Snakes' Elbows

by Deirdre Madden

  Thinking to protect her, Barney picked Dandelion up and dropped her head first down the front of his buttoned-up cardigan. ‘Oh really, this man is silly sometimes, silly beyond belief,’ the cat thought as she struggled to turn herself right-sides up again. ‘He means well but he gets it wrong every time.’ Her face now full of cardigan, now full of belly, she could hear Wilf chasing the dogs: ‘Scram! Go on, hoppit!’

  The dogs had started to bark as soon as Barney shouted at them, but they sounded fainter and farther away at every moment. By the time Dandelion’s cross little whiskered face popped out again above the top button of Barney’s cardigan the dogs were nowhere to be seen.

  But still their terrible warning rang in her ears. ‘Beware, Dandelion! Beware!’

  At a quarter to ten that night, Dandelion hopped on to Barney’s knee and stared up at him. Her clear green eyes were wide and anxious. He kissed her between the ears and stroked her under the chin.

  ‘Oh my dear Dandelion,’ he said. ‘If I were granted three wishes, one of them would be that you could talk to me. Often I look at you and I feel as if you’re trying so hard to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is.’

  The problem tonight was that Dandelion didn’t know either. She knew that something was going to happen because the dogs had warned her, but she couldn’t even begin to guess what it might be. Neither she nor Barney knew that as they sat together on the sofa something very strange indeed was taking place at the back door of the house. In the blackness of the night the word BOOM! suddenly and silently appeared in huge red letters, floating in the air beside the lock. The door flew open and the word crumbled away into coloured dust. Dressed all in black, Jasper Jellit slipped into the darkened house and started moving like a shadow from room to room.

  Ding! The clock on Barney’s mantelpiece chimed ten o’clock. ‘Come along, Puss. Cocoa time.’

  When they stepped out into the long corridor and Barney switched on the first light, the cat’s heart was beating so hard she thought he must surely hear it. But he simply stopped as usual to admire the painting of the man in the dark red robe and velvet hat, before passing by and switching on the second light. He glanced at the picture of the bowl of wood strawberries but when he moved on to the salmon, the cat paid no heed even though it was her favourite painting. Feeling nervous, she turned and looked behind her, back down the corridor with the closed door of Barney’s room at the far end.

  As they moved on, all at once Dandelion felt the fur rise on the back of her neck. They weren’t alone. There was someone else in the house tonight, she was sure of it, absolutely sure. She looked behind her again and got a tremendous shock, for there, standing in front of the painting of the young man, was Jasper!

  She gave a loud wild mew and Barney jumped in surprise. ‘Goodness me, cat! Did I stand on your foot? Did I hurt you?’ She mewed again but Jasper had already disappeared through the door between the picture of the man and the picture of the wood strawberries and was hiding there.

  ‘Come along, Dandelion.’ They reached the end of the first corridor and went down the spiral staircase to the second level.

  ‘I know Wilf has a point when he says I should have friends but I do so love my beautiful paintings,’ said Barney as he plodded slowly along, admiring them and turning on the lights as he went.

  Dandelion looked over her shoulder. There he was again! Jasper glared at the cat and put his finger to his lips, bidding her to be quiet. In response she mewed again, a long low horrible howl. Jasper stuck his tongue out at her, before darting into another doorway just as Barney turned around. ‘My little Dandelion, what is it? I simply don’t know what’s got into you tonight.’

  He picked the cat up and carried her in his arms for the rest of the way, with her head looking over his shoulder, so she could see Jasper as he followed them down to the kitchen, sneaking in and out of the rooms between where the paintings hung.

  ‘Behind you!’ Dandelion thought. If only this trick worked with human beings! If only she could plant an idea in Barney’s mind as she could with Cannibal and Bruiser. ‘BEHIND YOU!’

  At last they arrived in the kitchen, the whole house now ablaze with light.

  ‘Come in, my friends, come in!’

  ‘Hello Wilf. I’m really worried about the cat tonight. She’s behaving very strangely. I know she got a fright with the dogs down by the river but that was hours ago and she’s still so fidgety and nervous. You see? She’s not drinking her milk.’ And although her suppertime saucer was there as usual, Dandelion was too upset to touch it.

