‘Let me think,’ he went on desperately, his fists clenched against his forehead. ‘I know,’ he said at last. ‘Once we’ve got them home, we can shut them in that old shed at the bottom of the garden, where Uncle Zack used to keep hens. Nobody ever goes there.’
‘But we can’t go through the village with a pack of Scrabbles squeaking and squawking behind us!’ said Rosemary.
‘Well then, we shall just have to go round the village. I think I can find the way. But it’ll take much longer, so we’d better get going. Come on!’
They set off at a brisk pace, with the Scrabbles, twittering excitedly, streaming behind them.
8. Un-wishing
IT was a weary, untidy pair who at last reached home. It took a great deal longer than they expected, to find their way round the village. Once, they got lost in a small wood, and had to crawl through a thicket to find the path again. Twice, they had to climb a wall. Rosemary’s half-hope that they would lose the Scrabbles on the way came to nothing. As they reached each obstacle, their twittering grew a little agitated, but after some excited scurrying to and fro, they squeezed themselves over, under or through everything in their way, to join John and Rosemary the other side, squeaking with renewed vigour at their cleverness.
Once, when they were on a well-marked path, they heard someone coming towards them. The only way the Scrabbles could be persuaded to hide in a rather muddy ditch was to crouch down in it themselves, till the danger was past.
It was nearly dark when they reached home.
‘Just as well,’ said John. ‘Uncle Zack wouldn’t notice what we looked like anyway, but Mother Boddles will want to know exactly how we’ve got in such a mess if she spots us before we can clean up a bit.’
‘As soon as we’ve shut the Scrabbles up, we can sneak in through the side door,’ said Rosemary.
It was easier said than done to persuade the creatures to go into the shed. When they tried to shoo them in, they stood stock still, muttering suspiciously.
‘It’s no good,’ said John. ‘It’s you they always follow: you’ll have to go in first, then nip out quickly when they are all inside and I’ll slam the door behind you.’
It took quite a lot of courage for Rosemary to walk into the dark shed with the Scrabbles twittering round her feet. She could not see them clearly, but she could feel them tickling her ankles as they jostled their way in beside her. When a quick glance over her shoulder showed that the last one was through the opening, before they realized what she was doing, she turned, and with a flying leap escaped from the shed. Instantly John slammed the door behind her. Rosemary leaned against it with a sigh of relief.
‘Good old Rosie!’ said John.
‘But I feel such a pig!’ said Rosemary. ‘Tricking them like that when they were trusting us. Listen! They’re squeaking so unhappily. Will they be all right? Do you think they’re hungry?’
‘Goodness knows,’ said John. ‘But what on earth do Scrabbles eat?’
‘We found a hedgehog once in the garden at home, and we fed it on bread and milk,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. ‘We might try that.’
‘All right, but we’ll have to wait till after supper. I expect they’ll have calmed down a bit by then. We’d better have a good tidy up first. We’re pretty muddy from that ditch.’
‘I’ve been thinking all the way home,’ said Rosemary, as they washed their hands. ‘I think I know how it happened. The Scrabbles I mean. ...’
‘Well, go on, clever!’ said John.
‘Do you remember when we pulled the purple cracker at the bus stop?’ said Rosemary. ‘I was wearing the Golden Gew-Gaw, and when I said “I wish I could fly”, I did a little way, but then I came down, smack.’
‘So what?’ said John.
‘I was wearing it again when we had that silly row about the cat’s eyes, and when I said “I wish they’d come alive”, they did. I think it’s a wishing ring.’
‘I say, fancy you thinking all that out!’ said John, and the respect with which he said it made up for the number of times he had made her shut up. ‘But wait a minute. You hadn’t got the ring when we were scrapping. It was in my tin for Special Things.’
Rosemary shook her head. ‘That’s just where you’re wrong. We took it out of the box so that we could talk to Calidor, and I must have put it in my pocket afterwards, and when I shoved my hands in too, because they were cold, I must have slipped it on without thinking. I remember taking it off on the way home with the Scrabbles.’
John gave a slow, breathy whistle. Then he said: ‘But look here! If it’s a wishing ring as well as letting us hear cats talk, all we’ve got to do is to wish the Scrabbles back in their holes again. Where is it now?’
