To all this Ben was as if deaf and blind; none of it – Christmas or wedding – concerned him.
This was the last Christmas for the Blewitts as just one family – before May Blewitt became Mrs Charlie Forrester. So Mr Blewitt had decided on a special family treat: he would take everyone up to the West End to see the decorations and lights and the shops and to have tea. He would take them on Christmas Eve itself – he had that day off instead of Boxing Day.
This was just the kind of interruption to his thoughts and visions that fretted and wearied Ben. He did not want to go with the others, and he said so to his mother. But Mrs Blewitt was determined that her husband should have the pleasure of seeing the whole family enjoying his treat. Ben was not ill; he had nothing else to do (no one knew of those unbought, unmade Christmas presents); he must come; he must enjoy himself.
The West End on the afternoon of Christmas Eve was as Ben had known it would be: people – people – people; and lights – chains of twinklers and illuminations of fantastic design slung to and fro across the main streets. And people – people – people; and shop-windows in which objects glittered frostily or shone with coloured lights or turned and turned for the ceaseless attraction of the passing people – people – people. So many people pressing and passing that Ben lost his sense of a Chihuahua with him; and yet he never dared to close his eyes to look for it, since so many people were always telling him to keep them particularly wide open. As he blundered unwillingly along, strangers said, ‘Look where you’re going, sonny!’; and his father said, ‘Look sharp and keep with us, boy!’; and the rest of the family told each other and him, over and over again, ‘Look!’, or ‘Just look there!’, or ‘You must just look at that!’
When at last they queued up for their tea, Ben hoped to be able to take a quick glance at his Chihuahua; but he found his mother looking at him, and he dared not shut his eyes. When they sat down to tea, she was opposite to him, and he felt her eyes still upon him with a subdued anxiety. He must wait for some later opportunity.
On the bus on the way home the whole Blewitt family secured the two seats just inside the door, facing each other. They sat three a side, with Frankie on his father’s knee, and laughed and talked across the gangway. Only Ben sat silent, and Mrs Blewitt watched him, and he knew that she watched him. His eyes ached with the effort of keeping open when they wanted to shut – to see. He was tormented by the longing to see his dog, that must be on the bus with him at this minute. Surely it was. As the bus passed Big Ben and then over the bridge, the dog must recognize a favourite scene. While Mr Blewitt was still ringing the bell for their Request Stop, the dog – with all the daring of a Chihuahua – would be leaping off the platform of the moving bus. Now it must be waiting for them on the pavement. Now it must be trotting ahead of them as the family began to walk the rest of their way home. Now it must have stopped for them to catch up at the traffic lights, where they had to cross the road.
The lights were changing to green, and the traffic was beginning to move forward. The Blewitts, knowing that they must wait, bunched together, talking again of the afternoon. ‘Mother!’ said Frankie. ‘Did you see the toy fire-engine – but did you see it? Did you?’ He pulled impatiently at her sleeve, because she was looking over his head, watching Ben.
Ben stood a little apart from the rest of his family, with his back to them. He was facing squarely on to the road, so that only passing drivers might see that at last he was closing his eyes.
He was sure that the Chihuahua was at his feet. He turned his shut eyes downwards and – with overwhelming joy and relief – saw it. The dog’s colour was black. The intrepid creature looked up at him for an instant, then sprang forward to cross the road among the streaming traffic; and Ben followed it.
A moment can last – or seem to last – a long time; and two moments must last twice as long. For the first moment Ben was simply following his dog Chiquitito. The roar of the moving traffic – broken now by the sharper sound of brakes – was nothing to him. Only, there was a woman’s voice screaming his name, ‘Ben!’ It was his mother’s calling him back – oh! but it was surely too late – to safety. The syllable of her scream pierced to Ben’s tranced mind and heart. It opened his eyes.
