We left him to it and went to put the kettle on. Tigger took a drink of milk from her saucer then looked up at me.
‘Ralph?’
‘It’s a new one on me.’
For the next seven days it was Disneyworld revisited. The sweetness and light pervaded all four corners of the house, there was love and there was devotion and it was as boring as hell.
The two cats curled up all day together, sharing a communal blanket with a sultana who couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.
I shared a blanket with Aileen, but that was a different matter – people who work late into the night need a little time to themselves in the afternoon. But if we left them for just a moment or so, all three of them would come trooping upstairs after us.
‘We’re a family you see.’
It wasn’t easy to bring that certain smile to Aileen’s face with a couple of cats crouched affectionately, one on each pillow, and a smug little sultana grinning a demented grin at me from a dent in the duvet.
I began closing the bedroom door, something we hadn’t had to do since the children left home. But it didn’t work – you could hear the splinters flying as the two cats pounded away at the woodwork and then the ominous silence as the sultana measured up for a tunnel.
‘I can’t take any more of this.’
‘Just relax,’ Aileen breathed sexily in my ear, ‘and ignore them.’
‘I can’t – I don’t want Thermal to find out what he’s missing.’
He found out soon enough. A gradual sea-change swept over Tigger. At first it manifested itself in the form of gentle affection – she would roll over on to her back at the sign of the slightest footfall and ask for her tummy to be rubbed. I thought it was all rather sweet until it hardened into a raw passion as she squatted down and stuck her bottom in the air every time Thermal hoved into view.
He was panic stricken, and had to lock himself in the airing cupboard as his Disneyworld quickly whipped itself up into 9½ Weeks. I told Aileen what was happening.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘She’s on heat.’
‘Well I don’t like it – and what’s more Thermal doesn’t like it.’
‘Well the pair of you had better get used to it.’
It went on for ages – she was disgusting, and Thermal spent more and more time over at Chico’s across the lane.
I couldn’t lie on the rug first thing in the morning and read my Independent, Tigger would roll all over it and go bananas.
I couldn’t cope with it. It’s bad enough when Aileen’s like that. At least Aileen doesn’t do it out in the yard when I’m paying the milkman – or at least if she does, I haven’t seen her.
For Thermal came the added disadvantage of finding every tom-cat from miles around queuing up on his doorstep. Every time he put his head out of the door he got mugged. And when Chico, who hadn’t been seen to and who was too young to see to it himself, came over to find out what all the fuss was about – he got mugged as well.
I began to let Thermal out through the cat-flap in the cellar so that he could give them the slip. It worked for a while, but then one day Tigger slipped out with him and he was almost trampled to death in the rush.
He came in with a look of pure disgust on his face. He shuddered and sat down on the rug.
‘Anyone who can fancy Denton ought to be put down.’
Eventually, after what seemed like a decade or so, she calmed down and became, once again, the Tigger we all knew and loved and not the Tigger that every other tom-cat in the district was trying to get to know and love.
Thermal and I called a conference and decided to invite Aileen. She came reluctantly – she knew what it was about.
‘I think we ought to take her to the vet,’ I began.
‘Hear, hear!’
Aileen hesitated. She was up to here with tom-cats queuing on the steps, and she had been driven mad by the constant revving of their motorcycles in the back lane. Still, she hesitated.
‘Why don’t we let her have just one set of kittens?’
‘That’s sexist, that is.’
‘They should have one set of kittens,’ she insisted.
‘She’s got me.’
Right or wrong I was on Thermal’s side in this one, and we had rigged the voting before the meeting started.
‘I think we should get it over with.’
‘Doesn’t hurt much – makes your eyes water a bit, that’s all.’
*
It did more than mike Tigger’s eyes water – it laid her out for a week. She lay slumped on the hearth rug and Aileen held a saucer of warm milk under her nose.
‘I can’t believe she was pregnant already.’
‘Well she was.’
‘Poor Tigger.’
‘Just think – we could have had lots of little Dentons running all over the place.’
Thermal shuddered at the thought and hoisted his back leg up around his neck.
‘I wonder which one the father was – it could have been Ranji, he almost pitched a tent …’
We both fell silent at the same time – made speechless by Thermal’s astonishing display of athleticism as his tongue reached places I didn’t even know he had.
He always made a feature out of washing his bottom, but we’d never seen him do it on the mantelpiece before.
He could feel the silence being aimed at him and paused in mid-lick.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Yes there was.’
‘We were just wondering who the father was.’
‘Well it’s no good looking at me …’
A little row of daggers crossed over from the mantelpiece and caught me smack in the eye.
‘…is it?’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We were very busy over the next few weeks. I had reached that magical moment – chapter thirteen – when, for no known reason, the writing becomes easy and the book seems to take off on its own.
Aileen had reached chapter fourteen, when, for no known reason, it becomes ever so bloody hard again and you feel like bursting into tears.
