More Cats in the Belfry (14 page)

  I got the earring repaired. After my years of living with Siamese cats I was an expert at mending things myself, or tracking down somebody who could. My cousin Dee happened to be going to jewellery classes at the time. Her tutor was a craftsman jeweller, and he repaired the earring as if it had never been damaged. It cost a pretty penny, of course, and what he thought when he heard a cat had done it is anybody's guess, but I put it down to experience, transferred the earrings to the cupboard above the wardrobe, and girded myself once more to face the fray.

  So passed the summer, with Saphra continually in trouble. I wouldn't have changed him for worlds, but the affairs of the village passed me by more or less at a distance. Certainly with very little impact. The Friendly Hands Club came back from their holiday jaunt, Mrs Binney not yet having officially landed her catch, though the general opinion of those who'd accompanied them was that it couldn't be very long now. Except, that was, for Fred Ferry's father Sam, who'd gone along the trip himself, arthritis and all, and whose comment was that that Tooting bloke was an adjectival twit and if Maude married he so was she.

  It seemed that Mr Tooting had tried to show Sam how best to mount the steps to a museum with the aid of his stick. Sam, having a temper like his son's – and more sense, he'd informed his would-be mentor, than any ruddy townie wearin' a piddlin' pig-keeper's hat – had poked Mr Tooting in the knee with the stick to move him out of the way, Mr Tooting had fallen down the steps, and the coach party had had its biggest laugh of the holiday. The two were not now speaking to each other, and another village feud was in existence.

  Nearer home, Poppy Richards had moved into her cottage and was busy settling in and interesting herself in local affairs. She seemed much more sensible than her sister, from what I'd seen of her. She liked Saphra and stopped to talk to him when she went by, and had been added to his list of friends.

  Still nearer home, down the lane past Father Adams, Janet and Peter Reason had added four geese and half a dozen ducks to the two horses, labrador dog and tabby cat they already owned, and things had livened up no end. The Reasons had a considerable amount of land, spreading up towards me in one direction and almost the whole of the rest of the way down the valley in the other. The lane, a rough-surfaced bridletrack, ran through the middle of it, fenced only where it passed the horses' field, and for the rest of its length open to the Reasons' low cottage terrace on the right-hand side and their large parking area and stretch of woodland on the other. A wonderful place for a swashbuckling gander and his entourage to wander abroad in, and wander and swashbuckle they did.

  Almost any hour of the day except after lunch, when they took a siesta on the sloping lawn above the terrace, Gerald the gander and his wives could be seen marching up the lane, down the hill, or past my side gate and up the forestry track, swaying from side to side like a quartet of outsize skittles, honking to let the world know they were coming and followed, like children trailing a Salvation Army band, by a huddle of quacking ducks.

  They ventured incredible distances – far up the lane beyond me, stopping to look in at the gateways of the two other cottages along the route and honk defiance at the Alsatian which thrust its head through a cat-flap in the door of one of them and barked; way up the hill to the farm where they would peer patronisingly in at the unenterprising farm geese in their paddock; on to the Rose and Crown on the corner, before turning, and parading slowly back. Always with Gerald in front like a standard-bearer and the ducks bringing up the rear. And, as the weeks went by and nobody opposed him, with Gerald growing more belligerent.

  He offered to fight Fred Ferry whenever they met on the hill. Fred, being a countryman and used to geese, merely swung his knapsack to fend him off and said 'Why dussn't thee go and pester Old Pans?' (Old Pans, incidentally, wasn't nearly as dim as Fred thought she was. When Gerald passed she was usually inside her gate with the bolt on, throwing bread across to land outside Fred's.) Any time walkers ventured down the lane to Gerald's own cottage he stood in the middle of it and dared them, and the walkers usually turned back. Aided by his army, too, Gerald had a wonderful time every Friday morning, when the men from the Council came to check the swallet.

