The Catlady Read online

  All this, of course, was due to the busy hands of Mary Nutt, who had turned out to be what the Catlady's mother would have called “a treasure.”

  At first from simple gratitude at being given a home and then because she quickly grew fond of the Catlady, Mary worked from dawn to dusk in Ponsonby Place, dusting, scrubbing, washing, and polishing, and indeed doing most of the cooking. Even more importantly from the Catlady's point of view, her new helper paid a lot of attention to all the cats, and whenever she had a spare moment, it was spent grooming some happily purring puss.

  Percival and the rest spoke about her to each other with approval. “Good sort of girl, that, don't you think?” he said to Florence. “She's being a great help to Mu, what?” And his wife agreed, as did the uncle and aunt, the cousins, and the school friends. Only Vicky made no comment.

  The Colonel cleared his throat.

  “I hope you approve of the young servant, Your Majesty?” he said respectfully.

  Vicky looked up at the big white cat with her usual haughty expression.“We have only one criticism,” she replied.

  “What is that, pray, ma'am?”

  “We do not have enough attention paid to us. We are, after all, the most important cat in the house—in the land, indeed. The girl should feed us first.”

  “Certainly she should, ma'am,” said Percival, and once Vicky had left the room, he had a word with all the other cats.

  From then on, to Mary's puzzlement and Muriel's delight, when the food bowls were put upon the long refectory table, no cat touched a mouthful of its food until the tubby ginger cat Vicky had finished her meal and jumped down.

  Just as it should be, thought the Catlady. Her Majesty must eat first. Perhaps one of these days I'll tell Mary about reincarnation. The poor girl has lost both father and mother, or at least she thinks she has. It would surely be a comfort if I could persuade her that each of them is no doubt enjoying another life in another form.

  Chapter Four

  As time passed, the relationship between the Catlady and her young orphaned helper strengthened.

  Miss Muriel (as Mary now addressed her employer) became a kind of replacement for the girl's late mother, despite the huge gap in age.

  Equally, for the childless Catlady, this hardworking, affectionate, cat-loving girl was a great blessing. Especially because once again the cat population of Ponsonby Place was increasing. Margaret Maitland and Edith Wilson had, between them, another half dozen kittens, so that now the total was thirty-six.

  Miss Muriel was pleased with the new arrivals, Mary could see, though she did not understand why the Catlady had picked up each new kitten, peered into its eyes, and then said in a disappointed voice,“Oh dear, you're just a cat.”

  Just another cat, Mary thought, and more work for me. She knew, because she'd been told, that when the Colonel and Lady Ponsonby had been alive, they had employed a cook, a parlormaid, and three housemaids, and of course there had not been an army of cats in the place. If only I could persuade Miss Muriel, Mary thought, to get rid of some of them. Every bit of furniture is covered in cat hair, in wet weather every floor is dotted with muddy little pawprints, there are litter trays everywhere to be emptied, and often the kittens don't use them. What can I do to get Miss Muriel to part with some of them?

  As though in answer to this question, a cat walked into the room Mary was dusting. It was a tomcat, she could see from its big, round face, and ebony in color. A black male, thought Mary Nutt.“Blackmail!” she said out loud.

  Suppose I told Miss Muriel, she thought, that if a lot of the cats don't go, then I will? I wouldn't actually go, of course—I couldn't let her down like that when she's been so good to me—but it might just work. And we could shut up some of the rooms so there'd be less cleaning to do. Let's just hope I can persuade her.

  As things turned out, luck was to be on Mary's side. While she was plucking up the courage to tackle her employer, the Catlady was herself beginning to feel that perhaps there were rather too many cats in Ponsonby Place. It's not the expense of feeding them, she said to herself—I don't mind that—and it's not the work involved, for now dear Mary prepares their food and washes their dishes and cleans out their litter trays. It's because of Vicky, I suppose. She's become so important to me (well, she would be, wouldn't she, she is …was … the Queen) that I don't pay as much attention to the others as I used to. Except for Papa and Mama, of course, and the relations and friends. But as for the rest of them, I suppose I could do without them. That cat blanket's getting too much of a thing. I'd sooner just have Her Majesty on the bed.

  But then something happened that was to settle things for both Mary and Muriel. For some time the Catlady had been a trifle worried about her late mother (that is to say, about the tortoiseshell cat Florence, within whose body Lady Ponsonby had been reincarnated) because she seemed to be getting a bit fat.

  “Oh, Mama,” said the Catlady as she entered the master bedroom, carrying Vicky, “I shall have to feed you less. Just look at the tummy on you!”

  Following her own advice, she looked more carefully and then gave a gasp of horror as the truth dawned upon her.

  “Oh, Mama!” she cried. “You are pregnant!”

  Florence stretched languidly on the fourposter bed, and Percival purred proudly.

  “And at your time of life!” said the Catlady.

  Then she realized that though her mother if still alive would have been in her nineties, the cat she had become was young. What's more, when the coming kittens were born to Percival and Florence (to Papa and Mama, that is to say), they would be, strictly speaking, her own little brothers and sisters!

  She hurried downstairs to the kitchen. “Mary! Mary!” she cried. “She is going to have kittens!”

