‘But, all the same,’ his mother persisted, ‘you’re still thinking about a dog.’ Ben did not deny this. ‘You’re still wanting to have a dog.’
‘No!’ said Ben. ‘No, truly! I’m not wanting a dog any more, because I’ve got –’
‘Yes?’
Ben changed his mind about what he was going to say. ‘I’ve got over it.’
10. London Exploits
Mrs Blewitt could hardly believe that Ben no longer wanted a dog. In her experience, he did not give ideas up easily; besides, if he were like Paul or Frankie, he needed an animal of some kind. Well, within reason, he could have any small one that wasn’t a dog.
‘How would you like a white mouse, like Frankie’s?’ Mrs Blewitt asked.
‘No, thank you. I don’t want a white mouse.’
‘Well, then –’ Mrs Blewitt swallowed hard; ‘well, then, a white rat?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t want anything at all. I just want people to leave me alone. Please.’
He really meant what he said: to be left alone, in peace and quiet, so that he could shut his eyes, and see. For, by now, night-time visions were not enough for him. He saw the dog Chiquitito as soon as he closed his eyes in bed, and they were together when he fell asleep, entering his dreams together. But, when he woke in the morning, a whole day stretched before him, busy and almost unbearably dogless.
You might have thought that weekends and half holidays would have provided Ben with his opportunity, but not in a family such as the Blewitts. Ben’s mother did not like his staying indoors if the weather were fine; and, if it were wet, too many other people seemed to stay indoors.
So Ben reflected, as he slipped up to his bedroom one wet Saturday afternoon. He had left his father downstairs watching football on television; May and Dilys were cutting out dress patterns; Mrs Blewitt was advising her daughters and making a batch of buns for tea; Paul had disappeared, and Frankie –
When Ben reached the bedroom, there was Frankie. He was sitting cross-legged and straight-backed on his bed: this meant that he was exercising his white mouse. The mouse ran round and round his body, between his vest and his skin, above the tightened belt. In her ignorance of this Mrs Blewitt always marvelled that Frankie’s vests soiled so quickly – had such a trampled look.
At least there was no Paul in the bedroom, although Paul’s pigeon loitered on the windowsill, peering in.
But Frankie was going to talk. ‘I suppose it’s because you’re older than I am that you can have one … A white rat! And Mother always used to say that the very idea made her feel sick!’ Mrs Blewitt’s offer to Ben had gradually become known. Such a piece of information seeps through a family to any interested members, rather as water seeps through a porous pot.
‘But I don’t want a rat.’ Ben climbed on to his bed and composed himself as if for a nap.
‘If you take the rat,’ said Frankie, ‘I’ll trade for it: some really good marbles –’
‘No,’ said Ben.
‘– and I’ve a shoebox full of bus tickets. And another of milk-bottle tops.’
‘No.’
‘You’re a grabber,’ Frankie said coldly. ‘But, all right, you can have it: my penny flattened on the railway line.’
‘No,’ said Ben. ‘I told you: I’m not having the rat. I don’t want it. I just want to be left alone. I just want peace and quiet to shut my eyes.’
There was a very short silence. Then Frankie said, ‘This is our room just as much as yours, and I can talk in it as much as I like; and you look just silly lying there with your eyes shut.’
‘Go away.’
Frankie went on grumbling about his rights, which distracted Ben. Then he fell abruptly and absolutely silent, which was distracting in a different way. Ben opened his eyes and jerked his head up suddenly. Sure enough, he caught Frankie at it – sticking out his tongue, wriggling his hands behind his ears, all at Ben, in the most insulting manner.
‘I’ve told you to go away, Frankie.’
‘This is our room as well as yours. Some day it’ll be only ours, and then you won’t be allowed to come in at all without our permission.’ This was a reference to the re-allotting of bedrooms that would follow May’s marriage and Dilys’s leaving home with her. The girls’ bedroom would be left empty. Ben, as the eldest of the remaining children, was to move into it, by himself. He looked forward to the time: then at least he would be allowed to shut his eyes when he wanted.
‘And until then we just kindly let you share this room with us,’ said Frankie.
‘Go away, I say!’
‘A third part of it, exactly – to look silly in, with your eyes shut!’