  Our local swallet is in the stream bank further up in the forest, and when the stream swells after heavy rain the surplus water, in theory, goes down the swallet into underground caves and comes out, as has been proved by putting dye in it, in a village pond five miles away. If, however, the swallet is blocked by silt and stones brought down by the force of the water, the stream overflows its banks, rushes down like the Lynn in full spate, and washes away the lane surface.

  To prevent this, once a week two hefty Council workers parked their van outside my cottage, strolled up to the swallet carrying spades, cleared it of any blockage, ambled back checking the ditch for debris and overhanging brambles, went on down to the Reasons' to check there was no obstruction where the stream crossed the bridleway into the horses' field, then ambled back for a cigarette and an appreciative breath of valley air before heading off back to base.

  That was how it was before the coming of Gerald and his supporters. After that, the moment the Council van stopped outside, a procession would appear coming up the lane – a procession in a hurry this time: no time for honking – and when the men opened the van doors to get out they would find themselves confronted by four geese hissing away like steam jets against a backcloth of excited ducks. By dint of brandishing their spades the men would manage to get past them and up the lane to see to the swallet. It was when they returned that the real fun would start. As they passed the van and started down the Reasons' lane, the geese would emerge from behind my coal-shed, where they'd been waiting, and close in behind them. Hissing, rattling their big orange bills, feinting with outstretched necks at the men's legs and having a whale of a time.

  One of the men was pretty good at avoiding them. The other, a big bearded man a good six feet tall, was scared stiff and usually ended up doing a sort of jig on the spot, surrounded by geese and ducks and yelling for help. When that happened, if Janet was home she would come to his rescue. If she'd gone to work then I'd go out, wave my crook at them and the geese would disperse. Laughing their heads off by the look of them. I never heard of them actually hurting anybody. And, as Janet said, she couldn't keep them shut in. She was away all day; they were there to eat down the grass; and eat the grass – and police the valley – they did most successfully.

  It was mostly the Council men they intimidated, but occasionally they had a go at me. Sometimes, if I was going to town, I would reverse the car out of the garage and park it in front of the cottage before I changed out of my jeans. Up would hurry the geese, ready for their favourite sport, and I would have to open an umbrella at them before I could get out. I kept a red umbrella ready on the passenger seat, and the sight of me backing behind it like a matador towards the safety of my front gate intrigued many a visitor to the valley. Visitors in cars, that was. Nobody would have ventured out on foot.

  If I was in the garden with the cats when the geese went by, Tani would bolt, stomach to the ground, into the cottage and hide under the sofa while Saphra, who was made of stronger stuff, watched from the garden wall. Protected by the stream which ran beneath him like a moat he would crouch, wailing defiance at them. He wasn't Afraid. He'd take on the Lot of Them. Just let them Try Anything, he'd howl, with a quick look over his shoulder to make sure I was at back-up position behind him.

  It took more than a Siamese cat to put Gerald and Co. in their place, however. Way down past Father Adams's, who surprisingly had no trouble with the geese himself (maybe Gerald knew better than to chance his luck with a real countryman), Peter Reason had constructed a pond for them at the side of the lane by damming the stream, and it so happened that my cousin Dee came out to tea one day, bringing her border terrier Tilly and her friend's cross-Bedlington bitch Tag, whom she was looking after while her friend was on holiday.

  We had tea on the lawn with the cats in their run for safety, bees humming in the lavender behind us, white summer clouds drifting like sailing ships over the grass-grown ramparts of the Iron Age fort on the hill at the end of the valley and a buzzard hovering silently overhead. 'No wonder you love it here,' sighed Dee relaxing in her chair. 'I can't think of any place on earth more peaceful.'

  She didn't say that half an hour later, when we went out to put the dogs in the car. Tilly, who'd been spayed the previous week and was being rather careful how she moved, stood by the car door waiting to get in. Tag, milling about at the edge of the stream, was sniffing the various scents, when she suddenly heard something down the lane. Her head came up, she saw big white wings flapping like tablecloths down at the pond, and she was gone like an arrow.

