by Gene Kemp
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 smidgen 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 of and Humblepuppy in to the study with a bowl of water and a handful of Boniebisk, Taffy’s favourite breakfast food).
The auctioneers told me that Lot 12, deed box, coal scuttles and broom cupboard, had come from 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 that deed box. 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 knows 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 into his deed box whenever the atmosphere became too volcanic, and did his very 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 thickset black, who took a fancy to sleeping 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 stripy cousin Fred, whose owners presently moved from next door to another part of the town.
It was soon after Fred’s departure that Humblepuppy arrived, and from my point of view he couldn’t have been more welcome. Taffy missed Fred badly, and expected me to play with him instead; it was sad to see this large elderly tabby rushing hopefully up and down stairs after breakfast, or hiding behind the armchair and jumping out on to nobody; or howling, howling, howling at me until I escorted him out into the garden, where he’d rush to the lavender bush which had been the traditional hiding-place of Whisky, Tetanus, Charity, and Fred in succession. Cats have their habits and histories, just the same as humans.
So sometimes, on a working morning, I’d be at my wits’ end, almost on the point of going across the town to our ex-neighbours, ringing their bell, and saying, ‘Please can Fred come and play?’ Specially on a rainy, uninviting day when Taffy was pacing gloomily about the house with drooping head and switching tail, grumbling about the weather and the lack of company, and blaming me for both.
Humblepuppy’s arrival changed all that.
At first Taffy considered it necessary to police him, and that kept him fully occupied for hours. He’d sit on guard by the deed box till Humblepuppy woke up in the morning, and then he’d follow officiously all over the house, wherever the visitor went. Humble puppy was slow and cautious in his explorations, but by degrees he picked up courage and found his way into every corner. He never once made a puddle; he learned to use Taffy’s cat flap and go out into the garden, though he was always more timid outside and would scamper for home at any loud noise. Planes and cars terrified him, he never became used to them; which made me still more certain that he had been in that deed box for a long, long time, since before such things were invented.
Presently he learned, or Taffy taught him, to hide in the lavender bush like Whisky, Charity, Tetanus, and Fred; and the two of them used to play their own ghostly version of touch-last for hours on end while I got on with my typing.
When visitors came, Humblepuppy always retired to his deed box; he was decidedly scared of strangers; which made his behaviour with Mr Manningham, the new rector of Riverland, all the more surprising.
I was dying to learn anything I could of the old rectory’s history, so I’d invited Mr Manningham to tea.
He was a thin, gentle, quiet man, who had done missionary work in the Far East and fell ill and had to come back to England. He seemed a little sad and lonely; said he still missed his Far East friends and work. I liked him. He told me that for a large part of the nineteenth century the Riverland living had belonged to a parson called Swannett, the Reverend Timothy Swannett, who lived to a great age and had ten children.
‘He was a great-uncle of mine, as a matter of fact. But why do you want to know all this?’ Mr Manningham asked. His long thin arm hung over the side of his chair; absently he moved his hand sideways and remarked, ‘I didn’t notice that you had a puppy.’ Then he looked down and said, ‘Oh!’
‘He’s never come out for a stranger before,’ I said.
Taffy, who maintains a civil reserve with visitors, sat motionless on the night storage heater, eyes slitted, sphinx-like.
Humblepuppy climbed invisibly on to Mr Manningham’s lap.
We agreed that the new rector probably carried a familiar smell of his rectory with him; or possibly he reminded Humblepuppy of his great-uncle, the Reverend Swannett.
Anyway, after that, Humblepuppy always came scampering joyfully out if Mr Manningham dropped in to tea, so of course I thought of the rector when summer holiday time came round.
During the summer holidays we lend our house and cat to a lady publisher and her mother who are devoted to cats and think it a privilege to look after Taffy and spoil him. He is always amazingly overweight when we get back. But the old lady has an allergy to dogs, and is frightened of them too; it was plainly out of the question that she should be expected to share her summer holiday with the ghost of a puppy.
So I asked Mr Manningham if he’d be prepared to take Humblepuppy as a boarder, since it didn’t seem a case for the usual kind of boarding kennels; he said he’d be delighted.
I drove Humblepuppy out to Riverland in his deed box; he was rather miserable on the drive, but luckily it is not far. Mr Manningham came out into the garden to meet us. We put the box down on the lawn and opened it.
