With a practised paw, Woppit rolled over a protesting Calidor and went on licking. She said nothing, but there was the faint suggestion of a purr.
‘Please, Woppit!’ pleaded Rosemary.
‘I’ll think about it!’ said Woppit, as though it were a perfectly new idea of Rosemary’s. ‘I might do it, to oblige.’ But she went on licking the unhappy Calidor so vigorously that Rosemary felt quite sorry for him, and her purring settled down to a deep, contented hum.
At that moment, John burst in at the door. ‘Here’s some milk, but I only just got out without being seen,’ he said. ‘I could hear your mother getting up. We’d better hurry.’
They put the saucer down, left Woppit in charge, closed the door of the greenhouse firmly and ran back to the house and breakfast.
7
Figg’s Bottom
‘Really, Rosie,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘It was naughty of you to say you would look after three cats without asking first!’
Breakfast had been reduced to eggshells and toast crumbs before they had brought up the subject.
‘I know, Mummy, I’m awfully sorry, but –’
‘It wasn’t Rosie’s fault,’ broke in John. ‘You see, the… the… person they belong to had to go away this morning urgently, and there wasn’t time.’
‘But three cats, dears!’
‘One cat and two kittens,’ pleaded Rosemary. ‘And if you would only come and see them, Mummy, you couldn’t say no!’
Mrs Brown tried to go on frowning, but the two pleading faces were too much for her, and presently she smiled.
‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But if you want to keep them in the greenhouse, you must ask Mr Featherstone’s permission, and you must look after them yourselves.’
‘Of course we’ll look after them, won’t we, John? They are very special kittens, and we wouldn’t trust them to anyone else. May we go and ask permission this minute?’
The children ran downstairs to the ground floor flat, where they found Mr Featherstone shaving with an electric razor. When he heard them come in, he wheeled around, his razor buzzing in his hand like a wasp in a jam jar.
‘Good heavens, it’s young John! Rosemary told me you were coming. Glad to see you, my boy! Have a bull’s eye. You’ll find them somewhere about, on the bookcase I think. I’m afraid it’s a bit untidy.’
Rosemary felt that ‘untidy’ hardly described it. They couldn’t find the bull’s eyes among the litter of things on the bookcase, but they ran them to earth at last behind the coal scuttle in a very sticky bag. Because of the bull’s eyes they explained the situation rather indistinctly. However, Mr Featherstone seemed to understand.
‘Three cats in the greenhouse?’ he said. ‘I don’t see why not. No geraniums, so why not kittens? I remember you always had a weakness for the creatures, Rosie. Listen, I’ve got to take the van into Broomhurst this afternoon. Suppose you and John come with me. I could drop you in the country at the end of the town somewhere, and pick you up on the way back. What do you say?’
John and Rosemary thought it was an excellent idea.
They spent the morning making the greenhouse comfortable for the kittens. Mrs Brown found them an old blanket and the lid of a cardboard box so they could make a bed. They stacked the old flower pots in a corner and swept the floor and dusted the shelves, to the indignation of a number of spiders and several wood lice. Woppit lay in the sun outside and slept, and the two kittens chased the broom and their own tails, until they, too, fell asleep.
‘I expect Blandamour will come to see them soon, and I should like it all to look its very nicest,’ said Rosemary, standing back to admire the effect.
‘Bless you, she wouldn’t notice!’ said Woppit from the doorway. ‘Them as lives in high places thinks high and is above such things. Not that it isn’t right and proper for the humble likes of you and me to do our best, for all that!’
John did not much care for being bracketed with Woppit as ‘humble’, but, luckily, at that moment Mrs Brown arrived.
‘I thought that you and the cats might like some milk, and besides I want to be introduced,’ she said, setting down a tray. On it were two mugs, a saucer and a jug of milk.
‘The black one is Calidor and the other is Pergamond,’ said Rosemary, squatting down beside the ball that was two sleeping kittens.
‘The little dears!’ said her mother softly, stirring them gently with the toe of her shoe. Then she said, ‘I have your tea. I wanted to make some for Mr Featherstone – I’m sure he doesn’t look after himself properly – but he said he would get some in Broomhurst. If you ask him to put you down by the turning to Figg’s Bottom, you can go to Turley’s Farm and ask for some milk instead of carrying something to drink with you.’
‘Do you mean where we went last year after we picked wild daffodils, Mummy?’ asked Rosemary.
‘That’s it. I’m afraid the daffodil field has been built over now. There’s a new housing estate, but I think the farm is still there.’
‘It be!’ said Woppit unexpectedly, though of course only the children heard her. ‘I ought to know, seeing as my brother Tudge took on Turleys four years ago.’
When Mrs Brown had gone and both children and kittens were drinking their milk, she went on, ‘Ah, if you should meet a cat with a torn ear and a walleye, it’ll be Tudge, sure enough. You can tell him he can come and see me if he likes,’ she went on graciously. ‘I dare say I shall be glad of a bit of company here.’
She looked rather disdainfully around the greenhouse as she spoke.
‘What colour is he?’ asked John.
‘Not to say one colour,’ said Woppit cautiously, ‘but a bit of most.’
‘We’ll look out for him,’ said Rosemary gravely.
‘I’ll pick you up about half past five,’ said Mr Featherstone, as they rattled cheerfully along in the van.
They passed the familiar outskirts of Fallowhithe and found themselves in the newly built housing estate. They passed the finished houses with new curtains at the windows and new babies asleep in new prams in the front gardens, and were soon in a road with half-built houses on either side.
‘Where shall we meet you?’ asked John.
‘The corner by the Figg’s Bottom signpost is as good a meeting place as any. It should be just around the bend when we leave the houses behind,’ said Mr Featherstone. But they did not leave the houses behind. A tide of new buildings seemed to be coming toward them.
‘Good heavens!’ said Mr Featherstone. ‘I’d no idea the Broomhurst houses had spread so far.’
‘It looks as though a couple more houses will join it up with Fallowhithe,’ said John.
Even as they looked, they saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks along a plank over the remaining piece of open land, which they saw had the forlorn, naked look of all building sites before the work actually begins.
‘Anyway, there are still fields behind the houses on either side,’ said John.
The van slowed down and stopped at a turning which still had a country-lane look about it. There was a signpost at the corner which said: TO FIGG’S BOTTOM. The children got out.
John carried their tea in a knapsack. ‘We’ll be waiting for you, and thank you for bringing us, sir!’ he said.
‘Enjoy yourselves!’ called Mr Featherstone as he let in the clutch, and they watched the van rattle off down the road.
John and Rosemary wandered off to the nearest half-built house and watched a man with no shirt and a very brown back carry a load of bricks up a ladder, and come down again with the empty hod. He stopped at the bottom.
‘Can you tell us if the houses will join up in the end?’ asked Rosemary. ‘I mean so that Fallowhithe and Broomhurst meet?’