Double Trouble - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Unknown (ч. 2)

Unfortunately he wasn’t the only one who saw me.

It so happened that there was a shop in Briddar – I hadn’t known this before – which sold a special type of 121

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Double Trouble working trouser. A sort of brick-coloured heavy twill which was apparently all the local rage. All the village men were wearing them and you couldn’t get them anywhere else. That was what Father Adams had been buying when I saw him that day on the pavement...

and once Ern Biggs saw Father Adams in his natty brick-coloured trousers, Ern was over in Briddar like lightning after a pair for himself.

It was inevitable, of course. Since I was circling round Briddar on my lessons like a particularly determined driver on the Dodgems, Ern only had to be there buying his trousers and he was absolutely bound to see me. He did too. Coming out of the very same shop. And there was no pretending he hadn’t noticed me. He stood on the pavement and gawked. Neither did he keep quiet about it. It was his big item of news for days. I only had to pass him, chatting at somebody’s gate, and I knew what the conversation would be about. How he’d had to jump for his life... probably that everybody else had, too... ‘Goggles like ruddy gert telescopes’ I heard him say on one occasion.

So, my plans for keeping it a secret thwarted, on I drove; only too thankful that Ern Biggs wasn’t around on other occasions. When I crashed the gears, for instance, or went remorselessly backwards down hills; or the occasion on which I drove the car straight onto the pavement in Briddar High Street.

I bet there aren’t many learners whose instructors tell them on their fourth lesson out ‘On to the pavement!

Quick!’ I said so to Miss Prince as we sat in the car on it afterwards. She said it wasn’t normally part of the instruction. I shouldn’t make a habit of it. But she 122

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said… when you had a van unloading outside a shop on the opposite side of the road and from behind that van, as one approached it, came a lorry going far too fast to stop… on to the pavement was the only thing if one didn’t want to swop the car for a harp.

Charles nearly dropped when I told him. It could only happen to me, he said. That was what Miss Prince said, too, I admitted. Thank heaven Ern Biggs hadn’t been around.

So I plodded on behind my L-plates, while Charles got on with the extension plans. I hoped to take my test in the Spring, which was when he intended the alterations should start. Just in time, I secretly thought, if he was going to do any of the work himself.

He said he was. More and more he said so as on the one hand we heard how building costs were rising and, on the other, of people undertaking the work themselves.

After talking to someone in the village who’d done his own extension completely, Charles even saw us doing the block-laying. In gay Norwegian sweaters, he said.

Presumably to give that nonchalant effect.

This, however, was November. It was a long time yet to the Spring. Christmas came first, with log fires and family parties, and building and driving lessons forgotten.

It passed peacefully enough, save for one or two minor incidents. Seeley went off his food on Christmas night, for instance, which had me worried till I realised he was still full of beans. Doing his act up the bathroom door and going round chairs on his back.

A while later, in the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator door and Seeley appeared silently behind me. Shebalu was in the sitting room, joining in the party games.

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Double Trouble While we two were on our own, Seeley’s gaze intimated... Surely I knew what he Wanted? I should have done. Seeley, as a kitten, had been brought up on turkey and chicken... before we had him, that was, but it was something he’d never forgotten. Now there was one in the refrigerator, reminding him of his childhood.

He stretched out his head towards it, sniffing, in case I thought he meant the sausages...

He got it, of course. He ate turkey rapturously for days.

Shebalu couldn’t have cared less. That stuff again, she said, shaking her leg at it. Didn’t we have any rabbit?

Not that she was unimpressed by Christmas. Eyes round as saucers from the moment she got up, she was forever trying to reach the holly or climbing the Christmas tree. Any time we have had a Christmas tree there have always been cats in the branches. Now there was a new little cat. I looked at her, and remembered...

She also ate all the flowers off an indoor chrysanthemum.

Twelve brilliant yellow blooms it had, and was a present from a friend. I’d put it on the hall chest, which showed it off to perfection. The next time I saw it, it didn’t have a flower on it. Just a few scattered petals around from which you could tell what colour it had been.

It was Seeley, she said when I carried her out and confronted her with it. If I asked her, he’d gone a bit funny through eating all that turkey. It wasn’t Seeley, of course; I knew that very well. Half an hour later I caught her eating the leaves.

Siamese, on principle, always misbehave at Christmas.

Whether it’s the competition – so many visitors they feel it necessary to outshine. Whether it’s the atmosphere –

all the excitement and laughter and general air of laissez-124

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faire. Whether it’s the relaxation of supervision and with Siamese one should never relax...

Just after Christmas I had a letter from a friend who had two Siamese. Sheba (after our old girl) and her adopted brother Igor. She bet we couldn’t guess what they’d done this year, she said. She was right. We certainly couldn’t.

Apparently she’d given a party for which, among other things, she’d made some cream meringues. Knowing that pair, she said, she’d wanted to lock them (the cats) in the bedroom. If she’d suggested putting them in chains in a dungeon, however, her husband couldn’t have been more appalled. So they’d been allowed to join in the party, adding tone to it as only Siamese can. She’d kept a weather eye on them, of course. They’d just eyed her innocently back. Until, she said, she’d brought in a heavy tray and hadn’t been able to close the door behind her... and a few minutes later she noticed that Sheba had vanished.

She was after her in an instant, frantically fearing the worst. Everything seemed all right, however. The meringues were still on their dish on the kitchen dresser.

