Читать онлайн "Double Trouble [calibre 3.42.0]" - Тови Дорин - RuLit

there I stood. Afraid to move in case the marksman saw the branches waving and mistook the cats for pigeons.

Calling Seeley frantically whenever the firing stopped, when a worried little face would appear in the fork above me. And then the gun would go off again, and Seeley would promptly vanish.

We’d have been there still if Charles, spotting what had happened, hadn’t come staggering up the hill with the extending ladder. We’d have been there still trying to hoist it up into the sycamore, too, if a friend hadn’t come along and discovered us in our predicament.

He was on his way down to us with a home-grown cucumber which he laid carefully on the edge of the road, climbed the bank and helped us thread the ladder up through the tree.

The target practice had stopped by this time. The marksman, across on his patio, was more intrigued by watching us. We now had another snag, however, in that while Seeley kept appearing in the fork and peering down at us, the other cat kept appearing behind him as well – at which Seeley left off to chase him back to the end of the branch, and we were back once more where we started.

It was at this point, with the three of us holding the ladder in the air, gazing anxiously upwards and apparently waiting for Jacob to descend, that Ern Biggs plodded past on his way home from the Trammells.

‘Whass they doin’ then?’ he asked the man with the gun.

‘Blowed if I know’ came the answer.

‘Reckon they’m pickin’ they?’ said Ern, spotting the cucumber by the roadside. And then... I knew it was coming... ‘I seed she dancin’ up in the lane the other day,’ he ventured in his confidential voice.

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Doreen Tovey

We effected the rescue eventually. Charles climbed the ladder, coaxed Seeley on to his shoulder and descended to a level where I could lift him off. I was the first to come out of the wood – sliding down the bank on my bottom, holding Seeley over my shoulder by his tail and, when I reached the road, getting up with as much dignity as I could and marching down the hill towards the cottage. Next came the other cat. Once Seeley was out of the way he shinned down of his own accord. And finally, slithering down the bank with the ladder, picking up the cucumber and looking remarkably, like Laurel and Hardy, came Charles and our helpful neighbour.

‘Rum lot thee’st got round here,’ Ern’s voice floated after us complacently. ‘Never knows what thee’st goin’

to see.’

We, for our part, were glad that as yet we only had one cat to run after. Until her inoculation we were keeping Shebalu indoors. We dared not think what might happen when she was at large as well. She was, as we were daily discovering, very different from Sheba.

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Six

SHEBA HAD BEEN A good girl. Demure; a trifle prim, perhaps; never had she given us a moment’s worry.

True in her old age she’d become a bit of an autocrat, but what old lady doesn’t? Like Queen Victoria in her eighties was Sheba and one thing we knew for certain. Even in her giddiest days she’d never have drunk the dishwater.

Shebalu did. She also licked the sink and, when I’d been using the grillpan, could invariably be found wherever I’d left it, rasping away at the grid. She had the manners of an alley-cat, not the daughter of a Champion of Champions.

Terrible, wasn’t she? enquired Seeley, who seemed to have grown up overnight since her coming and spent a lot of his time sitting anxiously by her looking like a furry paternal owl. Why did I let her get at the dishwater?

said Charles, who worried in case it upset her stomach.

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Doreen Tovey

The answer was that I couldn’t stop her. Most people pour dishwater down the sink, but if we did, it blocked the drains. Something to do with the pipes not being sloped enough, which Father Adams said wun’t surprising seeing the builder that laid ’em. The fact was, anyway, that by long-established custom I threw the greasier dishwater either into the stream or on the garden. Not wishing to be seen doing this (people thought I was odd enough without adding compulsive water-throwing to my list of peculiarities), I was in the habit of peering through the doorway to see if anyone was about and, if there was, leaving the bowl in the sink until the coast was clear. This was when Shebalu got at it.

To avoid this I started dodging out with the bowl much more quickly and – my mind being more on dumping the dishwater than on the actual washing-up – embarked on a period in which I was constantly heaving teaspoons over the wall. I’d done this before in moments of stress. Over the years Father Adams had many a time and oft appeared with one of our teaspoons saying he’d found he in the stream and what was I narked with the Boss about this time, then? Now they were going over practically in shoals.

I didn’t see them when I threw them, of course, owing to the murkiness of the dishwater. But several times I found them laid by unknown rescuers on the gatepost; Father Adams, when he returned one now, handed it in resignedly and never said a word; and inevitably, in due course, Ern Biggs clumped in, importantly bearing a trophy.

‘Found he in the stream on me way home from Mr Trammell’s,’ he said.

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Double Trouble

‘Oh – many thanks,’ said Charles. ‘My wife throws them over the wall. When she gets flustered on account of the cats,’ he hurriedly explained.

‘ Do she now,’ said Ern.

Was it my fancy or from then on did we have more visitors to the Valley than ever? Customers from the pub coming down, thanks to Ern, in the hope of seeing me throwing teaspoons?

If so they were disappointed. After the episode with Ern I was a lot more careful with the dishwater. As Shebalu wasn’t allowed out she couldn’t cause any trouble. The only thing of consequence for quite a while was the disappearance of Seeley’s golf balls and a passer-by would scarcely have noticed that.

I hardly noticed it myself to begin with. The first time I looked for the ball where I thought I’d left it – on the lawn by the clock golf hole – I decided I must have been dreaming. Must have taken it back to the kitchen, I thought, and went to fetch another one. The next time I wasn’t dreaming, however I knew I’d left it by the hole.

A timely putt with that, when Seeley was in a wandering mood, often diverted him from going off into the woods

– but it had to be ready for the emergency; it was no good having it stowed away indoors.

I looked down the hole. It wasn’t in there. I thought of magpies... it was a bit too heavy for them. I looked at Seeley, who regarded me owlishly back. No. Big as he was, even he couldn’t have swallowed it.

So I reasoned – and several balls later (a present to him from a friend who’d given up golf) I was keeping a watchful eye on some children who were going past when I saw Nero, the black retriever, roaming around in the garden.

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Doreen Tovey

When I went out to chase him off he nipped through the hole in the wall made by the baker – obviously the way by which he’d come – and stopped in the lane to bark at me. A defiant, head-raised tirade with his legs spread stiff in challenge. Then he paused for a moment and I saw a bulge change places in his cheek.

‘He’s got Seeley’s golf ball,’ I said.