More Cats In The Belfry

  That was how it was before the coming of Gerald and his supporters. After that, the moment the Council van stopped outside, a procession would appear coming up the lane – a procession in a hurry this time: no time for honking – and when the men opened the van doors to get out they would find themselves confronted by four geese hissing away like steam jets against a backcloth of excited ducks. By dint of brandishing their spades the men would manage to get past them and up the lane to see to the swallet. It was when they returned that the real fun would start. As they passed the van and started down the Reasons' lane, the geese would emerge from behind my coal-shed, where they'd been waiting, and close in behind them. Hissing, rattling their big orange bills, feinting with outstretched necks at the men's legs and having a whale of a time.

  One of the men was pretty good at avoiding them. The other, a big bearded man a good six feet tall, was scared stiff and usually ended up doing a sort of jig on the spot, surrounded by geese and ducks and yelling for help. When that happened, if Janet was home she would come to his rescue. If she'd gone to work then I'd go out, wave my crook at them and the geese would disperse. Laughing their heads off by the look of them. I never heard of them actually hurting anybody. And, as Janet said, she couldn't keep them shut in. She was away all day; they were there to eat down the grass; and eat the grass – and police the valley – they did most successfully.

  It was mostly the Council men they intimidated, but occasionally they had a go at me. Sometimes, if I was going to town, I would reverse the car out of the garage and park it in front of the cottage before I changed out of my jeans. Up would hurry the geese, ready for their favourite sport, and I would have to open an umbrella at them before I could get out. I kept a red umbrella ready on the passenger seat, and the sight of me backing behind it like a matador towards the safety of my front gate intrigued many a visitor to the valley. Visitors in cars, that was. Nobody would have ventured out on foot.

  If I was in the garden with the cats when the geese went by, Tani would bolt, stomach to the ground, into the cottage and hide under the sofa while Saphra, who was made of stronger stuff, watched from the garden wall. Protected by the stream which ran beneath him like a moat he would crouch, wailing defiance at them. He wasn't Afraid. He'd take on the Lot of Them. Just let them Try Anything, he'd howl, with a quick look over his shoulder to make sure I was at back-up position behind him.

  It took more than a Siamese cat to put Gerald and Co. in their place, however. Way down past Father Adams's, who surprisingly had no trouble with the geese himself (maybe Gerald knew better than to chance his luck with a real countryman), Peter Reason had constructed a pond for them at the side of the lane by damming the stream, and it so happened that my cousin Dee came out to tea one day, bringing her border terrier Tilly and her friend's cross-Bedlington bitch Tag, whom she was looking after while her friend was on holiday.

  We had tea on the lawn with the cats in their run for safety, bees humming in the lavender behind us, white summer clouds drifting like sailing ships over the grass-grown ramparts of the Iron Age fort on the hill at the end of the valley and a buzzard hovering silently overhead. 'No wonder you love it here,' sighed Dee relaxing in her chair. 'I can't think of any place on earth more peaceful.'

  She didn't say that half an hour later, when we went out to put the dogs in the car. Tilly, who'd been spayed the previous week and was being rather careful how she moved, stood by the car door waiting to get in. Tag, milling about at the edge of the stream, was sniffing the various scents, when she suddenly heard something down the lane. Her head came up, she saw big white wings flapping like tablecloths down at the pond, and she was gone like an arrow.

  'Tag!' Dee and I shrieked in terrified unison. 'Tag! Come back!' She dashed into the mêlée of geese, scattering them in all directions, and then, like the obedient dog she was, she did come back, trotting up the lane with her tongue lolling happily at the fun she'd had. Unfortunately she'd set the stage for melodrama. Roused by the hullabaloo Tilly, forgetting her stitches, tore down the lane, passed Tag without a glance, and jumped on the nearest goose, which immediately sank beneath the pond surface with Tilly on her back and stayed there.