Contents
1. Early on a Birthday
2. A Dog Behind Glass
3. The Unspeakables
4. To Little Barley and Beyond
5. Life with Tilly
6. Promises and Rainbows
7. An End –
8. – and a Beginning
9. Wolves Die by Hundreds
10. London Exploits
11. A Christmas Eve to Remember
12. Mr Fitch Spells Aloud
13. A Trip for Ben’s Bones
14. Pig-sty in the Rain
15. To Have and Not to Have
16. A View from a Hill-top
17. The Real Question
18. ‘Bring Mrzzl for Jurney’
19. Brown
Acknowledgements
PHILIPPA PEARCE was the daughter of a miller and grew up in a mill-house near Cambridge. The house, the river and the village feature in many of her best-loved children’s books. She was educated at the Perse Girls’ School in Cambridge and then at Girton College, Cambridge, where she read English and history. In addition to writing books, she worked as a scriptwriter-producer for BBC radio, as a children’s book editor, a book reviewer, lecturer, storyteller and as a freelance writer for radio and newspapers. Philippa Pearce’s much-loved books for children include Carnegie Medal winner Tom’s Midnight Garden, A Dog So Small, The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, which won the Whitbread Award, and The Little Gentleman. Philippa Pearce died in 2006.
Puffin books by Philippa Pearce
THE BATTLE OF BUBBLE AND SQUEAK
A DOG SO SMALL
THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN
THE ROPE AND OTHER STORIES
TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN
For younger readers
LION AT SCHOOL AND OTHER STORIES
1. Early on a Birthday
The tapping on the window woke him. He was fast asleep, and then wide awake because of the tapping. Perhaps the pigeon always began as early in the morning as this, for it was certainly always tapping when the boys woke. But that was usually much later, with full daylight and with the smell of breakfast-cooking coming from downstairs.
Cold, scentless, dim was the early morning, and Paul and Frankie still lay sleeping. But Ben had woken at once, and at once he could not stay in bed a moment longer. He got out and went to the window. ‘Pij,’ he said softly through the glass; but the pigeon knew that this was not the boy who gave the food, and moved doubtfully off to the edge of the windowsill. The sill was always white with pigeon-droppings, so that Ben’s mother – who did not know of the daily feeding – said that the bird was an obstinate creature that did not know when it was not wanted; but it did.
The sky was a dirty pinky-yellow where dawn over London fought with the tired light of thousands of street lamps. The birds were awake – pigeons, sparrows, starlings; but nobody was in the street. It lay empty for Ben; and he could not wait a moment later in bed – in the bedroom – in the house. With action he must fill the space between now and breakfast time, when the post came.
He dressed quickly and left the bedroom. The other two were still sleeping, and the pigeon had resumed its tapping. He crept out on to the landing. His parents were still asleep: his father snoring, his mother silent. As soon as Mrs Blewitt woke, she would begin a little rattle of cups, saucers, teaspoons, tea-caddy, teapot and electric kettle. When the tea was made, she shook her husband awake. And when his snores had ceased to buzz through the house, you knew that the Blewitt family had really started its day.
Ben passed his parents’ door, and then his sisters’ – more warily. May was talking to Dilys. May was still half asleep, and Dilys three-quarters, but that did not matter in their kind of conversation. May, the eldest of the family, was going to marry Charlie Forrester early next year, and Dilys, very close to her in age, was going to be her bridesmaid. So they talked of weddings, and wedding presents, and setting up house with a three-piece suite and curtains with pelmets and a washing machine … ‘And a wedding like a newspaper photograph, with a bridesmaid and a page,’ said May, going back to her favourite beginning. Ben was tiptoeing so carefully – so slowly, that he had to eavesdrop. They spoke of the prettiness of a pageboy to carry the bridal train; and they wondered if Frankie, being really still only a little boy – although not really pretty any longer, and he might need some careful persuading to the idea …
Frankie? Ben’s eyebrows went up; but it was none of his business, this morning of all mornings. He tiptoed on, down the stairs and out of the house. He closed the front door behind him with care, and then said quite loudly, ‘It’s my birthday.’ The pigeon came to the edge of its sill for a moment, to look down at him, nonplussed. ‘Ah,’ said Ben, looking up towards it, ‘you just wait and see.’
