Jennie

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He had wanted a cat ever since he could remember, which was many years ago at the age of four – when he had gone to stay on a farm near Gerrards Cross, and had been taken into the kitchen and shown a basketful of kittens, orange and white balls of fluff, and the ginger-coloured mother who beamed with pride until her face was quite as broad as it was long, and licked them over with her tongue one after the other. He was allowed to put his hand on her. She was soft and warm, and a queer kind of throbbing was going on inside of her, which later he learned was called purring, and meant that she was comfortable and happy.

From then on he dearly wished for a cat of his own.

However, he was not allowed to have one.

They lived in a small flat in a Mews off Cavendish Square. Peter’s father, Colonel Brown, who came home occasionally on leave, did not mind if Peter had a cat, but his mother said that there was enough dust and dirt from the street in a small place, and not enough room to move around without having a cat in, and besides, Scotch Nanny didn’t like cats and was afraid of them. It was important to Peter’s mother that Nanny be humoured in the matter of cats, so that she would stay and look after Peter.

All of these things Peter knew and understood and put up with because that was how it was in his world. However, this did not stop his heart from being heavy, because his mother, who was young and beautiful, never seemed to have much time for him, or prevent him yearning hungrily for a cat of his own.

He was friends with all or most of the cats on the Square, the big black one with the white patch on his chest and green eyes as large around as shilling pieces, who belonged to the caretaker of the little garden in Cavendish Square close to the Mews, the two greys who sat unblinking in the window of Number 5 throughout most of the day, the ginger cat with the green eyes who belonged to Mrs Bobbit, the caretaker who lived down in the basement of Number 11, the tortoiseshell cat with the drooping ear next door, and the Boie de Rose Persian who slept on a cushion in the window of Number 27 most of the time, but who was brought into the Square for an airing on clear warm days.

And then of course there were the countless strays who inhabited the alley and the bombed-out house behind the Mews, or squeezed through the railings into the park, tigers and tabbies, black and whites and lemon yellows, tawnies and brindles, slipping in and out behind the dustbins, packets of waste paper, and garbage containers, fighters, yowlers, slinkers, scavengers, homeless waifs, old ’uns, and kittens, going nervously about the difficult business of gaining a living from the harsh and heedless city.

These were the ones that Peter was always dragging home, sometimes kicking and clawing in terror under his arm, or limp and more than willing to go where it was warm and there might be a meal and the friendly touch of a human hand.

Once in a while, when he evaded Nanny, he managed to smuggle one into the cupboard of the nursery and keep it for as much as two whole days and nights before it was discovered.

Then Nanny, who had her orders from Mrs Brown as to what she was to do when a cat was found on the premises, would open the door on to the Mews and cry – “Out! Scat, you dirty thing!” or fetch a broom with which to chase it. Or if that did not work and the stowaway merely cowered in a corner, she would pick it up by the scruff of the neck, hold it away from her, and fling it out into the street. After that, she would punish Peter, though he could not be worse hurt than he was through losing his new friend and remembering how happy it had been safe in his arms.

Peter had even learned not to cry any more when this happened. One could cry inside of one without making a sound, he had found out.

He was feeling that way now that he was sick, only this was different because he seemed to want to cry out this time, but found that he could not utter a sound. He did not know why this should be except it was a part of the queer way things had been since whatever it was had happened to him when he had darted away from Nanny who was talking to the postman, and run across the road after the striped kitten.

Actually, it was a coal lorry that had come speeding around the corner of the Square that had struck Peter and knocked him down just as he had stepped off the kerb without looking and had run in front of it, but what happened after that, the hue and cry, the people that gathered after the accident, Nanny’s crying and wailing, the policeman who picked him up and carried him into the house, the sending for the doctor and the trying to find his mother, and later, the trip to the hospital, Peter was not to know for a long, long time. So many strange things were to happen to him first.

