Carbonel and Calidor (6 page)

Miss Dibdin broke the uneasy silence.

‘What are you doing here?' she snapped. ‘Snooping and interfering!'

‘We didn't mean to snoop,' said John.

‘We only came to the station to shelter from the rain,' went on Rosemary. There was another pause, at the end of which Miss Dibdin took a deep breath, as though she had made up her mind about something.

‘Well,' she began, almost amiably. ‘Since you've stumbled on my secret, you had better sit down, and we can have a little chat. But first you must promise to tell nobody about it. Not a human soul!'

‘Promise!' said John. ‘Not a human soul!'

‘Promise!' said Rosemary.

Miss Dibdin motioned them to the bench, and they perched themselves uneasily on the edge.

‘First of all we must make up the fire for Crumpet. He wants to dry his wet paws, don't you, my pussididdlums!' she cooed. ‘Such a wet afternoon.' She added a few sticks to the smouldering embers, and coaxed them into life, before seating herself on a broken packing case. Crumpet sat down by the hearth and began to lick his paws, from time to time flashing a quick, green glance at John and Rosemary.

‘Well,' said Miss Dibdin at last. ‘What do you think of my little den, dears? Cosy, isn't it?'

Rosemary looked round, and thought that ‘cosy' was one thing it was not.

‘You see,' said Miss Dibdin, ‘I have taken rooms at Tucket Towers. So very kind of Mrs Witherspoon. I think she likes the company, and we have both started on the same ... hobby. Quite rivals we are becoming! So of course I wanted somewhere private where I could get on with things. Make messes with no one interfering, you know. After all, you can't boil a cauldron in a bed-sitting-room, can you?' She waved airily at the fire bucket which stood in the hearth, its red sides smudged with soot.

‘Do you mean you
cook
things in the fire-bucket?' asked John.

Miss Dibdin nodded. ‘A sort of cooking, you might call it,' she replied, pushing out her underlip. ‘You can imagine how pleased I was when I discovered this place that nobody seems to want! That was a couple of weeks ago, when I came to Highdown for the day to look round. There's even a short cut to the station, through the fields from Tucket Towers. I didn't tell Katie about it, at first. She's so inclined to interfere.'

‘I remember you telling Mrs Cantrip you were going to be met by a friend at Highdown Station,' said John.

Miss Dibdin smothered a laugh behind her hand.

‘That was rather naughty of me!' she said coyly. ‘But I didn't say what kind, did I? It was a furry, four-footed friend. A beautiful smooth-haired pussy! It belongs to Mrs Witherspoon. She told me it seemed to take a fancy to her, just as Crumpet did to me. Her cat met her first when she was coming home from church one Sunday morning. What with that, and the fact that it was a beautiful smoky grey, just the colour of the suit the vicar always wears, she called it Mattins. Mattins and Crumpet are
such
friends! Aren't you, my precious?'

Crumpet, now warm and dry once more, was purring furiously as Miss Dibdin rubbed him behind his ears.

‘You see, at first Mrs Witherspoon wanted time to decide whether to take me in, not being used to letting rooms, and that was to be the sign. If, when I arrived at Highdown I found Mattins sitting in the Ladies' Waiting Room, it would mean she would have me. And he was. So fortunate! But you remember that parcel I was expecting, with the Do-It-Yourself Kit? It never came, after all. I can't think what went wrong!'

Rosemary flashed a look at John and began uncomfortably: ‘Miss Dibdin ...'

But Miss Dibdin snapped: ‘Don't interrupt! I am telling you! Without it I am just having to make do. Why, I had to come to Highdown by bus and taxi, and
carry
my broom, instead of ...' She looked up, and broke off as she saw the children's fascinated gaze.

The windows of the little room were so clouded with dirt that not much light filtered through. The firelight flickered on her frowning face.

‘Well, anyway, here I am,' she ended lamely. ‘But it is surprising the number of ways it is possible to make the best of things.' She nodded towards the cones standing on the newspaper.

‘Did you really take them from the hole in the road?' asked John. ‘The cones, I mean.'

Miss Dibdin shuffled her feet in their sensible flat-heeled shoes.

