by Derek Tangye
He was a wonderful hunter of rabbits, and he had an earnest idea that these should always be brought into the cottage and left under my desk until I had seen them. This behaviour was prompted by my enthusiasm for the first rabbit he caught. It was a baby one and the incident took place within a month of his arrival at Minack; and because I was so anxious to see him settle down, my enthusiasm and that of Jeannie was far too vociferous.
I was writing a letter and never knew he had entered the room until I heard a soft jungle cry at my feet; and there was Monty, like a retriever, looking up at me with the rabbit beside him. He was inordinately proud of himself. He strode up and down the room as we praised him, with purrs loud enough for three cats, rubbing against us, then scampering back across the room to have another sniff. He never forgot the glory of this moment, and time and again we had to suffer a repeat performance. If we saw him coming we shut the door, and there was always plenty of time to do so. A rabbit was far too big for him to carry in his mouth, and he would pull it along on the ground. ‘Poor rabbit,’ Jeannie would say, dead though it was.
Monty never touched birds, except once when I saw him catch a wren which annoyed him. Wrens can be foolish and this one was foolish. They are so small that if they kept themselves to themselves no one need know their whereabouts; instead they proclaim their presence by the cross rattle of warning and, in spring, enjoy baiting any objects they dislike. There was Monty lying somnolent in the garden while a pair of Wrens rattled around him until he lost his temper and snatched one. I dashed forward, caught him, and put a hand to his mouth; and as I did so, he let the wren go and it flew safely away to a bush where it began its rattle again. And Monty went back to doze.
Monty’s docile attitude to birds met its response from them. They showed no fear of him. It was I, if anything, who felt fear. I was always waiting for the incident that never happened.
Monty, the hunter
12
I become vague when I try to isolate the years. I would like to have them arrayed in my mind in neat compartments but I find instead they merge into each other, and incidents connect themselves by haphazard association rather than by dates. Thus the flower seasons here at Minack, each of which has a slow moving yet mounting dramatic entity of its own, become dissolved in my mind into all flower seasons. The hours I have crouched weeding anemones or picking violets, lugging baskets of daffodils to the packing shed, rushing the flower boxes in the morning to Penzance station, these hours do not belong to one year but to all years. So also appear the storms that have battered Minack, and the lazy pleasure of hot summer days, the first scent of the may, the arrival of the chiffchaffs, the wonder of an angry sea with a fishing boat fighting for home. I have grown older not by passing each incident as if it were a milestone, but by being absorbed by them.
As Monty grew older his contentment was so obvious for all to see that we felt part of it. If something had gone wrong, if we had suffered some defeat which left us despondent, the sight of his magnificent person poised perhaps on some wall with the sun glinting his red bracken coat, his head alertly surveying the scene around him, would be enough to quell our momentary fears. His example was a positive contribution to the life we had chosen for ourselves.
I suppose it was this contentment that produced in him his calm attitude to birds. There was no need for him to kill for the sake of killing because he had so much else to do and, for that matter, so much else to think about. He was a great thinker. We have seen him so many, many times blinking away in the sun, not asleep, not awake, sitting upright with paws bunched, a shining white shirtfront, tail round his haunches, the tip flicking delicately. ‘Look at Monty,’ Jeannie would say, ‘He’s having his million and one thought.’
And while he was contemplating, the birds would be hopping around him. We had a bird table in the pocket garden opposite the front door and inevitably the crumbs we put on it used to be blown off on to the ground; neither Monty nor the birds were perturbed as they collected them. Of course if you live in the country you are certain to make friends with individual birds which respond to your approach with more trust than others. In our case we had two particular friends who hopped around Monty collecting the crumbs whom we called Charlie and Tim.
