Bel Ria Read online

  Yours sincerely,

  Neil MacLean, SBA

  It was the first letter of MacLean’s that the doctor ever remembered. He had a more retentive memory for names than the writer had credited him with. “Very interesting,” he said to himself, wielding the censor stamp, and was immensely tempted to write “and bow-wow to you too!” under its imprint, “Very interesting but why . . .” He replaced a tiny brightly polished silver bell, neatly cocooned in a pillbox.

  MacLean wasted no deep thought in a name. He had been brought up on a farm where each succeeding sheep dog had inherited the name of its predecessor. Thus there was always a Ria if it were a dog, and a Meg if it were a bitch. This was therefore a Ria. It was as simple as that.

  “I would be obliged if you would be calling the dog Ria to accustom it,” he said to Reid and his messmates over tea, before picking up his book and preparing to read as usual right through the meal. “Ree-ah,” he emphasized.

  “Ria,” said Reid obligingly, “Ria, Ria —” and he leaned over to pat the dog. “Good dog, Ria,” then, “Eh, but you’re nowt but skin and bone, luv— we’ll have to feed you up.” At the concern in this voice, the ears pricked slightly and the tail stirred. Reid cleaned his plate with a piece of bread, but his offering was forestalled.

  “The dog is getting fed once a day — by me,” said MacLean with cold flat emphasis, and returned his eyes to the pages of Admiral the Lord Nelson.

  So, phoenix-like, and most sadly, arose from the ashes of his former life this new dog, Ria: as unlike that other as it was possible to be: no hint of the vivacious little professional in this stricken-eyed cowering shadow. The only hint of his exceptional intelligence might have been remarked in the short time it took him to put meaning to words of a new language, and to interpret the message of ship’s bells and pipes. But in a mess where there was a constant turnover as the watches changed, there was little time or opportunity to observe anything as intangible as this. His bewilderment and pathos had reached out to the men as a whole; they had tried to give him the reassurance he so obviously needed, to make him one of them, but their attempts wilted under the consistently disapproving glare of one who so forbiddingly kept himself to himself, and made it quite clear that this extended to his belongings as well.

  The stolid Reid, the only man who ever said what he felt like to MacLean, argued the necessity of rigid discipline. “It’s a dog’s life all right, the way you’re going about it,” he said, and received the not unreasonable reply that an undisciplined animal roaming around underfoot in an emergency could be a real menace.

  “It is essential that he learns a set place at all times,” said MacLean, “and is never distracted from it.”

  Reid’s reply was succinctly monosyllabic.

  In the meantime Ria existed, physically at least, as a fairly adequate diet was being added to the milk in the guise of porridge, gravy and cod liver oil, all of which he lapped up with tidy disinterest.

  In contrast, shipboard life held the warmest and happiest of worlds for the monkey, who had no complexities of devotion to suffer a sea change, and almost immediately had become a very distinct personality, with a name, Louis, the beginnings of a wardrobe and some fifteen willing subjects in his personal kingdom of Number Five Mess.

  Leading Seaman Lessing, who had owned a capuchin monkey in civilian life, had interested himself in Louis’s welfare from the beginning when he had been housed, a sick, listless bundle, in a cardboard box in one of the boiler rooms. Here he had received the best clinical attention from MacLean, but grew daily more apathetic. Lessing had insisted that if the little animal did not have some constant contact with a living being he would simply pine away, no matter how excellent the treatment.

  After trying, and failing, to persuade Hyacinthe to share the warmth of her fur coat, he took matters into his own hands one day and removed the monkey to the mess deck. Here he provided both warmth and contact with his own body, first wrapping Louis in the folds of a woolen scarf. He slept with this bundle and ate with it on his lap. At the end of his four hours off, when the watches changed, he virtually press-ganged his opposite number into continuing this treatment. For days, Louis was never out of someone’s arms or stuffed inside the comforting warmth of a jersey or duffel coat, and by the time it was decreed that he was fit enough to be left to his own devices on the deck for a while, he was everyone’s concern.