Sheba was sitting thinking on the landing upstairs. Even when she picked up the meringues a little later and found there wasn’t any cream in them she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t at fault. They looked so untouched, she wondered if she was going crackers. She supposed she had put in the cream?

She got her answer on Boxing Day when Sheba had diarrhoea like a tap. It would peter out if it had been caused by cream, the Vet said when she called him.

But if she liked he’d come over and give the sufferer something to make sure... It was cream all right. By five o’clock the culprit was bawling for her food and pulling 125

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Double Trouble James the spaniel’s ears. Only, wrote Mia, no sooner had she got over that fright, than Igor nearly did for her for good and all.

The previous week she and her husband had bought an electric log fire – just for effect, as they had central heating. They only used the log part – never the fire

– though after half an hour or so the logs, which had a bulb inside, did get slightly warm. Anyway, she rang the Vet to tell him it had been the cream with Sheba, came back into the sitting room, her mind on something else

– and there lay Igor on top of the logs, artificial flames all round him, and for a moment she forgot that they weren’t real. It looked so horrible, she said, she nearly fainted. Just like one of the Old Testament stories with Igor as the sacrificial lamb. And then that horrible cat opened his eyes and smirked at her. Nice spot to relax on, he said.

The owners of Spice and Sugar had also been having trouble. We heard from Dora over the phone. She was sorry about her voice sounding so peculiar, she said. It was a wonder she had a voice at all...

The previous night, it seemed, they too had had visitors and the cats had been allowed to join in. (Better than locking them in her bedroom, said Dora. Last time Spice had taken down the cornices. Polystyrene, she said...

Yes, she knew cats could get their claws in it but she thought it would have been safe enough on the ceiling...) Anyway, when it was going home time they did shut the cats in the bedrooms. Sugar in Nita’s room, Spice in hers, so they couldn’t march out with the visitors. Past twelve o’clock it was and when she opened her bedroom door and found that Spice had gone... out through the 126

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transom window, which she hadn’t realised was open...

the one consolation was that it was raining.

Spice didn’t like the rain. She couldn’t be far, thought Dora. One discreet little call, not to disturb the neighbours, and she’d be back like a greyhound, yelling to be wiped.

Come one o’clock and, after a good many discreet little calls, Spice still wasn’t home. Come two o’clock and the discreet little calls had been abandoned. She and Nita were up at a nearby market garden, shouting over the walls like mad. In people’s gardens, down an electricity trench... they were building several more bungalows along at the end of the road and Nita, in the dark, went round every one.

It was pouring with rain. Their hair-do’s, done specially for the previous evening’s party, were hanging down their foreheads like seaweed. Still there was no Spice – and now they were beginning to think it was hopeless. If she were alive, she’d never be out in weather like that.

At three o’clock they went to bed. Not to sleep, said Nora. Jut to lie down because they were so exhausted. At five they were up and out again, roaming the streets with torches. She wasn’t calling now, said Dora. Her voice had gone and anyway she was no longer expecting any answer. All she expected was to find a sad little bundle lying somewhere in the gutter... caught by a car or a late-roaming dog, lying there soaked by the ram...

She was on her way up to the old quarry – a wild place, all hummocks and stunted bushes. Not that she’d ever known Spice go as far as that – but she must, thought Dora, have gone somewhere.

She had. And on her way to the quarry Dora met her coming back from it. She thought she saw something 127

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Double Trouble slipping past, elusively, at a distance – and when she whispered ‘Spice?’ the shadow answered.

She was scared, said Dora. She was soaked. Where she’d been for all those hours they’d never know. Only that Spice was now full of beans and showing off to Sugar, while Dora thought she’d probably caught flu.

Gosh, I could imagine how she’d worried, I said to Charles. Remember the time Sheba was missing all night? When Father Adams had been going to dig out a fox-earth because we thought there was no place else she could be? And the hundreds of miles we must have run looking for Solomon, said Charles. Remember the time we’d missed two trains to London?

I did indeed. Both of them had been involved in that.

I could see us now, running round the lanes like agitated ants, me frantically shrilling ‘Teeby-teeby-teeby’ and

‘Solly-wolly-wolly’ and Charles, who is much more dignified, clucking. I remembered the feeling of relief when, with half-an-hour to spare, Charles located them sitting inside a thorn thicket. We couldn’t get in to them but at least we knew where they were. If we waited a minute or two, we thought, they’d be coming out to join us.

An hour and a half later we were still waiting. The only difference was, Charles having fetched the shears to cut a way into them, they were now sitting further inside the thicket. Weren’t coming, said Solomon. They knew where we were Going. Off all day, said Sheba. Leaving them on their Own.

Eventually we’d given it up. ‘We’d better send a telegram to say we’re not coming,’ I said. ‘Or get them to broadcast a message on Paddington Station.’ Walking 128

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defeatedly back to the cottage we looked back up the track and there they were following behind. Sheba in front, Solomon trotting at her heels... angelic now they thought they’d gained their purpose.

They hadn’t. We caught a later train. Neither did they spend the time moping. As soon as our backs were turned, as well we knew, they’d be chasing round the cottage over the furniture. So many times we’d come back for something we’d forgotten and caught them tearing about. Very sheepish they’d looked, too, when we walked in on them. Thought we’d Gone, said the expressions on their faces.

