Dear Hugo

by Molly Clavering

  “You look a little disheartened,” Elizabeth said. “You shouldn’t. Atty is really very clean and tidy—for a boy.”

  “I didn’t mean to look disheartened. As a matter of fact, I was thinking that Atty bothers too much about being tidy and not making a mess to be natural,” I said. “I want him to think of Piper’s Cottage as home, not as a house he is visiting.”

  “Give him a bit longer. You hardly know each other yet,” Elizabeth said comfortably. “The time will come quite soon enough when you may look back with longing on these tidier days!”

  Comforting and practical Elizabeth! Before I could answer, a tremendous noise of trampling and talking in the hall announced the return of the boys, and all of a sudden they had invaded the dining-room, wet and filthy as usual, and demanding tea. Atty, with tremendous pride, produced from his pocket a horrible little trout about three inches long.

  “For your breakfast,” he told me.

  “Oh, Atty, how wonderful!” said I with what sounded to my own ears dreadfully false enthusiasm. “But I think you ought to have it yourself—your first fish.”

  “I’ve got one for myself too,” he said, and took a second measly fish out of his pocket.

  “How—how splendid,” said I weakly. Then a horrible thought struck me like a blow. “Who’s going to gut them?”

  “We are, after tea,” Anthony said with his mouth full of sponge-cake. “Atty’ll do his while I do mine.”

  “In the scullery, then, not the bathroom or the cloakroom,” Elizabeth said very firmly. “And put the loathsome bits in newspaper and stick them all in the boiler.”

  “Does Atty know how to gut fish?” I asked.

  “I do. I’ll show him,” said Anthony. “I can do rabbits too.”

  The rest of tea passed to an accompaniment of instructions and questions garnished with hideous details, on the gutting of rabbits and trout, sustained by the two sportsmen, to which Elizabeth and I listened as little as we possibly could.

  When the boys, armed with penknives, had clattered away, Elizabeth said mildly: “Split them and fry them in oatmeal, Sara. They are really quite good.”

  The odd thing is, they were!

  *

  Did you ever hear about the extraordinary old brothers who used to live at Carmichael? We—Atty and I—have been to tea with Mrs. Keith, and she has been telling me the story. Though they lived together, they had quarrelled, and never spoke to one another. They had their meals at separate tables in the big dining-room, the elder brother waited on by the butler, the younger by the table-maid. Every morning they drove to the tweed-mill which they owned, fifteen miles away, each in his own car with his own chauffeur. If they had anything that they had to say to one another, they sent messages by the servants. They never went anywhere except to the mill, and they never saw callers.

  Knowing Mrs. Keith, you will not expect to be told that while we talked Atty was sitting idle, trying not to fidget. Instead, as soon as he had finished a sumptuous tea, his hostess said to him, “Off you go into the garden. You’ll find some late rasps under the net, and perhaps an early greengage or two on the south wall.”

  Atty needed no further encouragement. He was off like a rocket to the old walled garden, leaving us to our own devices.

  “After that tea—!” I couldn’t help saying. Mrs. Keith laughed. “Boys always have a corner left to accommodate one or two small extras,” she said.

  “I shall never understand the creatures. Never,” I said hopelessly.

  “Maddening, but oddly attractive,” said Mrs. Keith. “But I think you are doing very well by your specimen, my dear.”

  “Not as well as you would.”

  “It is different, of course, when you have had one of your own,” she said, and her eyes went for an instant to the silver-framed photograph on the little table beside her chair.

  I remembered then that she had had only one child, the son who was killed towards the end of the 1914-18 war, and wished I had not started on the subject of boys.

  “There’s no need to wish that,” she said, reading my thoughts with uncanny ease. “Apart from losing him I have nothing but happy memories of my dear Robin, and because of him I have always taken an interest in boys.”

  Then she went on to talk about Ivo and you. Did you know that you were always her favourites, Hugo? It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about Ivo and me, and why I had come to live in Ravenskirk, but something, a sort of foolish shyness, stopped me. I felt that I did not know her well enough yet to part with my secret, though there is no one to whom I would rather tell it when the right time comes, if it ever does. I think it may not. I think I have kept it shut up inside me for so long now that I can never speak of Ivo except to you. . . .