Frankie was goading Ben; Ben was becoming enraged. It was all more unbearable than Frankie knew. Ben was not allowed even a dog so small that you could only see it with your eyes shut, because he was not allowed to shut his eyes.
At least he was bigger and stronger than Frankie. He became tyrannical. ‘Get off that bed and go away – now!’
Frankie said, ‘You’re just a big bully.’ But he was smaller and weaker, and he had the responsibility of the white mouse. He got off the bed – carefully, because of the mouse – and went away.
Ben felt only depressed by his unpleasant triumph. He was at last alone, however. He shut his eyes: the dog Chiquitito sat at the end of the bed …
Suddenly Ben was sure in his bones that he was still being watched. He opened his eyes a slit. There seemed no one. The pigeon was staring through the glass – but not at him. Ben opened his eyes altogether to follow the direction of the bird’s gaze: below Paul’s bed lay Paul. He had been going through his stamp album, but now he was watching Ben with curiosity.
‘Spying on me!’ Ben shouted with violence.
Paul rolled out of reach of his clawing hand, and said: ‘I wasn’t! There was nothing to spy on, anyway. You were just lying there with your eyes shut and a funny look on your face.’ But he scrambled out of reach of Ben’s fury, and fled. Ben locked the bedroom door after him, although he knew that he had not the least right to do such a thing. He shooed the pigeon off the windowsill. Then, with a sigh, he composed himself upon the bed once more to shut his eyes and see the dog Chiquitito in real peace …
Almost at once Paul came back, having fetched Frankie. They rattled the doorknob and then chanted alternating strophes of abuse through the keyhole. Frankie ended by shouting, ‘You’re not fit to have a white mouse, let alone a white rat!’ Their father came upstairs to see what the noise was, and made Ben unlock the door. Then his mother called them all for tea. That was that.
So, as Ben was clearly never going to see enough of his dog in the privacy of his own home, he began to seek its companionship outside. He discovered the true privacy of being in a crowd of strangers.
In a Tube train, for instance, Ben could sit with his eyes shut for the whole journey, and if anyone noticed, no one commented. He felt especially safe if he could allow himself to be caught by the rush-hour, and on the Inner Circle Tube. The other passengers, sitting or strap-hanging or simply wedged upright by the pressure of the crowd, endured their journey with their eyes shut – you see them so, travelling home at the end of any working day in London. Like them, Ben kept his eyes shut, but he was not tired. And when the others got out at their various stations, he stayed on, going round and round on the Inner Circle – it was fortunate that Mr Blewitt never knew of it – and always with his eyes shut. No one ever saw what he was seeing: a fawn-coloured dog of incredible minuteness.
If Ben were sitting, he saw the dog on his knee. If he stood, he looked down with his shut eyes and saw it at his feet. The dog was always with him, only dashing ahead or lingering behind in order to play tricks of agility and daring. When Ben finally left the Tube train, for instance, the Chihuahua would play that dangerous game of being last through the closing doors. While Ben rode up the Up escalator with his eyes shut, the Chihuahua chose to run up the Down one, and always arrived at the top firs
t. Only a Chihuahua called Chiquitito could have achieved that – and in defiance of the regulation that wisely says that dogs must be carried on escalators. This dog exulted before its master in deeds which would have been foolhardy – in the end, disastrous – for any other creature. On all these occasions the dog’s coat was black, as it had been for the encounter with the thousand wolves.
On buses, the Chihuahua sprang on or off when the vehicle was moving, as a matter of course. (Ben trembled, even while he marvelled.) But its greatest pleasure was when Ben secured the front seat on the top deck, and they went swaying over London together. Ben had always loved that; and all the things that Ben liked doing in London, the dog Chiquitito liked too.
Ben would walk to the bridge over the River, rest his elbows on the parapet, and shut his eyes. There was the dog Chiquitito poised on the parapet beside him. The parapet was far enough above the water to have alarmed a dog such as Tilly, but not this much smaller dog. Without hesitation, it would launch itself into the void, and, in falling, its tininess became even tinier, until it reached the water, submerged, and came up again, to sport in the water round unseeing crews and passengers on river-craft.
Then Ben whistled softly and briefly. At once the swimmer turned to the bank with arrow-swiftness, reached a jetty, leapt up the steps, ran under a locked gate (any other dog would have had at least to squeeze through), and disappeared from view. A moment later the dog trotted back on to the bridge, to where Ben waited.