  A seaboot stocking had been cut and neatly tailored to make a pullover; he already owned one pair of knitted shorts with a second pair on the needles; and another pair of devoted hands had netted a small hammock like Hyacinthe’s. It was found impossible to train him to the use of Hyacinthe’s sandbox, however: Louis had a happy disregard for such niceties of behavior. Fortunately there was no shortage of cotton waste from the engine room, and his shorts were lined with this.

  It was an incredibly cramped and congested kingdom, directly above a magazine, much of it already taken up with a maze of pipes and cables, the bolted-down benches and mess tables, lockers, hatches, ladders, even the large round bulk of a gun mounting and ammunition hoists. Yet in it some fifty men, divided between the port and starboard watches, lived, slept and had their comfortless being. At night when the hammocks were slung there were seldom enough to go round and the luckless stretched out on lockers or mess tables. They were seldom dry; the deckhead dripped constantly from condensation, and in heavy weather some of the water swirling along the decks inevitably found its way down the ammunition hoist and sloshed to and fro to the ship’s roll so that even their kit in the lockers was soaked. A rich fug compounded of steaming wool, bilge water, socks, tobacco and the stale reminder of the last meal permeated everything. It was hardly anyone else’s idea of the perfect kingdom, but Louis thrived there. From the point of view of a very small monkey it could not have been more ideal, for there was always company, always something going on, always some human only too glad to alleviate the monotony or shut off the mind to the discomfort in the parenthetical company of something so responsive, so innocently amusing and mischievous as a capuchin monkey.

  Even when the ship was at action stations and Louis was tethered by a collar and chain to a table, he was still not alone, for there were always two hands stationed at the ammunition whips leading up from the magazine. If nothing was happening he would occupy himself endlessly polishing the table with a much-prized yellow duster in one hand, an empty tin of polish in the other, or swinging in his hammock slung below the table. At the first explosion of guns or depth charges, however, he hopped into the hammock and covered his head in the folds of a long woolen scarf. He was always nervous and particularly mischievous after such a time, and the hands soon learned to keep anything they valued out of his reach afterwards: someone would usually give him an additional cigarette to his daily ration of two as a consoling distraction.

  He escaped once, unfortunately fetching up in the Chief Petty Officer’s Mess. Here he rifled the drawers, found a tin of brilliantine, then using a clean shirt as a polishing rag, he stickily burnished everything within reach, including a photograph of somebody’s wife and twin daughters. The official reprimand and warning that followed this escapade was so sharp that thereafter Number Five Mess took steps to train their Louis to such a remarkable degree of invisibility when authority was in the offing that it became a nightly challenge to the duty officer making rounds to try and spot him.

  Louis’s escapade was soon forgotten. Authority, recognizing the tedium and discomfort of the lower decks, was benevolent. Perhaps even a little envious, for sometimes the MO, on the professional pretext that he liked to follow up his patients, would borrow Louis for a visit to the wardroom. On the first occasion that he met the Captain there, also visiting, with Barkis as usual in tow, his flaming beard so excited Louis’s grooming instincts that he threw a very human tantrum when the time came to return him. Barkis had viewed him with considerable reserve, his pink-rimmed piggy eyes rolling in acute embarrassment: being bidden to suffer without a
ction the indignity of having his tail tweaked by a monkey was too much. Thereafter he tucked it well under and remained firmly seated when he encountered Louis.

  Tertian had returned to the Biscay coast after Falmouth and ferried back hundreds more Polish and British troops. Shortly after this she proceeded to Gourock, and there she was taken from the Home Fleet and given over to Atlantic convoy escort duty. The unremitting exhausting grind of those first few hundred miles outward bound to Halifax on the Western Approaches passage were soon intensified when the long-range Focke Wulf Kondors were able to operate out of Bordeaux, and not only to attack but act as aerial spotters for U-boats. Although the hands could fall out at action stations if there was no imminent urgency, they had to be ready to fall in again at minutes’ notice, so there was seldom any letting up, and never more than the brief snatch of sleep. But the U-boats were not yet ranging right across the Atlantic, and there was an area, like Tom Tiddler’s Ground, before the convoys reached their eighteenth west meridian rendezvous and there dispersed to continue alone or with Canadian-based protection, and Tertian turned back with the homeward-bound convoy. Before she steamed back into range of the hungry U-boat, there could be a brief interlude when a man might sleep for a few uninterrupted hours, finish a hot meal, or even find a pair of dry socks; a time to obliterate from the mind the shocking toll of lives and tonnage in their last flock and appraise the new assortment.

