Bel Ria

by Sheila Burnford

  A few minutes later, she received the news with every appearance of overjoyed astonishment. Not long afterwards she had a sudden inspiration for the separate conversion of the upstairs part of the house. They received this with equal pleasure and surprise.

  (However, the seeds of the coachhouse/surgery plan could wait for a while yet to be planted, she decided to herself after lunch: there was still this tedious war to be won yet. Doggedly she cast on the stitches for her twenty-seventh balaclava.)

  In June, immediately following D-Day, for her part in the all-out determination of those at home to back up the invading armies in France, Janet took on a part-time post with the A.R.P. in addition to the railway canteen, so Mrs. Tremorne and Bel Ria were alone for most of the day now.

  But far from being lonely, they were very content and occupied, and each had the other’s undivided attention. Wine-making now impossible — even to Alice Tremorne — with rationed sugar, they had taken up the challenge of cooking. Planting high stools in strategic resting places around the kitchen and scullery, she moved from one to another, talking to her keenly interested supervisor and taster ensconced at table level on a nearby chair, as she put her full ingenuity into the test of making something delicious out of the nothing of wartime substitutes and those rewarding eggs. The results were greatly appreciated by the still steady stream of visiting members of the Forces.

  The months slipped by most satisfyingly. In August the re-entry into Paris was celebrated with Oeufs parisiens; in September a landmine exploding in a field half a mile away rocked the house and flattened a magnificent Soufflé Arnhem; October brought the occupation of Athens and exotic (curried) Oeufs à la greque. Even the hens were doing their bit. Her triumph was the wedding feast with one of them in aspic.

  After this excitement, Neil returned to Sussex to his stone frigate posting, Janet to her jobs, and Bel Ria and Mrs. Tremorne settled down again, finding contentment even in the winter’s cold and fuel shortages for they avoided these by moving almost permanently into the warm coziness of the kitchen, with armchairs, footrests, wireless and all.

  Bel Ria seemed very content with this tranquil, undemanding kitchen existence, becoming reluctant even to desert the warmth of the fire for the wall, or the company of Fred and the hens. Too content altogether, Mrs. Tremorne decided, noticing that he stretched himself rather stiffly nowadays before making one of his briefer and briefer necessary sorties into the garden.

  “This will never do,” she told him briskly one cold February morning when he poked his nose out of the door, withdrew it swiftly before the icy blast, and returned to the kitchen. “We’re becoming soft — anyone would think we’re getting old,” and she began to coax and scold him from his bed by the fire for longer and longer periods. Out they went, rain or shine, wind or frost.

  “If I can do it — you can!” she told him mercilessly as they limped along together in the thin cold sunshine one day. “Smell that —” she commanded, poking the rich earth with her cane, “and that —” as she prodded a primrose clump. And “Fetch!” she exhorted as she whacked at rotting windfalls and fir cones — until suddenly the reluctant exercise turned into an exuberant, rolling, snuffing, digging discovery in the irresistible challenge of spring. Very soon, Bel Ria had forsaken the hearthside and was back in charge of his vibrant garden domain.

  It was not until the day of Victory in Europe that she was forced to admit in her heart that he was slowing up. Out in the garden to share in the jubilation of the long silenced bells pealing across the countryside, she saw Bel Ria try and fail to make the low jump onto the wall.

  “Perhaps we’re not quite as young as we were, my loved one,” she admitted, “but let’s rejoice anyway!” and she called in two youngsters passing by to move a garden seat close to the wall to make things easier for him. She sat there for a while when he was safely up, warm and content in the sun, both listening and watching and meditating. When he acknowledged with his customary dignity his friends among the passersby below, she stood up, her head on a level with his, and rejoiced with them. Then they went back into the house, and there Mrs. Tremorne ripped down the blackout curtains from her bedroom window, hung out a Union Jack, and tied a red, white and blue ribbon on Bel Ria’s collar.

  But in truth she herself seemed rejuvenated in this her eightieth year, for so much had happened, there was so much to look forward to, so many preparations afoot. Janet and Neil had their own quarters upstairs now, and it would not be long before he was demobbed. Her relief that the war was at last over was measured more by the fact that she no longer felt bound to supply His Majesty’s Navy with knitted comforts, but could ply her needles instead in an endless stream of shawls, bootees and bonnets for the child that was on the way. And the assurance that she would be the child’s godmother and proxy grandmother all rolled into one gave her carte blanche to order the best in nursery furniture and equipment in the same manner as she had years before ordered the best for a nameless little dog.

  There was another more immediate excitement to be realized too, the long awaited visit from Donald Sinclair. She could think of little else the week before. Bel Ria was shampooed, trimmed, combed and brushed to silken perfection, and she thought that he must sense something unusually exciting in the wind, for he became very restless and questioning the day before the visit.

  She was alone in the house that day, a day that had become unexpectedly even more momentous: early in the morning Neil had taken Janet to the hospital — some three weeks earlier than had been anticipated. She hovered between the kitchen and the hall window, the crossword unsolved, her knitting untouched, unable to settle to anything.

