The Kingdom of Carbonel

by Barbara Sleigh

  John and Rosemary did not waste time dressing. They crept downstairs into the shining, early morning garden. It was so early that the shadows were still long and narrow, and the dew from the grass, which needed cutting, was cold on their bare ankles.

  The birds and the small daylight creatures were all awake. The faint hum that Rosemary and John had noticed after drinking the red mixture was all around them, like the hum of a busy market place, but fainter and on a higher note. If they stood still, they could distinguish the little voices of which it was made. Only the birds sang loudly and excitedly of all the things they hoped to do on such a glorious day. Rosemary wanted to stop and listen, but John pulled her on.

  The greenhouse was quite small. It had not been used for some time. The lock was broken, and several of the panes were cracked. The coloured tiles patterning the floor had come loose from their moorings and rocked beneath Rosemary’s and John’s feet when they walked on them. The greenhouse no longer held rows of pots, full of delicate flowers. There was only one remaining climbing plant which had run riot over the walls and roof. Mrs Brown called it plumbago. It was flowering now, and great trusses of pale blue blossoms hung among the dark green leaves. John and Rosemary ran down the path and opened the door.

  On the shelf which had once housed pots of geraniums and primulas and lacy ferns, before a curtain of blue flowers, sat Carbonel. Beside him was a snow-white Persian, and between them were two kittens, one coal-black with white paws and the other tortoise-shell. All four sat quite still with their tails wrapped neatly around their front paws from left to right. The children hesitated by the open door. A blue flower fell silently between the kittens, and the black one raised a paw as if to pat it.

  ‘Calidor!’ said Carbonel sternly, and the kitten instantly wrapped his tail round his paws again, as if that would keep them out of mischief.

  ‘Good morning, Rosemary. Good morning, John.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said the children together, and John, to his surprise, found himself adding, ‘Sir.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Carbonel, turning to the white cat. ‘I have great pleasure in presenting my two friends, John and Rosemary.’

  The white cat gazed at them with wide, faraway blue eyes and bowed her head graciously. ‘My husband has often spoken of you. His friends will always be mine.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said John rather lamely.

  ‘Present the children, my love,’ said Blandamour. Carbonel bent his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘My son, Prince Calidor, and my daughter, Princess Pergamond. Make your bows, my children.’

  The two kittens stood up, and with back legs splayed out and small tails erect, made rather wobbly bows. John bobbed his head, and Rosemary lifted the skirt of her nightdress and made a little curtsy.

  ‘I give my children into your care,’ said Carbonel. ‘Protect their nine lives as if they were your own. And you, my children, repeat the royal rules each day and put them into practice.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ said the kittens in shrill chorus.

  ‘And obey John and Rosemary in all things.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Remember, they are in your charge and you are in theirs.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And when I come back, let me hear nothing to your discredit.’

  The black kitten, whose eyes had wandered to the drifting blue flowers again, began to say ‘Yes, Father,’ and hastily changed it to ‘No.’

  Carbonel turned to Blandamour. ‘My love, it is time for me to go. Come with me to the crossroads and see me on my way.’

  The black cat jumped silently to the tiled floor and went out into the sunlit garden, and Blandamour followed. John and Rosemary, watching them leap to the top of the garden wall, ran to wave good-bye. Standing on the garden roller, their chins level with the top of the wall, they could see Carbonel and Blandamour growing smaller and smaller as they trotted along the wall. It skirted the end of the gardens of number one hundred, number ninety-nine and number ninety-eight. At number ninety-seven, the wall curved, and the two cats disappeared from view.

  ‘Well, that’s that!’ said John, jumping down from the roller and wiping the moss from his hands on to his pyjamas.

  ‘Come on. Let’s get back to the kittens. Aren’t they gorgeous!’ said Rosemary.

  They ran back to the greenhouse. To their surprise, only the tortoise-shell kitten was to be seen. She was standing on her hind paws on a flower pot, peering into an old watering can.

  ‘Where’s the other one? Where’s Calidor?’ asked Rosemary, looking round anxiously.

  ‘He’s in here,’ said Pergamond in a muffled voice, because she was still peering into the can. ‘It sounds as though he’s paddling. Why don’t you answer, Calidor?’

