If I was in the garden with the cats when the geese went by, Tani would bolt, stomach to the ground, into the cottage and hide under the sofa while Saphra, who was made of stronger stuff, watched from the garden wall. Protected by the stream which ran beneath him like a moat he would crouch, wailing defiance at them. He wasn't Afraid. He'd take on the Lot of Them. Just let them Try Anything, he'd howl, with a quick look over his shoulder to make sure I was at back-up position behind him.
It took more than a Siamese cat to put Gerald and Co. in their place, however. Way down past Father Adams's, who surprisingly had no trouble with the geese himself (maybe Gerald knew better than to chance his luck with a real countryman), Peter Reason had constructed a pond for them at the side of the lane by damming the stream, and it so happened that my cousin Dee came out to tea one day, bringing her border terrier Tilly and her friend's cross-Bedlington bitch Tag, whom she was looking after while her friend was on holiday.
We had tea on the lawn with the cats in their run for safety, bees humming in the lavender behind us, white summer clouds drifting like sailing ships over the grass-grown ramparts of the Iron Age fort on the hill at the end of the valley and a buzzard hovering silently overhead. 'No wonder you love it here,' sighed Dee relaxing in her chair. 'I can't think of any place on earth more peaceful.'
She didn't say that half an hour later, when we went out to put the dogs in the car. Tilly, who'd been spayed the previous week and was being rather careful how she moved, stood by the car door waiting to get in. Tag, milling about at the edge of the stream, was sniffing the various scents, when she suddenly heard something down the lane. Her head came up, she saw big white wings flapping like tablecloths down at the pond, and she was gone like an arrow.
'Tag!' Dee and I shrieked in terrified unison. 'Tag! Come back!' She dashed into the mêlée of geese, scattering them in all directions, and then, like the obedient dog she was, she did come back, trotting up the lane with her tongue lolling happily at the fun she'd had. Unfortunately she'd set the stage for melodrama. Roused by the hullabaloo Tilly, forgetting her stitches, tore down the lane, passed Tag without a glance, and jumped on the nearest goose, which immediately sank beneath the pond surface with Tilly on her back and stayed there.
'Tilly!' we yelled, starting to run ourselves. As we reached the pond Tilly fell off into the water, scrambled ashore, and the goose popped up as if on water wings. Unfortunately not for long. Tilly jumped on her again, they went down like a submarine and its conning tower, and while we were still trying to get a grip on Tilly Janet came racing up from the stables, jumped into the pond, grabbed Tilly by her collar and threw her ashore. Up came the goose again, and beat it hastily for the opposite shore, where Gerald and the others were honking in circles.
Wading out of the pond, Janet dealt Tilly a well-deserved slap. Dee, cuddling the miscreant in her arms, turned her back to shield her. 'Don't hurt her. She's just had a hysterectomy,' she wailed.
'She should know better,' snapped Janet angrily. And we couldn't flaw that one. So she jolly well should.
All the way up the lane Dee agonised as to what she should do. Go back and apologise to Janet? I'd do that, I said. Better for Dee to take the dogs home out of the way before anything else happened. Offer to pay damages? I'd pass the message on, I said. Though I really didn't think there'd be any.
Dee safely away with the dogs – and was I glad to see the back of them – I went down the lane to see Janet. There was no sign of the geese. Only, over in a corner of the field by a ruined shed, something big and round and white lay half-concealed in a clump of nettles. Surely the goose hadn't died of shock? How on earth was I going to tell Janet? Coward-like, I didn't. Just apologised and asked how they were. I'd check on the way back, and if there was a defunct goose there I'd decide how to break the news to the Reasons later.
Janet received me just as worriedly. The geese were all right, she assured me (she didn't know about that big white bottom up the lane). She was sorry, though, that she'd slapped Tilly. She'd done it in the heat of the moment. Tilly had deserved it, I said. I must ring Dee, though, and tell her to bath Tilly in a Dettol solution, Janet insisted. With a half-healed incision... one never knew what germs there were in duck-ponds. I promised that I would, came relievedly up the lane – especially when I'd looked more closely at the round white thing in the nettles and found it wasn't a dead goose only an old white enamelled bowl thrown there by some long-gone valley resident in the days before refuse collections – and went up to get the cats in for their supper.
He wished he could have played with those dogs, said Saphra, who'd been sitting watching the whole thing in the cat-run. They knew how to have fun.
Hadn't realised they were white slaver dogs, had he? observed Tani, emerging from the cat-house with the alacrity which was her wont when visitors had gone. It was a good thing she had Brains enough for Both of them.
ELEVEN
She was clever. In a neat, precise little feminine way. I could imagine her knitting or organising kittens. But Saphra had moments of real inspiration and constructive reasoning, as when I threw his favourite toy mouse for him and he would pat it under the bureau then lie flat on his stomach peering underneath while I fished it out with an opened-out builder's ruler. That was the most interesting part of it for him – watching the ruler hook out the errant toy. He got round to carrying the mouse in his mouth to the bureau, pawing it deliberately underneath, then bawling for me to come and do the ruler business. This happened so often that I started to leave the ruler ready under the bureau and Saph had another constructive thought. That was what I'd used to get the mouse out. He'd never been able to work the water-pistol but he could wiggle the ruler, and wiggle it he did, one paw on the end of it, as he'd seen me use my hand, then rushing round to the front to see whether the mouse had appeared. Sometimes it had, and Saph was overjoyed, tossing it in the air in triumph before pushing it back to do the wiggling bit again. More often than not it hadn't, because he was wiggling the ruler blindly – but he'd reasoned out the connection and worked at it like an engineer manipulating a lever.
One of the most remarkable instances of this sort I've heard was told me by a breeder who'd sold a kitten to some people who'd never experienced the proclivities of Siamese before and kept ringing her to tell her what he'd been up to. It seemed that they'd been having their house re-wired and the kitten kept going under the floorboards and coming out somewhere else. They did their best to stop him, but given the chance he was underground like a flash, and it took ages of expensive working time to get him out. Then the electrician hit on the idea of tying a length of string to the kitten's collar, putting him under the floorboards, calling him from across the room where they'd taken up another board, and the kitten would nip across underneath, emerge gleefully from the new hole – and the electrician would tie the string to a length of flex which he then pulled through and connected up. 'Saved hours of taking up floorboards,' said the breeder proudly. I would have been scared of the string's getting caught round a joist and their having to take up floorboards even faster than before to get the kitten out, but maybe he was an exception. Maybe he's working even now as an electrician's mate. I never heard the sequel. Only wondered, thinking of Saphra using the carpenter's ruler as an extension of his arm, what one might have made of him with a little encouragement.