For, unquestionably, events seemed to be taking an odd turn what with night appearing to follow day at such rapid intervals that it was almost like being at the cinema with the screen going all dark and light and Nanny’s face seeming to be on top of him first and then sliding away into the distance only to return once more with the lenses of her spectacles shining like the headlamps of an approaching motor-car.

But that something really queer was about to take place Peter knew when after Nanny had faded into the distance and his bed had seemed to rock like a little boat in the waves and when she had begun to return again, it was no longer the face of Nanny, but that of the tabby striped kitten that had been washing itself by the park railings and that he had wanted to catch and hug.

Indeed, it was this dear little cat now grown to enormous size, sitting at his bedside smiling at him in a friendly manner, its eyes as large as soup tureens, large, luminous, and shiny, and resembling Nanny’s spectacles in that he could see himself mirrored in them.

But what was puzzling to him was that although he knew it to be himself reflected therein, still it did not seem to look like him at all as he was accustomed to seeing himself when he passed the tall cheval mirror in the hallway, or even in Nanny’s glasses in which he could frequently catch a reflection of his curly head of close-cropped auburn hair, round eyes, upturned button nose, stubborn chin, and cheeks as red-and-white and rounded as two crab-apples.

At first Peter did not try to make out exactly who or what he looked like because it was pleasant and soothing just to lose himself in the cool green pools of the kitten’s eyes, so calm and deep and clear that it seemed like swimming about in an emerald lake. It felt delightful to be there bathed in the beautiful colour and surrounded by the warmth of the smile of the kitten.

But then soon he began to notice the effect it was beginning to have upon him.

Sometimes the picture would be hazy and then for a moment it would grow quite clear so that he could see how the shape of his head had altered and not only the shape but the colour. For whereas he was familiar with the reddish-brown curly hair and apple cheeks, his fur now seemed to be quite short, straight and snow white.

“Why,” said Peter to himself, “I said ‘fur’ instead of hair. What a strange thing to do. It must be looking into the cat’s eyes that is changing me into a cat, if that is what is happening.”

But he continued to look there because he found that for the moment he could not take his gaze elsewhere, and when it grew hazy, his image seemed to quiver as though things were happening to it from inside, and each time it grew clear he noted new details, the queerly slanted eyes that were now no longer grey but a light blue, the nose that had changed from an uptilted little sixpenny-bit into a rose-pink triangle leading to a mouth that was no more like his than anything he could think of. It now curved downwards over long, sharp white teeth, and from either side sprouted sets of enormous, bristly white whiskers.

The head was square, the slant-set eyes large and staring, and the sharp-pointed ears stood up like dormers. “Oh,” thought Peter, “that is how I would look if I were a cat. How I wish I were one.” And then he closed his eyes, because this queer, unusual image of himself was now so clear and unmistakable that it was a little frightening. To wish to be a cat was one thing. To seem very much to be one was quite another.

When he opened them, it seemed for a moment as if he had broken the spell of the cat’s-eye mirror, for he was able to avoid staring into it and instead managed to look down at his paws. They were pure white, large and furred, with quaint, soft pinkish pads on the underside and claws curved like Turkish swords and needle-sharp at the end.

To his astonishment, Peter saw that he was no longer lying in the bed, but on top of it. His whole body, now long and slender, was just as soft and white as the ermine muff his mother used to carry when she dressed up and went out in the winter, and what seemed to be a blank and eyeless snake curving, moving, twitching and lashing at the end of it was his own tail. From ear-tip to tail-tip he was clad in spotless white fur.

The tiger-striped kitten, who with his smile and staring eyes had apparently worked this mischief on him, had vanished and was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was only Nanny, ten times larger than she had ever appeared before, standing over the bed shouting in a voice so loud that it hurt his ears –

“Drat the child! He’s dragged in anither stray off the street! Shoo! Scat! Get out!”

Peter cried out – “But, Nanny! I’m Peter. I’m not a cat. Nanny, don’t, please!”

“Rail at me, will ye?” Nanny bellowed. “’Tis the broom I’ll take to ye then.” She ran down the hall, and returned carrying the broom. “Now then. Out ye go!”

