Sirius (6 page)

In his puppyhood Sirius sang only human music. Throughout his life he was deeply interested in the great classical achievements of man's musical genius, but as he had always found the fundamental structure of human music crude, and inadequate to his interest in sound-Form and the emotions which sought musical expression, he began to experiment with new scales, intervals, and rhythms, suited to his more sensitive hearing. He made use of the quarter-tone and even the eighth-of-a-tone. Sometimes, in his purely canine mood, his melodies divided the octave in quite a different manner from any human musical mode. Thus to the human listener his most distinctive music became less recognizably musical and more like the baying of a dog, though a strangely varied and disturbing baying.

A supple and mellow voice was Sirius's only medium of expression. He often longed to play some instrument, so as to be able to introduce harmony into his experiments, but his tragic lack of hands prevented him. Sometimes he sat at the piano trying to finger out a two-note accompaniment to his singing, but his paws were far too clumsy to do even this properly. For long spells he would give up music entirely because his handlessness prevented him from doing what he wanted with it. At these times he would wander about with tail and head low, refusing comfort. The mingled sense of helplessness and talent tormented him. But presently his buoyant spirits would revive, and he would resolve that, if instrumental music must remain for ever impossible to him, he would do new and marvellous things with his voice. Throughout his life Sirius alternated between self pity on account of his disabilities and a surprisingly detached and humorous acceptance of his nature and his environment, issuing in a zestful will to triumph in spite of everything.

IN the foregoing chapter I should have written only about Sirius as a puppy, but in dealing with his disabilities and powers I was inevitably led on to speak of his later life. His serious musical adventures, for instance, did not begin till puppyhood was well over. I must now concentrate more definitely on his adolescence and early maturity, preparing the way for an account of that part of his life with which my own life became for a while closely entangled.

Already in adolescence Sirius was larger than most sheep-dogs. But though tall, he was at this time very slight and lanky, and it was often said that he had "overgrown his strength." He was also far from courageous. His caution in his encounters with other dogs was increased by his discovery in sundry minor brawls that his large cranium made his head unwieldly and his seizing of his opponent rather less slick than it might have been. This weakness was largely overcome when he reached full maturity, for constant exercise developed the muscles of his neck sufficiently to cope with his extra weight of head. In youth, however, he was no match for the smaller but more experienced collies that tended the sheep. One of these, unfortunately a near neighbour, formed a habit of persecuting Sirius whenever possible. There came a day when he was ignominiously chased home by this animal, who bore the appropriate name Diawl Du, black devil. It was the school-girl Plaxy who seized the yard broom and drove off the black devil with blows and shrill curses. Later Sirius heard Plaxy telling her mother about the incident. She ended the story with, "I'm afraid poor Sirius hasn't much spunk." Sirius did not know the word "spunk," but he detected in Plaxy's voice, which she intended to be merely amused, a note of deep mortification. He sneaked off to find a dictionary. With some trouble and much use of his wet tongue for turning the "India paper" pages he found the word; and he didn't like the idea that Plaxy thought him lacking in spunk. For "spunk" according to the Oxford Concise Dictionary meant "courage, mettle, spirit, anger," and was connected with "spark." Somehow he must regain Plaxy's respect, but how?

That same day Plaxy seemed to turn her attention away from Sirius towards the young cat, Trix, successor to Tommy. This impulse to make much of cats was a common reaction with her when she was at all alienated from Sirius. She would cuddle Trix in front of him and remark on her lovely tortoise-shell coat or her dainty nose. Also, Sirius noted, she would become strangely catlike herself, sitting about in lofty silence and indolence, "hugging herself," as he sometimes put it.

Shortly after his defeat by Diawl Do, Sirius got himself into serious disgrace over Trix. The cat was contemplating a leap into Plaxy's lap when Sirius lost control of himself and attacked his minute rival with noisy rage. She arched her back and stood firm, slashing Sirius's face, so that he retreated, yelping. Plaxy's scream turned into a laugh. Reviling Sirius for a bully and a coward, she snatched up Trix and lavished endearments on her. Sirius slunk away in shame and misery.

