Henry jumped. “Oh, look, Fara,” he said. “Here’s Turandot now!” To my extreme surprise, he swooped on me and picked me up. I’d never known him do that without my permission before. I squirmed around and gave him my Outraged Stare, but he took no notice and held me out toward this woman. “There,” he said. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
The woman narrowed her eyes at me. She shuddered. “Henry, she’s hideous! She looks as if she’s got the plague with all those blotches!” She backed away. “Don’t bring her near me. I’m not a cat person.”
Henry said cheerfully, “Okay.” And dropped me. Dropped me! Just like that.
I went away, back through the catflap and over to the Coop, where Big Dot was peering nervously out of the hatch. “I’ll have to introduce you to Henry later, I’m afraid,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
“Terribly,” she said.
“You met that Fara creature then?” Millamant said, popping up from the water butt again. “I tried to tell you. I think she’s staying here.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it!” I said, leading Big Dot to the kitchen.
When we got there, Great-aunt Harriet was sitting in the best chair with Mr. Williams in her lap. “Oh, we’ve got a Big Dot now, I see,” she said, watching Big Dot fit herself humbly through the catflap. “Better than the other thing that arrived here today. I must say, Henry has a genius for choosing terrible women! Little Dot, try to make him see reason. I’ve never disliked anyone so much in my life as I dislike that Fara.”
I jumped up on the Welsh dresser and observed that half my breakfast was still there. “Big Dot, if you like to come up here,” I began.
But Great-aunt Harriet popped Mr. Williams on the floor and sprang up, saying, “Now, Turandot, don’t make the poor thing struggle up there, for goodness’ sake, not in her condition!” and bustled about finding saucers. She gave Big Dot most of a tin of meaty chunks, a pyramid of dry food, and a soup bowl of milk. Big Dot ate it all. She was starving.
“Is this Fara woman really staying?” I asked.
Great-aunt Harriet never listens to me, but Mr. Williams said gloomily, “We fear the worst. He’s lent her his pajamas.”
Mr. Williams was right. But it was worse than we realized. We expected that Fara would be given one of the spare rooms, but when we followed Henry upstairs to bed, we discovered that he and Fara were sharing Henry’s room. Fara turned and stared at us. “Why are they here?”
“Little Dot always sleeps on my head,” Henry explained. “Orange and Claws and Madam Dalrymple usually dispose themselves around on the duvet. And Millamant curls up in the chamber pot, you know.”
“Well, they’re not doing that anymore,” Fara said. “Get rid of them.”
Henry said, in that cheerful, obliging way, “Okay.” And, to our extreme distress, we found ourselves pushed outside by Henry’s magic, out and down the stairs, and then out again, until we were in the farmyard. It was as if he had forgotten we were in danger from the Beast there. It was a cold night, too. Claws and Orange huddled together for warmth, and Madam Dalrymple sat as close to Mill as Mill would let her. I crouched by myself in the middle of the yard. I have never felt so bewildered and unhappy as I did then. Because, you see, I had seen Henry look at Fara the way he usually looks at me. And I had seen Fara look back, and her look kept saying, Henry, you are mine! Just like I do. I kept wondering if I was an awful cat, the way Fara was an awful human.
After a while, something big and warm and whitish came and settled in the clump of weeds next to me. “What is so wrong, Little Dot?” Big Dot asked.
“It’s Henry’s new human!” I said. “She won’t let us into Henry’s room. And she smells wrong, and she doesn’t even like Madam Dalrymple. I mean, most ordinary visitors who don’t care for cats always admire Madam Dalrymple! The farmers say she’s beautiful. But Fara called her a fluffy monstrosity.”
“I doubt if Madam Dalrymple understood though,” Big Dot said.
“No, she tried to get on Fara’s knee twice,” I said. “But that’s not the point, Big Dot! Henry’s being so obedient to her! He didn’t listen to his operas because Fara said she didn’t like opera, and he turned us out! How do we make Fara go away, Big Dot?”
“I’m not sure,” Big Dot said, and thought about it, sitting comfortingly close.
While she sat there, I noticed that Big Dot’s side, where it pressed against me, was sort of squirming and jumping. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Did all that food upset you?”
