Carbonel: The King Of Cats

19

Mrs Cantrip

It was dark inside the shop, and the old woman behind the counter was so busy with her customer that she paid no attention to the children. She was grinning and bobbing, but saying nothing to the young woman, who was talking very fast and angrily, while she held the small boy by the arm.

‘I tell you straight,’ she was saying. ‘It’s the third time ’e’s ’ad a stomach ache after eating your ’ome made sweets. Once I could ’ave understood, because ’e never was a child to know when to stop. But today ’e’d only sucked a couple, that I do know, when the poor little kid was doubled up. I’m not one to complain, neither, but you can take the rest of them back!’ And she threw the bag of sweets on the counter. The little boy howled anew, as much at the sight of his property bursting its bag and bouncing all over the floor, as at the pangs of stomach ache. The young woman gave him a shake.

‘And don’t you ever let me find you coming ’ere again!’ she said, and pulled him, still complaining, out of the shop.

The clanging of the bell died away and the children watched Mrs Cantrip as she scrabbled round the floor, picking up the sweets. As she put them back into the jar without so much as a dust, both John and Rosemary were doubtful about helping her to pick them up. However, it gave Rosemary a moment or two to notice that the old woman had made some attempt to tidy herself since the day she had sold the broom. Her grey hair was twisted into a wispy bun by means of several large hairpins that reminded John of staples. She wore a shawl over her shoulders edged with scarlet bobbles, some of them missing, and a grubby apron with a pattern of enormous pink flowers on it.

She peered short-sightedly over the counter and said to John, amiably enough:

‘What can I do for you, lovie?’

There was a pause while the cat and the two children instinctively drew nearer together. It was John who spoke first.

‘Are you Mrs Cantrip?’ he asked.

‘Katie Cantrip, that’s me,’ said the old woman. ‘Licensed to sell tobacco,’ she added with some pride.

‘Then, if you please, we want you to tell us the Silent Magic that will make Carbonel free for ever.’

The old woman stiffened, and the amiability drained from her face as completely as water drains from a sieve, leaving her sharp nose and chin looking sharper than ever. Her deep-set eyes snapped angrily.

‘Have you got that cat there?’ she asked harshly.

‘I’m here!’ said Garbonel, and he leapt up on to the counter.

Mrs Cantrip seemed to pull herself together.

‘Well, we’d better talk it over fair and square. Put the broom on the counter so that we can all hear His Highness Prince Carbonel talking.’

Carbonel’s tail twitched at the very end where it hung down from the counter, otherwise he might not have noticed the mock deference with which she gave him his full title.

‘Do as SHE says,’ he said, without taking his great golden eyes off her. ‘But don’t leave the broom unguarded for an instant. Goodness knows what she might get up to.’

So they put the broom longwise down the counter, with the twigs still wrapped in Rosemary’s shoe bag, and John held it one end, and Rosemary held it the other, and from the other side of the counter Mrs Cantrip laid her gnarled hand on the middle. But as she stroked the wooden handle the children felt the broom quiver in response.

‘Ah, my beauty!’ said the old woman, so softly that Rosemary was startled. ‘We had some fine times together, you and me! Do you remember swooping over the North Pole with the Northern Lights flickering through your tail? And beating back home against a north-east gale with the clouds scudding over the moon so thick and dark that many a broom would have lost its way? But not you, my beauty! Ah, you were as fine a besom as ever took the sky, but now you are old, and so am I, and the glory is gone from us.’ She stroked the broom and cruddled over it like a woman with a sick child. Rosemary seized on her softened mood. ‘But why won’t you set Carbonel free?’

At the mention of the cat the softened mood was over.

‘Why should I set him free? I always hated him, else why should I have gone to the trouble of binding him with a second Magic?’

‘Why do you hate me?’ asked Carbonel. His tail was still now, but his eyes never left the old woman’s face. ‘I worked well for you.’

‘Oh, yes, you did your work,’ said Mrs Cantrip bitterly, ‘but only because you had to. I never tamed your proud spirit. However powerful the magic I made, you were always there with your air of disdain and disapproval as though you were the master and I the servant. And just as much as you withheld your will, my spells were that much short of perfection.’

‘Your own pride was responsible for that. If you had been content to have a common cat for your accomplice you would have had your way. But you chose a Royal Cat.’

‘That is all over now,’ said Rosemary. ‘Can’t you forget it, and tell us the Silent Magic so that we can set him free?’

‘I shall never tell you, you may be sure of that. If you want to know, you must find it out for yourselves. Besides, it is a Silent Magic so no one can say it. It was written down, and I have burnt my books, haven’t I?’

‘Have you?’ asked Carbonel sweetly. ‘I doubt if it was only sugar and water that goes into these sweets of yours that give the children such stomach ache!’

John and Rosemary looked at the rows of jars on the shelves behind her, and in each one the sweets glowed very faintly, red and green and yellow, in a way that they had certainly never seen before in a sweet shop.

‘Well, what of it?’ said Mrs Cantrip sullenly. ‘It was only a very little magic I mixed with them to make ’em go farther. It didn’t do any real harm. A bit of stomach ache is good for children. Teaches ’em self control.’

Her eyes wavered beneath Carbonel’s unwinking stare.

‘Then if you are still doing magic, you didn’t burn all your books!’

‘I did burn them,’ said Mrs Cantrip angrily. ‘Well, all of them except one,’ she admitted.

