The Spuddy Read Online Free Page A

got up, stretched himself and sauntered away down the street. Andy, coming out of his aunt’s house after breakfast, was disappointed at not seeing the dog and resolved to go and look for him. Since he did not know his own way about Gaymal Andy had no idea where he should look but nevertheless he set out with that intention and as all Gaymal roads led inevitably towards the harbour it was on the pier that he eventually found himself. He stared in wonder. He had visited docks with his father but busy and exciting as they had seemed to him he now thought of them as being landlocked and lethargic in comparison with the spectacle of Gaymal. There was so much sea everywhere, so much sky and colour and movement and he could only stand letting the sights and sounds and the smells of the harbour envelop and enthrall him. He forgot his intention of looking for the Spuddy; forgot the ache of depression that had been with him during the past few weeks. He even forgot for the time that he was dumb since everyone was so busy and there was so much noise that people tended to gesticulate rather than talk. Here were boats galore: herring boats landing their catches; launches loading supplies; the lifeboat swinging at its moorings, and at the end of the pier the steamer was hauling up its gangplanks preparatory to leaving. The raucous siren announcing its intention of doing so seemed to Andy to be lifting the upper half of his body from the lower half and he pressed his hands over his ears to deaden the noise. Passing fishporters observing him threw him friendly grins and Andy grinned back ecstatically. He picked his way among all the fish boxes, trolleys, barrels, hoses and ropes that go to make up the impedimenta of a fish pier, his shoes scrunching on pieces of crab shell or skidding on fish that had been pulped to slime by the wheels of the lorries, until he reached the end of the pier. The steamer was well away now leaving a wake like a discarded shawl as it sailed into a misty rainbow that arched itself across the distant islands. Andy watched until steamer wake and rainbow vanished behind a gauzy screen of rain when, suddenly realising that the rain was now sweeping in over the pier and that he himself was getting wet, he ran for the meagre shelter of a high-piled stack of fish boxes where he waited until the shower had passed before continuing along a path between more stacks of fish boxes which brought him into the boatyard where his Uncle Ben worked. As his father had predicted Andy had taken an immediate liking to Uncle Ben. He quite liked his aunt but whereas Aunt Sarah was all scuttle and sharp-tongued splutter Uncle Ben was slow with smiling eyes and more given to expressing himself by nodding his head than by speaking. When he was not eating Uncle Ben had his pipe in his mouth and the only time he had conversed with Andy so far was when he had taken out the pipe to refill or relight it. He had said little then but his voice was gentle and the words comforting. Andy felt his uncle understood and he began to feel safe again. He thought that some day he might even show Uncle Ben some of his drawings – an honour so far reserved for his parents.
    Andy found his uncle working on a fishing boat that was winched high on the slip: a boat that had hit a rock, his uncle explained, and had needed several planks renewing. She’s been lucky, his uncle told him, if the weather had worsened the boat could easily have become a total wreck before the lifeboat reached her and the crew could have lost their lives. As he was speaking his uncle’s hands were caressing the boat’s side with as much tenderness as a mother smoothing a cot sheet over a sleeping child. Andy, who had never before seen anything bigger than a dinghy completely out of the water was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the underside of the boat. Standing beneath her and letting his eyes run along the generous curve of the bilge; the sweep of the hull into the