Wednesday morning was when Mrs Binney gave me her opinion, overheard as he came up the lane by my neighbour Father Adams, who called out to me to take no notice of she, she'd put the damper on th' Angel Gabriel hisself if he listened to her, to which Mrs B. replied that he was a daft old fool and marched up the hill in high dudgeon. Wednesday I spent reflecting on how right Mrs Binney probably was – about Shantung, at any rate. And on Wednesday evening something happened.
I was sitting in an armchair sewing. Saska lay curled in the opposite one, his black whip tail over his nose. Between us, on the sofa, was the cat basket – from which, after a while, there stealthily emerged the small white figure of the May Queen. She paused, studying the recumbent form across the way. The Big Cat was obviously asleep. Paw by paw she crept along the sofa on to the armchair and crouched there, studying him intently. At that point he snored a resounding snore, woke up with a start, saw her looking at him practically nose to nose, and nearly hit the ceiling, after which he hid under the bookcase while the May Queen fled for her basket.
Next day, presumably having taken comfort from the fact that he hadn't eaten her so far, she ventured into the Snoozabed while he was in the garden house and stayed there when I brought him in. He made no attempt to frighten her, but sat on a nearby chair looking long-suffering. By Thursday evening they were walking past each other across the room – obviously deliberately, and obviously equally deliberately ignoring each other. And on Friday evening, washing up after supper, with the door to the sitting-room open so that I could rush to her rescue if need be, as they still showed no real sign of becoming friendly, I nearly dropped a plate with astonishment when something big and dark flashed past the open doorway closely followed by something small and white travelling like a midget express train.
Before I could move, they hurtled back in the opposite direction, Shantung whizzing along in front this time, ears flattened for lessened wind resistance, Saska bounding behind her in full chase. I peered furtively round the corner after them. Shantung, all six inches of her, had stopped and was sitting in the middle of the floor with a paw raised, daring Saska, advancing across the carpet on his stomach, to come One Step Nearer and she'd Bop Him – and Saska, everything forgotten save that he had a girl to play with again, was looking happier than he'd done in weeks.
One small hiccup barred the progress of the entente cordiale. Later that evening, ensconced in his favourite armchair with Shantung between his front paws, washing her fit to flatten her to show she was now one of the family, Saska slipped his tongue accidentally into one of her ears. The rest of her, having been around the place for nearly a week, had obviously acquired the cottage smell by this time and was acceptable. Protected by those enormous pyramids, however, the insides of her ears still bore the taint of other cats and places. He withdrew his tongue, curled back his lips in the familiar feline gesture of having just smelled something unbelievably awful, and said 'Tchaah' again – which could have set things right back to square one but for the fact that Shantung took no notice, presumably having decided that he was a bit potty and did that sort of thing from time to time, or else that it was me he was swearing at. As she didn't respond to his Monster act he considered the situation for a moment, steeled himself, then shut his eyes and licked the inside of both ears thoroughly until they tasted right. Had to be done Some Time, he said – after which they curled together in a white and seal-coloured ball and went to sleep. Things at the cottage were apparently back to normal.
TWO
Not quite, they weren't. Saska, having been looked after for as long as he could remember first by his mother and then by Shebalu, obviously thought that was what female cats were for, and was anxious to re-establish the fact as soon as possible – to which end, having been accustomed to stretching out in the Snoozabed using Shebalu as a pillow, within no time I found him trying to do it with Shantung. She was so small he looked quite ridiculous, spread there like a big brown ink blot with only her tiny head poking out from underneath him. Time and again I rushed to rescue her only to find her purring like a barrel organ, obviously revelling in what she thought was his fond attention. I hoped she wouldn't complain if one day she came out flat, I told her.
