The Catlady (3 page)

The other cats, incidentally, on learning from the ginger kitten who she had been in her previous incarnation, treated her with much respect—Percival especially so, as in his former shape, his bravery in India had earned him the Victoria Cross.

One winter's day, when the snow lay deep around Ponsonby Place, there was a knocking on the great front door, and the Catlady went to see who it could be, Vicky perched upon her shoulder.

Muriel opened the door, expecting the postman, for no one else usually came all the
way up the long drive to the house. But it wasn't the postman. Standing on the steps outside was a young girl, poorly clad and shivering with cold.

Though on the whole the Catlady preferred cats to people, she was of a kindly nature, and now she did not hesitate.“Come in! Come in!” she cried. “You'll catch your death, whoever you are. Come, follow me, I have a good fire in the drawing room.” As the girl followed her across the vast, echoing hall, a host of cats watched curiously from doorway and stairway.

“Here, sit by the fire and warm yourself,” said the Catlady, “and I will go and make you a hot drink.”

When she had done so and the girl had drunk and some color had come back into her pinched face, the Catlady said,“Now tell me, what can I do for you?”

As she said this, it occurred to her that perhaps the girl had come in answer to that old advertisement in the
Dummerset Chronicle.
I rather hope not, the Catlady said to herself. This is not the sort of
person I had in mind. Not only is she badly dressed but her clothes are dirty, with bits of straw sticking to them.

The Catlady's face must have shown her distaste, for the girl stood up and said, “I won't trouble you any longer, madam. I'll be on my way now, and thank you for your kindness.”

She spoke with a Dummerset accent. A local girl, thought the Catlady. “Wait a moment,” she said. “You knocked on my door, so you must tell me what you wanted.”

“I saw your lights,” said the girl, “and what with the snow … and I was fair wore out … and I hadn't eaten for quite a while …I just couldn't go any further.”

“And you're not going any further now,” said the Catlady decidedly.“Sit down again. I'll fetch you some food.”

Chapter Three

Muriel Ponsonby was not particularly interested in food. As long as her cats were well fed, she herself was content with very simple fare, and she seldom kept much in the house.

Now, however, she was not long in providing some good hot soup and some bread and cheese for the young stranger, and not until the girl had finished eating did she press her further.

“Now tell me your name.”

“If you please, madam,” said the girl,“my name is Mary Nutt.”

“But tell me, Mary,” said the Catlady,
“where are your parents?” Mary's not very old, she thought. Fourteen, perhaps?

“Dead,” Mary replied.

“Both?”

“Yes, madam. Mother died a month ago, and my father, he was killed in South Africa, fighting the Boers. He was a soldier, my dad was, a soldier of the Queen.”

At this last word, Vicky jumped up onto the girl's lap, and Mary stroked her and added,“And the Queen's dead too now.”

Yes and no, said the Catlady to herself.

To Mary she said, “I am very sorry for you. My father is … that is to say, was … a soldier.”

And now he's a white cat, she thought.

“Thank you, madam,” said Mary Nutt. “The fact is that since Mother died, I've had nowhere to live. These last weeks I've just just been wandering about the countryside, sleeping in haystacks, as you can see, with no food to speak of, for I've no money. That was the first good meal I've had
for many a day, and I thank you for your kindness.”

This telling of her troubles and the sight of Vicky snuggled down on the girl's lap would probably have been enough to make up the Catlady's mind anyway. But then something happened that absolutely decided her.

In through the drawing room door marched the white cat Percival, straight up to the girl, and he began to rub himself against her legs, purring like mad.

Mary Nutt put out a hand to stroke him. “Isn't he handsome!” she said.

“You like cats, do you?” asked the Colonel's daughter.

“Oh yes!” replied the daughter of a trooper.

The Catlady looked at her, stroking with one hand Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby and with the other cuddling Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, Empress of India, and any doubts vanished.“I hope,” she said,“that you will stay here with me, Mary, and help me to look after my family.”

On that snowy day when Mary Nutt first set foot in Ponsonby Place, the house was as it had been for many years now. That is to say, the floors were dirty, the ceilings cobwebby, the furniture dusty, the chair covers grubby, and the windows smeary.

The place was a paradise for cockroaches and wood lice and earwigs and beetles and even, in the damper parts, for snails (though mice had the sense to keep well away).

On top of everything else, the whole house stank of cat.

By springtime the change in Ponsonby Place was miraculous. The floors and the ceilings and the furniture were clean, the covers washed, the insects gone. If the Colonel and his lady could have been reincarnated
in human rather than feline form, the house would have looked to them just as it had been in their day. To be sure, there was still a smell of cat, but, thanks to opening as many (clean) windows as possible when the weather allowed, it was much less strong now.

All this, of course, was due to the busy hands of Mary Nutt, who had turned out to be what the Catlady's mother would have called “a treasure.”

At first from simple gratitude at being given a home and then because she quickly grew fond of the Catlady, Mary worked from dawn to dusk in Ponsonby Place, dusting, scrubbing, washing, and polishing, and indeed doing most of the cooking. Even more importantly from the Catlady's point of view, her new helper paid a
lot of attention to all the cats, and whenever she had a spare moment, it was spent grooming some happily purring puss.

Percival and the rest spoke about her to each other with approval. “Good sort of girl, that, don't you think?” he said to Florence. “She's being a great help to Mu, what?” And his wife agreed, as did the uncle and aunt, the cousins, and the school friends. Only Vicky made no comment.