In the second moment he thought that, with open eyes – eyes that see the things that all eyes see – he actually saw the dog Chiquitito. He saw the Chiquitito that had been his companion now for so many weeks; he also saw the Chiquitito that had been worked in wool long ago by the nameless little girl in the white dress; and he also saw no dog – that is, the no-dog into which the other two vanished like one flame blown out, into nothingness. And the last dog he was master of: no-dog. He had no dog.
In that same, second moment, a car with screeching brakes hit Ben a glancing blow that flung him forward towards a van whose driver was also stamping on his brake and wrenching at his wheel. As the vehicles came to a standstill, Ben fell to the road between them.
The boy lay unconscious, bleeding, one leg unnaturally twisted. Mrs Blewitt was not allowed to take him into her arms, as she tried to do, lest he had some internal injury which movement might make worse. A policeman came. An ambulance came. The men very carefully loaded Ben Blewitt on to their stretcher and put him inside. His parents went with him to the hospital.
The other Blewitts went home under May’s care. Frankie and Paul were sobbing, and Dilys comforted them, but she was crying too. They left the crowd of spectators staring at Ben’s blood on the road, and a policeman taking down names and addresses and other information from drivers and other witnesses. The driver of the car that had hit Ben was a grey-haired woman. She could not answer the policeman’s questions for crying into her handkerchief and repeating over and over again: ‘But he walked straight into the road with his eyes shut – with his eyes shut!’
And the van driver supported her evidence. ‘He was walking like a sleepwalker – or like a blind man – a blind man being led – you know, a blind man following a guide dog.’
12. Mr Fitch Spells Aloud
Ben had a broken leg, three broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and concussion. The hospital thought that there were no internal injuries; the bones should mend well, especially at Ben’s age; but the concussion was severe.
He was a long time recovering consciousness. During that time his mind wandered in a kind of no-man’s-land between waking and dreaming. Through this land he went in search of his dog. All the places he had ever known or read of or heard of or even dreamt of mixed together, and mixed with the dog he sought. At one time he was with Young Tilly on the driftway bridge over the River Say, and she would not dive even from that little height into the river because she was afraid. She ran away, howling, and there was a shadow over the bridge. Ben thought it was cast by a storm-cloud, until, looking up, he saw a Mexican volcano that he had never noticed before, towering up at the other end of the driftway. Tilly had gone, but there were three other dogs, and he seemed to hear Granny Fitch’s voice saying, ‘A promise kept three times over!’ For the three dogs were all his. One was the dog embroidered in wool by the little girl with the ribboned white sleeve: Ben could see that – strictly as in the picture – the dog had only one side to its woolwork body and only one eye, of a black bead. The second dog was the dog so small that you could only see it with your eyes shut, and it was black. The third was no-dog.
Then, always, something terrible began to happen. The volcano would begin to erupt; and, instead of running away from it, the dogs – led by the coal-black Chihuahua – ran towards it, and Ben ran after them. He gained on them – he almost had them. But then the first two dogs vanished, leaving only no-dog: Ben had no dog. He began to scream, and when he listened to his voice he recognized his mother’s, screaming ‘Ben!’, as she called him back to safety.
Or perhaps the three dogs led him towards fierce hungry men with toasting-forks; and, of the three dogs, all vanished but no-dog: Ben had no dog. Then he began to scream, and it was his mother screaming and
calling him back: ‘Ben!’
Or perhaps the three dogs sped across a snowy plain towards a thousand packs of wolves, and suddenly two dogs vanished, leaving no-dog: Ben had no dog. And the calling back began again – ‘Ben!’
Over and over again the woolwork dog vanished and the black-coated Chihuahua vanished and Ben found that he had no dog, and heard his mother calling his name. But gradually the visions and terrors became – not less confused, for they always remained that – but less continuous. They dimmed, too, as firelight does in a room into which sunshine enters.
