by Paul Gallico
There was a slam and a click, and for a second time a door in Cavendish Mews was shut in Peter's face leaving him standing alone and deserted on the outside.
It all happened so quickly that for the moment there was nothing he could do but stand there and look at the cold, blank, mahogany door, quite benumbed by what had taken place.
Except that this time he was not entirely deserted, for first he heard Jennie's wild cry from inside– `Peter! PETER!' and then he felt the waves of her thought broadcasting to him, coming over so strongly as though she were standing next to him.
'Peter! Don't go away! I can't come now, but I'll manage things somehow. Don't worry. Go to the bombed house at No 38 and wait for me. I'll come as quickly as I can. They don't understand about us. Promise me …'
Peter sent back his promise, and after that it was quiet in the Mews.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Jennie Makes a Decision
PETER was so stunned by everything that had transpired in the Mews, the disappearance of his parents and subsequently the loss of Jennie due to her finding her family again, that he did not go immediately to the hostel at No. 38 Cavendish Square, the bombed-out house where the stray cats of the neighbourhood foregathered, but instead wandered in a dazed manner in and about the square.
He watched the children playing hopscotch on the walk inside the park, leaping on one foot over the chalk marks from one square into another, and he could not help but think how short a time ago it was that he himself had been hopping there with them in the same manner. He recognized several of them and wondered what they would say if they knew that he had suddenly been turned into a cat.
He saw Mr. Wiggo, the constable, his thumbs smartly inserted in his belt, conversing with somebody's nursemaid, and remembered that he used to stand in exactly the same way when he talked to Nanny and himself when they would come into the gardens, saying, `Well, and good morning to you, Master Brown. And how are you this fine day, Mrs. McInnis?' which was Nanny's name. Peter realized that if Mr. Wiggo saw him now he would chase him, as neither dogs nor cats were permitted inside the enclosure, and the constable would never suspect that the big white cat that was trespassing was Peter Brown to whom he used to wish such a cheery good morning.
To forestall this catastrophe, Peter slunk under a bush and hid until Mr. Wiggo passed on along the pram-lined walk on his rounds. But just the fact that he had to slink and hide from the policeman made Peter feel his plight and loneliness all the more.
Sparrows twittered in the shrubs and hopped and pecked about the street. Taxicabs coming around the corner went 'Honk-honk' as their drivers squeezed the rubber bulb of their horns; from Oxford Street came the hum of the heavy traffic. Although it was getting on in the afternoon, there was still a sun shining, the trees in the square were freshly green, and the air had lost its sharpness. It was May in London, but not for Peter.
He thought of Jennie safe and happy at last with Buff and the Penny family she loved so much, how she would be taken care of now, have her comfortable basket again to sleep in, fresh milk to drink and all the good things to eat she wanted, with never again a worry or a care, and Peter wondered whether it might not be best if he were simply to vanish out of Jennie's life and never turn up at the hostel at all. Then she would no longer have to trouble or bother about him.
The more he thought about this, the more he considered putting it into execution for Jennie's sake. He had but to turn and run away from Cavendish Square as he had done once before and the city would swallow him up for ever. Jennie would grieve for him at first when he did not keep the rendezvous at the hostel, but in her happiness with Buff she would get over missing him after a time, just as his mother had. What became of him was not important as long as Jennie was well off.
With his new-found self-reliance and all that he had learned from Jennie, he would make out somehow.
In spite of the pang of loneliness at his heart and the misery induced by the thought of never seeing Jennie again, peter rather fancied the sacrifice he was considering, and its nobility had a certain attractiveness that tended to obscure his better sense.
He was saved from this foolish step when it came to him, just in time, that he had promised to meet Jennie. And he remembered from when he had been a boy that nothing in the whole world hurt quite as much as a broken word. Once his mother had promised him that on his birthday she would spend the entire day with him. And then in the last moment something had come up which had prevented her from keeping it Remembrance of the pain this had caused him was so keen that huddled under the bush, Peter shook himself to try to drive it away. Then, quickly pulling himself together lest he should yet succumb to the temptation, he went around to No. 38 Cavendish Square, located the place where the board was loose at the bottom of the door, and slipped inside.
