A Cat in the Window

by Derek Tangye

  Derek Tangye (1912–1996) was the author of the much-loved books that collectively became known as The Minack Chronicles. They told the story of how he and his wife Jean left behind their cosmopolitan lifestyle in London to relocate to a clifftop daffodil farm in Cornwall. There they lived in a simple cottage surrounded by their beloved animals, which featured regularly in his books. In their later years, the Tangyes bought the fields next to their cottage, which are now preserved as the Minack Chronicles Nature Reserve.

  Also by Derek Tangye

  A Gull on the Roof

  A Donkey in the Meadow

  A Drake at the Door

  A Cat at the Window

  Derek Tangye

  Constable • London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Michael Joseph Ltd., 1962

  This edition published by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2014

  Copyright © Derek Tangye, 1962

  The right of Derek Tangye to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-991-0 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-47211-024-4 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover design by Simon Levy

  Illustrations

  Derek Tangye and Jeannie with Monty

  In the garden at Mortlake

  Sitting in the evening sun

  Jeannie and Monty

  Catch as cat’s can

  Monty explores

  Monty the hunter

  Monty in the Cornish garden

  Guarding the flower crop

  Derek with Jeannie and Monty

  1

  The opening paragraph of my book, A Gull on the Roof, which told how we came to live in Cornwall, was about our cat Monty of whom I said: ‘He was, for both Jeannie and myself, the repository of our secret thoughts.’ I am writing the story of Monty in A Cat in the Window.

  I first met Monty in Room 205 of the Savoy Hotel. He was six weeks old, and when I came into the room he was tumbling, chasing, biting an old typewriter ribbon dragged temptingly across the carpet by Lois, Jeannie’s secretary. He was the size and colour of a handful of crushed autumn bracken. At the time I did not notice the distinguishing marks I was later to know so well – the silky white shirt front, the smudge of orange on the left paw, the soft maize colour of the fur on his tummy. I did not notice his whiskers, nor his tail with its dark rings against cream, the rings graduating in size to the tip which, in his lifetime, was to flick this way and that, a thousand, thousand times. I saw only a pretty kitten with great big innocent eyes gambolling in the incongruous setting of Jeannie’s office, and I wondered why.

  ‘What’s this?’ I said to Lois, looking down at the two of them, ‘what on earth is this kitten doing here?’ I had seen ambassadors, film stars, famous journalists, politicians of all parties, in Jeannie’s office, but I had never before met a cat. It made me suspicious.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘come on, Lois, tell me what it’s all about?’ But Lois, the perfect secretary, went on playing as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘Lois, you’re hiding something from me. Where’s Jeannie? What’s she been up to? Both of you know I dislike cats and if . . .’

  ‘She’ll be back soon.’ Lois was smiling and refusing to be drawn. ‘She had to go over to Claridge’s. General Montgomery has just arrived and nobody is allowed to know. She won’t be long.’ As Public Relations Officer of the Savoy Group it was part of Jeannie’s job to keep certain news from the Press, just as much as it was on other occasions to get other news widely publicised.

  But on this occasion, on this particular warm, summer afternoon as I awaited her return with Lois and the chocolate-box cover of a kitten, her task was specially important.

  Monty had arrived to make a progress report to Churchill on the Battle of the Desert.

  I came from a dog family. In the walled garden of my rambling Cornish home was a row of wooden crosses with painted cries of Victorian sentiment. ‘Alas, poor Rosa,’ ‘Sweet, gentle Cara,’ ‘Farewell Little Gyp.’ And in my own childhood I remember the crosses going up again. My parents had no desire to disclose their emotions so, in their day, only the birth and death and name of the dog appeared on the cross. Rex, Bulger, Bruce, Mary, Lance, Roy, Gay. These sparse tributes to devotion were sometimes countered in my mind by unexpectedly finding my father standing opposite a cross quietly puffing his pipe. Young as I was, it touched me to feel the memories that were passing through him.

  My personal friends were first Bruce and then Lance; or Sir Lancelot by which, until I found the name too much of a mouthful, I first called him. Bruce was a mongrel of indescribable parentage while Lance, an Old English Sheepdog, brought with him from the kennels where he was born a list of relations bearing the names of sheepdog royalty. Bruce was in our family before I was born and by the time I was seven I thought he was immortal. He was to me a brother of my own age, and for hours on end I would tease him or wrestle or play hide and seek with him among the gorse- and tamarisk-covered land around our home. Bruce was the answer to any doubts of my mother as to how I could spend my time.

  Then he died and grief being suddenly to me an emotion instead of a word, my father countered by producing Lance. He moved subtly. He knew that what I needed was a dog I could call my own, and he devised a means that would make me, the small boy, feel he was my own. He told me one evening after I had gone to bed that he was driving to London the following morning and that, if I liked, I could go with him to Exeter, then return to Newquay by myself on the Cornish Riviera. He made me feel grown up and, unsuspectingly, I excitedly accepted. But when we reached Exeter station and the Riviera rolled in I found I was not to be alone on my return journey; for in the guard’s van curled timidly in a wicker basket was Lance.

