Unexpected Magic (35 page)

“Not a lot,” said Madam Dalrymple. “We'll have to call her Big Dot.”

I made a silently offended No Comment and moved the Coop off.

It was quite as difficult going back. The farther we went, the faster the Coop moved. By the time we reached the farm road, we were scorching along as fast as a car. I worked frantically to slow us down. And of course Madam Dalrymple, in her usual maddening way, chose the moment that I was trying to aim us at the farm gate to say, “Why did that woman tell you to remember nonsense?”

“I don't know!” I spat, as we hurtled into the yard. Mr. Williams, who was sitting in our way, rose six feet in the air and managed to miss us. Orange and Claws squirted out of nettle clumps to either side. We raced on until we hit the water butt and stopped. Millamant came head and shoulders out of it, squinting reproachfully. “Where's Henry?” I asked her.

“In the living room, but you won't want to go there,” Mill replied.

“Of course I will. It's got the best chairs,” I said.

As I bounded away toward the catflap, Mill said, “I did warn you!” but I took no notice. I raced through the kitchen and past the dining room—where the door was now closed on that map—and galloped into the living room. There I stopped as if I'd run into the water butt again.

Henry was standing there holding both the hands of a human woman. He had a beaming, dazzled look and he was staring into the human's face with the same expression that he usually saves for me. I suppose she was a handsome human, in a thin, dark way, but still … I mewed. Loudly.

Henry jumped. “Oh, look, Fara,” he said. “Here's Turandot now!” To my extreme surprise, he swooped on me and picked me up. I'd never known him do that without my permission before. I squirmed around and gave him my Outraged Stare, but he took no notice and held me out toward this woman. “There,” he said. “Isn't she beautiful?”

The woman narrowed her eyes at me. She shuddered. “Henry, she's
hideous
! She looks as if she's got the plague with all those blotches!” She backed away. “Don't bring her near me. I'm not a cat person.”

Henry said cheerfully, “Okay.” And dropped me.
Dropped
me! Just like that.

I went away, back through the catflap and over to the Coop, where Big Dot was peering nervously out of the hatch. “I'll have to introduce you to Henry later, I'm afraid,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

“Terribly,” she said.

“You met that Fara creature then?” Millamant said, popping up from the water butt again. “I tried to tell you. I think she's staying here.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” I said, leading Big Dot to the kitchen.

When we got there, Great-aunt Harriet was sitting in the best chair with Mr. Williams in her lap. “Oh, we've got a Big Dot now, I see,” she said, watching Big Dot fit herself humbly through the catflap. “Better than the other thing that arrived here today. I must say, Henry has a
genius
for choosing terrible women! Little Dot,
try
to make him see reason. I've never disliked anyone so much in my life as I dislike that Fara.”

I jumped up on the Welsh dresser and observed that half my breakfast was still there. “Big Dot, if you like to come up here,” I began.

But Great-aunt Harriet popped Mr. Williams on the floor and sprang up, saying, “Now, Turandot, don't make the poor thing struggle up
there
, for goodness' sake, not in
her
condition!” and bustled about finding saucers. She gave Big Dot most of a tin of meaty chunks, a pyramid of dry food, and a soup bowl of milk. Big Dot ate it all. She was starving.

“Is this Fara woman really staying?” I asked.

Great-aunt Harriet never listens to me, but Mr. Williams said gloomily, “We fear the worst. He's lent her his pajamas.”

Mr. Williams was right. But it was worse than we realized. We expected that Fara would be given one of the spare rooms, but when we followed Henry upstairs to bed, we discovered that he and Fara were sharing Henry's room. Fara turned and stared at us. “Why are
they
here?”

“Little Dot always sleeps on my head,” Henry explained. “Orange and Claws and Madam Dalrymple usually dispose themselves around on the duvet. And Millamant curls up in the chamber pot, you know.”

“Well, they're not doing
that
anymore,” Fara said. “Get rid of them.”