  There might even be time then for the off-duty watch in Number Five Mess to bring out a harmonica or a concertina and entertain — and be entertained by — their mascot.

  The moment any music started Louis would jump down from whatever shoulder he was favoring at the moment, bob up and down until someone found his enamel mug, then break into a kind of shuffling dance, skillfully catching anything thrown to him in the mug, gibbering in the grimace that his audience had learned to interpret as a smile. Or, if someone produced the trapeze that needless to say had been fashioned for him, he would go through an expert and unvarying routine of gymnastics. He expected applause and, when he got it, would make the rounds with his mug for reward. Sometimes the men teased him by withholding the applause; then he would chatter in frustration, pulling at Lessing’s hands, or retire to his hammock and sulk with his back turned, his little blue pullover pulled up over his face. When the claps and whistles were forthcoming at last, he would wait like some temperamental prima donna for the right pitch of rising enthusiasm before he appeared again. When he was really offended — and he was unexpectedly sensitive — it was a long time before the offender could win himself back into favor.

  If Louis’s gamin, chimerical qualities were a relaxing diversion to tired tense men, then they in turn gave him everything that he could have wished for: the love and constant company that he craved, adulation, warmth and comfort, ingenious toys for his amusement. He even had his own place at the table, where he downed thick cocoa or very sweet tea from his own mug and picked at whatever delicacies the messman and his messmates could heap upon his plate. If he lacked one thing in his little kingdom of Number Five Mess, that was the other half of his life’s act, his steed and companion, the dog.

  Chapter 6

  IT HAD NEVER BEEN MACLEAN’S INTENTION that dog and monkey should meet — if for no other reason than that the monkey had been from the start totally excluded from the tidy compartment in his mind reserved for the sole responsibility and welfare of dog, small, gray, one; Sinclair, Corporal RASC, property of.

  But he had not reckoned on the compartment being invaded by Ria’s nose — or by the escaping steam from a fractured pipe in the engine room. One day he returned to the sick bay after treating the monkey for a minor skin ailment. He laid his jacket over the chair, then turned to wash his hands. Under the desk, Ria stirred into sudden life as one of the sleeves hung before his nose. He sniffed intently, his stumpy tail quivered and one ear went straight up. His nose must have given him the certain message that somewhere in this steel maze was hidden another living part of him. Something of purpose or substance must have returned to him then with the message — as though a pinpoint of light had been glimpsed at the end of a long dark tunnel. There must come a time when his nose must surely lead him to it. . . .

  Then, a few days later, a stoker was admitted to the sick bay, seriously scalded and in great pain. Tertian was in mid-Atlantic, still within U-boat range, the sole destroyer escort to a convoy under attack most of the way, constantly zigzagging in evasion, sometimes turning hunter herself to shudder to the explosive pattern of her depth charges. In such conditions, with a drip running into his arm, the stoker needed almost constant attention. For the next five or six days MacLean took what sleep he could on a chair by the sick bay cot, appearing only briefly to snatch a meal in the mess, where Reid had undertaken the charge of Ria.

  The first evening, spelled off for supper by the doctor, he had returned to find Reid asleep, Ria wedged in at his back, his ears laid back in dog guilt: he had once before attempted to gain the dry security of a bunk, and had been told off then. “Get down, you,” said MacLean sharply now, and he jumped down at once to the heeling slippery deck. A locker door burst open to a particularly violent lurch and he slid down the deck engulfed in its contents, yelping as he cannoned off the bulkhead. As the deck came up again he started back, whimpering and favoring one paw, but this time MacLean halted him with an outstretched foot. He examined the paw, and Ria licked his hand. He wiped it in irritable disgust.

