Sirius (8 page)

Strange, or perhaps not strange at all, that both parents, though consciously modern in outlook, and on friendly terms with their children, were kept completely in the dark about their children's love affairs, They scarcely guessed that such things occurred!

I am inclined to think that there was another reason why Thomas was reluctant to send Plaxy away from home, a reason which, I suspect, Thomas himself did not recognize. Perhaps my guess is wrong, but on the few occasions when I saw father and daughter together, I felt that behind his detached and ostentatiously "scientific" interest in her lay a very strong feeling for his youngest child. And I suspect that he could not bring himself to face week-ends at Garth in her absence. Plaxy, on her side, was always rather aloof from her father, though quite friendly with him. She sometimes teased him about his mannerisms, for instance his habit of pursing his lips when he was puzzled. She was never infected by his passion for science, but when he was criticized she sometimes defended him with surprising ardour. For this reason, and in the light of subsequent events, it may be inferred that Thomas's submerged passion for her was reciprocated. Yet many years later, when Plaxy and I were married, and I was planning out this biography of Sirius with her, she ridiculed my suggestion that there was any strong feeling between her and her father, arguing that, like so many amateur psychologists, I was "always looking for a par ent complex."

This book is about Sirius, not Plaxy. I should not mention the problem of Plaxy's relation with Thomas did I not feel that it may throw some light on her extraordinarily deep, though conflicting, feelings about Sirius, who was Thomas's crowning work, and the apple of his eye.

However this may be, Thomas was not easily persuaded to let Plaxy go to boarding school. When at last he agreed in principle, and both parents began to search for a suitable school, he found weighty objections against all of them, However, in the end he accepted a certain co-educational and temperately modern establishment, situated conveniently near Cambridge.

The whole matter had, of course, been discussed with Plaxy herself, who was not easily reconciled to the prospect of what she called "going to prison." So great an upheaval in her life was bound to intimidate her. Moreover the thought came to her, "What will Sirius do without me?"

As though answering this unexpressed question, her mother said, "We think it's time for Sirius to get away for a bit too. He is to begin learning to be a sheep-dog."

Plaxy was in the end reconciled to going; and once she had made up her mind to it, she found herself sometimes strangely eager. This eagerness she could not help tracing to the prospect of being wholly a normal girl among other girls and boys. Evidently she was already suffering from a serious conflict over Sirius.

It was Thomas who talked to Sirius about the great change that was being planned. He began by saying that the time seemed to have come for Sirius to have an active life away from home. "I know quite well, of course, that I have no right to treat you as a mere dog, and that you yourself must settle your career; but you are young. In physical and mental growth, as in years, you are level with Plaxy, about sixteen. So the advice of an older mind may be helpful. Naturally I have my own ideas about your future. You are quite as intelligent as most human adolescents, and you have special advantages. I see you becoming one of the world's great animal psychologists and working with my crowd at Cambridge. But you mustn't get into the limelight yet. It would be very bad for you; and anyhow you have not had the right training yet, and of course mentally you are still too young. I think what you need now is a whole-time job as a sheep-dog, say for a year. I'll put you across as my 'super-super-sheep-dog." I think I can fix you up with Pugh, and he will certainly treat you decently. You'll have a hard life, of course, but you need that. And the whole experience should be interesting, and very useful to you later on. You must be careful not to give it away that you can talk; but you have had some practice at that game already. I'm afraid the job will be terribly dull at times, but most jobs are. For intellectual interest you will have to depend on your own resources. There'll be no chance of reading, but you will be able to make some very interesting observations of animal and human behaviour."

Sirius listened intently to this long harangue as he walked with Thomas on the crest of the Moel. At last he spoke, slowly and carefully; for Thomas was less practised than the others at understanding him. "Yes," he said, "I'm ready to have a shot at it. Do you think I should be able to come home fairly often?"