Peter was cold with fright. He could only cower down at the end of the bed while Nanny beat at him with the broom, and cry: “Nanny, Nanny, no, no! Oh, Nanny!”

“I’ll miaow you!” Nanny stormed, dropped the broom, and picked Peter up by the scruff of the neck so that he hung there from her hand, front and hind legs kicking, while he cried miserably.

Holding him as far away from her as she could, Nanny ran down the hallway muttering, “And it’s to bed without any supper for Peter when I find him. How often have I told him he’s no’ to bring in any more cats!” until she reached the ground floor entrance to the flat from the Mews.

Then she pitched Peter out into the street and slammed the door shut.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_6faa907e-389e-5bd0-a0db-e69ea10dc889)

Flight from Cavendish Square (#ulink_6faa907e-389e-5bd0-a0db-e69ea10dc889)

IT WAS MISERABLY cold and wet out in the Mews, for when the sun had gone down a chill had come into the air, clouds had formed, and it had begun to rain in a heavy, soaking, steady downpour.

Locked outside, Peter let out such a howl of anguish and fright that the woman who lived opposite said to her husband, “Goodness, did you hear that? It sounded just like a child!”

He parted the curtains to look, and Peter cried – or thought he cried to him – “Oh, let me in! Please let me in! Nanny’s put me out, me-out, me-out!”

Peter then heard the husband say as he dropped the curtains: “It’s only another stray, a big white tom. Where do they all come from? You never get a minute’s rest with their yowling and caterwauling. Ah there! Boo! Scat! Go ’way!”

The boy who delivered the evening newspapers came by on his bicycle, and hearing the shouting to scare away the cat outside the door, decided to assist him in the hope of earning a tip.

He rode his bicycle straight at Peter, crying “Oi! Garn! Scat! Get along there!” and then, leaning from the saddle, struck Peter across the back with a folded-up newspaper. Peter ran blindly from this assault, and a moment later, with a roar and a rumble, something enormous and seemingly as big as a house went by on wheels, throwing up a curling wave of muddy water that struck him in the flank as he scampered down the Mews into Cavendish Square, soaking right through his fur to the skin underneath.

He had not yet had time even to look about him and see what kind of a world this was into which he had been so rudely and suddenly catapulted.

It was like none he had ever encountered before, and it struck terror to his heart.

It was a place that seemed to consist wholly of blind feet clad in heavy boots or clicking high heels, and supplied with legs that rose up out of them and vanished into the dark, rainy night above, all rushing hither and thither, unseeing and unheeding. Equally blind but infinitely more dangerous were wheels of enormous size that whizzed, rumbled or thundered by always in twos, one behind the other. To be caught beneath one of those meant to be squashed flatter than the leopard-skin rug in their living-room.

Not that the feet weren’t of sufficient danger to one in the situation in which Peter now found himself, cowering on the wet, glistening pavement of the Square, standing on all fours, and not quite ten inches high. Eyeless, and thus unable to see where they were going, the shoes came slashing and hurtling by from all directions, and no pair at the same pace.

One of them stepped on his tail, and a new and agonising pain he had never felt before shot through Peter and forced an angry and terrified scream from his throat. The foot that had done this performed an odd kind of slithering and sliding dance with its partner for a moment, while down from the darkness above thundered a voice: “Dash the beast! I might have broken my neck over him. Go on! Clear out of here before somebody hurts himself!”

And the partner foot leaped from the pavement and flung itself at Peter’s ribs and shoulders where it landed a numbing blow.

In sheer terror Peter began to run now, without knowing where he was going or what the end was to be.

It seemed as though suddenly all London had become his enemy, and everything that had formerly been so friendly, interesting and exciting, the sounds, the smells, the gleam of lights from the shop windows, the voices of people, and the rush and bustle of traffic in the streets, all added to the panic that began to grip him.

