Sirius (7 page)

In one respect Sirius found his love affairs miserably unsatisfactory, throughout his life. For the beloved of the hour, however delectable in odour and appearance and in bodily contact, was invariably from his point of view something less than a half-wit. She could not speak, she could not understand his spoken endearments. She could not share the adventures of his wakening mind. And when her heat was over she became devastatingly frigid and unattractive. The fragrance was gone; the moron mentality remained.

Thomas was greatly interested in Sirius's accounts of his love affairs; about which, by the way, he showed no reticence. To the question, "What is it that attracts you in her?" young Sirius could only reply, "She smells so lovely." Later in life he was able to say more. Some years later I myself discussed the matter with him, and he said, "Of course it's mostly the luscious smell of her. I can't possibly make you understand the power of it, because you humans are so bad at smells. It's as though your noses were not merely feeble but colour-blind. But think of all that your poets have ever said about the delectable curves and colours of the beloved, and how her appearance seems to express a lovely
spirit
(often deceptively), and then imagine the whole thing done in terms of fragrance. Morwen's fragrance when she wants me is like the scent of the morning, with a maddening tang in it for which there are no words. It is the scent of a very gentle and fragrant
spirit
, but unfortunately the spirit of Morwen is nine-tenths asleep, and always will be. But she smells like what she
would
be if she
were
really awake."

"But what about her appearance?" I said. "Doesn't that attract you?" "It attracts
me
a lot," he replied, "but ordinary dogs take little notice of it. With them it's smell that counts, and of course the touch of her, too. But it's the smell that enthrals one, the maddening, stinging, sweet smell, that soaks right through your body, so that you can't think of anything else day or night. But her looks? Yes
I
certainly do care about her looks. She's so sleek and slim and slick. Also her looks help a lot to express the spirit that she
might
have been if she had been properly awake, like me. But then you see
I
have been made to notice appearances so much by being with you sharp-eyed creatures. All the same, even for me her voice is really more important than her looks. She can't talk, of course; but she can say the sweetest, tenderest things with the tone and rhythm of her voice. Of course she doesn't really and clearly
mean
them. She says in her sleep, so to speak, things that she
would
mean if she were awake."

But to return to Sirius's adolescence. Elizabeth had brought up her children in the modern tradition. Living in the country they were bound to learn a bit about sex from watching beasts and birds. But since there was none of the still very common guiltiness attached to sex in their minds, their interest in sex was very desultory, and they took a surprisingly long time to tumble to it. When Sirius achieved his first love affair, the two younger members of the family, who were not yet at boarding school, suspected nothing; but presently he began to talk about it with obvious pride. Elizabeth had to use all her tact and humour to establish the convention that what was perfectly right and proper for Sirius was not to be indulged in by human children until they were grown up; and that anyhow one didn't talk about these things outside the family; and above all, not in Wales. The whole affair, she confessed to Thomas, was really rather awkward, and she only hoped she hadn't done more harm than good.

Plaxy had of course already had numerous childhood romances. Very early in her schooldays she had been violently in love with a little Welsh girl at the village school. Whether this should be regarded as a sexual sentiment or not, it was certainly an obsession. Sirius, for the first time in his life, found himself unwanted. Plaxy suddenly had no time for the games they used to play when school and homework were over; for she had always promised to do something with Gwen. She would not let him come with her when she went out with her friend, for (she said) Gwen would soon find out that Sirius could talk; and it was the whole family's most sacred taboo that outsiders must not discover yet that Sirius was something more than a super-sheep-dog. This was the secret which they had learnt to cherish as a tribal mystery. No one but the six members of the family knew about it, except Kate, who had long ago been accepted into the tribe. The other two members of the domestic staff, Mildred the nursemaid and the local girl, had both been regretfully dismissed in order that the secret might not be endangered. Sirius therefore saw the force of Plaxy's argument; but something in her voice told him that she was glad to have such a plausible excuse for leaving him behind. The sudden loss of Plaxy's companionship and confidence weighed heavily on the puppy. He did nothing but mope about the house and garden waiting for her return. When she arrived he treated her with effusive affection, but in her response there was often a note of absentmindedness or even indifference.

