by Megan Rix
Buster’s descent – minus the squirrel, which ran up another branch and then leapt to the next tree – was much slower than his ascent. His little body trembled as he inched his way down, tummy pressed into the bark for reassurance.
The experience didn’t put him off chasing squirrels though, not in the slightest. Luckily, trees with squirrels in them and branches low enough for a small dog to run up were few and far between.
Although Lucy had every intention of following Robert’s advice to keep her head down, Pincher Jane had no intention of making that easy for her. She and some of her cronies were waiting for Lucy when they got to school.
‘Go to your class, Charlie,’ Robert told him.
‘But …’
‘Now.’
Pincher Jane’s face was very close to Lucy’s. ‘Look what you did,’ she said, pointing at the scratch marks.
Robert tried to mediate. ‘Hang on, there’s no need for this. It was half a dozen of one …’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy said, but Pincher Jane didn’t want apologies. She launched herself at Lucy like a wildcat and Lucy had no choice but to try and defend herself, with Robert trying to pull them apart and a growing crowd of onlookers gathering.
‘What’s all this?’ Mr Faber roared, swishing his cane. The crowd parted to let him through. ‘You two again,’ he said to Pincher Jane and Lucy. ‘And Mr Edwards in the thick of it. I might have known. Hold out your hand.’
‘But he didn’t do anything!’ Lucy cried, horrified.
‘Now.’
Robert held out his right hand and Mr Faber struck it with the cane, and then did the same to his left. Lucy and Pincher Jane looked at each other, dreading what was to come. Pincher Jane had tears in her eyes.
‘Now let that be a lesson to you.’
They waited for Mr Faber to cane them too, but the handbell started to ring and Mr Faber told them to go to class.
All day long, Lucy worried that Mr Faber would send for her. But he didn’t.
Robert sat at the back of his classroom, his hands smarting, hating Mr Faber and the injustice of being caned for trying to make peace and prevent a fight from breaking out.
He wished he was back in London with Michael and his other friends. Later he wrote another letter to Michael on the back of his piece of precious art paper while he was supposed to be copying a still life of some rotten-looking apples. Mr Faber and Hitler would probably be the best of friends if they met each other, he wrote. He asked Michael how Buster, Tiger and Rose were getting on and if he’d been able to visit them like he’d said he would, or if he’d been too busy helping his father with his NARPAC work. Robert wished he was old enough to help his own dad on his reconnaissance missions. He missed him badly.
At the airbase Maisy, the WAAF girl, always said the same thing when she saw the planes off, after checking the crew and flight destination on her clipboard. It was part of a standing joke:
‘Bring it back in one piece.’
Officer Roger Fletcher hated the two pigeons they took on board with them every flight. ‘They’re flying rats, that’s what they are,’ he’d say.
The pigeon wrangler, Jim, didn’t approve of Officer Fletcher’s attitude and was looking forward to the day, in a couple of weeks’ time, when Roger went off to do his pilot’s training. He hoped the new man the Air Ministry Pigeon Section was sending had a better attitude to the birds.
‘You won’t be calling them flying rats when you need them,’ Jim said. He’d tried to explain to Roger how homing pigeons were special; how, once they had understood that their home was their home, they knew with some amazing instinct how to get back to it. And as the airfield was now their home, to the airfield they would always return.
But try as Jim might, Roger was not impressed. ‘I don’t like the way they flap their wings or the noise they make.’ Jim shook his head.
When Roger’s replacement arrived two weeks later, Jim was not disappointed.
Officer Cadet Joe Lawson might have been only eighteen, but he was more than just a pigeon fancier – he seemed to have an appreciation for all animals. Jim and William Edwards laughed as Joe told how he’d recently shared a train compartment and his sandwiches with three animals – two dogs and a cat.
‘And they were some of the finest travelling companions I’ve known, let me tell you.’
Joe’s story made Mr Edwards think about his pets at home, and he told Joe and Jim about Buster’s antics. He missed Buster and he missed his family. The men at the base never talked about feeling homesick, but just about everyone was.
Jim took them over to see his latest fledgling pigeons. They had wispy downy yellow feathers on their heads and necks and grey-feather wings. Their beaks seemed long in proportion to an adult pigeon’s beak.
Mr Edwards thought they had the look of a young heron about them.
‘Aren’t they beauties?’ Jim said proudly.
And although neither Mr Edwards nor Joe would, if they’d been honest, have called the young pigeons beautiful, they both agreed with him.
‘That’s my favourite,’ Jim said, pointing to one at the back. ‘I’ve called her Lily, after my youngest daughter.’
They turned at the sound of a plane taking off – another reconnaissance plane on its way over to France. They all watched until it disappeared.
Sometimes it seemed to Michael that he was the only one of his age left in the whole of London.
His father had forbidden him from going with him again to the death field after he’d thrown up at the animal cremation fire. It had been the terrible scent in the air, the smell of death, that had first turned his stomach, before they’d even reached the field proper.
But worse was to come as he saw the large bonfire that had been piled high in the field, with pets that had been put down being burnt on it.
‘Why?’ Michael had gasped in horrified disbelief.
