Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

He thought they’d have stayed till October, he said – the brood had been still quite young when we left. Maybe that was why they’d gone early, I said – to get them to Africa 119

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The Coming of Saska before the colder weather set in. Whether they’d survived, or whether something had happened to them, we wouldn’t know till the following Spring – when, if we were lucky, one day they’d come back.

To this end we decided not to replace the glass in the garage window – a state of affairs that considerably worried Ern Biggs on the occasions when he came limping manfully past. ‘Want I put the glass back for thee?’ he enquired. ‘I could manage if theest hold the ladder.’ ‘’N then fall off and blame that for thee knee,’ said Father Adams, helpfully on hand as usual.

We explained we were leaving the gap in the window for the swallows but obviously nobody believed it. Fred Ferry, it eventually got back to us through the village grapevine, was putting it down to me getting stuck on that cliff-edge. That was why we didn’t put the glass back, he was busily telling people: I was afraid of heights. Not a mere fifteen feet from the ground, I wasn’t: I’d have done it without a thought.

Charles, who had nerves of steel and could overhang drops of hundreds of feet, would have done it on his head. But it was no good explaining it to the villagers. They all knew better than that.

It was no good, either, trying to explain to Aunt Ethel that we hadn’t been in Canada big-game hunting. That was what people had done when she was young. Bear skins, antelope skins, moose heads to hang on the wall... Where were our trophies? she enquired when, on our first Sunday back, Charles fetched her over to lunch. (She’d survived our absence successfully, of course: now she wanted to boast about our exploits.) We hadn’t gone for that, we told her. Thinking people didn’t kill animals like that nowadays.

We’d gone to see and enjoy the living animals. Those were all we’d brought back...

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Doreen Tovey

We indicated a pair of cattle horns that hung over the living-room archway, beneath the dark oak beams. They were Texas Long-horns, from a steer that had been bred for beef, and we’d bought them already mounted. They had a span of almost a yard and were really very impressive. Charles had chosen them himself and carried them on to the plane, a sock bound protectively round each tip. He couldn’t wrap the rest of them – they were far too big – and they had created quite a sensation. His tooth on the way out, a pair of horns on the way home... Charles always added variety to our travels.

‘They’re Texas Longhorns,’ we shouted at Aunt Ethel now: her hearing aid wasn’t working properly as usual.

‘From a steer . You know – cattle , bred for beef. We bought them in Montana.’ Aunt Ethel regarded them with approval.

She obviously hadn’t heard a word we’d said. ‘Whichever of you got those,’ she said with pride, ‘must have been a very good shot.’

So, back in our old routine, we moved on towards Christmas. Charles busy with his orchard, I riding, writing, doing the house-work, taking the cats for walks in the woods in the afternoons.

We didn’t give them the freedom Solomon and Sheba had had. There were more people around now with dogs. More strangers, too, who drove out from town to go for walks and might have fancied a Siamese out on the loose. So we let them out for a run before breakfast, started calling them if they weren’t back in half an hour... Shebalu was usually back well within that time, but Seeley sometimes went further afield.

Up the Forestry lane, perhaps, looking for mice in the ruins, or going up through our woods to Mrs Pursey’s where he would sit hopefully by the birdtable in her bungalow garden, visible to every bird for miles.

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The Coming of Saska Mrs Pursey would ring us if she saw him. She knew we didn’t like him being even that far away. She was always afraid, she said, that he might go further, and someone who didn’t know he was ours might pick him up… And I would trudge off up the hill to fetch him, carrying him back down to the cottage on my shoulder, hoping nobody would see me and feeling a fool for making such a fuss.

The neighbours’ cats stayed out day and night without harm – but they, I told myself, weren’t Siamese. Valuable, attractive, and – discounting all that – with a genius for getting themselves into trouble.

On odd occasions he would be away for an hour or more, and, having checked that he wasn’t at Mrs Pursey’s, I would go charging round the lanes shrieking ‘Seeley-weeley-weeley’ and banging a spoon on his feeding plate.

As I flashed past, neighbours would ask if it was the big dark one again, and say they’d let me know if they saw him. I’ve no doubt they tapped their heads at each other when I’d gone. I would have done the same. But I knew Siamese. I never had any peace until – by which time I was usually on my knees – I’d report back to the cottage for the umpteenth time and Charles, keeping watch at base, would call ‘He’s back’ – and sure enough, as large as life, there he’d be sitting in the path. Where on earth had I Been?

his air of puzzlement would enquire. He’d been waiting here for me for Ages. What on earth possessed me to run about shouting like that? Didn’t I realise he wanted his breakfast?

He didn’t play truant very often, but it was always the same when he did. I’d be frantic in case he was in trouble

– even while, tearing from one to another of his haunts, I was telling myself not to be so stupid. ‘You know he 122

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Doreen Tovey

always comes back,’ I’d think. As had Solomon, our other wanderer, before him. The number of times I’d rushed around the lanes thinking that Solomon had gone for good...

Once they came in for breakfast, they stayed in for the rest of the day. There were adders on the hills in summer

– Seeley, as a kitten, had been bitten up in Annabel’s field.

Strangers around, people with dogs, adders – for their own safety we kept them in. Until in the late afternoon, working at my typewriter, I’d realised that a deputation had arrived.

From their window-seat in the sun, or their armchair, if it was winter, and they were sitting watching me, side by side. Time to go out now, they would inform me. Before Charles started asking about tea.

Invariably I went with them, carrying a golf club for their protection. I didn’t take them as far as Solomon and Sheba used to go. Dogs seemed to appear these days from nowhere and the cats were vulnerable on the open track. I either sat with them on the hillside behind the cottage or took them into the woods.

At first just into the pine wood, where they followed me like dogs; Shebalu close behind me, in my footsteps like Wenceslas’s page; Seeley loitering at a distance to show his independence, but never letting me out of his sight. If I sat down, Shebalu was on my knees in an instant; she didn’t like the feel of the pine needles under her feet. When I looked round, sure enough Seeley would be sitting too...

upright, a few feet distant... conveying the impression that he was a Big Cat and nothing to do with us, but following us as soon as we moved on.

Some two hundred yards up the Forestry track there is a beech wood and after a while I began to take them into that. It was lighter – in winter, such sun as there was struck 123

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