

                  12
 front legs, it Aas impossible to tell. Certainly there was no movement to
 the reins from the bundle on the seat, into whose folds of shawls the monkey
 would disappear during the halts.
  Corporal Sinclair of the Royal Army Service Corps who, by one of the more
  lunatic entanglements of red tape and chaotic communication, had orders to
  drive his empty truck back from the coast to be wrecked at Montoire, had
  inched along at the heels of the donkey for a long mile, unable to swing
  out and rass, his vision ahead almost obscured by the high, swaying
  caravan. Ile had followed it so slowly and so closely that he felt almost
  as though he were part of it.
  Once, returning to the truck after manoeuvrm'g a brokendown hearse off the
  road, he had tried to make communication, smiling at the woman as he bent
  to pat the dog, but the head beneath his fingers was directed only to the
  woman, and her dark face was unresponsive, A distant stare rewarded his
  sketchy French. He tried again, proffering a packet of cigarettes. After a
  moment's hesitation she took one, and tucked it behind her ear, refusing
  another; but for a fleeting moment Sinclair saw a relaxation in the grimly
  set lips and, as though taking his line from her, the dog stirred his short
  tail. Soon after that the road cleared and the caravan and truck started
  off again.
  After half a mile, however, they met a straggling platoon of Pioneers who
  had missed their rendezvous somewhere. The sergeant stopped the truck and
  suggested that the soldier do a kindly about-tuin and carry his flagging
  grandfathers back down the road until they found some other available
  transport. Sinclair had time in hand. His orders were to report first to
  Movement Control at Savcnay when and however was possible. The useful life
  of this vehicle might as well be extended. The Pioneers piled gratefully in
  with their picks and shovels and he set off.
  It was noon before he caught up with the caravan on his return trip, during
  a long halt while a convoy passed at

                  13
 erratically-spaced intervals. It was hot, dusty and noisy, the sun beating
 down from a cloudless sky. The woman had taken out a goatskin water carrier
 which she handed up to the old man. He threw back his head and directed a
 stream of water into his mouth, then in turn she drank. The tethered bear
 sank down on its haunches, the extended forepaws pressed together, begging.
 She filled a bottle; clasping it like a child, the bear inserted the open
 end through the steel and leather of the muzzle and tilted the contents down
 its throat. A canvas bucket was set in turn before the horse and donkey.
 Finally she fitled an enamel bowl, and the dog came running to lap.
  A panting black mongrel crossed the road, thrust its head into the bowl and
  gulped avidly. The little dog moved aside, unag ressive, until the woman
  intervened and edged off the 09
 intruder. A young woman with a child on her hip crossed the road and held up
 a tin pitcher, asking for water. There was no reply, and she resorted to
 sign language, pointing at the child, the pitcher, her mouth. Finally she
 shouted, so loudly and angrily that the child howled. Without any recog-
 nition the dark woman continued to hold the bowl while her dog lapped. Only
 when the other spat contemptuously, directly into the bowl, did she
 straighten up and, with eyes blazing, she hurled it at the young woman's
 skirts. Quick as a flash, although encumbered with child and pitcher, the
 mother picked up the bowl and aimed at the little dog, who leaped for the
 shelter of the driving seat. A stone flew across the road from the hand of
 an ancient but suddenly agile crone, and found a target on the bear's nose;
 as it whimpered and shook its head, droplets of bright blood scattered over
 the dust. Another stone followed to rattle on the caravan, and another.
  Sinclair got out, prepared to do he knew not what, but bound by some
  obscure north versus southbound loyalty, and outraged by the pitiful
  senselessness of this shabby bear pawing feebly at its bleeding nose.

                  14
  He was savcd from action by the last tank rumbling by to meet the last
  carrier of the convoy; they met in the middle of the road, and chaos
  intervened. When the road was cleared, he returned to find the caravan
  lurched precariously in the ditch, the dog barking by the plunging
  straining horse while the woman alternately pushed and hung on to the
  tilting side. Even the old man had been galvanised into enough life to
  flap the reins. The sullen audience across the road, once more on the
  move, trudged by indifferently. With the aid of a passing despatch rider
  and an inexplicably bicycling Sikh rifleman, the soldier got the caravan
  back on the road. At the last heave, the back near wheel collapsed, the
  axle pin sheared. Despite the tilted axle shaft, the caravan miraculously
  remained upright. The woman suddenly looked drawn and exhausted, close
  to despair. Sinclair produced a wheel j ack.
  'All in the day's work,' he said cheerfully, and showed her how to use
  the )ack. 'You might as well keep it,' he added later, when the wheel was
  replaced, and a spare pin fitted. But despite eloquent pointings from the
  jack, to himself, and then to her, she still looked dubiously at him. At
  last she rummaged in her skirt pocket to produce a small purse from which
  she extracted a few coins. The soldier closed her fingers around the
  money, then shook the hand with a smile of refusal. He pointed to the
  water carrier and indicated that he would rather have a drink, but she
  upended the skin, with a somewhat wry smile at its emptiness.
  They were standing by the driving seat, their heads on a level with the
  dog sitting there, his bright, alert eyes under a top-knot of pulled-back
  hair, going from one face to the other, as though interpreting every
  expression. The doll-sized head of the monkey, now perched on his back,
  peered ludicrously over the top-knot.
  The woman's face suddenly cleared as she looked at them. She clicked her
  fingers. The monkey immediately transferred to her shoulder, the dog
  jumped down and rose to his hind-
  
                  15
 legs beside hcr. With the occasional slight motion of her hands, she put
 him through it small repertoire of tricks. Importantly, accompanied by the
 faint sweet tinkling of a bell around his neck, he striated back and
 forth, turned three rapid backward somersaults, then finally sat up at
 their feet with one paw raised ~i salute. The woman gazed down at him, her
 face softened by obvious pride. The dog looked back at her with beaming
 eyes, his slight body quivering as she reached in her pocket arA tossed
 him some small titbit which he caught in mid-air.
  The soldier applauded. Clearly this display had been his reward. He
  turned to go. The monkey in her arms pouted its lips, then smacked them
  in an astonishingly loud kissing noise, and held out an upturned pink
  paw. The soldier laughed and shook it. 'Goodbye,' he said 'And good luck
  - bonne chance, inadapne.' But already she was hurrying to untie the bear
  tethered to a steel stake in the shade of the overgrown hedge.
  She tugged and prodded and shouted, but the bear lay unmoving, it~.
  muzzle half-buried in leaves, the little eyes sunken and apathetic. She
  broke off a branch as a switch and raised it threateningly The bear
  whimpered, closed its eyes and winced in anticipation, and at this she
  gave up the struggle. She threw away the branch, then, hands on hips,
  stared down, indecisive. Just as Sinclair was about to drive off she ran
  towards him, and pointed to his rifle. Somehow she made him understand;
  there was no food for the bear, it was only an added burden, it had been
  someone else's livelihood, this dancing b~.-ar, never theirs ...
  Sinclair did not hesiiate; to his mind, this sorry beast would be better
  out of its misery. He slipped a round in his rifle and followed her back.
  She held the bear's chain, with no change of expression Dri her set face,
  and it was all over in a second. Thriftily she removed the muzzle, collar
  and stake, and the soldier pulled some branches over. She took his hand
  and shoo', it warmly, then pointed from the mound at their feet to

                  16
 the old man at the reins. For an astounded moment, the soldier thought that
 he was being asked to dispose of him too. But it must have been merely a
 comment on how much easier life would now be for, with a simile of
 satisfaction, she swung herself up beside the ancient bundle and took the
 reins herself. The monkey, chattering excitedly, jumped on to her lap. The
 dog had already taken up his station ahead of the horse. She accorded the
 soldier a brief nod as he drove past.
  The retreating traffic petered out markedly as Sinclair drove on. The
  caravan had given him a brief refreshing interlude from being one with this
  humiliation of retreat, this frustrating absurdity of driving these miles
  solely to destroy his vehicle, then to become himself one with this
  desperate flight from France. At least the caravan and its quaint entourage
  had a complete objectivity in the midst of this grey uncertainty - an
  uncertainty that was exemplified when he reached Savenay, only to be
  ordered by a chaotic Movement Control to drive the truck back again to
  Montoire, and there to hand it over to the wrecking crew. After that, he
  was to make his way back to St Nazaire for embarkation. 'Get there after
  dusk,' the sergeant advised. 'It's not a healthy place in daylight.'
  Sinclair was one of the last drivers to leave the blazing dump at Montoire,
  and it was there at the very moment of departure, ironically, after weeks
  of bombing and shellfire during the long haul back across France from the
  over-run Dunkirk beaches, that he was wounded; a tin exploded from a
  burning NAAF1 truck and tore a jagged path across his ribs, so that every
  breath he took now was a searing reminder. Someone had cov,=d the wound
  with a field dressing.
  There was only one truck left at the dump for the eventual transportation
  of the wrecking crew itself, and as he could no longer help he left to take
  his chances of a lift on the road. By now the situation was totally
  confused, he was told, and all communication had broken down. France was
  almost over-run, but here and there, apparently, between the advancing
  spear-
  
                  17
 heads of the German columns, were clear lanes down which a man might y--t
 make his way to the coast.
  He shouldered his rifle and pack and started off down a deserted side
  road. An atmosphere that was almost calm lay over the land now, of
  resignation perhaps; those who remained went about their business,
  hoarding, burying, destroying, preparing for the long siege ahead. For
  some it was but a repetition of another time, another occupation, the
  years of familiar endurance to be faced once more. In the end, the day
  of freedom must surely break; in the meantime children must be comforted
  to .leep, old people's querulous needs be met; there were eggs to be
  gathercd and cows to be milked.
  The road stretched out before the soldier, a composite of all the
  picturcs he had ever seen of roads left in the wake of a retreating army
  in other countries, other wars, something he had never expected to see
  himself; the abandoned wrecked equipment of an army haphazard with
  civilian pathos, the stiff -legged carcass of a horse, a handcart with
  a broken axle, an ancient Citroen on its side, one wheel turning in the
  soft wind, a battered doll face down in a patch of oil beside it. Half
  in, half out of a ruined basket, a carrier pigeon with one wing shot awjy
  crouched, life still in the glazed uncomprehending eye. The soldier
  turned back after five paces and broke its neck, watched only by the
  yellow satanic eyes of two goats grazing down the hedge. In the field
  beyond, a small herd of thin cows, bellowing with the pain of unmilk-ed
  udders, pressed against a gate leading to the farmyard, but the only sign
  of life in the farmhouse was a cat sitting on the window ledge. Clear
  above the bellowing, a thrush sang jubilantly from an ivy-covered oak;
  a short song, and when it was finished there was a moment of listening
  silence when even the cows were silent, and then the distant rumble of
  guns from the coast intruded. The soldier shifted the weight of pack and
  rifle and plodded on down the macabre desertion of the road.
  He was very, very tired. He could not remember when he had last slept for
  more than a snatched hour at a Rest Centre;

                  18
 he had lost a good deal of blood, and he now felt as dazed and numb with
 hurt as the pigeon, as uncomprehending as the cows. He tried to take his
 mind off his body, to think of other things as lie walked: of his young
 wife, now working in a munitions faccory; of his father, in the long west
 highland glen leading from the sea loch. It had been winter when he was
 last there, ttle red stags awaiting his coming with feed on the white
 windswept hills. Now the hills would be tender green, sunlit and shadowed
 by cumulus, the stags ranging far beyond the glen, the hinds high and
 secret with their new born calves. His father would be doing the work of
 two men, a solitary old man in the white cottage that had been home ...
  He tried to measure his walk now in terms of landmarks on the lonely road
  that snaked around the loch shore from the cottage to, say, Balluchmore
  village ... Two miles on and he would cross the humpbacked bridge soon,
  just around that corner ... three miles and it would be the stand of
  mountain ash above the bothy. Sick and giddy he stood at the side of the
  road, looking in vain for the ruined keep that should be coming into view
  now on its narrow peninsular, Beirm Bhreac should be there, looming up
  behind ... The soldier's knees gave way, and he folded gently into the
  shallow ditch.

 ig
                  2

 Sinclair came to, and with no sense of alarm found himself looking
 directly into a pair of eyes only a few inches away. They were merry,
 interested eyes, and he recognised them at once, one partly obscured by
 a few wisps of hair escaped from a familiar top--knot. As the dog's head
 bent closer, the muzzle touched his temple briefly, and he heard a faint
 tinkling. His eyes travelled peacefully up, and he saw a pair of feet in
 worn espadrillcs, thick black stockings, and the hem of a dusty black
 skirt. He felt no surprise; it was almost as though he had expected her.
  He raised his head and shoulders and looked around, wincing involuntarily
  at the stab of pain. The wagon was drawn up on the verge of the road, the
  familar huddle in front, the weary head-low horse and donkey. He tried
  to get to his feet but the world went into a sickening spin. The woman
  helped him, speaking with an incomprehensible urgency as she pointed down
  the road. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, then with an arm like
  steel around his shoulders, she drew him out of ihe ditch and through the
  open door of the caravan.
  Now he heard the noise of approaching engines, and understood her haste
  as she bundled him inside, pushing him out of the way on to a narrow bunk
  that ran down the length of one side at the same time as she scooped
  bundles of sacks, blankets and quilts off an elaborate brass bedstead
  opposite. She thrust the rifle under the sagging mattress, then turned

                  20
 to the soldier and, almost before he knew it, he was stretched out and under
 the covers, the bundles replaced on top. She indicated a tiny sliding
 ventilation grille in the side, sliding it fractionally open before dropping
 a musty pillow over his head and pulling up the covers. Something - a bundle
 of withys, he guessed - was thrown across his feet, then finally he felt the
 light living weight of the dog as it stretched across his thighs. She spoke
 one soft single word, then the door slammed. Seconds later the caravan
 creaked and swayed into movement. The soldier gave himself up for the moment
 to the musty darkness, the steady soothing clop-clop of hooves, and drifted
 away again.
  An awareness of alteration in the light warmth across his thighs roused
  him; the weight was no longer relaxed, and he heard the accompanying tinkle
  of an alerted head. The caravan halted, and now there were men's voices,
  harsh and commanding, the revving of engines, someone shouting. Although he
  knew not a vord of German, it was not difficult to interpret what was going
  on outside. The caravan must have reached one of the forward posts of the
  German thrusts, and its whys and wherefores were being challenged.
  He heard the woman's voice, apparently arguing, but not understood by her
  interrogators, and the sound of heavy boots approaching. As the Nvagon
  springs creaked to a new weight and the door was flung open, he lay rigid,
  his breath held. He felt the dog sit up, the quick movement of his tail,
  and heard the woman's voice again. Then, extraordinarily, the sound of
  laughter. The dog jumped down, the boots and voices moved off to the side,
  and someone, perhaps the old man, closed the door behind his head. The
  woman's voice rose again, loud and audacious now, and once more the
  mystifying laughter.
  He turned cautiously to the tiny strip of light under the covers from the
  ventilation grille. He put his eye to this peephole. The effect was
  dramatic, like looking down on a small spotlit stage, for in his
  circumscribed view he could see

                  21
 only a semi-circle of boots and the grey-green of German uniform tucked
 into them. In the centre of this stage, now adorned with a small cluster
 of bells secured to the top-knot and tinkling circlets on each forepaw,
 was the little dog. Only a few inches away from his eyes were the black
 skirts and dusty espadrilles of the woman, the toe of one of them raised
 even as he heard three short, sweet, flute-like notes close to his head.
 Evidently the old man was providing the music.
  On the fourth note the toe began to tap, and the dog rose to his hindlegs
  and began to dance. The tune had a lilting rhythm, and in perfect time
  he pirouetted in a circle, forepaws held out and head held high. The
  music changed in tempo, slower now, and at the end of each phrase the dog
  nodded his head so that the silvery bells accompanied each last three
  notes of the repeated phrase. Now he brought the forepaws into action,
  one at a time, each cluster of bells set in a different pitch to the
  nodding head.
  It was the performance of a virtuoso. The strangest thing was that there
  seemed nothing preposterous, only an inherent grace and precision. The
  little dog danced as though he lived for it, as though he would will his
  audience to listen to his bells and live for it too.
  Not far away, guns rumbled a reminder. Three-quarters of the western
  world lay reeling in the bonds of occupation, the wake of smouldering
  destruction left by these grey-green uniforms. A few short miles would
  soon end the agony of France, and then all Europe would be over-run - yet
  for this moment, in this one place, there was nothing but a silvery
  tinkling and a lilting tune and an audience who had become children
  again, spellbound before a dog who danced on a sunlit road to the bidding
  of the flute.
  So enchanted had Sinclair been too, that he felt almost a momentary
  irritation when the skirt moved and the palm of a hand occasionally
  lowered and raised obscuring his view, bringing the reality that these
  concealed signals probably coincided with the movements of head and paws.
  Yet the dog

                  22
 never appeared to look anywhere but directly ahead. The flute quickened in
 tempo and the little dancer spun in a small tight circle, the bells sounding
 wildly; and then, like a clockwork toy running down, slower and slower, the
 dog sank down to his haunches, shaking the bells on each extended forepaw in
 turn; then the paws lowered to the dust, the body following, until, finally,
 the last shake of bells to the final note of the flute, the head drooped and
 the dog lay still.
  There was a momentary hush, as of an audience bringing itself back to
  rcality, then a ragged round of applause and voices again. The woman spoke
  one soft sibilant, the ears flickered briefly, then the dog leaped into
  life to make a suddenly comic bow to the semi-circle of boots. The fingers
  clicked and he came running, with open mouth and lolling tongue, so that he
  appeared to be laughing. The fingers removed the bells from the paws, then
  slipped into a side pocket to return with some small reward of food. Two
  arms now made a circle and the dog jumped through it and out of Sinclair's
  sight.
  For a brief second he saw the doll-like figure of the monkey scuttle into
  view holding a tin cup, then the black skirts curtained off his view
  altogether. Clear above the guffaws of laughter and voices, the woman's
  voice rose in a new note, almost harsh and demanding, so that the soldier
  was reminded of a huckiter at a fair. He heard more laughter, then a tinny
  rattle of coins, and the brazen comments of the woman. The show was over,
  and as though to affirm this there was a burst of mortar fire from
  comparatively close range and shouted orders followed by a crescendo of
  revving engines.
  The encounter must have taken place at a crossroads, for when the caravan
  started tip again Sinclair felt it swaying to a right-angled turn, and the
  road surface was rougher. At least they were not travelling away from the
  coast now. He must get out as soon as possible; he could cut down lanes,
  across fields, and rejoin ihe road. He lay still, fighting the urge to
  sleep, until he reckoned that they must have covered a reason-
  
                  23
 able distance. Then summoning every ounce of will power, he struggled up,
 pushed aside the covers, and retrieved his rifle from under the mattress.
 The cold steel was a sobering reminder.
  He tapped on the half door. It opened a crack and he peered through,
  looking ahead to an empty potholed road. The craggy profile of the woman
  turned to look back along the road. She gave a grunt of apparent
  satisfaction, but when Sinclair pushed the door wider, intending to jump,
  she pressed it back and spoke in an unexpectedly sweet clear voice, quite
  different from the harsh fairground tones he had last heard. Words that
  were as incomprehensible as ever, but their message was clearly stressed;
  he must get under cover again. To his insistent repetition of 'St
  Nazaire, St Nazall,e ... as he touched the rifle and pointed to himself,
  she merely nodded calmly, pointed to the sun and shook her head. Then,
  as though to reassure him, she cracked the whip competently above the
  horse's ears, and with a further slap of the reins she increased the
  pace.
  Presently they turned off the road and creaked to a halt. The woman came
  through and the soldier removed his covers with relief. She opened a
  shutter and a shaft of sunlight fell on a bright red stain on his blouse.
  The dog jumped on the bed and sniffed at it with interest, tail wagging
  fast, until the woman pushed him gently aside and undid the buttons, her
  face concern,--d. The field dressing was soaked through. She replaced it
  with what looked like a wad of moss, smearing it first with some aromatic
  salve out of a rusty tin, then bound it firmly with a strip torn off the
  hem of her underskirt. The net effect was extraordinarily soothing and
  comfortable.
  They were halted on a sandy track under a clump of pines. In an almost
  leisurely fashion the woman began to unharness the horse, then, when the
  shafts were down, she helped the old man out., reached up for a folding
  stool and seated him close to the wheel. Ile was still holding his flute;
  she took it from him, stuck it in his pocket and substituted a clay

                  24
 pipe which the monkey promptly removed to its own mouth, scampering up on to
 the dog's back out of reach. The old man reviled them both with furious
 impotent grunts. Next she lit a small pressure stove which was soon hissing
 beneath a blackened billy can. Sinclair could barely restrain his impatience
 until he realised that whatever she was doing she was wary as a poacher,
 eyes and ears alertly sweeping the countryside.
  Lastly, accompanied by the dog with his proportionate little jockey hanging
  around his neck, she walked quickly to the top of the rise and surveyed the
  land from there. The dog's head turned in precisely the same arc as hers.
  Satisfied, she turned back and brewed bitter, strong tea, lacing Sinclair's
  mug from a small medicine bottle rummaged out of the old man's pocket.
  The concoction flowed through Sinclair's veins in a glorious heartening
  molten fire. As he sipped, she took a twig and made a sketch map on the
  sandy ground; here was the road where they had picked him up, the
  crossroads where they had turned east; and here was a back road, too
  meandering and narrow for military traffic, that eventually met up with a
  secondary road leading into St Nazaire. He must set off crosscountry for
  the first part. He followed her pointing finger to the south where high up
  in the pale still sky puffs of gunsmoke expanded Re parachutes. His arm
  rested on the donkey's back, his fingers absently tracing the cross there,
  the coarse, sunwarmed hair suddenly nostalgically familiar and normal, real
  in this unreal world.
  The woman's voice broke in: 'Mort pour la Patrie!' she said with commanti.
  Sinclair looked up, startled at this inexplicable announcement, delivered
  with such obvious utter contempt, and for the first time in a recognisable
  language. The dog interpreted by rolling over and over on the sketch map,
  scattering the sand, then lying still, as though dead. Then, to a mocking
  Wive la France!% the small corpse sat up with a ludicrous imitation of a
  salute. The voice was at total

                  25
 variance with the almost doting expression on the dark face, an expression
 reflected in the intense concentration of the eyes below, the slight compact
 body tensed like a coiled spring in anticipation. She pointed, and in a
 single bound the dog jumped up on to the donkey's back. She felt in her
 pocket, found nothing there, and laid her hand on his head in reward
 instead, gently rubbing behind one ear.
  It was time to go. Unable to express his gratitude in words to this
  enigmatic, indomitable woman who had taken such a risk for him, Sinclair
  unconsciously did the one right thing and spoke the one universally
  accepted word. 'Bravo!' he said simply, and he too patted the dog's head,
  an action acknowledged by the stumpy tail and the sensual almost cat-like
  inclination of the head towards his fingers. He felt in his pocket for the
  remains of a biscuit. It was taken gently and fastidiously, then laid on
  the donkey's back until the release of a smiling nod of assent from the
  woman.
  The old man suddenly made a grunting imperative noise, holding out the
  medicine bottle. Only when he saw his offering stowed in the soldier's
  pocket did he sink again within his shawls - like a tortoise retracting
  into its shell, he seemed to Sinclair as he said goodbye and set off up the
  sandy track.
  On the crest of the rise he looked back. The woman had already excluded
  him, her back turned as she fed the horse. Only the dog, and the monkey
  once more astride his back, watched his departure with grave interest.

 26
                  3

 The soldier cov(=d the ground in the easy strides of a hillman. He felt
 surprisingly refreshed and alert, the pain warmly contained under the
 comfort of the moss dressing. He had no wish for transportation now even if
 it had magically appeared. It could not be much more than ten miles to the
 coast and, remembering the sergeant at the dump's warning, he reckoned on
 reaching the docks after nightfall.
  He skirted the last field and as he emerged on to the narrow lane described
  by the woman, he heard the all too familiar engines of a Stuka, and almost
  immediately saw it sweep across the fields towards him, well below tree top
  level. Even as he flung himself down in the ditch with a gasp of sudden
  appalling pain in his ribs, he wondered why, for there had been nothing in
  the fields but a distant scattering of cattle and himself. The Stuka
  screamed over, its machine gun raising spurts (if earth, pinging on the tin
  roof of a cattle shelter, and then banked sharply to roar back over the
  fields, gun still blazing.
  'Bloody lunatic,' shouted Sinclair indignantly after it, and started off
  again, keeping a weather eye open for its predictable return.
  Presently, he was very slowly overtaken by his first military traffic - an
  RAOC sergeant pedalling along on an ancient bicycle with hard rLibber
  tyres. A slight young Lancashire Fusilier with grotesquely swollen feet,
  his boots slung around his neck, sat sideways on the cross bar. A black
  collie panted

                  27
 along behind 'Sorry, mate, full up,' said the sergeant as he wobbled past.
  Sinclair stepped out beside them for a few yards. 'Watch out for a
  Daredevil of the Skies in a Stuka,' he said. 'The type that would shoot
  up a turnip field for the hell of it-'
  'Him-' said the sergeant, disgust flooding his face. 'He conquered a
  couple of gypsies and a wagon back there. . .
 'In a clump of pines - an old man and a woman?'
  'I wouldn't know, but there were two bodies all right,' said the
  sergeant. 'The wagon was blazing-'
 'They had animals?' asked Sinclair.
  'I shot a horse,' said the sergeant briefly, 'and there was a donkey, but
  I missed it - it went screaming off into the trees.'
  'There was a dog, and a monkey,' said Sinclair wearily. 'It was a little
  circus act.'
  'Probably copped it too,' said the sergeant, and pedalled on down the
  road, so slowly that it was a long time before Sinclair lost sight of
  him.
  He walked on, but now he was only conscious of an infinite weariness and
  hurt, the reproachful ache in his mind that if they had not turned off
  the road for him they would still be alive, the old flute player and his
  mischievous little monkey, that rock-strong woman and her constant vivid
  shadow, the dog. Even the old horse who had rolled with such pleasure
  when released from the shafts, and the patient donkey - now all so
  needlessly, senselessly wiped out.
  An hour later, as he turned from wary custom to look back along the road,
  he saw, less than a hundred yards behind, the furtive figure of a dog,
  slinking along on the verge. Sinclair stood stock still for a moment, his
  scalp prickling eerily. The dog stopped too, cowering. A tiny face with
  anxious eyes and wrinkled brows peered over the dog's head.
  They were not ghosts conjured up by his uneasy mind; they were
  disconcertingly real. They looked very small and defenceless and tragic
  against this empty background. But their sudden return to life disturbed
  too deeply; they belonged
                                    b

                  28
 to the dead, and there was no place for them in his life, no time or thought
 to spare for them in their plight.
  The dog crept forward, then hesitated, his ears laid back, his eyes showing
  recognition, the short tail quivering almost imperceptibly, but the soldier
  returned no recognition; turning abruptly, he continued on his way without
  a backward glance. He forced them out of his mind as determinedly as he
  forced his pace, for the mellow light of late afternoon lay over the land
  now.
  The booming orchestration of the coastal guns ahead swelled and died away
  in longer and longer intervals. Somewhere a cow bellowed, and was answered
  by the lighter muffled call of a calf. A kestrel hovered over the far
  hedgerow, but swifts clipped and wheeled unheeding, low over the open
  field. A countryman all his life until he had shed his keeper's tweeds for
  a uniform in 1939, the soldier subconsciously noted these things, marked
  the distant returning rooks, flapping iii a strange purposeful silence this
  day, the evening voices of all birds subdued. Stirred perhaps by the desire
  to see and hear such nostalgic commonplace in his own countryside again he
  quickened his pace, holding the webbing of the rifle away from the raw ache
  of his ribs. Behind him the dog stretched out too to maintain its imposed
  distance.
  Nearer the town he saw a lone raider unload a stick of bombs across a ficld
  under the harassment of a diving Spitfire. He crossed the field afterwards
  in a short cut. The last bomb had straddled the hedge, scooping a crater
  deep into the soft sands of the rabbit warrens there. The blast must have
  blown the rabbits out of their burrows like shells from the muzzle of a
  gun. They lay in a sickle-shaped cluster about twenty feet from the
  crater's rim, outwardly whole and unharmed, as though dropped there by some
  retrieving dog. One doe, either at the moment of parturition, or as the
  result of blast propulsion, lay with a foetus between her hind legs, its
  sac already shrivelled by the sun, yet still intact, closely shrouding the
  miniature within.

                  29
  Sinclair stopped, unable to tear his eyes away for a moment. On the far
  side of the crater the dog suddenly appeared, standing utterly still, his
  head up as though pulled back by the monkey's hands around his throat. Two
  pairs of eyes stared unwaveringly at him. It was as though they drew him
  down to their plight and size, so that he was in proportion to the animals
  dead and alive of this little ruined crater world. This raw wound in the
  earth which exposed the roots of a tree like entrails, this scattering of
  small limp bodies, the aborted doe-all was suddenly an unendurable
  desecration. The roots of one scrubby pine among a hundred pines, some
  twenty of the most prolific vermin dead-yet somehow a blasphemy so
  incomprehensibly terrible that he felt quite giddy and shaken.
  In a sudden blind rage he shouted and swore at the dog, threatening with
  upraised arm, desperate to drive it away, to be rid of those remorselessly
  reminding eyes. They must not follow him, hopelessly, uselessly, into the
  seaport. They must find some other human association -some farmhouse sanc-
  tuary perhaps. 'Get oud' he yelled. 'Go back! Go away.... Shoo.... -UlezP
  He picked up a stone, feinted a throw to no effect. He threw it,
  deliberately short. The monkey buried its head, but the dog crouched
  steadfast, its eyes unwavering.
  It was useless. He was wasting energy. Once more he turned his back
  resolutely, and set off at such a cathartic pace that he reached the
  outskirts of St Nazaire shortly before sunset. Only then did he look back.
  They were still there. But in the town centre he lost his followers at
  last. In the empty streets of blind-shuttered houses and shops, he took
  cover for a while against the falling flak. He saw the dog momentarily,
  obviously terrified by the barrage, cowering against a wall; then, as
  shrapnel rained down he bolted from cover, and the last Sinclair saw of him
  was the little grey form streaking away down the cobblestones, veering
  wildly, the dark shape of the rider crouched low to the outstretched neck.
  Sinclair presied himself further into the stone arch of a gar-
  
                  30
 den wall, feeling at once both disquiet and relief to see them go. They had
 been incongruous enough before, but here their pathetic jockey-and-steed
 comicality was almost an outrage before the human tragedy of a war-torn
 town. Behind the shuttered windows of the house beyond, a crackling radio
 blared the Marseillaise.
  The bombardment increased. It was dark before the first lull fell and he
  found his way to the military control post. The blacked-out town was still
  full of troops, patiently awaiting embarkation orders, dim silent forms
  hunched on the kerbs now, or propped against walls, identifiable only by
  the occasional firefly glow of a furtive cigarette. He had a mug of coffee
  at a canteen operating in the crypt of a roofless church, considered
  reporting his wound but decided against it when an ambulance drove up to a
  first aid post and he saw what one medical corps orderly had to contend
  with single-handed. He joined a file of silent men converging on the docks
  towards the black bulk of a destroyer lying alongside, but the bombardment
  started up again, the destroyer slipped away, and the file scattered for
  shelter.
  For hours he crouched within the sandbagged emplacement of a wrecked gun
  with a dozen or so other men. Among them he recognised the young Lancashire
  Fusilier, last seen on a bicycle's crossbar, his feet now forced back into
  unlaced boots, the collie crouched by his side, When the boy's head fell
  forward and he slept momentarily, the dog stretched across his knees,
  whining, pawing at his chest until he wakened. Sinclair offered him a
  cigar'Ctte. The boy had reached the beaches of Dunkirk to find the last of
  the rescue craft pulled out. The collie had been one of a pack of abandoned
  dogs still roaming the water's edge. It had attached itself to him,
  following him back on the tortuous retreat across France, by truck at
  first, then on a train until it was derailed, and after that on foot. When
  he had crossed the Loire the dog had swum behind. The boy would not abandon
  him now. Somehow he would get this dog back to England.

                  31
  His tale sparked off an exchange of experiences over the last hectic weeks
  among the group. One man, a despatch rider, told how he had skidded off a
  sharp bend and into the ditch minutes before a German column had rolled by.
  The machine was wrecked, but when he had crawled through the hedge he had
  found, miraculously awaiting him in the field, a horse, unaccountably
  saddled and bridled. There was no sign of an owner. Kno1A ing little more
  than one end of a horse from the other he climbed gratefully aboard this
  providential transport, and set off to regain his signals unit on a cross-
  country course which lasted for nearly a week. Eventually he ended up at La
  Boule and there, with much regret, he was dismounted.
  Sinclair told something of the caravan and its entourage, and a voice to
  his left spoke of seeing a proper circus, a whole convoy of bright modern
  wagons and trailer cages, including two elephants, heading out of Paris.
  The talk fell away and the group dozed fitfully. Unable to ease his ribs
  into any comfortable position, Sinclair remained awake. Taking a packet of
  cigarettes out of his pocket he came across the medicine bottle. The swig,
  small though it was, exploded in his head, then spread its remembered
  warmth through his veins. lie drank to the generosity of the old man, and
  then to that fierce-eycd brave woman, now so culpably dead - and at that
  moment, almost as though summoned, he felt rather than saw the wraithlike
  presence of the dog. A nose touched hii hand, then quested within his open
  battle dress blouse, moving over the binding there. He drew deeply on the
  cigarette and in the red glow saw the familiar shape of the dog's head, and
  the dark limpet blur that was the monkey. They had found him, the one
  tenuous link with their destroyed past; their claim still strong in her
  scent on the strip of clothing around his ribs, and from her hands that had
  bound it there. The dog's eyes looked almost crazed with terror.
  The man beside him flicked a shaded lighter. 'Cor,' he said, 'look what's
  here-' and a hand reached out to the

                  32
 monkey; but the dog whirled with bared teeth as the monkey gibbered
 fearfully and clung tighter. Another hand proffered a piece of chocolate,
 but the dog, trembling violently, pressed closer to Sinclair. thrusting
 his head into the shelter of his arm.
  The monkey reached out to grab the edge of his blouse, then with a qul,:k
  nervous decision thrust its head within. Sinclair knew nothing ol
  monkeys, had never touched one before, and felt almost repelled by the
  dry warmth; but some instinct caused li~m to cup a hand over its haunches
  and the little thing burrowed in. He did up the buttons without a thought
  for the consequences of his action other than vaguely hoping that it
  would not sink its teeth in him later when he removed it. The black
  collie, ears pricked inquisitively, moved over to investigate, and the
  dog snarled. Lazily, Sinclair stretched out a proprietory leg and barred
  the collie with his boot, resting his hand reassuringly on the quivering
  dog -acknowledging the wrongness, the false premise of his responsibility
  even as he did so He should have driven them off immediately.
  When the ordcr reached them to move he paused, his hand irresolute over
  the buttons. It was too small, too naked and human a burden to return to
  the shoulders of a small distraught dog. Even if he did so, it would not
  be easy to abandon or drive t)iem away now that they had made contact;
  they had proved their tenacity. He buttoned up his blouse. The medicine
  botile had made him quite lightheaded and carefree. Let them take their
  chance. Let someone else make the decision. Let some authority risk its
  fingers over the dislodgement of the monkey, the sharp attendant teeth
  of its guardian dog. Ile would not think further than the moment. Ile
  shared a last sip on French soil with the fusilier. 'Here's luck,' he
  said che,--rfully, patting the almost imperceptible bulge on his chest.
  The dog kept close to his heels. Ahead, groups of men were moving out of
  cover to the shaded pin prick of light that marked one gangwav between
  the dock wall and the awaiting

 B                33
 destroyer. As he drew nearer, he saw the collie running up and down the
 edge of the dock, gathering itself for a spring, hesitating, barking,
 running back to try again, and always failing before the ten-foot gap. As
 he awaited his turn to embark he saw that two MPs were stationed on either
 side of the gangway, and were turning back with well directed boots the
 frantic attempts of yet another dog to board.
  He bent down and felt around the neck of the grey blur at his feet. The
  bell was firmly attached to some form of metallic thread but he silenced
  it by wrenching out the clapper. Tile next time he looked down his shadow
  was no longer there. He shuffled forward in his turn and produced his
  identifying paybook, feeling the small warm stillness under his pocket
  as he did so. A grey-faced naval officer, flanked by a keen-eyed Master
  of Arms, inspected his paybook briefly, glanced up at his face, then down
  to the front of his battle dress. Sinclair looked down too, resigned,
  expecting to find a tell-tale paw or tail sticking out, but 'Wounded?'
  asked the officer.
 'Not seriously, sir,' said Sinclair.
  'Report to the Medical Officer when you board the Lancastria,' said the
  officer, his eyes already on the man behind him.
  As he boarded the gangway, Sinclair could just make out a small still
  form pressed against and merging into the canvas sides, only a few inches
  away from the gleaming boots of an MP. Between the boots and the canvas
  was a space of some eight inches, and he marvelled at the strategic
  positioning of this extraordinary little dog. Sure enough there was a
  momentary brushing, light as a feather, against the inside of one leg as
  he took the first step up the gangway, and at the end as he stepped down
  he felt it again.
  It was impossible to move forward through the packed mass of humanity
  already on board the destroyer. His group was almost the last to be taken
  aboard before the gangway was removed. He remained jammed agonisingly
  against the

                  34
 rail as the destroycr slipped away from the dock and headed out to the
 great bulk- of the liner that lay at anchor three miles out in the
 roadstead.
  When they transferred to the Lancastria, it was impossible to distinguish
  anything at deck level among the milling boots in the darkness, but he
  had no doubt now that somewhere beyond the blue pin pricks of light in
  the dark cavern at the end of his second gangway crossing, his shadow
  would attach itself to him again.
  Everything on board the liner was proceeding with calm efficiency. The
  Lancastria's crew remained as imperturbable as though the throngs of
  weary unwashed troops and ill-prepared civilians - women and children
  among them - and wounded were privileged passengers about to set off on
  a peacetime cruise. White-jackcted solicitous stewards were everywhere.
  He was directed where to report, where to collect a life-jacket, where
  to stow his kit; he was allocated a mattress in No. 2 hold, and even a
  time to appear in the dining saloon, and finally he was direcled to the
  sick bay.
  Up to this point, he had luxuriated only in being part of an unthinking
  process again. Now he had to force himself to make a personal decision,
  and his tired mind rebelled. A medical officer woLild obviously take a
  dim view of the monkey's unhygienic haven, and if he were once listed as
  wounded he would be caught up wifli medical officialdom the moment they
  landed in En-land. Was he really going to see this thing through? Was he
  really going to burden himself with the ultimate acceptance of
  transferred ownership? The smuggling ashore, the concealment? And then
  ... ?
  But the dark woman had not hesitated to accept responsibility for him ...
  Then scrub the sick bay, said Sinclair to himself, suddenly resolute. And
  scrub the mattress in No. 2 hold as well, he decided a minute later,
  feeling the strong revulsion of the countryman against the constraint of
  walls and packed humanity. The upper deck might be packed too with silent