He said no more, even to Paul’s pigeon, even in this empty street, and even so near to the time of his birthday post. His grandfather Fitch had promised him – well, as good as promised him – a dog for his birthday. That was some time ago, when Ben had been on a visit to his grandparents. Grandpa had been watching him play with their dog, Young Tilly, and had suddenly said, ‘What about a dog of your own, boy – for your birthday, say, when that comes round?’ He had spoken from behind his gnarled hand, because Granny was there, and she missed little. She disapproved of dogs, even of Till. So Ben had only breathed his ‘Yes’ to his grandfather, and Mr Fitch had nodded in reply. But surely that had been enough.
Grandpa would have to tell Granny in the end, of course, to get her agreement; and then he would have to get hold of just the right kind of dog. There might be delay, for there would be need of delicacy and discretion. All this Ben had understood, and he did not alarm himself that his dog was not mentioned in the weekly letters to his mother. Grandpa wrote the letters at Granny’s dictation. She would have written them herself, but she had arthritis and could not use a pen properly. So Grandpa wrote for her, very slowly and crabbedly. Granny told him what to say, first of all about the weather and then about the rest of the family. Old Mr and Mrs Fitch had six surviving children, besides Mrs Blewitt, and all grown up and married and with children of their own. By the time Granny had finished with news of them, there was no room for talk about dogs. Moreover, Grandpa hated writing and by the end of each letter his fingers were cramped and exhausted with the effort of holding and subduing the pen. All this Ben told himself reassuringly, having faith that his grandfather would neither forget a promise nor break it.
For months now, Ben had been thinking of dogs. As long as you hadn’t been given any one kind of dog, you had a choice of the whole lot. Ben had not bothered to be reasonable in his imagining. He had had Alsatians, Great Danes, mastiffs, bloodhounds, borzois … He had picked and chosen the biggest and best from the dog books in the Public Library.
This morning Ben was making for the River – some way from his home, but worth the walk. Looking over the parapet, you had the only really extensive view possible in this part of London, and that was the kind of view you needed when you were thinking of a really big dog.
He turned out of his side street into another and then into a main road. There was very little traffic yet, and he made the street crossings easily, with only a brisk, almost absent-minded look in both directions. Already his mind was leaving London in the early morning for Dartmoor at night. Over that wild, nocturnal waste the hound of the Baskervilles was silhouetted against a full moon low in the sky. The dog’s spectral eyes dwelt upon the figure of Sherlock Holmes …
But a boy couldn’t do much with a bloodhound, unless there were criminals loose. Not a bloodhound then, this morning. The road along which Ben was trotting rounded a bend and came within sight of the bridge over the River. This was the point at which the Blewitt family still sometimes revived the old, old
joke about Ben’s littleness. If he grew to be six foot high, Ben sometimes thought, they would still make that joke. For from the other side of the bridge towered up Big Ben.
Ben Blewitt was still thinking of his dog. An Irish wolfhound perhaps – but they looked so unkempt and terribly sad in the photographs in the dog books. If he were dealing with wolves, he would really prefer a borzoi …
The traffic crossing the bridge into central London had been very slightly increasing all the time, and the number of pedestrians. Ben was outpaced by a man in a bowler hat and dark suit, carrying a briefcase. He had walked from Tooting and was going to his office in the City, where he liked to be at his desk by half past eight in the morning. He did this every morning – he was not a married man.
He passed Ben on the bridge, and went on to his work; but Ben stayed in the middle. He laid his elbows along the parapet and gazed over that amazing length and width of water, here in the heart of London. The only buildings to interrupt the expanse were the bridges, and they put only their feet into the water as they strode across.
