That was what we thought. I noticed her idly rub bing her back under a branch in her field one day. I must remember to saw that branch off, I told myself. Annabel liked to rub herself while she was thinking, and if we weren’t careful she’d look like a poodle. Then, of course, I forgot about it, until two days later we were putting her in at night and Charles said ‘Good Lord! Look at her back!’ It was typical. A week to go to the fête 154
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and Annabel hadn’t just rubbed the hair off in patches; she’d scrubbed herself completely raw. Not, fortunately, where her riding rug went (Annabel is too small for the smallest saddle), but right where the edge of it would come, across her withers; just where it would be particularly noticeable.
‘People will think she’s got mange,’ said Charles despairingly. ‘Honestly, you’d think she’d done it on purpose.’ Perhaps she had, too, knowing Annabel; though to do her justice all animals love to scratch. Anyway, I covered the patches with boracic powder to dry them up, put talcum powder on top of that in the hope that the scent might deter the flies, and thus, having sawn off the branch so she couldn’t do it again, we put her in her field next morning and awaited the inevitable comments.
‘Whass the matter with she then?’ enquired Father Adams, who never misses anything. ‘Whass that smell round here?’
demanded Fred Ferry, turning up almost simultaneously and suspiciously sniffing the air. They shook their heads sadly when I told them. ‘She ’ont be givin’ no old rides,’ they said.
She did though. Her back was perfectly healed by Saturday, and with a tartan car rug on top of her usual one, nobody noticed the hairless bits. Thirty-five donkey rides she gave on this occasion – and I, trudging round with her, was practically on my knees.
That was that obligation over – and now, said Charles, we ought to be thinking about a holiday. He reckoned the fruit and the vegetables were just about right to leave. The nets were doing their stuff and keeping off the birds. By gosh, we were going to have some apples.
We were going to have plenty of tomatoes, too, though the peas weren’t looking so bright. Field mice were getting 155
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at them and eating off all the shoots. Eventually – he didn’t like doing it, but we couldn’t let the crop be spoiled like that
– Charles went off to buy some mousetraps. He got them in Woolworths in the nearest town and was much intrigued to see the assistant, when he asked for them, pick them up one by one from the counter and carefully examine them.
‘Are some better than others?’ Charles asked with interest.
‘T’ isn’t that,’ said the assistant. ‘Little perishers of kids are always coming in here and setting the ruddy things. You’d never believe the times they’ve gone off on my fingers.’
Charles reluctantly caught a few of the marauders and then the remaining peas grew too big for mice to bother with and he was able to discard the traps. Seeley caught a few mice, too; he was quicker at it than Solomon, though he had the same capacity for letting them get away. Sheba had been a tremendous mouser in her time, but she didn’t bother with it much now, so we were most intrigued by her behaviour one morning. Seeley had caught a shrew – and, to my relief, had promptly lost it, so I didn’t have to go to the rescue. Sheba sat languidly by, apparently not even looking.
That was for Chil dren; her mousing days were Past; she couldn’t be bothered with such Trivia, her expression implied. I was absolutely amazed, therefore, when Charles came in a while later and said that Sheba, who hadn’t been outside the gate in ages, was out in the lane with Seeley and they were watching for mice side by side. ‘What on earth do you think that’s in aid of?’ I said. ‘He’s probably told her that he keeps losing them,’ said Charles. ‘And she’s got him out there giving him a lesson.’
They were certainly fond of one another. When ever Seeley, returning from one of his expeditions, went running up to 156
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her with his ‘Mrr-mrr-mrrr’ of greeting, Sheba would give him a deeper ‘Mrrr-mrr’ back. She was still his Number One pin-up girl, too. Often, when they sat together, he’d give a lick behind her ears like a doting parent tidying a child’s hair, and then he’d look at us most proudly. Not bad, Was She? he was obviously asking.
We learned how much she really meant to him, though, the day I put him in his cage on his own. They’d been going in there together daily for about six weeks without any fuss.
Indeed, it worked so well that Sugar and Spice’s owners had now put up a similar cage for them. That greyhound came to visit so often, they said, they couldn’t stand the strain.
This was one of Sheba’s off-days, however. She didn’t fancy her breakfast. She wanted to sleep on our bed. So we decided to let her stay there and, as it was a sunny day and it seemed a shame to keep him indoors, to put Seeley in the cage on his own. Immediately he was in there he began to howl. ‘Because Sheba isn’t with him,’ I said. ‘When I’ve finished these letters I’ll let him out and keep an eye on him.’ By the time I’d done the letters, however, Seeley had let himself out. Unable to get through the laced-up corners, he climbed the wire and, while clinging to one of the front support poles, had chewed a hole clean through what was supposed to be an unbreakable nylon net. Very intelligently done it was, too, with every thread that mattered chewed in a determinedly straight line.
Now he’d discovered how to do that, I said, we’d have to put the cage up permanently, with a proper wire roof. We didn’t, though. Next day Sheba was her normal self so, pressed for time as usual, I mended the hole with string, put them both in there temporarily, expecting Seeley 157
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to chew through the net within min utes – and he just didn’t bother. He simply sunned himself happily there with Sheba, occasionally rolling on the rug or getting up to swat a fly, as if the idea of escape had never entered his head. And now – if, as she often does, Sheba goes into the cage voluntarily (it being sheltered in there and strategically placed to catch the sun), Seeley is usually right behind her. Just as, in bygone days, Solomon would have been.
They make a happy picture together, and there is no doubt that he has done her tremendous good. Without him we would probably have lost her – instead of which a few weeks back, for the first time in years, Sheba rushed skittishly up the damson tree. We had to fetch the ladder to get her down, but not on account of her age. It was midnight and, sitting up there talking to us, Sheba would have tantalised us for hours.
She could climb better than Seeley could, Couldn’t She? (I’ll say she could. She was right at the very top.) It was Difficult getting up to her, wasn’t it? (It certainly was, on a dark night with a torch.) She’d made us give her lots of Attention, hadn’t she? demanded Sheba when we finally got her down. And indoors, watching frustratedly from the window, sat Seeley.
Wanted to be up the Tree with Sheba! he bawled.
Well, that was really something, said Charles as we carried her in. Who’d ever have thought we’d see her act like that again? She was good for a good few years yet, he reckoned… Which reminded him, what about fixing up that holiday? We’d better ring the Francises and find out when they could take the cats. He bet they’d be looking forward to meeting Seeley.
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Annabel was going to our local farm, where she’d stayed when we were on holiday ever since we’d had her. That marked the passing of the years with us, too… from the time when she was so tiny they’d fenced her off from the cows and she’d crawled indignantly under the barrier and put the herd to flight. There was the year they’d put her in with the heifers… the year they’d put her in with the older cows… The previous year had marked Annabel’s supremacy, when we’d come back and found her in charge of the bull. ‘Call her from the gate, mind,’ said Mrs Pursey when we went to fetch her. ‘William’s pretty docile, but it’s always best to be sure.’