‘Well, I've just been telling you, I have to make do,' she said irritably. ‘They were the right shape, though perhaps they aren't very comfortable. The human head is oval, and the hollow inside the cones is round. I know, because I tried one on before I, er, borrowed them. The colour is soon put right. Oh, I shall put them all back when Katie sends my parcel on. I shan't need them when it arrives. I told her where I was staying in the end. Tucket Towers sounds such a respectable address, don't you think? I'm sure the parcel will come at last, and when it does,
when
it does ...!' She threw back her head and laughed shrilly with wide-flung arms. ‘There will be
nothing
I cannot have and
nothing
I cannot do!'

‘But do you mean you are going to wear that cone thing on your head, like a witch's hat?' said John.

Miss Dibdin clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh dear,' she said. ‘I've said too much!'

‘Then your hobby really is magic?' said Rosemary.

Miss Dibdin nodded slowly. ‘If you've guessed so much it's no use pretending. But don't forget, you promised not to tell!' she added quickly.

‘Is there a witch's hat in this — this parcel you're expecting?' asked John.

Again Miss Dibdin nodded, and he exchanged a quick glance with Rosemary. Miss Dibdin's eyes glittered strangely in the firelight, as she stared into the dancing flames. Her voice dropped to a whisper, almost as though she was talking to herself.

‘And that's not all,' she muttered. ‘There is something else in the parcel besides the hat. Something more precious than the Bank of England. Something that would give me power; such power that ...'

‘But Miss Dibdin,' began Rosemary. ‘Do
listen!
When I went up to your room in Fairfax Market ... Ow!' she went on, looking reproachfully at John who had dug his elbow sharply into her ribs. ‘That hurt!'

‘Shut up!' he whispered.

Miss Dibdin didn't seem to have noticed. She sat gazing into the fire, wrapped in her own thoughts, and mumbling to herself. But Crumpet was watching, with eyes that never wavered. John cleared his throat loudly, and Miss Dibdin roused herself.

‘But what do you want
six
witches' hats for?' he asked.

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then she said sulkily: ‘I only meant to take one at first. Then when I found it didn't fit very well, I thought it might blow off when I was flying high. So I took the others as spares.'

‘You mean when you fly on your broomstick?' said Rosemary. ‘Can you fly very high?'

‘I can't fly at all yet. Didn't I tell you I had to come to Highdown by bus?' said Miss Dibdin crossly. ‘But I shall! Make no mistake! When my parcel comes ... What is it, John?' she broke off irritably. He had made several attempts to say something.

‘But Miss Dibdin, that hole in the road where you pinched the cones. Aren't you afraid someone will fall into it if there is nothing there to warn them?'

Miss Dibdin flushed with anger. ‘Pinched them, did you say?
Pinched
them? I should not dream of doing anything so vulgar!
Borrowed,
you mean. I told you, I shall put them back when my parcel comes. Besides,' she went on sulkily, ‘I don't believe in mollycoddling. People should look where they're going!'

‘But isn't stealing the cones breaking the law?' persisted John.

‘Talking of breaking the law,' said Miss Dibdin, drawing herself up, ‘what about you, pray?'

‘Me?' said John in surprise. ‘Whatever do you mean?'

‘Well, what are you, a
boy,
doing in a
Ladies
' Waiting Room? Go along with you, shoo! Shoo!'

She advanced on John, flapping her black mackintosh at him, and shushed him out of the door. Rosemary was only too glad to sidle out after him. A shrill voice followed them as they scuttled down the platform. They paused for a moment to listen, before crawling through the hole in the hedge.

‘Don't forget!' called Miss Dibdin. ‘You promised not to tell! Not a human soul!'

‘W
HEW
!' said John when they had scrambled out on to the road side of the hedge. ‘So Miss Dibdin really does want to be a witch!'

‘All the same,' said Rosemary, as she picked bits of twig out of her hair, ‘we ought to have told her about the purple cracker. Why did you make me shut up?'

‘Oh grow up, Rosie!' said John. ‘Do you really think that if that queer old thing got hold of the Golden Gew-Gaw it would be in “the right hands”? I'm sure it was the ring she meant when she talked about something that would give her all that power.'

‘ “More precious than the Bank of England”?' went on Rosemary. ‘I suppose you're right. What's the matter?'

John had suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘We've left the satchel with the leaflets behind — on the bench where we began to have lunch.
And
the rest of the sandwiches. We'd only eaten half of them. We shall have to go back and get them.'

‘
Must
we?' said Rosemary, remembering how very strange Miss Dibdin had been.

‘We must,' said John. ‘I'll go by myself if you're scared.'