I remembered, I said. And if I felt a pang of sadness, as one does for things that are past… ‘At least we don’t have to worry about those two,’ I said. ‘They don’t go off like that.’

Once again I was wrong. Within weeks we were worrying like mad.

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Fourteen

IT WAS THE SPRING, of course, and the fact that Shebalu was growing up. She still played with her ball with a bell on and Seeley – at times, anyway – still acted as though he were her grandfather. She was too big now to get under the armchair, though – where, pretending she was a mouse he’d lost, he used to corner her and refuse to let her come out. And once or twice they’d appeared playing boys and girls together, a sure sign she was growing up.

‘Appeared’ is the only word for it. Like Solomon and Sheba before them, they invariably did it in public. As on the occasion when some neighbours were asking after Shebalu and I said I’d give her a shout. ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ I called – feeling foolish even as I did it. I couldn’t yodel ‘Shebalu’, however, and ‘Teeby-teeby’ was too like

‘Seeley’ – so Doodoo she’d become for calling purposes, on account of the Lu at the end, and she always answered 130

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instantly, like a retriever to a whistle. She came tearing round the corner now – a flurry of blue and white fur and long legs. With her, as usual, was Seeley. ‘They’re terrific friends,’ I said.

They made that obvious all right. Seeley, following behind her, suddenly jumped on Shebalu’s back. She dropped, squealing but patently enjoying it, flat on her stomach on the ground. He, holding her in a cave-cat grip by the back of her neck, yowled triumphantly through her fur. And thus, for all the world to see, they advanced towards us up the path. ‘Are you going to breed with them?’ our neighbours asked. They were most surprised when I said it wasn’t possible.

At least they’d come when they were called, however, and they did arrive together. The morning came when I went out to summon them for breakfast and there was no Shebalu in sight. ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ I called enticingly – but only Seeley arrived. Scurrying round the corner like a tracker dog, looking worriedly about him as he came. He’d lost her. She’d vanished while his back was turned. Had we found her? he said.

An hour later, when we were almost on our knees with searching, she suddenly erupted out of the forest. Tearing top speed down the hill from the pine trees, telling us how exciting it was in there. It must have been, too – all those tall avenues of trees, and the pine needles to walk on and the silence all around her. And the foxes, we told her. We’d heard their mating calls in the night. She was city-bred. What could she know of foxes?

I felt happier when I saw her practising climbing.

Going like a squirrel up one of the pine trees behind the cottage – then down and up the next one, with Seeley 131

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Double Trouble exuberantly in her wake. He fell off as soon as he got a few feet up, but obviously nothing would ever catch her.

Charles, though, with whom she’d taken Sheba’s place, firmly refused to believe it.

Now she’d discovered the forest she vanished into it every morning – and Charles, as soon as he found she was missing, always started to worry. ‘You’d better call her,’ he’d say. ‘She’ll only come to you.’ And there I’d stand, hooting ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ and feeling an absolute fool...

For one thing this always produced Seeley. Whether it was that he, too, was looking for Shebalu and wanted to be on hand when she arrived, or whether he thought I was calling him, since for so long he’d come running with her when I called – ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ now became his signal call as well and he answered it more readily than ‘Seeley’.

It was the impression it gave to onlookers, however.

– ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ – I hadn’t realised it at first

– sounded exactly like a hunting horn. And when I stood in the lane and did that, and first a big seal-point came bounding up and noisily greeted me (but, to the observers’ surprise, I still called on)... and then a shaggy donkey came galloping across the hillside and Woo-hoo-hooed at me over the fence... and eventually, if they waited long enough, a lone-legged kitten with fantastically crossed eyes came tearing down the hillside out of the pine trees… ‘Well,’

I heard the comment on one occasion. ‘I aint seen nuthin’ like that.’

It was a good thing Em Biggs wasn’t around when they said it. He’d have told them a thing or two.

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It was worth the embarrassment, though, when Shebalu did turn up; and meantime something most interesting happened. Seeley became a tracker cat.

I used to wonder about that with Solomon and Sheba

– whether, when Solomon went missing, Sheba could have found him for us if she’d been so inclined. Did she know when he was merely behind the conservatory, or had gone off on one of his lengthy treks? If she did, she did nothing about it. We always had to find him for ourselves.

Seeley though... one day he came pelting down through Annabel’s field when I was calling for Shebalu.

paused against my legs to look anxiously up the Forest track, went into the yard and got on the coalhouse roof

– then stood on the edge of it and pointed. There was no mistaking what he was doing. Head thrust forward, eyes narrowed he surveyed the hillside like a retriever.

Looking glistening... ‘Just as if!’ I said. ‘He couldn’t hear a kitten in the forest!’

He did though. When he’d found the right direction he watched for a moment and then was down and speeding silently up the hillside. Into the wood he went – and sure enough, within seconds, he came out accompanied by his girlfriend.

He did it so many times that it obviously wasn’t coincidence. After a while I took him with me deliberately to find her. I’d put him down at the edge of the wood. He’d look and listen, and then go trotting off. Once I thought he’d made a mistake – he went into the undergrowth on my left while she appeared, a few moments later, coming straight towards me from a track ahead. Behind her, though, like a sheepdog, came Seeley.

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Double Trouble He’d gone in and circled round behind her. Now he was flushing her out.

