Bel Ria

by Sheila Burnford

  “I’m afraid he’s not here — he’s with friends. What a pity.”

  He said nothing: simply looked at her with the strange dark blue eyes. Now she must get rid of him. Make sure he never returned.

  “I am sorry about your dog,” she said, searching busily in a knitting bag for another needle to pick up a dropped stitch. “I know how attached one can become — although I cannot understand why you did not direct your inquiries through the RSPCA. There is a very efficient branch here, as I know from my own experience — they did a wonderful job of tracing owners and finding homes for unclaimed animals. They even had a wallaby, and a three-foot python they called Daphne for a while —”

  Still no response; she carried on undaunted: “Of course it is a very long time ago, isn’t it? Really a curiously long time if you were so attached to this dog? In fact,” she continued, a note of triumph creeping in, warming up to her subject with this advantage, “one might almost think that even if the poor thing were still alive, and you were fortunate enough to trace it, you could hardly expect the owners to relinquish it now. Dogs cost money to feed nowadays, you know — there is little enough leftover from anyone’s kitchen. Now, if you would not mind, Mr. McVane, I am a very busy woman —” She nodded distantly at him, as though dismissing some recalcitrant servant.

  He had risen to his feet, two dark red spots of color on his cheekbones.

  “MacLean is my name,” he said, and spelled it out. “And if it is money that counts, I would pay anything. How much would you be wanting for instance, Mistress Tremorne?” The scorn in the deceptively soft voice was only too apparent.

  Mrs. Tremorne flushed an ugly dark color. She reached out a hand that trembled for the bell on the table. “Go now,” she said, “before I report you to your commanding officer for your insolence, your intrusion in my home. My companion will see you out.” Mrs. Tremorne managed to convey that this would be a necessity to safeguard any valuables in his passing.

  She strained towards the bell, and the ball of wool rolled off her lap and under her chair. McLean bent down to retrieve it, but had to get on to his knees to reach under the chair. She looked down and saw a livid recent scar snaking up from behind one ear across the back of his head, the thin hair combed carefully across it. Pity and revulsion stirred simultaneously. And MacLean at that same moment, his eyes on a level with her grossly swollen feet and ankles in their gleaming buckled shoes, experienced the same reaction. He looked up at her as he handed back the wool, and she looked down, and he saw the soft, creased face with the hard mouth, deep lines etched on either side, the washed-out old eyes that sparkled now, but either with pity or anger only Mrs. Tremorne knew; unspokenly, like recognizing like, between them a truce was called.

  He stood with the ball of wool in his hand, picked up the knitting and examined it briefly, then stuck the needles through and laid it on the table.

  “It is the fine sock that you are making,” he said, with only a momentary hesitation. In fact it was a terrible sock, one that to his expert eye would produce blisters in the first foot it encountered, so loosely knitted that its present gargantuan size would shrink to tiny stiff matting at the first wash. It was all that he could do to stop himself picking up the dropped stitch. He picked up his cap to give his hands something to do so that he would not be tempted.

  “There are many of my socks seeing service in the navy,” said Mrs. Tremorne with a kind of complacent grandeur. “Balaclavas, scarves, mitts, too.”

  MacLean had a sudden recollection of his own comments on some of the Naval Comforts that had found their way to the quartermaster’s stores. “We are always very grateful for them,” he said, pushing his mendacity to further limits.

  She looked down at his own neat navy blue socks with a critical eye. “Very nice,” she said. “Very nicely knitted indeed. But no double heel?”

  “No,” said MacLean, “I am not liking the double heel, it is clumsy looking, yon.”

  “They last twice as long,” said Mrs. Tremorne reprovingly. “You should ask your wife to do them that way —”

  “I am not married,” said MacLean coldly, “and I like them single — the heels that is.”

  “They have to be darned,” said Mrs. Tremorne, “and what looks worse than that? Double is the only way.” They glared at one another.

  “I never darn,” said MacLean with Olympian dignity. “It is a foolishness. I knit new heels.” Torpedoed amidships, he thought with some satisfaction. “This is the second pair of heels these have had,” he added, for a final salvo.

