The Story of Jennie- or the Abandoned (7 page)

There was a kind of a glittering palace, and right next to it some wild stretches of the Scottish Highlands with huge rocks and boulders piled up and menacing trees throwing dark arms to the sky. Then there was somehow a view of the blue sea with some distant mountains, a trellised garden, a cottage with a thatched roof, a row of Arabian nomad tents, a gloomy piece of jungle all overhung with creepers and vines, a railway station, a piece of Greek temple …

Peter cried, `Why, I know what it is. It's theatrical scenery, like they use in the Christmas Pantomime. I suppose this is where they store it.'

'Is that what it is?' said Jennie Baldrin. 'I didn't know, but I thought it might interest you. I often come here when I feel the need of a change. Let us go over there and sit on that rock in the Highlands, because it reminds me of where we came from, at least the way my mother used to describe it.'

Of course they couldn't actually sit on the rock, since it was only painted on canvas in an extraordinary lifelike manner, but when they had squatted down and curled their tails around them right next to the rock, it was really, Peter felt, almost like being in that part of Scotland about which his Nanny too had so often told him.

When he and Jennie had settled, Peter said, 'Jennie dear… Do you think perhaps you might go on now. . ?'

Jennie closed her eyes for a moment as though to help herself to return once more to those memories that were so painful to her. Then she opened them again, sighed, and took up her narrative

'It was a large house, you know,' she said, `and it seemed to take perfect ages to get everything packed and sealed and ready to be moved.

'I walked around and into and over everything and smelled and fretted and tried to feel—you know how we can sometimes acquire bits and pieces of information and knowledge just through the ends of our whiskers'—(Peter didn't, but he also didn't wish to interrupt at this point, so he did not reply and Jennie went on)—but it was useless. I couldn't make out the slightest hint where everything was going to, or even when, though I knew it must be soon, because for several days the family had not been sleeping there, since all the beds were taken down and crated. Mrs. Penny and also Buff would come back during the day and pack, and of course feed me.

'In the evening they would take my basket upstairs to the top-floor sewing-room under the eaves of the roof and leave me there with a saucer of milk and one of water for overnight. The sewing-room was quite bare. I didn't even have any of my toys. I shouldn't have minded that if only I hadn't been so worried and upset by not knowing. Of course, I imagined that very likely the Pennys were stopping with friends or at a hotel where perhaps they couldn't have me until the new house should be ready wherever it was. But then, on the other hand, how could I be sure they weren't going far away somewhere over the sea where I could not go along?'

Peter knew all about moving. In military circles people were always packing up their belongings and starting off for India or Australia, or Africa. And he thought too that he understood the anxiety Jennie must have felt. For he remembered enduring nights of terror and sudden panic himself when the thought had come to him from nowhere at all, as it were, `What if Mummy were not to come back to me ever? Supposing I wake up in the morning and she isn't there?' And then he had lain fearful and wide awake in the darkness, listening and straining with his ears and all his senses for the sound of her key in the front door and her footsteps in the corridor going past his room. And not until this had come to pass, and more often than not it was well after midnight, would he be able to fall into a restless and troubled sleep.

Jennie's voice brought him back from these memories. 'One morning,' she was saying sadly, 'they did not come back; nor did they ever. I never saw them again, my dear, beloved Buff, or Mrs. Penny or Mr. Penny. They had gone away and cold bloodedly abandoned me.'

Peter gave a cry of sympathy. 'Oh, poor Jennie Baldrin!'

But then he added: 'I can't believe it. Something must have happened to them …'

`I only wish I could think so,' Jennie declared, `but when you grow older—I mean, after you have been a cat for a while, you will come to understand that people are always doing that. They keep us while we are convenient to them, and not too much trouble, and then, when through no fault of ours it becomes inconvenient, they walk out and leave us to starve.'

'Oh, Jennie,' Peter cried again, quite horrified at such cruelty, `I would never go away and leave you …'

`You wouldn't, perhaps,' Jennie said, `but people do, and THEY did. I remember that morning. I couldn't believe it at first when the time came and they were not there. I watched at the window. I listened at the door. Time passed. Then I started to shout, hoping perhaps that somehow they had managed to slip into the house without my hearing them.

