In spite of her arthritis, Granny got about wherever she wanted in the little garden or indoors. This afternoon she had laid the tea-table for Ben’s coming, so that Grandpa had only to brew the tea, while Ben made the toast.
Over the tea-table Granny questioned Grandpa – what he had bought in Castleford market, how much he had paid, whom he had met, what they had said. Then she questioned Ben. She wanted to know how he was getting on at school, and Paul, and Frankie. She wanted to know about Dilys’s deciding to change her job, and about May’s getting married – and, of course, all about May’s Charlie Forrester, whom Granny had met only once: was he really sober? was he steady? was he hardworking? was he helpful about the house? Grandpa, unobserved, took an extra spoonful of sugar in his tea, while Ben answered briefly, carefully, accurately, saying he didn’t know if he didn’t know, for all this was what Granny liked.
After tea old Mr Fitch usually read to his wife, whose eyesight had dimmed from much plain sewing when all the little Fitches had had to be so cheaply dressed. Granny had the choice of Grandpa’s reading from the Bible, the Chapel magazine, or any recent family letters. Grandpa read as haltingly as he wrote, so he gladly gave up his task to Ben this evening. There were two letters to be read: the first was from one of Ben’s aunts who had settled in Essex, and the other was from an uncle in Canada. As Ben read, Granny would occasionally stop him to call, ‘Do you hear, Joe?’ and Grandpa would come out of the scullery, where he was washing up the tea-things. Then his wife would repeat to him the news of the letter, in the very words of the letter, for Granny had a remarkable memory for things both near and long ago. Each time, Tilly – from her position just outside the open front door – would whine a little, hoping that this meant the end of the reading. Every time she did so, Ben whispered ‘Tilly …’ in a steadying voice that promised her his company later.
When he had finished reading the Canadian letter, Granny said, ‘Would you like the stamp?’
‘Well …’ said Ben, not liking to seem ungrateful. ‘I mean, thank you … But, as a matter of fact, I have – well, really, I have those Canadian stamps, so if you don’t mind –’
‘Answer what you mean, boy,’ said Granny, and the end of her knobbed forefinger came down like a poker-end on the table, so that Grandpa in the scullery jumped, and Tilly, who had been crawling forward until her nose rested on the threshold, winced back.
‘No, thank you, Granny,’ said Ben.
‘Not interested in stamps now?’
‘No.’
‘But in dogs?’
‘Yes,’ said Ben, quickly and truthfully because he had to, but unwillingly.
‘Disappointed you didn’t have a live dog on your birthday?’ The clash and splash of washing up stopped in the scullery. Ben was silent too. ‘Answer,’ said his grandmother.
‘Yes,’ said Ben.
Again, a silence. Then Granny: ‘What possessed Joe to promise such a thing … Do you know how many grandchildren we have?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Supposing your grandpa and I began giving them all a dog each – twenty-one dogs …’
Grandpa appeared in the doorway of the scullery. ‘Not one each. One to a family.’
‘Seven dogs, then,’ said Granny.
‘One’s in Canada.’
‘Six, then.’
Grandpa went back into the scullery, having reduced the number of dogs as much as was in his power. Ben could see that, even so, there were far too many dogs. He couldn’t have had one. He began to tell his grandmother that, anyway, you couldn’t really have a dog in London. But Mrs Fitch was continuing her own line of thought: ‘And I hope Lily’d have more sense too. A dog eats bones that would make good soup, leaves mud on the lino, and hairs on the carpet. Yet men and children – oh! they must have a dog! It beats me why. Look at that foolish Till!’ Young Tilly knew her name, but knew the tone in which it was spoken; she groaned hopelessly. ‘We have her,’ said Granny, ‘as we had her mother, because she’s said to keep down the rats and catch rabbits for the pot. But there never have been rats here, and there aren’t rabbits any more; and, anyway, she’s too old and fat to catch anything except a bit of bacon rind sneaked down on to the floor.’
