by Paul Gallico
The following morning, awakened by the roaring of the lion who was shouting for his breakfast in exceeding bad temper, Peter saw that not only was Lulu sitting up, not at all frightened, but she was yawning so that he could see right to the back of her pink throat.
`Aren't you frightened any longer?' he asked her.
`What, of that poor old thing in a cage?' Lulu replied. `That was yesterday, and yesterday is never the same as to-day. Don't you think to-morrow is really the best of all? To-day I'm not frightened of the lion any longer, I don't want any more ice cream and I'm tired of the fun fair. Let's go somewhere else. You know about everything. YOU lead the way.'
But as he started to crawl out from beneath the tent, she went by him with a whisk, a roll and a flash, and was ten yards ahead of him and waiting by the time he had got free of the canvas.
`Goodness,' she said, `I've been waiting for hours. I thought you were never coming. Do you hate rain?'
There was some logic to her last remark, for now that he was outside the tent, Peter found that it was a grey, unpleasant day with a fine, early morning drizzle coming down from the sky.
He replied, `Yes, indeed I do. I don't like it at all. My fur gets all wet and cakey, and then it gets dirty and—‘
`Pity,' Lulu interrupted. 'I LOVE the rain. All cats hate water but me-us, I mean. I once dived right off a punt into the Thames at Henley. It was Regatta Day and everybody applauded. Rain makes my eyes bluer, Come on, let's take a nice long walk in it.'
They left the fun fair and the Heath and promenaded steadily north through High-gate to Queen's Wood Priory Road. Here the drizzle changed to a downpour, but Lulu, who ordinarily proceeded only by leaps and frisks, now seemed to enjoy walking at a sedate stroll while blinking her eyes up into the downpour so that, as she apparently believed, they would get bluer. Peter was hideously wet; he had never been quite so thoroughly rained on before, and yet somehow wandering along beside Lulu it didn't seem to matter too much. If it really did make her eyes bluer, it was quite worth it.
Towards early afternoon the rain stopped, the sun came out again and nothing would do for Lulu but they must go on, and so they wandered across Finsbury Park and east through Clapton to the Leyton Marshes, where they played for a while in the vicinity of the waterworks before they struck north again as far as Epping Forest which they reached by nightfall and where they found an astonishing amount of trees and foliage considering that they were yet within the limits of London.
Peter was beginning to be tired and quite hungry, for somehow it always worked out that there was somewhere they had to go or something immediate they had to do just as he was about to catch a bite or a snooze for himself, but Lulu was too excited and enthralled at being in the woods and country, and fairly begged him to join her in the excitement. For the stars had come out overhead and the moon was now nearly full, and so bright that one could hardly bear to look it in the face.
The moonlight, of course, had a most marvellous effect on Lulu. She leaped; she danced; she shouted; she turned somersaults and ran up one side of a tree and down the other without ever stopping, her cream body flashing in the silver light. And whatever she did, Peter had to come and do it too, and they chased in and out the trees and shrubs until Peter thought he would drop, at which point Lulu cried
'Now! We're going to run right up a moonbeam. I'm the only one who knows how to do it. Follow me!'
Of course she didn't, but the way she gathered and hurled herself moon-wards, her little feet working furiously in the air, it seemed to Peter as though she actually were, and he wore himself breathless and ragged trying to follow and imitate her. Finally she seemed to exhaust herself for a moment and lay panting at the foot of a great beech, but only for a moment, for when Peter threw himself on the turf beside her, ready to drop off to sleep, she said: 'Moonlight makes me SO sentimental. Would you like me to sing you a Siamese song?' And without waiting for him to answer, she sang in her odd, cracked little voice:
'Eeny-meeny-miney-MO
Hokey-Pokey Bangkok Joe!'
