Six Lives of Fankle the Cat Page 10

  The old woman is aware of two young flushed darkling faces at the window. The child sees nothing. He does not hear the twilight and star laughter. He is asleep, in his white pyjamas, curled up in his grandma’s strawback chair.

  Sam and Margaret come in.

  “Who’s Jenny, Grandma?” says Margaret. “Did you have trouble with that little wretch? Has he been snivelling for a long time? Little sniveller, frightened of a dog! I heard you saying a girl’s name, Grandma – Jenny.”

  “Roger has been a very good boy. I’m going to put him to his bed now. There’s scones and raspberry jam for your supper.”

  “Oh, goody gumdrops,” says Sam. “I’m starving.”

  “Jenny? Jenny is the name of a girl that used to stay on this island – oh, a long long time ago.”

  “We always get a story, Grandma, before we go to sleep. Don’t we, Margaret?”

  “Your mouth is all red with raspberry jam, glutton.”

  “No, but don’t we get a story at bedtime?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Always. We always get a night story, Grandma. Mum tells us a story, or she reads a story. I don’t think I could go to sleep if I didn’t get a story.”

  “It’s many a long day since I told a story, child. When I was a girl, like Margaret, my life was all stories. Not now. I’m just an old woman who potters about.”

  “Grandma, listen to Roger snoring next door. Give him a row for that in the morning.”

  “A story. A story. I demand a story.”

  “Well, I may try. I’ll light this candle first. Candlelight makes a story sound better. Are you ready? There was this little boy called Lentil-soup and one day when he was out picking blackberries on the hill he saw a small green man standing before him. Lentil-soup knew that the creature was a fairy. The fairy said to Lentil-soup, ‘Give us a few of your blackberries to make a pie.’ Lentil-soup answered –”

  “Is it going to be a fairy story, Grandma?”

  “Of course it is, you idiot. Didn’t you hear Grandma mentioning a fairy? Don’t interrupt.”

  “I don’t want fairy stories. What do you think I am, a kid? None of that fairy rubbish for me.”

  “What kind of story do you want then, Sam?”

  “Pay no attention to him, Grandma. I’m going to write and tell mum about him in the morning. I will.”

  “I like science fiction. I like stories about space flight and the stars.”

  “Mercy, bairn, what does an old woman know about such things!”

  “Just try, Grandma. Then I’ll be good and get your messages from the village in the morning.”

  “He won’t, Grandma. He’s the biggest liar. He breaks every promise he ever makes.”

  “Science fiction. There’s been enough science fiction happening in this island since I was a peedie lass. That oil rig out there. The uranium mine on the other side of the hill. Men dropping into the sea with globes on their heads. Let me tell you this, science has made a fine mess of the island. I know you like coming here for your summer holiday. But you don’t have the freedom I had when I was your age. Fumes and dust everywhere. The wind here used to be like crystal. From the top of the cliff you could see right down to the ocean floor, it was so clear. Now it’s all mucky and putrid. Oh, I could go on and on!”

  “The story, Grandma.”

  “Grandma, do you think you could possibly tell a story about the moon? That would be space fiction. I saw a new moon over the hill tonight.”

  “Perhaps I could. “

  “If you tell a story about the moon, I’ll wash the dishes every day. I will.”

  “The moon. Let me see. There must be hundreds of stories about the moon.”

  “One’ll do for a start.”

  “I suppose you think, Sammy, the moon’s a dead cold lump of rock. That’s where you’re wrong. As a matter of fact, the moon is inhabited by marvellous animals, such as were only found on earth in the morning of time. Then they roamed free and happy among the other earth animals – among the horses, whales, wolves, cats, eagles, reindeer, bears. But those other animals were clever, very clever. As soon as man appeared on the scene, they saw what would be what. The horses, bears, cats, etcetera, were very curious when they first set eyes on man. ‘Dear me, look at this,’ they said to one another. ‘Isn’t it quaint? Just look at it, going about on two legs, and its other two legs high up and moving about in the air. Well, all we animals will have to try to be good to this new creature. Let’s help him in any way we can. Let’s try to make him at home on the earth. He won’t be able to do much by himself, will he? We’ll go and make friends with him now.’