And why shouldn’t a cat be good at tracking? Or, if it comes to that, a donkey? Annabel often told us when one or other of them was in her field. Head down, ears pointed like antennae in their direction, watching them from under her fringe with a benevolent pout on her lips.

At least, we hoped it was benevolent. One night the cats were around when I went to put Annabel into her stable.

It was raining so, not knowing what else to do, they followed us up through the garden. Into the stable they marched, where Annabel was eating maize from her bowl. She paused for a moment, looked at them and snorted. Completely ignoring her they started looking round for mice... which, they decided, after a quick survey of the walls, were definitely, without doubt, in her hay.

The hay was right by her back legs. Annabel always liked it there. So she could turn round when she’d finished her first course and continue her supper without stopping.

They sniffed, prowled, looked like a couple of Maigrets intently searching for clues... obviously only to annoy her; there probably wasn’t a mouse within miles.

Annabel, growing irritated, stamped backwards into the hay. Seeley, mrr-mrring in protest, took off to safety on the wall. But where, I panicked, was Shebalu? She’d completely disappeared!

Just in time, as Annabel turned towards it, I saw a movement in the hay. Shebalu was hiding inside it.

Completely invisible, so she thought, and tremendously pleased with herself. Annabel snorted again as I lifted her 134

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out. Pity I’d done that, she said, wobbling her underlip even harder. Some young cats needed teaching a lesson.

She’d just been going to eat her...

Again, though – would she have hurt her, or were the three of them playing? Next morning, it still being raining, they went up to see her again. Charles saw them go in deliberately, squeezing under the bottom of her door. Charles also heard Annabel snort and stamp – and was running hard to the rescue when the cats appeared again. Grumpy in the mornings, wasn’t she? they said as they strolled unconcernedly off.

Within minutes they were being chased by Nero and that didn’t seem to worry them either. Down the hill from the village they streaked – we hadn’t even seen them go up there. Seeley came flying over the front gatepost. Shebalu, ears flat and obviously enjoying it, rushed on into the forest and up the nearest tree... so fast we just stood there with our mouths open watching, while Nero, defeated, trotted home.

Shebalu was so fast we began to think she liked being chased and went out of her way to invite it. A day or so later she appeared with a ginger torn in pursuit and she certainly wasn’t worried about him. I was weeding a flower-bed when I heard the scuffling of feet and she came careering on to the lawn. Not fast this time – what with horses would be called a controlled canter; head up, bounding joyously as she came. And behind her was the reddest ginger cat I’ve ever seen, though there was nothing controlled about him. More like the wolf after Red Riding Hood he looked, until he saw me and changed his course. Off he shot, like a jet-propelled streak, over the wall and up the lane.

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Double Trouble Shebalu stood there disconsolately. They’d been going to play, she said. And where was guard cat Seeley, whom we’d last seen with her in the vegetable garden? As I went round to the kitchen he appeared from behind the cottage and joined me quietly inside. Discretion was obviously the better part of valour. Was it time for supper? he asked.

After that, of course, the ginger cat positively haunted us. Parading along the lane, crooning love-songs across in the orchard, sitting watching the cottage from up on the hill. And Shebalu sat in the window and watched for him. Why, she demanded, couldn’t she go out to play? Because, though he couldn’t mate with her, he might maul her and give her an abscess; that had once happened to Sheba. And because we didn’t want Seeley getting into a fight, as had happened so often with Solomon. So, for the moment, we kept them under strict supervision – which wasn’t made any easier by the fact that our building was at last under way.

The plans had been passed. Charles, to my vast relief, had decided against doing the work himself. I could well have seen us with a bathroom upstairs and no roof on it for years. And then, luck being with us, we’d managed to find Henry, who at that moment was looking for a job.

Henry, officially a sub-contracting bricklayer, could do just about anything. Plastering, carpentry, decorating...

even cooking, we later learned. He’d been an Army Cook-Sergeant and would have become a pastry-cook after the War – only cooking fats were rationed and he couldn’t see any future in it so he’d gone back to building instead.

There he was anyway – just finished sub-contracting for one builder, wanting a job to fill in... only he didn’t 136

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like bothering with ordering the materials, he said, and he’d need somebody to give him a hand.

It couldn’t have been better. We didn’t mind ordering the materials. Charles, complete with Norwegian sweater, was only too willing to help with the labouring.

Henry was ready to start immediately – and within a week he had.

He worked so fast we could hardly believe it. Up went the scaffolding, off came the outer line of tiles, on went the blocks. He came just after seven in the morning and hardly stopped till six at night. With me on the telephone ordering materials. Charles acting as builder’s mate and the peculiarities of our household giving Henry sleepless nights.

That was Henry’s trouble. He was a dreadful worrier.

Whether the timber would come on time whether it would rain on his block work... just as he’d worried all those years ago about the cooking fat shortage and had taken up building instead. Annabel particularly worried him. He wasn’t used to donkeys, he said.

Annabel, sensing this, intimidated him for all she was worth. Her field rises directly behind the cottage.

She had always been able to look through the kitchen window. And now, from a point on her hillside level with the old bathroom roof only a few feet away from where he was working, Annabel stood and watched him from under her fringe. Stolidly. Unmoving. For hours.

Just as if she was a foreman, he said. Made him feel quite uncomfortable at times. And then, when he was sure she hadn’t moved an inch – darn him, if she hadn’t knocked down his ladder. That was a huge joke to Annabel. Teeth bared derisively, lips sucked in till they resembled a pair 137

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Double Trouble of castanets, she’d stand there and patently laugh at him while he picked it up and re-set it. And when he’d gone in the evening and she had the place to herself, she’d go round and push down anything moveable she could find, ready for the morning.

