They needn’t have worried at that time. Sheba was with us then, and though in her young days the climb would have been nothing to her – many a time she’d gone up the roof at the back and appeared, tail raised, rubbing round a chimney pot – now she was old and far past climbing. As for Seeley, with his head for heights, he’d as soon have thought of climbing the Empire State Building. He sometimes looked up at the guttering as he passed beneath it – at which time there was invariably somebody above to peer beadily down at him and scold him. On one occasion, too (was it, we wondered, deliberate?), one dropped some sticks down on him instead of taking them in for nest construction. Seeley pretended he hadn’t noticed. Must have started to rain, he said.
Charles said he liked the starlings. Did I realise, he enquired, that they were one of the most intelligent birds in existence? One of the few birds with two lobes to their brains, which is something they share with human beings? Among the few small birds, as a result, who walk instead of hop? We had a marvellous opportunity, if only we took it, to study them at close quarters.
We certainly did. They used to wake me up in the morning demonstrating their walking prowess over our 92
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 92
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 92
18/01/2007 13:06:42
18/01/2007 13:06:42
Doreen Tovey
bedroom ceiling. One of them must have had long-distance ambitions; he pattered backwards and forwards for hours. The one who’d gone in for a home extension
– he kept pretty busy, too. Tapping eternally away at his project – it was just like a man with a hammer.
Probably pecking out some of the old lathe and plaster to make a nesting hole, said Charles – there must be lots of it still up inside the roof. He couldn’t think why I was worried. Of course they wouldn’t make the roof collapse.
They did the next best thing. Given carte blanche on account of they’d chosen to live with a bird-watcher...
making any structural alterations that suited their taste... they eventually made an entrance at the bottom of the chimney pot, which we didn’t know about until it rained.
93
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 93
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 93
18/01/2007 13:06:43
18/01/2007 13:06:43
Ten
IT WAS QUITE SIMPLE. Just a matter of their raising a couple of tiles to make a way in. In the normal way we’d probably have noticed the damp patch on the ceiling, righted the displaced tiles and that would have been that. Only it happened that it didn’t rain normally. It came down in an absolute deluge and we woke up in the morning to find that the stream was overflowing. Swirling down the lane in a fast-running torrent that threatened to wash all the surface off the track.
We were so busy seeing to that... knee-deep in icy water, rodding the pipes under the drive and hooking debris out of the ditches to get the stream back into its proper course, that it was some hours before –
still breakfastless – I went upstairs to change out of my wet clothes, heard a splashing sound in the spare room and found that the rain was coming in.
94
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 94
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 94
18/01/2007 13:06:43
18/01/2007 13:06:43
Doreen Tovey
It was dripping as hard as it could go, through the ceiling rose, down the electric light flex and on to the seat of a chair and Charles wasn’t at all pleased at having to go up on the roof, also still breakfastless, and put the tiles to rights. All the more so as, while he was sitting astride the apex, one arm round the chimney pot hoping it wouldn’t come off. Miss Wellington came past and called up ‘Having trouble with the roof?’ ‘No,’ I heard Charles reply. ‘I’m just admiring the view.’
Which, as I told him afterwards, was a silly thing to say because Miss Wellington would believe he meant it, sure as eggs were eggs, and pass it on to the rest of the village.
All was well that ended well, though, as I remarked, rather tiredly, later. We’d just had a meal and I’d lit a fire and put an oil-heater in the hall to dry things out a bit.
Charles had said we’d better keep the electricity off for a while in case it shorted on account of the wire getting damp. So there we sat, Charles in his usual armchair, I on the hearthrug with my back against the settee. Seeley was on my lap, Shebalu against my legs, all of us relaxing, for a few blissful minutes...
We fell asleep of course. What with our exertions in the stream and on the roof and now the soothing warmth of the fire. A while later I opened one eye and thought
‘Gosh – the fire’s smoking. How odd. It doesn’t seem very windy.’ It would die down presently, I decided, and closed my eyes again. There was nothing I could do about it. I was too tired, anyway.
Still later I opened my eyes once more. By now the room was really foggy. I could hardly see the Welsh dresser across it while Shebalu, usually so outstandingly white, looked positively grey against my legs. She had 95
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 95
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 95
18/01/2007 13:06:43
18/01/2007 13:06:43
Double Trouble
her head raised too, and was puzzledly sniffing. The fire must have been smoking, while we slept, like an oil-tanker. ‘Oil-tanker!’ I thought, starting up in alarm. I’d realised at last what it was.
I hadn’t checked on the stove in the hall after lighting it, and it had been flaring up for nearly two hours. The hall and the staircase were blacked out solidly, with cobwebs hanging down like curtains, while the sitting room lay under a blanket of smuts – and so, when we went upstairs, did the bedrooms. Shebalu was grey for days, however much we brushed her. It was a good thing it didn’t show on him, wasn’t it? said Seeley, interestedly watching.
It showed everywhere else. Carpets, curtains, bedspreads, walls – I looked like a Kentucky minstrel.
I got things clean eventually, of course – but as usual, I never learn. This happened within a week of Shebalu’s spaying and one morning a friend rang up, while I was cooking breakfast, to ask how she was getting on. ‘Fine,’
I said enthusiastically. And then we discussed the heavy rain-storm and I told her the story of the black-out and we both of us laughed like drains. She said she’d had an oil-stove black-out once herself and we laughed a lot more at her experiences. ‘Well, thank goodness everything’s all right now,’ I said, ringing off to go and finish getting the breakfast.
As I say, I never learn. I remember once, after Solomon had been ill, someone ringing up to ask how he was doing. ‘Oh, he’s fine now,’ I’d replied, just as enthusiastically – and, putting down the phone, had come through the living room door just in time to see Sol raise his tail to me in greeting against the electric fire. Fortunately it had a guard over it, but within five 96
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 96
Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 96
18/01/2007 13:06:43
18/01/2007 13:06:43
Doreen Tovey
seconds of saying he was fine, there we were with a horrible smell of singeing and Solomon’s tail in tiger-stripes that didn’t grow out for months.
Just as now, when I came through the same door to another smell of burning and, going out to the kitchen, found I hadn’t turned off the cooker when the phone rang. I’d left two eggs in the grill pan with the grill going full blast, they were now burnt black and I couldn’t see across the kitchen. The only room that had escaped, incidentally, when the oil-stove flared up the previous week.
I turned off the cooker, opened the back door to let out the smoke – through which Charles promptly appeared, like an agitated genie, announcing that Shebalu had taken out her stitches. Not all of them, I discovered, rushing to see for myself. Of her original three she’d taken out one on either side but was still held together by the middle one. She stood on the kitchen table, vastly pleased with herself, while we inspected her and decided that, as there were only two days to go before she was due to have her stitches removed anyway, if we made sure she didn’t get excited and run up trees, possibly, with a bit of luck, she might hold out.