The business of his washing her didn't last long, either. Within days she was washing him, and he was expecting it. It was a mammoth task. He used to sit upright for it and it looked as if she'd taken on cleaning the Post Office tower, but it didn't daunt her. As fragile looking as the delicate Oriental silk after which she was named, she reached up to lick his ears as if they were the stars on the twin pinnacles of her ambition – as they probably were. She had a Big Cat to herself. She was Important. Life was Blissful, she kept on telling me.
It was a complete transformation from the timid little scrap I'd first seen in Devon – as if she'd been kept under by the other cats she'd lived with and was now making up for lost time. She consistently climbed things, fell off them, ate things she shouldn't and told the world about it in the loudest voice I'd ever heard in a kitten. She even talked in her sleep. One of my most vivid memories of her kittenhood is of the two of them curled together in front of the fire in the Snoozabed – Shantung muttering dozily away with her eyes shut, Saska regarding her exasperatedly with one eye open. Shebalu never did that, said his expression.
It was during this period that she developed a quirk she retains to this day. She objects to my using a typewriter. I only have to get it out and set it on the small table by the fire and even before I begin tapping on it she will, without opening her eyes, start protesting in a staccato, Morse code-like voice at my doing Any Such Thing while she, with her Sensitive Hearing, is in the room. I am used to it now. I take no notice and eventually the nattering, not unlike the tapping of typewriter keys itself, subsides – but it was pretty off-putting when she started it as a shrimp-sized kitten. None of our long line of cats had ever done that before, either.
Out of doors presented more problems. Situated as the cottage is, in a valley surrounded by pine-clad hills, with the metalled lane ending at the front gate and other than that only rough bridlepaths for horse-riders and a few neighbours' cars to bump over, we used to consider it the safest of places for animals to live in. Then Seeley, Solomon's successor, went out one Sunday morning when he was six years old and was never seen again. He couldn't have been run over – we and our neighbours searched for days and we'd have found his body if he had been. Either somebody stole him or – for like all Siamese he was extremely inquisitive – he must have got into a parked car at the top of the hill or along at the pub and been carried off accidentally. If so, we only hoped, since nobody brought him back in answer to our advertising, that whoever found him looked after him and grew to love him as we had done. But after that we decided that never again would any of our cats be allowed to run free unless we were with them. To lose any animal is heartbreaking, and where Siamese are concerned, with their striking appearance and obvious value, the temptation to people without conscience is no doubt considerable. So we trained Shebalu and Seeley's successor, Saska, to collars and leads; they wore them when Charles exercised them in the morning while I was getting breakfast, or when we took them for walks in the forest; and we put up a chalet and large wire run in the garden in which, when the weather was good, they sunned themselves when we weren't on hand to keep an eye on them. After Shantung came I used to take Saska out for his walk and garden inspection on his lead, then put him in the run and keep Tani, as I soon started calling her, with me while I did the household chores, with occasional sorties on the lawn for kitten exercise where Mrs Binney usually caught up with us and delivered her dismal predictions. Then, when I thought they were sufficiently used to each other for Sass not to pounce on Tani in mistake for a fieldmouse, I started to take them into the garden together.
It would have been impossible to get a collar small enough for Tani, so as in my experience none of our cats, as kittens, had ever strayed far from whoever was with them, I let her and
Saska go loose – keeping close behind him so that I could grab him if he tried to make off. He didn't. Indoors, playing with Tani where only I could see him, was one thing. Outdoors he had his Siamese image to think of. So he pretended he didn't know her, stalking across the lawn or along the paths with aloof dignity while she pranced beside him like a furry yoyo trying to get his attention, or – a game she invented for herself as her legs grew longer – rushing up behind him as he walked and leap-frogging clean over him from back to front, which caused him only to swerve and stalk straight on, a look of resignation on his face, while she ran after him, gathering herself for the next leap.