  We were walking down to the garden to collect Atty, and be shown a different way home across the hill, when Mrs. Keith, who had taken my arm, suddenly gave it a little shake.

  “What have you been doing to scandalise Miss Bonaly?” she asked.

  I couldn’t help feeling that Miss Bonaly disapproved of me so whole-heartedly that my very existence scandalised her; but I said quite mildly that I was afraid she didn’t see eye to eye with me over my daily help.

  “Dear me!” observed Mrs. Keith. “Now why? It can’t be that you have inveigled someone away from her, because she has never been able to keep a daily woman, and by this time she must have run through every available female in the parish. Who do you have?”

  “Madge Marchbanks,” I said.

  “I see. So it’s on moral grounds that Miss Bonaly objects?”

  “Apparently,” I said—rather shortly.

  We had reached the garden door. Mrs. Keith stopped on the path and looked at me.

  “It’s not a very politic move to antagonise a woman with a tongue like Miss Bonaly’s,” she said.

  “I suppose if you were me, you would give Madge notice at once?” I said.

  “Certainly not! I should never allow Miss Bonaly—or anyone else—to tell me whom I should or should not employ!” Mrs. Keith retorted at once, as I had known she would.

  “Well then—there’s your answer!” I said, and I laughed. She looked so fragile and so fiery, like an enraged butterfly.

  “You wicked child. You deliberately led me into saying that!”

  “I know I did, and I’m not a bit sorry,” I told her cheerfully. “It’s none of Miss Bonaly’s business.”

  “True. But I don’t really approve of Madge Marchbanks,” said Mrs. Keith. “No doubt it is very old-fashioned of me.”

  “I don’t approve altogether myself, but all the same I like Madge, and I think that circumstances were too strong for her.”

  “Pah! No circumstances need be too strong for anyone unless they have as little character as a jelly-fish!” announced Mrs. Keith.

  “Madge won’t do it again,” I said.

  (“—I should hope not, indeed!” from Mrs. Keith.)

  “And I like Miss Marchbanks,” I ended.

  “Yes, Nettie is a good soul. . . . Well, we had better go and find that boy of yours,” said Mrs. Keith.

  I opened the door, and we went into the walled acre where the stored sweetness of all the flowers came to meet us like a fragrant welcome.

  Atty came dashing along the broad grass path towards us, his tie under one ear, and his face and hands well stained with raspberry juice.

  “I see you found the raspberries,” said Mrs. Keith.

  “Oh, yes, thanks! There were tons. Mrs. Keith—” he was almost bursting with excitement, his face had lost its rather anxious look which worries me—“did you know there’s a family of pied flycatchers in the garden?”

  “There is usually a nest among the clematis beside the greenhouse,” said Mrs. Keith. “I haven’t seen them myself this year, so I am glad to know they have come back.”

  “I watched them catch flies and feeding the young ones for ages,” said Atty. “This is a really good place for birds.”

  “Atty, we
must go home now,” I said. “Perhaps Mrs. Keith will let you come and see the flycatchers another day.”

  “Come whenever you want,” Mrs. Keith told him. “I like to see a boy who is interested in birds.”

  In a daze Atty thanked her for having him to tea, offered his deplorably grubby hand, and was tom away by me, still talking about the pied flycatchers.

  We left the garden by another door in its northern wall, and after crossing a field, found ourselves on the open hill-side, where a sheep-track went winding away over a heathery slope between clumps of green bracken.

  Atty was unable to bear the restriction which walking in single file along a tiny path imposed on his conversation. He stumbled beside me through the rough, catching his feet in tussocks of tough bent, falling into peaty holes unheeding, as he told me how much he admired Ladymount and its owner. The tea, the garden, the raspberries, but above all the flycatchers, I had to hear his opinion of them not once but many times. It had been a marvellous afternoon.

