She was right. Half an hour later he was sitting up drinking rabbit broth. That night he was eating rabbit itself. Within two days, so quickly did the aureomycin work, he was back to normal. Eating like a horse. Going, every time he thought of it, right up to the paddock to challenge Robertson (only I went right up after him and brought him back before he got the chance). Robertson, sensing his disgrace, stayed strictly up with Annabel. In order to divert Solomon's mind from Robertson we took him and Sheba for walks. Which was how we came to buy a piano.
We took them up across the hills one night – Charles carrying Sheba, who was otherwise apt to say her feet hurt and turn back halfway, while Solomon ambled behind. Rounding a corner, we suddenly came upon a young man sitting in a hedge with a tape-recorder. Recording birdsong, we presumed; we couldn't think what he was doing there otherwise. Not wanting to disturb him, we put Sheba down with Solomon and turned quietly back along the track.
Normally this was the signal for the pair of them to follow back behind us, bounding exuberantly through the grass and stopping at intervals to play their favourite game of boys and girls, which consisted of Solomon sitting on Sheba and biting her neck and which, for some reason best known to themselves, they only did on the return half of walks.
This time, however, there was silence. No sign of anybody. Until we went back along the track once more and there round the corner sat the pair of them, side by side in front of the bird-watcher. There was no need for speech. The angle of Sheba's ears enquired what he was doing. The angle of Solomon's expressed intense interest in the recorder itself. Silently we picked them up and slung them over our shoulders. Silently, if somewhat bewilderedly, the birdwatcher acknowledged our mimed apology...
It was useless, of course. Hanging over our shoulders as we tiptoed down the track, they started to shout back at him. Sheba first, as she always did to departing strangers, Solomon joining in from sheer enthusiasm. There went that recording, I said resignedly. While Charles, his mind on the recorder itself, said 'When are we going to get our piano?'
He'd been wanting one for ages. He was fond of music. If we had a piano, he commented at frequent intervals, I could accompany him while he played the violin, and he'd learn the piano himself so he could compose.
Neither of us had played at all for a considerable number of years. It was, as I pointed out, going to cause something of a sensation in the Valley when we started our duets. Charles practising beginners' pieces on a piano would hardly go unnoticed, either. Couldn't he compose on a violin? I enquired hopefully.
Apparently he couldn't. He needed a piano. Having settled that, the project stayed in the background for months and might never have materialised at all but for Charles seeing the tape-recorder turning seductively in the hedge.
That – and the visions it no doubt aroused of composing, recording, and the tapes being sent to London to be played by an ecstatic Barbirolli – revived his interest, and within a fortnight we had our piano. A modern miniature. And the piano men had gone, and I was in the study trying it out.
My one real doubt about having it had been how Solomon would react. He was a tremendously nervous cat. The staccato tap of a typewriter, for instance, affected him so that he leapt like a startled fawn at the slightest sound for hours after either of us had used it. We'd long ago had to buy a silent model before we started leaping too. So we'd decided to get him used to the piano gradually. Shut him downstairs to begin with, where he could only hear it at a distance, and then let him come up to the study in his own good time, exploring by himself.
In the excitement I forgot that, of course. I'd locked Solomon and Sheba in our bedroom while the piano was delivered. Let them out afterwards, when they'd immediately rushed down to see what they'd missed. And I'd started, hesitantly, to play.
After all those years of not touching a piano it probably was pretty awful – but not, I feel sure, as excruciating as I was given to understand when I glanced up a few minutes later to see the two of them sitting side by side in the doorway looking at me. There was no sign of nervousness on Solomon's face. Only complete incredulity. What on earth did I think I was doing? His expression demanded. Frightening off the bogy-men? Sheba enquired, while two pairs of ears tilted speculatively towards the piano.
After that I had only to touch the keys and, even if they hadn't been seen for hours, they appeared as if I were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It wasn't so much the music. It was warm just then, and when I played I opened the window that looked out on to the hall roof for air. The attraction was to get up into the wide, tiled window-sill and march in and out over the roof with raised tails, as if they were playing at bands. I reckoned they were doing it to draw people's attention to the fact that we now possessed a piano. Charles said they were making sure nobody thought it was them making all that noise. Whichever it was, the fact remained that the sun shone straight through that window on to the music rack; that when I played it was with the shadows of a pair of Siamese tails passing continuously across the music like a frieze of travelling bulrushes; and that when from time to time the voice of Father Adams saying 'Cor!' floated up from the lane as I struck a particularly distracted chord, it was hardly to be wondered at.
There are so many things one can do with a piano. When they came finally in from the roof, for instance, they jumped heavily, one by one, on to my back en route to the floor. That laid me practically flat on the keyboard for a start. Occasionally, inspired by a particularly noisy piece of music, they staged a wrestling match on the stairs. Galvanised on one occasion by the sound of louder screams than usual, I looked up to see Sheba crawling through the doorway on her stomach while Solomon held her by the scruff of the neck. This do for Rigoletto? they enquired hopefully.
One night Solomon rushed excitedly upstairs in the middle of my practising and bit me on the leg. Only in fun, of course. Apparently he'd decided I was playing the piano as a joke, so he was playing one on me. He beamed all over his triangular black face when I yelled and leapt from the chair.
Another night Sheba decided to sit on top of the door to watch me – a favourite place of hers – and, just as I got to the difficult bit, she fell off. Half a page of Chopin followed by a scream and the sound of somebody apparently being thrown from top to bottom of the stairs – that was the order of the day with my piano practice.
Charles had even less success. He'd intended to learn from the Rector's wife, who'd had quite a few pupils in the village, but she and her husband had moved to another parish. There wasn't a teacher now within miles. While he waited for one to turn up – if not, said Charles, he'd buy a Tutor when he had time and teach himself; the important thing was to have the piano – he got out his violin. That was in a pretty parlous state, too; the strings long since disintegrated, the bow a wreck, the bridge lying forlornly on its side in the case. Charles went specially to town to renew everything and one night stood happily in the sitting-room, violin assembled, ready to begin.
'Now!' he said with confidence, raising his bow.