                  35
 huddled shapes, but above was the velvet night sky of June and fresh salt
 air. He made his way up and found a place beside a sleeping civilian at the
 end of a row of back-to-back seats; and even before he had wedged himself
 in, he was aware of a small shape slipping down the narrow tunnel formed at
 their base. After a while he put a hand down and smiled in satisfaction when
 he felt the touch of a nose. So far so good.
  He had been handed two thick bully beef sandwiches soon after boarding. He
  ate one, then took the meat out of the other and passed it behind him, but
  it remained uneaten on the deck. He pushed a crust inside his blouse, but
  drew no response from the monkey. It seemed to be asleep. Sinclair closed
  his eyes and dozed uneasily.
  When he woke they were anchored out in the searoads beyond St Nazaire.
  There was the promise of another still warm morning. The long low shape of
  Les Etoiles rose from the flat dawn sea to the west, and to the east lay
  the silent waiting coastline of France, plumes of black smoke rising lazily
  in the misty air. There was a suspenseful unreality about it, as of a
  backdrop to an empty stage vefore the play begins. On the Lancastria,
  reality lay in the spectators, in the grey unshaven faces of men huddled
  into ground sheets or gas capes against the dawn chill, and in the stirring
  unease that they were still there, a vulnerable audience for any show the
  enemy might care to put on.
  Sinclair's immediate concern, however, was that the slight bulge at his
  chest was no longer there. He felt around in the folds of his blouse. The
  man beside him opened one eye. 'The monkey which is emerged from your
  vestments is now there-' he said in very French-accented English, and
  pointing vaguely behind him. 'It has sullied the floor,' he added severely.
  'A sailor has expressed considerable chagrin.' He closed the eye.
  Sinclair was relieved; at least it was not his vestments that had been
  sullied. The chagrined deckhand must have dealt

                  36
 with the offence for thCre was no sign. Nor was there any sign of the
 offcndcr or the dog; they must be deep in the fastness of their tunnel. He
 decided to leave well alone and went off to queue up for a mug of tea and
 another sandwich.
  On his way he saw the black collie of the night before, leaning
  possessively against a pack and rifle. A steward told him that he had seen
  at least a dozen other dogs on board, not to mention several cats, and a
  rabbit. And one of the army nursing sisters had even brought a tortoise
  along with her-he had managed to find some lettuce for that, he said
  proudly. He was obvious!y an animal ]over, and his day was made when he
  heard about the monkey. He produced an apple and some raisins, and his
  final triumph was a packet of biscuits with raised bumps which he assured
  Sinclair were nuts. 'Come back here before we get to the other side,' he
  said. 'Once they're off the ship most of those animals will be collared by
  the officials - but there are ways . . .' He let the words fall
  significantly.
  Fate seemed dc-termined to steer his course, sending such a useful contact.
  Siliclair settled on a later rendezvous and made his way back. Hc had just
  emerged on to the upper deck when, almost simultaneously with the shipboard
  uproar of alarm bells and gongs and gunfire, there came the scream of
  aircraft engines. The lincr shuddered convulsively to two nearby
  explosions, and men flattened on the deck like a pack of cards as the dark
  shapes passed over and veered off towards the coast bcfore the barrage of
  gunfire. A choleric-faced Indian army major a few yards ahead of Sinclair
  lowered a hastily snatched rifle as hc watched them go. 'I didn't lead them
  enough,' he said regretfully. 'Just wait till they come round again-' But
  the aircraft seemed to have been driven off for the moment; the ship's
  bells and a bugle rang the all clear soon afterwards. Men picked themselves
  up off the decks and resumed their grumbling, sunk back into lethargy, or
  went in search of a beer.
 Too stiff and painful to bend down and peer along the seat

                  37
 tunnel, Sinclair shoved the fruit and biscuits and a mug of water just
 inside. The animals must have been terrified by the explosions and
 gunfire, and he tried to entice them out with encouraging noises.
  His seat mate gazed down with such raised eyebrows that he felt some
  explanation about how he had acquired his companions was due. The
  Frenchman was interested, and in his quaintly pedantic English was able
  to supply some background to those 'peoples of the roads' as he called
  them, They came from the Basque country to travel the sideroads and
  villages of France, as seasonal as the onion vendors, as shrouded in
  antiquity as the gypsies - possibly of Moorish blood, he thought.
  Sometimes singly, more often two or three wagons together, always with
  a small troop of performing dogs; and selling pegs and withy baskets as
  a side line. As a child in Brittany, he remembered seeing one with two
  dancing bears.
  As the morning wore on and still the Lancastria lay at anchor the sense
  of unease deepened and spread from group to grumbling group. There was
  another raid at lunchtime, this time met with men's rifles and machine
  guns joining in with the ship's defences, and again driven off, but two
  miles away a black pall of smoke hung over their sister ship, the
  Oronsay. She had received a direct hit. It could have been them. Why
  didn't they push off now? At least, underway, they could take evasive
  action next time. What were they doing, tempting providence in this huge
  conspicuous liner out here in these shallow Loire waters? There were
  reportedly over six thousand troops and civilians aboard - true, every
  now and then another handful of weary men would be brought aboard from
  a fishing boat, but was that enough to justify the risk to six thousand
  lives? The silence from the coast became more and more oppressive, like
  the silence of a beast before it springs. Rumours spread: they were
  waiting for this, they were waiting for that; they would leave when the
  tide flooded, they were hemmed in by half the German navy; they were
  waiting for the rear guard to turn up, a naval escort, fighter aircraft

                  38
 escort; they were waiting to know where the hell to go, for England had
 been overrun as well ...
  As though sensing the unrest, the dog crept out of shelter at last and
  pressed shivering against Sinclair's knees; woebegone and bedraggled
  Nvith terrified eyes and tucked-in tail, he was almost unrecognisable
  from the jaunty little leader of the caravan. Sinclair noticed that
  almost the entire left flank of the close curled coat had been singed.
  The monkey, on the other b3ad, seemed quite unscathed. It sat back on its
  haunches close to the do,),, grimacing and rolling its lips back over its
  teeth between sips from the mug. It then emptied the remaining water over
  the dog's unflinching head and sidled swiftly up to a nearby soldier,
  newly woken, about to light a cigarette, Quick as a flash, the monkey
  grabbed his lighter, dropped it in the mug, then snatched the cigarette
  and stuffed it into its own mouth. Then, like a child showing off, the
  monkey rocked from one foot to the other and gibbered triumphantly as ~It
  waved the cup, wondrously preserving the lighter within and always
  tantalisingly out of reach of the owner.
  He was a lighthearted diversion, and the men around cheered him on. After
  a whih! Sinclair clicked his fingers as he had seen the woman do and, to
  his surprise, the little creature came immediately, running crablike over
  the deck to reach up and offer the mug. He removed the lighter, restored
  it, and dropped in a fraric instead. The monkey picked out the coin, bit
  it, and replaced it; then rattling the mug suggestively, importuned a row
  of men sitting on a Carley float. Good humouredly, they reached into
  their pockets and contributed.
  Someone produced a mouth organ and began to play. The monkey jigged and
  hopped around and rattled the mug, deftly catching any pieces of
  chocolate or biscuit in the other pawall of which he brought to Sinclair.
  The dog began to show a spark of interest; his eyes brightened, his ears
  crept up, and at last his tail unfurled as he watched. But the interlude
  was all too short; minutes later ihe music and voices were drowned

                  39
 out by the Alert bells shrilling out again, while over the racket a voice
 came booming almost into their cars from a nearby Tannoy speaker: 'Action
 Stations! Action Stations! Take cover - take covcr - take cover. . .'
  There was nowhere to take cover. Men flung themselves to the deck again,
  those who could crouched under the lifeboats or under the superstructure,
  others sheltered behind ventilating shafts, floats or seats, and monkey and
  dog fled back into their refuge tunnel. As the aircraft swept screaming to-
  wards them, the liner bucked to the blast of her own guns. Sinclair
  crouched at the end of the seats, saw the after Bofors gun swivelling and
  braced himself for another earsplitting round. Only a few feet away, two
  gunners had set up their machine gun and were already blazing away in
  company with scattered volleys of rifle fire. Above it all he heard the
  spaced whistle of an approaching stick of bombs, felt the ship shudder
  violently to each closer underwater explosion, and hunched himself tightly
  before the last wailing downward scream that filled his head to bursting
  point. As though scoring some Olympian goal the bomb dropped down the
  single funnel, exploding below the water line with such force that the
  Lancastria leaped like a mortally wounded animal, the jolting waves of her
  pain passing through every rivet of her length.
  A still second of shocked acknowledgement followed, then the guns roared
  out again over the clang and rattle of falling flak and twistcd red hot
  metal. The liner had listed sharply, then, as the sea surged in far below
  the water line she righted herself, wallowing in a sluggish roll thit
  became increasingly ill-balanccd. Under such a momentum, it could not be
  long before the more heavily listing side would lose, and then she would
  turn turtle. Sinclair reached for his lifejacket.
  Clear above the bedlam of noise, a steady voice through a loud hailer
  directed men to remove their boots and clothes and jump now, for with the
  deck already beginning to tilt ominously, only the starboard lifeboats
  could be released. Within

                  40
 minutes the angle had become so steep that men, equipment, floats and
 seats avalanched together towards the rail.
  Clinging on to the fixed seat as they kicked off their boots, Sinclair
  and the Frenchman waited until the area directly below was cleared; as
  they slithered down together the monkey leaped for his shoulder and clung
  tightly around his neck. The dog shot past, paws scrabbling without
  traction until halted by the raised combing beyond the rail.
  'One, two, three, and over we go,' said Sinclair, as the other man
  hesitated by the rail.
  'As yet I am unable to swim,' said the Frenchman in thin, precise tones,
  looking down with extreme distaste.
  'You won't learn standing here,' said Sinclair. 'Here, put this on-' and
  he pulled at the tapes of his jacket, trying to wrench it off: but the
  limpet monkey had hold of his hair and clung on grimly.
  The rail was within twenty feet of the water now. As he struggled to
  dislodge the monkey a lifeboat swung out on its davits a miraculous few
  yards away. There was a rush to fill it, but he steadied the Frenchman
  as the other climbed on to the rail and reached for the bows. He heaved,
  and the man was up and over and safely into the lifeboat.
  From below in the water a face looked up, and a voice yelled: 'For God's
  sake, hold your jacket down when you go - I nearly dislocated my bloody
  neck-'
  He was over the rail when he saw the dog, desperately balancing on the
  almost vertical edge. He scooped him up as he jumped. He knew that he
  must get as far away as possible from the sucking vortex that would
  follow when the ship went down. He was mad to hinder himself with the
  dog. He released his grip and started swimming, encumbered by the
  lifejacket and breathless with pain. The dog paddled along easily beside
  him.
  Behind him a demented medley of noise escalated almost unendurably above
  the hiss of escaping steam and bells still jangling madly, whistles and
  shouts, and somewhere, muffled,

                  41
 an inhuman screaming, while overall the calm strong voice directed
 steadily from the loud hailer. Incredibly a machine gun was stM firing.
 He heard the slapping crash as the lifeboat dropped free from the falls,
 and turning his head was suddenly m~are that the monkey's arms were once
 more wrapped around his neck; it must have wedged itself in somehow
 between his back and the hump of the old-fashioned cork life-jacket when
 he jumped.
  A spar of wood to which was still attached part of a cane seat suddenly
  bobbed up in front of him-, he grabbed it and rested for a moment. The
  dog's paws churned as he tried to get some purchase on the wood and raise
  himself out of the water, and had almost succeeded when the spar rolled
  over. Choking on the salt water, he bobbed up again, his eyes wildly
  imploring, his paws beating ineffectually. Sinclair raised him by the ~
  c ruff of his neck and rested the forepaws over his own forearm. If the
  dog had resisted him, used up too much of his small reserve of energy,
  he would have held its head underwater then and there and put an end to
  it; but almost as though recognising the possibility, the dog hung on
  without struggling.
  Sinclair turned to watch the last mortal moments of the Lancastria. H_-r
  bows already under, men still retreating flylike up the stern, the great
  liner reared almost three-quarters of her length clear of the water, then
  slid with slow inexorable majesty to the depths, her siren still blaring,
  silenced only with a last hiising sigh of steam. The waters closed over
  her in a great swirling emptiness. Then heads bobbed up like corks, and
  debris erupted and boiled over the surface.
  In the silence that followed, the shouts of one to another travelled
  clearly across the water. Over the flat horizon that was now his,
  Sinclair saw an assorted local fleet of fishing boats and latinches
  converge on the area; beyond them, two small cargo ships had altered
  course, while further away to the south he could make out the bow wave
  of a destroyer heading towards them.

                  42
  The water was cold, but he felt confident that he would be picked up soon
  - provided that enemy aircraft had the decency not to return and ihoot
  up the survivors. And provided that he had the strength to swim out of
  reach of the oil, he thought more urgently as hc saw the first viscid
  blackness float up and begin to spread, edged widely in places by the
  shining silver of shoals of dead fish.
  The grasp of the wood was comforting; he turned away from the oil slick
  and paddled towards the distant destroyer against the light wind.
  Presumably crouched on the life-jacket at the back of his neck, the
  monkey was burdenless and undemanding, almost non-existent. As long as
  it stayed that way it could remain there. He shifted the dog's paws to
  a better purchase on the cant! seat and pushed on.
  Other men had had the same idea of turning into the wind in the hope of
  outmanoeuvring the oil, and now there was a steady, slow, almost
  organised movement; the helpless and helpers were sorting themselves out.
  Sometimes one of the strong single swimmers catching up from behind
  shared his spar for a brief re~t. An empty lifeboat floated by, men
  clinging to the looped ropes on her sides.
  A small crate, empty and very buoyant, both ends stove in, followed. He
  caught it, shoving the spar through until the seat jammed against the
  sides so that the spar now rode fairly steadily, He gave the dog a slight
  heave, so that it gained the half-submer-ed seat and it crouched there
  shivering. At this, the monkey leaped on to the crate top, clear of the
  water.
  Among the bobbing heads before him, he could make out those of two other
  dogs. One paddled in aimless splashing circles. The other, obviously a
  large and powerful animal, was rapidly closing the gap to its target, a
  man without a life-jacket holding on to some partially submerged piece
  of flotsam. Powerless to intervene at this distance, Sinclair watched as
  the dog caught up and made frantic clawing attempts to climb on to the
  man's back. Despite his struggles, the weight

                  43
 on his shoulders forced the man's head below water time and time again.
 He was probably a non-swimmer, for it was all over in a few minutes, and
 the head went down for the last time. The dog swam on, searching for
 another foothold, and as it turned in his direction Sinclair reached in
 his pocket for a knife, but the first few feet of a wide ribbon of oil in-
 tervened. The dog tried to board this apparently solid surface, gulped oil
 in its panic, and shortly after its head disappeared too
  The oil "hen it reached him spread over in a vile viscid embrace, coating
  the spar so that his hands slipped off, and for a moment it drifted
  smoothly ahead, its occupants staring back in bleak anguish until he
  caught up with them. The dog tried to scramble up beside the monkey on
  the crate top, still clear of oil. The crate rocked wildly; somehow the
  monkey hung on, but the dog's paws slipped and he fell back. For a
  momerit it all seemed too hopeless to try and sort out again; it was as
  much as he could do to hang on to the spar himself and keep his mouth
  clear of oil. Then, despite himself, he bent his elbow under the
  haunches, and with this purchase to the hind legs the clog scrambled back
  on to the cane seat, the gleaming blue-black oil plastering his coat all
  except the head. After many attempts, and hardly knowing why he did so,
  Sinclair undid one of the tapes of his life-jacket and passed it under
  the spar and back, where he knotted it again securely.
  Another lifeboat went by, dangerously low in the water, packed with men,
  the ropes festooned with others. 'What happened to your hurdy-gurdy,
  mate?' someone called. Then, 'Hang on, lad,' called another, 'plenty of
  boats picking up now.'
  He could see them, the launches and lifeboats and whalers of the
  destroyer and other ships, zigzagging to and fro as they picked up
  survivors. But none came his way, although he waved and shouted. Later
  he was thankful for his apparent invisibility, for the enemy aircraft
  returned, machine-gunning

                  44
 where the survivors and boats were thickest, and dropping incendiaries in
 an attempt to ignite the oil. Mercifully the flames only flickeied briefly
 into life.
  The remaining heads were widely scattered now, none within earshot; he
  missed being within range of the shouts of encouragement one to another,
  and the silence was beginning to be so oppressive that he spoke words of
  reassurance to the animals from time to time if only to hear his own
  voice. He found himself envying their animal ability to take whatever
  came without protest, to go with it somehow, and turn themselves off into
  an almost trance-like state with half-closed withdrawn eyes. Yet every
  time he spoke, the dog turned his head and gave him his full regard, with
  eyes as suddenly alert as though blinds had sprung back.
  Sinclair seemcd to have drifted further and further away from the rescue
  ships on the horizon, and as the lonely hours wore on he became
  increasingly weak and at times lightheaded. His legs were numb with cold,
  and he knew that he must keep moving them, but all effort to propel his
  spar towards that &,tant goal of the destroyer had become excruciating.
  The monkey seemed to be shrinking, grey and cold; he wondered vaguely,
  but without real concern, how long it could survive. It looked impossibly
  fragile, eyes closed, and huddled into its own en\Nrapping arms. But as
  he rested for a moment, it suddenly reached down and touched his eyebrow,
  withdrawing its fingers ~o examine the oil on them closely, sniffed them,
  plainly did not like the smell, and wiped them delicately on its as vet
  unplastered chest.
  The dog crouched only inches before him, the oil-slicked coat sculpturing
  bone and muscle to shining blue-black relief, the eyes no longer
  half-closed, but wide and alive, always riveted on his now, so close as
  to reflect him within the pupils like twin convex mirrors. There were
  times when he felt the effort needed to hold on was too much, that it
  would be so much simpler just to let go and drift off into peaceful

                  45
 oblivion. Then always, just as his will was slipping away, he would be
 jerked back to open his eyes and see himself again in those other intent
 summoning ones.
  Then came a moment of sharp lucidity, returning from a pleasant drifting
  dream, and he suddenly knew at last that the tiny black face with the
  red-rimmed eyes was real, it was himself; and the moment he no longer saw
  himself there, he would no longer see any of the things he held most dear
  in the world either. He must stay wakeful and cling on to the spar, to
  life--even as these animals clung to their precarious raft; they might
  appear to have withdrawn from the situation behind shuttered eyes, but he
  saw now that their bodies were always controlled, and tensed to balance, to
  survival. Once again, his world was circumscribed to their small one.
  'All right,' he said aloud, and taking the monkey's nearest paw he wiped
  his eyes clear with it. 'All right, lads,' he repeated with louder
  determination as both heads turned towards him. 'Here we go-hold on,
  everyone, we're og.' He kicked his legs until some circulation returned,
  took a firmer grasp on the slimy spar and swam on.
  He was almost unconscious but his legs still fractionally moving,
  robot-like, his eyes fixed wide open, when the dog began to bark. It was a
  high, piercing bark, but even that did not penetrate his mind; nor did a
  voice when it called out, very close above his bead; his legs continued to
  move. Only when another voice said, 'Cut that jacket free-' did he rouse
  into sudden wideawake panic, seeing the descending knife, the severance
  from his known world. He fought desperately for sensibility, but all that
  his voice would utter above the barking was '1',Io, no, no ...
  At last he forced a complete sentence out. 'Grab the dog,' he said and
  tried to take the scruff of the slimy black neck himself, but his fingers
  slipped. A pair of arms reached out and hauled hirn so that he lay half
  over the combing of the boat, resting in agony on crunching ribs before he
  finally slithered over. the pain forcing his breath out in shallow

                  46
 gasps. Someone wiped his mouth and eyes clear of oil, and eased oil the
 cumbersome jacket. The whaler was filled with other slumped figures, black
 shining faces, red lips, red eyes, and from all around came the harsh
 racking sounds of retching and coughing from oil-filled stomachs and
 lungs. From these blacknesses, a small blackness detached itself and
 crawled to his side. He clung on to it in sudden fierce protectiveness
 and, still clinging, dropped off into unconsciousness at last.

 47
 Part Two
                  4

 Sick Berth Attendant Nell MacLean, of H.M. destroyer Tertian, was tending
 a group of walking wounded on deck when word reached him that the ship's
 whaler had been swung aboard and that there was a man haemorrhaging in it.
 He called for a strei~cher, and made his way forward, pressing urgently
 through the jammed mass of soldiers. Only two men were left in the whaler.
 The one who lay stretched in the stern sheets, one leg at a grotesque
 angle with a blood-soaked jacket under it, was obviously the haemorrhage
 for someone had twisted a belt around his thigh as a tourniquet. MacLean
 sent him as an emergency to the wardroom where the ship's doctor was
 working with the help of an RAMC Captain.
  He turned his attention to the other man, the front of his battle dress
  stained bright recent red, a matching trickle running from his mouth. He
  bent down to take the man's pulse and his fingers suddenly came in
  contact with a warm slimy black mass below the hand, so horrible in its
  unexpectedness that instinctively rie withdrew his fingers. Part of the
  black mass split open to red and gleaming white, and a low warning snarl
  pre,-eded the snapping together of the white gleam.
  'A'thiaghrna!' said MacLean, reverting aloud in the reflex of relief and
  surprise to his native Gaelic. The man's eyes opened in the blackness of
  his face and he answered in the same tongue: 'Leave the dog be,' he
  whispered. 'I'll leave him all right,' said MacLean with a sour look at
  the sharp

                  51
 teeth so close to his hands as he investigated the wound below the blouie.
 'I need my hands the day.'
  The man struggled to sit up, but the effort brought an ooze of scarlet
  froth to his lips.
  'Stay where you are,' said MacLean sharply, and called back for another
  stretcher. But the soldier suddenly strained up in such wild incoherence
  that MacLean had to hold him down. Now the man's words came in such panting
  distress that MacLean felt certain one lung must have been pierced by a rib
  fragment. 'The animals -where were they?"
  'Resting-l~ing back resting,' said MacLean smoothly, thinking that this one
  would be resting eternally himself very soon if he didn't lie still and
  stop torturing the remaining lung. He felt ill his satchel for an ampule.
  'The horse--' panted the soldier, barely audible. 'The rabbits - all those
  rabbits, they were innocent - I tell you, they were innocent ... even the
  bear.'
  'All having a nice wee rest the now,' crooned MacLean hypnotically as he
  slid in the needle.
  The man's eyes closed but they shot open again wildly when they came to
  move him to a stretcher. His hand groped to his side and across his chest,
  searching.
  'All right, all right,' said MacLean. 'Lie still, for Christ's sake, the
  dog's there - no one's going to take it away.'
  He stood up; there were others awaiting him. He looked at the throng of
  naked exhausted bodies and, as though summoned, a maji, fully clothed,
  clean and dry, eased through them and squatted down beside the stretcher.
  'It is U he announced formally, and the soldier's eyes opened and crinkled
  in recognition.
 'You know him?' said MacLean, and the man nodded.
  'Keep him from moving, then, until the drug takes effect. Rub his legs, and
  try and keep him warm -and watch out, there's a dog underneath the
  blanket-'
  'Yes,' said the helper, already busy. 'And that one - le singe,' he adJed,
  cocking an eye at a point above. MacLean

                  52
 looked too; on the superstructure, twenty feet above, was the tiny huddled
 figure of a monkey, one hand doubled loosely on its knee, the other stuffed
 in its mouth, its eyes fixed on the head of the dog below. At least there
 was no sign of the soldier's other innocents, the decks so far clear of
 horse or rabbits. MacLean departed.
  An hour later he returned. The drug had done its work and the soldier
  drowsed. The Frenchman had managed to ease off his oil-soaked battle dress,
  and had cleaned him up. The dog lay close by on the battle dress blouse. Up
  to this point, the man on the stretcher had been just another glistening
  black mask with white and red cut-outs for mouth and eyes. Now MacLean
  looked down on a face that shock and bloodlessness had etched to its finest
  point, the fine, pale clear-skinned face, black hair and dark blue eyes of
  the west Highlander. The soldier tried to speak, but went into an agonising
  spell of coughing.
  MacLean kneeled down and held him until it was over. He spoke softly,
  persuasively, in Gaelic. 'Wheesht, man, wheesht,' he said, 'and give your
  lungs a chance. Save your breath for breathing.' He laid him down at the
  end of the paroxysm and, kneeling there, smiled reassuringly; a smile that
  transformed his tired, lined face with its grim, set mouth.
  The soldier's lips moved again. As he whispered, the dog crept on its belly
  to the head of the stretcher, there to lay its muzzle on the edge.
  'I will do hi~ talking,' said the dry precise voice of the Frenchman as
  MacLean worked swiftly to change the dressing. 'He wishes to tell you that
  he is not wounded, that he must walk off this ship, for he has these two
  companions who have come a long way with him. They have no one else
  apparently. He is obsessed. They are a trust. He must walk off, for if he
  goes to hospital he will be separated from them, and this is
  insupportable.'
  The dog lifted its head, and its inflamed eyes under the matted hair looked
  directly into MacLean's, only a few inches

                  53
 away, almost as though waiting to hear his con-iment, MacLean shifted his
 gaze, and found that the soldier's eyes now held his, no longer unfocussed
 but holding an agony of waiting comprehension. He had seen this look too
 often that day; sometimes ft was heralded with a thin, barely perceptible
 then leaping pulse - then all too often the pulse stopped for ever. 'Ach,
 don't fash yourself so, man,' said MacLean. He continued w1th cheerful
 professional mendacity. 'No need to worry - you just leave it all to us.'
  'I have your hand on it?' the soldier managed to whisper. His hand moved
  on the blanket, and the dog stretched forward to touch it with his
  muzzle. 'Am bheil do lamh agam airansin.,'
  But there was a difference between the professional assurance, and the
  binding promise of his word; for a moment MacLean hc,,~itated. The dog's
  intense, uncomfortably human eyes watched him. A voice shouted urgently
  for him, and he rose. The dog rose too, still watching. The words were
  forced out of him it seemed. 'Aye,' he said, 'I'll see to him, never you
  fear. Mo lam~ air an sin. You have my hand on it. Now rest, will you-'
  He passed by scvcral times that night, each time halfexpecting to find
  the blanket pulled over the man's face, but he seemed to be sleeping, and
  his pulse was stronger. The Frenchman was nodding beside him, only the
  dog watchful and suspiciou,,; as he bent over the stretcher.
  At one poi-it, as he turned back the blanket, he found the monkey curled
  into an incredibly small tight ball between the soldier's arm and chest,
  its head buried deeply. MacLean's lips pursed with displeasure, but the
  dog growled fiercely when he tried to move it. He left well alone -let
  it go ashore on the stretcher undetected; he wished the medical orderlies
  joy in its discovery. His promise had been for the dog alone. With that
  in mind late in the afternoon, his hand descended with practised skill
  upon its muzzle; he deftly inserted two or three pills down an imtantly
  submissive throat, and dropped a jacket over it. The rails were lined
  with silent watching

                  54
 men as the shores of England loomed out of the mist. It would not be long
 before they disembarked. He would return for his bundle in good time. He
 made a careful note of the details in the soldier's paybook.
  Two weeks before, the British Expeditionary Force had been taken off the
  Dunkirk beaches in the most glorious makeshift fleet ever assembled off the
  coast of England, a fleet that steamed, sailed, waddled and chugged its way
  across the Channel, and once home, barely waited to disembark its troops
  before returning for more. Reception in England was of necessity often as
  makeshift, and in the confusion and urgency quite a L~w Fifth Columnists
  and other undesirables had infiltrated with the returning troops.
  But by the tinic Tcrtian docked at Falmouth with the Lancastria's
  survivors, certain aspects of security had been tightened up. Outwardly it
  was the same: the fleet of ambulances drawn up on the quayside, the
  Salvation Army doughnuts and tea, the lines of tired men shuffling off the
  gangways past the Military Police and the lynx-eyed security officers of
  the different services, then forming into groups to be detailed off to
  billets or transport. But this time, having learned the lesson that its
  four-footed camp followers will trail the British Army, even in retreat,
  the Port Health and Quarantine officials were ready for them. A man with a
  large net on the end ol a pole was stationed beside the police; an RSPCA
  van stood waiting, and any suspiciously-shaped packs were being examined.
  The last of the wounded ashore, the wardroom already cleared of dressings
  and surgical instruments, Nell MacLean leaned for a few minutes' respite
  over Tertian's rail and watched the scene I)elow. He saw an angry cat
  removed from a gas mask haversack, while several dogs that he had not even
  seen aboard were lead off to the van; a mynah bird, perched on an Air Force
  officer's finger, laughing in some falsetto imitation, passed the
  inspection triumphantly; so did a mandarin drake, its heid sticking out
  inquisitively from a pillow-
  
                  55
 case under the arm of one of the women civilian survivors, now wearing a
 pair of seaman's trousers and a violently striped sweater that MacLean
 recognised as belonging to the doctor. But something that looked like a
 ferret or a white rat, which gave itself away by peering out of the blanket
 folds around the neck of one of the walking wounded was plucked out
 gingerly, despite its owner's protestations that it was British born and was
 only coming home like him.
  There had been no inspection of the stretcher cases, however: as Ion,,), as
  that monkey remained curled in the recumbent ball he had last seen, it
  would have made it safely ashore. He watched the loaded ambulances speeding
  off with some satisfaction; the soldier had been in one of the first to go,
  MacLeaii having seen to that early in the morning by marking a priority on
  his medical tag. The man had been unconscious then, his breathing so
  rasping and laboured that it hurt even to listen to it.
  Only minutes before, the helpful Frenchman had waved
 back as he went down the gangway. Drawn aside from the
 lines, he was still being interrogated by two men in plain
 clothes. Presently, the * y escorted him to a shed that was closely
 guarded, MacLean noticed, regretting that he would never
 know what merited this attention - VIP or aspiring German
 agent?
  He heard the wailing message of the bo'sun's pipe summoning all hands to
  clean ship. The decks were a slippery shambles of -)II-covered clothes,
  blankets and rags and lifejackets, the paintwork covered with a ghostly
  frieze of naked black silhouettes and handprints. He turned to go, yawning
  longing to get his head down and his eyes closed if only for a few minutes
  before he started in on his own section below. A small smacking noise
  attracted his attention; ten feet above his head, huddled dismally on the
  inner ring of a life-buoy hanging over the bridge rail, was the monkey. It
  smacked its lips again sof tly and looked for a moment as though it were
  about to jump down on to his shoulder.

                  56
  MacLean scowled up at it, furious that it had outwitted him.
  The monkey moved listlessly along the rail, squeaking softly, was lost
  to view, then a second later appeared at the bottom of the companionway
  and timidly inched towards him, so close now that he could see the rings
  of oil around the inflamed eyes. Almost within his reach, it stretched
  out a paw as trustingly as a child - and at that moment the quayside
  siren, almost directly alongside, started on its first wailing crescendo
  and was matched by Tertian's action stations alarm. The monkey fled,
  swarming up a stay, fouling the deck as it went. MacLean gazed gloomily
  after. He turned through the steel doorway and clattered down to the sick
  bay.
  The doctor had gone ashore with some of the wounded. The cabin reeked,
  and looked as though a hurricane had hit it. He opened the scuttle wide,
  took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. It was very quiet
  now that the hurrying feet throughout the ship had settled down into the
  waiting silence of action stations, the flat outside the door and the
  cabins leading off were deserted. He was safe from interruption at least
  until the All Clear sounded again; nevertheless he drew the door curtain
  across.
  From the cupboard under the bunk, he drew out a cardboard box marked
  Boracic Lint and turned back the brown paper lying on top. Inside, on an
  evil-smelling oily blanket, eyes closed, but with its flanks moving
  steadily up and down, was the dog. The heavy sedative that he had given
  it would ensure that it remained this way for several more hours - by
  which time he hoped that he might have some more inspiration as to its
  future.
  He threw the blanket on a pile in the comer, lifted out the limp bundle
  and laid it on a rubber sheet on the bunk. Then with swift
  thoroti.,Thness he went to work with swabs, surgical spirit and
  detergent. Towelling the result dry, he looked down on the small body
  presently with professional satisfaction. The coat was revealed as a
  closely curled blue-grey, the hair

                  57
 singed off in a large area on one flank, and down to the flesh on a raw
 burn at the root of the short tail. This was dressed with the same
 meticulous care as the eyes had been bathed and the ears swabbed out. He
 looked with a critical eye at the lines of the dog.
  It had all the proportion and apparent fragility of bone that suggested
  some poodle blood at first sight; but the hindquarters were exceptionally
  powerful and there was an unusual depth of chest; there was the
  high-domed forehead that he usual.ly associated with present-day
  overbreeding - and stupidity to go with it, but this enigmatic dog had
  an unexpected width between the eyes. The muzzle was short, clean cut and
  pointed. He pulled back the black lips and examined the teeth: shining
  white, but very slightly worn, and he decided that the dog must be around
  seven years old. A slight parting in the damp mat of hair around the neck
  caught his attention close against the skin below was a strand of ribbon
  through which ran a single metallic thread, dull now under the oil. He
  cut it off, finding that it ran through the ring of a tiny silver bell
  with the clapper missing. He dropped the ribbon into a basin of solvent,
  wiped it off, and put it in his pocket.
  The All Clear went, and he was galvanised into swift action. Scooping up
  the dog, he wrapped it in a dry towel, then laid it in the middle of the
  soiled pile, covering it loosely. Activity returned to the ship;
  descending boots clattered, voices rang out. He drew back the curtain and
  was hard at work when the first figures passed by the open door.
  Now that he was irrevocably embarked on his course, he no longer felt
  tired, but almost exhilarated. The outline of his immediate strateply was
  already formulated; his promise would be fulilled. In due course, he
  would ship the dog back to the soldier-but that lay in the future, and
  there was no point in wasting present thought on the unpredictable.
  Equall~ his mind shied off superstitiously from the thought that he
  mi.ght have the animal on his hands for good if its owner died.

                  58
  His present plan was based on his guess that they would return to sea the
  moment the ship was re-fuefled. Falmouth was too vulnerable for one
  thing, and for another every ship would be needed against the possibility
  of invasion. As long as Tert;an left within the next few hours,
  everything would be all right; once they were at sea he could count on
  the sentiment that would arise over such a defenceless stowaway. And
  fortunately the precedent of animals aboard had already been set in
  Terizan: from the supreme level of the captain's bull terrier, who had
  been with the ship from the day she was commissioned, down to Hyacirithe,
  the ship's cat, a matriarchal tortoiseshell with six toes to her front
  paws, who reigned ox,(-r the lower decks. And the same maudlin sentiment
  would go for that damned monkey too, he thought; let the crew once make
  contact with that -if it had enough sense to stay out of reach until they
  sailed - and it would be home free too. just so long as he, Neil MacLean,
  SBA, took care-a proceeding which came easily to him-to see that nothing
  could be pinned on him in connection with their appearance, he was home
  free too ...
  By the time the MO had returned, he had everything gleaming and
  shipshape, and was seated at the desk filling in forms. Apart from the
  stained pile by the door, the sick bay wore its usual look of impersonal
  shining efficiency, The doctor congratulated him, and told him to turn
  in for a couple of hours while he could -as the buzz was that they would
  cast off as soon as they had been at least partially revictualled, the
  Lancastria's survivors having cleaned them out.
  MacLean asked him a few questions about the shore evacuation of the
  wounded - the RASC corporal, Sinclair, with the lacerated lung who had
  been on the first ambulance? He was pretty far gone, the doctor
  remembered; in fact, they had rushed him off to a local hospital instead
  of the hospital train.
  'Was he anyone you knew?' he asked MacLean absently, scrawling his
  signature on papers.
 'No, sir,' said MacLean, 'Never seen him in my life before.

                  59
 Came aboard with a little dog and a monkey they tell me, after hours in
 the drink too.'
  'Good grief,' said the doctor, yawning hugely. 'What happened to thern?'
  'Probably got ashore with the troops,' said MacLean, 'and then picked up
  by Quarantine-they tell me that there were quite a few animals on board
  this trip, If you would just be signing these as well, sir, and then if
  you will not be wishing anything further, I will be taking this lot
  ashore.'
  He tied the four ends of a sheet around the bundle by the door, put on
  his cap, picked up the bundle, fastidiously wiped off a speck of oil on
  the gleaming bulkhead and prepared to depart. His face was white with
  exhaustion and he suddenly looked very old to the young doctor.
  'Go and get your head down, man, and to hell with that lot,' he said.
  'And that's an order-just lose it in the sullage barge, or overboard,
  we'll indent for more.'
 'We already have, sir,' said MacLean primly, and departed.
  He took the bundle down to the mess which he shared with the acting petty
  officers and some of the victualling staff, slinging a hammock there when
  the destroyer was in port. At sea, he slept in the sick bay, and wished
  he were there now, with a comfortable cot, and that handy concealing
  cupboard underneath it.
  The mess was deserted except for APO Reid who was trying to clear ihe
  decks of acrid treacly litter. MacLean did not trouble to conceal
  anything from this one man; Reid was a close-mouthed individual. He slid
  the towel-wrapped bundle of dog out on the deck, turned back an edge to
  reassure himself, then lifted it into the bottom of his locker. After
  checking that the ventilation slits at the bottom were not blocked, he
  locked the door.
 'What you got there - Moses?' asked Reid.
 'A dog,' said MacLean.
  'Looks dead,' observed Reid, fishing a pair of braces and three socks out
  from under the table.

                  6o
  'Doped,' said MacLean sitting down, and distastefully stubbing out a
  smouldering cigarette stub.
  Reid threw an army boot on to his stack and looked sceptical.
  'See here,' said MacLean, rare persuasion in his voice, you never saw it
  - neither did I. When we're at sea, it appears and that's that -
  something else left behind by the pongos. No one's going to heave a poor
  wee dog like that overboard, is he-,0
  'Wouldn't put it past the Buffer,' said Reid, referring to the Master at
  Arms who was reputed to have a copy of King's Regulations instead of a
  heart, 'nor yet the First Lieutenant,' he went on. 'He carried on
  something awful when Hyacinthe had that litter in his bunk.'
  'It was very careless be was,' said MacLean severely. 'He should have
  kept his door shut.'
  'You might get it as far as Devonport,' admitted Reid, 'but then what?
  You'll be up on a charge if you're caught smuggling it ashore. What do
  you want a dog for anyway?'
  'I don't want a dog,' said MacLean sourly. 'That would be the last thing
  I would be wanting.'
  'You must be barmy,' said Reid. 'Who's so important anyway that you'd
  take the risk?'
  Useless to explain his quixotic promise to this hard-headed Yorkshireman
  what he could not put into words himself even - that he and that wounded
  soldier shared a common tongue and heritage, that their birthright alone
  imposed an obligation. 'I'm doing it for a kinsman,'he said simply, 'and
  Devonport's a fair way off yet. I might need a hand - there would be a
  pint or two in it,' he added cautiously.
  Reid stirred his heap with the toe of his boot. 'I'll not risk a stripe,'
  be said at last, 'and I haven't seen anything, but within limits -- would
  there be a meal thrown in with the pints perhaps?'
  'Aye, there would be that,' agreed MacLean. 'I can count on you, then?'