The animals had done nothing to deserve their deaths. Nothing at all.
After that day Michael would look at the pets being taken to be slaughtered and one would wag its tail, or look at him with innocent trusting eyes, or a cat would purr, totally unaware that its life was about to be over. When this happened, it was all Michael could do not to cry. It was all just so wrong. Then there were the pets that hadn’t been taken to the animal shelters. The ones that had been abandoned and left to wander the streets and fend for themselves. In some ways that was even worse. What chance would those animals have? And it was only going to get worse as autumn and then winter drew in.
How could pet owners leave their animals to turn feral and most likely end up starving to death?
Michael turned these questions over and over in his mind.
His main NARPAC jobs were to take messages and bring in stray animals – but only those that were no danger to him.
‘Don’t even attempt to approach a dog you don’t like the look of,’ his father warned him. ‘And if it looks diseased, leave well alone.’
It wasn’t enough. He wanted to do more.
Michael found the empty basement by accident. It was in one of the many buildings that had been abandoned, as people left London for their barracks or for the safety of the countryside.
He was following a stray cat that, a glimpse had told him, had recently given birth and surely needed medical attention.
He was just in time to see it squeeze through a hole in a fence. Michael followed despite his father’s warnings.
He was surprised to find himself in a large overgrown garden that was totally enclosed.
The cat was just ahead of him.
Michael crouched down so he’d be less frightening.
‘Here, girl,’ he called.
The cat took a step towards him, wary but curious.
‘That’s it – come on.’
The cat moved a little closer and Michael was sure she was going to come to him
when there was a faint mewling sound and she skittered away. Michael jumped up and ran after the cat, and was just in time to see her disappear down an open basement trapdoor.
After descending the steps into the basement Michael could see the cat over in the corner with her four kittens: one ginger tom that reminded Michael a little of Tiger, and three black-and-whites.
He knew he should report this so that the cat and her kittens could be moved to one of the animal shelters. That was the procedure he was supposed to follow. But the animal shelters were so full and had no choice but to put more and more animals down. The cat and her kittens wouldn’t stand a chance there. The basement was dry and safe. All they needed was some food and water and they could stay here until the kittens were stronger.
And so it turned out that the cat and her kittens were the first residents of Michael’s unofficial animal rescue centre.
Chapter 14
Days blended into each other and began to be almost indistinguishable one from the next, just like the forest areas the pets went through. But some woodland areas, although they looked the same to the animals’ eyes, had signs that said ‘Private’ and ‘No Trespassing’. And it was in one of these woodlands, as Rose and Buster chased a rabbit and Tiger waited to pounce, that Rose suddenly let out a yelp of pain.
The gamekeeper had laid thin wire snares to catch rabbits and foxes, and one of these had caught Rose’s right fore paw.
The more she struggled to free her trapped leg, the tighter the snare became. The other two watched helplessly as Rose frantically tried to break free.
Tiger raced up a tree and Buster ran to hide in a bush at the sound of rustling. The gamekeeper was coming!
The man held a gun and had a string of dead rabbits over his shoulder. The rabbits had not been as fortunate as Rose: having put their heads in the snares rather than their paws, they’d had no chance of escape, the snares tightening cruelly round their necks as they struggled. Even if they managed to survive until the gamekeeper came, he killed them.
Rose went dead still as the gamekeeper approached, smelling the blood on the man, sensing the danger that she was in.
‘What have we here, then?’ he said, and he put the dead rabbits on the ground so he could take a better look at Rose. He kept the rifle with him though. If she turned out to be an aggressive dog or was too badly injured from trying to break free from the snare, he would have no second thoughts about shooting her.
The snare was designed so that it tightened as the terrified animal struggled, but released once it stopped struggling. As Rose lay still the snare relaxed a little.
As the gamekeeper crouched down to take a look at Rose, putting his rifle on the ground, Tiger crept down the tree. His plan was to help himself to one of the rabbits, but as there were six tied together it was a lot for him to carry. Buster couldn’t resist the smell of fresh meat and came out of the bush. His small, sharp teeth clamped round the dead head of the first animal.
The gamekeeper looked round to find his rabbits gone.
‘Hey!’ he yelled and he picked up his gun, as Rose gave her paw a sudden, sharp tug, freeing it from the snare. She was up in a second and running after the other two, even though her paw was cut and in agony.
The gamekeeper thumped through the woodland in pursuit of his missing rabbits, swearing at whatever it was that had taken them. He suspected a fox. It was hard to tell in the dense woodland.
The animals slipped quietly away and once the sounds of the angry man had stopped, Rose joined the other two for a rabbit feast.
But the wire snare had cut deep into her flesh and that night Rose’s sleep was troubled and fitful. Buster and Tiger stayed close as the collie whimpered and flinched in her sleep.
The next morning Rose staggered to her feet and limped on, although pain thudded through her thin body with every step she took, and an involuntary cry of agony escaped from her panting mouth every now and again.
Soon their travel pace became painfully slow as Rose dragged herself onward, refusing to be defeated. Buster and Tiger brought her food to save her needing to hunt. But the pain soon became so bad that she barely ate. Buster whined and nudged part of a rabbit over to her, but Rose sighed and turned her head away.