“No, no,” she said. “I’m going to have kittens again. Quite soon, I think. Do you know, if you can think of what to do, and if all the doors are like the door from your kitchen, I think I could show you how to open Henry’s bedroom.”
“Oh, please do!” I said. “I miss the smell of his head!”
As we were talking, I had been hearing a lot of noise from Great-aunt Harriet’s cottage. It sounded as if Mr. Williams was singing, or something. Now it suddenly rose to a climax as Great-aunt Harriet threw her door open, saying, “Oh, all right, all right! Go out and do it then! Though what’s wrong with your litter box I—Oh!” she said, as the light fell on the six of us in our various huddles. “Did that creature throw you out then? Of course she did, she’s that type. It wouldn’t worry her if the Beast ate the lot of you. You’d better all come in here and be safe then.”
All of us, even Millamant, got up at once and filed politely into the cottage, where Mr. Williams was sitting on the table, looking suave and smug. We arranged ourselves courteously on the hearthrug.
“Hmm,” said Great-aunt Harriet and picked up her mug of cocoa. She stumped up to bed, muttering to herself. “Better bend our minds to getting rid of that young woman, or she’ll be sending Henry down to the vet with all the cats in a hamper to have them put down. She’d better not touch my Mr. Williams, though.”
This made me think very urgently all night of ways to get rid of Fara.
Of course, the first thing was to get into the house. Next morning the catflap was locked and all the windows were shut, though we could hear and smell that Fara and Henry were in the kitchen having breakfast. We gathered around the door and yowled. Orange and Millamant have particularly loud voices, so between us we raised a fine noise. Normally it would have brought Henry to the door like a shot, but that day he took no notice of us at all. It was as if Fara had put him under a spell.
After twenty minutes of continuous din, Great-aunt Harriet stumped out of her cottage and banged the kitchen door open with her stick. We streamed in after her and stood by our empty bowls. “Aren’t you going to feed your cats, Henry?” Great-aunt Harriet demanded.
Fara looked up from eating toast. “Cats are little hunting machines,” she said. “They can live on the mice in the barns.”
“With respect, Miss Spinks,” Great-aunt Harriet said, “not only has Claws eaten every mouse for miles around, but I don’t think Madam Dalrymple would know what to do with a mouse if it ran down her throat.” She got out the food and fed us, while Henry smiled dreamily at Fara and said nothing at all.
After breakfast, they chased us out again and locked the house, while Henry drove Fara into town to do some shopping. It seemed that Fara had arrived without any clothes but the flimsy black dress she was wearing.
“Which strikes me as odd,” Great-aunt Harriet said, when Mr. Williams fetched her. She thought a bit. “I shall borrow some lentils,” she said, and let herself into the house with her key. There she went and set the living room window very slightly ajar. “There,” she said, coming out with a cup of lentils. “Go in and do your worst.”
Orange muscled the window wide open and we all went in and took turns at peeing on the rugs. But the bedroom door was firmly shut. “Not to worry,” said Big Dot. She gathered us around her on the landing and showed us how you stood on your hind legs and trod on the door handle, and your weight pushed the door open. Before long, all of us could do it except Madam Dalrymple, although I had to jump to rea
ch the handle. Then Claws went in and did tomcat things until the bedroom smelled really strong. Millamant went along to the toilet, where she got herself extremely wet, and then lay on the pillows. I thought that had probably fixed the bedroom, so I took everyone else down to the kitchen where we spilled sugar and trod in the butter and knocked down cups so they smashed on the flagstones. Then Big Dot and Orange heaved the waste bin over, while I went and walked behind all the plates on the Welsh dresser until most of them fell over and one or two broke. Madam Dalrymple had great fun rolling in cornflakes.
Then we went outside again and hid. Henry’s car came back and he and Fara went into the house with bags and bags and bags. We could hear Fara’s voice in there, screaming curses, but all that happened was that Fara came grimly outside and put our bowls outside in a row, while Henry opened windows and draped carpets and pillows out of them to air.
“Round One is a draw, I think,” Great-aunt Harriet said when she let us into her cottage that night. “They’ve moved into the biggest spare room and she’s hung all her new clothes there. She’s bought enough stuff to last a year and rows of shoes. I suppose Henry paid, the poor fool!”