`I cried myself hoarse. I threw myself against the door. I tried desperately to open it, but it was one of those slippery doorknobs instead of a latch I might have worked. Morning turned into afternoon and afternoon into evening. I hardly slept at all, but kept pacing the floor of the empty sewing-room the whole night hoping against hope that they would come the next day.

'On the morrow something much more terrifying occurred. They didn't come, but the moving-men did. From the window I could see their van drawn up in front of the house. All day long they went in and out of the house, removing the furniture, crates, boxes and barrels. By late afternoon everything was loaded and tied on behind with ropes. Then they climbed into the front seat and drove away. And that night there wasn't any milk or water left, and I had nothing to eat or drink, nor the next, nor the one after that.'

`Poor, poor Jennie!' Peter said. `Weren't you awfully hungry?'

`The pain wasn't in my stomach, Peter,' Jennie replied, 'it was in my heart. I only wished to die of longing, misery, loneliness and sadness. More than anything, I wanted my Buff to be holding me in her arms close to her and giving me the little squeezes she used to because she loved me.

`And then suddenly to my horror I found myself hating her. I wanted to bite, scratch, claw and kill her for having abandoned me. Yes, I learned to hate, Peter, and that is worse than being sick, or starved, or thirsty, or in pain. It replaced all the love I had felt for Buff. I had no hope of ever getting out of that room alive, but I swore that if I did I would never again trust a human being, or give them love or live with them.

`And then one morning, when I was nearly dead, release came. I heard someone at the front door and then footsteps. I knew it wasn't their footsteps, and yet I hoped that somehow I was mistaken and they had come, and I was all ready to welcome them and purr and even try to reach Buff's shoulder to show her I had forgiven her. Oh, I would have put my paws to her face and kissed and kissed her if she had only come back and not forgotten me.'

Peter said, `I do wish she had, Jennie …'

`It wasn't, of course,' Jennie continued. 'It was just people, two women, very likely come to look at the house. One of them made sympathetic sounds and picked me up. But I was weak and dizzy from starvation and nearly out of my mind with worry, and didn't know what I was doing. I bit her. She dropped me, and I was so frightened I found the strength to run out of the door and down the stairs. Or rather I fell more than ran down them and didn't stop until I got to the bottom and out the front door. That was the beginning …'

`Of what?' Peter asked.

`Of being independent of human beings, of never again asking for a favour, of spitting and growling whenever one tried to reach down and stroke me or pick me up, of never again entering a house to live with them.'

Peter wanted to show her how sorry he was it had all turned out so badly, but he could not think of anything to say, because if it was really true that her family had abandoned her so heartlessly he felt very much ashamed that they were human beings. Instead he arose, went over to her and bestowed a few licks on the side of her cheek.

Jennie gave him a winning smile and purred for a moment.

`That was sweet,' she said, `but I like the life of a stray now, really. It's a rough one, and sometimes it isn't easy, but at least no one can hurt me any more. I mean inside, where you can't get at it and it never heals up. There isn't much that is open to cats that I haven't seen or done in the past two years. I found this place months ago. It's wonderful, because people hardly ever visit here. Come along, and I'll show you my secret entrance …'

They left the wild Highland scenery, walked by the Pyramids and the Sphinx, skirted the rooftop of a penthouse in New York, wound their way in and out of a drawing-room in Mayfair and a castle on the Rhine, and retraced their steps down the long, dark, musty corridors.

But just before they turned the corner to enter that part of the warehouse where Jennie's home was, she stopped, gave a low growl, and Peter saw her tail fluff up to twice its size. He halted behind her and heard voices, footsteps, scrapings and bumpings, and was all for running around the corner to see what it was, when Jennie whispered—'Get down, Peter! If they see us, we're in for it. It's our home! They're moving it out. Looks like your friend Napoleon has come for bed.'