It was twilight when the animals stopped to drink at a canal near Loxwood in West Sussex. Here Rose finally lay down and closed her eyes. Buster and Tiger waited, but she didn’t open them again. The animals instinctively kept as hidden as possible, especially when they slept, for safety’s sake; but Rose was fast asleep right out in the open. Buster barked at her, but she didn’t stir. He barked again and danced around her and nuzzled her with his head, but she still didn’t move.
Suddenly something much bigger than a duck or a swan or a deer or any other animal they’d seen close to the water before was heading towards them.
Buster was desperate and tried to wake Rose by licking her face. She shouldn’t be lying there. She’d be seen. Buster and Tiger fled as the huge horse came closer – but not too far. They crouched low in the bushes and watched.
The blue roan mare was fourteen hands high and tethered to a barge that she was towing. The mare stopped beside Rose and nuzzled her with her giant head. She seemed to have no inclination to move past the collie, but no intention of harming her either.
‘Come on, Bluebell, get a move on there,’ a voice from the barge called out.
But Bluebell stayed by Rose’s side. She tried gently nuzzling Rose again, but the dog didn’t stir.
‘Go and see what’s up with her, Jack.’
A boy hopped off the barge and on to the riverbank to see what Bluebell had stopped for. ‘What’s wrong, girl?’
Buster and Tiger watched him from their hiding place.
Jack saw Rose lying on the towpath and knelt down beside her.
Rose raised her head a little to look at the boy, but it was a supreme effort for her.
‘It’s all right, you lie back down again. You’ll be all right.’ But as Jack spoke he was looking at Rose’s injured paw and frowning. ‘Grandad!’
‘What is it now?’
‘Come quick.’
Jack’s grandad, the bargee, came off the boat. He bent down to look at Rose. ‘What have we got here, then?’
‘Will she be all right?’ Jack asked him. It was only two months since his old dog, Ben, had gone to sleep and not woken up the next morning. The pain of losing his best friend was still raw.
Alfred never lied to his grandson. ‘It don’t look good. That paw’s infected bad.’
‘We’ve got to help her,’ Jack said. They couldn’t just leave the dog here to die.
Alfred nodded. He could see Rose’s ribs through her fur. A good meal or three wouldn’t do her any harm. But that paw. That paw didn’t look good. He wasn’t sure if he could even save that leg of hers. He lifted Rose’s leg to see how far the infection from her wound had spread.
Rose whimpered.
‘Bring her on board.’
‘It’s all right, I won’t hurt you, girl,’ Jack said, as he lifted Rose into his arms and carried her on board the barge.
Inside was cramped and cosy. The barge’s small cooking range was in the rear of the cabin. It was fired by coal and had rails round the top to stop pans and the kettle from falling off. Alfred had been cooking Bluebell some bran mash to which he’d just added some grated carrot and molasses.
‘Put her on the bed.’
Jack lay Rose gently down on the narrow bottom bunk bed. At least she’d be warmer and safer in here than outside on the towpath.
The dog was very weak and Alfred wasn’t even completely sure that she’d make it through the night.
‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ Jack said anxiously.
Alfred sighed. Sometimes it was hard never lying to the boy. ‘It’s hard to say. Willpower will get her through if anything can. It all depends on how strong her wi
ll to live is.’
‘It’s strong, Grandad, I know it is.’
Outside Bluebell whinnied.
‘You take her food to her.’
Jack hesitated, not wanting to leave the dog.
‘Go on now.’
Jack came on to the towpath with a bucket of food for Bluebell.
‘There you go, girl.’ He released the mare from her harness and rubbed her down, talking to her all the time.
‘Well spotted there, Bluebell. Many a barge horse would have gone straight on, but not you, girl, aye? Not you.’
He blew softly at Bluebell’s nose and Bluebell blew back. Then Jack went back on to the barge as twilight turned to night.
Outside Buster and Tiger watched and waited for Rose to come back to them. They waited and watched and watched and waited, and finally fell asleep in the bush where they’d hidden.
The next morning Rose managed to drink some water and eat a little mashed chicken. As Alfred had suspected, the wound on her paw had become infected. He showed Jack how to make a poultice for it and later he lanced the wound to remove the pus.
‘I’m sorry, girl,’ Alfred said, as Rose whimpered and tried to pull her paw away. ‘But it has to be done.’
‘What shall we call her?’ Jack said.
‘Dog’ll do.’
But that wasn’t good enough for Jack. ‘Gypsy, I think we should call her Gypsy.’
For most of the rest of the day Rose slept on Jack’s bed. Outside Buster and Tiger waited. They were hungry too, although Buster wasn’t quite as hungry as Tiger, as he’d finished off what was left in Bluebell’s mash bucket.
Later in the day Tiger disappeared after a large water rat and came back stuffed full and quite ready to go back to sleep while they continued to wait for Rose.
The next morning Bluebell was re-tethered to the barge and it continued on its slow watery journey to the sea. Buster and Tiger followed the barge, at the side of the towpath, unseen.