‘Where is it?’ said John and Rosemary together.

‘That I’ll never tell you!’ said the old woman fiercely. But as she spoke the shop door burst open, and half a dozen people came tumbling in. Now the shop was so small that it could only hold four people with comfort, so that when six people squeezed in, in addition to John and Rosemary, and those people angry and gesticulating, there was barely room to move. Above the hubbub a brawny man who seemed to head the company shouted:

‘Are you Mrs Cantrip?’

‘That’s me. I’m Katie Cantrip, licensed to sell tobacco.’

‘Well, why don’t you sell tobacco instead of this rubbish? ‘Ere, this is what you sold me, see!’ and he thrust a handful of evil-smelling brown stuff under her long nose.

‘So I did!’ said the old woman blandly. ‘That’s tobacco all right. I ought to know, because I grew it myself in my own back yard,’ she added with pride.

‘You what…?’ roared the man.

‘Yes, and what is this rubbish you sold me instead of notepaper!’ said a shrill voice behind him. ‘Superfine Azure Bond is what I paid for, and nothing but dead leaves when I got home. I’ll have the law on you!’ But her shrill protests were drowned by further complaints.

‘Made my Tommy sick, her sweets did!’

‘And my Lucy!’

‘It ought not to be allowed!’

‘Who does she think she is?’

‘Give us our money back, missus!’

Fists were shaken and threats were thick in the air. John said to Mrs Cantrip:

‘You had better give them back their money, or I think there will be trouble.’

‘How can I? I haven’t got any,’ said the old woman. ‘But if you was to let me have the broom back I could be over their heads in a winking!’ she said craftily.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Carbonel.

She peered uneasily from side to side at the angry people, and Rosemary felt quite sorry for the old woman.

‘We can’t give you the broom, but we will help you, won’t we?’

John nodded. ‘Take her into the room at the back. And Carbonel had better go with you to see fair play. Give me all the money you’ve got. It’s lucky Daddy sent me five shillings this morning. Hurry up!’

Mrs Cantrip ran uncertainly to the end of the counter, hesitated and turned back and went with Rosemary with Carbonel close on her heels. Their disappearance raised a fresh shower of angry cries from the defrauded customers, so to make himself heard John climbed on to a chair.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! If you will jolly well be quiet for a minute, on behalf of Mrs Cantrip, I will give you your money back, if I can,’ and turning to the angry man he said, ‘What do you want?’

‘My tobacco or my money. That’s fair, isn’t it? I paid three and sixpence for this rubbish!’

Even from where he was standing on the chair John noticed an extraordinary smell coming from the torn packet. He counted out three and sixpence (there was three halfpence in the cash drawer, and a safety pin). This made a very large hole in their total of six and threepence. However, the brawny man seemed satisfied and, muttering something about ‘the police next time’, elbowed his way out of the shop. With his departure the remaining customers seemed a little less aggressive. Under the counter was a cardboard box of stationery with the maker’s seal still unbroken, so that John was able to replace the notepaper and envelopes from this, feeling pretty certain that it would not turn into dry leaves on the way home, as the other had done. Luckily the sweets had only been sold for a few pence, so that when the last customer came for her money he was only tuppence short. She was a nice, motherly person, and when she saw John’s anxious face she said:

‘Don’t take on, dearie! It doesn’t matter about the tuppence, but don’t let your grannie do it again.’

John was so shocked at the idea of Mrs Cantrip being taken for his grandmother, that he quite forgot to say ‘Thank you.’

When she had gone he locked the door and hung up the notice that said ‘Closed’, and heaved a sigh of relief.

In a few minutes he rejoined Rosemary in the little room that opened off the shop. It was surprisingly tidy. There was very little furniture, but what there was was clean and orderly. Rosemary was making a cup of tea.

‘It looked all right in the packet,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think we had better drink any. It might turn us into something.’

‘Probably something creepy with a lot of legs,’ said John. Rosemary shuddered. Mrs Cantrip said nothing, but she took the cup that Rosemary poured out for her and blew on it gustily.

‘Well, I got rid of them!’ he said, and told them what had happened. ‘But I shouldn’t open the shop for a day or two until it has blown over,’ he said to Mrs Cantrip, who did not even look up from her tea.

‘Go away!’ she said sourly.

‘Well, of all the ungrateful people!’ began Rosemary. ‘When all we are doing is to try to help you!’

‘It’s no use!’ said Carbonel. ‘Sulking, that’s what she’s doing. Best leave her to get over it.’

‘Come on, Rosie,’ said John. ‘Let’s go!’

‘All right, I suppose we had better.’ She turned to Mrs Cantrip. ‘But we shall come back for the Silent Magic, make no mistake about that!’

Mrs Cantrip poured her tea into the saucer and drank it noisily, but still she said nothing. The children found a side door that opened on to an alley which led back to the Market Square.

‘Well, I do think she might have said “Thank you”, considering it cost us every penny we’ve got!’ said Rosemary indignantly. ‘And I think it was awfully brave of you to face all those angry people like that. All the same, I wish we hadn’t got to walk back.’

‘Oh well, things might be a good deal worse,’ said John.

‘Look here, I’ve got something to show you. Where can we go that’s quiet and private?’

‘What about the Cathedral where we had our sandwiches the other day?’

‘Good idea,’ said John.