by Megan Rix
Halfway through the class there was tea for the people and water for the dogs. In the break Michael left and came back with Heggerty, who Mr Ward used to demonstrate basic dog first aid on.
Heggerty took her role of first-aid dog demonstrator seriously and stood very still on the table while Mr Ward wrapped bandages round her. Once he’d shown everyone what they were supposed to do, they were invited to try it for themselves.
‘Very fine work,’ he told Amy as he watched her bandaging Heggerty’s paw. ‘You’ve got a knack for this.’
In no time at all it became Amy’s job to do the first-aid demonstrations with Heggerty.
When it was Heggerty’s turn to ‘perform’, she always slowly and carefully walked up the three steps to the stage, where she stood proudly, her tail wagging.
Once Amy had demonstrated how the bandaging was supposed to be done, anyone who wanted to give it a try themselves came out to the front. Heggerty was always extremely patient, even with those who were most fumble-fingered. Her favourite point of the evening, however, was teatime when she usually managed to persuade someone to share a bit of their sandwich or a biscuit with her.
Sometimes Mr and Mrs Dolan came along to watch Amy’s demonstration.
‘Anyone like to give it a try?’ Amy asked, once she’d demonstrated how to bandage Heggerty’s paw. Amy’s dad put his hand up. He came out to the front and carefully wound the bandage as Heggerty helpfully held her paw up.
‘We’ve very proud of you,’ Mrs Dolan told Amy at the end of the class, squeezing her shoulder.
‘I’m only showing people how to bandage an injured dog,’ she said.
Her father shook his head. ‘What you did was show them how to save a dog’s life,’ he told her.
Amy was very excited when they got home that afternoon and she received her first brief letter from Jack.
‘Had my army haircut,’ he’d written in his familiar scrawl.
What he didn’t say was all that was now left of his hair was stubble.
‘Food’s plentiful.’
He didn’t add that so far most evenings they’d had soggy corned-beef fritters for dinner.
‘Made some new friends.’
Most of them were around the same age as him and all of them would be sent off to fight soon.
Amy wrote back to him telling him the news about helping Ellie and the War Dog Training School. She didn’t mention Misty; it had been three weeks since she’d disappeared and Amy didn’t know what to say, and, if she were honest, she didn’t know what to do any more.
She then decided to write a letter to Lieutenant Colonel Richardson to ask him about starting the War Dog Training School again, and to tell him how good Ellie’s classes were. At least that was something Amy could do to help.
Chapter 9
As each day passed, Bark and Howl grew stronger and more boisterous and confident in their underground home. They didn’t know they’d never seen the sun or the moon or felt grass under their paws and they didn’t care. The station was their world and they explored it as far as Misty and Sheba would allow them to.
Bark was always the more inquisitive and confident leader of the two, while Howl was happy to follow. It was Bark who first spotted the newspaper that had been blown into the station and wafted each time a train went past on another platform. Both puppies were frightened by the rustling sound it made.
Bark tentatively edged closer to the newspaper, his head cocked to one side. He stopped dead each time it moved and crept closer again once it was still. Howl watched his brother from a few feet away.
Once Bark had almost reached the newspaper, he barked at it. When it didn’t respond, he put out his paw. Howl came running over and they both stared at the sheet and wagged their tails. There was nothing to be scared of here.
Newspaper discarded as neither friend nor foe, the puppies trotted on until they stopped dead at the sight of a glove on the ground.
They ran back to their mother and Misty staggered painfully to her feet and slowly went over and picked up the glove to show them there was nothing to fear from it. Her pain had grown so intense now and she was so weak from not eating properly that she couldn’t stand for any length of time. She now spent days semi-conscious from the infection caused by the car injury to her back and leg. As she sank back down in pain, Bark grabbed the glove and it became a new toy for him and Howl.
When Daniel found anything he thought the puppies would particularly like, he saved it for them. A station worker left a ball of string behind one day and Daniel picked it up. He thought it’d make a fine ball for the pups and he hid behind the entrance to the disused platform and rolled it over to them.
Bark immediately raced up and pounced on it with Howl yapping excitedly behind him. But, as the puppies played with the string, it untangled like a ball of wool and spun out and along the platform.
Daniel put his hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing as even Sheba was unable to resist the string and was soon batting at it with her paws and chasing after it along with the puppies.
He longed to go out on to the platform and join them, but he was terrified of being seen by any of the station staff or passengers.
From where he stood, hidden, he couldn’t see Misty lying further along the platform and didn’t know how sick she had become.
Out on the platform Howl pushed his nose to Bark’s and then backed away. Bark put a paw out to him and Howl play-bit at Bark’s other forepaw, still on the ground. Soon the two pups were engrossed in play-fighting, biting at each other’s legs, trying to gain dominance by pawing each other’s backs and chewing each other’s ears. Misty panted as she watched them and then closed her eyes and slept again.
