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

111

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 111

18/01/2007 13:06:44

Twelve

WE WERE A LOT more careful after that, letting her have her ball only when we were around to see where she put it. Howl though she might, it was hers only at strictly specified times, one of which was nine o’clock at night.

She quickly learned the routine. Up till then she might be doing anything – blissfully on her back warming her stomach before the fire, helping Charles with his painting, tormenting Seeley... on the stroke of nine, just as Sheba had been with the milk, Shebalu was on the bureau insistently demanding her ball. It was her Right, we understood, to have it Now. Under her Siamese Charter.

Shebalu’s charter covered a lot of things. Seeley, for instance, wasn’t allowed to snore. If he did, whether he was on my lap or dreaming under his rug, Shebalu went up and peremptorily poked him. It was the funniest thing to see him embarrassedly open one eye and stop

– Seeley, who could have flattened her with a paw. He 112

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 112

18/01/2007 13:06:44

Doreen Tovey

doted on her so much it was really quite incredible and he demonstrated it in so many ways. Sometimes I tried to get him to play with the ball with the bell. It had been his as a kitten and there was no reason why they shouldn’t share it. He’d just pat it gently and look at Shebalu, who needed no second invitation to move in and take it. Even more remarkable, on several occasions when I threw it to him on the settee, he picked it up in his mouth and dropped it deliberately over the edge

– to where his cross-eyed girlfriend waited confidently below.

Instead of her imitating him, too, Seeley was now copying her. If she sat on the table watching Charles at work on a painting – Seeley was up there earnestly watching as well. If she drank the paint-water, which she very often did, being thirsty from so much talking

– then Seeley must have his turn. Once, when she kept trying to drink a particularly poisonous-looking jar of paint-water. Charles went out to change it, came back with a clean lot – and found that Seeley. determined to keep his end up, had eaten all the paint off his palette.

Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna and Gamboge. Seeley was perfectly all right but Charles’s ulcer played him up all night, worrying about the paint in Seeley’s stomach.

Seeley even moved at the same pace that she did.

Shebalu went everywhere at the double and came down the stairs like tumbleweed. Beside her, always, was Seeley.

His head turned towards her, his long legs performing a sort of rocking-horse canter as he checked his stride to match her gait – he looked for all the world like a trainer pacing a runner. One could imagine him quite easily in a striped jersey. Only in this case the runner, 113

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 113

18/01/2007 13:06:44

Double Trouble small, determined and boss-eyed, was always eventually allowed to win.

It was such a peaceful time, after the upset of losing Solomon and Sheba – like coming into harbour after a very stormy passage. He’d been thinking, said Charles, as we sat by the fire one night, Seeley on my lap, Shebalu on his and Annabel contentedly eating out in her stable...

here we were, everything going so well, what about putting in the plans for the cottage extension?

This was something we’d had in mind for a long time.

Originally ours had been a typical West Country cottage

– small, whitewashed, red-tiled, with two rooms up, two down and a lean-to cartshed at the back. The previous owners had knocked the two downstairs rooms into one and built a kitchen and bathroom in place of the cartshed. We had added on an entrance hall at the side so that one didn’t step straight into the sitting room, and there was a greenhouse and a conservatory, a garage at the top of the garden, and a stable for Annabel across the way. We didn’t need much more room, we said. Except that it would be nice to have the bathroom upstairs, so that people didn’t have to wander through the sitting room in their dressing gowns. And if we had that, of course, we could knock the old bathroom and passage into the sitting room and make a dining area, which would also be very useful. And while we were building on a bathroom upstairs, over the existing bathroom, we might as well have a room over the kitchen as well... we really could do with a study.

We could indeed, seeing that our one small spare room was crammed with papers, books, Charles’s easel, my typewriter, our canoe sails, a piano (so that 114

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 114

18/01/2007 13:06:44

Doreen Tovey

I could practise in the necessary seclusion) and, if we happened to be going out, two cat-boxes in case they were needed. When, we had people staying, everything, with the exception of the piano which weighed about half a ton, had to be moved into our bedroom. What with having to keep their belongings on the piano, trek downstairs to the loo and, if we happened to open our bedroom door when they were passing, an easel was likely to fall out and narrowly miss them... sometimes, though they were our friends, they looked definitely bemused.

Our bathroom fittings were old-fashioned, too. We had a bath like a horse-trough and a lavatory with a high cistern and a very long chain which was always coming off in visitors’ hands. How out-of-date it was had been brought home to us some while before when a cousin from Saskatchewan, visiting us for the first time ever, went into the bathroom. A while later he emerged, rushed to find his wife who was standing out on the lawn and, his face shining with excitement, said

‘Nellie! You should come and see! They’ve got one of those that you pull!’ Nellie, profoundly impressed, accompanied him hotfoot to see this relic of old England. On the Saskatchewan prairies, it seems, they have low-flush suites and central heating. Not a little house beside a log-pile with a moose calling behind it, as I had romantically imagined.

One way and another it was obviously time we carried out the alterations. We’d put it off for years, what with the mess we knew it would involve and not wanting to upset the cats. Solomon and Sheba were ageing and the hammering and knocking down of walls would have 115

Double Trouble_INSIDES.indd 115

18/01/2007 13:06:44

Double Trouble disturbed them. Solomon, in particular, was a very nervous cat. He’d have gone round being haunted for weeks.

Now, however, we had two young cats with nerves of iron and constitutions to match. And if I wilted a little at the prospect of all the rubble – just think, said Charles, how nice it would be when we had all that extra space.

So Charles embarked on the plans, which he’d decided to draw up himself, and the cats sat interestedly on the table and watched him and I thought thoughts of my own. Charles was talking of doing some of the alterations himself. The painting, he said. Maybe some of the woodwork. Certainly he could move out all the rubble... At which stage I produced my own proposition.

I thought I’d learn to drive, I said.

Charles couldn’t have been more alarmed if I’d said I was going to learn to fly. Years before he’d given me driving lessons himself, and they hadn’t been much of a success. For a start I couldn’t reverse. True I’d only tried it once... when I’d been turning across a country road and a petrol tanker had come along, revving impatiently at us to pass, and Charles, embarrassed because we were holding it up, had said ‘Back! Quick now! Back into that gate!’ He was even more embarrassed when I did. He hadn’t had to be shown how to reverse, said Charles, while the tanker-driver drove ecstatically on. He’d done it automatically. Three lessons he’d had before he’d gone out on his own and how I’d managed to knock down that gatepost...