‘In my bedroom, in my coat pocket.’
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ said John.
Together they stampeded up the stairs. Rosemary didn’t wait to switch the bedroom light on, but rushed to the peg on which her coat was hanging, and after some frantic fumbling in the wrong pockets she found it at last. Standing very straight and stiff, with the Golden Gew-Gaw on her up-raised finger, in a solemn voice she said: ‘I wish to goodness the Scrabbles were back in their holes again.’ Then feeling she had perhaps not been very polite she added under her breath: ‘Yours sincerely, Rosemary Brown.’
For a moment they stood very still.
‘The stone in the ring,’ said John. ‘It gave a sort of wink!’ But Rosemary had switched on the light. Its hard, white glare banished the shadows, and shone in every corner of the room.
‘Carbonel was right. The ring is dangerous. Do you think we ought to put it in the dustbin, or bury it or something?’
‘If we did we couldn’t hear Carbonel or Calidor talking. Here, stick it back in the tin, and we must be very careful not to take it out unless we specially want to hear them.’ He snapped the lid firmly down on the Gew-Gaw as he spoke.
‘I do wish Carbonel would come so that we can tell him everything that’s happened.’
‘But we promised Miss Dibdin we wouldn’t tell a human soul,’ said John.
‘Carbonel isn’t human. He’s a cat,’ said Rosemary.
John grinned. ‘You aren’t as stupid as you look!’ he said. But by the friendly way he tweaked her hair, she knew he was paying her a compliment.
‘You don’t think something has happened to him, do you?’ said Rosemary. ‘Carbonel I mean?’
‘Something’ll happen to us if we don’t go down to supper!’
On their way downstairs they met Mrs Bodkin. ‘Where have you been all this time?’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in. All that smarmed-down hair! It isn’t natural,’ she added suspiciously.
‘Oh, we’ve been in for ages,’ said John airily. ‘Getting cleaned up for supper.’
‘Lucky for you supper’s late. Mr Sprules, him that keeps the second-hand book shop in Broomhurst, called, and he’s staying on.’
Mr Sprules was a large, bald, friendly man, and both John and Rosemary were glad of his presence over supper, because they had so much to think about. They sat in silent thought, munching their food, barely aware of Mr Sprules’s boom and Uncle Zack’s lighter voice answering one another; their talk bouncing backwards and forwards across the table, like a ball in a game of tennis. But they both looked up sharply from their plates when they heard the words ‘cat’s eyes’.
‘A funny thing,’ Mr Sprules was saying. ‘Some silly young vandals have dug up the studs on the stretch of road beyond the railway bridge, down Sheepshank Lane. They were talking about it at the tobacconist’s when I looked in on my way here.’
Rosemary sat up with a jerk. Her face was red, and her eyes wide. ‘It might not have been “stupid vandals”,’ she said indignantly. ‘And — how do the tobacconist people know about it so soon? It was only ...’
But at this point, John, who was unable to nudge her in the ribs this time, because of the width of the Cromwellian table, broke into a prolonged, rather artificial cough.
; ‘Have some water, my boy,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘You’d be surprised how soon news gets round in a village.’ He looked thoughtfully from John to Rosemary. ‘You’re unusually quiet, you two! Sure you’re all right?’ Reassured by their nods he went on: ‘How did you get on this afternoon? They’ve been delivering leaflets for me, for the Sale on Saturday,’ he explained to Mr Sprules.
‘Except for Tucket Towers, we went everywhere, I think,’ said John. ‘It was getting rather late, so we thought we’d better leave that till tomorrow.’
‘Well done!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I’m very grateful to you both. I’m afraid I have left the leaflets rather late.’
‘Don’t forget I said I’d come and lend a hand at the Sale,’ said Mr Sprules.
‘Very good of you, my dear chap,’ said Uncle Zack.
‘Talking of Tucket Towers,’ went on Mr Sprules, ‘Mrs Witherspoon came into my shop the other day and bought a couple of battered old books from the bargain tray and asked my young assistant to take them out to her tricycle. Very high and mighty she was!’
‘She is a strange old thing,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘Lives in that great house all alone, and dresses up for dinner every night, they say, although it’s probably nothing but baked beans on toast. The house used to be full of really lovely stuff, furniture and old silver, but she’s sold it now, I believe. I dare say she’ll come to the Sale, buy an old cracked plate, and eat an enormous tea!’
