A Cat in the Window Read online

  He would glare at us from inside the dining-room window as we arrived home, the sweep of the headlights shining on his fierce face. ‘We’re in trouble again,’ I would say as I put the key in the door. It was perfectly true that he had the knack of making us feel we had misbehaved, that two o’clock in the morning was a disgraceful hour to return home. We would switch on the light and hurry into the dining room ready to gush a greeting, only to find he had not moved, that he was still staring out of the window pretending to be unaware of our arrival except for the sharp flicks of his tail.

  Jeannie used to come ready to bribe on these occasions and after she had purposely clattered plates in the kitchen and unwrapped some small paper parcel that had been donated by the Savoy restaurant, Monty would enter with the air of a cat who was ready to let bygones be bygones. He would devour the delicacy, lick the pattern off the plate but, unfortunately, would not pay the price expected of him. Jeannie’s caresses were spurned and he would struggle free from her arms, jump first on the sink then up through his private entrance above the kitchen window, and disappear into the night. He was an opportunist, not a weak character open to a bribe.

  There were other times when there was no doubt he had become unhappy in our absence. I knew the sign when we stood at the front door and heard him come thumping down the bare wood stairs, wakened by the sound of the car as we drew up. ‘He’s only hungry,’ I would say to Jeannie, mocking his greeting. But if he was hungry it was not the hunger which was the result of a bribe. He did not bellicosely clean the plate, then away into the night. He would eat a little then look up at us watching him; and I defy the person who does not believe he was saying thank you. And afterwards he would not refuse to pay the price of his meal. Jeannie was permitted to hug him, as many hugs as she wanted, and carry him upstairs and deposit him on the bed where he lay curled through the night. There was now no fear of my kicking him off.

  He was not on his own all the time. We did not leave him at nine in the morning and let him fend for himself until our return at any old hour. He had his friends. There was our daily, Mrs Hales, who had to queue for his whiting before she arrived at the cottage; whiting the staple diet, with the stink that hung for hours in the cottage. Mrs Hales was ill one day but as she lay in her bed she realised that the whiting, bought and cooked two days before, must have been consumed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, explaining the situation to us later, ‘oh dear, there I lay thinking of poor Monty. Whatever will he do, I said. All by ’imself and nothing to eat. It mustn’t be I said. So I got up and called a neighbour through the window. “Our Monty,” I said, “’asn’t got ’is whiting. Do me a favour will you?” I said, “go to the fish shop and get three nice whiting. I can manage to cook ’em . . . then I’ll send me ’usband up to Monty when ’e comes ’ome from work.”’

  There were Mr and Mrs Foster who lived next door at the Ship. The Fosters had been landlords since 1912, through the times when the Ship, as the pub at the finishing post of the Boat Race, was a pivot of the great day. Maharajahs, cabinet ministers, famous actors and actresses, as Gus and Olivette Foster never ceased telling us, used to be their customers then, shouting the crews to victory between glasses of champagne. There was none of that now; the bars were crowded on the big day, the steps of the pub and the towpath in front were jammed with people, but for the Fosters it was a poor imitation of what they remembered.

  A high wall divided our small garden from theirs; and theirs was large enough for Gus Foster, in the distant past, to tether the trotting ponies the racing of which was once his hobby. This wall was Monty’s favourite and he would reach it by way of the kitchen window and the flat roof of our spare room which ran along a short way beside it. Thus Monty, as he patrolled the top of this wall, could be observed not only from our side but also from the back windows of the Ship by anyone, such as the Fosters’ son, with the nickname of Whiskers, who might be at work in the garden.

  Both Whiskers and his sister Doris had a particular interest in Monty, but as Doris worked in London during the day, it was Whiskers, the barman in the pub, who mostly kept a watch on his outside activities. He was in his garden one day digging a patch of ground when he heard a terrific hullabaloo on the other side of the wall as if it came through an open window from inside the house. Quite obviously the noise was of two fighting cats and one of them, presumably, was Monty.

  Now the Fosters kept the key of our front door for just this kind of emergency, and Whiskers we always considered as a guardian of Monty in our absence. He was about to rush in for the key when the noise suddenly rose to a crescendo, followed a few seconds later by a huge tabby racing along the top of the wall with Monty at his tail. Whiskers said afterwards he was so delighted to see such a victory that he shouted: ‘Well done, Monty!’ at the top of his voice. But Monty, left alone on the wall after the tabby had fled over another, was obviously hurt. He lifted up a paw, looked down at Whiskers and miaowed loudly.

  So Whiskers fetched the key and went inside our cottage and into the garden, and coaxed Monty down from the wall and into his arms. It was a nasty bite and we had the vet for him that evening; for Whiskers had immediately rung up Jeannie to tell her of the battle.

  And what was the battle about? Instead of the stink of fish in the kitchen there was the stink of a tom cat. The tabby had stolen the whiting.