  I matured with Lance. First the same childish games I had with Bruce, then the tearful partings before school terms, wild barking reunions, and soon the long walks of doubtful youth, Lance at my side in the winding lanes sharing my puzzlement. I was a man when Lance died.

  Dogs, then, had been entities in my life. Cats, as if they were wasps with four legs, had been there to shoo away. They did not belong in my life nor in my family’s life. All of us were united that whenever we saw a cat the most important thing to do was to see it out of sight.

  But as I moved slowly out of the environment of my family, I found naturally enough people and homes who accepted cats as we accepted dogs. Cats were not vulgar as, in some mysterious way, I had been led to believe. I began to note that cats were able to bestow a subtle accolade upon their apparent owners which made these owners rapturous with delight.

  I resented this. Dogs, and by this I mean well-mannered, full of character, devoted dogs who did not snarl or bark unnecessarily, were to me the true tenants of a home. Cats were vagrants. They did not merit affection.

  I sensed, of course, that my attitude in a home where there was a cat or cats was unsatisfactory; so I developed a pose that after a while I made myself believe was genuine. I was allergic to cats. The proximity of one produced asthma. I felt dizzy. I b
ehaved so strangely that any owner of a cat who was entertaining me was convinced that if I were not to prove a sickly embarrassment the cat had to be removed. I know there are some people who genuinely feel like this, but I was not one.

  It was in this mood that I paid my first call on Jeannie’s parents in their handsome house on the hill of St Albans. I sat down in the sitting room and promptly Tim, Jeannie’s cat, a huge blue Persian, jumped on my lap. Unthinkingly I played my customary part. I gave Tim a violent push and, in so doing, knocked over a small table upon which was my untouched cup of tea. From that moment I began to realise it was dangerous to appear to dislike cats.

  For Jeannie is a cat lover, not only the slave of an individual, but an all-embracing cat lover. If she sees a cat on the other side of the street she will want to cross over to talk to it. Any pretty little thing, any handsome Tom, will receive her caressing and cooing. She fawns on the breed. Little wonder her mother after my visit had ended cast a humorous doubt on a successful marriage. Could a cat lover live happily with a cat hater?

  My future dealings with Tim were, therefore, cautious. I was careful not to cause offence by throwing any make-believe tantrums, yet I was equally careful not to appear affected by the lofty gaze he sometimes cast on me. I was polite but distant. I was determined to hold fast to my traditional dislike of the species. I was not going to be hypnotised by gentle purrs, soft kneading of paws, an elegant walk across the room and a demand to jump on my knees. I disliked cats. I most certainly would not have one in our home after we had married.

  This was my mood as I waited for Jeannie to return from Claridge’s. We had been married three months.

  2

  But I made no scene except a mock one. It was an inevitable defeat. I could only bluster. I could not enter my married life with an argument about a cat.

  Monty chose the moment of Jeannie’s return to pounce upon the toe of my shoe; then disappear up my trousers, except for a tail. He tickled my leg until I had to stoop and, for the first time, touch him. Jeannie and Lois watched hopefully the effect this would have on me. He was very soft, and the wriggle with which he tried to escape me was feeble, like the strength of my little finger. I felt the teeth nibble my hand, and a tiny claw trace a tickle on my skin; and when I picked him up and held him firmly in front of me, the big eyes stared childishly at me with impotent resentment. I had never held a cat in my hands before.

  ‘This is diabolical,’ I said in pretend fury, addressing Jeannie and Lois, ‘and don’t think I haven’t a card up my sleeve . . . I’m going to chuck this thing over Hammersmith Bridge on the way home.’ I spoke so vehemently that Lois seemed half to believe me. ‘Yes I am,’ I said, rubbing it in, ‘I’ll stop the car and fling the cat over the parapet.’

  ‘Kitten,’ murmured Lois.

  ‘Monty,’ said Jeannie.

  There is no defence against women who sense your heart has already surrendered. The head, however astute in presenting its arguments, appears hollow. If Jeannie wanted Monty she had to have him. How could I deny her? The best I could do was to learn to tolerate his existence; and make an attempt to impose conditions.

  ‘All right, I won’t do that,’ I said, and was immediately irked by the gleam of victory in their eyes, ‘But I’ll tell you what I will do . . .’ I looked defiantly at both of them. ‘I’ll make quite certain he is a kitchen cat. There’ll be no question of him wandering about the house as if he owns it.’

  This display of authority eased me into seeing the situation in a more comforting perspective. Jeannie would be happy, Monty out of sight, and I could continue my aloofness towards the species as before.

  ‘But if he doesn’t behave himself,’ I added, looking at the little ball of fur in my hand, ‘he’ll have to be found another home.’

  The weakness in my attack was my responsibility for Monty’s arrival. It was indirect, but a fact. We had mice in our cottage at Mortlake; and when, at Jeannie’s request, I set traps and caught the mice, I was so sickened by the task of releasing the dead mouse from the trap that I preferred to throw both the mouse and the trap into the river.