                  61
  'Aye, yoLi can that,' said Reid, imitating the soft inflection, so that
  MacLean flushed angrily, was about to say something, thought better of
  it and went off to try and scrounge a mug of tea out of the galley before
  cleaning up the wardroom.
  'Didn't ~ ou do some kind of work with animals in civvy street?' askcd
  the assistant cook, who was one of his messmates. 'Do you know anything
  about monkeys?'
  'A bit,' said MacLean cautiously.
  'Then you'd better get up to the foredeck,' said the cook. 'There's onc
  there and they can't get it down. The Chief's in a proper i ear about
  it-'
  Armed with some nuts, MacLean made his way up to the foredeck. The monkey
  was clinging to a stay. The Chief Petty Officer was directing two ratings
  to its capture, and there was a lot of encouraging banter from the rest
  of the work party. It looked infinitely small and pitiful, the skin
  loosely shrivelled, the oil strcaked face so pinched and furrowed that
  it had almost retreated into the frame of fur. MacLean had intended to
  do nothing about it, to leave it to the crew to find; now he realised
  that the vital spark that had kept this delicate creature going so
  miraculously long in nightmare conditions woull be extinguished if
  something were not done soon. This could not be allowed.
  As he joined the ring of men, the monkey's head turned towards him 'Tch,
  tch, tch,' he said and recognition came into the eyes, the black upper
  lip drew back from its teeth and he heard the soft smacking sounds of
  greeting. It reached out an arm towards him.
  'All right., you have a go-, MacLean' said the Chief disgustedly. 'Yoil
  try and get the little perisher down.'
  MacLean lield out his hand, palm upwards, with the nuts. The monkey
  dropped down at once and scuttled to his feet where it grasped a trouser
  leg and gazed earnestly up at his face. It put out a hesitant paw, then
  took a few nuts, stuffing them listlessl~ into its mouth with forefinger
  and thumb. The watching group to a man admircd this prodigious feat with

                  62
 sentimental smll,--s, and even the Chief's face relaxed for a moment before
 he recollected himself and told one of the ratings to grab it But the monkey
 huddled against MacLean's leg, clinging on, and threatened with lips pulled
 back over its teeth when thc hand approached. The hand retreated smartly.
  'Come along now, Wainwright,' said the Chief. 'Smartly now, before the
  First Lieutenant comes along and says what the f ricking hell's going on on
  my foredeck.'
  The sailor straightened up and looked at him. He was a giant of a man who
  looked not unlike a gorilla. 'I'm afraid, Chief,' he said gravely, and
  there was a slugger from the men.
  'You have a go, Chiefie,' they said encouragingly, and the Chief bent down
  -- then retreated sharply before the teeth.
  Suddenly the nionkey took things into his own paws; reaching up for
  MacLcan's hand, it swung itself up into the crook of his arm and clung
  around his neck. It was shivering, yet there was a dry heat to its body
  that MacLean's mind associated immediately with other ailing monkeys in
  other days.
  'Right,' said the Chief Petty Officer briskly, 'Now, MacLean, if you'll
  just double off to the Harbour Police with it, and you, Wainwright, swab
  that mucky deck down, we'll get on with the job of running this ship-' but
  the last of his words were drowned by dic wail of sirens and, as the ship's
  alarm bells followed, the group scattered to their stations. The monkey
  burrowed its head deeply into MacLean's jacket, trying to shut out the din.
  'Hang on to it, MacLean,' bellowed the Chief against the uproar. 'Get it
  below and. . .'
  As MacLean ducked in through the steel doorway, he saw the anti-aircraft
  gun mouiited on the superstructure above already swivelling around. He
  covered the monkey's head with his hand, pressing it against his shoulder
  before the ensuing noise. It rzwarded him by vomiting down his jacket.
  The doctor was still sitting in the sick bay, his feet on the desk, his
  eyes clmcd. Macl-ean coughed gently. 'The Chief

                  63
 sent me down with one of the Lancastria's lot that got left behind, sir,'
 he said.
  The doctoi opened his eyes and took in the monkey without any change of
  expression. 'The army's really scraping the bottom of the barrel, isn't
  itY he observed at last. 'What is it, and what's it complaining of?'
  'A capuchn monkey, sir, suffering from exposure and possible pneumonia,'
  said MacLean with equal gravity.
  The doct(,r sighed, removed his feet from the desk, and took a
  stethoscope out of the drawer. 'Take a deep breath, capuchin,' hc said.
  Then as the monkey bared its teeth, 'Yozir patient, I think, MacLean,'
  he added generously, and watched with sleepy interest as the patient
  submitted apathetically to having its eyes swabbed out, drops
  administered and M & B tablets crushed up in water and poured down its
  throat without a drop being spilled. Finally it was briskly and neatly
  cocooned *in cotton wool and a towel. 'Very professional,' he said
  approvingly, 'and now what?'
  'No. i boiler room,' said MacLean as he departed, with a look of such
  profound distaste at the bundle in his arms that he might have been bent
  on incineration rather than its eventual installation in a cardboard box
  with some holes punched out in the lid.
  Three hours later, Tertian cast off from the tanker and slipped away from
  Falmouth, heading for the open Atlantic, her complement irrevocably
  increased by two small and very miserable refugees.

 64
                  5

 In the circumstances they could not have been more fortunate. Tertian wa,,;
 what was known in the Navy as a 'happy ship': from the day that she had been
 cominissioned, her officers and men had shaken down and integrated to form
 the mysterious chance medley that makes such a ship, and into which two more
 animals were easily assimilated. Besides, she was only fulfilling the role
 of her familiar alias 'Noah's Ark'-a nickname that had followed inevitably
 when Lieutenant Commander Andrew Knorr, RN had been appointed to her command
 - w, the shipboard sages pointed out.
  As well as being the 'Owner' of his Ark and a flaming red beard, Knorr was
  also the owner of the legendary Barkis, some seventy amiable pounds of
  solid white bull terrier who had conformed to life in a destroyer almost as
  though he had evolved there. Even his descent of a vertical ladder or com-
  panionway was a fine bold adaptation: with forelegs in diving position and
  hind legs extended, his mighty body steeled, he would hurl himself down the
  length as though on a chute, gaining such impetus on the way that he
  usually slithered several feet along the deck, taking the legs away from
  anyone unfortunate enough to be in his path as he went. While the ship's
  company admired and respected their skipper for qualities such as unruffled
  seamanship or his unique - and contagious - general enthusiasm, it was
  quite obvious that Barkis regarded him merely as a willing, easily taken-in
  slave.
 When Knorr eventually issued an official warning, thcre-
 C                65
 fore, that any subsequent infringement of ship's discipline that could be
 traced to the presence of the new arrivals on board would result in their
 being dumped overboard forthwith (an operation that he, personally, would
 supervise), no one was unduly alarmed.
  The dog had been discovered in a store room, most fortuitously by none
  other than APO Reid, who duly reported its presence to the Buffer,
  receiving the sole comment 'Flaming Ark is flaming right-', who had in
  turn reported it to the First Lieutenant, who had only enquired hopefully
  whether it was large enough to devour the fecund Hyacinthe and then
  reported it in turn to the Captain, who had instructed the Officer of the
  Watch to enter it in the ship's log. Finally SBA MacLean had volunteered
  to assume responsibility. So, officially at least, one dog had been
  processed through all the proper channels, and was now on the ship's
  strength.
  Even if he had understood, this knowledge would have been little
  consolation in his present insensate terror. Tertian Nvent about her
  ordained way, her crew longconditioned and balanced to the cramped
  discomfort and ceaseless sawing movement of a destroyer slicing through
  the Atlantic swell. Up on the bridge, Barkis relaxed on a bunk in the
  Captain's sea-cabin or rolled nonchalantly along the decks in wide-spread
  nautical gait, conforming effortlessly to the ship's every movement.
  Below decks in No. 2 mess, Hyacinthe slept the hours away in her small
  swaying hammock, peacefully unmoved by all uncouth human disturbance.
  But to the small newcomer, straining to keep his balance, even his
  faculties, tinder a fixed table in a small cramped mess, what was routine
  to them must have been a heaving nightmare of confusion and terror from
  the moment he had staggered to his feet in the slippery pitching
  blackness of the store room.
  He had lived his entire life on the open road, yet safely contained
  within the small nomadic world of which he was the beloved and valued
  centre. In one flame-seared moment that

                  66
 world had gone, ind with it all security: he had come through the terrors
 of tire and water to waken now in what was possibly the mosi terrible
 element of all to him - confinement. Confinement in in unstable,
 unyielding steel box filled with the hurrying boots of strangers and their
 unrecognisable speech sounds; his ears assailed by fearful incessant
 noise, ranging from the routine background of bells and wailing pipes and
 disembodied voices of the loud hailers, the whine of turbines to the
 wind's eerie descant, the crashing roar of heavy seas, the thunder of guns
 that reverberated throughout every inch, and tlie great muffled shudder
 of exploding depth charges. An inhuman metallic world now that sought to
 deafen him to the gentle familiarity of tinkling bells and the clap of
 hands, the creak of rolling wheels, the notes of birdsong and flute; an
 and wojld that would deaden his senses for ever to the smell of damp woods
 and fresh green fields, hot living smells of fairgrounds, the promise of
 wood smoke.
  Above all, it must have been the loneliest of worlds, with only the
  slightest association of voice and smell between this human who now
  ordered his life, MacLean, and that deep, however brief, attachment to
  the soldier from whom stretched back his only link with his lost world.
  The soldier had shared that world once, travelled in the caravan and left
  his imprint on its people-the transference to him had been of the dog's
  own volition. Later in the terrors of the sea there had grown a close
  interdependence. Now there was only this unyielding stranger with the
  competent but impersonal hands, a brusque exclusion in his voice, and
  unsmiling eyes.
  A rope collar had been fashioned for him, not for restraint, for he was
  too terrified to move anywhere by himself, but to stop him sliding around
  the deck, and he was kept tied up with only brief forays on the end of
  a line to where the depth charges wert, secured over the stern. Here, in
  an area frequently washed down by following seas, Barkis came to lift his
  Olympian leg, or squat, while his attendant of the moment stood by with
  a hylicnic bucket of water. Here, to this sterile,

                  67
 salty substitute for trees and fragrant earth, came the trembling newcomer,
 creeping low, hesitantly testing the deck as though expecting it to give way
 beneath his paws, or scrabbling desperately for purchase as it heeled, the
 whites of his eyes supplicating the white-maned restless unknown that filled
 the horizon beyond the rails. Barkis displayed an overwhelmingly generous
 interest when they met there, but the exuberance of his greeting, the
 excited lash of his whiplike tail and the playful butting of his rock-hard
 head invariably capsized the small dog's already precarious balance and
 terrified him even more.
  Hyacinthe had appraised him the first day with a cold green gooseberry eye,
  apparently found nothing to alarm or disquiet, and thereafter ignored him.
  Although his body shivered constantly, he was otherwise unanimated. All the
  spark had gone out of him, the endearing top-knot had been cut off, his
  ears trimmed short: he was drearily unattractive in his misery, and he had
  become very thin. He spent the hours routinely in the dark obscurity of the
  kneehole under the sick bay desk, or under the Mess table, never curled up
  or sprawled in canine relaxation, but always tensely crouched, giving the
  impression that he was somehow clinging on against a suspended movement and
  dared not let go.
  Both front safeguard and training, he had been taught never to cat anything
  offered by strangers. Only one familiar hand had slipped titbits into his
  expectant mouth, and then always in reward, the same hand that had never
  touched him save in praise or affection. There had been no unsteady
  isolated bowl set before him, its unrecognisable contents to be eaten alone
  or apart. Food had always meant a shared savoury intimacy at the end of the
  day's work or travel, her plate or the pot to lick clean afterwards,
  perhaps a morsel fallen from the old man's fingers, a handout from the
  monkey -and, if there were any doubts over the rights, there had always
  been her smiling nod of reassurance.

                  68
  MacLean attributed the dog's refusal of food now to a combination of
  seasickness and changed environment. In charge of an aninial experimental
  laboratory before the war, he had known plcjity of sick and miserable
  animals in his tinie to refuse food, and almost always they had become
  reconciled to their lot in the end and had started eating once more. But
  as the days passed, and his charge continued to exist on tinned milk
  alone, he was forced to admit that there was a difference between those
  withdrawn, hunger-striking animals and this miserable but adamant little
  dog who would accept a biscuit, then lay it on the deck, where it would
  remain untouched; or if confronted with a bowl, would give the contents
  a perfunctory sniff, then turn away as though he had no stomach for them.
  MacLean tried seasick remedies, put sulphur. in the dog's drinking water;
  he mixed conditioning powders and emptied them down the unprotesting
  throat, vitamin pills by the handful followed. He doused the coat with
  flea powder and searched his memory for every last veterinary remedy dis-
  pensed to distraught owners of small pampered dogs who had gone off their
  food. He even -and this went very much against his principles -tried
  feeding by hand; but his disapproval could not help but be communicated
  through his fingers and voice., and in the end it was only by holding the
  muzzle and waiting until the throat was forced to swallow that he
  achieved anything, and then the dog retched up again. This behaviour, and
  the dog's utter dejection and constant shivering iriltated MacLean
  exceedingly: it went against his professional grain. For the first time
  in his life, he had encountered an animal whose will to resist him was
  unyielding.
  He even consulted the doctor, who thought that the dog might still be
  shocked, suffering from exposure, inhaled some oil ... at least be was
  drinking, it couldn't be rabies ... give him time, he'd never heard of
  a dog starving itself to death.
 'My prescription would be time,' he ended, looking sym-
                  69
 pathetically at the abject huddle with the round baffled eyes at MacLean's
 feet. 'Time - and lots of TLU
 'TLC?'
  'Tender Loving Care - plus, plus,' said the doctor, who took a perverse
  delight in rousing his dour SBA's invariable reaction to any sentiment.
  He was not disappointed now.
  'Thank you, sir,' said MacLean, his voice as acidly disapproving as his
  face.
  'Patient's name, rank, and number?' asked the doctor, happily addirig a
  row of hearts and hieroglyphics to 'TLC' on a medical foi m.
  'It hasn't got a narne,' said MacLean, stiff with outrage at this
  foolishriuss.
  The doctor looked up in genuine astonishment. 'Well, you might start in
  right there with the treatment -at least give it a personality, poor
  little devil,' he said. 'I wouldn't feel like eating myself if I were
  nothing but an It,' he added, half to himself, as MacLean departed. And
  he wondered, not for the first timc, at the complex nature of this man
  whose hands he had seen at work on a tiny sick monkey with the most
  expert deftri,~ss -yet with less actual involvement with his subject than
  he had seen in a mechanic dealing with a choked carburettor. It was the
  same with 'It': how, out of the whole ship's company, one who quite
  obviously had no affinity for dogs should have taken over this one was
  a corresponding puzzle.
  His SBA was a reticent man, and apart from once prying out the fact that
  he had worked for a vet and in an animal laboratory before joining up at
  the outbreak of war, the doctor knew little of him other than what he had
  observed. He spent his off-duty time in the sick bay, when it was empty,
  reading and knitting or playing solitary chess. Very much a loner, not
  liked by his shipmates, yet not disliked either - rather one who was
  treated with wary circumspection, for he more than made up for his small
  stature by the bite and lash of his tongue. He ran the sick bay and
  dispensary with impersonal

                  70
 extreme efficiency. The long-mouthed lead swinger got short and scornful
 shift, but he could show deepest concern and unsparing gentleness towards
 the wounded or seriously ill. In the six months that he had been on board,
 the doctor could not fault him in any of his duties.
  Periodically after a shore leave, he would appear so drunk at the end of
  the prow that it was so far only by a miracle -or by a deliberate
  Nelson-eye approach to his problem on the part of the duty personnel -
  that he had avoided the defaulters' list. But no matter how monumental
  the hangover, how green his face, how black an eye, he had never failed
  to report for duty dead on time in total efficient control of himself,
  and smelling strongly of peppermints.
  'I'm chust partial to a wee dram at times. It helps,' had been his only
  explanation when the exasperated MO, putting a stitch in above an
  eyebrow, had asked him once why he had to drink to such heroic excess
  each time.
 'Helps what?' he had persisted.
 'To pass the time,' said MacLean woodenly.
  The doctor returned to his job of censoring the crew's letters. Over the
  months lie had become expert at skimming over the contents, long familiar
  with those incautious hands that invariably needed his deleting
  attention. Among this week's batch was one that be read twice:

HMS TERTIAN c/o GPO July Ist 1940 Dear Corporal Sinclair,
   It is my sincere hope that when this reaches you, you will be well on
   the road to recovery. Perhaps even enjoying some sick leave. I write
   this line just to tell you that I have your belonging~ in safe keeping.
   I found the enclosed souvenir among them and enclose it for luck. The
   clapper was missing, but I have fashioned another.
  I would be glad to receive a line from you. There seems

                  71
 little likelihood that I will be able to despatch the above
 mentioned article for some time as we are kept on the hop
 just now. But I will see to it that it reaches you in good
condition one day as promised. Yours sincerely,
      Neil MacLean, SBA

  It was the first letter of MacLean's that the doctor ever remembered. He
  had a more retentive memory for names than the writer had credited him
  with. 'Very interesting,' he said to himself, wielding the censor stamp,
  and immensely tempted to write 'and bow-wow to you too!' under its im-
  print, 'Very interesting but why. . .' He replaced a tiny brightly
  polished silver bell, neatly cocooned in a pill box.
  MacLean wasted no deep thought in a name. He had been brought up on a
  farm where each succeeding sheep dog had inherited the name of its
  pr~decessor. Thus there was always a Ria if it were a dog, and a Meg if
  it were a bitch. This Was therefore a R~a. It was as simple as that.
  'I would be obliged if you would be calling the dog Ria to accustom it,'
  he said to Reid and his messmates over tea, before picking up his book
  and preparing to read as usual right through the meal. 'Ree-ah,' he
  emphasized.
  'Ria,' said Reid obligingly, 'Ria, Ria-' and he leaned over to pat the
  dog. 'Good dog, Ria,' then, 'Eh, but you're nowt but skin and bone, Itiv
  - we'll have to feed you up.' At the concern in this voice, the ears
  pricked slightly and the tail stirred. Reid cleaned his plate with a
  piece of bread, but his offering was forestalled.
  'The dog is getting fed once a day - by me,' said MacLean with cold flat
  emphasis, and returned his eyes to the pages of Admiral the Lord Nebson.
  So, phoenix-like, and most sadly, arose from the ashes of his former life
  this new dog, Ria; as unlike that other as it was possible to be: no hint
  of the vivacious little professional in this stricken-eyed cowering
  shadow. The only hint of his

                  72
 exceptional intelligence might have been remarked in the short time it
 took him to put meaning to words of a new language, and to interpret the
 message of ship's bells and pipes. But in a mess where Lhere was a
 constant turnover as the watches changed there WiLS little time or
 opportunity to observe anything as intangible as this. His bewilderment
 and pathos had reached out to th,_- men as a whole; they had tried to give
 him the reassurance he so obviously needed, to make him one of them, but
 their ittempts wilted under the consistently disapproving glare of one who
 so forbiddingly kept himself to himself, and made it quite clear that this
 extended to his belongings as well
  The stolid Reld, the only man who ever said what he felt like to MacLean,
  argued the necessity of rigid discipline. 'It's a do-'s life JI right,
  the way you're going about it,' he said, and received the not
  unreasonable reply that an undisciplined animal roaming around underfoot
  in an emergency could be a real menace.
  'It is essential ihat he Icarns a set place at all times,' said MacLean,
  'and is r iever distracted from it.'
 Reid's reply was succinctly monosyllabic.
  In the meantime Ria existed, physically at least, as a fairly adequate
  dict was being added to the milk in the guise of porridge, gravy and cod
  liver oil, all of which he lapped up with tidy disintere~,t.
  In contrast, shipboard life held the warmest and happiest of worlds for
  the monkey, who had no complexities of devotion to suffer a sea change,
  and almost immediately had become a very distinct personality, with a
  name, Louis, the beginnings of a wardrobe and some fifteen willing
  subjects in his personal kingdom of Number Five Mess.
  Leading Seaman Lessing, who had owned a capuchin monkey in civilian life,
  had interested himself in Louis' welfare from the beginning when he had
  been housed, a sick, listless bundle in a cardboard box in one of the
  boiler rooms. Here he had received the best clinical attention from
  MacLean, but

                  73
 grew daily raore apathetic. Lessing had insisted that if the little animal
 did not have some constant contact with a living being he would simply pine
 away, no matter how excellent the treatment.
  After tryllig, and failing, to persuade Hyacinthe to share the warmth of
  her fur coat, he took matters into his own hands one day and removed the
  monkey to the mess deck. Here he provided both warmth and contact with his
  own body, first wrapping Louls in the folds of a woollen scarf. He slept
  with this bundle and ate with it on his lap. At the end of his four hours
  off, when the watches changed, he virtualIN press-ganged his opposite
  number into continuing this treatment. For days, Louis was never out of
  someone's arms or stuffed insid,.- the comforting warmth of a jersey or
  duffle coat, and by the time it was decreed that he was fit enough to be
  left to his own devices on the deck for a while, h-- vms everyone's
  concern.
  A seaboot stocking had been cut and neatly tailored to make a pullover; he
  already owned one pair of knitted shorts with a secorid pair on the
  needles; and another pair of devoted hands had nctted a small hammock like
  Hyacinthe's. It was found impossible to train him to the use of Hyacinthe's
  sandbox however: Louis had a happy disregard for such niceties of
  behaviour. Fortunately there was no shortage of cotton waste from the
  engine room, and his shorts were lined with this.
  It was ari incredibly cramped and congested kingdom, directly abov,_- a
  magazine, much of it already taken up with a maze of pipes and cables, the
  bolted-down benches and mess tables, lockers, hatches, ladders, even the
  large round bulk of a gun mounting and ammunition hoists. Yet in it some
  fifty men, divided between the port and starboard watches, lived, slept and
  had their comfortless being. At night when the hammocks wcre slung there
  were seldom enough to go round and the luckless stretched out on lockers or
  mess tables. They were seldom dry; the deckhead dripped constantly from
  con-
  
                  74
 densation, and in heavy weather some of the water swirling along the decks
 inevitably found its way down the ammunition hoist and sloshed to and fro
 to the ship's roll so that even their kit in the lockers was soaked. A
 rich fug compounded of steaming wool, bilge water, socks, tobacco and the
 stale reminder of the last meal permeated everything. It was hardly anyone
 else's idea of the perfect kingdom, but Louis thrived there. From the
 point of view of a very small monkey it could not have been more ideal,
 for there was always company, always something going on, always some human
 only too glad to alleviate the monotony or shut off the mind to the dis-
 comfort in the parenthetical company of something so responsive, so
 innocenily amusing and mischievous as a capuchin monkey.
  Even when th,~ ship was at action stations and Louis was tethered by a
  collar and chain to a table, he was still not alone, for there were
  always two hands stationed at the ammunition whips leading up from the
  magazine. If nothing was happening he would occupy himself endlessly
  polishing the table with a much-prized yellow duster in one hand, an
  empty tin of polish in the other, or swinging in his hammock slung below
  the table. At the first explosion of guns or depth charges, however, he
  hopped into the hammock and covered his head in the folds of a long
  woollen scarf. He was always nervous and particularly mischievous after
  such a time, and the hands soon Icarned to keep anything they valued out
  of his reach afterwards: someone would usually give him an additional
  cigarett,- to his daily ration of two as a consoling distraction.
  He escaped once, unfortunately fetching up in the Chief Petty Officer's
  Mess. Here he rifled the drawers, found a tin of Brilliantine, then using
  a clean shirt as a polishing rag, he stickily burnished everything within
  reach, including a photograph of somebody's wife and twin daughters. The
  official reprimand and warning that followed this escapade was so sharp
  that thereafter Number Five Mess took steps to train

                  75
 their Louis to such a remarkable degree of invisibility when authority was
 in the offing that it became a nightly challenge to the duty officer making
 rounds to try and spot him.
  Louis' escapade was soon forgotten. Authority, recognising the tedium and
  discomfort of the lower decks, was benevolent. Perhapi even a little
  envious, for sometimes the MO, on the professional pretext that he liked to
  follow up his patients, would borrow Louis for a visit to the wardroom. On
  the first occasion that he met the Captain there, also visiting, with
  Barkis as usual in tow, his flaming beard so excited Louis' groorning
  instincts that he threw a very human tantrum when the tirne came to return
  him. Barkis had viewed him with considerable reserve, his pink-rimmed piggy
  eyes rolling in acute embirrassment: being bidden to suffer without action
  the indignity of having his tail tweaked by a monkey was too much.
  Thereafter he tucked it well under and remained firmly seated when he
  encountered Louis.
  Tertian had returned to the Biscay coast after Falmouth and ferried back
  hundreds more Polish and British troops. Shortly after this she proceeded
  to Gourock, and there she was taken from the Home Fleet and given over to
  Atlantic convoy escort duty. The unremitting exhausting grind of those
  first few hundred miles outward bound to Halifax on the Western Approaches
  passages were soon intensified when the long-range Focke Wulf Kondors were
  able to operate out of Bordeaux, and not oiAy attack but act as aerial
  spotters for U-boats. Although the hands could fall out at action stations
  if there was no imminent urgency they had to be ready to fall in again at
  minutes notice, so there was seldom any letting up, and never more than a
  brief snatch of sleep. But the Uboats were riot yet ranging right across
  the Atlantic, and there was an area, like Tom Tiddler's Ground, before the
  convoys reached their eighteenth west meridian rendezvous and there
  dispersed to continue alone or with Canadian-based protection, and Tertian
  turned back with the homeward-bound

                  76
 convoy. Before she steamed back into range of the hungry U-boat packs, there
 could be a brief interlude when a man might sleep for a few uninterrupted
 hours, finish a hot meal, or even find a pair of dry socks; a time to
 obliterate from the mind the shocking toll of lives and tonnage in their
 last flock and appraise the new assortment.
  There might even be time then for the off -duty watch in Number Five Mess
  to brm*g out a harmonica or a concertina and entertain -and be entertained
  by -their mascot.
  The moment any music started Louis would jump down from whatever shoulder
  fie was favouring at the moment, bob up and down until someone found his
  enamel mug, then break into a kind of shuffling dance, skilfully catching
  anything thrown to him in the mug, gibbering in the grimace that his
  audience had learned to interpret as a smile. Or, if someone produccd the
  trapeze that needless to say had been fashioned for him, he would go
  through an expert and unvarying routine of g~ mnastics He expected
  applause, and when he got it would make the rounds with his mug for reward.
  Sometimes the men te-ised him by withholding the applause; then he would
  chatter U'i frustration, pulling at Lessing's hands, or retire to his
  hammock and sulk with his back turned, his little blue pullover pulled up
  over his face. When the claps and whistles were forthcoming at last, he
  would wait like some temperamental prima donna for the right pitch of
  rising enthusiasm before he appeared again. When he was really offended-and
  he was unexpectedly sensitive-it was a long time before tli~_- offender
  could win himself back into favour.
  If Louis' ganiLn, chimerical qualities were a relaxing diversion to tired
  tense men, then they in turn gave him everything that he could have wished
  for: the love and constant company that he craved, adulation, warmth and
  comfort, ingenious toys for his amusement. He even had his own place at the
  table where he downed thick cocoa or very sweet tea from his own mug, and
  picked at whatever delicacies the messman

                  77
 and his messmates could heap upon his plate. If he lacked one thing in
 his little kingdom of Number Five Mess, that was the othcr half of his
 life's act, his steed and companion, the dog.

 78
                  6

 It had never been MacLean's intention that dog and monkey should meet -
 if for no other reason than that the monkey had been from the s-art
 totally excluded from the tidy compartment in his mind reserved for the
 sole responsibility and welfare of dog, small, grev, one; Sinclair,
 Corporal RASC, property of. Anyway Sinclair had never mentioned the mon-
 key: he must have thought it was dead.
  But he had not reckoned on the compartment being invaded by Ria's nose
  -or by the escaping steam from a fractured pipe in the engine room. One
  day he returned to the sick bay after treating the monkey for a minor
  skin ailment. He laid his jack,.-t over the chair, then turned to wash
  his hands. Under the desk, Ria stirred into sudden life as one of the
  sleeves hung before his nose. He sniffed intently, his stumpy tail
  quivered and one car went straight up. His nose must have given him the
  certain message that somewhere in this steel maze was hidden another
  living part of him. Something of purpose or substance must have returned
  to him then with the message -as though a pin point of light had been
  glimpsed at the end of a long dark tunnel. There must come a time when
  his nose must surely lead him to it....
  Then, a few days later, a stoker was admitted to the sick bay, seriously
  scalded and in great pain. Tertian was in midAtlantic, still within
  U-boat range, the sole destroyer escort to a convoy under attack most of
  the way, constantly zigzagging in evasion, sometimes turning hunter
  herself to shudder to the explosive pattern of her depth charges. In such

                  79
 conditions, with a drip running into his arm, the stoker needed almost
 constant attemion. For the next five or six days MacLean took what sleep
 he could on a chair by the sick bay cot, appearing only briefly to snatch
 a meal in the mess, where Reid had undertaken the charge of Ria.
  The first (-vening, spelled off for supper by the doctor, he had rcturned
  to find Reid asleep, Ria wedged in at his back, his ears laid back in dog
  guilt: he had once before attcmptcd to gain the Jry security of a bunk,
  and had been told off then. 'Get down, you,' said MacLean sharply now,
  and he jumped dowit at once to the heeling slippery deck. A locker door
  burst open to a particularly violent lurch and hc slid down the deck
  engulfed in its contents, yelping as he cannoncd off the bulkhead. As the
  deck came up again he started back, whimpering and favouring one paw, but
  this time MacLean halted him iN ith an outstretched foot. He examined the
  paw, and Ria licked his hand. He wiped it in irritable disgust.
  'Put him back where he was, Doc,' said Reid, his eyes still closed. 'He's
  not a bloody limpet, and when I'm looking out for him, he stays bloody
  here in this bunk.' His voice was sleepy and as equable as ever, but
  there was no mistaking an overtone of clear finality. There was no
  option: MacLean dropped Ria back on the blanket with ill grace.
  'It's no place for a dog,' he said, and picking up a pair of boots he
  threw one with a noisy clatter back into the locker. 'It will just be the
  encouragement of bad habits.' He punctuated his woids with tile second
  boot.
  Reid opened his eyes and smiled up at him. 'Why don't you frick off - and
  quietly, there's a good soul,' he said gently. 'We need oui- sleep-' He
  pulled the blanket over his face. Ria's apprehensive eyes peered over his
  back - then disappeared quickly before the look they received.
  MacLean swallowed his warmed-up food, gulped a mug of tea, and returned
  to his patient. His face was compassionate, his voice comforting, his
  hands tender as he adjusted the protective cocoon around the man's raw
  body.

                  80
  Back in the mess Reid lay awake for a minute or two, one hand absently
  Jondling the dog's car, then he huddled down under the blanket again,
  falling asleep almost instantly. Curled up to his back, Ria closed his
  eyes, heaved a long relaxed sigh of utter content, snuggled closer, then
  slept too.
  Perhaps because of the warm security of this first contact, and the
  interest and cameraderie that came his way in the following days now that
  the mess was free of MacLean's disapproving e~e, perhaps because he now
  had a purpose, Ria's confidence gradually returned.
  First, and most important, he found his sea legs. Up until now, he had
  had to be carried up and down ladders. Reid, after much encouragement,
  placing his paws one after another on the iungs, had persuaded him to
  scramble up, but the descent was obviously terrifying. Reid stood at the
  bottom, enticing, the others in the mess encouraged, and Ria crouched at
  the top, trying again and again to bring himself to make the attempt.
  Suddenly he launched himself, not down the ladder but into mid-air,
  straight at Reid who fortunately caught him. The watchers sumped their
  feet and clapped. His delight in his triumph was touching: his tall
  quivered to a near wag, and when he was patted and praised and put down
  he flew effortlessly up the ladder again and prepared for another
  descent.
  'Ooplah, my beauty,' ,aid Reid, his hands out, and down came Ria again,
  patently delighted with himself. He had performed, and lie had been
  applauded again at last. But this time his reward was his own achievement
  and Reid's evident pleasure. He soon learned to come down using all four
  paws, head foremost, but if exhorted by a cry of 'Ooplah' from someone
  at the bottom he would always launch into midspace.
  His next step forward was to show some initiative, and this followed very
  quickly in a remarkable adaptation. It was hot and crowded in the mess
  and he was thirsty. For a while he panted unnoticed on a bunk while the
  men sat around the table over tea. Suddenly he jumped down and stood on
  his hind legs beside them, balancing easily now to the ship's

                  81
 movement, e~ en walking around the end of the table. He was so obviously
 asking for something, his eyes intent on each in turn, that a crust was
 tossed his way. He ignored it, panting, and comprehension (fawned; someone
 fetched a mug of water.
  He drained it, then jumped back on the bunk, to lick and groom his paws,
  a very satisfied little dog of some substance at last, taking in
  everything around him with round bright eyes, basking in the attention
  accorded him by this friendly audience.
  Fear and the ladder had imprisoned him in the mess before. Now one
  barrier was down, and he overcame the other next day. He climbed the
  ladder many times, staying at the top to survey the passing world and
  assay its scents for longer and longer intervals. Many hands reached down
  to pat him, and his nose investigated each, some with great interest, and
  one in particular filled with such promise that he was emboldened enough
  to trail its owner's boots, until they disappeared up another ladder. He
  returned to his post, restless and excit,A He descended to the mess and
  whined insistently, only quietening when a would-be sleeper threw a
  paperback at him in exasperation.
  Far from quelling him, this seemed to have a decisive effect; in the
  comparative quiet of the middle watch he set off on his quest, hesitantly
  nervous as he gained the top of the ladder, wiih laid-back fearful ears
  and belly crouched low, then with inc-casing upright courage. He had
  traversed the route to the ~Aern oftcn enough, but never by himself, and
  always secure at the end of a line. He followed that route now, with many
  pauses while his quivering nostrils translated the messages wafted from
  ventilator shafts, door grilles and hatches.
  Sunlight streamed in through an opened doorway; he rested his muzzle on
  the high warm sill and snuffed the wind, until approaching footsteps
  drove him to retreat into unknown territory. He Nvent on, each forepaw
  raised and held in turn,

                  82
 step by wary step, tail between his legs, looking back frequently but aINN
 ays urged on by his nose.
  He crept past the whining terrors of an open engm*e room hatch, then
  WrUnched away in panic from a pair of hands that suddenly reaclacd out to
  him from the hot blast of the gleaming depths far below,
  His driving need lent him courage as he flitted up and down companionways
  and ladders, and along passageways, his coat merging into the grey of steel
  as he pressed close to the sides, hastening now to a growing certainty; and
  then down the final ladder, and his eyes could take over at last from his
  nostrils ...
  He crouched there for a moment, unobserved, his heart beating wildly,
  searching through the blue haze of tobacco smoke. A terrible journey', but
  at the end of it he had found a part of his lost self again - there,
  perched on a man's shoulder, eating a potato, was his monkey ...
  Lessing, sitting at the far end of the mess with his back turned to the
  ladder, thought for a moment that Louis had gone mad when the monkey had
  suddenly jumped from his shoulder, squeaking and chattering as never
  before. He swung now from the ovcrhead pipes then leaped from a hammock to
  another shoulder, from shoulder to table, where he rammed his potato into
  a sailor's open mouth in passing, then somersaulted off on to the deck
  where he scuttled down the length of the mess.
  Now Lessing saw the cause of the excitement - MacLean's dog, balanced half
  way down the ladder, swaying to the ship's roll. Louis leaped for him, yet
  somehow the dog managed to retain his balance before slithering down the
  rest of the way. As he gained the deck, Louis now clasped tightly around
  his neck, the ship rolled heavily and they skidded down the slope coming to
  rest agairist the hammock rack from which Hyacinthe had becri surveying the
  vulgar human world before her. Hyacinthe exploded off the pile. Louis
  reached out a lightning paw and grabbed her tail; she turned - it seemed

                  83
 even in mid-air - and raked his forearm so that he squeaked in pain,
 whereupon the dog went for her. The deck rose again, and the yipping,
 squeaking, spitting tangle of mixed fur skidded back and forth and finished
 up under the table where Lessing doused the uproar with a mug of water.
  It was a spectacular first entrance, and received the applause it deserved.
  Hyacinthe stalked off to soothe her ruffled fur and dignity ir) the galley.
  Lessing dried the whimpering Louis, and Ria solicitously licked the
  scratch. The end of his tail quivered like a tuning fork, and every inch of
  him was vibrant and eager. Ria had come to full vivid life once more.
  Now this inonkey haven was where he wanted to be too, and in the remaining
  (lays of freedom he would make his way to it whenever possible. Reid was
  well aware of what was going on, but as Ria was always punctiliously
  returned by Lessing or one of his messmates in due course after a visit, by
  unspoken agreement nothing was ever said, and MacLean remained in ignorance
  of his charge's double life.
  Up to now the only brief glimpses that the lower deck had had of this
  ii~_-w dog was of a small shrinking shadow at the end of a lint: on his way
  to the stern, or a limp shaggy bundle under MacLean's arm. Now a
  bright-eyed eager little dog would appear, leaping down the ladder to be
  greeted with an enthusiastic welcome in general and with rapturous
  affection by Louis.
  He was uufailingly patient, even when Louis was at his most mischicvous,
  and would tolerate all liberties, lying still for as long as his tormentor
  wanted to groom him, jump over or up and down on him, lean against him or
  hang around his neck; and se=ingly only amused if a bowl of water was
  emptied over him. However, invariably there came a point when Louis became
  extremely frustrated over his non-cooperation in an act. But, while their
  performance together had been a way ol life to Ria, it had been conditioned
  by training, and his reflexes must have been too deeply rooted to overcome
  without commands or signals.

                  84
  Louis had no such inhibitions, for most of his part of a performance had
  been built around what he, Louis, liked to do naturally, and when this
  culminated in a few puffs of a cigarette or some other treat, then he liked
  to do it even more; the dog was not only his refuge and playmate, he was
  also the vehicle towards the attainment of that pleasure.
  He would perch on Ria's back, leaning low and forward like a jockey temed
  for the start, but the start, maddeningly, never came; with encouraging
  clicks he would jump up and down to urge his mount on. 'Come on, Ria,
  they're og!' the watchers would ihout helpfully, but Ria could only sit
  there with head throx~n back and forepaws close together, tensed and ready
  as he waited for the starting signal that never came. This behaviour so
  puzzled and irritated Louis that he would jump down and even attempt to
  drag his partner forward by the collar, but the harder he pulled,
  chattering in frustration, the more firmly Ria planted his hind-quarters
  and rolled his eyes beseechingly. To their audience this miniature tug of
  war was a hilarious act, and was always cheered on. 'Haul away there,
  Louis,' roared his many supporters, and 'Pull, pull-' shouted the Ria Jew.
  As Louis could only be appeased by some delicacy he soon learned to turn
  his frustrations into yet another turn in his repertoire.
  Inevitably Ria was offered food and invariably it was refused-until the day
  he happened to arrive during a meal. Louis was guddling around in his own
  mess tin, picking out the choicest parts first as usual, and as Lessing
  watched he picked out a morsel that did not seem to meet with his approval,
  for he lobbed it over to the dog. It was caught and swallowed in a flash,
  and Ria moved closer, wagging his tail, his ears cocked expectantly. He was
  not disappointed: so engrossed in his plate that he did not bother to look
  up, Louis held out his paw with another reject, and Ria took it gently from
  his 6ngers. When Louis had finished, he moved in and polished the mess tin
  clean. Lessing gave him some of his own dinner and that disappeared too.

