The Story of Jennie- or the Abandoned (2 page)

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 under side 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.

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! Shoo! 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 agonizing 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 formerly had 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 rain swept 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 apalling 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: 'Trepassing, 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.'