I’ve never heard a puppy so wildly excited. Often I’d been sorry that I couldn’t see Humblepuppy, but I was never sorrier than on that afternoon, as we heard him rushing from tree to familiar tree, barking joyously, dashing through the orchard grass – you could see it divide as he whizzed along – coming back to bounce up against us, all damp and earthy and smelling of leaves.
‘He’s going to be happy with you, all right,’ I said, and Mr Manningham’s grey, lined face crinkled into its thoughtful smile as he said, ‘It’s the place more than me, I think.’
Well, it was both of them, really.
After the holiday, I went to collect Humblepuppy, leaving Taffy haughty and stand-offish, sniffing o
ur cases. It always takes him a long time to forgive us for going away.
Mr Manningham had a bit of a cold and was sitting by the fire in his study, wrapped in a Shetland rug. Humblepuppy was on his knee. I could hear the little dog’s tail thump against the arm of the chair when I walked in, but he didn’t get down to greet me. He stayed in Mr Manningham’s lap.
‘So you’ve come to take back my boarder,’ Mr Manningham said.
There was nothing in the least strained about his voice or smile but – I just hadn’t the heart to take back Humblepuppy. I put my hand down, found his soft wrinkly forehead, rumpled it a bit, and said,
‘Well – I was sort of wondering: our spoilt old cat seems to have got used to being on his own again; I was wondering – by any chance – if you’d feel like keeping him?’
Mr Manningham’s face lit up. He didn’t speak for a minute; then he put a gentle hand down to find the small head, and rubbed a finger along Humblepuppy’s chin.
‘Well,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘Of course, if you’re quite sure –’
‘Quite sure.’ My throat needed clearing too.
‘I hope you won’t catch my cold,’ Mr Manningham said.
I shook my head and said, ‘I’ll drop in to see if you’re better in a day or two,’ and went off and left them together.
Poor Taffy was pretty glum over the loss of his playmate for several weeks; we had two hours’ purgatory every morning after breakfast while he hunted for Humblepuppy high and low. But gradually the memory faded and, thank goodness, now he has found a new friend, Little Grey Furry, a nephew, cousin or other relative of Charity and Fred. Little Grey Furry has learned to play hide-and-seek in the lavender bush, and to use our cat flap, and clean up whatever’s in Taffy’s food bowl, so all is well in that department.
But I still miss Humblepuppy. I miss his cold nose exploring the palm of my hand, as I sit thinking, in the middle of a page, and his warm weight leaning against my knee as he watches the commercials. And the scritch-scratch of his toenails on the dining-room floor and the flump, flump, as he comes downstairs, and the small hollow in a cushion as he settles down with a sigh.
Oh well. I’ll get over it, just as Taffy has. But I was wondering about putting an ad into Our Dogs or Pets’ Monthly: Wanted, ghost of mongrel puppy. Warm welcome, loving home. Any reasonable price paid.
It might be worth a try.
Bang, Bang – Who’s Dead?
JANE GARDAM
There is an old house in Kent not far from the sea where a little ghost girl plays in the garden. She wears the same clothes winter and summer – long black stockings, a white dress with a pinafore, and her hair flying about without a hat, but she never seems either hot or cold. They say she was a child of the house who was run over at the drive gates, for the road outside is on an upward bend as you come to the gates of The Elms – that’s the name of the house, The Elms – and very dangerous. But there were no motor cars when children wore clothes like that and so the story must be rubbish.
No grown person has even seen the child. Only other children see her. For over fifty years, when children have visited this garden and gone off to play in it, down the avenue of trees, into the walled rose garden, or down deep under the high dark caves of the polished shrubs where queer things scutter and scrattle about on quick legs and eyes look out at you from round corners, and pheasants send up great alarm calls like rattles, and whirr off out of the wet hard bracken right under your nose, ‘Where’ve you been?’ they get asked when they get back to the house.
‘Playing with that girl in the garden.’
‘What girl? There’s no girl here. This house has no children in it.’
‘Yes it has. There’s a girl in the garden. She can’t half run.’
When last year The Elms came up for sale, two parents – the parents of a girl called Fran – looked at each other with a great longing gaze. The Elms.
‘We could never afford it.’
‘I don’t know. It’s in poor condition. We might. They daren’t ask much for such an overgrown place.’
‘All that garden. We’d never be able to manage it. And the house is so far from anywhere.’
‘It’s mostly woodland. It looks after itself.’
‘Don’t you believe it. Those elms would all have to come down for a start. They’re diseased. There’s masses of replanting and clearing to do. And think of the upkeep of that long drive.’
