Читать книгу The Catnappers - Ann Pilling - Страница 11

Chapter Six

They didn’t notice at first, they were too busy being embarrassed, creeping around the kitchen and making their separate breakfasts. Normally they helped one another and shared things.

“Excuse me,” grunted Miss McGee, “but I need to get the sugar basin down from that shelf,” and “Excuse me,” muttered Kitty, “I need to get myself some butter from the fridge.” But in reaching for this and that, they bumped into each other. Miss McGee burst out laughing and patted Kitty’s shoulder and Kitty squeezed Miss McGee’s arm (though they were not huggy people) and they both said, “Aren’t we silly?” and the quarrel was over. They had known each other for so long, you see, and they were such good friends. Having arguments was a waste of time.

Soon they were sitting at the kitchen table making a list. Christmas was coming and everybody made lists at Christmas; there was so much to do and to buy, even when you lived very quiet lives like Kitty and Miss McGee. The first thing was to get another pudding and they decided to buy one from Mr Moat at the corner shop. He sold excellent puddings, “as good as homemade”, or so he told his customers.

Kitty said she would pay because she’d burned theirs, but Miss McGee said no, because that wasn’t right, and that they would both pay. A tiny new quarrel was just starting up when Kitty suddenly interrupted herself and said, “McGee, it’s extremely quiet. Where is Nicholas?”

Miss McGee stared down at her feet. “I don’t know, I’ve not seen him this morning. Didn’t he come in when you boiled the kettle, for your first-thing cup of tea?” (Kitty always woke early and took a cup back to bed with her, till it got light.)

“No,” Kitty said. “I thought he might be with you.” (Nicholas adored the fat pillows on Miss McGee’s bed and sometimes snuggled right underneath them, especially during cold weather.) “I’ve not seen Nicholas since—” then she stopped because the rest of the sentence was going to have been “—since I threw the saucepan lid and the wooden spoon and the nutmeg grater and we shouted.” She didn’t say any of this because it was too embarrassing.

Nicholas didn’t come in for his breakfast and the rest of the morning was spent looking for him. They looked in their bedrooms and they looked in their sitting rooms and they looked in their spare rooms. Kitty climbed up to the dark, cobwebby attic on her long legs and searched among all the empty boxes and spare rolls of this and that which might come in useful one day. She unfolded all the spare paper shopping bags which they had hoarded away, and shook them out because Nicholas liked hiding in bags. It had occurred to her that he might have decided to hibernate this winter, like hedgehogs and tortoises. The weather was very cold and going to sleep until it warmed up again was such a good idea. But she couldn’t find Nicholas.

Meanwhile, Miss McGee was searching in the cellar which ran all the way under the house. She didn’t much like it down there; it was clammy and cold and there were lots of spiders. She only went into the cellar to get her jam jars when it was time for making jellies and jams and marmalade. Nicholas liked warm, snug places. He would only be down in the cellar if someone had shut him in by accident. But nobody had.

“Nicholas!” dumpy Miss McGee called into the echoey darkness and “Nicholas!” echoed the chilly damp walls in a kind of mockery.

“Nicholas!” shouted skinny Kitty who had climbed daringly on to the roof, through the attic skylight (after all, most cats loved climbing). “Nicholas!” mimicked the red roof tiles, spitefully. Upon Golden Square and the streets all round, an unearthly quiet had fallen. Kitty closed up the skylight and went downstairs to find Miss McGee. In her heart she knew that Nicholas was nowhere in the house. He had run away, because of their noisy quarrel.

All this looking had made the two old ladies very tired so, after their lunch, they dozed in their chairs. But when the church clock in the square bonged loudly, four times, they didn’t put the kettle on for tea, which was their usual habit, they wrapped up warmly and went walking in the cold December air. Miss McGee went towards one end of the little town and Kitty went towards the other.

Up and down the wintry streets they plodded, calling and calling for their little lost cat. They called “Nicholas” high and they called it low. Miss McGee used her silky-soft voice, the kind she used when she was spoiling Nicholas and had a special treat for him, and Kitty used her silly, high-pitched voice which always brought him running in from the garden because it meant food. But no cat came bounding along in response to either of these voices, and no one at all had seen him. They stopped every person they met and asked.

Then, when it was almost dark, and they were walking disconsolately to meet each other from opposite ends of Golden Square, they saw what looked very like a fluffy little cat, all gingery pale and making a rolling, haphazard progress along the pavement towards them.

“Nicholas!” exclaimed Kitty with joy and she bent down to stroke him. But because of the rain and the mist, she wasn’t wearing her spectacles, and what rubbed up against her legs wasn’t a nice, warm, furry thing at all, it was a big, wet, torn, brown paper bag that the wind had blown along the pavement. “Ugh!” she cried, and kicked it away. Normally she would have scrunched it up very small and taken it to the nearest litter bin, but she didn’t. Instead, she pretended she had something in her eye and she turned away from Miss McGee who had been scurrying up, all hopeful. She wanted to hide her tears.

“Now come on, Kitty,” Miss McGee said sensibly when she saw the bag, and she tucked her arm into her friend’s. “It’s no good crying over spilt milk.”

This is nothing to do with spilt milk, Kitty said to herself, while allowing Miss McGee to propel her along the pavements of Golden Square. It’s to do with a burnt pudding and throwing pan lids and shouting and a lost cat. But she didn’t say any of this out loud because Miss McGee was being so kind and, after all, it was Kitty who had burned the pudding and made the quarrel. So instead she said what, in her heart, she did not actually believe, which was, “He’ll come back, McGee, when he’s forgiven us.”

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” murmured Miss McGee, not believing it either, because Nicholas always came in very promptly for his meals, he was a greedy little cat. Something must have happened to him, something was wrong.

As they passed Number 26, the front door suddenly opened and the tall lady with the curly fair hair, the one whom Kitty had taken to be an angry, all-in-red monster, came out and peered down the street. She held Timothy Joe in her arms and he was wearing white pyjamas with blue dots on. In a lighted window, they could see the head of a great, black rocking horse.

Kitty tried to slow Miss McGee down. “Hello,” she called out in a friendly voice. “Horrid old evening, isn’t it?” And she was just going to ask the lady if she’d seen a cat resembling Nicholas when, having looked quickly down the street again, to left and to right, the red lady went inside and shut the door with a loud slam.

“Charming!” said Miss McGee, quickening her pace so that Kitty was almost sliding after her along the pavement. “If that’s the kind of neighbour she is, then I don’t want neighbours, thank you very much.”

But Kitty was thinking how very sad the lady’s face had looked, and how sad it had looked in the garden, under the crossness. “I think they might have some sorrow, McGee,” she whispered. But her friend didn’t hear, she was too busy trying to find her door key in one of her many pockets. She believed you could never have too many pockets in your clothes, a view with which Kitty didn’t always agree, though if she had had two pockets in her skirt the day before, she would have been able to put Big Time into one of them and taken it with her into Golden Square. Then the pudding wouldn’t have burned. Then Nicholas wouldn’t have run away.