Sometimes Bark and Howl were so tired they could only manage to play while lying down. Sleepily Bark would chew at Howl’s ear in a slow-motion play fight. Then Howl would half-heartedly go for Bark’s ear until finally they fell asleep lying half on top of each other – only to wake a little later, ready to begin playing again.
But, as the puppies thrived and grew strong, Misty grew ever weaker. Some days she could barely stand and then one morning, when the puppies awoke, Misty didn’t get up. She lay where she was, on her side, chest rising and falling, occasionally giving a small whimper of pain.
Bark and Howl pawed at their mum and licked at her ears, but she still didn’t sit up. Howl lay beside his mother, whining and licking her ear. Bark stood in front of her and barked, but Misty didn’t even lift her head.
When Sheba came back from hunting through the broken grating, she found Misty lying on her side, her breathing laboured. Sheba went over to her and nuzzled her, but Misty barely reacted.
Then Sheba looked into Misty’s glazed eyes and, as Misty stared back at her, her ragged breathing eased and she lapsed into a peaceful calm. Misty sighed and closed her eyes and didn’t open them again.
Sheba made a sound deep in her throat and the puppies ran to her, confused as to why their mother was no longer moving. She led them away from Misty back towards the grating. Bark and Howl looked back at their mum and whimpered. They ran back to her and nuzzled her and licked her ears and face, trying to wake her. Sheba made the sound again and this time they followed her through the grating.
She fed the hungry puppies a freshly killed rat and then took them to the area of the station the cats had claimed as their own. They weren’t too pleased to have the two puppies join them. One of them hissed and another cat raked out a paw as the puppies went past, but a hiss from Sheba stopped that behaviour.
Then they curled up together and went to sleep with Sheba lying beside them, keeping watch, as they whim
pered for their mum in their sleep.
Daniel was sad when he came across Misty’s body in the tunnel. She’d been a good mum and somehow he couldn’t bear to just leave her where she’d died. Her brown leather collar still had her name tag and NARPAC registration disc with the blue cross on the front attached to it. A dog that was registered wouldn’t be put down as an unwanted stray. Her official registration number was written on the the back along with: FINDER PLEASE REPORT THIS NUMBER TO NEAREST NATIONAL ANIMAL GUARD.
He took Misty’s collar off her neck as carefully as if she’d still been alive and slipped it into his pocket. Then he wrapped her body in some sacking and laid it in a hole that had been left when the work on the station had stopped, leaving many tunnels unfinished and piles of rubble lying about. He covered the hole with bricks and pieces of cement and stood looking at it for some time.
He wished he’d been able to do as much for his fellow soldiers who’d been lost at Dunkirk. The cries of the dying men haunted him whenever he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Daniel swallowed hard as he remembered. He’d never forget their faces. But now he had the mother of the pups to attend to. He found two sticks and tied them together to make a cross for Misty’s rough rubble grave.
‘Rest in peace,’ he said. His voice felt hoarse from lack of use. ‘Rest in peace.’
Chapter 10
When Amy got home from another day of helping Ellie with the dog-training classes, she found her mum holding a telegram and looking upset.
‘It’s your grandpa …’
‘Oh no!’ Amy cried, fearing the worst.
‘His house has been bombed and we need to go and fetch him and bring him back home with us.’
‘But what if he doesn’t want to come?’ said Amy.
She remembered how her grandpa had insisted that he wanted to remain in his own home when they’d invited him to stay with them before.
‘I don’t think he’ll have any choice now,’ Mrs Dolan said sadly.
They caught the train and then a bus to Woolwich. On the way Amy told her mother more about Michael’s search-and-rescue missions and the kitten he’d recently found.
‘Michael is only a year older than me,’ Amy said with admiration.
But Mrs Dolan was horrified at the idea that Amy might want to do the same thing, and told her so.
‘I don’t want you even thinking of doing something like that,’ she said.
‘But I want to help …’
‘Then find a safer way to do it. Dog-training classes are one thing, but bomb sites are quite another!’
Amy opened her mouth to say that Michael was only allowed into buildings that had been checked by an ARP warden first, but decided now was not the time. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared out of the window. She wasn’t used to her mother being so sharp with her. But then she remembered what Jack had said about people sounding mean when they were scared. And her mum was scared. Everyone was scared.
Over in South London there were so many potholes in the bomb-struck roads that the red double-decker bus had to swerve and roll to avoid them. Amy looked out of the bus window to try and distract herself from worrying about her grandpa.
None of the houses seemed to have been left with their windows intact, and many also had missing front doors from the force of the blasts. Everywhere people were clearing up as best they could, just like they’d been doing in Swan Street where she lived.
Sometimes the bombs had destroyed a few houses in a row; at other times only one or two seemed to have been struck. It was like a bizarre game of chance, only it was your home and everything you’d known could be lost or saved in an instant.
‘Mum …’
Mrs Dolan saw the worry on Amy’s face at seeing so many bombed streets from the bus window.
‘Let’s walk the rest of the way,’ she said, trying to distract Amy.
