by Iva Ibbotson
They had all hoped, as Fleck had hoped, that they would find a master worth serving – and had found only borrowers who came and went and did not care – but they were older and wiser than the little mongrel and they knew that one had to pull oneself together and make the best of things.
Fleck, in his cage, tried desperately to take in what they were telling him, but he was overwhelmed by grief. He lay with his head between his paws. His coat looked dead, his eyes were dull and he had eaten almost nothing since his return.
Kayley was working in the cubicle next door and whenever she could she came in to look at the Tottenham terrier. She had saved the blue flannel that had been clamped between Fleck’s teeth when he was returned. Mr Carker did not allow it in the cage but fortunately the Carkers were away at a dog show looking for exotic dogs to buy and now she dipped it in Fleck’s water bowl and moistened his mouth.
“You must try and drink,” she told him. “You’re still a young dog. This isn’t the end of the world.”
But she was lying and she knew it. Fleck’s world had ended when the door of his cage shut behind him and Albina Fenton hurried away on her high heels.
“Please, Fleck, for all our sakes,” said Kayley, stroking his weary head.
But Fleck only looked at her with his unequal eyes, and gave a desolate whimper which he quickly tried to repress, because he knew that Mr Carker did not approve of unhappiness.
Yet the daily round had to go on. Kayley went to hose down the yard, Otto was led away by a weedy man who wanted to impress his friends. Li-Chee went off to sit on the lap of yet another ancient lady … and Fleck rolled himself up into a dismal ball at the back of his cage and escaped into sleep.
“Is he any better?” asked Pippa, as soon as Kayley had taken off her coat.
Kayley shook her head. She was very tired.
“But that’s ridiculous,” said Pippa. “He can’t go breaking his heart after only three days with someone. It isn’t what happens.”
“It has happened,” said Kayley, and flopped into a chair.
She wasn’t usually like that and Pippa, who thought the world of her sister, was angry.
“I expect the boy’s forgotten all about him,” said Pippa.
“No,” said Kayley. “He won’t have done. Some boys would have done but not this one. It was just one of those things.”
Ralph, one of the twins, looked up from his homework and said it was like Romeo and Juliet. “They only saw each other for a moment on a balcony or something and that was it.”
“How did it turn out?” asked Pippa.
“Badly,” said Ralph. “Everybody died.”
“Idiot!” said Pippa. She could see that Kayley was at the end of her tether. She poured her sister a cup of tea, but she was scowling. Things did happen that were over the top. There was the story of Greyfriars Bobby – a Skye terrier who wouldn’t leave his master’s grave and lay on his tombstone every night for eight years till he died too. It was supposed to have really happened – one could go to Edinburgh and see the grave.
“Well, if the boy hasn’t forgotten about him, then he’s just feeble. It’s because he’s rich, I suppose. Rich people are always wimps. I wouldn’t let someone give me a dog and then take it away again. Not on your life.”
“What could he do?” asked Kayley. “He’s only a kid.”
“He could steal Fleck,” said Pippa. “That’s what I’d do. It wouldn’t be proper stealing. It would be taking back what belongs to one.”
But Kayley, remembering Hal, so small and well behaved beside his overbearing father, didn’t think there was much likelihood of that.
“We’ll have to leave for work very early on Sunday,” she told her sister. “The Carkers will still be away. I must say I’ll be glad of your help.”
But Pippa meant to do more than just help. She meant to investigate.
“I’m going to ask Dr Rutherford to come and see Hal,” said Albina, to her husband. He had just come back from Beijing, where he had done an important deal, and looked surprised.
“Is he ill?” he asked.
Albina looked annoyed. “I told you – he’s off his food and he looks thoroughly peaky and he hardly speaks to me. School begins again on Monday. We can’t send him back looking like something out of an orphanage.”
“Oh well, I suppose it can’t hurt to get him checked out,” said Donald. “There’s been a nasty flu bug around. I sat next to a man on the plane who kept sneezing. I hope I haven’t caught anything.”
When ordinary people want to see a doctor they go to the surgery and wait for their turn, but Albina was too rich to be ordinary, and she had a private doctor who would come and see patients in their houses.
Dr Rutherford was elderly, with white hair and a pleasant face, and when he had examined Hal he asked Mrs Fenton to leave him to talk to Hal on his own.
“I can’t find anything wrong with you physically,” he said to the boy, “though of course if you don’t eat you’re going to get steadily weaker.”
Hal shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s nothing I have to do.”
Dr Rutherford waited. “Nothing?” he said.
“No. Not now.”
“But you did have? You did have something to do?”
“Yes.”
But he wasn’t going to talk to the doctor about Fleck, or the way his parents had betrayed him.
“Well, I’ll leave you a tonic,” said Dr Rutherford. He smiled. “That’s what doctors do when they can’t think of anything else. I think that what’s the matter with you is in your mind, but if you don’t want to speak about it, I won’t force you.”
Dr Rutherford went downstairs and found Albina waiting.
“Well? Did you find anything?”
