Dr Rutherford went downstairs and found Albina waiting.
“Well? Did you find anything?”
Dr Rutherford put on his coat. “No. There is nothing physically wrong,” he said. “But there is something wrong just the same. The boy is deeply unhappy. Perhaps you know why this might be so?”
Albina flushed. “No, I don’t. Hal has everything a child could possibly need.” Then, as the doctor looked at her steadily, “There was some fuss about a dog – we rented one for him, and he thought it was here to stay and when we took it back he became quite unmanageable.”
“Ah. That would explain it,” said Dr Rutherford. And suddenly there came into his mind the memory of a white bull terrier bitch he had owned as a boy. She had run up the sides of trees and hung off a branch with her teeth, like a piece of washing. When she died of old age he had hidden in the attic and cried for a week. “Well perhaps there is a way of undoing the damage,” he told Albina. “You will have to look into your mind.”
But Albina, when he left, did not look into her mind; she looked into the kitchen, where she had to prepare her own lunch because Olga the maid had had the nerve to give notice on the day that Fleck was returned.
“You do bad,” she said to her employer. “You do bad thing. I go.”
And she had left, even though she had no job to go to and Albina offered her more money if she stayed. Fortunately that afternoon, the three G aunts came to tea, and were shocked to hear of the uselessness of the doctor, coming on top of the impertinence of the maid.
“You know, Albina, I was wondering,” said Geraldine. “Have you ever thought of sending Hal away to boarding school? I know you’d miss him but a change of scene is always a good idea.”
“And he does seem to be getting rather spoiled. I mean he’s been sulking now for nearly a week,” said Glenda. “I tried to tell him that the dog would have forgotten him completely but I don’t think he heard me.”
“Of course you’d find it difficult without him,” said Georgia. “But it’s his good you want to be thinking of. And unless you mean to have another baby to keep him company…?”
Albina shuddered. “Oh no! No, I couldn’t go through all that again. The nappies … and the screams…” She pondered what her friends had said. “I suppose he does need companionship. I’ll talk to Donald.”
Her husband said it would be very expensive. “Boarding schools cost the earth. But I suppose it would help to build his character. The fuss he’s made about this silly dog business doesn’t make one very cheerful about his future. If I gave way to my feelings every time I had an important deal to do, where would we be now?”
“Of course I’ll miss him,” said Albina. “I’ll miss him very much. But he’s so moody at the moment – and anyway I think we’ll be moving house again soon. I’ve seen a place with a swimming pool in the basement – and a billiard room. Not that we play billiards, but you never know – so that’ll keep me very busy.”
Donald was not interested in Albina’s plans for moving. He was used to shifting house every couple of years, just as he was used to changing his car, and his firm was expanding in the Far East. He’d be away even more, but he was glad that Hal would be somewhere settled.
Every man worth his salt wanted his children to have the best.
8
The Cottage by the Sea
“There’s a postcard from Hal,” said Alec Fenton, coming into the cottage and stamping the mud off his boots. It was only a few steps to the shore where he kept his dinghy but it had rained in the night and the path easily turned to mud.
His wife, Marnie, who was kneading bread at the kitchen table, wiped her hands and smiled with pleasure. “Let’s have a look, then.”
It was a long time since they had been to London to visit Hal’s parents, but they thought the world of their grandson.
Marnie read the card over her husband’s shoulder.
“Well, that is good news! He’s got a dog all for himself! I always said that was what Hal needed.”
Alec nodded. “Growing up in that museum – it’s no life for a boy.”
He looked out of the cottage window. The tide was out, and the sand stretched in a golden curve to the water’s edge. It was a quiet day and the islands were distinct: the big island, Farra, where the monks had lived in medieval times, the smaller low-lying island where their neighbour grazed his sheep, and the rocky outcrop where the seals came to breed. A cormorant dived from a rock and came up with a fish in his beak. The gulls circled. Alec’s own boat, the Peggotty, was pulled up on the shore, ready for the evening’s fishing.
“It looks as though Albina’s seen the light,” said Marnie, “if she’s let him have a dog. Maybe we were hasty, thinking ill of her.”
The visit that they had paid to Albina and their son had been such a wretched business that they had never gone back. They had been made to feel like the crudest peasants. Albina had raised her eyebrows when she saw their luggage, and said “Really?” in a surprised voice when they said they’d prefer to sleep together in the one room rather than have the separate rooms she offered them.
“We’ve been together for thirty-five years,” Alec had said. “We’ve no call to change now.”
She had looked pained when Marnie went to the kitchen to thank the maid for the nice meal she had cooked, and pointed out that the maid was paid to do the cooking.
And their own son, Donald, had hardly been there. He was endlessly flying about, and driving about, and when he was at home he had things dangling from his ear the whole time so that he could talk to Moscow or New York instead of the people in the room.
Donald had been a nice, ordinary little boy. He’d helped his father with the lobster pots, and worked in the fields, and they had hoped he would take over the land and the boat when the time came.
But after he’d got a scholarship to a posh boarding school, Donald had changed. He’d made remarks about the cottage, how shabby it was, and how small, and asked why they didn’t get a proper car instead of the wheezing old truck they used for everything – and he’d gone off to make his fortune in the south.
And he had made it all right. If living in a house where the bath taps glittered so much that they gave you a headache, the food looked as though it was waiting to be photographed for a magazine and there wasn’t a living thing in sight was what he wanted, he’d made it all right.
But Hal … Hal was different. He was the most loving, funny little boy. He and Marnie would have gathered him up and taken him away on the spot if they’d been allowed to. Even then they’d seen how lonely the little fellow was.
But now he’d be better. There was nothing like a dog for company. They only had their old Labrador now but they couldn’t imagine life without a dog.
“Let’s write him a letter and ask him if he can’t come up to visit us and show us Fleck. Albina must have changed if she’s let him have a dog. If Donald’s too busy to bring him, there might be someone coming north and we could meet him.”
So they wrote a letter to Hal, not just a postcard. It said they hoped he could come now he was older, and bring his dog. They said it wasn’t a difficult journey. If he could get a train as far as Berwick they would meet him, and after that it was only half an hour’s drive in the truck.
Hal got this letter on the day he went off with his mother to buy the clothes for boarding school.