More Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey Read Free Book Online

and nearly fell down laughing, Mrs Binney bellowed something she'd certainly never learned at the Mothers' Union, Miss Wellington said that anybody who used language like that was no lady, and Mrs B. departed in high dudgeon.
    Â Â Later that day, with the cottages at the top of the hill glowing golden in the evening sunshine and the doves once more pottering about in the road, a car turned the corner by the Rose and Crown and drove slowly along the road past the farm – so slowly it was hardly moving. As it approached Miss Wellington's cottage a hand came out of the window and quietly lobbed something on ahead.
    Â Â There was an almighty bang, the doves erupted in all directions, and the car came down the hill, turned at the bottom where I was peering out of the window wondering what on earth had happened, and proceeded unhurriedly back up again. There were no doves on the road when it passed Miss Wellington's. Fred Ferry said they were still going round up in the air. Not a bird was hurt. Apparently it had been nothing but a noisy firework. All the cottagers had rushed out, though, and recognised the car and its occupant as it went by, and I heard that Bert Binney came in for a good few free pints at the Rose and Crown that night. And on subsequent nights, because the doves never ignored a car again. Miss Wellington was livid, but she couldn't do anything about it – except pass Mrs Binney with her head in the air when she met her in the village, and as Mrs Binney was doing the same when she saw Miss W. that, as Father Adams said, made two of 'em.
    Â Â It had been Fred Ferry's fault in the first place, of course, for laughing that outrageous laugh. Like a ruddy hyena, as Father Adams so often remarked. It was, rather. I'd often heard it myself and longed to dot him one, following some ridiculous remark he'd made about the cats. I felt like that when I was taking them for a walk up the Forestry path one night. I'd chosen my time carefully – immediately after supper, when there weren't likely to be many people about with dogs. Saska was on his lead, to which he was quite accustomed. Tani was on one too, for her first expedition outside the cottage boundaries: a light elastic collar with a cord attached, which I'd made by way of training her and also so that I could pick her up immediately if we met a dog, rather than have her bolt in some irretrievable direction.
    Â Â She wasn't too bad on it. She squirmed a bit and tried to wriggle out of it backwards, but we'd got almost as far as the Forestry gate and she was just beginning to walk properly on it when we happened upon the Smell.
    Â Â It was a smell, too. About half an hour earlier a rider had come down the hill on a strange horse, tried to get it across the stream to go up into the forest, and it had started playing up. Some horses are like that about water crossings they don't know. It had backed, reared on its hind legs and frothed at the mouth. One must never let a horse get the upper hand, of course. Give in to it, turn away, and it will never cross that stream again. So the rider dug her heels in, I went out and made a noise walking behind it, and the horse capitulated and went across... where, to relieve the tension, it did a pool the size of our garden pond in front of the Forestry gate, shook itself, snorted, and went on.
    Â Â Only in extremity will a horse relieve itself in the roadway. It prefers the straw in its stable, or will move off the bridleway on to a grass verge rather than get splashed. Tani had never met such a spectacle before, but she obviously realised what it was. Anybody would, by the overpowering pong. Her only previous experience of such matters was when Saska performed, and presumably she thought this was one of his efforts – which, being a boy and careless, he hadn't been too careful about positioning. So there we were. Me standing by an enormous wet and pungent patch in the dust, Saska obliviously ahead