Tigger took over the running of the household in general and of Thermal in particular. What he needed, she decided, was a loving mother and a firm hand. She had been within a whisker of having kittens of her own and she was determined to give him the benefit of her experience.
Thermal was having none of it – he was determined to make his own way in this world and had formed a small public relations consultancy in partnership with Chico Mendes O’Connell from across the lane. They had started out with very little in the way of venture capital and were extremely short on experience, but their enthusiasm knew no bounds and already they had landed a two-house contract.
On the strength of that, they opened a small office in the cellar from where they ran the whole operation. PR was the coming thing and they were determined to be in on the ground floor – or even better, the cellar.
Their job was to make all visitors to either house feel especially welcome – to create an oasis of goodwill and then watch the benefits flow.
The men who came to empty the dustbins had been the first to taste the techniques employed by the two entrepreneurs.
‘The bins are over there in that shed.’
‘I’m afraid this door sticks a bit.’
‘I think you’ll find there’s another bag over there in that corner.’
‘Excuse me – you’ve dropped some potato peelings.’
They had already earned a pat on the head, a ride each on a rough shoulder, an over-ripe chicken carcass, a get-out-from-under-my-bloody-feet and a for-God’s-sake-bugger-off.
This was all within the first week. The future beckoned and the sky was the limit.
On Monday morning Thermal had a working breakfast with Chico over at Bridie’s place and then came back at just after twenty-five minutes past eight for elevenses.
The next seven days had been designated ‘Welcome the postman week’ and meticulous planni
ng was the order of the day. They could have done with a wallchart, but capital expenditure of that magnitude was out of the question, so they had to play it by ear.
Thinking wasn’t Chico’s strong point, it wore him out, and so he had a nap in the office while Thermal took first watch on top of the gate in the garden wall.
Viewed from the lane the wall is just above head height, but from down in the courtyard it stands a good fifteen feet tall. Seven stone steps reach up to a stone balcony, surrounded by an elegant iron rail that I’m going to get round to painting one of these days.
It must have been the best part of an hour later when, from the kitchen window, I saw the postman plodding along the lane, his eyes down, examining a clutch of letters in his hand.
Thermal saw him coming at the same time, but was torn between the dictates of his chosen profession and the natural-born instincts of a cat.
He should have stuck his paw out and said, ‘Hi there. My name is Thermal – let’s do lunch.’
But a sophisticated kitten-about-town must never look too excited and so he half stood up, had a good stretch with his head low down and his bum stuck up in the air, and then pretended to notice an interesting splinter in the top of the gate.
He gave it a bored little sniff. It was up to the postman to make the first move. He should have said, ‘Hullo there, Thermal – and how are you, old chap?’ Then if Thermal had wanted to ignore him, he could have done so – to devastating effect.
Cats rarely make the first move because they hate being ignored themselves, but the postman didn’t know this, and he had his eyes firmly on the letters as he put his shoulder to the gate and sent Thermal spinning off into mid-air, fifteen feet above the ground.
He knocked on the door a few minutes later and delivered several letters for Aileen, a bill from the garage for me and an extremely indignant kitten who appeared to be suffering more from acute outrage than anything else.
‘Did you see that?’
‘It was your own fault.’
‘You cannot be serious.’
‘You shouldn’t show off.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
Tigger took pity on him and tried to lead him away to the creche she had established behind the television set. Thermal had other things on his mind.
‘Gerroff.’
She listened to his protests with a gentle smile and all the annoying doorstep-patience of a Jehovah’s Witness. She tried again.
‘Gerroff!’
He bounced off down to the cellar to wake Chico and tell him that their business had just collapsed around their ears and Aileen went off to read her letters through the scanner.
Tigger sighed and gave me a rub round the ankles before going off to do the thousand and one things a mother has to do.
She’d win him round yet, with unquestioning love, patience and tolerance. She would win him round – or break every bone in his body in the attempt.
As the full horror of the garage bill sank into my unwilling mind I wondered if Tigger would like to go round there and sort them out first.
Aileen appeared at my side with a letter in her hand and the sort of look on her face that tries to be a very modest sort of look indeed and doesn’t quite manage it.
‘Read that.’
It was an invitation to the Women Of The Year Luncheon at the Savoy Hotel in London.
‘That’s terrific.’
‘And now that.’
It was page two of the letter and it informed Miss Aileen Armitage, novelist of this parish, that she was on a shortlist of six for the Women of the Year’s Frink Award.
‘That’s wonderful.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘It’s true enough.’
‘Read it to me.’
The scanner allows Aileen to absorb the sense of a message – one large letter at a time on the computer screen. But the effort takes away most of the flavour and so I read it out aloud to her, in my best BBC voice – the one where I try very hard to sound like an announcer and don’t quite manage it.
‘Of course I shan’t win it.’
‘No – of course you won’t.’
‘You rotten devil.’
She took the letter from me and smoothed it with her hand, but you couldn’t have smoothed that smile from her face with a steam iron.
‘I’m very proud of you – they couldn’t have made a better choice.’
