‘May I stroke you?’ she asked a little shyly, putting out her hand. But before she could touch him she heard her mother calling from the house.
‘Rosie! Time to get ready, dear!’
Rosemary turned to the sound of her mother’s voice. When she looked back again, the black cat had disappeared.
‘Rosie!’ called her mother faintly, but more urgently this time.
Rosemary crawled out on hands and knees, but she did not answer her mother until she reached the lawn, because she wanted to keep the Green Cave a secret.
‘Coming, Mummy!’ she called.
She looked back as she reached the house, and she was just in time to see a black cat leap up on to the garden wall, trot along the top and disappear behind the tool shed.
John’s train was late. When it came in at last and hissed itself to a standstill, the doors burst open and people poured out in every direction. Rosemary and her mother looked anxiously up and down the busy platform, but they could not see him.
‘That looks like John over there,’ said Rosemary, ‘but it couldn’t be – he’s too tall!’
But the boy came up to them, grinned and said, ‘How are you, Mrs Brown? Hello, Rosie!’
He refused any help with his suitcase and walked to the gate with Mrs Brown. The two of them talked together about the journey, about John’s father and mother and about how hot it was. Rosemary followed, carrying John’s raincoat. Studying his back as she walked behind, she realized that she had to look up to the tuft of hair that still stood up at the back of his head. Last summer it had been level with the top of her own fair hair. He was talking to her mother in a rather grown-up way. Rosemary’s heart sank.
‘Well, at least his hair does still stick up,’ she thought to herself. ‘That’s something, I suppose. He’s come for three whole weeks, and if he’s gone all grown-up since last year, whatever shall we do all the time?’
They had tea as soon as they reached home. It was a special tea, with watercress, strawberry jam and brandy snaps which Rosemary had made herself. A lot of them had broken, but she had thought it did not matter, because she and John could eat the bits afterward in the Green Cave. Now, she did not feel sure that John was the sort of person who would enjoy the Green Cave at all.
It was a quiet meal, with Mrs Brown making most of the conversation. Afterward, John politely offered to help wash up.
‘Not when you have only just arrived, dear,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘But you can help Rosie clear away, then I expect you would like to run and play in the garden. I’ll see to the tea things.’ She watched a little anxiously while they both stood with loaded trays, each standing back politely to let the other through the door.
When they had stacked the plates, they ran down the four flights of stairs into the garden.
‘It really belongs to all the flats. The garden, I mean,’ explained Rosemary. ‘But the grownups hardly use it. There are no other children, so the garden is practically mine. Would you like to see my flower bed?’
They walked sedately down the path, while Rosemary tried to think of something to say.
‘Did you have a good term – at school, I mean?’
‘Not bad,’ said John.
‘Oh good!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’m going to the high school next term. I expect I shall have a ponytail.’
‘Sally’s got one. You remember, my elder sister? It was perfectly sickening. One minute she was decent – sandals and plaits, like you, and the next she wore a ponytail and slip-on shoes, and wouldn’t play anything sensible.’
Rosemary only half listened; the other half was thinking: ‘This just can’t be the same John I played with last summer who had all those glorious adventures with me! Perhaps this proves that I did dream the magic part, and the flying, and the black cat that talked.’
‘Goodness!’ she said aloud. ‘Talking of black cats, there he is again!’
‘I wasn’t talking about black cats,’ said John.
‘That’s the second time today,’ said Rosemary excitedly. ‘Look on the garden wall!’
John looked. Then he said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I expect it’s Carbonel.’
‘John!’ said Rosemary, and she turned to look at him, beaming from ear to ear. ‘Then it did happen! You remember the magic, and the flying and everything?’
‘Of course it happened!’ said John in astonishment. ‘Good old Carbonel! Come on, Rosie, let’s see if we can catch him!’
They ran to the garden wall and looked along it both ways, but there was no sign of the cat. John stood on the rusty old garden roller and tried to look along the top, but the roller moved when he stood on tiptoe, and he fell off on to a rubbish heap. When he sat up with leaves in his hair, Rosemary began to giggle, and presently John joined her. The invisible wall of shyness between them melted as though it had never been.
‘Come on, come and see my Green Cave!’ said Rosemary, as she pulled John to his feet.
They crawled in on hands and knees.
‘What a glorious place!’ said John, as he tucked his feet under him. There was not much room for two.
‘Let’s make this our headquarters!’
It was going to be all right after all, thought Rosemary, and she ferreted happily under a pile of leaves and brought out the broken brandy snaps in a biscuit tin. They sat and munched happily together.
‘I’m not really going to have a ponytail,’ said Rosemary suddenly.
‘You are an owl, Rosie!’ said John, and tweaked one of her plaits in a friendly way. ‘Come on, let’s go and play something!’
2
Carbonel Again
Mrs Brown was a widow. She added to her small pension by dressmaking. The house in Cranshaw Road belonged to Mr Featherstone, who ran a travelling Repertory Company called the Netherley Players. Instead of paying rent for the flat, Rosemary’s mother looked after the costumes of the Company. These were kept in the old stables of the house.
After breakfast next morning, Mrs Brown said, ‘Rosie, dear, I’ve got to get on with those Roman togas in the costume room this morning – simply miles of machining, so will you and John do some shopping for me?’
They fetched a basket. With the shopping list on the outside of an old envelope and a pound note inside, they ran downstairs.
‘Good heavens!’ said John, as they closed the front door behind them. ‘There he is again!’
Sure enough, on top of one of the stone balls that stood on each gatepost, sat Carbonel. As soon as John and Rosemary reached the gate, he dropped silently down beside them.
‘Good morning!’ said Rosemary politely. ‘We’re going shopping, but we shan’t be long.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said John, ‘but he makes me feel I ought to bow to him. Hallo! He’s following.’
Carbonel was trotting quietly at their heels. He went with them to the baker’s, and the fishmonger’s, and the grocer’s and the little shop that sold newspapers and sweets and ices.
Once, they tried to see if they could shake him off by running quickly around a corner and diving down a little alley. But when they came out of the alleyway, after waiting for several minutes, there the black cat was sitting at the entrance, quietly washing his paws, which made them feel rather silly. The only difference was that from that moment on he walked beside instead of behind them, as though he intended that they should not escape.
On the way home, they sat down on a seat by the side of a quiet road to eat the ice creams they had bought at the little shop. They licked in silence, and Carbonel sat at their feet and stared and stared at them.
‘He’s beginning to make me feel uncomfortable,’ said John.
‘Do you think he’s hungry?’ suggested Rosemary.
‘Doesn’t… look… like it. Fat… as butter,’ replied John in the jerky way of someone whose tongue is occupied with capturing escaping ice cream.