Grandpa, with the tea-cloth in his hand, came right out of the scullery, and spoke with fire: ‘There aren’t any rats because she keeps them down all the time; and it’s not her fault if there aren’t rabbits any more. And stout, not fat.’ He went back into the scullery before Granny could reply.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Fitch, ‘that is something your grandpa and I shall not agree about. Ben, will you put the letters away for me, please? With the others, in the top drawer in the chest in my bedroom, on their right piles.’
Ben had done this before. He went upstairs to the deep drawer that held all the letters from Granny’s children. They were divided into eight piles, one for each son or daughter. He recognized his mother’s handwriting on one pile. One pile was much smaller than the others, because it had not been added to for many years; the postmarks were all foreign, as the stamps would have been, of course, except that they had been cut out long ago for grandchildren who were collectors. These were the letters written by Uncle Willy, who had been drowned before he had had time to marry and set up a family – Uncle Willy, who had brought the woolwork dog from the place with the unpronounceable name in Mexico.
Ben put the two latest letters into the drawer and shut it, with a sigh for the dog he had been cheated of. Somebody sighed in sympathy behind him. He turned. There was Tilly. She was never allowed upstairs, and one would have thought that she could never have conceived the bold possibility of a dog’s going up there. But, as she waited on the threshold downstairs for Ben’s coming, she had seen the hedge shadows lengthening along the driftway, and had smelt the end of the day coming. She could not bear that she and Ben should miss it altogether. Grandpa had come out of the scullery and Granny had then engaged herself in a one-sided conversation on the worthlessness of dogs. Taking advantage of this, Tilly had slid into the house and upstairs, to find Ben.
Ben took her great weight into his arms and staggered downstairs, to where a window opened on to the back garden. He dropped the dog through the window and went down to his grandparents.
‘I’ve put the letters away. Can I go out now?’
‘Yes, be back before dusk,’ said Granny. ‘I expect you’ll want to take that dog.’
‘She’s gone from the door,’ said Grandpa, looking. ‘But no doubt you’ll find her outside.’
‘I’ll find her,’ said Ben. He stepped outside, into the early evening sunshine and the smell and sight of flowers and grass and trees with clean country air above them up to a blue sky. He dropped his eyes from the blue and saw Tilly’s face round the corner of the house. She advanced no further, but jerked her head in the direction of the driftway. ‘Come on,’ her gesture said.
Ben picked a stem of grass growing beside the porch, set it between his teeth, and followed her.
5. Life with Tilly
It wasn’t that Ben wanted to live in the country – oh, no! The country was well enough for holidays and visits, but Ben was a Londoner, like his father. Mr Blewitt was an Underground worker, and, as the only English Underground is in London, Mr Blewitt could no more live out of London than a fish could live out of water. Besides, he liked London; so did Ben.
Ben liked to rattle down moving staircases to platforms where subterranean winds wafted the coming of the trains; he liked to burrow along below London. Above ground, he liked to sail high on the tops of London buses, in the currents of traffic. He liked the feel of paving-stones hard beneath his feet, the streaming splendour of a wet night with all the lamps and lights shining and reflected, the smell of London. After all, London – a house in a row in a back-street just south of the River – was his home; and he had been called – so his father said – after Big Ben.
But he would have liked to have had a dog as well.
That was why B
en particularly enjoyed his country visits to his grandparents. During a stay, Tilly became his. This was her own doing, and was done with delicacy, for she became his companion without ceasing to acknowledge Grandpa as her master.
Grandpa gave Tilly’s care over to Ben. He made her dinner – kept an eye open for all rinds of bacon, for bones, and other left-overs including gravy, added dog-biscuit and a little water, and stewed it all up in Tilly’s old enamel bowl on the kitchen-range. He combed out her spaniel curls, dusted her for fleas, gave her a condition powder – did everything. He shielded her from Mrs Fitch, who knew perfectly well that there was a dog about the place, and yet never allowed herself to become reconciled to the fact of it. Ben picked up Tilly’s hairs whenever he saw them indoors, rubbed her feet on the doormat before he let her inside, and walked between her and his grandmother when they entered together. Young Tilly herself knew how to evade notice. In spite of her bulk – ‘a back made to carry a tea-tray,’ Grandpa said – she could move so lightly that there was not so much as a click of her toe-nails on the linoleum.