Eventually he learned to tie everything to the scaffolding. Came the night, however, when we had a heavy storm – the one night’s rain we had in the whole time of building. We wouldn’t have heard it ourselves but for the fact that the glass conservatory roof was now covered by corrugated iron sheets... to catch him if he fell off, said Henry, prepared for all eventualities.

We were woken by the rain beating on it like something out of Somerset Maugham. And then ‘The timber!’

said Charles, leaping frantically out of bed. The roofing timber had been delivered that morning and lay exposed on the lawn. Charles, himself no optimist, envisaged it warping if it got wet. So up we got. Switched on the outside lights. Out on to the lawn we dashed in pyjamas and macintoshes. Covering up the timber with tarpaulins and plastic sheets, with the wind whistling wetly round our ankles at two o’clock in the morning.

Henry’s first words, when he arrived at seven, were that he hadn’t slept a wink all night. He’d been worrying, he said, how things were with us in the storm.

Oh, everything was all right, I said – we’d covered up all the timber. The rain on the corrugated iron had fortunately woken us up. Timber? said Henry. It wasn’t the timber he’d been worrying about. A night’s rain on that wouldn’t have done it any harm. It was the new bathroom window he’d put in place and propped up to keep it steady. In the middle of the night he remembered 138

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he hadn’t tied the poles, and he’d lain there imagining that donkey pushin’ ’em away and the wind blowing the window down through the roof.

Henry must have had extra-sensory perception.

Annabel hadn’t moved the poles and the window hadn’t come through the roof. But the very next day Henry asked Charles to help him lift the bathroom lintel, and Charles knocked a wall through the roof instead.

To give the picture I should explain that the old sloping roof at the back of the cottage was still in position –

Henry’s idea being to take off the outer line of tiles round the three edges of it, to build the shell of the extension up from there, and only when the new roof was safely on to take the rest of the old roof away from underneath.

From the level of the new bathroom window, therefore, one looked down upon the old back roof, as Charles discovered when he clambered up there holding one end of a heavy concrete lintel – on Henry’s scaffolding, which, he said, sagged under him like a bow. Worse was to come.

To lift the lintel to a height above the bathroom window Henry had positioned, on the sagging planking, a further single sagging plank raised up on concrete blocks.

Henry, who was used to it, went up on it like a ballet dancer. Charles, being inexperienced, went up like a lumbering elephant. He wobbled. Valiantly retaining his hold on the lintel he put out his elbow to balance himself. Just a touch against the wall, he said. How was he to know it would fall down?

Apparently the cement wasn’t dry. Henry hadn’t thought it necessary to tell him. All the years he’d been in the building trade, said Henry, and he’d never known anybody do that.

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Double Trouble Well, but Charles wasn’t in the building trade, I said, trying to pour oil on troubled waters. Henry, looking at the gap where his wall had been, said I didn’t need to tell him that.

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Fifteen

THE NEXT THING THAT happened was that Charles sprained his ankle. He’d been moving rubble from the cottage across to the orchard where he said it would be useful on the paths. Every morning before breakfast he carried up several plastic sacks full. Gosh, he felt fit, he said.

I thought I was seeing things when he strode past the window one morning carrying a consignment of rubble like Atlas and five minutes later... surely he couldn’t be limping, I thought... not just from dumping rubble on a path?

He was. His foot had slipped over the edge, he said, and the weight of the sack had pulled him down.

‘Wouldn’t believe it, would you?’ said Henry, looking at him in awe.

It was a massive multiple sprain and he limped like Long John Silver for weeks. Which, of course, was just when Seeley chose to go exploring on the roof.

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Double Trouble The cats had been interested in the alterations from the moment the scaffolding went up; balance-walking round the block work, nipping in and out through the empty windows. Seeley, in fact, got out one night and went up on the scaffolding in the dark. At least, hearing a plank creak as I searched for him, I hoped that was what it was. My heart thumping madly – but if I went back for Charles, and it was Seeley he might get away... I climbed into Annabel’s field, shone my torch along the supports, a plank rattled again and something took off into the darkness... It was Seeley all right but now he’d dodged up on to the hillside, and how on earth I was going to get him back...

The answer was psychology. One of the things the years have taught me is never to chase a Siamese cat. Just to hope to entice him back either by habit or curiosity, or he’ll only go further away. In this case the obvious bait was the scaffolding, as he was so intrigued by that. And the habit – that, of course, was my calling ‘Doo-doo’; ten o’clock at night or not. So I hauled myself up on to the scaffolding, turned the torch on myself so he could see me, and, feeling self-conscious as usual, started to yodel ‘Doo-doo’.

It worked of course. He was back like a boomerang. But I did wonder why I had to do these things. Supposing someone saw me. What on earth would they think?

That wasn’t Seeley’s big roof adventure, though. That happened when the old roof was opened up. The new roof was on at the back, there was an opening at the top of the stairs through into the extension and the cats, consumed with curiosity, were going in there first thing every morning. They weren’t allowed in after Henry arrived in case he accidentally walled them up.

