Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

13/06/2007 17:36:11

The Coming of Saska warm in the shelter of the trees and the cats loved chasing each other through the leaves. Up trees, down trees, charging around like pint-sized elephants; pretending they couldn’t hear me calling them, then catching me up at a tremendous lick; then back to the cottage in procession, for an evening in front of the fire. I would think how much the woods were like those in Canada. All it needed was a bear or two, or a moose. But then it wouldn’t be safe for the cats to be around in. Here, I told myself so many times... here they were so safe.

That Christmas, having resisted it for years, we installed television at the cottage. When we were going to find time to watch it was a problem, of course. We had so many other things to do. We liked having friends in for a natter round the fire for instance, and we liked reading: Charles did his painting in the evenings and it was the only time I had to play the piano. But we ought to have it for the news and the nature programmes, we decided – and, after our trip, I fancied seeing an occasional cowboy film, with cattle milling over the rangeland, riders racing in a cloud of dust out from a ranch... and, in nostalgic imagination, Charles and I riding with them on Sheba and Biz.

So we had it installed, switched it on – I remember the first time was when we were having tea by the fire with the long, low coffee table between us, and both cats were sitting on Charles’s lap. I was moving about with crumpets and teacups between Charles and the television set – but it was Seeley who objected to the interruption to his viewing, not Charles. Claws clamped to Charles’s knees, eyes concentrated as blue binoculars, he dodged his head impatiently round me when I got between him and the screen. Nearly missed that bit, said his expression. What 124

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Doreen Tovey

was the man on that horse doing now? Why on earth couldn’t I sit Down!

It reminded me of someone I knew who once bred a litter of television-addicted kittens. She said it was the only thing that kept those seal-point beatniks quiet. They used to come rushing in when the set was switched on and sit in a gang in front of it. They liked cow-boy films the best, she said, and when I asked her how she knew, she told me they never fought or budged an inch while those were on. They were always a bloodthirsty lot, she admitted. She thought they liked hearing the guns go bang.

Aunt Ethel liked cowboy films, too. It was a great help when she came to stay with us and we could park her and Seeley in front of the set. (Shebalu, completely uninterested, always curled in a ball behind Seeley and slept.) We left them like that one night when we had to make a call in the village. They were watching a film about Mexican bandits and there were even more horses than usual charging round, and people escaping across the Rio Grande, and gunfights and a band of hostile Apaches.

Tim Bannett called while we were out and wondered what on earth was going on. Aunt Ethel had the set turned up, of course, being rather deaf. Tim said it sounded from the front gate as if we were having a private revolution –

and when he came up the path and knocked at the door he got no answer. Only a burst of gunfire and, when he tapped on the window, a voice yelling ‘Take that, you lousy cur!’

He went back home and telephoned us twice, but couldn’t get any reply. Somewhat alarmed – wondering whether something had happened to us – he came down to the cottage again. He hammered on the door and window.

Still there was no reply. He was very relieved when he rang 125

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The Coming of Saska us later that night and we answered. Fancy, he said, people like us becoming television addicts... He was glad he and Liz didn’t have a set. I’m still not sure whether he believed us when we said it was Aunt Ethel and Seeley.

Round about then we heard of a piece of real-life adventure. A Canadian Government official in London, writing to acknowledge our thanks for making possible our trip, said he thought we’d like to know he’d been out in Alberta recently and had actually seen two of the Jasper wolves while driving through the Park. It was winter, the Park was under snow and practically deserted; a very different place from the way it looked in summer. The wolves had come down to look for food and he’d spotted them by the roadside. He’d driven past very slowly and they’d come out and trotted after him. He’d slowed the car even more, driving for several miles at a crawl with the wolves following only yards behind. Then, having an appointment in Banff, he’d had to speed up and they’d turned off into the forest. He’d never seen wolves as close as that before, he concluded. Didn’t we think it was interesting?

We did. Knowing something now about them we also had an idea as to why they’d done it. The car going slowly... not at the usual speed of motor traffic. Dropping to a crawl...

becoming, to all intents and purposes, even more feeble...

no doubt the wolves were following it waiting for it to come to a stop and die. When, though all the evidence says they wouldn’t have touched the driver, presumably they were anticipating to be able to eat the car!

Before we knew it, it was March and the primroses were out along the banks of the stream. Then it was May, and to Charles’s joy the swallows came back again. One morning, 126

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Doreen Tovey

as if by magic, there were three tired swallows sitting on the telephone wire. Presumably the original pair and one of their offspring, whom we hoped would also take up quarters in the garage. The third one disappeared later that day, however – probably up to the farm, where there’d be a selection of mates to choose from – and our pair settled down to live with us again. There was no cautiousness now as to whether we were a safe proposition. They remembered us and set to repairing their nest at once. We watched the male bird for ages, bringing hay from Annabel’s stable...

flying over with a long strand in its beak, circling several times to get it horizontal, then, with the hay out behind it like a kite-tail, straight in through the window gap at full speed.

Now it was June. Tim still hadn’t got his goat but he was very busy with his bees. Putting on supers, removing queen cells to prevent the hive from swarming – he’d become very competent indeed and it wasn’t his bees that were seen one morning clustered on one of the chimneys at he farm, looking as if they d been glued to it with treacle and showing every sign of settling in. Nobly, however, he and a neighbour tried to get them down – and were well and truly stung for their pains. Up on a roof, on a ladder, is not the best place to argue with bees. Gorged with honey, as they are when they swarm, they wouldn’t in the normal way have been angry, but this lot appeared to have mislaid their queen and were very agitated indeed. Just as Tim’s neighbour, Henry, got near them with a box, they swept up and off again.

Circling, they came down on the next-door-but-one chimney, presumably thinking the queen might be there

– seeing which, the owner of the cottage, who’d been 127

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The Coming of Saska watching from the garden, rushed in and lit a fire with the intention of smoking them off. What he’d forgotten was that he’d blocked the chimney for the summer, to stop stray birds and soot from falling down, and in next to no time the scene was one of animation such as is rarely seen in our village. A ladder on the farm roof, another against the cottage wall, Tim and Henry comparing bee-stings in the lane, smoke pouring spectacularly out of the cottage windows and Miss Wellington wanting to phone the fire brigade. The postman stopped to watch, a string of riders joined the throng, everybody gawking at the swarm on the chimney top – where they remained for quite a while until, still unsettled, they took off again. Definitely they weren’t Tim Bannett’s bees. Equally definitely, he got the blame.