                  85
  Unaware that this was the first solid food that the dog had eaten, his
  appetite seemed only natural to Lessing. Not only had the crew of the
  whaler seen them together in the water, but there could be no doubt from
  their behaviour that these two animals had belonged together formerly, and
  what more natural than that they should have shared a feeding time. But he
  was astute enough to recognise afterwards that Ria would never eat unless
  he, Lessing, were having his own meal at the sime time; also that in some
  uncannily perceptive way the dog seemed to have grasped the complex system
  of watch keeping and after one mistiming never again appeared in his
  absencc.
  But the (lay came all too soon when Tertlan made her rendezvous at eighteen
  degrees west. There she refuelled and turned back with an infinitely more
  vital flock, laden to its limits with fUel, machinery, tools, food and
  equipment, a rich prey for the U-boats on the homebound passage.
  And there Ria's frecdom ended, for shortly after his patient was
  transferr~d, clattcring down the ladder in an explosive mixture of anger
  and anxiety came MacLean, haunted every inch of the way in his search from
  the empty mess by thoughts of his charge being swept overboard, fallen down
  the engine room hatch, being found in - perhaps even desecrating - off
  limits territory, penetrating the wardroom ... It was an infuriating
  ant]Lllmax to find this domestic idyll: Ria, a look of almost besotted
  pleasure on his face, being very thoroughly groomed by rhe monkey, the
  centre of a watching ring as absorbed as Louis himself.
  MacLean's relief turned sour at the sight. He called twice but, beyond
  laying his cars back almost apologetically, Ria did not stir. He strode
  over and picked up the dog, but Louis hung on determinedly. As fast as he
  disengaged one paw with his free hand the other curled fast on the collar.
  He put Ria down on the deck to free both hands: still clutching with one
  hand, grimacing in fury, Louis made towards this interfering human
  antagonist the most obscene of his considerable

                  86
 repertoire of obscene gestures. There was a titter of restrained laughter.
 MacLcan, scarlet-faced, tried again to pry the fingers loosc, but Louis
 swung himself on to the dog's back and clung like some small determined
 Old Man of the Sea.
  Lessing took pity and came to help. 'Leave him till the watches change,,'
  he suggested as he disengaged paws. 'Louis always lets him go then
  without any fuss,' and as MacLean's mouth remained closed like a rat
  trap, 'I'll bring him back myself-' he ad&d hopefully.
  'The dog has no business to be here, now or anytime. Come, you-' said
  MacLean dismissively, and turned to go. His reluctant shadow fell in at
  his heels only after being dragged the first few feet.
  'Come on, Doc, be a sport-' wheedled the rest of Number Five Mess, facecl
  with the prospect of this new diversion for their spoiled and only child
  disappearing out of his grasp, 'Give them a treat - poor little orphans,
  they don't get many-'
  For a second, MacLean hesitated. He was exhausted, and he wanted only to
  get his head down for a few hours' oblivion, freed froin all
  responsibility or worry. But in that moment of indecision, Louis
  struggled free and scampered across to hang on to Ria's tall, so
  endearingly comical in his too-long shorts and white rollneck jersey as
  he tried to drag his companion back that a roar of laughter went up,
  increasing as the tail %vagged furiously so that the tiny body at the end
  of it quivercd in rhythm and the shorts dropped lower and lower. Then as
  though to complete the burlesque they dropped down altogether, Louis
  trying to pull them up and out of the way with one hand as he held on
  grimly to the tail with the other.
  'I'll thank yot to get yon brute of a monkey off -the now,' said MacLean
  to Lessing.
  Lessing's amusement was stopped cold at the venom in the tone. He
  shrugged and pried the furiously protesting

                  87
 Louis loose. He made one last attempt. 'But why not let them be together
 when they can? He's sort of settled down here with Louis, and he's no
 trouble. Why don't you give it a try anyway?'
  'The dog's settled - with me,' said MacLean. 'I'm responsible, and I'll
  not have any daft to-ing and fro-ing all over this ship - free to make
  a nuisance of itself where it shouldn't be,' he added with a meaningful
  scowl at Louis as he picked up Ria and left.
  Tastard!' summed up Number Five Mess when he was safely out of earshot
  --a man never knew that he might not have to report sick one day -and
  turned to consoling their Louis. 'Who the 'ell does he think he is,
  'Itler?' inquired a solo indignant voice. 'Fricking little tyrant, that's
  wot.'
  When he reached the upper deck, MacLean put Ria down and went out into
  the fresh darkness, making his way aft. He leaned over the guardrail, now
  watching the straight white path of the wake rolled out behind as the
  Terhan slipped through a calm blackness, now watching the small blur that
  was Ria investigating ihe bases of the depth charge mountings for traces
  of Barkis.
  The destroyer steamed steadily on the starboard flank of the convoy, her
  whole length tuned this night to a contentment of seagoing sounds, the
  sibilant swish of water against the hull soothing the low constant
  moaning of the funnel. But the sea held no siren sounds for MacLean; he
  hated it at the best of times, and for the moment he was deaf to
  everything except the laughter still ringing in his ears. He bitterly
  regretted his quixotic promise, and all the subsequent complications of
  fulfilment, the baffling resistance of the dog. He found himself
  resenting now the forfeiture of precious off-duty time that could be
  better spent in considering chess problems or getting on with a book;
  above all, the disquieting intrusion into the ordered fastnesses of his
  mind. His thoughts churned over the humiliating episode with the monkey
  as steadily as the ship's screws, the wake of his frustrations

                  8$
 rolling out as lengthily ovcr the bleakness of his heart.
  A dark figure detached itself from the darker mass of the after
  superstructure, and a soft whistle followed. It was the Leading
  Telegraphist, tonight one of the depth charge party, with another two hours
  of his watch to go and glad of any distraction. Ria went to him and
  cheerful SOUDds of greeting followed. MacLean had moved near enough to see
  that Ria was standing mi his hind legs ofjering a forepaw. Before so
  offensive a spectacle, there was nothing that MacLean wanted to Jo more in
  the world at that moment than to heave both ovcrboard and set off one of
  the depth charges over them.
 'How's things, Doc?' inquired the voice amiably.
  'Fine, fine, chiist fine. . .' snarled MacLean, his face now six inches
  away from the startled Telegraphist, and to an explosive 'Coine! that
  brought Ria slinking to his heels, he turned abruptly and vanished through
  the hatchway. ('Blimey, you could almost smell the sulphur - like the Demon
  King in the pantomime te was,' said the Telegraphist, regaling his
  messmates later.)
  Back in the sl,.-k bay, fie filled the kidney basin that now
 bore the label 'Dog only' with water and set it down before
 Ria, then shook out the daily ration of vitamin pills into his
 hand from a bottle. The pills were grimly dropped down
 Ria's submissive i-hroat; the empty dish carefully washed and
 put away. He removed his shoes and jacket and turned in on
 the cot. Ria lay down by the open door. Two minutes later
 MacLean was asleep. Two hours later, Ria still lay with his
 head on his paws, his dark eyes wide open and unseeing, as
 though they wero fixed on some point far beyond the im
 mediate boundar, ' k, of the flat before him - far beyond the
 bows of the Ark ind the endless expanse of ocean, in fact.

                  89
                  7

 It would hme astonished Neil MacLean, even deeply offended him if he had
 heard himself described as tyrannical or insensitive, when he was merely
 discharging his exacting obligation with the utmost conscientiousness.
  He came from crofter stock in a thriving west Highland farm, from forebears
  as at home on the sea in a fishing boat as on the hills. He was the
  youngest son, the seventh, a sickly asthmatic child, prone to all the
  allergic ills of his kind, a cossetted, undersized misfit in a family of
  tall strong brothers, for ever running to catch up, for ever falling
  behind.
  His father was also a seventh son, but despite the portentous mutterings
  and sidelong glances of the old people of the village, the only singular
  manifestation that might have been said to set this child apart was the
  marked reluctance of any domestic or farm animal to be near him. As a
  strong aroma of Friar's Balsam from the steaming asthma kettle perpetually
  enveloped him, with pungent overtones of the eucalyptus oil with which his
  wheezing chest was rubbed, his family did not find this altogether
  surprising. The same down-to-earth explanation prevailed when, as he grew
  older, he seemed to be able to subdue or dominate the animals by his
  presence alone: small wonder that before fierce waves of Vicks Vapour Rub,
  the rnost recalcitrant cow, the wildest of dogs, the maddest of bulls
  seemed to be almost anaesthetised into submission. Altogether it seemed a
  very sensible, satisfactory explanation as the boy could no more tolerate
  their presence go
 than they coulc his, for dic closer the proximity or inadvertent contact
 with an animal and he was seized with the dread wheezing and fighting for
 breath.
  He was sent to a specialist who produced a list of positive allergy tests
  as long as his mother's face as she listened with polite scepticism to the
  learned man expounding further on the psychological causes that might
  underlie the physical symptoms of asthma - maternal rejection, sibling
  rivalry, and guilt complexes all rolled smoothly off his tongue. Such
  haverings - and costly ones at that - she had never heard; far from
  rejecting her youngest son, she had bestowed more affection and attention
  on him than any of his brothers, rivalry was out of the question as there
  was a considerable gap in years between him and hLs next brothers; and as
  for guilt -Neil had been the most docile and obedient little boy, quite
  unlike his healthily mischievous brothers.
  However, the visit did have a productive effect. Shortly afterwards, Neil
  Nvas sent to the drier climate of inland Morayshire to board with an aunt.
  who owned -nothing more potentially disturbing than a budgerigar, and go to
  school there. The improvement was dramatic: although he was always to re-
  main undersized and thin, he grew out of all allergies, Furthermore, on the
  east coast, no one cared whether he or his father had six or sixteen
  brothers. But a residue of his strange power over animals remained,
  recognised by an astute local vet who took the boy on to help in the school
  holidays at first, then later as a full-time assistant when he left school.
  He became the most cfficient handler of animals that the vet had ever
  experienced, and he selflessly helped and encouraged the young man towards
  the goal of veterinary college. But after two academically successful years
  of college, he suddenly quit. He returned to his assistant's job, and the
  disappointed vet could get nothing more illuminating out of him other than
  that 'studying and the like was no the life' for him, He returned home only
  once during this period, and there, having by now almost forgotten its
  terrors, he had such a
   0

                  91
 traumatic attack of asthma that thereafter he made this the excuse never to
 return.
  He had married eventually. As uninformatively and mysteriously as he did
  most things, he returned from a holiday on the island of Mull with a soncy
  red-haired girl, who teased him unmercIfully about his pernicketiness -the
  only one who had ever teased him in his life; and who with all her
  extrovert flaming haired nature loved him even while she laughed at him,
  and told him how wonderful he was, so that he became transformed and
  wonderful in his love for her. Two and a half idyllic years later, on a
  visit home to her parents in Mull, she was drowned crossing to Iona in her
  father's fishing boat. Only her father's body was washed up later; the sea
  kept for ever his Margarct and all that had been their life, and Neil
  MacLean never again saw the streaming tendrils of the dark red seaweed
  undulating gently below its surface without thinking of a bright drowned
  flame.
  After the empty mockery of a funeral service, he had given his notice with
  polite formality to the vet; then, stocked up with whisky, he had returned
  to their cottage, locked the door and pulled the blinds, answering no
  neighbourly knock or voices; only seen when he emerged twice a day to feed
  Margaret's pullets at the bottom of the garden. Her grey cat returned once
  to cry distractedly outside the door, after which it took to the hills and
  went wild.
  At the end of two weeks he walked out of the cottage, his private wake
  over. He buried the bottles in the hill behind, and locked the cottage door
  behind him. He walked away without a backward look, carrying in one hand a
  small suitcase, and dangling from the other the six plucked carcasses of
  the pullets. His best suit hung in folds on him, but the trousers had
  knife-edge creases, his shoes shone brilliantly; his face was freshly
  shaved and expressionless as stone. The six pullets he gave to their
  nearest neighbour, returning at the same time a pound of sugar that
  Margaret had borrowed, so that her kindly f ice was scarlet with shocked
  grief. The key he

                  92
 handed over to thc vet, receiving in return his letter of the
 highest recommendation to a colleague, now director of the
 animal laboratory                    attached to a famous teaching
 hospital in
 London. He then walked to the station, arriving with his ticket
 on the platform a[ the precise moment as the south-bound
 train drew in, and he left Morayshire five minutes later
 wheezing and strug ling for breath as agonisingly as when he
            19
 first came there as a boy.
  It was not long before he became the head attendant in charge of the
  laboratory animals; and it was not long before the meticulous conditions
  in which they now lived became a byword among other laboratories. No
  post-operative patient ever received such undivided professional
  attention as did the animals in MacLean's care, nor lived so long
  afterwards, to the gratification of those conducting the experiments. The
  luckless shaven-haired monkey or rat, guinea pig or dog bent on
  renouncing the laboratory world for ever found itself opening its eyes
  on it once more from the antiseptically scrubbed floor of its cage, its
  drinking vessel freshly charged, its dressings ingeniously barred from
  investigation, its recovery a command - even, if necessary, its
  benefactor would minister long hours overtime to make sure it was carried
  out.
  No animal ever bit his ministering hand, no animal cowered away from him;
  and no animal ever greeted him with pleasure, not even the long-term
  residents in whom almost every attendant had a friendly involvement which
  was returned by the animals themselves. His uncanny power, and his
  dispassionate material involvement could not have found a better outlet.
  He treated the inmates as machines to be kept in perfect working order.
  His attitude might seem inhuman to others, but his care was never other
  than humane; and he would not tolerate any unnecessarily painful or
  clumsy handling or any form of teasing of the animals from his
  assistants.
  He voluntcereO the day after war broke out, and it was typical that,
  hating the sea, he should go straight to a naval recruiting office. He
  was undersized admittedly, but he was

                  93
 physically Ai classification, and when his veterinary and hospital
 experience were revealed, the medical officer recommended him for training
 as a Sick Berth Attendant, and under his pen MacLean, Neil Roderick, D/JX
 3427, (Presb.) grew an official inch in height.
  This was the rigid complex little man, bitterly inturned, to whom fate had
  sent a small cherished extrovert of a dog; a man who set his highest stands
  of admiration by the historical giants of endurance, strength and self
  control. A slight shivering dog who pranced on his hind legs, and allowed
  a dollsized monkey all liberties, who could not even face his food -such a
  dog, would not exactly enhance their heroic image. If he could have admired
  any dog enough to wish it for his own it would have been one like the great
  barrel-chested Barkis, that solid ma,,s that stood foursquare and fearless
  to anything, that invincible muscled missile of the ladders. Certainly not
  a dog who still winced and shuddered to noise, who seemed to float down
  those laddcrs, light and graceful as a feather. (He was not to know that
  Ria could have demonstrated a performing verve on those ladders -such as
  jumping from rung to rung on hind legs alone -that for strength of muscle
  and control would have made Barkis' headlong dive seem rudimentary.
  Fortunately this embarrassing accomplishment was never revealed to MacLean,
  and by the time Lessing and his messmates discovered it they had learned to
  hold their peace.)
  If he had ever considered their mutual problems, he might have said that,
  like himself, this dog could not help being small - it could not even help
  being French, he might have added - but at least it could conform to a more
  normal dutiful canine mould. with all four feet planted firmly on the
  ground, and a healthy appetite to boot.
  So Ria, who was only what he was, and what his forebears had always been,
  a dog to amuse and take the minds of men off other things, shivered and was
  increasingly bewildered by the disapproval and the denial of all that he
  knew, as MacLean strove daily to overcome the centuries and produce

                  94
 something that approached his idea of what a dog should be -if he were going
 to be stuck with one.
  But the dog's needs, or character, were too strong now to be subject to thc
  man's will. Time and time again, with infinite cunning, when he had learned
  the times that kept MacLean occupied with his duties, he would judge the
  moment; always soundless, he seemed to have acquired the ability to
  suddenly vanish. If tied, he slipped the collar or bit through the line.
  then straight to the lower deck and the haven of Number Five Mess, no fear
  or hesitancy now on the way, but a swift confident passage. Invariably he
  was retrieved, invariably, lie returned; and no appeal from Lessing or
  anyone could persuade MacLean to change his mind and permit the visits.
  Number Five Mess found his unyielding attitude beyond their total
  comprehension; if their beloved Louis enjoyed the company of Ria, then it
  followed that this should be forthcoming, and they could not fathom this
  refusal to make both parties happy by a similar indulgence with Ria. It
  became quite an issue. 'The flipping Fi1hrer's on his way-' the groan would
  go around xNhen they saw Ria's ears flick apprehensively, minutes before
  they heard the footsteps. 'It's back to concentration camp for you,
  Frogdog.'
  Louis, as though aware of his kingdom's disapproval, took an almost human
  delight in irritating Ria's pursuer. The result was often cruelly humorous
  as MacLean's face, when he was dourly set on retrieving his errant dog,
  bore a startling resemblance to the monlcy's. The kissing sounds that Louis
  made when he was feeling affectionate were always soft and gentle; MacLean
  was invariably greeted with loud and vulgar smacking of lips, or went on
  his way to the accompaniment of Louis' coarse version of a raspberry.
  The strain was beginning to tell. He found himself dreading the trip to the
  low,2r deck, and disUing the monkey with a repulsion and animosity that he
  had never before felt for anyone, let alone singling out an animal for such
  distinction.

                  95
 Not just for its humiliating behaviour, but for the disturbance to his
 mind, and the upsetting of routine and control, the distraction of always
 having to be on the alert to forestall the next vanishing act. His
 irritation and worry over Ria's lack of appetite aicreased too, for now
 this disconcerting animal was beginning to show disinterest in his
 carefully fortified porridge rinx, and seemed to have been living on water
 alone for the last few days. . .
  Inevitably came the time when he was confronted with the scene of Ria and
  Louis sharing a mess tin -worse still, the monkey was actually feeding
  the dog, his deheate little hands guddling around in the tin until they
  fished out a delicacy which was ffien tossed into the waiting eager
  mouth.
  'He's right hungry today,' said the innocent Lessing, looking up from his
  own plate. 'Scoffed his own, and now he's after something from Louis.
  Meat, potatoes, beans - the lot. Did you luiow he could sit up and
  salute? I thought I'd taught him, but he was so quick, I'm certain he
  knew it all before - just didn't know the Enghsh for it, I suppose. He's
  a sharp one-'
  But his last words were directed to MacLean's back; overcome with such
  a mixture of revulsion and mortification, he had said nothing - but so
  forcibly that for once Ria leaped with alacrity up the ladder before him
  and made straight for his proper obscurity under the desk, regardless of
  the fact that the doctor's feet were already there. He looked very
  subdued, only too WL11 aware that once again he had offended, and that
  the offence this time must be unusually grievous.
  'You look very guilty, my lad,' said the doctor. 'What have you been up
  to this time?'
  He pressed against these friendly legs as though seeking protection I rom
  he knew not what.
  But it was Barkis who was to be his saviour of the day. Barkis's claws
  to be exact, for in the confinement of a destroyer they were not worn
  down normally, and when they rcachcd the point of curving over his pads
  they had to

                  96
 be cut. AN his ~,N iles and strength went into his resistance to this
 painless opciation; it took three men to hold him down, and a fourth
 tovvield the clippers.
  'You're wanted on the bridge,' said the doctor as a setfaced MacLean
  appeared. (That his charge should occupy the same kneehole as an officer's
  legs was yet another offence - this time in the unseemly category.)
  'Operation Toenails, you lucky chap. I told the Captain that with all your
  experience, you probably had some magical quick tricks up your sleeve. And
  God help you if you haven't-I did the job last time and it took nie nearly
  a week to recover.'
  'Out you come,' the doctor said when MacLean had gone, and took a sugir
  lump from a cache in the drawer. Ria emerged and sat .xpectanily as the
  sugar was balanced on his nose, then with a professional flip, he sent it
  high in the air, caught and swallowed it. The next lump was thrown and
  caught with the same expertise, despite several teasing feints in the
  opposite direction. 'Clever dog! ' said the doctor, and ruffled the silky
  cirs, snifling down with a conspiratorial wink.
  MacLean arrived at the day cabin off the bridge to find there the brawny
  Yeoman to whom Barkis was much attached, and the Captain's steward, Smith.
  It was a sunny morning, Tcrtian steaming steadily, and the unsuspecting
  Barkis peacefully asleep on the bridge. The Captain whistled him in, and he
  came to the door with his powerful rushing roll, paused, sensed his
  impending doom and backed out hastily.
  'Grab him, Yeoman,' shouted the Captain, and the signalman leaped in a
  flying tackle. Barkis rolled over and waved his paws supplicatingly.
  Nothing would induce him to get to his feet again; he appeared to be able
  to ooze out of every attempt to lift him, like a sack of liquid lead.
  MacLean, watching this performance and thinking that if he had Barkis to
  himself for five minutes he would have the claws clipped without further
  fuss, suggested that the patient be slid or dragged by the collar into the
  cabin and there hauled on to the chart table for the operation. Barkis had
  a

 D                 97
 neck like a tr,~c trunk and could have been hauled for miles without
 feeling it, but: 'Oh, I don't think Barkis would like that,' said the
 Captain. 'He'd be most unwilling, wouldn't he then, poor boy?' he added
 tenderly to the inert white bulk-, quivering at his feet.
  MacLean was horrified; images were toppling off their pedestals all
  round. fie had always respected both dog and man for size and dignity,
  calm authority, cool courage and discipline - yet one was grovelling on
  the deck before the completely punless prospect of having his toenails
  cut, and the other wa,, demoralised with maudlin sympathy.
  'Softly, softly, catchee monkee,' said the Captain, and cooing
  persuasively with promises of chocolate, he managed to lure the
  trerrbling bulk on to his bunk and thence on to the chart table. 'Now!'
  he said suddenly, and like a welltrained team, he, Smith and the Yeoman
  pounced. Barkis opened his mouth in a dreadful scream and fought like a
  tiger. MacLcan hovered on the outskirts with the clippers waiting to grab
  a paw-, he got one for a second, held on grimly, but only got two claws
  clipped before Barkis had fought his way to the edge of the table and
  then on to the floor, where he collapsed on his back again. It was very
  hot. All wiped their brows and took time out before the next round.
  MacLean had never witnessed such a scene in all his life. It was more
  than he could stand; they could be here the rest of the morning. 'If I
  might be making a suggestion, sir,' he said at last. 'It is that we knock
  him out and proceed with the operation while he is unconscious?'
  The Captain looked at him in shocked surprise. 'Apart from the fact that
  it would take a sledge hammer to knock Barkis out,' he said, 'I don't
  think he would like that.'
  'I am not meaning a blow, sir,' said MacLean, his voice becoming more
  Highland by the moment with embarrassment both at having to stoop to this
  professional level, and meeting a suddenly defenceless hero upon it at
  the same time. 'I was thinking that we could knock him out with a wee
  whiff of

                  98
 something-' He could sec the Captain's worried expression, and before
 there was time to be told that Barkis wouldn't like that either, he
 hurried on to explain that it was the most merciful way; that the vet
 always employed it on strong sensitive dogs like Barkis -just a few drops
 of ether, and clip, clip, and it was a[l over before the patient realised
 what had happened. 'And no nasty after-effects,' he added soothingly,
 almost choking on the words.
  Still faintly dubious, the Captain sent for the doctor who agreed,
  straight-faced and solemn, with MacLean's suggestion. A mask and ether
  were produced, and peacefully, quietly, and in orJerly ship-shape fashion
  Barkis parted with his excess nails.
  Thanking MacLean afterwards, the Captain asked about Ria -he was a
  fine-looking little dog, he had thought on the few occasions he had seen
  him. Most intelligent, and - he had been about to sa~ 'amusing', but for
  some unknown, unconsidered reason he substituted 'and full of guts too'
  - he would have said.
  Astonished that the Captain had even been aware of Ria, taken aback by
  the obvious sincerity of this praise from a man he admired abovc all
  others, MacLean was speechless for a moment. Fine looking? Intelligent?
  Full of guts? Ria?
  As he swept the last neat crescents of claw on to a piece of paper,
  speech returned: 'I had not thought on it, sir,' he said politely, then
  added with considerably more conviction, 'But, aye, he certainly is a
  determined wee b ... beast.' He turned his attention to Barkis, still
  lying on the table with a slit of eye open and a silly pleased smile on
  his thin pink lips. He folded back one of the white ears, then suddenly
  bent over it so closely that it looked as though he were whispering into
  its depths.
  He straightened up and sniffed disapprovingly. 'Dirty ears,' he said. 'I
  will be cleaning them out. Come with me, you-' Barkis slid off the table
  and laid the shameful ears back, a picture of abject ai)ology.

                  99
  'I will rcturn him in fifteen minutes, sir,' said MacLean straightening
  smartly to attention before exiting with Barkis rolling obc(liently along
  behind, looking almost as bemused as the Captain. Whereas MacLean, for
  once, looked rather satisfied witf.1 himself .
  Later that afternoon as he sat at the desk, Ria suddenly came to him and
  pushed a cold nose into his hand. Reminded of Barkis's unsavoury ears,
  he lifted one of the softly folded ones under his hand and inspected the
  delicate spotless convolutions within. Pleased with what he found, he let
  his hand lie for a moment on Ria's head. 'They'll do,' he said. Ria's
  tail was dell,,hted at such praise, he grinned, turning his upper lip
  back o~er his teeth, and MacLean then inspected the shining teeth as
  grimly as if he expected to find signs of decay already from the illicit
  diet of Number Five Mess.
  Suddenly he was very conscious of the difference between these jaws and
  the powerful shark-like ones of Barkis; the fragility of the skull
  beneath his hand and its almost weightlessncss up(~n his knee; Ria's
  round vulnerable eyes, Barkis's protected slits. His mind went back to
  these same teeth gleaming frem the black oil-slimed mass of the soldier:
  this same wee jeisie of a dog had then endured over eight hours in the
  water. and heaven knew what else beforehand - yet still had fight in him.
  It occurred to him that the mighty Barkis's build would not havc stoood
  up to those hours in the water. 'Full of guts,' the Captain had said
  -maybe he wasn't so far wrong. And intelligent -well, yes, he was no
  fool. As to 'fine looking' -fine boned certainly, but he stood well nowa-
  days, straight legs - and if he'd keep his head and ears up the way they
  weie now, he wouldn't be so bad looking at that....
 'You'll do,' he said almost grudgingly. 'Aye, you'll do.'
  Contact with the Captain and Barkis must have been catching; for the
  second time in his thirty-eight years of life he had spoken words that
  were neither commands or refusals to an animal, words that assumed the
  comprehension of human thought. Head to one side, ears cocked, Ria's
  receptive eves

                 Ioo
 searched the face above as though expecting something further. But at that
 moment eight bells sounded, the change of watches; time for his routine
 inspection of his first aid packs stowed on every gun mounting throughout
 the ship. He secured Ria by a new length of stronger line and lef t.
  He climbed the ladder to A gun first, and having reached the platform found
  Ria immediately behind him, the collar slipped. Exasperated, he scowled
  down, but Ria, ears at a demure half-mast, gazed studiously into the
  distance. It was too late to return with him now -and at least this time he
  had not made for Number Five Mess. He continued his rounds, up and clown
  ladders, the dog, cat-footed, close behind, yet never in ~he way.
  They returned to the mess; time now, too, for his meal, and the defeating
  disinterest of Ria in his - the routine battle. He set the dish down,
  already more tense than usual, his mouth drawn down as he remembered the
  intimacy of the monkey's fingers in another dish. Ria gave the unappetising
  contents his usual perfunctory sniff and turned away. MacLean determinedly
  edg(-d the bowl towards him again with the toes of his boot, then bent the
  dog's head over it.
  Reid, already eating, watched in silence for a moment, them, 'For Christ's
  sake, man,' he said in a sudden rare burst of irritation, 'if you'd stop
  looking as though you had a mouth full of razor blades perhaps the dog
  would eat something - it's enough to put anyone off their grub! '
  MacLean looked up, startled. Then suddenly he smiled, almost shamefacedly.
  'Perhaps I am just a thing over-anxious,5 he admitted.
  'And talk aboui a dog's dinner -' said Reid, looking down at the bowl in
  dispist. 'Who'd want to eat that grisly looking muck?' He ladled some of
  his own plate on to the bowl, stirring it around with a finger.
  'Come on, Main's little luv, eat up your luverly dins-dins,' he said, in
  such i high falsetto imitation that MacLean could

                  i0i
 not help laughing - such an unexpected sound that Ria looked at him, his
 eyes round and astounded.
  'Go on - cat up -' said MacLean still laughing, and to his astonishment
  Ria set to and polished the bowl clean, so obviously ravenous that
  MacLean gave him some of his own.
  From then on there was to be no refusal of meals; a battle had been won.
  There would have been no doubt in MacLean's mind as to which had
  triumphed if the point had ever been raised: dogs always came round in
  the end; he knew. Still, he decided, perhaps Reid had a point -and anyway
  it could do no real harm to discipline if the dog continued to eat at the
  same tinic as himself - and maybe even have something of his own hot
  dinner. There was nothing more professionally abhorrent than a skinny
  looking dog. It was interesting, though, that a dog should actually have
  preferences as to where or how it should eat ....
  Or that anything the merest shade different, the slightest tinge of
  dnama, could assume such colourful importance apparently in the day to
  day lives of shipboard animals. This was his next discovery when a few
  days later he watched first Ria and then Hyacinthe shoot out of a
  hatchway on deck as Tertian drew within hailing distance of the last
  limping ship in the convoy, an elderly rust-stained tramp steamer that
  had straggled further and further behind all day with engine trouble.
  They must have received the summons from Barkis on his vantaQ
       ,e point of the bridge as he was hurling greetings across the water
       to a grizzled Aberdeen terrier tucked under the tramp skipper's arm
       - a small stocky figure on the bridge who, apart from a
       salt-stained bowler hat, looked not unlike a grizzled old Aberdeen
       himself. The terrier was yipping hysterically back.
  Ria was beside himself with excitement: Hyacinthe had leaped on to the
  meat safe and had a grand stand seat at all that was going on, but at
  deck level his view was obscured. He ran up and down, whining, hesitated
  at the bridge deck ladder, then turned - to MacLean's relief - and
  scrambled up

                 102
 the fo'c'sle ladder to the platform of A gun. One of the bearded
 scaramouche crew at the rusty rails heaving up and down before whistled
 to him and held up a ginger cat, waving its paw in greeting. Ria wriggled
 and grinned and cavorted precariously in return.
  When the exchanges through loud hailers were over - courteous enquiries
  arid exhortations from Terhan and decidedly salty disclaimers and asides
  from the tramp's bridge - the Captain released his silencing grip on
  Barkis's mouth and put the loud hailer beJore it. Not to be outdone, the
  skipper turned his mouthpiece over to his terrier and a dreadful
  amplified duet ensued. Froul the gun mounting Ria threw back his head and
  howled to make a trio of it as Tertlan moved off again.
  MacLean began to take an increasing interest after this in the way that
  the animals occupied their waking hours, seeing them for the first: time
  not as sick or healthy specimens but as individual perionalities.
  Convoy-watching seemed to hold the most fascination, presumably because
  of its possibilities of other animal encounters - and he had not realised
  before that almost every ship carried its quota of assorted mascots -but
  even a seagull snatching a crust, a bucket rolling down the deck spray
  flicking over the rails, held immense potential. In fact, there appeared
  to be no limits to the apparent human trivia that could be magnified into
  the most satisfying animal drama.
  He found himself more and more absorbed and often amused by the
  astonishing dimensions opened up through those eyes: Ria's expressive
  querying ones always on the faces of men, compared to the opportunistic
  scanning for action of Louis; Barkis's confidently cunning slits across
  which no shadow of doubt or justification ever flitted; the pure manipu-
  lation of her subject in Hyacinthe's stare. And from these observations,
  came the intriguing revelation that all these separate personalities -
  with the occasional temperamental exception of Louis - could merge and
  accommodate each with the other without conflict.

                 103
                  8

 The Atlantic convoys were the very life lines of England now; severance
 would mean a total blockade, so that in the end, even this la~,t defiant
 little island bastion must surrender -or starve. The responsibility of
 keeping these lines open, protecting th~- vital convoys, lay mainly with
 the destroyers, but in the preceding months twenty-two had been sunk and
 forty-five damaged, almost half their total strength. What was left-and
 many of t1tern dating back to 1917-had to be spread from the north
 Atlantic to the vulnerable Channel, from the Western Approaches to the
 Mediterranean, where pressure was mounting daily now that Italy had
 entered the war. Endlessly protecting, hunting, evading, and fightin'g-off
 attack becamc more and more a test of the limits of human endurance for
 a destroyer's crew, when all the body cried out for - if it could not be
 warm and dry - was a few hours of unbroken sleep, and even the most stolid
 temperament became frayed at the olges.
  Two hundred and seventy-four ships were sunk between June and October at
  a cost of only six U-boats, and now a fleet of superbly equipped fast
  commerce raiders was in operation. But against all odds, with engines
  kept going by seeming miracles sometimes, with dirty boilers and
  straining plates, with exhausted crews, the convoys kept on coming as
  that desperate summer of 1940 wore on into autumn gales, in the battle
  for the Atlantic. 'Das g7fickliches Zed', the Happy Time, the G(,jman
  navy called it. The Royal Navy and the

                 104
 Merchant Scrvic-- did not have time to call it anything, and if they had,
 it would havc been unprintable.
  In these conditions, the most important adaptation a shipboard animal had
  to learn was the art of keeping out of the way; to be SO tUned into
  urgency and strain that, while the shrill of Action Stations meant
  instant activity to humans, to them it signalled withdrawal into the most
  unobtrusive passivity they could find; to enter a state that needed not
  water nor food, comfor, nor company, for there was little chance of
  receiving any. Barkis secure in his lofty bunk, Louis and Hyacinthe in
  thcir hammocks -more often than not curled into a single ball -nowadays
  - they turned themselves off into a kind of tempontry hibernation, their
  bodies sometimes twitching to the thud ol underwater explosions, their
  noses wrinkling to the bitter smcll of cordite, but still, it seemed,
  deeply asleep. Apparently sizing up the situation, Ria never made any
  attempt to join the monkey at these times, although, paradoxically, he
  had mor( opportunity then.
  He also had far more close attention and company than usual then, for the
  doctor - to whose cheerful personality he was devoted and who borrowed
  him often for company -did not stand regular watches, and apart from
  routine duties there were many hour~ when lie -and MacLean too, to a
  lesser extent - were on standby only. These hours could be endlessly
  tedious, whiled away with books or a growing interest in sketching by the
  doctor, or a combination of reading and knitting socks by MacLean.
  Sometimes they could be bleak and harrowing hours: watching the night
  skies redden to a blazing tanker, the awesome fireworks of an exploding
  ship, the sickening blank where a living ship had been only a minute
  before; or worst of all, the lonely little marker lights flickering on
  the waves afterwards, the faint cries fadino, in Tertian's wake. 'f hen
  inactivity could be almost unbearable. Then the appalled, identifying
  mind sought distraction in the very normality and unconcern of a dog; a
  dissociation that was vet an associition, for while Ria could have no
  compre-
  
                 105
 hension of events, he could gauge the human mood and respond accordingly.
  On the few - sadly few - occasions when Tertian could stop to pick up
  survivors, or they were transferred from another ship, frozen, shocked
  men would be crammed into every available space; cabins and flats and
  wardroom were given over to the wounded, and then only was there the
  mixed blessing of exhaustion In activity for the doctor and MacLean. And
  then Ria too went into the same state of suspended animation as the other
  animals, securely wedged in under the end of a mattress in the mess.
  He had become relaxed now in MacLean's company during the enforced
  sharing of the worst hours of a convoy's struggle for survival, often
  stretched out in sleep as needles clicked and pages turned, close and
  companionable. Yet MacLean could not help noticing that he was subtly
  transformed in another man's presence, and very obviously and
  enthusiastically transformed if the other happened to be Reid or Lessing
  or the doctot in particular, or any other members of either mess.
  In a deep, dark and hitherto unused corner of his mind, this knowledge
  nagged. Still, he was rid of his former irritations now; there were no
  problems over food, no humiliating visits to Number Five Mess, no need
  to tie Ria - wherever he was left, he was always there on his return
  (even if, as MacLean now suspected - with a sneaking admiration at the
  cunning - he had arrived back probably only a few minutes before). All
  in all, the dog had settled in amazingly well, and had turned cut to be
  no trouble even in the most exigent circumstances.
  Which wa~ just as well, he reflected one morning, for it seemed likely
  that it would be months before he would be free of responsibility. The
  first mail for weeks had brought a letter from Donald Sinclair's wife.
  Her husband was now off the dangerously ill list, she reported, but one
  lung would remain permanently collapsed; he would remain in hospital for
  some

                 io6
 time yet, and would be invalided out of the army in due course:

 Then, God willing, one of these fine days we will be able
 to take the dog off your hands at last. It cannot have been
 easy for you, looking after him on a boat and all, and
 Donald has fretted often over what he put upon you when
 he was not, as he says, himself. For a while he could
 remember very little, now it is gradually coming back. One
 day we hope to repay you, even if it is only with our thanks
 and hopes of friendship. My Aunty knitted the enclosed
 for you ...

