by Forrest Reid
“I love this place,” Tom thought, expressing the immediate feeling of contentment that flowed in to him through all his senses. What stretched before him was a kind of pageant of summer at its height—an intensity of heat and light, of colour and growth and movement, filled with low stirrings and secret calls. The sea was visible when he sat up; indeed, though considerably below them, it was quite close as a bird would fly. Then, when he lay back in the heather again, it disappeared, and looking up he saw nothing but a bluish quivering haze that veiled the deeper blue of the sky.
Pascoe at once got busy. He opened his tin specimen-box and unscrewed his press, between the boards of which were a dozen sheets of blotting-paper. Tom admired the neatness with which he manipulated his flowers. He must have a very delicate sense of touch, for his fingers seemed never to bruise anything, never to fumble or make a slip. Watching him, Tom felt a momentary desire to assist, but knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to do so, and relapsed again into laziness. The slope on which he lay supported him at exactly the right angle for comfort; in spite of the buzzing and humming, no flies molested him; and the fair-haired Pascoe, with his mouth pursed up and an intensely serious expression on his whole countenance, looked somehow both amusing and attractive. “Would you be surprised if we saw an angel?” Tom asked him, but it was the kind of question Pascoe evidently regarded as merely symptomatic, for he neither stopped working nor answered.
“The worst of botany books,” Pascoe presently remarked, “is that unless there’s a coloured picture, or you happen to know the name of the plant already, they don’t help you much. That is, if you’re a beginner. Your father told me I might find it a bit complicated at first.”
It was at this moment that a large woolly dog joined them.
Neither of them had seen him approaching; he hadn’t been there a second ago, and now he was there—that was all. Probably a sheepdog of sorts, though he bore a marked resemblance to a bear, for his eyes were small, his muzzle blunt, and his unusually thick blackish-grey coat, to which a long streamer of goose-grass was attached, seemed to contain the accumulated dust of a lifetime.
He sat down facing Tom and Pascoe, nearly closed his eyes, and opened his mouth sufficiently to allow three or four inches of pink tongue to protrude. His breath came with the quick, panting sound of a small gas-engine, and his tongue dripped slowly drop after drop of moisture on to the ground. Pascoe, looking up from his work, frowned thoughtfully at him in silence. Then he said, with what was rather like a sigh: “There’s no doubt it’s much easier to identify animals than flowers.”
Tom supposed it was, though at the same time he was finding some difficulty in regard to this particular specimen. “You mean you’d know he was a dog?” he pondered.
“Well, wouldn’t you?” Pascoe replied; “and yet there’s far more difference between him and lots of other dogs than there is between you and a monkey.”
“Thanks,” said Tom, while he continued to study their visitor.
“I didn’t mean you in particular,” Pascoe explained. “I meant us—human beings. What breed would you say he was?”
“That’s just what I’ve been trying to make out,” Tom murmured doubtfully. “He isn’t so easy to identify. I don’t think he’s any breed at all. He’s just Dog. He looks to me like the first dog.”
“Yes, he does rather,” Pascoe agreed. “And I expect they were all the same once, like pigeons. I think that’s pretty clever of you.”
Tom was pleased, for Pascoe did not often pay compliments. He tried to be clever again. “I think I know his name,” he said.
Pascoe looked at him sceptically. “What is it?” he asked.
“Bruin,” said Tom, though the moment he had said it, it struck him as feeble. “Bruin! Bruin!” he called.
Yet marvellous to relate, he had guessed right, for a bushy heavy tail immediately thumped the ground. Tom was delighted. “I nearly always know dogs’ names,” he added imaginatively.
Pascoe did not answer, but suddenly he called out: “Chrysanthemum! Chrysanthemum!” and the tail once more thumped recognition.
Tom changed the subject. “Anyhow, he’s joined us,” he said. “And he’s going to stay with us all day. You can see that.” And indeed Bruin, or Chrysanthemum, or whatever his name was, did show every sign of intending to remain.
“Go home, sir!” ordered Pascoe, but this time it didn’t work, and Tom murmured: “Sucks to you!”
