He'd obviously got the idea from a report in the papers at the time about a man proposing to cross the Atlantic in a barrel. It didn't come off – the authorities prevented him doing it – but Miss Wellington had no doubt read about it too, and the possibility of my trying something equally stupid must have seemed credible to her.
Down she came, the afternoon of the day the Friendly Hands trip went off, when as luck would have it I was scrubbing the sails, spread out flat on the lawn, while the cats, to be companionable, were sitting one in each cockpit of the canoe, for all the world as if they were ready to take off. Our previous cats had often sat in the canoe like that when it was on the lawn for cleaning. There is nothing Siamese like better than being involved in what is going on. It would have been more unusual if they hadn't been sitting in it.
But Miss Wellington rushed through the gate, threw her arms round my neck and burst into tears, causing Tani to bolt for the cottage. Saph stayed where he was and yelled 'Waaah' at her in greeting, but Miss Wellington had other things on her mind. 'Don't do it,' she sobbed imploringly. 'You mustn't do it. Think of the poor little cats.'
'Do what?' I enquired. 'I'm only scrubbing the sails. That isn't going to hurt them.'
It came out then. What Fred Ferry had said. And Mrs Binney had told her Bert was hoping to get my cottage. And I always had been adventurous. Look how Charles and I had gone to the Rockies searching for grizzlies. But I mustn't think of doing such things now, without him. He wouldn't like it.
I put her right on all counts. I wasn't going anywhere, I assured her. I noticed, though, that when I'd sold the canoe – I advertised it in the paper that weekend and someone bought it the following Monday (a man wanted it to sail with his young son on the Somerset rhines, as Charles and I had done, and I couldn't think of a better future for it) – I noticed that no sooner had it gone up the hill on top of the purchaser's car, its yellow warning streamer fluttering from its stern, than Miss Wellington came pattering down the hill to look over the gate. To make sure I was still there?
That same week, while I was watching over the cats in the garden one morning, a little man arrived who'd been coming through the valley almost daily for quite a time, on what seemed to be a regular walk around the forest. He always stopped to pass the time of day with me and admire the cats. He liked gardening and he loved cats, he told me regularly, while Tani equally regularly fled indoors growling and Saphra, crouching, fixed him with a suspicious look and said he didn't believe him.
He was short, pompous – another Mr Tooting. I found him boring, but he would stay and talk. He was a comparative newcomer to the village and he lived on the Fairview estate – a widower, he informed me. He watched me for a while that particular morning as I nipped about in the wake of Saph, dead-heading a rose here, pulling a weed out there, crook in my hand ready to field the Menace should he try to take off. 'What you need is a man about the place,' he said suddenly in a sympathetic voice, leaning confidentially over the gate.
I nearly jumped out of my gumboots. Was there no peace anywhere? Mrs Binney. Miss Wellington. Now him. So far as I was concerned there was nobody in my life but my tall, handsome Charles. Never had been. Never would be. I hoped he was, indeed, waiting somewhere for me in the wings. Perhaps I misjudged my visitor's intentions, but I wasn't taking any chances. I had no desire to be thought another Mrs Binney. 'I've just acquired a very good handyman,' I told him icily. He stood for a moment, then walked on up the lane. He never came past again.
I had indeed acquired a handyman. His name was Bill, he was an ambulance man, and he did household repairs in his spare time. He lived ten minutes away by car and had been recommended by friends, who said he was a good, quick worker – not like Mr Panting, the awful old man I'd employed before, who dragged every job out to its limit. He didn't charge fancy prices and genuinely liked helping people. There was only one thing, said my friends. Never let him do any indoor decorating. He went at everything at the speed of sound, and if he was painting a door, for instance, he never put a dust sheet or even newspaper on the floor. Just worked away feverishly, splashing paint in all directions, then trod happily and obliviously through it afterwards.
