The Blue Cat

by Ursula Dubosarsky

  ‘Hello there,’ he said. He was so tall and broad he blocked out the sun. ‘My name’s Hal. How do you do?’

  Hilda scratched her leg. I looked down at my bare toes and wiggled them. We were not used to adults introducing themselves so casually. Surely he should be Mr Hal. Or Mr something, anyway. We did not know what to do. But Ellery stared at Hal with wide-eyed fascination.

  ‘I’m Hilda,’ said Hilda finally, breaking the silence.

  ‘Hello, Hilda!’ said Hal, in his loud film star voice. He pushed away a fallen branch covered with gum leaves from the bench and sat down alongside us. His knees were enormous. ‘So what are you kids up to today?’

  What were we up to? We looked at each other. What could we be up to? We were children.

  ‘Swimming,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t say! So that’s what you were doing in there,’ he said to Hilda. ‘Who would have thought?’

  ‘You’re a good swimmer,’ conceded Hilda.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hal. ‘You too. And look at the size of you.’

  ‘Are you going to fight the Japanese?’ asked Hilda.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hal. ‘That’s where we’re headed, aren’t we?’

  He blinked at the ships sitting grandly in the harbour. Then Hal caught sight of Hilda’s tin which she had pushed under the bench for safekeeping.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Hilda picked it up and gave it a proud rattle.

  ‘It’s my tin. I’m collecting.’

  ‘Collecting?’

  ‘War bonds,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Hal. ‘Got much?’

  ‘Tons,’ said Hilda. ‘But I’m getting more.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Hal.

  ‘We might get a reward if we find a lost cat,’ said Hilda in her important voice.

  ‘A lost cat?’ said Hal. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It’s her neighbour’s cat,’ said Hilda, pointing at me.

  I hunched my shoulders.

  ‘How long has it been lost?’ asked Hal.

  I shook my head. I did not want to talk about the cat.

  ‘It’s been gone since last night,’ said Hilda, who was always ready to provide information. ‘It ran away in the air raid practice. You know, when the siren went off.’

  ‘Since last night,’ said Hal, and gave his chin a thoughtful rub. ‘That’s not too long. Although I guess a cat can get up to quite a lot in a night.’

  He began whistling a tune we didn’t know. It was a long loud whistle, like a musical instrument. Could that really have come out of Hal’s mouth? He stopped whistling.

  ‘You won’t find him in the daytime,’ said Hal. ‘You’ll have to look for him when the night comes. That’s when cats get about.’

  ‘We can’t go out at night,’ I objected. ‘We’re children.’

  ‘And now there’s the Strangler,’ said Hilda, reprovingly. ‘We might get strangled.’

  ‘You’re telling me there’s a strangler on the loose?’ said Hal. ‘Gee, this town’s got everything!’

  That was one way of looking at it, I supposed. A wind shook the leaves of the branches of the trees looming above our heads. The teachers were down by the pool, chatting in boredom, the children were in the water or sunbaking on their backs.

  ‘Tell him what it looks like!’ Hilda urged me, poking me with her elbow. ‘The cat. He might have seen it. Give him a description.’

  ‘It’s blue,’ I muttered, as always unable to resist Hilda.

  ‘A blue cat! Now, that I have never heard of,’ said Hal.

  The two other soldiers were out of the pool and were sitting on the edge, their legs dangling in the water. Their eyes were closed and they were drowsing in the warmth, breathing in the fire of the air.

  ‘It is blue,’ I said doggedly. ‘I saw it in a book.’

  ‘Got to be true then,’ said Hal. ‘If it’s in a book.’

  He picked up his towel and held it in two hands and rubbed his back with it, up and down. Sunlight glinted all over him, as though electricity was coming from inside his body.

  ‘You know,’ said Hal, ‘I happen to know everything about finding lost cats.’

  ‘Really?’ said Hilda.

  ‘Actually,’ said Hal, ‘I might not look like it,’ he paused, ‘but I am a cat.’

  Suddenly he was down on all fours. He crouched, and put his fingers in a V shape on either side of his head for cats’ ears.