‘Thanks – I shall just go and enjoy the day.’
‘Right.’
‘Whether I win or not.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
She turned to leave, legs moving but not needed as she floated above the shagpile.
‘And let’s not tell anyone – not yet.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
She disappeared back into her office and within thirty seconds my phone on the branch line gave a little ding – like it does when she phones her youngest daughter to tell her the good news. I popped my head around her door.
‘We won’t tell a soul – right?’
‘It’s only Annie – just family and friends.’
I went back to work and made a mental note not to breathe a word of this to any of our deadly enemies.
That night we celebrated in style at an Italian restaurant. A friend had recommended the place.
‘Cost you around fifteen pounds a head.’
‘Sounds good.’
He must have had a soup and a sweet and a bottle of paraffin – the garage bill seemed quite reasonable in comparison. Aileen knocked back the last of the wine, it was her fifth glass of the evening and the only good thing about not being able to drive.
‘I’ll just pop to the toilet while you pay the bill.’
‘OK.’
I guided her over to the appropriate door. We’ve got it down to a fine art now – I hold her hand and, with a series of well-practised squeezes, steer her to the right, to the left or straight ahead. A stranger wouldn’t know that she couldn’t see and we just seem to be a very affectionate couple – which we are. Left to her own devices she tends to mingle with a lot of gentlemen who happen to have their hands full at the moment.
The return journey is something she prefers to turn into an adventure. She memorizes the twists and turns, the steps and stairs, and sets out staring straight ahead with a confident smile. Sometimes she doesn’t quite make it and I have to move in quickly.
Once she asked a rubber plant for directions, and once she walked straight through a plate glass window. Tonight the course could have been made for her, the going was firm and I would have bet money on her.
Back at the table the proprietor brought the bill on a silver tray. I smiled at the man, choked at the bill and reached for my credit card.
It wasn’t there. It had been – I had put it there, in my top pocket. No need for a wallet or cheque-book tonight – just slip my card in my top pocket.
‘Shall I need any money?’
‘No love – I’ve got my card.’
But I hadn’t. I knew where it was – it was on the window-sill in the bathroom, right next to the Royal Over-Seas League shower cap and just in front of the little bottle of shampoo from The Royal Hotel in Scarborough.
I walked over to the desk in the corner wearing a pale grey face that made my white shirt seem almost colourful. The proprietor didn’t seem to notice.
‘You enjoya your meal?’
‘Very much thank you – but I’m afraid I’ve come without my Access card.’
‘Of course’a we take Access. We take’a everything. We take’a Barclaycard, American Express, Diners Card …’
‘I haven’t any of them.’
‘Thena we take’a cheque – if you have banker’s card.’
‘It’s at home – with my cheque-book.’
‘We take’a cash.’
‘I haven’t any cash, but …’
His son came over and much as I enjoyed The Godfather I didn’t really want to meet
him in person.
‘Thisa man,’ said Poppa, spreading his arms wide, ‘he hasa no money.’
‘I have’a the money,’ I told him, ‘But I leave it at home.’
The son gave me a hard look to see if I was taking the mickey out of his Poppa. I wasn’t and I wouldn’t, but I have this problem. Ten minutes after getting off the train in Newcastle and I’m speaking like a Geordie. I sprouted a pair of mental leather shorts in Austria, and in Switzerland I had learned to yodel before we cleared customs.
‘What’a we do with him?’ asked Poppa.
I also have another problem. Whenever I am accused of anything, I look guilty.
At school, I used to blush like mad and go all shifty whenever the teacher asked who wrote the rude word on the blackboard. It never was me, but I was the one who always got thumped for it.
This time I was going to get thumped by the Mafia, who were certain to make a better job of it than Miss Urton ever did when I was in 4c. The son moved in close.
‘Why you not tell us you got no money before you eat?’
‘I didn’t know then. Look I can …’
Poppa and son spoke in rapid Italian, their arms conducting some invisible Milan Philharmonic Orchestra. As far as I could gather, Poppa wanted to send for the police whereas the son was all for disembowelling me with the butter scraper he was waving in his right hand.
Then Aileen appeared, hips swinging as though she was on casters, her red-gold hair freshly combed and a big dob of lipstick on the end of her nose.
‘Ready?’
‘I can’t pay the bill – I’ve left my credit card at home.’
‘Oh well,’ she turned to Poppa, ‘we’ll send it on to you.’
Poppa must have fallen in love with her during the soup.
‘Excuse’a me,’ he murmured, and with a white damask napkin dabbed at the lipstick on her nose. ‘Isa no hurry – any time.’
‘We’ll post it first thing in the morning.’
I glanced at the son to see if he intended holding me hostage until the cheque cleared, but his eyes were on Aileen’s hair. I thanked him for trusting us.
‘I would trust the lady with my life,’ he snorted.
‘What nice people,’ said Aileen as we slid through the swing doors.
The Cat Who Came In From The Cold Page 12