The New Boy

It was, too. The Vet, swabbing down his table when she’d gone, said this was the second case today and we’d better 124

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 124

25/05/2006 14:24:52

Doreen Tovey

take Seeley home again. ‘Leave it for another month or so,’

he said. ‘Till we’re sure that this is over.’

‘This’ was the pulmonary type of cat flu. Against the more serious enteric variety there is, of course, a vaccine, and Seeley had been inoculated, as had Solomon and Sheba.

Against the pulmonary variety there is as yet no vaccine, however – and though, said the Vet, most ordinary cats recover from it (just a couple of days’ heavy cold, he said, and then they’re right as rain) Siamese are often very ill.

Thanking our lucky stars we hadn’t taken Seeley into the waiting room, we turned our tracks for home. It was the only thing we could thank our lucky stars for, though. Seeley had kicked up enough fuss on the outward journey – shouting, screaming, chewing piece after piece off the basket. He was supposed not to have anything in his stomach, I wailed.

It would be even worse if he filled it up with wickerwork.

‘Why don’t you stop him, then?’ said Charles, trying hard to concentrate on the winding road. He should try poking his fingers in, I said. I’d almost lost a couple already.

On the way home he surpassed himself, however.

INCARCERATED! he roared at the passing cars in a voice so raucous Charles said it certainly was time he was neutered. DELIBERATELY STARVED! he an nounced

with a pathos that would have done credit to Irving. BEEN

IN HERE FOR HOURS AND I HAVEN’T HAD MY

BREAKFAST! he informed the garage attendant when we stopped for petrol. Heaven help us when we took him down to Halstock, said Charles. Forty miles of this and we’d be lucky to have a car…

We got him home, whisked him out fast and gave him some food. All in one Piece still, he informed Sheba happily 125

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 125

25/05/2006 14:24:52

The New Boy

Really, of course, the locals did know what was going on

– just as, after a day or two of surreptitious enquiry, they knew what our frost coverings were for, though they might pretend they didn’t. It was strangers to the place who were genuinely puzzled – and not only by the drapings, either.

‘Well, I’m glad I asked’ said one passing walker when I’d explained about the frost covers and the schoolhouse roof. I thought they had some con nection… And what about that sledge dog up the hill that pulls the pram? Did they get him from Alaska or something?’

There was an explanation for that, too. The Darlings, who owned the Samoyed, were merely putting him to the breed’s original use. He’d inherited an obvious liking for pulling things, they said. Why push the pram when Rob was willing to pull?

Meanwhile, while people were speculating about the schoolhouse roof and the frost covers and a dog apparently practising for the Arctic, I was spending long periods on the hillside behind the cottage. I had discovered that if I sat down somewhere and didn’t chase after him, Seeley, who was becoming increasingly fond of me, would play around within contact distance – which meant that while I watched him we had some peace of mind.

It was very pleasant watching him, too. It was becoming warmer now and this was Seeley’s first spring.

The exuberance with which he chased the butterflies, the wonder with which he regarded the birds, the joy with which he rolled and thrust his paws at me through the grass

– I shared it with him, this heaven that he was discovering daily. This was the place to be, he said. He was glad that he lived with us.

126

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 126

25/05/2006 14:24:53

Doreen Tovey

as he ate. He was indeed, and for the next few weeks it meant we not only had to watch him with Sheba (she didn’t like being jumped on and occasionally there was a noisy free-for-all) but we had to keep a weather eye on Seeley to make sure that he didn’t wander off.

This – seeing there was no guarantee once he vanished into the pinewoods that he was going to reappear again on the same side – led to all sorts of preventive manoeuvres.

Frantic round-ups during which we ran about the lane and hillside like ants; standing over him while he dug holes in the garden because he was particularly likely to streak off as if jet-propelled after that; doing my imitation of a prowling tomcat which, for a while, infallibly brought him back…

At first I’d tried imitating a dog but, as with Solomon and Sheba when they were young, that hadn’t been very successful. Standing in a lane barking ‘Row-row-row’ at a completely empty hillside is not the best way of impressing fellow humans with one’s sanity, either. I got some pretty peculiar looks from passers-by.

I got some pretty peculiar ones when I did my cat imitations, come to that. ‘Mrrrrow!… meeaOOOW…

RaaaaAAAAH!’ I would wail impassionedly while Charles peered anxiously up the Forestry lane. This – performed outside the back gate and followed by a sand-dance shuffle and clapping of hands which was supposed, for Seeley’s benefit, to be me chas ing the tomcat and indignantly shooing him off – was enough to transfix anybody who heard it, and though I always looked to see that the coast was clear before I started, the lanes in our part of the world are very winding and somebody was always catching up with me in the middle.

127

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 127

25/05/2006 14:24:53

The New Boy

On one occasion it was Major and Miss Howland. She was transfixed all right. Even more so, she informed me afterwards, when out of the woods and down the hillside, flat on his stomach like an otter, came a homing Siamese cat. He was growling sinisterly to himself as he slipped in through the gate. What on earth, she wanted to know, were we going to think of next?

It wasn’t so much a case of thinking of things as of necessity leading to invention. After a week or so of my only having to imitate a tomcat to bring him home as if by magic, for instance, Seeley got wise to the fact that it was me. Either that or he decided he was bigger now so he’d go looking for the cat who did it. At any rate, any time I did my imitations now he took no notice whatsoever

– and if I wanted him in because we were going out, he proceeded determinedly, with his ears flat to show he couldn’t hear, in the opposite direction. Thus it was, one morning when I was going riding and the horses would be ready at ten o’clock, that Seeley decided this was the morning when he was going exploring. In the Woods, he said, mounting steadily up the hillside ahead of me. Not Going To, he said when I pleaded with him to come back. That was only for Babies, he said when I desperately did my tomcat call. And, to show what he thought of that ruse, he did a sudden exuberant caper into the trees.

I did an equally speedy caper after him. It was half past nine now and if I lost sight of him, as well I knew, he wouldn’t come out again for ages. He began to saunter beneath the tall, dark groves of the pine trees. Oh Lord, I thought, despairingly; we could go for miles like this. He 128

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 128

25/05/2006 14:24:53

Doreen Tovey

did a light-hearted sortie or two up passing tree trunks. My gosh, I thought; if he goes right to the top…

He didn’t. Like Solomon, Seeley couldn’t climb for toffee.