I remembered that. He did a lot of jobs for me but I never let him work indoors. Even outdoors, however, his speed was apt to run away with him. Whatever he came to do he would belt down the hill as if answering a 999 call, leap out of his car, shoot down the path, rope me in as assistant, and within minutes be deep in the job, usually without giving me a chance to change out of my slippers. The first time he came to my rescue was when a length of rotten facing board fell off the apex of the cottage roof, and I noticed a crack in the wall beneath it.
I had called a builder who shook his head and said that was going to be some job. He'd have to bring along his brother-in-law, a roofing specialist, to do it – but he could tell me himself it would entail taking off the overlapping row of tiles, renewing the wooden tile supports, moving the bathroom downpipe to investigate the depth of the crack, filling it in and re-whitewashing the wall. 'And how much will that cost?' I asked, fearing the worst. He couldn't say exactly, he answered. Five hundred pounds. Maybe more. Scaffolding cost a lot to hire.
'Scaffolding?' I echoed. 'Can't it be done with a ladder?' Not with the conservatory built against the wall, he said. It'd need scaffolding to cover the sloping glass roof underneath. Nobody'd go up there otherwise.
That was when I went to my friends, who rang Bill for me on the spot. He'd come over the next evening, he promised. I went home and he turned up within half an hour – found he had time before supper so he'd just popped over, he explained. 'Do it this weekend,' he said, surveying the job. 'Got any planks that'd go over that glass?'
The conservatory had been designed by Charles, with stone-built walls front and back and a glass roof sloping down between them. Across the lane, in Annabel's old stable, were five long, wide, three-inch thick planks. Placed side by side on top of the walls they formed a solid platform over the glass. Charles, a stickler for safety, had stood ladders on the platform with complete equanimity when painting the side of the cottage himself. That was why I'd boggled when the builder mentioned scaffolding.
'Ah,' said Bill when I told him. If I could help him across with a plank he'd take a closer look at what wanted doing. Then he'd tell me how much it would cost.
I helped him across with one plank, we raised it and positioned it, and I asked should we fetch the rest. 'One'll be enough,' said Bill airily. I closed my eyes as he leaned a ladder against the conservatory wall, climbed it and got on to the plank. I watched heart in mouth as, sure-footed as a mountain goat, he hauled the ladder up behind him, leaned it against the upper cottage wall, went up it and examined the roof-edge, the woodwork and the crack. Came down, dusted his hands and said the tile supports were solid. All it needed was a new piece of weather-boarding, cement filling, painting and a coat of whitewash. 'Seventy pounds all right for the lot?' he asked.
Was it! I died a thousand deaths as he did the job, managing with only one plank. I nearly did myself a mischief, too, handing up hammers, nails, buckets of cement and, when that was done and dry, mixing the whitewash. But we did it. This was some time back, of course, when prices weren't as high as they are today. But seventy pounds instead of five hundred… Bill was factotum at the cottage from that time on, even if it did mean making more cups of tea than I'd ever brewed in my life. He drank tea as most people breathe. There was also the business of always turning up like a whirlwind, invariably in advance of when he'd arranged, and consistently incorporating me as handyman's assistant. But one can't have everything.
Thus it was that when the septic tank backfired (the outlet blocked, and I couldn't have a bath, and I phoned Bill one chilly summer's evening, and he said he'd only just come home – hadn't had his supper, but he'd be over the next day definitely)... there I was in sheepskin slippers, relaxed for the evening, a quarter of an hour later when Bill zoomed down the lane, screeched to a
stop outside the cottage and rushed in asking 'Where's the end of the run-off, then? And where d'you keep the drain-rods?'
Before I had time to breathe he and I, still in my slippers, were heaving the heavy railway sleepers off the top of the pit that Charles had constructed years before on the far side of the lawn so that the outflow pipe from the septic tank could be rodded. One got down into the stone-walled pit, found the end of the pipe threaded the rods along it, heaved them backwards and forwards till the silt blockage began to give – then leapt for dear life as the pit suddenly flooded. I nearly lost my slippers and it started to rain, but we did it, lifted the sleepers back on, laid the drain-rods in the stream to wash themselves clean, and Bill said he'd best be getting back for his supper. I said he shouldn't have bothered, I could have waited till tomorrow. Well, the meal hadn't been quite ready, he said. And he hadn't liked to think of me being unable to have a bath. Now I could go and have one.
