Bel Ria

by Sheila Burnford

  He stood up; there were others awaiting him. He looked at the throng of naked exhausted bodies, and as though summoned, a man, fully clothed, clean and dry, eased through them and squatted down beside the stretcher.

  “It is I,” he announced formally, and the soldier’s eyes opened and crinkled in recognition.

  “You know him?” said MacLean, and the man nodded.

  “Keep him from moving, then, until the drug takes effect. Rub his legs, and try and keep him warm — and watch out, there’s a dog underneath the blanket —”

  “Yes,” said the helper, already busy. “And that one — le singe,” he added, cocking an eye at a point above. MacLean looked too; on the superstructure, twenty feet above, was the tiny huddled figure of a monkey, one hand doubled loosely on its knee, the other stuffed in its mouth, its eyes fixed on the head of the dog below. At least there was no sign of the soldier’s other innocents, the decks so far clear of horse or rabbits. MacLean departed.

  An hour later he returned. The drug had done its work and the soldier drowsed. The Frenchman had managed to ease off his oil-soaked battle dress, and had cleaned him up. The dog lay close by on the battle dress blouse. Up to this point, the man on the stretcher had been just another glistening black mask with white and red cut-outs for mouth and eyes. Now MacLean looked down on a face that shock and bloodlessness had etched to its finest point, the fine, pale, clear-skinned face, black hair and dark blue eyes of the west Highlander. The soldier tried to speak but went into an agonizing spell of coughing.

  MacLean kneeled down and held him until it was over. He spoke softly, persuasively, in Gaelic. “Wheesht, man, wheesht,” he said, “and give your lungs a chance. Save your breath for breathing.” He laid him down at the end of the paroxysm and, kneeling there, smiled reassuringly; a smile that transformed his tired, lined face with its grim, set mouth.

  The soldier’s lips moved again. As he whispered, the dog crept on its belly to the head of the stretcher, there to lay its muzzle on the edge.

  “I will do his talking,” said the dry precise voice of the Frenchman as MacLean worked swiftly to change the dressing. “He wishes to tell you that he is not wounded, that he must walk off this ship, for he has these two companions who have come a long way with him. They have no one else apparently. He is obsessed. They are a trust. He must walk off, for if he goes to hospital he will be separated from them, and this is insupportable.”

  The dog lifted its head, and its inflamed eyes under the matted hair looked directly into MacLean’s, only a few inches away, almost as though waiting to hear his comment. MacLean shifted his gaze and found that the soldier’s eyes now held his, no longer unfocused but holding an agony of waiting comprehension. He had seen this look too often that day; sometimes it was heralded with a thin, barely perceptible then leaping pulse — then all too often the pulse stopped forever. “Ach, don’t fash yourself so, man,” said MacLean. He continued with cheerful professional mendacity. “No need to worry — you just leave it all to us.”

  “I have your hand on it?” the soldier managed to whisper. His hand moved on the blanket, and the dog stretched forward to touch it with his muzzle. “Am bheil do làmh agam airansin?”

  But there was a difference between the professional assurance, and the binding promise of his word; for a moment MacLean hesitated. The dog’s intense, uncomfortably human eyes watched him. A voice shouted urgently for him, and he rose. The dog rose too, still watching. The words were forced out of him it seemed. “Aye,” he said, then repeated the word firmly and clearly, “Aye, I’ll see to him, never you fear — mo làmh air an sin. You have my hand on it. Now rest, will you —”

  He passed by several times that night, each time half-expecting to find the blanket pulled over the man’s face, but he seemed to be sleeping, and his pulse was stronger. The Frenchman was nodding beside him, only the dog watchful and suspicious as MacLean bent over the stretcher.