Three feet up and off he’d plop, pretending that wasn’t the one he’d meant to go up after all. Neither was the next one, he said. He was only showing me how he could very well if he wanted to. He then light-heartedly poked a paw down a mouse hole in the pine needles before darting tantalisingly behind another tree a few feet ahead.

I hope the mouse forgave me. The only way I stopped Seeley from prancing off still further was to seize a dried-up bracken stem and poke it feverishly down the mouse hole myself. ‘Look Seeley,’ I said ingratiatingly, demonstrating that the stem would go inches and inches in and then, when you withdrew it, come inches and inches out…

It stopped him going any further but it didn’t entice him back within grabbing distance. I finally achieved that by lying flat on my back, pretending to be dead, and crying.

‘Woohoohoo,’ I wept softly with one half-opened eye on Seeley. ‘Oh, Woohoohoohoohoo…’ Whereupon Seeley, who apparently did care for me a little, came – albeit nonchalantly – back, walked heavily across my stomach, and went on to sniff a plant beneath the nearest tree. Raising myself up stealthily I grabbed his tail. Seeley jumped yards on the end of it – and I jumped yards myself when, from just behind me, a frightened voice said ‘Oh dear dear me…

I really thought you’d been thrown!’ It was Miss Wellington.

Intent on capturing Seeley I hadn’t heard her coming down the track – and she, intent on gathering pine cones, had apparently nearly dropped herself when she saw me, wearing riding clothes, lying flat under a tree on my back.

129

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 129

25/05/2006 14:24:53

The New Boy

I told her what I’d been doing. Miss Wellington, who was odd herself, was about the only one to whom I could have explained such a manoeuvre and not have been thought dotty. ‘What a good idea,’ she said admiringly. ‘I must try it myself when Sooty won’t come in.’

I made my excuses, carted Seeley back to the cottage – by now it was five minutes to ten – and made it to the riding stables by the skin of my teeth. It was time, I said to Charles that night, that Seeley really was done. I was beginning to have night mares about his roaming off through the forest.

So we fixed it up again and once more the expedi tion set forth. There was a difference this time in that Seeley, now two months older than on his first abortive trip, was so much bigger that he wouldn’t fit into Sheba’s basket and we’d had to buy him a new one. We’d got him one of the kind that looks like a cage, with a dome-topped wickerwork body and a complete wire door as the front. We’d been told that cats who dislike travelling – as had Solomon in the first place and now, indomitably following him, the vociferous Seeley – sometimes change their attitude completely if they travel in something they can see out of.

So we’d bought this basket, which was big enough for a dog kennel (better get a large one while we were at it, said Charles: we didn’t know how much Seeley was going to grow) and in it, on the back seat, sat Seeley, like a little black-faced pea in an enormous wickerwork pod.

I hated to see him in it. Seeley hated it, too – but not so much, quite definitely, as in a closed-in basket he couldn’t see out of. I could get my fingers through the wire bars, too, and thus – letting him chew my fingers instead of the wickerwork, and we hadn’t put a blanket in the basket so 130

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 130

25/05/2006 14:24:53

Doreen Tovey

he couldn’t eat that – we got him safely to the Vet with an empty stomach. We had a morning appointment this time; a special concession so he wouldn’t have to miss his breakfast and his lunch. And the cat flu epidemic was over, and it was a fine warm day so he wouldn’t catch cold.

The one thing we would have done if we’d had time was put another couple of straps on the basket. There was only one at the moment, half-way up the wire door. It needed at least two more to guarantee the basket entirely Seeley-proof. It was all right just this once, though, we decided.

We’d be with him till he was handed over to the Vet. After his operation he’d be too wobbly to think of escaping. That was the reason we’d bought the basket so hurriedly – to give him plenty of room to lie out in when he was coming round.

So we delivered him to the Vet who told us to come back again just before lunch. If Seeley had recovered consciousness by then, he said, we could take him home.

He was definitely taking no chances, however. If he wasn’t round, we must wait till the afternoon.

He took no chances to the extent that, noting that there was only one strap on our basket and knowing Siamese potentialities even better than we did, when he’d done the operation he put Seeley into a cage. A white-barred affair with an outside fastening from which there was no possible chance of escape.

Not until someone opened the door, that is. When we went back just before lunch the assistant said would we please take a seat in the waiting room; she’d see if he’d come round yet. Awed by her white-starched overall and air of efficiency we did so – and were out of our chairs 131

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 131

25/05/2006 14:24:53

The New Boy

like rockets when a few seconds later (gone was the brisk efficiency now, and she was clutching one bleeding hand with the other) she returned to say could we please come at once. Our little Siamese had escaped.

In theory Seeley should have been still extremely dopey and easily transferred to his basket. In practice, he was conscious and hopping mad. When she’d opened the cage to get him out he’d scratched her and dashed into the dispensary. He wouldn’t let her get near him, she said, and he was growling at her really horribly.

If ever our hearts went out to our New Boy it was in the moment when we saw him at bay in the corner of that dispensary – groggy still from the effects of the anaesthetic, but determined to fight to the death. I called to him, and he stopped growling at once, and let Charles and me, between us, pick him up.

Feeling absolute heels – it was nobody’s fault that he’d escaped but it must have been a terrible experi ence for him, coming round in a strange cage like that and thinking his friends had deserted him – we took him home. He was Hungry, he said when we got indoors, so we gave him a plateful of rabbit. He’d been Fighting People he informed Sheba through mouthfuls of food when he saw her.

Obviously the operation itself hadn’t troubled him a bit.

If we thought that was going to be the end of his wanderings, however, we were very much mistaken. Two days later he went missing and, when we did catch up with him, for the first time ever he wasn’t in the woods, but coming back jauntily down the road.

I thought his operation was supposed to stop all that, I said, going out to usher him sternly through the gate. That 132

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 132

25/05/2006 14:24:53

Doreen Tovey

was only for Girls, said Seeley as he marched importantly in. Now he didn’t have them on his mind any more, he could concentrate on being an explorer.