  The enclosed was a pair of socks. MacLean examined them critically. Aunty
  was an expert, but had been over-generous in length. They would do nicely
  for Reid.
  He put the letter away, his feelings very mixed, and went out into the
  warm September sunshine on deck. It had been an exciting and eventful
  time, these last three days, and an almost holiday atmosphere still
  prevailed in every quarter of Tertian as she swung gently to her buoy off
  the fishing port of Oban.
  They had been diverted from the Clyde on the homeward leg and sent on up
  the west coast of Scotland on a reported sighting of two IT-boats. One
  of the quarry had escaped, but the other was hunted up a long sea loch
  until trapped and forced to the surface -whereupon she had promptly
  scuttled. The crew, complete even to a sinister parrot which swore
  fluently in English, was picked up by a jubilant Tertian and taken to the
  nearest port, Oban, as she was running low on fuel. There she
  clisembarked her not altogether glum captives, and among the
  congratulatory signals that followed was one delaying their return to the
  Clyde for twenty-four hours, thus giving both watches some hours ashore.
  This was familiar ground to MacLean, the waters all too familiar, and he
  had hoped never to see them again. The

                  107
 mountainous 'Island of Mull dominated the western horizon, and some twenty
 miles away as the crow flies north, but nearer eighty by road, was the
 farm where he had been born. This was the land of his forebears, and of
 Margaret's. Twentyfour hours hcre could only be twenty-four deeply
 disturbing hours too long in his e, timation.
  It was a Sunday, and in the rare peace of make and mend that settled over
  the ship after Divisions, he settled himself with his back against the
  aft superstructure. One watch was going ashore in search of what limited
  diversion a Highland town on the Sabbath pubs-closed afternoon could
  offer. Most of the remaining watch slept below, only the few who were not
  afraid of fresh air sprawled around the deck in the sun, a good stodgy
  ~hip's dinner behind them, the prospect of a good stodgy tea ahead with
  a couple of hours uninterrupted kip in between.
  But MacLean was not one to waste the idle hour: he knitted, and as he
  knitted he read (General Gordon, Hero of Khartoum), Ria tidily disposed
  on one side, a mug of tea on the other.
  The gentle rise of mainland hills stretched before him, vividly slashel
  with bracken's fiery russet and the deep purple of heather. Across the
  intervening water a light wind carried the peaceful sounds of church
  bells and sheep bleating - and, to a sensitive interpretive nose, all the
  exciting, nostalgic and tantalising smells of sunwarmed earth. The only
  other nose in the ship's company that might have appreciated the wind's
  promise, Barkis, was already ashore with the Captain, realising them to
  the full. Ria rose and stood by the rail, his nose twitching, his ears
  flickering, his eyes searching for the source of this paradise. He
  whined, and MacLean whistled softly, but Ria did not even turn his head.
  He whined, more insistently, and only turned back reluctantly to a sharp
  'Come here!' - but not to lie down, to sit and snuff and quiver. The
  distraction irritated Mac-Lean, immersed in the most exciting part of
  General Gordon, 'Wheesht,' he said curtly, standing resolutely

                  108
 on the Residency steps in Khartoum and almost matched in height with the
 gallant General.
  Further along the deck, Lessing appeared with Louis who, in tribute to
  the sun, wore a sleeveless white singlet instead of his customary
  pullover Over this was a shoulder harness to which was attached a long
  light line. Louis clutched a grey mouse from which he had long ago
  removed the clockwork insides; crouched on Lessing's shoulder he looked
  like a small owl with its prey, his eycs as all-seeing. Lessing put him
  on the deck and settled down to write letters, from time to time
  patiently removing a grasping paw from his pen or the mouse from his
  writing pad. Louis wandered further afield and soon, inevitably, he had
  aroused a devoted slave or two to amuse him.
  Ria switched his gaze off the shore and watched, his tail quivering.
  Besidc him MacLean knitted determinedly before advancing hordes of
  yelling dark-skinncd natives.
  One of Louis' admirers tossed him a biscuit; he caught it neatly and
  suddcnly scampered along the deck towards Ria. But the line taUtcried ten
  feet away and Louis rocked from one foot to another in frustration for
  a moment, then tossed the biscuit with remarkable accuracy straight at
  Ria's mouth. Ria's jaws opened, snapped shut, and the biscuit vanished.
  MacLean tried to keep his eyes on the print, to ignore the intrusion in
  Khaitoum, but a monkey in a loin cloth insisted on scuttling up the
  Residency steps now, waving a dagger and yelling 'InfideW A second
  biscuit followed, and MacLean's patience snapped: he put down the book
  suddenly seized with the same pcrverse anger and revulsion that he had
  felt when he had first seen Louis feed Ria, and 'No!' he repeated sharply
  to a third biscuit. But each time Ria swallowed without glancing back.
  On the fourth throw, MacLean's hand shot out and intercepted the biscuit,
  putting it into a pocket where Ria's nose followed. His tail wagged as
  though he understood this to be part of a game.
 'Will you be still, damn you', said MacLean almost hissing

                 109
 the words, and this time cuffed him lightly across the head for emphasis.
 In a flash Ria sunk his teeth in the hand. He released it almost
 immediately, cowering back as though ashamed, but his eyes were bright and
 wary.
  MacLean stuffed the hand in his pocket quickly and glanced around, but
  no one was turned his way. He looked at his watch, replaced the paper
  bookmark, picked up his mug and knitting, and departed. Ria followed,
  head held high now, walking as though on the tips of his paws.
  In the sick bay MacLean set out cotton wool, antiseptic, scissors, and
  a roll of iape in a neat row, and sat down at the desk to dress the
  oozing punctures on his hand. His face was very white, and his hands
  trembled. Suddenly he stretched it down to Ria'~, nose, so close that a
  droplet of blood smeared on a nostril Tacl!' he said vehemently, then
  'Bad!' so that he exploded the word in the dog's ear, and at the same
  time he cuffed the side of the woolly head again, but sharply this time.
  Ria's reaction was as instantaneous as before, but this time he snarled,
  one lip pulled back over his teeth, before he sunk them in the hand, and
  this time he did not cower afterwards. For a long inoment they glared at
  one another, almost on a level, the twice-bitten hand between them like
  a bone between two hackles-raised disputing dogs, one pair of eyes
  gleaming almost green, and the other pair glittering dark as coal. It was
  the man who turned away first. His face was expressionless as he attended
  to the wounds.
  Ria remained still as a statue for a full minute, his head thrust forward
  and one lip still fractionally lifted, then he turned and slipped through
  the door to lie in his usual place outside, his head stretched on his
  paws and his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the man.
  Through the open scuttle drifted the peaceful bah-ing sounds and all the
  sweet headiness of hill and moorland that had so stirred Ria a short
  while ago, sounds and smells that suddenly stirred MacLean now to such
  a sick nostalgia of

                 110
 remembrance that he laid his head on the sound hand lying on the desk,
 sick and dizzy with the too-swift transition, almost afraid to breathe,
 waiting for the familiar iron band to squeeze around his chest, trying to
 suppress all other unbidden memories before they flooded his mind and
 broke the dam of his reserve.
  Ria whined uneasily, then came to him. He licked the blood that his own
  teeth had drawn from this hand that had struck him, and sudderily
  Macl-can found that he could breathe again, all tension gone. He put his
  hand on the dog's head, and remembrance now was gentle and kind: a boy
  riding home oi; the peat cart, the gorse and heather-laden summer wind
  gentle on his face, the sheep summer high on the hills, the lazy murmur
  from the burn ... He felt the delicate bone structure beneath his
  fingers, and smoothed the cars, feeling at the same time the warmth of
  the dog's body pressed against his legs. Perhaps he dozed for a minute.
  There had bee,2 a pup, a gangling sheep dog pup, and a child had struck
  it again and again until it had cringed, silent and submissive before him
  on the ground; then the child had called it to him, clapping his hands
  encouragingly; then, when it was oncc more fawning and gambolling at his
  feet the child fondled and patted to see the shining adoration in its
  eyes, and then he had struck it again, harder this time, until it yelped;
  then once more the reconciliation ...
  How long had this gone on? Minutes, hours, days or years? He only knew
  that throughout the summer-laden wind blew steadily, even as it did
  today, filling him with a strange exhilaration and dreadful sorrow so
  that he had both laughed and cried; and then had come the fear that he
  could not get his breath, that the ground was falling away below him
  -somebody's arms had held and carried him, then the vapours of Friar's
  Balsam steadily steaming from a kettle somewhere drifted over all memory,
  the ground falling away as it was now ... the deck below was sinking,
  sinking, . .
 He jerked fully awake: there was a sound of boots on the

                 III
 companionway at the far end of the flat. He opened the drawer and swept
 everything into it, and even as he did so there was a second when the world
 seemed to stop and there was nothing but utter still clarity, and it was as
 though he suddenly knew something that he had known all his life but had
 never wanted to know, and had resisted; in this inexorable moment he had
 accepted it and was resigned, knowing that there was no escape from the
 knowledge, and never had been.
  He was sitting, tidy and composed, his jacket back on, Ria 4t his feet,
  immersed in his book, when Lessing pulled back the curtain.
  Lessing was well over six feet, with enormous hands and feet, his Young
  fresh face dominated by a pair of the most startlingly direct and guileless
  blue eyes. He was a most likeable youngster, so solid and dependable yet
  unassuming that he was already marked out for further promotion. He stood
  now in the entrance, seeming to fill the sick bay, and suddenly looked very
  awkward and unsure of himself. He was going ashore on the next liberty
  boat, he said; there wouldn't be anything doing in the town, but he thought
  he'd walk over the hills and maybe have a swim - would MacLean like to go
  too ?
  Still shocked and spent within, MacLean's defences were momentarily down;
  he had rejected all overtures of friendship so consistently that his
  solitariness was now an accepted fact and no one ever sought him out for
  company. He seldom went ashore, only for dockyard stores, and he had never
  once taken Ria. Ile smiled, his rare transforming smile, and said that
  there was nothing he would rather do more - not for the swim for he had
  never learned to swim, but he loved to walk-, and it was a grand clay for
  the walking; but the doctor was ashore, and he was on duty ... and he
  thanked Lessing anyway for thin~ing of it.
  Lessing seemed overwhelmed by this unusual spate of words. He stood there,
  awkwardly turning his cap in his hand. 'Let

                 112
 me take Ria then.' he said at last. He hesitated as the smile vanished but
 went on resolutely, 'It'll do him good to have a run -get out of this tin
 box for a while. Must be worse for a dog being cool),.d up - not even a
 blooming tree to think about.'
  He had never once looked at the hand, but MacLean knew very well what was
  in his mind. For a moment, he almost reverted to his USUal image and told
  Lessing to mind his own business, and then, almost despite himself, he
  heard his voice saying, 'Aye, it's an unnatural life all right. I'd be
  glad if you'd take him -off with you then-" to Ria who, sensing something
  differcjit, pleasurable, exciting, bounded after Lessing.
  MacLean looked out of the scuttle at the sunlit hills beyond the little
  port. He had relatives here. He had only to go ashore and telephone. His
  father, or his eldest brother, would take Ria for him, and in time
  dispatch him further north and back to Sinclair. It would be as simple
  as that. He could still go ...
  He picked up his cap and called after Lessing: 'Hold on a minute-'
  The boy's head reappeared around the curtain, and as MacLean opened his
  mouth to speak Ria's face followed, his head cocked to one side
  enquiringly.
  'I thought-' began MacLean, then, suddenly decisive, he went on; 'that
  this would h(-Ip-' and he made a quick sketch on a notepad. 'You'll get
  out of the town quickly that way, then on up a sheep track until you come
  to a lochan-'
  He watched the liberty hoat speed off to the shore, then returned to his
  place in the sun, at peace with the world despite his throbbing hand.
  Ria came back, bis coat warm and fragrant still with the green growing
  bounty of earth that had been his for three ecstatic hours, his eyes
  clear and shining, his whole bearing jaunty and confident -a very
  different dog, as the man who greeted him could not fail to observe. Nor
  could the dog

                 113
 have failed to sense the difference in the reception from the man.
  The Ark left Oban next morning, steaming down the Firth of Lorn, and when
  she entered the open Atlantic to turn south, MacLean came up on deck to see
  the last of the islands of his homeland waters and looked north. On the
  horizon, off the long black mass of Mull, he could just make out the lonely
  dot that was the holy island of Iona. He watched until it disappeared at
  last, and with its going some of the lightness of heart that his Margaret
  had brought returned to him, as though her laughter came echoing down the
  years. Unconsciously he smiled.
  Beside turn, as though bidden, Ria rose with extended forepaws in the
  action he had learned brought attention to himself, but which, almost as if
  aware of the inevitable condemnation it would receive, he had never
  attempted with MacLean.
  He had judged his moment precisely. He looked up, his eyes round and merry,
  and for once MacLean looked directly down at him
  He sudderily knew that she of all people would have been the one for this
  dog that stood beside him now, that from her extravagance of love and
  gaiety she would have encouraged and abetted all antic nonsense and found
  a counterpart in lightheartedness. She had always wanted a dog, but she had
  understood, and given way to him. It had been his one denial to her.
  'Behave yourself-' he said now with automatic severity, but the smi~le
  still lingered. Ria got down at once, but he wagged his iail with unabashed
  enthusiasm and continued to look as though he were laughing with open mouth
  and lolling tongue.
  They turned and made their way along the deck to the stern, Ria scampering
  ahead unchecked. Barkis saw thern from the bridge, hurled himself down, and
  joined them. He threw himself at Ria in his customary onslaught of pleased

                 114
 greeting, but Ria sidestepped him neatly at the last moment and he drew up
 still standing, looking very puzzled. He launched himself again, and again;
 he whirled suddenly one way and then the other, but always, like a toreador
 playing a bull, Ria evaded him in the nick of time. It built up into an
 exuberant garric: weight and speedy cunning versus equal cunning but
 lighmeight nimbleness.
  MacLean watched, so absorbed by Ria's tactics that he was unaware of the
  Captain's approach until Ria fractionally misjudged his timing and nearly
  overbalanced to a side eddy variation of the latest whirlwind Barkis
  approach. 'Barkis's round, I think,' sa.d a complacent voice behind him.
  But even as the Captain spoke, Ria recovered his balance, managing an
  amazing pirouette of an about-turn as he did so, then turned and chased
  Barkis who fled in mock terror before him.
  'Sir!' acknowledged MacLean, straightening respectfully, but his voice was
  equally complacent.
  Thereafter, this game was played whenever conditions of calm or inactivity
  allowed, with endless variations and an apparent rule between the
  contestants that neither should ever win. Not only did it give the dogs the
  exercise they so badly needed, but it was a spectator sport that fascinated
  Hyacinthe. She would appear like magic on some vantage point above, her
  green eyes huge and intense, her head following the play like an umpire at
  Wimbledon. Having been caught up herself once by mistake in the game she
  saw to it that such hideous indignity could never happen again and always
  chose her perch well out of dog reach.
  Occasionally nowadays, bored with Louis' persistence, she had taken to
  seeking out Ria for diversion. Hyacinthe's favourite pastime was staring:
  as close as possible, she would fix her unwinking green orbs on her subject
  and stare and stare. No one could outstare her, and when at last the oppos-
  ing eyes blinked she would stretch and purr and wind herself around her
  victim in triumphant pleasure.
 But in Ria, who could spend hours gazing into some limit-
                 115
 less space, she met her unswerving match. She would approach with measured
 tread as he lay with his head on his paws, settle herself comfortably with
 her front paws tucked in towards one another under her chest, then snap her
 eyes wide open at almost nose to nose range on Ria's. 'Like a myopic tea
 cosy,' as the doctor said one day, sketching the contestants. He added a
 pair of glasses above Hyacinthe's whiskers, her head sticking out of a furry
 cosy in place of a tea pot spout, and curved her luxurious ringed tail into
 the shape of a handle. Finally Ria was caricatured before her into nothing
 but a pair of huge eyes surmounted by ears, one up and one down.
  'What will you do with him eventuallyY he asked idly, adding another
  whisker to Hyacinthe.
  'Return him to the man who brought him aboard, sir.' said MacLean.
  'Fortunately I was able to find his name and unit from the records.'
  'Most fortunate indeed,' agreed the doctor blandly. He looked up. 'It won't
  be easy, will it -I mean to part with him after all these months?'
 There was a long pause. 'Aye,' said MacLean at last.
 'What do you mean "aye"Y
  There was an even longer pause. 'I mean "no",' said MacLean. 'No, sir, it
  will not be easy now.' The admittance was forced ~out of him; out at last,
  laid starkly bare before his own mind.
  ' "Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware/Of giving your heart to a dog to
  tear",' said the doctor lightly, looking up in mischievous expectation of
  the customary acid reaction to such sentiment. 'Kipling - the "Power of the
  Dog",' he emphasized.
  But for once he was disappointed: MacLean merely looked thoughtful as he
  rubbed the already gleaming top of the steriliser. 'Indeed, sir,' he said,
  politely.
  He found the sketch on Christmas day, a freezing joyless day in
  mid-Atlantic, with Tertian plunging and rearing in

                  n6
 mountainous seas that crashed over her decks and cascaded down every inch so
 that ihere was no dry place on board and Christmas clicer perforce was
 corned beef and hard tack, for the galley fires had been extinguished.
   To S. B. A. MacLean -
   LATITUDE       Wind NNE - Force io
   LONGITUDE
  MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS AT SEA 1940 was scrawled unevenly underneath in an
  obviously Force io hand.
  He put the sketch away where other men kept photographs of families and
  sweethearts, in his paybook. After much thought and doubi as to whether he
  had lost his senses with such foolishness, he folded and packaged his
  latest pair of socks. The English were great on Christmas, he excused him-
  self, as he left the package on the desk, and went off to put on all the
  heavy weather gear he could muster, for it was time to make the routine
  check of his first aid caches throughout the ship.
  The life lines on deck had been rigged almost from the time they left port,
  stout ropes with running hand grips or tails, stretching along the length
  of the deck. He emerged from the doorway hardly able to stand against the
  force of the wind, grabbed one of the tails and started off along the
  pitching treacherous deck. But Ria must have slipped out at his heels, for
  as he turned his face away from the wind he suddenly saw him, paws
  resisting uselessly against the icy tilt, sliding towards the rails. At the
  same moment MacLean was aware of a monstrous wave towering over the port
  bow towards its climay. Never knowing afterwards how he had done it, he
  flung himself clown, still hanging on to the rope tail, and managed to grab
  Ria's collar, his arm feeling as though it would be pulled out of its
  socket when the monster crashed and the foaming torrents swept along the
  deck. Somehow he hung on, and somehow he got Ria back inside, and there in
  his relief he gave way to a very natural human reaction.

                  T17
 ledged a rightfulness of punishment, accepting the smack with a suitably
 contrite rolling of his eyes, and even a placatory attempt with the end
 of his tail. With his soaked coat revealing every line of his slight
 frame, he suddenly looked very vulnerable. MacLean was totally won over.
 'You devil of a dog, you,' he translated, but softly, and he carried Ria
 down to dry him off as much as possible with an already soaked towel from
 his dripping locker in a drearily sloshing mess. From the crackling
 wireless came the strains of 'God rest ye merry gentlemen'.
 'Stupid animal followed me out,' he explained to Reid.
  'It's only a bloody fool of a human who'd go up on deck unless he had
  to,' said Reid mildly. 'Can't your turret trip wait?'
  'You don't know what that lot on the guns will get up to,' said MacLean
  darkly. 'Nicking my dressings for nose wipes, pinching rn~ plaster for
  their corns - it's every day it's got to be or there wouldn't be a thing
  left.'
  'Set forth, then, good Saint MacLean,' said Reid. 'I'll see that your
  page doesn't foflow in your footsteps this time.' He bundled ip the
  shivering dog in a jersey and stowed him -for once with no remonstration
  - in at his back. Usually, Ria curled tip there in peaceful contentment,
  but this time Reid noticed that he remained strangely tense and reluctant
  to stay, even whining softly; there was no relaxation until MacLean
  returned.
  But the subtle change in relationship went unnoticed by anyone else,
  including MacLean himself, for the transition from him imposing his will
  to Ria. anticipating his wishes had evolved so naturally he was unaware
  of it. They remained to the rest of the ship's company the same
  undemonstrative pair together, while Ria by himself was the same amusing
  selfreliant diversion as always. There were few who could resist his
  unique blend of showmanship and humour and his remark-
  
                 118
 able ability for iiierpreting speech or mastering another trick had gained
 him a reputation for almost super-canine intelligence.
  He had long drawn a self-imposed line between the upper and lower decks:
  the lower decks were his territory, the upper decks app.rently Barkis's,
  and should he happen to find himself there - perhaps at the invitation
  of the doctor -he became very circumspect, never entering a cabin unless
  he were invited. Sometimes, passing by, his curiosity would get the
  better of him and he would stick only his head around an open door. As
  he was always soft-footed as a cat, this sudden appearance of a
  disembodied head with enormous interested eyes could be quite startling.
  His interests had become legion, and had ranged beyond mere seabird,
  convoy or iceberg-watching to the entire ship's company, for not only was
  he immensely inquisitive, but he liked to keep an eye on everything
  aboard. MacLean's sense of the proprieties would never have recovered had
  he known the full extent of canine bounds transgressed. A routine that
  afforded greai interest was the Captain's rounds, when a small
  unobtrusive shadow would hover at a discreet distance in the wake of the
  inspectirig party-and thereby penetrate normally inaccessible quarters.
  Once a Very August Personage indeed was piped aboard Tertian in port, and
  later met both Louis and Ria. Louisdressed to the nines for the occasion
  in a sailor suit-was unimpressed by the sudden wealth of gold braid,
  having eyes only as always for the Captain's golden beard, but Ria's
  professional assessment could not be 'faulted.- he sat up and saluted
  smartly on request and had his head patted by the August hand in reward.
  MacLean, hearing about this episode later, found it hard to look
  convincingly disapproving.
  He had not realised how much of his heart had been given to be torn until
  Te,tian returned to Devonport in early March, 1941. He was looking
  forward with unusual pleasure to a forty-eight hour leLve, and had made
  plans to spend it walking

                  119
 on Dartmoor with Ria -the first time they would ever have gone off
 together. When the mail was distributed that first morning in port there
 was one letter for him, and the contents came as the most profound and
 hurtful shock.
  Donald Sinclair was out of hospital and returned to his Highland glen,
  there to await a final medical board before being discharged from the
  Army. He would no longer be any good on the hills, he said, but
  eventually he would be running a farm instead and now at last he could
  relieve Ria's benefactor of his obligation - '. . . so thoughtlessly
  imposed upon you. Now at last we can give the dog a settled home, Any
  port that you are in - if you could dispatch him from there to Glasgow,
  someone will pick him up there and bring him on to us. . ' He enclosed
  a postal order to cover any cxpenses involved, the ticket, and the
  purchase of the obligatory muzzle for 'an unaccompanied dog'.
  Suddenly the world seemed very bleak, and MacLean's pleasure turned to
  ashes. Even fate seemed to be working against him, for within ten minutes
  of confiding this news to Reid, arrang--ments slipped easily and
  inexorably into place to preclude any valid deferment: Reid had returned
  from telephoning a sister who lived in Plymouth to say that she was
  travelling up to Yorkshire in a few days' time. The same train would go
  ori up to Glasgow.
  'Ria could go ashore with me this afternoon and I'll leave him with her,'
  he said hesitantly. 'But are you sure you have to do this? Af ter all
  this time - he's part of our Ark now . . .'
  'It has to be done,' said MacLean with such a wooden finality in his
  expression that Reid was silent.
  It all happ,med so quickly that there was no time to brood, no time for
  the heaviness of his heart to be communicated, for the morning was fuHy
  occupied with routine duties. At noon he changed and went ashore with a
  brushed, trimmed and bright-eyed Ria who was only innocently excited at
  the prospect of a walk on dry land.
 Once clear of the dockyard gates, MacLean handed him

                 120
 over, then, feeling like a Judas, told him to go with Reid. 'Away you go
 for a run-' he said, forcing a reassurance. Ria was very attached to Reid
 and had often gone ashore with him, but now he must have sensed suddenly
 something disastrous. As MacLein turned away down the street he whined and
 struggled to follow, straining at the end of the short lead.
  Reid picked hiin up to soothe him, but as MacLean turned the corner he
  heard a sound that he had never heard before -Ria barking, and barking
  in a high-pitched almost hysterical despair that was to haunt him for
  days afterwards.
  He shut out tile sound in the refuge of the nearest pub, the first of
  many that saw him that day. He drank himself into a state of ~.olitary
  savage gloom such as he had not attained for a very long time-and barely
  made it back on board.
  They were anchored out in the Sound. Soon after darkness fell, the alaims
  sounded and the systematic destruction of the ancient gentle town of
  Plymouth began. Tertian was a Devonport ship and many of the men had
  families on shore, while almost all had friends. Their own guns joining
  in the shore barrage, all night long they watched helplessly, sickeningly
  jarred by every explosion, scared by every freshly leaping fire.
  Next morning ihose who had homes or relatives there, were given a few
  hours' compassionate shore leave. For some it was a thankful reunion, for
  others a nightmare search through the rubble-strewn streets and
  smouldering ruins, hopefully to neighbours' houses and the emergency
  centres set up for the bombed out, fearfully to hospitals or to the
  hastily set-up morgues.
  Reid went ashore, and found his sister standing aimlessly in front of
  what had been her house, one of a terrace leading off the Hoe. One side
  was completely exposed, a gap v,,here the adjoining house had been. All
  the windows were out, the roof was gonc, and the kitchen extension at the
  back Jay in an impenetrabIc heap of lathes and rubble. That was where

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 Ria had been, she informed him tearfully; fortunately she herself had been
 out for supper with the neighbour with whom she was now sheltering.
  They could not even attempt to salvage anything from the rest of the
  house for there was an unexploded land-mine at the back of the row. There
  was nothing further Reid could do. He spent his remaining time boarding
  up the neighbour's shattered windows and helping where he could, then he
  returned to break the news to MacLean, and the only consolation he had
  to offer was that Ria's death must have been instantaneous.
  MacLean had been standing by the rail. Without turning his head, he
  thanked Reid in a flat expressionless voice and continued to look across
  at the smouldering city under its pall of black smoke. He never spoke of
  Ria again.
  In all too brief a time that day, those ashore were recalled urgently and
  all leave cancelled. Word had come through that the cruiser Admiral
  Hipper was making a sortie out of Brest, and Tertian was to be part of
  the force sent to intercept. The drawn, grey-faced searchers returned,
  many of them still not knowing what had befallen their families, some
  knowing only too well, and they slipped away in company with two other
  destroyers.
  For days they played cat and mouse, but in the end the prey eluded them,
  and Tertian proceeded on to Gibraltar to refuel.
  She passed through the gates of the Mediterranean to become a part of the
  Fleet there, part of the immortal annals of the Tobruk run, Mersah
  Matruh, Crete, and the Malta convoys - and she was never to return.

 122
 Part Three
                  9

 The sirens souncled the red alert in Plymouth that night about 9 o'clock.
 For months, this had meant nothing more sinister than the approach of an
 enemy reconnaissance plane, or a lone afternoon raider; always, soon
 afterwards, the All Clear would follow. But this night, almost before the
 first warning notes had ebbed away, the skies were filled with the steady
 purposeful throbbing even as the anti-aircraft barrage and searchlights came
 into action, and a minute later the total bombardment of Plymouth and
 Devonport began. It was the first night of a terrible son et luml&re
 display, lit by the leaping flames, the searchlights and slowly dropping
 flares, while the shuddering bass of the guns thundered their eartlabound
 accompaniment to the screaming crescendos from the skies.
  Ria had become used to the noises of war at sea, for even under the
  insulation of a mattress in a bunk sanctuary, nothing could muffle the
  carrying vibration of steel plates, but never had he faced the assault of
  violence and explosion alone, or within confining walls in the now
  unfamiliar surroundings of solid unmovable land.
  He had been comforted by Reid's continuing familiar presence when he had
  been brought to this house, waiting stoically enough by the window as
  though expecting MacLean to appear and take him back to the Ark. Then Reid
  had gone, and now there was only his sister, who was kind and well-meaning,
  but a stranger. Then she had gone out for the evening, leaving him in the
  kitchen, an extension opening onto a small courtyard at the back of the
  house, one of a

                 125
 terrace leading off the Hoe. When the anti-aircraft batteries started up,
 there was no familiar sanctuary to which he could make his routine way;
 there was only himself in this small rock-still room.
  When the first stick of bombs screamed down, each earthshaking crump
  landing inexorably nearer, almost as though they searched him out, Ria
  started to his feet, and cowered against the back door; then as the last
  bomb began its shrieking pursuit, he bolted under the table. The bomb
  landed squarely between the next two adjoining houses of the terrace,
  slicing a path between them as cleanly as a knife through bread. The
  kitchen rocked and shuddered to the blast, then settled, sagging.
  The deep quivering silence that followed was intruded upon,
  unobtrusively, almost apologetically, by a thick acrid smell, then came
  an awakening crash as the bricks and masonry of the next door chimney
  cascaded on to the roof. The timbers groaned under their burden, and with
  soft, shifting sighs the lathes released imprisoned plaster, pulverised
  now to a thick white dust that settled shroud-like on the little kitchen.
  Slowly, smoothly, the roof blended with the crumbling wall, widening the
  red gap of sky like a blind pulled back; the wall curved and trembled,
  then disintegrated in a shower of bricks. The floor heaved up in sympathy
  so that a pot slid off the stove, the rivulets of its contents almost
  instantly dammed by the white dust, and in slow motion the blue and white
  plates one by one slid off the dresser.
  Now human sounds were heard, heavy running boots crunching through glass
  in the street beyond the courtyard, shouts, sharp orders, whistles, and
  a voice that said, 'Oh, Christ, oh, Christ, oh, Christ. . .' with as much
  humanity as a clock ticking. Beyond these noises rose the growing orches-
  tration of the night; the multiple endless drone of aircraft, the thunder
  of the dockyard guns, the lighter barking of the anti-aircraft batteries
  on the Hoe, the high whistling crescendo then the great bass drum
  thumping of bombs.

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 Every now and then, as though some conductor had stifled every instrument
 with his baton, suddenly, abruptly, there fell a silence that seemed to
 engulf the town, then insidiously the little wounded noises would start up
 again, the soft sighings of flame tendrils rising to fierce hungry
 crackling, whispered moans that became sharp cries then shrieks, slithering
 slates and bricks that first plopped one by one then became a roaring
 avalanche of roofs and walls, the far-away bells and sirens of ambulances
 and fire engines drawing nearer and nearer, louder and louder.
  Now the kitchen was light as day, the roof open wide to the flares swaying
  down from the skies, and the red glow from the burning town. The dresser
  topped exhaustedly across the reeling table For a few seconds, a complete
  hush fell again over the small ruined world that had been the kitchen, then
  mounting crackles of flames rose from somewhere just beyond the jagged
  edges of the roof. And as though summoned from some inferno by them, the
  white ghostlike figure of a dog appeared from under the pile of wreckage by
  the table and drifted across the rubble on the floor; drifted across the
  door sagging on one hinge, and out into the courtyard, the eerie white of
  its dust-laden coat now changing from pink to red to orange from the
  spectroscope of orange flares against the red sky and yellow flames. The
  little ghost cowered trembling, until the last hinge on the door gave way
  and it crashed down, bringing with it a bucket that clanged across the
  courtyard. With that, he bolted into the street, his paws scarcely touching
  the ground, clearing the fence with a foot to spare.
  Now he smelled fear, death, and terrible human excitement, an evil blend
  that sent him, eyes glazed and wild, skittering and slithering across the
  rubble and glass-strewn streets, shying away from the running boots of
  wardens and firemen, leaping over obstructions, until he reached the open
  spaces of the Hoe. And here he ran madly again, up the concrete paths,
  across the grass, from crater to crater, then down to

                 127
 the sea, his claws scrabbling wildly on the slimy steps as he turned away
 from it again. Each flare, each bomb, each salvo from the guns galvanised
 the desperate aimless running in the red glare of this world gone mad.
  He turned from the Hoe at last and ran up the centre of the stricken
  burning town. A man, reeling drunk-, sang in a wavering, hiccoughing tenor
  within the angled entrance to a draper's shop. He whistled then cal-led but
  the dog turned and fled on ap the street, only to reappear an instant
  later, running strai,;ht at the man. He swerved at the last moment and
  jumped into the glassless display-window of the shop, twisting through the
  grotesquely fallen shapes of the fashion dummies, knocking one over so that
  it fell with its head stuck out over the jagged glass, smiling vacuously
  down at the pavement. The man lurched out of his doorway, picked it up and
  waltzed unstcadily off down the street until a warden darted out of the
  shelter of a church porch and grabbed him.
  In the very back of the shop, in what must have been the manager's office,
  crouched a cat with a mewhng kitten in its mouth. It backed up against the
  desk as the dog ran in, and a lightning paw flashed out to rend an ear so
  that he turned and fled with high hysterical yipping. He ran throughout the
  night until, hours later, he veered crazily between the tombstones of a
  churchyard, and there finaBy collapsed under the solid sheltering wing of
  a marble angel toppled off a tombstone.
  And while he lay there, the All Clear sounded in the dawn of a new day, and
  for a few minutes, silence lay like a pall across the shattered town.
  Nearby in a crater, the ants from a colony sliced in half scurried
  frenziedly, some of them carrying eggs, their dead already neatly piled
  some distance from the new entrances. Then all around, one by one, the
  dazed human inhabitants of Plymouth emerged from their burrows to survey
  the world that had been left to them.
  The sun came up that lovely stiU spring morning, generous with its warmth
  and promise in the desolation. Its rays sought low in its rising under the
  marble wing and rested on

                 128
 the small spent creature there, so that he crawled out and licked his
 bleeding paws. Although his eyes still darted nervously from side to side,
 he was normal now with the normality of animal and newborn day; the horror
 of the night was over. There was no homing urge for the strange house near
 the Hoe; there was no one to search for, no links with anyone in the
 unfamiliar town; he was derelict, nameless, lost.
  He stayed around the churchyard for a while, watching the weary grey
  people who emerged blinking from the crypt, but the terrifying A-,til of
  fire engines drove him on. He limped down a narrow street, picking his
  way between fragments of glass and twisted metal. The street was silent
  and deserted, the rows of small houses gaping at their opposite numbers,
  the very heart of many of them exposed.
  There was no human reminder of the night, living or dead. The only body
  that had not been tidied away was that of an old grey-muz/led spaniel who
  lay as though asleep in the gutter. High up in a budding lime tree, a
  monstrous pair of white bloomers caught on a branch filled and danced to
  the light wind. Below, a robin poured out over the crater in the little
  front garden its proprietary song, last year's nest, blown from the deep
  sanctuary of the hedge, now bowling gaily along the i1m. The dog sat on
  the sunny step before the roofless shell of a house and scratched
  himself, watching with mild interest a large white rabbit hopping around
  the next door garden The rabbit investigated the shattered glass of a
  cloche, then settled down to feed, munching lettuce stolidly, its ruby
  eyes fixed with as little interest on the dog. A chirping cheerful family
  of sparrows enjoyed a dust bath nearby.
  Across the street a black Labrador scrambled over a mountain of rubble,
  sniffing and searching. Suddenly its ears pricked, and the rudderlike
  tail began to swing. Possessed now by urgency, it dug with frantic
  forepaws, whining excitedly as the dust and rubble flew out behind.

 E                 129
  An A.R.P. Warden appeared at the far end of the street, carrying a
  cdpboard with the names and numbers of the inhabitants. Where possible
  he entered the evacuated houses, circling the outted ones, and calling
  out routinely, 'Hellooo, helloooo ... k anyone there?' The little dog
  watched his progress with pricked ears. The echoing 'Hellooo, hellooo.
  . .' rang out at htst next door to where the Labrador dug, and it
  answered him with a continuous high barking. The man climbed over the
  wreckage, watched in silence for a moment, bade the dog stop - a useless
  command - then holding it back by the collar, he knelt down and shouted,
  bending his ear close to the pile.
  The little (log picked his way over the rubble too, and at once his
  seeking nose caught the same message as the Labrador; he start,-,d
  digging beside the large dog, who snarled briefly at him before setting
  to again. The man seized a loose timber and pried aside some obstruction.
  He bent down again, and shouted, listened, then as feverishly as the
  dogs, he started digging too. '11old on,' he shouted, 'help's coming
  -just hold on . . .' And faintly now came back the assurance of life that
  the (fogs had recognised, a whisper of sound below the imprisoning pile.
  Sitting back on his heels, sweat running down his blackened face, the
  warden pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew, until there was an
  answer of steel-shod boots running, and presently the wailing siren of
  a heavy rescue unit. This was too much for the little dog, sirens spelled
  disaster and confusion. Tucking his tail between his legs, he fled tip
  the street before the banshee noise.
  His ears pilcking warily, conscious of much unseen, unheard, he slowed
  down soon to a trot, for his pads were raw with cuts. He passed a narrow
  house, its grubby curtains still in place on either side of the blown-in
  windows, the shabby door open. In and out of the door, through and out
  of the windows, went a quantity of cats, all of indeterminate markings,
  flowing backwards and forwards so continuously that they could have been
  four or forty. The dog was about to give

                 130
 the place a wide berth, for the pungent smell drifting out was offensive,
 when two beligcrent toms erupted out of a window, snarling and spitting,
 locked in combat almost on top of him, and he took to his heels again.
 Halfway up the street, he was joined by a gambolling Alsatian puppy who
 leaped in clumsy playfulness at his ears.
  The pup stayed with him most of the morning, occasionally plumping down to
  a sprawling stop, the loose skin on its forehead wrinkled in some apparent
  perplexity, then trotting after again. Onc(: they came upon a very small
  girl sitting on the pavement, one unbuttoned shoe on one foot, and a sock
  on the other, onc arm through a sleeve, the other through the neck of her
  dress, a tearstained grubby child who had plainly attempted to dress
  herself. She was eating a thick piece of bread and dusty jam, and held out
  a hand to the puppy. It leaned against her, licking the sticky face as she
  hugged it, then filched the crust the moment she turned her head. She
  looked at her empty fingers, then she and the pup licked them carefully.
  From somewhere nearby, traced by the flickering ears of the dog to the
  house immediately behind, a woman wept, continuously, hopelessly; and
  accompanying the lament, the sweet rolling arpeggios of a canary soared
  from the room beyond the open window. 'Mam, Mam-' called the child, but the
  weeping continued unbroken, and now the child's face crumpled in hungry
  forsaken grief. The puppy licked the salt tears from lier cheek, wagging
  its tail cheerfully while she tried to brush it away. At last she
  purnmelled on its head with all her strength, hammering at its round
  astonished eyes until it drew back abashed.
  A van drove tip to the entrance of the street, which was barricaded at both
  ends with signs LIVE BOMBs. An army officer and two men got out, and a
  policeman appeared. He pointed down the street, on the opposite side to
  where the dogs and child sat, and the soldiers set off carrying boxes of
  equipment. One of them saw the trio and beckoned back to the

                 IP
 policeman who walked quickly down the street to the child and picked her up,
 but even as he did so his head turned to the sound of the steady weeping
 beyond. He called to the halted group of soldiers; then, still carrying the
 child, ran inside the house. PreSCntly the woman's stifled voice answered
 the urgent deep tones of the man, and a few minutes later she herself
 emerged, carrying a fur coat and a shopping bag stuffed with clothes with
 one hand, her handbag and a silver trophy and tcapot with the other. The
 policeman carried the child, a large photograph in a silver frame, a shining
 golden teddy bear with a red ribbon around its neck, and a wireless tucked
 under one arm, its cord trailing. Urging the stumbling woman on, he hurried
 back up the street, the puppy ambling after. The litcle dog sat on, his
 round bright eyes following them until they disappeared around the corner.
  The canary sang on, forgotten; but soon afterwards the song petered out,
  and the street was very quiet and still, the only movement coining from the
  group of men half-hidden from sight in the garden on the other side of the
  street.
  The dog picked up a few crumbs from the pavement, then trotted over to
  investigate. Lying exposed, deep in the soft earth which had been dug away
  now, was the long, finned shape of an unexploded bomb. The officer lay
  prone over the rim of the crater, probing delicately as he dictated through
  a field telephone to the two soldiers who now crouched behind a sandbagged
  shelter some hundred yards up the street. The dog, soundless, approached
  the officer from behind and examined the canine possibilities of the
  crater.
  '. . . over,' said the officer quietly into the mouthpiece strapped to his
  chest. He drew his brows together as the voice through the head-phones
  quacked some message, 'Repeat, please,' he said, and the voice came though
  clearly now. 'There is a dog, repeat dog, at your right shoulder.'
  He turned his head and saw the grey woolly head on a level with hi~ own,
  the eyes fixed intently on some point within the crater, hind-quarters
  already flexed to investigate.

