Six Lives of Fankle the Cat (2 page)

“Coming!” shouted Tom Strynd. “I'm coming! I can't be everywhere at once!” Then he turned to Jenny and said in a low sweet voice, “After I get back from the farms, Jenny, I'm going to take this little kitten, Jenny, I'm going to tie a heavy stone round his neck. Then I'm going to drop him in the millpond.”

The little bell pinged again, twice.

Tom Strynd scuttled across the yard towards the shop, crying, “Patience, patience! Job had patience.”

Jenny lifted the condemned kitten in her arms. She swayed it back and fore. She whispered fiercely, “He won't! Don't be feared, peedie friend. Not a hair of you will be harmed. You'll never see the millpond, tonight or any other night. I'm Jenny. I'm your friend. You're coming home with me.”

It was only as Jenny rounded the shoulder of the little hill and saw Inquoy below her, its chimney smoking, that she realized the enormity of her deed. Who was she to promise sanctuary to a kitten, even such a beautiful kitten as this? It couldn't be – it was impossible. Her mother was bound to find out in time, no matter how cunningly Jenny hid the animal. Her mother could smell out cats – and the smell of a cat within half-a-mile of Inquoy made her ill with disgust.

“Stop here meantime,” said Jenny to the kitten. “I'm not leaving you. I'll be back in a minute with some milk and breadcrumbs. You sweetheart.” She kissed the little cold nose of the kitten. She put him into an old disused henhouse and closed the door.

Half-way to the croft house, Jenny paused. She realized she would need all her imagination to get through the next day or two. She sat down on the wall of the kailyard. She closed her eyes. She picked up a stone. She said slowly, in a foreign accent. “I am a spy. I have no name. I have a secret number. I am in enemy territory. If I'm caught I will be killed without mercy. I have been sent here by MI5. My task: to rescue a very important prisoner, someone with secrets so precious that all the countries of the earth want desperately to have them. The first part of my mission is accomplished. (MI5, can you hear me? This is 527 speaking.) I have had success. I entered the prison today. I shot the guards, I brought the prisoner out safe. All is well. But a worse hazard lies ahead – how to get the prisoner out of the country. Can you hear me, MI5? I have concealed the prisoner in a peasant's hut. I will attempt tonight, under cover of darkness, to get the prisoner past the dock and embarkation authorities. It will not be easy. The alarm has been raised. Their anti-espionage people are everywhere. I am sending this radio message from a bleak hillside above the port. I have seen through the binoculars a likely ship. Her name is
Fantasy
. I am returning now, at sunset, to the peasant's hut. You will hear from me once we are safely aboard the ship. If you do not hear from me, then it is all over – the worst has happened – the prisoner and your 527 are captured, probably dead ...”

A cold voice said at her shoulder, “What kept you so long?”

Jenny said to her mother, “Mr Strynd spoke and spoke and spoke.”

“Where are the messages?” said Mrs Thomson.

Jenny had forgotten the messages in the joy and anxiety she had experienced that morning.

“I'm sorry, Mam,” she said. “I don't know what I can have been thinking about. I got the messages alright, and I paid for them. They're safe enough. I just left them, somehow or other, in the shop. I'll go right back at once and get them.”

Such a violent spasm of asthma struck Mrs Thomson then that she had to sit down on the kailyard wall, five yards away from Jenny. It was four or five minutes before she could speak.

“You foolish ungrateful girl!” said her mother at last. “What am I to do with you? Does any other woman on this island, or in the whole world, have a daughter like you? I sometimes wonder if you're quite right in the head. A beautiful spy in enemy territory! The Lord give me patience. Who are your enemies, girl – myself and your father? Let me tell you something, Jenny. Let me warn you. If you go on with those stupid dreams and fantasies, you'll come to a bad end! You will, for sure. Listen, girl, I'll tell you exactly who you are. You're Jenny Thomson, aged eleven, of Inquoy Farm, on a little island in Orkney. You're a schoolgirl. When you leave school you'll probably work on a farm somewhere. When you're a bit older, if you're lucky, some decent farmer might take you for his wife. Then you'll likely have two or three bairns. Then you'll be an old woman with rheumatics and wrinkles, telling stories beside the fire to grandchildren. That's the way it always has been for a farm woman. That's the way it always will be. Resign yourself to it. It'll save you a lot of unhappiness, Jenny. Whenever you feel those foolish dreams taking hold of you, say to yourself firmly:
No. I'm poor Jenny Thomson, of Inquoy croft
. That'll bring you to your senses ... I have nothing more to say.”

