Carbonel: The King of Cats

by Barbara Sleigh

  By squeak of bat

  And brown owl’s hoot,

  By hellebore,

  And mandrake root,

  Come swift and silent

  As the tomb,

  Dark minion

  Of the twiggy broom.

  When Rosemary opened her eyes again she said, ‘I forgot to ask you. Have you any sandwiches that he will like? Mine are only ham and hard boiled egg, and I know he won’t like those.’

  They tore a corner of John’s packet and found that his were potted meat and jam.

  ‘Look here,’ said Rosemary. ‘We shall have to put in some time before Carbonel can possibly get here. Let’s go and buy him a tin of sardines. He will be frightfully hungry after walking all the way here. I think we can get a little tin for sevenpence. Let’s go to the grocery stalls.’

  They set off walking slowly up and down the market. They meant quite honestly to be looking for sardines, but it was all so interesting that it was some time before they reached the aisle where most of the grocery stalls were to be found. They bought a little tin of sardines from a stall which was a jumble of all kinds of tinned foods which had a large placard over it which said SMASHING REDUCTIONS!A PENNY OFF THE SHILLING! So instead of paying sevenpence they got it for sixpence halfpenny. It was not till they had wandered to the end of the market that they realized that there was no key with it with which to open the tin.

  ‘What a swizzle!’ said John. ‘Let’s go back and ask for one.’

  They went back, but the fat man in charge of the stall merely said:

  ‘Well, what do you expect for sixpence halfpenny? P’r’aps you’d like a knife and fork?’ and everybody laughed.

  ‘How cross people are today!’ sighed Rosemary.

  ‘A fat lot of use a tin is without an opener,’ said John. ‘The sight of a tin we can’t open will make Carbonel cross as well, and I shouldn’t blame him!’

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Rosemary. ‘Perhaps the second-hand man will have one he would let us borrow.’ So they went to see.

  The old man saw them coming over the heads of several people. As soon as he caught sight of Rosemary he waved an imaginary fairy wand, pointed the toe of a battered boot, and did what he meant to be a fairy pirouette. Then he wheezed in a way that Rosemary recognized as a laugh and she laughed too, more because he was such a nice, friendly litde man, than because she thought it funny. The fairy wand business was becoming a regular joke.

  ‘They still ‘aven’t come in yet!’ he said between wheezes.

  ‘It isn’t a fairy wand we want today, it’s a sardine tin opener,’ said Rosemary gravely.

  ‘A sardine tin opener?’ he said, going off into a paroxysm of wheezes. ‘You’ll be the death of me!’ he said at last, wiping his eyes. But he rummaged about in an old box and brought out a key, very old and rusty, but nevertheless a key.

  ‘I don’t fancy sardines myself, but it takes all sorts to make a world. If it was sweets, now, it would be different. A regular sweet tooth I’ve got.’

  Rosemary took the opener from him. ‘Thank you very much indeed! How much is it?’

  ‘I’ll make you a present of it!’ said the old man gallantly, and turned away to attend to a customer.

  It was precisely this minute that the two children became aware of Carbonel licking his dusty paws a few feet away. Far from being cross at having been summoned, he was most gracious.

  ‘I wondered if you would have enough sense to say the Words,’ he said. ‘Of course I was coming anyway, but the Words give one’s paws the power of coming the shortest way possible. I was following the bus route when they whipped me round and down an alley I had never noticed before. Got me here in half the time. Not a whole tin of sardines specially for me? Really, I feel quite touched! Believe me, I shall never forget it!’

  And Carbonel rubbed himself against the children’s bare legs, winding in and out between them and purring, as John said, ‘Like a space ship.’

  They found a couple of packing cases at the edge of the stalls and settled down to eat their sandwiches, while Carbonel, still purring, licked the sardine tin until even the smell of sardine had gone.

  ‘I tell you what I bags we do,’ said Rosemary, as she wiped the crumbs from her lap. ‘Let’s go and buy the old man a present. He has been so jolly kind and helpful. We shouldn’t have found either the hat or the cauldron without him, and now there is the opener.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. But whatever could we give him?’