This was what he had come for. The expanse of the River reminded him conveniently of the enormous expanses of Russia, the home of the borzoi. At school Ben learnt about Russia – what Russians choose to eat for breakfast and what agricultural implements and crops they use on which soils; he wasn’t very much interested. His father read about Russia in the newspaper, and thumped the table as he read. Paul and Frankie read about Russian space-travel. But Ben’s Russia was different from all this. For one thing, his country was always under deep and dazzling snow. The land was a level and endless white, with here and there a dark forest where wolves crouched in the daytime, to come out at night, howling and ravening. For Ben, it was daytime in Russia. Sleighs had been driven out into the snow, and left. Each sleigh was covered with a white woollen blanket to match the snow. Beneath the blanket – but wait: already men on horseback were beating the nearby forest. Wolves came out. They were rushing past the sleighs. Men concealed in the sleighs threw back the blankets and, at the same time, unleashed their coupled borzoi dogs. Magnificent, magnificent beasts! They leapt forward after the wolves.
The wolves were fast, but the borzois had greyhound bodies, their whole bodies were thin, delicately made, streamlined for speed. The wolves were fierce, but the borzois were brave and strong. They caught up with the wolves: one borzoi on each side of a wolf caught it and held it until the huntsman came up with his dagger –
At this point Ben always stopped, because, although you couldn’t have wolves, he wasn’t so keen on killing them either. Anyway, from the far side of the bridge the moon-face of Big Ben suddenly spoke to him and said half past seven. The wolf-hunt with borzois had taken a long time. Ben Blewitt turned back from the River to go home to breakfast.
He broke into a run as he realized that the morning post would have arrived.
2. A Dog Behind Glass
The stream of traffic was much thicker as Ben hurried homewards. He rushed up to his usual crossing at the traffic lights, and a policeman said warningly, ‘Now then, sonny, not so fast,’ thinking he might recklessly try to cross at once. But Ben waited for the red traffic light as usual. However urgent your business, you simply had to, in London. A cat which did not know about this scudded across the road without waiting. ‘Oh!’ said Ben, and closed his eyes because he could not bear to look, and then opened them again at once because, after all, he had to know. The cat looked neither to right nor to left, but suddenly quickened her pace as a car flew towards her. Cat and car sped on paths that must cross. ‘She’s done for!’ said the policeman. The car passed, and there was the cat, safe on the farther pavement. She disappeared at once down some area steps, and Ben thought that when she reached the bottom she would certainly sit down to get her breath back and to count her nine lives. The policeman was shaking his head.
Ben crossed soberly and safely at the red, and then began running again. When he turned into his home street, he saw that the time was late enough for most of the dustbins to have been put on to the pavement. His father was just trundling the Blewitt dustbin out to be emptied in its turn. This was the day of his father’s late work-shift on the Underground.
As Mr Blewitt was going indoors, he saw Ben at the end of the street and waved to him to hurry. Perhaps it was just for breakfast, but perhaps it was for the post. Ben tore along.
The post had come, and it was all for Ben. His father had piled it by his place for breakfast. There were also presents from May and Dilys, Paul and Frankie; and his mother and father had given him a sweater of the kind deep-sea fishermen wear (from his mother, really) and a Sheffield steel jack-knife (from his father). They all watched while, politely, he opened their presents first of all, and thanked them.
He was not worrying that there had been no dog standing by his place at the breakfast-table. He was not so green as to think that postmen delivered dogs.
But there would be a letter – from his grandfather, he supposed – saying when the dog would be brought, by a proper carrier, or where it could be collected from. Ben turned eagerly from his family’s presents to his post.
He turned over the letters first, looking for his grandfather’s handwriting; but there was nothing. Then he looked at the writing on the two picture-postcards that had come for him – although you would hardly expect anything so important to be left to a postcard. There was nothing. Then he began to have the feeling that something might have gone wrong after all. He remembered, almost against his will, that his grandfather’s promise had been only a whisper and a nod, and that not all promises are kept, anyway.
He turned to the parcels, and at once saw his grandfather’s handwriting on a small flat one. Then he knew for certain that something was wrong. They would hardly send him an ordinary birthday present as well as one so special as a dog. There was only one explanation: they were sending him an ordinary present instead of the dog.
‘Open it, Ben,’ said his mother; and his father reminded him, ‘Use your new knife on the string, boy.’ Ben never noticed the sharpness of the Sheffield steel as he cut the string round the parcel and then unfolded the wrapping-paper.
They had sent him a picture instead of a dog.
