by Hilary McKay
“In our bedroom,” said Lulu. “Just until tomorrow. And you can’t look in case you guess what they are!”
Lulu was thinking of the throne when she said this, which still looked like a wrapped-up throne, however much paper she and Mellie taped around it. But it was useful for Ratty too. With Nan’s eyes helpfully shut, he reached the little bedroom that Lulu and Mellie were to share quite easily. Lulu and Mellie dumped him on Lulu’s bed and surrounded him with parcels.
“You’d never guess he was there!” said Mellie, bouncing a bit.
“Shush!” said Lulu.
When at last the car was unloaded, Lulu’s dad said good-bye and told Nan how good he hoped they would be. And Nan said that she knew they would be as good as gold, because they always had been, right from the moment they were born.
“Oh yes,” said Lulu’s dad. “I don’t know why I keep forgetting that.”
Then he hugged everyone very quickly and hurried away.
Lulu and Mellie and Nan waved from the gate until he was gone, and then Lulu remembered Ratty upstairs, still in his birthday parcel.
“Shall we unpack now?” she asked.
“Later,” said Nan. “First we will have drinks by the pool!”
“What pool?” asked Lulu and Mellie together.
“The one by the orange and lemon tree,” said Nan, and she led them around the corner of her very small house, into her very small garden, and pointed proudly.
There was Nan’s very small tree and under it was a beautiful blue paddling pool with flowers floating in the water.
“Oh, Nan!” exclaimed Lulu and Mellie, their hot shoes already kicked off, their feet already dabbling.
“And look at my tree!” said Nan.
The little tree was transformed. Dangling from its branches were oranges and lemons, grapes and bananas and rainbow-colored candle lanterns, waiting to be lit. Large bright paper butterflies balanced on the branches. Mellie spied a pineapple and Lulu, who all her life had wanted to climb a coconut tree and pick a real coconut, now found that she could.
“It’s a jungle tree!” said Mellie. “You should have brought your parrot, Lulu, instead of just that ha…”
Splash!
Lulu had climbed into the tree to have a closer look at the coconut. Now Mellie was suddenly much wetter and the coconut was bobbing in the pool. And on the far side of the tree, where Nan had spread rugs and cushions, three furry golden shapes were suddenly awake. Six bright green eyes were staring indignantly at the coconut.
They belonged to Marigold, Nan’s enormous golden cat, and Dandy and Daisy, her two fat kittens.
All at once Lulu remembered what it was that she had worried about in her dreams.
Right out loud, Mellie exclaimed, “Lulu! We forgot about the cats! They’re good cats, though, aren’t they, Nan? They don’t go around killing things like some cats do.”
“Certainly not!” said Nan.
“Not even rats or mouses or hamsters or things?”
“Mice!” said Nan. “Not mouses! No, not even butterflies!”
Lulu was so afraid of what Mellie would say next that she slid down the tree, put a cushion on Mellie’s head, sat on it, and changed the subject.
“What made you think of an orange and lemon tree, Nan?”
“Oh,” said Nan. “First I wished I had an orange tree, and then I thought I’d make an orange tree! And then I thought, why just oranges? So I added the lemons and everything else. I thought you could help yourselves to fruit just as easily from the tree as you could from the fruit bowl.”
“Can we help ourselves?” asked Mellie, wriggling out from beneath the cushion and Lulu.
“Of course. Shall I show you how to open up the coconut?”
But Lulu and Mellie would not hear of that. There was only one coconut and they thought it would be a waste to eat it so soon.
“Let’s hang it back up again,” said Lulu.
Nan had hung the coconut by a string tied around its middle. It was not an easy job to tie the string without it slipping. Over and over the coconut splashed down into the paddling pool and either Lulu or Mellie had to climb the tree and try again. They enjoyed this very much, but the cats did not. Every time the coconut fell again, they looked more disapproving and moved a little farther away.
It was amazing how quickly the morning went by. Paddling and coconut hanging. Learning how to make paper-plate butterflies. Bubble-blowing from the top of the tree. They had to take turns to do this because the tree was so small.
“Do the cats like the bubbles?” called Mellie when it was her turn to climb.
Lulu looked around. Where were the cats?
“Gone to get away from the splashes,” guessed Mellie.
“Gone to find some shade,” suggested Nan. “It’s getting hotter and hotter. I’ve opened all the doors and windows to get a breeze through the house.”
“All the doors!” repeated Lulu.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t look when I opened yours,” said Nan.
That didn’t stop Lulu worrying. She rushed upstairs and sure enough, there were Nan’s three cats.
Nan’s cats were stay-at-home cats. It was true that they never went hunting. They liked sofas and cushions and large meals and sunshine. They had their own cat brushes and their own cat china bowls and at Christmastime they had their own cat Christmas presents under the Christmas tree.
Lovely smelly cat treats, that’s what the cats had had, wrapped in Christmas paper. It was Lulu who had wrapped those parcels, and Lulu who had shown the three cats how to unwrap them, ripping the paper with their claws.
Nan’s cats had not forgotten. And now they had found a parcel larger and smellier and more exciting than anything they had unwrapped at Christmas.