  “Who, Miss Muriel?”

  In the nick of time, the Catlady stopped herself from replying,“My mama.”

  “My Florence!” she said. “I had thought she was just putting on too much weight, but now I see what it is!”

  More kittens, thought Mary, as if there weren't enough cats about the place already. Maybe this is the moment to suggest cutting down the numbers.

  “Wouldn't it be a good idea to get rid of a few of your cats, Miss Muriel?” she asked.

  “Get rid of them?” “Yes. Find good homes for them.” “But how?”

  “I could put an advertisement in the local paper.”

  A few days later readers of the Dummerset Chronicle saw the following notice:

  “You don't have to do anything, Miss Muriel,” Mary said.“I give you my word I'll make sure they go to good homes.”

  In the next few weeks a lot of people came walking, cycling, or riding up the drive to Ponsonby Place. Some owned a cat but fancied having another, some had lost their cats and wanted to replace them, some had never owned a cat before but were attracted by that one word FREE. Many were just curious and keen to take this chance to see the Catlady in her own home.

  Such was the demand that soon Mary was having to turn people away. She pinned a notice on the front door that said:

  “All those that have gone have got good homes, I'm sure, Miss Muriel,” she said to the Catlady, who was sitting in an armchair in the drawing room with the Queen of the United Kingdom on her lap, reading a book called The Care of Cats.

  “Well done, Mary dear,” the Catlady said. “Though I shall miss them all very much.”

  Let's hope, she thought, that my Florence (Mama, that is) has a lot of kittens.

  As though to compensate for the losses, Florence gave birth the very next day, on the fine silken bedspread of the four-poster in the bedroom of the Catlady's late parents.

  “Oh, Mama!” breathed Muriel Ponsonby as she bent over the two newborn kittens. One was a tortoiseshell like the mother, the other white like the father, who sat nearby, purring with pride.

  The Catlady had been an only child, but now she thought, I have a baby brother and a baby sister!

  “Oh, Papa,” she said, “what
shall we call them?” But of course Percival merely replied, “Mu.”

  “I'll ask Mary,” said the Catlady, and she followed Vicky (who always liked to lead the way) down to the kitchen.

  If only Mary knew, she thought as she told the good tidings, that these two new kittens are the children of my dear mama and papa, so that now I have the brother and the sister I never had as a child.

  “Come up and see them,” she said. And then as they stood looking down, she said, “What shall we call them? Why don't you choose, Mary Nutt?”

  Mary laughed.

  “We could call them after some sort of nut!” she said.

  “What a good idea,” said the Catlady. “Let's see now, there's walnut and peanut …”

  “… and chestnut and beechnut and groundnut …”

  “… and coconut and hazelnut,” said the Catlady.

  “Hazel,” said Mary. “That would be a nice name for the little female, wouldn't it?”

  “Oh yes!” said the Catlady. “But what about the little tom?”

  “Coco, Miss Muriel,” said Mary. “Short for coconut.”

  “I like it!” cried the Catlady.

  My sister Hazel, she thought, and my brother Coco. What fun! How lucky I am to believe in reincarnation. It would be nice for Mary to believe too. Just think. Her father, for instance—Arthur, I think he was called—suppose he's now a boy or a horse, perhaps, or a dog or maybe even something as small as a mouse. No, not a mouse, they don't live long enough. He'd have gone into yet another body by now, dead of old age or, worse, killed by a cat. Just think, if dear Papa had eaten Arthur Nutt!

  But it might help Mary, she said to herself, to know that I, at least, believe that her father is not dead and gone. His body might be buried on some South African battlefield, but his personality, his spirit, his soul, call it what you like, has been reincarnated, has entered some other body. Maybe I should try to explain it to her.

  “Mary dear, tell me, is it very painful for you to talk of your parents?”

  “Painful?” replied Mary. “Yes, it will always be painful. But they've gone. I just have to accept that.”

  “Gone,” said the Catlady.“Gone where?”

  “To Heaven, I suppose. They were good people.”

  “Have you ever thought,” asked the Catlady, “that they might have been reincarnated?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That they might have been reborn, in some other shape or form?”

  “Oh, I don't think I could believe in that,” Mary said.

  “I do,” said the Catlady.

  Mary Nutt looked at her employer, the elderly, green-eyed Catlady, gray hair tied back as usual. She's aged quite a bit in the time I've lived here, she thought— rather bent, a bit unsteady on her feet—but her mind is still clear, I think.

  Or rather, I thought. But this reincarnation thing!

  “Do you mean,” Mary asked, “that you believe you were someone else in a previous life?”

  “Someone. Or perhaps somebody. I wasn't necessarily human.”

  “You could have been an animal?”

  “Yes, indeed. I may be one in the future, when my heart stops beating. I don't expect you to believe in the idea, Mary, but I thought it might be a comfort to you to know that I am sure your mother and father are still enjoying lives of some sort. As indeed my dear mama and papa are.”

  “Your mother and father?”

  “At this moment they are in their old bedroom, resting upon their four-poster bed, while my brother and sister play on the floor.” “I don't understand,” said Mary.

  “Percival and Florence. My father and mother.”