  The charged atmosphere in the house since that dawn awakening had affected Bel Ria too. He became increasingly restless as the morning wore on, panting, importuning, roaming from room to room, up and down the stairs, then back to her. He whined at the door to be let out, then minutes later scratched at it to be let in. She watched him settle on the sanctuary of the wall in the early afternoon almost with relief.

  He was there when his soldier came walking up the road, searching for the house. Minutes before he came into view, Bel Ria half rose, ears pricked, tensed and ready. For the first time he jumped down off the wall onto the road. He waited, crouched low and quivering.

  Donald Sinclair did not recognize him at first glance, so neatly unobtrusive against a peaceful suburban background; then, as he drew nearer, the unmistakable riveting eyes drew him back down the years to that road in France and the dusty desolate little figure with its rider clinging tightly around its neck. Then the eyes had been filled with wary entreaty; now they were bright and somehow calmly expectant. He waited there steadily, until that soldier who had once tried to drive him off, picked him up silently now and held him close in his arms. He buried his head in the man’s jacket, as though seeking once more the reassurance of a bandage torn from familiar clothing.

  Sinclair could feel the heart beating fast beneath his hands. He opened the gate and stood within for a long minute, for he was deeply moved, then he walked slowly towards the house.

  Alice Tremorne came to the door, her face ashen; she had seen him coming from the window and thought he carried a dead or injured Bel. Wordlessly, she put out her hands to take him, but he resisted, burrowing his head back within the man’s jacket. In a sudden flood of relief she realized who this stranger must be.

  “I’m sorry, I must have given you a fright. I’m Donald Sinclair,” he said, and put Bel Ria down to steady her.

  Her knees felt as though they were buckling. She tottered into the kitchen on his arm and sank into the nearest chair.

  “How silly of me,” she said at last, the color returning to her face. “It has been such an eventful day —”

  He brought her a glass of water. “I think this is an occasion that calls for something a little stronger,” she said, managing a smile at last, and directed him to the cupboard with the Sloe Gin ’36.

  “My best vintage,”
she said as she poured two glasses. “I never drink it without thinking of Bel — Bel Ria, I mean, he saved my life, you know, he found me —”

  She broke off and looked across where he sat now with his muzzle laid on the man’s knee, whining softly. She had never seen him like this before; so tense that he was almost rigid, his whole being concentrated on the man, excluding her even when she had spoken his name.

  “There is no need to ask if he recognized you,” she said, smiling, for strangely the exclusion did not rankle. She had warmed immediately to this tall gentle-faced man with the same soft accent as Neil, the same dark almost navy blue eyes. “Oh, there is so much to tell you, so much to ask — let’s begin at the beginning and go on to the end.”

  The sloe gin reminded Donald Sinclair in its potency of the old man’s fire-coursing brew. It might not be the beginning, but he spoke of this now, of the last sip taken on French soil with the young Fusilier, of the Lancastria’s last hours, and the long ordeal in the water when he had seen himself reflected in those same dark eyes that watched him now. And from there he went back to the first encounter with the caravan.

  He was a natural storyteller. Sometimes the words came out as though he were half speaking to himself, his face clearing as some long forgotten detail sprang to mind again, at other times frowning in concentration. Drawn on by Mrs. Tremorne’s rapt attention, her head nodding from time to time as some small blank was filled in for her, he recreated in vivid living detail the close security and love, the responsibility, the excitement, the tragedy and courage of those eventful missing hours in Bel Ria’s life that he had shared.

  She spoke only once, when he described the perfection of communication between the dark woman and her dog in the performance on the road.

  “So that was what he was trying to tell me,” she said sadly. “Oh, Bel, if only I had known —”

  But Bel Ria had ears only for the inflections of this voice that stirred memory, this man who was his last link in the human chain that reached back to the rolling open roads of the caravan world, the chain that had held him fast from there so long.

  It was almost dusk when the story ended. The kitchen was very still and peaceful. Mrs. Tremorne roused herself back to reality after a long silence. “I wonder what his real name was,” she mused and she told of John Peel’s hounds and how Bel had picked out his name.

  “I don’t think I heard her speak directly to him once,” said Donald Sinclair. “She would nod, or use her hands, or just look his way and that was all. But it was curious that he picked on an English word like ‘bell.’ ” He drew out of his pocket a white pillbox and handed it over. “It was around his neck,” he explained. “I brought it for good luck — for the bairn that’s coming.”

  Mrs. Tremorne opened the box and took out a tiny silver bell, the handle threaded by a narrow metallic strip. She shook it gently, smiling at the unexpectedly clear sweet tone.

  Bel Ria’s head turned as though electrified by the sound, his ears pricked, then for the first time since Sinclair’s arrival he came to her. His tail moved faster and faster, he cocked his head from one side to the other as she tinkled the bell again. She slipped the ribbon around his neck. He tossed his head, shook it, then moved it from side to side in a deliberate rhythmic control that kept the clapper chiming continuously. Enchanted, Mrs. Tremorne clapped her hands in time.

