The owners of Spice and Sugar had also been having trouble. We heard from Dora over the phone. She was sorry about her voice sounding so peculiar, she said. It was a wonder she had a voice at all...
The previous night, it seemed, they too had had visitors and the cats had been allowed to join in. (Better than locking them in her bedroom, said Dora. Last time Spice had taken down the cornices. Polystyrene, she said...
Yes, she knew cats could get their claws in it but she thought it would have been safe enough on the ceiling...) Anyway, when it was going home time they did shut the cats in the bedrooms. Sugar in Nita’s room, Spice in hers, so they couldn’t march out with the visitors. Past twelve o’clock it was and when she opened her bedroom door and found that Spice had gone... out through the 126
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transom window, which she hadn’t realised was open...
the one consolation was that it was raining.
Spice didn’t like the rain. She couldn’t be far, thought Dora. One discreet little call, not to disturb the neighbours, and she’d be back like a greyhound, yelling to be wiped.
Come one o’clock and, after a good many discreet little calls, Spice still wasn’t home. Come two o’clock and the discreet little calls had been abandoned. She and Nita were up at a nearby market garden, shouting over the walls like mad. In people’s gardens, down an electricity trench... they were building several more bungalows along at the end of the road and Nita, in the dark, went round every one.
It was pouring with rain. Their hair-do’s, done specially for the previous evening’s party, were hanging down their foreheads like seaweed. Still there was no Spice – and now they were beginning to think it was hopeless. If she were alive, she’d never be out in weather like that.
At three o’clock they went to bed. Not to sleep, said Nora. Jut to lie down because they were so exhausted. At five they were up and out again, roaming the streets with torches. She wasn’t calling now, said Dora. Her voice had gone and anyway she was no longer expecting any answer. All she expected was to find a sad little bundle lying somewhere in the gutter... caught by a car or a late-roaming dog, lying there soaked by the ram...
She was on her way up to the old quarry – a wild place, all hummocks and stunted bushes. Not that she’d ever known Spice go as far as that – but she must, thought Dora, have gone somewhere.
She had. And on her way to the quarry Dora met her coming back from it. She thought she saw something 127
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Double Trouble slipping past, elusively, at a distance – and when she whispered ‘Spice?’ the shadow answered.
She was scared, said Dora. She was soaked. Where she’d been for all those hours they’d never know. Only that Spice was now full of beans and showing off to Sugar, while Dora thought she’d probably caught flu.
Gosh, I could imagine how she’d worried, I said to Charles. Remember the time Sheba was missing all night? When Father Adams had been going to dig out a fox-earth because we thought there was no place else she could be? And the hundreds of miles we must have run looking for Solomon, said Charles. Remember the time we’d missed two trains to London?
I did indeed. Both of them had been involved in that.
I could see us now, running round the lanes like agitated ants, me frantically shrilling ‘Teeby-teeby-teeby’ and
‘Solly-wolly-wolly’ and Charles, who is much more dignified, clucking. I remembered the feeling of relief when, with half-an-hour to spare, Charles located them sitting inside a thorn thicket. We couldn’t get in to them but at least we knew where they were. If we waited a minute or two, we thought, they’d be coming out to join us.
An hour and a half later we were still waiting. The only difference was, Charles having fetched the shears to cut a way into them, they were now sitting further inside the thicket. Weren’t coming, said Solomon. They knew where we were Going. Off all day, said Sheba. Leaving them on their Own.
Eventually we’d given it up. ‘We’d better send a telegram to say we’re not coming,’ I said. ‘Or get them to broadcast a message on Paddington Station.’ Walking 128
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defeatedly back to the cottage we looked back up the track and there they were following behind. Sheba in front, Solomon trotting at her heels... angelic now they thought they’d gained their purpose.
They hadn’t. We caught a later train. Neither did they spend the time moping. As soon as our backs were turned, as well we knew, they’d be chasing round the cottage over the furniture. So many times we’d come back for something we’d forgotten and caught them tearing about. Very sheepish they’d looked, too, when we walked in on them. Thought we’d Gone, said the expressions on their faces.
I remembered, I said. And if I felt a pang of sadness, as one does for things that are past… ‘At least we don’t have to worry about those two,’ I said. ‘They don’t go off like that.’
Once again I was wrong. Within weeks we were worrying like mad.
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Fourteen
IT WAS THE SPRING, of course, and the fact that Shebalu was growing up. She still played with her ball with a bell on and Seeley – at times, anyway – still acted as though he were her grandfather. She was too big now to get under the armchair, though – where, pretending she was a mouse he’d lost, he used to corner her and refuse to let her come out. And once or twice they’d appeared playing boys and girls together, a sure sign she was growing up.
‘Appeared’ is the only word for it. Like Solomon and Sheba before them, they invariably did it in public. As on the occasion when some neighbours were asking after Shebalu and I said I’d give her a shout. ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ I called – feeling foolish even as I did it. I couldn’t yodel ‘Shebalu’, however, and ‘Teeby-teeby’ was too like
‘Seeley’ – so Doodoo she’d become for calling purposes, on account of the Lu at the end, and she always answered 130
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instantly, like a retriever to a whistle. She came tearing round the corner now – a flurry of blue and white fur and long legs. With her, as usual, was Seeley. ‘They’re terrific friends,’ I said.
They made that obvious all right. Seeley, following behind her, suddenly jumped on Shebalu’s back. She dropped, squealing but patently enjoying it, flat on her stomach on the ground. He, holding her in a cave-cat grip by the back of her neck, yowled triumphantly through her fur. And thus, for all the world to see, they advanced towards us up the path. ‘Are you going to breed with them?’ our neighbours asked. They were most surprised when I said it wasn’t possible.
At least they’d come when they were called, however, and they did arrive together. The morning came when I went out to summon them for breakfast and there was no Shebalu in sight. ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ I called enticingly – but only Seeley arrived. Scurrying round the corner like a tracker dog, looking worriedly about him as he came. He’d lost her. She’d vanished while his back was turned. Had we found her? he said.
An hour later, when we were almost on our knees with searching, she suddenly erupted out of the forest. Tearing top speed down the hill from the pine trees, telling us how exciting it was in there. It must have been, too – all those tall avenues of trees, and the pine needles to walk on and the silence all around her. And the foxes, we told her. We’d heard their mating calls in the night. She was city-bred. What could she know of foxes?