Дорин Тови: The Coming Of Saska

Praise for Cats in the Belfry

‘The most enchanting cat book ever’

Jilly Cooper

‘If you read Cats in the Belfry the first time round, be prepared to be enchanted all over again. If you haven’t, then expect to laugh out loud, shed a few tears and be totally captivated by Doreen’s stories of her playful and often naughty Siamese cats’

Your Catmagazine

‘A funny and poignant reflection of life with a Siamese, that is full of cheer’

The Good Book Guide

Praise for Cats in May

‘If you loved Doreen Tovey’s Cats in the Belfry you won’t want to miss the sequel, Cats in May … This witty and stylish tale will have animal lovers giggling to the very last page’

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THE COMING OF SASKA Michael Joseph edition published 1977

This edition published by Summersdale Publishers Ltd. in 2007

Copyright © Doreen Tovey 1977

All rights reserved.

The right of Doreen Tovey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Condition of Sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise cir-culated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd

46 West Street

Chichester

West Sussex

PO19 1RP

UK

www.summersdale.com

Printed and bound in Great Britain.

ISBN: 1-84024-595-6

ISBN 13: 978-1-84024-595-0

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THE

COMING OF

SASKA

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Also by Doreen Tovey Cats in the Belfry

Cats in May

The New Boy

Donkey Work

Double Trouble

Life with Grandma

Raining Cats and Donkeys

Making the Horse Laugh

A Comfort of Cats

Roses Round the Door

Waiting in the Wings

More Cats in the Belfry

Cats in Concord

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One

WHEN I TOLD FATHER Adams we were planning another trip to the Rockies – to do some more riding, I said, and look for the grizzlies we’d missed last time, and if possible see something of the wolves – he looked at me as if I needed certifying.

He usually does look at me like that, of course. Charles and I have lived along the lane from him for more than eighteen years now, but in his eyes we are still essentially townsfolk and therefore dim beyond redemption when it comes to the commonsense matters of life.

This time, however, he regarded me even more old-fashionedly than usual. ‘Hassn’t thee got enough wild animals round here?’ he said. And then, in a voice deep with concern because really he is rather fond of us, ‘Thee’st want to watch thee dussn’t get et .’

I knew what he was thinking of. For one thing the previous week, when we’d been bringing down logs from our two 5

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The Coming of Saska and a half acres of woodland, which is across the lane from the cottage. It could almost have been a scene from the Canadian backwoods then, with Charles stacking the logs at the road-edge and me loading them on to a roughly constructed sledge so that Annabel, our donkey, could haul them down to the cottage.

The idea of the sledge was because the hill is so steep. With wheels the load of logs would probably have shot straight to the bottom with Annabel on top – but with runners it slid gently down behind her, the weight acting as a brake, and it towed up easily again when empty.

Annabel loved it. Not wanting to over-burden her... she is, after all, only a very small donkey... at first I’d tied just a couple of logs to the sledge. She’d wafted them down to the valley as if they were balloons, so next time I’d added a couple more...

and the time after that another two... until eventually she was pulling quite a load on every trip. Enjoying it, too. Plodding down the hill with the air of an experienced, if pint-sized, dray-horse and the complacently smug expression on her face that Charles and I knew only too well.

She stood patiently at the bottom while I unloaded the logs on to the grass verge outside the cottage; pulled the sledge back up again without even the slightest pause (normally I’d have to haul her up it bodily, with her fighting to eat dandelions at every step); stood again at the top while I re-loaded... ‘I wish we had a camera handy,’ I said to Charles as, with me walking at her head, she started down the hill once more. ‘Or that somebody would come along and see her. Nobody ever does when she’s being good like this.’

That did it. Mention the word ‘good’ in Annabel’s hearing and, it being her lifelong principle to be the opposite, non-co-operation sets in at the speed of sound. At the end of 6

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Doreen Tovey

that descent she decided she’d had enough of playing at draught horses. Unfortunately I had my foot on the sledge-rope at the time, anchoring it while I unloaded the logs, so when she moved off down the other fork of the lane (away, that is, from any direction that could possibly be connected with log-hauling), she not only took the still half-loaded sledge with her but me as well, sliding along behind it on my bottom with my foot caught in the rope.

Overburden her, did I say? The sledge and I went down the lane behind her as if we were so much balsa wood. The lane leads, if one follows it far enough, to the field of a donkey friend of hers called Charlie, some three miles away, and I’d no doubt have gone the whole way to Charlie’s on my seat if it hadn’t been that Father Adams happened to be a short way down there clearing a blockage in the stream at the time, and Annabel shied and stopped when she saw his head come up out of the ditch.

I scrambled up, grabbed her bridle and explained what had happened. Father Adams said nothing for a moment.

Just looked at me resignedly from under his hat brim.

‘Wur’s the Boss?’ he asked at length. When I explained that Charles was still up at the top of the hill bringing logs out to the road-edge... I had shouted but he couldn’t have heard me above the noise of the stream, I said, and anyway he was singing when I left... that didn’t help things either.

Charles has a very good voice but his habit of singing when working among his fruit trees is down on Father Adams’s scorecard as another of our peculiarities.

I remember on one occasion Charles rendering ‘On Yonder Hill Declining’ from Fra Diavolo ... standing on a slope in the orchard, one arm out-thrown in the manner of Gigli, performing, as he thought, entirely for my benefit...

7

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The Coming of Saska and in the pause after a ringing ‘Dia... vo... lo... o prou...