  ‘Meow,’ he said. ‘Meow.’

  Ellery laughed. I had never heard Ellery laugh before, not out loud. I loved the sound, it filled me up. It tinkled like a magic bird. We all laughed. I laughed too and so did Hilda. We felt the laughter bursting out of us, like fizzy water in a bottle that has been shaken.

  All at once Hal rolled over and his legs were in the air. His hands were spread out on the pavement. He was walking upside down!

  ‘How do you do that?’ demanded Hilda, running alongside him.

  Her towel fell from her head and her wet plaits flew behind her. Hal took a few more upside-down steps and his legs started to sway backward.

  ‘HOW do you do that?’ repeated Hilda. ‘HOW?’

  Hal’s face turned bright red and his forehead was creased with lines of strain. But he kept smiling, an upside-down smile. All his toes were stretched out across the blue sky.

  CHAPTER XX.

  THEN, just as suddenly, Hal was the right way up again, bouncing on his bare feet. He bowed at Hilda, as though he was on stage, and turned and bowed at Ellery and me. We clapped, all three of us.

  ‘How did you DO that?’ said Hilda again. ‘HOW did you do that?’

  ‘I guess I could teach you,’ said Hal, in a lazy sort of way.

  But Hilda did not want to be taught. She wanted to do it herself. She threw her arms into the air and tried to turn upside down. Her towel fell off her head. She did a kind of half-cartwheel, and then another, and another. Out of breath, she picked up her towel and came and flopped back down on the bench. Hal gave her a slow clap.

  ‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘For a beginner.’

  A ferry was heading towards the wharf through the maze, steadily humming and sighing, stirring a froth of waves around it. The other two soldiers by the pool were smoking now. One of them had bright red hair and such freckled skin. He was going to burn. He raised a cigarette in the air to Hal, as if to say, do you want one? Hal shook his head.

  ‘That’s our boat,’ said Hal to us. ‘We’ve got to get the ferry back to the camp.’

  We knew what he meant. There was a soldiers’ camp in Hyde Park. All the grass of the park was covered with a forest of army tents where the soldiers lived while they were in Sydney, where they cooked their meals and where they went to sleep at night.

  ‘Before they send us off to save the world,’ said Hal.

  ‘My big brothers are in the army,’ said Hilda.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Hal.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hilda. ‘And one of them is a prisoner of war.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Hal.

  He picked up a stray branch of gum leaves and smacked it softly on the ground.

  ‘I’ll probably be a prisoner of war next week,’ said Hal.

  He stretched out his long long legs and scratched the back of his neck.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled out to the other two soldiers. ‘Either of you seen a stray cat?’

  The soldier with the red hair stubbed out his cigarette and grinned at Hal. He stood up and came ambling over.

  ‘A cat,’ he said. ‘A cat. Actually I did see a cat.’

  His voice was softer than Hal’s but just as strangely American.

  ‘Did you?’ Hilda sprang up at once. ‘Where was it? What did it look like?’

  ‘Hey, calm down,’ said Hal. ‘It probably wasn’t your cat.’

  ‘Where did you see it?’ demanded Hilda, fixed on the red-headed soldier.

  The soldier gestured with his thumb at the silver and gold domes glittering across the
water.

  ‘Over there.’

  ‘In Luna Park?’ said Hilda, disbelieving.

  A cat in Luna Park?

  ‘That’s right,’ said the red-headed soldier. ‘Luna Park. In Coney Island, in fact. I only noticed it because it was when the siren went off. Everyone was standing still for a moment, and then there was this cat, sitting on the floor in front of me. Just sitting there, staring at me.’

  The big wheel at Luna Park was just beginning to turn, very slowly. It was time for the park to open. I could already smell the fairy floss and the frying food.

  ‘Beautiful cat,’ said the red-headed soldier. ‘All smooth and shiny. Sleek.’

  I remembered the cat, stretched out, smooth and shiny and sleek, on the carpet on Miss Hazel’s living room floor.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ said Hilda to me. ‘In Coney Island! We could go and find him.’

