Chapter 29 Having Kittens
Having Kittens
Although Evie and Kate vanished back upstairs to work after breakfast on New Year’s Day, and Opal and Verity hadn’t come down at all, the rest of us seemed to have decided to take the day off and go out.
Timon and Nerys were meeting friends for lunch, and Toby and Pearl were going into St Melangell, where most of the shops opened on a Sunday, including a silversmith where they thought they might find an unusual engagement ring.
‘I prefer silver to gold,’ Pearl explained.
‘So do I,’ agreed Nerys. Since she was always wearing big silver and semi-precious jewellery, that wasn’t a huge surprise!
‘There’s that lovely clothes shop where I got my new tunics and those velvet Mary Jane shoes,’ I suggested to Pearl. ‘That’s worth a look in.’
‘Good idea, because I feel like branching out into other colours than green. I’m not sure how it came about that Opal and I became so addicted to one colour.’
‘Well, I can’t talk, since I rarely wear anything but black,’ said Nerys.
Just then, Max Prynne rang Rhys’s mobile to suggest he take me over to look at the West Lodge that morning. Cariad elected to come with us.
It was a lovely winter’s day, cold and lightly frosted under a clear, pale cerulean-blue sky, so we decided to walk by way of the cliff path.
It wound its way up and down, through tussocky hillocks of gorse and hawthorn and small spinneys of wind-bent trees.
There wasn’t even a breeze today, so I could hear the sea shushing against the cliffs.
I’d only walked this path once before, when I went into the village to do some Christmas shopping, and I hadn’t taken much notice of the little lodge house that stood where the end of the cliff path met the road.
A pair of wrought-iron gates stood open and, just inside it, there it was, a typical, small square stone lodge. With a pang I thought of Wisteria Cottage, although West Lodge didn’t have its chocolate-box prettiness of whitewashed walls and thatched roof.
It looked like a child’s drawing of a little house, with windows on either side of the door, where Max awaited us.
He unlocked it, and we followed him into a little hall, with doors to left and right and a steep stair going upwards between.
‘I’m afraid it has electric storage heaters rather than central heating,’ he said.
‘It was modernized in the eighties, so it’s not exactly up to date, but a new kitchen was built on the back, with a bathroom over it, and the old kitchen turned into a dining room.
But I’ll let you explore on your own,’ he added with a grin as Cariad ran past him, flinging open doors.
It wasn’t much smaller than my old home, with a parlour that opened into the dining room, which I thought could become my temporary studio because the kitchen was just big enough to squeeze a table and a couple of chairs into and the view from the window was of shrubbery and trees.
‘No garden,’ said Max, who had followed us in. ‘If you spend your days working as a gardener on the estate, you don’t want to come home in the evening and start on your own garden.’
‘I suppose not,’ agreed Rhys. ‘But if you miss gardening, Ginny, I’m positive Tudor would welcome any help in the kitchen garden at Triskelion!’
‘I might take you up on that. I love the walled garden there – even in winter it’s quite magical – but then, all walled gardens seem to have that air about them.’
‘And so do quarry gardens, I always think,’ put in Max.
Cariad, who had vanished upstairs, now came thundering down again and insisted we go and look at the bathroom.
‘It’s pink!’ she said. ‘The toilet and the bath and the basin and everything.’
And she was right, because they were all an odd shade of sticking-plaster pink.
‘I think you could call that colour of bathroom suite retro,’ I said.
Other than this, there were two bedrooms and that was it, apart from an airing cupboard with a cylinder in it.
‘There’s a couple of sheds outside and the old outdoor toilet,’ Max said. ‘The cooker runs on Calor gas. The cylinders are outside and have to be changed from time to time.’
‘So did the one in my old cottage, so I’m used to that,’ I said. ‘So long as I have something to cook on and there’s a bit of heat and hot water, I can manage.’
‘So, are you going to come and live here?’ asked Cariad eagerly.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Max, it’s very kind of you to let me have it while I look for somewhere permanent.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I can give you the keys now, so you can come back and measure up to see where things will fit and for curtains, that kind of thing,’ he said, then showed us the Calor gas containers outside, and explained where to get new ones delivered.
‘I think it’s a cute little house,’ Cariad said. ‘And I can easily walk here on my own to visit you, Ginny.’
‘You can if you check she isn’t working first,’ Rhys told her firmly.
‘As long as it isn’t first thing in the morning, I’ll always be glad to see you, Cariad,’ I said.
As we went out and Max locked the door behind us, Cariad said, ‘It’s a dear little cottage really. All it needs is a cat.’
‘I think I should wait till I’m permanently settled—’ I began.
But Max was already eagerly saying: ‘Funny you should say that, because if you want a kitten, I’ve got four I’m trying to find homes for. Our cat went out on the tiles, so goodness knows what the father is, but you could come and look at them.’
‘It’s up to you, Ginny,’ said Rhys, looking amused as I hesitated. But Cariad pleaded so much to go and see them that in the end I gave in.
Max drove us up to the castle in his Range Rover, where he and his family had one self-contained wing of the house to themselves, with an enviably large kitchen where we found the new feline mother and her kittens in a basket by the range.
Cassy was a large, fluffy, black-and-white cat, but her four offspring were like a kitten selection box, as if nature had gone out of her way to provide as much variety as possible.
There was a tabby, a ginger, a fluffy black one and an entirely white one with yellowish-green eyes, which Cariad pounced on.
‘Oh, look, isn’t this one sweet?’
But almost automatically I’d picked up the black one, the smallest but fluffiest of them all, and saw that it wasn’t completely black after all: there was a little whorl of white hair in the centre of its forehead, like a star.
