Raining Cats and Donkeys (12 page)

  When I got there, of course, the huntsman had gone. The next thing I heard was the blasted horn sounding, like the horn of Roland, from the heights way above the Valley, where he'd driven in five minutes in his van but it would take me an hour to reach on foot.

  Back at the cottage, having been towed down the Valley by the excited hound faster than I remembered running in years, I found Charles in a similar condition of status quo. Having telephoned the hunt kennels and got no reply, Charles had next phoned the local policeman, who was having his tea, and who'd advised him to phone the hunt kennels. 'That's all I could do myself, you see Zur', said Constable Coggins, helpfully giving Charles the hunt kennels number and hanging up fast before his kipper got cold. So Charles had once more phoned the hunt kennels, once more got no reply, and was sitting there frustratedly demanding what things were coming to.

  As if in answer, the hound, whom I'd left tied to the lilac tree while I went in to talk to Charles, at that moment started baying. A forlorn, full-throated call that was like the wind in Fingal's Cave. 'Lo-oooost', she moaned mournfully down the Valley. 'Tied up in a place where there's no-oooo meat, only bissss-cuits. Come to the rescue at o-oooonce!'

  Refusing to be quiet unless someone stayed with her – and of course we couldn't have her indoors on account of the cats – what happened was that I spent the next three-quarters of an hour sitting on the porch-mat comforting her. She, deciding that she liked being comforted, climbing affectionately on to my lap, Charles put the porch-light on so that the huntsman could see us if he came past and Solomon and Sheba immediately got up into the window that looked on to the porch and, craning their necks so that they could look down at us, started bellowing indignantly themselves at my traitorous behaviour.

  The neighbours must have thought they were seeing things that night, the way their homecoming cars slowed, took in the floodlit tableau on our doorstep, and proceeded thoughtfully on up the lane. Never was I more glad than when the hunt van stopped outside our gate, the voice of the huntsman called through the darkness 'Thank goodness you've got our Emily', and Emily, without so much as a parting lick, leapt thankfully over the wall to join him.

  Father Adams's comment, when we told him about it, was that it showed how careful we had to be. Whether he meant careful about taking on strange hounds or careful about people seeing me act peculiarly on the porch I wasn't quite sure, but it didn't make much difference anyway. However careful we were things always happened to us. Take, for instance, the episode of Charles's tooth.

  When one of his side teeth collapsed while he was eating a nut, the dentist suggested he had a plate. A normal occurrence, many people have them, and Charles's tooth, on the thinnest cobalt plate imaginable, was most realistic. After his initial attempt at eating with it, when he announced that meals now meant nothing to him, never again would he be able to taste anything, he settled down with it very well. The one exception being that when he'd had it in for long periods – particularly when he'd had a hard day at the office or been to visit his Aunt Ethel – it gave him indigestion. He said it did, anyway. He got a strong metallic taste in his stomach.

  We were coming back from town one night, even more harassed than usual on account of we'd not only been visiting Aunt Ethel but were extremely worried because we'd lost some keys that morning and couldn't think where they were, when Charles said he'd have to take his tooth out. He couldn't stand it a moment longer, he said. His stomach was sending up signals of solid aluminium.

  If he put it in his pocket, I warned him, sure as eggs were eggs he'd lose it. Don't be silly, of course he wouldn't, said Charles, slipping the fragile metal strapping into a fold of his breast pocket handkerchief. After which we forgot about his tooth and returned to worrying about the keys.

  We had reason for worrying, too. We could get into the cottage all right; I had a spare key in my handbag. But the garage key was missing, without which we could neither put the car away nor get the hay for Annabel's supper. The coalhouse key was missing, without which we couldn't light the fire. The toolhouse key was missing, which meant if anything went wrong and needed fixing – as, in the circumstances, it undoubtedly would within the hour – Charles couldn't get the tools to do it with.

  What with that and our normal homecoming routine of letting out the cats, getting Annabel in, switching on the radio to hear the news, changing used earth-boxes and seeing that Solomon didn't get up the path and encounter Robertson, we were in our usual state of pandemonium.

  I searched the bedroom for the keys, and the pockets of Charles's duffle coat. I looked in the dustbin, where they'd been found on several previous occasions, but they weren't there this time. Charles was wandering about the paddock with a torch. Some hope, I thought, he had of finding anything in that mud.

  I knew from his tread as he came down the path a while later that the news wasn't good. Honestly, I said. Where things
went
around this place I didn't know. We couldn't feed Annabel, couldn't light the fire, where Solomon had got to I hadn't the vaguest clue...

  Solomon was by the rain-barrel, said Charles. He'd passed him coming in. He'd found the keys, he informed me as he kicked off his boots – adding, when I started to say but that was good, 'But now I've lost my tooth'.

  He had, too. We searched for it for ages. Upstairs. Downstairs. In the mud of the paddock. Even – since that was where he'd discovered the keys by seeing them glint in the torchlight – in the straw in Annabel's stable. We found it at last where it must have fallen when Charles bent to switch on the radio. On the rug in front of the fireplace. We'd have trodden on it long before if Solomon, presumably under the impression that it was some sort of spider, hadn't been sitting there cautiously keeping an eye on it. Meanwhile, being used to Solomon and his trophy hunting, we'd been stepping over and around him automatically, and had never noticed a thing. It was only when he reached out and cautiously poked it that I realised what our fat man was watching. There was no dignity around this place, said Charles, leaping to the rescue of his beloved tooth just as Solomon's paw came stealthily up for the kill. Just no dignity at all.