  At one point, as he turned back the blanket, he found the monkey curled into an incredibly small tight ball between the soldier’s arm and chest, its head buried deeply. MacLean’s lips pursed with displeasure, but the dog growled fiercely when he tried to move it. He left well alone — let it go ashore on the stretcher undetected; he wished the medical orderlies joy in its discovery. His promise had been for the dog alone. With that in mind late in the afternoon, his hand descended with practiced skill upon its muzzle; he deftly inserted two or three pills down an instantly submissive throat and dropped a jacket over it. The rails were lined with silent watching men as the shores of England loomed out of the mist. It would not be too long before they disembarked. He would return for his bundle in good time. He made a careful note of the details in the soldier’s paybook.

  Two weeks before, the British Expeditionary Force had been taken off the Dunkirk beaches in the most glorious makeshift fleet ever assembled off the coast of England, a fleet that steamed, sailed, waddled, and chugged its way across the Channel, and once home, barely waited to disembark its troops before returning for more. Reception in England was of necessity often as makeshift, and in the confusion and urgency quite a few Fifth Columnists and other undesirables had infiltrated with the returning troops.

  But by the time Tertian docked at Falmouth with the Lancastria’s survivors, certain aspects of security had been tightened up. Outwardly it was the same: the fleet of ambulances drawn up on the quayside, the Salvation Army doughnuts and tea, the lines of tired men shuffling off the gangways past the Military Police and the lynx-eyed security officers of the different services, then forming into groups to be detailed off to billets or transport. But this time, having learned the lesson that its four-footed camp followers will trail the British Army, even in retreat, the Port Health and Quarantine officials were ready for them. A man with a large net on the end of a pole was stationed beside the police; an RSPCA van stood waiting, and any suspiciously shaped packs were being examined.

  The last of the wounded ashore, the wardroom already cleared of dressings and surgical instruments, Neil MacLean leaned for a few minutes’ respite over Tertian’s rail and watched the scene below. He saw an angry cat removed from a gas mask haversack while several dogs that he had not even seen aboard were lead off to the van; a mynah bird, perched on an Air Force officer’s finger, laughing in some falsetto imitation, passed the inspection triumphantly; so did a mandarin drake, its head sticking out inquisitively from a pillowcase under the arm of one of the women civilian survivors, who was now wearing a pair of seaman’s trousers and a violently striped sweater that MacLean recognized as belonging to the doctor. But something that looked like a ferret or a white rat, which gave itself away by peering out of the blanket folds around the neck of one of the walking wounded, was plucked out gingerly, despite its owner’s protestations that it was British born and was only coming home like him.

  There had been no inspection of the stretcher cases, however: as long as that monkey remained curled in the recumbent ball he had last seen, it would have made it safely ashore. He watched the loaded ambulances speeding off with some satisfaction; the soldier had been in one of the first to go, MacLean having seen to that early in the morning by marking a priority on his medical tag. The man had been unconscious then, his breathing so rasping and labored that it hurt even to listen to it.

  Only minutes before, the helpful Frenchman had waved back as he went down the gangway. Drawn aside from the lines, he was still being interrogated by two men in plain clothes. Presently, they escorted him to a shed that was closely guarded, MacLean noticed, regretting that he would never know what merited this attention — VIP or aspiring German agent?

  He heard the wailing message of the bo’sun’s pipe summoning all hands to clean ship. The decks were a slippery shambles of oil-covered clothes, blankets and rags of life jackets, the paintwork covered with a ghostly frieze of naked black silhouettes and handprints. He turned to go, yawning, longing to get his head down and his eyes closed if only for a few minutes before he s
tarted in on his own section below. A small smacking noise attracted his attention; ten feet above his head, huddled dismally on the inner ring of a life buoy hanging over the bridge rail, was the monkey. It smacked its lips again softly and looked for a moment as though it were about to jump down onto his shoulder.

  MacLean scowled up at it, furious that it had outwitted him.

  The monkey moved listlessly along the rail, squeaking softly, was lost to view, then a second later appeared at the bottom of the companionway and timidly inched towards him, so close now that he could see the rings of oil around the inflamed eyes. Almost within his reach, it stretched out a paw as trustingly as a child — and at that moment the quayside siren, almost directly alongside, started on its first wailing crescendo and was matched by Tertian’s action stations alarm. The monkey fled, swarming up a stay, fouling the deck as it went. MacLean gazed gloomily after. He turned through the steel door and clattered down to the sick bay.