A fortnight later it was remarked in the family that Sirius had developed an unexpected craze for worrying an old spade-handle which had been lying in the outhouse. Whenever possible he would persuade some sturdy human being, preferably Maurice, who was home from boarding school, to join in the game. Boy and dog would hang on to opposite ends of the piece of ash and swing hither and thither about the garden, each trying to shake off his opponent. Towards the end of the holidays Maurice remarked, "Sirius is getting damned strong. You can't tear the thing from him; you can't twist it from him." All this time Sirius had been carefully avoiding Diawl Du, but at last he felt ready. Though he was confident that his grip was much more powerful than it had been, and his head movements quicker and more precise, he would not trust to physical powers alone; cunning must be his mainstay. His strategy was planned with great care. He studied his chosen battle-ground, and rehearsed the crucial action which was to give him victory in the very scene of his former discomfiture, and under the eyes of Plaxy.

One afternoon when Plaxy had returned from school he hurried over to Glasdo, the farm where Diawl Du lived, and ostentatiously hung about till his enemy issued like a black avalanche from the farmyard gate. Sirius at once took to his heels, bolting for home. To reach the front door of Garth, which was ostensibly his objective, he had to make a right-angled turn through the yard gate. (Garth, it will be remembered, was an old farm-house.) As he checked himself to do this and swing through the gate, he glanced behind to see that Diawl Du was at the correct distance. Then he raced round the yard in a great curve, arriving back at the gate, but at right angles to his original course through it, and hidden from Diawl Du by the wall. At that moment the collie swerved through the gate in pursuit, and Sirius with great momentum crashed into him on the left flank. Diawl Du rolled over with Sirius on top of him. Sirius gripped his throat, his teeth finding a much firmer hold than on the hard old spade handle. He hung on desperately, fearing that if he once let go the superior skill of the other dog would be his undoing. The collie's throttled screams and Sirius's own continuous muffled growl soon brought out the inmates of the house. Out of the corner of his eye, as he rolled over and over with his enemy, Sirius caught sight of Plaxy. The warm blood seeped into his mouth and threatened to choke him, but he hung on, coughing for breath. The saltness and odour of Diawl Du's blood, he afterwards said, turned him mad. Some pent up energy and fury in him was released for the first time. At the height of the struggle the thought flashed upon him, "This is real life, this is what I am for, not all that human twaddle." He gripped and tugged and worried, while Diawl Du's struggles became weaker, and the horrified human beings did their best to loosen his grip. They beat him, they threw pepper in his face so that he sneezed violently, but he did not let go. They fell upon him in a mass to hold him quiet while they tried to prise his jaws open with a stick. His own blood mixed with the collie's in his mouth, and he was surprised at the different flavour of it. Nothing that the family could do made him loosen his grip. Plaxy, desperate with horror, did her best to force her hands into his mouth. Then suddenly beside herself, she screamed. At last Sirius let go, and Diawl Du lay inert on the ground.

The victor stalked away, licking his blood-slippery lips, his spine still bristling. After taking a drink at the trough under the yard pump, he lay down with his chin on his paws to watch the proceedings. Elizabeth sent the children into the house for warm water, disinfectants, bandages, while she examined the wound. Presently Plaxy was holding the unconscious dog's head, while Elizabeth applied a large cotton-wool pad and wound the bandage round his neck. After a while Diawl Du showed signs of life, moving his head slightly in Plaxy's hands. He produced the ghost of a growl, which ended in a whimper. Then they carried him inside and laid him before the kitchen fire with a drink of water beside him.

No one took any notice of Sirius, who still lay in the yard, stiff and sore; triumphant, but also rather bewildered and resentful. If she wanted him to have spunk, why didn't she come and praise him and pet him?

Presently Elizabeth came and started up the little car. When she had backed it into the road, she went in and, with Maurice's help, brought out Diawl Du in her arms, while the others prepared a place for him on the back seat of the car. When he was comfortably laid on a rug on the seat, she drove off to Glasdo.

