“Oh, Aunt Daisy!” A sob broke through, then the storypoured out. “It’s Nana. She chewed up one of Granny’s slippers and Gran’sawfullyangry and she says … she says Nana has togo!”
“Oh dear!”
“And I know this isn’t your house yet and you’re not my mummy yet but could you please,pleasetalk to Granny and tell her Nana didn’t mean to be naughty?”
Daisy quailed at the prospect of trying to persuade an irate woman who disapproved of her that the puppy should be forgiven for destroying a slipper because she did not mean to be naughty. And over the ’phone, too.
“Darling, I think I’d better come round. I’ll hop on a bus and be there in no time. Hang on, I’m sure your grandmother won’t throw Nana out without speaking to your father first. I’ll be there in two ticks.”
Two ticks was overoptimistic. Possessed by a feeling of urgency, Daisy hurried to the Fulham Road and soon caught a Number 74. The rush hour was in full swing, but at first she was going into town, so the worst of the traffic was heading the other way. Hyde Park Corner was the first check. At last the bus escaped from the jam and rumbled up Park Lane, only to be thoroughly entangled at Marble Arch. The right turn into Oxford Street took forever. From there on it was standing room only, up Baker Street and Park Road, till Daisy thankfully disembarked just beyond St. John’s Church.
The bus rolled on towards Camden Town. Daisy left behind the busy Prince Albert Road and plunged into the quiet residential streets of St. John’s Wood.
Gardenia Grove was a dead-end street lined with early Victorian semi-detached houses. Any pair would have fitted easily inside one wing of Daisy’s childhood home, and their gardens, set down in a corner of Fairacres’ park, might easilygo unnoticed. On the other hand, compared with the tiny Chelsea house, they were spacious.
To Daisy, the Fletchers’ house sometimes seemed spacious, sometimes cramped. It was always very clean and tidy, almost excessively so, or had been until Nana’s irruption into the quiet household.
Mrs. Fletcher blamed Daisy for the puppy’s arrival. Daisy was, in fact, to blame. She was not at all sorry—Belinda’s devotion to Nana precluded that—but she acknowledged that perhaps her future mother-in-law deserved a bit of sympathy for the inevitable disturbance.
Walking up the garden path, past the silver birch and beds of Michaelmas daisies and honey-sweet alyssum, she decided to start on the right foot by expressing her sympathy with Mrs. Fletcher. Belinda surely already knew Daisy was fundamentally on her side.
Belinda answered the door, red-eyed. Daisy hugged her, saying, “Where’s the culprit?”
“Granny made me tie her up in the back garden. She’s awfully sad.”
“I expect she knows she’s in disgrace, though she doesn’t understand why. Come along, let’s see what I can do.”
Hanging on Daisy’s arm, Belinda took her to the sitting room, which faced south, overlooking the back garden. It was a pleasant room, for which Daisy credited Alec’s first wife. The furniture was rather heavily Victorian, but chairs and sofa had been reupholstered in cheerful prints. The walls, doubtless once covered with murky wallpaper, were painted white. If the Stag had ever stood grimly at Bay over the mantelpiece, he had been replaced with a colorful view of Montmartre.
Mrs. Fletcher, an angular woman of about sixty with a setface, sat knitting by the fireplace, where a gleaming Benares brass tray hid the empty grate. Her hair, worn confined by a hairnet in the fringed style favoured by the Queen Mother, was of that greyish blond which suggests a red-headed youth. Skinny, ginger-pigtailed Belinda might well grow up to look very like her grandmother. Daisy was determined, however, that the child should not develop the older woman’s rigid, stifling attitude to life.
“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said. “I’m so sorry to hear Nana’s in hot water.”
“It’s kind of you to come,” snapped Mrs. Fletcher, her tone making plain that “interfering” would be a more accurate reflection of her thoughts. “But the dog will have to go. It has completely ruined a perfectly good slipper.”
“Too maddening!”
Taken aback by Daisy’s commiseration, Mrs. Fletcher said, “It’s not the slipper so much—one can always purchase another pair—as the possibility that next time it will chew up something more valuable.”
“Yes, of course. Puppies can be a bit destructive, especially when they’re teething. Like babies. I expect Alec chewed things like mad when his baby teeth were coming in.”
“So did I,” Belinda put in eagerly. “Daddy said I used to gnaw his finger.”
“Neither you nor your father ever destroyed anything,” Mrs. Fletcher pointed out, her mouth pursed. “Nor left hair all over the carpets.”
“No,” Daisy agreed, “and there’s no reason why Nana should be allowed to. She shouldn’t be left alone in a room where there are things she can damage, Bel. When no one can be with her, you should shut her in the kitchen or the scullery. Make sure she has sticks and hard rusks to chew. But mostly she will chew only when she’s bored and hasn’thad enough exercise. Did you play with her and walk her today?”
“No, Aunt Daisy,” Belinda admitted, head hanging. She bit her lip. “I went to play with Annette after tea, and she’s afraid of dogs.”
“If you want to keep Nana, you’re going to have to take responsibility for her, you know.”
“I know. I’m frightfully sorry, Granny. I’ll save up my pocket money and buy you some new slippers. And I’ll absolutely walk Nana after school every single day and play with her lots and make sure she’s shut up somewhere safe,andbrush her oftener, so please,pleasecan she stay?”
“Sooner or later, you’ll forget,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “or the dog will get out.”
All too likely, Daisy thought, but she said, “It won’t be forever. Puppies grow out of chewing. It just takes patience.”
“Derek’s dog, Tinker Bell, doesn’t chew things up,” Belinda earnestly informed her grandmother. “When she’s not going for walks or playing, she mostly just sleeps, doesn’t she, Aunt Daisy? Sopleasecan I keep Nana?”