  The dome of Coney Island wavered in the sunlight like a mirage, like a palace from the Arabian Nights. We couldn’t go and find him there. We had to go back to school.

  ‘We’re not allowed,’ I said. ‘We have to go back to school.’

  ‘It’s lunchtime,’ said Hilda. ‘We could go just for lunchtime.’

  No, we couldn’t.

  ‘We don’t have any money,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t need money just to look,’ said Hilda. ‘Anyway, I’ve got money.’

  She held up the golden syrup tin.

  ‘You can’t spend that!’ I said, outraged. ‘That’s for the Empire!’

  ‘I can pay it back when we get the reward,’ said Hilda. ‘It’ll work out.’

  Hilda was philosophical. That means you think everything will turn out for best, according to my father. Or if you don’t actually think it, you pretend to.

  ‘There isn’t a reward,’ I said. ‘I never said there was a reward.’

  Even if we found the cat, how could I ask Miss Marguerite for money? I certainly couldn’t ask Miss Hazel. She was happy the cat had run away. She wouldn’t thank us for bringing him back.

  The ferry slowed its engines as it came nearer, and there was a deep creaking as it hit the wooden edge of the wharf and then recoiled.

  ‘Well, here’s our boat, kids,’ said Hal. He leant over and slapped the red-headed soldier on the back. ‘We’ll be pushing off. Time to go.’

  Not just for them. Our teachers were blasting their whistles for the children to get out of the water. Swimming was over. We had to get dressed and ready to go back to school, a jumble of boys and girls, wet, salty, burnt and exhausted, pushing, tripping, shoving.

  ‘To the war?’ said Hilda.

  ‘To the war,’ Hal agreed, standing up. ‘Tomorrow morning. Off we go.’

  It was too strange. How could Hal be here with us, sitting in the sun, walking upside down along the pavement by the pool, rubbing sand from the corner of his crinkled eye, and then tomorrow in the war? Holding a gun, shooting, being shot…

  ‘You know what they say,’ said Hal, ‘it’s so long, it’s been good to know you.’

  He bent down and held out his hand to Hilda to shake, as though she was winning a prize at school. Hal’s hand was so big Hilda’s freckled little fingers disappeared from sight. He lifted her up in the air by her arm for a moment and she laughed, dangling her feet in the air. He let her down again.

  ‘You kids better get a move on,’ said Hal to us, watching the children heading up the stairs, ‘or you’ll be left behind.’

  He shook my hand too, but more gently. Then Ellery stood up straight and clapped his feet together as though he was standing to attention and gave Hal a nod as they shook hands too.

  ‘You’re a funny kid,’ said Hal. ‘You’re not from here, are you?’

  ‘He’s from You-rope,’ explained Hilda. ‘He doesn’t speak English.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Hal, and he looked away, and he didn’t say anything else.

  The three soldiers put their uniforms back over their dry bodies, their feet inside their socks and their great heavy boots. Then they lit more cigarettes, swung their bags on their backs and started for the gap in the fence near the water that opened onto the path that led to the wharf.

  ‘Bye!’ cried out Hilda, waving forlornly.

  Hal stopped and made a mock salute. We saluted back.

  ‘Watch out for the Strangler!’ called out Hal at the fence.

  Above us the cloud of chattering children were moving together towards the mossy steps that led from the shore back up to the street. The branches of the trees and vines coiled over the heads of the three soldiers like waves, and they were gone, into the tunnel of green.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  WE WERE alone at the pool. The cries of the children became fainter, a swarm of insects drifting into the distance.

  I strapped my sandals on over my sunburnt toes and draped my dry towel around my head as Hilda had, like a sheikh.

  ‘I think we should go and look for that cat,’ said Hilda determinedly.

  ‘We can’t,’ I said.

  Ellery watched us. He blinked with his long eyelashes.

  ‘Just quickly,’ said Hilda. ‘We’ll be back by the end of lunch. Nobody will notice.’

  She was right. Nobody would notice. They had forgotten us already. Nobody had been sent back to find us and to tell us to hurry up and come on. When they all got back to school, it would be lunchtime and the children would scatter around the playground and it would be at least an hour before we would be missed. Nobody would see that we weren’t there until the bell rang for the end of lunch. By then we could be back at school, ready to line up with the others.