Charlie was a chaffinch and Tim a robin, and they both treated Monty as if a cat were the most harmless thing in the world. Charlie was a bossy character who, in the spring and summer, used to follow us around cheeping all day. Even a bird’s voice can sometimes sound too persistent and we used to chafe Charlie for the monotony of his cry. A gentleman chaffinch, if you look at it closely, is a beautiful bird. There is a touch of the tropics about its plumage of slate-blue, pink, chestnut, black-and-white wings and tail; only its voice is humdrum. Thus Charlie’s voice as he perched on certain favourite places was a high-pitched note repeated over and over again, until I marvelled sometimes that Monty was not irritated into action.
He would hop, for instance, at the entrance of the flower house while Monty was dozing on a bench and we were bunching the daffodils, piping away on and on until in exasperation I would say: ‘For goodness’ sake, Charlie, think up another song.’ Or he would perch on a certain stunted old apple tree under which in the lush grass Monty used to like to slumber; there would lie Monty curled in a ball while above him, with the monotony of a pneumatic drill, sang Charlie. But it was when we sat out of doors having breakfast or lunch that Monty was put most to the test.
We used to sit on a white seat, the scent of a verbena bush pervading the air, the sea in the distance, Monty at our feet, and Charlie a few yards away on the gravel path determinedly demanding crumbs from our plates. Nor would Charlie be alone, for he would have with him the dim little person who was his wife; and thus Monty had two to look at, to be tempted by, and yet to ignore.
In winter Charlie was a more silent individual, as if the summer had consumed his song. His feathers would lose their sheen, he would crouch rather than perch on a branch as if days were made to be borne instead of enjoyed. Sometimes he would disappear for weeks on end, and there was one winter when he was so long away that we made up our minds that he was dead. We missed his perky presence. We regretted our rudeness about his voice. We yearned to see his busy little nature once again. And we did. In the spring he suddenly appeared one day in the wood while Jeannie was feeding the chickens, the same old song, the same old Charlie, bossy as ever.
Tim was a gentle robin, if you can think of a robin as gentle. At least we ourselves never saw him attacking another or trying to assert his personality at the expense of other birds. Charlie would drive him off the bird table at any time. Tim simply did not fancy a battle. He preferred to wait cunningly until Charlie had had his fill, then he would return and stay there until perhaps a tomtit would harshly tell him to go; Tim, in fact, believed in appeasement. This possibly was the reason why he liked so much to be indoors with us, or in the flower-packing shed when we were there. He found life less troublesome, felt safer, if he sat on a corner of my desk, despite the fact Monty might be wandering about the room. It was a remarkable sight seeing Tim on the back of a chair while Monty was on the chair itself. Or looking for crumbs on the carpet while Monty lay stretched by the stove. Or just flying around the room while Monty appeared not to take the slightest notice. Of course, Monty knew he was there. He observed Tim out of the corner of his eye, but it was an eye that never had the suspicion of a glint.
Yet Tim at times became so overconfident that he seemed to be going out of his way to court attack from Monty. I remember him once in the flower-packing shed standing delicately on one leg on the cup of a daffodil that rose from a galvanised pail. The pail was with others on the floor and there was Monty threading his way between them until he reached the spot where Tim was on the daffodil looking down on him, while a paw stretch away he was looking up at Tim; but neither bothered to show any interest.
The height of Tim’s foolishness was when he urged his lady of the year to build a nest at ground level a
mong a bed of polyanthus. Heaven knows what caused him to choose such a place because it was in an area fifty yards from the cottage which Monty had found a particularly fruitful hunting ground. Perhaps Tim had done so because it was so near to the packing shed, which meant he could have an idle time indoors without being too far from his mate. Anyhow I found the nest while I was picking the polyanthus, flushing the mate away as I did so.
At that moment, I saw Monty coming towards me, walking earnestly between two rows of plants, tail erect, a benign expression on his face which suggested that for some reason I was particularly popular. This was a moment to enjoy, not to spurn, but I hastened towards him, swept him up in my arms and carried him, now cross, away to the cottage. Then I returned with bamboo sticks and a coil of wire netting and proceeded to encircle the nest in a cage. It looked safe when I had finished, but my activities had upset even Tim. The nest was never used again.
