Dear Hugo

by Molly Clavering

  It was a lovely September morning, the whole countryside irradiated with that gentle pale golden light which is one of the glories of early autumn, the hillsides all bronzed with withering bracken and purple and umber with faded heather. Atty had gone off on his bicycle to spend a long dirty happy day with Anthony Drysdale, building a dam across the stream in the glen above Carmichael, and I, having rather galloped through the minimum of housework, took Pam for a walk up Piper’s burn. He doesn’t go very far yet, because I don’t want to overtire him, and the little sheep-track through the grass with the water murmuring over its bed of coloured pebbles close by, is more interesting than the road, which entails collar and lead. Our progress was leisurely; I was enjoying the freshness of the air and the sunlight falling on the pale stubble fields where the last of the corn was being led in, and thinking about Atty’s clothes, for the beginning of term is only a week away now. Pam was occupied with his own affairs, trotting about sniffing busily, or jumping back in ridiculous alarm from a moth fluttering out of a tuft of grass.

  We reached a place where the burn takes a wide curve round a charming miniature lawn of soft green grass, with a big old thorn-tree, the reddening haws thick on every twig, in the centre. Among its roots are rabbit-holes, and though I feel sure that the sight of a rabbit would alarm Pam greatly, he loves to snuff about the entrance to their burrows.

  I watched him paddling across the grass to the tree, thinking how much he had grown even in the week he has been with us, and then suddenly there was a snap! and the horrible heartrending crying of a terrified puppy in pain. When I reached him I found his front paw fast in one of those dreadful gin-traps, and he was pulling with all his baby strength to get free from the horror that had caught him. It was useless for me to try to force the steel apart with my hands unless I had something to jam between them, and I was looking wildly round for a stick, at the same time doing my best to comfort Pam and prevent him from hurting himself even more, when someone vaulted the stone wall, splashed through the burn, and said: “Hold the puppy and be ready to pull when I tell you.”

  In far less time than it takes to write it down two lean strong hands had forced the trap open, I had lifted Pam free, and his agonised shrieks had died down to sobbing whimpers.

  “Better have a look to see if he is badly damaged,” suggested the owner of the hands. To my shame I found that I was trembling as much as poor Pam, and I was afraid to fumble with his paw in case it was broken and I made it worse.

  “Let me. Just try not to let him jerk.” The sensitive hands were gently feeling the puppy’s leg from the pads up and down again, while I did my best to keep him still, though it was rather like holding an eel covered with black curls.

  “I’m pretty certain there’s nothing broken, but the bones will be bruised. Poor fellow! I hate those traps!”

  Then, and not till then, I looked up, and very nearly dropped Pam. For the man who had come to his rescue was one of the party with whom I’d had “words” on the moor a few weeks earlier! You know how it is on those occasions: you think you haven’t noticed anything in your blazing rage, but all the time the figures and faces of the people you are angry with have been photographed on your mind’s eye—if such a thing is possible. Anyhow, possible or not, I recognised this thin brown man at once. He was not the one who had shouted, he was the one who had stood a little apart looking earnestly at his gun with an expression of faint distaste for the whole affair and particularly for furious viragos on his face.

  “Oh dear!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself.

  Mercifully he thought I was talking about Pam’s bruised leg.

  “It would probably be a sound idea to get your vet. to look at him, just to be on the safe side,” he said. “Are you far from home? I’ll carry him for you if you like. He’ll be a bit heavy for you.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t dream of letting you!” said I hastily, for the longer we were together, the more likely he was to recognise me as I had already recognised him. “It’s no distance at all, just downstream to the cottages—”

  “You aren’t a visitor, then? You live here?”

  “Yes, oh yes. I live here,” I babbled. “Thank you so much for coming to the rescue—”

  It was too late, or almost too late. He was looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face—one of those rather craggy faces, very brown, with high cheek-bones and a big nose, that go so well with the glengarry bonnets worn by Highland regiments.

