Carbonel: The King Of Cats

11

Showing Off

Rosemary and her mother thanked Jeffries, the chauffeur, and got out of the car at number ten, Tottenham Grove. Rosemary rather hoped that one of her friends would see them, but the only person to notice was the boy delivering evening papers, and he only noticed Carbonel in her arms.

He sang out rudely:

Does your mother want a rabbit?

Skin her one for ninepence!

She felt Carbonel stiffen angrily.

‘Well, darling, did you enjoy it?’ said her mother when they reached their room and she was taking off her hat.

‘Mummy, it was lovely! I liked John awfully, and the garden, and the scrumptious pudding. And Mrs Pendlebury Parker was very kind! But you only had rice and stewed fruit. I saw when we came to see you.’

‘It was very nice rice pudding,’ said Mrs Brown as she ran her fingers through her hair. ‘And as for Carbonel…!’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Oh dear, that sounds like Mrs Walker again. Come in!’ she called.

‘Oh, there you are, dear,’ panted the landlady.‘These stairs will be the death of me! I just came up to see if the cat was here. It’s a funny thing, I’d just put down a plate for ’im this morning with some nice bits of liver, and ’im purring for it like a steam engine, when ’e suddenly lifts up ’is head and gives a little mew, angry like, and off he goes up the area steps as if the dogs was after ’im! And I ’aven’t seen him since. I wouldn’t like…’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Walker,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘A most extraordinary thing! He suddenly turned up at Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s house this afternoon. It must be every bit of six miles.’

‘Well I never!’ said Mrs Walker.

Rosemary looked at Carbonel, but he still ignored her, as he had done all afternoon. She was not feeling very comfortable about her own behaviour over the Summoning Words. Was she right to have used them as she did? But as sometimes happens when we are afraid we are in the wrong she took refuge in being cross. She had been looking forward to a good long talk all day, but when she saw him going off with Mrs Walker without so much as a glance in her direction, she said to herself that she didn’t care in the least, and that she would not talk to him if she could, and perhaps that would teach him!

By bedtime she would have given a good deal to have seen him curled up on the eiderdown. She could have said the Summoning Words, but she felt a little shy of using them again, and besides, it seemed wasteful to use magic to fetch him from the basement. Rather like hiring a taxi to go to the corner of the road. She knew he would come back in the end, so there was nothing to do but wait patiently.

When her mother had gone next morning, Rosemary tidied up the flat with special care, and then she hurried off to the shops. She bought a pound of sausages, the thin kind, a large tin of baked beans, two cream buns, two gob-stoppers for dessert, a bunch of cornflowers, and two ounces of sprats as a peace offering for Carbonel. The cornflowers were only twopence because they were just beginning to go white at the edges. She would like to have set it all out on her best doll’s tea service, but she was not sure if John would laugh, so she decided not to. She poked her head into the wardrobe to see if the broom was all right and, thinking it must be rather dull for the poor thing, she took it out and laid it carefully on her bed with the precious twigs on the pillow.

At 11 o’clock she was watching for John through the window, but it was a large black car that stopped at the door, not the smaller grey one in which they had come last night. John was already on the way upstairs when she ran down. She could see Mrs Walker on the floor below peering suspiciously after him.

‘I say, I am glad you’ve come! I was afraid something would happen to stop you.’

‘It’s all right, Aunt Amabel has gone on in the car to a committee. Jeffries is coming about three o’clock to take us both back to Tussocks to tea. It’s all arranged. I say, where is the cat and the broom?’

‘Carbonel has gone off on his own. He does sometimes, you know. I’m afraid he is cross with me about that spell yesterday. But there is the broom… oh, please be careful!’

John had picked it up without ceremony, and was examining it with an incredulous expression.

‘What a mouldy old thing!’ he said cheerfully.

‘It’s not!’ said Rosemary hotly. ‘And if it was it would be very unkind to tell it so. You must be very gentle with it.’

‘Well, how do I make it take me for a ride?’

‘You don’t make it. You ask it very politely, in rhyme.’

‘Do you mean to say that I’ve got to make up poetry?’ said John in the same voice he would have used if he had been asked to jump over the moon.

‘I’ll do it, because it is my broom,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least, I’ll try. It must be only a tiny ride because of not wearing out the magic. I should think round the sitting room.’

They fetched a piece of paper, and after much argument and biting of the pencil they produced a rhyme that they both secretly thought rather good.

‘Now, stand astride the handle, say it aloud, and then hold tight!’