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This, I might say, was not so far-fetched a possibility as it sounds. They were in and out of everything like a pair of moles. Down into the cavity walls, underneath the floorboards... there was always a furry bottom wriggling backwards out of somewhere. Then one morning, just before the ceiling went up in the new section, Shebalu discovered a way through into the old roof over our bedroom. A dark, inviting hole at the top of one of the walls.

Before we could stop her she was up, through it and after the starlings. We could hear them in there twittering and scrabbling like mad – they hadn’t expected an attack from the rear. Charles immediately imagined her being trapped. Chasing birds in that old lathe and plaster, he said, and there was no way for us to get in. Some minutes later she emerged again. Birdless, but covered in cobwebs. No sooner was she out, however, than Seeley promptly went in.

He came out all right, too. It was a bit like waiting for Theseus to emerge from the labyrinth... a pretty woolly headed Theseus, busily copying Shebalu as usual... but out he came all right, apart from the cobwebs. It was Exciting in there, he said.

So exciting that they took to going in there every morning, with Charles eternally forecasting they’d get stuck. How would we get them out? he asked – he with his gammy foot? How could we stop them from getting in? I said. We had no answer to that.

Anyway, one morning Shebalu caught a starling. We could tell that by the flapping and squawking inside the roof. And Charles was having a fit – both for the starling’s safety and for his blue-pointed girlfriend.

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Double Trouble Starlings can be nasty if they attack a cat. I called her.

Never was ‘Doo-doo-doo’ uttered more heartfeltly. And I was answered – though oddly enough it sounded more like Seeley... except I was sure he was out. I called again, and kept being answered, and eventually Shebalu put in an appearance with a full-grown starling in her mouth.

I soon rescued him. Standing on the step-ladder, as she came through the hole I grabbed the scruff of Shebalu’s neck, held it – and in seconds she’d let go of the bird. It didn’t hurt or frighten her. It always works. And the bird was away in a flash. He didn’t seem particularly scared, either. I could see him watching me beadily over a rafter inside the hole. Only... there was still a Siamese calling...

and it wasn’t Shebalu. She was now in the extension with us.

It was Seeley. ‘Seeley!’ I yelled in panic. ‘Wooooo’ came a muffled voice from the direction of the roof. I knew that note, too. I know all of Seeley’s voices. Somewhere my seal-point friend was in distress. ‘He’s stuck!’ said Charles, visualising him with his head jammed under a rafter. ‘Or hurt,’ I said, thinking of a starling’s beak.

As a matter of fact he was neither. After a despairing moment in which Charles said why did it happen to us and I wondered if I could possibly squeeze through the hole, we pulled ourselves together and formed a plan of campaign. I was to stay where I was and keep calling to comfort him. Charles was to get a ladder round to the front of the cottage. Charles would then go up it, take off the tiles and try to find him. And if that didn’t work we’d call the fire brigade.

It was a sensible plan. It probably would have worked

– except that when Charles limped round the cottage 144

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with the ladder he found there was no need for it. Seeley was sitting up in the rain-water gutter looking down at him. Marooned he was, said Seeley. About time we brought that ladder. Another couple of seconds and he might have fallen off.

He hadn’t been inside the roof at all. He must have got up on to the new flat roof at the back, walked down the steep-sloping roof at the front, my ‘Doo-doo-doo’ must have sounded as if it was coming from the guttering

– and there he’d been answering me, wondering why I didn’t appear. Probably he’d expected me to come out through a hole like a starling; Seeley thought I could do anything. One thing we did know, Seeley didn’t have a head for heights. There was nothing for it even now, but for Charles to climb up to get him. He was going up the ladder when Henry arrived. ‘Where’s he off to now?’ enquired Henry. ‘Going to practise parachuting?’

I looked at him. ‘Well,’ said Henry unrepentantly. ‘You never know in this place.’

Things were coming along, nevertheless. The partitions went up, the plumber arrived, in next to no time the new bathroom was installed. It didn’t have a door on it, of course – not for weeks. That was one of the jobs Charles was going to do.

My driving was progressing too. At least, according to Miss Prince. It wouldn’t be long before I took my test, she was saying now, though when I passed that on to Charles he raised his eyes to the heavens.

The thing was, I was used to her car by this time. It was small, it had four gears, the gear stick was on the floor...

and when Charles suggested I should try our car (we had to face it some time was the way he put it)... I found 145

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Double Trouble everything was exactly opposite. Ours was bulky, it had three gears, the gear-lever was on the steering-column.

Even the indicators worked the opposite way. Down was Right on ours... it was Left on hers... I whipped them up and down as if I was playing an organ. Also, our car had a long-rising clutch pedal, while hers made contact in an instant. Let ours in fast and we jumped like a bucking cow... or else I did it too cautiously and for ages we didn’t move at all.

It was always happening at junctions. ‘Come on now

– hurry up,’ Charles would urge me, seeing nothing in sight for miles. And I’d let out the clutch and we’d leap into the road and the engine would stop and I couldn’t get it started... ‘I don’t do this in hers,’ I would wail.

Charles said it was just as well, otherwise by this time she wouldn’t have had a body on her chassis.

The biggest snag, however, was the width of our car.

Even after I got over stopping it dead when anything came towards me on the wide roads I still wouldn’t take it round narrow lanes. Certainly I wouldn’t drive it from the main road down to the cottage. Our lane winds exceptionally and there are a couple of nasty corners –

and anyway I didn’t want anybody to see me. Ern might have told everyone I was a learner, but there was no need for them to actually see me at it.

