The Catnappers

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The spiky, black gate which let people into the garden was not only shut, it was locked. This meant that the little boy must have climbed over the spikes or that he had been lifted inside, and left there. Kitty did not approve of either of these things: the iron spikes were dangerous and the garden was lonely and the boy was very small indeed. She could see him clearly now; he was wearing a bright red jersey and ting, bright blue jeans and a floppy woollen hat the colour of a daffodil. Underneath, his hair was a great mass of golden curls; it looked as if he’d not yet had his first grown-up haircut.

Kitty unlocked the gate and went into the garden. She shut it behind her carefully, locked it again and walked up the path towards the child. “My name’s Kitty,” she told him. “I live at Number 19 with my friend Miss McGee and we have a cat called Nicholas. Do you have a pet?”

The small boy looked at her uncertainly. He had enormous, glossy brown eyes and a small, sweet mouth, all folded like the petals of a flower, but his lips were quivering. Kitty turned away, pretending she had lost all interest because she knew all about that particular look; it meant that he was about to cry.

Ignoring him, she started to poke about under the leafless shrubs on the edge of the little pond. “You find lovely things here,” she said, as if to herself (but just loud enough for the little boy to hear, which of course was the whole idea). “Look … here’s a lovely leaf that’s slowly turning into a skeleton … and here’s a perfectly round pebble … and here’s … here’s a frog! My goodness me …” The little boy was following her now and every time she bent down to look at something he bent down too. Round and round the garden they went, peacefully collecting things.

This game went on for quite a while but then it was as if the little boy suddenly remembered something quite different, or had decided to play his own game. He started to make a very particular kind of noise. “Chu … chu … chu …” and as he did so he lifted up the dry, twiggy branches of the shrubs, to peer underneath them. “Chu … chu … chu …” he kept calling.

“Is that a train game?” asked Kitty. “Can I play too? Chu … chu … chu …” she went, up and down the paths and round the pond. “We’re great big steam trains,” she told him, “we’re not silly diesels … chu … chu … chu …” But at this the little boy slowed down, shook his head very solemnly and began to chew his fingers. Then he let out the most enormous HOWL.

It was quiet in Golden Square, and already quite dark. There were no doctors or dentists around in any case, because it was Saturday. In the silence, the cry of the little boy felt as big as an earthquake, and Kitty panicked. “Please don’t cry, dear,” she said, going up to him. “Please don’t cry—” and then something suddenly burst out of the bushes, something resembling a big, red, flapping monster.

“Timothy!” it bellowed. “Timothy Joe! Come here this minute! We are terribly late. Your daddy’s been sitting in the car for a whole ten minutes and he’s extremely cross.”

Kitty took a few steps backwards. She didn’t like loud noises, or people that shouted. In this respect she was like Nicholas. But the red monster (who turned out to be a rather tall lady in a raincoat the colour of holly berries, with a red hat to match and curly fair hair), came right up to her. “What are you doing here?” she said, quite rudely.

“I … I live here,” Kitty whispered, her insides turning into wobbly snakes, as they tended to do when she was nervous. “I live at Number 19, with my friend Miss McGee. We are your neighbours. I was so pleased to see your little boy in the garden that I came down to say hello. It’s lovely to have a family in the square again. We so miss Debbie and her mum, you see. They’ve gone to live in the Town Flats, to escape the damp. Debbie was like a granddaughter to us.”

For a second the very red lady looked slightly less ferocious, but then somebody nearby sounded a car horn three times. The driver was getting impatient. Without a word she swept the small boy off his feet and stuffed him under her arm like a large parcel. “I’m sorry but we really are horribly LATE,” she said, moving off towards the gate.

Kitty ran ahead of her and unlocked it, but the lady did not say thank you, not even when Kitty called out, “I’ll see to the gate – let us know if we can be of any help to you,” because she really did want to be a good neighbour.

She watched the woman strap Timothy Joe into a car seat and climb into the car herself, next to a worried-looking man with spectacles who was the driver. She watched the car move away from the pavement and disappear from the square. Then she went back into the garden and sat for a while by the little pond, thinking about how angry the mother had been, how roughly she’d stuffed the little boy under her arm and how she’d not said thank you for anything.

Perhaps she wasn’t his mother. Perhaps she was his nanny, or an “au pair” person, or even an aunt. Perhaps she was cross because she thought he’d got lost. But Kitty had been in the garden too, they had both been there, with the gate locked. She couldn’t understand it at all. Next time she saw Debbie’s mum in the square she would ask her if she knew anything about this fierce lady. Mrs Springer got to hear all sorts of gossip as she did her cleaning jobs.