She repeated it several times, but her voice was growing sleepy. Finally she said: 'There! To-morrow I'll teach it to you. Now it's bedtime. Watch over me, Peter. Strange places make me nervous at night. Somebody ought to keep an eye out while we're sleeping. You do it.' She lay over on her side and soon the regular movement of her flanks showed that she was off. Peter gazed down at her and thought he had never seen anyone sleep so gracefully, and the position of trust she had endowed him with as her guardian thrilled him to the core. Let anything come out of the forest, no matter what, a lion, a tiger, or even an elephant, and he would protect her-that is, provided he could manage to keep awake.
Fortunately there were only a few hours left of the luminous night, and shortly after the moon dipped beneath the trees, the sun once more mounted the sky, and Lulu awoke. She stretched, blinked, and gave one of her paws a nip as Peter watched her enchanting movements. And then with a swift stirring, as though she had suddenly remembered something, she sat bolt upright and stared at Peter in the strangest imaginable way, almost as though she had never seen him before in her life. She even got up and walked over to him and peered at him. Then she shook herself once and asked in a kind of a dazed and far away voice: `Where on earth are we? Where have you brought me to? What has happened to me?' And although she actually did not pass her paw across her brow, the expression on her face was exactly as though she had.
Peter, taken aback by this strange behaviour of his erstwhile gay and carefree companion, said: `I'm not certain, but I think we're in Epping Forest …'
Lulu gave a little shriek and sprang away from him as though he were contaminated. `Gracious! I remember nothing. I must have been drugged. What day is this, and since when?'
Peter counted. It had been Tuesday, he remembered when they had gone away together. `Thursday or Friday, I think. I'm not sure.'
Lulu gave a loud cry-'Thursday or FRIDAY! Oh, what have you done? My poor people. I must get back at once. The poor, poor dears; how very upset they will be. I mean more to them than anything. They will be worried ill, you wretch …'
`But . . . but . . .' stammered Peter, commencing now to be completely bewildered, `you told me yourself that you wanted them to worry, that that was half the fun, and that-'
`Oh!' Lulu said in a shocked voice. `How can you be so horrid and so wicked? Luring me away from home with soft words and promises, plying me with ice cream to stupefy me and then trying to shift the blame on to me; having all the fun and then making ME responsible. I don't think I ever want to see or speak to you again. I'm going home at once. The mercy is they'll be so glad to see me they won't scold me at all perhaps when I come back. By now they'll surely think I'm dead. And I might be for all of you.'
Peter was stunned by the attack and even more so by the sudden fear of losing Lulu.
`Lulu!' he pleaded, `don't go back. Stay with me forever. I'll get you ice cream every day, and mice, and wash you as often as you like, only don't leave me …'
`Oh!' said Lulu again, and once more, 'OHHHHHHHH!' and now her voice was really shocked as well as angry. `How dare you? How do you imagine such a thing? Don't you know that I'm a princess? Stay with you indeed! What I ought to do is hand you over to the nearest policeman. I shan't do it, because I am too good-hearted. Everybody says I have the disposition of a saint. But don't you dare to presume upon it. I am going home at once now, and don't wish to be followed. Good-bye.'
And with that she turned and went scampering off through the trees in swift, galloping leaps, leaving Peter sitting there too dazed and stricken to speak, move, or even call after her. But after she had gone about twenty yards she paused suddenly and looked around, and called back: `It was fun, though, wasn't it?' Then she turned once more and ran and ran as fast as she could, her tail streaming out behind her, and in a few moments she was quite out of sight.
And that was the last time that Peter ever laid eyes on her.
CHAPTER TW
ENTY-FOUR: The Informers
Yes, when Lulu's dark tail vanished around a clump of shrubbery, that was the last of her, and when Peter, hurt and bewildered no less by the sudden desertion of his new-found friend and comrade as by the accusations she had made against him, trotted to the edge of the park where the monotonous line of two family houses, as alike as two peas in a pod, began once more, and looked down the street, there was no sign of her. She had not reconsidered. She had not waited for him. She had not changed her mind. She had gone home without him.
