2. A Dog Behind Glass

The stream of traffic was much thicker as Ben hurried homewards. He rushed up to his usual crossing at the traffic lights, and a policeman said warningly, ‘Now then, sonny, not so fast,’ thinking he might recklessly try to cross at once. But Ben waited for the red traffic light as usual. However urgent your business, you simply had to, in London. A cat which did not know about this scudded across the road without waiting. ‘Oh!’ said Ben, and closed his eyes because he could not bear to look, and then opened them again at once because, after all, he had to know. The cat looked neither to right nor to left, but suddenly quickened her pace as a car flew towards her. Cat and car sped on paths that must cross. ‘She’s done for!’ said the policeman. The car passed, and there was the cat, safe on the farther pavement. She disappeared at once down some area steps, and Ben thought that when she reached the bottom she would certainly sit down to get her breath back and to count her nine lives. The policeman was shaking his head.

Ben crossed soberly and safely at the red, and then began running again. When he turned into his home street, he saw that the time was late enough for most of the dustbins to have been put on to the pavement. His father was just trundling the Blewitt dustbin out to be emptied in its turn. This was the day of his father’s late work-shift on the Underground.

As Mr Blewitt was going indoors, he saw Ben at the end of the street and waved to him to hurry. Perhaps it was just for breakfast, but perhaps it was for the post. Ben tore along.

The post had come, and it was all for Ben. His father had piled it by his place for breakfast. There were also presents from May and Dilys, Paul and Frankie; and his mother and father had given him a sweater of the kind deep-sea fishermen wear (from his mother, really) and a Sheffield steel jack-knife (from his father). They all watched while, politely, he opened their presents first of all, and thanked them.

He was not worrying that there had been no dog standing by his place at the breakfast-table. He was not so green as to think that postmen delivered dogs.

But there would be a letter – from his grandfather, he supposed – saying when the dog would be brought, by a proper carrier, or where it could be collected from. Ben turned eagerly from his family’s presents to his post.

He turned over the letters first, looking for his grandfather’s handwriting; but there was nothing. Then he looked at the writing on the two picture-postcards that had come for him – although you would hardly expect anything so important to be left to a postcard. There was nothing. Then he began to have the feeling that something might have gone wrong after all. He remembered, almost against his will, that his grandfather’s promise had been only a whisper and a nod, and that not all promises are kept, anyway.

He turned to the parcels, and at once saw his grandfather’s handwriting on a small flat one. Then he knew for certain that something was wrong. They would hardly send him an ordinary birthday present as well as one so special as a dog. There was only one explanation: they were sending him an ordinary present instead of the dog.

‘Open it, Ben,’ said his mother; and his father reminded him, ‘Use your new knife on the string, boy.’ Ben never noticed the sharpness of the Sheffield steel as he cut the string round the parcel and then unfolded the wrapping-paper.

They had sent him a picture instead of a dog.

And then he realized that they had sent him a dog, after all. He almost hated them for it. His dog was worked in woollen cross-stitch, and framed and glazed as a little picture. There was a letter which explained: ‘Dear Ben, Your grandpa and I send you hearty good wishes for your birthday. We know you would like a dog, so here is one …’

There was more in the letter, but, with a sweep of his hand, Ben pushed aside letter, packing-paper, string and picture. They fell to the floor, the picture with a sharp sound of breakage. His mother picked it up. ‘You’ve cracked the glass, Ben, and it’s a nice little picture – a little old picture that I remember well.’

‘I think it’s a funny birthday present for Ben, don’t you, Paul?’ said Frankie; and Paul agreed. May and Dilys both thought it was rather pretty. Mr Blewitt glanced at it and then back to the newspaper he had opened.

Ben said nothing, because he could not. His mother looked at him, and he knew that she knew that, if he hadn’t been so old, and a boy, he would be crying. ‘Your granny treasured this because it was a present from your Uncle Willy,’ said Mrs Blewitt. ‘He brought it home as a curio, from his last voyage – the last voyage before he was drowned. So you see, Granny’s given you something that was precious to her.’

But what was dead Uncle Willy or a woolwork dog to Ben? He still could not trust himself to speak; and now they were all looking at him, wondering at the silence. Even his father had put the paper down.

‘Did you expect a real dog?’ Frankie asked suddenly.

Everyone else answered for Ben, anyway.

His mother said, ‘Of course not. Ben knows perfectly well that Granny and Grandpa could never afford to buy him a real dog.’

His father said, ‘And, anyway, you can’t expect to keep a dog in London nowadays – the traffic’s too dangerous.’ Ben remembered the cat scuttering from under the wheels of the car that morning, and he hated his father for being in the right. ‘It isn’t as if we had any garden to let a dog loose in,’ went on Mr Blewitt; ‘and we’re not even near an open space where you could exercise it properly.’

‘There’s the park,’ said Dilys. But Ben knew that park. It was just a large, flat piece of grass in front of a museum. There was a straight, asphalted path diagonally across it, and seats set in islands of asphalt. There was a noticeboard by the gate with forty-two by-laws beginning ‘No person shall –’ Eight of these said what no person should let a dog do there; and an extra regulation for that park said that dogs must be kept on leads. But you never saw a dog there, anyway.

May was saying, ‘What about the River?’ She only thought sensibly on her own subject, nowadays. ‘Couldn’t a dog swim in the River for exercise?’

Then Paul and Frankie and even Dilys laughed at the idea of Ben’s exercising the dog he hadn’t been given in the only open space, which was the River. They laughed merrily among themselves. Ben’s hands, half hidden by the wrapping paper that his mother had picked up from the floor, clenched into angry fists. Mrs Blewitt, still watching him anxiously, took the letter again to skim through the rest of it. ‘They say they hope you won’t be disappointed by their present – well, never mind that – and – why, Ben, just listen! – they ask you to go and stay with them again as soon as you’re able. Isn’t that nice? You always like that. Now, let’s see when you might go … Not next week, but perhaps the week after, or perhaps even –’

On this subject Ben had to speak. ‘I don’t want to go there,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever want to go there again. I shan’t.’