‘You’ve never provided refreshments before?’ said Mr Sprules.
‘It has never been so important for me to sell things before,’ said Uncle Zack ruefully. ‘I wish I had a better head for figures. I had another very disturbing letter this morning. I’m afraid I shall have to sell nearly all my favourite things.’
‘Not your special treasures?’ said Rosemary. Uncle Zack nodded.
‘It was Mrs Bodkin’s idea about refreshments. She said it would make people in a better mood to buy things, with a cup of hot tea inside them and a couple of her macaroon biscuits.’
‘A very sensible woman!’ said Mr Sprules.
‘Oh well, let’s talk about something more cheerful,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I tell you what! How about a game of Heads-Bodies-and-Tails or something, after supper? Could you face it, Sprules?’
‘There’s nothing I’d like better!’
Next morning, when Mrs Bodkin brought in the scrambled eggs for breakfast, she was breathing rather heavily and her usually neat hair straggled over her forehead.
‘Why, Mrs Bodkin!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘Is anything the matter? You look upset.’
‘I’ve had a nasty turn,’ said Mrs Bodkin, with a hand on the heaving bib of her apron. ‘I would never have believed it! I can’t abide rats. Never could from a child.’
‘Rats?’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I’m glad to say we’ve never been troubled with them in this house.’
‘Not in the house,’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘That shed at the bottom of the garden!’ John and Rosemary exchanged anxious glances. ‘I went down there before getting breakfast, to see if that big old enamel bowl was there — for the biscuit mixture for the Sale. As soon as I opened the door they came pouring out. Hundreds of them! They nearly knocked me over. They went streaming up the garden in a sort of huddle. The queerest-looking rats you ever saw! Square they were, with great shining eyes, and not a tail amongst ’em. And squeaking! You never heard the like!’
‘How extraordinary!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘What did you do?’
‘I came over quite queer,’ replied Mrs Bodkin. ‘So I sat down on that broken old wheelbarrow, till I felt a bit better.’
‘I’m very sorry you’ve had such a shock,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘Perhaps you’d better go and lie down for a little.’ Then he turned to John and Rosemary. ‘Come on, you youngsters. We’d better go and look into this straight away.’
And leaving Mrs Bodkin protesting at the untouched scrambled egg cooling on their plates, they hurried away down the garden.
The door of the shed was open, and swinging on its hinges. John and Rosemary, their curiosity overcoming their reluctance, followed close behind as Uncle Zack stooped to go inside. They looked anxiously round in silence while he poked into every corner, behind piles of empty flower-pots and rusty garden tools.
‘Not a trace of a rat or a rat-hole,’ he said at last.
Nor a Scrabble either! thought both John and Rosemary. They grinned at each other with relief.
‘Curious,’ went on Uncle Zack. ‘Mrs Bodkin is a sensible woman. She can’t have imagined it; though she may have exaggerated the number of them, of course. “Squarish and not a tail between them”?’ He laughed. ‘A new kind of rat, perhaps? Sprules will be interested when I tell him.’
‘Then we can’t have un-wished the Scrabbles after all,’ said John gloomily, when they had finished their breakfast of stone-cold scrambled egg and leathery toast, and Uncle Zack had gone off to the little room he called his office. ‘If it is a wishing ring, why didn’t it work this time?’
‘P’raps I didn’t do the wishing properly,’ said Rosemary. ‘Or more likely it won’t unwish its own wishes.’
‘Well, let’s hope when Mother Boddles saw them scuttle off up the garden they were making for their holes,’ said John, with more confidence than he really felt. They went and hung over the gate in front of the house and looked up and down the road. There was nothing to be seen of the Scrabbles. ‘What are you staring at?’ said John.
‘I was watching that little cat limping along on the other side of the road,’ said Rosemary.
9. Dumpsie
ROSEMARY crossed to where, in the shadow of the hedge opposite, a small, draggled-looking tabby cat, not much bigger than a kitten, was stumbling on three paws over the rough grass. The fourth paw it seemed unable to put to the ground. It shrank back when she came near and, with flattened ears, spat half-heartedly, as she bent over it.