When Lulu came into the bedroom, there they were, eagerly unwrapping the parcel that was Ratty in his cage.
Mellie had followed Lulu when she ran. Now she looked around the little room, which seemed absolutely bulging with parcels, and said, “Weren’t they clever to find the right one!”
“Clever!” said Lulu. “Help me shoo them away! Look at poor Ratty!”
Ratty was not happy. His eyes were bulging and his ears were flat. He trembled at the furry faces so close to his. His pink tail twitched in fear. Lulu picked up the whole cage and hugged it, while Mellie shooed the cats.
The cats did not want to be shooed. They looped around Mellie’s legs and jumped among the jumble of things in the room and tried very hard to get back to their parcel.
“What is the matter?” called Nan up the stairs.
“Nothing!” called Mellie as she scooped up a kitten. “Only the cats!” She grabbed the other.
With a kitten under each arm, Mellie chased Marigold out of the room and pulled the door shut behind her. Lulu heard her panting. She heard the double thud of kittens jumping to the floor. She heard Nan ask, “Can I help?”
“No, no, no!” said Mellie. “You can’t! Because it’s a … a …”
“Surprise?” suggested Nan. “Don’t tell me anymore! What’s Lulu doing?”
“She’s sorting it out,” said Mellie.
Sorting out Ratty took a long time. A lot of patient talking. A great many comforting carrot slices. Ages before he would let Lulu pick him up and carry him around the room to show him that there was nothing to be afraid of anymore. And when Lulu finally left him and opened the door, there were all the cats on the little landing, waiting for the moment when they could rush back to their present.
“No, no, no!” Lulu told them, hurrying them down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Mellie and Nan were making lunch.
“Now, Lulu,” said Nan, kindly not saying anything about how long she had been, “where shall we have lunch? Inside or outside?”
“Outside, please,” said Lulu at once. “Wi
th the cats! Come on, cats!”
Nan and Mellie laughed when Lulu said that, because the cats came at once. They followed after Lulu in a prowly golden parade. They followed her outside with the lunch things and in again to help carry drinks and up the tree to pick bananas and back to the kitchen for ice cream.
They seemed to have decided not to let her out of their sight. The only place they wouldn’t follow her was into the paddling pool. They sat around the edge glaring, waiting till she came out.
Sooner or later, thought the cats, Lulu would lead them back to their present.
“They are bewitched!” said Nan.
“Can we take them with us?” asked Lulu.
“What?” asked Nan, astonished. “Cats? To the fair? I don’t think so, Lulu!”
“What will they do, then, while we are away?”
“Just snooze, I suppose.”
“Inside?”
“Oh yes, don’t worry, they won’t be locked out!”
“They can’t open doors, can they, Nan?” asked Mellie.
“They don’t need to,” said Nan cheerfully. “They can walk through walls!”
“Not really?” asked Mellie.
“No, of course not really!” said Nan, laughing. “Now, off you go and get ready if you want to go out today!”
Lulu and Mellie went.
The cats followed. Through the house. Up the stairs.
“Sorry, cats,” said Lulu as she closed the bedroom door on them.
The cats were sorry too. Three sets of urgent paws began clawing at the door.
“It’s a scary sound,” said Lulu. “If you didn’t know what it was, wouldn’t it be awful?”
“Or even if you thought you did,” said Mellie, “but were wrong! You might think, ‘Oh, I’ll just let Nan’s cats in,’ and open the door, and there would be a great big grizzly bear! Or a lion or a tiger or one of those T. rexes!”
Mellie obviously liked the idea of such a frightening surprise and usually Lulu would have felt the same. But having Ratty to take care of made everything different.
“Think how it must sound to him!” she said. “What if the cats do it all afternoon? There’ll be no one here to rescue him. Perhaps I’d better not go!”
“You can’t not go!” said Mellie at once.
“This is Nan’s treat! It would spoil it. You’ll just have to put him somewhere safe …”
She looked around the little room, crowded with packing and presents. Lulu looked too. And Lulu said, “The roof!”
Long ago, an extra bit of house had been built onto Nan’s kitchen. It stuck out a little way into her garden and it had a flat roof. The flat roof was right under Lulu and Mellie’s bedroom window. It looked like a patch of gravelly stones, with a little wall around the edge.
At first Nan had thought it would be a good place to grow flowers and she had put plant pots up there. But she had soon grown tired of climbing in and out of the window to water them. Now there was only one plant left, a pink rose that grew all around the window. Nan could water that without climbing. She just had to lean out of the window and she could reach its tub.
There were not many things that Lulu and Mellie were not allowed to do at Nan’s house. They were allowed to dress up in her beads and hats and dig for treasure in her garden. They were allowed to cook in her kitchen and slide down her banister. They had made a Harry Potter house in the cupboard under her stairs. Once Mellie had played Titanic in her bathroom. Once Lulu had tucked up a hedgehog on the sofa.
But they were not allowed to play on the roof.
Scratch! Scratch! Scratch! went the bears or the lions or the tigers or the T. rex or perhaps the cats at the door.
