by Joan Aiken
“January!” the large man boomed, standing just behind the shoulder of Miss Lestrange. “Now, there’s a chilly sort of name to give a spirited lady like yourself—a downright cold, miserable kind of dreary name, isn’t it, boys and girls? The worst month of the year!”
“It is not!” snapped Miss Lestrange—but she did wish he would not stand so close, for his presence just out of sight gave her the cold grue—for some odd reason the phrase Get thee behind me, Satan, slipped into her mind—“January means hope, it means looking forward, because the whole year lies ahead.”
But her retort was drowned in the shout from the group of players—“We’ll soon warm her up!”
“Happy lot, ain’t they?” confided the voice at her back. “Nick’s Nightflowers, we call ourselves—from the location, see?” He pointed up and, by the light of the flaring rags, Miss Lestrange could just read the sign on the wall: old nick’s court, e.i. “And I’m Old Nick, naturally—happy to have you with us tonight, Miss Lestrange.”
She flicked a glance sideways, to see if it would be possible to slip away once they began playing, but to her dismay most of the group were now between her and the entrance, blocking the way; from their grins, it was plain that they knew what she had in mind. And she had never seen such a unattractive crew—“Really, she thought, “if they had tails they could hardly look less human.”
Old Nick, with his red velvet and ruffles, was about the most normal in appearance and dress, but she cared for him least of all, and unobtrusively edged her Snowcem tin cornerways until at least she had the wall at her back.
“Ready, all? Cool it now—real cool,” called Nick, at which there was a howl of laughter. “One, two, three-stomp!”
The music broke out again. If music it could be called. The sound seemed to push Miss Lestrange’s blood backward along her arteries, to flog on her eardrums, to slam in her lungs, to seize hold of her heart and dash it from side to side.
“I shan’t be able to endure it for more than a minute or two,” she thought quite calmly. “It’s devilish, that’s what it is—really devilish.”
Just at the point when she had decided she could stand it no longer, half a dozen more figures lounged forward from a shadow at the side of the court, and began to dance. Boys or girls? It was hard to say. They seemed bald, and extraordinarily thin—they had white, hollow faces, deepset eyes under bulging foreheads, meaningless grins. “White satin!” thought Miss Lestrange scornfully. “And ruffles! What an extraordinarily dated kind of costume—like the pierrot troupes when I was young.”
But at closer view the satin seemed transparent gauze, or chiffon. “I’ve never seen anyone so thin—they are like something out of Belsen,” thought Miss Lestrange. “That one must have had rickets when young—his legs are no more than bones. They must all have had rickets,” she decided.
“D’you like it?” boomed the leader in her ear. It seemed amazing that he could still make his voice heard above the row, but he could.
“Frankly, no,” said Miss Lestrange. “I never laid eyes on such a spiritless ensemble. They all dance as if they wanted dosing with Parrish’s Food and codliver oil.”
“Hear that, gang?” he bawled to the troupe. “Hear that? The lady doesn’t care for your dancing; she thinks you’re a lily-livered lot.”
The dancers paused; they turned their bloodless faces towards Miss Lestrange. For a moment she quailed, as tiny lights seemed to burn in the deep eye-sockets, all fixed on her. But then the leader shouted,
“And what’s more, I think so too! Do it again—and this time, put some guts into it, or it’ll be prong, thong, and trident, all right!”
The players redoubled their pace and volume, the dancers broke into a faster shuffle. And the leader, still making himself heard above the maniac noise, shouted,
“Hope! Where are you? Come along out, you mangy old tom-cat, you!” And, to the group, “He’ll soon tickle you up!”
A dismal and terrified wailing issued from the dancers at these words.
“Hope’s a little pet of mine,” confided the leader to Miss Lestrange. “Makes all the difference when they’re a bit sluggish; you ought to like him too.”
She distrusted his tone, which seemed to promise some highly unpleasant surprise, and looked round sharply.
A kind of ripple parted the musicians and dancers; at first Miss Lestrange could not see what had caused this, but, even through the music, she thought she could hear cries of pain or terror; then a wave of dancers eddied away from her and a gold-brown animal bounded through, snatching with sabre-teeth at a bony thigh as it passed.
