Six Lives of Fankle the Cat Read online

  ***

  Old Sam Swann the tailor was sitting beside his kitchen fire listening to the wireless when Jenny arrived. Old Mrs Swann sat at the other side of the fire, in a rocking chair, knitting a jersey.

  “Have you seen my cat Fankle?” asked Jenny shyly. She had never been in this house before.

  Behind the curtains was the tailor’s bench, with its mingled smells of cloth, chalk, and resin.

  Jenny had come here, on an impulse. Going home, she had suddenly remembered her father saying that Sam Swann the tailor was the greatest expert on cats in the island. There was nothing he didn’t know about cats. People came from all over with their sick cats to the tailor shop, and more often than not Sam Swann knew the cure.

  “Isn’t the wireless a fine thing?” he said in his small sweet voice to Jenny. “It tells you things. It educates you.”

  He was a very eccentric man, Sam Swann. Though he knew everything about cats, he didn’t keep a cat himself. If somebody whose cat he had cured asked him to name a fee, he would say something like, “Oh yes, I think it will be a fine day tomorrow, indeed,” or “General Amin seems to be stirring things up in Africa.”

  “It’s about my cat Fankle I’ve come,” said Jenny. “He’s been missing three days.”

  “I don’t know what I would do without the wireless now. I don’t know what in the world Annabella would do ...” Annabella Swann, who was as deaf as a doornail, knitted away steadily.

  “Is it usual,” said Jenny, “for cats to go away for three days at a time?”

  “I’ll tell you what I heard on the wireless tonight,” said Sam Swann. “A talk about the planet Mars. I learned a few things. There’s volcanoes and icecaps on Mars. Fancy that.”

  “I don’t think Fankle’s sick,” said Jenny. “At least, he didn’t look sick last time I saw him. But he might have suddenly got sick. Is this true, Mr Swann, that cats when they get sick go away and eat grass and get better that way?”

  “Another talk last night,” said the old man, “was about the American War of Independence. That was in George the Third’s day, a long time ago. It all started with a gang of ruffians dumping chests of tea into the harbour at Boston, Massachusetts. There’s never a day I live that I don’t learn something from that wireless.”

  “Goodnight, Mr Swann and Mrs Swann,” said Jenny.

  Sam Swann followed Jenny to the door. “All that music too on the wireless. High-class stuff, Scottish dance music. Tell me now, Jenny, do you really like that pop music?”

  Outside, the night was as black as coal, or tar, or treacle.

  Jenny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The old man said in her ear, in the doorway, and winked, “Cats sometimes fall in love, you know.”

  ***

  Jenny was just going to bed when there was a loud double knock at the door. “Who can it be,” said her father, “at this time of night?”

  It turned out to be Ma Scad. “Is that girl, what’s-her-name, Jenny, in?” she demanded. “She was at my door earlier, asking about a black cat. Well, I have a message for her. A certain farmer in this island – I’m mentioning no names, I’ve been in trouble that way before – if you go, Jan Thomson, to a field of a certain farmer on this same island, you’ll find a post in the middle of the field, and hanging down from the top of the post is a black cat. So I heard, not half-an-hour ago. I came here at once. A dead black cat, to scare the birds. Tell your girl that. I thought she might want to know.”

  ***

  The very next morning Fankle turned up. He was tired and thin and hungry, but he had roses and moonlight in his eyes.

  Revenge

  The largest trout ever caught in the island was a twelve-pounder. That trout had been caught on the little island loch by a ne’er-do-well called Steve Smith, in the year 1924. Steve, who lived in a hovel on the loch shore, thought nothing about it at the time; only how he was to have little to eat but trout – fried trout, grilled trout, boiled trout, trout soup, trout and apples – for a whole week and more. The prospect depressed him, for he didn’t like trout to eat all that much. He was very relieved when Mr Twamm, who owned the little hotel in the village, gave him a pound for the fish. Mr Twamm got the trout stuffed; had a suitable case made; and the largest trout ever caught in the island hung thereafter in the hall of the hotel, a proclamation and a challenge.