And when he got there he found Jennie waiting for him.
He was so glad he could have run up and kissed her. As a matter of fact he did, in spite of the assortment of strays of all sizes, kinds and colours sitting or lying about in odd nooks, crannies and perches of the burned-out house, that is, he rushed up and touched noses with her and began washing her face as Jennie laughed and said:
`Well! I thought you were never coming. I've been here just hours. I was beginning to get worried that something had happened to you …'
`But, Jennie,' Peter said-'I never thought you would be here so soon.'
`Ho!' she scoffed. `You know me and being kept indoors. When I make up my mind I want to get out– well! Anyway, now you're here, you must come and meet everyone. There are some really interesting cats here. I've been having a chat with them while I waited for you. Let's see, we'll start at the bottom and go around. This is Hector, here-the name, of course, doesn't fit him a bit. He once belonged to a coal miner, and he's actually been way down deep in a mine. Later on you must get him to tell you all about it.'
Hector was a lemon-yellow cat with a faint white stripe and a somewhat sour expression on his face, and who, Peter noticed, was not too clean. But he was evidently so pleased by the introduction that Jennie had given him that he was disposed to be pleasant and gave him rather a lengthy greeting which enabled Peter to look about and see the kind of place to which he had come.
The house had been gutted by the blaze that followed the fire-bomb that dropped on it during the war, and there was little left but the four walls and a few of the larger beams going across from one side to the other. However, the steps leading to the second floor were of stone and they had been preserved, as well as part of the stone landing which still clung to one wall. There were cats up on the landing, and several squatted comfortably on the stairs from which vantage point they could look down with their big green or yellow eyes and take note of everything that was going on.
But really the best places were in the ruins of the foundations. Some of the cellar walls and partitions were still standing, now overgrown with weeds and the purple fireflowers, and some of the corners were covered over, which was fortunate as there was no roof to the house and when it rained these nooks gave some shelter. But the way they were cut up by cross-walls and parts of the older foundation it was almost like small private flats, and the nice thing was that one always had a little piece of wall at one's back, or a corner in which to curl up, and to cats living the life of strays this was doubly important.
But Hector was finished saying how pleased he was to meet as travelled a cat as Peter (Jennie had evidently been laying it on thick in his absence) and Jennie was now continuing:
`Well now, this is Mickey Riley who was thrown out in the streets when he was a kitten and who never had a home. If there's anything you ever want to know about London and the best places to go to make a living, ask Mickey. There's just nothing he doesn't know …'
Mickey, a big dark chap with a tiger stripe and an enormous square head, lapped up Jennie's flattery and practically took a bow as he said: 'Quite, quite. Be glad to answer your questions.’
As Jennie Baldrin says,
there isn't much I haven't seen or done. 'Though I will admit I've never been to Glasgow on a boat, or fallen overboard. I'd like to hear about that some time, youngster.'
How wonderful Jennie was, Peter thought, at always saying just the right thing and making everybody feel good and purry,
'This is Ebony,' Jennie said, introducing Peter to a lean-flanked, jet-black cat. 'Isn't she beautiful? Not a touch of white on her anywhere, not a single hair. That's quite unusual, you know. Ebony used to belong to an old widow, a tobacconist in Edgware Road. When she died, nobody took her on. She had been devoted to her, too. Eight years. You would think the woman would have made some provisions for her. Ebony learned the streets the hard way, didn't you, dear?'
Ebony showed a tiny piece of pink tongue at the centre of her coal-black mask and quickly gave herself a couple of self-conscious licks. She was so pleased she didn't know whether to stand up or lie down.