  ‘He said he’d got a terribly sweet tooth,’ said Rosemary. ‘There is a sweet shop over there I went to once. Let’s go there and see what we can afford.’

  She led the way to the little shop where she had weighed the merits of toffee apples and liquorice bootlaces on the day that she had first met Carbonel. What a long time ago it seemed now! When they reached the shop they were in deep discussion as to what happened to a sweet tooth if you had to have false ones, so that Rosemary did not notice anything different about the shop at first.

  ‘I don’t expect they can replace a sweet tooth,’ she was saying. ‘That is why old people don’t seem to like toffee. Besides…’

  John interrupted, ‘Is this the shop you mean? What a miserable place!’

  It was indeed. There was no longer a cheerful display of jars of sweets, of pink coconut ice, and sticks of peppermint rock. Except for one or two jars of pallid toffee and some dusty odds and ends of stationery the window was empty. Rosemary looked with distaste at two dead blue-bottles which lay on their backs near some yellowing envelopes. ‘I think this is it,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Well, p’r’aps that explains it,’ said John. And he pointed to a hand-printed notice which was stuck rather crookedly on to the window with stamp paper:

  UNDER NEW MANGEMENT

  it said in wobbly capital letters.

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t think the “new mangement” gets many customers!’

  But as he spoke a young woman with a whimpering small boy opened the door with an angry jangle of the bell and went in. ‘I say, look at that!’

  Rosemary looked where he pointed excitedly.

  Over the door was another notice which said KATIE CANTRIP. LICENSED TO SELL TOBACCO.

  John whistled. ‘Gome on!’ he said.

  Rosemary began to say, ‘Don’t go in till we’ve decided what to do…’ but it was too late. John had opened the door with a jangle of the bell that could not be ignored, and Carbonel had slipped in after him. There was nothing for Rosemary to do but follow down the two steps into the shop.

  19

  Mrs Cantrip

  It was dark inside the shop, and the old woman behind the counter was so busy with her customer that she paid no attention to the children. She was grinning and bobbing, but saying nothing to the young woman, who was talking very fast and angrily, while she held the small boy by the arm.

  ‘I tell you straight,’ she was saying. ‘It’s the third time ’e’s ’ad a stomach ache after eating your ’ome made sweets. Once I could ’ave understood, because ’e never was a child to know when to stop. But today ’e’d only sucked a couple, that I do know, when the poor little kid was doubled up. I’m not one to complain, neither, but you can take the rest of them back!’ And she threw the bag of sweets on the counter. The little boy howled anew, as much at the sight of his property bursting its bag and bouncing all over the floor, as at the pangs of stomach ache. The young woman gave him a shake.

  ‘And don’t you ever let me find you coming ’ere again!’ she said, and pulled him, still complaining, out of the shop.

  The clanging of the bell died away and the children watched Mrs Cantrip as she scrabbled round the floor, picking up the sweets. As she put them back into the jar without so much as a dust, both John and Rosemary were doubtful about helping her to pick them up. However, it gave Rosemary a moment or two to notice that the old woman had made some attempt to tidy herself since the day she had sold the broom. Her grey hair was twisted into a wis
py bun by means of several large hairpins that reminded John of staples. She wore a shawl over her shoulders edged with scarlet bobbles, some of them missing, and a grubby apron with a pattern of enormous pink flowers on it.

  She peered short-sightedly over the counter and said to John, amiably enough:

  ‘What can I do for you, lovie?’

  There was a pause while the cat and the two children instinctively drew nearer together. It was John who spoke first.

  ‘Are you Mrs Cantrip?’ he asked.

  ‘Katie Cantrip, that’s me,’ said the old woman. ‘Licensed to sell tobacco,’ she added with some pride.

  ‘Then, if you please, we want you to tell us the Silent Magic that will make Carbonel free for ever.’

  The old woman stiffened, and the amiability drained from her face as completely as water drains from a sieve, leaving her sharp nose and chin looking sharper than ever. Her deep-set eyes snapped angrily.

