Sirius (25 page)

For several weeks Sirius and Plaxy and Mrs. Pugh kept a close watch on Elizabeth. The common task drew the girl and the dog closer to one another than they had ever been before. They were often together, but seldom alone together. This frequent compresence and infrequent intimacy generated in each a great longing for unrestrained talk, and an increasing sensibility towards each other's slightest changes of mood. Both, of course, were mainly and anxiously concerned with the patient. Some exasperation was inevitable, but was tempered and indeed almost wholly silenced by the strong affection which both had felt for her since their infancy. Both were put to strain by the necessity of sacrificing their own urgent activities, perhaps for a very long time. Each knew that the other was strained, and the two were drawn closer by that knowledge.

Under Plaxy's firm and loving treatment Elizabeth made good progress; but as her health improved she became increasingly restless. One day she insisted on dressing and going downstairs. It so happened that on the table there was an unopened newspaper. She picked it up and opened it. "BRITISH CRUISER SUNK," said the main headline. It was the ship on which Maurice was serving. Owing to the fact that the Germans were the first to announce the sinking, the Admiralty had been forced to break their rule and publish the information
before
the next of kin had been told of the casualties. The shock of the news, and the suspense that followed it, killed Elizabeth before word came through that her son was among the survivors.

Plaxy, though "scarcely human," though cat-like and fay, was human enough to have deep feelings for her mother, who had always shown special affection for her youngest child, and yet had built up with her an even freer, happier relationship than with the elder children; for she had learnt by her own past mistakes with them. Elizabeth's death therefore hit Plaxy hard. Sirius too was greatly distressed, on his own account, and still more on hers. For himself, he was again strangely perplexed by this business of death. The dead Elizabeth kept talking to him. And it was not the Elizabeth that had just died, the over-strained and difficult Elizabeth; it was Elizabeth as she was in her prime. Again and again, with variations, she made or seemed to make a very intelligent contribution to his thoughts. She said, "Don't puzzle your old head about it so! Minds like ours just aren't clever enough to understand, and whichever way you decide you're sure to be wrong. Don't
believe
I still exist, for that would be false to your intellect; but don't refuse the
feeling
of my presence in the universe, for that would be blind."

Shared grief and common responsibility tended to bring Plaxy and Sirius into an ever closer intimacy. They now sank exhausted into mutual dependence. And there was much work to do together. With the aid of the family solicitor and a representative of the Laboratory, they had to wind up the Trelone affairs. Obviously the house must be sold. But the decision to surrender the home in which they had been brought up together was momentous both to girl and dog, for it meant severing the remaining tangible link between them. They spent many hours of many days sorting out the contents of the house. All the furniture had to go, save the few pieces that Tamsy wanted for her own house, and the fewer that were to be given to Sirius, who must now be re-established at Caer Blai. Books, crockery, kitchen utensils, clothes, all the multifarious possessions of the dead parents, had to be sorted out. The property of the absent children must be separated from the rest, and packed up and dispatched. Plaxy's own and Sirius's own things must be collected and sorted. A great bonfire of sheer rubbish was made every morning, and carefully extinguished at night, because of the black-out. Photographs of the parents themselves, of
their
parents and relatives, of the four children and Sirius at all ages, of super-sheep-dogs, of holiday expeditions, of Sirius at work with sheep, all had to be looked at by dog and girl together, squatting on the floor of the dismantled sitting-room. All had to be talked over, laughed over, sighed over, and finally assigned either to the rubbish pile or to the collection of things too good to destroy.

When the labour was over, when the furniture was all gone, when there was nothing in the house but a few packing cases not yet dispatched and the few crocks and scraps which the two had been using for their meals; when the floors were bare board and the house was the mere shell of a home, Plaxy prepared a final meal for the two of them. It was lunch. She was to leave by train early in the afternoon, and he was to begin at once to catch up with arrears of work at the farm. They sat together on the floor of the empty sitting-room, and ate almost in silence. They had as a matter of course settled down in the spot by the fireplace where they had so often sat together during the past two decades. The old soft hearth-rug had gone. They sat on Plaxy's mackintosh, spread on the floor boards. She leaned against a packing case instead of the vanished couch. The solemn little picnic was soon finished. Sirius had licked out the last drop of his last bowl of tea. Plaxy had stubbed her cigarette-end in her saucer. Both sat silent.

