The Kingdom of Carbonel (2 page)

‘Not when you have only just arrived, dear,' said Mrs Brown. ‘But you can help Rosie clear away, then I expect you would like to run and play in
the garden. I'll see to the tea things.' She watched a little anxiously while they both stood with loaded trays, each standing back politely to let the other through the door.

When they had stacked the plates, they ran down the four flights of stairs into the garden.

‘It really belongs to all the flats. The garden, I mean,' explained Rosemary. ‘But the grownups hardly use it. There are no other children, so the garden is practically mine. Would you like to see my flower bed?'

They walked sedately down the path, while Rosemary tried to think of something to say.

‘Did you have a good term – at school, I mean?'

‘Not bad,' said John.

‘Oh good!' said Rosemary. ‘I'm going to the high school next term. I expect I shall have a ponytail.'

‘Sally's got one. You remember, my elder sister? It was perfectly sickening. One minute she was decent – sandals and plaits, like you, and the next she wore a ponytail and slip-on shoes, and wouldn't play anything sensible.'

Rosemary only half listened; the other half was thinking: ‘This just can't be the same John I played with last summer who had all those glorious adventures with me! Perhaps this proves that I did dream
the magic part, and the flying, and the black cat that talked.'

‘Goodness!' she said aloud. ‘Talking of black cats, there he is again!'

‘I wasn't talking about black cats,' said John.

‘That's the second time today,' said Rosemary excitedly. ‘Look on the garden wall!'

John looked. Then he said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I expect it's Carbonel.'

‘John!' said Rosemary, and she turned to look at him, beaming from ear to ear. ‘Then it did happen! You remember the magic, and the flying and everything?'

‘Of course it happened!' said John in astonishment. ‘Good old Carbonel! Come on, Rosie, let's see if we can catch him!'

They ran to the garden wall and looked along it both ways, but there was no sign of the cat. John stood on the rusty old garden roller and tried to look along the top, but the roller moved when he stood on tiptoe, and he fell off on to a rubbish heap. When he sat up with leaves in his hair, Rosemary began to giggle, and presently John joined her. The invisible wall of shyness between them melted as though it had never been.

‘Come on, come and see my Green Cave!' said Rosemary, as she pulled John to his feet.

They crawled in on hands and knees.

‘What a glorious place!' said John, as he tucked his feet under him. There was not much room for two.

‘Let's make this our headquarters!'

It was going to be all right after all, thought Rosemary, and she ferreted happily under a pile of leaves and brought out the broken brandy snaps in a biscuit tin. They sat and munched happily together.

‘I'm not really going to have a ponytail,' said Rosemary suddenly.

‘You are an owl, Rosie!' said John, and tweaked one of her plaits in a friendly way. ‘Come on, let's go and play something!'

Mrs Brown was a widow. She added to her small pension by dressmaking. The house in Cranshaw Road belonged to Mr Featherstone, who ran a travelling Repertory Company called the Netherley Players. Instead of paying rent for the flat, Rosemary's mother looked after the costumes of the Company. These were kept in the old stables of the house.

After breakfast next morning, Mrs Brown said, ‘Rosie, dear, I've got to get on with those Roman togas in the costume room this morning – simply miles of machining, so will you and John do some shopping for me?'

They fetched a basket. With the shopping list on the outside of an old envelope and a pound note inside, they ran downstairs.

‘Good heavens!' said John, as they closed the front door behind them. ‘There he is again!'

Sure enough, on top of one of the stone balls
that stood on each gatepost, sat Carbonel. As soon as John and Rosemary reached the gate, he dropped silently down beside them.

‘Good morning!' said Rosemary politely. ‘We're going shopping, but we shan't be long.'

‘It's a funny thing,' said John, ‘but he makes me feel I ought to bow to him. Hallo! He's following.'

Carbonel was trotting quietly at their heels. He went with them to the baker's, and the fishmonger's, and the grocer's and the little shop that sold newspapers and sweets and ices.