T
hings were quiet after that until Christmas. Reasonably quiet, that is. There was one little upheaval when the Parish Council, having met and discussed the complaint about Mr Carey's entrance, duly announced its decision in the matter, which was to refer it to the County Council. This meant another two months before the reply could itself be debated and that, with luck, the matter would still be under discussion in six months' time.

  When this state of affairs was reported back to the Rose and Crown, Fred Ferry said if 'twere he he'd put weed-killer on th'eather and have done with it. Actually Fred wouldn't have done any such thing. It was just his way of talking. This being precisely what had occasioned his previous row with Father Adams, however – Father Adams having planted a privet hedge against the boundary wire because he fancied it, Fred Ferry saying the roots would spoil his dahlias and making a cryptic reference to weed-killer, the hedge having subsequently died and Father Adams having dark suspicions as to how it had happened – from then on Father Adams was on the side of Mr C.

  Some people was a mite too handy with their weed-killer, he announced in the general direction of the bottom of his cider mug. Some people wanted to mind their dahlias didn't go instead of th'eather. Why
shouldn't
the chap have a heather bank if he wanted to? demanded Father Adams, coming up for air, banging down his mug, and warming more and more, the more he thought of it, to the idea of an Englishman's cottage being his castle and if he wanted to block up his entrance and grow heather on it, why the Magna Carta shouldn't he?

  'What about the beer lorry then?' asked Fred indignantly. Father Adams said 'What about it?' back – adding, in the heat of the moment and in complete negation of his former attitude, that it ought to be
made
to unload at the front door, sticking there blocking the roadway like that – and thereby he sealed his fate for weeks.

  The supporters of the Rose and Crown to a man weren't speaking to him. Father Adams, for his part, went stubbornly out of his way to talk to Mr Carey whenever he saw him. He was also, when he wanted a drink, going over to the Horse and Hounds in the next village for it, and the sight of Father Adams in our car headlights, trudging defiantly along the lane in the wrong direction as we came home at night, gave us as much a feeling of unreality as did the occasions on which we'd seen a badger in the self-same spot.

  The atmosphere down with us was much more harmonious. It was the mouse-catching season, for a start. Afternoons saw Sheba ensconced beside the fish-pool, gazing prettily at a hole in the bottom of the woodshed, warmed by the autumn sunshine and nicely handy for a chat with passers-by. Solomon did his mousing in the garden path. A sunken path which runs from the cottage to the garage, with nine-inch high stone walls on either side. His mouse-hole was in one of the walls. Watching it in his case meant not sitting close to it as Sheba did – patiently, scarcely breathing except when a passing admirer spoke to her, when, being Sheba, she forgot and bawled enthusiastically back. Watching it in Solomon's case meant an ambush position three feet away against the opposite wall. To delude the mouse into coming out, we understood. He hadn't found Sheba's method very successful.

  As his interpretation of Sheba's method had been to sit bang in front of a hole, breathe down it, peer down it, and, when all else failed, put his paw down it in an effort to liven things up, we appreciated this new development. Solomon, we said, was actually
thinking
.

  It was a pity he had to choose the path to put his deductions into practice, though. In order not to disturb him, we now couldn't walk up it. Mustn't come between a cat and his mouse-hole, must we? Charles called encouragingly' across to him as we took our new route to the garage – up the path as usual to begin with; a wide, semi-circular detour across the lawn at the point of operation; and then rejoining the path further on.

  It was all very well in daylight, but when Charles did it one night in the dusk he fell over the snowberry bush. Even in daylight it had its drawbacks, too. Our garden is low-walled and open to the public gaze. The path being sunken, people looking in as they passed – as, in the country, they invariably do – couldn't see Solomon sitting in it mouse-watching. All they could see was us, apparently bonkers at last, proceeding in mysterious semi-circles over the lawn.

  It was peaceful, nevertheless. Sheba by the woodshed; Solomon in the path; Robertson, with a defiantly turned back indicating no connection with anybody, hunting all by himself in the paddock hedge.

  All was peaceful with Annabel, too. It had been Janet's idea to take her waist measurement when she came back from being mated. Owing to their being barrel-shaped it is very difficult to tell when donkeys are in foal – but this way, said Janet inspiredly, we couldn't go wrong. Measure her now... measure her in six months' time... the difference would be bound to show.

  We measured her. Fifty-four inches. We looked at her incredulously. Fifty-four inches
now
, when to our eyes she looked quite thin? What must she have been before? we wondered. And what, if one could encompass such expansion, would she measure when her time was up?

  Fifty-four feet, judging by the way she was eating. 'Eating for two, remember!' said Miss Wellington coyly, whose chief occupation these days seemed to be making Yorkshire Puddings, having a spoonful herself, and bringing the remainder down to Annabel to keep up her strength. It wasn't just the amount that was suspicious, either. Annabel was eating nettles. Fresh ones from the hedgerows, dusty ones from the edges of the lane, dried-up old dead ones from the bonfire heap where they'd been put for burning and were pulled out and eaten by Annabel as she passed as if she would die on the spot without them. Seeing that she'd previously declared nettles were poison and she'd die on the spot if she ate them, we were certain that something was up. So we were when Annabel fell down. Sure-footed, nimble as a goat, with legs like little stool-props on which she
couldn't
fall down, she was going up the lane when she did. A step or two up the bank to reach a dandelion and there she was, a typical expectant mother, rolling helplessly on her back in the dust.

  We helped her up, felt her anxiously and decided that all was well. It was a sign though, we said. From then on we were more careful. Walked either side of her when we took her uphill. Tethered her on the lawn when the ground was frozen so she couldn't trip over things. Which was one of the reasons why, that year, we had a somewhat eventful Christmas.