Six Lives of Fankle the Cat (4 page)

“The whole city cheered as the
Esmeralda
cleared the headland.

“The enemy fleet was waiting for us under the horizon. Invisible signals flew from ship to ship – ‘The
Esmeralda
has put out ... Take your stations ... Let every gun be primed ...'

“We sailed into a circle of hell. It was the longest cruellest day in the whole of time. The
Esmeralda
, fighting like a wildcat, was slowly gunned to pieces. The mainmast came down at noon in a flurry of silk and canvas and amber. The grey ships, their gun-mouths flashing scarlet, closed with us. I saw the corpse of Tomas – that brave sailor and prime minister – lying in the stern, with charred corpses all around him. In the middle of that thunderous feast of death, from time to time, rose the laughing voice of Mustacio, commanding, encouraging, defying. Now, at sunset, the grey shapes huddled close about us, and the
Esmeralda
was a floating charnel house.

“The little boy, Mint, fell with a musket-ball in his side. I could not bear to listen to his sweet cries of pain. I left him – what could a cat do? – and I went teetering along the tilted ruin of the deck, to find my king. I think, by then, every man-jack on the
Esmeralda
was either dead or mortally wounded. Mustacio had a great gash on his cheek. He licked the blood. ‘Better than rum, little cat,' he said. His right hand was like a pound of mince.

“By now the
Esmeralda
was going down fast by the stern. The terrible din of the guns went on and on, but not from the
Esmeralda
; her last gun had long since fallen silent. ‘Come, little Quichicuto,' said Mustacio, ‘we'll go now and see what death tastes like. I am curious.' He picked me up in his left hand. At that moment the wooden wall of the deck rose sheer against us. Under us was the sea with its salt and sharks and blood.”

Jenny touched the corner of her eye with her lace handkerchief.

“You are not to cry,” said Fankle. “It was bravely done. And now I want to see what the position is with regard to Mrs Crag's budgie. I've often wondered what budgies tasted like.”

***

Fankle was away all day.

In the meantime Jenny had been reasoning things out. Presumably Fankle (or Quichicuto) had gone down with the ship. How did it happen that this same cat was hunting about in the hills for mice and rabbits, and was even considering the piratical seizure of old Mrs Crag's budgie?

So, when Fankle returned, just before lamp-lighting time, Jenny confronted him with the problem, face to face.

“Oh,” said Fankle, “is that what's bothering you? You think I'm a liar, do you? You think I make up stories. Let me tell you, far more wonderful things have happened to me than the Mustacio episode. Yes, indeed.”

“I don't understand,” said Jenny.

“You must have heard – even you,” said Fankle, “that
cats have nine lives
. Now, would you mind pouring me a saucer of Effie's milk.”

The strange thing was, Fankle didn't speak all the time. For weeks at a time he said nothing but ‘miaow' and ‘mrrrrrr' and ‘fzzz,' and then he was a very nice loveable cat – not the show-off and the braggart he had showed himself to be in his story of the pirate king Mustacio.

***

Not two hundred yards from Jenny's father's croft stood the island church, and beside it the manse where the minister lived with his elderly mother Mrs Martin. It was a sad house, because poor Mrs Martin had not been at all well for years. What was wrong with her nobody knew, not even the island doctor. It was just that the kind old lady was melancholy all the time now. Her sad eyes looked out at a sad world. She didn't see the point of going out any longer, when there was nothing but sadness and vanity to be seen and heard. If she went anywhere, she reasoned, she would only intensify the existing sadness. Indoors there was little solace for her either, though her son Andrew was all considerateness and kindness. Her food tasted of nothing. The books she had loved once bored her now. Sometimes she would take up wool and knitting needles, but all she knitted was an immensely long, grey, scarf-like garment, that grew and grew and was now fifteen feet long if it was an inch.

“Mother,” said the Rev Andrew Martin one morning after breakfast (which he had prepared and set, for she wasn't interested in cooking either), “Mother, it's such a beautiful day! There are only two little clouds like white lambs in the sky. Everything is so beautiful and warm and clear. It's a shame to be indoors. You really must sit outside on a morning like this. I'll bring your chair and your shawl.”