‘It’s all right, Puss,’ said Rosemary gently. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ She knelt on the grass, and with two careful fingers stroked the silky top of its head. ‘It looks as if its paw is cut quite badly,’ she went on to John, who had joined her. ‘I wonder how it happened? Let’s get out the Golden Gew-Gaw and find out.’ Under her stroking fingers Rosemary felt the little animal’s tense body begin to relax.
‘Where do you come from, Puss?’ she asked, when she and John had both crooked little fingers through the ring.
‘We’re Hearing Humans,’ added John, ‘so you can tell us.’
‘I don’t care a whisker who you be!’ said the cat, looking up at them suspiciously. ‘I’m not telling nothing. Neither where nor why, because there’s some in high places trusts me not to. Trouble brewing, there is. Bad trouble, where I come from. Mind you, I’m not telling what, neither.’
‘Can’t you even tell us how you hurt your paw?’
‘Ah, that’s different,’ said the cat. ‘Boys that was. Threw a stone at me. Them Fallowhithe lads ...’ She broke off, and went on sulkily: ‘There, I’ve gone and told you “where”, and I didn’t mean to.’
‘Do you mean you’ve come all the way from Fallowhithe?’ said Rosemary. ‘That’s miles!’
‘Since the edge of last night I’ve been padding it. But with only three paws it’s hard going.’
‘Won’t you tell us who you are?’ asked John.
‘Me?’ replied the cat. ‘I’m a nobody, I am. That’s why I sez to myself, no one won’t notice the likes of me searching here and seeking there.’
‘What are you seeking and searching for?’ asked John.
‘That ‘ld be telling!’ said the little cat. ‘But I’ll go so far as to say it’s for who, not what.’ A small pink tongue flicked out for a moment. The cat gave a little moan. ‘What wouldn’t I give for so much as a dribble of milk!’
‘Look here,’ said Rosemary, turning to John. ‘Couldn’t we carry the poor thing indoors and bathe its paw?’
‘Just what I was thinking,’ he said. ‘And give it some milk. Come on!’
‘Here, wait a minute! Suppose I don’t want to come?’ said the little animal, shrinking back even further into the hedge. ‘Where might “indoors” be, I should like to know?’
‘Why here. Uncle Zack’s house, at Highdown.’
‘Highdown?’ said the little cat, with a sudden lift of her drooping head. ‘Then I’m in luck. For that’s where the seeking and searching really has to begin!’
‘Come on then,’ said John. ‘We’d better ask if we can keep her.’
Uncle Zack was busy in his office. He looked up absently for a moment from the papers that littered his desk, and waved distractedly at the one on which he seemed to be working. It was covered with figures, and almost as many doodles.
‘A cat?’ he said absently. ‘Yes, of course, of course. Might help with those rats. What is 425 divided by nineteen?’ Luckily he did not seem to expect an answer.
Mrs Bodkin, on the other hand, frowned rather fiercely.
‘A cat? Well, I don’t know! As if I hadn’t enough to do, what with you two, and the things to make for the Sale and ...’ She broke off: ‘My goodness me, that’s a nasty cut on its paw! Poor little thing! Well, what are you waiting for? Go and get the First Aid Box. It’s in the cupboard in the bathroom, and there’s some milk in a jug on the kitchen table.’
So that was all right.
Presently, bathed, bandaged and fed, with an empty milk saucer alongside, the little cat sat and washed itself by the sitting-room fire. Only then did John and Rosemary realize what a pretty creature it was, with shining tabby coat, snow-white stockings and wide white ruff.
‘It’s awfully difficult to talk to someone when you don’t know what to call them,’ said John.
‘You are a “she” anyway, aren’t you?’ asked Rosemary.
The cat looked up from licking a hind leg. ‘Ah, a she I be, right enough. And you’ve been that kind I don’t mind telling you my mammy calls me Wellingtonia.’
‘What a grand name!’ said Rosemary.
‘Not really. Born and bred in a Wellington boot I was, that’s why. Wellingtonia for best, but Dumpsie for ordinary, because the boot was on Fallowhithe Rubbish Dump. There’s some as turns up their grand noses at anywhere so low, but snug and warm it was, and handy for haddock heads, and the licking of sardine tins and such.’
Carbonel and Calidor Page 6