133

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 133

25/05/2006 14:24:53

FOURTEEN

He did too, just as Solomon had done before him. I remember, when Solomon was that age, building a low stone wall along one side of the front path, and so often did I check to see where Solomon was while I was doing it

– and every time I checked I had to down tools to fetch him back – that the wall, when it was finished, had bends in it like the Serpentine.

I wasn’t building a wall now but I was trying to dig the flowerbeds, the procedure usually being – one forkful, Seeley was on the path; two forkfuls, Seeley was still on the path; three forkfuls, Seeley was still on the path; four forkfuls, Seeley was suddenly gone. Transported by means of levitation, apparently, since one never saw him going.

Just one moment he was there and the next he was high on the hillside head ing for the forest, fifty yards up the lane 134

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 134

25/05/2006 14:24:54

Doreen Tovey

making for the village – or, more often than not, nowhere in sight at all and we didn’t know which way he’d gone.

‘We’ll have to put up that cage,’ we kept say ing – but it was early yet. Only February. Too cold for a little cat to sit in the open in a cage. So I alternated between digging the flowerbeds and run ning to fetch back Seeley (Seeley was definitely my cat, said Charles; he wouldn’t come to him) while Charles got busy on his fruit trees.

This year, he said, he was determined to have some fruit

– to which end (as, being in a valley, we are particularly susceptible to frost) he set about pro tecting the early-blooming pear trees. He started by covering them with some old lace curtains; relics of my grandmother’s, which my Aunt Louisa had given us. He continued – getting really enthusiastic about this frost protection now and there weren’t enough curtains to go round – by using large hessian sacks which he bought up by the dozens. Charles being an artistic type who doesn’t worry too much about the appearance of things, the result was that that spring visitors to the Valley (and any residents, too, who hadn’t been past for a while) were positively electrified by the sight of our orchard, which looked as though it had been taken over by a convocation of monks, about ten feet tall, wearing white lace cassocks surmounted by sinisterly hooded habits.

They had this pointed-hood appearance because Charles, to keep the hessian from touching the blossom, had one corner of each huge sack propped high above its tree on a cane. A simple and, if one knew it, a perfectly reasonable explanation, but as usual few people did. As usual, too, in a country village, people put their own interpret ations upon the phenomenon.

135

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 135

25/05/2006 14:24:54

The New Boy

‘Scarecrows,’ I heard one old man inform another as they stood at the orchard gate and stared. ‘Oh ah,’ said his companion placidly, as though thirty-odd scarecrows to an acre was nothing at all unusual. ‘Put there to keep the cats off was another knowledgeable verdict. (Though we hadn’t come to that yet, even with Seeley.) ‘Bet they frightens the horses,’ said somebody else. ‘Looks like a lot of witches,’

said another. ‘’Ouldn’t like to come across they in the dark unbeknownst,’ said a further voice going past in the dusk.

By moonlight, in fact, with the frost glittering on them, they did look rather spooky. ‘Minds I,’ said Father Adams, who’d seen them himself one night en route to the Rose and Crown ‘of Fred Ferry’s father and the ghost in the churchyard.’

We didn’t know there was a churchyard ghost, we said.

Nor there weren’t, said Father Adams, proceed ing to tell us the tale.

It seemed that years before, Fred Ferry’s father, whose name was also Fred, had been renowned for getting rolling drunk and then going and sitting on a stone in the churchyard, moaning to himself about being such a sinner.

‘Used to frighten all the women coming home from the Mother’s Meeting,’ said Father Adams. ‘Didn’t matter that they knowed ’twas he. The noise he made did always put the wind up ’em.’ So the other men decided to teach old Fred a lesson and one night, when there was to be a funeral the following day, one of them got down into the newly dug grave just after closing time while the rest hid behind the adjoining headstones.

‘Along comes Old Fred,’ said Father Adams. ‘A-moaning and a-blathering about this business of being a sinner, 136

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 136

25/05/2006 14:24:54

Doreen Tovey

and up rises Tom in an old white sheet and calls on’n to repent.’

‘And did it work?’ I asked Father Adams. ‘Naw,’ he said reminiscently, ‘but ’twere nearly the end of Tom. Old Fred, thinking ’twere a ghost, picked up the sexton’s spade and hit

’n on the head. ‘Get back down there, you b.’ he shouted.

‘Stay down where theest belong!’

I thought of the story every time I saw the frost covers in the dusk after that. At the top of the hill, in the village, too, another mysterious erection had suddenly appeared.

They were putting a new roof on the old schoolhouse – a building long turned over to private occupation. The local children went to school now in the adjoining village.

The surrounding cottages were very small, like ours. But the schoolhouse towered over them to about twice their height, and when the builders had put scaffolding all round it they covered the house with a complete tarpaulin roof and then – on account of this is high-up hill country and the wind through the scaffolding was rather fierce – they lashed tar paulins all round the sides of the scaffolding as well. Inside this the men worked, made their tea on a plank about thirty feet up and were, from the sound of it, ecstatically happy.

From the outside, however, this enormous tar paulined cube presented another focal point for speculation. Some wits decided there was a statue going up under it. ‘Dam’ gert bloke then… p’raps ’tis a group of ’em’ said one onlooker, following which rumours of the Parish Council being done in stone were rife in the Rose and Crown. ‘Putting up a supermarket’ said another – and from the size of the tarpaulin casing, that could have been possible too.

137

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 137

25/05/2006 14:24:54

The New Boy

We were glad too, though we certainly needed our wits about us. One day, for instance, when for once I wasn’t trailing him, Seeley vanished com pletely. We searched, we called him, I did my cat imitations – Seeley didn’t answer.

‘He’s up on the hillside somewhere,’ said Charles. ‘I saw him going in that direction.’ So, keeping a weather eye on the hillside where the grass was now so long we couldn’t possibly find him unless he decided to co operate, we continued – albeit anxiously – with our gardening.

It was a little while later that I heard squawking and, looking up, saw a magpie advancing in determined hops through the grass. One of a pair that were friendly with Annabel, and often pecked round her while she grazed. ‘Got his eye on some thing,’ I thought, and went on weeding.

Until, a second or two afterwards, I saw the second magpie hopping through the grass from another direction and, dropping my trowel, I shouted and started to run.