“If you like,” said Mrs Martin dully. And she was sorry her words were so leaden and dispirited, for she didn't like hurting her son; and because she loved him, and because the morning through the sitting room window was so radiant, her spirits sank lower than ever.

Andrew wrestled the huge fireside chair outside and set it just beside the door, and he arranged the cushion. Mrs Martin came out like Mary Queen of Scots approaching the scaffold. She sighed and sat down. Andrew draped the shawl about her shoulders.

“Bring my knitting,” she said.

Having seen her as comfortable as possible, Andrew retired to his study to work on his Sunday sermon, and the old lady was alone.

And really, it was such a beautiful morning! A blackbird sang from the garden wall, burst after burst of purest ecstasy! The two little clouds like lambs had been joined by a third, high up in the intense blue sky, but they seemed to be too tranced with delight to move. The sea, between the two green hills, shimmered. You could almost feel the joy of the grass growing, and the teeming wildflowers. You could, if you were not Mrs Martin. She sat there, the sole blight on this happy summer world. As she sat, a tear welled in her eye – melancholy's answer to the dewdrop in the heart of the garden rose.

She took up her knitting needles, but they made an ugly ‘clack-clack' in the delicate web of sound that lay over the island. She dropped them again.

Just then, Mrs Martin saw a black cat on the garden wall, magnified and distorted by the unfallen tears in her eyes. Of course, it was the cat of Inquoy, Jan Thomson's croft. What was its name now – Flannel? Funnel? Mrs Martin couldn't quite remember. Some funny name like that. And it was a strange cat too. It followed the Thomson girl to school most mornings. It had (so she'd heard) attacked the coastguard's Alsatian dog – flown in his face like a black whirlwind, claws and teeth out – and sent the huge powerful dog home with his tail between his legs. And here it was now, on the garden wall of the manse. That had never happened before.

The cat seemed to be taking a friendly interest in the creature he shared the wall with – the joyous blackbird. The blackbird was too busy keeping a wary eye on the cat to sing now. It quivered on the wall, poised for flight, should that sinister shadow make one move.

“Really,” thought Mrs Martin, “if there is to be any ‘nature red in tooth and claw' in this garden, I'll call Andrew to take me inside. I just
couldn't
stand that!”

And then she realized that the black cat was looking at her, in a very concerned way. He looked, and looked, and then leapt softly from the wall on to the lawn, and approached her.

The blackbird resumed its song, a magnificent fount of celebration.

You would almost think the cat had some kind of message for Mrs Martin. But in the long garden there were so many distractions. First it was the butterflies. Three of them exploded silently out of the rosebush over Fankle's face. He fought with them for several seconds, but butterflies are much harder to fight against than dogs, and the butterflies separated, drifting airily each his own way. Fankle didn't seem to mind such a lyrical defeat. Once more he turned a serious regard on poor afflicted Mrs Martin.

What now – whatever was the creature doing now? He seemed to have found something in the long grass. Delicately he howked it out with a fore-paw, and it was – a fragment of cherry cake! Mrs Martin was
astonished
. The duplicity of Andrew! So this was what he did in the garden, late in the evening, after she was in bed – ate cherry cake – slice after slice of it, she wouldn't wonder. The thing was, Andrew had become worried last winter that ‘he was digging his grave with his teeth.' It was sweet things that he had always gone for, from his childhood up – chocolate, cream buns, meringues, honey and bread, but chiefly and most of all:
cherry cake
. Cherry cake was the chief villain in the thrilling drama that was going on in Andrew's body. Cherry cake he loved passionately and devotedly – and it was cherry cake that would finish Andrew off. So Andrew believed. It was true, he seemed to be getting fatter with every month that passed, and he was deeply worried about it. Last winter Andrew had come to a solemn decision – no more sweet things for him. He renounced them, he put them behind him. He got a diet sheet from the doctor which he studied carefully. Above all, cherry cake, that had been his joy and delight, was to be banned forever from the manse.

Be sure your sins will find you out! So this was what Andrew did night after night, in the garden, when he was supposed to be studying the growth of potatoes and lettuce and strawberries – he was wolfing down, in secret, thick slices of cherry cake!