I needed one by that time, after battling with the drain-rods, but I didn't like to say so. How much did l owe him? I enquired instead. 'Would a fiver be all right?' he asked.
It would have taken a long time to make his fortune at the prices he charged, but he insisted that he liked giving people a hand. He gave many a hand to me. As fast as he helped restore my peace of mind, however, Saphra seemed intent on demolishing it. I'd never had a cat like him.
It seemed that heredity had something to do with it. Saska, his predecessor, had been dastardly enough. And Saska had inherited his intelligence and Machiavellian ways from his father Saturn Sentinel, Pauline Furber's stud cat, of Killdown descent, who was known for passing his individualism on to his offspring. Saphra's pedigree had had to be sent on to me by post – his breeder had run out of pedigree forms when I bought him. I knew he was a grandson of Saturn Sentinel, and Saska's nephew on his father's side – but it wasn't until I got his complete pedigree by post a week later that I discovered he was also descended from Saturn Sentinel on his mother's side. What I'd got – I wouldn't have changed him for worlds, but I did blench slightly when I realised it – was a kitten with Saska's lineage on both sides. Was Saphra going to be twice as intelligent as Saska had been – and twice as dastardly?
Twice as dastardly seemed to fit the bill. And being brought up by a parrot hadn't helped. There'd already been the business of Langford and the purple towels. And then he went absent without leave.
I couldn't bring myself to put him on a lead. It would have been like trying to harness a grasshopper. Instead I trailed him like a shadow, which took up a lot of my time, though he didn't seem to appreciate the attention. WAAAH, he would complain when I stopped him going out under the gate. Why didn't I go and follow Tani? Because Tani was sitting contentedly on the lawn, that was why – watching a butterfly on a clover flower, and dreaming. WAAAH, he would protest, when I lifted him off the garden wall. The grass was better out in the lane. Why couldn't he have some of it? WOOOH he would howl when, for the umpteenth time, I hauled him down from the cat-house roof from which he had the obvious intention of jumping off on to the hillside behind the cottage and setting off to explore the forest. Couldn't a cat have any Freedom?
The answer was no, so long as I was around. I remembered the awfulness of losing Seeley. The day came, though, when after sitting for ages in front of the clump of ferns by the front gate in case a shrew came out, he jumped up on to the gatepost and from there out into the lane. He'd done it before and had never run away. Just stayed in the lane looking interestedly around until I picked him up and brought him back into the garden, telling him a quarter of an acre was enough for any cat, to which he usually replied with a thwarted WOW and went off to torment Tani.
This time, however, I was just about to pick him up when he crouched flat, looking further up the lane. I looked, too. There was a black and white cat standing, startled, in front of Annabel's stable. Even as I made a grab for Saphra he slipped through my hands, heading like an arrow for the stranger. There was nothing of the Pleased To Meet You attitude with which he greeted humans. It was more like Here I Come With My Cutlass. In a flash the other cat had gone up the wall of Annabel's stable on to the orchard bank and, with Saphra hot on his heels, tail bushed to its fullest extent, disappeared into a sea of nettles.
I couldn't climb up on to the stable wall. The bank in front of it was too steep for a foothold. I had to run further up the lane to the orchard entrance, up a track between the apple trees, and along the overgrown path behind the table until I reached the nettlebed, which looked even more impenetrable at close quarters.
There was no sign of the two cats. Not a single leaf or weed-stalk moved. There was no sound. Why wasn't Saphra howling? His predecessors at the cottage used to wail like air-raid sirens when they met up with another cat. I could always track them by their voices. When any of them got chased up a tree or cornered somewhere, they always used to howl for me to come and rescue them.