Peter felt it might embarrass her if he were to reveal that Napoleon had been dead for more than a hundred years, and anyway, it did not make much difference; more to the point, it was no longer there, and everything else in the bin was also being moved out either to a sale or an exhibition.

`Pity,' said Jennie. 'It was a nice home. I'd grown rather fond of it, particularly your friend's bed. Ah well, one can always find another somewhere else.'

`There must be dozens of storage bins we passed where we might be cozy,' Peter said.

`Won't do. Not in here,' Jennie said decisively. `Once people show up, you've had it, and if you are wise you will clear out. When the movers get those things into the light they'll find evidence of our having lived there. Your hairs and mine. And the mouse business. Then there'll be a hue and cry and a hunt for us all through here—lights up and dust swirling, and men poking about with torches and sticks. No, trust me, Peter, I know. As soon as they have finished we'll use my emergency exit. There's still plenty of daylight left to look about for a new place to stay the night. Keep out of sight until I give the word.

Peter did as she bade him, for he very well appreciated that Jennie was more experienced and must know what she was talking about.

And then, what with all the dust about, the washing and the talking and not having had anything to drink after all that running through London, Peter fell prey to a most dreadful thirst, and it suddenly seemed to him that he would perish if he did not soon feel something cool and moist going down his throat.

` I'M awfully thirsty, Jennie,' Peter whispered.

They had been crouching there around the bend of the warehouse corridor for the better part of an hour waiting for the men to finish the work of carrying out the furniture from the storage bin.

Jennie flattened herself and peered around the corner. `Soon,' she said. `There are only a few pieces left.'

`How I wish I had a tall, cool glass of milk,' Peter said.

Jennie turned her head and looked at him. `Dish of milk, you mean. You wouldn't be able to drink it out of a glass. And as for milk—do you know how long it is since I have seen or tasted milk? In our kind of life, I mean cut off from humans, there isn't any milk. If you're thirsty you find some rainwater or some slops in the gutter or in a pail left out, or you can go down the stone steps to the river landings when they are deserted at night, if you don't mind your water a little oily and brackish.'

Peter was not at all pleased with the prospect and he had not yet got used to the fact that he was no longer a boy, with a home and family, but a white cat with no home at all and no one to befriend him but another scrawny stray.

He was so desperately thirsty and the picture drawn by Jennie so gloomy and unpleasant that he could not help bursting into tears and crying, `But I'm used to milk! I like it, and Nanny gives me some every day …'

'Sshhh!' cautioned Jennie, `they'll hear you.' Then she added, `There's nobody goes about setting out dishes of milk for strays. You'll get used to not having it eventually.'

But Peter didn't think so, and continued to cry softly to himself while Jennie Baldrin watched him with growing concern and bewilderment. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something which apparently she did not very much wish to do. But finally, when it appeared that she could bear his unhappiness no longer, she whispered to him, `Come, now … don't take on so! I know a place where I think I can get you a dish of milk. We'll go there.'

The thought caused Peter to stop crying and brighten up immediately. `Yes?' he said. `Where?'

`There's an old watchman lives in a shack down by the tea docks,' Jennie told him. `He's lonely, likes cats, and is always good for a titbit, especially for me. He's been after me to come and live with him for months. Of course, I wouldn't dream of it.,

'But,' said Peter, not wishing to argue himself out of milk but only desiring to understand clearly the terms under which they were to have it, `that is taking it from people, isn't it?'

`It's taking, but not giving anything,' Jennie said, with that strange, unhappy intenseness that came over her whenever she discussed anything to do with human beings. `We'll have it and then walk out on him.'

`Would that be right?' Peter asked. It slipped out almost before he was aware of it, for he very much wanted the milk and he equally did not wish to offend Jennie. But it was just that he had been taught certain ways of behaviour, or felt them to be so by instinct, and this seemed a poor way of repaying a kindness. Clearly he had somewhat put Jennie out, for she stiffened slightly and with the nearest thing to a cold look she had bestowed upon him since they had met, said, `You can't have it both ways, Peter. If you want to live my kind of life, and I can't see where you have very much choice at the moment—'