“What can we do with those clothes?” I said.
Madam Dalrymple suddenly came alert. “I know all about clothes,” she said. “I’ll show you what to do.”
Next day, Henry went off to work at the Science Institute. “I must go there occasionally,” he said, when I tried to get in the car with him, “or they’ll wonder what they’re paying me for. Out you get, Little Dot.” He drove away, leaving Fara alone in the house with all the doors and windows shut.
Great-aunt Harriet came and knocked on the kitchen door. When Fara didn’t open it, she went and rapped on the living room window. “Oh, Miss Spinks, if you would be so good! I’m afraid I’ve run out of sugar.”
After a while, Fara came and grudgingly let her into the kitchen. I was ready. I did one of my best vanishments and was past Fara and through the kitchen before she had properly got the door open. While Great-aunt Harriet was saying, “Oh, no need to get down the tin. I can hook it with my stick and reach it that way—oh, how kind!” I scudded along to the dining room and opened its door the way Big Dot had taught us. I stole past the table with the map magic, very careful not to disturb it—although, from the dusty smell of it, I suspected that Fara had made Henry forget all about it—and jumped to the windowsill. That window bursts open if you lean on it hard enough, so I did that. Everyone came jumping quietly inside, except for Big Dot. She was feeling poorly that day and stayed resting inside the Coop.
We all crept up to the spare bedroom. And there were all the clothes, hanging in rows, with lines of shoes underneath them. Mr. Williams looked at them with great interest.
“Do we tear them up?” he asked Madam Dalrymple. “I quite fancy getting my claws into some of these.”
“She’ll get much more annoyed if we spoil them so that she can almost wear them,” Madam Dalrymple said. “You make the fronts messy, as if food was spilled on them. … ”
Millamant said, “I know a pond that’s full of green slime!” and hurried away.
“ … and you put hairs all over the black things,” Madam Dalrymple explained, “except you, Mr. Williams, you put hairs on the white things. Then the knitted things, you bite a thread and then pull, to make holes, and the dresses you bite just the thread in the hems and then pull the hem half down. You bite buttons, too, so that they half come off. … ”
She had all kinds of ideas, so many that I began to suspect that Madam Dalrymple had been dumped in that pigpen by the enraged human she once owned. And whatever she suggested, we did. Millamant came back dripping with green slime and plastered herself lovingly up the fronts of things, Mr. Williams pulled down a pile of white things and wriggled in them, and, while the rest of us bit and pulled threads, Orange went along methodically making messes in all the shoes. It was fun. When everything was thoroughly treated, we went away—although Millamant paused to roll the last of her slime off on the pillows—and spent the rest of the day persuading Great-aunt Harriet to give us titbits.
You should have heard Fara shrieking when Henry came home.
“Perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea,” Great-aunt Harriet said, after she had been to borrow some tea the following morning. “She’s telling Henry to fetch the laundry hamper and take you all down to the vet. He hasn’t quite agreed yet, but he will.”
“Let’s get on the Coop and go away!” Madam Dalrymple said, shivering.
I didn’t know what to do. I was miserable. I crouched wretchedly beside the water butt all day, hoping and hoping that Henry would come out and comfort me, but he never did, until Mr. Williams came rushing across the yard, mewing excitedly. There never was a cat like Mr. Williams for mewing. “Come and see! Come and look!” he mewed. “Everyone come in through the dining room window and see!”
Mill surged out of the water butt, Madam Dalrymple materialized from a hay bale, Orange and Claws shot out of the coach house, and we all galloped after Mr. Williams, consumed with curiosity. He led us through the dining room and upstairs to the spare room. There was a strange new smell there. It was not coming from the shoes, which had been bundled into a plastic sack in the passage, nor the clothes, which had been thrown across the sack. It was coming from the bed, inside the room. We stood on our hind legs to look.
Big Dot was lying in the middle of the duvet there, looking tired, surrounded in rather a mess that was full of small squirming bodies. Six of them, there were six … “Kittens?” I said. “Oh, Big Dot, why did you have to have them here?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Big Dot said weakly. “But it was so comfortable—and I got rather taken short.”