  The island was visited every summer by a number of trout fishers, all of whom stayed in the hotel. They looked with envy and longing at the twelve-pound trout in the hallway of the hotel. If only they could catch one half that size! One of them was heard to declare, over his malt whisky, that he would give his left hand to land a trout as large! But of course they were only joking. They knew they would go to their graves with nothing larger than a four-pounder to their credit. Indeed they were quite content, on a summer evening, to catch a couple of half-pounders, which they would hand in at the hotel kitchen, to be fried for breakfast next morning.

  But there was one man in deadly earnest about breaking the record. Lieutenant-Colonel Stick came every summer to the island, with his large fat wheezing wife, Mrs Stick, and his pretty, plump, earnest daughter Constantine. The colonel himself was as thin as a twig, which caused the islanders to say that he had been very aptly named. His neck was like a rope with a skin-clad skull on top of it. His knickerbockers cracked in the wind about his thin shanks, as he stood in the dinghy and fished, fished, fished from June to September. “I’ll catch a thirteen-pounder before I die,” he whined through his nose. “I will. I will. I will.”

  But all he caught were little tiddlers, or half-pounders, or pounders. One marvellous day he caught a six-and-a-half-pounder. His thin face split with delight as he weighed that trout on the hotel scales. Mrs Stick and Constantine were pleased that day, too – it meant that the vinegar of him would be changed to honey, for one evening at least. But then the colonel’s eye caught the fish in the display case, and he scowled. Why should a tramp like Steve Smith have all the glory, while he, a gallant and honourable soldier, was condemned to fish, fish, fish, for little bits of tarnish? It was an unfair world.

  ***

  Every evening that summer, as the colonel turned his back on the loch, he observed a black cat sitting on the grassy verge above. This black cat knew a thing or two, that much was obvious. As soon as a trout fisher waded ashore, there was this black cat waiting for him. As often as not the trout fisher would throw him a little fish, and then Fankle – for of course it was Fankle – would begin to devour it with the utmost greed and delicacy. The trout fishers all grew to be fond of Fankle. They seemed to think that Fankle, and his blackness, brought them luck. (Fishermen are very superstitious.) Often they would turn round, where they stood thigh-deep in the loch, to see if that black cat was anywhere on the bank above. If Fankle was there, washing his face or chasing a butterfly, sure enough they would catch a decent fish within the next half-hour. They all had the greatest regard for Fankle, except Colonel Stick.

  Colonel Stick waded ashore one day, tall and thin as a heron, and all he had in his bag was a quarter-pounder and a six-ouncer. The black cat approached, he coiled himself sinuously, and with deep affection, around the rubber ankles of Colonel Stick. The next thing Fankle knew, he was struggling in cold brackish loch water! The colonel had hurled him there, with one violent kick! There was not a more wretched cat than Fankle when finally he struggled ashore. He looked as if he had been dipped in a tub of slime. He shivered. He sneezed. The three swans on the loch looked at him with disdain.

  Fankle dragged himself home, to be comforted and dried and warmed and fed by his dear friend Jenny.

  ***

  Sometimes Fankle would walk all the way to the hotel. He was very popular in the hotel kitchen, where Annabel the cook and Alfie the kitchen boy would treat him to all the scraps from the plates of the rich over-fed trout fishers.

  The first coolness of autumn was in the air – the island oatfields were full of ripe secret golden whispers – when a wonder
ful thing happened to Colonel Stick; he hooked the largest trout he had ever seen! It happened in the middle of the loch. On that particular afternoon Steve Smith, now an old man with a brown wrinkled face, was acting as the colonel’s ghillie – that is, he was rowing the gallant gentleman here and there about the loch, and seeing to the gear, and advising on this and that matter. “You could do worse,” Steve had said, “than have a try over beside that little islet with the ox-eye daisies growing on it. I saw two or three big ones jumping there ...” “Very well, my man,” the colonel had deigned to reply, “row in that direction.” After a couple of casts, a huge underwater obstacle disrupted the splendid rhythm of the colonel’s fishing. “Damn it!” he cried. “Blast and damn! It’s stuck in weed.” But then the obstacle made a powerful swerve and lunge. “Hold on to it,” said Steve Smith. “You’ve caught a big one.”

