Bel Ria

by Sheila Burnford

  “Come on, Mam’s little luv, eat up your luverly din-dins,” he said, in such a high falsetto imitation that MacLean could not help laughing — such an unexpected sound that Ria looked at him, his eyes round and astounded.

  “Go on — eat up —” said MacLean, still laughing, and to his astonishment Ria set to and polished the bowl clean, so obviously ravenous that MacLean gave him some of his own.

  From then on there was to be no refusal of meals; a battle had been won. There would have been no doubt in MacLean’s mind as to which had triumphed if the point had ever been raised: dogs always came around in the end; he knew. Still, he decided, perhaps Reid had a point — and anyway it could do no real harm to discipline if the dog continued to eat at the same time as himself — and maybe even have something of his own hot dinner. There was nothing more professionally abhorrent than a skinny looking dog. It was interesting, though, that a dog should actually have preferences as to where or how it should eat. . . .

  Or that anything the merest shade different, the slightest tinge of drama, could assume such colorful importance apparently in the day-to-day lives of shipboard animals. This was his next discovery when a few days later he watched first Ria and then Hyacinthe shoot out of a hatchway on deck as Tertian drew within hailing distance of the last limping ship in the convoy, an elderly rust-stained tramp steamer that had straggled farther and farther behind all day with engine trouble. They must have received the summons from Barkis on his vantage point of the bridge as he was hurling greetings across the water to a grizzled Aberdeen terrier tucked under the tramp skipper’s arm — a small stocky figure on the bridge who, apart from a salt-stained bowler hat, looked not unlike a grizzled old Aberdeen himself. The terrier was yipping hysterically back.

  Ria was beside himself with excitement. Hyacinthe had leaped onto the meat safe and had a grandstand seat at all that was going on, but at deck level his view was obscured. He ran up and down, whining, hesitated at the bridge deck ladder, then turned — to MacLean’s relief — and scrambled up the fo’c’sle ladder to the platform of A gun. One of the bearded scaramouch crew at the rusty rails heaving up and down before whistled to him and held up a ginger cat, waving its paw in greeting. Ria wriggled and grinned and cavorted precariously in return.

  When the exchanges through loud hailers were over — courteous inquiries and exhortations from Tertian and decidedly salty disclaimers and asides from the tramp’s bridge — the Captain released his silencing grip on Barkis’s mouth and put the loud hailer before it. Not to be outdone, the skipper turned his mouthpiece over to his terrier and a dreadful amplified duet ensued. From the gun mounting Ria threw back his head and howled to make a trio of it as Tertian moved off again.

  MacLean began to take an increasing interest after this in the way that the animals occupied their waking hours, seeing them for the first time not as sick or healthy specimens but as individual personalities. Convoy watching seemed to hold the most fascination, presumably because of its possibilities of other animal encounters — and he had not realized before that almost every ship carried its quota of assorted mascots — but even a sea gull snatching a crust, a bucket rolling down the deck, spray flicking over the rails held immense potential. In fact there appeared to be no limits to the apparent human trivia that could be magnified into the most satisfying animal drama.

  He found himself more and more absorbed and often amused by the astonishing dimensions opened up through those eyes: Ria’s scanning expressive querying ones always on the faces of men, compared to the opportunistic scanning for action of Louis; Barkis’s confidently cunning slits across which no shadow of doubt or justification ever flitted; the pure manipulation of her subject in Hyacinthe’s superb stare. And from these observations came the intriguing revelation that all these separate personalities — with the occasional temperamental exception of Louis — could merge and accommodate each with the other without conflict.

  Chapter 8

  THE ATLANTIC CONVOYS were the very life lines of England now; severance would mean a total blockade, so that in the end, even this last little island bastion must surrender — or starve. The responsibility of keeping these lines open, protecting the vital convoys, lay mainly with the destroyers, but in the preceding months twenty-two had been sunk and forty-five damaged, almost half their total strength. What was left — and many of them dating back to 1917 — had to be spread from the north Atlantic to the vulnerable Channel, from the western approaches to the Mediterranean, where pressure was mounting daily now that Italy had entered the war. For a destroyer’s crew, the limits of human endurance were tested by the endless task of protecting, hunting, evading and defense, when all the body cried out for — if it could not be warm and dry — was a few hours of unbroken sleep, and even the most stolid temperament became frayed at the edges.