  “Put him back where he was, Doc,” said Reid, his eyes still closed. “He’s not a bloody limpet, and when I’m looking out for him, he stays bloody here in this bunk.” His voice was sleepy and as equable as ever, but there was no mistaking an overtone of clear finality. There was no option: MacLean dropped Ria back on the blanket with ill grace.

  “It’s no place for a dog,” he said, and picking up a pair of boots he threw one with a noisy clatter back into the locker. “It will just be the encouragement of bad habits.” He punctuated his words with the second boot.

  Reid opened his eyes and smiled up at him. “Why don’t you just frick off — and quietly, there’s a good soul,” he said gently. “We need our sleep —” He pulled the blanket over his face. Ria’s apprehensive eyes peered over his back — then disappeared quickly before the look they received.

  MacLean swallowed his warmed-up food, gulped a mug of tea, and returned to his patient. His face was compassionate, his voice comforting, his hands tender as he adjusted the protective cocoon around the man’s raw body.

  Back in the mess Reid lay awake for a minute or two, one hand absently fondling the dog’s ear, then he huddled down under the blanket again, falling asleep almost instantly. Curled up to his back, Ria closed his eyes, heaved a long relaxed sigh of utter content, snuggled closer, then slept too.

  Perhaps because of the warm security of this first contact, and the interest and camaraderie that came his way in the following days now that the mess was free of MacLean’s disapproving eye, perhaps because he now had a purpose, Ria’s confidence gradually returned.

  First, and most important, he found his sea legs. Up until now, he had had to be carried up and down ladders. Reid, after much encouragement, placing his paws one after another on the rungs, had persuaded him to scramble up, but the descent was obviously terrifying. Reid stood at the bottom, enticing, the others in the mess encouraged, and Ria crouched at the top, trying again and again to bring himself to make the attempt. Suddenly he launched himself, not down the ladder but into midair, straight at Reid who fortunately caught him. The watchers stamped their feet and clapped. His delight in his triumph was touching: his tail quivered to a near wag, and when he was patted and praised and put down he flew effortlessly up the ladder again and prepared for another descent.

  “Ooplah, my beauty,” said Reid, his hands out, and down came Ria again, patently delighted with himself. He had performed, and he had been applauded again at last. But this time his reward was his own achievement and Reid’s evident p
leasure. He soon learned to come down using all four paws, head foremost, but if exhorted by a cry of “Ooplah” from someone at the bottom he would always launch into midspace.

  His next step forward was to show some initiative, and this followed very quickly in a remarkable adaptation. It was hot and crowded in the mess and he was thirsty. For a while he panted unnoticed on a bunk while the men sat around the table over tea. Suddenly he jumped down and stood on his hind legs beside them, balancing easily now to the ship’s movement, even walking around the end of the table. He was so obviously asking for something, his eyes intent on each in turn, that a crust was tossed his way. He ignored it, panting, and comprehension dawned; someone fetched a mug of water.

  He drained it, then jumped back on the bunk, to lick and groom his paws, a very satisfied little dog of some substance at last, taking in everything around him with round bright eyes, basking in the attention accorded him by this friendly audience.

  Fear and the ladder had imprisoned him in the mess before. Now one barrier was down, and he overcame the other next day. He climbed the ladder many times, staying at the top to survey the passing world and assay its scents for longer and longer intervals. Many hands reached down to pat him, and his nose investigated each, some with great interest, and one in particular filled with such promise that he was emboldened enough to trail its owner’s boots, until they disappeared up another ladder. He returned to his post, restless and excited. He descended to the mess and whined insistently, only quietening when a would-be sleeper threw a paperback at him in exasperation.

  Far from quelling him, this seemed to have a decisive effect; in the comparative quiet of the middle watch he set off on his quest, hesitantly nervous as he gained the top of the ladder, with laid-back fearful ears and belly crouched low, then with increasing upright courage. He had traversed the route to the stern often enough, but never by himself, and always secure at the end of a line. He followed that route now, with many pauses while his quivering nostrils translated the messages wafted from ventilator shafts, door grilles and hatches.