Once Ben used to wonder what a Mexican Chihuahua thought of the greasy, filthy London Thames after the wild, free rivers of its native country. But nothing of the smell, dirt, noise, traffic and other roaring dangers of London daunted the Chihuahua. It seemed to take London for granted. It never even cocked an ear when Big Ben boomed the hour.
One day Ben noticed a small silver plate on the dog’s collar: an address plate. Here he read the name of the dog and the name of its home city, as on the back of the lost picture. But the name of the home city had changed:
CHIQUITITO
LONDON
11. A Christmas Eve to Remember
Ben Blewitt was just an ordinary boy with an unsurprising character and abilities – except for his ability to see a dog too small to be there. Unlike the Chihuahua, he had never been a daredevil; he was inclined to be rather slow and cautious. Perhaps for that very reason he took a particular delight in the dog’s feats.
And still he had to have more and more of his dog’s company. In school, now, he would often sit with a studious-seeming hand shielding his shut eyes, watching the dog Chiquitito as it leapt from desk-top to desk-top in a kind of wild, impertinent sport.
He heard only absent-mindedly the voices of the other pupils and of the master. His attention was entirely upon his Chihuahua. Look! the creature was almost flying through the air now, in its daredevil leaps – and under the teacher’s very nose too!
‘What have I been saying, Blewitt?’
Ben opened his eyes, and did not know. He never knew the answers to questions in class nowadays. Angry schoolmasters reprimanded him and punished him for inattention. Still he persisted in watching his Chihuahua whenever he could. He had never been a brilliant boy in school; now he seemed a stupid one. He knew it, without being able to care. He supposed that his termly report would not be a good one, perhaps not even passable. His father would be severe; his mother would grieve. Still he must watch his Chihuahua.
‘Blewitt – Blewitt, I say! Open your eyes – or is there something wrong with them?’ And by now the question was not sarcastic. Word went privately from the form master right up to the Head, and then went privately right down again to Mrs Blewitt, who was asked to call upon the headmaster one afternoon. The Head said that he did not wish to worry Mrs Blewitt unduly. Her son’s odd behaviour recently might be due to no more than faulty eyesight, possibly to be corrected by the wearing of glasses. The Head’s suggestion of an immediate and thorough testing of the boy’s eyes, merely as a precaution, should not alarm Mrs Blewitt.
At once Mrs Blewitt was alarmed, and more than alarmed. She felt some foreboding that no oculist could dispel; but she took Ben to have his eyes tested.
The oculist’s conclusion was that Ben had excellent eyesight; he could read even the tiniest test-lettering. Outside again, Ben said to his mother, ‘I told you that I could see even the smallest things. As a matter of fact, I know I can see things so small that other people can’t see them at all. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes.’
‘Then why do you sit with them shut so often? I’ve caught you at it at home; they say you do it at school. You’re not short of sleep.’
‘My eyes are tired.’
‘The oculist is positive that they’re not.’
‘They’re not tired by seeing things,’ Ben said carefully. ‘They’re tired of seeing things – the same old things – great hulking things, far too big – big, dull, ordinary things that just behave in the same dull old way –’
‘If you mean your teachers and the other boys, you are speaking very rudely indeed!’
Ben sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to. I was really thinking of what my eyes would rather see, that’s all.’
‘But, Ben, dear, just tell me why –’
‘I’ve told you.’
It was Mrs Blewitt’s turn to sigh. She gave up; but from now on, secretly and fearfully, she watched Ben.
The dog Chiquitito was becoming a continuous presence for Ben. When the boy’s eyes were shut, the dog was there, visibly; and when his eyes were open, the dog still seemed present – invisibly. Ben felt it there – knew it was there, now loyally and alertly beside him, now with its active and bold spirit speeding it to engage in some new and extraordinary exploit. Always the dog was either before Ben’s eyes or in his mind. His mother, watching him when he did not know he was being watched, saw him with eyes open but vacant – abstracted and absorbed, she supposed, in some inward vision. She told herself that the boy slept well, ate well, and admitted to no worries; but she was uneasy.
Meanwhile, autumn was settling into winter, with fog.