One night, though, after I’d done quite a trouble-free journey out from town... only a couple of clutch-jumps this time, said Charles; we’d make a driver out of me yet... he suggested I did take it all the way home. There wouldn’t be much traffic, he said, and nobody’d know it was me in the dark and at some time or other I had to try it out...

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Poor Charles. He was trying to encourage me. Round the first corner I rolled – absolutely nothing in sight.

Towards the second bend... I could see car headlights coming round it. ‘Slow down!’ said Charles. It was all right; I already had. I’d pulled towards a gateway as a matter of fact and stopped to let the other car go through.

‘I only said Slow,’ said Charles. ‘No need to stop. ’ So obediently I went on – which was when I hit the wall.

Touched it actually. It was Charles who said I’d scraped it and, jamming on the hand-brake, leapt out and rushed to take over in the driving seat. He avoided looking at the wing. He said he couldn’t.

When I got home I looked at it and there was one minute scratch on the bumper. Charles, agreeing that perhaps he could polish it out, said it could have buckled the wing though. It didn’t make much difference that it hadn’t, he said. It was avoidance of the object that counted.

Not for the first time I wondered whether it was possible to win. It was though. The time came when Charles admitted I wasn’t driving too badly. It was fortunate I could, he said, even with L-plates, when he’d damaged his foot carrying the rubble. And the extension was nearly complete... everything was falling into place.

It promised to be a wonderful Spring, too – Shebalu’s first with us ever. I spent a lot of time with her and Seeley up on the hillside, watching over them on account of adders and enjoying, with them, their youth.

We were up there the morning the extension literally did fall into place. The downstairs part was nearly finished now. The old bathroom had been removed and the wall had been taken away, huge jacks supporting the ceiling while it was done. They’d stayed there while four 147

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Double Trouble enormous lintels had been cemented into place, and for three days more while it set. That very morning the jacks had been removed and Henry had actually smiled. The place had stayed up after all then, he said. Had I checked that the chimney pots were still on?

That wasn’t what I was doing on the hillside. Charles, that morning, had reported seeing Seeley chasing a mouse at the foot of a tree. And later that he’d chased it up the tree, and caught it and brought it down. Then he’d lost it, and the mouse had run up the tree again, and Seeley had once more climbed up after it...

Well, a mouse ran up a clock in the nursery-rhyme so there was no reason why it shouldn’t go up a tree...

or that Seeley, our seal-point clown, shouldn’t go up the tree after it. But for the mouse to run up the tree a second time – did it perhaps have its home up there?

That was what I was investigating when I heard the crash which sounded as if the cottage staircase had collapsed. I rushed from one direction, Charles from another, and we converged, white as sheets, in the sitting room. It wasn’t the staircase – and Henry hadn’t been flattened, as we’d feared. One of the ceiling beams had fallen down.

It was quite simple. The beams, which were false, were supported at either end on decorative brackets. Henry, in removing part of the wall, had removed the bracket from under one end of a beam. He’d supported the beam with a prop, removed the prop when he took away the jacks – and, with nothing to support it, the beam had simply collapsed. Not immediately. The ceiling-plaster had held it to the ceiling. Until, half-an-hour later, its weight brought it thundering down.

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One end lay on an armchair, the other on the floor...

it was so heavy the three of us could scarcely lift it Why hadn’t we told him it wasn’t screwed to the joists? said Henry. The answer was that we hadn’t known. Charles was absolutely appalled. All these years people had been sitting in that chair, and at any moment the beam could have come down. Only those brackets supporting it...

he’d have to see to them at once. He wouldn’t rest until all the beams were screwed to the joists.

’Twas all right for him to talk about resting. said Henry.

He’d nearly gone to his. He’d been bending down doing a bit of plastering when the thing had come down and it had missed his backside by inches. He was beginning to wonder, he said, what next was going to happen.

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Sixteen

NOTHING, AS A MATTER of fact. We are back to the peaceful calm of when we started. Annabel is grazing out on the hillside and Jane Robart has just ridden past. Still with the air of Elizabeth the First graciously patronising the peasants. ‘Ought to let thy donkey loose,’ Ern Biggs said the other day. ‘Bet he’d put the wind up her.’

‘She,’ I corrected him. ‘Annabel.’ Ern still gets everything wrong. ‘As a matter of fact she did, last year.’

‘Did she now?’ said Ern. ‘How was that, then?’ Father Adams superiorly told him.

That is the one thing the year has brought – those two now speak to each other. Each one trying to score, of course, as countrymen always do. Both of them bait Miss Wellington, too – and for all her indignation she enjoys it. She is up in her garden now, wearing the headgear she considers appropriate to the season. ‘Well, summer’s here then,’ Father 150

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Adams always says. ‘Old Ma Wellington’s out in her straw hat.’

Ern Biggs’ eyes nearly jumped out when he saw it first, with its steeple-shaped crown and raffia flowers.

‘Whass she got on? A beehive?’ he enquired. Father Adams was quick to correct him. ‘Just shows thee ignorance – thass her hat,’ he roared. ‘She bin wearin’

he for nigh on forty years.’

Probably she has, too – though that was long before we came to the village. Things don’t change much in the country. Our extension is finished – we hadn’t got that a year ago – but you’d hardly notice it from the front.

‘Looks just the same as it ever did,’ says Father Adams.