                 132
 Very softly the man whistled under his breath, and the dog's eyes turned to
 meet his at six-inch radius. The dog licked the man's cheek, and in the same
 instant an arm came round his shoulder and clutched him in a steel grip.
 Taken by surprise, he reacted instinctively, twisted, and sank his teeth in
 the hand. But there was no relaxation in the grip, and the man backed away
 from the crater for some yards before rising to his fect. Carrying the
 squirming dog, he walked leisurely towards the soldier. The soldier's face
 was white.
  'Shut him in ihe van, sergeant,' said the officer, 'and we'll start again.'
  'I'd like to break its bleeding little neck,' said the sergeant. 'Another
  secondand. . .'
  The dog now lay limp and relaxed, looking from one to the other. The
  officer smiled down at him. The dog wagged his tail agreeably, but was
  handed over to the sergeant, who clamped a hand hard around his jaw,
  pressing his ribcage so hard that he twisted in silent pain. The officer
  scratched behind one ear. 'Gently with him,' he said. 'He doesn't know what
  it's all about.' He lit a pipe and leaned against the sandbags, an elderly
  untidy man, with a vague sweet face, his spectacles mended on one side with
  adhesive tape, his crumpled uniform terminating in a pair of plaid bedroom
  slippers. The soldier, viciously clamping the jaw under his hand, walked
  back to the van, opened the door, and threw his burden into the back; then,
  because he was still a very shaken man, he picked up a wrench and threw it
  after for good measure.
  The dog crouched in the back as the door banged shut. Gradually his
  confidence returned and he jumped over into the driving seat. He lay across
  the seat with head on paws to wait, his eyes and ears alert. Nearly two
  hours later, he heard the sound of returning rubber-soled footsteps, and
  jumped into the back again, pressing himself against the side of the truck,
  his nose at the bottom of the crack where the door would open. He gathered
  himself as the handle turned,

                 133
 and was cleat of the truck a second later, running madly up the street to
 freedom.
  He wandered on, limping and thirsty, in the hazy dust-laden sunshine. When
  the streets were blocked by fire engines and ambulances, fie picked a
  passage between clumping boots that sometimes kiLked him out of their
  urgent way, past the great heaving coils from water hydrants, through
  clouds of smoke, up empty streets where walIs trembled above him, through
  choking acrid smells, and smells of death and vileness.
  There was only one place he knew, and he returned to it, to the sheltering
  marble wing above the tombstone. And here a crazed lonely woman, wandering
  through the churchyard, saw him and comforted herself for a while with his
  reality, sitting on the grass, stroking the cold marble feathers above, and
  murmuring in an incomprehensible torrent to the small silent audience that
  paid her its grave undivided attention. A motley pack of dogs swept past in
  slavering courtship of a young, bewildered yet excited greyhound; trailing
  a leather strap from her wide collar she leaped on to a flat tombstone to
  snarl ritually at the most persistent of her followers, a mangy collie cur.
  The woman screamed at them in a flood of obscenities and the little dog
  fled from her to join the pack. Hours later, his ardour cooled after being
  set upon two or three times, he returned to his now deserted guardian angel
  to lick his wounds, a lip bitten through and a tattered ear.
  He was there still when the nightmare started up again soon after dark, and
  when the first screaming hurtled down at him from the pulsing darkness he
  pressed back into his refuge, shuddering convulsively, until at last the
  noise and terror drove him to the madness of the night. This time he did
  not always run alone; there were other dogs that ran in terror-stricken
  circles too, their known world gone, instinctively packing together. Once
  a runaway horse came thundering up a narrow cobbled street, an old grey
  carthorse, galloping heavily, its flying mane and tail gallant in the
  unearthly

                 134
 orange light, on,.- opaque white eye fixed steadily ahead, the other
 rolling wildly. The little dog broke away from the pack as though drawn
 irresistibly, to run ahead, as he had once run before anoiher old grey
 horse who had drawn a caravan, and who had lain kicking between the shafts
 until a stranger soldier had silenced the screaming with a merciful
 bullet. There had been a red glare, a cracklig of flames, unmovM'a' bodies
 that sunlit afternoon in France too; perhaps it was this that drove the
 little dog to his madness in the nights of bombing.
  He ran with unseeing eyes before the feathered hooves striking sparks
  from the cobbles, until at last they thundered up a street blocked with
  fire engines, and there the horse wheeled, its heavy quarters skidding
  in the soaked debris, and it was brought down to its knees. A fireman
  seized the reins and encouraged it back to its feet, and it stood
  trembling, head flung back wildly, the nostrils dilated red to the red
  night sky. But what to do with an old spent horse with broken knees when
  there was a burning human agony and every pair of hands needed - the man
  lead the animal beyond the fire engines and writhing hoses until he came
  to a house with a garage attached. The dog trotted along behind. The
  garage was empty; the rrian tethered the horse to a workbench and ran
  out. The dog, stretched his forepaws up to the chest of the horse, almost
  as though from custom; at the first touch of the light paws the, horse
  shied clumsily, then stood, shuddering. The dog wagged his tail, and at
  last the horse lowered its head, whickering softly. The dog jumped on to
  the bench and curled up. Gradually the horse quietened, only backing
  clumsily and jerking its head back to the limits of the frayed tether
  when the bombs -ounded almost directly overhead. They spent the rest of
  the night there.
  The scrap merchant traced the runaway early next morning, and led it off
  doNn the smouldering street, followed for a while by the dog. The little
  procession threaded its way through the glass -strewn rnaze of an
  exhausted town that

                 135
 lay in a mornentary respite under the calm mockery of an early morning sun
 that spun rainbows out of the fire hose jets and illumined the black
 billowing smoke with soft rosy pink. Ambulances, fire engines, rescue units
 and mobile canteens edged past them; men shouted angrily at them to get out
 of the way. They plodded on, the dog's head low as the horse's, close to its
 dragging hooves, until they reached the scrapyard at last, and there the man
 lead the horse into its stable. But when the dog would have followed, he
 drove him off and closed the half-door. The dog drank from a trough, then
 limped out into the road again where he stood indecisively for a minute or
 two before making his way back.
  It seemed that Man was entirely preoccupied with his immediate survival and
  salva-e and as yet his compassion could encompass only the humans of his
  shattered world. Often the mere animal offence of being concerned only with
  their own business of survival brought about the equally primitive reaction
  of' the hand reaching for the nearest missile, or the toe of a boot finding
  its mark. That a hungry scavenging dog would feed on the overturned
  contents of a meat safe while ten yards away lay the body of the one who
  planned to cook those contents offended by its very reasonableness; that
  rats should emerge sleek and prosperous from the same cellars where man now
  sought refuge, or a spider painstakingly spin a web across his newly
  blown-in windows -all such behaviour had somehow become a terrible
  violation. The uncaring abstractton of tied dogs, the fluttering of mount-
  ing sparrows - these too were such unendurable desecrations that even the
  exultant nocturnal scream of a copulating cat could seem more noisome than
  a descending bomb.
  The little dog, after some bitter experiences, was well aware of all this;
  although he must have hungered for human company in his lonely terror he
  learned to keep his distance from it. He stayed roughly around the same
  area during those days, foraging in dustbins or the wreckage of shops and

                 136
 houses. He was Mainly attracted by the heavy rescue crews working round
 the clock to free survivors trapped under the debris of collapsed houses,
 for the reward of what had lain beneath the wreckage that first morning
 when he had dug with the black Labrador had apparently given much pleasure
 to man. Perhaps in the expectation of further approbation he would often
 try to join in other digging operations; but always he was driven away by
 angry voices, sometimes more forcibly and pairfully by thrown bricks from
 those who interpreted his diligence as a morbid desecration; sometimes he
 tried to removt_- mountains of rubble by himself, knowing certainly that
 beneath it lay the living reward that man sought elsewhere, but pointing
 out its presence in vain.
  In the late of afternoon of the third day, cowed and slinking now with
  furtive wary eyes, he wandered further afield to a residential area on
  the outskirts of the town, and there, rifling through the already
  well-rifled contents of a dustbin blown into the orchard adjoining a
  large garden, he paused, one paw lifted, sniffing the air, his ears
  upright. He limped through the garderi, following some scent or sound,
  until he came to a buildin- at the bottom of the garden, a coach-house
          b
 converted into a garage. 'rhe windows were blown in and most of the roof
 clown, but the walls still stood sturdily. To the right of the closed
 double doors was the original stable door, half open, and the little dog,
 after hesitating for a moment, edged in warily.
  The interior wa~ a tangled mass of beams, lathes and slates, and he
  approached it with much caution, low to the ground, his nose still
  working busily. Where a small inverted V of access to the pile had been
  formed by two beams he paused, his tail moving fast, ears cocked and head
  to one side, whining excitedly. Now be inserted his head into the V, his
  slight body followed, and like a wraith he infiltrated the narrow tunnel.
  It widened out after a few yards to a small clearing, the roof formed bv
  a jumble of precariously balanced timbers. An arm protruded from below,
  lying along a length of board,

                 137
 and as the Liog crawled towards it the fingers opened and closed as though
 beckoning.
  Delighted xith his find, he licked the handy then wagged his tail when
  a weak muffled voice from below responded to his action. Questing around
  for access he tried to tunnel down through a mass of plaster board to
  which remnants of paper and yellowed magazine pictures of horses still
  adhered. As he dug, the vibrAtion loo~cned part of the delicate spillikin
  construction of the pile, and from somewhere above there was a groaning
  shift of weipht followed by a heavy resettlement of timbers, then a small
  avalanche of plaster. The immediate V remained above, but the little
  entrance tunnel was now gone. The dog yelped as a heavy board pinned one
  paw; he pulled desperately, ihe yelping changing to a higher pitch with
  the pain. The p:i,,v tore free at last; whimpering, he fell to licking
  his mangled t~)es.
  The weak disembodied voice below whispered for a while, then grew silent,
  but the hand still moved wearily as though in search, until at last the
  fingers found and closed upon the other paw, tracing the pads and nails,
  circling the delicate hocks. He licked the firgers perfunctorily and
  returned his attention to the injured paw. A glimmer of light high up in
  the tangled pile slowly Lded as darkness fell. The bleeding staunched at
  last, exhausted with pain and hunger, he laid his head on the other paw,
  his muzzle resting lightly on the hand. The fingers moved out wid up past
  the matted hair on the crown of his head, then to the sensitive hollow
  behind his cars. Sometimes the arm was withdrawn for a while, but the
  voice continued, sometimes speaking, sometimes singing; sometimes it
  called out high and continuously, when he would whine or lick the hand
  as though in response to a call.
  Gradually he and the hand grew weaker, both lying listlessly for hours
  at a stretch. By the evening of the second day the hand had gone and the
  voice was long silent. He could no lorger lift his head, and his eyes
  were blind and sealed with a yellow discharge. He lay without movement,
  as

                 138
 though awaiting he end with patient resignation, only the occasional flick
 of one ear to sudden creaks above betraying the will to live.
  On the late morning of the third day he raised his head and momentarily
  freed the other - then suddenly he pushed back on one for6eg to his
  haunches and broke into a high wild barking.

 139
                10

 Alice Tremorne had been trapped for two nights and days when the dog found
 her. She had been alone in the house as Miss Carpenter, her companion
 help, was away on a week's holiday, and the daily help had left soon after
 putting the evening meal in the oven. After listening to the nine o'clock
 news, restless and so bored with her own company that she had even cleared
 away the supper dishes for the first time in her life, Mrs Tremorne
 suddenly thought of sloe gin. At the beginning of the war she had put up
 several bottles. They should be pleasantly aged by now, maturing in the
 inspection pit of the garage, a place which she had found, after much
 trial and error, maintained an excellent temperature for her home-made
 wines. She would tell Janet Carpenter to fetch a sample bottle when she
 returned ...
  But the more she thought about the sloe gin, the more she wanted to try
  it now; how very inconsiderate of the woman not to have foreseen this
  wish. Why should she have to wait five days before it was realised? She
  could not. She would not. She would fetch some herself - she would show
  Carpenter she was not indispensable. It would be interesting to see how
  the Elderflower '37 was faring too. Wincing, but still majestic, Mrs
  Tremorne rose stiffly to her feet.
  Taking a small torch, a fur wrap, and her stick from the hall cupboard,
  she shuffled slowly down the path to the garage, grimly enjoying the
  outing, savouring each detail of the hazards of st~-ps and path to relate
  to Carpenter in due course.

                 140
 She hoped she wculd be able to manipulate the bottles, for her hands as
 well as her legs Nvere stiff and swollen with arthritis. Anticipating
 difficulty, she had put two small bottles and a funnel in the string bag
 over her arm so that at least she could transfer some of the contents in
 the garage itself.
  Where the cobbles had been taken up from the stable yard, the surface had
  been paved; very easy to negotiate, even for an elderly woman who
  normally never set foot outside without her companion's arm being
  available. But when she opened the garage door and shone the light
  around, she realised that she had forgotten the fitted boards covering
  the pit. She would have to remove the ones over the steps. Her knees
  twinged at the thought. But Mrs Tremorne was not one to turn back from
  her determined course; somehow she managed to lever up enough boards.
  Puffing and panting, giddy with the effort, cursing Carpenter, she now
  realised that it would be sheer foolhardiness to attempt the cement steps
  of the pit without a handrad. She decided to investigate instead the deep
  cupboard in which the matured bottles of Elderberry, Ginger and
  Blackcurrant wines were kept, under the stairs leading to the loft.
  Outside the sirens wailed, such a normal event almost every evening since
  the war had begun that she took no notice. She unlocked the door, closing
  it carefully behind her before switching on the light. The neat rows of
  labelled bottles filled her orderly soul with pleasure, dating back to
  - let me see when - she adjusted her pince-nez and bent closer. It was
  at this precise moment that she realised the sirens had heralded business
  this time; the anti-aircraft defences ringing the town burst out into an
  excited crackling, and now the great thudding of the naval guns from the
  dockyard joined in. Above all this was another seldom heard but
  unmistakable noise, a very unpleasant noise indeed, with the spaced
  finality of its dreadful thuds rattling h.-r bottles and sending the
  suspended lightbulb into a crazy flickering dance: those unspeakable
  Germans were actually havirg the eflrontery to bomb Plymouth.

                 141
  Mrs Trernorne switched off the light, and re-opened the cupboard door.
  The open garage door now framed a bright orange sky across which
  searchlight fingers moved, and a garden illuminated as clearly as a stage
  setting. A flare floated down towards the paddock beyond, and as she
  watched her fascination changed to irritation as the bright unearthly
  glow revealed unseemly mounds of fresh mole-hills on her lawn. There was
  a sudden clanging as fragments of metal rained down on thc path, an
  unpleasant pattering on the roof above. She found herself longing for the
  comfortable haven of her armchair in the shelter of the cellar stairs of
  the house, three comforting floors and the concrete stairs overhead.
  Then her world was filled with a rushing screaming noise like an express
  train coming straight at her. Arthritis and all, Mrs Tremorne dropped to
  the floor and lay flat, her head buried in her arms. The stone floor
  rocked, she felt as though all air were being sucked out of her body, her
  head exploding, then her body became strangely weightless. Without in any
  way feeling conscious of her passage across the garage, she had been
  ncatly picked up and as neatly deposited on the straw on top of her own
  bottles at the bottom of the pit. At the same time, almost as though she
  had activated some ]ever, the roof collapsed, the first beams to fall
  straddling the pit, and so supporting the remainder that fell in crazy
  order on top. Terribly shaken, her head spinning, her eardrums thudding,
  Mrs Tremorne lay on her straw mattress and wondered if this was the end.
  Before she could find out, she dropped off into unconsciousness.
  When she came to some hours later, lying there with her arms by her
  sides, in thick black silence, she thought that she was in her coffin,
  additional proof being that when she spoke up indignantly to say that
  there had been some mistake, she heard no words. She resigned herself,
  with black fury, to eternal rest.
  After a while, she became conscious of sharp things boring through the
  straw, like fakirs' nails into her back, and memorN

                 142
 returned: the tops of her wine bottles. She lifted her arms then each leg
 cautiously in turn; everything worked. She felt herself carefully, but
 could not find even a scratch; her shoes had been blown off, but she still
 clutched the torch in one hand, the string bag was still over her arm, the
 medicine bottles were intact inside. After much painful effort, she
 managed to get to her feet, resting her elbows on a cleared space at floor
 level. She saw now that there were occasional chinks of red light in the
 otherwise impenetrable mass over her. She swept the beam of the light
 around the roof of her prison and saw ihat even if she had had the
 strength to remove some of the obstruction, the balance was so delicately
 conserved that shc might well loosen a key support and bring the whole
 jumble crashing down. She would have to resign herself to waiting.
 Conserving her light, her strength. Thank goodness, even although the
 night was not cold, she had put on her cape. It irritated her very much
 that she had no one except herself to blame for her predicament, this
 unnerving silence - only thos,~ dreadful Germans, and she concentrated all
 her hate on thern.
  She did not know when the All Clear sounded at last in the early morning;
  she did not even know if it was day or night, only that she was now very
  cold and ached in every bone. She shouted and shouted not knowing that
  her voice had become a whisper, and tears of fury and weakness furrowed
  down her dusty cheeks. Falling silent at last from sheer exhaustion, she
  reallsed that the A.R.P. post at the corner of the street where the
  listed occupants of all the houses around were kept, would probably check
  the house only. Knowing that Miss Carpenter was away-one of the wardens
  was her cousin - and finding no evidence of Mrs Tremorne (if only she had
  not been so altruistic with that supper tray ... ) they would assume that
  she had gone out for the evening. They would never think of looking in
  the garage, for everyone knew that she was unable to get around without
  assistance. But the daily would come at 9 o'clock, Mrs

                 143
 Tremorne reassured herself, she would know, she would come searching....
  But no one came. She had no idea of the passage of time for her watch had
  stopped. She moved some bottles to form a straw nest. Sometimes she fell
  into an exhausted sleep, sometimes she forced herself to move her arms
  and legs and stand leaning on the edge of the pit, shouting. Sometimes,
  lightheaded, she sang, her fingers pressed over her vocal chords to
  assure herself that sound was indeed coming forth. Thirsty, she
  remembered the sloe gin; transferring some to a small bottle in total
  darkness occupied her for a long time. She spilled a lot before she
  learned the art, but the resulttaken strictly medicinally - was very
  comforting. And the more sips she took, the more it seemed that her
  hearing was returning; she could even hear occasional sounds of traffic
  from the road beyond the garden. But they only increased her feeling of
  a terrible loneliness and desertion - the rest of the world going about
  its business, uncaring of Alice Tremorne.
  It was in one of these more lonely moments, during her second night, if
  she had known it, that as she leaned against the pit edge, and clenched
  and unclenched her fingers against their growing stiffness, she suddenly
  heard an unfamiliar creaking in the immediate timbers. She shone the weak
  beam of the light in this direction, calling for help in a husky whisper,
  then suddenly, out of nowhere came the warm wet touch of a tongue on her
  finger. Instinctively repelled she jerked her arm back; then as though
  to reassure her, she heard a soft whining, and knew that this was not the
  repulsive questing of a hopeful rat. Her fingers moved again to touch a
  muzzle, ears, to be covered again by an eager tongue-it was a dog that
  had come out of the blackness to her, the only living thing that knew or
  cared, apparently, that she still existed.
  Unfamiliar tears of gratitude welled up in Mrs Tremorne's eyes. When the
  pile shifted, and high agonised yelps followed

                 144
 she forgot her own splitting head and aching bones; she longed only to
 comfort this warm miraculous link with life, to show it by the soft
 stroking of her fingers how much she cared. From that moment, Mrs Tremorne
 determined that if she had to spend another month here, living on gin in
 total darkness, she would somehow come out of it and see the reality of
 this small creature that had risked its life to come to her need out of
 the terrible night.
  It was undoubtedly the same sloe gin that put her there in the first
  place that brought her out alive again, for it was to be another two days
  before she was found by the conscientious Janet Carpenter who had cut
  short her holiday to come back when she could receive no satisfaction on
  the telephone, the lines being down. She had arrived only that morning,
  after travelling for two nightmarishly slow days. She had been unable to
  find the daily help who had promised so faithfully to look after Mrs
  Tremorne. She had vanished without a trace, padlocking her cottage behind
  her, and for a while Miss Carpenter thought Mrs Tremorne might have
  vanished with her, to some safer hideout in the country. She knew that
  her mistress would not have gone out with friends that evening, as the
  warden suggested, for the simple reason that she had no friends. No one
  even liked her sufficiently to ask her out and put up with her
  overbearing bitterness for an evening. But it never occurred to her to
  think beyond the house at first; Mrs Tremorne elsewhere, solo, was
  unthinkable.
  It was not until after her fruitless investigations that she came out
  into the garden to survey the wreckage and heard a faint muffled barking.
  Puzzled, she traced it to the garage. Plainly there was a dog trapped
  somewhere in that pile; but how to set about getting it out was another
  matter, for the whole structure above it looked perilous in the extreme.
  She sniffed the air; it smelled as though some Bacchanalian orgy had
  recently taken place. The cupboard under the stairs hung drunkenly, one
  hinge on the shelves buckled and a pile of broken bottles covered in
  white dust lying below. On top was

                 145
 a curiously familiar shape under its coating of dust. Picking her way
 carefully over she picked it up: she held Alice Tremorne's ivory-headed
 cane, as much a part of her normally as though it were an extension of her
 left arm. Janet Carpenter turned and ran for the A.R.P. post.
  They uncovered, piece by precarious piece, first the dog, a small white
  shadow of a dog who gazed blindly up at them from thickly encrusted eyes
  behind a matted fringe of hair, dusty white save for the contrasting red
  of a clean licked, mangled fore-paw, so light that as it was lifted out
  it seemed there could be nothing but dry bones within the enveloping
  whiteness. The man who held it was conscious of the sweet sickly smell
  of infection, the dry hot skin below the coat. Nevertheless, it
  acknowledged man's presence by a brief quivering of the end of its tail.
  He laid it on the floor and they set to again for the urgent, yet
  frustratingly slow uncovering of Mrs Tremorne's body.
  It was unveiled at last. Stretched out neatly on a bed of straw, her head
  pillowed on a flat square of empty bottles, hands folded tidily on her
  chest under the sable cape, her stockinged feet together, Mrs Tremorne
  lay. The string of pearls on the massive shelf of her bosom moved up and
  down with peaceful regularity. Even as they gazed upon her, the slack
  lower jaw dropped another fraction, she hiccoughed gently, and then a
  loud imperious snore fell upon their astonished ears.
  She was taken to hospital, where - almost incredibly for a
  seventy-six-year-old semi-invalid - no damage other than a bruising which
  discoloured almost her entire body had been found, and now it was a
  matter of time and rest only.
  The overworked nursing staff hoped fervently that the time with them
  would be brief, for she was a despotic bell-ringer of a patient. The
  first thing she had asked for when she recovered from her monumental but
  merciful hangover was the dog, her rescuer, in whom, as she declared, had
  lain her

                 146
 salvation. Miss C arpenter, hovering dutifully by the bed, was bidden to
 find to find out about this canine hero forthwith. What did ir look like? It
 was just a dog, a small dog, Miss Carpenter said, remembering with aversion
 the limp, dirty, blood-staincd bundle, but adding only that it appeared to
 have a shortis,~ tail and longish cars. Airs Tremorne regarded her with
 scorn.
  'It was a nuracl--,' she said, her words still somewhat slurred, 'I held
  ish paw and strength flowed out, poshitively flowed out. . .' Her glazcd
  eyes glared from the pillow, challenging anyone to dispute the source of
  the m1raclc working flow, and Miss Carpenter lei t to track it down.
  She was able ~:o report next day that one of the rescue team had taken the
  clog home with him, and his wife was looking after it; its eyes were open,
  the wound on the paw was clean, but possibly there were internal injuries
  or severe shock for the aminal seemed to have lost the will to live-it
  simply lay in a box without stirring, and was kept going only by the
  efforts of the woman with spoonfuls of warm milk laced with precious
  whisky.
  She must be suitably rewarded, and a vet must be called immediately,
  commanded Mrs Tremorric - two, three vets if necessary. A taxi must be
  summoned so that dog could be installed at The Cedars straightaway.
  Carpenter must go forth and - here was her alligator bag - set the
  machinery in motion; a dog basket, the best, to be bought; leads, brushes,
  bones and tempting dog Jelicacie,, - dogs liked liver, she knew: fetch
  then, quantities of liver ...
  Liver was very hard to get nowadays, offered Miss Carpenter apologetically.
  'Tell Hobbs the Butcher I wish liver,' said Mrs Tremorne, weakly but
  majestically. The butcher's had received a direct hit, Carpenter had heard.
  'What has that to do with Hobbs :)btaininE liver?' enquired Mrs Tremorne in
  genuine surprise.
  It was useless cxplaining; no one tried. The war to Alice Tremorne was
  simply an interlude of personal inconvenience.

                 147
 Miss Carpenter departed dispiritedly into the ruins of the shopping
 centre.
  'Good dog, good little doggie,' mumbled Alice Tremorne, drifting off
  again. 'Did it hurt then? Poor little doggie ... never mind. . . Alice
  is here. . .'

 148
                I I

 If miraculous strength had flowed out of the dog's paw to Alice Tremorne,
 now the procedure was reversed and strength flowed back through every means
 that the hand dipping into its alligator bag could provide. The little dog
 entered a new stage of his life that held everything a solicitous parent
 might give its child, a life of extreme contrast to all he had ever known,
 in its quiet stability and ordained pattern of day following upon day. By
 the time Mrs Tremorne was allowed home to her well-aired bed, still stiff
 and sore, he was installed in a basket (the best) in her bedroom, his coat
 brushed to gleaming point, his hair tied back from his eyes with a red
 ribbon, and combed to a silken length that would have sent MacLean rushing
 in shame for scissors. The hair around his delicate hocks had been shaved to
 match the area around the injured paw over which a baby's blue bootee was
 drawn to hold the dressing in place. He hopped on three legs, and several
 times a day Miss Carpenter, mouth buttoned into a thin line, clipped a leash
 on to the lightest and finest of red collars and took her charge for an
 airing in the garden. After the first day of Mrs Tremorne's homecoming she
 no longer returned him to the basket, but lifted him -her lips by now almost
 invisible - into the fastness of Mrs Tremorne's bed, who then drew her pink
 silt, eiderdown tenderly over.
  At first he had hardly stirred, lying with dull apathetic eyes that were
  wide open yet seemed to focus on nothing. When they closed and he slept
  briefly, his body twitched con-
  
                 149
 vulsively, ani then Mrs Trcmorne would reach out to pat and talk the
 reassuring baby talk that she had never used in her life but which seemed
 to come naturally to her now, until he lay quiet again. As the days
 passed, his tall gradually stirred more and rnore, his eyes cleared and
 focused, his ears rose fractionally - until one day she woke from a light
 sleep to find him lightly brushing her arm with one paw, his eyes beaming
 with interest Yet another indomitable little dog had risen from the ashes.
  Now to find a name for him. It seemed to Alice Tremorne that if she tried
  enough words she might run into a chance combination of vowels that would
  sound near enough to the dog's ears. Propped up against her pillows, her
  anonymous audience's eyes fixed upon her with unwavering attention, she
  started off by running through all the fictional or traditional canine
  names that she could remember: Rover, Fido, Blackie, Spot, Kim ... She
  sent Carpenter down to the library: Garm, Argus, Owd Bob, Beautiful Joe,
  Luath, Beowulf, Greyfriars Bobby ... She ran through name after name but
  none met with any recognition. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John ... she per-
  severed: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor ... She was about to dip into
  the telephone book when she remembered John Peel and his hounds.
  'Yes, I ken lohn Peel, and Ruby too!l And Ranter and Roverl . . .' She
  trailed off; no, it wasn't Rover, it was . . . Raver? Ringworm? She
  started off at the beginning again, hoping to get carried along
  unconsciously: 'Do ye ken John PeeldWi' his coat so gay,' she sang
  determinedly, only to get stuck again at Ranter. It was very irritating
  to one who prided herself on her memory.
  She was still at it when Miss Carpenter arrived to take the dog out, and
  when commanded to make a duet she outran Mrs Tremonic convincingly:
  'Ranter and RingwoodlBellman and True!' she continued in a surprisingly
  sweet soprano.
  It was irrffating to be bested; but as Mrs Tremorne repeated the nex
  names, suddenly the ears before her rose and

                 150
 flickered and the round eyes lit up in seeming recognition. She repeated
 the names, and this time the dog jumped off the bed and sat quivering
 expectantly, his eyes never leaving her face. It was Bellman that excited
 him, but she soon found that the first half of the word had the same
 effect: 'Belll' she said, 'Bell-good BeIll' and each time she spoke, the
 dog's tail wagged more furiously.
  'You see,' she said triumphantly, 'that's his name -Bell I Time for
  walkies then, my darling Bell-' She gazed down dotingly
  In glum silence, Carpenter clipped on the lead. Then, almost unheard of,
  she produced an opinion of her own. 'I think Bell's a silly name for a
  dog,' she said. 'It sounds like a girl one way or a chime the other.' She
  sniffed.
  Mrs Tremorne was not used to mutiny, but she quelled it now with cunning
  case: 'Neither the feminine nor the ding dong,' she said with lofty
  dismissal, 'but Bel, who -as I am sure you will remember - was the god
  of heaven and earth in Babylonian mythology.'
  Many years addiction to The Times crossword had paid off. Bel he became,
  despite Carpenter sniffs, the sound of the name near enough to the one
  to which he must have responded for so many years before he became Ria.
  Measure for measure, he returned the love and care lavished on him, and
  all his uninhibited affection and natural gaiety, so long denied,
  returned. He filled out to an attractive alert healthiness, becoming in
  the process the closest thing to a poodle to which the united efforts of
  his mistress and a kennel maid skilled in the art could clip and comb
  him, the dark curls of the outer coat stripping down to a pale, almost
  lavender, grey. The mutilation of his toes left him with a permanent
  slight limp but did not seem to inconvenience him at all.
  The gardener, the milkman, the postman, every tradesman who came to the
  door - in fact, any human who entered the house or garden - was greeted
  with enthusiastic interest, and

                 151
 if it were not immediately returned he would stand on his hindlegs to draw
 attention to the oversight.
  Soon, even the reluctant Miss Carpenter, who had lived only for retirement
  one day with an undemanding canary, fell under his spell. She no longer
  looked so haunted, for now that Mrs Tremorne had an all-engrossing
  interest, the spotlight of attention had shifted, and an atmosphere of
  almost cosy warmth gradually permeated the normally gloomy house with their
  mutual absorption. Suddenly one day she became Janet. Bel loved her, and
  more and more she enjoyed his company and the interest he brought to her
  formerly solitary walks. But undoubtedly the one who received his full
  devotion was the one whom he had found himself, his own human bounty, Mrs
  Tremorne.
  He seemed to be completely content in his role of the perfect companion to
  her; a dog who had quickly learned to interpret yet another vocabulary, who
  roused no antagonism in other dogs, whose presence did not raise the hair
  or flatten the ears of cats, friendly with all worlds; a perfect dog,
  obedient, fastidiously clean, with faultless manners, even towards food,
  for at first he would eat nothing, however tempting, unless she were eating
  too. To all appearances a dog for old ladies to pamper, who could fit right
  into a gentle purposeless life as though he had known no other; a chameleon
  little dog. Yet there were times when Mrs Tremorne felt that it was like
  living with some kind of ghostly X, the unknown quantity - who and whatever
  had formed his life before he came to her. There was a certain excitement
  in finding new clues towards the solving, but mostly they only tantalised
  further with fragmentary glimpses of an unshared world.
  There werc times when he lay for hours on top of the garden wall, watching
  the world that passed below as though he were waitting to recognise some
  familiar form. Watching him herself, Mrs Tremorne gradually discovered the
  pattern of his interests: the clip-clop of a horse-drawn milk van or

                 152
 coal cart always brought dic most eager attention; servicemen, and sailors
 in particular, always aroused attention; children were accorded only a
 flicker of interest, passing dogs no more than a polite ritual
 acknowledgement. But this knowledge only added up to the questionable
 composite of an equestrian batchelor sailor for a former owner, and was not
 much help. He made many friends among the regular passers-by. They would
 stop and have a word with him, and he would receive their attentions with
 dignified polite interest, but he would never jump down off the security of
 his garden wall. He also made an c:xellent early warning system, for minutes
 before the sirens wailed to the approaching throb of German raiders he had
 abindoned the wall to make for the furthermost corner of the shelter under
 the kitchen stairs. A bonfire one day in the garden terrified him into this
 refuge as well.
  There were the occasional times too when he lay listless and unresponsive,
  his eyes infinitely sad and faraway. One afternoon, eerily, he had sat up
  suddenly, thrown his head back and howled, a high haunting sound that had
  run- in Mrs Tremorne's ears for days afterwards, unable to gauge at the
  depths from which such sorrow must find outlet. Sometimes she found herself
  almost willing him to speak, to tell her what he was so obviously imploring
  her to do on those occasions when he would ilt before her, or crouch at the
  top of the stairs, tense, searching her eyes, straining every nerve to get
  his message across as to the part she must play in some ritual. . .
  'Darling Bel, what is it?' she would implore. 'What are you trying to tell
  me?'
  'Sit up! ' and 'salute' and 'catch' had been translated into immediate
  action, and she had discovered that he would toss and catch biscuits
  balanced on his nose, but whatever other time-honoured canine trick command
  she gave - speak, say please, roll over, jump - a puzzled shadow only would
  flit over his eyes, and it seemed as though she would never find the key
  woris that would unlock any further response.

                 153
 But as the bond between them grew, his quivering need to communicate became
 stronger.
  One day, he rose to his hindlegs in a bid to keep her attention longer. She
  took his forepaws. The wireless was playing Irish jigs, and she laughed
  down at him, moving his paws in time to the music. 'Come on, my darling,'
  she said, 'dance with me-' She moved three stiff close steps to the right,
  and then to the left, and he followed her. 'One, two, three,' sang Mrs
  Tremorne to her eager little partner, C and a one, two, three-' Breathless,
  she let his paws go, but to her astonishment he circled on, nodding his
  head and pawing the air in a quaint little dance.
  Her reaction, of course, was one of unmitigated admiration and enchantment
  as she clapped her hands -and relief too, for it was as though some barrier
  had been broken down. Her pleasure was so patent that thereafter he
  voluntered this performance from time to time; but only, she noticed, when
  the need to communicate or demonstrate affection to her became so
  overwhelming that he had no other recourse, a unique bestowal of himself.
  A barrier had indeed been broken down but she could never know how strong
  and deeply entrenched it had been.
  Because she wanted more than anything else to participate in the life that
  now ran with hers, she forced herself to walk more and more so that she
  could go further afield to the garden and ~Natch her darling's enjoyment
  there. Unheeding of the almost impossible goal she had set for her
  arthritic legs, her ambition was to take Bel for a proper country walk one
  day. Sometimes she ached in every other part of her body as well, but
  whitefaced with effort, she persevered, and was rewarded in more ways than
  one, for not only did she begin to feel better physically, but through Bel
  she made daily contact with the outside world. She had actually been seen
  at the far end of the orchard talking over the fence -about Bel
  naturally-to her neighbour. But she was so slow that she deciled he must
  have more from her than this

                 154
 sedate accompaniment; he must have more outdoor pursuits and more interests
 to keep his mind off himself and overcome these lonely listless periods.
  She planned to buy a ball for a start; he would chase it, retrieve it, she
  would throw it up in the air and over gates and he would jUmp and leap and
  have all the exercise she could not give him.
  Fortunately she was spared the bending and stretching of these activities.
  That afternoon, she and Bel had reached the far end of the garden at their
  customary tortoise pace when suddenly he stopped, his ears pricked, tense
  and quivering. Then he gathered himself and shot like an arrow down through
  the hedge, across the small orchard beyond, and leaped at the barred gate
  to the paddock. He paused there, poised on the top bar, his tail moving in
  the strange nervous vibration that was his version of the more usual
  wagging of other dogs. Clinging on Nvith his front paws, his tail moving
  more rapidly than ever, he looked so like a fluffy hovering dragonfly that
  Mrs Tremorne laughed out loud.
  Now she saw the object of his excitement, her neighbour's donkey, the
  long-retired Fred who grazed her paddock from time to time-he must have
  been turned out there again only today. She watched Bel streak across the
  grass, then slow down to a halt a few feet away, his excitement apparently
  diminished. However, he sniffed around, examining from every angle,
  retticning with his nose the compliments of the donkey as it gently nudged
  his head. He crouched, sprang, and dropped lightly on the shaggy back.
  Fortunately it was not the first time that Fred had felt an unexpected
  weight there; fifteen yeais of children had accustomed him to almost
  anything. Mrs Tremorne leaned on her cane and revelled in the light-hearted
  spectacle of Bel, his mouth open, pink tongue lolling as though in
  laughter, his forepaws so rigid before him that they looked as though they
  pushed back his head and trunk. Fred moved off slowly, cropping the grass,
  the small motionIcss rider still on his back.

