The Spuddy Page 3

  The Spuddy had spent the morning doing his usual rounds of the pier and the kipper yard but when he had heard the clock strike twelve habit had turned him in the direction of his former home. He was not expecting to find his meal put out for him but he thought he might just as well make sure. When he saw the furniture van and strange people going in and out of the house he had sufficient intelligence to realise he was unlikely to be welcome there but he felt he could risk slipping round to the back to see if his bowl was in the accustomed place beside the coal shed. It was, but it was empty of everything save a few drops of rain and the lingering smell of yesterday’s food. He licked it more to assert ownership than for the meat-tainted moisture but even as he did so a red-haired woman appeared and amid a shrill stream of invective hurled a stone which hit the path beside him. Ruffled but still dignified the Spuddy retreated to the other side of the street and at what he judged to be a safe distance he sat down to keep an eye on the proceedings. As he did so there was a clang against the kerb a few feet away from him. It was his empty feeding bowl. The Spuddy was still sitting there, half obscured by the bulky van, when Andy spotted him. Immediately he ran towards him and putting a gentle hand on the dog’s head crouched down and let his arm slide down until it was around the dog’s neck. The Spuddy’s response was a cursory lick on the ear which might have become more fervent had not the red-haired woman emerged from the house to scream at Andy not to encourage the beast. She wasn’t going to have it hanging around her place, she yelled, as she re-entered the house and shut the door. Andy, catching sight of the empty bowl in the gutter and guessing why it was there knew that unless he could help him the Spuddy was going to be in a hazardous position. As he retrieved the bowl he heard his aunt’s voice scolding him for his slowness and urging him to come for his dinner. With an encouraging pat on the Spuddy’s head Andy left him and followed his aunt inside. When the meal was over and she had cleared away he showed her the Spuddy’s empty bowl, mutely asking her for scraps.

  ‘Indeed no!’ she declared firmly. ‘I’m not giving you food to take to that dog. He should have been put down before his own folks went away and it’s only a matter of time before he’s put down anyway.’ She put her hands on her hips and looked hard at Andy. ‘If you go tempting him to hang round here you’ll upset the neighbours and I won’t stand for that. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘the more you tempt him the more likely it’s you yourself will be the death of him. Aye, you, Andy,’ she stressed, seeing his look of consternation. ‘The woman that’s moving in to the house was here taking a cup of tea with me earlier this morning and she canna abide dogs at any price, she was telling me. She’s that nervous of them, she says, and if the Spuddy still comes round now that she’s moved in her husband’s going to complain to the police.’ She gathered up the tablecloth. ‘Aye, and then something will have to be done about getting rid of him.’ She went to the back door, shook the crumbs from the cloth and coming back in said less severely: ‘The best thing you can do for that dog, Andy, is to keep away from him and make sure he keeps away from you.’ Out of the corner of his eye Andy saw Uncle Ben nodding sad confirmation.

  Dejectedly tucking the bowl under his anorak Andy went out into the street but the moment he saw the Spuddy again his dejection became resolution. The Spuddy and he were going to be friends and somehow friends must contrive to look after each other. It wouldn’t be easy – that much he knew – but if only he could keep the Spuddy fed and unharmed until his father came on leave he was certain his father would find some way of ensuring that Andy could keep the dog. Sadness descended on him as he wished, as so often before, that he could correspond with his father; that he could read and write like other children of his age and thus be able to both send and receive letters. But when his father was at sea their communication with each other was limited to picture postcards with lots of X’s printed clearly on the back which his father posted whenever he was in port. In reply Andy could only add more X’s together with a painstakingly printed ‘ANDY‘ to his mother’s letters and sometimes give her one of his drawings to enclose.

  Shaking off his despondency Andy approached the Spuddy and showing him the feeding bowl tried to entice the dog to follow him but the Spuddy, used to verbal invitations and instructions, was reluctant until Andy’s explicit gestures, aided by a renewal of invective from the red-haired woman persuaded him to accompany the boy. Before leaving the house Andy had checked the money in his pocket and money being something his mother had ensured he was familiar with he reckoned he had enough to be able to buy at least two and perhaps three days food for the Spuddy, and today being a Wednesday it was only three days before he was due for another week’s pocket money from the sum his father had left for that purpose.

