Carbonel: The King Of Cats

9

John

They spent a happy half-hour among the gooseberry bushes, where the fruit hung like golden lanterns among the dark leaves. They ate until the prospect of bursting even one more on her tongue made Rosemary look at them with distaste. Then they played Cowboys and Indians, and then they tried trawling along the widest gravel path with one of the nets off the gooseberry bushes. But they caught nothing except a couple of man-eating sharks (they were really sticks), so they thought they had better put the nets back before any more holes got torn. Then, feeling rather hot, they came out of the kitchen garden and lay flat on the dusty grass under the cedar tree on the lawn. It was really a very hot day. They could see the main drive from here before it curved round to the front door. Presently a sleek, black car slipped down the drive on the way to the main road.

‘How lovely to have a car like that,’ said Rosemary, sitting up and pouring a handful of dust from one cupped palm to the other.

‘Pooh! That’s nothing,’ said John carelessly. ‘Aunt Amabel has got three, counting the little grey one.’

‘Good gracious!’ said Rosemary, deeply impressed. ‘Have you got three?’

‘As a matter of fact we’ve got four, and a pony, and… and an aeroplane. What have you got?’

Rosemary was surprised. Somehow John did not look like the kind of boy to have a pony or an aeroplane. There was a darn in the seat of his grey flannel shorts, and the rubber was beginning to peel from the toes of his sandals. She did not boast herself as a rule, but it seemed hard not to be able to produce anything at such a challenge, so without bothering about the consequences she said, ‘I’ve got a witch’s broom and a cat that talks.’

‘That’s silly,’ said John. ‘You couldn’t have.’

Rosemary sat up cross-legged and very straight. Her face had gone quite red.

‘I have, so there!’

John rolled over and looked at her.

‘All right, you needn’t get so waxy!’

‘But you don’t believe me, and it’s true!’

‘Bet you can’t prove it!’

‘Right,’ said Rosemary hotly, ‘I will! I know a magic spell that will make the cat come to me, whether he wants to or not.’

‘All right!’ said John, grinning hatefully. ‘Say it!’

Rosemary stood up. Could she remember the Summoning Words? She screwed up her eyes and said a little uncertainly:

By squeak of bat

And brown owl’s hoot,

By hellebore,

And mandrake root,

Come swift and silent

As the tomb,

Dark minion

Of the twiggy broom.

She opened her eyes again and looked anxiously round. There was no Carbonel.

‘I say, you do do it well!’ said John with a note of real admiration in his voice, which at any other time would have given her great satisfaction. But the way in which he did not even trouble to show that he did not believe her, made her bite her lip with vexation. She looked round desperately for Carbonel once more, and seeing nothing but the sun-baked lawn, to her own surprise burst into tears. John sat up.

‘I say,’ he said awkwardly, ‘whatever is the matter? I didn’t really think you would believe any of that stuff about me having a pony, and an aeroplane. Of course we haven’t. We’ve only an old rattle-trap of a car. It was only a game. You had better have my hankie. I’ve got one today,’ he said with modest pride. Rosemary was feeling for hers in her knicker leg without success.

‘But it is true,’ she sniffed obstinately. ‘I have got a broom-stick that flies, and a witch’s cat…’ And out came the whole story.

John listened with open mouth. She described how she lived with her mother, and how she had gone to Fairfax Market, and all the strange things that had happened since.

‘Gosh!’ said John, when she had finished. ‘I say, you are lucky! Oh, not the broom business. That’s all pretend, though you tell it awfully well. I mean you are lucky getting your own dinner, and cooking it yourself on a gas-ring. It must be wizard!’

Rosemary was just going to say once more that it was not pretend, but she stopped herself. After all, she could hardly blame him for not believing her. A week ago she would not have believed it herself, and there was some consolation in John’s genuine envy for the gas-ring dinners. A discreet booming noise came from the house.

‘That’s the first gong for lunch,’ said John. ‘We’d better go and wash. Aunt Amabel is fussy.’

As they walked towards the house, he told her that although his mother was Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s sister, they were always hard-up, that he had a sister of twelve (the one with measles), and a small brother of four, and they lived in the country. It all sounded very jolly.