  “So all the animals went up to man and stood round about him and bade him welcome to earth, in their various voices. Elephant trumpeted, dog barked, seal grunted, horse whinnied, gull screamed, fish made a little water song too fine for the ears of man to hear.

  “Man said to his wife and children, ‘Look at all the creatures who have come to help us. We can’t let an opportunity like this slip ...’ He went into his house of leaves and came out with a bow and arrow and shot the dove who was sitting on a branch. Down fell dove, dead, with the arrow right through him. ‘Make pigeon pie,’ said man to his blunt-nosed wife. ‘I fancy pigeon pie for my supper.’ So the wife took the dead bird indoors and lit a fire. The animals were very puzzled by this behaviour. Weapons, little cluster of flames – they looked at each other in wonderment. Man said, ‘You there, sheep, you’re to come round here tomorrow morning first thing. Understand, all of you, I’m master here now. I want some of that wool of yours, sheep, for a coat. I don’t know what I can do with you, lion. Cow, there’s better drink in those buttercup-tasting udders of yours than’s in the well. I’m going to tether you at the end of my house. Listen, worm, I’m going to use you to catch fish – isn’t that a good idea! (I smell the pigeon in the pot now – delicious. My wife is getting to be a good cook.) Cat, I want you to come and play with my little boy. Horse – now let me think – I’ve been digging the earth and sowing seed – very hard work. The other night I got an idea. Why not have a sharp curve of wood dragged along the earth, and then sow the whole field in a morning? Horse, you’re the very one to do that. Report here, horse, on the first day of spring. You’ve been romping idly about in the wind and sun too long ...’ At this point man spied pig cavorting round a stone. He fitted another arrow into his bow and shot pig through its fat jolly neck. Pig gave a little grunt and a twitch and it died. ‘I’ll salt it,’ said man. ‘Must think of the future. I’ll get some good chops out of pig next winter ...’

  “The animals were amazed. They said goodnight in their various ways to man and trooped back to their meeting place in the forest clearing. There was a large deep lake there too so that the whales and other fish could attend.

  “Lion said, ‘I just don’t know. I have never seen cold brutality like that in all my time under the sun. Certainly man is clever. He can do things that we can’t do. He has even made fire – that terror – work for him. Perhaps it’s our duty to help him in any way we can. I would welcome some opinions on this rather serious business. I tell you frankly that my immediate inclination tonight, when I saw first pigeon and then pig slaughtered in that dreadful way, was to tear man to pieces.’

  “‘No,’ said horse. ‘We must indeed help him. I’ve promised to drag a plough for him, and I will, as soon as it’s spring. This creature has more in him, in some ways, than all the rest of us put together. He will, I know, do great things on the earth. In a sense the earth has been holding its breath, for thousands of years, waiting for the coming of man.’

  “‘He is very beautiful,’ said peacock, ‘if you look a him in a certain slant of light.’

  “At this point Himp-hunk came forward to address the assembly. (Himp-hunk is an animal you’ve never seen.) Himp-hunk spoke very gravely. ‘What we have seen today, fellow animals,’ he said, ‘is only the beginning. This new creature has shown us what he can do, and what he means to do. H
e has no intention of joining in the beautiful dance of creation, with us other animals, and with the stars and plants and grains of dust and sun and moon. No, he intends to dominate creation. He will use every means in his power to do just that. He will use us, just as he uses the tree to make his weapons and houses and fires. He will go so far as to destroy us, if he thinks it necessary.’

  “‘Hear hear,’ said Jimp-jack, who was a creature half-fish and half-bird. ‘I have never once been frightened on this planet until today, when I saw what man could do with his bow and arrow.’

  “Then Wurton lumbered to his feet. He was huger than a gorilla, but he had a face gentle as a flower. ‘Brother Himp-hunk has spoken well and wisely,’ he said. ‘This new creature will ruin the beautiful song of creation. We animals are not cruel unnecessarily – we only kill when we are hungry, and then it is a clean acceptable death we deal. My plan is this, that we surround the house of man tonight, and then when he comes out of his door in the morning, to stand in the sun with his wife and child, we fall on the family and kill them with as little fuss as possible.’

