Дорин Тови - The New Boy_INSIDES.indd

He’d just been opening the gates, said Charles, when he’d heard this sudden buzzing across the lane. He’d looked across, there they were all in the air, and before he could do anything they were away. They’d swooped low across the garden (Charles’s later interpretation was that they’d come down to say goodbye to him but at the time he’d leapt hastily into the car out of their reach); away up the Valley (by now Charles was out of the car and running after them); through the roof of the ruined cottage (he’d thought they were going to settle there, said Charles, but the darned things did a loop round the rafters and then zoomed out again); and away up over the hillside and into the forest.

We never found that lot either, but next day Charles got the bee-expert over and he went down through the hive. There were three more queens just ready to hatch, he reported; we’d have lost another two swarms if we hadn’t called him in. Bees do this, it seems, if the hive is exceptionally prolific.

Not just one swarm takes off, but up to four, till the hive is reduced in size. As to why that swarm had got away from Charles… the first swarm, said the expert, had had the old queen at its head. When she came down she’d wait till the scouts came to lead her to her new home… in our case she’d waited till next morning… and if we’d captured her, she would have stayed and so would the rest of the swarm.

The subsequent swarms, however, are led by virgin queens.

Just hatched, said the expert, and flighty and restless, like young maids the whole world over. He’d never known a 95

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virgin swarm that did stay put unless you locked ’em in to hold the queen.

So there we were. We were certainly learning about bees.

There was more to it than he’d thought, said Charles, considerably chastened. She was still looking forward to tasting our honey, cooed Miss Wellington whenever we saw her.

She didn’t get any. We didn’t take even twelve pounds of it that season. The swarms had carried off most of it when they absconded and the bees still in the hive would need the rest, to feed them through the coming winter.

It was the bees still in the hive I was worried about in connection with Seeley. Next year, when they’d built up again and were ready to sting people, it would be a new little cat who was venturing forth. Solomon and Sheba had been grown cats when we had the bees and they’d met up before with indi vidual ones. How could a little kitten know about a hive?

We’d do something about them before the spring, Charles assured me. Put wire netting around them… maybe let someone else have them… they took up a lot more time than he’d thought they would. Come the spring, I thought resignedly, I bet he’d get bee fever all over again, and I’d be making bee candy and haring to everybody’s rescue…

There were months yet to spring, however, and I had more immediate things to worry about. Like the question of keeping up with Seeley’s appetite, and his vanishing into the woods, and the growing signs of depredation around the place.

‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’ is un doubtedly the motto of every Siamese cat owner. The cats rip the chair-96

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covers, turn carpets into remarkable imitations of astrakhan, smash china till you’d think they had shares in a pottery…

and still, when the owner replaces the article, he imagines that this time all will be well. With one or two precautions, perhaps, like putting rugs over vulnerable furniture, moving china from the route of Siamese steeplechases and, when one catches the culprits at it, ordering them firmly, very sternly, to desist…

It never works, of course. Some friends of ours took precautions, when they were having some armchairs recovered, to the extent of consulting with the buyer of a large furniture store as to the most suitable Siamese-proof material he could suggest. Now that , he said, being an enthusiast in his profession, would make a really interesting experiment, and one that might help lots of other suffering cat-owners… So he provided them with samples of materials which they left around tacked casually onto boards… large boards, said our friends, to simulate the backs of chairs…

It was obvious the burnt-orange boucle wasn’t the answer; that finished up like sacking with holes in it (the same colour, too) within days. It was obvious the charcoal tweed wouldn’t do, either; the colour was all right but it now had a fur-fabric nap. Finally they settled on a dusky green, tight-woven… I suppose you’d call it a linen rep. The cats hadn’t so much as looked at that one, said their owners; the buyer said it obviously didn’t titillate their claws.

They hadn’t looked at it because why the heck should they, surrounded by boucle and tweed and strong-claw-making moquette? Once the experimen tal panels had been taken away, though, and in their place stood three chairs 97

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resplendent in tight-drawn green linen… it titillated their claws then all right, said their owners; they’d had the backs out of those chairs within weeks . No, it hadn’t been of use to provide them with stropping boards. The green chairs were their Mecca and nothing else.

We’d gone through it all ourselves, of course. Goodness knows how many hearthrugs Solomon had ruined, stropping exuberantly in the middle (to test his Strength, he said). We’d tried putting a car-rug down when we were out of the room but that hadn’t been any good. Solomon merely played tunnels under the car rug and – now we couldn’t see him, he said excitedly, so we didn’t know who was doing it, did we? – stropped harder on the hearthrug middle than ever.

There was the hide armchair in the hall, reduced by Sheba to a striking example of shagreen with holes in it.

There was Solomon’s demolition of the staircarpet and Solomon’s morning exercises round the bed… He’d pulled himself up and down the bed-base so heartily for years that the stuffing now stuck out in tufts. It was no good trying to stop him if doing it, either. It made him feel good, he said.

Why, after all our experience, we should have I thought that Seeley was going to be different… but that was the hope springing eternal bit. He looked such a harmless little kitten, too. One couldn’t imagine him doing any damage.

We soon learned. It must have been about his second day with us that, having shut him into the hall to try to have our lunch in peace, we decided to let him in because we couldn’t stand his yelling any longer. It couldn’t be good for him, either, said Charles, crying his little heart out like that… So he opened the door and I was still laughing at the 98

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way Seeley shot the length of the room like a greyhound straight from the trap, when he flashed back over my shoulder and landed smack in the middle of my plate. He’d been making for the arm chair behind my dining-chair as a take-off board for the table. He hadn’t been charging up the room at random.

Thereafter he made for that chair whenever he came into the room. Either as a quick way on to the table if we were sitting at it, as a ricochet spot or a smart bit of show-off if we weren’t, or to drag himself round on his back when he was bored… all the more so when he discovered that it got me hopping mad.

It did make me mad, too. The ricochet bit was clever.

Seeley dashing into the room, leaping in full flight to hit the back of the chair at a Wall of Death angle with all four feet as he passed and then galloping on as if in a circus ring was most spectacular indeed, and always earned a round of applause from his onlookers. But Seeley throwing himself on to his back, clawing his way noisily and deliberately round the bottom of a practically brand-new loose-cover and then pausing, still on his back and watching with one canny blue eye round the corner to see what I was going to do about it, made me very mad indeed. So I shouted at him, said he was a horrible little cat, which was just what he was waiting for and, with a look of fiendish glee on his face, he careered on round the bottom of the chair.