  “Surely—haven’t we met somewhere, then?” he asked slowly. “I’m not very clever about people’s names, but I usually remember faces, and—”

  Oh dear! Oh dear! This time I kept the exclamation to myself. Aloud I said firmly: “I don’t think we have met—” for surely to scream at someone in the middle of a moor is hardly meeting?—“and I really ought to take the puppy home and ring up the vet.”

  I thanked him again, and turned to go back, when Pam had to ruin everything by struggling out of my arms and limping ostentatiously on three legs across to his rescuer. Every single hair seemed to say, “If you aren’t capable of gratitude, I hope I am.”

  “He—er—he evidently wants me to carry him,” said the wretched man politely. “So I’d better introduce myself. I’m Lawrence Whitburn. I live at Chapelwood.”

  There was nothing for it but to throw in my hand with as good grace as possible.

  “I am Sara Monteith,” I told him, I hope hiding my reluctance successfully. “And I live down there at Piper’s Cottage.”

  “How-do-you-do?” he said. “Now everything is on a proper footing.” He bent down and scooped Pam up under one arm, with his hand supporting the injured paw, and we started sedately down the burnside.

  It was idiotic that he should suppose me to be prim enough to refuse his help because we hadn’t met one another properly, but far better than his knowing the real reason.

  I kept the conversation to traps, a disagreeable subject, but impersonal, and anyhow, I really did want to know if it was legal to use such a cruel means of killing rabbits.

  According to Colonel (or General, or Brigadier, for I am sure he is not plain Mister) Whitburn, the question of gin-traps is a difficult one. They are not supposed to be set in the open, but they are allowed within the mouth of a burrow. Whether the one which caught poor Pam was in a proper place or not we were unable to decide.

  “But I’m pretty sure that Wilson, whose farm they are on, knows nothing about them,” said Lawrence Whitburn. “When he wants rabbits killed off he has it done properly by a trapper who uses snares. I think these were set by a hopeful poacher. I’ll let Wilson know about them. He’ll be none too pleased if any of his beasts get into them.”

  By this time we were at the gate of the cottage, where we stopped.

  Once again I said my piece, with real gratitude, though I wanted to add: “And now do please go away and I hope I shall never see you again.” Vain hope in a place like Ravenskirk, of course, but I really know very few people and none of them seemed likely to be friends of his—except possibly old Mrs. Keith and the Drysdales. However, as a single woman is most often invited to hen tea-parties, I thought that I had quite a reasonable chance of avoiding him. All this because I had lost my temper for a few minutes. Note the moral, Hugo—though if you are like Ivo, your temper is both sunny and well controlled.

  In the meantime this man Whitburn is still standing at the gate of Piper’s Cottage with Pam in the crook of his arm!

  “Do you live here alone?” he asked.

  “Yes—I mean, no, not exactly. I have a boy with me during the holidays,” said I, remembering with a pang how soon they would be gone.

  Perhaps I sounded a little repressive, for he suddenly handed the puppy to me, raised his cap, and saying: “I hope the little chap will be none the worse,” turned and walked away.

  I had no time then to waste in regretting that I had not met this really very pleasant man for the first time when he came to our rescue, because I had to ring
up the vet. at Langtoun, miles away, and ask him to come. No sooner had I put the receiver down than Atty came tumbling in, soaked to the skin, having fallen into the deep pool made by his dam, and clamouring for “something to eat.” I had just driven him upstairs with orders to change everything he was wearing, which was not much, when Madge appeared, ostensibly to bring me a boiling of potatoes from Aunt Nettie’s garden, but really in the hope of some excitement, having heard by local grapevine that Atty had returned “wringing wet.”

  Promptly turned her on to mopping up the damp patches on the carpets left by Atty’s dripping progress, while I brewed cocoa for him and comforted Pam with a biscuit.

  Wild screams of laughter from Atty’s room indicated that he was telling his adventures to Madge as he changed. I felt rather cross and disinclined for merriment, so shut myself into the kitchen with Pam and began preparing lunch until the cocoa heated. The very thought of drinking cocoa at eleven-fifteen on a fine September morning made me feel slightly sick, but it is Atty’s favourite beverage except for coca-cola, and I knew Madge would also be delighted to swallow a mug of the stuff. There is no accounting for tastes. Atty’s appetite for lunch would be unimpaired, I did not feel responsible for Madge to the extent of supervising her diet, so I poured the brown steaming drink out of the saucepan into two large mugs, set the tin of biscuits conveniently to hand and went into the passage to summon Madge, carrying Atty’s jorum.