A third friend was Hubert the gull. He was far too superior, of course, ever to use the bird table, and he would stand on the rim of the roof waiting for us to throw food to him. Quite often Charlie would be there too, hoping to pinch a bite from under Hubert’s beak; and Charlie would look ridiculous, so tiny beside Hubert yet so importantly awaiting us, that I used to call out: ‘Charlie seagull is up on the roof!’
Our postman saw them up there together one day, and he told us the story of a seagull at Mousehole who paraded every day on a certain balustrade. A sparrow used to like it there too for visitors passed frequently by, and thus the sparrow and the seagull were regularly fed. One day, however, after the end of the season when the visitors had gone and food was no longer thrown to them, the gull suddenly eyed the sparrow, waddled quickly towards it, snapped it up and swallowed it whole. For a while after hearing that story we kept a watch on Hubert when Charlie was up there alongside him . . . just in case.
Hubert behaved towards Monty in his large way as Charlie and Tim did in their small way. Monty himself, at first, was not sure of him. Hubert would sweep down from the roof, land on the path and advance towards Monty who retreated nervously, looking round every few seconds and curling his mouth in a soundless snarl. I feel sure Hubert had no intention of attack. He was curious perhaps. He succeeded, however, in those first weeks after his arrival at Minack in establishing a moral superiority for a while over Monty.
Yet if a cat and a gull can like each other these two did, or at least they learnt to tolerate each other. I have seen them both on the flat rock that stretches out from one side of the cottage like a sacrificial stone, Monty at one end, Hubert at the other, and neither of them appeared to be perturbed.
Hubert never behaved so calmly when another gull arrived on the roof. The roof was his personal kingdom and if a gull swooped down and settled at one end, Hubert exploded in fury, half ran, half flew towards it, lunged out with his beak, then sailed into the sky in a storm of squawks chasing the offender this way and that until both disappeared over the fields towards the sea. A few minutes later he would return, fluff out his feathers and be at peace again as king of the roof.
There were times when Monty was certainly jealous of him. During those meals outside when Charlie and his squeak were ignored, Monty would watch Hubert suspiciously as he stood with the presence of an eagle a little way off; and as soon as he began to come too close, Monty would advance timidly but surely until Hubert decided it was wise to retreat. But it was when Hubert accompanied us on our walks that Monty became most annoyed, for he liked to have us to himself on these occasions and Hubert spoilt his pleasure.
Hubert would leave the roof as we set off down the lane, come swooping low over our heads, then up again into the sky, wheeling with the grace of a swallow; and when he came low again, his wings hissing the air with their speed, Monty would crouch and look up and glare. At other times we would be wandering around our meadows and fields with Monty trotting along with us when Hubert would dive from the sky, land on the ground twenty yards away, then strut on a parallel course; or if we had paused he would remain stationary, looking at us as if he were saying to himself, ‘I wonder what they are up to?’ These moments particularly infuriated Monty. He would begin to creep along the ground, stalking Hubert as he would a mouse, getting nearer and nearer, making a weird noise which was neither a growl nor a miaow. It was a comical sight. Both knew there would be no attack. Both knew the parts they had to play. It was a question of split-second timing. As soon as Monty had arrived within a few feet, Hubert, to save him the embarrassment of coming any nearer, flew off.
In spring, Monty’s thick coat began to moult and we used to give him a daily combing. He would lie on my lap as I traced the comb up and down his back, on his sides and up around the jowls of his neck. He loved it. He purred happily until I turned him over and began the same task on his underparts. There would now be silence except for a series of little grunts. He found it awkward to purr on his back.
And when it was all over I would collect the silky fur in my hand, go outside and throw it into the wind. It floated into the air, soaring and billowing, eddying in the end to some thorn bush or tussock of grass or entangling itself in the sea pinks on the wall. It did not stay in any of these places for long. The fur was much sought-after. Most nests around Minack were lined with it.
