“Excuse me, madam!” Jenkins, the watchdog and rent-collector, who had replaced the porter of palmier days, had stopped her in the narrow hall. “Would that cat with the black-and-white muzzle be yours by any chance?”
A month ago, Miss Paisley would have dithered with apology for breaking the rules and would have promised instant compliance.
“It is my cat, Jenkins. And I would be very glad to pay you half a crown a week for any trouble it may be to you.”
“That’s very kind of you, madam, and thank you. What I was goin’ to say was that I saw it jump out o’ Mr. Rinditch’s window with a bit o’ fish in its mouth what Mr. Rinditch had left from his breakfast.” He glanced down the passage to make sure that Mr. Rinditch’s door was shut. “You know what Mr. Rinditch is!”
Miss Paisley knew that he was a street bookmaker, with a number of runners who took the actual bets, and that Jenkins stood in awe of him as the only tenant of any financial substance. Mr. Rinditch was a stocky, thickset man with a large sullen face and a very large neck. Miss Paisley thought he looked vulgar, which was a matter of character, whereas the other tenants only looked common, which they couldn’t help.
“I’ll give it proper cat’s-meat, then it won’t steal.”
“Thank you, madam.”
The “madam” cost Miss Paisley about £4 a year. None of the other women were “madam,” and none of the men were “sir” — not even Mr. Rinditch. Two pounds at Christmas and odd half crowns for small, mainly superfluous services. For Miss Paisley it was a sound investment. In her dream life she was an emigrée awaiting recall to a style of living which, did she but know it, had virtually ceased to exist in England. It was as if the 30-odd years of unskilled clerical labor were a merely temporary expedient. Through the cat she was acquiring a new philosophy, but the dream was untouched.
“I have to cut your meat,” she explained that evening, “and I’m rather dreading it. You see, I’ve never actually handled raw meat before. It was not considered a necessary item in my education. Though I remember once — we were on a river picnic — two of the servants with the hamper were being driven over...”
She had to ask Jenkins’s advice. He lent her a knife — a formidable object with a black handle and a blade tapering to a point. A French knife, he told her, and she could buy one like it at any ironmonger’s — which she did on the following day. There remained the shuddery business of handling the meat. She sacrificed a memento — a pair of leather driving gloves, which she had worn for horse-riding during her holidays from school.
On the third day of the fourth month the cat failed to appear at its meal-time. Miss Paisley was disturbed. She went to bed an hour later than usual, to lie awake until dawn, struggling against the now inescapable fact that the cat had become necessary to her, though she was unable to guess why this should be true. She tried to prove it was not true. She knew how some old maids doted upon a particular cat, perpetually fondling it and talking baby-talk to it. For her cat she felt nothing at all of that kind of emotion. She knew that her cat was rather dirty, and she never really liked touching it. Indeed, she did not like cats, as such. But there was something about this particular cat...
The cat came through the open window shortly after dawn. Miss Paisley got out of bed and uncovered the meat. The cat yawned, stretched, and ignored it, then jumped onto the foot of her bed, circled, and settled down, asleep before Miss Paisley’s own head returned to her pillow. Miss Paisley was now cat-wise enough to know that it must have fed elsewhere, from which she drew the alarming inference that a cat which had strayed once might stray again.
The next day she bought a collar, had it engraved with her name and address and, in brackets, £1 Reward for Return. She could contemplate expenditure of this kind without unease because, in the 30-odd years, she had saved more than £500.
That evening she fastened the collar in position. The cat pulled it off. Miss Paisley unfastened the special safety buckle and tried again — tried five times before postponing further effort.
“Actually, you yourself have taught me how to handle this situation,” she said the following evening. “You refused the bloater paste and the not very fresh milk. You were right! Now, it will be a great pity if we have to quarrel and see no more of each other, but — no collar — no meat!”
After small initial misunderstandings the cat accepted the collar for the duration of the meal. Oil the third evening the cat forgot to scratch it off after the meal. In a week, painstaking observation revealed that the cat had become unconscious of the collar. Even when it scratched the collar in the course of scratching itself, it made no effort to remove the collar. It wore the collar for the rest of its life.
After the collar incident, their relationship was established on a firmer footing. She bought herself new clothes — including a hat that was too young for her and a lumber jacket in suede as green as a cat’s eyes. There followed a month of tranquillity, shadowed only by a warning from Jenkins that the cat had failed to shake off its habit of visiting Mr. Rinditch’s room. She noticed something smarmy in the way Jenkins told her about it — as if he enjoyed telling her. For the first time, there came to her the suspicion that the “madam” was ironic and a source of amusement to Jenkins.
On the following Saturday came evidence that, in this matter at least, Jenkins had spoken truly. She would reach home shortly after 1 on Saturdays. While she was on her way across the hall to the staircase, the door of Mr. Rinditch’s room opened. Mr. Rinditch’s foot was visible, as was Miss Paisley’s cat. The cat was projected some four feet across the corridor. As it struck the paneling of the staircase, Miss Paisley felt a violent pain in her own ribs. She rushed forward, tried 10 pick up her cat. The cat spat at her and hobbled away. For a moment she stared after it, surprised and hurt by its behavior. Then, suddenly, she brightened.
“You won’t accept pity!” she murmured. She tossed her head, and her eyes sparkled with a kind of happiness that was new to her. She knocked on Mr. Rinditch’s door. When the large, sullen face appeared, she met it with a catlike stare.
“You kicked my cat!”
“Your cat, is it! Then I’ll thank you to keep it out o’ my room.”
“I regret the trespass—”
“So do I. If I catch ’im in ’ere again, he’ll swing for it, and it’s me tellin’ yer.” Mr. Rinditch slammed his door.
Miss Paisley, who affected an ignorance of cockney idiom, asked herself what the words meant. As they would bear an interpretation which she would not allow her imagination to accept, she assured herself they meant nothing. She began to wonder at her own audacity in bearding a coarse, tough man like Mr. Rinditch, who might well have started a brawl.
In the meantime, the cat had gone up the stairs and was waiting for her at the door of her apartment. It still did not wish to be touched. But when Miss Paisley rested in her easy chair before preparing her lunch, the cat, for the first time, jumped onto her lap. It growled and changed its position, steadying itself with its claws, which penetrated Miss Paisley’s dress and pricked her. Then it settled down, purred a little, and went to sleep. The one-time dining-room clock chimed 2 o’clock: Miss Paisley discovered that she was not hungry.
On Sunday the cat resumed its routine, and seemed none the worse. It tackled its meat ration with avidity, and wound up with Miss Paisley’s other meringue. But that did not excuse the gross brutality of Mr. Rinditch. On Monday morning Miss Paisley stopped Jenkins on the first-floor landing and asked for Mr. Rinditch’s full name, explaining that she intended to apply for a summons for cruelty to animals.