It was so cold that winter, however, that even with two hot-water bottles they had us up at two in the morning protesting that their ears were falling off, please to let them into bed with us. We got no sleep if we did. Solomon, being my cat, insisted on cuddling cheek to cheek with me. If Sheba showed signs of wanting to get in on my side he got closer still and lay possessively on my face. If she did come in he bit her on the leg, whereupon Sheba spat like a squib and went and sat forlornly at the bottom. She wouldn't sleep on Charles's side. Charles, she said, fidgeted. She either sat despondently on my feet and got cold, or came back and we had a repeat performance with Solomon. Solomon, if he finally did relent and let her in, in any case snored and twitched his paws like a tic-tac man the moment he fell asleep. So in the end we fixed them up in the sitting-room.
Bottles and blankets in the big armchair in front of the fire. The fire made up so the room wouldn't get cold during the night. Food, water-bowl and earth-boxes conveniently lined up so that they had the equivalent of a luxury self-contained flat. Thereafter we went to bed leaving two little cats sitting happily on the hearthrug in the firelight in a manner that reminded us of a Christmas card. A picture, alas, that resolved itself, the moment we ourselves were in bed, into the sound of claws being stropped down below us in celebration on the chair covers; the sound of a Siamese Grand National by firelight over the furniture (in friendship this time, as we could tell from the change of direction as Solomon chasing Sheba gave way, to his intense delight, to Sheba chasing Solomon); and the reply as we shouted and banged on the floor in protest, from a basso profundo Seal-point voice assuring us that everything was all right down there. He and Sheba were enjoying themselves.
They enjoyed themselves to the extent that, within days, they were trying to send us to bed. Come eleven o'clock and Solomon would start rubbing against Charles's foot. Sheba would practise long-jumps from chair to chair. Solomon, when all else failed, would sit on the back of the armchair in which they slept and wail, with his eyes fixed on the door through which we must go to fill their hot-water bottles and clean our teeth, that it was Late... he was getting Circles under his eyes from staying up... Sheba had circles too, he would shout, Sheba being Charles's cat and Solomon thought that might speed him up a bit...
There was no question of moving them back upstairs when the winter ended. They were down there for good.
Things were progressing everywhere now. Mrs Adams had taken down the maroon plush curtains and replaced them with spring-like white muslin. Father Adams was pursuing the traditional country pastime of having a row with his neighbour over their boundary. Miss Wellington was painting her garden gnomes – a task which, as there were eight of them plus an assortment of spotted toadstools, ensured that she was on the other side of the wall, brushing away with an air of intense absorption, every time the row over the boundary disturbed the desert air. And there was tension at the Rose and Crown.
There usually was. From who pulled the bells wrong on Sunday to the way some hapless newcomer was growing his potatoes, they were always in a state over something. This time, however, it appeared that disaster had really struck.
A Mr Carey had bought a cottage in the lane adjoining the side entrance to the pub. He'd decided to build a garage at the side of the cottage and to alter his existing gate and run-in, which was right outside his front door, to an entrance further along that would also serve the garage. While he was walling up the old entrance he'd further decided to front it with what he considered to be an improvement – a steep bank of earth, in line with the other grass verges along the lane, planted with heather roots that he'd brought back from his walks.
Unfortunately other people didn't see it like that. The old way in, being right opposite the pub's side entrance, had been the one place in the whole lane where cars could squeeze past while the brewery lorry was unloading. Every time there was a beer delivery now there was a queue of car owners honking agitatedly to pass. The brewery driver got bad-tempered having to keep breaking off to move the lorry. Father Adams said it didn't do the beer no good, being rolled in in all that hurry. Mr Carey – a non-drinker himself and entirely unmoved by such sentiments – said why didn't they unload the lorry at the front door of the pub... a suggestion, entirely feasible, which was rejected out of hand on the grounds that the lorry had always been unloaded at the side door and who was he to alter things?
The matter had been referred urgently to the Parish Council. Unfortunately they met only every two months. Meanwhile there was a weekly traffic block at Carey's cottage, a nightly indignation meeting at the Rose and Crown, and considerable speculation as to whether the heather, planted so doggedly by Mr Carey, would grow.
General opinion was that it wouldn't. It grew in the peat on top of the moors, but hereabouts the soil was limestone. Actually it did. In bringing the heather down from the moors Mr Carey had thoughtfully brought the soil to go with it. And there, for the moment, the matter rested.
Things were much more peaceful with us. For one thing Solomon appeared to have made friends with Robertson. I nearly dropped the first time I saw them, Robertson ensconced inscrutably on a hay-bale in the garage and Solomon, on his first post-thaw inspection trip, sitting on the ground in front of him. There was a silence that I expected to be broken at any moment by Solomon hurtling flat-eared into the attack. Then I realised it was a silence not so much of an eve of battle as of a chess-match. Robertson regarded the driveway. Solomon studied the sand-heap. There they sat, if a trifle embarrassedly, like a couple of members of Boodles.
It was some time before Sheba joined them, but eventually she did and now the three of them sat in silence in the garage apparently practising mental telepathy. They weren't practising that, though, the evening we saw them by the woodshed. We'd been off for a week by the sea – Annabel going up to the farm, Solomon and Sheba to the Siamese hotel at Halstock, and the Hazells, in our absence, feeding Robertson. Halfway through the week he'd vanished, they reported when we came back, and they couldn't find him anywhere. We thought he'd probably traced Annabel to the farm and sure enough, the day after we fetched Annabel home, Robertson himself reappeared, stalking grandly along the path towards her stable.
Later that night I noticed, looking through the kitchen doorway, that Solomon and Sheba were in the yard, sitting in front of the woodshed and studying the base of it with expressions of rapt concentration. 'They've got Robertson down a mouse-hole', I jokingly said to Charles, 'and they're not going to let him come out'. I was nearer the truth than I knew. A while later I looked out of the hall window on the principle, well-known to Siamese owners, that if they're quiet they're up to something – and there, beyond them, where I hadn't been able to see him from the kitchen, was Robertson. Sniffing at one of the support posts while our two gazed superiorly on.
A little later Robertson had gone, but our own two were still sitting importantly by the woodshed. I went out at that to see what Robertson had been sniffing at – and there, down the woodwork, was a long damp streak. Solomon, it seemed, had sprayed. A good big spray that he'd been saving up for a week. He'd then sat down with Sheba with an air of Beat That One If You Can while Robertson inspected it – and, to their intense satisfaction, he'd had to admit that he couldn't.