'And this (who proved to be a brindle cat with white face and whiskers somehow reminiscent of Father Christmas) is G. Pounce Andrews, who really has had a lot of hard luck. Started in a butcher's shop and it closed down, got a job with a tailor and he went out of business, then went into a boardinghouse and it burned down, and then a private house where he was staying was hit by a bomb-the only one in the block. Well, you know how people talk and how ridiculously superstitious they are, especially about cats. Word got round, and nobody, but literally nobody, would have Pounce around, no matter how many mice he brought in. He's been on his own ever since. And he does deserve better, because none of it was his fault …
'Oh, and of course,' Jennie continued, 'I mustn't forget. This sweet little grey girl is Limpy. She has had a hard time of it. Orphan. Never even knew who her mother was. Lost her in a flood almost before her eyes were open. Country cat, you know. How she ever survived I'll never know. AND then getting her foot caught in a trap. And actually moved to the city and learned to make a go of it. When you are talking about real, true-blue courage . . . well-'
Limpy fell over on her side and did some violent washing. It was true. Peter saw that the toes of her left hind foot had been crushed. But he was given no time to linger over this tragedy, for Jennie was spinning merrily on
'Now these two dears are sisters, Putzi and Mutzi. From the Continent. Vienna, I think they said. They have known true sorrow. Came over here in 1938 with some refugees. Their house caught it in 'forty– four. Flying-bomb. Luckily Putzi and Mutzi were out visiting in another block. When they came back there was nothing, just a hole. They didn't even find any small pieces of their people. And after that, nobody thought of taking them in. The wonder is that they got on so well in London, I mean being really foreigners and not knowing our ways at all. Darlings, I think you are really marvellous …'
Putzi and Mutzi, who were a pair of quite ordinary shorthaired tabbies with identical looks and expressions, except that one was a little thinner in the face than the other, purred modestly, and Putzi said: 'Ach, it is really nothing. What shall one do? One does the best one can, no?'
And so, one after the other, Peter met them all, including Tiggo, a half-Persian black with a white mask who had had a home and was now a stray because he liked it and preferred to vagabond it than live the soft life, and Smiley, who was a big, cheerful-looking mottled grey-and-white tomcat who had belonged to a bachelor who had got married to a woman who could not abide cats.
At the end of Jennie's list of introductions and her recital of the accomplishments, trials, tribulations and individual virtues of each inhabitant of the hostel, there was not a cat in the place but was reduced to a state of complete adoration of her. And thus Peter learned that there was more than one way of extracting a living and a night's shelter and safety from the streets of London, and that a winning nature and blarneying tongue was quite as valuable as a sharp claw in a swift paw.
For they soon found themselves settled by the mutual consent and urging, as it were, of all the residents of the hostel, in the best ground-floor suite of the ruined building, a secluded little dugout made by the rear stairs leading to the cellar and a corner of a brick wall. The steps were already overgrown with a kind of fungus-like moss that made a soft bed, and they were sheltered on three sides by the remains of the brick wall with a ledge overhead in case it rained. It had been occupied previously by the two Viennese sisters and Ebony and Limpy who, however, insisted that Peter and Jennie take it over all to themselves.
And as for dinner, it was a question of choosing from the many gifts brought to them, and dividing up the rest so that everybody had something. Mickey Riley brought a bone, G. Pounce Andrews had a mouse put away that had not been too much used, Limpy contributed a fish head and Tiggo had salvaged an entire half lobster carcase, legs attached and all, out of a nearby dustbin.
After supper was over, they all had a general community wash-up and get together talk-feast, after which some of the strays who liked night prowling went out through the place where the board was loose. Others stayed around to chat a little longer and, exchange experiences, and then wandered off to their various quarters to sleep.
Down through the top of the roofless house shone a three-quarter moon, its silvered disc filling the inside of the building with soft light that made the angles of the ruins stand out sharply shadowed, and reflected in cold pools of emerald and topaz from the eyes of the cats who were still awake and had them open.