Suddenly Plaxy said, "I have been thinking hard," And he, "So it seems, oh wise woman." "I've been thinking about us," she continued. "Mother was useful on the farm, wasn't she?" He agreed, and wondered how they would manage without her. "The new land girl," he added, "is not a patch on the last. She tries to keep her hands soft." "Suppose," said Plaxy, looking hard at her toe, "well--would you like it if I stayed to help you?" Sirius was licking a cut on his paw. He stopped to say. "Wouldn't I just! But that's impossible." He went on licking. "Well," said Plaxy, "why
shouldn't
I, if I want to? And I have decided that I do want to, very much. I
don't
want to go, I want to stay, if you'll let me." He stopped licking, and looked up at her. "You
can't
stay. It's all arranged. And you don't
really
want to stay. But it's nice of you to think you do." "But, Sirius, sweet, I do really want to, not for always, but for the present. I have thought it all out, right here. We'll rent Tan-y-Voel." This was the labourer's cottage on Pugh's land, where later I was to discover them. "It'll be fine," she cried brightly; then with sudden shyness, for he was gazing at her sadly, she added, "Or
wouldn't
you like it?" He reached out and nuzzled into her neck. "You needn't ask," he said, "but you have a life of your own to lead. You can't give it all up for a dog." "But," she answered, "I am sick of teaching, or rather trying to. I suppose I'm not really interested enough in the little brats. Perhaps I'm too interested in
me
. Anyhow, I want to live." "Then what about Robert," he said, "and being a mother, and all that?" She looked away and was silent for a while, then sighed. "He's a dear. But--oh, I don't know. Anyhow, we have agreed that I must be myself, and being myself just now means staying with you."

In the end she had her way. They went straight off to tell the Pughs of the change, and announce that they intended to seize the empty cottage at once. Pugh was of course overjoyed, and with innocent mirth he remarked, "I congratulate you, Mr. Sirius, on your bride." Plaxy coloured, and did not respond well to this sally; so that Pugh had to smooth matters over by saying, "Just an old farmer's joke, Miss Plaxy. No offence, indeed." Mrs. Pugh scolded him, "For shame, Llewelyn! You are a horrid old man, and you have a nasty mind like a bubbling black bog." They all laughed.

Before the lorry came to transport the last load from Garth, Plaxy had opened one of the cases and taken out some bedding, towels and so on. She dumped the remaining crocks and pans into the one empty case. Together they made a list of essential furniture which must he fetched back from the store and sent to Tan-y-Voel. When the furniture removers returned, they were mildly annoyed at the change and the confusion, but Plaxy used all her charm, and they duly delivered the goods at the cottage.

Even a two-roomed cottage takes some settling into, and Plaxy spent most of the following day arranging their new lite. She brushed out the two rooms, scrubbed the stone floors, cleaned the grate, improvised blackout curtains for the little windows, and bought such stores as were possible in war-time. In the evening Sirius returned from his work to find a smiling home and a smiling though rather exhausted Plaxy. The table was laid for her supper, and on the carpet beside her chair was Sirius's customary "tablecloth" and bowl. Sirius had two distinct styles of feeding. In the wild he fed wild, on rabbits and hares and so on; in the house he was given porridge, soup, bread-and-milk, bones, crusts of bread, cake and a good deal of tea. At one time it had been very difficult to buy enough to feed him adequately, because of the rationing system; but Thomas had pulled wires and secured a special ration for him as a valuable experimental animal.

After the meal, when Plaxy had washed up, they sat together on the couch that had been rescued from the old home. They had been gay, but now a sadness settled on them. Sirius said, "This is not real. It is a very lovely dream. Presently I shall wake up." And she, "Perhaps it will not last long, but it is real while it lasts. And there is a rightness in it. It had to be, to make us one in spirit for ever, whatever else may come. We shall he happy, never fear." He kissed her cheek.