And then he realized that they had sent him a dog, after all. He almost hated them for it. His dog was worked in woollen cross-stitch, and framed and glazed as a little picture. There was a letter which explained: ‘Dear Ben, Your grandpa and I send you hearty good wishes for your birthday. We know you would like a dog, so here is one …’
There was more in the letter, but, with a sweep of his hand, Ben pushed aside letter, packing-paper, string and picture. They fell to the floor, the picture with a sharp sound of breakage. His mother picked it up. ‘You’ve cracked the glass, Ben, and it’s a nice little picture – a little old picture that I remember well.’
‘I think it’s a funny birthday present for Ben, don’t you, Paul?’ said Frankie; and Paul agreed. May and Dilys both thought it was rather pretty. Mr Blewitt glanced at it and then back to the newspaper he had opened.
Ben said nothing, because he could not. His mother looked at him, and he knew that she knew that, if he hadn’t been so old, and a boy, he would be crying. ‘Your granny treasured this because it was a present from your Uncle Willy,’ said Mrs Blewitt. ‘He brought it home as a curio, from his last voyage – the last voyage before he was drowned. So you see, Granny’s given you something that was precious to her.’
But what was dead Uncle Willy or a woolwork dog to Ben? He still could not trust himself to speak; and now they were all looking at him, wondering at the silence. Even his father had put the paper down.
‘Did you expect a real dog?’ Frankie asked suddenly.
Everyone else answered for Ben, anyway.
His mother said, ‘Of course not. Ben knows perfectly well that Granny and Grandpa could never afford to buy him a real dog.’
His father said, ‘And, anyway, you can’t expect to keep a dog in London
nowadays – the traffic’s too dangerous.’ Ben remembered the cat scuttering from under the wheels of the car that morning, and he hated his father for being in the right. ‘It isn’t as if we had any garden to let a dog loose in,’ went on Mr Blewitt; ‘and we’re not even near an open space where you could exercise it properly.’
‘There’s the park,’ said Dilys. But Ben knew that park. It was just a large, flat piece of grass in front of a museum. There was a straight, asphalted path diagonally across it, and seats set in islands of asphalt. There was a noticeboard by the gate with forty-two by-laws beginning ‘No person shall –’ Eight of these said what no person should let a dog do there; and an extra regulation for that park said that dogs must be kept on leads. But you never saw a dog there, anyway.
May was saying, ‘What about the River?’ She only thought sensibly on her own subject, nowadays. ‘Couldn’t a dog swim in the River for exercise?’
Then Paul and Frankie and even Dilys laughed at the idea of Ben’s exercising the dog he hadn’t been given in the only open space, which was the River. They laughed merrily among themselves. Ben’s hands, half hidden by the wrapping paper that his mother had picked up from the floor, clenched into angry fists. Mrs Blewitt, still watching him anxiously, took the letter again to skim through the rest of it. ‘They say they hope you won’t be disappointed by their present – well, never mind that – and – why, Ben, just listen! – they ask you to go and stay with them again as soon as you’re able. Isn’t that nice? You always like that. Now, let’s see when you might go … Not next week, but perhaps the week after, or perhaps even –’
On this subject Ben had to speak. ‘I don’t want to go there,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever want to go there again. I shan’t.’
3. The Unspeakables
At the breakfast-table borzois, bloodhounds, Irish wolfhounds, and all the rest had vanished together, and Ben returned to loneliness. To be the middle child of a family of five may not be as sociable and warm as that central position sounds. Paul and Frankie were much nearer to each other in age than they were to Ben, and so were May and Dilys. The two youngest and the two eldest made two couples, and in between them came Ben, alone. He had never been much interested in the girls’ affairs, anyway. Paul and Frankie followed more sensible pursuits, and Ben sometimes allowed himself to play with them for relaxation. But, really, their games, their plasticine, their igloos made of eggshells and Seccotined cotton-wool, and all the rest – these were things he had done with. Even their pets seemed childish to him: Paul’s pigeon, Frankie’s white mouse, their silkworms, and racing beetles stabled in matchboxes. Ben needed a mature, intelligent creature-companion. Nowadays it always came back to the same thing: a dog.