Free A Comfort of Cats by Doreen Tovey Page B

at her gate to check the cars as they went up one by one. At seven next morning the phone rang again.
    Â Â 'It can't be her,' I said. It was, though. Ringing all of us in turn to tell us the village was cut off. There was a drift beyond the farm, right down to the main road – she'd already been out to have a look at it. She was terribly worried, she said. Nobody could get to work. Shouldn't we get up early and try to dig through?
    Â Â In her mind's eye she obviously saw us all digging away as in the salt mines. Out to the main road by nine o'clock and those who worked in town, at their desks by ten. A combination of 'Business as Usual', 'The Mail must go Through' and 'Valiant Expedition to the Arctic'. What she was overlooking was that it was a good half-mile out to the main road and the drift was packed as high as the hedge-tops. Even with elephants we couldn't have got through that lot. There was nothing for it but to wait for the snow-plough.
    Â Â There being more important roads than ours we had to wait for several days, though Miss Wellington rang the Council every morning as if we were Mafeking. Meanwhile, cut off, unable to get away, the rest of the village turned its mind to other pursuits. Men sawed wood. Women baked bread because the baker couldn't get through. Children appeared with sledges. People helped one another to clear their paths. Miss Wellington, a woollen scarf over her hat and wearing enormous boots, helped everybody busily. When Charles and I went up to try to get to the village shop for milk, she was scraping away frantically in the drive of the house on the corner. When we came back an hour later, having navigated drifts that had piled up like ice caverns and frozen wastes that looked like the Antarctic, Miss Wellington was scraping away outside the Rose and Crown, obviously trying to set an example.
    Â Â 'Worried about thee pint?' Fred Ferry jovially enquired, stamping his feet as he went through the door. Miss Wellington regarded him frostily. He wouldn't joke if he needed an ambulance, she said, obviously still harbouring visions of him under the graveyard wall. And how was the milkman going to get through? And the man who came for the insurance?
    Â Â They didn't. For days we clambered over the drifts for the milk. Somebody always brought Miss Wellington's. The insurance man, who covered several villages on a bicycle, got so behind he didn't come for weeks.
    Â Â Miss Wellington continued to worry, however – if it wasn't about our being cut off by the snow, it was whether the stream would flood when the thaw came. Occasionally, by way of a change, she would potter across to the graveyard and do a stint of worrying about that. Was Tim sure the wall was safe? She was so concerned about Mr Ferry. That poor curly kale, weighed down by all that snow – wouldn't it be better for it if Tim cleared it off? Those dear, dear daffodils, flowering so bravely under their covering – she wished somebody would go to their rescue...
    Â Â He wished somebody'd rescue him , Tim remarked one day, somewhat at the end of his tether. 'Ah!' replied Miss Wellington. 'We shouldn't wait for rescue! We should go out and do things for ourselves!'
    Â Â So help him, said Tim, before he knew where he was she had him round the corner digging out that drift. She never gave up, did she? He could see her waving the troops up the Heights of Abraham.
    Â Â Her name was Wellington, not Wolfe, but he had something there. Miss Wellington never gave in. Fred Ferry said there were times when he thought this Bannett bloke almost deserved the graveyard, living next door to she.

Eight

    Sass liked the snow once he decided it was safe, but it took several excursions for him to be sure of it. After every fall he would venture cautiously out and try the surface with a paw. It would crumble. He'd reach out a little further and put his weight on it. Being a big lad, his paw would sink through.