  There was a splash and a faint mew. John rushed to the watering can and, putting in his hand, lifted out a bedraggled kitten, dripping with dirty water and mewing pitifully.

  ‘You poor little thing!’ said Rosemary, trying to wipe off the slime with her nightdress.

  But the kitten only whimpered, ‘Where’s Woppit? Want Woppit!’

  ‘What on earth is Woppit?’ asked John.

  ‘Here be old Woppit, my pretty dears!’ said a voice behind them, and there in the doorway was a dusty, dishevelled, elderly tabby cat.

  ‘Bother!’ said Pergamond crossly.

  ‘As if they could keep old Woppit away! “Too big for a nurse now,” they said. But I knows better! Me that’s looked after ’em since before their blessed blue eyes was open. They thought they’d hoodwinked old Woppit and whisked you away without her knowing. But I smells here, and I asks there, and sure enough, I’ve found my little furry sweetings! And where’s my precious princeling puss?’

  All the time she was talking, Woppit was purring loudly and comfortably. But when she caught sight of Calidor, bedraggled and miserable in Rosemary’s lap, her untidy fur bristled with indignation.

  ‘What have the horrid humans been doing to you then, my pet? I knew it all along! I never did hold with humans!’

  ‘We aren’t wicked, even if we are humans!’ said John indignantly. ‘And we didn’t do anything!’

  ‘It was Calidor’s fault,’ said Pergamond virtuously. ‘We were hungry, and I only said I thought there might be sardines in the water at the bottom of the can, and he was looking to see, and he fell in. He was only doing this.’

  She put her front paws on the rim of the can, and heaving her stumpy hind legs up the side, tried to stand on the rim. John’s hand shot out again just in time to stop her from falling in as her brother had done. He set her firmly down on the ground.

  ‘But there weren’t any sardines,’ said Calidor, who was beginning to revive. ‘Only a lot of smelly water.’ He sneezed violently. ‘I think I’ve lost a life,’ he went on with gloomy satisfaction. ‘You’ll catch it when Father hears!’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ mewed Pergamond. ‘I want my breakfast!’

  ‘Regular meals they’re used to, like any well brought-up kittens. There’s some people takes on a job without so much as knowing the first thing about it.’ Woppit looked sourly at John and Rosemary.

  ‘Look here,’ said John angrily, ‘are you suggesting that Rosie and I aren’t capable of looking after a couple of kittens?’

  ‘Well then, which of you is going to lick my little princeling clean? And no licking around the corners, mind!’

  ‘Lick him!’ said Rosemary in horror, looking at the kitten’s matted fur.

  ‘That’s what I said. You’ll never get him clean without. Either I licks, or you licks, and if I stays and licks, I stays for good!’ said Woppit. ‘Which is it to be?’

  ‘I should have thought a bath –’ began Rosemary. But at the word ‘bath’ the kittens set up such a mewing, and Woppit’s comforting was so noisy, that the children could not hear themselves speak. They slipped outside the greenhouse and shut the door behind them quite firmly.

  ‘Whew!’ said John. ‘I’m beginni
ng to see what Carbonel means about the kittens being “high spirited”.’

  ‘Look here,’ interrupted Rosemary, ‘I think we should find Woppit very useful. After all, we can’t sit and hold their paws all day long.’

  ‘Yes, but I refuse to have an old tabby cat ordering me around,’ said John.

  ‘I don’t think she’ll try if we make her see that we only want to do our best for the kittens.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said John. ‘Suppose I run back upstairs and get them some milk, and you see what you can do with old Woppit.’ John ran.

  When Rosemary went back into the greenhouse, Woppit was already vigorously licking a sulky Calidor. She eyed Rosemary suspiciously, but she did not stop.

  ‘Please, Woppit,’ said Rosemary humbly, ‘John and I want you to stay and show us how to look after Prince Calidor and Princess Pergamond, if you will.’

  With a practised paw, Woppit rolled over a protesting Calidor and went on licking. She said nothing, but there was the faint suggestion of a purr.

  ‘Please, Woppit!’ pleaded Rosemary.

