Safely over on the other side, he leaned his chin on Aileen’s shoulder and grinned at the camera.
‘Right – let’s have him out.’
He was handed to the official cat-controller, who was now in fear of losing his job.
‘Would you all like a nice cup of tea?’
‘No thank you – just get rid of him.’
They had shut the study door behind me and there was no way I could get back in – I might disturb the sound balance and they had had enough of that for one day, and so I had found myself carrying the child prodigy down to the courtyard where Bridie waited for me with Chico tucked under her arm.
‘Listen to this.’
We all three of us stared at Chico, waiting to hear what he had to say.
‘Come on, Chico.’
Chico is the strong silent type, which is most unusual for an Irishman and even more unusual for an O’Connell.
‘Come on.’
Bridie poked him in the ribs and he complained bitterly in a raw throaty squawk.
‘There,’ she said, ‘do you think his voice is breaking?’
The football match had to be abandoned when the postman walked across the pitch and the players bolted.
I held out my hand for the letters he was holding out in front of him, but he had his head down as usual and he walked straight past me and began to climb the steps.
Arthur panicked and came hobbling down, Thermal flew past him on the way up and Tigger and Chico went off with Bridie to discuss tactics.
He wasn’t the fastest postman in Huddersfield. It was now almost lunch-time and if he tackled his round as he tackled the steps it was a wonder he ever got here at all.
As he rammed a handful through the letterbox, I said, ‘Excuse me please,’ and walked past him and picked them off the mat. The door was wide open now, but he still pushed the next bunch through the letterbox and I had to remove a couple of them from the pocket of an overcoat that was hanging on a hook.
‘How much longer is this going on?’ he demanded.
‘Is what going on?’
‘These letters – and these.’
He produced several Jiffy bags and a parcel.
‘This is the last call on my round. I’ve had to haul this lot every inch of the way – it’s been a week now.’
The producer’s assistant tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Any chance of another cup of tea?’
I’d got my job back – there was still time to make an impression.
‘Right away.’ I turned to the postman, ‘Would you like a cup?’
‘No thanks – I live across the park.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ the girl asked him. ‘Don’t they drink tea over there?’
‘No, it’s not that,’ he handed me the Jiffy bags, ‘it’s just that my wife will be watching me through the binoculars.’
The producer’s assistant and I zoomed our eyeballs across the park.
‘She watches you – through binoculars?’
‘Oh aye. If I went into a house for a cup of tea with a lady, she’d play merry England.’
I was about to point out, just in case he hadn’t noticed, that I wasn’t a lady when he leaned forward and asked the assistant, ‘Excuse me love – would you do me a favour?’
‘If I can,’ she said.
He shuffled to one side and pointed to a gap between the trees.
‘I live over there. Would you come out on the balcony and wave across the park?’
‘What for?’
‘I’d appreciate it – and so would the wife.’
‘Anything for a quiet life,’ she said, stepping out through the doorway and hoisting a self-conscious arm into the air. ‘That all right?’
‘Just once more for good measure. She might not have got the first one.’
She gave another wave to the unseen enemy and then, as she turned, she saw Thermal sitting on the roof.
‘How did he get up there?’
It does look rather dramatic when you first see a cat sitting on a chimney, four storeys above the ground. It’s even more riveting to watch him pick his way along the guttering, paws on points like Margot Fonteyn.
He can work his way right round the house in the guttering, and I had often wondered, just to be on the safe side, if I should get him one of those balancing poles that The Great Houdini used to carry.
‘It’s quite simple really,’ I explained. ‘He jumps from the bed to the dressing table and then on to the wardrobe and goes out through the Velux window in the roof. He frightens the life out of the birds – they don’t expect an attack from behind when they’re having forty winks.’
She stared at Thermal in wonder as I talked and he caught her eye, went all embarrassed and began to do his silly walk along the ridge tiles.
The postman had his eye on the girl, and as she disappeared back in the house he tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, ‘How could she see the cat?’
‘Well he’s up there – look.’
‘But she’s supposed to be blind.’
‘No – Aileen’s supposed to be blind. That was a lady from the BBC.’
It took a little while for this to sink in and then he turned and gestured across the park with a wild, ship-to-shore, sort of a wave.
‘That wasn’t her,’ he shouted. ‘That was a woman from the BBC. I’ll get the other one in a minute.’
He turned back to me. ‘She’ll be quite excited,’ he said, ‘she watches BBC.’
Just then Aileen came to the door with the interviewer and began to point out interesting backdrops for the next session.
‘This is her,’ the postman roared, pointing his finger at the interviewer’s head. ‘This is the Woman of the Year.’
‘No it isn’t,’ I shouted to the space across the park. I poked a finger into Aileen’s right ear. ‘This is her.’
‘What’s happening?’ Aileen asked.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Just wave across the park and we can all go in and have a cup of tea.’
So she waved – a good long wave with a nice bright smile on her face and then she turned back to me.