Was Saph facing the intruder inside the nettles, where I couldn't see him, and battle might break out at any moment? Was the other cat, which I didn't recognise, hot-footing it for home – maybe miles away – and Saphra at that very moment following after him? Had he lost sight of the other cat and, his mind wandering as Siamese minds are apt to wander, was he ambling off, under cover of the nettles, on some other project altogether? Up to the farm field at the top, for instance, where I could hear machinery clanking – and Saph was interested in anything that moved. Supposing he got too near it?
My neighbours thought I was potty, I knew, to worry so much. Cats always came back, they said. They knew their way home. But Seeley hadn't come back. And I'd heard of cats being killed by farm machinery. And Saph had never been across in the orchard or up the hill – supposing he didn't have a homing instinct?
I did what I'd done for years, whenever a cat went missing. I couldn't go through the nettles – they were waist-high and covered too great an area. So I came back down to the lane and started my tour. Up the hill to the Rose and Crown, left up another hill to the top lane, back along that, looking down across the farm field to check there was no long-legged truant following the hay-mower, and beyond that, peering into the depths of my own wood. Calling 'Saffle-affle-affle', my diminutive for Saphra, as in years past I'd called 'Solly-wolly-wolly' and, to the cat who'd never come back, 'Seeley-weeley-weeley'.
Saphra didn't answer, but other people heard me calling. Fred Ferry, going along to the Rose and Crown, asked 'Cat gone missin' then?' as I passed him, which was pretty stupid as he obviously was, but it did mean Fred would spread the news along at the pub and somebody might spot him later. Miss Wellington came down the hill prodding the undergrowth with a walking stick, which was also still. Saph wouldn't wait there for her to poke him out, but at least she was trying to be helpful. Janet Reason said she'd take her retriever, Daisy, round the lane in the hope of tracking him down, but I didn't think that was likely. I couldn't see Saph coming unresistingly home in Daisy's mouth like a furry, long-legged pheasant.
For nearly two hours I circled that area of land; calling, looking, worrying. Nobody I asked knew of a black and white cat living anywhere in the neighbourhood. The two of them could by this time be miles away. Then, coming past Annabel's stable for the umpteenth time, looking across at the cottage case he'd returned by himself in the meantime, I suddenly spotted him. Ambling down the hill towards me: unhurried, confident, obviously knowing exactly where he was. He reached the bottom of the hill and looked towards me, but instead of coming along the lane to meet me he turned left and started down the other lane, where he'd have passed the Reasons' cottage. But Janet was out searching for him with Daisy and nobody could have seen him, and he'd have gone on to the remoter part of the valley. Was it coincidence that I'd returned at that very moment... or was it because I'd just been silently asking Charles for help? I hadn't asked at first. I only did it when I reached an impasse… and once again it had worked.
I ran after Saph, picked him up, hugged – never, ever, coul
d I be cross with him – and put him into the cat-run where Tani, the perpetual Good Girl, was sitting surveying the world as though he'd never been missed. He rushed up to her, bit her on the neck and said he betted she didn't know where he'd Been. Didn't Care, Either, said Tani, biffing him with a reproving paw.
TEN
She did care. She loved him in spite of his consistently treating her as if he were Tarzan – when, if I was around, she would scream blue murder for me to come and rescue her. Fond of being the Rescued Heroine, was Tani, although when she thought I wasn't looking she often bit him back to encourage him to do it again. He was over-rough with her at times, though, and a vet I knew who was an expert in cat behaviour suggested I should get a water-pistol. He'd used it to cure one of his own kittens who'd had a habit of biting, he told me. It would dissuade the offender, who would associate it with what he was doing when it was pointed at him and would realise it was better not to do it. The water wouldn't hurt him – it was just that he wouldn't like it.
So it proved. The most embarrassing part of the exercise was buying the water-pistol. I can still see the look on the assistant's face when I went into the toy shop and asked for one. 'For my Siamese cat,' I explained in case she thought I wanted to play with it myself, at which her eyebrows went even higher. She knew Siamese cats were odd, her expression said, but she really didn't believe they used water-pistols.
More Cats in the Belfry Page 9