But Hector was finished saying how pleased he was to meet as travelled a cat as Peter (Jennie had evidently been laying it on thick in his absence) and Jennie was now continuing:
`Well now, this is Mickey Riley who was thrown out in the streets when he was a kitten and who never had a home. If there's anything you ever want to know about London and the best places to go to make a living, ask Mickey. There's just nothing he doesn't know …'
Mickey, a big dark chap with a tiger stripe and an enormous square head, lapped up Jennie's flattery and practically took a bow as he said: 'Quite, quite. Be glad to answer your questions.’
As Jennie Baldrin says, there isn't much I haven't seen or done. 'Though I will admit I've never been to Glasgow on a boat, or fallen overboard. I'd like to hear about that some time, youngster.'
How wonderful Jennie was, Peter thought, at always saying just the right thing and making everybody feel good and purry,
'This is Ebony,' Jennie said, introducing Peter to a lean-flanked, jet-black cat. 'Isn't she beautiful? Not a touch of white on her anywhere, not a single hair. That's quite unusual, you know. Ebony used to belong to an old widow, a tobacconist in Edgware Road. When she died, nobody took her on. She had been devoted to her, too. Eight years. You would think the woman would have made some provisions for her. Ebony learned the streets the hard way, didn't you, dear?'
Ebony showed a tiny piece of pink tongue at the centre of her coal-black mask and quickly gave herself a couple of self-conscious licks. She was so pleased she didn't know whether to stand up or lie down.
'And this (who proved to be a brindle cat with white face and whiskers somehow reminiscent of Father Christmas) is G. Pounce Andrews, who really has had a lot of hard luck. Started in a butcher's shop and it closed down, got a job with a tailor and he went out of business, then went into a boardinghouse and it burned down, and then a private house where he was staying was hit by a bomb-the only one in the block. Well, you know how people talk and how ridiculously superstitious they are, especially about cats. Word got round, and nobody, but literally nobody, would have Pounce around, no matter how many mice he brought in. He's been on his own ever since. And he does deserve better, because none of it was his fault …
'Oh, and of course,' Jennie continued, 'I mustn't forget. This sweet little grey girl is Limpy. She has had a hard time of it. Orphan. Never even knew who her mother was. Lost her in a flood almost before her eyes were open. Country cat, you know. How she ever survived I'll never know. AND then getting her foot caught in a trap. And actually moved to the city and learned to make a go of it. When you are talking about real, true-blue courage . . . well-'
Limpy fell over on her side and did some violent washing. It was true. Peter saw that the toes of her left hind foot had been crushed. But he was given no time to linger over this tragedy, for Jennie was spinning merrily on
'Now these two dears are sisters, Putzi and Mutzi. From the Continent. Vienna, I think they said. They have known true sorrow. Came over here in 1938 with some refugees. Their house caught it in 'forty– four. Flying-bomb. Luckily Putzi and Mutzi were out visiting in another block. When they came back there was nothing, just a hole. They didn't even find any small pieces of their people. And after that, nobody thought of taking them in. The wonder is that they got on so well in London, I mean being really foreigners and not knowing our ways at all. Darlings, I think you are really marvellous …'
Putzi and Mutzi, who were a pair of quite ordinary shorthaired tabbies with identical looks and expressions, except that one was a little thinner in the face than the other, purred modestly, and Putzi said: 'Ach, it is really nothing. What shall one do? One does the best one can, no?'
And so, one after the other, Peter met them all, including Tiggo, a half-Persian black with a white mask who had had a home and was now a stray because he liked it and preferred to vagabond it than live the soft life, and Smiley, who was a big, cheerful-looking mottled grey-and-white tomcat who had belonged to a bachelor who had got married to a woman who could not abide cats.
At the end of Jennie's list of introductions and her recital of the accomplishments, trials, tribulations and individual virtues of each inhabitant of the hostel, there was not a cat in the place but was reduced to a state of complete adoration of her. And thus Peter learned that there was more than one way of extracting a living and a night's shelter and safety from the streets of London, and that a winning nature and blarneying tongue was quite as valuable as a sharp claw in a swift paw.
For they soon found themselves settled by the mutual consent and urging, as it were, of all the residents of the hostel, in the best ground-floor suite of the ruined building, a secluded little dugout made by the rear stairs leading to the cellar and a corner of a brick wall. The steps were already overgrown with a kind of fungus-like moss that made a soft bed, and they were sheltered on three sides by the remains of the brick wall with a ledge overhead in case it rained. It had been occupied previously by the two Viennese sisters and Ebony and Limpy who, however, insisted that Peter and Jennie take it over all to themselves.
And as for dinner, it was a question of choosing from the many gifts brought to them, and dividing up the rest so that everybody had something. Mickey Riley brought a bone, G. Pounce Andrews had a mouse put away that had not been too much used, Limpy contributed a fish head and Tiggo had salvaged an entire half lobster carcase, legs attached and all, out of a nearby dustbin.
After supper was over, they all had a general community wash-up and get together talk-feast, after which some of the strays who liked night prowling went out through the place where the board was loose. Others stayed around to chat a little longer and, exchange experiences, and then wandered off to their various quarters to sleep.
Down through the top of the roofless house shone a three-quarter moon, its silvered disc filling the inside of the building with soft light that made the angles of the ruins stand out sharply shadowed, and reflected in cold pools of emerald and topaz from the eyes of the cats who were still awake and had them open.
From nearby All Souls' church tower Peter, snug against his bit of wall, heard the clock strike eleven. His heart was heavy within him, for any moment now he knew that Jennie would have to be leaving him and returning to her people. She seemed, however, to be quite content to remain where she was, and when she neither made any move to go, nor any mention of having to do so, Peter himself, no longer able to bear the suspense, brought up the subject.
'Jennie,' he said, `won't you be, I mean, oughtn't you to be getting back to Buff and the Pennys? Surely Buff will have missed you when she went to bed …!'
Jennie did not reply for a moment. However, she raised her sleek head and Peter saw the soft moonshine on her white throat and mask, and the glitter of her eyes. Then she spoke, saying in a strange kind of voice, `Peter, I've been out on my own too long to go back. I shan't be returning. I've come back to you to stay. Do you mind very much?'
How very much like Jennie for her to put it that way. Did he mind her coming back! And dismissing with the simple declaration that she had been a free cat too long to be able to return to domestication, the depth of the sacrifice she was making for him.
For Peter had no doubt whatsoever that had the Penny’s understood that he and Jennie were together and taken him in with her she would have been happy to remain there with the child who had been her first and only real love amongst human beings. What she was saying so simply and without any fuss whatsoever was that she was giving up everything she loved for him.
And he was deeply touched by it. But being that inside of him he still thought like a little boy, he could not help but think of the sorrow and disappointment that must be the share of Buff, the girl with the long brown ringlets and the sweet face.