He might have stolen it from somebody's larder. It was equally possible that one of the local game-keepers had dropped it over the gate as a present in passing, as country people, shy of receiving thanks, sometimes do – and that Solomon had simply picked it up and brought it in.
We never knew the answer. For two days it lay hidden under the bath with Solomon trying to batter the door down and Charles alternately saying that it seemed a shame to waste it and that men had been sent to Botany Bay for less. We hoped somebody might drop a clue as to where it had come from, but they didn't. If it had come out of somebody's larder it was, as Charles said, quite obvious that it hadn't got there legitimately either. We dared not make enquiries for fear, if it wasn't a present, of branding Solomon as a poacher. Having spent every waking moment since the day he was born trying to impress people with his toughness it was, after all, only natural for them to believe him.
On the second night therefore – since, quite apart from conscience, we could hardly eat a bird which might (if one followed another line of thought) have died from poisoning, we crept out after dark with the body wrapped in a bag, walked two miles into the hills, and regretfully buried it in a ditch.
FIFTEEN
Solomon's Romance
How nice, people said – watching them march in majestic procession up the garden trouble-bent for Charles's latest batch of cabbage plants, or posed lovingly cheek to cheek in an armchair like a picture on a Christmas card – to have two Siamese cats.
In some ways it was. They were company for each other when we were out – and where, as Solomon said himself, could he have put his head when he slept in front of the fire on winter nights, if it wasn't for Sheba's stomach?
On the debit side, however, the mischief those two led each other into outdid a cage of monkeys. The time Sheba stowed away in Sidney's side-car for instance, and he didn't find her until he got home and then had to turn round and bring her all the way back – she'd never have thought of that on her own. Sheba was a home girl. She rarely went far from the garden herself and any time Solomon went off on one of his jaunts she could be depended on, to his disgust, to be standing gleefully in the porch bawling here he was and were we going to smack his bottom now as he tried to sidle surreptitiously up the path.
He could boast as much as he liked about where he'd been and what he'd done. Sheba wasn't interested. She preferred to stay at home and be Charles's and Sidney's little friend. Until she heard Solomon yelling one day to look where he was now – and when she did, there he was out in the lane sitting on the bonnet of a stationary car. She took one look at him, started to shout for Charles, and changed her mind. She had been good for so long that life had, to tell the truth, become rather boring. Besides, however often she advised it, Solomon never did get his bottom smacked. Instead he was made so much fuss of when he did come back from his wanderings that her prissy little nose was put rather out of joint… Without more ado she joined him on the bonnet of the car.
After that the moment anybody parked a car outside the cottage the pair of them were gone like a flash. To begin with they just sat on the front chatting madly to passers-by. That was bad enough. I nearly wore myself to a shadow rushing out to shoo them off and wipe away the paw marks before the owner returned. Then Solomon discovered that a car has an inside. I remember perfectly the day he found that out. Rushing out to grab them off the bonnet of a big black Humber, polishing away busily at the paw marks as I did so, I suddenly realised that he was staring incredulously at something through the windscreen, and when I looked to see what it was there was an old lady sitting in the back seat, staring equally incredulously back. Grinning weakly – it was all I could think of to do – I grabbed the cats and fled. It was pointless, of course. Solomon, having spotted the old lady, was determined to have a closer look. The moment I put him down on the lawn he was away over the wall again like a shot, this time clinging firmly to the door handle with both paws while he peered intently through the window.
Solomon, when he is determined, has claws like grappling hooks. I just couldn't get them off the door handle, and what with him bawling with rage because he wanted to see the lady, Sheba in her usual strategic position up the damson tree advising me to smack him this time anyway and the old lady practically in a state of collapse thinking she was being attacked by a mad woman and an equally mad cat, I could think of only one thing to do. Holding Solomon firmly round the middle I yelled as hard as I could for Charles. Charles disentangled Solomon. Charles, while I carried Solomon into the house, pacified the old lady. It was a bit difficult, he said – she kept saying that when her son came back from his walk we would hear more of this – until he mentioned that I was his wife. Whereupon, he said – rather puzzled, because he didn't know yet about me rushing out and polishing the bonnet of her car while she was still inside it – she patted his hand, saying poor, poor boy, we all had our troubles and must bear them bravely, and gave him a peppermint.
I swore I'd never get Solomon off a car again. I did of course. I was always dragging him off, from under – and now, if ever he found an open window – from inside other people's cars. Charles wouldn't, so I had to. I dared not open the door, even if it wasn't locked. Charles said people might think we had nefarious intentions. So there, sometimes two and three times a day, I stood dangling a long piece of string through the windows of strange cars, frantically imploring Solomon to be a good cat and come out before the owners returned. I held the string at arm's length and stood as far back from the car as I could. Nobody could possibly have thought I had nefarious intentions, but quite a few must have thought I had a screw loose. Particularly since Solomon never paid any attention anyway, but either lay at full length along the top of the back seat pretending to passers-by that it was All His and he was Waiting for the Driver or else was quite invisible on the floor, nosing around among the parcels.
He knew he was doing wrong. He always nipped smartly out again a split second before the owner returned. But I was terribly afraid that one day he – and I – would be caught. I was afraid, too, that one day he might get in a car without my knowing it and be driven off without the driver knowing it either. Automatically I dropped whatever I was doing and rushed to the front gate every time I heard a car. Then in the end, of course, as I might have expected if I'd stopped to consider how those cats' minds worked, it wasn't Solomon who got carried off, but Sheba.
Far more cautious than her brother, she never risked getting inside a car herself. The most she would do, while I fished frantically for him with a piece of string, was to sit wide-eyed on the bonnet saying he was naughty, wasn't he, and she didn't know what we were going to do with him. She was longing to try it herself all the same. You could see it written all over her small blue face. So when at last the impulse became too great for her she went, obviously reasoning that she knew Sidney and would be quite safe with him, and sat in his side-car – and, such is the injustice of the world, promptly got abducted for her pains.
Solomon was beside himself with glee when she came back. This time it was his turn to do the shouting, and he made the most of it. Here she was, the Cross-Eyed Wonder Herself, he yelled stalking to meet her as she came, looking rather sheepish, down the path in Sidney's arms. What About Us Smacking Her Bottom For a Change, he roared in a voice that would have done credit to a lighthouse-keeper. He didn't wait for an answer. As soon as Sidney put her down he bowled her over himself, just to show who was who.