More Cats In The Belfry

  He looked, I thought, rather embarrassed that I had discovered his secret. The hens looked hopeful for a general handout. Tani and Saph, faced with such a mêlée and unable to do their no-seeing act past that lot, dived into them without delay. Hen pheasants went up in all directions, lumbering into the air like jumbo jets, their wide-spread wings frustrating any attempt by the cats to stop them, while the cock stood his ground, flapping his own wings defiantly, his neck stretched tall, bawling raucous defence calls. I waved my arms shouting 'Stop it!' till the yard was cleared, and the cats continued sedately on their way up the path, smug expressions on their faces, Saph stopping to spray the wall at the top of the steps to remind the pheasants Who was Who round here...

  Small wonder that I had little time to get myself ready. That in due course I shot off in the car to drive to the station with hastily snatched-up earrings stuffed in my handbag. Small wonder either, when I got to the hotel where the meeting was being held and attempted to make myself presentable, that I discovered I'd brought one gold stud earring and one of those brass-topped, double­-pronged paper fasteners; the sort used for putting through holes in piles of papers. I didn't use it as an earring, but I might as well have done. Nobody in that Siamese-benighted audience would have noticed it.

  Back to the valley, and within days there was another crisis. It was breeding time for the foxes and a vixen, hunting for food for her cubs, had on two consecutive days taken one of the Reasons' ducks. They disappeared in the late afternoon, a cloud of white feathers on the Reasons' lawn showing what had happened, and until Janet could get someone to put the survivors in early on a regular basis I offered to do it for her. All I had to do was call them if they weren't in sight, she said, rattle the feeding bowl which she'd leave ready filled with corn, and they'd come straight from wherever they were and make for their house.

  Maybe that was what they did when she called them – I'd heard the cacophony of goose and duck voices that greeted her when her car went down the lane in the early evening – but when I went out and banged the bowl at three in the afternoon there was dead silence. I banged again. I shouted. 'Coo-coo' was the only thing I could think of, not having had the sense to ask Janet what she called them, but still there was no reply. 'Coo-coo-coo' I bellowed again, which made a change from being heard bawling 'Tanny-wanny-wanny' or 'Saffy-waffy', but I doubt whether it persuaded anybody within hearing distance that I was less than three-quarters round the bend. And then Gerald and his wives came marching in single file down the hill, round the corner and into the pond, making a terrific show of drinking, washing and flapping their wings, and followed seconds later by the three surviving ducks. Which raised a problem, because Janet had said I need only put the ducks in; the geese could take care of themselves till she got home. But the geese were between the ducks and their house, and since Gerald chose that moment to start mating with them all I could do was stand and wait for him to finish.

  Most embarrassing it was, a goose underneath, Gerald on top, Gerald falling off, the pair of them rolling about in Rabelaisian abandon in the pond, then Gerald determinedly climbing back on top again. I explained why I was there to a girl going by on her horse, not wanting her to think I was a voyeur. I doubt whether she believed me. I explained again to a woman I'd never seen before who came drifting along picking up sticks and informed me, apropos of nothing, that she was a countrywoman.

  I was waiting to put the ducks in because two had been taken by foxes, I said. 'Ah... foxes,' she chirruped brightly. 'Do you ever hear the young foxes calling in the night? I always remember hearing them when I first came to live in the country.' I refrained from saying that what she'd heard was a vixen screaming for a mate, in case she thought I had a one-­track mind, but felt bound to contradict her when she started talking about hearing weasels screaming when they were caught by a fox. Foxes didn't catch weasels, I told her. That noise was a weasel killing a rabbit. 'Oh, is it?' said the would-be countrywoman airily.

  She went on gathering sticks. I got over the fence and headed for the pond. The geese made off when I waved a branch at them, but the ducks immediately tried to follow them. I was jumping backwards and forwards over the fence like a retriever and had herded two ducks into their shed and was trying to round up the third, which was rushing about like a demented hen, when the woman came drifting back. 'What about trying it with a carrot?' she suggested helpfully. I didn't tell her that ducks don't eat carrots but I was beginning to wonder about the countrywoman business.