They were both tired after the day's work, and very soon they were yawning. Plaxy lit a candle and put out the lamp. In the next room her familiar bed was awaiting her, and on the floor was Sirius's old sleeping basket, a vast pan of wicker containing a circular mattress. Strange! They had been brought up together, child and puppy, sharing the same room; and even when they were grown up she had been thoroughly used to undressing before him without any self-consciousness; yet now, unexpectedly, she was shy.

At this point I cannot resist pausing to ask the reader a question. Does not Plaxy's momentous decision to give up her career and live with Sirius need some explanation? Here was a young woman of outstanding charm, with many admirers, and one of them her accepted lover. She had taken up a teaching post which she filled with distinction, and in which she was finding a good opening for self-expression. Suddenly she gave up her work and practically broke off relations with her lover in order to join her life with the strange being who was her father's most brilliant creation. Does it not seem probable that the underlying motive of this decision was the identification of Sirius with her father? Plaxy herself, now my wife, scorns this explanation, holding that it does not do justice to the power of Sirius's own personality over her. Well, there is my theory, for what it is worth.

On the morning after the occupation of Tan-y-Voel, Plaxy began her apprenticeship on the farm. She cleaned out a pigsty, harnessed the horse, loaded muck into the cart and unloaded it on the manure heap. She also helped Sirius to attend to a sick sheep on the moor. Towards the end of the day she put in some hard work on the wilderness that was meant to be the cottage garden. In such style, with variations, the days passed. Her face took on the healthy glow that delighted me when in due season I discovered her. With mingled distress and pride she watched her hands go blistered, grime-ingrained, scratched, cut and hard. Mrs. Pugh taught her to milk. Pugh himself taught her to broadcast a field with oats, while the instrument which she insisted on calling the "sowing machine" was out of order. Always there were countless nameless jobs to do about the farm. Her main function, she said, was to save Sirius's teeth, which were beginning to wear down with too much gripping of wood and iron. So far as possible he confined his attention to the sheep and the super-sheep-dogs, but there was no end to the number of small unexpected tasks which really called for hands but could most easily be disposed of at once by his own clumsy jaws. On the farm premises he was always, in spite of his painfully acquired skill with those unsuitable instruments, too pitifully handless. But on the moors he was in his clement. Plaxy greatly enjoyed the expeditions into the hills with Sirius and his canine pupils. Bounding through the bracken, he was a storm-tossed but seaworthy boat. Trotting around, giving orders to his pupils, he was a general and his charger all in one. When a sheep broke away and had to be retrieved, he would streak after it, belly to earth, like a torpedo.

In this new life there was almost no leisure, no time for reading, music, writing. Contact with the world beyond the hills was at a minimum. Expeditions to sheep sales were rare excitements. On these occasions both Sirius and Plaxy would accompany Pugh, she as Pugh's unofficial land-girl. The bustle, the babble of Welsh voices, the clamour of sheep, the variety of human and canine types, the social atmosphere of the pubs, and of course the young men's unconcealed admiration of this bright and humorously self-important, this forthcoming but rather queer land-girl (not in uniform)--all this Plaxy vastly enjoyed as a change from the seclusion of the farm.

Apart from these infrequent excursions, social intercourse was to be had only on expeditions to the village, and on visits to neighbouring farms to borrow or lend tools, or simply for friendly intercourse. Often Plaxy would tidy herself up and revert as far as possible to the gay young lady; and it was with deep peace of mind that she walked through the fields with the great sinewy beast at her side. With a careless, queenly self-confidence she accepted the inevitable admiration of the young farmers and shepherds, and sensed their puzzlement over her indefinable oddity.

After she had been with Sirius for several months, however, something happened which spoiled these social occasions for her. She was made to realize that, though she was so popular with many of the local people, there were some who were outraged by her living alone with the man-dog. Increasingly it was made difficult for her to be unselfconscious with Sirius in public. And her observed shyness with him fomented the salacious rumours.