For while he knew that he still thought and felt like and was Peter, yet he was no longer the old Peter he used to know who went about on two legs and was tall enough to be able to reach things down from over the fireplace without standing on tiptoes. Oh no. That Peter was gone and in his place was one who was running on all fours, his ears thrown back and flattened against his head, his tail standing straight out behind him, dashing wildly, hardly looking or knowing where he was going through the rainswept streets of London.

Already he was far from his own neighbourhood or anything that might have looked familiar, and racing now through brightly lighted and crowded thoroughfares, now through pitch-black alleys and crooked lanes. Everything was terrifying to him and filled him with fear.

There was, for instance, the dreadful business of the rain.

When Peter had been a boy, he had loved the rain and had been happiest when he had been out in it. He liked the feel of it on his cheeks and on his hair, the rushing sounds it made tumbling down from the sky, and the cool, soft touch of it as it splashed on to his face and then ran down the end of his nose in little droplets that he could catch and taste by sticking out his lower lip.

But now that he seemed to be a cat, the rain was almost unbearable.

It soaked through his thick fur, leaving it matted and bedraggled, the hairs clinging together in patches so that all their power to give warmth and protection was destroyed and the cold wind that was now lashing the rain against the sides of the shops and houses penetrated easily to his sensitive skin, and in spite of the fact that he was tearing along at top speed he felt chilled to the marrow.

Too, the little pads at the bottom of his feet were thin and picked up the feel of the cold and damp.

He did not know what he was running away from the most – the rain, the blows and bruises, or the fear of the thing that was happening to him.

But he could not stop to rest or find shelter even when he felt so tired from running that he thought he could not move another step. For everyone and everything in the city seemed to be against him.

Once he paused to catch his breath beneath a kind of chute leading from a wagon and which served to keep the rain off him somewhat, when with a sudden terrible rushing roar like a landslide of stones and boulders rolling down a mountainside, coal began to pour down the chute from the tail-gate in the wagon, and in an instant Peter was choking and covered with black coal dust.

It worked itself into his soaked fur, streaking it with black, and got into his eyes and nose and mouth and lungs. And besides, the awful noise started his heart to beating in panic again. He had never been afraid of noises before, not even the big ones like bombs and cannon fire when he had been a little boy in the blitz.

He had not yet had time to be aware that sound had quite a different meaning to him now. When noises were too loud it was like being beaten about the head and he could now hear dozens of new ones he had never heard before. The effect of a really thunderous one was to make him forget everything and rush off in a blind panic to get away from it so that they would not hurt his ears and head any more.

And so he darted away again to stop for a moment under a brightly lighted canopy where at least he was out of the dreadful rain. But even this respite did not last long, for a girl’s voice from high above him complained:

“Oh! That filthy beast! He’s rubbed up against me, and look what he’s done to my new dress!”

It was true. Peter had accidentally come too close to her, and now there was a streak of wet coal grime at the bottom of her party gown. Again the hoarse cries of “Shoo! Scat! Get out! Pack off! Go ’way!” were raised against him, and once more the angry feet came charging at him, this time joined by several umbrella handles that came down from above and sought to strike him.

To escape them, shivering and shaking, his heart beating wildly from fright and weariness, Peter ran under an automobile standing at the kerb where they could not reach him.

It was to be only a temporary sanctuary from rain and pursuit, and an unhappy one at that, as the water was now pouring through the gutters in torrents. For the next moment from directly over Peter’s head, there sounded the most appalling and ear-splitting series of explosions mingled with a grinding and clashing of metals as well as a shattering wail of the horn. Hot oil and petrol dripped down on Peter, who was nearly numb with terror from the shock of the noise. Summoning strength from he knew not where, he darted off again, and just in time, as the car started to move. He seemed to have struck a kind of second wind of panic strength, for he ran and ran and ran, bearing towards the darker and more twisted streets where there was less wheeled traffic to menace him and less likely to be humans abroad to abuse him.

And thus he passed on into the poorer section where the streets were dirtier and horrible smells arose from the gutters to poison his nostrils and make him feel sick, mingled with the odour of coffee and tea and spices that came from the closed-up shops. And nowhere was there any shelter, or friendly human voice, or hand stretched forth to help him.

