There was a curved slash-mark down the paper– more slash-marks on the pole – and, on the ground, what could have been the droppings of a very large dog.
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The Coming of Saska They weren’t, of course. They were a bear’s. A man in the Loop parking-ground told us. We recognised him as having been up at Granite Park and went across to talk to him. Furthermore, he said, he’d come off the trail about twenty minutes ahead of us and the notice-board had been intact then: he remembered looking at it.
So we’d narrowly missed another bear. Was it a black or a grizzly? An expert could have told from the size of the droppings, but we knew nothing about that. Only that it was one that went around clawing at notices. Maybe it was a good thing we had missed it... or was it just feeling bored?
Charles said he bet nobody would believe us at home
– about the experiences we’d had in one day.
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Twelve
WE WENT HOME WITHIN a week and they believed us all right.
Father Adams’ verdict was that ’twould have served us right if we had been et. Fred Ferry said ’twas a pity I’d rattled them stones, wunnit? What he meant by that we weren’t quite sure. Miss Wellington said it made her come all over giddy just to think of me up on that cliff ledge... After which they embarked on an account of what had happened in the village in our absence and we wondered if we hadn’t been safer in Canada.
For a start, Tim Bannett had gone in for keeping bees and was talking of getting a goat, in both of which activities he was being encouraged by Miss Wellington, no doubt with thoughts of honey for tea and goats’ milk cheese and herself in a flowery smock helping to sell them. They’d been looking at possible goats, the bees were already installed, and Tim was getting stung almost daily.
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The Coming of Saska
‘Hasn’t he got a veil?’ asked Charles, who’d been an ardent bee-keeper himself until a number of stings built up on him and he proved to be allergic. Oh yes, replied Miss Wellington – but he wasn’t getting stung actually handling the bees. He’d been reading about communicating with them and he was putting it into practice – taking siestas on a chaise longue in front of the hive where he could study them and transmit thoughts of trust and friendship as they flew in and out over his head.
One couldn’t communicate trust to them wearing a bee-veil, could one? she asked. I said it didn’t sound as if he was communicating much without one. These were early days yet, said Miss Wellington. Just give the dear little creatures a chance to settle in.
Father Adams contributed the next item of interest. Had we heard about Mr Duggald, he asked. He were goin’
round bandaged up like a mummy, having been bitten by Fred Ferry’s cousin Bill’s dog.
Actually it wasn’t as bad as that. It was only his hand that had been bitten. It seemed that Bill Ferry’s daughter was getting married and Bill, talking about it in the pub, had said his wife was drivin’ him fair nuts about who had to pay for what, which side of the church people sat on, and the flowers and all that muck. Mr Duggald had told his wife, who happened to have a book on etiquette, and she’d sent him round to Bill Ferry’s with it specially... he’d said it could wait till opening-time but Mrs Duggald, trying to be neighbourly, insisted he took it round at once.
There was nobody at home when he got there, so he’d opened the door to leave the book on the kitchen table.
Bill’s dog was in the kitchen: Mr Duggald bent down to stroke it and the dog promptly bit him in the hand. ‘Thic 118
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Doreen Tovey
dog hadn’t read thic book on etiquette,’ said Father Adams, who thought the whole thing uproariously funny. Unlike Mr Duggald, with a tetanus injection and stitches in his hand, and Mrs Duggald feeling it was all her fault for sending him, and Bill Ferry now assiduously avoiding Mr Duggald and not speaking to him when they did meet by accident. ‘In case he sues ’n’ explained Father Adams, who obviously hoped that he would.
This being ground where the Ferry family no doubt thought it best to tread softly, Fred, pretended he hadn’t heard that one. Had we, he asked, changing the subject, seen Ern Biggs limpin’ around? When we said no, who’d bitten him, Fred said he’d got water on the knee. Tripped over the guard stone outside the pub wall – the one put there to stop the milk lorry knocking it down. ‘Bin there for years,’ Fred said expansively, ‘but theest know old Ern when he’s had a drop too much. Out of the door, legs weavin’ like withy plaits, flat on his face over th’ stone.
Hobblin’ around with a stick he is, and threatening he’s goin’ to...’ He stopped, realising what he’d almost said.
‘Sue ’em,’ completed Father Adams.
So now we knew, when we saw Tim Bannett with an angry bump on his nose, Mr Duggald with his hand in a sling, and Ern Biggs limping along with a sag to his knees that increased when he was passing the pub. For ourselves, we fetched the cats from Halstock, and Annabel back from the farm, and settled down to the autumn, dreaming of all we had seen – with Charles worrying intermittently about our swallows, which had gone when we got back.
He thought they’d have stayed till October, he said – the brood had been still quite young when we left. Maybe that was why they’d gone early, I said – to get them to Africa 119
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The Coming of Saska before the colder weather set in. Whether they’d survived, or whether something had happened to them, we wouldn’t know till the following Spring – when, if we were lucky, one day they’d come back.
To this end we decided not to replace the glass in the garage window – a state of affairs that considerably worried Ern Biggs on the occasions when he came limping manfully past. ‘Want I put the glass back for thee?’ he enquired. ‘I could manage if theest hold the ladder.’ ‘’N then fall off and blame that for thee knee,’ said Father Adams, helpfully on hand as usual.
We explained we were leaving the gap in the window for the swallows but obviously nobody believed it. Fred Ferry, it eventually got back to us through the village grapevine, was putting it down to me getting stuck on that cliff-edge. That was why we didn’t put the glass back, he was busily telling people: I was afraid of heights. Not a mere fifteen feet from the ground, I wasn’t: I’d have done it without a thought.
Charles, who had nerves of steel and could overhang drops of hundreds of feet, would have done it on his head. But it was no good explaining it to the villagers. They all knew better than that.
It was no good, either, trying to explain to Aunt Ethel that we hadn’t been in Canada big-game hunting. That was what people had done when she was young. Bear skins, antelope skins, moose heads to hang on the wall... Where were our trophies? she enquired when, on our first Sunday back, Charles fetched her over to lunch. (She’d survived our absence successfully, of course: now she wanted to boast about our exploits.) We hadn’t gone for that, we told her. Thinking people didn’t kill animals like that nowadays.
We’d gone to see and enjoy the living animals. Those were all we’d brought back...
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We indicated a pair of cattle horns that hung over the living-room archway, beneath the dark oak beams. They were Texas Long-horns, from a steer that had been bred for beef, and we’d bought them already mounted. They had a span of almost a yard and were really very impressive. Charles had chosen them himself and carried them on to the plane, a sock bound protectively round each tip. He couldn’t wrap the rest of them – they were far too big – and they had created quite a sensation. His tooth on the way out, a pair of horns on the way home... Charles always added variety to our travels.