  ‘I’ll think about it!’ said Woppit, as though it were a perfectly new idea of Rosemary’s. ‘I might do it, to oblige.’ But she went on licking the unhappy Calidor so vigorously that Rosemary felt quite sorry for him, and her purring settled down to a deep, contented hum.

  At that moment, John burst in at the door. ‘Here’s some milk, but I only just got out without being seen,’ he said. ‘I could hear your mother getting up. We’d better hurry.’

  They put the saucer down, left Woppit in charge, closed the door of the greenhouse firmly and ran back to the house and breakfast.

  7

  Figg’s Bottom

  ‘Really, Rosie,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘It was naughty of you to say you would look after three cats without asking first!’

  Breakfast had been reduced to eggshells and toast crumbs before they had brought up the subject.

  ‘I know, Mummy, I’m awfully sorry, but –’

  ‘It wasn’t Rosie’s fault,’ broke in John. ‘You see, the… the… person they belong to had to go away this morning urgently, and there wasn’t time.’

  ‘But three cats, dears!’

  ‘One cat and two kittens,’ pleaded Rosemary. ‘And if you would only come and see them, Mummy, you couldn’t say no!’

  Mrs Brown tried to go on frowning, but the two pleading faces were too much for her, and presently she smiled.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But if you want to keep them in the greenhouse, you must ask Mr Featherstone’s permission, and you must look after them yourselves.’

  ‘Of course we’ll look after them, won’t we, John? They are very special kittens, and we wouldn’t trust them to anyone else. May we go and ask permission this minute?’

  The children ran downstairs to the ground floor flat, where they found Mr Featherstone shaving with an electric razor. When he heard them come in, he wheeled around, his razor buzzing in his hand like a wasp in a jam jar.

  ‘Good heavens, it’s young John! Rosemary told me you were coming. Glad to see you, my boy! Have a bull’s eye. You’ll find them somewhere about, on the bookcase I think. I’m afraid it’s a bit untidy.’

  Rosemary felt that ‘untidy’ hardly described it. They couldn’t find the bull’s eyes among the litter of things on the bookcase, but they ran them to earth at last behind the coal scuttle in a very sticky bag. Because of the bull’s eyes they explained the situation rather indistinctly. However, Mr Featherstone seemed to understand.

  ‘Three cats in the greenhouse?’ he said. ‘I don’t see why not. No geraniums, so why not kittens? I remember you always had a weakness for the creatures, Rosie. Listen, I’ve got to take the van into Broomhurst this afternoon. Suppose you and John come with me. I could drop you in the country at the end of the town somewhere, and pick you up on the way back. What do you say?’

  John and Rosemary thought it was an excellent idea.

  They spent the morning making the greenhouse comfortable for the kittens. Mrs Brown found them an old blanket and the lid of a cardboard box so they could make a bed. They stacked the old flower pots in a corner and swept the floor and dusted the shelves, to the indignation of a number of spiders and several wood lice. Woppit lay in the sun outside and slept, and the two kittens chased the broom and their own tails, until they, too, fell asleep.

  ‘I expect Blandamour will come to see them soon, and I should like it all to look its very nicest,’ said Rosemary, standing back to admire the effect.

  ‘Bless you, she wouldn’t notice!’ said Woppit from the doorway. ‘Them as lives in high places thinks high and is above such things. Not that it isn’t right and proper for the humble likes of you and me to do our best, for all that!’

  John did not much care for being bracketed with Woppit as ‘humble’, but, luckily, at that moment Mrs Brown arrived.

  ‘I thought that you and the cats might like some milk, and besides I want to be introduced,’ she said, setting down a tray. On it were two mugs, a saucer and a jug of milk.

  ‘The black one is Calidor and the other is Pergamond,’ said Rosemary, squatting down beside the ball that was two sleeping kittens.

  ‘The little dears!’ said her mother softly, stirring them gently with the toe of her shoe. Then she said, ‘I have your tea. I wanted to make some for Mr Featherstone – I’m sure he doesn’t look after himself properly – but he said he would get some in Broomhurst. If you ask him to put you down by the turning to Figg’s Bottom, you can go to Turley’s Farm and ask for some milk instead of carrying something to drink with you.’

