Bel Ria

by Sheila Burnford

  He tried to measure his walk now in terms of landmarks on the lonely road that snaked around the loch shore from the cottage to, say, Ballochmile village. . . . Two miles on and he would cross the humpbacked bridge soon, just around that corner . . . three miles and it would be the stand of mountain ash above the bothy. Sick and giddy he stood at the side of the road, looking in vain for the ruined keep that should be coming into view now on its narrow peninsula, Beinn Bhreac should be there, looming up behind. . . . The soldier’s knees gave way, and he folded gently into the shallow ditch.

  Chapter 2

  SINCLAIR CAME TO and with no sense of alarm found himself looking directly into a pair of eyes only a few inches away. They were merry, interested eyes, and he recognized them at once, one partly obscured by a few wisps of hair escaped from a familiar topknot. As the dog’s head bent closer, the muzzle touched his temple briefly, and he heard a faint tinkling. His eyes traveled peacefully up, and he saw a pair of feet in worn espadrilles, thick black stockings, and the hem of a dusty black skirt. He felt no surprise; it was almost as though he had expected her.

  He raised his head and shoulders and looked around, wincing involuntarily at the stab of pain. The wagon was drawn up on the verge of the road, the familiar huddle in front, the weary head-low horse and donkey. He tried to get to his feet but the world went into a sickening spin. The woman helped him, speaking with an incomprehensible urgency as she pointed down the road. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, then with an arm like steel around his shoulders, she drew him out of the ditch and up and through the open door of the caravan.

  Now he heard the noise of approaching engines and understood her haste as she bundled him inside, pushing him out of the way onto a narrow bunk that ran down the length of one side at the same time as she scooped bundles of sacks, blankets and quilts off an elaborate brass bedstead opposite. She thrust the rifle under the sagging mattress, then turned to the soldier, and almost before he knew it, he was stretched out and under the covers, the bundles replaced on top. She indicated a tiny sliding ventilation grille in the side, sliding it fractionally open before dropping a musty pillow over his head and pulling up the covers. Something — a bundle of withies, he guessed — was thrown across his feet, then finally he felt the light living weight of the dog as it stretched across his thighs. She spoke one soft single word, then the door slammed. Seconds later the caravan creaked and swayed into movement. The soldier gave himself up for the moment to the musty darkness, the steady soothing clop-clop of hooves, and drifted away again.

  An awareness of alteration in the light warmth across his thighs roused him; the weight was no longer relaxed, and he heard the accompanying tinkle of an alerted head. The caravan halted, and now there were men’s voices, harsh and commanding, the revving of engines, someone shouting. Although he knew not a word of German, it was not difficult to interpret what was going on outside. The caravan must have reached one of the forward posts of the German thrusts, and its whys and wherefores were being challenged.

  He heard the woman’s voice, apparently arguing but not understood by her interrogators, and the sound of heavy boots approaching. As the wagon springs creaked to a new weight and the door was flung open, he lay rigid, his breath held. He felt the dog sit up, the quick movement of his tail, and heard the woman’s voice again. Then, extraordinarily, the sound of laughter. The dog jumped down, the boots and voices moved off to the side, and someone, perhaps the old man, closed the door behind his head. The woman’s voice rose again, loud and audacious now, and once more the mystifying laughter.

  He turned cautiously to the tiny strip of light under the covers from the ventilation grille. He put his eye to this peephole. The effect was dramatic, like looking down on a small spotlit stage, for in his circumscribed view he could see only a semicircle of boots and the gray-green of German uniform tucked into them. In the center of this stage, now adorned with a small cluster of bells secured to the topknot and tinkling circlets on each forepaw, was the little dog. Only a few inches away from his eyes were the black skirts and dusty espadrilles of the woman, the toe of one of them raised even as he heard three short sweet flutelike notes close to his head. Evidently the old man was providing the music.

  On the fourth note the toe began to tap, and the dog rose to his hind legs and began to dance. The tune had a lilting rhythm, and in perfect time he pirouetted in a circle, forepaws held out and head held high. The music changed in tempo, slower now, and at the end of each phrase the dog nodded his head so that the silvery bells accompanied each last three notes of the repeated phrase. Now he brought the forepaws into action, one at a time, each cluster of bells set in a different pitch to the nodding head.