I was right. It was Seeley they were after. He was there in the grass just beyond them. Whether they were playing with him or whether, which was more likely, he’d been stalking them and they were out to teach him a lesson – either way it was a good thing I’d been watching for him. I’d heard of magpies attacking cats before… One deliberately attracting the cat’s attention, while the other crept up from behind.

He was very subdued when I carried him back, lying as inconspicuously as he could in my arms, his eyes as round as an owl’s, his ears so flat he looked practically streamlined.

Wasn’t going out Again, he announced – which was how he came to discover the little fish.

We’d hatched them ourselves the previous year. After the flood, as a result of giving them the fresh supply of water, 138

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 138

25/05/2006 14:24:54

Doreen Tovey

our goldfish had started spawning like mad. Usually they ate the eggs as soon as they laid them but this time, by way of experiment, I took some out with a teaspoon and put them into teacups to hatch. Teacups without handles, of which we have rather a lot, and it needs shallow water to hatch them out.

They looked like tiny, transparent pinheads – with, after a day or two, a little black dot inside them which showed they were fertile. According to the book they should have taken from four days to a fortnight to hatch, depending on the weather – but the summer was very cold that year and when, after nearly a fortnight, they still showed no signs of emerging, I tried putting them in warmer water.

The result was miraculous. Those fish were out within seconds. One moment there was a tiny little globule with what now looked like an eyelash in it – and the next the egg was rolling emptily on the bottom of the teacup while the eyelash was out, clinging prehensilely to the side. For days we had a row of teacups with static black eyelashes in them in the kitchen window – and then the eyelashes began to swim, and developed two little eyes, and eventually, unbelievably, they became tiny transparent fish.

We hatched more than fifty, but the mortality rate among goldfish fry is very high. If one saves ten per cent one is lucky, so we were just about right when we finished up with five. We kept them, during the winter, in a plastic bowl on top of the kitchen cupboard; they were too small yet for the big pond, where their relations would promptly have eaten them, and it was too cold to leave them out of doors on their own.

139

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 139

25/05/2006 14:24:54

The New Boy

Charles thought a lot of those fish. He took them down regularly to change the water, feed them and admire them.

Marvellous little chaps they were, he assured them; he was going to build them a new pond all to themselves. Actually there was very nearly no need to. The same night that Seeley was stalked by the magpies, Seeley in turn found the fish. On the kitchen table, where Charles had left them while he came in to have his supper, and where, when we went out, Seeley was happily fishing.

He was standing with one front foot actually in the bowl of fish and the other paw poised to strike. He hadn’t caught any yet – though the fishing paw was wet and had obviously been in the water pretty often – and he couldn’t understand why we yelled and grabbed him. Spoiling all his Fun, he wailed as I bore him away. Didn’t like him doing Anything.

Bet we were in league with those silly old Magpies.

From then on we had to keep a wire cake-tray permanently on top of the fish bowl, remember never to leave it on the table, and keep a watchful eye on the cupboard to make sure Seeley hadn’t found a way of climbing up it. This was indoors. As at the same time we had to make sure he wasn’t chasing Sheba – and, if outdoors, that he wasn’t wandering off or stalking bees, life, like the weather, was certainly warming up.

The qualms I’d had about our own bees had happily resolved themselves. Charles had gone up early in the year to see if they needed feeding and found that they just weren’t there. The most likely explanation, seeing that there were no dead bees in the hive and all the honey had gone, was that the bees from one of the stranger hives up the Valley had come on a raiding expedi tion, as bees sometimes do if 140

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 140

25/05/2006 14:24:54

Doreen Tovey

they are close to a weakened hive, and that – as again has been known to happen – our bees, instead of fighting them, had matily gone off to join them taking their honey stores with them.

It was the best thing that could have happened in the circumstances. There were the bees up the Valley to pollinate Charles’s fruit trees. Charles wasn’t likely to be stung any more, with the other hives so far away. Seeley – I sighed with relief – was never likely to come across a hive at all. Not one with bees in it, any way, though our own hive still stood empty on the hill.

‘Better get he down fast,’ advised Father Adams. ‘Afore the bees swarms further up and comes back down here to live.’ There wasn’t much fear of that, however. The man who kept the other bees was an expert.

We had to watch Seeley with the ordinary bees around the garden, but there were nothing like as many as there would have been. Seeley, of course, never having seen a bee before, was absolutely entranced to have so many exciting playmates. He stalked them on his stomach, he leapt after them through the air, he flattened all the crocuses making frustrated pounces.

The main thing was to stop him picking one up in his mouth. If one stung him on the paw he’d learn to leave them alone, but a sting in the mouth can be dangerous.

Olive oil was the best quick first aid if that happened, I’d read – applied with a feather if the bee-sting was in the throat. So I kept a feather and the oil-bottle handy, hoped I’d never have to use it, and meanwhile kept on running.

Out to fetch him back from the lane. Up to fetch him back from the hillside. Out once more because he was now after 141

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 141

25/05/2006 14:24:55

The New Boy

a bee – a bumble-bee this time, and it was slower and he almost caught it.

Didn’t want him to have any fun at All, wailed Seeley as I carted him back to where I was weeding a border. It wasn’t that. It was that I wanted to know he was safe. In the end all our precautions were in vain, however. Seeley was bitten by an adder.

142

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 142

25/05/2006 14:24:55

FIFTEEN

He met up with it in Annabel’s field, behind the cottage. The one place we’d thought, since she patrolled it so solidly and the grass was down to billiard-table level, was completely adder-free. Charles actually saw it happen, though he didn’t know then that it was an adder. He was cementing a gatepost; I was mowing the lawn; we were keeping an eye open for Seeley who we knew was up there somewhere.

It was Charles who saw him come out of the trees at the top of her field, amble a few yards down one of the paths and then crouch, flatten his ears and pounce at something.

A bee, Charles thought at the time – but we weren’t so worried about bees now, seeing that Seeley hadn’t so far managed to catch one.

A moment or two later he said he could hear a cat crying and where was Sheba? Indoors, I said. I couldn’t hear the crying myself on account of the noise of the mower. And 143

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 143

25/05/2006 14:24:55

The New Boy

then Charles said suddenly ‘Quick – it’s Seeley!’ and was in the lane and up the hillside like a flash.