Mrs Binney, watching with raised eyebrows, opined that she'd got St Vitus's Dance – a diagnosis which, as I was pretty sure that cats didn't get it, for once didn't worry me. Father Adams, who had once owned a Siamese himself – Mimi, who'd been given to him when her owner went abroad and whom he'd worshipped till the day she died – said nostalgically that he 'ouldn't mind a little 'un like that himself: minded him of his girl, she did. And Fred Ferry, our reputed local poacher who'd been interested in Siamese potential ever since he'd watched Saska, as a youngster, retrieving fir cones and fallen apples when I threw them and bringing them back to me, said he bet if she was trained she'd be a good rabbit catcher when she got older.
Mrs Binney, continuing her efforts on behalf of her son Bert, meanwhile took the opportunity to lean on the gate one day, remark how thin she thought Shantung was looking, and enquire in a lowered voice whether I knew that Mr Myburn had been complaining about 'they trees up thur'? The Myburns owned a bungalow whose garden and adjoining portion of field abutted on the top of the cottage orchard, and the four trees in question, which were in the orchard hedge, overhung a wooden shed on their property. One of my many maintenance worries had been whether the trees, which were old and gnarled, could possibly come down in a storm and cause damage for which I might be held liable – from which point my imagination carried me on to see myself faced with a large claim which I would be unable to pay. Mr Myburn would undoubtedly be in the line of fire when the shed collapsed, I'd have to sell the cottage, and the cats and I would end up living in a garret... all the things people like me are apt to imagine when so much as a roof tile comes off. The obvious solution was to have the trees taken down by an expert but I knew I couldn't afford that, so I'd done nothing, gone on worrying, and here was Mrs Binney playing on my fears.
Who had Mr Myburn complained to? I asked. 'Everybody,' said Mrs B. encouragingly. 'If they belonged to my Bert he'd take 'em down hisself,' she added, patently confident that if I could be persuaded into selling the cottage the orchard would automatically go with it. 'He says they could fall down any time.'
Glancing upwards to make sure they hadn't done it yet, I made my excuses, picked up Tani, withdrew into the cottage to worry some more, and that evening marched up to see Mr Myburn. I'd heard he was concerned about the trees in the orchard hedge, I told him. He said he was. Well, I volunteered, I couldn't afford to pay for them to be cut down professionally, but I was pretty adept with Charles's electric chainsaw, and if he would help me I thought I could take them down myself. How about it?
Help? he enquired, obviously not seeing himself as a woodsman. If I cut them straight down they certainly would come down on his shed, I explained. They needed to be sawn part way through, then pulled sideways with a rope so that they fell into his field. If he would just help with the rope after I'd tied it on... He could have the wood if he liked, I added. I couldn't possibly drag the trees back down to the cottage...
Brightening visibly at the prospect of a supply of winter logs Mr Myburn agreed, and the following Saturday morning saw me lugging an extending ladder up the steep hillside opposite the cottage to the orchard hedge; carting the chainsaw, its long cable and a can of chain oil up the same way; and bidding a soulful farewell to Tani and Saska, locked in their run with a notice on the door telling whoever it might concern whom to contact if I didn't come back – which, donning my riding hat and rubber boots and gloves (helpful, I understood, if one cut through the cable by mistake), I privately considered a strong possibility.
I thought Mrs Myburn might provide a cup of coffee before we started, but no. Mr Myburn stood ready wearing his rubber boots and a yellow construction worker's safety helmet which he'd presumably borrowed, Mrs Myburn peered apprehensively from the shelter of the bungalow doorway, and work was obviously expected to start right away.
With Mr Myburn's help I threaded the ladder from the top of the bank up through the intricacies of the first tree, climbed it, tied the top of it to a hefty branch for safety, fetched up the saw, primed the oil button and began cutting. Most of the branches dropped neatly into the field or over the hedge on the orchard slope. It was when I secured a long rope to a branch that overhung the shed, cut partly through it, got down and asked Mr Myburn to help me pull it sideways that Mrs Myburn sprang into action. 'No, darling! No!' she shrieked, rushing forward as if I'd suggested he jump off the Matterhorn. 'You mustn't! It's dangerous!'
