Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

The bears’ll be about now... it’s their evening feeding time and you don’t want to turn a corner into a hungry bear. If you’re going, you go fast down the Loop Trail.’

We did. Provided with a tin filled with stones by the naturalist and instructions to rattle it all the way, we were on our way within minutes, watched by the walking party from the top of the track.

The Loop Trail, despite its name, is the most direct route down to the road – four miles straight down the mountainside by a rough, precipitous track. It is so called because it emerges on a spectacular loop in the highway where the road switches suddenly from north-west to south-east. It was quicker. It was straight. There was no chance of a bear being round a corner. In one way I was 114

The Coming Of Saska_INSIDES.indd114 114

13/06/2007 17:36:09

Doreen Tovey

sorry, but the naturalist obviously knew best. The one thing that had me nervous – I knew it from reading Night of the Grizzlies – was that the Loop Trail ran adjacent to the campground where the girl had been killed that night, and that, while there might not be any corners for them to be around, grizzlies were known very often to use this trail.

There might not be many corners but there were an awful lot of bushes about. The sort that one could easily imagine bears behind, on the banks of the narrow, sunken trail. I rattled the tin, even while I hated doing it. What was the point of frightening the bears when we’d come specially to see them? There is a sinister air, though, about the overhung Loop Trail. On it one remembers the tragedy. So I rattled like mad, sat down several times... we were going fast and the way was precipitous... and, when we were almost at the bottom, with a foot-bridge across the stream ahead of us, a sure sign of civilization... I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. I shouldn’t have rattled. We might have seen another bear and now it was too late. There wouldn’t be any down here.

We had oranges in our pockets. ‘Let’s sit down here and eat them,’ I said, anxious for the last bit of atmosphere.

‘Not till we get to the road,’ said Charles. ‘The smell of oranges carries.’ I followed him, thinking how silly that was... a well-used footbridge here, the road only yards ahead.

We crossed the bridge. There was a notice-board beyond it, carrying the usual warning to hikers about bears. At least – it had carried it. The notice had been ripped. Half of it lay on the ground, together with the pulled-off top of the board.

There was a curved slash-mark down the paper– more slash-marks on the pole – and, on the ground, what could have been the droppings of a very large dog.

115

The Coming Of Saska_INSIDES.indd115 115

13/06/2007 17:36:09

The Coming of Saska They weren’t, of course. They were a bear’s. A man in the Loop parking-ground told us. We recognised him as having been up at Granite Park and went across to talk to him. Furthermore, he said, he’d come off the trail about twenty minutes ahead of us and the notice-board had been intact then: he remembered looking at it.

So we’d narrowly missed another bear. Was it a black or a grizzly? An expert could have told from the size of the droppings, but we knew nothing about that. Only that it was one that went around clawing at notices. Maybe it was a good thing we had missed it... or was it just feeling bored?

Charles said he bet nobody would believe us at home

– about the experiences we’d had in one day.

116

The Coming Of Saska_INSIDES.indd116 116

13/06/2007 17:36:09

Twelve

WE WENT HOME WITHIN a week and they believed us all right.

Father Adams’ verdict was that ’twould have served us right if we had been et. Fred Ferry said ’twas a pity I’d rattled them stones, wunnit? What he meant by that we weren’t quite sure. Miss Wellington said it made her come all over giddy just to think of me up on that cliff ledge... After which they embarked on an account of what had happened in the village in our absence and we wondered if we hadn’t been safer in Canada.

For a start, Tim Bannett had gone in for keeping bees and was talking of getting a goat, in both of which activities he was being encouraged by Miss Wellington, no doubt with thoughts of honey for tea and goats’ milk cheese and herself in a flowery smock helping to sell them. They’d been looking at possible goats, the bees were already installed, and Tim was getting stung almost daily.

117

The Coming Of Saska_INSIDES.indd117 117

13/06/2007 17:36:09

The Coming of Saska

‘Hasn’t he got a veil?’ asked Charles, who’d been an ardent bee-keeper himself until a number of stings built up on him and he proved to be allergic. Oh yes, replied Miss Wellington – but he wasn’t getting stung actually handling the bees. He’d been reading about communicating with them and he was putting it into practice – taking siestas on a chaise longue in front of the hive where he could study them and transmit thoughts of trust and friendship as they flew in and out over his head.

One couldn’t communicate trust to them wearing a bee-veil, could one? she asked. I said it didn’t sound as if he was communicating much without one. These were early days yet, said Miss Wellington. Just give the dear little creatures a chance to settle in.

Father Adams contributed the next item of interest. Had we heard about Mr Duggald, he asked. He were goin’

round bandaged up like a mummy, having been bitten by Fred Ferry’s cousin Bill’s dog.

Actually it wasn’t as bad as that. It was only his hand that had been bitten. It seemed that Bill Ferry’s daughter was getting married and Bill, talking about it in the pub, had said his wife was drivin’ him fair nuts about who had to pay for what, which side of the church people sat on, and the flowers and all that muck. Mr Duggald had told his wife, who happened to have a book on etiquette, and she’d sent him round to Bill Ferry’s with it specially... he’d said it could wait till opening-time but Mrs Duggald, trying to be neighbourly, insisted he took it round at once.

There was nobody at home when he got there, so he’d opened the door to leave the book on the kitchen table.

Bill’s dog was in the kitchen: Mr Duggald bent down to stroke it and the dog promptly bit him in the hand. ‘Thic 118

The Coming Of Saska_INSIDES.indd118 118

13/06/2007 17:36:10

Doreen Tovey

dog hadn’t read thic book on etiquette,’ said Father Adams, who thought the whole thing uproariously funny. Unlike Mr Duggald, with a tetanus injection and stitches in his hand, and Mrs Duggald feeling it was all her fault for sending him, and Bill Ferry now assiduously avoiding Mr Duggald and not speaking to him when they did meet by accident. ‘In case he sues ’n’ explained Father Adams, who obviously hoped that he would.

This being ground where the Ferry family no doubt thought it best to tread softly, Fred, pretended he hadn’t heard that one. Had we, he asked, changing the subject, seen Ern Biggs limpin’ around? When we said no, who’d bitten him, Fred said he’d got water on the knee. Tripped over the guard stone outside the pub wall – the one put there to stop the milk lorry knocking it down. ‘Bin there for years,’ Fred said expansively, ‘but theest know old Ern when he’s had a drop too much. Out of the door, legs weavin’ like withy plaits, flat on his face over th’ stone.

Hobblin’ around with a stick he is, and threatening he’s goin’ to...’ He stopped, realising what he’d almost said.

‘Sue ’em,’ completed Father Adams.

So now we knew, when we saw Tim Bannett with an angry bump on his nose, Mr Duggald with his hand in a sling, and Ern Biggs limping along with a sag to his knees that increased when he was passing the pub. For ourselves, we fetched the cats from Halstock, and Annabel back from the farm, and settled down to the autumn, dreaming of all we had seen – with Charles worrying intermittently about our swallows, which had gone when we got back.