And quite naturally now that he was alone for the first time and the peculiar spell of Lulu over him was broken, or at least loosened somewhat, since even though she was no longer there, the echoes of her presence, the faintly crossed blue eyes glowing out of the dark, velvety mask, the compact, tight little cream body with the dark feet and tail and ears, and above all the hoarse, haunting, challenging voice, were all about him, Peter thought about Jennie Baldrin, and once he did think about her and remembered how he had left her without a word as to where he had gone or when he would be back, it had to be admitted that his conscience was very bad indeed.
He thought of her waking up in the hostel and not seeing him at her side and then going out to look for him and not finding him, and no one about to tell her where he had gone or give her a message from him. Then she would look for him all over in the square and about the neighbourhood, and when she failed to locate him and he had not come back at night, or the next night, either, goodness knows what she might think. She might believe that he had gone off so that she could go back to Buff; or even worse, she might fear or suspect that he, Peter, for whom she had just made the supreme sacrifice of leaving the family she loved so much for his sake, had the very next morning run off with someone else.
Of course, Peter told himself, actually this was not so, and he heard himself making a speech to her when he should return to the hostel and find her waiting for him, in which he explained everything to her exactly how it had happened so that she would not misunderstand, and in which he began with– 'You see, I thought it would be nice if when you woke up I had a fresh mouse for you and so I went outside to have a look around and see where I might find one. Well, there she was, just the other side of the door, this extraordinary, beautiful, gay, mad person. Really, Jennie, I had never encountered anyone like her before and she lured me away by coaxing me to dance with her and we went to a fun fair together and slept in the animal tent, and after that we stayed in a stable and …'
But Peter never got much beyond that because it had a kind of a hollow ring, and worse, it sounded perfectly absurd, not to mention cruel and fickle on his part, and he could not imagine himself really saying anything like that to Jennie for all the world. Well, then, what would he say?
And the more he thought about it, the less certain and happy he became about the whole business, because it wasn't as though he had just stayed away for a few hours, or a day at the most, but three days. And the really dreadful thing was that just before Lulu had deserted him he had begged her not to return home to her people, but to go off with him on a kind of perpetual outing and holiday-camping trip. Of course Jennie need not know about that, but the fact remained that he knew it, whatever happened, and at the moment he felt that it was not a very nice thing to know.
For a while he succumbed to the temptation of thinking up a story to tell Jennie that would cover his heartless desertion of her, something dramatic, possibly with cat-nappers, two spies with checkered caps and neckerchiefs who had scooped him up from the square with a net just as he had been about to pounce on a fine medium-sized mouse which he intended to bring to her, and who had then whisked him off in a high-powered car.
There would then be a good deal more about a mysterious house with drawn blinds in Soho, a silent, evil-looking Chinaman with a long knife who was his jailer, and the masked leader of the gang with the villainous leer and the scar on his face who had bargained with the dealer in illicit furs, a fat, greasy– looking fellow with a bulbous nose and bloated face. With the odds at more than twenty to one against him, he, Peter, had finally managed to elude his captors and fight his way out of the dungeon and escape from the house to return to her at last.
But he knew that he could not do that, either. First of all, he was quite well aware that it would not be possible for him to lie to Jennie even if he really wished to do so, which, deep down, he did not. And, secondly, the story was not a very good one.
And the conclusion to which he finally came was that there was only one thing to do and that was to go back to Cavendish Square-though goodness knows actually where he was now and how long it would take him to find his way, and once he had got there to march into the hostel, confront Jennie, and make a clean breast of the whole business and ask her to forgive him.
He found he felt a little better immediately he had come to this decision, and not pausing even to make his toilet or forage for something to eat, he set off at a swift trot, alternating with darts and rushes, in the direction his instinct told him was south by south-west and Cavendish Square. But he had not realized actually how far it was possible to come in three days, even stopping off as often as he and Lulu had, and it was close to nightfall before, tired, hungry and footsore, the tender pads on his feet worn almost to bleeding from pounding along the hard stone pavement, Peter arrived at last at his destination. Entering the square from the north, along Harley Street, he turned at once to the hostel at No. 38 and, squeezing in through the narrow opening, found himself once more inside, his heart beating in his throat and a very uncomfortable feeling in his middle.
