Eva Ibbotson - One Dog and His Boy

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.