  But far from going under, Mrs. Tremorne was staring at his socks with admiration. “You knitted them?” she said. “How wonderful — I wish I could turn heels like that — I always get a space there and have to darn it in. And a needle is such a finicky thing with these stupid hands of mine. Look,” she said, holding up the knitting. “It’s starting to form now —”

  MacLean hesitated, momentarily defenseless before her admiration, then, “Here, it’s like this,” he said, and took up the sock.

  Mrs. Tremorne relaxed. Bel was safely in the paddock with his friend. According to his inflexible habits, he would not return unless she called him from the window, or until he saw her taking her morning stroll in the garden. She would make sure nevertheless.

  Janet, entering the sitting room a few minutes later at the bidding of the bell, expecting she knew not what, resigned to fetching Bel’s lead and watching him limp out of her life with this sinister visitor, found him sitting on a chair drawn up close to Mrs. Tremorne’s, their heads bent over something.

  “Now, into the back of the next stitch, careful now,” he was saying, “then pass the slipped stitch over . . .”

  Mrs. Tremorne looked up. “Ah, Janet, my dear,” she said. “Coffee for two, please — oh, and Janet,” she paused meaningfully, “if that Mr. Bell should call this morning, tell him to come back later — I am not to be disturbed. . . .” MacLean’s head was safely bent over the knitting. She nodded at it and one vulturish eyelid dropped.

  “I’ll see that he gets the message,” Janet said, almost skipping out of the door and down the stairs, heading for the paddock, her heart singing hallelujahs as she went.

  “And now, Mr. MacLean,” said Alice Tremorne, “just once again — into the back of the stitch you said. . . .” She was playing with fire, she knew; he should go now — but she could not overcome the terrible desire to speak of Bel, to hear something of his background and because of this, there was, too, the feeling of being drawn to this dour, inscrutable, little man who gave no inch to her, who had once owned Bel . . .

  “I mind once,” he was saying, and she felt that if she had Bel’s ears they would move forward now, stay pricked and intent, “I was sitting on the deck, peaceful like, in the sun, knitting, when the Tertian suddenly lurched — she’d altered course to avoid a mine though I did not know it then — and the ball of wool skittered down the deck, and would have been over, but Ria, he’d skittered too, quick as a flash and he’d caught it.” Mrs. Tremorne could hardly stop beaming. It was as much as she could do to refrain from capping this anecdote.

  “Another time —” and MacLean was launched into a world of reminiscence. Helpless, dumb, avid for more and more, Mrs. Tremorne listened, and as Bel’s life at sea unfolded, so many of the missing pieces clicked into place; and something else, which she tried to push into the back of her mind and stamp upon, the unconscious laying bare of a man’s life, and the gradual returning warmth to it from the coming of the dog.

  “And so, you see,” he ended at last, “that was why I left him here — I had promised Sinclair —”

  Mrs. Tremorne could hardly believe her ears. “You mean to say that after all these months you deliberately left him?”

  “Aye,” he said heavily. “I was not wanting to — and nor was anyone else on board, for he had become part of the ship — but he was not mine, I was only minding him whiles for Sinclair.”

  Mrs. Tremorne’s eyes were bri
ght with battle. Any prickings of conscience she might have had were quenched forever by this appalling statement. “You, Sinclair — pshaw!” she said, almost snorting. “What about the dog? What about his feelings? You had him for all that time, yet you talk about this Ria as though he were a parcel to be re-addressed — and to someone who had only known him for hours probably, and all to honor some stupid impulsive promise! Honor indeed! It was pure heartlessness!” The fact that she was partly defending her own behavior gave a passionate conviction to her words. MacLean looked troubled, she observed with pleasure.

  “You don’t understand,” he said at last, his words weighted with the burden of trying to explain the inexplicable debt that was owed to Ria, not just by Sinclair but by himself too. “There was more to it than just a promise. Sinclair seemed bound to that dog — I do not know how he acquired it — for it must have followed him from France and would not give him up, even in the sea. He was a strange wee dog — how he affected people. Even me —”

  He stopped, looking suddenly old and defeated, but Mrs. Tremorne resolutely closed her mind’s eye and spoke with brisk firmness. “At least you are talking about that poor dog in the past now,” she said, “and I am sure that is the only sensible thing to do now. Stop blaming yourself, Mr. MacLean, and lay the past to rest. It’s over and done with.”

