We'd have thought it was a momentary aberration – maybe she'd mistaken him in her anger for the other cat – but for the fact that from that time on she only had to catch the merest whiff of Belle, and she immediately pitched into Sass.
Once I had to carry her down from the hillside behind the cottage completely beside herself with rage. Smelling Belle's scent on a gorse bush – seeing, which was worse, Sass interestedly sniffing at it – she'd leapt upon him with the fury of a Parisian Apache dancer. I separated them. She rushed at him again and I picked him up. She'd Kill Him when I put him down, she informed him. Sass, who always goes completely silent in moments of stress, dug his claws into my shoulder and prepared for take-off. I couldn't manage them both, so I let him go and grabbed Shebalu instead. She is half his size and easier to handle. Holding her firmly by her back legs and the scruff of her neck, I ran back along the hillside shouting for Charles.
'What is it? An adder?' he demanded, rushing out of the kitchen door clutching the poker. Fred Ferry was as usual out in the lane.
'It's Sass!' I shouted. 'Shebalu's attacked him and he's bleeding. I've brought her back to keep them apart, but I've had to leave him behind!'
Charles started to run. I knew what he was thinking. Since we'd lost Seeley we'd never left a cat out of doors alone, and now Sass was loose somewhere – on a trailing lead, which was dangerous in itself – and goodness knew what he might meet up with.
'How far back did you leave him?' he asked, hurriedly unfastening the gate.
'Don't know what thee two bist panicking about,' said Fred laconically. 'There he is coming along behind thee.'
Sure enough, following Shebalu and me at a distance, was a woebegone little figure. Frightened, left behind, maybe thinking I didn't want him – still his one thought was to stay close. Never, of all the Siamese who have given their hearts to us, has one loved us quite so devotedly as Sass.
Which was all very well but he had a piece out of one ear and Shebalu had hit him on his nose, which was bleeding. What did she mean by it? I asked her. Her? said Shebalu, calm as a Quaker now they were indoors. It was all his fault for encouraging that other cat. She strolled across, looked him over and licked his fur back into place. He was as good as new now, she informed us.
He wouldn't have been for long, the way she was beating him up, but in March we had a week of heavy snow. It kept Belle away. Our two rarely went out. When they did, it was up a solid, snow-packed track from which her scent had been obliterated. Shebalu forgot about her and Sass could breathe again – which was more than could be said for the rest of us.
Miss Wellington was on the trail. The weather forecast had given snow – heavy over Western hills, which was us. This explained why our starlings had arrived the previous day, several weeks earlier than usual. They nested in our roof every year – they had entrances under the tiles above the gutter – and they moved in like a migrating tribe of Red Indians. We could hear them up there, scuffling in one corner, banging away in another, protesting as they squeezed narrowly in through the holes. Making more noise than any of the others, as he had done for several years previously, was one we could distinguish because he'd somewhere or other learned to wolf-whistle.
'If theest stopped up they holes,' Father Adams told us every spring, 'they 'ouldn't get in there tearing up thee roof.'
Actually we wouldn't have turned them out for anything. It had been their nesting place for years. But one or two of them did bang away as if they were using steam-hammers. They'd start up at dawn and I'd lie in bed listening, wondering what on earth they were up to. Extending their quarters? They certainly couldn't be catching insects at that speed, unless the beams were riddled with woodworm... I'd wake Charles to listen. He'd say if it was that rotten the starlings wouldn't make much difference and turn over and go back to sleep. I'd go on listening. Every now and then there'd be a piercing Whee-eeew, as if somebody was saying Now you've done it...
That, however, was normal breeding-season behaviour. It was different the day before the snow. The starlings came in, rustled about a bit, as if they were unpacking their bags. There were a few flutters and scuffles and squawks. We heard the familiar wolf-whistle, probably saying Gosh, fancy finding this place still standing. Then they settled down, as if they were waiting for something – and twenty-four hours later we had the snow.
It came during the night. Everybody in the Valley slept peacefully, knowing that the cars were all up at the farm. We'd all heard the forecast and Miss Wellington had phoned everybody anyway, and had stood at her gate to check the cars as they went up one by one. At seven next morning the phone rang again.
'It can't be her,' I said. It was, though. Ringing all of us in turn to tell us the village was cut off. There was a drift beyond the farm, right down to the main road – she'd already been out to have a look at it. She was terribly worried, she said. Nobody could get to work. Shouldn't we get up early and try to dig through?
In her mind's eye she obviously saw us all digging away as in the salt mines. Out to the main road by nine o'clock and those who worked in town, at their desks by ten. A combination of 'Business as Usual', 'The Mail must go Through' and 'Valiant Expedition to the Arctic'. What she was overlooking was that it was a good half-mile out to the main road and the drift was packed as high as the hedge-tops. Even with elephants we couldn't have got through that lot. There was nothing for it but to wait for the snow-plough.
There being more important roads than ours we had to wait for several days, though Miss Wellington rang the Council every morning as if we were Mafeking. Meanwhile, cut off, unable to get away, the rest of the village turned its mind to other pursuits. Men sawed wood. Women baked bread because the baker couldn't get through. Children appeared with sledges. People helped one another to clear their paths. Miss Wellington, a woollen scarf over her hat and wearing enormous boots, helped everybody busily. When Charles and I went up to try to get to the village shop for milk, she was scraping away frantically in the drive of the house on the corner. When we came back an hour later, having navigated drifts that had piled up like ice caverns and frozen wastes that looked like the Antarctic, Miss Wellington was scraping away outside the Rose and Crown, obviously trying to set an example.
'Worried about thee pint?' Fred Ferry jovially enquired, stamping his feet as he went through the door. Miss Wellington regarded him frostily. He wouldn't joke if he needed an ambulance, she said, obviously still harbouring visions of him under the graveyard wall. And how was the milkman going to get through? And the man who came for the insurance?
They didn't. For days we clambered over the drifts for the milk. Somebody always brought Miss Wellington's. The insurance man, who covered several villages on a bicycle, got so behind he didn't come for weeks.
Miss Wellington continued to worry, however – if it wasn't about our being cut off by the snow, it was whether the stream would flood when the thaw came. Occasionally, by way of a change, she would potter across to the graveyard and do a stint of worrying about that. Was Tim sure the wall was safe? She was so concerned about Mr Ferry. That poor curly kale, weighed down by all that snow – wouldn't it be better for it if Tim cleared it off? Those dear, dear daffodils, flowering so bravely under their covering – she wished somebody would go to their rescue...