Cats in the Belfry (17 page)

  That was what he thought. Sheba and a handsome young vet was one thing. Sheba and ourselves was quite another.
He
could open an inch and a half of her tail with a scalpel and all she did was languish at him. We only had to pick up the bottle of Dettol and she was streaking up the hill to the Rector's like a comet, yelling to Hide her Quick, we were going to Torture Her.

  As if that weren't enough to put up with, Solomon met the same cat a day or two later in the lane, stalked up and stuck his neck out at him like an ostrich – instead of taking to his heels as any normal cat would have done – and promptly got slashed on the cheek. It was only a small cut – but doing Sheba's tail was a picnic to trying to see to that. She, after all, was very small and frail. If we could stop her getting out of the house we could, with Father Adams to help us, usually corner her somewhere and minister to her; even if it was flat on our stomachs under the table like a rugger scrum. But Solomon was so powerful even three of us couldn't hold him still. The cat book said the way to deal with an awkward cat was to clutch him by the scruff of the neck and press him firmly down on the table. But Solomon had so much scruff he could turn round inside it, with the remarkable result that while
we
were holding him by the back of the neck he was flat on his back waving his paws like a windmill. The only way we could cope with him was for me to drag him round and round the floor on my hands and knees pretending he was a kitten, and getting a dab in with the Dettol when I could.

  They had, needless to say, fully recovered by the time the grandfather clock arrived. The man who came to set it up laughed when I asked about having it hooked to the wall so that they couldn't knock it over. No, cats couldn't hurt that old beauty he said, affectionately patting its walnut sides. They'd made things to last when they made he.

  They had indeed. That clock, which had come to us on the death of my grandmother's brother, had belonged to my great-great-grandfather, and what with his years in the family shipping business in New York and his son's sojourn as a sheep-farmer on the River Plate it had done some travelling in its time. 'Twice round the Horn and the scars to show it,' great-grandfather used to say, after nostalgia for good old English beer and a couple of Victorian policemen to push him home on a barrow at closing time had brought him home to final retirement in the land of his birth. The scars were still there. Deep chips out of its base where it had slipped its moorings once in a gale and fallen, as great-grandfather himself was always doing, over his sea-chest. Neither great-grandfather nor Cape Horn, however, had ever subjected that poor old clock to the indignities it suffered at the hands of those cats.

  The man had no sooner hung the weights, set the pendulum with loving care and departed than they were on it like a gang of demolition workers. Sheba perched on top, sneezing indignantly because she had found a crack that hadn't been properly dusted, and Solomon – expert, from long practice with the pantry, at opening doors – with his head inside watching the works. It superseded all other interests. For a while even the joys of tearing up the stair carpet and sitting on cars were forgotten. When it struck they fell over one another in a mad dash to the hall in case the works were falling out. When I wound it up Sheba hung over the top dabbing at the hands while Solomon, with a triumphant howl, sprang up my back and stood on my head to join her.

  I worried when the weights were up in case the clock was top heavy and Sheba, leaping like a spawning salmon from the hall chest, might tip it over. When they were down I was scared of Solomon, whom we usually saw these days as two spidery back legs and a long black tail hanging out of the clock case, getting tangled up in them and being dragged inside. I worried so much that when we went out I took no chances either with the clock or the cats. In addition to tying up the window catches and putting newspapers on the stairs I now tied a piece of rope round the clock case so that Solomon couldn't open it, and dragged a heavy armchair against it so that Sheba couldn't knock it over.

  Eventually we found a key for the door and Charles screwed the clock itself to the wall. Not, however, before it had served as another example to the village of our being as mad as hatters. Usually the first thing I did when I got home was to restore the hall to normal, but one night, being particularly tired, I left it. That, naturally, was the night one of the village ladies called to leave a collecting envelope for charity. There was rather an odd look on her face when I explained the avalanche of newspapers at the bottom of the stairs, the rope tied rakishly round the clock and the armchair pushed hurriedly against its middle; particularly since at that moment the cats, busily eating their supper in the kitchen, were nowhere in sight. There was an even odder one when, half an hour later, she returned to pick up the envelope and saw that what I had said was true. One Siamese was squatting like a cross-eyed owl on top of the clock and the other, with his head inside it, was delivering a running commentary on the works.

  Not that the village needed any extra confirmation of their belief that we are cuckoo. They have had quite enough evidence of that in the past three years. Myself on the mornings we have to be away early, for instance, charging up the lane in my dressing gown carrying a cat basket and barking like a dog. I take the cat basket because it is quite impossible to carry two Siamese, squirming like demented eels, together; if and when I am lucky enough to catch up with them Sheba rides home in the basket and Solomon, wailing tearfully about this being The Morning he Wanted to Be a Horse, hangs down my back like a sack. I bark because it does – sometimes – deceive them into thinking there is a dog about and halts them in their tracks. I am in my dressing gown because if I don't start out after them the moment they disappear, by the time I am dressed they are quite likely to be strolling happily through the next village.

  It is no good explaining this to people, of course. They just think we are mad. Like the two early-morning walkers on whom I once, still in my dressing gown, descended like Tarzan from the woods. I can see their faces now as I came slithering down the steep, muddy path, grabbing wildly at the passing branches to steady myself and finally, losing my balance, sliding the last few yards to the road on the seat of my pyjamas. I explained that I was looking for a Siamese cat. It didn't help matters at all that at that moment two Siamese cats came ambling elegantly out of the front gate enquiring in tones of pained surprise what on earth was I sitting in the road like that for;
they
had been waiting in the garden for hours.

  It was the same when Sheba, balance-walking along the ridge of the cottage roof one day after it had been raining, slipped on a wet tile and lost her nerve. There was no audience for the half hour during which she sat terror stricken on the ridge bawling for Charles to save her and Solomon, apprehension in every line of his triangular black face, howled in sympathy on the lawn; nobody to help us when at last, convinced that she really was stuck, we heaved the long extending ladder up on to the hillside and from there across to the roof. No sooner had Charles crawled along it, however, and got himself equally stuck on the ridge than the valley was suddenly alive with onlookers. Father Adams on the way to the pub, the riding school out for morning exercise, and a detachment of boy scouts disembarking for a nature ramble from a bus on the corner. It was no good, either, trying to explain to any of them why he was up there. By that time Sheba had come down off the roof all by herself and was merrily chasing Solomon round the lawn.

  One expects that sort of thing from Siamese, of course; but in time it tells. Three years ago I hadn't a white hair in my head. As for Charles – even as I have been writing this last chapter he has fallen downstairs again.

  For all that we wouldn't be without them. It is as impossible to imagine the cottage now without Siamese cats as it once was without a squirrel. They are coming down the hill now as I write. Sheba marching in front, putting down her small blue paws with the precision of a WAAF sergeant-major; Solomon ambling along in the rear, stopping occasionally to sniff at a daisy or to look over his shoulder in case there should be something interesting behind, and then having to run on his long, spindly black legs to catch up. In a moment they will come tearing up the stairs to stand side by side in the doorway, gazing at me as suspiciously as if it were I, not they, who left the ball on the stairs for Charles to slip on. Long – even Charles, tenderly bathing his bumps in the bathroom, says he agrees with me – may they continue to do so.

Have you enjoyed this book?
If so, why not write a review on your favourite website?

If you're interested in finding out more about our books,
find us on Facebook at Summersdale Publishers and
follow us on Twitter at @Summersdale.

Thanks very much for buying this Summersdale book.