“We aren’t allowed to play on the roof,” said Mellie as Lulu opened the window.
“This isn’t playing,” said Lulu, and she leaned out and lowered Ratty’s cage onto the gravelly flatness outside.
And there he was. He had blue sky above and cool shade all around him. He had roses to smell and lovely fresh air. And when the window was closed he was quite safe.
“And no one will know he is there!” said Lulu triumphantly.
Even looking up from the garden she could not see his cage. The little wall hid it. Ratty was quite safe from the cats, and Nan was quite safe from Ratty.
Then, one on each side of Nan, taking care of her because it was her birthday treat, Lulu and Mellie went to the fair in the park.
Chapter Four
Ratty on the Roof
There never was a better person to take to a fair than Nan. She never said, as Lulu’s and Mellie’s parents so often did, “Once is enough!” or “Wait till you’re older!” She never said, “You’re not eating that!”
Once was not enough for Mellie on the Sky Wheel or Lulu on the carousel or Nan on the bumper cars. They tried them all twice and many other things too. And they ate cotton candy and hot dogs and terrible sticky rock candy. Also, by rolling balls and throwing hoops and catching ducks, they succeeded in winning a giant blow-up parrot, a long purple scarf made from feathers, a green balloon that rattled like thunder, and a solar-powered glow-in-the-dark plastic garden gnome.
“Extra birthday presents for you!” said Lulu to Nan.
Then they wound the feather scarf around Nan’s neck, and Lulu took the parrot and the balloon, and Mellie took the gnome in one hand and Nan’s hand in the other, and they walked home very slowly together.
“Did you have a nice time, Nan?” asked Mellie.
“I had a wonderful time,” said Nan. “I haven’t laughed so much for years and years and years. But I shall be very glad to sit down!”
The cats were pleased to see them come home. They mewed and curled around their legs, explaining how hungry they were.
“Wait five more minutes,” Nan told them, collapsing on the sofa.
In less than five minutes Lulu and Mellie heard the first gentle snore.
Very quietly Lulu and Mellie fed the cats and put away the prizes. Then Mellie got out supper things in the kitchen and Lulu went upstairs to see how Ratty had enjoyed the roof. She found him chewing at the bars, the way he did when he could not endure his cage any longer.
Lulu looked at the crowded bedroom. Then she looked at the roof, all airy and clear, with the little wall around the edge. Then she did something she had never done before. She climbed out of the window.
And she opened Ratty’s door.
Mellie said, “Lulu! We’re not allowed to play on the roof!”
“I’m not playing,” said Lulu. “I’m exercising Ratty. He’s having a lovely time. Look!”
Ratty did look happy. Lulu had put her quilt onto the roof and arranged it into tunnels. He was diving in and out, exploring them, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was collecting rose petals that had fallen from the tub of pink roses, climbing through the open door of his cage and tucking them into his bed.
Mellie looked for a while and then she asked, “Is it nice out there?”
“Lovely,” said Lulu, stretched out on her back. “There’s loads and loads of sky.”
Mellie climbed out of the window too. She stretched out beside Lulu.
“This isn’t playing,” she said. “It’s just lying down.”
“Yes,” agreed Lulu.
“The cats are looking for you out in the garden. Nan’s awake. She said to tell you there are penguins on TV. You go and watch them and I’ll stay here with Ratty.”
“Don’t you want to watch the penguins?”
Mellie shook her head. She had endured many penguin programs and once a whole film.
“I know what it will be like,” she said, yawning. “The TV people will say: ‘These are penguins. They live a very hard life’. And the penguins will stand around on the ice. For ages and ages and ages! Anyway, you’re missing them. You’d better hurry
up before Nan wonders where you are.”
So Lulu scrambled back through the window and downstairs to Nan. Nan laughed when Lulu told her what Mellie had said about penguins.
“What’s Mellie doing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Lulu. “Well, looking at the sky and yawning!”
“Everyone’s tired,” said Nan. “After these penguins I think supper, then bed.”
“Then it’ll be your birthday,” said Lulu. “Are you excited about tomorrow, Nan?”
“I’m always excited about tomorrow,” said Nan. “You just never know what will happen, do you?”
The penguins caught fish. They stood around on ice. Lulu watched, fascinated.The TV people explained what a hard life it was. Mellie appeared in the doorway.
“I told you so,” she said. “All penguin programs are exactly the same!”
“Mellie!” exclaimed Lulu. “I thought you were looking after … looking at … the sky!”
“I’ve looked at it,” said Mellie. “It went all rosy.”
Behind Nan’s back, Mellie puffed out her cheeks and scrabbled invisible rose petals into her mouth with her paws. “Then it went very quiet …” Mellie’s head nodded forward, eyes closed, limp-pawed, a hamster asleep.
“So I came down,” finished Mellie and stopped being a hamster and started trying to stand on her head instead.
The penguins finished. A new show started about criminal minds.
“No, thank you!” said Nan. “No criminal minds here!” And she switched off the TV so that the screen became blank except for Mellie’s reflection.
“I shut the door,” said Mellie from upside down.
Lulu and Nan sighed with relief.
After supper Nan sent the girls upstairs.