‘It’s a beautiful house. And not really a huge one.’
‘And would you want to live in a house with –’
They both looked at Fran who had never heard of the house. ‘With what?’ she asked. ‘Is it haunted?’ she asked. She knew things before you ever said them. Almost before you thought of them.
‘Of course not,’ said her father.
‘Yes,’ said her mother.
Fran gave a squealing shudder.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ said her father. ‘No point now in even going to look at it.’
‘How is it haunted?’ asked Fran.
‘It’s only the garden,’ said her mother. ‘And very nicely haunted. By a girl about your age in black stockings and a pinafore.’
‘What’s a pinafore?’
‘Apron.’
‘Apron. How cruddy.’
‘She’s from the olden days.’
‘Fuddy-duddy-cruddy,’ said Fran, preening herself about in her T-shirt and jeans.
After a while though she noticed that her parents were still rattling on about The Elms. There would be spurts of talks and then long silences. They would stand for ages moving things pointlessly about on the kitchen table, drying up the same plate three times. Gazing out of windows. In the middle of Fran telling them something about her life at school they would say suddenly, ‘Rats. I expect it’s overrun with rats.’
Or, ‘What about the roof?’
Or, ‘I expect some millionaire will buy it for a Country Club. Oh, it’s far beyond us, you know.’
‘When are we going to look at it?’ asked Fran after several days of this, and both parents turned to her with faraway eyes.
‘I want to see this girl in the garden,’ said Fran, because it was a bright sunny morning and the radio was playing loud and children not of the olden days were in the street outside, hurling themselves about on bikes and wearing jeans and T-shirts like her own and shouting out, ‘Bang, bang – you’re dead.’
‘Well, I suppose we could just telephone,’ said her mother. ‘Make an appointment.’
Then electricity went flying about the kitchen and her father began to sing.
They stopped the car for a moment inside the propped-back iron gates where there stood a rickety table with a box on it labelled ‘Entrance Fee. One Pound.’
‘We don’t pay an entrance fee,’ said Fran’s father. ‘We’re here on business.’
‘When I came here as a child,’ said Fran’s mother, ‘we always threw some money in.’
‘Did you often come?’
‘Oh, once or twice. Well yes. Quite often. Whenever we had visitors we always brought them to The Elms. We used to tell them about –’
‘Oh yes. Ha ha. The ghost.’
‘Well, it was just something to do with people. On a visit. I’d not be surprised if the people in the house made up the ghost just to get people to come.’
The car ground along the silent drive. The drive curved round and round. Along and along. A young deer leapt from one side of it to the other in the green shadow, its eyes like lighted grapes. Water in a pool in front of the house came into view.
The house held light from the water. It was a long, low, creamy-coloured house covered with trellis and on the trellis pale wisteria, pale clematis, large papery early roses. A huge man was staring from the ground floor window.
‘Is that the ghost?’ asked Fran.
Her father sagely, solemnly parked the car. The air in the garden for a moment seemed to stir, the colours to fade. Fran’s mother looked u
p at the gentle old house.
‘Oh – look,’ she said, ‘it’s a portrait. Of a man. He seems to be looking out. It’s just a painting, for goodness’ sake.’
But the face of the long-dead seventeenth-century man eyed the terrace, the semicircular flight of steps, the family of three looking up at him beside their motor car.
‘It’s just a painting.’
‘Do we ring the bell? At the front door?’
The half-glazed inner front door above the staircase of stone seemed the door of another shadowy world.
‘I don’t want to go in,’ said Fran. ‘I’ll stay here.’
‘Look, if we’re going to buy this house,’ said her father, ‘you must come and look at it.’
‘I want to go in the garden,’ said Fran. ‘Anyone can see the house is going to be all right.’
All three surveyed the pretty house. Along the top floor of it were heavily-barred windows.
‘They barred the windows long ago,’ said Fran’s mother, ‘to stop the children falling out. The children lived upstairs. Every evening they were allowed to come down and see their parents for half an hour and then they went back up there to bed. It was the custom for children.’
‘Did the ghost girl do that?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Fran’s father.
‘But did she?’
‘What ghost girl?’ said Fran’s father. ‘Shut up and come and let’s look at the house.’
A man and a woman were standing at the end of the hall as the family rang the bell. They were there waiting, looking rather vague and thin. Fran could feel a sadness and anxiety through the glass of the wide, high door, the woman with her gaunt old face just standing; the man blinking.
