Sirius (23 page)

They were sitting together on the lawn at Garth, and he playfully attacked her, pushing her over and making for her throat. Accustomed from childhood to such battles, she gripped his ears and tugged hard. Before his teeth had softly seized her, or his tongue had begun its tickling caresses, he squealed for mercy. They smiled into each other's eyes. "Sadistic little bitch!" he said, "Sweet cruel bitch!" With one hand she seized his lower jaw and pressed it backwards and downwards into his neck. The sierras of ivory closed gently on the back of her hand. Dog and girl struggled playfully for a while, till she let go, exhausted. Wiping her hand on his coat, she protested, "Slobbery old thing!" They lay quietly on the grass.

Suddenly Plaxy said, "I expect you have great fun with Mifanwy, don't you?" He heard a faint tension in her voice. There was a pause before he answered, "She's lovely. And though she's so deadly stupid, she really has the rudiments of a soul." Plaxy pulled a piece of grass and chewed it, looking at the distant Rhinogs. "
I
have a lover, too," she said. "He wants me to marry him, but that would be so binding. He has just joined the R.A.F. He wants me to have babies, lots of them, as quickly as possible. But it's too soon. I'm much too young to pledge myself for ever to anyone." There was a long pause. Then Sirius asked, "Does he know about me?" "No." "Will he make any difference to--us?" Promptly she answered, "
I
don't
feel
any different. But perhaps I don't really care enough about him. I love him terribly as a human animal, just as you love Mifanwy, I suppose, as a canine animal. And I love him very much as a friend too. But I don't know whether that's enough for marriage. And it must be marriage, for the children's sake, because they need a permanent father. They ought to grow up in the community of their parents." Another long pause came between them. She threw him a quick sidelong glance. He was staring at her, his head very slightly tilted to one side, his brows puckered, like any puzzled terrier. "Well," he said at last, "marry him, and have your litter, if you must. And of course you must. But all this is much more serious than bitches. Oh, Plaxy, fundamentally it's you and I that are married, for ever. Will he spoil that? Will he put up with it?" She pulled nervously at the turf, and said, "I know, I know we're somehow married in the spirit. But if that makes me ever unable to love a man whole-heartedly enough to want to be his wife and have babies with him, oh, I'll
hate
the hold you have on me." Before he could reply she looked squarely at him and continued, "I didn't mean that. I
can't
hate the hold you have on me. But--oh, God, what a mess!" Tears were in her eyes. He stretched forward to touch her hand, but thought better of it. Then he said, "If I am spoiling your life, it would have been better if Thomas had never made me." She put a hand on his shoulder, and said, "If you had never been you, then I should never have been I, and there would have been no difficult, lovely 'us." And even if I do hate you sometimes, I love you much more, always. Even while I am hating you, I know (and the best of me knows gladly) that I am not just Plaxy but the human part of Sirius-Plaxy." He answered quickly, "But to be that properly you must be as much Plaxy as possible, and so you must somehow live your human life fully. Oh, yes, I understand. Being human, and a girl, and in England, and middle class, you can't
merely
have lovers and an illegitimate litter. You must have a husband." To himself he added, "And I perhaps, must sometimes kill your kind." But the memory of Thwaites murdered suddenly came upon him, and revolted him with its contrast to the present happy situation. It was as though, running on the moor in bright weather, he had suddenly been swallowed by a bog. And somehow it seemed that only Plaxy could pull him out. On a sudden impulse he told her the whole story.

BY the autumn of 1940 Sirius was well established at Caer Blai, was planning great improvements for the pasture, the breed and the arable land, and was known in the neighbourhood as "Pugh's man-dog." Precisely what his mental stature was, no one could decide. Pugh, by telling the whole truth about him, had put them off the scent. It was known that the man-dog had a marvellous facility with sheep, and was managing them on the latest scientific principles. But all this was vaguely thought to be less a matter of intelligence than of a sort of super-instinct mysteriously implanted in him by science. It was known too that he could understand a good deal of speech, and was actually able to use words himself to those who had the key to his queer pronunciation. He was learning a bit of Welsh; and the fact that his Welsh was so rudimentary, and that this was the language which alone was familiar in the district, disguised from everyone his true linguistic gifts and his fully human mentality.

Even so, had it not been war-time, the newspapers would certainly have publicized him, and with far more success than befell the stunt of the talking mongoose at an earlier date.

