The Story of Jennie- or the Abandoned (29 page)

There was no use waiting or looking any longer in the Mews. And besides, deep down, Peter had always known that even if Jennie had been angry at him she would have answered his call had she been there.

But where to search next? In a panic lest she might have returned to the hostel in the meantime, he went charging around the corner and in through the broken board, almost tearing an ear in his haste, but of course she was not there. He would even have been glad to have been abused by the two sisters once more just because they had last had contact with Jennie, but they had gone out and there were only a few strangers in the hostel, most of the residents having gone about the business of the day.

It was then the conviction came over him that he must look elsewhere, and probably far from there, that she must have left the neighbourhood which had brought her unhappiness.

He thought now that he would go back and look around their old haunts on the docks as the most likely place where Jennie might go. He moved both by day and by night, and because his mind was so occupied by his quest, Peter was not even aware what an experienced and practised London cat he had become, thanks to Jennie's teaching and training. Sights and sounds and sudden noises no longer frightened him; he erred to know how to avoid trouble automatically; he could melt away and hide at a moment's notice, instinctively, no matter where he was he always picked out and marked a place of safety to which to go in case of sudden danger, something to get under, or on top. But of course he was doing these things without realizing it at all. For right then he was going through that awful stage of seeing Jennie in every tabby cat curled up in a shop doorway, or washing in a window, or gliding across the top of a fence or hoarding.

Because the yearning for her was ever in his mind, it seemed to him that each time he turned a corner his heart leaped high with hope that he might come upon Jennie, and if there was a cat there at all tiger striped, no matter what her size, shape or colour, he suffered first from the hope-born illusion that it was Jennie and then from the oft-repeated when it was not.

And from this he passed to the stage where he had the strongest feeling that surely now he must and would find her just around the next corner, and so he would dash at full speed to get there and look. There would be nobody there, only some children playing in the gutter, or women queueing up at the fish store or the local sweet shop, or perhaps only a dog scavenging in the streets. Then the conviction would seize hold of Peter that he had just managed to miss her, that she had been there but probably had just nipped around the next corner, and that if he ran as fast as he could he might be in time to catch her there.

This sort of thing of course soon led to a state approaching exhaustion, particularly since he was not stopping to eat or drink, except as he came upon a pool of dirty water still remaining from the last rain in some depression of the street, and whatever scraps of anything edible happened to come his way during his pell-mell, headlong, conscience-driven search. He had let himself go physically and personally as well, not stopping to wash or clean up, and soon his white fur lost its gloss and became matted and dirty, his pink skin began to collect grime and itch him, and it was not long before he was the counterpart of the scrawniest, mangiest stray that ever slunk along the backwaters of London Town and the river reaches.

And still he kept on, with night merging into day and day into night again. He slept when he could not go on any longer out of sheer weariness, and wherever he happened to be, and always when he had had a little rest, there was the memory of the sweet and unforgettable face of Jennie with its white throat and soft, pink-lined muzzle, and the glowing, liquid, tender eyes, as well as all her individual mannerisms; her smile, the quick way she would look over at him to make sure that everything was well with him, her dear motions when she washed herself, her gay carriage. And there were her little weaknesses such as her family and ancestry and her desire to show off and look well before Peter's eyes, and at the same time all her strength, her lithe sureness, muscular paws and quiet, efficient action when it came to the hunt, or any kind of emergency. And it drove him on and on and on, ever searching.

When he reached the dock section once more he found that he remembered his way about somewhat better, and he went to the shack where Mr. Grims had lived on the chance that Jennie might just possibly have returned there to mourn for her friend, or drawn by her memories of the old man.

It was a grey, cold day, and raining again, when Peter went slinking along beneath the cover of the lined– up goods wagons in the late afternoon as he had that day so long ago with Jennie and thus came at last to the shack with the tin roof and the crooked-pipe chimney sticking out of it.