But a few minutes later, as they turned the corner to her grandpa’s street, Amy gasped. The gas main was blazing and fire engines all around were trying to put it out. Huge hoses criss-crossed the road and the acrid smell of smoke was everywhere as people shifted through the rubble with a sense of utter despair. None of the houses in her grandfather’s street were still standing. Sewage seeped into the street from a shattered pipe.
‘Stay close, Amy,’ Mrs Dolan told her, taking her hand. There was no point going any further. Amy’s grandpa’s house was totally destroyed.
They found him in the local primary school. The Women’s Voluntary Service had turned the school into a rest centre for people who’d been made homeless by the bombing.
‘Bombees?’ a woman from the WVS asked Amy and her mother cheerily as they arrived.
‘Beg pardon?’ said Mrs Dolan.
‘Bombees? Have you been bombed out of your home?’
‘Oh no, we’ve come over from North London,’ Mrs Dolan told her.
‘We’ve come to fetch my grandpa,’ explained Amy.
The old man was sitting in a child’s chair that was too small for him with a blanket round his shoulders, looking very sorry for himself.
‘Dad,’ said Mrs Dolan.
He looked up at her with red, watery eyes and for a moment or two it seemed he had no idea who she was.
‘Forty years I lived there,’ he said. ‘Forty years and now it’s gone.’
A WVS woman brought him a cup of tea, but his hand shook so much that a lot of it spilt.
‘We’re going to take you home with us, Dad,’ Mrs Dolan said.
‘Forty years …’
‘You’ll be safer.’
‘Forty years …’ Tears ran in rivulets down his face. ‘I don’t want to leave my home.’
But he didn’t have a home any more.
Once they got back to Amy’s house, Mrs Dolan took the old man’s bag, with the few belongings he’d managed to salvage, up to Jack’s room where he’d be sleeping from now on.
‘Where’s Misty?’ Grandpa asked Amy.
‘She’s lost,’ Amy told him. ‘She ran away when the bombing started.’
‘Poor little thing,’ her grandpa said. ‘Must be scared out of her wits.’ Amy’s grandpa was a dog lover like Amy.
‘I’m helping my friends train other dogs so that they know what to do in the bombings, and can even help with search-and-rescue missions. We want them to set up another national War Dog Training School,’ Amy explained.
‘They used trained dogs like that a lot as messenger and guard dogs in the last war, you know,’ the old man told her. ‘Some even brought first aid to wounded soldiers. I think it’d be a fine idea to set up another school.’
When Mr Dolan came home, he told them how people had been coming into the Underground station, where he worked, all day long and buying penny tickets, but not using them.
‘Wise souls,’ Amy’s grandpa said and Mr Dolan raised an eyebrow.
‘They’ll be wanting somewhere safe to shelter if there’s more bombs tonight,’ he said. ‘And there’s naught safer than the Underground. That’s where we went in the Great War. Safe as houses down there, much safer than houses to be honest!’
‘Can’t be very comfortable,’ Mrs Dolan said. Although the truth was they weren’t very comfortable in the Anderson shelter either.
‘No, but you’d be safe,’ Grandpa said and Mr Dolan nodded.
Mrs Dolan set about making a flask of tea and some sandwiches and Mr Dolan brought down the cardboard suitcases they used when they went on holiday to put their blankets and pillows in.
No one wanted there to be any more bombs that night, but if there were they’d be ready. An hour later the air-raid si
ren went off. There wasn’t time to get to Wood Green Station so they hurried to the Anderson shelter. But, once the all-clear sounded, they headed for the station.
‘All right, Jim?’ Mr Dolan’s fellow station clerks greeted him and he nodded. They went down the steps to the platform that was already crowded with people – many of whom they knew.
Mrs Dolan laid out their bedding and looked enviously at the people who’d brought portable mattresses with them. Her hip wasn’t going to like lying on the hard concrete floor at all. But at least it was warm down here, unlike the Anderson shelter, almost too warm.
‘Night night,’ Amy’s grandpa said and a moment later he was sleeping like a baby, while all around him other people chatted and played cards and knitted and laughed.
There was a strong sense of camaraderie among the Londoners: a camaraderie that had only been strengthened by the bombing. They wouldn’t be beaten by a bully they told each other, no matter how many bombs he dropped on them.
Chapter 11
When Bark and Howl awoke, they found Sheba beside them with another rat offering. After they’d eaten, Sheba taught them the art of keeping very, very still and waiting patiently until the rats thought they were safe and almost came to them before they pounced.
For a long time it seemed like it was going to be too much for the puppies. The sight of the rats was too exciting. Their natural inclination was to bound after them. But that usually meant they spent a lot of time running about with their tails wagging excitedly and very little time actually catching any food. Their squat little puppy legs weren’t designed for speed, and to successfully catch rats they needed guile too – and that could only come with experience.
At last, Bark managed to stay still long enough and was rewarded with a tasty rat; then Howl managed it too. Rats were easily fooled by them when they stayed motionless, but skittered away fast as soon as they moved.