Kitty sat for ages by the pond, turning the mystery over in her mind, then started to walk home very slowly, swishing the fallen leaves about with her flat, brown shoes. Little children liked swishing through leaves, especially when they were nice and crunchy, but these particular leaves had turned soggy. They had been on the pavement rather too long; it was too near Christmas for good crispy leaves.

Christmas! Kitty suddenly remembered the pudding, and Big Time, ticking away on the hall table in Number 19. Even though she was quite an old lady, she was still quite fit and so, picking up the hem of her long coat so as not to trip, she ran all the way home.

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Chapter Five (#ulink_2c02ff6a-a83b-54ac-86da-8ae1d9d1d03e)

As she puffed up the steps to the front door it opened all by itself, as if by magic. But Miss McGee was standing just behind it, her face all swollen with red rage, and there was a sickening smell and a haze in the air, as if the house had recently been on fire.

“I’m sorry, McGee,” Kitty whimpered, knowing that her friend was about to explode about the pudding. “But I got held up in the garden. There really is a family with children at Number 26, well, there’s a child, a dear little boy called Timothy Joe. It’s wonderful.”

But Miss McGee took no notice. “You went out, Kitty,” she said, through gritted teeth, “and you left your timer behind you, and you forgot. My pudding’s boiled dry, my beautiful pudding that cost me all that time and effort and money. There’s a horrible mess all over the kitchen. It’s a tragedy.”

Kitty didn’t answer, there was no point. She had seen Miss McGee in this angry mood before. What she must do was to put matters right as quickly as possible. She walked past her friend and went down the basement stairs into the kitchen, to see what she could do.

The haze down below was worse than in the hall: it was like thick fog and the horrible burnt smell made Kitty cough. She pulled out a hanky, squashed it against her nose, and spluttered into it. Her eyes began to stream but she could see, though everything was rather blurred, McGee’s very best saucepan, all blackened with soot, and the pudding basin cracked right in half and, on the ceiling, a huge, dark ring, like a thundercloud.

“It’s a tragedy,” McGee repeated. “It’s a real tragedy.” Sagging down on to the nearest chair, she began to cry.

One part of Kitty was very sorry indeed but another part wasn’t. Yes, it was terrible that she had forgotten the pudding but it wasn’t the end of the world. She pointed this out to Miss McGee. “I’m really sorry, McGee,” she told her, “but I was so excited about the new family. Listen, I’ll paint the ceiling this afternoon; I’ll stand on the table and I’ll paint it, and I’ll buy you a new pan for Christmas. It’ll be an extra present. And I’ll make another pudding for us, I’ll do it right now.” Picking up a cookery book, she started to turn the pages, she even started to hum.

It was the humming that did it, the humming was the last straw to her friend McGee. “I don’t want you to make another pudding,” she wailed. “It’s a tragedy.”

It was Kitty’s turn to get cross now. “Don’t be silly, Florence,” she snapped. “If you call spoiling a silly old pudding a tragedy, what do you call it if something really awful happens? What do you call it if someone has a terrible accident, or even dies? Now that’s what I call a tragedy.”

McGee did not reply. Instead she snatched up the lid of the saucepan, which was lying on the kitchen floor, and hurled it at Kitty’s head. She missed and the lid hit a row of plates on a dresser and broke two of them. McGee, who had been sniffing miserably, now started to howl in earnest. In complete silence, like a person on television with the sound switched off, Kitty raised the cookery book she had been reading to find the pudding recipe, and threw it across the room in her friend’s direction. She missed, too, (neither of the old ladies was a very good shot), and the book plopped into the sink where the pages spread out like wings. “Now my best cookery book’s ruined as well!” McGee wailed, and she buried her face in her hands.

“You are RIDICULOUS!” screeched Kitty.

“Not so ridiculous as YOU,” screeched Miss McGee.

Then she threw a wooden spoon at Kitty, then a nutmeg grater, and Kitty threw another cookery book and an egg, and they both screeched and screeched.

In the middle of it all, Nicholas, who had come running in through his cat-flap for tea, ran out again, and pelted right along all four sides of Golden Square and away, and was gone all that night.

And in the morning, when the two rather shamefaced old ladies met in the kitchen for their breakfast, he was still missing.

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Chapter Six (#ulink_92f857d1-8f34-57fe-9be4-c3b4058dd154)

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.