But, alas, what a difference. Gone were the red-blooming geraniums from either side of the door and from the windows. It looked dirty, dismal and more tumbledown than ever, and when Peter crept near and looked inside through the half-opened door he could see a mean-eyed, snivelling-looking little fellow wearing a dirty neckcloth, sitting on the cot with an Upraised gin bottle held to his mouth, and the whole place smelled of gin and sweat and dirt. And of course there was no sign of Jennie.

The man removed the bottle from his lips, and since he had drained it empty, he sent it flying through the door where it crashed into a thousand pieces almost where Peter was sitting. Had it been another inch or two to the left, it would have hit him. Peter wished it had. He dragged himself away from there..

As a kind of last hope, he found his steps turning towards the basin, east of the London docks, where the Countess of Greenock had been berthed. Surely, oh surely that was where Jennie must have gone. And the terrible part of his punishment was that each time he had such a thought about where she might be, it became at once the place where she must be and then he became all of a fever to get there, and as he went his mind would delude him with the picture of exactly where he would find Jennie, and how she would look, and what he would say to her, and what she would reply. And soon he would convince himself that it was all true and that he had only to hasten his steps to reach the Countess to find all as it was before-Mr. Strachan slashing at his dummy with his sword, Mr. Carluke cocking his fingers and firing off imaginary pistols at imaginary bad men and Indians, the crash of smashing crockery emanating from Captain Sourlies' cabin, and Jennie perched up on her favourite place-the flag locker on the after– deck.

The Countess was indeed in port, warped to her dock in the usual slovenly manner, but outside of the mournful strains of singing coming from amidships, there were no signs of life aboard her, the entire crew and officers having apparently gone ashore leaving no kind of watch whatsoever and no one aboard except Mealie, the cook.

He was sitting on a stool on deck at the head of the gangway, shining black and round-eyed, chanting a doleful blues, but his sharp and rolling eyes missed nothing, and when Peter poked his head around the corner of the gangplank and looked up, he ceased singing at once and shouted down-'Hollo, you Whitey! Hollo you. I know you. I know you. I never forget NO one. Where you been, hey? Where you gorl friend? You looking for you gorl friend, hey? She ain' been aroun' here.. . Why you both no come back.? We got plandy mouse and rot on board again.'

Peter was so stunned by the news that Jennie was not there, that for the moment there was nothing he could do but stand, almost frozen by despair. He had been so certain that Jennie would be at the ship, that this was truly the last place where she could be, and he could only look up at Mealie in silent misery.

It was astonishing how the big negro seemed to understand him. He arose from his stool, shaking his head and saying: `Don't you look at me thot way, big Whitey. I tol' you I ain' seen your gorl friend. Where you leave her, hey? Maybe she come along later . . .' Now he made clucking noises and advanced half-way down the gangplank and called: `You Whitey! You come bock and work, hey? I pay you good wages for cotching rot and mouse. Roas' lamb on Sunday and watchu like…. Plandy milk too. What you say, Whitey? You look like you plandy hongry inside …'

Now Peter became afraid that Mealie might pick him up, take him back aboard the Countess and lock him up in the galley, and so before the cook could come any nearer he turned away and ran and ran, his eyes again scalded by tears of misery and disappointment. He ran as fast and as far as he could, but it was no great distance, for it had been so long since he had eaten anything that he was quite weak and even felt that he was perhaps going a trifle light in the head since he now began to take to imagining things.

This took strange forms, such as finding himself at places with the feeling that he had been there before, and of course in the company of Jennie. Under the spell of this imagining, Peter would even turn to speak to Jennie, only to find that she was not there and the street a strange one in the wilderness of London.

He was staggering late one night, still looking, hunting and searching in the grim neighbourhood of the great warehouses and storage yards and buildings near the basins and the river by Wapping, when again he was impressed with the sense of familiarity as he passed a large hoarding advertising Bovril, not far from a pillar box. Surely he had been here before, but it, his exhausted condition he could not remember when.