  I thought of Ladymount, its spacious rooms and wide passages, its garden and grounds, and felt with a pang that Atty must find Piper’s Cottage very confined.

  He was chattering on. “It’s nice to be going home, all the same, isn’t it, Aunt Sara?”

  “It is, Atty? You don’t think the cottage is a bit on the small side?”

  “Oh, no!” he sounded shocked. “I think Piper’s Cottage is just right for us. It’s so cosy, you know—”

  Such a wave of relief rushed over me when I heard him speak so confidently of the cottage as “home” that it almost choked me. I realised in that moment how much I must have been worrying about whether he would ever settle down here and be happy.

  Naturally I couldn’t say anything about it, so I just walked stolidly on along the path, until I heard him say hesitatingly, “You—you will be staying here, Aunt Sara?”

  “Staying here? What do you mean?”

  “Not selling Piper’s Cottage and buying another house somewhere else?”

  “My dear Atty,” I said, stopping in my surprise. “Why in the world should I do such a thing?”

  “Oh—well—people do move about,” he said. “Some people like changing their houses—”

  He was looking anxious again, almost careworn, and I remembered how little stability poor Atty’s home life has had up to the present.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” I told him. “Even if I wanted to change houses, which I don’t, I couldn’t do it. I haven’t enough money. It took me all I could afford to buy Piper’s Cottage, and I bought it meaning to stay in it.”

  His face cleared at once. “I say, Aunt Sara, I am glad! What a good thing you aren’t rich!”

  Before I could reply to this astonishing sentiment, he saw a stonechat and forgot everything else except the little bird perched on a big grey boulder, bobbing about and making its little sharp noise, which is exactly like a pebble being knocked against a stone.

  Somehow we wandered away from our sheep-track. I found a boggy patch where neat little clumps of sundew were lifting their heads of tiny white blossoms above the sticky hairy leaves which entice the flies on which they feed, and then a colony of bog-asphodel, one of my favourite moor plants, with the delicate golden flowers on their coral-red stems smelling faintly of lilies. Atty was stalking his stonechat, and we were both happily absorbed in our innocent pursuits, when there was a great whirring of wings, and several grouse rose almost at our feet, clamouring “Go-back! Go-back!”

  The next moment I wished most heartily that we could have taken their excellent advice, for there was a shot, which sounded disagreeably loud, and the whing of pellets past my head, and over the crest of a rise on our left appeared several men armed with guns and all very angry.

  I know it was very silly of me to have left the path, and I suppose we had spoiled the end of their day for them, but we certainly did not do it intentionally, and—well, I do hate to be shouted at! So somehow, instead of apologising in my best manner, I heard myself accusing them of almost shooting us and being a danger to harmless people walking home across the hill.

  It was all most tiresome and annoying. I was furious with myself and with the shooting-party, and now those horrible men, whoever they are, will think of me not only as a fool, but a rude fool! Our happy afternoon had a most unfortunate ending, you will agree, and as at present I feel too cross and disgruntled to write any more, I will bring this letter to an indignant conclusion!

  CHAPTER IV

  MID-SEPTEMBER, 1951

  You certainly have not forgotten what it was to be a boy, Hugo, and the best thanks I can give you is to say I wish I had thought of it myself!

  Pam was delivered by car the day before yesterday, his breeder and former owner happening to be passing quite near Ravenskirk, and Atty has ceased to be an “orthinologist” and become a canophilist pure and simple.

  I was a little dubious over the name in case it might be misconstrued as a shortened form of Pamela but Atty was quite firm. “He looks like Pam,” he said, so Pam the creature is, and more appropriate than I realised at first, because according to the dictionary, Pam is the Knave of Clubs in the old card game of Loo. Our Pam is quite black enough for that, though I hope not entirely knavish, but he has a roguish eye and teeth like needles, and I have a suspicious nature! He also has charm to a ridiculous degree. When I think of the numbers of worthy and estimable human beings who have to go through life without possessing this indefinable, rare but so easily recognised gift at all, it does seem unfair that such a large quantity of it should be concentrated in one young black poodle puppy (standard size).

