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‘Where d’ust thee live?’ Ern peered at me myopically.

‘Down in the Valley,’ I said.

‘Bist thee Mrs Trammell?’

‘No.’ I gazed around again. ‘Well, I’d better be going.

He obviously isn’t up here.’

With which, filled with frustration because it was very likely that Seeley was further up the path but if I tried to pass Ern I’d be caught for the rest of the morning, back I came to report to Charles that I’d try the lane from the other end – which meant going uphill through the village, up another hill by the pub, and then back, full 49

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circle along the lane that Ern was in, only this time I’d be on the other side of him.

He would have to be in that blasted lane, I thought, scurrying up the first hill like the White Rabbit, thinking of all I might have been doing. Only, as I reached the top, to see a figure with a billhook ahead of me. Ern! I thought with dismay, recognising the trilby hat, the sack he always carried over his shoulder and the shambling, steel-tipped clump of his enormous boots. And how he’d got there so fast and where he was going... across the fields seemed the answer to the first question and to the pub the second, except that it wasn’t yet opening time and he usually worked till midday.

The thing was, anyway, not to catch up with him. So, desperate by now as to where Seeley might be but I’d be sunk if I had to talk to Ern, I began to loiter. Not so easy in a village where one is known and to start lurking along the road intently studying the gateposts is apt to give the impression that one has gone bonkers. And Ern kept stopping to peer round to see who was behind him, at which I stopped too and gazed interestedly at the sky –

and then, darn me, when he got to the Rose and Crown he didn’t go in there after all, but turned to the left and trudged on up the slope.

This hill was even steeper. He stopped to look back so many times, and there was only one gate-way in which to loiter, that I threw discretion to the winds and openly hid in it, cocking an eye round the corner at him till he’d gone. Then, emerging from my hiding place – realising too late that Fred Ferry was watching me interestedly from over the hedge and a fine story that was going to make when he told it in the pub – I 50

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Doreen Tovey

belted up the hill, turned into the lane, and once more started calling for Seeley.

There was no sign of him. But as I reached the point in the lane where it begins to dip to the Valley, I heard a whistle far below, from Charles. ‘Has he come back?’ I yelled at the top of my voice. There was no answer. Charles apparently couldn’t hear me. Certain, however, that Seeley must have returned I let myself go in a ballet dance. It was a lovely day, Seeley was safe, Ern had gone home and the turf was so quiet and soft and springy, up there, high above the rest of the world.

‘Dah... dah... dee-dah... dah’ I sang, leaping with outstretched arms around the corner. And there, regarding me dourly from the spot where I’d seen him before, was Ern, complete with billhook, still in the process of trimming the hedge.

‘I knows who thee bist,’ he said. He ought to seeing that I’d just landed like a grasshopper right in front of him. I knew now, too, who it must have been going up the hillside ahead of me. His brother Bert, on his way home from some other job at the top of the village. He, too, wore a trilby and carried a sack, and at that distance I hadn’t recognised him.

‘Found thee dog?’ asked Ern.

‘Cat,’ I said. ‘Yes, he’s come back home all right.’

‘What be doin’ up yer then?’

‘Going back down to the Valley,’ I said. (And that, I thought settled him.)

I was no match for Ern, however. In four quick moves

– an enquiry as to where the pub was, though the wily old so-and-so knew as well as I did; an enquiry as to what time they opened, though that he probably knew even 51

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better; the comment that he wun’t half thirsty... wun’t it I as made thic home-made wine? – in four moves flat he had me.

‘Come in on your way home and have a glass,’ I said.

And made my way back down to the cottage knowing that that was another hour’s hold-up for sure and all on account of that blasted cat...

Who, I discovered when I got back, hadn’t come home even yet. Charles said he’d been whistling to know if I’d found him. So Charles had the pleasure of serving Ern with his elderberry wine while I went on with the search, and all I got for that piece of hospitality was the conversation I heard – on account of the way sounds carry in the Valley – as I toiled up yet another hillside calling for Seeley.

‘Whass she shoutin’ for?’

‘One of the cats,’ said Charles.

‘Thought she’d found ’un.’

‘No, she hasn’t,’ said Charles.

‘I seen she up in the top lane dancin’.’ Ern’s confidential tone showed what he thought of that.

‘She often does,’ said Charles. And that didn’t help much, either.

The morning’s score so far was a knocked-down wall, Seeley still missing, Fred Ferry and the brothers Biggs convinced that I was dotty – and we hadn’t finished yet.

Charles, when he’d got rid of Ern, said it had occurred to him... the Trammells had been up outside their cottage with the car-boot open. He supposed Seeley couldn’t have got shut in there?

Guess who was deputed to go and ask them to look in the car-boot. The Trammells hadn’t been there long.

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They knew me only as somebody eternally calling for a cat up and down the Valley – when, that was, I wasn’t banging an enamel bowl to coax a donkey down from the heights. To be asked if they had our Siamese cat in their boot was hardly the best of introductions, but Charles was insistent, so I did it.

He wasn’t there, of course. They pulled out the boot-rug and shook it, to make sure they’d convinced me. We never knew where he’d been. Only that he returned at two in the afternoon, having left at eight in the morning, as nonchalantly as if he’d been for a five-minute stroll round the garden. We could only think he’d been up all night watching Shebalu – to make sure she didn’t eat him, not by way of looking after her – and that he’d gone off somewhere exhausted and had a darned good sleep.

We watched him carefully for the next few days, not wanting a repeat performance of his disappearance. We might as well not have bothered, of course. There was this new habit of his of chasing the cat from down the lane. One morning he was sitting by the fishpond while I was doing some gardening, the other cat passed the gate, and whooosh! Seeley was through the bars at a bound, chasing him up the hill. I whooshed after him, too. I might even have caught him – I was shouting so hard, not wanting him to vanish, that for a second he hesitated and looked back. At which moment a gun went off, I jumped yards and both cats shot into the wood and straight up a sycamore tree.

It wasn’t anyone after us. It was another newish neighbour practising shooting at a tin. I didn’t know him very well, either – certainly not enough to say would he mind not firing his gun, our cat had gone up a tree. So 53

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