  “The little snail said, in his silver voice, ‘Man is part of the dance too. In time we will understand him. Then all will be well.’

  “The silkworm said, ‘I will give him beautiful coats.’

  “Swintock (who hopped on one leg and had seven eyes) said, ‘Man is a murderer. Blot him out.’

  “The debate went on all night. In the end it got fierce and bitter, a thing that had never happened before; the speeches of the animals were normally all wonder and delight.

  “In the end they decided to vote on the question as to whether man was to be welcomed, or destroyed. There were seventy-eight votes in favour of man, and twenty-six against. Those against included Himp-hunk, Jimp-jack, Wurton, Swintock, Syblick, Garter-grace, Airy-tong, Slumberlite, Graycroke, Assiepat, Cloud-cleaver, Delver, Dreamdinge, Fenderley, Essywhat, Ragbeam, Goldboy, Mountain-spinner, Tenpole, Swartfish, Andrake, Ally bally, Kirstane, Swaylpot, Toelash, TwinWebream, Papy-ruck, Denplane, and Cat.”

  “Cat?” says Sam.

  “Cat,” says the old lady. “C – A – T.”

  “Cat,” says Margaret. “Are you deaf, Sam? Grandma said cat.”

  “Those anti-man animals retired to another part of the forest to consider their position.

  “For a week they thrashed the matter out. The more they went into the question, the more dreadful and sinister the shadow that man threw over the beautiful earth. At the end of the week they decided that it would be unendurable to share the planet with a cold-blooded murderer like man. They decided to emigrate en masse. Long they debated which star or planet to settle on. Himp-hunk was all in favour of going to the golden castle of the sun. Swintock thought it would be good fun to glide and swim and dance forever through the streams of the merry dancers. But at last common sense prevailed. They decided that the moon, the nearest heavenly body, was to be their future home.”

  (“And how,” says Sam, “would they get to the moon? There were no rockets or space ships in them days.”

  “Shut up, just listen,” says Margaret.)

  “I’ll tell you how they got to the moon. They waited until the full moon was just touching the hill out there one night. Then, one after the other, they leapt and flew and clambered into that round silver house.

  “The moon animals live there quite happily. The only times they are troubled are when, every hundred years or so, Graycroke, who has an eye more powerful than any telescope ever built, looks at the earth and tells the other moon animals what he sees. Then a sadness falls on the moon creatures. What they feared in the beginning is coming to pass, faster and faster. Man is trying to dominate the whole of creation, with the greatest cruelty, unscrupulousness, and cunning. In particular – they realize this with growing horror – the animals they have left behind on earth, the friends of man, are being enslaved and destroyed.

  “Graycroke looked once through his enormous crystal eye. He said, ‘I see lion. Lion is locked in a cage, in a city zoo, thousands of miles from the desert. A man comes from time to time and feeds that noble, powerful creature with a hunk of dead horse.’

  “Graycroke said, again, ‘I see elephant. Elephant is dragging logs through a jungle clearing. He stumbles. Man has worked him to the bone. In the end, the beautiful curves of ivory are drawn from his earth-fast head.’

  “Graycroke said, again, ‘I see blue whale. Blue whale is stuck full with harpoons. He is staining the sea with his rich oil and blood. Soon the ocean will be empty of blue whale forever.’

  “Graycroke said, once more, ‘I see cow. Cow has dowered man for many a summer with milk and butter and cheese. There she hangs, cut into red sections, each dreadful piece hanging from a steel hook at a wall reeking with blood.’

  “Graycroke cried out in pain, ‘I see rabbit now. Rabbit is coming out of his house under the sand. Man has injected a dreadful sickness into rabbit. Now rabbit blunders among the dunes, blind and deaf and wounded. His death is a lingering agony.’

