Six Lives of Fankle the Cat

by George Mackay Brown

  Jan Thomson pondered. Then he said, “In the boatshed. Your mother never goes there.”

  So Fankle was bedded down in an old fishbox in the boatshed, with a lining of lambswool plucked by Jenny from the barbed wire, to keep him warm.

  ***

  “Jenny,” said Mrs Thomson the very next afternoon, “that’s twice today you’ve gone out with a saucer of milk. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” said Jenny. “There’s a starling with a hurt leg in the yard. I’m helping him to stay alive.”

  “That’s good of you, Jenny,” said her mother.

  The little black kitten grew fast in the boatshed, fed on saucers of milk, and on milk-soaked bread, and pieces of fish and chicken. Soon he was scampering all over the boatshed, chasing flies and beetles and pieces of dust in sunshine. Jenny brought him his milk three times a day. Then she would stroke him, and he would purr like a powerful little engine. “Fankle’s a very good singer,” Jenny assured her father.

  ***

  A terrible thing happened – Mrs Thomson’s cheese and butter were being interfered with! Something was plundering these delicious plates in the cupboard every night. (Mrs Thomson was a very good dairy-woman.)

  “No mistake,” said Jan Thomson. “It’s a rat – and a big clever one at that.”

  So, traps were set here and there about the croft-house, primed with cheese and grilled bacon. But he was a clever rat alright. He only came out at night, and so nobody in the house ever saw him, and he was so diabolically clever he could get the cheese or the bacon out of the trap without springing it.

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs Thomson, “what will we do? If that old dog was any good, he’d catch the thief.”

  The fact was that Robbie, the old collie, who had been a very good dog in his day, now slept the remnant of his life away before the fire. If, on one of his chance meanders round the steading, he saw a rat or a mouse or a young rabbit, he gave it a sleepy benevolent look. Robbie’s days as a farm dog were over.

  “Whatever can be done?” cried Jenny’s mother. “Do you know this, the rat bit and scratched into a whole pound of sausages in the night. What we were supposed to have for our tea. And the cupboard door was locked!”

  ***

  Fankle flourished in the boatshed. He loved scuttling among the lobster creels, the oars, and the coiled fishing lines. He was on good terms with the many spiders in the shed, and with the blackbird that came every morning to sing on the roof. But cats love best of all to be outside; Jenny could only give him his liberty when Mrs Thomson was away for the day, shopping in Kirkwall or Hamnavoe. Then Fankle had a wonderful time between the grass and the clouds. He ran among the chickens, who clucked indignantly at him. He even squared up to the cow, sparring and dancing away, like a little David threatening Goliath. Once he even ventured into the house, and spent a companionable hour with Robbie in front of the fire. He licked Robbie’s ear, very delicately. Then he got up, stretched himself, and strolled across to examine with great interest a crack in the kitchen floor, where the flagstone had worn.

  Fankle sniffed at that fissure for quite a while. He tried to look in. He sniffed again, and gave a little growl in his throat. Then Jenny had to seize him and run with him into the boatshed, for she had heard the sound of a car on the road. Her mother was returning from the ferryboat.

  “Something very strange is going on in this house,” Mrs Thomson complained one morning at breakfast. “Jenny, what are you doing with all that milk, day after day? That bird must have flown away ages ago.”

  Jenny assured her that the starling was still hopping around on one leg, and drinking more than ever, but soon now he would be better.

  “If I haven’t enough to put up with,” said Mrs Thomson, “with that pirate of a rat! I’m as sure as sure can be that I heard a cat miaowing early this morning, somewhere around the house.”

  Her husband assured her that that was impossible. There had never been any cat on that croft since they had got married; he knew how much she hated cats.

  But Mrs Thomson caught the guilty look that father and daughter exchanged across the table.

  “Stray cat or not,” said Mrs Thomson, “it won’t stay here – I can assure you of that.” Jenny’s mother was in a bad mood that morning, because in the night the rat had made a skeleton of the cold chicken they were to have, with salad, for their dinner that day.

  ***

  Mrs Thomson, one Saturday in June, was to be one of a group of trippers. The island branch of the Women’s Rural Institute was going on a sea outing to the island of Hoy.