  “Those were their names?” “Those are their names. New forms they may have acquired, but I know without a shadow of a doubt who they were before they became cats. Just as I am absolutely certain about Vicky here. She was born at twenty past four on the afternoon of January 22, 1901, the very instant that the last breath left her previous body.”

  “Whose body was that?” Mary asked.

  “Vicky, as I most disrespectfully call her, is in fact Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India,” said the Catlady.

  She picked up the stout ginger cat and began, with great deference, to stroke her. “So now you know, Mary,” she said. “Vicky here is the late great Queen Victoria.”

  Did I tell myself her mind was clear? Mary thought. She's barmy.

  Chapter Five

  The shopkeepers in Dumpton Muddicorum had always thought Miss Ponsonby a bit mad. “You'd have to be,” they said, “to keep as many cats (and spend as much money on their food) as the Catlady does.”

  Nonetheless, they were still rather fond of her. She was always smiling, always polite. “She may be a bit strange,” they said among themselves,“but she's a proper lady.”

  Of course, they knew nothing of her belief in reincarnation, but commented, first, on her kindness in giving away some of her cats (“Free,” they said. “She never asked for a penny”) and, secondly, on the fact that the years seemed to be telling on her. Riding her bicycle was patently becoming a big effort.

  “Good job she's got that nice young girl living with her, what's her name … Mary … Mary Nutt, that's it,” they said. They had not been surprised when Mary appeared in the village one day, riding the Catlady's tall black bicycle, to do the shopping. They each made regular inquiries of Mary as to how Miss Ponsonby was getting on.

  One day Mary came back from the village to find the Catlady standing at the

  front door, leaning on the walking stick that she now always used, and looking, Mary could see, very worried.

  “What is it, Miss Muriel?” Mary asked before beginning to unload the shopping from the big wicker basket on the handlebars.“What's the matter?”

  “Oh, Mary!” cried the Catlady.“It's my brother!”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yes, Coco. I can't find him anywhere. I've asked Mama and Papa and my sister Hazel where Coco has gone, but of course they couldn't tell me. Could he have been stolen, d'you think, or run away? I've searched the house but I can't find him.”

  “He must be somewhere about,” Mary said. “I'll just unload this shopping and then I'll make you a nice cup of tea. I'll find him, don't you worry.”

  In fact, the white kitten Coco, adventurous as most boys are, had decided to do some exploring.

  In the master bedroom of Ponsonby Place, there was a large fireplace, once used to keep Sir Percival and Lady Ponsonby warm on winter nights. When Coco was alone in the room, he began to nose around it. Looking up, he saw the sky through the chimney stack. He also saw that there were little stone steps on the walls of the chimney, steps up which, long ago, children had been sent to sweep down the soot with bags full of goose feathers. Coco began to climb. As he did so, the soot began to fall and he became covered in the stuff. It got in his eyes and his nose and his mouth, and he became very frightened. He did not know whether to go on up or to come back down or what to do. He sat on one of the steps, mewing pitifully for his mother.

  He was there, of course, when the Catlady was searching for him, but her hearing was too poor to catch his muffled cries and her eyesight not sharp enough to notice the fallen soot in the fireplace.

  But Mary, when she began to search, both heard the kitten and saw the sootfall. Cautiously she peered up the chimney and saw the crouching figure of the tiny adventurer.

  “Oh, Coco!” she called. “However are you going to get out of there?” The answer was immediate.

  Perhaps it was the sight of her face, perhaps the sound of her voice, perhaps he simply lost his footing, but the next minute Coco came tumbling down into the fireplace.

  Mary, by now very sooty herself, carried him down to the kitchen, where the Catlady still sat over her cup of tea.

  “Here he is!” she said.

  “But, Mary,” the Catlady cried, peering through her spectacles, “my brother Coco is a white kitten, like Papa, and tha
t one is coal-black.”

  “Coal- black's about right,” Mary said, and she set about cleaning the unhappy Coco while on the floor below the sink, his parents watched and waited.

  “Whatever has the boy been doing?” Percival asked his wife.

  “Went up the chimney, by the look of it,” replied Florence.

  “Why?”

  “I've no idea, Percival. Boys will be boys.”

  The Colonel looked smug. “Chip off the old block,” he said rather proudly. “I was always an adventurous lad.”

  But Coco was not the only adventurous one. A few days later it was Hazel who went missing. Coco had gone up. She went down.

  Below the ground floor of Ponsonby Place was the cellar, though the door to it was nowadays seldom opened. The flight of steps that led down to the racks where Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby had kept his wine (when he was a man) was very steep, and the Catlady hadn't been down there for years.

  But recently, Mary had taken to using the racks for storing things, and on this particular day she had gone down to fetch some cloths and some shoe polish. Unbeknownst to her, someone else slipped down too.

  Mary came back up the steep steps and shut the cellar door. She got out Miss Ponsonby's bicycle and set off to do the shopping.

  When she returned, she found, once again, the Catlady standing at the front door, leaning on her walking stick. This time, however, she looked delighted, her old face wreathed in smiles.

  “Oh, Mary!” she cried.“It's my sister!”

  “Your sister?”