                 155
  When Mr!i Tremorne called at last Bel came running immediately, his eyes
  still alight with excitement. She filed away another clue towards the
  unknown X. After this there was no problem about outdoor interest: if not
  bound for a session on the wall he would trot off briskly in search of
  Fred, sometimes pottering around the paddock in his company, sometimes
  lying close by as the donkey whiled away the long summer afternoons in
  the shade of the trees, sometimes bounding in a beautifully co-ordinated
  arc on to the broad patient back, there to dream with head thrown back,
  erect and totally still. Yet if Mrs Tremorne tried to persuade him to
  repeat this leap to order, he would simply sit before her, looking more
  and more puzzled the more she exhorted.
  The withdrawn hours became fewer and fewer as the timeless weeks
  stretched into months within the garden walls, the war intruding only in
  domestic inconvenience, sporadic sorties to the air raid shelter, or
  through the impersonal voices of the BBC bringing news of the disastrous
  world that lay beyond:
 , Today's official reports from Singapore indicate a grave
 situation . . . our troops have again had to fall back . .
 'Dreadful, dreadful,' said Mrs Tremorne.
 'A great sea and air battle is going on in the English Channel. .
 Scharnborst, Geneisenau ... Prinz Eugen ... The cost to us: six Swordfish
 aircraft are missing ... twenty bombers ... sixteen fighters . . .'
 'That unspeakable little Hitler-' said Mrs Tremorne.
  The convoys battled on against the ever multiplying U-boat packs, such
  a terrible toll exacted that rationing became even more stringeni. A
  strange tinned fish called snoek - popularly supposed to have originated
  in very old Rhodesian rain barrels - made its appearance on ration
  points. Whalemeat was expensive but required no points. Succulent slabs
  of horscmeat destined for British dogs were dyed blue to discourage human
  consumption. However,'The introduction of soap rationing will reduce the
  consumption of soap by one-
        tn

                  156
 fifth,' declared the 9 o'clock news voice. Lord Woolton created his Wartime
 Pie.
  Terrible, terrible!, said Mrs Tremorne when he revealed its ingredients.
  But it was only when she was faced with the prospect of one egg per
  fortnight and an ounce of butter to spread over seven slices of morning
  toast that the full impact of the war was brought home. She was unable to
  dismiss the inconvenience any longer; it was clearly here to stay, and for
  some time. Unable to do anything about the butter, she turned her attention
  to a long range solving of the egg problem: they would keep hens.
  Fortunately Janet showed unexpected enthusiasm for this project. Even more
  happily, yet another interest was provided for Bel. Six day-old chicks were
  bought; for the first few days they were reared in the kitchen under a lamp
  in a box, and under the unwavering gaze of Bel who appearcd to be almost
  mesmerised by them. When they huddled together under the lamp for a brief
  sleep he relaxed; when they awoke. their cheepings brought him scurrying
  back. When they were let out they followed him around as though he were a
  mother hen; and if he lay down they climbed all over him. His retinue
  persisted even when they were grown birds and had the run of the orchard
  and, for a while, the gardcn. They would converge on him from all quarters
  with hysterical clucking excitement when he appeared, and were greatly
  frustrated when their wings were clipped and they were no longer able to
  fly up and perch beside him on the donkey's back. Mrs Tremorne was greatly
  amused by his feathery following until they took to searching him out in
  the house, perching on windowsills, peering through, gaining access through
  any open door or window. After she and Bel had woken up one morning to the
  sound of their triumphant voices outside the bedroom door, they were exiled
  from the garden.
  Now Bel's da~s were full indeed, and by the time a year had passed and the
  montlis of the second were marching on,

                 157
 he was indirectly contributing to the war effort as well, for in a
 combination of patriotism - stirred into activity by the fall of Singapore
 where she had once lived - and the effort to arrest the stiffness of her
 fingers in order to groom him, Mrs Tremorne had learned to knit. Slowly and
 painfully she Imitted for the Naval Comforts Fund, working her way up
 through the endless tedium of scarves to balaclavas and mitts, and then the
 ultimate triumph of socks. When the articles were collected the names and
 addresses of the knitters were pinned on, and sometimes they were despatched
 this way. Months later Mrs Tremorne received acknowledgment of her labours
 from two of the recipients, a Wren stationed in Scapa Flow, into whose hands
 a pair of mitts had found their way, and a Leading Seaman who might well
 have been on the Arctic convoy routes from his description of the cold.
  Mrs Tremorne was strangely touched by their letters; for the first time she
  was in personal contact with the war. So touched, that from now on she and
  Janet saved from their rations of sugar, margarine and dried fruits, and
  one day two cakes were detspatched.
  She wrote regularly to her prot6g6s, long inconsequential letters totally
  unrelated to the war; about what was coming up in the garden, the hens, a
  book she had read - but always the longest paragraphs were about Bel, and
  Bel's day to day activities. Perhaps her age and infirmity were apparent in
  her writing, perhaps the youngsters to whom she wrote appreciated this
  odier-worldliness in the midst of service life, or perhaps she was just
  exceptionally fortunate, but she received many long levers in return, and
  even from time to time small presents. The one which she particularly
  treasured was a diagonally-sliced sliver of tusk, minutely engraved with an
  endless procession of infinitesimal dogs. She had it set into a brooch and
  never wore any other.
  If her life had been completely altered by Bel's coming, so was Janet
  Carpenter's, who looked ten years younger -almost within five years of her
  actual thirty-four. Having

                 158
 looked after her elderly ailing parents until they died, she had been
 untrallied for any job. Unable, because of a slight congenital heart defect,
 to escape into the more colourful life of the womcn's services, she had
 resigned herself to the grey future of a light-duties companion. Now that
 Mrs Tremorne was so occupied, and content to be left in the company of Bel,
 she had nerved herself to ask if she might join one of the voluntary
 services, and now slaved most happily two aftcrnoons and two evenings a week
 in a railway canteen.
  She proved to be an unexpectedly amusing raconteuse, and brought back a
  breath of outside life each time as she regaled Mrs TrL'mornc with her
  various encounters over the coffee urns. Mrs Tremorne, eager to expand her
  Bel audience, encouraged her to invite lonely or stranded young service men
  and women back to The Cedars.
  At Christmas, by now well-launched into under-counter or behind-haystack
  deals, she procured a magnificent turkey, wine, and even crackers, and
  eight young people sat down to an unforgettable dinner. Afterwards, one of
  them produced a pennywhistle, another a concertina, and they sang carols.
  Then, as though to put the final seal of pleasure on this happiest of days,
  Bel judged his moment, and rose to perform his solemn little (lance to the
  music.
  It had been some time since he had expressed himself this way to Mrs
  Tremorne, and as she watched him circle now with nodding head and
  outstretched paws, she saw that his eyes sought hers with the same strange
  intensity of those first weeks. At that moment, with a sudden jealous stab
  of helplessness, as though she had somehow failed him, she knew without
  doubt that this was only a part of a presentation: it should go on, but it
  could not for something was missing, and she could not provide it.
  Everything else in his life she could provide, but not this release that
  belonged to someone else.
 She did not speak of this to Janet; if she had become such

                 159
 an absurd old woman that she was jealous of a ghost then it was better to
 keep it to herself. She comforted herself in bed that night by thinking
 of all his ways that belonged only to her, that had no part of any other
 life but The Cedars; how he brought her stick, carried up the morning
 newspaper, retrieved a fallen ball of wool, searched out the sites of
 cunningly coi icealed eggs -and a dozen examples that had sprung from lier
 alone. She felt his reassuring warmth at the end of the bed. He was hers.
 She was just about to fall asleep when she realised that she herself had
 taught him none of these tricks: atl had evolved from Bel himself.

 16o
                12

 Into this happy little Eden one day, nearly two years after Bel's arrival,
 came a stranger. He walked up the path and rang the bell, and when Janet
 came to the door he asked to see Mrs Tremorne. He was in naval uniform,
 small and slight, his firmly compressed mouth giving a severity to the
 finelydrawn, almost aesthetic face. She asked him to come in, thinking that
 one of Mrs Tremorne's pen friends might have materialised.
  He stood in the hall, turning his cap around in his hands, yet not
  apparently in any nervousness for he had an air of restrained excitement
  and his deeply set dark blue eyes were everywhere.
 'What name?' asked Janet.
  'Neil MacLean,' he said then added in a soft lilting accent, 'but Mistress
  Tre-morne will not be acquaint with it. I have been trying to trace a dog
  that was lost in Plymouth in 1941, and I had heard from a nurse at the
  hospital here that. . .' His voice trailed off : it was too long an
  explanation to give now, and he looked at Janet expectantly.
  She could feel the blood drain out of her face, and a terrible feeling of
  disaster closing in. In the ten seconds that she stood silently staring at
  MacLean, a hundred thoughts leaped in her mind-hide Be], deny his
  existence, tell this man that Mrs Tremorne was dying upstairs and couldn't
  be disturbed, pretend that she was a deaf mute-no she couldn't do that she
  had already spoken - pray that the floor would give

                  161
 way under him so that he could be locked for ever in the cellar with his
 questions about a dog that had been lost in Plymouth ... Oh, no, oh, no ...
 cried Janet's very soul, seeing the grim vista of a future that held no Bel,
 life, as it had been befcre ...
  And even as she stared at his puzzled face -for he was beginning to wonder
  if this strange mute woman was going to throw a fit or something - Mrs
  Tremornc's voice floated down the stairs. 'If that was the lauiidry,' she
  said, 'tell them that we are now missing two pillowcases.'
  Janet found her voice. 'It is a Mr MacLean, wanting to see you about a
  dog,' she called up.
  Mrs Tremorne was rather deaf nowadays. 'God?' she said, very puzzled, for
  Mr Vane, the vicar, did not usually announce himself so baldly.
  'Dog,' shouted Janet, almost wringing her hands. 'MacLean. . .'
  Mrs Tremorne looked down and saw the dark blue uniform with some relief.
  She decided that he must be one of Bel's garden wall acquaintances. 'Come
  along up, Mr McVane,' she said pleasantly.
  MacLean followed her into the small upstairs room that Alice Tremorne used
  nowadays so that she could watch Bel in the garden or down in the paddock
  with a pair of field glasses, and where this morning she had been writing
  to her C children'. She hobbled across the room on swollen feet, and sat
  down, motioning MacLean to a seat opposite. By the arm of her chair was a
  small table on which lay her knitting and some photographs of Bel by a
  half-finished letter.
  MacLean sat on the extreme edge of the chair, his face dour at the prospect
  of recounting the long chain of bygone fact and recent coincidence that had
  brought him here.
  Mrs Tremorne smiled at him, 'You must be one of Bel's friends?' she said.
  'I am not acquaint with the narne,' said MacLean. 'As I was telling yon
  woman at the door, it was about a dog that

                 162
 was thought to have boeii killed during the blitz in 1941-' he paused,
 suddenly so aware of a current of hostility in this room that he looked
 around, almost expecting to find someone else, for there was no change of
 expression in the pale wrinkled face opposite.
  'How sad,' said Mrs Tremorne. 'So many poor animals then-' Carefully she
  tidied the photographs into the letter then took up her knitting and turned
  her hooded gaze on MacLean. She nodded with gracious sympathy. 'A terrible
  time. We had no dustbijis emptied or any electricity for a week, and my
  garage was hiC
  'Indeed, now,' he said, as graciously, but determined to get on with the
  business in hand. 'It was at the end of February, and it's a long swry, but
  I heard in a roundabout way that you had acquired a dog then, one that had
  found you when you were buried under your house-'
  'Garage,' said Mrs Tremorne. 'It used to be the coachhouse and. . .'
 'Buried under ~ our garage-'
 'In the pit-'
  'Buried in the pit of your garage that used to be a coachhouse,' amended
  MacLeaji, softly and patiently. Their eyes met, and he continued hurriedly,
  'and I thought from what I heard that it might well have been Ria-'
  'Ria?' said Mrs Tremorne, her stumbling fingers dropping a stitch.
  "That was the name I gave him for I never knew his real one. He was brought
  aboard our destroyer off St. Nazaire with one of the sarvivors from the
  Lancastria. The man was badly wounded, and I kept the dog for him. There
  was a monkey too. Thep. I left the dog in Plymouth, and-'
  'Monkey?' said Mrs Tremorne, stalling for time, time to climb out of this
  'bottomless pit that had so suddenly yawned before her.
  He nodded, his eyes on her hands. He had lost his initial excitement, and
  ft-It only wary and ill at ease now, uncertain

                 163
 how to confront her-, uncertain even of any right, 'It was called Louis,
 after. . .' His voice trailed off lamely. The room was very still, only
 the clicking needles. Her move now ...
  Mrs Tremorne, outwardly contained, inwardly surging with a fierce
  determination, and entirely untroubled by conscience, decided that
  strategic attack was the best defence. 'The best remedy against an ill
  man is much ground between,' she remembered. Very well; she would set
  those limits now.
  'And what did this dog of yours look like, my man?' she said, and the
  voice broke the silence with such icy deliberate condescension that
  MacLean's own soft voice when he answered held a tone that the one-time
  Ria could have interpreted for Alice Tremorne if he had been there, and
  would have laid his cars back in trepidation.
  'Ria was not very big,' he said, 'Dark grey, with quite a thick coat, and
  his tail had been docked. He wasn't any breed, mind you, a terrier type,
  but you couldn't mistake him for his eyes-very large and bright they
  were. And he was the cleverest wee beast I ever came across-' Despite
  himself, his face had softened as he talked. 'In fact,' he confided in
  a sudden earne~t rush, leaning forward in the chair, 'when I heard that
  this dog had saved someone's life, I said that will be him for sure, that
  will be Ria, for he had the great courage.' MacLean stopped, astonished
  at his loquacity.
  'What a wonderful dog he must have been!' said Alice Tremorne with
  masterly earnestness. 'How I wish I could say the same about mine! Like
  so many of these overbred small poodles nowadays my darling is very timid
  and highly strung.'
 Toodle~' said MacLean.
  'Poodle,' said Mrs rremorne firmly. 'You see, I'm afraid you've wasted
  your time.'
  Now or never. He must take this formidable old cow by the horns: 'I
  ~vould like to see him,' he said.
 'I'm afraid he's not here - he's with friends. What a pity.'
 He said nothing: simply looked at her with the strange

                 164
 dark blue eyes. ',I;ow she must get rid of him. Make sure he never
 returned.
  'I am sorry about your dog,' she said, searching busily in a knitting bag
  for another needle to pick up a dropped stitch. 'I know how amched one
  can become - although I cannot understand why you did not direct your
  enquiries through the RSPCA. There is a very efficient branch here, as
  I know from my own experience - they did a wonderful job of tracing
  owners and findings homes for unclaimed animals. They even had a wallaby,
  and a three-foot python they called Daphne for a while-'
  Still no response; she carried on undaunted: 'Of course it is a very long
  time ago, isn't it? Really a curiously long time if you were so attached
  to this dog? In fact,' she continued, a note of triumph creeping in,
  warming up to her subject with this advantage, 'onc might almost think
  that even if the poor thing were still alive, and you were fortunate
  enough to trace it, you could hardly expect the owners to relinquish it
  now. Dogs cost money to feed nowadays, you know -there is little enough
  left over from anyone's kitchen. Now, if you would not mind, Mr McVane,
  I am a very busy wornan-' She nodded distantly at him, as though
  dismissing some recalcitrant servant.
  He had risen to his feet, two dark red spots of colour on his cheekbones.
  'MacLean is my narne,' he said, and spelled it out. 'And if it is money
  that counts, I would pay anything. How much would you be wariting for
  instance, Mistress Tremorne?' The scorn in the deceptively soft voice was
  only too apparent.
  Mrs Tremorne flushed an ugly dark colour. She reached out a hand that
  trembled for the bell on the table. 'Go now,' she said, 'before I report
  you to your commanding officer for your insolence, your intrusion in my
  home. My companion will see you out.' Mrs Tremorne managed to convey that
  this would be a necessity to safeguard any valuables in his passing.

                 165
  She strained towards the bell, and the ball of wool rolled off her lap
  and under her chair. MacLean bent down to retrieve it, but had to get on
  to his knees to reach under the chair. She looked down and saw a livid
  recent scar snaking up from behind one ear across the back of his head,
  the thin hair combed carefully across it. Pity and revulsion stirred
  simultaneous!y. And MacLean at that same moment, his eyes on a level
  \7,,Ith her grossly swollen feet and ankles in their gleaming buckled
  shoes, experienced the same reaction. He looked up at her as he handed
  back the wool, and she looked down, and he saw the soft creased face with
  the hard mouth, deep lines etched on either side, the washed-out old eyes
  that sparkled now, but either with pity or anger only Mrs Tremorne knew;
  unspokenly, like recognising like, between them a truce was called.
  He stood with the ball of wool in his hand, picked up the knitting and
  examined it briefly, then stuck the needles through and laid it on the
  table.
  'It is the fine sock that you are making,' he said, with only a momentary
  hesitation. In fact it was a terrible sock, one that to his experi eye
  would produce blisters in the first foot it encountered, so loosely
  knitted that its present gargantuan size would shrink to tiny stiff
  matting at the first wash. It was all that he could do to stop himself
  picking up the dropped stitc~. He picked up his cap to give his hands
  something to do so that he would not be tempted.
  'There are many of my socks seeing service in the navy,' said Mrs
  Tremorne with a kind of complacent grandeur. 'Balaclavas, s(arves, mitts,
  too.'
  MacLean had a sudden recollection of his own comments on some of the
  Naval Comforts that had found their way to the quartermaster's stores.
  'We are always very grateful for thern,' he said, pushing his mendacity
  to further limits.
  She looked down at his own neat navy blue socks with a critical eye.
  'Very nice,' she said. 'Very nicely knitted indeed. But no double hrel?'

                 166
  'No.' said MacLean, 'I am not liking the double heel, it is clumsy
  looking, yon.'
  'They last twice as long,' said Mrs Tremorne reprovingly, 'You should ask
  vour wife to do them that way-'
  'I am not married,' said MacLean coldly, 'and I like them single - the
  heels that is.'
  'They have to be darned,' said Mrs Tremorne, 'and what looks worse than
  that? Double is the only way.' They glared at one another.
  'I never darn,' said MacLean with Olympian dignity, 'It is a foolishness.
  I knit new heels.' Torpedoed amidships, he thought with some
  satisfaction. 'This is the second pair of heels these have had,' he
  added, for a final salvo.
  But far from going under, Mrs Tremorne was staring at his socks with
  admiration. 'You knitted them?' she said. 'How wonderful - I wish I could
  turn heels like that - I always get a space there and have to darn it in.
  And a needle is such a finicky thing with these stupid hands of mine.
  Look,' she said, holding up the knitting, 'It's starting to form now-'
  MacLean hesitated, momentarily clefenceless before her admiration, then,
  'Here, it's like this,' he said, and took up the sock.
  Mrs Tremorne relaxed. Bel was safely in the paddock with his friend.
  According to his inflexible habits he would not return unless she called
  him from the window, or until he saw her taking her morning stroll in the
  garden. She would make sure nevertheless.
  Janet, entering the sitting room a few minutes later at the bidding of
  the bell, expecting she knew not what, resigned to fetching Bel's lead
  and watching him limp out of her life with this sinister visitor, found
  the stranger on a chair drawn up close to Mrs Tremorne's, their heads
  bent over something.
  'Now, into the back of the next stitch, careful now,' he was saying,
  'Then pass the slipped stitch over . . .'
  Mrs Tremorne looked up. 'Ah, Janet, my dear,' she said. 'Coffee for two,
  please - oh, and Janet,' she paused meaning-
  
                  167
 fully, 'if that Mr. Bell should call this morning, tell him to come back
 later -I am not to be disturbed. . .' MacLean's head was safely bent over
 the knitting. She nodded at it and one vulturish eyelid dropped.
  'I'll see that he gets the message,' Janet said, almost skipping out of
  the door and down the stairs, heading for the paddock, her heart singing
  hallelujahs as she went.
  'And now, Mr MacLean.' said Alice Tremorne, 'just once again -into the
  back of the stitch you said. . .' She was playing with fire, she knew;
  he should go now-but she could not overcome the terrible desire to speak
  of Bel, to hear something of his background and because of this, there
  was, too, the feeling of being drawn to this dour, inscrutable, little
  man who gave no inch to her, who had once owned Bel ...
  'I mind once,' he was saying, and she felt that if she had Bel's ears
  they would move forward now, stay pricked and intent, 'I was sitting on
  the deck, peaceful like, in the sun, knitting, when the Tertian suddenly
  lurched-she'd altered course to avoid a mine though I did nov know it
  then - and the ball of wool skittered down the deck, and would have been
  over, but Ria, he'd skittered too, quick as a flash and he'd caught it.'
  Mrs 'rremorne could hardly stop beaming. It was as much as she could do
  to refrain from capping this anecdote.
  'Another time-' and MacLean was launched into a world of reminiscence.
  Helpless, dumb, avid for more and more, Mrs Tremorne listened, and as
  Bel's life at sea unfolded, so many of the missing pieces clicked into
  place; and something else, which she tried to push into the back of her
  mind and stamp upon, the unconscious laying bare of a man's life, and the
  gradual returning warmth to it from the coming of the dog.
  'And so, you see,' he ended at last, 'that was why I left him here - I
  had promised Sinclair-'
  Mrs Tremorne could hardly believe her ears. 'You mean to say that after
  all those months you deliberately left him?'

                 168
  'Aye,' he said heavily. 'I was not wanting to -and nor was anyone else on
  board, for he had become part of the ship, but he was not mine, I was only
  minding him whiles for S inclair.'
  Mrs Tremorne',; eyes were bright with battle. Any prickings of conscience
  she might have had were quenched forever by this appalling statement. 'You,
  Sinclair - pshaw!' she said, almost snorting. 'What about the dog? What
  about his feelings? You had him for all that time, yet you talk about this
  Ria as though he were a parcel to be re-addressed-and to someone who had
  only known him for hours probably, and all to honour some stupid impulsive
  promise! Honour indeed! It was pure heartlessness! ' The fact that she was
  partly defending her own behaviour gave a passionate conviction to her
  words. MacLean looked troubled, she observed with pleasure.
  'You don't uaderstand,' he said at last, his words weighted with the burden
  of trying to explain the inexplicable debt that was owed to Ria, not just
  by Sinclair but by himself too. 'There was more to it than just a promise.
  Sinclair seemed bound to that dog - I do not know how he acquired it - for
  it must have followed him from France and would not give him up even in the
  sea. He was a strange wee dog -how he affected people. Even me-'
  He stopped, looking suddenly old and defeated, but Mrs Tremorne resolutcly
  closed her mind's eye and spoke with brisk firmness. 'Ar least you are
  talking about that poor dog in the past now,' she said, 'and I am sure that
  is the only sensible thing to do now. Stop blaming yourself, Mr MacLean,
  and lay the past to rest. It's over and done with.'
  He stood up and looked out of the window across the sunny tranquil garden
  arid paddock to the orchard beyond, his eye caught by the ambling figure of
  a donkey in the long grass between the apple trees. Close at its heels he
  could make out a small dog and some hens He followed them until they dis-
  appeared behind a hedge.
 Mrs Tremorne had stood up too. 'A beautiful view, isn't

                 169
 it?' she said, and picked up MacLean's cap and handed it to him. 'It has
 been most interesting meeting you,' she managed to smile at him, trying to
 rivet his eyes safely away from the window.
  'I was looking at a donkey and a dog in the field over there,' he said, and
  her heart missed a beat.
  'What wonderful eyesight you must have,' she said smoothly. 'That is my
  neighbour's field.'
  Donkey and dog came into sight again. MacLean's eyes narrowed intently as
  he watched, sudden wild hope flaring up. The dog squeezed under the gate
  and ran up the fence line. As he came into full view, running with an
  uneven gait, MacLean saw an impeccable poodle with squared off jaws and
  trousers, a shaven tail terminating in a knob of hair, the clipped coat a
  pale grey. He turned away from the window.
  'I am sorry I troubled you, Mistress Tremorne,' he said wearily. 'I am
  owing you an apology. I will be going now.'
  Before she could ring the bell he was half-way down the stairs. He let
  himself out. And Janet, watching him walk down the path, hurried indoors to
  rejoice with Mrs Tremorne.
  But Mrs 'rremorne was standing by the window, her face working
  uncontrollably, her mouth contorted in ugly grief. Janet's first thought
  was that she was having a heart attack, but - 'Don't stand there gaping,
  you dolt,' said Mrs Tremorne, 'fetch me a handkerchief.' Janet fetched two,
  and stood by silently while Mrs Tremorne mopped her face. 'Can you see Bel
  out there?' she asked at length. Bel was down there in the orchard, Janet
  said after a look through the field glasses, lying quietly in the sun, the
  darling. He must be waiting for his walkies - she would fetch Mrs
  Tremorne's cardigan.
  I would not have done it, I would not have done it -I would not have lied,
  Mrs Tremorne told her conscience fiercely as she made her slow way into the
  garden; he made me do it, it was his fault, I am almost sure I would not
  have

                  170
 done it if he had not been so ruthless in his talk of promises, his own
 feelings....
  But Bel was untroubled by devious thought, and knew only what his senses
  told him. He came running now to greet this human who madc, up his
  present world, his eyes bright with love and interest. She put out her
  hand to him, the mesh bag with her knitting in it dangling from her
  wrist. He stiffened, sniffed the hand again, and now the ball of wool,
  the half-knitted sock -and suddenly Bel was off like a hound on a trail.
  Swift as an arrow up the stairs to the sitting-room, the seat, the
  stairs, the coffee cups, all touched briefly, and swift as an arrow down
  again, through the open door and along the path to the gate. And now Bel
  was jumping wildly at the gate, throwing himself at it, failing, falling
  back, throwing himself at it again. Yet he could have jumped as he
  usually did on to the wall, and down to the lane below; it was as thou-h
  he must ),o through the gate, follow the reality that had gone through
  it already.
  Janet ran to him, calling, but he took no notice, only the agonised
  frenzy ol silent leaping and falling.
  'Open the gatc,' said Alice Tremorne steadily. 'Quickly, run - open the
  gate and let Bel go ...
  And Janet, standing by the open gate, watched the little grey shadow
  streak down the straight empty road until it vanished.

 Half a mile away, MacLean waited at a stop for the bus that would take him
 back to the naval barracks at Devonport. When it had brought him here, he
 had felt buoyant with excitement and certainty, now he felt empty and flat
 - yet in a curious way expiated, and resigned. The bus drew up, the small
 queue shuft-d forward and he swung himself on board.
  'Standing room only, move along there,' said the conductress. 'Pass along
  there, please now - and no dogs allowed, i . f you please-' She touched
  MacLean's shoulder, 'Sorry, mate,' she said in a conspiratorial whisper,
  'the inspector's on

                 171
 board-' Then in a loud cheerful voice, 'Come on, doggic-' and she smiled
 down.
  Sitting neatly at his feet, looking up at him with the clear, dark
  unmistakable eyes, unblinking beneath a ludicrous topknot secured with a
  red ribbon, panting slightly, but otherwise in complete control - sitting
  as though he had never left, was Ria. Together they got off the bus.
  MacLean walked the miles back to the naval barracks and afterwards could
  not remember one yard of the way. Every few mm'utes he looked down to
  reassure himself of the miracle: Ria, cool, contained and undemonstrative
  to him as ever, trotting at his heels with the slight limp to which he had
  not yet become accustomed. He paused only once as they neared the dockyard
  gates, and removed the red ribbon.

 Exactly threc days later, at ten o'clock in the morning, Bel returned to The
 Cedars. Janet heard him at the garden gate, and ran to let him in. He took
 the stairs in three bounds, pushed open the bedroom door, and jumped on to
 Mrs Tremorne's bed. Mrs Tremorne had been gazing blankly down into the
 unresponsive depths of a cup of cold tea, willing herself to get up and face
 a day that lacked any incentive for getting up.
  She was possibly the happiest woman in England the following moment, with
  Janet a close second, while Bel in his excitement made the first clumsy
  movement of his life and upset the cup of tea. The dog Ria might be
  undemonstrative, cool and contained; Mrs Tremorne knew only a Bel who
  openly and enthusiastically demonstrated his affection for her, but even
  she had never seen this Bel who nudged at her face with his muzzle as
  though he could not get close enough, who pawed at her forearm, and made
  whining singing noises. Janet and Alice Tremorne wept unashamedly together.
  After that Bel followed his usual morning routine as though he had never
  been absent. When the faint chink and rattle of

                 172
 the impending vacuuming session was heard downstairs, and Mrs Tremorne was
 getting dressed, he padded downstairs, looked in the kitchen, found no
 familiar water bowl, or even his plate upon which normally reposed at this
 hour his ten o'clo ck offering -a biscuit or square of chocolate from her
 precious sweet ration. He sat in the kitchen entrance now, gazing
 earnestly at Janet, a faint air of reproof in his manner; and so
 compelling was his gaze that it was not long before she interpreted it to
 his satisfaction, giving him, in heartfelt gratitude, her entire ration
 for the week.
  As though hypnotised, she followed him, again through custom, and opened
  the front door. Bel trotted briskly down the path towards the orchard,
  checked on the welcoming hens, and followed by his flock continued on to
  the paddock. The old donkey broke into a trot towards him and then a
  canter. Bel ran towards him and sailed through the air to land on the
  dusty brown back. It was as though he had never gone. The only difference
  in him was that he no longer wore a ribbon; and someone had clipped the
  long hair on the top of his head.
  He was there when Mrs Tremorne made her slow way to the orchard. They had
  thcir lunch there, the three of them, and afterwards Bel accompanied the
  old lady up to her room for her afternoon rest, and had a good sleep
  himself, under the pink eiderdown.
  At four o'clock, after a pleasant tea, before which he balanced biscuits
  on his nose, retrieved his ball and gave it back to Janet to throw again,
  Bel indicated that he had business elsewhere; he sat by the door and
  then, when let out, sat before the gate in silent supplication, again
  ignoring the easy access over the wall. Janet looked up at Mrs Tremorne
  who watched from the upstairs window. This time she seemed almost happy.
  'Yes, open it,' she called down; and then had an inspiration, for, apart
  from MacLean's name and rank she had no idea where he was stationed, or
  how to get in touch with him. 'Tie on a fresh ribbon before he goes,' she
  said. But the hair

                 173
 was too short, and the ribbon had to be tied to his collar. He ran off
 without a backward glance.
  So Ria, arriving back at Devonport barracks three quarters of an hour
  later, was able to inform MacLean how and where Bel had spent the
  afternoon.

 174
                 13

 Now Bel and Ria merged into Bel Ria, a composed purposeful little figure
 who was often to be seen on the back roads between Devonport and The
 Cedars, trotting along in his uneven but fast gait, looking neither to
 left nor to right, undiverted by other dogs, even interesting smells,
 intent only on reaching his alternative world. On reaching The Cedars he
 behaved as Bel; on returning to Devonport he was MacLean~s undemonstrative
 Ria.
  Communication was soon established between his two owners. Mrs Tremorne
  tied a label on his collar with an invitation to tea. The deft-fingered
  MacLean fashioned a small permanent waterproof capsule into which he
  rolled his acceptance.
  It was at first a stiff, very formal tea party, with both sides wary, but
  by some tacit understanding no mention was made -and never was - of their
  first meeting. Guilt was as unfamiliar an emotion to Alice Tremorne as
  triumph was to Neil MacLean, but disquietude was now mutual: the spectre
  of a third and rightful owner - rightful to MacLean anyway, but to be
  fought to the last inch by Mrs Tremorne - hovered uneasily and unspoken
  between them. This drew them unwillingly closer together. Besides, there
  was so much that Mrs Tremorne wanted co know that only MacLean could
  unfold. By the end of the ineal he was winding a ball of wool for her,
  and having learned that sultanas and itinerant knife grinders were now
  unavailable had indicated that he might be able to remedy this lack.

                 175
  Throughout, Bel Ria sat between them, his eyes as always going from one
  face to the other as though following the conversation, relieved when
  rapport was reached, clearly anxious when it was restrained. When, to
  MacLean's barely concealed disapproval, his customary saucer of milky tea
  and sugar was handed down, he handled the situation with an almost uncanny
  perception; cocking one eye and ear briefly in MacLean's direction,
  hesitating only fractionally, he lapped his tea, then lay quietly down and
  closed his eyes -thus tactfully omitting his usual sitting up to beg and
  saluting routine, always followed by a comfortable session on Mrs
  Tremorne's lap.
  Acquaintance gradually flowered with Bel Ria as courier for message,, and
  observations and, as MacLean's talent for fixing things around the house
  was revealed, urgent enquiries about what io do with a leaking U-bend or a
  Hoover emitting alarming sparks, followed. On receiving one of these SOSs,
  MacLean would arrive as soon as he had time off and put things right. Once
  he turned up with a pair of overalls in his gas mask haversack, then armed
  with a saw and bucket of tar, he 'sorted', as he described the operation,
  the apple trees. Shortty after he took over the grass cutting, for the
  gardener could only spare an hour or so a week now and the garden was
  beginning to look like a wilderness. From there it was but a short step to
  clearing choked gutters and drains and a coat of wood preservative on the
  henhouse. At first he had little to say; he would do whatever he considered
  had to be done and then depart, brushing aside any thanks, and refusing
  always to stay for any meals. It was as though he could not again bear to
  see his Ria of the Ark behaving as the pampered Bel of The Cedars.
  Alice Tremorne taxed him with this one day, and he admitted it bluntly: he
  didn't Re dogs-or any animals for that matter-made fools of with tricks and
  the like. She was silent for a moment. Her colour was high and she looked

                 176
 angry; but when she spoke at last there was no sharpness in her voice, only
 a new almost weary tone that MacLean had not heard before.
  'I don't think it is we who make fools of dogs,' she said slowly. 'I am
  beginning to think that they make fools of us -they show up our needs and
  weaknesses somehow.' As though embarrassed by this insight she handed him
  a glass of her Elderberry '38 to try. She knew now that he was not the
  ghostly X of her jealousy. Ria could never have danced for this man.
  MacLean sipped in silence, looking thoughtful, but whether he was
  considering the bouquet or her words she was not to know.
  'Aye,' he said at last, the word that she recognised by now did not
  necessarily mean assent, but was merely a useful noncommital. They were
  standing by the window upstairs, looking down and across the garden to the
  roofless shell of the coach-house. 'Yon needs sorting,' he said, with a
  disapproving scowl in its direction.
  'Impossible!' said Mrs Tremorne. 'This dreadful war -carpenters nowadays
  are either so doddery that they'd fall off the first rung of a ladder or
  charging so much that it would be out of the question.'
  'Indeed now!' said MacLean, his face brightening in a way that she had also
  come to recognise presaged the taking-up of a challenge, or the setting in
  order of the disorderly. Her potting shed for example was now an
  uncobwebbed and regimented delight.
  He left shortly afterwards, as abruptly and brusquely as ever, and she
  watched him walk down the drive to the gate, her heart turning over as
  always at the sight of her darling Bel following him., however temporarily,
  out of her life. 'Half a loaf was better than none,' Janet had consoled
  with maddening logic. Indeed it was - nevertheless she still found herself
  longing that MacLean might be transferred to some remote, dog-debarred
  posting, and his half restored to her in whole

                 177
 impeccable poodledoin once more, his lovely silken topknot unsnipped. .
  (There had been bitter argument over Bel Ria's appearance. She was proud
  of her grooming talent, and the combing and brushing had been a
  pleasurable daily routine, but MacLean had wanted a reversal to the
  shaggy naval look, claiming stubbornly that he would look a proper twit
  followed by a poodle with a hair ribbon at the barracks. In the end a
  compromise had been reached, engineered by the diplomatic Janet: why not
  let his coat grow out all over, but then keep it short to somethin1c,
  like Bedlington terrier length? Both had grudgingly accepted this, both
  had secretly admired the compact result; and both had suffered the same
  short stab of realisation when they saw that a few white hairs had grown
  in to lightly brindle the short curly coat.)
  She knew that he had a fortnight's leave coming up, and the thought of
  the consequent total separation was unbearable. Yet deep down, she had
  to admit that she would miss this dour little man's unannounced visits,
  miss his forthrightness, the challenge of his uncompromising attitude
  towards her. And so would Janet, she thought with sudden amusement: there
  were times nowadays when she was positively skittish.
  He took her unawares therefore on his next appearance when he put forward
  a proposal, to which he had obviously given considerable thought, and
  which was presented with much delicate celtic circumvention to preserve
  his own deeplyrooted sense of what was a fitting distance between them.
  Alice Tremorne was given to understand that it might be a very good idea
  if he were to spend his leave restoring the coach-house. Admittedly he
  wasn't a carpenter or a bricklayer but it was possible that he could
  overcome this handicap, and he knew a chippic chap who was the great one
  for fixing things and iNould know where to lay hands on some timber and
  tools. 'Some things are better done through the likes of him,' he said
  with a vagueness that she thought it better not to question.