“Yes, mother,” said Jenny, “I'm sorry. I'll try not to imagine foolish things again. I'm Jenny, nothing else.”

“You'd better go back and get the messages then,” said Mrs Thomson, “before somebody steals them.”

Jenny got up from the wall and gave her mother a sorrowful guilty kiss on the cheek.

“My asthma is very bad today,” said Mrs Thomson. “There's a good girl. We won't say another word about it ... Worst asthma I've had all summer. There must be some cat or other prowling around.”

Jenny crept off once more in the direction of the village, a plain, chastened, rather stupid croft girl.

“A name,” whispered Jenny. “What name will I give the cat?” As she passed the smithy she said, “
Fankle
... Because, little dear, you have caused so many difficulties already. Your name will be Fankle.”

“But where can we hide him?” said Jenny to her father. “Mother's sure to find him, one day or another.”

Jan Thomson pondered. Then he said, “In the boatshed. Your mother never goes there.”

So Fankle was bedded down in an old fishbox in the boatshed, with a lining of lambswool plucked by Jenny from the barbed wire, to keep him warm.

***

“Jenny,” said Mrs Thomson the very next afternoon, “that's twice today you've gone out with a saucer of milk. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” said Jenny. “There's a starling with a hurt leg in the yard. I'm helping him to stay alive.”

“That's good of you, Jenny,” said her mother.

The little black kitten grew fast in the boatshed, fed on saucers of milk, and on milk-soaked bread, and pieces of fish and chicken. Soon he was scampering all over the boatshed, chasing flies and beetles and pieces of dust in sunshine. Jenny brought him his milk three times a day. Then she would stroke him, and he would purr like a powerful little engine. “Fankle's a very good singer,” Jenny assured her father.

***

A terrible thing happened – Mrs Thomson's cheese and butter were being interfered with! Something was plundering these delicious plates in the cupboard every night. (Mrs Thomson was a very good dairy-woman.)

“No mistake,” said Jan Thomson. “It's a rat – and a big clever one at that.”

So, traps were set here and there about the croft-house, primed with cheese and grilled bacon. But he was a clever rat alright. He only came out at night, and so nobody in the house ever saw him, and he was so diabolically clever he could get the cheese or the bacon out of the trap without springing it.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs Thomson, “what will we do? If that old dog was any good, he'd catch the thief.”

The fact was that Robbie, the old collie, who had been a very good dog in his day, now slept the remnant of his life away before the fire. If, on one of his chance meanders round the steading, he saw a rat or a mouse or a young rabbit, he gave it a sleepy benevolent look. Robbie's days as a farm dog were over.

“Whatever can be done?” cried Jenny's mother. “Do you know this, the rat bit and scratched into a whole pound of sausages in the night. What we were supposed to have for our tea. And the cupboard door was locked!”

***

Fankle flourished in the boatshed. He loved scuttling among the lobster creels, the oars, and the coiled fishing lines. He was on good terms with the many spiders in the shed, and with the blackbird that came every morning to sing on the roof. But cats love best of all to be outside; Jenny could only give him his liberty when Mrs Thomson was away for the day, shopping in Kirkwall or Hamnavoe. Then Fankle had a wonderful time between the grass and the clouds. He ran among the chickens, who clucked indignantly at him. He even squared up to the cow, sparring and dancing away, like a little David threatening Goliath. Once he even ventured into the house, and spent a companionable hour with Robbie in front of the fire. He licked Robbie's ear, very delicately. Then he got up, stretched himself, and strolled across to examine with great interest a crack in the kitchen floor, where the flagstone had worn.

Fankle sniffed at that fissure for quite a while. He tried to look in. He sniffed again, and gave a little growl in his throat. Then Jenny had to seize him and run with him into the boatshed, for she had heard the sound of a car on the road. Her mother was returning from the ferryboat.

“Something very strange is going on in this house,” Mrs Thomson complained one morning at breakfast. “Jenny, what are you doing with all that milk, day after day? That bird must have flown away ages ago.”

