The Story of Jennie- or the Abandoned (26 page)

The spell was broken by the little creature herself who skipped three steps sideways and three steps back again, bushed her tail and said, `Good evening! I know it's morning, but I don't care. I say what I please. In the evening I say 'good morning" if I feel like it, and I never say "good afternoon." Well?'

The last being a direct question addressed to him, Peter felt he must reply, but was so bewildered by the charm of the cat as well as her odd way of speech that he could think of nothing to say but `Good evening, Miss,' which brought another shriek from her and this time she jumped straight up into the air, and when she came down she cried-Oh, I say, you are going to be fun. My name is Lulu, but all my friends call me Fishface for short. That's because when I eat bloaters, or kippers, or have a little hake, brill, cod or pollock my breath always smells of fish. Here, I'll show you. SMELL?' And she came over quite close to Peter and breathed in his face. The aroma of fish was unmistakable, but somehow, perhaps now that he was a cat, Peter did not find it unpleasant.

He smiled and said, `My name is Peter, and-' but could get no further, for Lulu made a backwards and forwards dash almost simultaneously and cried `Peter, Peter! There was a poem that started that way, but I've forgotten the rest. Anyway, I think up my own poetry. I am thinking of one now about thimbles. Very well then, I'll recite it for you,' and here she sat down with her tail folded about her and a most sanctified look on her face that reminded Peter of some of the saints he had seen on the stained-glass windows in church, and recited as follows”

`Thimble,

Thimble, Thimble,

Thimble, THIMBLE!

`You see,' Lulu explained to him after she had finished, `unlike most poetry, it ALL rhymes. Whoooooeeee!' With a leap and a bound she was away, chasing a wholly imaginary leaf, whirling, striking at it with her swift, dark paws, then finally imagining that it had been blown back close to Peter where she landed on it with a terrific pounce and crouched there, looking up intensely into Peter's face as she said: 'Do you like tea? Do you like coffee? I love olives. Wasn't it a nice day next Thursday?'

'Never mind answering!' she cried in her deep voice before Peter could even so much as think of a reply, and got up and danced away from him with one shoulder all hunched up and crooked-'Come on, dance with me, all sideways and twist about. Up you go, and down you go, and AROUND you go; now RUN!!'

Swept away, Peter found himself dancing sideways beside her, then leaping up into the air and turning all about before he came down, and then when he landed on the pavement, running, running, running with her as hard as he could. He could not remember when he had ever had so much fun or been in the presence of such a wholly fascinating and enchanting creature.

They did this several times, after which Lulu threw herself down on her side, stared at Peter out of luminous blue eyes and announced: 'Of course, you know I'm Siamese. My father was a King and my mother a Queen, and all my brothers and and sisters Princes and Princesses. I am a princess myself. Aren't you glad?' And again, before Peter could reply that he was indeed very glad, she half sat up and recited as though it was something she had once learned out of a book-'I'm not like a cat; I'm not like a dog; I'm more like a monkey, really, but mostly I'm like ME, and nothing else. I get along with EVERY– BODY.' Then she concluded rather irrelevantly-'I can wear hair ribbons,' and got up and began walking down the block in the direction of Portland Street. When she had proceeded some distance, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

'Coming?' she called to Peter.

Without a second thought, indeed, he could not have helped himself had he wished it, so enchanted with her had he become, Peter went trotting after her.

'Where are we going?' he asked.

'Oh,' cried Lulu with one of her little side jumps. `How will we be able to tell until we get there? Some place exciting. I haven't been off like this for ages. I'm so glad I found you. We can do everything together …'

Progress with Lulu, Peter found, was wonderful, enthralling, exciting and somewhat nerve-wracking. One moment she would be shrieking with laughter and leaping along the street stiff legged, or flying along the top of a fence at full speed, her ears laid back, tail streaming out behind her, commanding Peter to a game of 'Follow My Leader,' and the next she would be sitting down in front of a perfectly strange house, miserably sad and woebegone, with the tears streaming from her magnificent eyes and announcing to Peter in heartbreaking tones that she was all alone in a strange country, thousands and thousands of miles away from Siam and all the Siamese. 'You don't know, you cannot know what it is to be so far away, so very far away from everyone …'

Peter felt his own heart would break too, she was so pathetic in her plight and separation from her loved ones. He tried to comfort her by saying, 'Oh, poor Lulu. Tell me about your far-off home and where you were born. Perhaps talking about it will make you feel better.'