  Piper’s Cottage has only one fault: there is no hall, only a short narrow passage running right and left from the front door to the sitting-room on one side and the dining-room and kitchen on the other. The stair goes up directly opposite the front door, so that there is no hiding from anyone who happens to ring the bell, still less from the caller who dispenses with this formality and walks in.

  On this occasion I was practically in Miss Bonaly’s arms, and cocoa was splashing over the carpet before I realised that she was there at all. Madge, still laughing with pea-hen stridency, was halfway downstairs, clutching a pail and a rather dirty cloth, and at the top, dancing about in nothing but a pair of pants, I caught a glimpse of Atty. I knew that no detail of this scene could have escaped Miss Bonaly’s lynx-like eye. All I could do was to behave as if it was perfectly normal.

  “Please give this to Atty, and then come down and wipe up what I’ve spilled,” I said to Madge, handing her the mug. “And Atty, get dressed at once.” Then I turned to Miss Bonaly and invited her to come into the sitting-room.

  She came quite meekly, murmuring that she would only stay a minute, as she was selling flags for Shipwrecked Mariners and must continue her round.

  After I had put five shillings into her box and taken two little flags for Atty and myself, she regained her usual form.

  “I met Major Whitburn at the end of the road,” she announced, fixing me with a beady look.

  “Did you, Miss Bonaly?” (So he isn’t plain Mister. I was quite right!)

  “Do you know him?” she went on.

  “We have met,” I said, purposely vague.

  “He looked as if he might have been coming from here.”

  “Did he?”

  At that moment, just as she was about to retreat vanquished, Atty burst into the room, his face adorned with a large brown moustache of cocoa, and said, “I say, I met that man we saw on the hill the other day, with the shooters, you know, when you were so angry!”

  Those dots, Hugo, represent what I should have liked to say but didn’t.

  Instead, I suggested that Miss Bonaly was there, and he might say How-do-you-do to her.

  “How d’you do?” said Atty perfunctorily, and at once returned to the subject. “He was nice, and very intrusted to see me again. But he said Pam had been hurt—is he hurt, Aunt Sara?”

  “No, nothing serious, but the vet. is coming to see him,” I told Atty, feeling that the whole situation was now beyond my control. Miss Bonaly would have to think what she liked. Her eyes were on stalks as she stared at us, her nose quivered with curiosity.

  “But what happened to the poor little doggie?” she asked.

  “He got caught in a trap. Major Whitburn very kindly helped to let him out,” I said baldly. “That’s all.”

  “Dear me! Quite an adventure!” Miss Bonaly tittered. “I always say adventures come to the adventurous! Why, it is twelve o’clock! How time flies. I must be wending my way—or I shall never sell my flags this morning. Good-bye, Miss Monteith. Good-bye, little boy—”

  Thank heaven the vet. banged on the door and drowned Atty’s indignant mutterings at being so insultingly addressed. Miss Bonaly sped away laden with a rich harvest of gossip, and we fetched Pam from the kitchen, where Madge, against all orders, was feeding him on the dregs of her cocoa in a saucer.

  Mr. Hendry, the vet., a pleasant young man in very horsey breeches and tweed jacket, cheered Atty and me by assuring us that Pam’s leg was only bruised, but added as he left that Pam would probably be sick as a result of the cocoa.

  He was.

  *

  Atty has gone back to school, and the house feels so quiet and empty that it might be a moated grange. I miss him dreadfully, and am glad to have Pam for company, though I think he is finding life dull too without Atty to play with. I am a very poor substitute.

