CHAPTER THIRTEEN
So they’ve finally decided on a name for you. They took their time, didn’t they? Well, fair enough, I know it’s an important decision and I agree, you wouldn’t want to be lumbered with something embarrassing like Tiddles for instance, just because they rushed into it. So you’re going to be Charlie. Yes, it’s good, I like it. It doesn’t quite have the class of Oliver, but it’s got a certain ring to it and at least it sounds a lot more masculine than Kitty. And they’re getting you an engraved identity disc like mine? Good. Take it from one who knows – even if you’re not going to be a wanderer, you never know when events might overtake you and you might end up getting lost in a wood, like I did. No, don’t worry. I’m sure that won’t happen to you.
So, Charlie, you want to hear some more of my story, do you? I must say I’m quite gratified by how much of an impression it’s making on you. I’m sure you’ll be learning a few lessons from my experiences. But I should remind you that I learnt quite an important lesson myself because of all this. I learnt that it’s not a good idea to be too proud of your achievements. No cat is invincible. We just end up making fools of ourselves if we think we are.
My problem, as I’ve already mentioned, was that I was getting a bit too carried away with all the praise from the villagers. It was such a nice feeling, to think that I’d personally helped everyone get together with new friends and meet up with their old ones. They were all talking about what a friendly place the village had become since the disaster of the fire. Sarah seemed to be one of the brains behind all the new arrangements, alongside myself of course.
‘We need to make more use of the notice board,’ she said one evening while the family were having their dinner.
‘Notice board?’ Martin said, looking blank.
‘Yes, the one outside the village hall. It’s survived the fire, hasn’t it, but nobody seems to have used it since.’
‘Well, no, because none of the groups and clubs that met there are meeting now, so they’ve got no announcements to make.’
‘Of course they have!’ she interrupted. ‘We all have. We’ve all been phoning each other, dropping notes through everyone’s doors, emailing people, about whose house we’re meeting in each week – when all we needed to do was agree a schedule of dates and venues and put it on the board.’
‘Put like that, it sounds obvious,’ Martin admitted. ‘But these things always need someone to organise them.’
‘Well done for volunteering, Mart,’ she said, laughing, and then, because he looked so taken aback, she added, ‘you can organise the dominoes players at least, can’t you? I’ll get a rota done for the WI, and help Anne sort out the Brownies. Hopefully other people will soon get the message.’
Apparently they did, because within just a couple of days Sarah was saying the pensioners’ club and the mum-and-baby group had both put up lists on the board.
‘And there are a couple of other notices,’ she added. ‘It’s like everybody had forgotten about the notice board and now they’re all starting to use it again.’
‘Good for you, then, love. It’s a lot easier than phoning around, isn’t it, and not everyone’s on email. What are the other notices about?’
‘Oh, there’s one from Kay – you know, the woman who used to run the nursery? Up till now she’s managed to keep going, with as many of the children as possible, running it from her own home in Great Broomford. It’s obviously been difficult, though, and two of her staff have found other jobs. So she’s closing after Christmas. She says she’s really sorry to let people down but she simply can’t carry on running it from home for the length of time we’re going to be without the hall.’
‘What’s she doing, then? Will she start up somewhere else? Only I’m just thinking, if she’s going to need new staff…’
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Sarah smiled. ‘Nicky next door. But you know what she said – she can’t earn the money she needs, locally. Anyway no, sadly Kay’s decided to call it a day and retire. She’s in her fifties and she’s got a grandchild of her own, now, apparently, and another on the way. So she wants more time for herself and her own family.’
‘Fair enough. Can’t blame her. But what about the parents who used the nursery for their kids? There isn’t another one anywhere around here, is there?’
‘No. And even further afield, they’ll all have waiting lists, you can bet your life. I don’t know what they’ll all do, Martin. It’s so difficult for people, isn’t it, when they both have to work. It was only a small nursery, but nearly all the working parents in the village used it, even if only for one or two days a week.’
Another day, another problem for Little Broomford. I didn’t like to hear about all these people struggling with the details of their lives. It’s strange how humans have so many worries and problems in their lives, little kit—sorry, I mean Charlie – when all we cats have to worry about is getting enough to eat and avoiding horrible things like foxes and unstrapped dogs. If they’re so much cleverer than us, you’d think they’d have made their lives easier for themselves rather than harder, wouldn’t you.
Although I’d heard my human friends talking about the old female called Barbara who half-murdered me when I chased the birds in her garden, I hadn’t been anywhere near her cottage again since that day. But every time her name came up, it seemed to provoke lots of smiles and chuckles, and I gathered she’d had some kind of personality change and was being nicer to everyone. Hard though it was to believe, considering how she spoke to me, to say nothing of picking me up by my neck and threatening me with her spoon, I decided I’d pluck up my courage again, and go to see this transformation for myself.
There was a cold wind blowing again that day. Every now and then the wind blew the dry brown leaves that had fallen off the trees earlier on, up into the air, whirling them around like miniature snowstorms. It made me feel kind of skittish and scampery, and I bounded down the road they call Back Lane and took a running jump up onto Barbara’s wall. I could see straight into her front room, and to my amazement, there she was, looking just the same as before with her grey hair piled up on top of her head and her glasses halfway down her nose, but this time she had her mouth turned up in a huge smile. In fact as I watched her, she threw back her head, opened her mouth wide, and I could actually hear her laughing from where I was. Sitting next to her on the sofa, all comfy, with his arm resting along the back of the sofa so that he was almost, but not quite, cuddling her, was the old male from over the road, the one they’d called Stan.
Well, I decided to be really brave and get a closer look. The windowsill was just about wide enough to sit on, so after a moment poised on the wall, judging the distance, twitching and preparing my muscles for the jump, the way we do, I leapt neatly across the tiny garden and made a good safe landing. From this new vantage point, I could see that the television was on, and both the old humans had their back paws up on the same stool, and a bright red woolly blanket draped over their legs. There was a bottle open on the little table next to Stan, and they both had glasses in their front paws. As I watched them, they sipped from their drinks and turned to smile at each other.
‘It’s that cat again!’ the female suddenly shrieked, pointing at me through the window. It gave me such a fright, I overbalanced and fell right off the windowsill, which was particularly embarrassing as there was a robin watching from the flowerbed, who was no doubt going to go home and tell his entire family about it. I got straight up onto my paws, of course, and started washing myself frantically to show I didn’t care. I kept one eye on the front door, half expecting the old woman to come stamping out waving her spoon again, despite her new cosy smiley appearance. But instead, I gradually became aware of the sound of laughter. Not just the quiet chuckling kind of laughing humans do over some of their television programmes, but absolute roars of high-pitched laughter, louder than shouting. It was both of the old humans laughing out loud together. I stopped washing in surprise, listening to the din. And when it eventually died away, I could hear them muttering together, like they were almost too worn out to talk.