Dr Rutherford put on his coat. “No. There is nothing physically wrong,” he said. “But there is something wrong just the same. The boy is deeply unhappy. Perhaps you know why this might be so?”
Albina flushed. “No, I don’t. Hal has everything a child could possibly need.” Then, as the doctor looked at her steadily, “There was some fuss about a dog – we rented one for him, and he thought it was here to stay and when we took it back he became quite unmanageable.”
“Ah. That would explain it,” said Dr Rutherford. And suddenly there came into his mind the memory of a white bull terrier bitch he had owned as a boy. She had run up the sides of trees and hung off a branch with her teeth, like a piece of washing. When she died of old age he had hidden in the attic and cried for a week. “Well perhaps there is a way of undoing the damage,” he told Albina. “You will have to look into your mind.”
But Albina, when he left, did not look into her mind; she looked into the kitchen, where she had to prepare her own lunch because Olga the maid had had the nerve to give notice on the day that Fleck was returned.
“You do bad,” she said to her employer. “You do bad thing. I go.”
And she had left, even though she had no job to go to and Albina offered her more money if she stayed. Fortunately that afternoon, the three G aunts came to tea, and were shocked to hear of the uselessness of the doctor, coming on top of the impertinence of the maid.
“You know, Albina, I was wondering,” said Geraldine. “Have you ever thought of sending Hal away to boarding school? I know you’d miss him but a change of scene is always a good idea.”
“And he does seem to be getting rather spoiled. I mean he’s been sulking now for nearly a week,” said Glenda. “I tried to tell him that the dog would have forgotten him completely but I don’t think he heard me.”
“Of course you’d find it difficult without him,” said Georgia. “But it’s his good you want to be thinking of. And unless you mean to have another baby to keep him company…?”
Albina shuddered. “Oh no! No, I couldn’t go through all that again. The nappies … and the screams…” She pondered what her friends had said. “I suppose he does need companionship. I’ll talk to Donald.”
“Of course I’ll miss him,” said Albina. “I’ll miss him very much. But he’s so moody at the moment – and anyway I think we’ll be moving house again soon. I’ve seen a place with a swimming pool in the basement – and a billiard room. Not that we play billiards, but you never know – so that’ll keep me very busy.”
Donald was not interested in Albina’s plans for moving. He was used to shifting house every couple of years, just as he was used to changing his car, and his firm was expanding in the Far East. He’d be away even more, but he was glad that Hal would be somewhere settled.
Every man worth his salt wanted his children to have the best.
8
The Cottage by the Sea
“There’s a postcard from Hal,” said Alec Fenton, coming into the cottage and stamping the mud off his boots. It was only a few steps to the shore where he kept his dinghy but it had rained in the night and the path easily turned to mud.
His wife, Marnie, who was kneading bread at the kitchen table, wiped her hands and smiled with pleasure. “Let’s have a look, then.”
It was a long time since they had been to London to visit Hal’s parents, but they thought the world of their grandson.
Marnie read the card over her husband’s shoulder.
“Well, that is good news! He’s got a dog all for himself! I always said that was what Hal needed.”
Alec nodded. “Growing up in that museum – it’s no life for a boy.”
He looked out of the cottage window. The tide was out, and the sand stretched in a golden curve to the water’s edge. It was a quiet day and the islands were distinct: the big island, Farra, where the monks had lived in medieval times, the smaller low-lying island where their neighbour grazed his sheep, and the rocky outcrop where the seals came to breed. A cormorant dived from a rock and came up with a fish in his beak. The gulls circled. Alec’s own boat, the Peggotty, was pulled up on the shore, ready for the evening’s fishing.
“It looks as though Albina’s seen the light,” said Marnie, “if she’s let him have a dog. Maybe we were hasty, thinking ill of her.”
The visit that they had paid to Albina and their son had been such a wretched business that they had never gone back. They had been made to feel like the crudest peasants. Albina had raised her eyebrows when she saw their luggage, and said “Really?” in a surprised voice when they said they’d prefer to sleep together in the one room rather than have the separate rooms she offered them.
“We’ve been together for thirty-five years,” Alec had said. “We’ve no call to change now.”
She had looked pained when Marnie went to the kitchen to thank the maid for the nice meal she had cooked, and pointed out that the maid was paid to do the cooking.
And their own son, Donald, had hardly been there. He was endlessly flying about, and driving about, and when he was at home he had things dangling from his ear the whole time so that he could talk to Moscow or New York instead of the people in the room.
Donald had been a nice, ordinary little boy. He’d helped his father with the lobster pots, and worked in the fields, and they had hoped he would take over the land and the boat when the time came.
But after he’d got a scholarship to a posh boarding school, Donald had changed. He’d made remarks about the cottage, how shabby it was, and how small, and asked why they didn’t get a proper car instead of the wheezing old truck they used for everything – and he’d gone off to make his fortune in the south.
And he had made it all right. If living in a house where the bath taps glittered so much that they gave you a headache, the food looked as though it was waiting to be photographed for a magazine and there wasn’t a living thing in sight was what he wanted, he’d made it all right.