  ‘Have you got that cat there?’ she asked harshly.

  ‘I’m here!’ said Garbonel, and he leapt up on to the counter.

  Mrs Cantrip seemed to pull herself together.

  ‘Well, we’d better talk it over fair and square. Put the broom on the counter so that we can all hear His Highness Prince Carbonel talking.’

  Carbonel’s tail twitched at the very end where it hung down from the counter, otherwise he might not have noticed the mock deference with which she gave him his full title.

  ‘Do as SHE says,’ he said, without taking his great golden eyes off her. ‘But don’t leave the broom unguarded for an instant. Goodness knows what she might get up to.’

  So they put the broom longwise down the counter, with the twigs still wrapped in Rosemary’s shoe bag, and John held it one end, and Rosemary held it the other, and from the other side of the counter Mrs Cantrip laid her gnarled hand on the middle. But as she stroked the wooden handle the children felt the broom quiver in response.

  ‘Ah, my beauty!’ said the old woman, so softly that Rosemary was startled. ‘We had some fine times together, you and me! Do you remember swooping over the North Pole with the Northern Lights flickering through your tail? And beating back home against a north-east gale with the clouds scudding over the moon so thick and dark that many a broom would have lost its way? But not you, my beauty! Ah, you were as fine a besom as ever took the sky, but now you are old, and so am I, and the glory is gone from us.’ She stroked the broom and cruddled over it like a woman with a sick child. Rosemary seized on her softened mood. ‘But why won’t you set Carbonel free?’

  At the mention of the cat the softened mood was over.

  ‘Why should I set him free? I always hated him, else why should I have gone to the trouble of binding him with a second Magic?’

  ‘Why do you hate me?’ asked Carbonel. His tail was still now, but his eyes never left the old woman’s face. ‘I worked well for you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you did your work,’ said Mrs Cantrip bitterly, ‘but only because you had to. I never tamed your proud spirit. However powerful the magic I made, you were always there with your air of disdain and disapproval as though you were the master and I the servant. And just as much as you withheld your will, my spells were that much short of perfection.’

  ‘Your own pride was responsible for that. If you had been content to have a common cat for your accomplice you would have had your way. But you chose a Royal Cat.’

  ‘That is all over now,’ said Rosemary. ‘Can’t you forget it, and tell us the Silent Magic so that we can set him free?’

  ‘I shall never tell you, you may be sure of that. If you want to know, you must find it out for yourselves. Besides, it is a Silent Magic so no one can say it. It was written down, and I have burnt my books, haven’t I?’

  ‘Have you?’ asked Carbonel sweetly. ‘I doubt if it was only sugar and water that goes into these sweets of yours that give the children such stomach ache!’

  John and Rosemary looked at the rows of jars on the shelves behind her, and in each one the sweets glowed very faintly, red and green and yellow, in a way that they had certainly never seen before in a sweet shop.

  ‘Well, what of it?’ said Mrs Cantrip sullenly. ‘It was only a very little magic I mixed with them to make ’em go farther. It didn’t do any real harm. A bit of stomach ache is good for children. Teaches ’em self control.’

  Her eyes wavered beneath Carbonel’s unwinking stare.

  ‘Then if you are still doing magic, you didn’t burn all your books!’

  ‘I did burn them,’ said Mrs Cantrip angrily. ‘Well, all of them except one,’ she admitted.

  ‘Where is it?’ said John and Rosemary together.

  ‘That I’ll never tell you!’ said the old woman fiercely. But as she spoke the shop door burst open, and half a dozen people came tumbling in. Now the shop was so small that it could only hold four people with comfort, so that when six people squeezed in, in addition to John and Rosemary, and those people angry and gesticulating, there was barely room to move. Above the hubbub a brawny man who seemed to head the company shouted:

  ‘Are you Mrs Cantrip?’

  ‘That’s me. I’m Katie Cantrip, licensed to sell tobacco.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you sell tobacco instead of this rubbish? ‘Ere, this is what you sold me, see!’ and he thrust a handful of evil-smelling brown stuff under her long nose.