Henry said, in that cheerful, obliging way, “Okay.” And, to our extreme distress, we found ourselves pushed outside by Henry's magic, out and down the stairs, and then out again, until we were in the farmyard. It was as if he had forgotten we were in danger from the Beast there. It was a cold night, too. Claws and Orange huddled together for warmth, and Madam Dalrymple sat as close to Mill as Mill would let her. I crouched by myself in the middle of the yard. I have never felt so bewildered and unhappy as I did then. Because, you see, I had seen Henry look at Fara the way he usually looks at me. And I had seen Fara look back, and her look kept saying, Henry, you are
mine
! Just like I do. I kept wondering if I was an awful cat, the way Fara was an awful human.

After a while, something big and warm and whitish came and settled in the clump of weeds next to me. “What is so wrong, Little Dot?” Big Dot asked.

“It's Henry's new human!” I said. “She won't let us into Henry's room. And she
smells
wrong, and she doesn't even like Madam Dalrymple. I mean, most ordinary visitors who don't care for cats
always
admire Madam Dalrymple! The farmers say she's beautiful. But Fara called her a fluffy monstrosity.”

“I doubt if Madam Dalrymple understood though,” Big Dot said.

“No, she tried to get on Fara's knee twice,” I said. “But that's not the point, Big Dot! Henry's being so
obedient
to her! He didn't listen to his operas because Fara said she didn't like opera, and he turned us
out
! How do we make Fara go away, Big Dot?”

“I'm not sure,” Big Dot said, and thought about it, sitting comfortingly close.

While she sat there, I noticed that Big Dot's side, where it pressed against me, was sort of squirming and jumping. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Did all that food upset you?”

“No, no,” she said. “I'm going to have kittens again. Quite soon, I think. Do you know, if you can think of what to do, and if all the doors are like the door from your kitchen, I
think
I could show you how to open Henry's bedroom.”

“Oh,
please
do!” I said. “I miss the smell of his head!”

As we were talking, I had been hearing a lot of noise from Great-aunt Harriet's cottage. It sounded as if Mr. Williams was singing, or something. Now it suddenly rose to a climax as Great-aunt Harriet threw her door open, saying, “Oh, all
right
, all right!
Go
out and do it then! Though what's wrong with your litter box I—Oh!” she said, as the light fell on the six of us in our various huddles. “Did that creature throw you out then? Of
course
she did, she's that type. It wouldn't worry her if the Beast ate the lot of you. You'd better all come in here and be safe then.”

All of us, even Millamant, got up at once and filed politely into the cottage, where Mr. Williams was sitting on the table, looking suave and smug. We arranged ourselves courteously on the hearthrug.

“Hmm,” said Great-aunt Harriet and picked up her mug of cocoa. She stumped up to bed, muttering to herself. “Better bend our minds to getting rid of that young woman, or she'll be sending Henry down to the vet with all the cats in a hamper to have them put down. She'd better not touch my Mr. Williams, though.”

This made me think very urgently all night of ways to get rid of Fara.

Of course, the first thing was to get into the house. Next morning the catflap was locked and all the windows were shut, though we could hear and smell that Fara and Henry were in the kitchen having breakfast. We gathered around the door and yowled. Orange and Millamant have particularly loud voices, so between us we raised a fine noise. Normally it would have brought Henry to the door like a shot, but that day he took no notice of us at all. It was as if Fara had put him under a spell.

After twenty minutes of continuous din, Great-aunt Harriet stumped out of her cottage and banged the kitchen door open with her stick. We streamed in after her and stood by our empty bowls. “Aren't you going to feed your cats, Henry?” Great-aunt Harriet demanded.

Fara looked up from eating toast. “Cats are little hunting machines,” she said. “They can live on the mice in the barns.”

“With respect, Miss Spinks,” Great-aunt Harriet said, “not only has Claws eaten every mouse for miles around, but I don't think Madam Dalrymple would know what to do with a mouse if it ran down her throat.” She got out the food and fed us, while Henry smiled dreamily at Fara and said nothing at all.