Seeley tried to walk to him but could only stumble. And all the time we could hear this dreadful crying.

He was still crying – crying with every breath he took in a frightening monotone – when Charles got him down to me at the gate. His paw was already huge and there was something that looked like water oozing from it. We carried him in and put him on the table, hoping against hope it might be a bee-sting. Seeley couldn’t stand up by now and still he was crying, crying, crying. My own heart nearly stopped beating. I said ‘Oh my goodness… it’s an adder!’

Somehow we telephoned the Vet. Get him over as fast as we could, he said; it was quicker for us to go to him than for him to come to us; he’d have everything ready at the surgery. Somehow we got the car out, and Seeley into his basket, and were speeding up the hill. We hadn’t stopped for anything. We were still in our old gardening clothes. I hadn’t even washed my hands; they were covered in earth.

Halfway to the surgery Seeley suddenly quietened. He was looking at me with big round eyes but he didn’t appear to be quite so frightened. ‘I bet it was a bee-sting after all,’ I said, ‘and we’ve been making all this fuss for nothing.’

The Vet didn’t think so. ‘That’s pretty big for a bee-sting,’

he said, examining a paw which was now swollen up to Seeley’s shoulder. And when I said but wouldn’t Seeley have been unconscious by now if it really had been an adder, he said not necessarily. In his experience, he said, cats and dogs had more resistance to adder-bite than was generally supposed. Some did die within a very short time – if, for instance, they were bitten on the mouth; but if they were 144

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 144

25/05/2006 14:24:55

Doreen Tovey

bitten in the foot, like Seeley, he’d known a good many of them to recover. It was shock we had to guard against, he said. It was half an hour now since Seeley’d been bitten and he hadn’t yet collapsed. He’d give him a cortisone injection and we’d keep our fingers crossed. Take him home; bathe, bathe and keep on bathing his paw in water as hot as he could stand it – and if Seeley did collapse we were to call him at once.

Seeley didn’t collapse – though, when we got him home and out of his basket and I saw the size of his leg, I was pretty near it myself. He wouldn’t have his paw bathed, either. It Hurt, he said, and rushed to hide under the table. So – not knowing whether we were doing right but remembering that with adder-bite in humans one is supposed to keep the patient still to prevent the venom circulating – we abandoned that and put him on our bed, in his favourite refuge, the nest of sweaters, with a hot-water bottle in it to keep him warm.

Years before, Sheba had had a swollen paw and we thought it might have been an adder and the Vet had given her antihistamine. They didn’t give antihistamine now, he’d explained in the surgery; some cats reacted to it badly. They didn’t give snake-serum, either. Some cats reacted to that. They’d found it best to treat them for shock.

All I knew, looking at Seeley lying quiet against the bottle, his paw stretched out before him like a furry black bolster, was that Sheba’s paw had never swollen like that.

Huge it was now, and when I touched his shoulder he cried. Either Sheba’s bite hadn’t been from an adder – or was cortisone enough?

145

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 145

25/05/2006 14:24:55

The New Boy

It was. Our Vet, as usual, knew what he was doing. Seeley’s leg was so swollen that at one time it must have been at least four times its normal diameter. It couldn’t get any bigger without bursting, I said, looking at it despairingly.

But Seeley didn’t collapse. When, at three in the morning, we got up to see how he was, he was sitting up himself, looking at us alertly, and we could see the shape of his leg.

It was still badly swollen, and the paw on the end of it was gross, but at least it didn’t look so much like a policeman’s truncheon.

By midday it was down still further. By evening he could walk on it – though still with a decided limp. We ourselves were still shaken by the narrow squeak he’d had. ‘No more putting it off,’ said Charles. ‘We’d better build that cage.’

We did. We also, for Annabel’s sake, scoured her field for signs of the adder, but we couldn’t find it. How was it she’d never trodden on one if they were up there? I asked.

Because of the ground vibration when she walked, said Charles; an adder would hear her coming and slip away before she reached it, but Seeley’s light little tread wouldn’t have disturbed it at all. The water from Seeley’s paw – that, said the Vet, had been serum; the liquid that is left when blood coagulates. We hadn’t seen that with Sheba, as we realized when we thought about it. There wasn’t much doubt that Seeley had crossed swords with an adder.

So we erected his cage. A temporary one, said Charles; he’d put it up properly later. The main thing, at the moment, was to get some protection up fast.

It was – as it needs to be with a Siamese – a big cage, about twelve feet by six, and five feet high, consisting of four iron stakes sunk into the lawn with inch-mesh wire netting fixed 146

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 146

25/05/2006 14:24:55

Doreen Tovey

round it. The final cage would also have a wire netting roof, but that needed crossbars to support it. For the moment, until we had time to make the crossbars, we covered it with one of Charles’s fruit nets. An unbreakable nylon one, of which he’d just bought several dozens to replace the frost coverings. The frost danger was over, Charles had reported, but now the blasted birds were at the blossom…

And how they were! Bullfinches, blue tits, wood pigeons

– they were up in the orchard in droves. The wood pigeons only attacked the cherry trees, but the small birds were everywhere at once. They’d never seen such blossom, obviously, thanks to Charles’s frost coverings which had protected it. That – putting up the nets; sometimes several nets to a tree if it was a large one and it had to be done, said Charles; several of the trees were already completely stripped – was why Seeley’s adder cage was only a temporary one. Charles needed all his time to put up the nets.

So I draped the fruit net roof over the cage myself, tying it every few inches with string, and put Seeley inside for a try out. He protested immedi ately. INCARCERATED!

SEND FOR THE POLICE! CLAUSTROPHOBIA! he roared, sitting bolt upright inside the wire and proceeding to bawl his head off.

He couldn’t get out, though. We’d fixed the bottom wire down with tent pegs and, inspect it though he might, he couldn’t pull that up. He wasn’t going to be in it permanently, of course. Just for an hour or so when there might be adders about, when it was a shame to shut him indoors but we didn’t have time to watch him.

All was well the first day. Thought he was going to be shut in there For Ever, he complained when I let him out 147

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 147

25/05/2006 14:24:55

The New Boy

again, but it didn’t seem to have worried him overmuch.