“That’s Hope,” said the leader with satisfaction. “That’s my little tiger-kitten. Isn’t he a beauty? Isn’t he a ducky-diddums? I powder his fur with pepper and ginger before we start, to put him in a lively mood—and then doesn’t he chase them about if they’re a bit mopish!”
Hope certainly had a galvanizing effect upon the dancers; as he slunk and bounded among them, their leaps and gyrations had the frenzy of a tarantella; sometimes he turned and made a sudden snarling foray among the musicians, which produced a wild flurry of extra discords and double drumbeats.
“Here, puss, puss! Nice pussy, then! There’s a lady here who’d like to stroke you.”
Hope turned, and silently sprang in their direction. Miss Lestrange had her first good look at him. He was bigger than a leopard, a brownish-ginger colour all over, with a long, angrily switching tail; his fangs glistened white-gold in the fiery light, his eyes blazed like carbuncles; he came towards Miss Lestrange slowly, stalking, with head lowered.
And she put out her right hand, confidently running it over his shoulder-blades and along the curving, knobbed spine; its bristles undulated under the light pressure. “There, then!” she said absently. Hope turned, and rubbed his harsh ruff against her hand; elevated his chin to be scratched; finally sat down beside her and swung the long tail neatly into place over formidable talons.
Miss Lestrange thoughtfully pulled his ears; she had always liked cats.
She turned to the leader again.
“I still don’t think much of your dancers. And, to be honest, your music seems to me nothing but a diabolical row!”
Silence followed her words. She felt the dark cavities in their faces trained on her, and forced herself not to shrink.
“However, thank you for playing to me. And now I must be going,” she ended politely.
“Dear me.” The leader’s tone was thoughtful. “That fairly puts us in our place, don’t it, boys and girls? You certainly are a free-spoken one, Miss January Lestrange. Come now—I’m sure a nice lady, a dyed-in-the-wool lady like you, wouldn’t want to be too hard on the lads, and really upset them. Just before you go—if—you do go—tell me, don’t you think that, in time, if they practice hard enough, they might amount to something?’
“I am absolutely not prepared to make such a statement,” Miss Lestrange said firmly. “Your kind of music is quite outside my province. And I have never believed in flattery.” A kind of rustle ran through the group; they moved closer.
“Our kind of music ain’t her province,” the leader said. “That’s true. Tell you what, Miss Lestrange. You shall give us a tune. Let’s have some of your kind of music—eh? That’d be a treat for us, wouldn’t it, gang?”
They guffawed, crowding closer and closer; she bit her lip.
“Fetch over the harp!” bawled Nick. “No one in our ensemble actually pays it,” he explained to Miss Lestrange. “But we like to have one along always—you never know when someone may turn up who’s a harp fancier. Like you. No strings, I’m afraid, but we can fix that easy.”
A warped, battered, peeling old harp was dumped down before her; it had no strings, but one of the dancers dragged up a coil of what looked like telephone cable and began rapidly stri
nging it to and fro across the frame.
“Now,” said Nick, “you shall delight us, Miss Lestrange! And if you do, then maybe we’ll see about allowing you to leave. Really, you know, we’d hate to part from you.”
An expectant pause had fallen: an unpleasant, mocking, triumphant silence.
“I haven’t the least intention of playing that ridiculous instrument,” Miss Lestrange said coldly. “And now, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me; my friend will be wondering where I’ve got to. Come, Hope.”
She turned and walked briskly to the entrance of the court; there was no need to push her way, they parted before her. Hope trotted at her side.
Far off, down Hell Passage, could be heard a faint, clear whistle, coming her way.
But, once out in the alley, Miss Lestrange tottered, and nearly fell; she was obliged to put a hand against the wall to support herself. Seized with a deep chill and trembling, she was afraid to trust her unsteady legs, and had to wait until the boy David reached her, whistling and zig-zagging along on his rollerskates.