  Pausing outside the butcher’s he looked in at the window but he thought the butcher looked harassed and loath to risk adding to his harassment by trying to convey by signs what he wished to purchase he chose instead to go to the general store where it was relatively easy for him to point to a tin of dog meat and a tin opener, hand over the requisite money and skip away. If he was aware of the mystified shopkeeper coming to the doorway to observe him further Andy gave no sign and together he and the Spuddy raced towards a promising looking huddle of sheds which he had noticed earlier in the morning. Here Andy felt sure he would be able to find a quiet corner where he could stand guard whilst the Spuddy ate his meal. The sheds, he discovered, were situated within the kipper yard itself, a place where it was obvious the Spuddy was completely at home. It was in fact the Spuddy who led Andy to where two small and patently disused sheds abutted to form a reasonably secluded spot and, watched closely by the Spuddy, Andy set the feeding bowl on the ground, opened the tin and tipped the contents into the bowl, pushing it towards the dog and nodding vigorously as he did so. The Spuddy regarded the boy in the same dubious manner as a shopkeeper might regard an urchin who has offered him a five pound note to change. His glance dropped to the food and his nose twitched. With diminished uncertainty yet still without complete conviction his glance returned to the boy. Andy pushed the bowl nearer; he lifted it up and held it close to the dog’s nose before putting it down again and only then did the Spuddy, with a dignified swing of his tail which Andy interpreted as a gracious ‘thank you’, begin to eat. Crouching with his back against the wall of the shed Andy smiled with satisfaction.

  The next thing he must do for the Spuddy, Andy resolved, was to try to find a place where the dog might sleep unmolested at nights. While Andy was disposing of the empty meat tin by tossing it into the harbour and while he washed the feeding bowl under the tap on the pier he pondered over his problem. One of the empty sheds where he had fed the dog was a possibility but where and how he would get sacks or some other form of bedding to cover the damp-looking earth floor? When you were unable to speak it was difficult to indicate even the simplest things you wanted. How was he to mime to strangers his request for bedding for a dog he was not supposed to have? All afternoon the boy and the dog roamed Gaymal but when tea-time came Andy had still found neither bedding nor a cosier alternative to the shed for his companion.

  The evening dusk was thickening and since his aunt had stipulated that he must be home by dark he knew the time had come when he must leave the Spuddy. Clapping his hands he gestured towards the kipper yard but the Spuddy stayed beside him. He tried stamping his feet; a pretence of kicking and of throwing. He tried dodging and hiding but the Spuddy was not to be diverted. Feeling traitorous Andy at last picked up a stone and throwing it so as not to hit the dog he made what he hoped was a menacing rush towards him. The Spuddy was surprised but not deterred. Andy grew desperate but it was Uncle Ben coming home from work who solved the problem for him. ‘Way back, boy!’ he commanded the Spuddy. ‘Way back! You mustn’t come near this place. Go!’ His voice was quietly authoritative and the dog, understanding at last, turned away arid loped off in the direction of the kipper yard. Miserably Andy wondered if the Spuddy would ever come near him again but t
he next morning when he rounded the corner into the main road there was the Spuddy waiting for him as gladly as if he recalled nothing of their parting. Always after that when Andy had to return to his aunt’s house the Spuddy escorted him until they had almost reached the street when he would stop and allow Andy to go on without him. When Andy came out again the Spuddy would be waiting to greet him and where he spent the intervening time Andy never discovered.

  Chapter Six

  It seemed to Andy that the days raced by with the speed of the wind-chased wavelets he liked to watch rolling past the end of the pier and so captivated was he by the kaleidoscopic pageantry of the harbour he had little time to dwell on the crisis which had brought him to Gaymal. For the first few weeks after his arrival he had looked every morning to see if the postman had brought him word from his mother – perhaps a picture postcard like those his father sent him with lots of X’s on the back to let him know she still loved him but as the days became weeks and there was still no sign from her he began to accept that either she had forgotten him or she wished him to forget her. If he could not make himself forget her he did at least succeed in decolourizing his memories of her sufficiently to open his eyes to the affection that was being offered to him in his new surroundings. The Spuddy’s attachment to him was unmistakable and Uncle Ben made no secret of the warmth of his feelings and even his aunt, whose testiness had once unnerved him, began to betray a hitherto unsuspectedly tender side to her nature. Sarah had never had any wish to appear forbidding but she was a congenitally fussy woman and having no children of her own she had not relished the prospect of taking Andy into her home. She had done it, she confided to her husband and to her neighbours, because she considered it her duty and though this was undoubtedly true Andy had not been in her care for more than a few weeks before she was admitting to herself that she hoped his father’s voyage would be a prolonged one.