  The colonel was so excited he nearly dropped the rod. His Adam’s apple wobbled in his throat. He did all the wrong things, such as reeling in when he should have given the fish more line. In fact he made such a mess of it that in the end Steve Smith had to take the rod out of his hand. When he felt the huge power on the hook, Steve whistled. His own frail body responded with a surge of joy. Man and fish fought with each other. After twenty minutes an immense trout lay thrashing itself to death on the bottom-boards of the dinghy. The colonel gaped at it in awe.

  There was nothing to be done then but row ashore. The colonel gave Steve Smith an extra fifty pence, over and above his fee, for his help. He stuffed the speckled bronze-and-silver-and-rose splendour into his bag; it was so huge the head and the tail stuck out.

  A certain black cat had observed the drama from the door of the boatshed.

  The colonel’s only concern now was that this treasure of a trout should tip the scales at over twelve pounds. What if it was eleven pounds eight ounces! The colonel thought of cheating – of stuffing a sizeable stone into the trout’s maw. But immediately he regretted it. He was, after all, an honourable man.

  A little lithe black shadow flowed after the colonel, twenty yards behind, as the colonel strode on towards the hotel.

  The monstrous fish was placed on the scales. The needle swung and hung and quivered upon twelve pounds four-and-a-half ounces! The colonel wept with joy. He embraced his enormous lady. “If I die tomorrow,” he half sang, “I die a happy man!”

  Guests and hotel workers gathered round this king of trout. They nodded. They smiled. They admired. (Privately, each was sorry it hadn’t been caught by somebody else.)

  Mr Twamm the hotelier came out of his office and congratulated the colonel.

  “Take that down!” said the colonel, indicating the prize trout caught in 1924.

  “Remove it. Let room be made for my champion!”

  “What a fuss,” said his daughter, “about a fish that nobody is going to eat!” (It wasn’t that Constantine Stick was unromantic; she was genuinely and actively concerned for the poor and undernourished of this earth.)

  The colonel frowned at Constantine. But then, his eye again lighting on his treasure, he summoned all present, even the kitchen boy, into the bar for a celebratory drink. It cost him all of twenty pounds sterling, in ringing toasts and pledges. Alfie the kitchen boy drank too much beer and had to go out and be sick among the rhododendrons. When he returned to the bar he was still half-tiddly. He muttered something about “a black cat whooping it up in the hall ...” But nobody at any time paid any attention to Alfie. The colonel called for a last round – “make it doubles this time” – whatever they wanted.

  ***

  When the colonel stole out from the circles of drinkers to enjoy a private view of his heart’s desire, the fish was not exactly down to a skeleton. That would have been an impossibility, even for a cat of Fankle’s voracity and bottomless stomach. But several large gashes had been trenched in the splendid flank. It was as if a knife had been taken to the Laughing Cavalier. Ravages of speckled skin, tatters of flesh.

  It was Mrs Stick who heard the low moan from the hall, under the bar chatter and clink of glasses. She had heard it perhaps twice before in her life, when the colonel had been in extremis, once when his Rhodesian shares had crashed and another time when he got an abscess in his jaw.

  She said to Constantine, “Wait here.” She went out into the hall. She saw, beyond her hunched and broken husband, a black cat groaning with excess trout on top of the reception desk. Then the black cat looked over at the colonel, and it seemed, in spite of its sufferings, to smile.

  Poetry and Prose

  Fankle lay curled and seemingly asleep under Mr Tindall’s desk, a thing which happened frequently, for as often as not he accompanied Jenny to school, like Mary’s lamb.

  “Now,” said Mr Tindall, “are your pencils sharp? Start at a clean page in your jotters. Composition this morning.”

  Most of the children groaned inwardly. Composition was not the favourite subject in that school.

  “Dear me,” said Mr Tindall, “we seem to have tackled about every subject on earth. I’m stuck for a subject. Any suggestions?”

  Jimmy Riddack whispered, “Fankle,” holding out a crumb of bread from his playtime piece. Fankle stirred, but slept on.

  “Well, now, James,” said Mr Tindall, “I think that’s a good idea. You will write an essay on Fankle the cat, a hundred words long. Begin.”

  ***

  At the end of half an hour the pupils stood up one after the other and read their essays on Fankle aloud.

