The climax came when Mrs Binney happened past one morning and stopped to ask Miss Wellington 'What be goin' to with they, then?' which was one of her stock remarks and actually related to nothing except her desire to start a conversation. Fred Ferry, who lived opposite Miss Wellington and happened to be leaning on his gate, promptly bawled 'Turn 'em into pigeon pie,' and guffawed so loudly at his own joke that he really did scare the doves, who rose into the air in a panic-stricken flurry and made for the dovecote, and in the rush one of them had an accident on Mrs Binney's violet hairdo.
Fred Ferry slapped his knee and nearly fell down laughing, Mrs Binney bellowed something she'd certainly never learned at the Mothers' Union, Miss Wellington said that anybody who used language like that was no lady, and Mrs B. departed in high dudgeon.
Later that day, with the cottages at the top of the hill glowing golden in the evening sunshine and the doves once more pottering about in the road, a car turned the corner by the Rose and Crown and drove slowly along the road past the farm – so slowly it was hardly moving. As it approached Miss Wellington's cottage a hand came out of the window and quietly lobbed something on ahead.
There was an almighty bang, the doves erupted in all directions, and the car came down the hill, turned at the bottom where I was peering out of the window wondering what on earth had happened, and proceeded unhurriedly back up again. There were no doves on the road when it passed Miss Wellington's. Fred Ferry said they were still going round up in the air. Not a bird was hurt. Apparently it had been nothing but a noisy firework. All the cottagers had rushed out, though, and recognised the car and its occupant as it went by, and I heard that Bert Binney came in for a good few free pints at the Rose and Crown that night. And on subsequent nights, because the doves never ignored a car again. Miss Wellington was livid, but she couldn't do anything about it – except pass Mrs Binney with her head in the air when she met her in the village, and as Mrs Binney was doing the same when she saw Miss W. that, as Father Adams said, made two of 'em.
It had been Fred Ferry's fault in the first place, of course, for laughing that outrageous laugh. Like a ruddy hyena, as Father Adams so often remarked. It was, rather. I'd often heard it myself and longed to dot him one, following some ridiculous remark he'd made about the cats. I felt like that when I was taking them for a walk up the Forestry path one night. I'd chosen my time carefully – immediately after supper, when there weren't likely to be many people about with dogs. Saska was on his lead, to which he was quite accustomed. Tani was on one too, for her first expedition outside the cottage boundaries: a light elastic collar with a cord attached, which I'd made by way of training her and also so that I could pick her up immediately if we met a dog, rather than have her bolt in some irretrievable direction.
She wasn't too bad on it. She squirmed a bit and tried to wriggle out of it backwards, but we'd got almost as far as the Forestry gate and she was just beginning to walk properly on it when we happened upon the Smell.
It was a smell, too. About half an hour earlier a rider had come down the hill on a strange horse, tried to get it across the stream to go up into the forest, and it had started playing up. Some horses are like that about water crossings they don't know. It had backed, reared on its hind legs and frothed at the mouth. One must never let a horse get the upper hand, of course. Give in to it, turn away, and it will never cross that stream again. So the rider dug her heels in, I went out and made a noise walking behind it, and the horse capitulated and went across... where, to relieve the tension, it did a pool the size of our garden pond in front of the Forestry gate, shook itself, snorted, and went on.
Only in extremity will a horse relieve itself in the roadway. It prefers the straw in its stable, or will move off the bridleway on to a grass verge rather than get splashed. Tani had never met such a spectacle before, but she obviously realised what it was. Anybody would, by the overpowering pong. Her only previous experience of such matters was when Saska performed, and presumably she thought this was one of his efforts – which, being a boy and careless, he hadn't been too careful about positioning. So there we were. Me standing by an enormous wet and pungent patch in the dust, Saska obliviously ahead on his lead tugging to get through the gate, and Tani like small mouse on a string behind me, scratching furiously to try to cover it up.
I tugged the cord, but she wouldn't come. I couldn't go back to her, with Saska pulling hard in the other direction. At that moment Fred Ferry swung briskly down the hill behind me and rounded the corner (Fred was always appearing like that, knapsack on his shoulder and heading for the hills, which was why he had the reputation of being our local poacher) and said, his eyes like saucers, 'Cor did she do that?' He knew very well she couldn't have done, but it didn't stop him reporting it as a fact up at the pub, so that people kept coming past for days asking was it true that I had a cat that widdled like a water-cart?
They used to stop and watch to see if she'd perform, and she didn't like it. She would run indoors and hide behind the sofa, protesting that the White Slavers she was always expecting had caught up with her at last.
Life had its complications where my Aunt Louisa was concerned, too. Now nearly eighty, in her young days she'd helped my grandmother bring me up, and I looked on her as my responsibility. She still lived in the old family house in Bristol and, with a strong strain of independence, kindly neighbours and myself keeping an eye on her, she managed very well indeed.
'Managed' was the operative word. She was lively as a cricket, looked about sixty, and ran local affairs, as my grandmother had done before her, as if she were the Queen Mother. Her particular friend was a much younger woman who lived a few doors away and whose name was pronounced like mine but spelt Dorine.
Every day, while Dorine was at work, Louisa would go down to let her two cats, Norton and Petal, into the garden for exercise, get them in again in due course, and generally see that all was well. Dorine, in turn, came up for a chat with Louisa every evening and acquainted her with what was going on in the rest of the road and her own activities, which were not inconsiderable. To help cover the expenses of her big old house, in addition to her full-time job she regularly took, as boarders, two or three students who were on special courses at the nearby polytechnic. They had their lunch at the college and went home at weekends, and thus fitted in well with Dorine's own schedule. She gave them comfortable accommodation, had only to provide them with breakfast and an evening meal five days a week and she and Louisa monitored their welfare between them. Louisa, for instance coped on the odd occasion when she went down and found one of the students still in bed, suffering from a cold or a stomach ache and needing cosseting. Dorine dealt with the reprobate who said he didn't like cats and was caught one day aiming a kick at Norton. He was reported to the college and transferred forthwith to other accommodation. Even so, when I found one of Louisa's pantry shelves loaded one day with bottles of tomato ketchup and Louisa said she was hiding them from Dorine's students, my mind did boggle slightly. Dorine had, it seemed, come up the previous evening breathing fire and slaughter, clutching a bagful of bottles and declaring that this lot (her current quota of students) were really the end. They wanted tomato sauce on everything – even the gourmet meal with wine which she gave them once a week when her boyfriend came to supper – and she wasn't going to have it, so would Louisa keep them for her so she could say with truth that she didn't have any in the house?