“Coo, Miss Lestrange, I knew you’d get lost; and you did, didn’t you? Thought I’d better come back and see where you’d got to. You all right?” he said, sharply scrutinizing her face.
“Yes, thank you, David. I’m quite all right now. I just went a bit farther than I intended. I’m a little tired, that’s all.”
She glanced back into Old Nick’s Court. It was empty: empty and silent. The flares had gone out.
“Well, come on then, Miss Lestrange, just you follow me and I’ll take you back to the other lady’s car. You can hold on to my anorak if you like,” he suggested.
“That’s all right, thank you, David, I can manage now.”
So he skated slowly ahead and she walked after him, and a little way in the rear Hope followed, trotting silently in the shadows.
When they came within view of the car—it took a very short time, really—David said, “I’ll say goodnight then, Miss Lestrange. See you Thursday.”
“Good night, David, and thank you.” Then she called after him: “Practise hard, now!”
“Okay, Miss Lestrange.”
There was an ambulance drawn up behind the car.
“Wait there!” she said to Hope. He sat down in the shadows of the alley-mouth.
As Miss Lestrange crossed the road, the ambulance rolled off. Dr. Smith stood looking after it.
“Sorry to be such a time,” she said. “That poor man—I’m afraid he’s not going to make it.”
“You mean—Tom Rampisham?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if he dies on the way in. Oh—excuse me a moment—I’ll have to lock up his flat and give the key to the porter.”
Without thinking about it, Miss Lestrange followed her ex-pupil. She walked into the untidy room that she had last entered—how long? thirty years ago?—and looked at the table, covered with scrawled sheets of paper.
“I don’t know who ought to take charge of this,” Dr. Smith said, frowning. “I suppose he has a next-of-kin somewhere. Well—I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Come along—you must be starving and exhausted—let’s go.”
Miss Lestrange was looking at the top sheet, at the heading HOPE, which was printed in large capitals. Halfway down the page a sentence began.
“It was on a clear, frosty November evening, not many years ago . . .”
The words trailed off into a blob of ink.
Dr. Smith led the way out. “It’s terribly late. We can still get a meal at the Chinese place, though,” she was saying. “And afterwards I’ll phone up Rumbury Central and find out how—and find out. I really am sorry to have kept you so long. I hope you weren’t frozen and bored.”
“No . . . No. I—I went for a walk.”
Miss Lestrange followed the doctor along the echoing concrete passage. And as she went—“I do hope,” she was thinking, “oh, I do hope that Hope will still be there.”
Humblepuppy
Our house was furnished mainly from auction sales. When you buy furniture that way you get a lot of extra things besides the particular piece that you were after, since the stuff is sold in lots: Lot 13, two Persian rugs, a set of golf-clubs, a sewing-machine, a walnut radio-cabinet, and a plinth.
It was in this way that I acquired a tin deedbox, which came with two coal-scuttles and a broom cupboard. The deedbox is solid metal, painted black, big as a medium-sized suitcase. When I first brought it home I put it in my study, planning to use it as a kind of filing cabinet for old typescripts. I had gone into the kitchen, and was busy arranging the brooms in their new home, when I heard a loud thumping coming from the direction of the studio.
I went back, thinking that a bird must have flown through the window; no bird, but the banging seemed to be inside the deedbox. I had already opened it as soon as it was in my possession, to see if there were any diamonds or bearer bonds worth thousands of pounds inside (there weren’t), but I opened it again. The key was attached to the handle by a thin chain. There was nothing inside. I shut it. The banging started again. I opened it.
Still nothing inside.
Well, this was broad daylight, two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, people going past in the road outside and a radio schools programme chatting away to itself in the next room. It was not a ghostly kind of time, so I put my hand into the empty box and moved it about.
Something shrank away from my hand. I heard a faint, scared whimper. It could almost have been my own, but wasn’t. Knowing that someone—something?—else was afraid too put heart into me. Exploring carefully and gently around the interior of the box I felt the contour of a small, bony, warm, trembling body with big awkward feet, and silky dangling ears, and a cold nose that, when I found it, nudged for a moment anxiously but trustingly into the palm of my hand. So I knelt down, put the other hand into the box as well, cupped them under a thin little ribby chest, and lifted out Humblepuppy.