‘Why did I do that?’
‘I’ll tell you later – it’s a bit like being the Queen.’
I walked down the steps with the postman. He’d got rid of his letters, but he seemed to have all the cares of the world on his shoulders.
‘I’ll have to get a move on,’ he said. ‘She times me – she watches me walk across the park and she gets annoyed if I stop and talk to anyone.’
I began to wish we hadn’t bothered waving to this crabby old woman who watched the world and her husband through a pair of binoculars, and then I had an awful feeling that I might be misjudging her – she might be disabled and this was her only way of keeping in touch.
‘Is she disabled?’ I asked him. ‘Can’t she get about?’
‘Oh aye,’ he said, ‘she can get about. It’s just that she’s a nosey old devil and she doesn’t like to miss anything.’
That afternoon Aileen entertained a reporter from the Yorkshire Post, another film crew, this time from Yorkshire Television, and a free-lance journalist from Woman’s Weekly.
I granted an audience to a small man with bad breath who had come especially to see me and wanted to talk about patio doors and double glazing.
It was nice to be wanted, but even nicer, when they had all gone, to be able to put our feet up and relax.
‘Have you fed the cats?’
‘Oh hell.’
I put my feet down and limped out to the kitchen – it was almost an hour after feeding time and I was surprised Thermal hadn’t come looking for me.
Tigger never would. She seemed conscious of the fact that she never did any of the cooking or contributed to the upkeep of the household in any way, and she would rather go hungry than have it look as though she were after a hand-out.
Arthur was going through a funny phase. He had landed on his feet and h
ad become as cocky a cat as you ever saw, except during the half-hour leading up to a meal-time – then he seemed to think that it was all too good to last and was a nervous wreck by the time I pushed a saucer under his nose.
But Thermal had no such qualms. He knew his rights, and he also knew when it was six o’clock on the button, so where on earth was he?
Then I remembered. He wasn’t on earth at all – he was up on the roof and I’d forgotten all about him. He could get down on his own, but the window had a habit of slamming shut.
Due to a certain deficiency in the back leg area I am not as nimble as Thermal, and the leap from the dressing table to the wardrobe is a bit too much for me. So I hauled a pair of steps up from cellar to bedroom and stuck them under the window.
It had snapped shut and I half expected to see an angry young cat glaring in at me from the other side, tapping his wristwatch in frustration.
But there was no cat – at least, not on the flat roof that surrounds the dome, nor on the tiles that climb towards the two chimneys.
I shouted, and a row of damp pigeons took off into the night – all except the deaf one at the far end.
They must have been very brave or extremely stupid to settle down with Thermal on the prowl and they didn’t look either – except for the deaf one at the far end who looked very stupid indeed.
For a man who suffers panic attacks on the third rung of a ladder, the next five minutes were very painful. I clambered up the wet tiles to all four ridges and peered down at the guttering on the other side. I even had a peep down one of the chimneys, but there was no sign of Thermal – it was just me and the pigeon.
The courtyard was about the size of a dining table from up there, the paving slabs glistened and looked very hard.
There was a cat lying flat on its stomach by the edge of the steps – it was Chico, and he seemed disturbed by something he had just discovered in the flower bed.
I had better go down and have a look. I just hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It wasn’t Thermal – it was Denton. He was hugging the ground like a sniper, lying half submerged amongst the Azalea Japonica.
He wouldn’t have known what they were called, of course, he couldn’t read the words on the little stick. But he did know that Chico couldn’t see him properly from over there, and was coming over here to have a closer look.
Denton licked his lips in anticipation. This was just the way to keep in trim after a night out with the lads – taking a big lump out of Chico.
And then this ugly great bloke who doesn’t know the first thing about the law of the jungle comes blundering in and treads on your tail. It’s just not fair – it plays hell with your nerves and it doesn’t do your tail much good either.
It was the first time I had ever been pleased to see Denton, and if he had stayed around long enough for me to say thank you I would have kissed him. That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach had told me that I was going to find a badly battered Thermal lying there in the flower bed.
But the relief soon rolled over into anxiety, and with the faithful Chico acting as my chief scout I worked my way around the edges of the house, hoping against hope that we wouldn’t find anything.
We didn’t, and Chico seemed to think he had let me down – but then he didn’t know what we were looking for.
I searched the roof once more that night and then again in the morning, but there was no trace of him and I wondered if he could have fallen down the chimney and be boarded up behind one of the gasfires …
‘It’s not like him,’ Aileen told me. ‘He’s very surefooted.’
‘I know he is.’
‘You worry too much.’
‘I know I do.’
‘He’s probably got a girlfriend somewhere.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’
The man from North Eastern Gas arrived spot on twelve o’clock and removed first one gasfire and then the other. He found a very stiff thrush and a small piece of mortar.