‘Ah – and thee grass still wants cuttin’,’ says Ern.

My driving lessons have been something new, of course, but once I pass my test even that will be taken for granted. It’s only being a learner that arouses comment.

As Charles says – And how! He had the brakes done last week. I said I hoped it wasn’t my fault. He couldn’t blame that on my going through a pothole or too near a wall? Charles grinned and admitted that he couldn’t. The thing we didn’t know, of course, was that in adjusting the brakes the mechanic somehow mis-aligned the braking lights. As soon as the engine was switched on, whatever the car was doing, the braking lights were on.

The stranger who stopped us and told us about it miles from home, realised something was wrong – he could understand the lights being on going downhill. he said

– but not when we were going uphill as well.

They didn’t realise it here – or they pretended they didn’t. Being so near my test I am now driving openly through the village with L-plates, getting used to the lane.

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Double Trouble So it was that when I was seen driving our car up the hill with the braking lights resplendently on – ‘How’d she manage that then?’ Ern enquired interestedly later of Charles. ‘I’ve never seen anybody doin’ that before.’

‘Spec thass what they teaches ’em nowadays in these schools,’ said Father Adams. ‘With women they probably wants to be double sure.’

They are a pair of old rapscallions and they know it

– but we wouldn’t change them one bit. Part of the joy of country life is its affectionate gossip and banter.

And for us it is also two Siamese cats, sitting up on the hillside. A little blue-point batting flies; a big seal-point proudly watching her; and nearby, a donkey grazing and surreptitiously eyeing the pair of them. Just as it has been now for so many years and yet might easily not have been. If we’d mourned Solomon and Sheba so much that we’d decided not to replace them.

Replace them, I say... Seeley is so much like Solomon that it might easily be him. Sometimes I forget for a moment and it is Solomon who races down the hillside, jumps on to my shoulder and rubs his face against mine to show how he loves me. Certainly he reminded me of Solomon when I put Annabel in the other night. Seeley had been hanging round waiting for his supper and had presumably forgotten the time of day. When I came out of the kitchen with Annabel’s water-bucket he thought I was bringing out his breakfast. That, after all is the usual procedure – he waits at the back door, I come out carrying the saucer and we march in procession to the conservatory.

We went in procession this time, too. I carrying the water-bucket, Seeley accompanying me, mrr-mrring and anxiously looking up at it... straight into the conservatory 152

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where he looked back to see if I was following. If that wasn’t like Solomon, I said to Charles, thinking his supper was in the bucket… a couple of bat-brains if ever I’d seen them; he and Seeley both.

Lovable bat-brains. And though Shebalu is completely different from Sheba, she is lovable too. Long-headed and Roman-nosed, where Sheba was round-faced and flat-nosed... but very beautiful, and as much a part of the place as we are ourselves. Shebalu and her ball with the bell on, and her addiction to washing up mops.

She is going off into the woods now, with Seeley close behind her. As we hope they will be for many years to come.

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CATS IN THE BELFRY

Doreen Tovey

£6.99

Paperback

ISBN 10: 1 84024 452 6

ISBN 13: 978 1 84024 452 6

‘It wasn’t, we discovered as the months went by, that Sugieh was particularly wicked. It was just that she was a Siamese.’

Animal lover Doreen and her husband Charles acquire their first Siamese kitten to rid themselves of an invasion of mice. But Sugieh is not just any cat. She’s an actress, a prima donna, an iron hand in a delicate, blue-pointed glove. She quickly establishes herself as queen of the house, causing chaos daily by screaming like a banshee, chewing up telegrams, and tearing holes in anything made of wool.

First published over forty years ago, this warm and witty classic tale is a truly enjoyable read for anyone who’s ever been owned by a cat.

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CATS IN MAY

Doreen Tovey

£6.99

Paperback

ISBN 10: 1 84024 497 6

ISBN 13: 978 1 84024 497 7

‘All our animals showed their independence at a dishearteningly early age.’

The Toveys attempt to settle down to a quiet life in the country. Unfortunately for them, however, their tyrannical Siamese cats have other ideas.

From causing an uproar on the BBC to staying out all night and claiming to have been kidnapped, Sheba and Solomon’s outrageous behaviour leaves the Toveys at their wits’ end. Meanwhile Doreen has to contend with her husband’s disastrous skills as a handyman, and a runaway tortoise called Tarzan.

Both human and animal characters come to life on the page, including Sidney the problem-prone gardener and Blondin the brandy-swilling squirrel. This witty and stylish tale will have animal-lovers giggling to the very last page.

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THE NEW BOY

Doreen Tovey

£6.99

Paperback

ISBN 10: 1 84024 517 4

ISBN 13: 978 1 84024 517 2

The Toveys are no strangers to disaster, particularly the Siamese-related kind, but when their beloved Solomon dies unexpectedly, they’re faced with a completely new type of problem – do they find another cat to replace the one they’ve lost?

The animals always win in the Tovey household.

It is with the interests of Solomon’s (very audibly) grieving sister Sheba at heart that Doreen and Charles set off in search of Solomon Secundus, affectionately known as Seeley.

Joined by a myriad of endearing characters, Seeley ensures he’s living up to Solomon’s standards in just the amount of time it takes to fall in a fishpond. This is an enchanting tale that will tickle your funny bone and tug on your heartstrings.

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www.summersdale.com

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