Once, they tried to see if they could shake him off by running quickly around a corner and diving down a little alley. But when they came out of the alleyway, after waiting for several minutes, there the black cat was sitting at the entrance, quietly washing his paws, which made them feel rather silly. The only difference was that from that moment on he walked beside instead of behind them, as though he intended that they should not escape.

On the way home, they sat down on a seat by the side of a quiet road to eat the ice creams they had bought at the little shop. They licked in silence, and Carbonel sat at their feet and stared and stared at them.

‘He's beginning to make me feel uncomfortable,' said John.

‘Do you think he's hungry?' suggested Rosemary.

‘Doesn't… look… like it. Fat… as butter,' replied John in the jerky way of someone whose tongue is occupied with capturing escaping ice cream.

‘Now you've offended him!' said Rosemary reproachfully. Carbonel had turned his back on John and was gazing up at Rosemary. ‘
Are
you hungry, Carbonel?'

She held out the packet of fish. It was one of those very fishy parcels. Carbonel's nose quivered slightly at the enticing smell, but he closed his eyes resolutely and opened his mouth in a disdainful yawn.

‘Well, it's clearly not that,' said John. ‘Listen, Carbonel –' he went on. But the animal continued to sit with his back turned, as though John did not exist.

‘I expect you'd better apologize, John,' said Rosemary.

John muttered something under his breath and then thought better of it.

‘I'm sorry, Carbonel, honestly I am. I forgot how touchy you are. But I do wish to goodness we knew what was the matter!'

‘Do you want to tell us something?' said Rosemary.

Carbonel turned and, putting his front paws on Rosemary's knee, licked the back of her hand with a warm, rasping tongue.

‘But how can you tell us?' asked John.

Greatly daring, Rosemary stooped down and gathered the black cat into her arms, because she felt he needed comforting. He was so heavy that it was quite an effort. She put him on her knee. He no longer fitted into the hollow of her lap, and she had to hold him with both arms or he would have overflowed on to the wooden seat.

‘We'd do anything we could to help you, Carbonel. Wouldn't we, John?'

John nodded. ‘But how can we tell what is the matter if you can't talk to us? What can we do?'

‘Why don't we consult Mrs Cantrip?' suggested John. ‘I know she is supposed to have retired from being a witch, but perhaps we could persuade her to tell us if there is anything we could do. Hi! Carbonel!' he protested.

At the mention of Mrs Cantrip, Carbonel stood up on Rosemary's knee and, with a deep, bass purr, thrust the top of his sleek head against her chin again and again. Then he jumped on to John's lap, upsetting the shopping basket so that fish, biscuits, bacon and sugar went rolling on to the ground. They stuffed them back into the basket and set off home, Carbonel with tail erect, trotting before them.

‘The last time I saw Mrs Cantrip she was washing dishes at the Copper Kettle tea room,' said Rosemary. ‘I don't know if she is still there.'

‘Let's go and see,' said John.

They set out for the Copper Kettle early after lunch. Carbonel was waiting for them on the gatepost. They explained where they were going, but, instead of coming with them, the black cat showed complete indifference. He sat down in the middle of the pavement and began to wash his tail. John and Rosemary walked past, but Carbonel caught up with them and calmly placed himself in front of them again. This time he transferred his attention to his left hind leg.

‘Well,' said John, ‘you'd better hurry if you want us to go and find Mrs Cantrip, Carbonel, because I'm not going without you and that's final.'

Carbonel gave him a withering glance, then trotted ahead, keeping pointedly to Rosemary's side of the pavement. Having decided to go with them, he set off at such a speed that they could barely keep up, and when they finally reached the Copper Kettle, which was some distance away, they were hot and footsore.

Miss Maggie and her sister Florrie, who owned the teashop, were old friends. They welcomed the
two children with cries of pleasure. Carbonel waited outside.

‘Why, if it isn't John! And how you've grown!' said Miss Maggie with upraised hands. As everyone of a still-growing age knows, there is no answer to this, so John merely grinned sheepishly.

‘Now, come into the kitchen, dears. We're just putting away the lunch things. Choose whatever you'd like to eat. How about some nice fruit salad?'

John winked at Rosie as they followed Miss Maggie. Fruit salad was always welcome, and Mrs Cantrip would probably be found in the kitchen.