  The cottage, with a roof the shape of a dunce’s cap, was within a few yards of the finishing post of the Boat Race, and only the towpath separated the front steps and the river. On the ground floor was the dining room, the kitchen and the spare bedroom; on the first, two bedrooms, one overlooking the river, and the other the garden; and on the top floor were the bathroom and the sitting room which stretched the breadth of the cottage. Across this room at door level stretched two massive old oak beams and from them, dovetailed by wooden pegs, were two spans ancient as the beams, triangular, supporting the inside of the dunce’s cap which was the ceiling. In one corner was the fireplace and opposite, along the length of the room, were the windows from which we watched the Thames flowing to the curve at Barnes Bridge; and beyond, the silhouette of London.

  The cottage was once upon a time an inn, and one of the innkeepers was a waterman who married a Shakespeare player. I used to dig up broken old clay pipes in the garden, sometimes part of a stem, sometimes a bowl, and when I sent a sample to the British Museum they confirmed they were Elizabethan. From then on I used to hand pieces to visitors, telling them the story of the cottage. ‘You had better keep this,’ I would say, ‘Shakespeare may have used it.’

  It was a small walled garden the length of a cricket pitch and the width of half a tennis court. At the top end was the concrete shelter in which we crouched during bad air raids . . . except the night we were celebrating our first wedding anniversary with a party in the cottage; and the roof was blown off.

  On the other side of one wall was the garden of the Ship, the pub next door; on the other side of the opposite one was a passageway from the river to Mortlake village; and within a hundred yards of both were Sandy Lane and West Road with the Brewery towering in the background. Along the river bank were three or four houses and beyond them, three minutes from the cottage, was Chiswick Bridge. In time, in the early morning, Monty used to walk with us to the bridge but he would go no farther. He would sit down when we reached the archway and, however much we coaxed him, would not budge. He was never, in fact, to be a wanderer while he lived at Mortlake. His world, for seven years, was to be the small walled garden; except after the bombing when he came with us to Jeannie’s old home in St Albans. And it was from St Albans in the first place that he came.

  I complained once again one morning to Jeannie about my trap task. In retrospect I know, of course, I was being ridiculous, but at the time, when I had to perform the task, I felt disgusted.

  ‘Now if we had a cat,’ replied Jeannie, and she gave no sign that she was trying to influence me unduly, ‘you wouldn’t have to worry about traps at all . . . you see, the very smell of a cat keeps mice away.’

  In due course I was to find this statement to be untrue, but at the time, in the frame of mind I was in on that particular morning, it interested me.

  ‘You mean to say that a mouse never comes into a house where there’s a cat, and all that catching and squealing takes place outside?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jeannie blandly, ‘mice are very intelligent and they know they haven’t a chance if a cat finds them in a house.’

  ‘And what about birds?’ Jeannie, I knew, once had a favourite cat called Tubby who spent much of her time in the spring climbing up trees to catch nestlings for her kittens. Jeannie, when she could, would gently take the little bird from Tubby’s mouth when she reached her kittens and return it to the nest.

  ‘Well,’ she said, making the answer sound very simple, ‘all you have to do is to have the cat doctored. Cats only catch birds for their families.’

  Here again the ardour to convert me misled her sense of accuracy. True, Monty was seen to catch only one bird in his life, and that was a wren which annoyed him and which he promptly let go when we advanced on him; but he, I think, was an exception. Most cats, if they don’t catch for their families, will catch for the fun of
it, or because they are bored. You can’t blame them. They are no worse than the man who takes out his gun for an hour or two of rough shooting.

  ‘Anyhow,’ I said, by way of ending the conversation, ‘I still don’t like them.’

  On reflection, I believe my dislike was based on their independence. A dog, any dog, will come to you wagging its tail with friendliness if you click your fingers or call to it. There is no armed neutrality between the dog world and the human race. If a human is in need of affection and there is a dog about, he is sure to receive it, however frail affection from a stranger may be. Dogs are prepared to love; cats, I believed, were not.

  I had observed too, that cat owners (but who, I wondered, would call himself the owner of a cat?) were apt to fall into two types. Either they ignored the cat, put it out at night whatever the weather, left it to fend for itself when they went away on holidays, and treated it, in fact, as a kind of better-class vermin; or else they worshipped the animal like a god. The first category appeared callous, the second devoid of sense.

  I had seen, for instance, a person sit rigid and uncomfortable in a chair because a cat had chosen his lap as the whim of its own particular comfort. I had noticed, and been vexed by, the hostess who hastens away at the end of a meal with titbits for the cat which has stared balefully at her guests during the course of it. Cats, it seemed to me, aloofly hinted the power of hypnotism; and as if in an attempt to ward off this uncanniness, their owners pandered to them, anxiously trying to win approval for themselves by flattery, obedience, and a curious vocabulary of nonsensical phrases and noises. A cat lover, I had found, was at the mercy of the cat.

  I was now to learn for myself whether this was true. My education was about to begin. My morning conversation with Jeannie had made her believe there might be a gap in my armour; and by the time I had forgotten the conversation, she had already rung up her mother to disclose her hopes. ‘I think he’s weakening,’ she said, ‘we must seize the chance.’