  “He had bells around his paws too when he danced on the road,” said Sinclair. He clicked his fingers and Bel Ria came running to sit before him, transformed with a jaunty confident excitement.

  He offered his forepaws, one at a time, with a demanding insistence. Donald Sinclair took each one in turn, encircling it with his fingers, smiling down regretfully, but Bel Ria seemed satisfied with the action. He stood stock-still between them for a moment, then with head erect, he straightened his back and extended his forepaws in the ritual that had always preceded the tantalizing fragment of the dance bestowed from time to time on Mrs. Tremorne.

  He took the opening step — and at the very same moment there was a crashing bang as the front door slammed, footsteps ran across the hall, then the kitchen door burst open before Neil MacLean.

  “Janet’s fine!” he shouted, “and it’s a boy — Janet’s got a fine wee boy for us!”

  He rushed at Mrs. Tremorne and hugged her, so carried away that he almost lifted her off her feet. Then he turned to Donald Sinclair and an incomprehensible flood of Gaelic goodwill followed, accompanied by much handshaking and backslapping.

  Bel Ria was caught up in the excitement too. His years fell away and he raced around the kitchen, scattering the rugs on the linoleum. He skidded to a halt and barked before the group, but such was the jubilation that no one heard this rarest demand for notice. In an attempt to be more closely involved, he jumped up onto a nearby chair but abandoned it when Mrs. Tremorne unknowingly dropped her fur wrap over his head when she went to find the hoarded whiskey to wet the new Scot’s head. His exuberance died away and he sat panting quietly by the door, the wrap still trailing from one shoulder.

  They sat around the table after the initial toast of health, wealth and happiness to the new life. They grew ever more close and mellow as reminiscences and plans flowed back and forth. They drank a toast to Janet, and to one another.

  “And to Bel Ria,” remembered Mrs. Tremorne at last, looking down at him, remorseful at her oversight. “To my darling Bel — for if it were not for you, the three of us would not be celebrating now.”

  “To Bel —”

  “And Ria —”

  “And Bel Ria —” they said, and raised their glasses to him.

  After the first commotion of congratulations had died down, he had crept back to sit by Sinclair, pressed close against his leg. Occasionally he had shaken his head in a bid for inclusion, but the small sweet sound of the bell went unheard below the cheerful voices. Then he had tried circling the group, pausing, concentrating intently on the faces as though willing them to glance down. He was patted absently by each in turn, but still the voices rose and fell, denying him. He whined, patently distressed and bewildered, as though he understood no meaning or intent from their intonations. Panting, he went to and from his waterbowl until it was empty, then returned to sit by the soldier.

  “Bel — Ria — Bel Ria —” he heard at last, and the hand that lay on his neck threaded fingers through the ribbon there to set the bell tinkling clearly in the sudden silence.

  It was his moment. He had the full spotlight of his audience’s attention at last. He shook his head to set the bell ringing, rose, then straight and steady, his eyes fixed ahead, he pirouetted before them.

  Mrs. Tremorne had been privileged to these opening movements of his inexplicable little dance. Neil MacLean had never seen or even known about it. Long ago, Donald Sinclair had been one of a spellbound audience that had watched it to the conclusion. But now in the gathering dusk of a silent room, the little dog did not dance for him, or for her, nor did he even look apprehensively in Neil MacLean’s direction. He danced, as though he must, for the one who taught him. But her bidding never came, there were no signaling fingers or tapping foot, no guiding flute to accompany him, and he became halting and uncertain in his steps. Panting hard now, shaking his head for the reassurance of the bell, he circled slowly and faltered, half-lowering himself to the floor, his head turning back as though in search.

  Helpless and deeply disturbed, his audience watched. He rose again unsteadily, repeated the circle, and tried to follow on into a tight spin.

  “Oh, no — no, Bel,” pleaded one; “Let him be,” said another; and the third who alone could set this tragic pas de soul against its proper background, who alone understood its choreography, looked on silently.

  But suddenly Bel Ria seemed to receive confidence. His head went back and his eyes looked forward with a steady eagerness, as though long custom had recalled the closing movements and there was no longer any need for direction.

  There was nothing to disquiet n
ow in the certain dignity and perfection of his finale. He circled, slower and slower, his forepaws lowering and his head drooping to the proper spaced intervals, once more the perfectly controlled clockwork toy running down. But this time when he sank to the ground he did not rise again to take his applause and finish his act. It was already over.

  SHEILA BURNFORD (1918–1984) was born in Scotland and emigrated to Canada in the 1950s. Her first novel, The Incredible Journey was a modest success when it was first published in 1961, but became a best seller after it adapted for film by the Walt Disney Company in 1963 and again in 1993 (as Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey). Burnford followed up her novel with three books of non-fiction, including One Woman’s Arctic, an account of her activities (dog sledding among them) on the Canadian Arctic island of Baffin, and two books for young readers. In 1978 she published Bel Ria (1978), her final book, which drew on her experience as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War II.