It opened a minute mouth, showing a pink tongue, and snuggled under my chin.
The mother didn’t seem to mind the removal of her kittens in the least.
‘That one’s a girl,’ Max told me. ‘I think she’s taken to you,’ he added hopefully.
‘Daddy, can we have a kitten?’ predictably demanded Cariad, who was now sitting on the floor with the white kitten in her arms.
‘I think you’d have to ask Auntie Nerys, and also Bronwen, since she’s likely to be doing the toilet training,’ he said. ‘Nor am I sure how Pompey would take to a kitten arriving on the scene.’
‘He’d probably treat it with lofty indifference,’ I said, as the black kitten cuddled up. ‘And since Snookums is used to a cat in the house, I don’t suppose he would mind.’
‘Traitor,’ said Rhys. ‘Cariad, if it’s all right with Bronwen and Nerys, you can have it, but you must ask first – and help to look after it.’
‘I will!’ she promised. ‘And Ginny, you said you would get a kitten to replace Mrs Snowboots.’
‘Not replace,’ I said, because nothing could replace my beloved old cat. ‘But I did intend getting a kitten when I’d found a new cottage – I mean, a permanent one.’
The kitten took this moment to open its mouth and make the most pathetic little mewing noise I’d ever heard … and my fate was sealed. But then, let’s face it, I’d been lost from the moment I picked it up.
‘I think that one’s chosen you,’ said Rhys with a grin. ‘What will you call it?’
‘Snowflake,’ suggested Cariad. ‘That’s what the white mark looks like on her head.’
‘It does a bit, but it made me think of a star – so I’ll settle for that. What about yours, if you’re allowed to have it, Cariad?’
‘Snowy? It sort of goes with Snookums,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s two of them sorted, I hope,’ said Max. ‘I’ll keep those two for you. It’ll be another two or three weeks before they can leave their mother, even though Cassy already seems to have had enough of them!’
*
We walked into the village for a late lunch at the Blue Parrot cafe and, just as we were leaving, Pearl and Toby came in, laden with shopping.
Pearl, prettily flushed, showed off a silver ring with a middle band set with tiny stars that swivelled round. It was a starry kind of day!
On the way home we scrambled down to the little pebble cove, the only place on the headland where you could get down to the sea, where Rhys proved a lot better at skimming bits of slate across the water than either Cariad or me.
Then we had to comb the debris with Cariad, while she looked for treasure.
She found a few miraculously unbroken shells, a somewhat battered Lego octopus, and a pebble shaped like a heart, which she promised to paint and varnish for me.
Then, happy, windblown, tired and ravenous, we went back. I thought, as we made our way up through the village, that anyone who didn’t know would have taken us for a little family going home after a day out. And oddly, entering the warm hall of Triskelion now really did feel like coming home.
*
As soon as we got back, Cariad dashed off into the kitchen to begin her charm offensive about the kitten on Bronwen.
Nerys and Timon weren’t back yet and there was no sign of Opal or of Evie, who was probably still engrossed in the contents of the Memory Box.
Verity, looking pale and heroic, as if coming downstairs had been a huge achievement worthy of applause and admiration, was nibbling a tiny piece of cake in the refectory.
‘I feel as if I need to keep my strength up,’ she said bravely. ‘And of course I don’t have any weight issues,’ she added, looking at Kate’s heavily laden plate.
‘Neither do I, if that was aimed at me,’ Kate said hotly. ‘I’ve stayed exactly the same weight for the last ten years!’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean—’ began Verity hastily, backing down in the face of Kate’s belligerent glare, but luckily just then the late arrival of Pearl and Toby, glowing, provided a diversion.
I’d presumed that Verity had missed out on all the news of the last few days, but it quickly became apparent that someone had filled her in, because she congratulated Toby and Pearl on their engagement.
Then she turned her sweet smile on me and said archly that she’d heard I meant to rent a nearby cottage, because the local attractions had proved too much to resist. Then she looked with wide-eyed innocence from me to Rhys before smiling knowingly.
But this time, I caught a glimpse of something disturbing behind the seeming innocence, as if a mask had slipped: a kind of gloating pleasure.
I’d always thought she just had a propensity for putting her foot in it and saying exactly the wrong thing, but now I suddenly realized that here was someone who derived pleasure from being malicious.
‘I’d like Ginny to come and live here with us for ever,’ said Cariad, who had emerged in time to snatch the last flapjack from under Kate’s nose.
‘I’m sure you do – and you’re not the only one, since she’s made herself so popular,’ Verity said, with another smile that this time I could see was entirely false.
I wondered how I could have been so taken in.
Then she trailed off back upstairs again, saying she was quite worn out and must have a lie-down before dinner that evening.
Pearl, catching this, looked up from a low-voiced conversation with Toby.
‘I think Opal will be at dinner with the rest of us tonight too, so we’ll all be together again.’
‘I suppose we will,’ I said. It seemed to me that some of us had changed rather a lot in the short time that had elapsed since our first dinner together!
Verity’s true nature would probably remain exactly the same.
‘Rhys,’ I said quietly, ‘I’ve made an awful discovery. I think Verity positively enjoys saying hurtful things to people!’
He eyed me in an amused kind of way. ‘She does, and spite is terribly exhausting, so it’s no wonder poor Verity needs a lie-down.’
‘I suppose that’s why Nerys doesn’t seem to like her very much.’
‘I don’t like her, either,’ said Cariad.
‘Little pitchers have big ears,’ he told her.
‘Don’t be silly, Daddy. Pictures don’t have any ears at all!’ Cariad said, and giggled.