He was quite light.
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his faint inquiring whimper, and I could hear his toenails scratch on the floorboards.
Just at that moment the cat, Taffy, came in.
Taffy has a lot of character. Every cat has a lot of character, but Taffy has more than most, all of it inconvenient. For instance, although he is very sociable, and longs for company, he just despises company in the form of dogs. The mere sound of a dog barking two streets away is enough to make his fur stand up like a porcupine’s quills and his tail swell like a mushroom cloud.
Which it did the instant he saw Humblepuppy.
Now here is the interesting thing. I could feel and hear Humblepuppy, but couldn’t see him; Taffy apparently, could see and smell him, but couldn’t feel him. We soon discovered this. For Taffy, sinking into a low, gladiator’s crouch, letting out all the time a fearsome throaty wauling like a bagpipe revving up its drone, inched his way along to where Humblepuppy huddled trembling by my left foot, and then dealt him what ought to have been a swinging right-handed clip on the ear. “Get out of my house, you filthy canine scum!” was what he was plainly intending to convey.
But the swipe failed to connect; instead it landed on my shin. I’ve never seen a cat so astonished. It was like watching a kitten meet itself for the first time in a looking-glass. Taffy ran round to the back of where Humblepuppy was sitting; felt; smelt; poked gingerly with a paw; leapt back nervously; crept forward again. All the time Humblepuppy just sat, trembling a little, giving out this faint beseeching sound that meant: “I’m only a poor little mongrel without a smidgeon of harm in me. Please don’t do anything nasty! I don’t even know how I came here.”
It certainly was a puzzle how he had come. I rang the auctioneers (after shutting Taffy out and Humblepuppy in to the study with a bowl of water and a handful of Boniebisk, Taffy’s favorite breakfast food).
The auctioneers told me that Lot 12, Deedbox, coal-scuttles and broom cupboard, had come from the Riverland Rectory, where Mr. Smythe, the old rector, had lately died aged ninety. Had he ever possessed a dog, or a puppy? They couldn’t say; they had merely received instructions from a firm of lawyers to sell the furniture.
I never did discover how poor little Humblepuppy’s ghost got into the deedbox. Maybe he was shut in by mistake, long ago, and suffocated; maybe some callous Victorian gardener dropped him, box and all, into a river, and the box was later found and fished out.
Anyway, and whatever had happened in the past, now that Humblepuppy had come out of his box, he was very pleased with the turn his affairs had taken, ready to be grateful and affectionate. As I sat typing I’d often hear a patter-patter, and feel his small chin fit itself comfortably over my foot, ears dangling. Goodness knew what kind of a mixture he was; something between a spaniel and a terrier, I’d guess. In the evening, watching television or sitting by the fire, one would suddenly find his warm weight leaning against one’s leg. (He didn’t put on a lot of weight while he was with us, but his bony little ribs filled out a bit.)
For the first few weeks we had a lot of trouble with Taffy, who was very surly over the whole business and blamed me bitterly for not getting rid of this low-class intruder. But Humblepuppy was extremely placating, got back in his deedbox whenever the atmosphere became too volcanic, and did his best not to be a nuisance.
By and by Taffy thawed. As I’ve said, he is really a very sociable cat. Although quite old, seventy cat years, he dearly likes cheerful company and generally has some young cat friend who comes to play with him, either in the house or the garden. In the last few years we’ve had Whisky, the black-and-white pub cat, who used to sit washing the smell of fish-and-chips off his fur under the dripping tap in our kitchen sink; Tetanus, the hairdresser’s thick-set black, who took a fancy to sleep on top of our china-cupboard every night all one winter, and used to startle me very much by jumping down heavily on to my shoulder as I made the breakfast coffee; Sweet Charity, a little grey Persian who came to a sad end under the wheels of a police-car; Charity’s grey-and-white stripey cousin Fred, whose owners presently moved from next door to another part of town.
