Kitty (11 page)

“Pay attention, Kitty,” said Emily Mainwaring, smiling at her pleasure. “I’ll tell you a bit about the people we are going to stay with. Mrs. Jane Dwight-Hammond is a poet. Not a very good one I’m afraid but she’s a very kind lady. Her sister, Matilda, is also very nice but she has a penchant for collecting stray cats. I’m afraid the little brutes are all over the place. They are both maiden ladies and very old friends of mine.”

“But you said
Mrs.
Dwight-Hammond,” pointed out Kitty.

“Well, she was disappointed in love, or so she says, at a very early age and sees no reason why she should suffer the stigma of being a Miss. She invents husbands for herself but they’re apt to change with the days of the week. Don’t let it bother you. She’s quite harmless. Also, it’s good social training to get used to eccentrics. Goodness knows, society is peppered with them.”

The house was called unimaginatively “Sea View” and stood on a small promontory at the far end of the beach. It was an enormous Victorian mansion with tall red roofs and it stood in several acres of neglected garden. As the carriages crunched to a halt on the graveled drive, no sound could be heard but the wind sighing through some ragged, monkey puzzle trees on the scraggly lawn.

“Ring the bell, Judson,” said Lady Mainwaring to one of the footmen, “and keep on ringing. This always happens,” she explained to Kitty. “They love company but they get very nervous when company actually arrives and go into hiding.”

Judson rang the ship’s bell which was on a stand outside the door. Then the silence fell again and faint, agitated rustling and scurrying could be heard from the back of the house. Just as Judson was about to sound off on the bell again, the front door popped open and a thin middle-aged lady in a shabby teagown rushed out. She had a thin, lined face and a great quantity of strong yellow teeth. Her pale, weak eyes watered in the sunlight and she peered at them anxiously.

“Oh, it is you, Emily. We can’t be too careful you know. Lots of bad, bad men around.”

This was Jane.

An identical figure came bounding down the steps behind her and hugged both Kitty and Lady Mainwaring in turn. “I forgot to tell you they were twins,” said Emily Mainwaring to Kitty.

Matilda Dwight-Hammond did indeed look, at first glance, like a carbon copy of her sister. But closer inspection revealed her to be smarter in her dress and less vague and timid in her manner.

“Tea is served in the drawing room,” said Matilda.

“Can we please change our gowns first?” asked Emily Mainwaring. “We’re very sticky and hot from the train journey.”

A look of almost childish disappointment crossed Matilda’s face. “But Emily, teatime is
always
when we say ‘hello.’”

“Oh, very well,” sighed Emily. Matilda beamed with delight and ushered them into the drawing room. Kitty expected to find other visitors to whom she was expected to say “hello,” but the eyes which met hers belonged to a score or so of cats.

There were cats sitting on the chairs, cats on the floor, even cats on the piano. Their different-colored furs gleamed with health and their unblinking eyes surveyed Kitty with interest.

“We’ll start with the first,” said Matilda, and then giggled. “Why, your name
is
Kitty. How suitable!”

She led the way to the first cat, a hugh tabby with large green eyes. “Now this is Peter. Say hello to Kitty, Peter.”

Peter mewed politely. They passed to the next. “And this is Tibbles.” Tibbles was a Persian who fluffed her fur and also mewed.

More fascinated by the minute, Kitty was introduced to cat after cat. Then Matilda clapped her hands and opened the door. “Hellotime is over,” she announced. “Time to leave.” The cats rose and stretched and slowly loped from the room, quickening their pace as they went out into the garden, the sun shining on their sleek fur. Then they fanned out and dived off into the shrubbery.

“Now it’s good-bye time,” said Lady Mainwaring. “We really must get changed.”

“Of course, of course,” said Matilda. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

Kitty stood patiently and let Colette undress her. Her room was charming. White lace curtains framed the long windows and were looped back to show a view of the beach and the sea on the other side of the tangled shrubbery of the garden.

The furniture was of white cane with the exception of a marble washstand with a porcelain ewer and basin which were overflowing with roses and maidenhair ferns. An empty crystal bowl stood next to the washstand on a triangular cane table. The sisters had forgotten to arrange the flowers or—more likely, thought Kitty—they considered the basin and ewer more suitable for a flower display.