  He stood up and looked out of the window across the sunny tranquil garden and paddock to the orchard beyond, his eye caught by the ambling figure of a donkey in the long grass between the apple trees. Close at its heels he could make out a small dog and some hens. He followed them until they disappeared behind a hedge.

  Mrs. Tremorne had stood up too. “A beautiful view, isn’t it,” she said, and picked up MacLean’s cap and handed it to him. “It has been most interesting meeting you,” she managed to smile at him, trying to rivet his eyes safely away from the window.

  “I was looking at a donkey and a dog in the field over there,” he said, and her heart missed a beat.

  “What wonderful eyesight you must have,” she said smoothly. “That is my neighbor’s field.”

  Donkey and dog came into sight again. MacLean’s eyes narrowed intently as he watched, sudden wild hope flaring up. The dog squeezed under the gate and ran up the fence line. As he came into full view, running with an uneven gait, MacLean saw an impeccable poodle with squared off jaws and trousers, a shaven tail terminating in a knob of hair, the clipped coat a pale gray. He turned away from the window.

  “I am sorry I troubled you, Mistress Tremorne,” he said wearily. “I am owing you an apology. I will be going now.”

  Before she could ring the bell he was halfway down the stairs. He let himself out. And Janet, watching him walk down the path, hurried indoors to rejoice with Mrs. Tremorne.

  But Mrs. Tremorne was standing by the window, her face working uncontrollably, her mouth contorted in ugly grief. Janet’s first thought was that she was having a heart attack, but — “Don’t stand there gaping, you dolt,” said Mrs. Tremorne, “fetch me a handkerchief.” Janet fetched two, and stood by silently while Mrs. Tremorne mopped her face. “Can you see Bel out there?” she asked at length. Bel was down there in the orchard, Janet said after a look through the field glasses, lying quietly in the sun, the darling. He must be waiting for his walkies — she would fetch Mrs. Tremorne’s cardigan.

  I would not have done it, I would not have done it — I would not have lied, Mrs. Tremorne told her conscience fiercely as she made her slow way into the garden; he made me do it, it was his fault. I am almost sure I would not have done it if he had not been so ruthless in his talk of promises, his own feelings. . . .

  But Bel was untroubled by devious thought, and knew only what his senses told him. He came running now to greet this human who made up his present world, his eyes bright with love and interest. She put out her hand to him, the mesh bag with her knitting in it dangling from her wrist. He stiffened, sniffed the hand again, and now the ball of wool, the half-knitted sock — and suddenly Bel was off like a hound on a trail. Swift as an arrow up the stairs to the sitting room, the seat, the stairs, the coffee cups, all touched briefly, and swift as an arrow down again, through the open door and along the path to the gate. And now Bel was jumping wildly at the gate, throwing himself at it, failing, falling back, throwing himself at it again. Yet he could have jumped as he usually did onto the wall, and down to the lane below; it was as though he must go through the gate, follow the reality that had gone through it already.

  Janet ran to him, calling, but he took no notice, only the agonized frenzy of silent leaping and falling.

  “Open the gate,” said Alice Tremorne steadily. “Quickly, run — open the gate and let Bel go . . .”

  And Janet, standing by the open gate, watched the little gray shadow streak down the straight empty road until it vanished.

  Half a mile away, MacLean waited at a stop for the bus that would take him back to the naval barracks at Devonport. When it had brought him here, he had felt buoyant with excitement and certainty, now he felt empty and flat — yet in a curious way, expiated, and resigned. The bus drew up, the small line shuffled forward and he swung himself on board.

  “Standing room only, move along there,” said the conductress. “Pass along there, please now — and no dogs allowed, if you please —” She touched MacLean’s shoulder, “Sorry, mate,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “the inspector’s on board —” Then in a loud cheerful voice, “Come on, doggie —” and she smiled down.

