and once Ern Biggs saw Father Adams in his natty brick-coloured trousers, Ern was over in Briddar like lightning after a pair for himself.
It was inevitable, of course. Since I was circling round Briddar on my lessons like a particularly determined driver on the Dodgems, Ern only had to be there buying his trousers and he was absolutely bound to see me. He did too. Coming out of the very same shop. And there was no pretending he hadn’t noticed me. He stood on the pavement and gawked. Neither did he keep quiet about it. It was his big item of news for days. I only had to pass him, chatting at somebody’s gate, and I knew what the conversation would be about. How he’d had to jump for his life... probably that everybody else had, too... ‘Goggles like ruddy gert telescopes’ I heard him say on one occasion.
So, my plans for keeping it a secret thwarted, on I drove; only too thankful that Ern Biggs wasn’t around on other occasions. When I crashed the gears, for instance, or went remorselessly backwards down hills; or the occasion on which I drove the car straight onto the pavement in Briddar High Street.
I bet there aren’t many learners whose instructors tell them on their fourth lesson out ‘On to the pavement!
Quick!’ I said so to Miss Prince as we sat in the car on it afterwards. She said it wasn’t normally part of the instruction. I shouldn’t make a habit of it. But she 122
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Doreen Tovey
said… when you had a van unloading outside a shop on the opposite side of the road and from behind that van, as one approached it, came a lorry going far too fast to stop… on to the pavement was the only thing if one didn’t want to swop the car for a harp.
Charles nearly dropped when I told him. It could only happen to me, he said. That was what Miss Prince said, too, I admitted. Thank heaven Ern Biggs hadn’t been around.
So I plodded on behind my L-plates, while Charles got on with the extension plans. I hoped to take my test in the Spring, which was when he intended the alterations should start. Just in time, I secretly thought, if he was going to do any of the work himself.
He said he was. More and more he said so as on the one hand we heard how building costs were rising and, on the other, of people undertaking the work themselves.
After talking to someone in the village who’d done his own extension completely, Charles even saw us doing the block-laying. In gay Norwegian sweaters, he said.
Presumably to give that nonchalant effect.
This, however, was November. It was a long time yet to the Spring. Christmas came first, with log fires and family parties, and building and driving lessons forgotten.
It passed peacefully enough, save for one or two minor incidents. Seeley went off his food on Christmas night, for instance, which had me worried till I realised he was still full of beans. Doing his act up the bathroom door and going round chairs on his back.
A while later, in the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator door and Seeley appeared silently behind me. Shebalu was in the sitting room, joining in the party games.
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Double Trouble While we two were on our own, Seeley’s gaze intimated... Surely I knew what he Wanted? I should have done. Seeley, as a kitten, had been brought up on turkey and chicken... before we had him, that was, but it was something he’d never forgotten. Now there was one in the refrigerator, reminding him of his childhood.
He stretched out his head towards it, sniffing, in case I thought he meant the sausages...
He got it, of course. He ate turkey rapturously for days.
Shebalu couldn’t have cared less. That stuff again, she said, shaking her leg at it. Didn’t we have any rabbit?
Not that she was unimpressed by Christmas. Eyes round as saucers from the moment she got up, she was forever trying to reach the holly or climbing the Christmas tree. Any time we have had a Christmas tree there have always been cats in the branches. Now there was a new little cat. I looked at her, and remembered...
She also ate all the flowers off an indoor chrysanthemum.
Twelve brilliant yellow blooms it had, and was a present from a friend. I’d put it on the hall chest, which showed it off to perfection. The next time I saw it, it didn’t have a flower on it. Just a few scattered petals around from which you could tell what colour it had been.
It was Seeley, she said when I carried her out and confronted her with it. If I asked her, he’d gone a bit funny through eating all that turkey. It wasn’t Seeley, of course; I knew that very well. Half an hour later I caught her eating the leaves.
Siamese, on principle, always misbehave at Christmas.
Whether it’s the competition – so many visitors they feel it necessary to outshine. Whether it’s the atmosphere –
all the excitement and laughter and general air of laissez-124
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faire. Whether it’s the relaxation of supervision and with Siamese one should never relax...
Just after Christmas I had a letter from a friend who had two Siamese. Sheba (after our old girl) and her adopted brother Igor. She bet we couldn’t guess what they’d done this year, she said. She was right. We certainly couldn’t.
Apparently she’d given a party for which, among other things, she’d made some cream meringues. Knowing that pair, she said, she’d wanted to lock them (the cats) in the bedroom. If she’d suggested putting them in chains in a dungeon, however, her husband couldn’t have been more appalled. So they’d been allowed to join in the party, adding tone to it as only Siamese can. She’d kept a weather eye on them, of course. They’d just eyed her innocently back. Until, she said, she’d brought in a heavy tray and hadn’t been able to close the door behind her... and a few minutes later she noticed that Sheba had vanished.
She was after her in an instant, frantically fearing the worst. Everything seemed all right, however. The meringues were still on their dish on the kitchen dresser.
Sheba was sitting thinking on the landing upstairs. Even when she picked up the meringues a little later and found there wasn’t any cream in them she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t at fault. They looked so untouched, she wondered if she was going crackers. She supposed she had put in the cream?
She got her answer on Boxing Day when Sheba had diarrhoea like a tap. It would peter out if it had been caused by cream, the Vet said when she called him.
But if she liked he’d come over and give the sufferer something to make sure... It was cream all right. By five o’clock the culprit was bawling for her food and pulling 125
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Double Trouble James the spaniel’s ears. Only, wrote Mia, no sooner had she got over that fright, than Igor nearly did for her for good and all.
The previous week she and her husband had bought an electric log fire – just for effect, as they had central heating. They only used the log part – never the fire
– though after half an hour or so the logs, which had a bulb inside, did get slightly warm. Anyway, she rang the Vet to tell him it had been the cream with Sheba, came back into the sitting room, her mind on something else
– and there lay Igor on top of the logs, artificial flames all round him, and for a moment she forgot that they weren’t real. It looked so horrible, she said, she nearly fainted. Just like one of the Old Testament stories with Igor as the sacrificial lamb. And then that horrible cat opened his eyes and smirked at her. Nice spot to relax on, he said.