His mother said ‘Ben’ instead of calling it. She spoke it quietly and very carefully, as though trying to wake him without startling him. Ben opened his eyes, and there she was, in her hat and coat, sitting by his bed in the hospital. She saw at once that his eyes were open and looking at her, and she put out her fingers to touch his cheek so that he should know that she was quite real, and that he was getting better. Then Ben closed his eyes again for a while.
Christmas Day was over without Ben’s ever having known it. The Blewitt family had hardly noticed it at all, anyway, because of his lying unconscious in hospital. Drearily, too, they had decided that May’s wedding must be put off, and Charlie Forrester, with May crying on his shoulder, said that he understood and that it was no use people getting married when they felt so miserable.
But then the hospital promised that Ben would fully recover, even if his recovery took some time; and a postponement of the wedding would really be very awkward, for all the guests had been invited and the arrangements made. Granny Fitch, for example, was sending Grandpa up to London – an expedition he had not made for many, many years. And the mother of the curly-haired little cousin had already written that he was beginning to ask for his hair to be cut short like other boys’ and she did not know how much longer she could manage to keep him looking as a pageboy should. Taking everything into consideration, Mrs Blewitt thought that May should have her wedding at the proper time, even if Ben could not be there; and Mr Blewitt muttered that, in some ways, Ben was a lucky boy to be in hospital.
May smiled again, and Charlie looked relieved; and Ben, when he was asked, said that he did not mind. So the wedding would take place on the day fixed, after all.
The only difference to Ben was in his being visited. Since he first went into hospital, his mother had never failed to come daily. But now she warned him that the house would be full of guests on May’s wedding-day and that she really could not be sure of managing to slip away. She promised that someone else of the family would come in the afternoon, and she would try to come in the evening, if she possibly could.
A day without a visitor at all would have been very dull. There were only two other occupants of Ben’s small ward: a boy who had to lie on his back and spoke very little, and a child – a baby, really – who stared silently at Ben through the bars of his cot. There was a window, but from Ben’s bed one had a view only of sky. On the day of the wedding the sky was a wintry blue – the New Year had been cold but fine, so far.
The morning passed, and then the early afternoon, and at last Ben’s visitor came. Somehow he had not expected Grandpa to be the one. Old Mr Fitch was wearing not only his blue suit but a blue hat as well, in honour of his granddaughter’s wedding. He took his hat off as he sidled into the ward. He managed with difficulty as he was also carrying a bunch of very short-stemmed snowdrops and a large Oxo tin tied with string.
‘Well, boy!’ Grandpa whispered. He tiptoed up to Ben’s bed and put the snowdrops on the bedtable. ‘Just a few – the first – from up the driftway. Picked ’em myself early this very morning.’ He put the Oxo tin with them and tapped it. ‘Six. Your granny says you’re to tell the nurses not to mix ’em up with shop ones for the other patients, and they’re to boil them a good five minutes, being new laid. You like a runny yolk and hard white.’
Grandpa then sat down on the visitor’s chair, put his hat under it, and his hands on his knees, so that he was comfortable. Then he looked round at the boy in the bed, the boy in the cot and at all the ward.
‘What was the wedding like?’ Ben asked. Grandpa turned back to him and remembered that Mrs Blewitt had told him to entertain Ben by describing the wedding-party. He went through the guests – Forresters and Blewitts and Fitches. The Fitch relations had outnumbered the other two put together – Bill Blewitt was an orphan with only one sister, anyway. Then Grandpa went on to the food and the drink.
Ben listened languidly. He stared as he listened, wondering at the oddity of his grandfather being here, in the middle of London, instead of in Castleford, or Little Barley, or at the driftway. Sometimes Grandpa paused to look round him, as if similarly surprised, even alarmed. When a nurse came in, he got up in a fright, nearly knocking his chair over, and treading on his hat. She smiled at him, made him sit down again and began attending to her cot-patient.
To put his grandfather at ease, Ben asked, ‘How’s Young Tilly and Granny?’