  Sitting neatly at his feet, looking up at him with the clear, dark unmistakable eyes, unblinking beneath a ludicrous topknot secured with a red ribbon, panting slightly, but otherwise in complete control — sitting as though he had never left — was Ria. Together they got off the bus.

  MacLean walked the miles back to the naval barracks and afterwards could not remember one yard of the way. Every few minutes he looked down to reassure himself of the miracle: Ria, cool, contained and undemonstrative to him as ever, trotting at his heels with the slight limp to which he had not yet become accustomed. He paused only once as they neared the dockyard gates, and removed the red ribbon.

  Exactly three days later, at ten o’clock in the morning, Bel returned to The Cedars. Janet heard him at the garden gate, and ran to let him in. He took the stairs in three bounds, pushed open the bedroom door, and jumped onto Mrs. Tremorne’s bed. Mrs. Tremorne had been gazing blankly down into the unresponsive depths of a cup of cold tea, willing herself to get up and face a day that lacked any incentive for getting up.

  She was possibly the happiest woman in England the following moment, with Janet a close second, while Bel in his excitement made the first clumsy movement of his life and upset the cup of tea. The dog Ria might be undemonstrative, cool and contained; Mrs. Tremorne knew only a Bel who openly and enthusiastically demonstrated his affection for her, but even she had never seen this Bel who nudged at her face with his muzzle as though he could not get close enough, who pawed at her forearm, and made whining singing noises. Janet and Alice Tremorne wept unashamedly together.

  After that Bel followed his usual morning routine as though he had never been absent. When the faint chink and rattle of the impending vacuuming session was heard downstairs, and Mrs. Tremorne was getting dressed, he padded downstairs, looked in the kitchen, found no familiar water bowl, or even his plate upon which normally reposed at this hour his ten o’clock offering from Janet — a biscuit or square of chocolate from her precious sweet ration. He sat in the kitchen entrance now, gazing earnestly at Janet, a faint air of reproof in his manner; and so compelling was his gaze that it was not long before she interpreted it to his satisfaction, giving him, in heartfelt gratitude, her entire ration for the week.

  As though hypnotized, she followed him, again through custom, and opened the front door. Bel trotted briskly down the path towards the orchard, checked on the welcoming hens, and followed by his flock, continued on to the paddock. The old donkey broke into a trot towards him and
then a canter. Bel ran towards him and sailed through the air to land on the dusty brown back. It was as though he had never gone. The only difference in him was that he no longer wore a ribbon, and someone had clipped the long hair on the top of his head.

  He was there when Mrs. Tremorne made her slow way to the orchard. They had their lunch there, the three of them, and afterwards Bel accompanied the old lady up to her room for her afternoon rest, and had a good sleep himself, under the pink eiderdown.

  At four o’clock, after a pleasant tea, before which he balanced sugar lumps on his nose, retrieved his ball and gave it back to Janet to throw again, Bel indicated that he had business elsewhere; he sat by the door, and then, when let out sat before the gate in silent supplication, again ignoring the easy access over the wall. Janet looked up at Mrs. Tremorne, who watched from the upstairs window. This time she seemed almost happy.

  “Yes, open it,” she called down; and then had an inspiration, for apart from MacLean’s name and rank, she had no idea where he was stationed, or how to get in touch with him. “Tie on a fresh ribbon before he goes,” she said. But the hair was too short, and the ribbon had to be tied to his collar. He ran off without a backward glance.

  So Ria, arriving back at Devonport barracks three quarters of an hour later, was able to inform MacLean how and where Bel had spent the afternoon.

  Chapter 13

  NOW BEL AND RIA MERGED into Bel Ria, a composed purposeful little figure who was often to be seen on the back roads between Devonport and The Cedars, trotting along in his uneven but fast gait, looking neither to left nor to right, undiverted by other dogs, even interesting smells, intent only on reaching his alternative world. On reaching The Cedars he behaved as Bel; on returning to Devonport he was MacLean’s undemonstrative Ria.

  Communication was soon established between his two owners. Mrs. Tremorne tied a label on his collar with an invitation to tea. The deft-fingered MacLean fashioned a small permanent waterproof capsule into which he rolled his acceptance.