  She began to consider the boy’s education, complaining to Ben that it had been wickedly neglected; she rowed with the local schoolmaster when he refused, because of Andy’s affliction, to take him into the school as a pupil and when the darker evenings brought long hours indoors she determined that she herself would be Andy’s tutor. Confiding this intention to a friend who also happened to be the school cleaner she induced him to ‘borrow’ some lesson books so that she could teach Andy to read and write. Despite a scolding tongue she displayed not only a natural ability to teach but also an astonishing patience with the boy and, stimulated by his keenness to learn, she tended to ignore most of the chores she normally felt compelled to undertake in the evenings so as to devote the time to Andy and his studies, with the result that at the end of three months Andy found he could write to his father giving him the glorious news that if his father wrote a letter in return he would now be able to read it for himself.

  During all the hours of daylight Andy and the Spuddy were down at the pier, mingling with the fish porters and watching the comings and goings of the boats. His eye was becoming trained to the lines of boats and to their different responses to the sea so that he could recognize each boat long before it reached the harbour. He knew most of the crews and was accustomed to being thrown a rope to hitch round a bollard or being told to bring a hose or even being called aboard to collect the empty pop bottles to take to the grocer with the instruction that he could keep the ‘penny backs’ for himself. Andy was glad of the ‘penny backs’ because they helped him to buy more food for the Spuddy and so augment the scraps he saved from his own meals. Uncle Ben helped too by saving his own scraps and if Aunt Sarah ever noticed the total lack of food on her table at the end of their meals she made no comment. So long as Andy did not offend the neighbours by allowing the Spuddy to hang round the place she felt it right to hold her tongue. After all, she conceded, maybe a dumb boy needed a dumb friend and at least the dog kept Andy out all day so that he wasn’t constantly under her feet.

  After a long lingering autumn winter howled in with wild sharp-toothed winds that scraped the skin like a steel comb. The hills which had been snow-capped became snow shawled and soon snow-skirted; the pier puddles were skimmed with ice and fishermen and porters flapped their arms across their oilskinned bodies trying to keep warm during the minutes of inaction. Andy, snug in the thick sweaters his aunt knitted for him and in the ‘oilies’ she had bought for him began to worry anew over the Spuddy’s sleeping quarters. He suspected that wherever the Spuddy spent his nights it was too exposed a place for him to with-stand the severity of winter. There were mornings when the dog’s coat was unaccountably wet and one day Andy noticed him shivering a lot. The next morning, after a night of blizzard, Andy found the Spuddy waiting for him in snow that was up to his belly; his ears were drooping and snow from the last flurry was still melting in his coat. Andy was sure the Spuddy was sick and resolved to go to Uncle Ben and somehow persuade him to help find a safe, warm place for the Spuddy to sleep. Down at the boatyard Uncle Ben watched Andy’s passionately expressive mime with complete understanding and after feeling the dog’s hot nose and cold ears he led them to the far corner of the work-shed where there was a great pile of wood shavings and cotton waste. Andy looked at his uncle with grateful comprehension and began to arrange the shavings into a nest-like hollow which he lined with cotton waste. Even before he had finished the Spuddy, without waiting to be invited, stepped into the centre of the nest, turned round twice and settled himself down with an audible sigh of relief. For three days the Spuddy hardly stirred from his new bed but lay there showing little interest in anything, even food, and Andy, fearing his friend might die, stayed miserably around the boat shed, rarely leaving it except at his uncle’s insistence. On the fourth day when the Spuddy saw Andy he got up out of his bed to greet him. On the fifth day he was prepared to accompany Andy down to the pier and on the sixth day Andy was overjoyed to find the Spuddy waiting for him in the usual place near the main road. But henceforth instead of the Spuddy escorting Andy most of the way home in the evenings it was Andy who escorted the Spuddy to the boatyard and saw him comfortably settled in his quarters.