  ‘So I did!’ said the old woman blandly. ‘That’s tobacco all right. I ought to know, because I grew it myself in my own back yard,’ she added with pride.

  ‘You what…?’ roared the man.

  ‘Yes, and what is this rubbish you sold me instead of notepaper!’ said a shrill voice behind him. ‘Superfine Azure Bond is what I paid for, and nothing but dead leaves when I got home. I’ll have the law on you!’ But her shrill protests were drowned by further complaints.

  ‘Made my Tommy sick, her sweets did!’

  ‘And my Lucy!’

  ‘It ought not to be allowed!’

  ‘Who does she think she is?’

  ‘Give us our money back, missus!’

  Fists were shaken and threats were thick in the air. John said to Mrs Cantrip:

  ‘You had better give them back their money, or I think there will be trouble.’

  ‘How can I? I haven’t got any,’ said the old woman. ‘But if you was to let me have the broom back I could be over their heads in a winking!’ she said craftily.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Carbonel.

  She peered uneasily from side to side at the angry people, and Rosemary felt quite sorry for the old woman.

  ‘We can’t give you the broom, but we will help you, won’t we?’

  John nodded. ‘Take her into the room at the back. And Carbonel had better go with you to see fair play. Give me all the money you’ve got. It’s lucky Daddy sent me five shillings this morning. Hurry up!’

  Mrs Cantrip ran uncertainly to the end of the counter, hesitated and turned back and went with Rosemary with Carbonel close on her heels. Their disappearance raised a fresh shower of angry cries from the defrauded customers, so to make himself heard John climbed on to a chair.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! If you will jolly well be quiet for a minute, on behalf of Mrs Cantrip, I will give you your money back, if I can,’ and turning to the angry man he said, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘My tobacco or my money. That’s fair, isn’t it? I paid three and sixpence for this rubbish!’

  Even from where he was standing on the chair John noticed an extraordinary smell coming from the torn packet. He counted out three and sixpence (there was three halfpence in the cash drawer, and a safety pin). This made a very large hole in their total of six and threepence. However, the brawny man seemed satisfied and, muttering something about ‘the police next time’, elbowed his way out of the shop. With his departure the remaining customers seemed a little less aggressive. Under the counter was a cardboard box of stationery with the maker’s seal s
till unbroken, so that John was able to replace the notepaper and envelopes from this, feeling pretty certain that it would not turn into dry leaves on the way home, as the other had done. Luckily the sweets had only been sold for a few pence, so that when the last customer came for her money he was only tuppence short. She was a nice, motherly person, and when she saw John’s anxious face she said:

  ‘Don’t take on, dearie! It doesn’t matter about the tuppence, but don’t let your grannie do it again.’

  John was so shocked at the idea of Mrs Cantrip being taken for his grandmother, that he quite forgot to say ‘Thank you.’

  When she had gone he locked the door and hung up the notice that said ‘Closed’, and heaved a sigh of relief.

  In a few minutes he rejoined Rosemary in the little room that opened off the shop. It was surprisingly tidy. There was very little furniture, but what there was was clean and orderly. Rosemary was making a cup of tea.

  ‘It looked all right in the packet,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think we had better drink any. It might turn us into something.’

  ‘Probably something creepy with a lot of legs,’ said John. Rosemary shuddered. Mrs Cantrip said nothing, but she took the cup that Rosemary poured out for her and blew on it gustily.

  ‘Well, I got rid of them!’ he said, and told them what had happened. ‘But I shouldn’t open the shop for a day or two until it has blown over,’ he said to Mrs Cantrip, who did not even look up from her tea.

  ‘Go away!’ she said sourly.

  ‘Well, of all the ungrateful people!’ began Rosemary. ‘When all we are doing is to try to help you!’

  ‘It’s no use!’ said Carbonel. ‘Sulking, that’s what she’s doing. Best leave her to get over it.’

  ‘Come on, Rosie,’ said John. ‘Let’s go!’