‘If you're going, of course I'm coming too,' said Rosemary.

John was peering cautiously over the hedge. ‘Hold on a minute ... I think it's all right! Yes, look over there!'

Rosemary looked.

It had stopped raining, and a shaft of pale, watery sunshine had broken through the clouds. Pinpricks of light sparkled on the raindrops still hanging from the bare hawthorn hedge. Two fields distant, on the other side of the railway, a figure in a flapping black mackintosh was bobbing its way through the wet grass.

‘Miss Dibdin,' said Rosemary. ‘She must be going back to Tucket Towers by that short cut she told us about.'

‘You can see the tower sticking up behind that clump of trees,' said John.

The path sloped downhill, and they watched Miss Dibdin's dumpy figure grow smaller and smaller, until she seemed to merge into the mist, which still lay on the low ground. Finally, she disappeared among the dark shadows of the trees.

‘Come on!' said John. ‘We don't want to be caught in the station if she decides to come back again.'

They wriggled their way once more through the hole in the hedge, and hurried up the ramp which led to the platform. Then they stopped. Sitting on the bench on which they had eaten the sandwiches, licking his paws, was Crumpet.

‘Quick!' whispered Rosemary. ‘The Golden Gew-Gaw! Let's see if he will talk to us. You promised!'

John nodded, and felt in his pocket for the tin of Special Things. Then, each with a finger looped through the golden band, they advanced on tip-toe.

‘Hallo, Calidor!' said John suddenly.

The cat started, turning quickly, and looked furtively to left and right, muttering to himself: ‘No tact, humans haven't. How in the world do they know what my real name is? Crumpet I'm called hereabouts.'

He looked suspiciously up at the children, with flattened ears.

‘We know quite a lot about you,' said Rosemary. ‘About Carbonel, and you not caring a herring bone who becomes King of the Cats after him. But we'll call you Crumpet if you'd rather.'

The cat rose slowly, his legs with their white paws splayed, so that he could balance on the slats of the station seat. He stared up at them with wide green eyes.

‘Who are you?' he asked at last. ‘And how is it you can hear me talk? Even She can't do that.' He nodded towards the Ladies' Waiting Room.

Once again John nudged Rosemary as she was about to speak.

‘Oh, we just — happen to be able to hear — a lot of things,' he said airily.

Crumpet was squinting up at them now through half-closed eyes.

‘Fairfax Market!' he said suddenly. ‘That's where I've seen you before.'

Rosemary nodded. ‘We met Carbonel on the way home afterwards,' she said. ‘We told him we were going to Highdown, and that Miss Dibdin was bringing you here too.'

‘You told him that?' said Crumpet angrily. ‘Just when I thought I'd escaped! It's “Calidor, do this”, and “Calidor, do that”, “Royal cats do this”, and “Royal cats don't do the other”, morning, noon and night. Sick of it, I am! It's not as though I am a kitten any longer. Why, I'm not even allowed to choose my own friends!'

‘Carbonel did say something about you getting into bad company,' began John.

‘Bad company?' interrupted Calidor. ‘Is that what he calls her? The prettiest little tabby that ever lapped a saucer! And as nice manners as any stuck-up royal kitten, and honest too. None of your sly-paws like the other one they've planned I shall marry.'

‘But why don't you want anyone to know your real name?' asked John.

‘For two reasons,' replied Crumpet. ‘This is not my father Carbonel's kingdom. It is enemy country. It belongs to Grisana, Queen of the Broomhurst cats.'

‘But I don't understand,' said Rosemary. ‘Why should Grisana mind you being here?'

‘Because she hates me for refusing to marry her daughter, Melissa,' said Crumpet.

‘The one you meant by “sly-paws”?' asked Rosemary.

Calidor nodded. ‘It was all arranged when we were kittens. At first my parents thought that if my sister Pergamond were to marry Grisana's son Gracilis, it might end the feud between Broomhurst and Fallowhithe cats. But they decided he was too feeble; like his father King Castrum, to be of any importance. Instead they approached Grisana, and it was arranged that when we were both grown up I should marry her daughter Melissa. But the only cat I mean to marry is my one and only dear little Dumpsie! Turned spiteful, Grisana has, because of it. Says I've insulted the royal house of Castrum. If she finds out I am in her kingdom, she'd do anything to get her own back. As Crumpet, she need never know who I am.'