  As soon as Mrs Thomson, in her new floral dress and modish hat, was round the corner and out of sight, Jenny ran and flung open the boatshed door. It seemed as if a little patch of midnight whirled past her into the sun and wind. Fankle was all set to have a riotous day of it. He leapt softly between byre and barn. When Jenny looked again, he had disappeared into the long grass of the meadow.

  Jenny went indoors and busied herself about the house. She was the woman in charge that day. She would have to make the beds, keep a flame in the fire, prepare dinner and tea for her dad. Jenny loved doing these jobs.

  While Jenny was scrubbing the potatoes in the kitchen sink, queen of the house for a whole day, she glanced through the window and got a terrible shock. There, turning over the hill road, were the lady trippers of the W.R.I. They had only been gone a half hour.

  What on earth had happened? Jenny soon learned, once her mother was back home, looking so hurt and downcast. (Poor Mrs Thomson, everything seemed to be going wrong for her that summer!)

  It transpired that Neil Bell the boatman, who was to have ferried them to Hoy, had suddenly been seized with tummy pains after breakfast, and had been whirled away to hospital in Kirkwall, in a helicopter, with suspected appendicitis. And so the trip was off. “And this such a lovely day!” complained Mrs Thomson.

  She was so disappointed that she had got a headache. “Never mind,” said Jenny. “I’m getting on well with the housework. You just sit over there beside the fire, am, and I’ll bring you two aspirins and a cup of tea.”

  So Mrs Thomson, looking like one of the hanging gardens of Babylon in her summer dress, sat in the armchair beside the fire, and sighed, and sometimes touched her throbbing temple with delicate fingers.

  Meantime Jenny scrubbed the potatoes and dropped them, a cluster of pale globes, into the pot of boiling water. Just then she thought, with sudden panic, about Fankle. Fankle, the forbidden cat, was running about the farm, free as the wind. At any moment Fankle might show his midnight face at the door; and that, on top of everything else, might well prove the end of her poor mother.

  Jenny quickly dried her hands on her apron and slid like a shadow through the door.

  “Girl, come back!” cried her mother. “Where do you think you’re going? There’s the table to set. The potato pot might boil over.”

  Jenny returned. She said, rather lamely, that she was going to see if the hens had laid any eggs.

  “Plenty of time for that!” said her mother. “See to the dinner. Your father will be hungry.”

  Poor Jenny, she laid the knives and forks on the scrubbed table with a sunken heart. It was a house of gloom and despondency.

  “No dinner of course for me,” moaned her mother. “I couldn’t eat a bite.”

  Jenny returned one knife and one fork into the table drawer. Then she raised the lid of the ramping potato pot. Right enough, if she had gone out looking for Fankle, the pot would have boiled over, and that would have been another sorrow for her poor mother to bear.

  “Jenny,” came the mournful voice from the fireside chair.

  “Yes, mother?”

  “Open the cupboard. See if that rat was on the rampage last night.”

  When Jenny opened the cupboard door, she saw at once that the rat had performed a masterpiece of thieving. He had eluded two cunningly-placed traps. He had approached the large round white cheese that Mrs Thomson had made for the chee
se competition at the agricultural show in August. Now, that lovely cheese had been protected by a heavy Pyrex dish – it seemed an invulnerable treasure inside a crystal castle. The bandit rat had somehow contrived (who knows how?) to lever up the protective glass, and to make savage inroads into the prize cheese. In fact, the cheese was ruined – you could not have exhibited it at a fair of tramps.

  As quietly as she could, Jenny reported the disaster to her mother.

  It was more than flesh and blood could bear. Mrs Thomson groaned. Two large tears, like pearls, gathered in her eyes and coursed down her stricken face. She was beyond speech. It was all sighs and groans with her. At last she managed “doctor,” and “brandy,” and “Why do I have to suffer like this?” and finally, at the peak of pain, “That was the loveliest cheese I ever made!”

  And she looked at Jenny as if Jenny was personally responsible for all her sufferings.

  At this point Jan Thomson came in. The two women of the house poured out to him, in broken phrases, the sum of troubles that had happened. Jan Thomson listened with sympathy (for he was a kind man), and he went over and kissed his wife on the cheek, and stroked her hair, and murmured kind words.