"Oh yes," Thomas replied, in an altered voice. "You probably haven't yet heard that Plaxy is going to boarding school. I'll tell Pugh the whole family will be very disappointed if you are not with us a lot during the holidays, because you are the family-dog, now that Gelert is dead. Pugh will arrange that all right." He added, "I'm afraid you and Plaxy will miss one another badly at first. But you will both get used to it. And after all you must live your lives separately some day, so you had better begin practising now."

"Yes, of course," said Sirius, but his tail drooped and he fell silent for a long time.

In fact only once did he speak. He suddenly asked, "Why did you make only one of me? It's going to be lonely being me."

Thomas told him that there had been a litter of "four of you," and that he alone had survived. "We have tried again many times," he said, "It's fairly easy to produce the Gelert sort, but you are a very different kettle of fish. We have two promising puppies coming on now, but they are too young yet for us to size up their powers. And there's a super-chimp, though of course she's no good to you. She's a problem, sometimes a nitwit and sometimes too clever by half."

There was always a great hustle in the house when a child was being made ready for school, When it was the child's first term, the preparations were even inure prolonged. Clothes had to be bought or made. Books, writing materials, sports gear, had all to be procured. As the day approached, Plaxy became more and more absorbed in her urgent affairs. Sirius wondered at her cheerfulness. It was supposed to be a gallant pose in the face of impending sorrow, but often it "smelt" genuine. There was little fur him to do in the preparations, save for occasional messages, so he had far too much time to brood on the future, Plaxy's cheerfulness was, indeed, partly a cloak to cover her desolation at the prospect of leaving home and all that she loved. Had she been younger she might not have felt the break so badly. On the morning of her departure she happened to meet Sirius alone on the landing. She surprised him by dropping her bundle of clothes and kneeling down to hug him. With schoolgirl sentimentality but with underlying sincerity of feeling, she said, "Whatever becomes of me I shall always belong to you. Even when I have been unkind to you I belong to you. Even if--even if I fall in love with someone and marry him some day, I shall belong to you. Why did I not know it properly until to-day?" He said, "It is I that am yours until I die. I have known it ever so long--since I bit you." Looking into his grey eyes and fondling the dense growth on his shoulder, she said, "We are bound to hurt one another so much, again and again. We are so terribly different." "Yes," he said, "But the more different, the more lovely the loving."

ON the day after Plaxy went to boarding school Thomas took Sirius over to Pugh at Caer Blai. On the way he talked a great deal to the dog about his future, promising that when he had been with Pugh a year he should see something of the human world beyond the sheep country, and possibly settle in Cambridge. Sirius listened and consented; but he was an anxious and a sorrowing animal, and his tail would not stay proud.

One source of solid comfort lay in the fact that he knew Pugh for a decent sort. Sirius classified human beings in respect of their attitude to dogs; and even in later life he found this a useful touchstone of human character. There were those who were simply indifferent to dogs, lacking sufficient imagination to enter into any reciprocal relation with them. There were the "dog-lovers," whom he detested. These were folk who sentimentalized dogs, and really had no accurate awareness of them, exaggerating their intelligence and loveableness, mollycoddling them and over-feeding them; and starving their natural impulses of sex, pugnacity and hunting. For this sort, dogs were merely animate and "pathetically human" dolls. Then there were the dog-detesters, who were either too highbrow to descend to companionship with a dumb animal or too frightened of their own animal nature. Finally there were the "dog-interested," who combined a fairly accurate sense of the difference between dog and man with a disposition to respect a dog
as a dog
, as a rather remote but essentially like-minded relative. Pugh was of this sort.