The children turned towards Sirius. "Gosh!" said Maurice, "you've done it this time!" And Tamsy, "They'll have you shot as a dangerous animal." Giles contributed, "It was just murder." Plaxy said nothing but "Oh, Sirius!" He stared at her in silence, trying to analyse her tone of voice. Mainly it spoke reproach, and horror. But there was something else in it, perhaps exultation at his prowess, perhaps mere human superiority. Anyhow, what did he care? He lay still for a little longer with chin on paws, staring at Plaxy. At that moment Trix, the cat, came and rubbed herself against Plaxy's legs. Plaxy picked her up and hugged her. Sirius rose, his back once more bristling, and with a low noise between a snort and a growl he stalked with conscious dignity out through the gate.

The fight with Diawl Du was a turning point in the career of Sirius. He had tasted victory. He had got his own back. Never again would he be cowed by half-wit persecutors. But something more had happened than a calculated triumph. His deeper nature, his unconscious nature, had found expression. He had discovered something far more satisfying than human sophistication. These thoughts were not clear in his mind at the time; but looking back on the incident from a much later period, this was the form that he gave them.

Elizabeth warned him that, if he attempted murder again, there might be serious trouble. "Remember," she said, "to outsiders you are only a dog. You have no legal rights at all. If someone decides that you are a nuisance and shoots you, he won't be had up for murder; he'll merely get into trouble for destroying a bit of our property. Besides," she added, "how
could
you do it? It was horrible, just animal." Sirius gave no response to this taunt; but taunt he felt it to be. He could both smell and hear her contemptuous hostility. Probably some suppressed and unacknowledged hate for her canine foster-child had found a sudden outlet. Sirius saw the folly and danger of his action clearly enough, but her last remark filled him with rage. In his heart he said, "To hell with them all!" Outwardly he gave no sign that he was even listening. He was sitting in front of the kitchen fire, and after Elizabeth's taunt he cocked up a hind leg and carefully, ostentatiously, groomed his private parts, a habit which he often used with great effect to annoy his women folk.

As the months piled up into years Sirius's self-confidence in relation to other dogs was greatly augmented. His increasing weight and strength combined with superior intelligence to give him not only freedom from persecution but acknowledged superiority over all the sheep-dogs of the countryside, who were all much smaller than the young Alsatian. His combination of size and cunning put him in a class apart. As for "spunk", the truth seems to be that throughout his life he remained at heart a timid creature who rose to a display of boldness only in desperation or when the odds were favourable, or on those rare occasions when the dark god of his blood took possession of him.

I cannot deal with his relations with animals of his own biological type without giving some account of his sexual adventures. Long before the fight with Diawl Du he had begun to be perplexedly interested in any bitch in heat that he happened to come across. Mostly they would have nothing to do with him, regarding him, presumably, as an overgrown puppy. But there was one large and rather elderly black bitch who seemed to find the callow young giant very attractive. With her he periodically indulged in a great deal of desultory love play. Thomas observed the antics of the couple with keen interest, because it soon became obvious that Sirius lacked the ordinary dog's intuitive aptitude for making full use of his opportunities. The two animals would race around, tumbling over one another in mock battle, obviously relishing the delectable contact of their bodies. But after a while Sirius would stand about foolishly wagging his tail, wondering what to do next. This aimlessness was of course a normal stage in the sexual development of dogs, but normally it soon led to copulation. Sirius, however, who as it happened had never observed another canine pair copulating, seemed permanently at a loss. It was not till he came upon his own beloved in the act of being taken by another dog, far younger than himself but more instinctive and more physiologically mature, that he discovered what it was that his body wanted to do.

Henceforth his amours were brought to a point in the normal manner. Physiologically he was still merely in the "school-boy" phase, and not very attractive to mature bitches. Nor was sex at this stage an obsessive passion with him. It was more important as a symbol of maturity than as an end in itself. Its natural seductiveness was much enhanced by its being "the done thing" for grown-up dogs. In comparison with Plaxy and even the elder children Sirius seemed sexually precocious, simply because his unrestricted amours afforded him experience and technique, while to the children everything of the sort remained for a long while almost unexplored territory.