Sirius made himself thoroughly popular with most of the surrounding farmers and villagers, but there were a few who stubbornly regarded him with suspicion. Devout chapel-goers affirmed that the man-dog's real master was not Pugh but Satan, and that Pugh had sold his soul to the Devil to help him out of the labour-shortage. Some of the sexually obsessed, aware of the great affection that held between the man-dog and the scientist's younger daughter, whispered that it was Thomas, in the first instance, who had sold his soul, in order to gain scientific fame, and that Satan, incarnate in the dog, habitually gratified himself in perverse sexual intercourse with Thomas's daughter. And she, they said, for all her charm, was little better than a witch. Anyone could see that there was something queer and inhuman about her. Rumours of a different type were spread by the cruder sort of patriots. They declared that Thomas was in the pay of the Nazis, who had found in his man-dog the ideal kind of spy. It was no accident that the animal was established in the neighbourhood of a big artillery camp.

Most people were too sensible to take these rumours seriously. Pugh was popular, and so was Sirius; for he was certainly a genius with sheep, and he lent distinction to the district. Thomas, though an Englishman, had won a place in local esteem; and his daughter, in spite of her new-fangled ways, was an attractive girl. Not till the pressure of war had been much prolonged, driving simple folk to look for scape-goats, was public opinion to become hostile.

When the great air attacks on London began, Elizabeth received a long letter from Geoffrey describing conditions in his parish, and urging her to take in some of his refugee children, and plant out others in suitable homes in her district. Geoffrey was one of those who believed in personal responsibility. He suspected all Government organization; consequently he was anxious to avoid as far as possible merely handing over his charges to the official evacuation authorities.

Geoffrey's account of the devastation, heroism, muddle, callousness, and human kindness in the great blitzes had a deep effect on Sirius. He remembered vividly the smell of Geoffrey's home, and of the bare little church and all the stuffy houses that he had visited. And these olfactory images called up in his mind a rich picture of human beings struggling against a hostile environment and their own inadequacy. He remembered many of the people whom Geoffrey reported as casualties, and many of the children for whom hospitality was required. He had a generous impulse to rush off to London at once with his panniers filled with first-aid equipment. But it was a foolish impulse. He would only be in the way. Besides, it was one thing to enjoy a generous impulse and quite another to put it in action. He suspected that he would be a thorough coward in an air raid; and anyhow, fundamentally he felt aloof from the whole war. If the human race was fool enough to torture itself in this crazy manner, what had
he
to do with it? Nevertheless he could not help being deeply moved by Geoffrey's story, and by affection for Geoffrey himself. The plight of London became even more vivid to him and to the local population when, by one of those flukes which seem common in war, a single bomb, dropped at random by a stray raider, fell neatly on a lonely cottage in the neighbourhood, killing or wounding all its occupants.

Elizabeth undertook to take three London children into her house, and Mrs. Pugh, with much misgiving, agreed to accommodate two more. Sirius gave up his room at Caer Blai. Most of the local wives had already either taken on evacuees from blitzed towns in the north-west, or had refused to do so; but Elizabeth, after paying many calls, was able to tell Geoffrey that she had accommodation for fifteen more children and two mothers. It so happened that the neighbourhood had been rather lucky so far with its little immigrants. Though there had been a good deal of grumbling on the part of some hostesses, on the whole the scheme had worked. But the twenty little Londoners were a different kettle of fish. They were smelly, lousy, unruly little brats, and it was said in the district that no decent housewife would have had them across her doorstep if she had known what they were like. They made horrid messes in the house, broke the furniture, ruined the garden, lied, stole, bit one another and their hostesses, tormented the cat, and used dreadful language.

Some of the hostesses had the wit to realize that these children were simply the product of circumstances. It was shocking, they said, that society should allow its more unfortunate members to grow up in such degradation. The less imaginative housewives, however, indulged in orgies of self-righteous indignation against the children themselves and their parents. Some took the line that the immigrants were English, and that was what the English were like. As for Elizabeth, her popularity suffered somewhat. She alone was responsible for this recent affliction. It was remembered in some quarters not only that she was English, but that her husband had sold his soul to the Devil. Matters were made worse by the fact that her own evacuees turned out quite well. She was one of those who had a natural gift for treating children as human persons and expecting to be treated decently in return. There were troubles enough at first. But in a few weeks the little girl and her two small brothers were proudly helping with the house and the garden.