Dressed in a loose, flowing teagown and minus stays, Kitty walked out onto a small wooden balcony in front of the window and took a deep breath. Far away, yachts skimmed across the horizon under a freshening breeze. Little puffs of clouds chased each other across the cerulean sky. On the shoreline, the shallow water changed from blue to pale-green and on a stretch of springy turf above the tide line, the cats romped and played, their fur rippling and glistening in the light wind.

Kitty could not help thinking it would have been the ideal place for a honeymoon. What on earth was her husband doing now?

•    •    •

Peter Chesworth was, at that moment, staring at Lady Mainwaring’s butler as if he could not believe his ears.

“Gone to the seaside!” repeated his lordship angrily. “Did my wife leave a note?”

“No, my Lord,” said the butler. “But Lady Mainwaring did.”

Lord Chesworth removed his gloves, tucked his cane under his arm, and scanned the single sheet of paper. “Dear Peter,” Lady Mainwaring had written, “Kitty was disappointed not to hear from you so we assumed you were still occupied with your work on the estate. We are going to Hadsea for a short holiday. May we hope that you will join us? I enclose the address….”

He crumpled the note in his hand. No, they may
not
hope that he would join them. He had never had to chase after any woman in his life and he did not intend to start now—particularly with his wife who ought, by rights, to be sitting by his side warming his slippers and his bed.

He stood irresolute on the pavement and then, with a slight feeling of being hunted, saw Veronica Jackson’s carriage coming to a stop. The lady herself, to judge from the amount of luggage strapped on the back, had just returned from the country as well.

Peter Chesworth did not know that Veronica had watched him going into the house from the carriage window and subsequently seen him reemerge a few moments later with a look like thunder on his face.

“Well, Peter, here we both are back in town,” she said brightly. “Are you running off anywhere?”

His lordship was absolutely furious with his wife. He was damned if he would go running after her.

“I’m going nowhere at present,” he said, looking up at her with his attractive mocking smile. “But I’ll take you to the opera this evening if you like.”

“Not Wagner!” begged Veronica in mock horror. “I can’t stand all that caterwauling.”

“No, not Wagner,” he assured her. “Bizet.”

“Till tonight then!” She kissed her fingertips to him and her carriage moved off.

They arrived mercifully late and the production of
Carmen
was already halfway through the first act. Peter Chesworth was regretting his impulse. Perhaps if they stayed quietly in the box at the interval, they would not be noticed.

But as the lights blazed up at the first interval, Veronica was leaning over the edge of the box, waving to her friends. She seemed almost to be going out of her way to attract attention and was wearing a very low-cut dress which seemed to draw all the eyes of the men like a magnet.

With a shudder, Peter Chesworth saw his mother-in-law and Lady Henley in a box opposite. Lady Henley had her lorgnette positively screwed to her eyes and Mrs. Harrison was directing a pair of opera glasses in the direction of Veronica’s white bosom.

Well, they could glare all they wanted. He was neither going to explain nor apologize. As Lady Henley made a movement to her feet, the theater was mercifully plunged into darkness as the second act began.

Lord Chesworth decided to escape. “Let’s go to the Cavendish and drink champagne,” and, as his partner showed signs of protesting, he clasped her hand. “Please, Veronica.”

Veronica smiled in the darkness. They would by all means go to the Cavendish Hotel and she would make sure that Peter Chesworth did not leave her till the morning.

Lord Chesworth guided his companion into the public dining room of the Cavendish in an effort to avoid the heavy-drinking crowd who gathered with the proprietress, Mrs. Lewis, in her parlor. But the dining room seemed to be filled to capacity with London society, Mrs. Lewis’s reputation as a cook drawing them from all over.

Peter Chesworth’s ears burned as glances were thrown in their direction and the feathered headdresses of the ladies bobbed and nodded as they whispered with their heads together. He wished for the first time in his life that he were a woman so that he could faint or, at the very least, complain of a headache. Veronica was drinking steadily and leaving much of the excellent food on her plate. Her eyes held a hectic glitter and her voice became louder and more strident until her personal endearments seemed to be bouncing off the walls. He suddenly thought of his quiet, shy wife and heartily wished he had gone to join her. He would leave for Hadsea in the morning.