“It’s no good,” he went on; “he’s just friendly and frightfully determined. He knows quite well we’re having a picnic, and he knows we can’t do anything if he makes up his mind to stay. He’ll eat most of the sandwiches too: dogs like that have awful appetites. I bet he could eat a whole leg of mutton.”
“I bet he won’t eat my sandwiches,” replied Pascoe simply.
He began to screw up his press, and Tom waited till he had finished before rising to his feet. “Well, what about going on?” he then proposed. “It’ll be nicer down at the sea.”
They picked their way back to the lane, the woolly dog preceding them, looking round over his shoulder every few seconds as if encouraging them not to lag behind.
For some reason this air of leadership began to displease Pascoe, who wasn’t particularly fond of animals. Tom merely found it amusing, and Pascoe’s attitude amused him also.
“It’s because he’s so beastly full of himself,” Pascoe grumbled. “Besides, I know he’s going to be a nuisance. Just look at him! You’d think he was taking charge of us! It’s what he thinks, anyhow. For two ticks I’d turn round and go the other way.”
“So would he,” Tom answered gaily; “you won’t get rid of him like that, and we want to get down to the shore.”
There was something in what Pascoe said, all the same, and the nearer they drew to the sea the more urgent became Chrysanthemum’s signals. For an oldish dog he was behaving very oddly. He kept running on ahead and then running back again, showing all the time more and more excitement. Tom half expected to be grabbed by the jacket at any moment, and though this didn’t actually happen it came as near to it as possible. Pascoe deliberately slackened his pace.
“He is leading us!” cried Tom with sudden conviction. “I wonder what’s the matter!” For he had read about Saint Bernards, and other philanthropic dogs, organizers of rescue parties, inveterate humanitarians. Yet it seemed hardly likely that there could be any question of a rescue here, unless somebody trying to climb the cliff had sprained an ankle or fallen.
“There’s nothing the matter,” Pascoe told him. “Don’t take any notice; he sees he’s impressing you. If you stop taking any notice of him he’ll soon get tired.”
But Tom was doubtful, and he ran down the last slope and on to the beach, where he waited for Pascoe, with Chrysanthemum jumping round him in the most extraordinary fashion.
It couldn’t be a rescue, however, for there wasn’t a living soul in sight. Besides, Chrysanthemum never so much as glanced at the cliff, but devoted all his attention to Tom. In another minute Pascoe had joined them.
The tide was out and they walked at the sea’s edge till they reached the end of the bay. Here, on a flat rock, Tom put down the basket and Pascoe his botanizing paraphernalia.
“What is the matter?” Tom exclaimed again, all his curiosity returning as Chrysanthemum began to dig wildly beneath the very rock they had chosen. He showered the sand out in a thick storm, and in a very short time had scraped a hole about a foot deep. “He’ll soon be in Australia,” Tom murmured, but he had begun to feel a share of the excitement himself, half hoping for romantic developments—a big brass-bound box—even a little one would do.
“Perhaps it’s a smuggler’s hiding-place,” he suggested to the less impressionable Pascoe. “Do you think it could be? Or it may be treasure out of a wreck.”
“It’s much more likely to be a dead body,” returned Pascoe gloomily, and this unpleasant view was somehow so plausible that it instantly dispersed Tom’s dream of treasure-tr
ove.
He wished Pascoe had kept quiet: he wished they had gone to the other end of the bay. Side by side they stood watching Chrysanthemum, who was now so plastered with sand as to be more like some unclassified marine object than a dog. The hole he was making grew deeper and deeper; at any moment a stiff dead hand or foot might gruesomely appear.
“I wish we hadn’t come,” Tom whispered. “Do you think it would be wrong for us to go away?”
“No, I don’t,” returned Pascoe emphatically, “and I’m going.” He lifted up his own personal belongings as he spoke, and Tom lifted the basket.
“We’re not the police,” Pascoe went on. “It’s none of our business to go hunting for corpses. And if there is a corpse, it must be of somebody who was murdered.”
This also seemed a logical conclusion: Pascoe would make a very good detective, Tom thought. So they retired nearer the cliff and chose this time a rock above high-water mark.
The curious thing was that Chrysanthemum, after a single parting glance at his unfinished labours, immediately joined them and began fresh excavations in the new spot.