From nearby All Souls' church tower Peter, snug against his bit of wall, heard the clock strike eleven. His heart was heavy within him, for any moment now he knew that Jennie would have to be leaving him and returning to her people. She seemed, however, to be quite content to remain where she was, and when she neither made any move to go, nor any mention of having to do so, Peter himself, no longer able to bear the suspense, brought up the subject.
'Jennie,' he said, `won't you be, I mean, oughtn't you to be getting back to Buff and the Pennys? Surely Buff will have missed you when she went to bed …!'
Jennie did not reply for a moment. However, she raised her sleek head and Peter saw the soft moonshine on her white throat and mask, and the glitter of her eyes. Then she spoke, saying in a strange kind of voice, `Peter, I've been out on my own too long to go back. I shan't be returning. I've come back to you to stay. Do you mind very much?'
How very much like Jennie for her to put it that way. Did he mind her coming back! And dismissing with the simple declaration that she had been a free cat too long to be able to return to domestication, the depth of the sacrifice she was making for him.
For Peter had no doubt whatsoever that had the Penny’s understood that he and Jennie were together and taken him in with her she would have been happy to remain there with the child who had been her first and only real love amongst human beings. What she was saying so simply and without any fuss whatsoever was that she was giving up everything she loved for him.
And he was deeply touched by it. But being that inside of him he still thought like a little boy, he could not help but think of the sorrow and disappointment that must be the share of Buff, the girl with the long brown ringlets and the sweet face.
Aloud, he said to Jennie-`Jennie, dear. It was so lonely without you. Nothing seemed the same any more, and I thought that was how it was always going to be, and I didn't know what to do. But won't it be just too dreadful for Poor Buff. She was so happy to have found you again. Jennie, why does someone always have to be unhappy?'
Peter saw the shining in Jennie's eyes before she turned her head away for a few washes as seemed indicated by the emotional content of the moment, and they were brighter and more glistening than even the moon could have evoked. But she said after she had smoothed her fur down somewhat and gained control of herself and her voice:
`Buff isn't a child any longer, Peter, and doesn't need me as much as she once did. She is almost fifteen now. People change too, Peter, and as they grow older things no longer mean the same to them. She will cry when I don't come back, but she will get over it, beca
use she has other things that interest her now, and above all she will remember that I did come back once and that I understand that she didn't abandon me on purpose. And actually,' she added with that queer and sometimes frightening wisdom she seemed to possess, `what made Buff most unhappy all the three years was the thought that I believed she had deserted me. Which of course I did, because I was a fool, until you came along and taught me what people really can be like …'
She gave herself a long stretch and an inverted `U' bend, and concluded, `Well, anyway, that's all over and done with. And now here we are together again. But oh, Peter, for a little you gave me a bad turn. I was so afraid you might be going to do something foolish for my sake and not keep your promise to come and meet me here. Never, never do that, Peter. ..'
Peter thought it best not to say that he had been tempted for Jennie's sake. Instead, he gave a great sigh. He was very happy now. They lay down side by side, curled up together, and soon went fast to sleep. As the disc of the moon slid away from the opening of the roof, the soft light went out from the inside of the bombed house and all its ruins and sleeping cats vanished in the shadows of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Lulu-or, Fishface for Short
The next morning was a fine day. Peter awakened to find Jennie curled up in a tight ball, one paw over her eyes to keep out the light, and emitting just the tiniest of snores. Although the roof overhead was now the blue sky, and soon the sun would be streaming into the hostel, she was still fast asleep. Most of the other cats were already up and about their business. Some had departed, others were sitting about making their toilet with a serious wash, or giving themselves a lick and a promise, depending upon the state of their personal pride and how low they had come down in the world.
Peter thought he would go out and forage. It would be nice if when Jennie woke up there he would be with maybe a mouse, if he could find one, or perhaps a bone dug out of last night's refuse from some of the better houses on the square, or even a bit of melon rind of which Jennie was extraordinarily fond.