After a while this early romance faded out, and Sirius was reinstated. But other romances followed. When she was twelve Plaxy lost her heart to the local blacksmith's boy, Gwilim, who was eighteen. This was a one-sided affair, and Plaxy saw little of him. She made Sirius her confidant, and he comforted her by protesting that Gwilim must be stupid not to love such a nice girl. Once he said, "Anyhow, Plaxy,
I
love you." She hugged him and said, "Yes, I know, and I love you. But I do love Gwilim. And you see he's my
kind
, and you're not. I love you differently; not less, but differently."

It was while Plaxy was pining for her brawny young blacksmith that Sirius himself began to be seriously interested in the females of his own kind. Suddenly Plaxy found that her faithful confidant, who had always been ready to listen and sympathize, save during brief hunting expeditions, was no longer available. Often when she came back from school he was nowhere to be found. He failed to turn up either for homework or games or even meals. Or if he was present, he was mentally far away, and perfunctory in his sympathy. Once when she was telling him how marvellously Gwilim swung the hammer on to the red-hot iron, and how he smiled at her afterwards, Sirius suddenly sprang to his feet, stood for a moment sniffing the air, then bolted. Bitterly mortified, she said to herself, "He's not a real friend, after all. He's just a brute beast." (This expression she had recently learnt at school.) "He doesn't really understand, he doesn't really care." All this she knew to be quite untrue.

After her intermittent and always unrequited passion for Gwilim had dragged on for eighteen months, causing her much sweet sorrow and self-importance, she happened to come one day upon Sirius in the very act of love with his fragrant darling of the moment. On one occasion recently she had seen two dogs behaving in this odd way, but she had not seen Sirius doing it. She was surprised to find that it was a horrid shock to her. She hurried away, feeling unreasonably outraged and lonely.

It was two or three years after the affair with Gwilim that she made her first conquest. Conwy Pritchard, the postmaster's son, was a much more responsive lover than the always friendly but never sentimental Gwilim. Conwy had a fight with another boy about her. This was very thrilling. She let herself be wholly monopolized by him. Sirius was once more neglected. When he himself happened to have an affair on, or was crazy about hunting, he did not mind at all. At other times he was often very lonely.

Moreover, during this enthralling intimacy with Conwy, Plaxy's manner to Sirius sometimes showed an unwonted harshness. It was as though she had not merely forgotten about him, but resented his existence. Once he came upon the youthful lovers walking in a lane, hand in hand. When she saw him, Plaxy withdrew her hand and said in the way one speaks to a mere dog, "Go home, Sirius!" Conwy remarked, "Why does your father have to breed these fat-headed brutes?" Plaxy laughed nervously, and said in a rather squeaky voice, "Oh, but Sirius is a nice dog, really. Now off with you, Sirius. We don't want you now." While the dog stood still in the road, trying to analyse Plaxy's tone, to discover her precise emotional state, Conwy made a move as though to pick up a stone, and shouted, "Go home you tyke." The strong silky mane rose along Sirius's neck and shoulders, and he stalked ominously towards Conwy, with head down, ears back, and the ghost of a snarl. Plaxy cried out in a startled voice, "Sirius! Don't be crazy!" He looked at her coldly, then turned and walked off down the lane.

That evening Plaxy tried hard to make friends with Sirius, but he would not respond. At last she said, and he could tell that she was nearly in tears, "I'm terribly sorry about this afternoon. But what could I do? I
had
to pretend you were just an ordinary dog, hadn't I?" His reply disconcerted her. "You wish I really was one, don't you!" A tear spilled out of her eye as she answered. "Oh, Sirius, I don't. But I'm growing up, and I must be like other girls." "Of course," he answered, "just as I must be like other dogs, even though I'm not really one of them, and there's no one of my sort in the whole world." He began to move off, but she suddenly seized him and hugged him, and said, "Oh, oh, you and I will be friends always. Even if each of us wants to be away living another life sometimes, we'll always, always, come back to one another afterwards, and tell about it." "If it could be like that," he said, "I should not be lonely even when you were away." She smiled and fondled him. "Plaxy," he said, "in spite of you being a girl and me a dog, you are nearest of all creatures to lonely me." Sniffing lightly at her neck, he added, "And the smell of you is more lovely really than the crazy-making scents of bitches." Then with his little whimpering laugh he said, "Nice human bitch!" Plaxy blushed, but she too laughed. She silently considered the phrase; then said, "If Conwy called me a bitch he'd mean something horrid, and I'd never speak to him again. When you say it, I suppose it's a compliment." "But you
are
a bitch," he protested. "You're a bitch of the species
Homo sapiens
, that Thomas is always talking about as though it was a beast in the Zoo."