  Jeannie and Monty

  8

  Not only the Fosters but others along the river bank kept a watch on Monty. He was a talisman to the passers-by as he sat in the dining-room window, hour after hour, waiting for our returns. One autumn we spent a month in Paris and when we got back we were looked at reproachfully by those who had seen him day after day in the window. ‘You should have seen him late at night when the street lamp lit up his face,’ said a neighbour, ‘he looked so mournful.’ We hated to hear such remarks because we felt we were in the wrong. Of course he had been well looked after by his guardians but he had been very lonely. And yet what does one do if ever one wishes to go away for a holiday with an easy conscience? Deposit a cat at the vet and you may think it is safe but you cannot possibly persuade yourself that the cat in such strange surroundings does not believe it has been deserted and has been left in a prison. There seems to be no answer except never to take a holiday.

  Monty’s big day in the dining-room window was Boat Race day. The Boat Race party, as far as we were concerned, came round each year much too quickly. An annual affair which had such raucous results as a Boat Race party, is apt to dissolve in some mysterious way with its predecessors. Time stands still. The guests have never left, or they are always just arriving or saying goodbye. Hence my old friends Mr and Mrs X are greeted by me at the door and I feel I am simultaneously greeting them this year, last year and the year before. Ours used to be a bottle party and as the Boat Race generally took place at some unearthly hour in the morning, guests began to arrive with their bottles at 9 a.m. The trouble with a bottle party is the stress it puts on the host and hostess who are inclined to greet their guests with graduated enthusiasm, according to the importance of the bottle. We had one guest who regularly brought a bottle of milk. I never found out whether this was a joke, for he consumed alcohol like everyone else; but I remember how our greeting became dimmer each year until it would have become extinct had we not departed for Cornwall.

  The preparations, of course, began at the crack of dawn and as it was always a marathon day of festivity, large quantities of food were prepared to cope with late breakfasts, lunch, tea and those who still had the stamina to stay for supper. For Monty these preparations were a nuisance and this might be considered surprising because, with so much food about, one might have expected him to be the official taster. But he was never a greedy cat. He ate his requirements and no more, although like all of us he had certain favourite dishes, chopped pigs’ liver, for instance, which he gobbled faster than others. He considered these preparations a nuisance, I think, because he wanted to get on with the party. He had a role to play, an
d it was a role which he enjoyed.

  He would keep out of sight, the airing cupboard was the ideal hiding place, until he had the good sense to realise the towpath was waking up; shouts of small boys who without reason for loyalty to either University were violently partisan on behalf of one or other of the crews, odd couples booking places on the railings, then the appearance of hawkers with dark- and light-blue favours. There was a pleasant atmosphere of impending excitement, and it was now that Monty appeared and expected attention.

  Both Jeannie and I were Cambridge supporters and before our first Boat Race party Jeannie had bought Monty a large light-blue ribbon which she tied in a bow round his neck. I did not approve. I thought such a gesture was ostentatious and silly and I anticipated confidently that Monty would wriggle free from the encumbrance as soon as he had the chance. He did not do so. True, the ribbon became more and more askew as the day wore on with the bow finishing up under his tummy, but this had nothing to do with any action on his part. It was the attention he received which caused that.

  Hence the light-blue ribbon became an annual ritual and invariably, after the bow had been tied, he would sit in the dining-room window staring with a lordly air at the crowds; and the crowds looking for a diversion until the race began would call to him and shout to their friends about him. He adored this period of glory. So much on his own but now at last receiving his due. And when our guests arrived, a hundred or more packing the cottage, a cacophony of laughter and talk, cigarette smoke clouding the rooms, people sitting on the floor and the stairs, glasses everywhere, Jeannie and I rushing around with bottles and plates of cold food, Monty was as cool as a cucumber. He would stroll from room to room, pausing beside a guest when the praise was high, even deigning to jump on a lap, ignoring the cat haters, refusing with well-bred disgust any morsel dangled before him by some well-meaning admirer. He was unobtrusively sure of himself; and when the rackety day was over, when Jeannie and I had gone to bed feeling too tired to sleep and we put out a hand and touched him at the bottom of the bed, we both felt safe. Safe, I mean, from the tensions among which we lived.

  Sometimes I wonder if we would ever have come to Cornwall had it not been for Monty. Decisions are often based on motives which are not obviously apparent, and cool intellects certainly would not believe that two people could change the mainspring of their life because of a cat. Such intellects, however, are free from turbulent emotions. They are the human version of the computer; to be envied, perhaps, because they are spared the distractions of light and shade. They can barge through life indifferent to the sensibilities of others because they have none themselves. Materialism, in their view, is the only virtue.

  Monty became a factor in our decision because he reflected, in his own fashion, stability. It did not matter how tired we were when we reached home, how irritated we might be by the day’s conflict of personalities, how worried by inflated anxieties, how upset by apparent failures, Monty was solidly there to greet us. His presence, you might say, knocked sense back into us. He thus gave a clue to the kind of reward we might have if we exchanged our existing way of life for one that had a more enduring standard of values. We did not say this self-consciously at the time, too many other factors were involved; but on reflection I realise his example helped us to take the plunge.