But by the time he had got rid of a very angry Veronica on the doorstep of her home and reached the safety of his own bed, he decided to go in two days’ time instead. He did not want to look as if he were running to heel like a whipped dog.

Kitty was enjoying the Dwight-Hammonds’ eccentric household immensely. The sisters dithered about cheerfully, Matilda with her cats and Jane with her poems. Lady Mainwaring rested and read and chatted with the sisters, leaving her young friend endless freedom to explore the garden and the beach.

Playing with the cats, paddling at the edge of the water, collecting shells and seaweed, Kitty was like a child. She even inspired Jane Dwight-Hammond to write a poem in her honor. Jane gathered together Lady Mainwaring, her sister, Kitty, and the cats to listen to it.

Jane coughed nervously and fingered a long necklace of amber beads as she peered shortsightedly about the room to make sure she had her audience’s full attention. She began:

A sudden clap of thunder shook the drawing room and the poetess threw her papers in the air and bolted out of the room.

Emily Mainwaring gave a very unladylike grin. “Jane is terrified of storms—thank goodness. I wonder how long that poem was going to be? ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ is nothing compared to the length of some of Jane’s epistles.”

Matilda was as angry as that good-natured lady could be. “You are very, very cruel, Emily. Jane has a great talent. She would have been published by now if it weren’t for “
Them
” Kitty was to learn in due course that “
Them
” referred to the whole publishing world of men who, Jane and Matilda were firmly convinced, rejected the poems simply on the grounds that they were written by a woman.

A flash of lightning and another terrible roll of thunder rocked the house and died away leaving a dark, ominous silence, broken only by the faint whimpers of the terrified Jane abovestairs. “I had better go to her,” said Matilda.

“What a frightful storm,” said Emily. “We’d better go to sleep and have a rest before this evening.”

The sisters and their guests had been invited to a ball at a country house five miles’ distant. Their hostess, Maria Epworth, was an old schoolfriend of the Dwight-Hammonds.

Kitty lit the gas in her room and decided to read instead of going to bed, since the noise of the storm howling outside the shutters seemed to make sleep impossible. But for all the heavings and groans and shakes of the house as it rode out the storm, Kitty eyes began to droop. She turned down the gaslight to a faint glimmer and climbed into bed, wriggling her toes down between the cool sheets. Her foot struck something thin and cold at the foot of the bed. It moved! Kitty screamed and leapt out of bed and stood with her bosom heaving. Then she laughed. Obviously the Dwight-Hammonds had gone in for the popular fad of practical jokes.

She ripped back the bedclothes and found herself staring down at the writhing bodies of two adders. Then she really screamed in earnest, stumbling through the old storm-rocked house, her terrified cries rising higher and higher over the noise of the thunder.

Lady Mainwaring was first on the scene to catch the frightened girl in her arms. “It must have been a nightmare, Kitty, but we’d better make sure.”

The sisters did not keep any menservants except for one very old deaf coachman. Neither the cook nor the housemaids would volunteer to go into Kitty’s bedroom.

“In that case, I’ll go myself,” snapped Lady Mainwaring. With Kitty clutching her sleeve, she threw open the door of the bedroom. “There you are!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Why there’s noth—” Her voice broke off as she saw something moving on the floor and she edged into the room in time to see the tail of a snake disappearing as it slithered under the bed.

“Good God!” gasped Emily Mainwaring, leaning against the doorjamb.

“What is it?” cried Matilda, materializing behind them with her hair in curl papers.

“Snakes!” shouted Emily and Kitty together.

“Snakes! Are you sure?” screamed Matilda. And then without waiting for a reply, she threw back her head and yelled, “Cats. Cats! Come here, at once.”

There was movement on the stairs and then the cats came bounding along the corridor. “Get the snakies. Get them!” shouted Matilda, dancing in excitement.

The women turned away and there was a great scuffling and mewing and then the leaders of the pack, who seemed to be Tibbles and Peter, strolled past them, each holding a dead snake triumphantly in its mouth. The other cats ambled past with a “see, there’s nothing to it” attitude.