  Fankell the thief

  Fankell is a big thief, he stoll a chicken out off our press, he stoll Moira’s blackbird, he stoll a pund of sossiges out of the van, he stoll butter from the hall kitchen, he stoll the kurnel’s prize trout, I wonder sometimes if Fankell does any thing ells but steal.

  Barney Bell

  Fankl is Jenny’s cat. Jenny is lucky. I wunce had a cat, her name was Tibb. Tibb was run over by the Glebe’s tractor. Tibb was wanting to catch rats and rabbits when the Glebe’s oatfield was being cut but instead Terry, the tractor man, ran over Tibb. I cried and I cried and I cried. This is all about Tibb but Tibb is not Fankl. Fankl is not so stupid as our Tibb. Fankl would not have let himself be run over.

  Agnes Gray

  F is for felicitous and funloving A is for astute N is for nocturnal K is for cunning (that is to say, if cunning were spelt with a ‘k’) L is for legerdemain E is for errant, egregious, ecstatic, earnest, exquisite. All the above qualities and attributes, plus a thousand more, belong to the cat Fankle, of Inquoy on this island. But indeed all the 26 letters of the alphabet would have to be plundered to describe that cat, and still one would not have come anyway near the heart of the enigma that is Fankle.

  Robert Black

  One day I was out walking with my dad. My dad had his binoculars. My dad’s hobby from being factor on the estate is nature study. My dad wants me to be a nature lover too, but I have always liked the creatures and the plants anyway. That day we saw an owl, a curlew, a kestrel, oyster-catchers, terns, and bonxies. And a hundred different kinds of wild flowers and many different wild animals (all of them I could and would write down only there’s no space). Anyway, when we got home, my dad asked me what creature or plant I had liked best on that walk. I said Fankle, and he wasn’t pleased about that. Fankle had been a shadow in the long grass.

  Alice Tweedale

  One day Fankle decided to be a man, not a cat. He bought trousers and a jersey and boots at the shop. He went home and wrote a letter to his cousin in New Zealand. He drank a glass of whisky at bedtime. He said, “Tomorrow I am going to the mart in Kirkwall to buy a cow and some sheep ...” Fankle was a rich farmer. He changed his name to Mister Frank Kelly. He got married. He had a girl and a boy. He had 2 tractors.

  Norman Fell

  Fankle is the name of my cat. I own Fankle, and Fankle owns me. He watches the crack in the flagstone. He hears things we can’t hear, spiders spinning. I would like to be a lady or a powerful witch or a concert pianist in a l
ong red gown at the Proms. I would like it if Fankle could tell me amazing stories out of his nine lives, going back long ages. I would like to be a poor girl who marries an emperor. But I am only Jenny of Inquoy, a croft girl, and Fankle is only a black stray cat I got from Mr Strynd. My mother says that’s the way it is. Of course she is right. Fankle is the only cat that doesn’t give my mother asthma. Mrs Martin of the Manse says she’s sometimes sure Fankle is speaking to her. She loves Fankle. She gives Fankle tins of salmon or tuna on Fridays.

  Jenny Thomson

  Here is a poem I have made about Fankle.

  Fankle, a poem

  There’s a cat at Inquoy

  Black as soot.

  He eats fish.

  He tries but he doesn’t like jam or mustard or fruit.

  Fankle belongs to Jenny,

  Black as lampout,

  Black as treacle,

  Black as the forge when the blacksmith’s away for the day,

  Black as night

  He has eyes and claws bright as a breaking sea.

  Samuel Ingison

  Tam Black of Smedhurst is a coarse brute, everybody says. He won’t let his wife wear rings or put scent behind her ears. Tam of Smedhurst hates cats. He kicks them. Yells at them. Puts his dog after them. Fires his shotgun at them. The day of the island show he tried to throw Fankle out of his yard. Now he has silver scars on his wrist.

  William Gray

  (All that Fred Kringle knew, after a hurried whispering session behind hands with Jenny, was that the cat’s name began with “f.” He wrote down a large black F near the centre of the page. After a while he drew a sailing ship flying a jolly roger in one corner. In the opposite corner he drew what might pass for a pyramid. He drew, with deep concentration, a long spiky flame-breathing creature – a dragon, possibly. He drew, and rubbed out, a motor van. Finally Fred drew a full moon with smiling eyes above the hill ...