  The doctor had gone ashore with some of the wounded. The cabin reeked and looked as though a hurricane had hit it. He opened the scuttle wide, took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. It was very quiet now that the hurrying feet throughout the ship had settled down into the waiting silence of action stations; the flat outside the door and the cabins leading off were deserted. He was safe from interruption at least until the All Clear sounded again; nevertheless he drew the door curtain across.

  From the cupboard under the bunk, he drew out a cardboard box marked Boracic Lint and turned back the brown paper lying on top. Inside, on an evil-smelling oily blanket, eyes closed, but with its flanks moving steadily up and down, was the dog. The heavy sedative that he had given it would ensure that it remained this way for several more hours — by which time he hoped that he might have some more inspiration as to its future.

  He threw the blanket on a pile in the corner, lifted out the limp bundle and laid it on a rubber sheet on the bunk. Then with swift thoroughness he went to work with swabs, surgical spirit and detergent. Toweling the result dry, he looked down on the small body presently with professional satisfaction. The coat was revealed as a closely curled blue-gray, the hair singed off in a large area on one flank, and down to the flesh on a raw burn at the root of the short tail. This was dressed with the same meticulous care as the eyes had been bathed and the ears swabbed out. He looked with a critical eye at the lines of the dog.

  It had all the proportion and apparent fragility of bone that suggested some poodle blood at first sight; but the hindquarters were exceptionally powerful and there was an unusual depth of chest; there was the high-domed forehead that he usually associated with present-day overbreeding — and stupidity to go with it, but this enigmatic dog had an unexpected width between the eyes. The muzzle was short, clean cut and pointed. He pulled back the black lips and examined the teeth: shining white, but very slightly worn, and he decided that the dog must be around seven years old. A slight parting in the damp mat of hair around the neck caught his attention: close against the skin below was a strand of ribbon through which ran a single metallic thread, dull now under the oil. He cut it off, finding that it ran through the ring of a tiny silver bell with the clapper missing. He dropped the ribbon into a basin of solvent, wiped it off, and put it in his pocket.

  The All Clear went, and he was galvanized into swift action. Scooping up the dog, he wrapped it in a dry towel, then laid it in the middle of the soiled pile, covering it loosely. Activity returned to the ship; descending boots clattered, voices rang out. He drew back the curtain and was hard at work when the first figures passed by the open door.

  Now that he was irrevocably embarked on his course, he no longer felt tired, but almost exhilarated. The outline of his immediate strategy was already formulated; his promise would be fulfilled. In due course, he would ship the dog back to the soldier — but that lay in the future, and there was no point in wasting present thought on the unpredictable. Equally his mind shied off superstitiously from the thought that he might have the animal on his hands for good if its owner died.

  His present plan was based on his guess that they would return to sea the moment the ship was refueled. Falmouth was too vulnerable for one thing, and for another every ship would be needed against the possibility of invasion. As long as Tertian left within the next few hours, everything would be all right; once they were at sea he could count on the sentiment that would arise over such a defenseless stowaway. And fortunately the precedent of animals aboard had already been set in Tertian: from the supreme level of the captain’s bull terrier, who had been with the ship from the day she was commissioned, down to Hyacinthe, the ship’s cat, a matriarchal tortoiseshell with six toes to her front paws, who reigned over the lower decks. And the same maudlin sentiment would go for that damned monkey too, he thought; let the crew once make contact with that — if it had enough sense to stay out of reach until they sailed — and it would be home free too. Just so long as he, Neil MacLean, SBA, took care — a proceeding which came easily to him — to see that nothing could be pinned on him in connection with their appearance he was home free too . . .

  By the time the medical officer had returned, he had everything gleaming and shipshape, and was seated at the desk filling in forms. Apart from the stained pile by the door, the sick bay wore its usual look of impersonal shining efficiency. The doctor congratulated him and told him to turn in for a couple of hours while he could — as the buzz was that they would cast off as soon as they had been at least partially revictualed, the Lancastria’s survivors having cleaned them out. MacLean asked him a few questions about the shore evacuation of the wounded — the RASC Corporal, Sinclair, with the lacerated lung who had been on the first ambulance? He was pretty far gone, the doctor remembered; in fact, they had rushed him off to a local hospital instead of the hospital train.

  “Was he anyone you knew?” he asked MacLean absently, scrawling his signature on papers.

  “No, sir,” said MacLean, “never seen him in my life before. Came aboard with a little dog and a monkey they tell me, after hours in the drink too.”

  “Good grief,” said the doctor, yawning hugely. “What happened to them?”

  “Probably got ashore with the troops,” said MacLean, “and then picked up by Quarantine — they tell me that there were quite a few animals on board this trip. If you would just be signing these as well, sir, and then if you will not be wishing anything further, I will be taking this lot ashore.”

  He tied the four ends of a sheet around the bundle by the door, put on his cap, picked up the bundle, fastidiously wiped off a speck of oil on the gleaming bulkhead and prepared to depart. His face was white with exhaustion and he suddenly looked very old to the young doctor.

  “Go and get your head down, man, and to hell with that lot,” he said. “And that’s an order — just lose it in the sullage barge, or overboard, we’ll indent for more.”

  “We already have, sir,” said MacLean primly, and departed.

  He took the bundle down to the mess which he shared with the acting petty officers and some of the victualing staff, slinging a hammock there when the destroyer was in port. At sea, he slept in the sick bay, and wished he were there now, with a comfortable cot, and that handy cupboard underneath it.

  The mess was deserted except for APO Reid who was trying to clear the decks of acrid oily litter. MacLean did not trouble to conceal anything from this one man; Reid was a close-mouthed individual. He slid the towel-wrapped bundle of dog out on the deck, turned back an edge to reassure himself, then lifted it into the bottom of his locker. After checking that the ventilation slits at the bottom were not blocked, he locked the door.

  “What you got there — Moses?” asked Reid.

  “A dog,” said MacLean.

  “Looks dead,” observed Reid, fishing a pair of suspenders and three socks out from under the table.

  “Doped,” said MacLean, sitting down and distastefully stubbing out a smoldering cigarette stub.

  Reid thre
w an army boot onto his stack and looked skeptical.

  “See here,” said MacLean, rare persuasion in his voice, “you never saw it — neither did I. When we’re at sea, it appears and that’s that — something else left behind by the pongos. No one’s going to heave a poor wee dog like that overboard, is he?”

  “Wouldn’t put it past the Buffer,” said Reid, referring to the Master at Arms who was reputed to have a copy of King’s Regulations instead of a heart, “nor yet the First Lieutenant,” he went on. “He carried on something awful when Hyacinthe had that litter in his bunk.”

  “It was very careless he was,” said MacLean severely. “He should have kept his door shut.”

  “You might get it as far as Devonport,” admitted Reid, “but then what? You’ll be up on a charge if you’re caught smuggling it ashore. What do you want a dog for anyway?”

  “I don’t want a dog,” said MacLean sourly. “That would be the last thing I would be wanting.”

  “You must be barmy,” said Reid. “Who’s so important anyway that you’d take the risk?”

  Useless to explain his quixotic promise to this hard-headed Yorkshireman what he could not put into words himself even — that he and that wounded soldier shared a common tongue and heritage, that their birthright alone imposed an obligation. “I’m doing it for a kinsman,” he said simply, “and Devonport’s a fair way off yet. I might need a hand — there would be a pint or two in it,” he added cautiously.

  Reid stirred his heap with the toe of his boot. “I’ll not risk a stripe,” he said at last, “and I haven’t seen anything, but within limits — would there be a meal thrown in with the pints perhaps?”

  “Aye, there would be that,” agreed MacLean. “I can count on you, then?”

  “Aye, you can that,” said Reid, imitating the soft inflection, so that MacLean flushed angrily, was about to say something, thought better of it and went off to try and scrounge a mug of tea out of the galley before cleaning up the wardroom.