Hunger was now added to the torments that beset him, hunger and the knowledge that he was fast approaching the end of his strength. But rather than stop running and face new dangers, Peter was determined to keep on until he dropped. Then he would lie there until he died.

He ran. He stopped. He started again. He faltered and kept on. He thought his eyes would burst from his head, and his chest was burning from his effort to draw breath. But ever when he came to pause, something happened to drive him on – a door banging, a shout, a sign waving in the wind, some new noise assaulting his sensitive ears, dark threatening shapes of buildings, a policeman glistening in his tall helmet and rain cape, hideous bursts of music from wireless sets in upper-storey windows, a cabbage flung at him that went bounding along the pavement like a head without a body, drunken feet staggering out of a pub door, a bottle thrown that crashed into a hundred pieces on the pavement close to him and showered him with glass.

He kept on as best he could, but running only weakly now as exhaustion crept up on him.

But the neighbourhood had changed again, the little shops and the lighted upstairs windows were gone, and Peter now entered a forbidding area of huge black sprawling buildings, of blank walls and deserted streets, of barred doors and iron gates, and long, wet, slippery steel rails he knew were railway tracks.

The yellow street lamps shone wetly on the towering sides of the warehouses and behind them the docks and the sides of great ships in the Pool, for it was to this section of London down by the Thames that Peter’s wild flight had taken him.

And there, just as he felt that he could not run or stagger another step, Peter came upon a building in which the street light showed the door standing slightly ajar. And the next moment he had slipped inside.

It was a huge warehouse piled high with sacks of grain, which gave forth a warm, comfortable, sweetish smell. There was straw on the floor and the sacks were firm and dry.

Using his sharp, curved claws to help him, Peter pulled himself up on to a layer of sacks. The rough jute felt good against his soaked fur and skin. With another sack against his back, it was almost warm. His limbs trembling with weariness, he stretched out and closed his eyes.

At that moment a voice close to him said: “Trespassing, eh? All right, my lad. Outside. Come on. Quick! Out you go!”

It was not a human voice, yet Peter understood him perfectly. He opened his eyes. Although there was no illumination in the warehouse, he found he could see clearly by the light of the street lamp outside.

The speaker was a big yellow tomcat with a long, lean, stringy body, a large head as square as a tiger’s, and an ugly, heavy scar running straight across his nose.

Peter said: “Please, I can’t. Mayn’t I stay here a little while? I’m so tired—”

The cat looked at him out of hard yellow eyes and growled, “You heard me, chum. I don’t like your looks. Pack off!”

“But I’m not hurting anything,” Peter protested. “All I want to do is rest a little and get dry. Honestly, I won’t touch a thing—”

“You won’t touch a thing,” mocked the yellow cat. “That’s rich. I’ll wager you won’t. I work here, son. We don’t allow strangers about these premises. Now get out before I knock you out.”

“I won’t,” said Peter, his stubborn streak suddenly showing itself.

“Oh, you won’t, won’t you?” said the yellow tom softly, and gave a low growl. Then, before Peter’s eyes, he began to swell as though somebody were pumping him up with a bicycle pump. Larger and larger he grew, all lumpy, crooked and out of plumb.

Peter continued to protest: “I won’t go. There’s plenty of room in here, and besides—” but that was as far as he got, for with a scream of rage the yellow cat launched his attack.

His first lightning buffet to Peter’s head knocked him off the pile of sacks on to the ground, his second sent him rolling over and over. Peter had never dreamed that anything or anyone his size could hit so hard. His head was reeling from the two blows, and he was sick and dizzy. The floor seemed to be spinning around him; he tried to stand up, but his legs gave way and he fell over on his side, and at that moment the yellow tom, teeth bared, hurled himself upon him.