‘Your Granny’s as well as can be, and Tilly –’ Grandpa’s moustache widened into a smile. Then he glanced at the nurse, who was now putting Ben’s snowdrops into water. He dropped his eyes; he coughed artificially.
‘How’s Tilly?’ repeated Ben.
‘Poor bitch,’ said Grandpa, without raising his eyes. ‘She’s not so well.’
His words and manner were so evasive that Ben knew something was up. Suddenly he remembered Tilly vividly – saw her, in his mind’s eye: liver-and-white, curly-haired, fat, frolicsome, and – although she was called Young Tilly – getting old. Old for a dog, that is; but Ben did not know exactly how old, and he did not know at what age a dog such as Tilly might be expected to die. ‘Is she – is she very ill?’
‘Not ill at all, exactly.’ Grandpa glanced round at the smart young nurse, who impressed and frightened him, and then looked directly at Ben. He curved his hand round his mouth to speak a private message. As Mr Fitch wrote with such difficulty, he always supposed that others would be as easily confused as himself by the spelling of words. ‘She’s going to pea-you-pea,’ he confided.
‘P – U – P?’ Ben repeated, not understanding for a moment; but the nurse, pausing at the foot of the bed, exclaimed, ‘Pup – have puppies! Now, isn’t that nice! What breed will they be?’
Grandpa was flustered, but answered, ‘The bitch is mostly spaniel, ma’am, but what her puppies will be like, we daren’t say.’ He turned to Ben: ‘You remember that Toby you saw in the Codlings’ canoe once? He’s likely the father, as the time before, and he’s mostly terrier.’
‘Spaniel-terrier puppies – how very nice!’
‘Puppies!’ Ben said wonderingly.
‘Aye, and us all thinking that sly bitch was past having puppies ever again! When they’re born, you must come and see them, Ben.’
‘There, Ben!’ said the nurse. ‘Whatever could be nicer?’ She went out to fetch something.
‘Puppies …’ said Ben. Not dogs you could see only with your eyes shut; not dogs you could see only one side of, because they were worked in wool; not no-dogs. Real dogs, these – little flesh and blood and fur dogs – Tilly’s puppies. He could not help saying, sadly, ‘I wish …’
His grandfather picked up his hat and looked intently inside it, but seemed not to find there any suggestion of what he should say. He turned the hat round several times, and at last remarked, ‘Your dad was saying this very day, over a piece of wedding-cake, that he thought you’d given up this idea of a dog in London. He said it was just impossible for you to have a dog where you live.’
‘That’s true,’ said Ben. ‘Just impossible to have a dog – even the smallest dog – impossible to have any size of dog at all.’ And because he was remembering the one size of dog – the wonderful dog – that he had mistakenly thought it would be possible to have, and because he was still weak from illness, a tear went slowly down each cheek.
His grandfather saw the tears and looked away. ‘You must come and see those puppies before they g
row so big that we have to get rid of them. Your granny won’t have ’em about the place longer than she can help.’
Ben tried to rally himself. He asked, ‘Doesn’t she like Tilly’s having puppies?’
‘Like? There’s not much she can do about it. Your gran’s a woman to reckon with; but, then, Tilly’s female too. She’s been a match for your granny this time.’ Grandpa laughed at the joke of it; but Ben did not feel like laughing, and the nurse, coming in again, said he looked tired now. Grandpa took the hint and stood up, gripping his hat. ‘Your granny said I was most particularly to hope you were better and give her love and say you’re to come and stay as soon as you can, because country air is what you’ll need.’
‘There!’ said the nurse.
‘Thank you,’ said Ben. His grandfather went, the nurse showing him the way out. And Ben turned his face into the pillow and – observed only by the little boy through the cot-bars – wept for a dog he could never have. That evening, when his mother slipped in for a few minutes with a piece of May’s wedding-cake, Ben told her of Granny Fitch’s invitation to stay, but not about Tilly’s puppies.