  It was the performance of a virtuoso. The strangest thing was that there seemed nothing preposterous, only an inherent grace and precision. The little dog danced as though he lived for it, as though he would will his audience to listen to his bells and live for it too.

  Not far away, guns rumbled a reminder. Three-quarters of the western world lay reeling in the bonds of occupation, the wake of smoldering destruction left by these gray-green uniforms. A few short miles would soon end the agony of France, and then all Europe would be overrun — yet for this moment, in this one place, there was nothing but a silvery tinkling and a lilting tune and an audience who had become children again, spellbound before a dog who danced on a sunlit road to the bidding of the flute.

  So enchanted had Sinclair been too, that he felt almost a momentary irritation when the skirt moved and the palm of a hand occasionally lowered and raised obscuring his view, bringing the reality that these concealed signals probably coincided with the movements of head and paws. Yet the dog never appeared to look anywhere but directly ahead. The flute quickened in tempo and the little dancer spun in a small tight circle, the bells sounding wildly; and then, like a clockwork toy running down, slower and slower, the dog sank to his haunches, shaking the bells on each extended forepaw in turn; then the paws lowered to the dust, the body following, until, finally, the last shake of bells to the final note of the flute, the head drooped and the dog lay still.

  There was a momentary hush, as of an audience bringing itself back to reality, then a ragged round of applause and voices again. The woman spoke one soft sibilant, the ears flickered briefly, then the dog leaped into life to make a suddenly comic bow to the semicircle of boots. The fingers clicked and he came running, with open mouth and lolling tongue, so that he appeared to be laughing. The fingers removed the bells from the paws, then slipped into a side pocket to return with some small reward of food. Two arms now made a circle and the dog jumped through it and out of Sinclair’s sight.

  For a brief second he saw the doll-like figure of the monkey scuttle into view holding a tin cup, then the black skirts curtained off his view altogether. Clear above the guffaws of laughter and voices, the woman’s voice rose in a new note, almost harsh and demanding, so that the soldier was reminded of a huckster at a fair. He heard more laughter, then a tinny rattle of coins, and the brazen comments of the woman. The show was over, and as though to affirm this, there was a burst of mortar fire from comparatively close range and shouted orders followed by a crescendo of revving engines.

  The encounter must have taken place at a crossroads, for when the caravan started up again Sinclair felt it swaying to a right-angled turn, and the road surface was rougher. At least they were not traveling away from the coast now. He must get out as soon as possible; he could cut down lanes, across fields, and rejoin the road. He lay still, fighting the urge to sleep, until he reckoned that they must have covered a reasonable distance. Then summoning every ounce of will power, he struggled up, pushed aside the covers, and retrieved his rifle from under the mattress. The cold steel was a sobering reminder.

  He tapped on the half-door. It opened a crack and he peered through, looking ahead to an empty potholed road. The craggy profile of the woman turned to look back along the road. She gave a grunt of apparent satisfaction, b
ut when Sinclair pushed the door wider, intending to jump, she pressed it back and spoke in an unexpectedly sweet clear voice, quite different from the harsh fairground tones he had last heard. Words that were as incomprehensible as ever, but their message was clearly stressed; he must get under cover again. To his insistent repetition of “St. Nazaire, St. Nazaire . . .” as he touched the rifle and pointed to himself, she merely nodded calmly, pointed to the sun and shook her head. Then, as though to reassure him she cracked the whip competently above the horse’s ears, and with a further slap of the reins she increased the pace.

  Presently they turned off the road and creaked to a halt. The woman came through and the soldier removed his covers with relief. She opened a shutter and a shaft of sunlight fell on a bright red stain on his blouse. The dog jumped on the bed and sniffed at it with interest, tail wagging fast, until the woman pushed him gently aside and undid the buttons, her face concerned. The field dressing was soaked through. She replaced it with what looked like a wad of moss, smearing it first with some aromatic salve out of a rusty tin, then bound it firmly with a strip torn off the hem of her underskirt. The net effect was extraordinarily soothing and comfortable.