What he discovered inside did 'not tend to make him feel much more comfortable. It was the hostel all right; he had made no mistake in the address, and besides, there was but one bombed house in the row, and yet it was not the same at all. It looked as it had before in the twilight with the shadows falling over the walls and cornices and overgrown bits of rubble and ruin, but it felt quite different.
And then Peter saw why. The inhabitants seemed all to have changed. The lemon-yellow Hector was no longer there, nor was Mickey Riley. He failed to see Ebony, or G. Pounce Andrews, or little grey Limpy, Tiggo or Smiley. There seemed to be as many cats in and about the place, and some of them even resembled his old friends, but when he saw them closer he noted differences in colour and marking, shape and size, but above all in their behaviour towards him. He was a stranger. They did not know him. There had been apparently a turnover in the population of the hostel.
With a sinking heart Peter went back to the snug little den that he and Jennie had occupied the night of their arrival. There was someone in it, but the eyes that glared out at him from under the shelter of the cornice were not the soft, liquid melting ones of Jennie, but two cold, amber-coloured, hostile orbs, and he was greeted as he approached with a low growl and the old, well remembered cry-''Warel You're trespassing.”
The hostel was free ground and open to all, but Peter was not in a mood to argue the point with the new occupier, a big, hard-faced cherry-coloured tom with dirty white saddle markings and battle scars.
`Excuse me,' Peter said, `I didn't mean to. I was looking for a friend. We were here together-I mean we had that place three days ago, and-'
`Well, you haven't now,' the cherry-coloured cat said unpleasantly. `I was assigned to this by old Black himself. If you want to make something out of it, go and see him …!
'Yes,' said Peter, `I know. But I was really only looking for my friend. Do you happen by any chance to know where she is? Her name is Jennie Baldrin.'
`Never heard of her,' the cherry-coloured cat said curtly. 'But then I've only been here since yesterday. There was no one here by that name when I came.'
Peter felt himself growing sicker and sicker, and the empty, scared feeling about his heart grew greater all the time. Picking his way carefully through the hostel, upstairs as well as down, he searched it thoroughly from top to bottom. But there was no Jennie Baldrin, nor anyone who remembered h
er or had seen her. One brindle tabby did recall somebody mention Jennie's name, and that was all. This seemed to have happened two days ago. Peter had the horrid feeling that somehow he had been bewitched, that not three days but three years or perhaps even three centuries had passed, that in some manner he had left the planet to wander elsewhere and now that he had returned everything had changed and, most terrible of all changes, Jennie Baldrin was no longer there. She had vanished and no one knew where she had gone or what had become of her.
Just at that moment his ears were caught by the faint scraping sound as two cats made their way into the hostel from outside, two twin tabbies with identical markings and expressions, except that one was slightly thinner in the face than the other. Dark as it was growing, with a great leap of his heart peter recognized them, and with a glad shout ran over to them calling-`Putzi! Mutzi! Oh, how glad I am to see you both. It's me, Peter. You remember me, don't you?'
The pair stopped at his approach and stared first at him and then they exchanged a look between themselves. They did not seem at all to share his enthusiasm at seeing them, or to return it. For a moment it appeared even that they were going to turn away without speaking to him, but then Putzi eyed him coldly and said: 'Oh ho! So you have come back, have you?'
But Peter was too elated to have found someone who knew him and who would be able to tell him where Jennie had gone, to notice anything, and said:
`Yes. And I'm looking for Jennie Baldrin, but I can't find her anywhere. Can you tell me where she is?'
Putzi and Mutzi exchanged another look, and now it was Mutzi who replied in a voice that was filled with primness and distaste. 'No, we cannot. And even if we knew, we would not tell you, so there.'
The little pang of fear and discomfort was returning to Peter now, and besides, he was feeling quite bewildered. `But why?' he asked. 'I don't understand. Where did she go? And why wouldn't you tell me?'