  Chapter Seven

  For skipper Jake and the crew of the ‘Silver Crest’ the fishing season had proved a disastrous one. It had begun with a broken con rod in the engine which kept them tied up at the pier for close on two weeks and when that was repaired there had followed a run of bad luck which included fouled nets, a seized winch and gear damaged by heavy seas. When at last they managed to get a good spell at sea they found the herring shoals elusive and instead of ‘Silver Crest’ coming into port with fish holds so full that skipper and crew felt justified in taking a few hours rest and relaxation she was arriving with a meagre cran or two which necessitated their turning round straight away after unloading and going back to sea to search for new grounds to set their nets, perhaps snatching only two hours rest out of the twenty-four. From being one of the highest earning boats in the port they had dropped to being one of the lowest – a source of chagrin for any skipper with pride. The crew were dispirited and worried by the superstition that the bad luck which was dogging them might yet bring worse catastrophe. But Jake dismissed their fears. Despite discomforts, disappointments and danger he would allow nothing to affect his driving ambition to catch fish – more and more fish to earn more and more money for himself and his crew. And since Jeannie, his wife, was so much away from home visiting her parents Jake was also goaded by loneliness – loneliness and the recurring pain in his stomach which only hard work or deep sleep could dull.

  Before he had met Jeannie, Jake, in common with most Gaymal fishermen, had been a heavy drinker, spending all his weekends ashore in the local pub downing whisky after whisky and when the pain had first insinuated itself into his stomach he had drunk even more whisky in the hope of alleviating it. Eventually its acuteness had driven him to see his doctor.

  ‘You’ll have to keep off the drink,’ the doctor warned after examining him. ‘I can give you medicine but medicine can’t fight the damage the w
hisky’s doing you. It would be different if you took a bit more care of yourself but ach!’ The doctor shook his head. ‘You fishermen are all the same. You abuse your bodies all week, working like galley slaves, going without sleep and bolting great wads of stodgy food and when the weekend comes you’re away to the pub and pouring whisky into your stomach as if it was an empty barrel with holes in the bottom.’

  Jake had intended to heed the doctor’s warning but Gaymal offered only two places where an unmarried man ashore for the weekend could find company and relaxation. They were the pub and a district up at the back of the kipper yards locally known as ‘Chinatown’ where the itinerant ‘kipper lassies’ had their quarters. Jake had nothing against the kipper lassies; indeed he preferred them to the local girls who, he considered, suffered too much from what he called the ‘I want disease’, but not being by nature a wenching man he had settled for the pub and since neither the Gaymal pub nor its customers welcomed teetotallers nor even moderate imbibers Jake had continued his drinking. Continued that is until Jeannie had come into his life.

  From the day he had first seen her behind the counter in the local paper shop he had wanted her for his wife. Her smallness and primness delighted him and he liked to observe her pretending to frown at the teasing remarks of the fishermen while all the time, the enamoured Jake was sure, she was really finding it difficult to restrain her demure little mouth from breaking into a smile. He reckoned she was about half his age and he wondered if she would think him too old for her so he was both astounded and delighted when she responded to his first tentative approaches and when, after they had known each other for about two months, she agreed to accompany him on a visit to his sister in Glasgow he felt the time had come for him to ask her to marry him. As they wandered with apparent aimlessness along the city streets Jake intentionally edged her towards the windows of jewellers’ shops and when she had exclaimed over the displays of rings he suggested with stumbling diffidence that he should buy her one as an engagement ring. She had declined at first as he had expected her to but noting the sparkle in her eyes when she studied the rings he could see the temptation was strong and when he pressed a little she soon yielded. He was earning good money at that time and the ring they chose was an expensive one; so also were the coat and jersey and skirt which she fell in love with and which he, in a glow of devotion, insisted she should, have. What did it matter if he spent in a single night what had taken him a month to earn? He had a boat, hadn’t he? And there were plenty more shoals of herring in the sea waiting to be caught.