  They were halted on a sandy track under a clump of pines. In an almost leisurely fashion the woman began to unharness the horse, then, when the shafts were down, she helped the old man out, reached up for a folding stool and seated him close to the wheel. He was still holding his flute; she took it from him, stuck it in his pocket and substituted a clay pipe which the monkey promptly removed to its own mouth, scampering up onto the dog’s back out of reach. The old man reviled them both with furious impotent grunts. Next she lit a small pressure stove which was soon hissing beneath a blackened billy can. Sinclair could barely restrain his impatience until he realized that whatever she was doing she was wary as a poacher, eyes and ears alertly sweeping the countryside.

  Lastly, accompanied by the dog with his proportionate little jockey hanging around his neck, she walked quickly to the top of the rise and surveyed the land from there. The dog’s head turned in precisely the same arc as hers. Satisfied, she turned back and brewed bitter, strong tea, lacing Sinclair’s mug from a small medicine bottle rummaged out of the old man’s pocket.

  The concoction flowed through Sinclair’s veins in a glorious heartening molten fire. As he sipped, she took a twig and made a sketch map on the sandy ground; here was the road where they had picked him up, the crossroads where they had turned east; and here was a back road, too meandering and narrow for military traffic, that eventually met up with a secondary road leading into St. Nazaire. He must set off cross-country for the first part. He followed her pointing finger to the south where high up in the pale still sky puffs of gunsmoke expanded like parachutes. His arm rested on the donkey’s back, his fingers absently tracing the cross there, the coarse, sun-warmed hair suddenly nostalgically familiar and normal, real in this unreal world.

  The woman’s voice broke in: “Mort pour la Patrie!” she said with command. Sinclair looked up, startled at this inexplicable announcement, delivered with such obvious utter contempt, and for the first time in a recognizable language. The dog interpreted by rolling over and over on the sketch map, scattering the sand, then lying still, as though dead. Then, to a mocking “Vive la France!” the small corpse set up with a ludicrous imitation of a salute. The voice was at total variance with the almost doting expression on the dark face, an expression reflected in the intense concentration of the eyes below, the slight compact body tensed like a coiled spring in anticipation. She pointed, and in a single bound the dog jumped up onto the donkey’s back. She felt in her pocket, found nothing there, and laid her hand on his head in reward instead, gently rubbing behind one ear.

  It was time to go. Unable to express his gratitude in words to this enigmatic, indomitable woman who had taken such a risk for him, Sinclair unconsciously did the one right thing and spoke the one universally accepted word. “Bravo!” he said simply, and he too patted the dog’s head, an action acknowledged by the stumpy tail and the sensual almost catlike inclination of the head towards his fingers. He felt in his pocket for the remains of a biscuit. It was taken gently and fastidiously, then laid on the donkey’s back until the release of a smiling nod of assent from the woman.

  The old man suddenly made a grunting imperative noise, holding out the medicine bottle. Only when he saw his offering stowed in the soldier’s pocket did he sink again within his shawls — like a tortoise retracting into its shell, he seemed to Sinclair as he said good-bye and set off up the sandy track.

  On the crest of the rise he looked back. The woman had already excluded him, her back turned as she fed the horse. Only the dog, and the monkey once more astride his back, watched his departure with grave interest.

  Chapter 3

  THE SOLDIER COVERED the ground in the easy strides of a hillman. He felt surprisingly refreshed and alert, the pain warmly contained under the comfort of the moss dressing. He had no wish for transportation now even if it had magically appeared. It could not be much more than ten miles to the coast, and remembering the sergeant at the dump’s warning, he reckoned on reaching the docks after nightfall.

  He skirted the last field, and as he emerged onto the narrow lane described by the woman, he heard the all too familiar engine of a Stuka, and almost immediately saw it sweep across the fields towards him, well below tree-top level. Even as he flung himself down in the ditch with a gasp of sudden appalling pain in his ribs, he wondered why, for there had been nothing in the fields but a distant scattering of cattle and himself. The Stuka screamed over, its machine gun raising spurts of earth, pinging on the tin roof of a cattle shelter, and then banked sharply to roar back over the fields, gun still blazing.