All seemed well the second day, too. Seeley was in his cage; Sheba, who liked it really warm, was sleeping in the car; I, with tranquillity of mind at last, was getting on with some writing. Tranquillity as to where he was, that is, not tranquillity as far as sound went, since Seeley, for nearly an hour, had been howling with every breath. At last all was peaceful, however. He was getting used to it at last, I thought – and looked up, right at that moment, to find him sitting triumphantly on the floor beside me.

He’d climbed the wire adjoining one of the corner poles, where it was taut, and, while clinging to it, had pushed his way out under the net. That we could tell from the turned-back piece of fruit netting. So I ran string through the netting on the corner as if I were sewing it; congratulated myself next day, when I saw his little bullet-head thrusting vainly against the roof while he clung to the wire like a monkey, that I’d foiled that attempt at a breakthrough – and half an hour later, looking out through the window from my typewriter, there he was proceeding across the lawn. Got out through the Other Corner, he announced triumphantly when he saw me. And sure enough, when I went out, the fruit netting was pushed back by the other pole.

At least, I thought, firmly lacing up that escape hatch, he wouldn’t try getting out through the back. He wouldn’t realize it was possible to get out through there. At his age he couldn’t have that much intel ligence. He had, though.

Twice more he emerged like a little black Houdini, until I’d laced down all four corners and, for good measure, all round the sides as well.

148

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 148

25/05/2006 14:24:55

Doreen Tovey

Now he couldn’t get out. In fact, as the weather was warmer we put Sheba in with him for company and he didn’t want to get out. They had a rug in there, their water bowl, a plate of food and an earthbox (the latter two to meet Seeley’s requirements) and at last we had some peace. People spotted the cage through the trees and began to speculate, of course. ‘Wonder what they got in there?’ said one. ‘Looks like they’m keeping rabbits now,’ said another. ‘That’s to stop the new one from getting bitten,’ said somebody else who’d obviously heard about the adder.

Miss Wellington had heard about it, too. She was now going around in slacks. ‘On account of the snakes,’ she told the postman. And though there was no reason why she shouldn’t wear slacks – people much older than she wore them nowadays, though not usually in psychedelic pink – villages being what they are, and Miss Wellington having hitherto been seen only in long tweed skirts except in high summer when she wore long and drooping voiles, there was certainly some excitement over that.

‘They old snakes’d better watch out or they’ll die of shock when they sees she,’ opined Fred Ferry. ‘Got her eye on old Bill Porter, I reckons,’ said Father Adams – Bill Porter being a widower and well over eighty. ‘Not if I sees she first,’ said Bill Porter when they chaffed him, while Miss Wellington tripped skittishly in her slacks among her toadstools.

We, meanwhile, having solved the problem of keeping Seeley safe for a guaranteed hour or two a day, still had to keep watch on him when he wasn’t in the cage. He couldn’t be locked up all the time. He had to have his periods of freedom. And have such periods he did, while I walked with him in the Forestry lane, sat patiently near him while 149

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 149

25/05/2006 14:24:56

The New Boy

he investigated the hedgerows and played happy games of tag with him in the grass.

‘He ought to learn to stay in the garden some times though,’ said Charles. ‘Not be like Solomon; always out through the gate.’ So the next thing that appeared on the lawn was a permanent pile of peasticks, and I excavated the clock golf hole.

The peasticks were an accident. Charles, having pruned some of the branches off the nut tree by the coalhouse, left them in a pile on the lawn until he had time to move them (he just had to get on with putting up the nets, he said; those birds weren’t going to beat him) and there Seeley found them and said they made a super ambush. As he could be guaranteed to stay under them for at least twenty minutes after he was first let out in the morning (spying on the birds, leaping out at the bees, and occasionally landing on Sheba) it was obviously worth leaving them there. There they still remain, too, though now they have been there for months, with a little cat lurking under them and people wondering why we haven’t moved them.

The clock golf hole was deliberate. Solomon, when he was young, had been very fond of clock golf. It kept him on the lawn for ages – one of us putting the ball while Solomon either chased it, tail high, across the grass, or practically stood on his head in the hole. He liked it so much that once, when a visitor mislaid her car keys, at a time when Solomon was given to carrying things in his mouth, we’d found those where nobody but he could have put them; down the clock golf hole on the lawn.

Over the years the habit had died out, however. The numbers were somewhere in the woodshed, the hole 150

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 150

25/05/2006 14:24:56

Doreen Tovey

had long since filled in. Until I, hoping it might similarly interest Seeley, found the hole and cleared it out and got out the clubs.

It was more than hope. I had the feeling that if Seeley would play this game that was so personally Solomon’s, it would prove there was a connecting link. That there was an inherited line of behaviour running through them which would make Seeley more and more like my first friend.

It was quite uncanny. One tap of the ball into the hole when the game was ready, and it was as though Solomon was with us all over again. The same exaggerated prancing after the ball; the same clowning around the hole; the same excited tearing onto the lawn when I picked up a club in the kitchen. Sheba had never been interested in clock golf; nor had Sugieh, Solomon and Sheba’s mother. Was I right?

One could get another just the same?

Now another big seal-point cat crouched by the clock golf hole while passers-by stared incredulously over the gate. ‘Whass he doing then. Keeping goal?’ enquired Father Adams. And then, unusually for him, who was never sentimental – ‘Takes ’ee back, don’t it… watching

’un,’ he said.

151

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 151

25/05/2006 14:24:56

SIXTEEN

One by one a good many things were emerging to take us back.

When we first had Seeley, for instance, he’d been very scared of cars. Probably his mother had warned him to be careful of them. When one came past, anyway, even if he was safely in the garden, Seeley would crouch in terror and run indoors.

‘At least we won’t have that worry,’ we’d said, remembering the time when Solomon only had to spot a car parked in the lane to be under it, on it – or preferably, if the owner had left a window open, inside it – before we could say Jack Robinson. And now here we were with the lighter evenings, people parking their cars to go for a stroll – and Seeley, at nine months old, as interested in motor vehicles as Solomon had been. Under them, on them – he hadn’t yet found one with the window open, but he peered interestedly in through the windscreens just as Solomon had done.