What saved Peter was that he was so limp from the first punishment he had taken that he gave with the force of the attack, so that the big bully rolled with him towards the door. Nevertheless he felt teeth sink into his ear and the needle-sharp claws rip furrows in his side. Kick, kick, kick, one-two-three, and it was like thirty knife thrusts tearing his skin. More blows rained upon his bruised skull. Over and over they rolled, until suddenly they were out of the door and in the street.

Half blinded by the blood that had run into his eyes, Peter felt rather than saw the yellow cat stalk back to the warehouse door, but he heard his hard, mocking voice saying: “And don’t come back. Because the next time you do, I’ll surely kill you.”

The water running in the gutter helped to revive him a little, but only for a moment. He knew that he was bleeding from many wounds; he could hardly see out of his eyes, there was a rip in his ear, and he felt as though every bone in his body was broken. He dragged himself on a hundred yards or so. There was a hoarding advertising Bovril a little further down the street, and he tried to reach it to crawl behind it, but his strength and his senses failed him before he got there. He fell over on his side by a pillar box, with the rain pouring down in torrents and bounding up from the pavement in glistening drops. And there Peter lay quite still.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2f1eea00-89d7-5907-953f-1a1c875c5262)

The Emperor’s Bed (#ulink_2f1eea00-89d7-5907-953f-1a1c875c5262)

WHEN PETER OPENED his eyes again, it was daylight and he knew that he was not dead. He was also aware of something strange, namely that he was no longer in the same place where he had fallen the night before shortly before he had lost his senses.

He remembered that there had been a hoarding with a poster, a pillar box, and a long, low wall, and now there were none of these to be seen. Instead, he found himself lying on a soft mattress on an enormous bed that had a red silk cover over it and a huge canopy at one end with folds of yellow silk coming down from a sort of oval with the single letter ‘N’ on it, written in a manner and with a kind of a crown over it that Peter found vaguely familiar.

But now he was only concerned with the wonderful comfort of the great bed, the fact that he was warm and dry, even though he ached from head to foot, and wondering how he had got to where he was.

For now that his eyes were fully opened, he noticed that he was in a dark, high-ceilinged chamber into which only a little light filtered from a small grimy window at the top with one pane out – it was really more a bin than a chamber, because it had no door and it was filled with furniture of every description, most of it covered with dust sheets, and piled to the ceilings, though in some cases the covers had slipped down and you could see the gilt and the brocade coverings of chairs and sofas. There were a lot of cobwebs and spider webs about, and it smelled musty and dusty.

All the horrors of the night before came back to Peter, the pursuit, the noises, the hounding, and the fright, the terrible mauling he had suffered at the hands of the yellow tomcat and, above all, his plight. Turned into a cat in some mysterious manner and thrown out into the street by Nanny by mistake – how was she to know that he was really Peter? – he might never again see his mother and father, his home, and Scotch Nanny from Glasgow who, except for hating cats, was a dear Nanny and good to him within the limits of a grown-up. And yet the wonderful feel of the bed and the soft silk under him was such that he could not resist a stretch, even though it hurt him dreadfully, and as he did so, to his surprise a small motor seemed to come alive in his throat and began to throb.

From somewhere behind him a soft voice said, “Ah well, that’s better. I’m glad you’re alive. I wasn’t sure at all. But I say, you are a mess!”

Startled, for the memory of his encounter with the yellow cat was still fresh, Peter rolled over and beheld the speaker squatted down comfortably beside him, her legs tucked under her, tail nicely wrapped around. She was a thin tabby with a part-white face and throat that gave her a most sweet and gentle aspect heightened by the lively and kind expression in her luminous eyes that were grey-green, flecked with gold.

She was so thin, Peter noticed, that she was really nothing but skin and bones, and yet there was a kind of tender and rakish gallantry in her very boniness that was not unbecoming to her. For the rest, she was spotlessly clean, particularly the white patch at her breast, which gleamed like ermine and (along with her remark) made Peter acutely conscious for the first time of his own condition. She was quite right. He was a mess.

His fur was dirty, matted with blood and streaked with mud and coal dust. To look at him, no one would ever have known he had once been a snow-white cat, much less a small boy.