  The mail decided to be late this week, so your letter announcing the arrival of the pup came the day after Pam instead of three days before, but it did not matter in the least. In fact, I think it was the surprise of finding ourselves in possession of this new and unlooked for treasure which added the last rapturous touch to Atty’s delight.

  When a car stopped at the gate and a very doggy hard-bitten woman jumped out and came striding to our door with the small black bundle under one arm, we had no idea that she was anything but a stranger wanting to be directed some where.

  Of course Atty and I were at the door. Cars come up our road so seldom that we always rush to see who they can be, a bumpkin-like habit of which we shall have to break ourselves when our neighbours at Wallace Cottage come home (if they ever do come. I am beginning to believe that they don’t exist at all).

  Anyhow, there we were, on the step, and she came up to us and said: “Miss Monteith? I’ve brought you a poodle pup—dog, three months old—”

  “Me? Are you sure?” I stammered. “I’m afraid it must be a mistake—”

  (“Oh, Aunt Sara!” from Atty in imploring tones.)

  “Not at all. Hugo Jamieson cabled me to send you one, and as I had a litter and was coming your way, thought I’d bring him. Save him a long train journey,” she said. “Got Hugo’s cable on me somewhere—here, hold him a minute, will you?” She dumped the black bundle into Atty’s eager arms, and it put out a warm pink tongue and licked his cheek.

  “—got his pedigree, too. Here you are! Cable—” She thrust a crumpled piece of paper at me, which I was much too dazed to read, and then an imposing sheet covered with names like Bumper of Camperdown and Whitmore Winning Hand, and worse.

  “He’s a nice one, best of the last litter, and the only black dog among them—Linworth Little Slam. Like him?” she added abruptly to the entranced Atty.

  All he could do was nod at her dumbly over the puppy’s head of black curls, and I saw in a flash that even if I had hated dogs, we would have to keep this one. Fortunately though I am not an indiscriminate dog-lover, I have known and loved many dogs: and this puppy with the absurd name—(I could hear us shouting—“Little Slam, come here, sir!” all round Ravenskirk!) was, even at a rapid first glance, most endearing.

  “Mean to tell me old Hugo never let you know about the pup? Just like him!” said M
rs. Pulborough (I discovered her name on the pedigree, that is how I knew it: Mrs. Josephine Pulborough). She gave a short laugh exactly like a fox-terrier’s bark. She really was very doggy, but at the risk of sounding catty, I must admit that I thought her doggy traits were those which are least agreeable in dogs themselves. If she is a great friend of yours, Hugo, I apologise, but we did promise to write truthfully, didn’t we?

  “I’m sure he has written,” I said. “The mails are sometimes rather erratic. Won’t you come in and have a cup of coffee, or tea?”

  “Not for me, thanks. I’ll have to push on. But I’ll come in for a minute and give you some gen on his food and all that. He’s been wormed, of course.”

  “Oh—er—good,” said I, determined not to show my ignorance.

  And she came in, and was extremely helpful, writing down all about the puppy’s diet and what to do if he was ill and so on.

  Her final instructions were shouted to Atty just as she was “pushing off.”

  “Don’t play with him unless he wants to play,” she shouted above the noise of the car’s engine. “He needs a rest now and again. ’Bye.”

  She waved a hand and bumped away down the road.

  Atty looked after the car thoughtfully. Then he said: “I think Pam will really like living with us better than with her, don’t you, Aunt Sara?”

  I dodged this by asking: “Why Pam?” and since you have already been told about his name, I will spare you a repetition. All that I’ll tell you is that even in this short time his presence has made me realise what the house lacked before he came, and Atty adores him. Thank you most truly for giving Pam to us.

  *

  Has it ever happened to you that if you once meet a person in awkward or unusual circumstances you continue to meet them like that? I know that this device is constantly used by writers of fiction, but it occurs quite as often in real life. (No, I am not going to produce the cliche!) It has just happened to me, rather embarrassingly.