First it was the cats, coming in with round, astonished eyes to ask what on earth I was doing there and when was I going to get up. Lying there instead of Charles, said Sheba reproachfully, and I knew she liked it under his knees. Then it was Charles, asking if he should make a cup of tea. Then, a few minutes later, it was the cats again – Charles having apparently decided there wasn’t much chance of my making it, anyway – appearing to report that he wasn’t half mucking about in the kitchen and he hadn’t given them their breakfast yet. Then it was Solomon, howling wrathfully downstairs, 129
Cats In May_Insides.indd 129
Cats In May_Insides.indd 129
15/03/2006 16:50:04
15/03/2006 16:50:04
Cats in May
charging – grumbling loudly to himself – up to his earth box in the spare room, and then appearing dramatically in the doorway once more to inform me (even in bed I was still in charge in Solomon’s little world) that Charles hadn’t changed it, Charles wouldn’t let him out, and if I didn’t do something quick there’d be an accident.
At that point I summoned strength to yell for Charles, whereupon the cats were let out, I got my cup of tea, Charles – flushed with achievement – announced that he would now get the breakfast, and, save for a monotonous creak… BANG from down below where the sitting-room door latched itself firmly every time he went through (and what on earth he was doing going through it about fifty times a minute I couldn’t imagine) there was peace.
It lasted about five minutes, at the end of which Charles called up to say the post van hadn’t arrived yet and ought he to get Solomon in – after which my next diversion was Charles in the garden calling Solomon. Shortly after that there was the sound of a tray being deposited on the hall table. Breakfast now, I told myself, and felt quite hungry at the thought. But no. Charles, having got it that far, was once more in the garden calling Solomon…
It took twenty minutes to round up Solomon and get that tray up to my bed. By that time the toast was stone-cold
– which Charles said was odd, because it was hot enough when he made it. The tea was cold too. Colder even than the toast. Understandably so when I questioned Charles and found that he hadn’t made a fresh pot. Having, he said, only poured one cup each out of it, and there was still bags left, he’d used the lot he’d made an hour ago.
130
Cats In May_Insides.indd 130
Cats In May_Insides.indd 130
15/03/2006 16:50:04
15/03/2006 16:50:04
With Solder and Crowbar I will skim the details of the rest of the morning, taken up by the Rector arriving to enquire whether he could get us anything in town (yes, I replied gratefully via Charles; a rabbit for the cats); Charles coming up again to ask what size rabbit; Charles shouting at me from the garden could I see, because the Rector was waving to me from the road; Charles coming up ten minutes later to ask whether I was awake and should he make some coffee; and, ever and anon, the cats marching in like a Greek chorus to enquire was I still in bed, they didn’t like what Charles had given them for breakfast, and – once again – Charles wouldn’t let them out.
By then it was lunch-time. There was no need for Charles to ask me what he should do about that. Before he wore his legs out completely I got up and fixed it myself.
What followed was, of course, inevitable. After all that work Charles had a relapse. By afternoon he was back in bed and I was tottering up with cups of tea for him. By evening, too – and there was no denying it; Sidney said he could hear him from the other end of the garden – Charles had a cough. There was no need – as Sheba said, snug once more in her little tent under Charles’s knees while Solomon lay determinedly on his chest, heaving like a storm-tossed sailor with every wheeze – to ask who was most sick in this house. It was undoubtedly Charles.
He recovered eventually, of course. By the end of the week, with people going down like flies all over the village and the cats sitting on the wall happily informing people as they passed that we’d had it first, Charles – except for his cough – was quite flourishing. Which was how, looking 131
Cats In May_Insides.indd 131
Cats In May_Insides.indd 131
15/03/2006 16:50:05
15/03/2006 16:50:05
Cats in May
round for something to occupy us during convalescence, we came to re-string the grandfather clock.
You remember, perhaps, the grandfather clock. The one in the hall, where Sheba used to sit on top and Solomon was eternally opening the door to watch it tick? We’d found a key for it eventually, and for a while there’d been peace. Sheba had even given up sitting on the top. No fun in that, she said, if old Podgebelly wasn’t mucking about underneath.
And then one day the key broke off in the lock, and we were back where we started. Sheba sitting on the top, Solomon hanging through the door, entrancedly watching the pendulum. He was taller now than he had been – or else a bit more athletic. And when we went home one night and, when I opened the hall door, only Solomon ambled through, I had the fright of my life. No sign of Sheba, the door of the clock wide open, and – the silence struck me immediately – no sound of ticking from the clock…
I hardly dared look, so sure I was of what I’d find. Sheba lying in the bottom of the clock flat as a pancake, with a weight on top of her – pushed in experimentally by Solomon or, as she was apt to do when nobody was about, having an inquisitive look on her own account and over-balancing.
Sheba, as it happened, was asleep on our bed. Frozen to the eiderdown, she said when I found her there a few minutes later and hugged her with relief. Which was why she hadn’t come down, and I’d be a lot more useful if I got her a hot-water bottle. Solomon it was who’d stopped the clock. Want to see how? he enquired excitedly as I set it going again. Standing on his thin hind legs he opened 132
Cats In May_Insides.indd 132
Cats In May_Insides.indd 132
15/03/2006 16:50:05
15/03/2006 16:50:05
With Solder and Crowbar the door, reached in a long black paw and prodded the pendulum. Clever, wasn’t he? he said.
After that little scare we went back to tying the door with string while we were away, and it was just as well we did.
One night we went home to find that the clock had stopped again – and this time, when we opened the door to find out why, one of the weights was off. The catgut had snapped and it was lying in the bottom.
So, during our convalescence, it seemed an apt time to re-hang it. Quietly, contemplatively – with, as Charles said, plenty of time to appreciate the way craftsmen of old did their work.
What the craftsmen of old did with grandfather clocks, as we discovered when we started in on ours, was to hang the weights on catgut, tie the ends in knots inside a couple of hollow cogwheels – and then bung the clock face on fast, right in front of the cogwheels and fixed so firmly that we couldn’t get it off.
We used everything but a crowbar on it before we’d finished, and still we couldn’t get it off. We never did get it off. We were in fact fast reaching the stage of jumping on it when Father Adams looked in to see how we were and informed us that you didn’t put new gut in like that. Not by taking off the hands and strewing pendulum, weights and pieces of clock case all over the floor. You eased it – with a piece of wire if necessary, but definitely without touching the clock face – in through they little holes. . .
We managed it in the end. What Charles said before we’d finished about the craftsmen of old and those little holes must have scorched their ears even at a distance of a hundred-and-twenty years – but we did it. We even got 133