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

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 72

18/01/2007 13:06:41

Doreen Tovey

looked so sad on it, she said; like a Roman prisoner in chains in the Forum – and he’d immediately chased Solomon through a cloche in the garden and Sol had to have twelve stitches in his leg.

After that she’d concentrated on Annabel. Fortunately not to the extent of wanting to take her out, but she was always coming down to feed her. She made a great point about toasting Annabel’s bread and one day she explained to me why. She always took all the crusts off her bread, she said – one never knew where the baker had been. And while I was still trying to think of something to say to that one – that was why she toasted the crusts before bringing them down to Annabel, she confided.

She wouldn’t give the dear little soul bread that might have germs.

The result of that was that while Annabel accepted bread in its normal state, germs and all, from other people, she expected it toasted from Miss Wellington as according to the laws of the Medes and Persians. On the one occasion when Miss W. brought her half a loaf of sliced – which she hadn’t bothered to toast, she said, because it was safely wrapped by machine – Annabel snorted petulantly and tossed the lot in the air and Miss Wellington, highly impressed, said it only went to show.

Now she brought the toast accompanied by four or five motley dogs – who, she explained, hanging wildly on to their leads, she was exercising for various people who lived on the new estate.

A laudable idea indeed, belonging as they did either to pensioners or to households with small children where, during the week, there was nobody to exercise 73

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 73

18/01/2007 13:06:41

Double Trouble

them properly. The snag was, being Miss Wellington, it wasn’t long before she was letting them off their leads, too, because she thought they looked like prisoners in chains.

So there they were, happy exponents of canine lib., milling round Annabel’s gate one morning while Miss Wellington doled out the hygienic toast, when one of them spotted Seeley coming back from his morning’s walk. Normally he came down through the trees and would have seen them before he emerged from cover.

As luck would have it, however, he appeared this time on the track itself, marching round the corner like the principal actor on a stage.

All would have been well even then if he’d nipped back the way he’d come. But with memories of how (in his opinion) he’d recently routed Nero, he paused, arched his back, advanced threateningly down the lane – and when one of the dogs went after him, so did the entire pack.

It was a most momentous scene. Miss Wellington blew her whistle – of which the dogs, not being trained to it as were the dog woman’s, took no notice at all. I, having been talking to Miss Wellington over our own gate, jumped it and ran, shouting wildly, after the dogs.

Charles shot down from the orchard like Mercury in gumboots. And Annabel grabbed the carrier bag dropped by Miss Wellington and poured a shower of toast all over the ground.

We could just about have bet on the next move. Round the corner, as if on cue, came Father Adams with a spade.

‘Whass up now then?’ he interestedly enquired, leaning on it and surveying the scene. ‘Startin’ up thee own Hunt or somethin’? And whass thee done wi’ the fox?’

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 74

18/01/2007 13:06:41

Doreen Tovey

That annoyed Miss Wellington for a start. It didn’t help either when I – Seeley was safely up a tree by now but I was still shaken by his escape – said she ought to keep those dogs on leads or not bring them out at all.

Icily (I could see we wouldn’t be speaking for a while) she clipped the leads on their collars. Icily, for the next few days, she marched them past in tight formation.

Jolly good job, said Seeley, watching with Shebalu from the safety of one of the windows – but I was sorry about it. I was fond of old Miss Wellington.

Eventually, again copying the dog lady, she turned up leading the dogs and pushing a pedal-bike. A high-saddled affair with a basket, which she must have had for years. Inside the Forestry gate she let the dogs off the leads, mounted the bike and pedalled, with head held high, up the track. Looking, with the dogs running after her, just like a huntsman on wheels.

‘She’ll come round,’ said Charles, seeing me look regretfully after her. ‘And at least she can’t be a nuisance in there, taking the dogs along the track.’

Which only shows how wrong one can be. She practically started a stampede.

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 75

18/01/2007 13:06:41

Eight

I WAS IN ON that, too. I was out riding with some friends one morning, on horses from the local stables, and there we were, cantering lightheartedly along one of the Forestry tracks, when we spotted somebody pushing a bike away ahead of us.

I knew who it was at once. No one else ever takes a bicycle into the Forest. Not only would nobody want to, what with the stones and the ruts and the precipitous uphill paths, but only Miss Wellington would have unearthed a fact that we ourselves didn’t know – that bridle paths are, by law, for horses, pedestrians and cyclists.

There she was, anyway. Miss Wellington, her bicycle and the dogs, throwing up the dust from the summer-baked track like a caravan crossing the Sahara. We slowed immediately. Even so we soon caught up with her, the long legs of the horses moving like camels across the ground.

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 76

18/01/2007 13:06:41

Doreen Tovey

‘Hi, Miss Wellington,’ I said as we passed. But Miss Wellington didn’t reply.

I rode on regretfully, leaving her in our wake, sorry to think we still weren’t speaking. At least… I thought were leaving her in our wake. Suddenly I realised that Miss Wellington had mounted her bike and was bumping furiously along at the side of us. Not because she’d had second thoughts and wanted to make it up, but because she was determined she wasn’t going to be passed.

We were walking the horses now. One never canters past people or other animals. Even so we were still raising the dust and Miss Wellington was getting whiter every minute. She was also ringing her bicycle bell. Right on a level with the horses’ tails, and the dogs started yapping and, highly disciplined though they were, the horses didn’t like it. Ears back, heads tossing, they fidgetted and quickened their step, which in turn raised a lot more dust.

‘Let me pass,’ said Miss Wellington imperiously. ‘D’you hear me? You’re covering me in dust. Will you please let me pass?’

We couldn’t. Nothing short of a police horse would have stood still for that cacophony to pass it. We began to trot. Miss Wellington, still ringing her bell, pedalled correspondingly faster. Like the opening of the Charge at Omdurman (except, of course, for the bike), we swept close-packed in the dust along the lane, emerged at last into a clearing – wheeled smartly to the right across the grass and were off and away up another track before Miss Wellington realised what we were doing.

The horses, freed from the bicycle bell and the yapping dogs, went up the track like thunderbolts. ‘Silly old fool,’