  “Now,” said Jenny to herself, “now is the time to slip away and find that cat and return him to the boatshed!”

  But, as it turned out, Jenny did not have to go to that trouble, for Fankle presented himself at the open door – softly, subtly, secretly, a jet black shadow. The cat was carrying across his jaws a creature as big as himself, a long grey sinister shape. The beast was dead. And it was a rat.

  As if Fankle knew what was what, he dragged his prey over the flagstone floor and, with the greatest of courtesy, laid the rat at the feet of Mrs Thomson. Then he went over to the other side of the fire, gave his paw a long sweep with his tongue, and began to wash his face. (You have to clean yourself well after a battle with a rat.)

  Most ladies, presented with a rat, even a dead rat, would have screamed and gone rushing round the room. Not Mrs Thomson. After a first amazed minute, she fixed the grey shape on the floor with an amazed and satisfied eye. There was no doubt in her mind that here lay the pirate who had ruined the summer for her.

  “Good gracious!” cried Jan Thomson in a false voice, “where on earth did that cat come from? Put him out at once, Jenny. I’ll take the rat out to the dunghill.”

  “The cat is to remain here, beside the fire,” said Mrs Thomson. “I like this cat. Isn’t he sweet? Isn’t he clever? To have killed that demon of a rat! I must say he has a nice kind face. Jenny, this cat, whatever his name is, is to be given a saucer of milk at once.”

  “His name is Fankle,” said Jenny.

  “Fankle can bide here,” said Mrs Thomson, “for as long as he likes. He looks as if he belongs here, anyway. Pretty puss cat.”

  King of Pirates

  One morning Jenny discovered, not entirely to her surprise, that Fankle the cat could speak. From the very beginning, of course, Jenny had spoken to Fankle, and Fankle had seemed to understand very well what the girl was saying to him. “Fankle, here’s a bit of bacon for you” – that would bring Fankle running from the furthest corner of the croft. “Fankle, you thief, who stole the cream that mother was keeping for the sponge cake?” – at that Fankle hung his head in shame, and he slunk away among the shadows. “Fankle, dear, I love you, nice little black thing that you are!” – Fankle’s eyes would melt with purest joy, and he would purr under the girl’s caressing fingers for an hour.

  It was a Saturday morning, and Jenny had brought a saucer of warm milk for the cat to lick at the barn door. Fankle curled his tongue round his morning meal, once or twice, speculatively. Then he said, as distinctly as any budgie, but in far more musical and exquisite diction, “This milk is from Millie. I’ve never liked Millie’s milk so much as Effie’s milk. I wish Jenny would bring me Effie’s milk always in the morning for my breakfast. How can I let Jenny know I like Effie’s milk best? Still, I suppose I ought to be thankful. Some cats – for example, the half-dozen strays on the hill – never get any milk at all, except when they can steal some ...” Fankle sighed, and his tongue went at Millie the cow’s milk with a sure greedy rhythm.

  “Fankle, you spoke!” cried Jenny.

  Fankle waited till he had curled the last drop of milk round his tongue. Then he strolled over and rubbed against Jenny’s shinbone. “Spoke,” he said, “of course I spoke. I’ve been speaking for a very long time. Human beings are rather stupid. You think cats can do nothing but miaow. Of course most of them can do nothing but miaow. Silly things. But I and a few other special cats can speak as well as you. Jenny, I thought you’d never understand me. How very glad I am! Now we can have an interesting talk now and again.”

  Jan Thomson appeared round the corner of the barn, driving his old tractor. The steading was rank with noise and petrol fumes.

  “I hate that tractor,” said Fankle. “A stupid blundering thing. I hate machines of all kinds.”

  “Father,” cried Jenny. “Just listen to this! Shut off the engine for a minute. Fankle can speak.”

  Jan shut off the engine.

  “Fankle, say hello to my dad,” commanded Jenny.

  “Sir, your servant,” said Fankle half-mockingly, half obsequiously; but all that Mr Thomson heard was a miaow.

  “Don’t be stupid, Jenny,” said her father. “Get out of the way, now. I have a lot of work to do this morning.”

  Again the yard was possessed by a frightful din and fumes, until the tractor had disappeared in the direction of the hay field.