'Who me?' Lulu chirped, her tears as suddenly drying up as they had started. 'Why, I was born in London, of course. Where else would anybody of any importance be born? My whole family, too. We have a pedigree longer than our tails. I told you, all Kings and Queens, didn't I? Have you a pedigree? Well, never mind. Your being cute makes up for a lot of things. You came along at just the right moment. You know, I was so bored.' Here her hoarse voice sank to a quite confidential whisper-'I live with very rich people on the Square. No. 35. VERY rich. He has Shares. Don't look so sad, Peter. I'm really quite marvellously happy now.' And off she would go, leaping, twisting, dancing and shouting at the top of her lungs, and of course Peter would be after her full tilt, laughing madly at her funny ways.

Thus in many starts and stops they found themselves at last, after climbing steadily for some time and proceeding up many curvy blocks of small houses one just like another, on a sort of plateau, an open space with a rail around it, almost like being on the top of a mountain. For when you looked over the edge, there was all of London spread out beneath your feet and stretching for mile upon mile of streets and houses and spires, and the silver winding of the Thames, and the millions and millions of chimneypots on the rooftops, the endless rows of grey houses, and in the distance the occasional spots of green that marked the little parks in the squares. There was the big patch of green that was Regent's Park, another that was Hyde Park, and a third that was Kensington Gardens; tall chimneys and cranes far off that marked the docks and factories and warehouses on the Thames and, after that, the whole trailing off and vanishing into a kind of blueish haze of distance and mist and smoke.

`Hampstead Heath!' Lulu announced. `Isn't it picturesque? I often like to come up here just to meditate,' and with that she threw herself down on the ground, closed her eyes and was quiet for just five seconds, when she was up again, gave herself a couple of fierce and energetic washes on both sides of her neck and said, `There! Now that I've meditated, where shall we go next? Oh, I want to have fun, fun, fun! One can't be serious all the time you know …'

It was well on towards noon, for the journey up to the Heath had taken considerable time, and Peter ventured to remind Lulu that it was getting late. `Oughtn't you to be thinking about getting back?' he asked-`I mean, your people, you know. Won't they miss you?'

Lulu stopped and looked at him as though she could not believe her ears.

`Miss me? Of course they will. They'll bust when I don't come back. Why, that's half the sport. What fun would it be if they didn't care? I'm sure they'll have notified Mr. Wiggo the Constable already. They hate me to be out. Sometimes I don't come back for days if I don't feel like it. I think I don't feel like it right now. I think I feel like staying away for maybe three whole days, just to see what that would be like. I've never done that before. They will be upset. Oh listen, Peter. It sounds like music somewhere. Let's go THERE!'

It was quite true. As Peter pitched his ears forward to listen, he could hear borne on the wind the strains of the gay and strident music that sometimes comes from a carousal. Some where in the vicinity there was a Fun Fair.

They set off, following the direction of the sound, and sure enough pretty soon they came to a large collection of tents from which gay pennants were flying, booths, roundabouts, coconut shies, ice-cream counters, aeroplane whirls, auto dodgems, shooting galleries, shove-ha'penny boards, darts games, sideshows with dancing girls, fortune tellers, strength-testing machines, and all the gay and noisy paraphernalia of the itinerant Carnival.

There were crowds of people thronging the fairgrounds. `Hurry, hurry!' Lulu shouted to Peter, scampering along and looking back over her shoulder at him every so often. `Isn't this luck? I've never been to anything like this. I'll bet there are all sorts of good things to eat inside. Here we are. You lead the way just in case anything should go wrong, and I'll follow you…'

Peter had been to a small fun fair once when he had been by the seashore on holiday, but he had certainly never been to one by himself, that is, without somebody holding him by the hand and telling him where to go and where not to go, and of course never had he been anywhere in the company of a creature so beautiful, charming and wholly captivating as Lulu.