Jenny assured her that the starling was still hopping around on one leg, and drinking more than ever, but soon now he would be better.

“If I haven't enough to put up with,” said Mrs Thomson, “with that pirate of a rat! I'm as sure as sure can be that I heard a cat miaowing early this morning, somewhere around the house.”

Her husband assured her that that was impossible. There had never been any cat on that croft since they had got married; he knew how much she hated cats.

But Mrs Thomson caught the guilty look that father and daughter exchanged across the table.

“Stray cat or not,” said Mrs Thomson, “it won't stay here – I can assure you of that.” Jenny's mother was in a bad mood that morning, because in the night the rat had made a skeleton of the cold chicken they were to have, with salad, for their dinner that day.

***

Mrs Thomson, one Saturday in June, was to be one of a group of trippers. The island branch of the Women's Rural Institute was going on a sea outing to the island of Hoy.

As soon as Mrs Thomson, in her new floral dress and modish hat, was round the corner and out of sight, Jenny ran and flung open the boatshed door. It seemed as if a little patch of midnight whirled past her into the sun and wind. Fankle was all set to have a riotous day of it. He leapt softly between byre and barn. When Jenny looked again, he had disappeared into the long grass of the meadow.

Jenny went indoors and busied herself about the house. She was the woman in charge that day. She would have to make the beds, keep a flame in the fire, prepare dinner and tea for her dad. Jenny loved doing these jobs.

While Jenny was scrubbing the potatoes in the kitchen sink, queen of the house for a whole day, she glanced through the window and got a terrible shock. There, turning over the hill road, were the lady trippers of the W.R.I. They had only been gone a half hour.

What on earth had happened? Jenny soon learned, once her mother was back home, looking so hurt and downcast. (Poor Mrs Thomson,
everything
seemed to be going wrong for her that summer!)

It transpired that Neil Bell the boatman, who was to have ferried them to Hoy, had suddenly been seized with tummy pains after breakfast, and had been whirled away to hospital in Kirkwall, in a helicopter, with suspected appendicitis. And so the trip was off. “And this such a lovely day!” complained Mrs Thomson.

She was so disappointed that she had got a headache. “Never mind,” said Jenny. “I'm getting on well with the housework. You just sit over there beside the fire, am, and I'll bring you two aspirins and a cup of tea.”

So Mrs Thomson, looking like one of the hanging gardens of Babylon in her summer dress, sat in the armchair beside the fire, and sighed, and sometimes touched her throbbing temple with delicate fingers.

Meantime Jenny scrubbed the potatoes and dropped them, a cluster of pale globes, into the pot of boiling water. Just then she thought, with sudden panic, about Fankle. Fankle, the forbidden cat, was running about the farm, free as the wind. At any moment Fankle might show his midnight face at the door; and that, on top of everything else, might well prove the end of her poor mother.

Jenny quickly dried her hands on her apron and slid like a shadow through the door.

“Girl, come back!” cried her mother. “Where do you think you're going? There's the table to set. The potato pot might boil over.”

Jenny returned. She said, rather lamely, that she was going to see if the hens had laid any eggs.

“Plenty of time for that!” said her mother. “See to the dinner. Your father will be hungry.”

Poor Jenny, she laid the knives and forks on the scrubbed table with a sunken heart. It was a house of gloom and despondency.

“No dinner of course for me,” moaned her mother. “I couldn't eat a bite.”

Jenny returned one knife and one fork into the table drawer. Then she raised the lid of the ramping potato pot. Right enough, if she had gone out looking for Fankle, the pot would have boiled over, and that would have been another sorrow for her poor mother to bear.

“Jenny,” came the mournful voice from the fireside chair.

“Yes, mother?”

“Open the cupboard. See if that rat was on the rampage last night.”

When Jenny opened the cupboard door, she saw at once that the rat had performed a masterpiece of thieving. He had eluded two cunningly-placed traps. He had approached the large round white cheese that Mrs Thomson had made for the cheese competition at the agricultural show in August. Now, that lovely cheese had been protected by a heavy Pyrex dish – it seemed an invulnerable treasure inside a crystal castle. The bandit rat had somehow contrived (who knows how?) to lever up the protective glass, and to make savage inroads into the prize cheese. In fact, the cheese was ruined – you could not have exhibited it at a fair of tramps.