  The process of changing over from a city to a country life was spread over a year and more. We made several sorties to the cottage near Land’s End during that time, and Monty was usually a companion. He appeared to be quite unconcerned by the long car journey except once, and that was my fault. I was naturally on guard against him jumping out of the car in a panic whenever on the route I had to slow down or stop; but there came a time when I exchanged my ordinary car for a Land Rover. A saloon car you could shut tight but a Land Rover with its canvas hood had potential gaps through which a determined cat might escape. I therefore bought him a basket and at the instant of leaving Mortlake I pushed him in it, banged down the lid and tied it, and set off. It was an appalling miscalculation. Instead of appreciating my action as a gesture towards his own safety, he took it as an insult. He was enraged. He clawed and spat and cried and growled. I was halfway to Staines when the noise of his temper forced me to stop, and I gingerly lifted the lid up an inch. A pair of eyes of such fury blazed through the slit that I hastily banged down the lid again.

  Now Jeannie was with me on this occasion and inevitably this incident developed an argument. She wanted to take him out of the basket. I was too scared that once allowed to be free there would be no holding him. My imagination saw him gashing us with his claws as he fought to escape, then away like a madman into the countryside. She, however, insisted that only the basket angered him and he would be his old gentle self as soon as he was let out. So the argument went on, past Staines, past Camberley, past Basingstoke; it was not until we reached the outskirts of Andover that I gave in. Monty was released and, with a look of disgust in my direction, the purrs began.

  There was another occasion when he travelled as a stowaway on the night train from Paddington. Jeannie was always very proud of this exploit as she was the architect of its success. She was due to join me for the weekend and was dining at the Savoy before catching her sleeper when she suddenly decided she would like Monty to accompany her. She dashed back to Mortlake, found him, after a desperate five-minute search, crouched on the wall at the end of the garden, and arrived at Paddington with three minutes to spare. Monty was an admirable conspirator. He remained perfectly still as she rushed him along the platform wrapped in a rug. Not a miaow. Not a growl. And nobody would ever have known that the night train had carried a cat, had Jeannie been able to curb her vociferous enthusiasm when she arrived at Penzance.

  But she behaved as if the Crown Jewels were in her compartment. She was in such a high state of excitement when I met her that she did not notice the car attendant was directly behind me as she slid open the door to disclose her secret.

  Monty’s aplomb was superb. He stared at the man with regal indifference from the bunk. And as I recovered from my surprise and Jeannie muttered feeble excuses, all the car attendant found himself able to say was: ‘Good heavens, what a beautiful cat!’

  Five minutes later we were in the car on the road to Minack.

  Catch as cat’s can

  9

  Monty was wary in the beginning at Minack. He did not relax on those initial short visits, seldom put his nose outside the cottage, making even a walk of a few yards in our company a notable occasion. He was seven years old and needed time for readjustment.

  Minack is a cottage a few hundred yards from the cliff and cupped in a shallow valley with a wood behind it. The walls grow up from great rocks which some crofter a few centuries ago decided would make the ideal foundation. The stones of the walls are bound together with clay and, when we first came, the floor inside the cottage was of earth layered over by thin boards. There are two rooms; one, which is the length of the cottage, is our living room and kitchen, the other, a tiny one, is our bedroom; and there is a third room which we added as an extension along with a bathroom that became known in his lifetime as Monty’s room. On one side of the cottage the windows stare out undisturbed, except for the old barn buildings, across rocky moorland to the sea and the distant coastline rimming Mount’s Bay; on the other, two small windows on either side of the door face a pocket of a garden. The old crofter, the architect of Minack, wished to defend the cottage against the south-westerlies; and so this little garden, and the cottage, were set in a hill that rose away to the west. Thus, if we walk up the hill fifty yards and look back, the eye is level with the massive granite chimney; the chimney which to fishermen sailing back to Mousehole and Newlyn in a stormy sea gives the comfortable feeling they are near home.

  There is no house or eyesore in sight; and this freedom amid such untamed country provides a sense of immortality. As if here is a life that belongs to any century, that there is no harsh division in time, that the value of true happiness li
es in the enduring qualities of nature. The wind blows as it did when the old crofter lived at Minack, so too the robin’s song, and the flight of the curlew, and the woodpecker’s knock on an elm. This sense of continuity may be unimportant in a world with the knowledge to reach the stars; but to us it provided the antidote to the life we had led. It was a positive reminder that generations had been able to find contentment without becoming slaves of the machine. Here around us were the ghosts of men and animals, long-forgotten storms and hot summer days, gathered harvests and the hopes of spring. They were all one, and our future was part of them.

  Our plan was to earn a living by growing flowers and, the speciality of the district, early potatoes in pocket meadows on the cliff. We were, however, more influenced by the beauty of the environment than by its practical value; hence we presented ourselves with difficulties which had to be borne as a sacrifice to our whim. There was, for instance, no lane to the cottage. A lane ran from the main road a half-mile to a group of farm buildings at the top of the valley; but once past these buildings it became rougher and rougher until it stuttered to a stop amid brambles and gorse. In due course we cut a way through and made a road, but in the beginning the nearest we could take the car to Minack was the distance of two fields; and across these two fields we used to carry our luggage . . . and Monty.