152

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 152

25/05/2006 14:24:56

Doreen Tovey

‘Doesn’t he look like him?’ I said as we sped out to get him in and to wipe the telltale footprints off yet another car. ‘He does,’ said Charles. ‘And he acts like him, too. I only hope we have the strength to keep on running.’

Spring was now turning to early summer. You couldn’t win, said Charles, coming in from his fruit trees one day. He’d kept the frost off them. He’d kept the birds off them. And now guess what? He’d gone up to see how they were doing and there was a blasted snail on one of them. Under the net, right on the top, just sticking its neck out for a shoot.

It looked like being a good crop all the same. And the weather was warm and the grass was high and Nature was absolutely abounding. Seeley was in his seventh heaven. One day Charles found him out by the stream, happily ambushing the bees. He’d discovered the spot where they came down for water and was crouched there watching them land. Another day, seeing him intently studying another part of the stream

– in the long grass beside the gate – Charles investigated cautiously to see what was there… Seeley, saucer-eyed, was watching a toad. A big one, and beautifully marked, said Charles. We very rarely saw them around ourselves.

Now, too, the time was approaching for the village fête, where for the second year running Annabel had been asked to give donkey rides. We’d been a bit apprehensive the first time because she wasn’t used to it, but she’d behaved herself very well. She’d given twenty-eight donkey rides and earned fourteen shillings, and only stopped dead twice.

Since then, what was more, she’d been trained. A teenager in the village, who was an excellent rider herself, had taught her small sister to ride on Annabel, who was now a fully-fledged riding donkey.

153

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 153

25/05/2006 14:24:56

The New Boy

They used to take her out on Saturday afternoons. At first Marian had to lead her – or perhaps tow her would be a better description, since Annabel wasn’t very cooperative.

But within a few weeks they were returning to say that Annabel had trotted… Annabel had cantered… and once, I regret to say, that Annabel had got down and rolled and Julie had fallen off. I watched sometimes from the window as the procession went by – Annabel marching in dependently ahead now, while Marian walked some way behind.

Annabel was obviously imagining she was a proper horse, and Julie sat her well. There was one occasion, admittedly, when Annabel turned to the right as she was passing her stable and marched in, Julie and all – but Marian went in after them and the next moment Annabel, complete with rider, complacently reappeared.

All in all she was pretty well trained now and we weren’t worrying about her behaviour at the fête at all. What we were concerned with was that she should look well-groomed and have a shining coat; Annabel’s own desire being to roll in the dust and look awful.

I combed her. I brushed her. Not too hard, other wise her coat would come right out, as we were now on the verge of summer.

It wouldn’t look like Annabel without her furry coat. We could start getting it out in earnest when the fête was over.

That was what we thought. I noticed her idly rub bing her back under a branch in her field one day. I must remember to saw that branch off, I told myself. Annabel liked to rub herself while she was thinking, and if we weren’t careful she’d look like a poodle. Then, of course, I forgot about it, until two days later we were putting her in at night and Charles said ‘Good Lord! Look at her back!’ It was typical. A week to go to the fête 154

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 154

25/05/2006 14:24:56

Doreen Tovey

and Annabel hadn’t just rubbed the hair off in patches; she’d scrubbed herself completely raw. Not, fortunately, where her riding rug went (Annabel is too small for the smallest saddle), but right where the edge of it would come, across her withers; just where it would be particularly noticeable.

‘People will think she’s got mange,’ said Charles despairingly. ‘Honestly, you’d think she’d done it on purpose.’ Perhaps she had, too, knowing Annabel; though to do her justice all animals love to scratch. Anyway, I covered the patches with boracic powder to dry them up, put talcum powder on top of that in the hope that the scent might deter the flies, and thus, having sawn off the branch so she couldn’t do it again, we put her in her field next morning and awaited the inevitable comments.

‘Whass the matter with she then?’ enquired Father Adams, who never misses anything. ‘Whass that smell round here?’

demanded Fred Ferry, turning up almost simultaneously and suspiciously sniffing the air. They shook their heads sadly when I told them. ‘She ’ont be givin’ no old rides,’ they said.

She did though. Her back was perfectly healed by Saturday, and with a tartan car rug on top of her usual one, nobody noticed the hairless bits. Thirty-five donkey rides she gave on this occasion – and I, trudging round with her, was practically on my knees.

That was that obligation over – and now, said Charles, we ought to be thinking about a holiday. He reckoned the fruit and the vegetables were just about right to leave. The nets were doing their stuff and keeping off the birds. By gosh, we were going to have some apples.

We were going to have plenty of tomatoes, too, though the peas weren’t looking so bright. Field mice were getting 155

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 155

25/05/2006 14:24:56

The New Boy

at them and eating off all the shoots. Eventually – he didn’t like doing it, but we couldn’t let the crop be spoiled like that

– Charles went off to buy some mousetraps. He got them in Woolworths in the nearest town and was much intrigued to see the assistant, when he asked for them, pick them up one by one from the counter and carefully examine them.

‘Are some better than others?’ Charles asked with interest.

‘T’ isn’t that,’ said the assistant. ‘Little perishers of kids are always coming in here and setting the ruddy things. You’d never believe the times they’ve gone off on my fingers.’

Charles reluctantly caught a few of the marauders and then the remaining peas grew too big for mice to bother with and he was able to discard the traps. Seeley caught a few mice, too; he was quicker at it than Solomon, though he had the same capacity for letting them get away. Sheba had been a tremendous mouser in her time, but she didn’t bother with it much now, so we were most intrigued by her behaviour one morning. Seeley had caught a shrew – and, to my relief, had promptly lost it, so I didn’t have to go to the rescue. Sheba sat languidly by, apparently not even looking.

That was for Chil dren; her mousing days were Past; she couldn’t be bothered with such Trivia, her expression implied. I was absolutely amazed, therefore, when Charles came in a while later and said that Sheba, who hadn’t been outside the gate in ages, was out in the lane with Seeley and they were watching for mice side by side. ‘What on earth do you think that’s in aid of?’ I said. ‘He’s probably told her that he keeps losing them,’ said Charles. ‘And she’s got him out there giving him a lesson.’