  CHAPTER V

  OCTOBER, 1951

  When the time comes for you to retire, Hugo, if you want a quiet life, don’t settle down in the country. Bury yourself in London or any really large city, and you can live like a hermit, but avoid the outskirts of a village. I am dazed by the ceaseless whirl of activities in which almost everyone in and round Ravenskirk is involved. Tea-parties of all sorts and sizes take place daily, and there are long afternoons when some twenty or so ladies gather to play Rummy like tigresses for lervely prizes given by their hostess. I, who have always considered Rummy a lighthearted game played with a good deal of noise and recrimination with Atty and Anthony & Co., had no idea, in my innocence, that it was so important a part of the social life of Ravenskirk! One Rummy party was enough for me, and I do not see how I can compete with tea-parties either, for my baking isn’t up to local standards, and simply to buy cakes and scones from the baker isn’t the thing to do at all. “Everything on the table was bought” is a damning indictment and stamps you as a failure at once.

  Besides these functions there are all sorts of others: whist drives in aid of almost everything, sales of work for the churches, W.R.I. meetings, classes for Scottish country dancing and amateur dramatics and dressmaking. I have joined the W.R.I. Mrs. Currie is the President, and Elizabeth is on the Committee, so I feel I shall be among friends there. There is a bridge club, a choral society, a Burns club, a badminton club; Boy Scouts and Wolf Cubs, Girl Guides and Brownies, all flourish. I am quite well informed about the Guides, not only because I was one myself in the dim past, but because Mrs. Currie’s Sylvia is helping to run them during this year she is to be at home between school and some further training as yet only vaguely indicated by her mother. Sylvia no doubt has her own ideas as to a career quite clear-cut. There is nothing vague about her.

  She came in this morning to ask—or rather, to badger—me into taking tickets for some terrible entertainment called a “Beetle Drive,” in aid partly of the Guide funds and partly for charity. Though I have never participated in a Beetle Drive before, I am quite sure it will be frightful. Its very name is against it, and reminds me at once of raids made on Grannie’s big basement kitchen in the old house in Edinburgh, late at night after dances, of switching on the light and seeing hundreds of horrible great blackbeetles scuttling to take cover with a rustling noise over the stone floor. Ugh!

  Of course I took the tickets. I am not proof against Sylvia’s eager enthusiasm. I took four of them, which means that I shall have to find three other victims as weak-willed as myself to join forces with me. I shall also have to provide what is known as a “Basket Tea.” If only Sylvia had chosen to hold this affair during the Christmas holidays, how much simpler
it would be. Anthony and Atty and their young friends would have loved it, I am sure; but no, Sylvia says that people are far too busy going to parties at Christmas to have any time to spare. This prospect fills me with dismay. It makes me feel that I should like to go to bed on December 23rd and stay there until January 2nd, when presumably the worst of the rush will be over. In the meantime there is still the Beetle Drive. Perhaps Elizabeth Drysdale will come, and be able to collect two others. Anyhow, it turned into much too lovely a day to worry over trifles. After Sylvia had gone Pam and I went out to the garden and spent an hour or two very profitably according to our lights. I pruned the ramblers, which were in a dreadful tangle, and scratched like wild cats, while Pam did some independent work among a big flourishing patch of red saxifrage. I must say I could have dispensed with his efforts, for he scraped it all up with appalling thoroughness, and though I put it back and stamped it down well, I read in my gardening book that saxifrages hate to be moved, and feel that this can have done them no good. It is useless to scold Pam, who believes (or pretends to believe) that he is helping; so I told him without much hope, not to do it again, and went back to the ramblers. When I looked at him next, he was sweetly asleep, with his head pillowed on the brown ruin he had made of a nice plump green cushion of saxifrage leaves.

  Battling with those ramblers gave me an enormous appetite for lunch, and quite restored my temper, ruffled by Sylvia and her beetle drive. There is nothing like a spell of hard work in the garden for one’s temper, I find. At least, it has a most beneficial effect on mine.

  I felt not just resigned, but quite cheerful when I rang Elizabeth up and told her of the treat I had in store for her. As I expected, she said Yes, she would come, and “beetle like anything.”

  “Do you know how?” I asked.

  “Not in the least, but I suppose we’ll be told,” she answered.

  “The whole thing is rather a bore,” I said with a sudden return of my rebellious feelings.