I never had a mother, nor a father come to that, nor any brothers or sisters, none that I know of anyway. Not that I have ever felt sorry for myself. The truth is that you don’t miss what you’ve never had. But you do wonder. As a small boy growing up in the orphanage in Islington, I often used to try to imagine who my mother was, what she looked like, how she dressed, how she spoke. For some reason I never much bothered about my father.
I must have been about nine years old, and on the way back from school one day, walking down Tollington Road, when I saw a fine lady passing by in a carriage. The carriage happened to stop right by me. She was dressed all in black and I could see she had been crying. I don’t know why, but I smiled at her and she smiled back. At that moment I was sure she was my mother. Then the carriage moved on, and she was gone. For months afterwards I dreamed about her. But as the memory of that moment faded, so did the dream. I had other imaginary mothers of course. They didn’t have to be posh or rich, but I certainly didn’t want to believe that my mother might be down on her hands and knees scrubbing someone’s doorstep, her nose and hands red and raw with the cold. Above all my mother had to be beautiful. She couldn’t be too old and she couldn’t be too young. She mustn’t have children. It was essential to me that I was the only child. And of course, she would have to have fair hair, because I had fair hair.
It was natural then, I suppose, that within a few days I had quite made up my mind that Countess Kandinsky fitted the bill perfectly. She was fair-haired, supremely beautiful and elegant, about the right age to be my mother, and so far as I could tell, childless. So if she was my mother, it followed that I had to be a Russian count or prince – I didn’t much mind which. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea, and the more I’d daydream about it. I would lie awake in my little attic room up on the servant’s corridor, where the roof leaked and the water pipes gurgled and groaned, and I’d dream my dream, knowing of course that it was probably all nonsense, but believing in it just enough for me to be able to enjoy it all the same. Thinking back, I’m sure it was this silly fantasy, as much as my cat-minding duties that made me look forward so much to visiting the Countess’ rooms while she was at rehearsals. I went up there at every possible opportunity, as often as I could manage, without my absence in the lobby being noticed. I was always up and down in the lift, carrying luggage, and each time I’d just slip away for a minute or two and check on Kaspar. Mr Freddie noticed of course – he noticed everything.
“What have you been up to, lad?” he asked me once when I came back down.
“Nothing,” I told him with a shrug.
“Well, one day,” he said, “maybe that nothing will get you into a whole lot of trouble with Skullface. So you’d better watch your step.” I knew Mr Freddie wouldn’t snitch on me, he wasn’t like that.
Usually I’d find Kaspar sitting at the bedroom window, watching the barges steaming by on the river, or sometimes he’d be curled up asleep in his chair in the sitting room. Either way, he’d hardly deign to give me a second glance until the food was in his bowl, and until he decided he was ready for it. Those first few days, I felt he was treating me in much the same way as most of the guests who came to the Savoy, with a certain cold disdain. I wanted to like him and be liked by him, but he kept his distance. I wanted to stroke him again, but I didn’t dare because he made it perfectly clear by the way he looked at me that he didn’t want me to. I did dare talk to him though – probably because he couldn’t answer me back. I would crouch beside him as he lay in his chair cleaning himself after his meal, and I’d tell him how my name was not Johnny Trott at all, but Count Nicholas Kandinsky – the Tsar of Russia was called Nicholas, I knew that, so I thought the name would do fine for me. I told Kaspar that I was in fact the long lost son of the Countess, that she had come to London to look for me, and that therefore I was to be treated with greater respect, even if he was a Prince, and that anyway there wasn’t much difference between a Prince and a Count.
He’d listen for a while to my fantastical ramblings, but he’d soon tire of them, break into a great roaring purr, close his eyes and go to sleep. But then, after only a few days he surprised me by jumping up to sit on my lap after he’d finished his meal. I dared to hope that at last he was beginning to treat me as an equal, that he must have believed my story after all, that we might now be friends. So I stroked him.
Clearly I presumed too much. Kaspar sank his claws into my knee just to remind me who the Prince was, then sprang off my lap and went to the window, where he sat deliberately ignoring me, swishing his tail with quiet satisfaction and watching the barges on the river. I went to stand by him to try to make it up to him.
“And I love you too,” I told him. I said it sarcastically, but even as I was saying it, I knew I really did mean it. He was an ungrateful, supercilious creature, and not at all endearing in any way. Yet despite all this I loved him, and I wanted him to love me too. There were moments when, if I’m honest, I relished Kaspar’s aristocratic aloofness. Twice a day, during my work breaks, I’d take him out for his walk. We went to the park down by the river, but to get to the park I had to walk Kaspar on his lead from the lift all the way across the lobby to the front door. I swear that Kaspar knew perfectly well that everyone was looking at him, admiring him. He certainly knew how to put on the style, stepping out all high and mighty like the Prince of Cats he was, his tail waving majestically. Did I feel proud! Mr Freddie would doff his top hat to us as we passed by. There was some mockery in the gesture, I knew, but there was something else too. Mr Freddie knew class when he saw it, and Prince Kaspar was class. He left no one in any doubt about that. Even the dogs in the park knew it. One withering look from Kaspar, and any notions they might have had of the prospect of a good cat-chase withered away instantly. Tails between their legs they would bark at us, but only from a safe distance. Kaspar made it plain that he simply despised them, and then he ignored them.
It was on a bench in the park one spring day, perhaps six weeks or so later, that Kaspar first showed me any real affection. He was sitting up on the park bench beside me basking in the sunshine, when without even thinking about it I found myself stroking his head. He looked up at me to let me know it was all fine by him, and then he smiled, I promise you he smiled. I felt his head pushing into my hand, felt the purr coming over him. His tail was trembling with pleasure. I know it sounds silly, but at that moment I felt so happy that I was almost purring myself. I looked into his eyes and for the first time I could tell that he liked me, that at last he thought of me as his friend. I felt honoured.
The next morning I met the Countess hurrying through the lobby.
“Ah Johnny Trott,” she said, as I opened the front door for her. “I am late for rehearsals. All my life I am late. You will walk with me. I have an important thing I must say to you.”
It was raining, so I held the umbrella for her as we crossed the Strand and walked up into Covent Garden, past the barrel organ with the monkey who turned the handle, and the blind soldier playing his accordion by the fruit stalls. She stopped to pat the coalman’s horse, who was standing between the shafts of his cart, hanging his head in the rain, and looking thoroughly miserable and soaked through. The Countess berated the coalman soundly when he came out of the pub, and told him in no uncertain terms that he should put a blanket on the horse in such weather, that in Russia they treated horses properly. The coalman was speechless, too stunned and shamefaced to argue.