“We’ll have to guard you,” I said. “If Fara finds them … ”
“I know. I’ll move them the moment I feel stronger,” Big Dot said. “Not just yet, please.”
She went to sleep. Having kittens is obviously quite tiring. The rest of us crouched where we were, around the bed, waiting for what we knew was going to happen. Sure enough, just before suppertime, when the kittens had begun to move about and make squeaky noises, the door opened and Fara came in.
She stopped. She stared. Then she screamed, “Oh, this is the last straw! On my bed, of all places!”
“It isn’t your bed. It belongs to Henry,” I said.
She didn’t hear me. She plunged forward, with both her hands out to grab. “These are going in the water butt,” she said. “I’ll drown them myself.”
We all acted at once. We poured up over the edges of the bed, and stood there growling and spitting, so that the bed was full of our lashing tails, arched backs, and glaring eyes. Big Dot stood up in the center of us, twice her usual size, growling loudest of all.
“Get out of my way!” Fara screamed and grabbed for the kittens. Upon this, Mr. Williams, who was nearest—timid, nice-mannered Mr. Williams—put a paw-full of claws in each of her arms and dragged. He left two rows of dark, oozing blood on her. She screamed even louder and hit Mr. Williams, so that he flew across the room and crashed into the chest of drawers.
“What on earth is going on?” Henry said from the doorway.
Fara turned to Henry and went on screaming. She was so angry that she seemed to forget how to speak. “Middle of the bed!” she howled. “Water butt. Drown them. Horrible little ratty things! Drown, drown, drown!”
Henry walked around her and looked down at the bed. “Kittens,” he said.
“In the middle of my bed!” Fara screamed.
“There are other beds,” Henry said. “Pull yourself together, Fara. May I?” he said to Big Dot. Big Dot, very nervously, moved aside and let him sort through her kittens. “Six,” Henry murmured. “One of every color—black, gray, white, ginger, this one’s tortoiseshell, and here’s a tabby. Oh, well done, Big Dot!”
“Henry,” Fara said to him, in a hard, yowling voice, “I’m telling you to get rid of these cats and drown these kitten
s. All of them. Now.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Henry said. He put the kittens gently back beside Big Dot. “Three boys and three girls, I make it.”
“I mean it!” Fara shouted. “Henry, if you don’t get rid of every single cat this minute, I shall leave!”
We all stared intensely at Henry, except for Mr. Williams, who was washing his bruises beside the chest of drawers. Henry looked at Mr. Williams. “The black cat,” he said, “belongs to Great-aunt Harriet.”
“But he scratched me!” Fara said. “They’re all horrible creatures. So which is it to be? Do you get rid of them, or do I leave?”
Henry looked from one to another of our urgently staring pairs of eyes, and then at Fara. He seemed almost bewildered, the way he is when he wakes up in the morning. “There’s no question,” he said to Fara. “If that’s your attitude, you’d better leave.”
Fara’s chest heaved with emotion. She glared. “All right,” she said. “You’ll regret this.” And she left. She swung around and stormed out of the room. I heard her feet galloping down the stairs. I heard the kitchen door crash shut behind her. But I didn’t relax until I heard her feet distantly swishing through the farmyard and then pattering on the road. Then I was so relieved that I burst out purring. I couldn’t help it.
Henry sighed and said sadly, “Oh well. She did complain a lot. And she hates opera.”
We had a perfect, peaceful evening. Henry invited Great-aunt Harriet to supper and played her two operas. One was Turandot, of course. But, although I sat on his knees to comfort him, I could tell he was sad.
The next morning, all the farmers arrived again, looking grim and serious. During the night, the Beast of Ettmoor had attacked the farm next to Henry’s and killed six sheep, a sheepdog, and the farm cat. They were very worried because, according to the plans, the Beast should by now have been herded down the valley inside the final ring of magical generators.
Henry was equally worried. I sat on the dining room mantelpiece and watched him show the farmers the map and scratch his hair over it. “I think,” he said at last, “that what may have happened is that a crucial—er—field-static generator must have got moved slightly, just enough to let the Beast slip back out of our trap. This one, I think.” He pointed to the wobbly little marker that I had tried to play with.
Unexpected Magic Page 25