John did as he was told and said loudly:

Round and round the sitting room

Kindly take me, magic broom.

With a jerk that nearly threw him off, the broom rose into the air with John astride, and swept into the sitting room. Round and round it went, about three feet from the floor. It was not very comfortable, because unless he kept his legs straight out in front they bumped into the furniture. As it was, he knocked the cornflowers over, so that the water streamed over Mrs Brown’s best tablecloth that Rosemary had taken without permission. The broom took the corners with a violence that would not have disgraced a Dodg’em. But John held on and went careering round with shining eyes, making penetrating jet plane noises.

Rosemary was delighted. Now he would have to believe that the story she had told him was true! Round and round went the broom. Presently John stopped making jet noises, and a little later he stopped smiling.

‘I say, Rosie!’ he called, ‘I think I’ve had enough. How do I stop it?’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Rosemary. ‘We didn’t say in the rhyme how many times round we wanted it to go.’

‘Well, hurry up and tell it now… I’m not feeling very well.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Rosemary anxiously, ‘but I shall have to get some paper. I can’t do poetry without.’

She had no idea what they had done with the pencil, and when she found it at last under the bed she was so flustered she could think of no rhymes at all. By this time a very pale John was clinging on to the broom with both arms. Rosemary bit the pencil and screwed up her eyes until it hurt, but it was no use. She could think of no poetry at all. John was just saying faintly:

‘I think I’m going… to be…’ when Carbonel walked silently into the room.

Rosemary fell on her knees beside him.

‘Oh, Carbonel, darling! Please, please stop the broom! We forgot to say how many times round it was to go, and now it won’t stop! And John looks as if he’s dying. Whatever shall we do?’

There was no reply, only a faint moan from John, and Rosemary added:

‘But it is no good telling me because I can’t hear!’

The cat struggled free from her enclosing arms and stalked into the centre of the room. There was a pause, and then, haltingly, as though he was waiting to be prompted, John said faintly:

Forgive my rude untutored tongue,

Remember I am very young.

On the bed I pray you lay me,

Or my ride will surely slay me!

And at once, gently as a boat sailing on a peaceful sea, the broom skimmed the bedroom and settled down on Rosemary’s bed, where John lay beside it, thankful for the feel of solid, if rather lumpy, mattress beneath him. Rosemary, wide-eyed and anxious, followed with Carbonel. The black cat put his front paws on the bed and looked at John’s closed eyes and pale face, and Rosemary quickly put her hand on the broom.

‘He’ll be all right in a minute. It all comes of showing off,’ said Carbonel severely. ‘First it was yesterday, you saying the Summoning Words, and me just settling down to my dinner… as nice a bit of liver as I’ve ever seen… to hurry six miles in the sweltering heat, and for what? Nothing at all,’ he added bitterly. ‘If you wanted to show what you can do, why couldn’t you have done something flashy… like turning this boy here into a beetle, or something…’

‘No fear!’ said John, struggling into a sitting position. The colour was returning to his cheeks.

‘Besides, I don’t know how to turn people into beetles,’ said Rosemary.

‘I suppose you don’t,’ said Carbonel grudgingly.‘But there is no excuse for showing off with the broom, when the poor old thing wants all the rest and quiet she can get. I saw several more twigs on the floor next door. And you must have offended her into the bargain. That’s why I put in that bit about “Pardon my untutored tongue.” She only takes her corners like that when she is upset.’

‘I expect that was me,’ said John. ‘I called her a… a mouldy old thing, but I’m awfully sorry. I think it’s a simply wizard broom!’

Rosemary felt the broom wince in a bridling sort of way under her hand.

‘There you go again! It isn’t a wizard broom. Don’t you know a witch’s broom when you see one?’

Rosemary put out her hand and stroked carbonel rather shyly on the top of his head with one finger.

‘Please don’t be cross any more. I said the Summoning Words because I couldn’t bear John not to believe about you. I only half thought they would work when I said them, and I promise never to say them again, unless it’s really important.’

Carbonel looked a little less severe. Rosemary transferred her stroking finger to the soft part underneath his chin, and he did not seem to mind.

‘But it is no good you doing slovenly spells like that,’ he said more gently. ‘The idea of not saying when you wanted the broom to stop! If I had not come back it would have to have gone on going round and round until all the twigs fell out of its tail, and it might have taken months!’

John shuddered.

‘Or until I could think of a rhyme, I suppose,’ said Rosemary.

‘Which would have been much the same thing, seemingly,’ said Carbonel tartly.