They were equally vigorous too, and Tom, though he was several yards off, got a shower of sand in his face. Yet in spite of being half blinded he felt relieved. “It’s all nonsense!” he cried. “There can’t be dead bodies all over the place. It’s not a cemetery.”
Then he tried an experiment. He lifted a stone and threw it. Chrysanthemum instantly ceased digging and raced after the stone with deafening barks. At last they’d grasped what all along he had wanted, and from that moment he jumped about them and barked without ceasing. The rocks reverberated. It was a marvel how one dog—even a big one—could make so much noise. There was little question now of sea-music and lonely shores. Nothing less like his last visit could Tom imagine.
“He’s going to spoil the whole thing,” he said, beginning to share Pascoe’s opinion. “We may as well give it up and go somewhere else. We can try up there on the cliff. If we get further away from the sea he may stop barking, and he won’t be able to dig.”
“I’m not going away from the sea,” Pascoe declared obstinately. “I’m not going to let any dog upset my arrangements. What’s more, I’m going to bathe before lunch.”
“He has upset them, whether we like it or not,” Tom replied; but when Pascoe began to undress, he did so also, and they ran down to the water’s edge. The blue sea glittered in the sun, and big rounded waves came tumbling in, foaming past the rocks and hissing up the smooth brown sand. Chrysanthemum bathed with them: that was to be expected. But it didn’t matter much; it was only surf-bathing anyhow; for even quite close to the edge the waves were as high as their shoulders and carried them for yards up the beach. Chrysanthemum was swimming most of the time; Pascoe tried to swim; but Tom waited for the waves, sitting in the shallows and letting them lift him up and sweep him on with squeals of delight, leaving him stranded high and dry. It was fine sitting on the sand in ten inches of warmish water, with bubbles of spray melting on your legs. Presently Pascoe came into the shallows too; and then Chrysanthemum—they were all together now. Pascoe looked extremely naked beside Chrysanthemum, whose coat was as dense as, and much longer than, a sheep’s. Chrysanthemum was really a good name for him, though Tom knew it had been chosen by Pascoe as the most unlikely he could think of. But really it was much better than Bruin, which was stupid. The kind of chrysanthemum that has long loose petals, Tom decided. For the hair of his coat, mixed with sand and sea, was hanging down now in tangled clusters exactly like petals.
“I don’t see why we need dress,” he said, burying his feet in the sand. Not a soul ever comes here, and it’s more interesting to have no clothes on; it makes you behave differently.”
“It doesn’t make me behave differently,” Pascoe contradicted, “and you always behave as if you were naked.”
This remark puzzled Tom. It sounded as if it ought to have a meaning, and perhaps it had—yet he couldn’t discover any. He gazed at Pascoe in uncertainty.
But Pascoe was doing exercises—touching his toes without bending his knees. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “We’ll not dress if you don’t want to.”
“Middling,” Tom thought, abandoning the question of nakedness. “But I’ll get hungrier when I begin. I always do”
“Then let’s have our grub,” Pascoe said, “because I’m starving.”
The unpacking of the basket was of absorbing interest to Chrysanthemum. With a slowly moving tail he sat down about a yard from Tom and directly facing him. To Pascoe he paid no attention whatever. “How does he know?” Tom wondered. “He heard him saying things, of course, but he can’t have understood. It’s very mysterious how they know. They must get thought-waves or something.” He held out a sandwich of ham and brown bread. Chrysanthemum leaned forward and the sandwich disappeared. It was exactly like posting a letter.
Tom looked at Chrysanthemum and Chrysanthemum looked at Tom. The pendulum movement of his tail seemed as automatic as if he had some clockwork arrangement inside him. “After all, he’s not as big as I am,” Tom mused, “and yet it takes me two minutes, I should think, to eat a sandwich.” He glanced at Pascoe half guiltily as he offered another, but Pascoe was feeding as hard as he could, his jaws working as regularly as Chrysanthemum’s tail. “You’re a silly to give him all your lunch,” he remarked with his mouth full. “He’s probably better fed than we are; at any rate he’s about twice as fat. I’m not going to give him anything not so much as a crumb.”