  ‘What’s up with you Pussens, eh?’ said Wilf as he prepared Barney’s cocoa. ‘If you like I’ll take her along to the vet in the morning.’

  The vet! Oh no! Dandelion hated going to the vet. ‘Look, you see how restless she is,’ Barney said as she crossed to the kitchen door and went back out into the corridor.

  The cheek of him! There was Jasper, walking up and down staring at all the paintings. When he saw that Dandelion was alone, he didn’t hide. ‘Push off, cat,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t you know when you’re not wanted?’

  Suddenly Dandelion realised why he was there and what the dogs had wanted to tell her.

  Jasper was going to steal the Haverford-Snuffley Angel.

  He had wanted to buy it at the auction but hadn’t been able to do so and now he was going to take it anyway. Stretching out his right leg he gave Dandelion a little kick. ‘Go on pussycat, get lost.’

  In reply to this she opened her mouth as wide as she possibly could. From where Jasper was standing she seemed to disappear, leaving only a wet pink mouth ringed with a ferocious set of pointed teeth. From this mouth came a truly horrible sound.

  ‘MEEAUUGHOHURMARWAROOUU!’ It was extraordinary to think that so small and sweet a cat could make so loud and dreadful a noise. Appalled, Jasper stuck his fingers in his ears. Dandelion caught her breath and did it again.

  ‘WAAHHUUOMAAAWOAMMAROO!’

  Barney shot out of the kitchen holding his mug of cocoa. ‘Stop that this very minute, Dandelion! I never heard such a racket in my life. Why are you being so naughty tonight? Come now, follow me and behave yourself.’

  Jasper, of course, had disappeared again. Barney couldn’t carry both the cat and the cocoa and so Dandelion trotted at his heels, turning around from time to time to see if Jasper was still following them. Yes, there he was, sneaking from one room to the next behind them in the darkness as Barney switched off each of the lights in turn. Dandelion knew that the Haverford-Snuffley Angel was in Barney’s room. She was in a foul temper now with Jasper because he had kicked her and she was determined not to let him get his hands on the painting. But how was she to stop him?

  They reached the top floor of the house and moved slowly down the corridor. At the far end they could see the shut door of the bedroom. ‘I do hope you’re going to settle down and sleep,’ said Barney.

  Suddenly Dandelion realised that, being a cat, she had one big advantage over the two men: she could see in the dark. She looked round just in time to see Jasper disappear into the room between the painting of the strawberries and the painting of the young man. Barney switched out the last light in the corridor. He had left on the lamps in the bedroom so that when he opened the door he would be able to see clearly again. But in that moment of total darkness, between his turning off the last light and opening the door, Dandelion knew that the moment had come to act!

  She shot from his side and darted into the room where Jasper was hiding. It was pitch black but she could see that he was standing in the middle of the floor, quite lost, not knowing where any of the furniture was. She gave a sharp, savage mew and leapt at him, landing on his face.

  ‘Arrgh! Uugh! I can’t breathe!’

  Dandelion wrapped her paws tightly around his head and held on as if her life depended on it while Jasper spun round and round the room, not knowing where he was and completely unable to shake her off. Dandelion remembered watching children on the merry-go-rou
nd at Woodford Fair and how she had wondered what it must be like to go round and round and round like that. ‘Now I know,’ she thought as she saw the bookcase go past for the twentieth time, and she clung on to Jasper’s head, as though it were the pole of a prancing wooden horse.

  And then she lost her grip. She flew one way across the room while Jasper flew in the opposite direction. As she landed on the table and slid along it like a cowboy’s drink in a Wild West bar she heard the window breaking. There was a long wild cry. Then Crump! Something hit the ground outside. Then Crash! Dandelion skidded into a vase at the end of the table and it fell to the floor in a million bits. But the cat kept going, and slid right off the end of the table and into a bookcase that toppled over just as Barney opened the door and switched on the light.

  What a sight met his eyes! The bookcase was falling forward like a great tree being cut down in a forest, and book after book tumbled to the floor. The window was broken and the vase was smashed, and sitting there in the middle of all this mess and destruction was Dandelion.