But, standing at the sink in a cloud of steam, was not Mrs Cantrip, but a square, vigorous young woman who was accompanying her saucepan cleaning by singing a rather doleful hymn tune. This was a thing that Mrs Cantrip would certainly not have done.

‘To tell the truth, dear,' said Miss Maggie in reply to Rosemary's inquiries, ‘I was quite glad when the funny old thing left of her own accord. Want some more cream on your fruit, dear?'

Rosemary nodded. She finished the last of the pineapple, which she did not really like, and prepared to enjoy the pears and peaches.

‘I'm always saying to Florrie,' went on Miss
Maggie. ‘Florrie, I say, if there's one thing I hate it's unpleasantness! And really she was so very queer that I never knew quite how she'd take it if I told her to leave.'

‘So it wasn't you who fired her?' asked John.

‘Would you believe it? She went off one evening in the middle of the week. Put her shoes and apron in the cupboard under the sink, just as usual, and never turned up again, and with half a week's wages to come!'

‘We'd send it on to her if we knew the address,' said Miss Florrie, who had come in while her sister was talking. ‘But she never would tell us where she lived.'

‘Not that she did her work badly, mind you,' continued Miss Maggie. ‘I will say that. Now it's no good for you to sniff like that, Doris,' she said to the new girl. ‘Fair's fair. But her washing-up water! I do like it clean! She always seemed to get hers not exactly dirty but coloured, somehow – bright red or yellow or green. I can't imagine how she did it.'

John and Rosemary looked at one another.

‘And when I spoke to her about it once,' went on Miss Maggie, ‘she said something about clean water being so dull. Did you ever hear of such a thing?'

Conversation became general after this. Presently
Rosemary said, ‘If you like, John and I could take Mrs Cantrip's money to her, and her shoes. She used to keep a little shop in Fairfax Market.'

‘Well, that would be kind of you, dears!' said Miss Maggie.

She rummaged in the cupboard under the sink and brought out an enormous pair of buckled shoes of a very expensive make, but very down at the heel. The apron had a vivid pattern of flowers and tropical fruit. As Miss Maggie shook it out, a little screw of paper fell from the pocket on to the floor. By the time Rosemary had picked it up, the shoes and the apron had already been made into a neat roll, so she put the paper in her pocket. As soon as they could, John and Rosemary said good-bye.

Carbonel paused in his restless pacing as soon as he saw them.

‘Well, if we can find her in her own house, it will really be much better than trying to talk to her at the Copper Kettle with Miss Maggie buzzing around,' John said, when they had explained the situation.

But Carbonel did not wait for him to finish. He bounded off in the direction of Fairfax Market so quickly that the children did not attempt to keep up with him.

‘Well!' said Rosemary.

‘If he isn't at Mrs Cantrip's house when we get there, I vote we just go away and do nothing more about it,' said John.

‘I almost hope he won't be!' said Rosemary.

But he was. When they reached the little shop that had been Mrs Cantrip's last year, the black cat was sitting beside the door with what John called his ‘waiting expression'.

‘Supposing Mrs Cantrip doesn't live here any more,' said Rosemary hopefully.

‘She lives here all right!' said John. ‘Look at the curtains!'

There was no longer any trace of a shop. The grimy window was hung with two odd lengths of lace, looped up in an attempt at elegance. One was tied with a bootlace, and the other with a piece of purple ribbon that looked as though it had come off a chocolate box.

‘They aren't very clean,' said Rosemary.

Someone had started to paint the battered front door scarlet, but had lost interest halfway down.

‘I say! Look at that notice!' said John.

Propped against the window was a card which said, in wobbly capital letters,

APARTMENTS
H. and C. in all rooms.
R.S.V.P.

As they looked at it in silence, a bony hand appeared between the dusty curtains and took away the card. John squared his shoulders. ‘She's at home all right. Here goes!' he said, and he knocked loudly on the door.

In reply to his second knock, the door opened a crack and a voice that was unmistakably Mrs Cantrip's said, ‘Apartments is let! Go away!' And the door was firmly slammed in their faces.