Tilly was with Ben, whatever he was doing. On the first days of his visit, he spent most of his time about the house and garden, helping Grandpa. He kindled the fire in the range, fetched the milk from the milk-box at the end of the driftway, pumped the water, dug the potatoes, fed the fowls, and gathered the eggs. Always Tilly was with him. They spent one whole afternoon with Grandpa, helping to knock up a new hen-coop for a hen with a brood of very late chickens. The chicks ran over Tilly’s outstretched paws as she dozed in the sun to the beat of Ben’s hammer on the nails.
On other days they were more adventurous. Granny directed Grandpa to pack a lunch of sandwiches for Ben, and he went out after breakfast until nearly teatime – with Tilly.
They went down the driftway. Once – in spite of everyone’s saying there weren’t any more, nowadays – they startled a rabbit. Tilly threw herself into the chase, ears streaming behind her, until the rabbit began really to run. Then, intelligently, Tilly stopped.
Once, in a copse, they startled a squirrel; and Tilly would not believe she had no possible chance of catching it. She thought it must fall.
Once they found an old rubber ball in a ditch: Tilly found it and Ben threw it for her, and they only lost it hours later, in a bed of nettles.
The weather became hot, and they bathed. Just before reaching the driftway bridge over the Say, they would strike off across marshland to the river. Tilly led the way, for bathing was her passion. The marsh grasses and reeds grew much taller than she was, so that every so often she reared herself up on her hind legs to see where she was going. She dropped down again to steer a more exact course, each time resuming movement with greater eagerness. As they neared the river, Tilly could smell it.
Her pace quickened so that she took the last few yards at a low run, whining. She would never jump in, but entered the water still at a run, and only began swimming when she felt her body beginning to sink.
Tilly swam round and round, whining, while Ben undressed by a willow tree. He did not bother to put on bathing-trunks, for there was never anyone about. He dived in and swam, and Tilly threshed the water round him.
There was never anyone about – until the last day of Ben’s visit. That day, the weather was stiflingly hot, and Ben and Young Tilly bathed in the morning to keep cool. Afterwards, they lay under the willow tree where, even in its shade, the heat dried fur and skin. They shared the lunch between them – hard-boiled eggs and thick cheese sandwiches, and a bottle of lemonade as an extra for Ben. That made the day seem even heavier and drowsier. They slept.
So not even Tilly was awake when the canoe appeared for the first time, coming out from under the driftway bridge. There were two boys and a little girl in it. Between the knees of the older, red-haired boy, who sat in the stern, was a dog: an upstanding-looking mongrel, mostly terrier perhaps. He glanced towards the bank where Ben and Tilly lay, but they were hidden by the grasses, asleep. No wind blew a scent from them. The canoe passed and went out of sight.
The boy and the dog slept on. Breezes began to blow the leaves of the willow tree, so that their silvery-green undersides showed light against a darkened sky. Great black clouds crept overhead.
Except for the abrupt, shivering little breezes, the air was hot, still, heavy before the storm. Then a single raindrop splashed on Ben’s bare shoulder. He woke, and his movement woke Tilly.
The oncoming storm tried its strength out with a few more big drops, and Ben began hurriedly to collect his clothes to dress. Tilly was shivering and whining round him, getting in his way. Then she fell silent, turning towards the river, alert. Ben looked where she was looking, and at once dropped down behind the screen of grasses. The canoe they had missed before was coming back. Seeing the dog in it, Ben put his fingers through Tilly’s collar. She had stiffened, but was willing to remain still and quiet.
The canoe was hurrying to get home before the rain. The two boys were paddling with all their might, and – to leave the stern-man quite free – the dog had been sent forward into the bows. There he sat, in front of the little girl, looking ahead over the water and from side to side at the banks. This time, on one of his side glances, the dog saw or smelt Till. There was no doubt of it, and Ben felt Tilly, under his hand, quiver responsively. The dog stood up now to look better at the bank, and the boat rocked as he moved.
