Tim Bannett called while we were out and wondered what on earth was going on. Aunt Ethel had the set turned up, of course, being rather deaf. Tim said it sounded from the front gate as if we were having a private revolution –
and when he came up the path and knocked at the door he got no answer. Only a burst of gunfire and, when he tapped on the window, a voice yelling ‘Take that, you lousy cur!’
He went back home and telephoned us twice, but couldn’t get any reply. Somewhat alarmed – wondering whether something had happened to us – he came down to the cottage again. He hammered on the door and window.
Still there was no reply. He was very relieved when he rang 125
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The Coming of Saska us later that night and we answered. Fancy, he said, people like us becoming television addicts... He was glad he and Liz didn’t have a set. I’m still not sure whether he believed us when we said it was Aunt Ethel and Seeley.
Round about then we heard of a piece of real-life adventure. A Canadian Government official in London, writing to acknowledge our thanks for making possible our trip, said he thought we’d like to know he’d been out in Alberta recently and had actually seen two of the Jasper wolves while driving through the Park. It was winter, the Park was under snow and practically deserted; a very different place from the way it looked in summer. The wolves had come down to look for food and he’d spotted them by the roadside. He’d driven past very slowly and they’d come out and trotted after him. He’d slowed the car even more, driving for several miles at a crawl with the wolves following only yards behind. Then, having an appointment in Banff, he’d had to speed up and they’d turned off into the forest. He’d never seen wolves as close as that before, he concluded. Didn’t we think it was interesting?
We did. Knowing something now about them we also had an idea as to why they’d done it. The car going slowly... not at the usual speed of motor traffic. Dropping to a crawl...
becoming, to all intents and purposes, even more feeble...
no doubt the wolves were following it waiting for it to come to a stop and die. When, though all the evidence says they wouldn’t have touched the driver, presumably they were anticipating to be able to eat the car!
Before we knew it, it was March and the primroses were out along the banks of the stream. Then it was May, and to Charles’s joy the swallows came back again. One morning, 126
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Doreen Tovey
as if by magic, there were three tired swallows sitting on the telephone wire. Presumably the original pair and one of their offspring, whom we hoped would also take up quarters in the garage. The third one disappeared later that day, however – probably up to the farm, where there’d be a selection of mates to choose from – and our pair settled down to live with us again. There was no cautiousness now as to whether we were a safe proposition. They remembered us and set to repairing their nest at once. We watched the male bird for ages, bringing hay from Annabel’s stable...
flying over with a long strand in its beak, circling several times to get it horizontal, then, with the hay out behind it like a kite-tail, straight in through the window gap at full speed.
Now it was June. Tim still hadn’t got his goat but he was very busy with his bees. Putting on supers, removing queen cells to prevent the hive from swarming – he’d become very competent indeed and it wasn’t his bees that were seen one morning clustered on one of the chimneys at he farm, looking as if they d been glued to it with treacle and showing every sign of settling in. Nobly, however, he and a neighbour tried to get them down – and were well and truly stung for their pains. Up on a roof, on a ladder, is not the best place to argue with bees. Gorged with honey, as they are when they swarm, they wouldn’t in the normal way have been angry, but this lot appeared to have mislaid their queen and were very agitated indeed. Just as Tim’s neighbour, Henry, got near them with a box, they swept up and off again.
Circling, they came down on the next-door-but-one chimney, presumably thinking the queen might be there
– seeing which, the owner of the cottage, who’d been 127
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The Coming of Saska watching from the garden, rushed in and lit a fire with the intention of smoking them off. What he’d forgotten was that he’d blocked the chimney for the summer, to stop stray birds and soot from falling down, and in next to no time the scene was one of animation such as is rarely seen in our village. A ladder on the farm roof, another against the cottage wall, Tim and Henry comparing bee-stings in the lane, smoke pouring spectacularly out of the cottage windows and Miss Wellington wanting to phone the fire brigade. The postman stopped to watch, a string of riders joined the throng, everybody gawking at the swarm on the chimney top – where they remained for quite a while until, still unsettled, they took off again. Definitely they weren’t Tim Bannett’s bees. Equally definitely, he got the blame.
Then it was July. A whole year had gone by since our trip to Alberta and we recalled it nostalgically day by day.
This time last year it had been Klondike Days. This time last year, we were at Wapiti. Then came the anniversary of the day we went on the wolf-howl the day that had been so wonderful. This year it was one of the most tragic we had ever known. It was the day we lost Seeley.
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Thirteen
THE PREVIOUS DAY HAD been such a pleasant one. We had gone down to the moors in the afternoon, to buy peat for the garden. We took tea with us and had it in the car, looking out at the rhines and the flat water meadows and the hedges of pollarded willows that make this corner of Somerset so reminiscent of the Camargue. We watched the herons flying home, and a water-rat sitting up in a clump of reeds eating a seed-head, turning it in his paws as if it were corn-on-the-cob. We came home and I took the cats for a run...
then in for their supper and ours. We ate in armchairs so that we could see The Pallisers... Shebalu turning her back on such mundane behaviour as usual, Seeley watching eagerly with us. He sat on Charles’s knee, that being his favourite viewing point, which gave him an unobscured view of the screen. I looked across at him once. He was looking at me.
He squeezed his eyes affectionately, which was always his way of communicating. Later, I remember, he was rolling 129
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The Coming of Saska happily on the carpet and I got down and hugged him, always a pushover for that little black pansy face. Really, I said, when we went to bed... I’d really enjoyed that day.
We let them out next morning, which was Sunday, and they ambled as usual up to the vegetable garden to eat grass and see what the day was like. Charles went with them, to check there were no cars about, and to open the greenhouse door and water the tomatoes. While I was setting breakfast I looked out through the kitchen and Seeley had come back and was sitting in the outer doorway. He was looking out into the yard, obviously wondering where to go next.
I almost fetched him in – but he hadn’t been out long, I thought. It was such a nice morning. Another ten minutes or so wouldn’t hurt. So I left him. Shebalu came back while we were having breakfast. But we never saw Seeley again.