He felt ill and weak, and was sure that another imagining was upon him. But he gave himself up to it because of the strong feeling that Jennie was somewhere nearby and the comfort it brought him for the moment.

He had had so many bad dreams and horrid nightmares during the endless days and nights of looking for Jennie, that he welcomed this good one that seemed to have been granted him for the moment, and this was that the drab, grimy, blackened brick wall of the warehouse along which he was dragging him– self at the moment would soon contain an aperture or hole, about the size of a dinner plate, a foot or two above the pavement, and that the grating which belonged over it would have rusted at the catches and fallen away so that if one wanted one could get out of the hole—or into it….

Yes, it was a good dream that had come over him, for sure enough, there was the so-familiar hole, metal lined, and on either side the small indentations to show where once the grating had fitted over it.

Such a dream, Peter felt sure, was meant to be followed, and with an effort he leaped upward and into the entrance. Oh yes, indeed, no more than three feet along inside the iron pipe and there was the rusted-out spot, a smaller hole leading off into the dark tunnel at the left, just as he had known it would be.

It was so good, and so comforting, not to feel quite so lost and aimless any more, to seem to be knowing where he was, or at least which way to go at the behest of this kindly, benevolent phantasy, left-now right and then left again, and if the dream as truly his friend and comforter, surely there would be the bin with a little light filtering into it from a grimy window near the top that had one pane out of it, and it would be filled with red and gilt furniture, covered with dust sheets piled right to the ceiling. In the centre would be an enormous bed with a red silk cover on it and a high canopy at one end with folds of yellow silk coming down from a kind of large oval medallion with the single letter 'N' over it in script, with a crown above….

Sweet and dear dream, thought Peter, for there indeed was the room, exactly as it had been before. And would the dream hold now, would it grant him the final grace by letting him imagine that he had but to leap up on to the red silk cover to find Jennie waiting there for him, or would he waken or return to his senses to find himself cold, hungry, miserable, wet and shivering in some wretched alley in the slums, alone and no nearer to Jennie than he had been at the beginning of his search?

For a moment almost he dared not move lest it fade, and then came the queerest feeling that he was no longer dreaming, but that maybe … maybe …

The next instant he made one leap up on to the bed, and found himself face to face with Jennie. And it was no dream. No, not even an imagining. It was true. He had found her at last.

'Jennie! Jennie!' Peter cried-'Oh, Jennie, I've looked and looked for you. Jennie, have I really found you?'

Jennie said: `Hello, Peter. I'm glad to see you. I've been waiting such a long time. I knew you'd come here in the end to find me.' And then she went over to him and touched noses and kissed his eyes. But the next moment she said: `Peter…. How thin you've grown. And your coat! Oh, my Peter, what has been happening to you? You haven't been eating. You're starved. Peter, you must let me give you some mouse at once. I've a lovely one I caught earlier in the day . . .' She leaped down to where she had cached the prize and returned to the bed with it and laid it in front of Peter. `See, he's just the right size, and nice and fat too. But don't eat too fast, Peter, if you haven't had anything for a long time.'

There was a quiet pride in her eyes when Peter carefully took it down on to the floor to eat, and even more when after he had finished half he withdrew and offered her the rest. `No, my dear,' she said, `you finish it. You need it more. I've had plenty.

Peter felt strengthened at once. He was so wildly happy at having found Jennie, at seeing her once again, or he would have been had he not felt so ashamed, and worried about how he would explain to Jennie, and what he should say and how to begin.

But somehow the final miracle happened too, for it just never came to that at all. Because when he started to wash after his meal, partly from realizing what a mess he was again and how he must look to Jennie, and partly because of his embarrassment, Jennie came over to him and said; 'Peter, you're so tired. Let me do it for you. Just lie down and close your eyes …'

It was plain to Peter now that she had forgiven him, and all the shame and misery and conscience feeling that was in him seemed to be swept away by a great flood of loving her that seemed to pour through him and dispel all the darkness, unhappiness and sorrow that had been his share for so long.