                  178
  She was delighted. Providence had smiled upon her again, and this time
  the alligator bag would see to it that the smile remained, for surcly,
  she reasoned to herself, this was a business proposition., Already she
  was organising the details in her mind, and out they came now in a
  fulsome rush: Janet would turn the Yellow Bedroom into a bed-sitting-room
  for Mr MacLean's leave-it was such a sunny room, and he would be very
  comfortable there - and of course it must be a proper financial
  arrangement with the proper going wage ... On she went without
  intcrruption until suddenly she became aware of a coolness in the
  atmosphere. Bel Ria, sitting beside her, laid the wcather vanes of his
  ears back, and looked covertly around.
  When MacLean spoke his voice was very cold indeed. There would be no
  financial arrangement; he would be doing it because he chose to do it.
  There would be no bed-sittingroom in the house, however yellow, however
  comfortable. The harness room was still weather-proof, there was water
  from the pump there, a fireplace to cook by -'and the lavatory still
  works,' he finished with steely finality. If Mistress Tremorne would
  supply a camp bed and a few cooking utensils, that would be all he would
  be needing.
  But Mistress Tremorne could not and would not countenance such a
  one-sided makeshift arrangement. They set to, hammer and tongs, into an
  argument closely followed by the worried ears and eyes of Bel Ria between
  them. At the height of it he suddenly yawned hugely, rose, stretched and
  departed downstairs to Janet, leaving behind a disconcerted lull in the
  battle.
  Unexpectedly, Alice Tremorne was seized with a witchlike cackling of
  laughter. 'He's right,' she managed to say at last. 'We are being very
  boring indeed - I give in! Now will you give in over your idea of
  crouching over a grate with a frying pan and do me one more favour
  -accept our hospitality for meals?'
 MacLean could make concessions too. He accepted grace-
                 179
 fully, even managing to restore Mrs Tremorne to the position of benefactor.
  'It's the grand holiday you will be giving me,' he said. 'Board and lodging
  and recreation - what more could I want? I had nowhere else to go anyway -
  except perhaps to Scotland, to sort things out with Donald Sinclair-'
  The words hung between them. Alice Tremorne interpreted correctly. 'That
  can wait,' she said flatly. 'It will wait for ever as far as I am
  concerned. But the coach-house needs sorting out now before the winter,
  doesn't it? And, after all, I am a very old lady with no one to turn to for
  help with it, aren't I?'
 She managed to sound tremulous and pathetic.
  'Aye,' said MacLean, enigmatically as ever. He patted Bel Ria, something
  she had never seen him do before, and nodded cheerfully enough as he
  departed, but his eyes looked troubled.
  Mrs Tremorne watched him go with the stirrings of real affection. Already
  she was planning that she would feed him like a fighting cock during his
  stay, even if it meant exploring the murkier depths of the black market,
  for apart from that being the only way she could repay him, he looked as
  though he needed building-up. He was far too thin, and often seemed tired
  and strained. Perhaps it was because of that terrible scar on his head.
  Somehow she must break down his reserve and get him to talk about the days
  of the destroyer and get him to fill in the past. She plotted happily.
  He came with an ecstatically returning Bel Ria in that glorious portentuous
  autumn of 1943. He settled into the tackroorn - finding that Janet had
  determinedly added her own touches of a carpet, reading light, and even
  curtains at the windows - and as he took off his uniform in exchange for
  working rig, he shed all worries and the outside world of war for the
  little self-contained one of The Cedars.
  The sirens still wailed their nightly dirge across the land to the
  approaching bombers. Rationing was even tighter, com-
  
                 180
 modities were exhausted and making-do had become an inventive commonplace,
 but certain hope was abroad now, growing daily stronger as the pressure of
 the Allies mounted in every theatre of war; from North Africa to Russia;
 from Italy today to Burma tomorrow -to the certain dawn of that day when the
 great combilled strength would leave these shores and return to France Jor
 the final reckoning.
  Against this mighty background were set the victories and defeats of The
  Cedars - and countless other Cedars across the country. The triumphal bonus
  of a pound of offal against the surrender of the Italian fleet; fireless
  grates and the tedium of the blackout against the conditions of the
  Murmansk convoys; the claustrophobia and damp of the air raid shelter
  against a midget submarine in a Norwegian fjord - or the restoration of a
  coach-house against the homeless havoc left in the wake of bombers. Yet all
  the apparently minuscule trivia, the grumblings, the inconsequential
  pleasures, were woven into the background of the global tapestry of war.
  Alice Tremorne's equal indignation with the laundry, and Hitler, the
  quality of sausages and the Emperor of Japan; Janet Carpenter's pleasure in
  the underwear potential of half a German parachute; Neil MacLean's problems
  with his conscience, roof measurements and blistered palms - all these were
  there. Even the way a little dog's coat was shorn to the winds of
  compromise was a part of the fabric of that time.
  Bel Ria's reaction to his seperate lives brought together virtually under
  the same roof was unpredictable: he was plainly very put out at first.
  Although he slept in Alice Tremorne's bedroom, walked with MacLean across
  the fields in the evening, and sat between them at meals, during the rest
  of the day he paid frequent restless visits from one to another and seemed
  displaced and unable to relax with either, as though the fusion of his dual
  roles bewildered him. It took him a day or two to adjust to the situation.
  Or perhaps, his allegiance no longer divided, he felt free to pursue his
  own ends, for he took to spending more time with the donkey and with Janet

                 181
 - their company undoubtedly restful and undemanding, for neither expected
 anything of him other than what he was, and Janet -was not above a
 down-to-earth scolding if he left muddy paw prints on the floor or rolled
 luxuriously on the compost heap. He spent many more hours too on his
 garden wall vigil, his eyes distant, yet his ears flicking to all movement
 up and down the road.
  'It's as though he were watching for someone to come up that road -I used
  to think it was whoever he belonged to before, but you are here now -and
  he still waits,' said Mrs Tremorne on,-- morning. She was sitting in a
  garden chair by a neat pile of stack-ed timber, pressed into dating and
  listing the intact wine bottles which MacLean had excavated from the
  debris. Yesterday he had found the shoes that had been blown off hei feet
  nearly two and a half years ago: side by side, the toes turned slightly
  out as their owner had left them, they had come to light under a pile of
  lathes. Now he paused in his hammering and emptied his mouth of nails.
  'He would lie like that for hours on board too,' he said. 'Staring at
  nothing, as though he was sleeping with his eyes open. Hyacinthe used to
  curl up beside him whiles and it seemed he never even noticed she was
  there.'
  Alice Tremorne put down her dusters and produced two bottles of beer and
  two glasses from her bag like rabbits from a conjurer's hat. 'Tell me
  about her, Neil,' she said persuasively, eager as a child for the next
  installment of a story, one of which she could never have enough. 'And
  about Barkis, and the monkey - Luigi, wasn't it?'
  Touis,' he said. 'Poor wee Louis -' he broke off abruptly, and poured the
  beer. Plainly he didn't want to think about the monkey now. 'You should
  not be stopping me at my work,' he said with reproving frown.
  'You need o break,' said Alice Tremorne, 'Oh, come along now, Neil - tell
  me about the ship's cat,' she cajoled.
  So he told her about Hyacinthe, about her majestic ways and six toes to
  each front paw, her apparent ability to receive

                 182
 and decipher signals with the antennae of her unusually long whiskers so
 that she never missed a sailing, always managing to get back on board in the
 nick of time however solicitous the attentions of her current Lothario on
 shore. 'A real "pierhead jumper" she was,'he said.
  And he told her something of that terrible dawn on their way back from
  Tobruk when two JU 88s swooped out of the rising sun to sink one of their
  three destroyers and leave Terhan lying low in the water, mortally wounded
  from two direct hits. Some passing hand had picked up Hyacinthe where she
  lay in the scuppers with both front legs broken, and dropped her on a
  stretcher being passed across to the last destroyer alongside. How
  Hyacinthe had got back to Alexandria with the rest of Tertian's survivors
  and had been taken to hospital with them. And how a Surgeon Captain, an
  orthopaedic specialist in civilian life, had set her legs in a plaster
  jacket that left her head sticking out of one end, and her hindquarters and
  tail out of the other.
  'Then,' said MacLean, smiling down at Bel Ria who had forsaken the wall to
  join them and sat listening as apparently spellbound as Mrs Tremorne, 'then
  one of the crew bored a hole through the plaster sleeves, just below the
  ~aws, to take an axle for two rubber-tyred wheels and turned her into a
  kind of self-propelling trolley. She used to wheel herself around the
  hospital, still managing to look dignified despite that contrivance, her
  tail straight up in the air like a flue brush, and everyone signed her
  cast, even the Surgeon Rear Admiral.'
  She had made a perfect recovery, her fame had swept even further abroad;
  and then there had been much rivalry about her future, for it seemed that
  everyone coveted the stately Hyacinthe: the hospital staff put forward a
  strong claim, there had been a well laid plot for cat-napping hatched below
  a cruiser's decks, and it was even rumoured that the C-in-C Mediterranean
  Fleet had designs upon her. In the end she went to a mine layer.
 'Until that was sunk on the Tobruk run too.' said MacLean.

                 183
 'But yon cat still had plenty of lives. She survived that, swimming like an
 otter for a float, their SBA told me, and I heard later that she came back
 to England -in a submarine of all things.'
  'What a pity she can't write a book about her experiences,' said Mrs
  Tremorne.
  'If she could, I'm thinking that it would be banned,' said MacLean with a
  pawky smile. 'She was a proper sailor with a husband in evcry port.'
  'And Barkis? You haven't told me yet what happened to him?' asked Mrs
  Tremorne, aware of Bel Ria's sudden quivering interest as she spoke the
  name.
  'The bridgc received a direct hit,' said MacLean, so tersely that she
  forebore to ask any further questions.
  He did not tell her then, or ever, of the ghastly shattered shambles that
  had been the bridge, of the scalding screaming horror of the engine room,
  or the twisted tangles of metal mangling the bodies of his shipmates. Of
  Reid. Of Lessing. Or of any of Lhose sixty-eight shipmates who went down
  with Tertian. Nor did he tell her then of his last sight of Louis that
  still haunted him in its lonely bravura ...
  He went off to get a ladder. Mrs Tremorne was unable to resist the
  temptation: 'Barkis -' she said softly to Bel Ria, 'Hyacinthe, Louis-' but
  almost immediately was filled with shame for his eyes searched hers eagerly
  as she spoke their names, then lie turned and looked back down the garden
  as though expecting them to materialise. She felt very small. To distract
  him, she forced herself to take the now increasingly painful walk to the
  paddock and the donkey.
  'Walkies, my darling,' she said. 'Fetch my stick - fetch Missus's garden
  stick. We'll go and see how Fred is.'
  Neil MacLean sawed and hammered and painted the days away, completely
  absorbed in his work. The first two days, palms blistered, back aching and
  head throbbing, he had fallen into his camp bed in the tack room almost
  immediately after supper. Now, brown and fit, free for the first time in
  months

                 184
 of the headaches which had plagued him since they removed the fragment of
 metal from his head in the hospital at Alexandria, he did full justice to
 Mrs Tremorne's carefully plotted meals. Armed with the extra rationing
 points provided for HM Forces on leave, she excelled herself.
  Neil, as she and Janet always called him now, had developed an easy
  relationship with her, never deferring, often blunt, yet always
  maintaining a balance of diffidence. Her ruthless determination amused
  him; his stubborness exasperated and challenged her. Both loved an
  argument, and they had much to argue about, for both had hard and fast
  opinions about almost everything. But disagreement always discomforted
  Bel Ria, and his initial nervous yawnings, heralding his imminent
  condemnatory departure from the scene, were usually enough to make them
  agree to differ on the subject. Mrs Tremorne took to using the diplomatic
  all embracing 'Aye' as well. So did Janet, but teasingly.
  Janet had blossomed, and her refreshing down-to-earth viewpoint, her
  often hilarious gossiping anecdotes, were the perfect foil to his
  taciturnity. He found time to refurbish an old bicycle discovered rusting
  in the toolshed for her shopping expeditions, and lie found too that she
  made an excellent apprentice, with a good head for heights. Followed up
  the ladder by the famdiarly nimble paws of a delighted Bel Ria, they
  spent many hours working companionably on the roof. Once Mrs Tremorne had
  got over her fears and realised that her darling was as at home on a
  ladder as on the staircase, she relaxed and watched progress benignly
  through her field glasses.
  Sometimes, a formidable opponent, she played chess in the evenings with
  Neil. Sometimes they read or listened to the wireless; sometimes all
  three sat knitting or sewing, Bel Ria asleep in their contented midst.
  But Mrs Tremorne liked it best when she could persuade Neil to talk about
  the days of Tertian.
 One evening he brought over a few photographs to show

                 185
 her. The fii-st was of a fair haired young man, his eyes squinting agianst
 a low sun. He stood by a ship's rail, wearing a duffle coat, a small monkey
 muffled up in a rollnecked jersey in his arms, and by his feet, looking up
 at the monkey, was Ria of Tertian, far sturdier then in his thick almost
 shaggy coat but still recognisably her Bel.
  'Atlantic convoy,' said MacLean. 'That was the doctor. He wasn't long
  qualified, but I served under none better. He sent me these pictures after
  I got back here.'
  The secoid was of a thick-set bearded man in tropical uniform, one hand
  half-raised in salute, newly stepped off a gangway, at his heels a massive
  bull terrier looking towards the camera with a pleased shark-like smile of
  recognition.
  'The Captain coming aboard at Gib. with Barkis,' said MacLean. 'Himself was
  the fine gentleman,' he added with such finite simplicity that Alice
  Tremorne passed swiftly on to the last picture.
  This was of a very tall young seaman with the same little monkey perched on
  his shoulder, this time wearing a shoulder harness and lead over a white
  singlet and a pair of absurd white shorts.
 'Lessing and Louis in the Mediterranean,' said MacLean.
  Mrs Tremorne seemed fascinated by the photograph, looking at it under the
  light with a magnifying glass. 'So tiny and delicate,' she marvelled. 'Such
  a little scrap of a thing to have gone through so much-'
  'He was a thrawn wee beast,' said MacLean with some vehemence. 'At least
  with me,' he added with sudden honest insight, 'as i~ . he knew I couldn't
  abide his capers, but the men were dqft about him, and so was Ria for that
  matter. When Ria didn't come back after Plymouth, he was aye searching for
  him on board. For a while he wouldn't eat, and he was all htiddled up and
  listless, the way sick monkeys are, but it was warm in the Med, and there
  was plenty of fruit and nuts and the like, and after a while he seemed to
  forget and settled down.'

                 186
 'And where is lie now?' asked Mrs Tremorne.
  'He went with our Ark,' said MacLean, his face expressionless.
  Mrs Tremorne had not heard properly. 'Where did you say?' she repeated.
  MacLean looked across at her. She was looking down at the photograph, her
  Jace soft. Ria watched him, his eyes uneasy. 'He went with Lessing and the
  others-' he said gently, and he's still. with them, still the same.'
 'What a happy ending,' said Mrs Tremorne with relief.
 'Aye,' said MacLean, and got out the chess board.
  He thought of Louis again that night, lying awake in the tack room that now
  looked as neat and snug and ship-shape as he could have wished. He had had
  no affection or sentiment for the animal, but his end had been such a
  lonely one and its defiant rejection had affected him profoundly.
  In those desperate moments after Tertian had been hit, there was naturally
  no time to think of Louis. Helplessly out of commission, Tertian was a
  sitting target. The decision was taken to abandon ship, thcn sink her
  themselves. Their sister ship, Trumpeter, now moving in alongside, was an
  even more vital target with her decks already crammed with Tertian's
  survivors, and every minute counted. In the last moments, all hands had
  turned to in searching out the wounded.
  One of the last to leave, scrambling over the wreckage, the coxswain saw a
  flicker of movement among it and Louis leaped on to the rail ahead. The
  coxswain grabbed as he passed but Louis struggled and bit and fought free
  to swarm up a stay out of reach.
  Trumpeter stood off and trained her guns, while on her packed decks the
  small company of Tertian's survivors were the silent shocked spectators.
  Close to MacLean, the quartermaster watching through binoculars spotted
  Louis just before the first salvo. High on the wireless mast that still
  remained miraculously straight and intact, he clung to a stay, his yellow
  duster trailing from one paw. His head was turned in

                 187
 the direction of Trumpeter. The guns thundered.
  He was glad now that he had substituted the satisfactory ambiguity to
  Alice Tremorne, for he had not realised until he saw her with the
  photograph that she had such a vulnerable core. Why burden her with
  something that had tormented him enough in the sick feverish activity of
  his mind for weeks afterwards, when twisting restlessly in the hot
  unreality of the long hospital nights, there had been plenty of time to
  think, to try and equate his obsession over the manner of death of one
  capuchin monkey with the deaths of so many fine men.
  Thinking back to that time from the serenity of his mind tonight, it was
  as though he saw it in perspective for the first time and was able to
  understand at last: Louis had been the only alien, the only one out of
  his element against that background. Loss of life was an accepted gamble
  that men took when they xNent to war. But no animal went to war: caught
  up in man's lethal affairs, they were an irreconcilable aberration.
  He suddenly recalled the soldier's ravings about bears and horses and
  rabbits-the 'innocents' he had called them. The innocents? Fanciful talk
  he would have said then-ravings indeed. But now? All he knew now was that
  nothing could ever be the same again; he could never return to the
  laboratory after the war - there would be too many Louis' and Rias and
  Hyacinthes there to remind him.
  He slept, absolved, the little ghost of Louis laid to rest at last, along
  with all the other animals that had passed through his hands, as innocent
  now as them.
  Early in the morning, as though to rid his conscience entirely of the
  last thing that remained on it, he wrote a long letter to Donald
  Sinclair, the first communication since that stark telegram from
  Plymouth. He ended it:

 ... so that you must tell me what you would Eke done for I am not easy in
 my mind to bide this way when it is your
 right. I should have written long before. Mind you I do

                 188
 not speak for Mrs Tremorne - after all this time she thinks of the dog as
 hers, and in a way this is so - if it was not for her this letter would not
 need to be written. She has been willing enough to let him be with me this
 half and half way, but only because she would do anything for him and it
 seemed to be his own decision. He is a strange dog.
   I will hope to hear from you soon. In the meantime I will try and make him
   stay here when my leave is up, for finding his own way between Uport and
   here is too risky with the traffic. And too long, as I am thinking now
   that he is nearer eleven than ten.

  He addressed and sealed the envelope, then stamped it resolutely. He would
  post it now, before breakfast, before he had any second thoughts.... There
  was a faint scratch at the door: Bel Ria had arrived, unusually early, in
  time to accompany him. He limped more noticeably than usual on their way to
  the postbox, sometimes going on three legs.
  It would rain before the afternoon, said Alice Tremorne sagely-her own
  aching joints had foretold this as well this morning. She was half way down
  the stairs when she made her pronouncement, making difficult progress. Near
  the bottom she stumbled and almost fell. She waved Neil imperiously aside
  when he went forward to take her arm, but he took it anyway and to divert
  her furnings as he helped her across the hall to the windowseat, he told of
  his decision to leave Bel Ria when his leave ended. The news was not
  received with the pleasure he had expected. He could feel her arm beneath
  his become suddenly rigid, and for a moment she seemed quite stunned.
  'Does that mean that. that you are going away, going back to sea?' she ~aid
  at last, and far from sounding exultant, she sounded almost fearful.
  'Nothing of the kind,' he said, surprised, 'I'll be at Devonport for a
  while yet, I hope. It just seemed that with the winter coming on ~t would
  be easier for him.' He felt her relax.

 Cy                189
 She sat down, but before she turned her head away he saw to his
 embarrassment that she had tears in her eyes. 'Mind you, Mistress Tremorne,'
 he went on severely, 'that doesn't mean any fancy work with the clippers and
 ribbons and the like the moment I've gone - there's plenty to be done yet
 outside so I'll be be backwards and forwards to keep an eye on him.'
  'But perhaps he won't stay once you've gone through that gate,' said Airs
  Tremorne worriedly. A few drops of rain splashed on the window, and she
  recovered herself. 'You see,' she said triumphantly, 'It's going to pour!'
  Then, with sudden Machiavellian cunning, she went on: 'Why don't you take
  Janet to the pictures this afternoon for a start? To get him used to the
  idea that you will come back?'
  'The pictures? In the afternoon~' he said, so obviously horrified at such
  decadence that she laughed.
  'Goodbye Mr Chips is hardly an orgy. Bel and I will have a nice afternoon
  pampering ourselves in front of the fire. Why don't you go?'
  'Why not? Why not indeed?' he said with sudden reckless decision. 'I might
  do just that-'
  Mrs Tremorne watched them go. Bel Ria made no attempt to follow. 'How
  nice,' she said as she settled down for a cosy chat with hini on her lap,
  'How nice it would be -I could bring my bedroom downstairs, which would be
  much easier for us, wouldn't it? -and they could have the whole of the
  upstairs, and then we could all be together! Wouldn't that be lovely, my
  darling?' Bel Ria regarded her with enthusiastic interest. After a while
  they both had a little nap.
  When she woke up she confided another thought: 'The coach-house would make
  a wonderful surgery, wouldn't it?' Bel Ria looked. at her enquiringly. 'I
  mean if he went back and finished his veterinary degree one day - did you
  know he only had a year to go?' He stirred his tail agreeably. The rain
  drummed on the windows. It was very peaceful. They had another little nap.
 Bel Ria seemed reassured when he saw that Neil's work

                 Igo
 clothes remained in the tack room on the day of his departure. Janet held
 him at the gate, subdued but unprotesting as she waved his paw cheerfully in
 farewell. Then he followed her quite happily to find Fred and the morning's
 egg harvest.
  Donald Sinclair's reply, awaiting at the barracks, was movingly warm and
  percipient:

 ... besides, I have no 'right' as you said in your letter -it is between you
 and Mrs Tremorne, for the dog has belonged to both of you over these years,
 and he was with me for less than 24 hours. It was a queer time too, the more
 I think about it - if the dog had never found me in that ditch in France
 everything vould have been different. And his real owner might still be
 alive. That woman risked everything for me, and in the end the only way I
 could repay her at all was to see that her dog was cared for - and that was
 where you came in.
   I hope that one day we will meet and have a good yarn about those days -
   perhaps next year when I expect to come south for a week or so ...

  There was a PS: 'Re-reading your letter I think that you have answered it
  yourself already! I think that she would be well content with your
  decision.'
  Neil handed the letter to Mrs Tremorne on his next visit without comment.
  When she had finished reading she was silent for a long time.
  'So it was a woman,' she said slowly at last. 'The one he really belonged
  to, I mean-' When she spoke again, she sounded almost sad, 'I think I
  always knew that he never really belonged to either of us, he's just a part
  of both of us. Look at him-' she went on, glancing across the room to where
  Bel Ria lay in a patch of sunlight, 'you see, he isn't the shaggy Ria of
  your photographs, or the almost-poodle Bel of mine. He's Bel Ria and he
  became that between us.'
 MacLean could only nod. She looked at the letter again

                  191
 then handed it back. 'Strange-how he found people, first Sinclair, and then
 me. But not you-'
  He put the letter back in his pocket with an air of finality. 'Perhaps he
  found me out instead-' he said briskly. 'And now, I've got until six, so
  there's just time to get another coat of paint on before the light goes.'
  Clearly the matter was closed.
  Seconds before he had uttered the words, the seemingly fast asleep Bel Ria
  had risen, stretched, and made for the door where lie now stood looking
  back expectantly, his tail stirring slowly.

 192
                 14

 The question of possession had been dispelled and was never to be revived.
 Be] Ria was left to himself as the humans in his life became increasingly
 possessed by their own intertwining lives, but so gradually did this
 detachment come about over the following year that it went unremarked. The
 extended solitude on the wall, the longer withdrawals into sleep in their
 company were taken for a natural quietude in his undisputed security.
  Only occasionally now (lid he search their faces to interpret some shadow
  of expression, or sit alertly with his head turning from one to another
  as they spoke. It was as though he had mastered their communication and
  that there was nothing further to learn. Yet in other ways he appeared
  to have drawn closer, for the deeply ingrained need of his character and
  training to give of himself drove him to become even more prescient to
  their actions or wishes. Almost before an idea had been formed - such as
  going out for a walk or wondering where he was - he would appear with
  eager questioning eyes, as though he had already received the summons and
  waited only to learn their requirements of him. Always minutes before
  Neil's or Janet's arrival he would be watching from the window or the
  wall, and the enthusiasm of his greeting grew more demanding.
  He performed his day to day tricks for Mrs Tremorne more insistently,
  prolonging the session whenever possible,
 even addinu to ihem. But the impulse to bestow his dance

                 193
 seldom overtook him now, for he was no longer rewarded with her pleasure.
 only frustrated by her concern. It had seemed to her that he had become
 over-intense and anxious then, and sometimes he even panted as though the
 performance exacted too great an effort, and because of this,
 sympathetically attributing it to his rheumatism in the injured paw, she
 tried to avoid it altogether.
  Even Neil, returning after a long period of absence in the spring of 1944
  noticed no change other than a muzzle more greyed than he remembered,
  although this lack of awareness was hardly surprising that day as his
  mind's eye was almost fully occupied with more pressing affairs. He had
  been posted to a Combined Operations base on the south coast and had come
  back on an unexpected forty-eight hour leave.
  Bel Ria had anticipated his coming from his post on the wall since early
  morning, and had shadowed him from the moment he had turned in at the
  gate, but after the first greeting it was Janet who received all the
  attention from then on, for within half an hour of his arrival she and
  Neil had become engaged.
  Janet had made only one proviso: that Alice Tremorne should always be
  their responsibility, no matter what. Neil seemed only surprised that she
  would bother to mention this.
  'But I've never thought other than that I'd be taking on the pair of
  yc)u,' he said. 'Do you want me to propose to her as well?'
  'It won't always be easy,' Janet warned. 'You don't know what it was like
  before. Bel Ria can't live for ever, and when he's gone she'll be lost
  for something to lavish her love and attention on. You're szire you want
  to take it on? And please, no "aye" for an answer this time.'
  At his feet Bel Ria looked up. Neil's mind suddenly went back to the same
  discomforting intensity in the inflamed eyes of a small black oil-reeking
  dog by the head of a stretcher, awaiting his answer then as now.

                 194
  'There will be bairns to take his place one day,' he said abruptly. 'And
  yes, I was never surer of anything.'
  He bent down to pat Bel Ria and then, to Janet's amazement, picked him up
  and held him in his arms. Bel Ria managed to look so awkward and
  embarrassed by this departure from custom that he put him down after a
  moment.
  'I've never seen you do that before,' she said.
  'I was just seeing what it felt like,' he said sheepishly.
  Everthing would go on just the same, they agreed as they walked back to the
  house, until Neil was demobbed and would get his gratuity - perhaps even a
  grant as well - to finish off the year for a veterinary degree. And in the
  meantime, as Mrs Tremorne's bedroom had been moved downstairs to the
  dining-room, perhaps they would be able to use part of the upstairs as
  their own quarters. And ...
  From the window Alice Tremorne saw them coming, Bel Ria running ahead, the
  three beings who filled her life. She sat back in her chair with a deep
  sigh of content. Bel Ria had not been alone in his precognition. He arrived
  now, well ahead of the others, and displaced The Times in her lap. She
  hugged him tightly, and then in her excitement dabbed her eyes with one of
  his ears instead of her handkerchief. 'At last - I was beginning to think
  we'd have to do it for him!' she said. He scratched the ear absently, then
  examined his paw as though he had never seen it before, so she went on with
  his answer: 'So nice - so exactly right! '
  A few minutes later, she received the news with every appearance of
  overjoyed astonishment. Not long afterwards she had a sudden inspiration
  for the separate conversion of the upstairs part of the house. They
  received this with equal pleasure and surprise.
  (However, the seeds of the coach-house/surgery plan could wait for a while
  yet to be planted, she decided to herself after lunch; there was still this
  tedious war to be won. Doggedly she cast on the stitches for her
  twenty-seventh balaclava.)
 In June, immediately following D-Day, as her part in the

                 195
 all-out determination of those at home to back up the invading armies in
 lrance, Janet took on a part-time post with the ARP in addition to the
 railway canteen, so Mrs Tremorne and Bel Ria were alone for most of the
 day now.
  But far from being lonely they were very content and occupied, and each
  had the other's undivided attention. Winemaking now impossible - even to
  Alice Tremorne - with rationed sugar, they had taken up the challenge of
  cooking. Planting high stools in strategic resting places around the
  kitchen and scullery, she moved from one to another, talking to her
  keenly interested supervisor and taster ensconced at table level on a
  nearby chair, as she put her full ingenuity into the test of making
  something delicious out of the nothing of wartime substitutes and those
  rewarding eggs. The results were greatly appreciated by the still steady
  stream of visiting members of the Forces.
  The months slipped by most satisfyingly. In August the reentry into Paris
  was celebrated with Oeufs parisiens; in September a landmine exploding
  in a field half a mile away rocked the house and flattened a magnificent
  Souffl~ Arnhem; October brought the occupation of Athens and exotic
  (curried) Oeufs a la greque. Even the hens were doing their bit. Her
  triumph was the wedding feast with one of them in aspic.
  After this excitement Neil returned to Sussex to his stone frigate
  posting, Janet to her jobs, and Bel Ria and Mrs Tremorne settled down
  again, finding contentment even in the winter's cold and fuel shortages
  for they avoided these by moving almost permanently into the warm
  cosiness of the kitchen, with armchairs, footrests, wireless and all.
  Bel Ria seemed very content with this tranquil, undemanding kitchen
  existence, becoming reluctant even to desert the warmth of the fire for
  the wall, or the company of Fred and the hens. Too content altogether,
  Mrs Tremorne decided, noticing that fie stretched himself rather stiffly
  nowadays before making oie of his briefer and briefer necessary sorties
  into the garden.

                 196
  'This will never do,' she told him briskly one cold February morning when
  he poked his nose out of the door, withdrew it swiftly before the icy
  blast, and returned to the kitchen. 'We're becoming ;oft - anyone would
  think we're getting old,' and she began to coax and scold him from his
  bed by the fire for longer and longer periods. Out they went, rain or
  shine, wind or frost.
  'If I can do it --you can!' she told him mercilessly as they limped along
  together in the thin cold sunshine one day. 'Smell that-' she commanded,
  poking the rich earth with her cane, 'and that-' as she prodded a
  primrose clump. And 'Fetch!' she exhorted as she whacked at rotting
  windfalls and fir cones - until suddenly the reluctant exercise turned
  into an exuberant, rolling, snuffing, digging discovery in the
  irresistible challenge of spring. Very soon Bel Ria had forsaken the
  hearthside and was back in charge of his vibrant garden domain.
  It was not until the day of Victory in Europe that she was forced to
  admit in her heart that he was slowing up. Out in the garden to share in
  the jubilation of the long silenced bells pealing across the countryside,
  she saw Bel Ria try and fail to make the low jump on to the wall.
  'Perhaps we're not quite as young as we were, my loved one,' she
  admitted, 'but let's rejoice anyway! ' and she called in two youngsters
  passing by to move a garden seat close to the wall to make things easier
  for him. She sat there for a while when he was safely up, warm and
  content in the sun, both listening and watching and meditating. When he
  acknowledged with his customary dignity his friends among the passers-by
  below, she stood up, her head on a level with his, and rejoiced with
  them. Then they went back into the house and there Mrs Tremorne ripped
  down the blackout curtains from her bedroom window, hung out a Union
  Jack, and tied a red, white and blue ribbon in a bow on Bel Ria's collar.
  But in truth she herself seemed rejuvenated in this her eightieth year,
  for so much had happened, there was so much to look forward to, so many
  preparations afoot. Janet

                 197
 and Neil had their own quarters upstairs now, and it would not be long
 before he was demobbed. Her relief that the war was at last over was
 measured more by the fact that she no longer felt bound to supply His
 Majesty's Navy with knitted comforts, but could ply her needles instead
 in an endless stream of matin6e jackets, bootees and bonnets for the child
 that was on the way. And the assurance that she would be the child's
 godmother and proxy grandmother all rolled into one gave her carte blanche
 to order the best in nursery furniture and equipment in the same manner
 as she had years before ordered the best for a nameless little dog.
  There wa,, another more immediate excitement to be realised too, the long
  awaited visit from Donald Sinclair. She could think of little else the
  week before. Bel Ria was shampooed, trimmed, combed and brushed to silken
  perfection, and she thought that he must sense something unusually
  exciting in the wind, for he became very restless and questioning the day
  before the visit.
  She was alone in the house that day, a day that had become unexpectedly
  even more momentous: early in the morning Neil had taken Janet to the
  hospital - some three weeks earlier than had been anticipated. She
  hovered between the kitchen and the hall window, the crossword unsolved,
  her knitting untouched, unable to settle to anything.
  The charged atmosphere in the house since that dawn awakening had
  affected Bel Ria too. He became increasingly restless as the morning wore
  on, panting, importuning, roaming from room to room, up and down the
  stairs, then back to her. He whined at the door to be let out, then
  minutes later scratched at it to be let in. She watched him settle on the
  sanctuary of the wall in the early afternoon almost with relief.
  He was there when his soldier came walking up the road, searching for the
  house. Minutes before he came into view, Bel Ria half rose, ears pricked,
  tensed and ready. For the first time he jumped down off the wall on to
  the road. He waited, crouched low and quivering.

                 198
  Donald Sinclair did not recognise him at first glance, so neatly
  unobtrusive against a peaceful suburban background; then, as he drew
  nearer, the unmistakable riveting eyes drew him back down the years to that
  road in France and the dusty desolate little fig-Lire with its rider
  clinging tightly around its neck. Then the eyes had been filled with wary
  entreaty; now they were bright and somehow calmly expectant. He waited
  there steadily, until that soldier who had once tried to drive him off,
  picked him up silently now and held him close in his arms. He buried his
  head in the man's jacket, as though seeking once moie the reassurance of a
  bandage torn from familiar clothing.
  Sinclair could feel the heart beating fast beneath his hands. He opened the
  gate and stood within for a long minute, for he was deeply moved, then he
  walked slowly towards the house.
  Alice Tremorric came to the door, her face ashen; she had seen him coming
  from the window and thought he carried a dead or injured Bel. Wordlessly,
  she put out her hands to take him, but he resisted, burrowing his head back
  within the man's jacket. In a sudden flood of relief she realised who this
  stranger must be.
  'I'm sorry, I must have given you a fright. I'm Donald Sinclair,' he said,
  and put Bel Ria down to steady her.
  Her knees felt as though they were buckling. She tottered into the kitchen
  on his arm and sank into the nearest chair.
  'How silly of me,' she said at last, the colour returning to her face. 'It
  has been such an eventful day-'
  He brought her a glass of water. 'I think this is an occasion that calls
  for something a little stronger,' she said, managing a smile at last, and
  directed him to the cupboard with the Sloe Gin, '36.
  'My best vintage,' she said as she poured two glasses. 'I never drink it
  without thinking of Bel - Bel Ria, I mean, he saved my life, you know, he
  found me-'
 She broke off and looked across to where he sat now with his

                 199
 muzzle laid on the man's knee, whining softly. She had never seen him U-c
 this before, so tense that he was almost rigid, his whole being concentrated
 on the man, excluding her even when she had spoken his name.
  'There is no need to ask if he recognised you,' she said.,
 smiling, for strangely the exclusion did not rankle. She had
 warmed immediately to this tall gentle-faced man with the
 same soft accent as Neil, the same dark almost navy blue
   'Oh, thcre is so much to tell you, so much to ask - let~s
 eyes.
 begin at the beginning and go on to the end.'
  The sloe gin reminded Donald Sinclair in its potency of the old man's
  fire-cour,~ing brew. It might not be the beginning, but he spoke of this
  now, of the last sip taken on French soil with the young Fusilier, of the
  Lancastria's last hours, and the long ordeal in the water when he had seen
  himself reflected in those same dark eves that watched him now. And from
  there he went back to the first encounter with the caravan.
  He was a natural story-teller. Sometimes the words came out as though he
  were half-speaking to himself, his face clearing as some long forgotten
  detail sprang to mind again, at other times frowning in concentration.
  Drawn on by Mrs Tremorne's rapt attention, her head nodding from time to
  time as some small blank was filled in for her, he recreated in vivid
  living detail the close security and love, the responsibility, the
  excitement, the tragedy and courage of those eventful missing hours in Bel
  Ria's life that he had shared.
  She spoke only once, when he described the perfection of communication
  between the dark woman and her dog in the performance on the road.
  'So that was what he was trying to tell me,' she said sadly, 'Oh, Bel, if
  only I had known-'
  But Bel Ria had ears only for the inflections of this voice that stirred
  memory, this man who was his last link in the human chain that reached back
  to the rolling open roads of the caravan world, the chain that held him
  fast for so long.
 It was almost dusk when the story ended. The kitchen was

                 200
 very still and peaceful. Mrs Tremorne roused herself back to reality after
 a long silence. 'I wonder what his real name was,' she mused and she told of
 John Peel's hounds and how Bel had picked out his name.
  'I don't think I heard her speak directly to him once,' said Donald
  Sinclair. 'She would nod, or use her hands, or just look his way and that
  was all. But it is curious that he picked on an English word like "bell".'
  He drew out of his pocket a white pillbox and handed it over. 'It was
  around his neck,' he explained, 'I brought it for good luck - for the bairn
  that's coming.'
  Mrs Tremorne opened the box and took out a tiny silver bell, the handle
  threaded by a narrow metallic strip. She shook it gently, smiling at the
  unexpectedly clear sweet tone.
  Bel Ria's head turned a,~ though electrified by the sound, his ears
  pricked, then for the first time since Sinclair's arrival he came to her.
  His tail moved faster and faster, he cocked his head from one side to the
  other as she tinkled the bell again. She slipped the ribbon around his
  neck. He tossed his head, shook it, thcji moved it from side to side in a
  deliberate rhythmic control that kept the clapper chiming continuously.
  Enchanted, Mrs Tremorne clapped her hands in time.
  'He had bells around his paws too when he danced on the road,' said
  Sinclair. He clicked his fingers and Bel Ria came running to sit before
  him, transformed with a jaunty confident excitement.
  He offered his forepaws, one at a time with a demanding insistence. Donald
  Sinclair took each one in turn, encircling it with his fingers, smiling
  down regretfully, but Bel Ria seemed satisfied with the action. He stood
  stockstill between them for a moment, then with head erect, he straightened
  his back and extended his forepaws in the ritual that had always preceded
  the tantalising fragment of the dance bestowed from time to time on Mrs
  Tremorne.
  He took the opening step -and at the very same moment there was a crashing
  bang as the front door slammed, foot-
  
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 steps ran across the hall, then the kitchen door burst open before Neil
 MacLean.
  'Janet's fine! ' he shouted, 'and it's a boy - Janet's got a fine wee boy
  for us!'
  He rushed at Mrs Trcmorne and hugged her, so carried away that he almost
  lifted her off her feet. Then he turned to Donald Sinclair and an
  incomprehensible flood of Gaelic goodwill followed, accompanied by much
  handshaking and backslapping.
  Bel Ria was caught up in the excitement too. His years fell away and lie
  raced around the kitchen, scattering the rugs on the linoleum. He skidded
  to a halt and barked before the group, but such was the jubilation that no
  one heard this rarest demand for notice. In an attempt to be more closely
  involved he jumped up on to a nearby chair, but abandoned it when Mrs
  Tremorne unknowingly dropped her fur wrap over his head when she went to
  find the hoarded whisky to wet the new Scot's head. His exuberance died
  away and he sat panting quietly by the door, the wrap still trailing from
  one shoulder.
  They sat around the table after the initial toast of health, wealth and
  happiness to the new life. They grew ever more close and mellow as
  reminiscences and plans flowed back and forth. They drank a ioast to Janet,
  and to one another.
  'And to Bel Ria,' remembered Mrs Tremorne at last, looking down at him,
  remorseful at her oversight. 'To my darting Bel -for if it were not for
  you, the three of us would not be celebrating now.'
 'To Bel-'
 'And Ria--'
 'And Bel Ria-' they said, and raised their glasses to him.
  After the first commotion of congratulations had died down, he had crept
  back to sit by Sinclair, pressed close against his leg. Occasionally he had
  shaken his head in a bid for inclusion, but thc small sweet sound of the
  bell went unheard below the cheerful voices. Then he had tried circling the
  group,

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 pausing, concentrating intently on the faces as though willing them to
 glance down. He was patted absently by each in turn, but still the voices
 rose and fell, denying him. He whined, patently distressed and bewildered,
 as though he understood no meaning or intent from their intonations.
 Panting, he went to and from his waterbowl until it was empty, then returned
 to sit by the soldier.
  'Bel - Ria - Bel Ria -' he heard at last, and the hand that lay on his neck
  threaded fingers through the ribbon there to set the bell tinkling clearly
  in the sudden silence.
  It was his moment. He had the full spotlight of his audience's attention at
  last. He shook his head to set the bell ringing, rose, then straight and
  steady, his eyes fixed ahead, he pirouetted before them.
  Mrs Tremorne had been privileged to see these opening movements of his
  inexplicable little dance. Neil MacLean had never seen or even known about
  it. Long ago, Donald Sinclair had been one of a spellbound audience that
  had watched it to the conclusion. But now in the gathering dusk of a silent
  room, the little dog did not dance for him, or for her, nor did he even
  look apprehensively in Neil MacLean's direction. He danced as though he
  must, for the one who taught him. But her bidding never came, there were no
  signalling fingers or tapping foot, no gulding flute to accompany him, and
  he became halting and uncertain in his steps. Panting hard now, shaking his
  head for the reassurance of the bell he circled slowly and faltered,
  half-lowering himself to the floor, his head turning back a, though in
  search.
  Helpless and deeply disturbed, his audience watched. He rose again
  unsteadily, repeated the circle, and tried to follow on into a tight spin.
  'Oh, no - no, Bel.' pleaded one; 'Let him be,' said another; and the third
  who alone could set this tragic pas de seul against its proper background,
  who alone understood its choreography, looked on silently.
 But suddenly Bel Ria seemed to receive confidence. His

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 head went back and his eyes looked forward with a steady eagerness, as
 though long custom had recalled the closing movements and there was no
 longer any need for direction.
  There was nothing to disquiet now in the certain dignity and perfection
  of his finale. He circled, slower and slower, his forepaws lowering and
  his head drooping to the proper spaced intervals, once more the perfectly
  controlled clockwork toy running down. But this time when he sank to the
  ground he did not rise again to take his applause and finish his act. It
  was already over.