Monty suns himself
13
As the years went by we became increasingly sensitive to the hazards that faced Monty. In the beginning we were so content with our new way of life that we foresaw the possibility of trouble neither for ourselves nor for him. Then, as the nature of our struggle became clear, we realised that we were going to have anxiety as well as contentment. The defeats and shocks we suffered, the lost harvest of daffodils, a field of beautiful anemones destroyed in a night by a southerly gale, a drought at a time when moisture for cliff potatoes was vital, brought home to us the extent of the battle in which we were engaged. Hence there were times when nervousness was substituted for calm and the foolish mood of anticipating trouble created unnecessary fears.
This foolish mood developed one evening at dusk when I saw an owl chasing Monty, diving at his upturned startled face as if it were aiming to peck out his eyes. I rushed forward shooing it away, only for it to come back ten minutes later, and again the following evening, and the evening after that. I treated it as Monty’s enemy, obsessed with the idea that it might blind him. ‘That damn owl is there again,’ I would say, and hasten to frighten it away.
Jeannie’s attitude towards it was quite different. She viewed my actions as utterly stupid and whenever I hurried to perform them she would crossly say: ‘Leave it alone. It’s perfectly harmless . . . it’s fond of Monty.’ This streak of romanticism had its origin in her childhood when she first came upon the rhymes of Edward Lear. A famous one had caught her fancy and she now saw the opportunity of watching its particular theme come to life.
The owl and the pussy cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat.
They took some honey and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The owl looked up to the stars above
And sang to a small guitar:
‘Oh lovely pussy, oh pussy my love,
What a beautiful pussy you are, you are,
What a beautiful pussy you are.
Nothing would shake her conviction that the owl pursued Monty out of a curious kind of affection; and I had to admit when several weeks had passed and no unpleasant incident had occurred that my fears were probably groundless. I refused to accept, however, that the owl liked Monty; and yet there were certain features of the relationship which were a puzzle. The tawny owls at Minack, and this was a magnificent tawny owl, nest at the top of the elms which surround a meadow close to the cottage. Very few cats could climb the specially favourite elm, and Monty was certainly not one of them. But the annual nest in this elm, just a cleft in the tree trunk, was a very foolish one and, usually, one or other of the nestlings would fall out. I would find one on the g
round, a bundle of white feathers and two large unhappy eyes, and then laboriously climb up the tree and replace it beside its fellow. During this particular spring, however, I found no bewildered baby owl and as, later in the summer, I frequently saw the two sitting together like identical twins on various trees in the wood, it was clear no casualties had occurred. Hence Monty, against his nature and in a fit of madness, could not have climbed the elm and attacked the nest or killed a fallen nestling. He had, in fact, done nothing to incur the ire of the parent.
Yet there it was, the owl haunted him. It pursued him like a large dog with wings, swooping up and down as he walked innocently down the lane, cracking the evening air with its harsh cries of kewick, kewick. Nor would it leave him alone if he were happily curled on a chair indoors. It wanted Monty to be out with him. It would demand his presence by perching on the wall outside the front door harshly repeating again and again kewick, kewick. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Jeannie would smile and say. And I would reply abruptly: ‘For goodness’ sake don’t be so whimsy.’
In the end I learnt to take the relationship for granted. It went on throughout the summer and as I never saw the owl make a direct attack on Monty I lost my concern that it might do him harm. But there was one incident which surprised me. I was coming up the path from the cliff one evening when there was still another hour or two of daylight, when on turning the corner close to the cottage I saw the owl perched on the back of the white seat. It stared unblinkingly back at me, incongruous in such a daylight setting as if it belonged to another world. But what surprised me was that Monty was only a few feet away, lying comfortably like a Trafalgar lion in front of the seat. He saw me coming, got up and stretched, and walked slowly forward, while the owl heaved itself into the air and flapped off into the wood. I felt as if I had disturbed two people having a gossip.