In the country, the fog was white. Old Mr and Mrs Fitch watched it rise from the ploughed fields round the house and thicken from the direction of the river. Grandpa watched the solid Tilly fade and vanish into it, when she slipped off on one of her private expeditions down the driftway; and she would come back with the hairs of her coat beaded with moisture. Grandpa himself went out as little as he could; but the damp seemed to seep indoors to find him, so that he began to complain of aches in the back. Old Mrs Fitch said that his back must be ironed with a hottish iron over brown paper. She could not do it herself, nowadays, but Mrs Perkins came in from next door and – under Mrs Fitch’s direction – gave him this relief.
Then the two of them settled by the fire again, and Tilly was allowed to lie on the rug between them, where she groaned and twitched in her sleep, dreaming of summer and of other dogs, no doubt. And the soft whiteness of the fog drifted up to the window, pressed against the glass, and looked in on them.
In London, the fog that came up from the River was whitish too; but later, another fog began. No one could say where it was coming from, but everyone could taste its tang in the air, and feel the oppression of its descent. The sky seemed to thicken, and at the same time to come lower – so low and heavy, it looked as if it would soon need propping up with poles. And then, at last, one day when all indoor lights were on by three o’clock in the afternoon, the sky fell and lay upon London in a greasy, grey-yellow pea-souper of a London fog.
People were saying that soon you really might as well walk in London with your eyes shut. Ben tried it, going slowly, of course, along the pavements of streets he knew well. The Chihuahua, now lemon-yellow in colour – perhaps for better visibility – went slightly ahead. It seemed to know the streets as well as Ben did, going not too fast, but with an unerring sense of direction. Ben followed with absolute trust; he gave himself into the Chihuahua’s care.
&nb
sp; All landmarks and familiarities melted into fog. Pedestrians fumbling their way home overtook even-slower-moving vehicles; as the fog thickened, they would come up abruptly against cars abandoned half on the pavement. By that time, the buses, having reached the safety of their garages, refused to venture out again.
The streets filled with fog and emptied of traffic and people. Nobody in London went out unless he had to – except for Ben. In the evening he slipped from the house to roam the streets with the dog Chiquitito. Fog enclosed them in a world of their own. They owned it, and they owned each other. For, if Ben were the Chihuahua’s master, the dog itself possessed Ben’s eyes and thoughts, directed his actions.
At last the fog cleared away into sparkling cold weather in time for the very beginning of the Christmas rush. The Blewitts began to get ready for their Christmas. May was knitting hard to finish a pullover for Charlie; Mrs Blewitt was gathering things for a Christmas hamper to go to Granny and Grandpa; Christmas cards and parcels had to be posted early to Mrs Blewitt’s brother in Canada; and soon all the Blewitts were busy making or buying presents for aunts, uncles, cousins, and for each other.
All except for Ben. Usually, at Christmas, he would join with May and Dilys or with Paul and Frankie in giving presents. This year, May and Dilys thought he must be joining with Paul and Frankie; and Paul and Frankie thought he must be joining with May and Dilys. He was doing neither, nor was he preparing to give presents on his own. Ben had regretted the passing of the fog, and he simply could not be bothered with the coming of Christmas. He cared for another thing.
This year, Mr Blewitt said, their family Christmas must be rather quieter than usual – certainly less expensive – because of May’s wedding so soon afterwards. Plans for the wedding were already mixing with preparations for Christmas. May had come out into the open with her ambition for a pageboy at her wedding. There was a terrible scene when Frankie, who had been making multicoloured paper chains and paying no attention, realized that they wanted him. Paul, knowing that he himself was too large for the part, laughed so much that he fell over on to the heap of paper chains, to Frankie’s double fury. Dilys stood by May; Mr Blewitt stood by Frankie. Mrs Blewitt seemed to waver between the two sides but finally came down on Frankie’s by reminding them all of a little cousin who might act in Frankie’s place. The boy was only five, hardly old enough to object or even to realize into what he was being led, and Mrs Blewitt was sure his mother would agree. She fetched a recent photograph of the child. May and Dilys said that he looked sweet; Mr Blewitt said that with those curls he would be useful as either page or bridesmaid. Paul stopped laughing at Frankie, and they both went back to the paper chains.