One Dog and His Boy

23 Return of the Dogs

On the following day Hal was out in the garden helping his grandfather weed the vegetable bed when he saw an enormous silver car drive up to the cottage. Immediately he was furious. His parents had promised not to come up before the end of the week. What’s more, they had bought another car they didn’t need – a Rolls-Royce gleaming with newness.

The car stopped, and out of the driving seat came a calm-faced Indian gentleman who stood for a moment looking at the view. Then a second door opened, and out stepped Kayley.

When she had finished talking to Pippa on the telephone, Kayley had hurried round to find her mother, who was sewing with Mrs Naryan. It was no good trying to shield Pippa now, so she explained exactly what had happened.

“I’m going up to fetch her straightaway,” she said. “Goodness knows what else she’ll get up to. There’s an overnight bus to Berwick, I can catch that. I’ve got enough in my savings for the fare, just about.”

But at this point Mrs Naryan put down her needle.

“That is not a good idea, I think,” she said in her soft voice. “This bus will not be pleasant.”

She walked out of the room and came back with her husband. Mr Naryan, like his wife, was small, soft-spoken and gentle. He was also one of the richest men in England, having built up a flourishing import-export business in the years since he had left Rajasthan.

“I will drive you to Northumberland,” he said.

And when both Kayley and her mother said no, no, it was out of the question, it was impossible, he only smiled. “There is a man in the north whom I would like to see,” he said. “I will come to your house at six tomorrow morning.”

Now he shook hands with Hal’s grandparents and then took his leave. He was going to spend the night in a hotel further up the coast and come back for Kayley and Pippa on the following day.

The dogs remembered Kayley. They remembered her so well that she was nearly knocked over, and Kayley petted them and talked to them as only she could talk to dogs.

But her greeting to her sister was not so enthusiastic.

“Come outside,” she said to Pippa when she had been welcomed by Hal’s grandparents and said hello to Hal.

The first ten minutes as they walked along the beach was spent by Kayley giving Pippa a piece of her mind.

“You must have been mad,” she said. “We’ve had the police round, and the Carkers are spitting blood. I thought you’d forgotten to set off the burglar alarm, but letting the dogs out on purpose…”

“I know,” said Pippa. “I sort of saw red. The way they looked when Hal took Fleck away … I couldn’t bear it.”

“That’s all very well, but what now? Hal’s grandparents can’t keep five dogs. What’s going to become of them? If we take them back to Easy Pets it’ll come out that you let them go, and—”

“We can’t,” Pippa broke in. “We absolutely can’t take them back to sit in those awful cages again.”

“Well, how can we find homes for them?”

Pippa looked at the four dogs who had followed them on to the sands.

“They’ve got homes, Kayley. All four of them. They found homes for themselves, but they came on with us to see Fleck safe. They’ve found homes and work and masters that they want to serve.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kayley.

So Pippa told her.

They left early the following day. Mr Naryan was a Buddhist and didn’t seem to mind dogs piling into his beautiful car. The Buddha held all life to be sacred, and whether it was a businessman or a St Bernard lolling on his spotless cream upholstery made no difference to him.

Fleck said goodbye again and again to Otto and Honey and Francine and Li-Chee, and they said it to him. But the little mongrel was not worried or upset. He had known at once that he and Hal belonged to the cottage in a special way, and when the others got into the car, he turned and went back into the house and flopped down contentedly beside old Meg.

For Hal it was more difficult. He and Pippa hadn’t been together long but those days on the road had changed him. He’d be able to write to Pippa and phone her, but seeing the dogs go was hard.

It was Kayley who comforted him.

“You’ll see them again, Hal,” she said. “When you’ve shared so much with someone, whether it’s a dog or a person, they don’t just go out of your life.”

They drove to the monastery first. As the car slowed down, Otto, who had been looking out of the window, began to moan and gargle deep in his throat, and to press his nose against the glass. They stopped outside the gates to let him out, and Pippa and Kayley went with him. Pippa was putting up her hand to ring the bell, but before she could do so the door opened and Brother Malcolm stood there, smiling his welcome.

But now it all went wrong. She had expected Otto to rush inside and up the stairs, but he wouldn’t go. Instead he turned and raced away round the side of the building and out of sight.

“He is in the garden,” said Brother Malcolm.

“We’d better go and see,” said Kayley.

The girls walked past the herb beds and into the orchard, where they saw an unusual sight. The abbot of St Roc lay on the grass, felled like an oak tree. And over him and beside him and round him was Otto, now licking, now barking, now simply sitting on his chest.

“Is it all right?” shouted Pippa.

The abbot did not reply. He merely raised one arm – perhaps in blessing, perhaps in greeting, perhaps just because it was the only one of his limbs that he could free.

The girls did not repeat their question. If ever anything was all right, this was. They turned and walked back to the car.

Old Selby, the shepherd, was getting ready to load his possessions on to the removal van. There weren’t many of them. His room in Rosewood was small, and everything was built in and fitted. He’d set the bonfire, ready to burn the stuff he wasn’t taking, and now he picked up his crook and laid it across the top. Billy was going to a farmer in the neighbouring valley. He padded miserably behind his master, his eyes clouded with anxiety, and from time to time he lifted his head and howled.