They were certainly fond of one another. When ever Seeley, returning from one of his expeditions, went running up to 156

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 156

25/05/2006 14:24:56

Doreen Tovey

her with his ‘Mrr-mrr-mrrr’ of greeting, Sheba would give him a deeper ‘Mrrr-mrr’ back. She was still his Number One pin-up girl, too. Often, when they sat together, he’d give a lick behind her ears like a doting parent tidying a child’s hair, and then he’d look at us most proudly. Not bad, Was She? he was obviously asking.

We learned how much she really meant to him, though, the day I put him in his cage on his own. They’d been going in there together daily for about six weeks without any fuss.

Indeed, it worked so well that Sugar and Spice’s owners had now put up a similar cage for them. That greyhound came to visit so often, they said, they couldn’t stand the strain.

This was one of Sheba’s off-days, however. She didn’t fancy her breakfast. She wanted to sleep on our bed. So we decided to let her stay there and, as it was a sunny day and it seemed a shame to keep him indoors, to put Seeley in the cage on his own. Immediately he was in there he began to howl. ‘Because Sheba isn’t with him,’ I said. ‘When I’ve finished these letters I’ll let him out and keep an eye on him.’ By the time I’d done the letters, however, Seeley had let himself out. Unable to get through the laced-up corners, he climbed the wire and, while clinging to one of the front support poles, had chewed a hole clean through what was supposed to be an unbreakable nylon net. Very intelligently done it was, too, with every thread that mattered chewed in a determinedly straight line.

Now he’d discovered how to do that, I said, we’d have to put the cage up permanently, with a proper wire roof. We didn’t, though. Next day Sheba was her normal self so, pressed for time as usual, I mended the hole with string, put them both in there temporarily, expecting Seeley 157

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 157

25/05/2006 14:24:57

The New Boy

to chew through the net within min utes – and he just didn’t bother. He simply sunned himself happily there with Sheba, occasionally rolling on the rug or getting up to swat a fly, as if the idea of escape had never entered his head. And now – if, as she often does, Sheba goes into the cage voluntarily (it being sheltered in there and strategically placed to catch the sun), Seeley is usually right behind her. Just as, in bygone days, Solomon would have been.

They make a happy picture together, and there is no doubt that he has done her tremendous good. Without him we would probably have lost her – instead of which a few weeks back, for the first time in years, Sheba rushed skittishly up the damson tree. We had to fetch the ladder to get her down, but not on account of her age. It was midnight and, sitting up there talking to us, Sheba would have tantalised us for hours.

She could climb better than Seeley could, Couldn’t She? (I’ll say she could. She was right at the very top.) It was Difficult getting up to her, wasn’t it? (It certainly was, on a dark night with a torch.) She’d made us give her lots of Attention, hadn’t she? demanded Sheba when we finally got her down. And indoors, watching frustratedly from the window, sat Seeley.

Wanted to be up the Tree with Sheba! he bawled.

Well, that was really something, said Charles as we carried her in. Who’d ever have thought we’d see her act like that again? She was good for a good few years yet, he reckoned… Which reminded him, what about fixing up that holiday? We’d better ring the Francises and find out when they could take the cats. He bet they’d be looking forward to meeting Seeley.

158

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 158

25/05/2006 14:24:57

Doreen Tovey

Annabel was going to our local farm, where she’d stayed when we were on holiday ever since we’d had her. That marked the passing of the years with us, too… from the time when she was so tiny they’d fenced her off from the cows and she’d crawled indignantly under the barrier and put the herd to flight. There was the year they’d put her in with the heifers… the year they’d put her in with the older cows… The previous year had marked Annabel’s supremacy, when we’d come back and found her in charge of the bull. ‘Call her from the gate, mind,’ said Mrs Pursey when we went to fetch her. ‘William’s pretty docile, but it’s always best to be sure.’

William is another character. Earlier that spring he’d been out in the field adjoining the road with his wives and, as Farmer Pursey believed in locking him in every night for safety (not that William was dan gerous but some fool might let him out), one of the features of the local scene had been Farmer Pursey calling him at about five o’clock every evening and waving a mangold, and William, who loves mangolds as dearly as Seeley loves turkey, sprinting across the field and following anticipatorily through the gate, across the road and down to his shed in the farmyard.

One Saturday afternoon, however, Farmer Pursey went to a football match and wasn’t back by five o’clock. William waited and waited and waited. After about twenty minutes the bellows of a bull urgently demanding his mangold began to rend the air. We heard the noise down in the Valley and wondered whatever it was. And finally William, refusing to wait any longer, broke through the hedge. Not, fortu nately, into the road, but into a neighbouring garden where, when Farmer Pursey returned a short while later, William was 159

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 159

25/05/2006 14:24:57

The New Boy

still snorting and loudly demanding his mangold while the owners of the bungalow kept watch on him – not from any fear of his fierceness, but so that he shouldn’t run away.

This being William, it was no surprise to us when we went to the gate and saw him grazing meekly in the field with Annabel in full command. She was only about half as tall as he was but there she stood, queening it over him and a cow and two calves like Cleopatra in the land of Egypt.

It was a good thing we didn’t go into the field, at that. He followed her right to the gate.

What she’d get up to this year, goodness only knew. There was a new Scotch collie for her to play with, and Mrs Pursey always spoiled her. What Seeley would get up to at Halstock we didn’t know either, and we certainly weren’t looking forward to the journey. Howling all the way, said Charles, shuddering at the very thought. But he bet he’d like it when he got there… Remember the first time Solomon and Sheba went there as kittens, he said, and they’d liked the earthbox so much they’d gone to sleep in it?

I remembered. I remembered so many things. We were right in having Seeley. He has been good for Sheba. He has been good for us. The household is normal once more.

Even as I have finished this book I have seen something I never expected to see again. Seeley and Sheba sitting side by side in the kitchen, their tails affectionately crossed.

If, sometimes, I look across to where the daffo dils are and say ‘Oh, Solomon… Solomon… Solomon…’… nobody ever hears me. I whisper it to myself.

160

The New Boy_INSIDES.indd 160

25/05/2006 14:24:57

Document Outline

Cover

Copyright

Also by Doreen Tovey:

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN