The Abandoned, page 19
But the main thing was of course that Peter understood every word of what they were saying, and it made his heart swell with joy, because it did prove that they had not abandoned Jennie. It seemed, from what he could piece together, that when they moved away from their old home they had had to go to a hotel for a few nights, as the paint in the new place was not yet quite dry. The morning that they were to move in and had planned to come back and call for Jennie Baldrin, Buff had been taken violently ill and had been rushed to the hospital, where for three days and three nights her life was despaired of. Doctors and nurses, her mother and father had watched constantly at her bedside, and in the excitement Jennie was forgotten.
At last, when Buff had been pronounced out of danger and on the road to recovery, Mrs. Penny had remembered Jennie, but more than five days had passed, and when she hastened back to the old house, it was to find Jennie gone.
Peter felt it was terribly important that Jennie should know this at once, and while all of the excitement and talking and crying was still going on, he called up to Jennie, perched high and happily on Buff’s shoulder: “Jennie! I’ve the best news for you. I’ve been listening to what they’ve been saying. They didn’t go away and cruelly leave you behind. Buff was taken ill and had to go to a hospital”; and as quickly as he could, he told her the whole story, and concluded: “I knew that people who really loved cats, and particularly you, couldn’t be like that. Aren’t you glad about it?”
Strangely, although she smiled down at him quite happily and dreamily, Jennie did not appear to be impressed with the story or particularly elated over it, though no doubt she was pleased it had turned out that way. She said only: “It doesn’t really matter to me any more Peter, what happened, or how, now that I have her back again and she loves me. You see, I could forgive her anything.”
This was a point of view so wholly feminine that Peter found it quite baffling, and for a moment he felt the forerunner of a real and awful pang of pain and loneliness, which he quickly suppressed, for he wanted to entertain nothing but happiness that things had turned out so well for Jennie at last. But what Jennie said next was characteristic of her and reassuring. She called down to him with that soft, crooning sound which was reserved only for their more intimate exchanges of thoughts: “Oh, Peter, we’re all going to be so happy now. For I know they’ll love you just as much.”
But this was a dream that was soon shattered. As it turned out, Buff and her mother were hardly even aware of Peter’s presence, and when at last the first excitement of greeting and crying over Jennie had begun to calm down, and all the heads that had popped out of windows in the Mews had drawn back inside again, Buff, with Jennie still draped lovingly about her shoulders and one paw gently caressing her smooth cheek, turned and made her way inside No. 2 Cavendish Mews, the big granite house with the rich-looking vestibule where all of Jennie’s troubles were to come to an end. And, quite naturally, Peter followed. But here Buff’s mother, seeing a large white stray attempting to get through the door, bent down and gave him a gentle shove out into the street, saying not unkindly: “No, no, old chap. Sorry, not you. We can’t have every cat inside. You run along home now.”
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.
But 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 broadcast to him, coming over as strongly as though she were standing next 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.
JENNIE MAKES A DECISION
PETER was so stunned by everything that had happened 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 neighborhood forgathered, 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 nurse-maid, 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. MacInnis?” 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 round 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 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 forever. 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 so 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 at the last moment something had come up that had prevented her from keeping her promise. 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 colors 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 Peter noticed he 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 Peter rather a lengthy greeting, which enabled him 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. The steps leading to the second floor, however, 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 several 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.
Hector had finished saying how pleased he was to meet as traveled 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 in 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 Edgeware 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 provision for her. Ebony learned the streets the hard way, didn’t you, dear?”
Ebony showed a tiny piece of pink tongue at the center 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” (which proved to be a brindle cat with a 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 shop and it closed, got a job with a tailor and he went out of business, then went into a boarding house 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 gray 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 ’44. 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 marvelous.”
Putzi and Mutzi, a pair of quite ordinary short-haired 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 another, 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 gray-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 were 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 insisted, however, 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 carcass, legs attached and all, out of a dustbin.
After supper was over, they all had a general community wash-up and get-together talk-fest, 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 disk 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 near-by All Souls’ church tower Peter, snug against his bit of wall, heard the clock strike eleven. His heart was heavy within him, for he knew that any moment now 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 mentioned 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. She raised her sleek head, however, 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?”