At the farm they were greeted with an uproar by the two super-sheepdogs at present in Pugh's possession. The farmer issued from the byre. He was a fresh-complexioned middle-aged man with a scrubby reddish moustache and blue eyes with a permanent twinkle. Sirius rather liked the smell of him. He guessed the man must do a lot of laughing. They were taken into the kitchen, where drinks were provided by Mrs. Pugh, while the two men talked. Pugh had a good look at Sirius, who was squatting on the floor by Thomas. "He's really far too big for a sheep-dog, Mr. Trelone," said Pugh in his singing Welsh voice. "He should be herding rhinoceroses, or not the little Welsh mountain sheep, anyhow. But, my! What a head he has on him! If it's brain that counts, Mr. Trelone, he must be a genius, isn't it! I can see it's he that'll be running this farm and me running after the sheep for him. Pity I'm so rheumatic!" Thomas admitted that Sirius was pretty bright, for a dog. "He'll be useful. But don't expect
too
much. After all, he's only a dumb animal." "Of course," said Pugh, and then surprisingly he winked at Sirius. "I have had experience of your dogs, Mr. Trelone, and fine animals they are. There's Idwal here now. He's full of strength, though he is twelve, which is very unusual for a hard-working sheep-dog. Then there's the bitch you sent me two years ago. Juno, we call her. My! She was quick to learn the tricks of the trade! And now she has had that litter of six by old Idwal. But the magic did not go into them from the parents. They are six little fools. But I have sold them all for a good price." "Well," said Thomas, "I told you not to expect anything from the second generation." Pugh replied with a sigh. "Yes, indeed, and you did, Mr. Trelone. I told the purchasers what you said, but they would not believe it, whatever; so what could I do but take the good price and tell them they were fools." After lighting his pipe Pugh asked, "And how old is this one, Mr. Trelone?" Thomas hesitated, then said, "Fifteen, aren't you, Sirius?" The dog let slip a "Yes," but Pugh apparently did not notice anything unusual in his sudden grunt. "Fifteen! Holy Moses, Mr. Trelone, but most dogs are dead long before that, and this one is not much more than a puppy." Thomas reminded him that longevity had been one of the aims of the experiment. "Well," said Pugh laughing, "if he will stay on with me he shall marry my daughter Jane and take over the farm when I am gone. But what is the name he answers to, Mr. Trelone, did you say?" "I call him Sirius," said Thomas. Pugh pursed his mouth and frowned. "That is not a handy name for calling across the valley, is it!" He paused, puffing at his pipe, then added, "Perhaps, Mr. Sirius, you will permit me to call you by some other name. How would Bran do?" Sirius had tilted his head over on one side, as though he were vainly trying to understand this remark, obviously addressed to him. Thomas said, "That's fine. He'll pick it up in no time."

Sirius's despondency was increased by the discovery that even his name was to be taken from him. Surely, he thought, he would be changed into a new being. Nothing whatever of the old life was to be left to him but the memory of it. At home, though he had grown up in the custom of sharing ownership of most things with Plaxy, each of the two young creatures had possessions of their own. Nearly all their toys had been held in common, but when Plaxy had gone to the village school she had also begun to acquire personal property connected with her new life--books, pens, pencils and many little nondescript treasures gained through intercourse with her fellows. Sirius also had begun to collect a few personal possessions, though far fewer than Plaxy; for, owing to his lack of hands, there were few things that he could use. There were certain ancient treasures preserved on a shelf in the minute room that had been allotted him--a rubber bone, a lump of gleaming white quartz, a sheep's skull, several picture books. And there were later-acquired possessions--more books, and music, his three writing gloves and several pens and pencils.

In his new life he had to be even more propertyless than St. Francis, for he was just a dog, and whoever heard of a dog with property? Fortunately property meant little to him; he had a propensity towards communism, due perhaps to his strong canine sociality. It should be remembered, however, that though dogs in many ways show a far more social disposition than human beings, in some respects they have a keen sense of personal ownership, for instance over bones, bitches, human friends, and localities. For Sirius, at any rate, to be completely stripped, even of his precious writing gloves, was indeed to be reduced to the status of a brute beast. And now they intended to take away his very name. Speech, too, was of course stolen from him by the simple fact that no one on the farm could understand him. Nor was he to be able as a rule to understand them, for among themselves the Pughs talked Welsh.

Sirius's attention had wandered from the conversation, but it was recalled when Thomas rose to leave. All three went out into the yard. Thomas shook hands with Pugh, then patted Sirius, and said "Good-bye, old man. You stay there." Sirius feigned perplexity, made as if to follow Thomas, was shooed back and retreated with a puzzled whimper.