When I pointed out that with two of us pulling on a thirty-foot rope, both feet on the ground and standing way beyond the range of the length of the branch, it was perfectly safe, but that I couldn't pull it on my own and if I cut right through the branch instead and just let it drop it would land on the shed, she capitulated. Hands clasped in prayer, she stood by as we pulled the branch sideways and Mr Myburn held it there while I shinned up the ladder and severed it completely. 'Oh, Leslie, you are brave,' she cooed while I climbed down and prepared to move the ladder.
We got all four trees down like that – first the branches, then the trunks – until a large pile of timber lay on the ground in the Myburns' field and their shed was out of danger. I hadn't the strength to cut the wood into logs for them, and I wasn't lending Mr Myburn my saw. One thing you have to do with an electric saw – which he didn't know, never having used one – is to press the oil button at very frequent intervals, otherwise the chain will dry out and the motor overheat. He'd questioned my pumping it as often as I did – they didn't do that with petrol ones, he said, his tone conveying that, as a woman, I didn't understand these things. Maybe not, but engine-powered saws work on a different oiling system, and I had no intention of having my electric one ruined. It was essential for the cottage wood supply for the winter. So I made the excuse that I had work to do with it later, trailed back down to the cottage with the equipment, took the notice off the cat-run door, telling them 'I'm back, chaps. We're all right for a while yet – I did it', and tottered indoors to have some bread and cheese before collapsing into an armchair. All afternoon I could hear Mr Myburn up at the top of the hill, industriously cutting logs with a saw borrowed elsewhere. Every now and then it stopped and, from the stuttering noises, proved difficult to start again. I hoped he understood the mechanism of that one.
One thing it did bring home to me was that as a widow I was indeed a social outcast as far as some people were concerned. Immediately after Charles's death many people had called offering sympathy, going out of their way to be friendly. 'It doesn't last,' I was told by other women who'd gone through the experience before me. 'People don't really want you when you're on your own. They soon start to drop you.'
How true that had turned out to be. In the old days, if Charles and I had been taking down those trees together, we'd have been asked in for coffee before we started. It would have been a friendly get-together. Now I was fended off as if I had the plague, or might expect further help with something.
The Myburns weren't the only ones, either. One couple, Rhona and Paul, with whom Charles and I had been very friendly – we played cards together regularly – actually told me, when we met by accident some weeks after his death, that they'd seen me one day in the supermarket in Cheddar but had kept out of my way. 'We thought you wouldn't want to talk to anybody,' they said.
What they meant was that they hadn't wanted to talk to me, and were only telling me now in case I'd happened
to see them. The only time we met again after that was when Rhona's mother, herself a widow, came to stay with them. I was invited over to tea, and to go and see a place they were thinking of buying. It seemed they had the idea of starting up a boarding cattery and kennels and had found an old house with large grounds and an attached barn that could, they said, be turned into a granny flat. Several granny flats from the size of it. If they could get planning permission Rhona's mother, parked docilely side by side in the back of their car with me as if we were already in our wheelchairs, was going to sell her own house in Essex, put the money towards the capital they needed, and have a flat with them. Did they hope I might consider doing the same? I wondered. I preserved an unimpressed silence, countered Paul's remark as I left that evening that the car I was driving – bought six weeks before Charles's sudden death – was too big for me with the reply that I needed it to pull our caravan, which I intended to go on using, and never heard from them again.
There was likewise a man who lived at the other end of the village but was grazing some goats in a field further past the cottage. He always used to stop and chat to Charles, but after his death would pass by, when I was in the garden, looking straight ahead and pretending not to see me – until the day when, after a tremendous gale during the night, I was standing on top of one of the big flat cottage gateposts, chainsaw in hand, preparing to deal with a branch of the damson tree that had split off from the main bough and was hanging like a vast, leafy curtain across the front gate.
More Cats in the Belfry Page 2