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 onto the lightest and finest of red leather 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 silk 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 convulsively, and then Mrs. Tremorne 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 tail gradually stirred more and more, 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 persevered; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. . . . She was about to dip into the telephone book when she remembered John Peel and his hounds.
“Yes, I ken John Peel, and Ruby too! / And Ranter and Rover . . .” 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 Peel, / Wi’ 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. Tremorne convincingly: “Ranter and Ringwood, / Bellman and True!” she continued in a surprisingly sweet soprano.
It was irritating to be bested; but as Mrs. Tremorne repeated the new names, suddenly the ears before her rose and 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: “Bell!” she said, “Bell—good Bell!” and each time she spoke, the dog’s tail wagged more furiously.
“You see,” she said triumphantly, “that’s his name — Bell! 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 ease: “Neither the feminine or 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 had 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, gray. 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 if it were not immediately returned he would stand on his hind legs 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 cozy 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 tantalized further with fragmentary glimpses of an unshared world.
There were times when he lay for hours on top of the garden wall, watching the world that passed below as though he were waiting to recognize 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 coal cart always brought the 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 bachelor sailor for a former owner, and was not much help. He made many friends among the regular passersby. 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 excellent early warning system, for minutes before the sirens wailed to the approaching throb of German raiders, he had abandoned 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 rung 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 sit 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-honored 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 words that would unlock any further response. But as the bond between them grew, his quivering need to communicate became stronger.
One day he rose to his hind legs 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, “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 volunteered 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 farther afield in the garden and watch 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 neighbor. But she was so slow that she decided he must have more from her than this 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 with 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 neighbor’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, returning 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 years of children had accustomed him to almost anything. Mrs. Tremorne leaned on her cane and reveled 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 motionless rider still on his back.
When Mrs. 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 coordinated arc onto 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 . . . Scharnhorst, Gneisenau . . . 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 stringent. 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 horsemeat 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-fifth,” declared the nine 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 appeared to be almost mesmerized 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 garden. 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 days were full indeed, and by the time a year had passed and the months of the second were marching on, 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 knitted 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 dispatched this way. Months later, Mrs. Tremorne received acknowledgment of her labors from two of the recipients, a Wren stationed in Scapa Flow, into whose hands a pair of mitts had found its 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 dispatched.
She wrote regularly to her protégés, 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 other-worldliness in the midst of service life, or perhaps she was just exceptionally fortunate, but she received many long letters 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 looked after her elderly ailing parents until they died, she had been untrained for any job. Unable, because of a slight congenital heart defect, to escape into the more colorful life of the women’s services, she had resigned herself to the gray 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 afternoons 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. Tremorne 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 undercounter 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 dance 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 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 concealed eggs — and a dozen examples that had sprung from her alone. She felt his reassuring warmth at the end of the bed. He was hers. She was just about to fall asleep when she realized that she herself had taught him none of these tricks: all had evolved from Bel himself.