He had said this before, and Tom didn’t care. Besides, it wasn’t true that Chrysanthemum was fat. He wasn’t any fatter than Pascoe himself; they were both about right, and Tom wished he was the same.
It was strange, nevertheless, how Chrysanthemum had divined immediately whence the source of blessings would flow. He never so much as looked at Pascoe until the latter offered him the shell of a hard-boiled egg. “I wouldn’t do that,” Tom advised. “You might want it later.”
Pascoe had begun on the tomatoes, which were overripe and inclined to spread; in fact they had spread—there was tomato on his chin and on the tip of his nose—but this didn’t trouble him, nor did Tom’s sarcasm. “I don’t want him,” he replied, “and I’m not going to encourage him. You didn’t want him yourself a few minutes ago. It’s only weakness now, and because you’re silly about animals. I suppose you think I’m being stingy.”
Tom didn’t think so; he knew Pascoe was acting upon principle. But then he didn’t share the principle and had begun to like Chrysanthemum; how could you help liking anybody who was so friendly!
He mentioned this, but Pascoe said it was only cupboard friendship.
“It began before he ever knew there was any grub,” Tom declared. “It began the moment he found us.”
“Which was the moment he sniffed the basket,” Pascoe replied. “You said yourself he knew we were having a picnic.”
“Even if he did,” Tom argued, “I don’t see that it makes any difference. He came because he wanted our company, and he wouldn’t go away now if we stopped feeding him: he wouldn’t say a word; he would still be friends.”
Pascoe went on eating, unmoved.
Luckily Chrysanthemum didn’t care for tomatoes, so Tom had his full share of these. During this course Chrysanthemum disinterred a long-deceased crab, which he crunched and swallowed with apparent relish. “The eggshells were at least fresh,” Pascoe pointed out dispassionately. “It just shows you what he’s like.” But Pascoe didn’t understand Chrysanthemum any more than he understood Tom. Tom and Chrysanthemum understood each other. And in the end Pascoe did give him a sandwich, though he was careful to explain that it was really to Tom he was giving it.
They had left enough for a second if smaller meal, and now they repacked the basket. “What do you want to do?” Tom asked; but Pascoe had eaten too much to be immediately energetic.
“Nothing for a bit; then either bathe again or else dress and explore along the top of the cliff. What would yo
u like to do?” Tom had no special wishes, so this programme suited him well enough. Clothes were arranged as pillows and Pascoe went to sleep almost at once. So did Chrysanthemum, with his heavy damp head on Tom’s stomach—selected after several trials as being the only really soft spot in his body. Tom did not feel sleepy—only lazy and content to lie on his back and listen to the waves. Besides, he didn’t want to go to sleep; it was too pleasant lying here like this; and the pleasantness somehow included everything—Pascoe and Chrysanthemum—the sea and the sun and the earth. He thought of his angel, but very lazily, and the angel reminded him a little, though only a little, of a boy who had once spoken to him at a party, and whom he had never seen again. Eric Gavney his name was—quite a big boy. He went to the school Pascoe would be going to after the holidays, and to which Tom himself would be going, he supposed, next year. . . . If not sooner; for there had been some talk of that recently—chiefly, he thought, because Daddy and Mother seemed to have an idea—a quite ridiculous idea—that Pascoe looked after him, and that it would be better if they were to go together. . . .
It was queer this getting to know people. Sometimes . it made a difference, though usually it didn’t. Three years ago he hadn’t known Pascoe. And there was Chrysanthemum, lying with his head on Tom’s stomach—and yesterday neither of them had had the least suspicion that the other existed! When he went to his new school he would get to know a whole crowd of boys whom he now couldn’t even imagine, though they must all be alive and doing something at this very moment. With some of them he might become friends: with one he might become great friends—have the kind of friendship he sometimes dreamed of: not that he would ever drop Pascoe. He couldn’t conceive of happiness without friends; they were much more important than anything else, he thought; and even the earth he would have liked to be as nearly human as possible. Though human wasn’t exactly what he meant: Chrysanthemum, for instance, wasn’t human. What he meant was more just having feelings and the power to communicate them—a capacity for friendship. . . .