Raining Cats and Donkeys (13 page)

  It began with the Hazells going to London. Over Christ­mas itself this time, to visit their parents.
If
we could feed Rufus, said Janet hesitantly, and keep the Aga going till Boxing Night...? Of course we would, we said warmly. No trouble at all. So Jim fixed the Aga to burn more slowly – that way, he said, we need stoke it only once a day; he knew we'd be busy with visitors – and off, waving happily, they went.

  I'd said not to touch that Aga. We were going up twice a day in any case to feed Rufus. We weren't experts at Agas ourselves. I'd have felt much safer doing it twice a day, as we'd always done in the past.

  It was all right the first night. The Aga was doing well. Next morning – Christmas Eve – it was noticeably cooler. I filled it, riddled it furiously and hoped for the best. That night it was out. Charles, the super-optimist, insisted that it wasn't. Riddle it, he said, suiting his action to the words; open the bottom; in ten minutes it would be going like a bomb. Ten minutes later Rufus said it wasn't any warmer, was it? and Charles said he'd think of something. Meanwhile we took Rufus up a hot-water bottle.

  I got little sleep that night. Charles's Aunt Ethel, who was staying with us for Christmas, never sleeps properly away from home as she is always telling us. What with listening to her bed springs creaking restlessly through the wall, her getting out of bed, her getting back again – after which, with the same sort of relief one gets from hearing the fall of the second boot, I
ought
to have been able to doze off only I was stark-eyed worrying about the Aga – I heard every hour strike till dawn.

  To add to everything we'd had a heavy frost. The Aga out, the house getting colder, the Hazells coming home to a heatless Boxing Night – visions whirred through my mind like Cinemascope. When I got to the weather turning to snow, the Hazells being delayed, the pipes bursting and the carpets being ruined, I woke Charles in a panic. Nonsense, said Charles reassuringly. We'd get it going easily now we knew it was out. All we needed was some charcoal. What he'd overlooked, of course, was that it was now Christmas Day and we couldn't get any.

  I will draw a veil over the events of the day that followed, save to say that at our party that night the chief topic was how to start Agas. Coal, suggested someone. If we stood by and watched it? In the intervals of cooking the turkey we'd tried that all the morning. Firelighters, suggested another. If we used enough of them? In between cutting sandwiches we'd tried those all the afternoon. Charcoal, insisted an expert; you couldn't use anything else. We gave him a nasty look.

  It was colder than ever that night. The glass was dropping. The ground rang like iron when we saw our guests off and Rufus shivered visibly when we took up another hot-water bottle. Even Charles was wakeful when we went to bed, and at four in the morning he informed me that he had solved it.

  We have one of those air-controlled open fires. A big one, with plenty of draught. Get our fire going like a smithy, said Charles; bring down some of the Aga fuel and lay it in rows on top; then he'd go up and empty the Aga, when he'd done he'd phone me at the cottage, I would then shovel the red-hot fuel into a bucket and run up the lane with it (I do an awful lot of running when you come to think of it), pour it into the empty stove, and Bob would be our uncle.

  Surprisingly enough he was, though it was a good thing nobody actually saw me on my mission, heading hot-foot up the lane with the makings of a rattling good forest fire.

  It was an old bucket with leaky seams. Running increased the draught and it was glowing like a brazier as I panted through the Hazell's door. Into the kitchen, down through the funnel, more fuel piled on top as fast as we could shovel it...

  It worked. The world was a different place an hour later as we strolled back down the Valley. Behind us was a rapidly warming house, a tidied kitchen, a purring ginger cat sitting happily on the cover of the hot plate. Before us lay the rest of Boxing Day in which to relax. To chat to Aunt Ethel, pay some attention to the animals, go over to Charles's brother in the evening...

  We'd left Annabel tethered on the lawn with some hay. We'd been a bit worried because the lawn was extra icy but she had to have an airing. It was alarming, nevertheless, to get back and find that her rope was broken.

  We really must get a stronger one, I said, grabbing the end and anchoring her hastily to the lilac tree. Supposing she'd realised she was loose? Galloped up the lane after us in her condition and slipped on the icy track? I wilted, I said, at the thought. At that moment Aunt Ethel came scuttling round the comer in a salmon pink: dressing gown and brogues and I wilted in earnest. Aunt Ethel, who is over eighty, never goes outside the door, even to the dustbin, without her hat and coat. Something was obviously up.

  Had been up, to be correct. It seemed that Annabel, annoyed at our going off without her, had broken her tether rope shortly after I'd left and had followed me up the lane. Aunt Ethel, gazing peacefully out on the winter landscape before going up to dress, had seen her and given chase in dressing gown and slippers. Unable to catch her, and miraculously not having fallen down herself, she'd come back with the intention of ringing us at the Hazells, but realised she didn't know the number. Unearthing the directory (what on earth, she said, induced us to keep it in the log box?) she found there were an awful lot of Hazells, and some of them spelt it with an 's'. She'd decided it was probably 'z', started to go through the list, had a couple of interesting conversations with people whom she'd apparently addressed as Charles and told them the donkey was loose – they, she said indignantly, hadn't known what she was talking about, which was hardly surprising when we looked up the directory later and discovered that the first one lived twenty miles away and the second one nearer forty... 'And then', she said, fixing me with a look, 'your Aunt rang up' .

  My Aunt Louisa has an affinity for trouble. Let her clear a table and you can guarantee she'll drop the tray. Put her on a bus for us and you can bet she'll go past the stop. How she could have mucked things up by telephone was beyond all comprehension, but true to form, she had. Aunt Ethel, explaining about Annabel, had asked if she knew how Hazell was spelt. With an 's' or a 'z'? Louisa, who didn't know and had never met them, always likes to be helpful. 'With an 's'' she declared unhesitatingly.