All the same, it was Billy who first heard the car purring down the track. His ears went up. He yapped once as the door opened.

“Go, Honey,” said Pippa. “It’s all right. You can go now.”

Honey bounded out, came back once to her friends, and then was gone.

But Pippa, following her, stopped in dismay, seeing the removal van, the bonfire.

“Oh dear,” she said. “You’re leaving! We’d hoped you’d be able to have Honey, but if—”

Old Selby was bending down, rubbing Honey’s head.

Now he straightened himself. “No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m not leaving now. I’m staying right here where I belong.”

He walked over to the bonfire and picked out his stick. Then he went over to the driver of the van.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Selby. “You’ll have to take the van back.”

The driver looked at him, ready to argue. Old people had fancies, he knew. The shepherd probably didn’t know what he was doing.

But then he looked at Selby again. When he first saw him he’d taken him for a man near the end of his life, but he seemed to have changed. He didn’t really look old at all – and the driver shrugged, and got back into his cab.

“Come on, Honey,” said Selby. “We’ve got work to do.”

They caught the circus in Todcaster on its last day. The big top had come down; lorries were being loaded. Francine was out of the car, streaking away the moment it stopped. Kayley and Pippa, following her, heard her yapping outside one of the caravans. Then a black shape bounded out and in a moment Rupert and Francine were dancing round each other in a frenzy of joy.

Now a thin man in a beret followed Rupert out of the caravan and introduced himself as Petroc.

“This must be the dog that George told me about. Francine, is it?” he asked in a slight foreign accent.

“Yes, it is. We wondered if she could stay with you?”

Petroc sighed. “It would have been good. She could have joined my act, Petroc’s Poodles. It is the best dog act in the world,” he said modestly. “But a dog like that is worth a lot of money and I am a poor man, so I’m afraid—”

“We don’t want any money,” said Kayley quickly. “We just want her to be happy.”

Petroc looked at Francine, rolling over and over with Rupert on the grass. His thin face creased into a smile.

“She is happy, I think,” he said. “Yes, I know dogs and this one is happy. She is very happy indeed.”

But Francine did not forget her manners. She gave a paw to Kayley, then to Pippa, then to Kayley once again, before she followed Rupert into the caravan and her new life.

The car was empty now and Li-Chee was getting worried. He had whimpered pathetically when Otto left, and now he sat on Pippa’s knee, his pop eyes anxiously searching her face. Where was everybody? Had he been forgotten?

Kayley and Pippa too were nervous. This last stop was going to be difficult. What if there was a rule against having pets in the care home? Mr Naryan, driving steadily, said little, but he was a comfort.

“He has a big heart, that one,” he said. “It will be well with him.”

As they turned into the drive of Greystoke House, they saw that the garden was full of children. They stopped and Li-Chee jumped out – and then from the group of children one little girl came running like the wind.

“Li-Chee,” said Nini, and now she did not kneel to him, but scooped him up in her arms.

Then Mick came over and Pippa gave him the note that Hal had written.

“We made it all right, thanks to you, and your friends,” she said, and Mick said it was nothing, and that Nini had been quite different since the night they came.

“She talks now and she sort of fits in. It’s great.”

But the difficult part was still to come. Mick took them to Mrs Platt’s office, but they had to be careful because the house mother knew nothing about the night in the boiler room.

Pippa said they were looking for a home for the Peke.

“We remembered that Nini liked him so much when she came to the circus. But perhaps there’s a rule against having animals here?”

Mrs Platt said no, there wasn’t. In fact, at the last meeting of the committee it had been suggested that the children might have a dog. “There was a very nasty character in a white van out there the other day,” she said. “Sat there for hours. I thought then a dog might see him off.” She went to the window. “My goodness, that’s not much of a watchdog, though. It looks like a little rat. Is that the one in the circus act? What’s happened to his hair?”

Kayley looked at Pippa, who was the family liar.

“A horrible boy cut it because he was jealous,” said Pippa. “Our dog act was better than his.”

Mrs Platt was shocked. “People don’t know how to discipline children these days.” She looked out of the window again. “But really, I don’t think—”

She broke off. Li-Chee, who had been sitting on Nini’s lap, suddenly raced down the steps, barking at the top of his voice.

“It’s the newspaper delivery boy,” said Mrs Platt. “Well, I reckon I was wrong about him not being a watchdog.”

“Pekes are amazing like that,” said Kayley. “They’re lion dogs, bred to protect emperors and give notice of danger.”

“Are they then?” said Mrs Platt, looking at the newspaper boy, who had dropped the paper and run back to the gate. “Well, well – I guess he can stay.”

The last thing Kayley and Pippa saw as they drove away was Li-Chee sitting on the top of the steps. Nini was on one side of him and Mick on the other, but Li-Chee’s paws were stretched out in front of him and he held his head high.

Just so had his ancestors sat and guarded the palaces of emperors. And just so sat Li-Chee now, protecting Greystoke House.