The Catlady (6 page)

front door, leaning on the walking stick that she now always used, and looking, Mary could see, very worried.

“What is it, Miss Muriel?” Mary asked before beginning to unload the shopping from the big wicker basket on the handlebars.“What's the matter?”

“Oh, Mary!” cried the Catlady.“It's my brother!”

“Your brother?”

“Yes, Coco. I can't find him anywhere. I've asked Mama and Papa and my sister Hazel where Coco has gone, but of course they couldn't tell me. Could he have been stolen, d'you think, or run away? I've searched the house but I can't find him.”

“He must be somewhere about,” Mary said. “I'll just unload this shopping and then I'll make you a nice cup of tea. I'll find him, don't you worry.”

In fact, the white kitten Coco, adventurous as most boys are, had decided to do some exploring.

In the master bedroom of Ponsonby Place, there was a large fireplace, once used to keep Sir Percival and Lady Ponsonby warm on winter nights. When Coco was alone in the room, he began to nose around it. Looking up, he saw the sky through the chimney stack. He also saw that there were little stone steps on the walls of the chimney, steps up which, long ago, children had been sent to sweep down the soot with bags full of goose feathers. Coco began to climb. As he did so, the soot began to fall and he became
covered in the stuff. It got in his eyes and his nose and his mouth, and he became very frightened. He did not know whether to go on up or to come back down or what to do. He sat on one of the steps, mewing pitifully for his mother.

He was there, of course, when the Catlady was searching for him, but her hearing was too poor to catch his muffled cries and her eyesight not sharp enough to notice the fallen soot in the fireplace.

But Mary, when she began to search, both heard the kitten and saw the sootfall. Cautiously she peered up the chimney and saw the crouching figure of the tiny adventurer.

“Oh, Coco!” she called. “However are you going to get out of there?” The answer was immediate.

Perhaps it was the sight of her face, perhaps the sound of her voice, perhaps he simply lost his footing, but the next minute Coco came tumbling down into the fireplace.

Mary, by now very sooty herself, carried him down to the kitchen, where the Catlady still sat over her cup of tea.

“Here he is!” she said.

“But, Mary,” the Catlady cried, peering through her spectacles, “my brother Coco is a white kitten, like Papa, and that one is coal-black.”

“
Coal-
black's about right,” Mary said, and she set about cleaning the unhappy Coco while on the floor below the sink, his parents watched and waited.

“Whatever has the boy been doing?” Percival asked his wife.

“Went up the chimney, by the look of it,” replied Florence.

“Why?”

“I've no idea, Percival. Boys will be boys.”

The Colonel looked smug. “Chip off the old block,” he said rather proudly. “I was always an adventurous lad.”

But Coco was not the only adventurous one. A few days later it was Hazel who went missing. Coco had gone up. She went down.

Below the ground floor of Ponsonby Place was the cellar, though the door to it was nowadays seldom opened. The flight of steps that led down to the racks where Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby had kept his wine (when he was a man) was very steep, and the Catlady hadn't been down there for years.

But recently, Mary had taken to using the racks for storing things, and on this particular day she had gone down to fetch some cloths and some shoe polish. Unbeknownst to her, someone else slipped down too.

Mary came back up the steep steps and shut the cellar door. She got out Miss Ponsonby's bicycle and set off to do the shopping.

When she returned, she found, once again, the Catlady standing at the front door, leaning on her walking stick. This time, however, she looked delighted, her old face wreathed in smiles.

“Oh, Mary!” she cried.“It's my sister!”

“Your sister?”

“Yes, Hazel. I lost her. I couldn't find her anywhere. But someone else did find her!”

“Who?”

The Catlady pointed down at Vicky, who was sitting at her feet, looking extremely smug. “Her Most Gracious Majesty found her,” said the Catlady. “How Hazel got there I do not know, but she was in the cellar. Somehow she'd been shut in there.”

“Oh,” said Mary.

“I was getting so worried,” the Catlady said. “I looked everywhere, I listened everywhere, but as I think you know, these days neither my sight nor my hearing is what it used to be. I asked Papa and Mama but they didn't seem to understand. And then something extraordinary happened, Mary. Vicky came up to me and put a paw on my stocking—something she has never done before—and then turned and walked away, stopping and looking back every so often. Clearly, she wanted me to follow her, so I did. She led me to the cellar door, and when I opened it, there was my poor sister sitting
on the steps. How glad I was to see her, and so were Papa and Mama and Coco. And how grateful I am to Her Majesty!”

The Catlady bent down and, very respectfully, stroked Vicky's fat ginger back.

“Thank you, ma'am, thank you so much,” she said, and Vicky purred loudly.

Percival and Florence, of course, discussed this latest event in their own language.

“How in the world did the girl come to be shut in the cellar?” the Colonel asked his wife.

At that moment, Vicky came into the master bedroom. She was the only cat in the house to be allowed in that room, though normally she spent her days and nights on the Catlady's bed.

Percival and Florence, who had both
been lying on the carpet, sprang up, and Percival stood rigidly to attention like the soldier he had once been.

He waited for Vicky to speak (it was customary among all the cats not to address the Queen first but to wait to be spoken to).

“Well, Colonel,” Vicky said, “I trust that your daughter is none the worse for this latest incident?”

“She came to no harm, Your Majesty,” Percival replied, “but she might have been imprisoned for a long time had it not been for your skill in finding her, ma'am. My wife and I are truly grateful.”