“This tiny waif,” she said, extricating her finger with difficulty from his champing jaws, “this tiny waif wants only a little bit of companionship, a little bit of help in his moment of strife... As, indeed, does my friend.”
“Well, I’ll give you that he’s very, very nice,” said Emma, obviously moved.
“Oh, he is,” said Ursula, clamping her hand firmly over his mouth so that he couldn’t bite her again. “He’s absolutely charming, and I believe — I’m not sure, but I believe — he’s house trained... Just for a week, dear Emma. Can’t you possibly see your way to... to... to putting him up, as it were, as though he was a paying guest or something like that?”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it for everybody,” said Emma, her eyes fastened, mesmerised, on the wriggling fat-tummied, pink-tummied puppy with his great load of white fur and his bulbous black eyes. “But seeing as he seems a nice little dog, and as it’s you that’s asking... I’m... I’m... willing to have him for a week.”
“Darling,” said Ursula. “Bless you.”
She whipped the puppy hastily back into his hamper because he was getting out of control. Then she rushed across and threw her arms round Emma and kissed her on both cheeks.
“I always knew,” she said, peering into Emma’s face with her brilliant blue searchlight gaze that I knew could have such devastating effect. “I knew that you, of all people would not turn away a tiny little puppy like this in his hour of need.”
The curious thing was that she said it with such conviction that I almost got out my handkerchief and sobbed into it.
So eventually, refusing the offer of another cup of tea and another slice of indigestible cake, we left. As we walked down the road towards the station Ursula wrapped her arm round me and clutched me tight.
“Thank you so much, darling,” she said. “You were a great help.”
“What do you mean, a great help?” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No, but you were there. Sort of... a sort of a force, a presence, you know?”
“Tell me,” I said, interested, “why you want to inflict this poor woman with that vindictive little puppy when she obviously doesn’t require one?”
“Oh, but you don’t know about Emma,” said Ursula. Which was quite true because I didn’t.
“Tell me,” I said,
“Well,” she began. “First of all her husband got ill and then they got Bow-wow and then her attention was divided between the husband and Bow-wow, and then the husband died and she channelled all her recuperance, or whatever you call it, into Bow-wow. And then Bow-wow got knocked down and since then she’s been going steadily downhill. My dear, you could see it. Every time I came to visit her I could see that she was getting more and more sort of, well — you know, old and haggish.”
“And how do you think the puppy is going to help her?” I enquired.
“Of course it’s going to help her. It’s the most savage puppy of the litter. It’s bound to bite the postman or the greengrocer or somebody who delivers something, and it’s got very long hair for a peke and it’s going to shed that all over the place, and it’s not house trained so it’s going to pee and poo all over the place, dear.”
“Just a minute,” I said, interrupting. “Do you think this is a very wise gift to give a fragile old lady who’s just lost her favourite Bow-wow?”
“But my dear, it’s the only gift,” said Ursula. She stopped, conveniently under a street lamp, and her eyes gazed up at me.
“Bow-wow used to be exactly the same. He left hair all over the place, and if she didn’t let him out he’d pee in the hall, and she’d complain for days... Gives her something to do. Well, since her husband died and Bow-wow died she’s got nothing to do at all and she was just going into a sort of... a sort of grey decline. Now, with this new puppy, he’ll bite her and he’ll bite everyone else. They’ll probably have court cases and he’ll put his hair all over the place and he’ll pee on the carpet and she’ll be as delighted as anything.”
I gazed at Ursula and for the first time I saw her for what she was.
“Do you know,” I said, putting my arms round her and kissing her, “I think you’re rather nice.”
“It’s not a question of niceness,” said Ursula, disrobing herself on me, as it were. “It’s not a question of niceness, She’s just a pleasant old lady and I want her to have fun while she’s still alive. That puppy will give her tremendous fun.”
“But you know, I would never have thought of that,” I said.
“Of course you would, darling,” she said, giving me a brilliant smile. “You’re so clever.”
“Sometimes,” I said as I took her arm and walked her down the street. “Sometimes I begin to wonder whether I am.”
The next few months had many halcyon days for me. Ursula possessed a sort of ignorant purity that commanded respect. I very soon found that in order to avoid embarrassment it was better to take her out into the countryside rather than confine her to a restaurant or somewhere similar. At least in the countryside the cuckoos and larks and hedgehogs accepted her for what she was, a very natural and nice person. Take her into the confines of Bournemouth society and she dropped bricks, at the rate of an unskilled navvy helping on a working site.
However, even introducing Ursula to the wilds was not without its hazards. I showed her a tiny strip of woodland that I’d discovered which had, at that time, more birds’ nests per square inch than any other place I knew. Ursula got wildly excited and peered into nests brim full of fat, open-mouthed baby birds or clutches of blue and brown eggs, and ooo’d over them delightedly. Nothing would content her but that I had to visit the place every day and phone her a long report on the progress of the various nests. A few weeks later I took her down to the place again and we discovered, to our horror, that it had been found, presumably by a group of schoolboys, and they had gone systematically through the whole of the woodland and destroyed every nest. The baby birds were lying dead on the ground and the eggs had all been taken. Ursula’s anguish was intense. She sobbed uncontrollably with a mixture of rage and grief and it was a long time before I could comfort her.
She was still racked with occasional shuddering sobs when I ushered her into the spit and sawdust bar of the Square and Compass, one of my favourite pubs in that region. Here, in this tiny bar, all the old men of the district would gather every evening, great brown lumbering shire horses of men, their faces as wrinkled as walnuts, their drooping moustaches as crisp and white as summer grass with frost on it. They were wonderful old men and I thought to meet them would take Ursula’s mind off the ravaged nests. I was also interested to see what sort of reaction her presence would create.
To begin with, they sat stiff, silent and suspicious, their hands carefully guarding their tankards, staring at us without expression. They knew me but now I had introduced an alien body into their tiny, smoke-blurred bar and, moreover, a very attractive and feminine body. This was heresy. The unwritten law was that no woman entered that bar. But Ursula was completely unaware of this or, if not unaware, undaunted by it. She powdered her nose, gulped down a very large gin in record time, and turned her brilliant melting blue eyes on the old men. Within a few minutes she had them relaxed and occasionally, half guiltily, chuckling with her. Then she spied the blackboard in the corner.
“Ooooh!” she squealed delightedly, “Tiddleywinks!”
The old men exchanged looks of horror. Then they all looked at the oldest member of the group, an eighty-four-year-old patriarch who was, I knew, the local champion of this much beloved game.
“No, Miss,” he said firmly, “that’s shove ha’penny.”
“Do teach me to play it,” said Ursula, gazing at him so adoringly that his brown face went the colour of an over-ripe tomato.