Mrs Martin didn't know whether to laugh or cry. If it had been a really serious business – if Andrew was indeed cherry-caking himself to death – there would have been cause for tears. But the truth was, Andrew was and had always been an acute hypochondriac, forever worried about his health. The island doctor had assured Mrs Martin, privately, that there was nothing wrong with Andrew – he could eat, with safety, as much cherry cake as he wanted. And Mrs Martin had told the doctor in return that stoutness ran in the family: Andrew's father and uncle and grandfather had been even huger than Andrew: vast men, that set the earth trembling under their feet.

It had taken this cat to discover Andrew's innocent deceit. A fair fragment of cherry cake Andrew must have dropped and not found in the twilight of last night! The black cat swallowed the cherry, his eyes melting with sheer sensuous delight.

“You are a strange cat,” said Mrs Martin out loud. The blackbird agreed with her, thrillingly. Fankle himself seemed to acquiesce. He approached the invalid obliquely, across the shallot bed.

Then, before Mrs Martin was aware of it, he pounced! He pushed the ball of grey wool away, he parried, dancingly he threatened it – you would think he both loved and hated it. Then something happened: his claw got hooked in the endless scarf that Mrs Martin was knitting, and he could not get the paw free. He tugged, he pulled. The knitting needles fell with a tiny clatter on the flagstones. Fankle whirled about, and that was the worst thing he could have done, for the scarf began to drape itself about him, and the harder the cat tugged and struggled, the closer he was wound. The struggle to escape went on for the duration of two blackbird songs, and at the end of it Fankle lay there on the grass at Mrs Martin's feet like a badly-put-together Egyptian mummy. Even his head was covered – one ear only stuck out. At last, from inside the grey swathe, emerged a tiny ‘miaow.'

“Andrew,” cried Mrs Martin.

Her stout son was there in five seconds, his pen in his hand.

“Free that cat, Andrew,” said Mrs Martin.

“Good gracious!” said Andrew. “How on earth did this happen?” And then, when he had unwound Fankle and unhooked the claw, “Why, it's the Thomsons' cat – Fankle.”

“Fankle, is that its name?” said Mrs Martin. “Well, Andrew, since you've been so good as to free Fankle, you can have a thick slice of cherry cake.”

At the gape of guilty astonishment Andrew gave, she began to laugh: first a slow smile, then a reluctant chuckle, then a full-throated shout of merriment. It was just like the happy Mrs Martin of seven years ago, before the melancholy had come on her. It was, to Andrew, the most beautiful sound in all that summer of music and poetry.

As for Fankle, he gathered himself together with dignity, and left the garden without another glance at Mrs Martin and the Rev Andrew Martin. He even ignored the blackbird.

It would be wrong to say that Mrs Martin was entirely cured of her depressions from that day on. She still sighed occasionally, and thought with sadness of the emptiness of existence and the pain of life. But she could go out – a thing that had never happened for seven years. She could visit the crofts, and speak to the old women and the children. She could shop at the village store. She sat once more in her pew in the kirk on Sundays. The whole island was the better of that, because they had always liked Mrs Martin.

Every Friday afternoon a little box was delivered at the door of Inquoy croft, addressed in Mrs Martin's writing to
Fankle Thomson
. Inside was a tin of salmon, Fankle's favourite food. At teatime on Fridays, Fankle ate with great luxury.

Reverend Andrew Martin resumed his eating of cherry cake publicly, and grew rather fatter, but it suited him; and now he didn't mind so much, when there was laughter once more across the breakfast table at the manse.

“Of course,” said Fankle, “that business with Mustacio was nothing. I had seen far greater times.”

“Is that so?” said Jenny.

They were sitting in the kitchen of Inquoy croft, on a Saturday afternoon. Outside, it was as grey and cold and wet as an old dishcloth. Jenny's father was working in the barn; Mrs Thomson had had to go to the village for messages. Jenny herself had intended to pass the afternoon with a book, but she couldn't get on with it, for Fankle kept rubbing against her intent head, purring and miaowing alternately, and once he even walked across the spread pages. It was obvious that Fankle didn't want his friend to read; at least, not for the moment.