  ‘Even if there isn’t a reward,’ said Hilda, ‘think how happy Miss Thing will be when you bring her back her cat.’

  ‘Miss Marguerite,’ I said. ‘Anyway, he won’t let you pick him up, even if you do find him. He doesn’t like being touched.’

  Hilda could see I was wavering.

  ‘Oh, cats love me,’ she said confidently. ‘He’ll let me pick him up.’

  A paper bag fluttered up in the air and down again. The water of the pool was quietly tipping against the barnacles, waves spilling over into the ocean. Someone had left their towel behind, another person a hat. The ends of Hilda’s plaits were already dry, like yellow sheaves of corn.

  ‘We can’t,’ I said.

  The ferry at the wharf blew its hollow horn, ready to leave. We could hear shouting and clapping. That must be Hal, I thought, telling the deckhand to wait for them before they pulled the gangplank in. Off they go, off to war.

  I sat down on a lump of sandstone. Cicadas were singing and on the other side of the wall that separated the pool area from the houses we could hear someone mowing their lawn.

  Scuffing her feet, Hilda wandered over to the pool. I got up and followed her there. The pavement was already completely dry as we walked its perimeter. Our sandals clapped on the concrete, methodically, like machinery.

  There was a slender tree near the water’s edge. Its trunk had twisted around as if it was hanging on tight, just about to topple into the ocean, and its branches were covered with little round pinkish fruit, like hundreds of miniature pomegranates. Hilda put down her tin, plucked one of the fruits and bit into it. Pale pink juice and seeds stuck to her lips.

  ‘Guavas!’ said Hilda. She rubbed her stomach theatrically and waved at Ellery to come over. She raised her voice. ‘They’re good! Taste one. Delicious!’

  I reached up for a fruit. It fell willingly into my fingers and I put it whole into my mouth. The flesh was warm from the sun and very sweet. I pulled another off and held it out for Ellery. He took it and bit into it with his little pale teeth. He made a funny face.

  ‘I don’t suppose they have guavas in You-rope,’ said Hilda. ‘We’re lucky. We have EVERYTHING here.’

  This time she snapped off a whole line of fruit on a branch. She lay down on her back and closed her eyes and made a candlestick with her legs in the air, and began to eat the guavas one by one.


  ‘Ellery,’ said Hilda, still with her eyes closed. ‘What was school like? You know, over there.’

  She did not want to say the word – Germany.

  ‘Shh,’ I said, pushing Hilda with my foot. I shook my head. ‘Don’t ask him things.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Hilda.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Anyway he doesn’t speak English.’

  I felt sleepy. I lay on my side. I thought about what the other children were doing back at school. I imagined the skipping rope thwacking on the tar, the boys with their pockets full of marbles. It seemed as though it was all happening in an entirely different world.

  Hilda sat up suddenly.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she said.

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Something.’

  Leaves crackled under the feet of insects and small scurrying animals, wings passed overhead and the deep sweetness of gum leaves and summer pollen floated by. Hilda let the branch of guavas drop.

  ‘We can’t go back to school now,’ she said. ‘I’m going to Luna Park.’

  She knew I would come too. It was too hard to refuse to do what Hilda wanted. This was the worst thing but also perhaps the best thing about her.

  I glanced at Ellery. His eyes were full of secrets.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  HILDA set off to Luna Park at a fast pace. She knew I might change my mind if she dawdled. I followed Hilda, and Ellery followed me.

  The last time I’d been to Luna Park was before the war, when my uncle and aunt from Western Australia came to visit. I was only small, so I didn’t remember much. I remembered the lights, the music, the queues and the noise, the rush and speed and the screams and the sweet and sour air. But most of all I remembered being happy. It was as though everyone was happy there, that’s what I remembered. Everyone was happy. Happy, happy.

  When the war began my father said Luna Park would close down. But it didn’t. Then he said it would close down when Singapore fell, but it didn’t. Then surely it would close down when Darwin was bombed, but here it was, still open, waiting for us.