This was all accepted without anything other than a nod or two. Madame enquired as to whether she would be taking luncheon at the house. Ninette told her “yes.” “I do not want to be a burden on them,” she said, in her new, broken English. “They must watch their pennies.”
Madame nodded with approval and attention moved on to the new playbill at the Alhambra music hall, which seemed, from what Ninette could gather, to be pretty much like the old playbill. The comedian was said to be a little funnier, the magician not so good as the last. There were ragtime singers from America in place of Rose and Violet and Three Young Men. There were jugglers instead of acrobats, and dogs instead of the sketch comic. The young ladies voiced their discontent.
Ninette concentrated on her dinner. But it occurred to her at that moment that she might, just might, be able to leverage her cachet as a French dancer into a position at one of these music halls. Respectable shop girls and respectable boarding house owners went to these performances; while not the Paris Opera in terms of artistic quality, these places were at least attracting something other than the bohemians, the grisettes, the whores and apaches. They might even have their own versions of the old men in fur coats, who liked to make the lives of little ballet girls more comfortable.
She could not continue to live here, of course. She was rather sure that the salary of a dancer would not extend to a place like this, and even if it would, she doubted that Madame would permit someone like a dancer to live among her shop girls. But perhaps the cat could find her a place that catered to entertainers.
Not an impossible idea. . . .
Dinner ended with something that Madame called “treacle pudding,” which Ninette regarded with a dubious expression, and which was rather more sticky sweet than she was used to. Still, it was a luxury. The last day had been full of luxuries. She had actually had enough to eat for the first time in ... well, certainly since Maman had died. She had sat in a railway carriage and then in a ferry, she had slept in a bed between sheets that were not tearing apart with age and gray with washings, beneath warm, whole blankets. It was like a miracle.
But it was not, thank le bon Dieu, perfection. She would have suspected perfection immediately. Perfection would have meant that she was lying delirious in a ditch somewhere, or mad, or even dead or at least dying. But no, this was reality. The cassoulet was just a bit scorched on the bottom, the mutton and pork in it were thrifty re-use of leftovers, for she tasted a memory of mint on the mutton and of rosemary on the pork. The treacle pudding was something she had never tasted or even heard of before, and surely she could not have invented anything like it in her own mind.
So once again this was brought home to her: she was in England, and a talking cat had brought her here. She had paid for lodgings for a week. So, for a week at least, she would live like a decently paid shop girl.
At the moment, that was more than enough.
The other girls began to push away from the table, thanking Madame, as the little maidservant came to clear away the last of the plates. Some went into the drawing room; pleading the long journey, Ninette excused herself and went back up to her room. When she entered the room, it was empty. When she turned back from closing the door behind herself, the cat was on her bed.
Turn out the purse, he said, imperiously. The English one, not the French one.
Obediently, she did so. The cat delicately separated the coins into neat little piles.
This is a sovereign, he said, pointing to the pile of the largest of the coins. These are worth the most. They are also called pounds. You had two, you gave Madam one, and she returned you the change. These are shillings. Twenty of these make a pound. You have seven now. These are pennies, or pence. There are twelve of them in a shilling and you have fifteen. These two here are three penny pieces, and you have two, they are also called thruppence. These four are six penny pieces, called six-pence. You have eleven of these half-penny pieces, called ha’pence, and eighteen of these little fellows, each worth one fourth of a penny, called farthings. Your rent and meals, with the maid to do your laundry, for one week, came to fifteen shillings. So, I am going to drill you in this money, and then I am going to drill you in how much is reasonable to pay for something.
“But why—” she began.
Because you need a few more items of clothing right now, and because I am going to make it possible for you to live here and live well, and I should be very much obliged if you didn’t allow yourself to be cheated. Now. What is this? An imperious paw tapped one of the piles of coins.
It was a very good thing that she had gotten that sleep, because her eyes were weary and sore by the time the cat allowed her to scoop the coins back into the purse, change into her threadbare little spare shift, blow out her candle, and go back to sleep. By this time, she was well aware that she was possessed of more money than she’d ever had in her life. She knew exactly how much she should expect to pay for the pieces of clothing the cat insisted she get tomorrow. But one of the expected purchases very much puzzled her. She understood going to a second-hand shop for most of it. . . .
But why would she be going to a ragman for a dress?
She went out early the next day, ostensibly to visit her mythical sister. It was still wet—not raining, but a kind of heavy mist. She headed purposefully down the street, her shawl about her shoulders, her hat pinned firmly on her head and her hair in the same tight little bun she wore when performing. She looked as if she knew exactly where she was going. In fact, she was following the cat.
Tall, narrow houses mixed with shops along a street heavy with traffic. Horse cabs, omnibuses, wagons, the occasional motor truck or motor car moved along slowly but steadily; this was nothing like her street in Montmartre. There, little cafes put their tables out on the sidewalk, produce shops racked their wares in front to entice buyers, street peddlers bawled out encouragement to buy from their carts, and everywhere there were the bohemians, sitting on steps, on balconies, hanging out of the windows. Dancing to a street organ, making music of their own. Arguing, brawling, making love in public. Here, there was none of that, only the stiff rows of houses and shops, and the stiff people moving purposefully to their destinations.
It will change with the holiday season. Then, you will see. This is the off-season, when it is hard to let rooms and hard to fill theater seats.
The cat turned down a side street. Then another. And another. They grew progressively narrower with less traffic, until at last, at long last, she found herself in a neighborhood that did remind her of home.
Not that there were artists and musicians thronging the place. But this was not a place where those good little shop girls would come to buy. Safe enough now, it was not a place where she would care to be after dark. There were no houses here, only buildings full of cheap flats that must have been home to enormous families. There was another accent in these streets; not being a native speaker, she couldn’t place it, but there was a veritable horde of red-haired children running about. And though there may not have been artists and musicians, there was music, of drum and fiddle and tin whistle, coming from a public house that was already open.
But the cat paused at a doorway and twitched his tail at her. She pulled the door open to the ringing of a little bell, and the cat slipped inside, under her skirt.