  Aunt Ethel abandoned the Hazells, went through – to their complete mystification – the list of fifteen Hasells, and was mentally wringing Louisa's neck before re-starting on the 'z's' when she happened to glance out of the window and there, on the lawn, having reappeared with the suddenness of a magician's rabbit, was Annabel. Having failed to find us, she'd come back to finish her breakfast.

  Stopping only to put on her brogues – as a precaution, she said, against slipping – Aunt Ethel had sallied forth to tie her up and that was where we'd come in. It was just as well we had. If Aunt Ethel
had
laid hands on the rope – and if Annabel had started cavorting, as she usually does if she thinks it's loose – our aged relation would have gone across the lawn like a water-skier on those solid, thick-soled brogues.

  We escorted her inside, gave her some whisky, had some ourselves to calm our nerves. 'Anything exciting happen?' asked Jim Hazell, ringing up next morning to thank us for seeing to the Aga. Nothing exceptional, said Charles reflectively. Not when you considered it was us.

A
ctually it proved a season of alarms. First of all I thought Sheba had kidney trouble. We'd heard of a cat which did have it and we knew the symptoms, and when I noticed Sheba going continually to the water-bowl one day my heart sank in my shoes. Either kidneys or diabetes, said the cat-book when I looked up excessive water-drinking, and that raised another possibility. Diabetic people put on weight.

  Sheba was plumper lately. We'd put it down to her current passion for cream off the milk. As we'd attributed that in turn to her being unable any longer to watch Solomon drinking it alone – slurp, slap, guzzle he went, and if you can't stop the racket do it yourself, that way you don't hear it so much, we'd thought was Sheba's reasoning – it hadn't struck us as very significant. The question now was, however, was she plump because of diabetes, or was she drinking milk because she had kidney trouble and was thirsty?

  Neither, as a matter of fact. It was the salt I'd put in their rabbit. When, after I'd been worrying over her for hours, Solomon came down from his morning nap under our eiderdown, joined her at the water-bowl and, taking it in like a suction pump, drank half the bowl at once, it suddenly came to me. Someone had said salt was good for them and the previous day, for the first time ever, I'd tried it out. Sprinkled it on their rabbit in the pressure cooker. A little too liberally it now appeared, but at least everybody's kidneys were in order.

  Annabel didn't die of eating bacon-rind either, which was our next domestic hiatus. She ate a lot of peculiar things these days including the goldfish food, which we discovered her sucking surreptitiously off the surface of the pond under guise of having a drink. That, however, was biscuit meal and harmless. Apart from making sure the fish didn't vanish as well, we didn't worry about it.

  We wouldn't have worried about the bacon rind except that it was just our luck, the morning she ate it, there'd been a talk on the wireless about donkeys. Yew trees and meat were fatal to them, warned the speaker, at which we'd raised our eyebrows superiorly. Yew trees, yes. We'd heard of animals dropping dead with sprigs still in their mouths. But meat... Donkeys wouldn't
touch
it, we said, with memories of a hiker once giving Annabel a ham sandwich and Annabel spluttering it indignantly back at him.

  That was at breakfast time. Within half an hour that donkey had come into the yard, gone over the flagstones with lips questing as inquisitively as an elephant's trunk as was her wont, gathered up all the birds' crumbs as was her wont also, now that she was eating for two – and scoffed while she was at it, all the bacon-rind.

  She'd never touched it before, but deciding that it was her condition didn't help much during the vigil that followed. We dared not ring Mr Harler. A leg of lamb, yes. Four pieces of bacon rind – no. There was a limit to the situations with which we could confront him. We sweated it out ourselves.

  Two hours later, with Annabel still on her feet, Charles said it was obviously all right if it was cooked. Maybe it was, but we took no more chances. After that the bacon rind was put out of her reach on the bird-table, and on the occasions when she came into the kitchen we made sure the refrigerator door was shut so she couldn't get at anything raw.

  We had no illusions about her nosing it out otherwise, if she felt like it. She'd been coming into the kitchen since she was a foal, and it held no mysteries for her. She knew as well as we did that sugar came out of the bottom cupboard, apples were in a bowl on the dresser and it was Nice if you stood by the convector. Lately she stood by it more than ever. It was good for Julius, she informed us – Julius being the expected foal, so-called because we anticipated him in July.

  There were times, of course, when, while it was convenient to have Annabel in the yard, because we knew then where she was, it wasn't convenient to have her in the kitchen. When we had visitors, for instance, and they might not have fancied little donkeys sniffing at the saucepans, or if I wasn't there myself to keep an eye on what she was doing. On such occasions I used to shut her out. It was no use that winter. It was so wet that the door swelled with the dampness and, as Annabel soon discovered, the lock developed a habit of sticking. One biff with her head, open it would fly and in, with a triumphant snort, would come Annabel to warm Julius some more. The only remedy was to bolt the door – which, if I did, resulted in the cottage being shaken to its foundations as Annabel determinedly rammed it, and my rushing to open it anyway, before Julius came loose from his moorings.

  Unfortunately it wasn't only Annabel who could open the door. Solomon could do it too, tugging from the inside with his incredibly powerful claws. Try as I might to make sure it was firmly shut, the moment I left it Solomon would rake and claw and howl and roar until a sudden ominous silence would inform us that he'd done it again. Forced the door and was away on trouble bent.

  It was as a result of this that eventually he had his last great fight with Robertson. Finding the door open I'd gone out to check on him as usual. I'd looked. Listened. There was no sign of anybody. No howl for help. No sound of battle. He must, I decided, have gone up behind the cottage where Robertson never went. He was safe up there and the air would do him good. Even Solomon had been indoors a lot during the recent awful weather...