  “All this the moon animals got to know through the cloud-piercing eye of Graycroke, as the years and centuries went past. The fact of man filled many of them with burning rage. What could they do? What ought they to do? I don’t know how many solemn debates were held in the moon parliament. At length, in the year 2001, a critical debate was announced by Swintock, the speaker of the moon parliament that year: That this House proceeds forthwith to ordain and order, by all means possible, the early destruction of the planet Earth; since one species on the said planet Earth, man, has from his creation committed sundry grave outrages, woundings, and death upon his fellow creatures, not to speak of his despoiling of minerals, and his pollutions of air and earth and water, so that whole regions of the beautiful Earth – our former home – are no longer fit to live in; and now, worse threatens, in that man is looking outwards into space, for the purpose of extending his cruel empire there, and has even made sundry landings on the crust of our enchanting home, the moon: we therefore now solemnly resolve to eliminate this canker called man from the universe, till no trace of him or his kindred remain ...

  “You know of course that the moon regulates the ebb and flow of our seas. The moon animals have long had control of the enormous magnets that operate the earth tides. It was quite within their power to pull out the flood-levers to their fullest extent; in which case – as in the days of Noah – the solid earth would become in an instant a saturated dripping sponge in which everything, from a sandfly to the yeti on the slope of Mount Everest, would be drowned.

  “One of the moon animals especially, Himp-hunk, took to prowling about the doors of the chamber that housed the tidal magnets. How Himp-hunk longed to get his paws on those flood levers!

  “Every animal, as he spoke in the debate, was listened to with earnest close attention.

  “Man the destroyer ... Man the murderer ... Perfidious Man ...” These were the commonest phrases used by speaker after speaker.

  “As the debate grew to an end, it seemed that the vote would be overwhelmingly in favour of the swift drowning and destruction of Earth.

  “Finally all the animals had spoken with the exception of Cat.”

  “Cat,” says Sam. “Cat? Cat is one of the earth animals. Everybody knows that.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” says Grandma. “Cat belongs to the two worlds, earth and moon. Cat can go from one to the other in a twinkling. Have you ever looked in a cat’s eyes, how they change like the moon from crescent to full? That’s the sign of a moon animal. The eyes of all the moon animals are like that, they change like the moon itself.”

  “Tell me then – how does Cat get from earth to moon and back again? Does he have his own private space ship?”

  “Grandma, why don’t you tell Sam, once and for all, to shut his blooming cheeky mouth!”

  “This is what happens, Sam. Cat waits till the moon is balanced for a second on the crest of the hill out there – then he leaps softly on to t
he silver threshold. It’s as simple as that, Sam.

  “At last Cat caught the speaker’s eye. He got slowly to his feet. There wasn’t much point in him speaking, really. The moon animals had already arrived at their decision.

  “Cat spoke slowly at first. He agreed that there was much evil and destructiveness in man. Man, he said, was unique in that he actually warred with himself. Alone of all the animals, man, on the slightest whim or excuse, would turn upon his fellows and wound, maim, enslave, kill. Also, man always found a noble word, such as ‘patriotism’ or ‘progress’ or ‘freedom,’ to excuse the butchery. Truly man was a frightening species. ‘And yet,’ said Cat, ‘we only see man and his works from a great distance, through the powerful crystal eye of Graycroke. You moon animals get only a general view of the situation on earth. But I, Cat, live half my time on earth and half my time here on the moon. I do not have an abstract view of man. I have instead some knowledge of individual men and women and boys and girls. They have names. They laugh and cry. They visit each other with gifts and gossip. When they are young, when they are in love, when they are making something and enjoying their work, everything they do and say is wonderful. None of the other animals, I think, has such beauty then. Let me remind you of this – even on our first acquaintance with man, when he murdered dove and pig, we realized all the same that he had entrancing possibilities in him; more than any other creature.

  “‘If those possibilities come to fruition, fellow moon animals, man will make of earth a place of unimaginable beauty, bounty, wisdom. On that day, there will be a treaty signed. Men will be fully accepted into the dance of creation. Animals and men will love one another at last, as they were meant to do.’

  “Cat then went on to mention Orpheus, St Francis, Robert Burns as human beings who had loved in their day the entire animal creation. There were thousands of good people on earth like them. But if, tomorrow morning, those torrents of water were to be unleashed, all that hope and promise would be lost.