‘He’s probably got a girlfriend somewhere,’ he said as he pushed the fire back into place.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually holding a dead thrush between forefinger and thumb. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
But Thermal wasn’t really interested in girls – the vet had seen to that – and so I punched up the old circular on the Amstrad and, after substituting the words ‘half-grown cat’ for ‘small kitten’, I ran off another 150 copies and started on my rounds.
I knew where all the letterboxes were this time, and Tigger came with me to keep me company, walking on the walls where she smelled dogs and danger, trotting up the paths when she sensed that all was well.
*
She hadn’t been able to settle since Thermal disappeared and she followed me around the house like a new puppy. Even Arthur, who possesses all the subtle sensitivity of a half-brick, seemed to notice that something was wrong.
‘I could always move in you know – make up the numbers.’
It’s a bit early for that, Arthur.’
‘Just thought I’d mention it.’
Two days stretched into four and then the fifth day was a Friday. The woman rang up again about men going round in a van stealing ’em. She must live close by – she had answered the small ad in the Examiner last time. I cut her off in her prime and then the doorbell rang. The man had my circular in his hand.
‘This yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m doing up some flats down the road. My men say there’s a cat in the building somewhere – been there for a few days, they’ve heard it, but they haven’t seen it.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Bring a torch – the electric isn’t on.’
We walked down together to the lovely old house opposite the park. It was so obviously empty that I had hesitated about tackling the drive and the letterbox with my leaflets. Only the work ethic that nags away at me twenty-four hours a day had made me do the job properly.
‘He must have come in while we had a window out – we’ve done it up now and he’s stuck.’
I shouted and whistled over the first two floors, but the empty house wasn’t at all impressed.
‘Come on – we’ve got two more yet.’
We climbed a staircase that had known better days and I shone my torch over a stack of old floorboards.
‘We’re replacing ’em.’
I thought I heard something and so did he. We stood still, silent for a time, and then I shouted.
‘Thermal!’
‘Thermal?’
‘That’s his name – it’s a long story.’
‘It must be. I can’t be doing with cats myself – I like dogs.’
We climbed to the fourth floor and the torch began to feel the strain. The beam dripped out of the business end and fell to the floor with a limp wrist.
‘What sort have you got?’
‘A wire-haired terrier.’
‘What do you call him?’
‘Dinky.’
‘Dinky?’
‘Yes – well, it’s the wife’s really.’
The top floor crouched under low beams and didn’t seem quite so hollow as the rest of the house. A couple of rooflights came to the assistance of my torch as it attempted a weary search of the far corners.
‘He must be up here. My blokes have tried to coax him out, but he wouldn’t have nothing to do with them. Just pinched the fillings out of their sandwiches when they weren’t looking.’
‘That sounds like him – Thermal!’ I shouted.
There was a scuttling sound and then nothing.
‘Thermal!’
He came like a train under the floorboards, right from over by the gas meter. I could hear him pounding, out of sight, and then he leapt up through the gap between two joists and hit me full in the chest, his claws grabbing at my sweater.
‘So that’s Thermal.’
; ‘This is him.’
‘Mucky little devil, isn’t he?’
His ears went back and his eyes went wild at the sound of a stranger’s voice. He struggled to get away and I had to pin him under one arm to hold on to him.
‘He’s a lucky little devil as well. That’s the last floorboard – the electricians would have had it screwed down in the morning.’
The three of us stood in the kitchen and grinned daft grins at one another as Thermal tucked into a large green tin of rabbit and chicken in jelly, and then, as a special treat, a much smaller, tin-coloured tin of silver sardines in olive oil.
He paused for a burp – not one of Tigger’s timid bicarbonate burps, delicately masked with a pretty little smile – but a real building-site belch that made the fur round his haunches fold and pucker up into a one inch ruff.
The ruff travelled the entire length of his body, taking up the slack before running out of steam somewhere around the back of his neck and then washing itself out, down over his face.
I could only guess at the sort of language he must have picked up from under the floorboards.
‘Pardon me.’
Tigger wrinkled her nose in disgust.
‘I should think so.’
‘I was hungry – I haven’t eaten for a week.’
‘You pinched the fillings out of the men’s sandwiches,’ I reminded him and he winced at the thought.
‘Have you ever tried cheese and tomato with Branston pickle?’
It was good to have him back again, and as a nightcap he had the top off the milk almost down to the bottom, before following us upstairs and burying himself under the duvet.
He was fast asleep before I had whipped my shirt off and he had picked his favourite spot – right where I like to tuck my knees up after I’ve kissed Aileen good night.
I threaded my feet down the bed until my toes touched warm fur and then my legs forked out left and right, sliding either side of him until I was just one digit short of advertising the Isle of Man.
I swivelled my hips, tucked my right arm under my chest and turned over slowly with my left knee in mid-air so as not to disturb him. It was ever so comfortable for the first thirty seconds and then my shoulder froze and went to sleep.
The Cat Who Came In From The Cold Page 16