  'Tag!' Dee and I shrieked in terrified unison. 'Tag! Come back!' She dashed into the mêlée of geese, scattering them in all directions, and then, like the obedient dog she was, she did come back, trotting up the lane with her tongue lolling happily at the fun she'd had. Unfortunately she'd set the stage for melodrama. Roused by the hullabaloo Tilly, forgetting her stitches, tore down the lane, passed Tag without a glance, and jumped on the nearest goose, which immediately sank beneath the pond surface with Tilly on her back and stayed there.

  'Tilly!' we yelled, starting to run ourselves. As we reached the pond Tilly fell off into the water, scrambled ashore, and the goose popped up as if on water wings. Unfortunately not for long. Tilly jumped on her again, they went down like a submarine and its conning tower, and while we were still trying to get a grip on Tilly Janet came racing up from the stables, jumped into the pond, grabbed Tilly by her collar and threw her ashore. Up came the goose again, and beat it hastily for the opposite shore, where Gerald and the others were honking in circles.

  Wading out of the pond, Janet dealt Tilly a well-deserved slap. Dee, cuddling the miscreant in her arms, turned her back to shield her. 'Don't hurt her. She's just had a hysterectomy,' she wailed.

  'She should know better,' snapped Janet angrily. And we couldn't flaw that one. So she jolly well should.

  All the way up the lane Dee agonised as to what she should do. Go back and apologise to Janet? I'd do that, I said. Better for Dee to take the dogs home out of the way before anything else happened. Offer to pay damages? I'd pass the message on, I said. Though I really didn't think there'd be any.

  Dee safely away with the dogs – and was I glad to see the back of them – I went down the lane to see Janet. There was no sign of the geese. Only, over in a corner of the field by a ruined shed, something big and round and white lay half-concealed in a clump of nettles. Surely the goose hadn't died of shock? How on earth was I going to tell Janet? Coward-like, I didn't. Just apologised and asked how they were. I'd check on the way back, and if there was a defunct goose there I'd decide how to break the news to the Reasons later.

  Janet received me just as worriedly. The geese were all right, she assured me (she didn't know about that big white bottom up the lane). She was sorry, though, that she'd slapped Tilly. She'd done it in the heat of the moment. Tilly had deserved it, I said. I must ring Dee, though, and tell her to bath Tilly in a Dettol solution, Janet insisted. With a half-healed incision... one never knew what germs there were in duck-ponds. I promised that I would, came relievedly up the lane – especially when I'd looked more closely at the round white thing in the nettles and found it wasn't a dead goose only an old white enamelled bowl thrown there by some long-gone valley resident in the days before refuse collections – and went up to get the cats in for their supper.

  He wished he could have played with those dogs, said Saphra, who'd been sitting watching the whole thing in the cat-run. They knew how to have fun.

  Hadn't realised they were white slaver dogs, had he? observed Tani, emerging from the cat-house with the alacrity which was her wont when visitors had gone. It was a good thing she had Brains enough for Both of them.

S
he
was
clever. In a neat, precise little feminine way. I could imagine her knitting or organising kittens. But Saphra had moments of real inspiration and constructive reasoning, as when I threw his favourite toy mouse for him and he would pat it under the bureau then lie flat on his stomach peering underneath while I fished it out with an opened-out builder's ruler. That was the most interesting part of it for him – watching the ruler hook out the errant toy. He got round to carrying the mouse in his mouth to the bureau, pawing it deliberately underneath, then bawling for me to come and do the ruler business. This happened so often that I started to leave the ruler ready under the bureau and Saph had another constructive thought. That was what I'd used to get the mouse out. He'd never been able to work the water-pistol but he
could
wiggle the ruler, and wiggle it he did, one paw on the end of it, as he'd seen me use my hand, then rushing round to the front to see whether the mouse had appeared. Sometimes it had, and Saph was overjoyed, tossing it in the air in triumph before pushing it back to do the wiggling bit again. More often than not it hadn't, because he was wiggling the ruler blindly – but he'd reasoned out the connection and worked at it like an engineer manipulating a lever.