  Two hundred and seventy-four ships were sunk between June and October at a cost of only six U-boats, and now a fleet of superbly equipped fast commerce raiders was in operation. But against all odds, with engines kept going by seeming miracles sometimes, with dirty boilers and straining plates, with exhausted crews, the convoys kept on coming as that desperate summer of 1940 wore on into autumn gales in the battle for the Atlantic. Die gluckliche Zeit, the Happy Time, the German Navy called it. The Royal Navy and the Merchant Service did not have time to call it anything, and if they had, it would have been unprintable.

  In these conditions, the most important adaptation shipboard animals had to learn was the art of keeping out of the way, to be so tuned in to urgency and strain that, while the shrill of action stations meant instant activity to humans, to them it signaled withdrawal into the most unobtrusive passivity they could find; to enter a state that needed not water nor food, comfort nor company, for there was little chance of receiving any. Barkis secure in his lofty bunk, Louis and Hyacinthe in their hammocks — more often than not curled together in one nowadays — they turned themselves off into a kind of temporary hibernation, their bodies sometimes twitching to the thud of underwater explosions, their noses wrinkling to the bitter smell of cordite, but still, it seemed, deeply asleep. Apparently sizing up the situation, Ria never made any attempt to join the monkey at these times, although, paradoxically, he had more opportunity then.

  He also had far more close attention and company than usual then, for the doctor — to whose cheerful personality he was devoted and who borrowed him often for company — did not stand regular watches, and apart from routine duties there were many hours when he — and MacLean too, to a lesser extent — were on standby only. These hours could be endlessly tedious, whiled away with books or a growing interest in sketching by the doctor, or a combination of reading and knitting socks by MacLean. Sometimes they could be bleak and harrowing hours: watching the night skies redden to a blazing tanker, the awesome fireworks of an exploding ship, the sickening blank where a living ship had been only a minute before; or, worst of all, the lonely little marker lights flickering on the waves afterwards, the faint cries fading in Tertian’s wake. Then inactivity could be almost unbearable. Then the appalled, identifying mind sought distraction in the very normality and unconcern of a dog; a dissociation that was yet an association, for while Ria could have no comprehension of events, he could gauge the human mood and respond accordingly.

  On the few — sadly few — occasions when Tertian could stop to pick up survivors, or they were transferred from another ship, frozen, shocked men would be crammed into every available space; cabins and flats and wardroom were given over to the wounded, and then only was there the mixed blessing of exhaustion in activity for the doctor and MacLean. And then Ria too went into the same state of suspended animation as the other animals, securely wedged in under the end of a mattress in the mess.

  He had become relaxed now in MacLean’s company during the enforced sharing of the worst hours of a convoy’s struggle for survival, often stretched out in sleep as needles clicked and pages turned, close and companionable. Yet MacLean could no
t help noticing that he was subtly transformed in another man’s presence, and very obviously and enthusiastically transformed if the other happened to be Reid or Lessing or the doctor in particular, or any other members of either mess.

  In a deep, dark and hitherto unused corner of his mind, this knowledge nagged. Still, he was rid of his former irritations now; there were no problems over food, no humiliating visits to Number Five Mess, no need to tie Ria — wherever he was left, he was always there on his return (even if, as MacLean now suspected — with a sneaking admiration at the cunning — he had arrived back probably only a few minutes before). All in all, the dog had settled in amazingly well, and had turned out to be no trouble even in the most exigent circumstances.

  Which was just as well, he reflected one morning, for it seemed likely that it would be months before he would be free of responsibility. The first mail for weeks had brought a letter from Donald Sinclair’s wife. Her husband was now off the dangerously ill list, she reported, but one lung would remain permanently collapsed; he would remain in hospital for some time yet, and would be invalided out of the Army in due course:

  Then, God willing, one of these fine days we will be able to take the dog off your hands at last. It cannot have been easy for you, looking after him on a boat and all, and Donald has fretted often over what he put upon you when he was not, as he says, himself. For a while he could remember very little, now it is gradually coming back. One day we hope to repay you, even if it is only with our thanks and hopes of friendship. My Aunty knitted the enclosed for you . . .

  The enclosed was a pair of socks. MacLean examined them critically. Aunty was an expert, but had been overgenerous in length. They would do nicely for Reid.

  He put the letter away, his feelings very mixed, and went out into the warm September sunshine on deck. It had been an exciting and eventful time, these last three days, and an almost holiday atmosphere still prevailed in every quarter of Tertian as she swung gently to her buoy off the fishing port of Oban.

  They had been diverted from the Clyde on the homeward leg and sent on up the west coast of Scotland on a reported sighting of two U-boats. One of the quarry had escaped, but the other was hunted up a long sea loch until trapped and forced to the surface — where she had been promptly scuttled. The crew, complete even to a sinister parrot which swore fluently in English, was picked up by a jubilant Tertian and taken to the nearest port, Oban, as she was running low on fuel. There she disembarked her not altogether glum captives, and among the congratulatory signals that followed was one delaying their return to the Clyde for twenty-four hours, thus giving both watches some hours ashore.

  This was familiar ground to MacLean, the waters all too familiar, and he had hoped never to see them again. The mountainous island of Mull dominated the western horizon, and some twenty miles away as the crow flies north, but nearer eighty by road, was the farm where he had been born. This was the land of his forebears, and of Margaret’s. Twenty-four hours here could only be twenty-four deeply disturbing hours too long in his estimation.

  It was a Sunday, and in the rare peace of make and mend that settled over the ship after Divisions, he settled himself with his back against the aft superstructure. One watch was going ashore in search of what limited diversion a Highland town on the Sabbath pubs-closed afternoon could offer. Most of the remaining watch slept below, only the few who were not afraid of fresh air sprawled around the deck in the sun, a good stodgy ship’s dinner behind them, the prospect of a good stodgy tea ahead with a couple of hours uninterrupted kip in between.

  But MacLean was not one to waste the idle hour: he knitted, and as he knitted he read (General Gordon, Hero of Khartoum), Ria tidily disposed on one side, a mug of tea on the other.

  The gentle rise of mainland hills stretched before him, vividly slashed with bracken’s fiery russet and the deep purple of heather. Across the intervening water a light wind carried the peaceful sounds of church bells and sheep bleating — and, to a sensitive interpretive nose, all the exciting, nostalgic and tantalizing smells of sun-warmed earth. The only other nose in the ship’s company that might have appreciated the wind’s promise, Barkis, was already ashore with the Captain, realizing them to the full. Ria rose and stood by the rail, his nose twitching, his ears flickering, his eyes searching for the source of this paradise. He whined, and MacLean whistled softly, but Ria did not even turn his head. He whined, more insistently, and only turned back reluctantly to a sharp “Come here!” but not to lie down, to sit and snuff and quiver. The distraction irritated MacLean, immersed in the most exciting part of General Gordon. “Wheesht,” he said curtly, standing resolutely on the Residency steps in Khartoum and almost matched in height with the gallant General.

  Farther along the deck, Lessing appeared with Louis, who in tribute to the sun, wore a sleeveless white singlet instead of his customary pullover. Over this was a shoulder harness to which was attached a long light line. Louis clutched a gray mouse from which he had long ago removed the clockwork insides; crouched on Lessing’s shoulder he looked like a small owl with its prey, his eyes as all-seeing. Lessing put him on the deck and settled down to write letters, from time to time patiently removing a grasping paw from his pen or the mouse from his writing pad. Louis wandered farther afield and soon, inevitably, he had aroused a devoted slave or two to amuse him.

  Ria switched his gaze off the shore and watched, his tail quivering. Beside him MacLean knitted determinedly before advancing hordes of yelling dark-skinned natives.

  One of Louis’s admirers tossed him a biscuit; he caught it neatly and suddenly scampered along the deck towards Ria. But the line tautened ten feet away and Louis rocked from one foot to another in frustration for a moment, then tossed the biscuit with remarkable accuracy straight at Ria’s mouth. Ria’s jaws opened, snapped shut, and the biscuit vanished.

  MacLean tried to keep his eyes on the print, to ignore the intrusion in Khartoum, but a monkey in a loin cloth insisted on scuttling up the Residency steps now, waving a dagger and yelling “Infidel!” A second biscuit followed, and MacLean’s patience snapped: he put down the book, suddenly seized with the same perverse anger and revulsion that he had felt when he had first seen Louis feed Ria, and “No!” he repeated sharply to a third biscuit. But each time Ria swallowed without glancing back. On the fourth throw, MacLean’s hand shot out and intercepted the biscuit, putting it into a pocket where Ria’s nose followed. His tail wagged as though he understood this to be part of a game.

  “Will you be still, damn you,” said MacLean almost hissing the words, and this time cuffed him lightly across the head for emphasis. In a flash Ria sank his teeth in the hand. He released it almost immediately, cowering back as though ashamed, but his eyes were bright and wary.

  MacLean stuffed the hand in his pocket quickly and glanced around, but no one was turned his way. He looked at his watch, replaced the paper bookmark, picked up his mug and knitting, and departed. Ria followed, head held high now, walking as though on the tips of his paws.

  In the sick bay MacLean set out cotton wool, antiseptic, scissors, and a roll of tape in a neat row, and sat down at the desk to dress the oozing punctures on his hand. His face was very white, and his hand trembled. Suddenly he stretched it down to Ria’s nose, so close that a droplet of blood smeared on a nostril “Bad!” he said vehemently, then “Bad!” so that he exploded the word in the dog’s ear, and at the same time he cuffed the side of the woolly head again, but sharply this time.

  Ria’s reaction was as instantaneous as before, but this time he snarled, one lip pulled back over his teeth, before he sank them in the hand, and this time he did not cower afterwards. For a long moment they glared at one another, almost on a level, the twice-bitten hand between them like a bone between two hackles-raised disputing dogs, one pair of eyes gleaming almost green, and the other pair glittering dark as coal. It was the man who turned away first. His face was expressionless as he attended to the wounds.

  Ria remained still as a s
tatue for a full minute, his head thrust forward and one lip still fractionally lifted, then he turned and slipped through the door to lie in his usual place outside, his head stretched on his paws and his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the man.

  Through the open scuttle drifted the peaceful bahing sounds and all the sweet headiness of hill and moorland that had so stirred Ria a short while ago, sounds and smells that suddenly stirred MacLean now to such a sick nostalgia of remembrance that he laid his head on the sound hand lying on the desk, sick and dizzy with the too-swift transition, almost afraid to breathe, waiting for the familiar iron band to squeeze around his chest, trying to suppress all other unbidden memories before they flooded his mind and broke the dam of his reserve.

  Ria whined uneasily, then came to him. He licked the blood that his own teeth had drawn from this hand that had struck him, and suddenly MacLean found that he could breathe again, all tension gone. He put his hand on the dog’s head, and remembrance now was gentle and kind: a boy riding home on the peat cart, the gorse and heather-laden summer wind gentle on his face, the sheep summer high on the hills, the lazy murmur from the burn. . . . He felt the delicate bone structure beneath his fingers, and smoothed the ears, feeling at the same time the warmth of the dog’s body pressed against his legs. Perhaps he dozed for a minute.

  There had been a pup, a gangling sheep dog pup, and a child had struck it again and again until it had cringed, silent and submissive before him on the ground; then the child had called it to him, clapping his hands encouragingly; then, when it was once more fawning and gamboling at his feet the child fondled and patted to see the shining adoration in its eyes, and then he had struck it again, harder this time, until it yelped; then once more the reconciliation . . .