One day Elizabeth had news from Geoffrey that his church had been destroyed, but that he was continuing to devote his whole time to the care of his parishioners. He was elated that after long agitation he and others had secured great improvements in the public shelters in the district. A few days later she received a letter in an unknown hand saying that her cousin had been killed.

The news of Geoffrey's death seemed to bring the war strangely near to Sirius. For the first time someone whom he knew and loved had vanished. This somehow put the whole thing into a new perspective. It should not have done so. He thought he had imagined the personal impact of war pretty well, but evidently he had not. Geoffrey had simply ceased to be, like a match flame when it is blown out. So simple, and yet somehow so incredible! For in a queer way Geoffrey now seemed more real than before, and nearer to him. For days he caught himself quietly talking to Geoffrey and getting perfectly good answers from him in his own mind. Queer! Just a trick of imagination, no doubt. But somehow he couldn't really in his heart believe that Geoffrey had simply been snuffed out. Or rather, part of him believed it confidently and another part just couldn't. He had a fantastic dream. Geoffrey sought out Thwaites in Hell, and found him with Sirius's soul in his pocket. Somehow Geoffrey brought Thwaites up to Heaven, and his reward was the freeing of Sirius.

The war was soon to come even nearer to Sirius. In May Thomas took him by car to visit a farm near Shap, where several super-sheep-dogs were being successfully used to do practically the whole routine work on the sheep. The route back to North Wales passed through Liverpool. There had been a good deal of raiding on Merseyside from time to time, and Thomas judged it wise to be well across the river before dark. Unfortunately they were late in starting, and did not arrive in Liverpool till dusk. Somewhere in the outskirts of the town they developed engine trouble, and by the time an overworked garage hand had put matters right it was dark. They set out once more, but were much delayed by the condition of the town. There had been a bad raid on the previous night, and the streets had not yet been properly cleared. The result was that, before they could reach the entrance of the famous tunnel under the Mersey, a raid began. It was not far to the tunnel, so Thomas decided to hurry on. Sirius was terrified. Probably the noise was even more trying to his sensitive ears than to the duller human organ. Anyhow he had always been a coward, save in the wolf-mood. The moaning of planes, the prodigious smack and racket of anti-aircraft guns, the tearing rush of bombs (like a raucous and vastly amplified whisper, he thought), followed by such a crash as he had not believed possible, and then the clatter of falling masonry, the roaring and crackling of fires, the scurrying of human feet, the screams of casualties demanding help as the car passed a wrecked shelter, all this had a shattering effect on his morale. Sitting there in the back of the car he had nothing to do but be terrified. Then there were the smells, the stinging smells of gases from explosives, the dusty smell of shattered masonry, the pungent smell of burning woodwork, and occasionally the stench of mangled human bodies.

It seemed madness to go on any farther, so Thomas drew the car into the side of the road, and they dashed for the nearest shelter. The blast from a bomb pushed the side of a house across the street at them. Thomas was pinned under it; Sirius, though bruised and cut, was free. The lower part of Thomas's body was covered with masonry. With great difficulty and in great pain he gasped out, "Save yourself. By the tunnel. Down the street. Then to Wales. Save yourself, for my sake. Please go, please!" Sirius tried frantically to shift the debris with his paws and teeth, but could not. "I'll get help," he said. "No, save yourself," Thomas gasped. "I'm--done-- anyhow. Good luck." But Sirius hurried off, and presently was tugging at a man's coat, and whimpering. It was obvious that he wanted help for someone, so a party came back with him. But when they reached the place where Thomas had been, they found only a fresh crater. The men returned to their former task, leaving Sirius blankly gazing. He sniffed about for a long while, whimpering miserably. Then his terror, which had been blotted out by action, welled up again. But his head was clear. He must find the tunnel entrance, which Thomas had said was quite near. He hurried along by the light of fires reflected from the clouds. At one point the road was completely blocked by fallen masonry, and he had to clamber over it. At last he reached the tunnel and managed to sneak in unobserved. He cantered along the footpath; and though a stream of cars was travelling towards Birkenhead, making a terrifying noise in the confined space of the tunnel, no one took much notice of him. At the Birkenhead entrance he made a dash for liberty, and found himself once more in the threatening racket of war and under the firelit sky. But the bombs were falling mostly on the Liverpool side of the Mersey.