“Oh, and Christmas and New Years,” Jennie continued, “packages arrived tied up in tissue paper and I was allowed to get into boxes that had been emptied, and the whole house smelled of good things to eat. On my own birthday, which, if you would like to remember it, is on April 22nd, I always had new toys and presents, and Buff gave a party for me. Of course I was spoiled and pampered, but I adored it. Who wouldn’t have done so?
“Those were the three happiest years of my life. I was with Buff or her parents every minute that they were home, and I loved them with all my heart. I even learned to understand a little of their language, although it is very difficult, harsh and unmusical. I’ve forgotten most of it now, but then, between the words that I recognised and their expressions or tone of voice, I always knew whether they were pleased or displeased and what they wanted of me.
“One day, early in May, just about two years ago, I noticed that everyone seemed to be very busy and distracted and occupied with themselves and that something strange was going on in the house.”
“Oh dear,” said Peter, beginning to be quite upset, “I was afraid something would happen. It was just too perfect …”
Jennie nodded. “Yes. It seems it’s always that way. I went around peering into their faces, trying to make out what might be going to happen. And then one morning, trunks, bags, valises, holdalls, canvas sacks, suddenly appeared from the attic, boxes and crates, and barrels full of straw and sawdust were brought into the house, and men in rough clothes, aprons and peaked caps came in to pack them, and of course after that I knew. They were going to move. But whether it was to be to a house in another part of the city, a place in the country, or abroad, I had no means of knowing or finding out.
“Until you’ve been a cat yourself, Peter, and have gone through it, you will never understand what it means to sit by, day in and day out, while everything which is familiar and to which you are attached, furniture, and things on mantelpieces and tables, disappear into crates and boxes for shipping, and not know.”
“Not know what?” asked Peter.
“Whether or not you are going to be taken along.”
“Oh, but of course you get taken along!” Peter burst out, thinking how he would act under the same circumstances if he had ever had a cat as sweet and good-natured as Jennie Baldrin. “Why, nobody would think of going away and leaving you behind, even—”
He stopped in mid-sentence because Jennie had turned away abruptly and was washing furiously. There was a kind of desperation in her movements that touched Peter’s heart and told him more plainly than words that she was suffering. He cried: “Oh, poor Jennie Baldrin! I’m so sorry. It can’t be true. Nobody could be so cruel. Tell me what happened.”
Jennie left off her washing. Her eyes were quite misty and she looked leaner and bonier than ever. She said, “Forgive me, Peter. I think perhaps I’d better stop for a little. It hasn’t been easy, remembering back and living over those beautiful days. Come. Take a walk with me and we’ll poke about a bit to familiarise you with this place so that you’ll know the ins and out of it, as well as the secret entrance, and then I can tell you the rest of the story of what happened to me that fatal May.”
Peter was terribly disappointed at the interruption, but he did not wish Jennie to know this, he felt so sympathetic because of the tragedy in her life, even though he could not imagine how people as good and kind as the Pennys seemed to be could go off and leave her behind. But he kept his counsel, and when Jennie jumped down from the bed, he followed her. He was feeling much stronger now and had no difficulty keeping up with Jennie as she squeezed through the slats at the end of the bin and turned left up the corridor.
They prowled down a long, dark corridor, on either side of which were storage bins such as they had just left. They turned into several passageways, went down a flight of stairs, and came around a corner into a place where the room was illuminated by an electric bulb that hung from a wire overhead. It was an enormous enclosure where the ceiling was three times the height of their own and it was filled from top to bottom in the strangest manner, not only with all kinds of things but also with places.
There was a kind of glittering palace, and right next to it some wild stretches of the Scottish Highlands with huge rocks and boulders piled up and menacing trees throwing dark arms to the sky. Then there was somehow a view of the blue sea with some distant mountains, a trellised garden, a cottage with a thatched roof, a row of Arabian nomad tents, a gloomy piece of jungle all overhung with creepers and vines, a railway station, a piece of Greek temple …
Peter cried, “Why, I know what it is. It’s theatrical scenery, like they use in the Christmas Pantomime. I suppose this is where they store it.”
“Is that what it is?” said Jennie Baldrin. “I didn’t know, but I thought it might interest you. I often come here when I feel the need of a change. Let us go over there and sit on that rock in the Highlands, because it reminds me of where we came from, at least the way my mother used to describe it.”
Of course they couldn’t actually sit on the rock, since it was only painted on canvas in an extraordinarily lifelike manner, but when they had squatted down and curled their tails around them right next to the rock, it was really, Peter felt, almost like being in that part of Scotland about which his Nanny too had so often told him.
When he and Jennie had settled, Peter said, “Jennie dear … Do you think perhaps you might go on now …?”
Jennie closed her eyes for a moment as though to help herself return once more to those memories that were so painful to her. Then she opened them again, sighed, and took up her narrative:
“It was a large house, you know,” she said, “and it seemed to take perfect ages to get everything packed and sealed and ready to be moved.
“I walked around and into and over everything and smelled and fretted and tried to feel – you know how we can sometimes acquire bits and pieces of information and knowledge just through the ends of our whiskers—” (Peter didn’t, but he also didn’t wish to interrupt at this point, so he did not reply and Jennie went on) – “but it was useless. I couldn’t make out the slightest hint where everything was going to, or even when, though I knew it must be soon, because for several days the family had not been sleeping there, since all the beds were taken down and crated. Mrs Penny and also Buff would come back during the day and pack, and of course feed me.
“In the evening they would take my basket upstairs to the top-floor sewing-room under the eaves of the roof and leave me there with a saucer of milk and one of water for overnight. The sewing-room was quite bare. I didn’t even have any of my toys. I shouldn’t have minded that if only I hadn’t been so worried and upset by not knowing. Of course, I imagined that very likely the Pennys were stopping with friends or at a hotel where perhaps they couldn’t have me until the new house should be ready wherever it was. But then, on the other hand, how could I be sure they weren’t going far away somewhere over the sea where I could not go along?”
Peter knew all about moving. In military circles people were always packing up their belongings and starting off for India, or Australia, or Africa. And he thought too that he understood the anxiety Jennie must have felt. For he remembered enduring nights of terror and sudden panic himself when the thought had come to him from nowhere at all, as it were, “What if Mummy were not to come back to me ever? Supposing I wake up in the morning and she isn’t there?” And then he had lain fearful and wide awake in the darkness, listening and straining with his ears and all his senses for the sound of her key in the front door and her footsteps in the corridor going past his room. And not until this had come to pass, and more often than not it was well after midnight, would he be able to fall into a restless and troubled