  “They don’t all understand,” said Fankle. “I don’t care if he is your father, he’s like all the rest of them, very insensitive. Shall I tell you some things about me – where I came from to this place, for example?”

  “I know quite well where you came from,” said Jenny. “I brought you here in my two hands. You were found in Mr Strynd’s van.”

  Fankle chose to ignore such a common pedestrian statement.

  “Marvellous things have happened to me,” he said. “I could write a book about them. Some day I might. I don’t suppose you know, for example, that I was once a ship’s cat, and no ordinary ship’s cat either, but a pirate ship’s cat. You might say I belonged to Mustacio the pirate. Equally, of course, Mustacio and the ship and the crew belonged to me. Mustacio was a swarthy swaggering man, always half-cut on rum. But I liked him a lot. He was a great success, as a pirate, to begin with.”

  “Did they catch him and hang him in the end?” said Jenny.

  “Catch Mustacio!” said Fankle. “Certainly not! Mustacio was far too clever for them. I don’t think I’ll continue with this story. Clearly you are not interested.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Jenny. “Go on, please.”

  “The pirate Mustacio and I first met in the port of Liverpool,” said Fankle. “I had taken a stroll down to the docks, to see which ships were in. That was in the year – let me see – 1702. And there, among all the common barques and brigs, was this black coffin of a ship, with dangerous-looking men coming and going. They didn’t shout across the water, like the sailors on common ships. Oh no – they whispered secrets to each other, dark intense bits of intelligence. It was clear to me that this was no ordinary ship. The other seamen in the other ships didn’t seem to notice – I tell you, most human beings are stupid. However, as I was sitting on that jetty, relishing the dark poetry of that ship, I became aware that two other men were also casting speculative eyes on her. I knew who they were alright. They were harbour commissioners, men trained to smell out whatever was strange or unlawful – for example, smuggled cargoes, concealed guns, wanted criminals. Oh yes, they were interested in the Esmeralda alright. Esmeralda, that was the name of the ship. I am certain of it, said one commissioner to the other. I would wager my life on it. It’s Mustacio’s ship, none other. Listen carefully, Mister Boothroyd. We will act swiftly, and at night. That ship is not to be given clearance before nightfall. Otherwise act as if everything we
re normal. At seven o’ the clock that ship is to be boarded. You are to see, Mister Boothroyd, that the port officers are armed. There will be, I assure you, a fine display of hangings along this same waterfront before Michaelmas ...

  “A sailor with a cunning look was leaning on the rail of the Esmeralda, smoking a clay pipe, and his smouldering eyes were on the commissioners. He guessed, from long experience no doubt, that these two men were no friends of the Esmeralda. He guessed, but he couldn’t be sure – not yet. Now, I have never been a friend of lawyers and policemen. On the contrary, I am fascinated – always have been – by vagabonds and gypsies and outlaws. I crouched there on the edge of the jetty – I tensed – I leapt softly on to the deck of the Esmeralda. I approached the clay-pipe-smoking sailor. I said, ‘Take me to your skipper. I have some urgent information for him.’ I’m glad to say, that Tomas – that was the sailor’s name, he was a Basque – Tomas understood cats and their language. So, in fact, did nearly all the crew, except Sawbones the surgeon, a stupid old thing. Tomas picked me up. He smelt of tar and gold. Tomas brought me to the skipper’s cabin. Mustacio lay on his bunk, half-seas across with rum, but drunk or no he was a marvellous-looking man, with scarlet and silver broideries on his coat, and a nose flattened over his face where he had been struck in Sicily by a bandit’s whipstock. And he, Mustacio, understood cat language. He listened to what I had to say. He nodded. He kissed me. He gave me a couple of starfish to eat. He gave me a bowl of curds laced with Jamaican rum. When I woke up after that feast, we were on the broad free Atlantic, headed west.”

  “How wonderful,” said Jenny. “I never knew that, Fankle.”

  “I could tell you things about Mustacio and the Esmeralda,” said Fankle, “that would make your flesh tremble like butterflies in a summer breeze. Some other time. Old Mrs Crag of Greenglen, she has a budgie I’m very interested in. She lets her budgie out of its cage every morning at half-past ten. Time I was off.”

  “But what happened to Mustacio in the end?” pleaded Jenny. “At least tell me that.”