  “Bloody lunatic,” shouted Sinclair indignantly after it, and started off again, keeping a weather eye open for its predictable return.

  Presently, he was very slowly overtaken by his first military traffic — an RAOC Sergeant pedaling along on an ancient bicycle with hard rubber tires. A slight young Lancashire Fusilier with grotesquely swollen feet, his boots slung around his neck, sat sideways on the crossbar. A black collie panted along behind. “Sorry, mate, full up,” said the sergeant as he wobbled past.

  Sinclair stepped out beside them for a few yards. “Watch out for a Daredevil of the Skies in a Stuka,” he said. “The type that would shoot up a turnip field for the hell of it —”

  “Him —” said the sergeant, disgust flooding his face. “He conquered a couple of gypsies and a wagon back there. . . .”

  “In a clump of pines — an old man and a woman?”

  “I wouldn’t know, but there were two bodies all right,” said the sergeant. “The wagon was blazing —”

  “They had animals?” asked Sinclair.

  “I shot a horse,” said the sergeant briefly, “and there was a donkey, but I missed it — it went screaming off into the trees.”

  “There was a dog, and a monkey,” said Sinclair wearily. “It was a little circus act.”

  “Probably copped it too,” said the sergeant, and pedaled on down the road, so slowly that it was a long time before Sinclair lost sight of him.

  He walked on, but now he was only conscious of an infinite weariness and hurt, the reproachful ache in his mind that if they had not turned off the road for him they would still be alive, the old flute player and his mischievous little monkey, that rock-strong woman and her constant vivid shadow, the dog. Even the old horse who had rolled with such pleasure when released from the shafts — now all so needlessly, senselessly wiped out.

  An hour later, as he turned from wary custom to look back along the road, he saw, less than a hundred yards behind, the furtive figure of a dog, slinking along on the verge. Sinclair stood stock still for a moment, his scalp prickling. The dog stopped too, cowering. A tiny face with anxious eyes and wrinkled brows peered over the dog’s head.

  They were not ghosts conjured up by his uneasy mind; they were disconcerti
ngly real. They looked very small and defenseless and tragic against this empty background. But their sudden return to life disturbed too deeply; they belonged to the dead, and there was no place for them in his life, no time or thought to spare for them in their plight.

  The dog crept forward, then hesitated, his ears laid back, his eyes showing recognition, the short tail quivering almost imperceptibly, but the soldier returned no recognition; turning abruptly, he continued on his way without a backward glance. He forced them out of his mind as determinedly as he forced his pace, for the mellow light of late afternoon lay over the land now.

  The booming orchestration of the coastal guns ahead swelled and died away in longer and longer intervals. Somewhere a cow bellowed, and was answered by the lighter muffled call of a calf. A kestrel hovered over the far hedgerow, but swifts dipped and wheeled unheeding low over the open field. A countryman all his life until he had shed his keeper’s tweeds for a uniform in 1939, the soldier subconsciously noted these things, marked the distant returning rooks, flapping in a strange purposeful silence this day, the evening voices of all birds subdued. Stirred perhaps by the desire to see and hear such nostalgic commonplace in his own countryside again he quickened his pace, holding the webbing of the rifle away from the raw ache of his ribs. Behind him the dog stretched out too to maintain its imposed distance.

  Nearer the town he saw a lone raider unload a stick of bombs across a field under the harassment of a diving Spitfire. He crossed the field afterwards in a shortcut. The last bomb had straddled the hedge, scooping a crater deep into the soft sands of the rabbit warrens there. The blast must have blown the rabbits out of their burrows like shells from the muzzle of a gun. They lay in a sickle-shaped cluster about twenty feet from the crater’s rim, outwardly whole and unharmed, as though dropped there by some retrieving dog. One doe, either at the moment of parturition, or as the result of blast propulsion, lay with a fetus between her hind legs, its sac already shriveled by the sun, yet still intact, closely shrouding the miniature within.