But Hal … Hal was different. He was the most loving, funny little boy. He and Marnie would have gathered him up and taken him away on the spot if they’d been allowed to. Even then they’d seen how lonely the little fellow was.
But now he’d be better. There was nothing like a dog for company. They only had their old Labrador now but they couldn’t imagine life without a dog.
“Let’s write him a letter and ask him if he can’t come up to visit us and show us Fleck. Albina must have changed if she’s let him have a dog. If Donald’s too busy to bring him, there might be someone coming north and we could meet him.”
So they wrote a letter to Hal, not just a postcard. It said they hoped he could come now he was older, and bring his dog. They said it wasn’t a difficult journey. If he could get a train as far as Berwick they would meet him, and after that it was only half an hour’s drive in the truck.
Hal got this letter on the day he went off with his mother to buy the clothes for boarding school.
9
Dog Rescue
Mr Carker put an advertisement for his Easy Pets business into the papers every month. The advertisements were very glossy and there were pictures of the particularly beautiful or rare dogs which could be hired. In the latest advertisement there was a mention of the Tottenham terrier, a new breed of which there were very few specimens in England, and it said that Easy Pets was the first rental agency which had such a dog on its books.
This advertisement was read by a Miss Gertie Gorland, a tall, thin woman who lived with her brother Harold, who was also tall and thin.
The Gorlands ran a hotel by the seaside which was doing badly, and a steam laundry which was doing badly, and a delicatessen which was not only doing badly but had actually gone bust, and when they saw the advertisement they had a brainwave. “We could breed Tottenham terriers,” said Gertie. “Set up a puppy farm. If they’re so rare, people will pay fortunes for them.”
So they went round to Easy Pets and arranged to hire out Fleck for a couple of hours. They wanted to make sure that this new breed was not fierce or liable to attack strangers.
When they saw Fleck they quickly stopped worrying about his fierceness. He was curled up in his cage and scarcely looked up when they came in – there is nothing like misery for making one tired – but when Kayley put on his collar and lead, he followed them dutifully out into the street. To tell the truth, he didn’t care who he was with or where he was going.
The Gorlands hadn’t gone far when they decided that the Tottenham terrier was not likely to catch on as a fashionable pet. No one stopped them and asked them where they had got that dear little dog, no heads turned – and out in the strong light they had to admit that the terrier was an odd-looking creature with his short legs and bat-like ears.
When they had walked for a while, Gertie said she was hungry, and Harold said he was hungry too. Tall, thin people need a lot to eat.
“We could see what he’s like in crowded places,” said Gertie, looking down at the dog.
So they turned into a well-known department store where there was a grand restaurant which permitted one to bring in dogs. The owners had been forced to do this because a lot of famous people ate there who refused to be parted from their pets.
When the waiter had shown them to their table, the Gormans put the loop of Fleck’s lead under the leg of Gertie’s chair, and when he had smelled the hundred or so pairs of uninteresting feet and the over-rich smells of the food, Fleck crawled under the table and went to sleep.
“I’m not being difficult,” said Hal. “It’s just that I don’t mind whether I have a blue tuck box or a brown one. I would mind if I could, but I can’t. It doesn’t make any difference.”
Albina sighed. “I don’t know what to do with you. I’m spending a fortune to make sure you’re properly kitted out for your new school, and you just stand there like a dummy.”
They were in a famous department s
tore, buying Hal’s school uniform for Okelands. They had already bought four pairs of navy blue trousers, six white shirts, two striped ties and a cap with the Okelands motto on it. The motto was in Latin and usually Hal would have asked what it meant but now he didn’t care. If it said, “Go Out and Kill People With a Hatchet” it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing mattered to Hal any more.
After the tuck box came the scarf and the blazer and the socks…
When everything had been paid for, Albina decided to go round the store. Although she didn’t need a wedding dress she took Hal through the bridal department, and though she already had eighteen nightdresses she took him through lingerie, and though she never gardened, only got the maid to hose down the gravel, she went through the gardening department, fingering wheelbarrows and tubs of artificial roses.
In the jewellery department she bought herself a diamond bracelet, and after that she was in such a good mood that she said she would take Hal out to lunch in the restaurant which was famous for its exotic and unusual food. Hal had eaten there before and been sick afterwards but he followed his mother and the waiter to a table covered in a pink cloth, with a vase of lilies in the centre. The smiling waiters wore tailcoats and an orchestra played softly on a dais.
“Now isn’t this nice,” said Albina. She took the huge menu the waiter offered her and became absorbed in it.
“I think we’ll have—” she began.
But she didn’t go on.
Three tables away, Gertie was just dipping her spoon into her tomato soup when a kind of earthquake hit the store.
The Tottenham terrier who had been lost to the world leapt to his feet and pulled so hard at his lead that Gertie’s chair fell over and she went crashing to the floor, followed by the plate of soup, which landed upside down on her blouse.
And as she lay kicking and screaming, Fleck took off.