After breakfast, they chased us out again and locked the house, while Henry drove Fara into town to do some shopping. It seemed that Fara had arrived without any clothes but the flimsy black dress she was wearing.

“Which strikes me as odd,” Great-aunt Harriet said, when Mr. Williams fetched her. She thought a bit. “I shall borrow some lentils,” she said, and let herself into the house with her key. There she went and set the living room window very slightly ajar. “There,” she said, coming out with a cup of lentils. “Go in and do your worst.”

Orange muscled the window wide open and we all went in and took turns at peeing on the rugs. But the bedroom door was firmly shut. “Not to worry,” said Big Dot. She gathered us around her on the landing and showed us how you stood on your hind legs and trod on the door handle, and your weight pushed the door open. Before long, all of us could do it except Madam Dalrymple, although I had to jump to reach the handle. Then Claws went in and did tomcat things until the bedroom smelled really
strong.
Millamant went along to the toilet, where she got herself extremely wet, and then lay on the pillows. I thought that had probably fixed the bedroom, so I took everyone else down to the kitchen where we spilled sugar and trod in the butter and knocked down cups so they smashed on the flagstones. Then Big Dot and Orange heaved the waste bin over, while I went and walked behind all the plates on the Welsh dresser until most of them fell over and one or two broke. Madam Dalrymple had great fun rolling in cornflakes.

Then we went outside again and hid. Henry's car came back and he and Fara went into the house with bags and bags and bags. We could hear Fara's voice in there, screaming curses, but all that happened was that Fara came grimly outside and put our bowls outside in a row, while Henry opened windows and draped carpets and pillows out of them to air.

“Round One is a draw, I think,” Great-aunt Harriet said when she let us into her cottage that night. “They've moved into the biggest spare room and
she's
hung all her new clothes there. She's bought enough stuff to last a year and
rows
of shoes. I suppose Henry paid, the poor fool!”

“What can we do with those clothes?” I said.

Madam Dalrymple suddenly came alert. “I know all about clothes,” she said. “I'll show you what to do.”

Next day, Henry went off to work at the Science Institute. “I must go there occasionally,” he said, when I tried to get in the car with him, “or they'll wonder what they're paying me for. Out you get, Little Dot.” He drove away, leaving Fara alone in the house with all the doors and windows shut.

Great-aunt Harriet came and knocked on the kitchen door. When Fara didn't open it, she went and rapped on the living room window. “Oh, Miss Spinks, if you would be so good! I'm afraid I've run out of sugar.”

After a while, Fara came and grudgingly let her into the kitchen. I was ready. I did one of my best vanishments and was past Fara and through the kitchen before she had properly got the door open. While Great-aunt Harriet was saying, “Oh, no need to get down the tin. I can hook it with my stick and reach it that way—oh, how
kind
!” I scudded along to the dining room and opened its door the way Big Dot had taught us. I stole past the table with the map magic, very careful not to disturb it—although, from the dusty smell of it, I suspected that Fara had made Henry forget all about it—and jumped to the windowsill. That window bursts open if you lean on it hard enough, so I did that. Everyone came jumping quietly inside, except for Big Dot. She was feeling poorly that day and stayed resting inside the Coop.

We all crept up to the spare bedroom. And there were all the clothes, hanging in rows, with lines of shoes underneath them. Mr. Williams looked at them with great interest.

“Do we tear them up?” he asked Madam Dalrymple. “I quite fancy getting my claws into some of these.”

“She'll get much more annoyed if we spoil them so that she can
almost
wear them,” Madam Dalrymple said. “You make the fronts messy, as if food was spilled on them. … ”

Millamant said, “I know a pond that's full of green slime!” and hurried away.

“ … and you put hairs all over the black things,” Madam Dalrymple explained, “except you, Mr. Williams, you put hairs on the
white
things. Then the knitted things, you bite a thread and then pull, to make holes, and the dresses you bite just the thread in the hems and then pull the hem half down. You bite buttons, too, so that they half come off. … ”