‘What is it, Toby?’ called the boy at the stern; and, from the way he spoke, Ben knew he must be the master of the dog. With a pang he knew it: the boy was not much older than he, he did not look much richer – even the canoe was old and shabby – but he lived in the country, where you could exercise a dog. So he had a dog.
The other boy in the canoe cried that they must not stop for anything Toby had seen on the bank – it was already beginning to rain quite heavily. The canoe sped on. As it went, the dog in the bows turned sideways and finally right round in order to continue looking at the place on the bank where Tilly was. Then the canoe disappeared under the bridge; and the rain was really coming down.
Then Tilly seemed to go mad. She raced up and down the bank, barking, and then flounced into the water, and swam round furiously, barking and snapping at the raindrops as though they were a new kind of fly. Ben had not meant to bathe again, but now, seeing Till in the poppling water, he could not resist. He dived in and swam under her, which always agitated her. He came up in a shallow, and stood with the raindrops fountaining in the water round him and beating on his head and shoulders and rushing down them. ‘Tilly! Tilly!’ he shouted, for Tilly – now that the canoe had gone far off – was setting off in its pursuit, still barking. She heard Ben and turned, coming back with the same speed as in her going, and with such an impact on Ben’s legs when she reached him that they both went down together into the water, their barking and shouting almost drowned in the rushing of water and wind.
Thunder was rolling up, with lightning. They went ashore. Ben pulled on his clothes, and they began to run home. The marshland was becoming a slough; the driftway was becoming a marsh. Black clouds darkened their muddy way; lightning lit it. By the time they reached the refuge of their home-porch, water seemed to be descending from the sky in continuous volume instead of in separate raindrops.
Ben stumbled in through the front door. A pathway of newspapers had been laid from its threshold to the scullery. ‘Straight through to a hot bath,’ called Mrs Fitch; ‘and that dog’s too wet and muddy for a decent home.’
‘She’s not; and she’s frightened of lightning,’ said Ben. The violence of the storm excused contradiction. He picked up Tilly and carried her along the paper way into the scullery, his grandmother no longer protesting. In the scullery Grandpa was pouring cans of hot water into a tin bath. He winked when he saw Young Tilly, and fetched a clean sack to rub her down.
Ben had his hot bath, and towelled himself, and Grandpa gave him his dry change of clothes. The rain was streaming in wide rivers down the scullery window. ‘We bathed in i
t, Grandpa,’ said Ben, ‘as we were going to be caught in it, anyway.’ He remembered the hurrying canoe, and described it and its occupants.
‘The red-headed one’ll be young Codling,’ said Grandpa, ‘and the others must be Bob Moss’s two youngest.’
‘And the dog? Does he belong to the red-haired boy?’
‘Aye.’
‘Tilly was frightened of him.’
‘Of young Codling?’
‘No, of his dog.’
‘She’s a sly one,’ said Grandpa emphatically, closing one eye. ‘That Toby fathered her puppies some two years back. But she’s too old for such tricks now.’
Ben sighed. Young Tilly’s mother, Old Tilly, had been old when she had had her last litter of puppies, of which Young Tilly had been one; but Young Tilly was now even older than Old Tilly had been then.
The storm continued, and during tea there was a particularly violent outburst. Young Mrs Perkins, sheltering under a raincoat, dashed in from next door to ask, ‘You all right?’ She said excitedly that this was the worst storm her husband could remember. Granny was saying that the importance of that remark depended upon how far back a person could remember, and that depended upon his age, which might be nothing to speak of. But Mrs Perkins was already dashing home again.
Up to now, Tilly had been hiding under the furniture; now she made a rush to get out through the door after Mrs Perkins. On the very threshold she darted back from a flash of lightning that, branched like a tree, seemed to hang in the sky, ghastly, for seconds. She yelped and fled back again to the shelter of Grandpa’s chair. She squeezed under it so far that she stuck, and the old man had to get up to release her.
‘Fat, and a coward,’ said Granny.
Everyone knew that Tilly was – well, timid, yet she wanted to go out, even in this thunderstorm. She spent all that evening crawling towards the front door, and then dashing back in terror. For the storm continued with lightning, thunder and floods of rain.