  ‘I saved your angel for you,’ she thought, but she knew it was no use.

  ‘You bad cat! You naughty creature! You bad, bad cat!’

  ‘Been in the wars, eh Jasper?’ said Mr Smith.

  Jasper didn’t reply but scowled across the desk. ‘Those are nasty-looking scratches on your face. Lucky whatever did it didn’t put your eye out. For how long is your arm going to be in that sling?’

  ‘The doctor’s taking the plaster off tomorrow,’ Jasper said and Mr Smith smiled brightly.

  ‘You’ll be back in business then, won’t you? Ready for action. Ready for anything.’

  On the desk was a glass dish filled with squares of fudge. Mr Smith picked one up, removed its cellophane wrapper and popped it in his mouth. Jasper moved to take one as well but Mr Smith shook his head and pulled the dish away with a mysterious smile. And then right before Jasper’s very eyes, something quite remarkable happened. Mr Smith started to disappear. First the top of his head went, then his eyes, his nose, his smiling mouth with its gold tooth. Now headless, his neck melted away and then his chest.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said a voice from nowhere.

  ‘It’s incredible,’ Jasper said. ‘It’s quite, quite incredible.’

  Mr Smith now seemed to have completely vanished. Jasper imagined that the bottom half of him was still disappearing behind the desk when all of a sudden a voice shouted in his ear. ‘BOO!’

  Jasper jumped in fright and heard a little chuckle. Now that he was invisible, Mr Smith had sneaked around the desk to tease Jasper. It was incredible and it was horrible and it was wonderful all at the same time. Jasper thought of all the things he could do with the fudge, as a pair of black shoes appeared on the floor beside him. There were feet in the shoes and now legs in grey trousers. From the floor up Mr Smith once more became visible until there he was, standing before Jasper still smiling his mysterious smile.

  ‘How much?’ Jasper said immediately.

  ‘Not cheap,’ said Mr Smith.

  ‘How much?’ Jasper asked again.

  Mr Smith named his price and Jasper said, ‘Ow!’ as though he had toothache. ‘Is that for a whole box of fudge?’

  Mr Smith shook his head sadly. ‘That’s for a single square. Told you it wasn’t cheap.’

  Jasper sat there thinking.

  ‘It’s very new stuff,’ Mr Smith said. ‘The boys in the backroom are still working on it. This is the weakest variety,’ and he pointed to the fudge in the dish. ‘I only use it for demonstration purposes. But even the effect of the strongest doesn’t last for very long.’

  ‘So if I wanted to be invisible for an hour or two I’d have to eat a lot of fudge to start with?’

  ‘Exactly. And there’s the danger that it might wear off at the wrong moment, that you’d start to become visible again when you didn’t want to be. Could be embarrassing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you eat some more then? Top up the effect?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Smith.

  ‘Does it work with animals?’

  ‘It works wonderfully well with animals. We gave some to the factory cat and it disappeared for a whole day. The poor mice had a terrible time with an invisible cat running around the place. But the boys are still working on it,’ Mr Smith said again. ‘The product isn’t ready yet. I think you should wait.’

  ‘No,’ said Jasper.

  Because Jasper couldn’t wait for anything. Often when he woke in the middle of the night, he rang for the maid to bring him his breakfast because he couldn’t wait until the morning. He had once even celebrated Christmas in the middle of summer, with a tree and a turkey and presents, simply because he couldn’t bear to wait until December. ‘I want the fudge and I want it now.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Mr Smith. ‘You’ll be needing at least four boxes,’ and he did a little sum on a notepad that was sitting on the desk, then told Jasper the final mind-boggling price.

  ‘I’ll take an extra box,’ Jasper said just to remind Mr Smith how rich he was. Mr Smith was impressed.

  ‘It is a remarkable product,’ he said as Jasper got his wallet out, ‘and you’re a remarkable man. You see it’s all very well to become invisible; it’s knowing what to do then, that’s the test. It’s having the imagination. It’s thinking big.’