They went by a man who specialized in selling big inflated balloons attached to a stick coloured red, yellow, blue and green for the young folk, and of course Lulu had to reach up and bat one with her paw, and since she had neglected, or even out of pure mischief refrained from pulling in her needle-sharp claws, the balloon, a large crimson one, went off with an appalling explosion, knocking Lulu head over heels and frightening her so that when she got to her feet she tried to go in three directions at once, with the result that she went nowhere at all, but remained practically in one spot, causing Peter to shout with laughter. But the man who was selling the balloons did not think it was at all amusing to have a sixpenny one ruined and dangling a limp bit of torn rubber on the end of a stick, and he snatched it up and would have beaten Lulu with it except at just that moment she found her feet and went darting away like an arrow out of a bow with Peter after her, still laughing. When he caught up with her finally, however, she was furious at him, not only for laughing at her, but also for breaking the balloon which she accused him of having done just to frighten her, and which of course was quite untrue.

But so under her spell was Peter that he did not even mind that, though when he had been a boy, nothing had made him quite so miserable or unhappy as to be unjustly accused. Instead, he apologized to her just as though he had done it, and to make up for it offered to take her where they might get some ice cream.

Lulu, who never seemed to be able to stay in any mood very long, at once stopped being angry and even rubbed up against Peter twice, most lovingly, and said: `Ice cream! Oh, ice cream! I just LOVE ice cream. If you can get me some ice cream I'll never forget you as long as I live,' and then she added quickly: `You know, we have ice cream every day at our house, every single day and twice on Sunday. That's because my people are so rich. Shares, you know. Or did I tell you?'

Peter did not quite believe this, else why would she be so very eager to have some, but he was not able to find fault with anything that Lulu chose to do or say, and besides, he did think he knew where to get it. His sharp eyes, now trained never to miss an opportunity for a snack or a full meal, had noticed that right in the vicinity of where they had stopped was an ice-cream booth served by a girl in a white apron, with bright yellow hair the colour of straw, jaws that never stood still, and eyes that also moved constantly roving over the crowd. The aw movement no doubt was due to the use of American chewing gum, but since her eyes were constantly wandering over the crowd looking for a personable young man she did not quite pay attention to what she was doing, with the result that every time she served up a gobbet of ice cream, which she got out of a cylinder-shaped tin with a metal scoop and flopped it on to the wafer cornet before handing it to a customer in exchange for three-pence, large dribbets of it would fall to the floor behind the counter at her feet. It was on these drippings that Peter intended to concentrate.

The problem was how to get behind the counter without being noticed, but that was not too difficult when it developed that it was only oilcloth around the bottom of the booth, and not fastened too securely at that. In a moment he had showed Lulu where to nip under, and only after she had achieved it safely without attracting any attention did he follow her himself.

There was one opening on the other side by the feet of the girl and this was immediately filled by Lulu whose dark tail stuck out straight behind her as she squatted there and licked and lapped and sucked up all the ices that dropped down beside her like manna from heaven. While Peter waited patiently for his turn, she had some chocolate and vanilla and some cherry flavour, then a bit of pineapple and strawberry, followed by orange, pistache, coffee and lemon, as well as raspberry, peach and blackberry. This took quite a long time, as sometimes there would be a considerable wait between customers and nothing would come down. But it was steady feasting at that, and from where he sat and waited, Peter was sure that he could actually see Lulu's sides distending.

Had Peter thought of Jennie at that moment, which he did not, he might have wondered that Lulu had not offered to make a little room for him so that he too could enjoy the delights his wits had provided. But the sad truth was that not once since he had first laid eyes on Lulu had Jennie crossed Peter's mind. He was completely bedazzled by the gay, fascinating and irresponsible little Siamese.

Not only did Lulu fail to offer to share, but when her sides were really so ballooned out that Peter was beginning to be afraid that she might burst, she emitted a resounding burp, followed by a deep sigh, and turning away from the hole said to Peter: `Oh! I simply couldn't lap another tongueful. That was delish. Where do we go now? I think I'd like to see the animals if it was quite safe. Come on. You lead the way. You're so clever.'