  ‘Do you mean where we went last year after we picked wild daffodils, Mummy?’ asked Rosemary.

  ‘That’s it. I’m afraid the daffodil field has been built over now. There’s a new housing estate, but I think the farm is still there.’

  ‘It be!’ said Woppit unexpectedly, though of course only the children heard her. ‘I ought to know, seeing as my brother Tudge took on Turleys four years ago.’

  When Mrs Brown had gone and both children and kittens were drinking their milk, she went on, ‘Ah, if you should meet a cat with a torn ear and a walleye, it’ll be Tudge, sure enough. You can tell him he can come and see me if he likes,’ she went on graciously. ‘I dare say I shall be glad of a bit of company here.’

  She looked rather disdainfully around the greenhouse as she spoke.

  ‘What colour is he?’ asked John.

  ‘Not to say one colour,’ said Woppit cautiously, ‘but a bit of most.’

  ‘We’ll look out for him,’ said Rosemary gravely.

  ‘I’ll pick you up about half past five,’ said Mr Featherstone, as they rattled cheerfully along in the van.

  They passed the familiar outskirts of Fallowhithe and found themselves in the newly built housing estate. They passed the finished houses with new curtains at the windows and new babies asleep in new prams in the front gardens, and were soon in a road with half-built houses on either side.

  ‘Where shall we meet you?’ asked John.

  ‘The corner by the Figg’s Bottom signpost is as good a meeting place as any. It should be just around the bend when we leave the houses behind,’ said Mr Featherstone. But they did not leave the houses behind. A tide of new buildings seemed to be coming toward them.

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Mr Featherstone. ‘I’d no idea the Broomhurst houses had spread so far.’

  ‘It looks as though a couple more houses will join it up with Fallowhithe,’ said John.

  Even as they looked, they saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks along a plank over the remaining piece of open land, which they saw had the forlorn, naked look of all building sites before the work actually begins.

  ‘Anyway, there are still fields behind the houses on either side,’ said John.

  The van slowed down and stopped at a turning which still had a country-lane look about it. There was a signpost at the corner which said: TO FIGG’S B
OTTOM. The children got out.

  John carried their tea in a knapsack. ‘We’ll be waiting for you, and thank you for bringing us, sir!’ he said.

  ‘Enjoy yourselves!’ called Mr Featherstone as he let in the clutch, and they watched the van rattle off down the road.

  John and Rosemary wandered off to the nearest half-built house and watched a man with no shirt and a very brown back carry a load of bricks up a ladder, and come down again with the empty hod. He stopped at the bottom.

  ‘Can you tell us if the houses will join up in the end?’ asked Rosemary. ‘I mean so that Fallowhithe and Broomhurst meet?’

  The man looked up. ‘Hallo, ducks!’ he said. ‘When we’ve finished they’ll join so neat as you won’t know where one begins and the other ends! Makes you think, don’t it?’

  John agreed that it did.

  ‘If you ask me, the cats have moved in already,’ the man went on. ‘I’ve never seen so many. All over the place, they are!’

  Even as he spoke, a great black animal with white paws padded silently across the half-built wall, gave them a searching look and disappeared the way it had come.

  The man frowned. ‘And it’s a funny thing,’ he went on, ‘but there’s a rubbish dump here already, even before anyone’s moved in. Beats me where it comes from. There’s even an old rocking chair.’ He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, Charlie!’ shouted a voice.

  ‘Okay, I’m coming,’ replied the man. ‘So long!’ he said. He winked cheerfully at Rosemary and went off whistling.

  John and Rosemary turned and wandered off in the direction he had pointed out to them with his thumb. In a field, beyond a cement mixer, was a pile of old tins and some worn-out shoes, and beside it stood a rocking chair.

  ‘I wonder who put it there?’ said Rosemary. ‘It doesn’t look broken to me.’

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ said John impatiently. ‘We haven’t come all this way to examine old rubbish heaps! I’m hungry. I vote we go on down the lane and have our tea as soon as we find a good place. We can go on to Turley’s afterwards and get some milk.’