  ‘I know exactly what I’m going to do.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ said Mr Smith, buttering up Jasper. ‘I bet you do. What are you planning?’

  The boxes of fudge were on the table now and Jasper started to pack them into his briefcase. He smiled at Mr Smith and gave a slow wink. ‘That,’ he said, ‘would be telling.’

  The morning after Jasper’s attempt to steal the Haverford-Snuffley Angel, Wilf fixed the broken window and put the books back on the shelves. There was nothing to be done about the vase except to throw the pieces in the bin. Dandelion was put in her basket and taken to see the vet, a stern woman who plucked the cat up by the scruff of its neck. They stared at each other, eyeball to eyeball, as Wilf explained what had happened the night before.

  ‘What do you feed it?’

  ‘She eats very well,’ said Wilf. ‘On a typical day she might have grilled pork sausages for her breakfast, then baked haddock for lunch with a dish of fresh cream as a mid-afternoon snack.’

  ‘What?’ cried the vet. She let go of Dandelion’s neck and the cat dropped like a stone back into the basket. ‘Baked haddock, your granny! No wonder this cat is nervous and difficult. It eats far too much rich food. From now on give it only a saucer of milk in the morning, one small simple meal for its lunch, and milk again at night. It also has to take two of these yellow pills three times a day. I know they’re rather big and it’ll hate having to swallow them but take no nonsense from it.’

  Dandelion couldn’t believe her ears and began to wail with misery.

  ‘You see?’ said the vet. ‘Spoilt. Spoilt rotten. It’ll do you good, Miss Puss, to know a little hardship.’ (People tend to like either dogs or cats. The vet liked dogs.)

  She hadn’t finished either. From a drawer in her desk she took a small red leather harness. ‘It’s got a nasty slouch too,’ she said. ‘Make it wear this at all times.’

  ‘How will that help?’ asked Wilf in surprise.

  ‘It just will,’ said the vet. A short brutal struggle followed as she put the harness on Dandelion. Wilf thought it was quite normal for a cat to slouch. There was nothing he hated more than having to wear a shirt and tie so he could imagine how Dandelion felt, and was extremely sorry for her.

  *

  In the days that followed, life returned to normal in Barney’s house and another week rolled by. Monday came and the sun rose hot and bright over Woodford. Just after dawn a large white van drove into the road beside Barney’s house and came to a halt. This would have been a most unremarkable event and not worth mentioning were it not for one significant detail. The van was empty. It was driven down the road but there was no one at the
steering wheel. Stranger still, once it was parked the doors opened and closed but no one got out.

  The milkman had already done his rounds. At about eight o’clock Wilf opened the front door to bring in the bottles from the step. As he bent down, his hands brushed against something warm and hairy close to the ground. He heard a panting sound and could smell expensive eau de cologne. But there was nothing and no one there. The front step was completely empty except for the usual two white bottles. Goose-pimples rose on Wilf’s arms. He picked up the milk but as he turned to go back inside, someone or something bumped against him, pushed him rudely aside and swept into the hall. Wilf could feel all of this but still there was nothing to be seen. ‘Oo-er!’ His hair stood straight up on end in fright. ‘What on earth was that?!’

  ‘This is a very old house,’ he said to Barney as he served breakfast a short time later. ‘When you bought it, did they say anything to you about ghosts?’

  Barney looked up in surprise from his cinnamon toast. ‘Of course not. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as a ghost.’

  ‘There might be,’ argued Wilf.

  ‘Well there isn’t. Not in this house anyway. Why do you ask?’

  Wilf thought about what had happened on the step. He must have imagined it. ‘I was just wondering,’ he said.

  After breakfast, Wilf went back to the kitchen and Barney settled down to play the piano. Dandelion sat beside him listening. From time to time her tummy rumbled so loudly it could be heard over the music. Poor Dandelion was tremendously hungry. It would be hours until lunchtime, she reflected, staring miserably at the clock, and even then all she would get was a couple of spoonfuls of horrible tinned cat food. With that, a thought came into her mind.

  ‘Dandelion! Dandelion! It’s us – Cannibal and Bruiser.’ It was loud and clear, but the dogs were nowhere to be seen.