After the incident in the lane, Plaxy's affair with Conwy went all awry. She saw him in a new light. He was an attractive enough human animal, but he was nothing more. Apart from his looks and his confident irresistible love-making, there was nothing to him. The dog Sirius was far more human.

For a while Plaxy and Sirius maintained a very close intimacy. She even persuaded him to walk to school in the morning and bring her back in the afternoon, "to keep Conwy from being a nuisance." Indeed the two were always together, and never at a loss for talk. When Plaxy went to a party at the village school, where there was to be dancing, Sirius was of course lonely and bored, but he did not really mind. She would come back. When Sirius went off for the day with Thomas, it did not matter. Plaxy was lonely, but busy. And when he came back he would tell her all about it. Even when he went crazy over a new bitch she did not fundamentally mind. She was secretly and unexpectedly jealous; but she laughed at herself, and she kept her jealousy hidden. His love affairs, she told herself, were no concern of hers, and they did not really matter. Anyhow they were soon over; and she herself was beginning to be interested in a boy she had met at the dance, a young student, on holiday from Bangor.

At this time Plaxy was already (so I was told) developing that rather queer gracefulness which became so striking in her maturity. Whether by native composition or by constant companionship with a non-human creature, or both, she earned the remark of the local doctor's wife, "That child is going to be a charmer, but somehow she's not quite human." At school she was often called "Pussy," and there was indeed a cat-like quality about her. Her soft hair and very large greenish blue eyes, her rather broad face, with its little pointed chin and flat nose, were obviously feline; so was her deliberate, loose-limbed walk. Sometimes when she was moody, and inaccessible to her own kind, her mother would call her "The cat that walked by itself." Not till long after I had married her did I tell her my own theory of her peculiar grace. It was, of course, the influence of Sirius, I said, that had created her "scarcely human" manner; but it was her latent antagonism to Sirius that had turned that manner cat-like. It was this character that enthralled him and exasperated him, and indeed all her admirers, from Conwy Pritchard to myself. There was one characteristic about her which particularly suggested an unconscious protest against Sirius, one which tended to be exaggerated whenever she was in conflict with him. This was the extraordinary delicacy and precision of the movements of her hands, both in practical operations and in gesture. It was as though her consciousness of herself was chiefly centred in her hands, and to a lesser degree in her eyes. This character of elegant "handedness" was something far stronger than mere felinity. It was reminiscent of those Javanese dancers who use their hands with such exquisite effect. It was at once human and "parahuman," so that she seemed to me not so much cat as fay. She was indeed at once cat, fawn, dryad, elf, witch.

This description really applies to Plaxy in her early maturity, when I first met her; no doubt in childhood her peculiar charm was only nascent. But even at fifteen or sixteen the "scarcely human" grace was appearing, and was strongly attractive to the young males of her own species.

It was in this period, in fact when Plaxy was sixteen, that Elizabeth suggested to Thomas that it was high time for the child to go to boarding school. The others had gone at a much earlier age. Plaxy had been kept back partly to be an intelligent companion for Sirius. "But now," said Elizabeth, "she's much too wrapped up in him. She won't grow up properly this way. She's cloistered here in this lonely place. She needs to see more of her own kind." Thomas had been secretly planning not to send Plaxy to boarding school at all, partly for Sirius's sake, but also because the other three, he felt, had been rather deadened by it. "Cloistered!" he cried, "what about that damned nunnery where Tamsy was?" Elizabeth admitted that it had turned out rather badly, and added, "Anyhow, I thought we might send Plaxy to a more modern place, preferably co-educational. She doesn't mix enough with the boys."