Encounters. Barbara Erskine
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desperately for a weapon of some kind to defend myself with. I didn’t have a poker of course; the best I could do was a high heeled shoe. I crept out of bed and reached for my dressing gown, then, with the heel of the shoe held out menacingly before me in a shaking hand, I crept to my door and listened again. The whole flat was silent. Beyond my door lay the tiny hall off which led the kitchen door, next to mine, and opposite them the bathroom and the other room. Sally my flat mate had been sent to Brussels by her firm for six weeks, so I was alone. The telephone was in the kitchen. I quietly turned the handle of the door and opened it a crack. I looked out. The kitchen door was ajar.
Suddenly there was the most tremendous crash, followed by a terrified mewing and a scrabble of paws. I laughed out loud with relief.
Pushing open the door I clicked on the light. The kitchen, like my room, was at the front of the house. It had a small dormer window leading onto a broad parapet which ran along the house tops the entire length of the street. I had left the window wide open because of the heat. My visitor must have crept along from another flat and, seeing the open window, come in. My beautiful flowering geranium lay in the midst of its shattered pot on the floor beneath the window. There was no sign of the cat. It must have heard me and fled the way it had come, knocking over the plant as it leaped for the window. I got a dustpan and brush and swept up the mess, then checking everything else was in order I stopped to get myself a cold drink from the fridge.
‘Mee-ow.’
I jumped. The frightened squeal came from very near me. Then I saw it. Hiding in the dark crack between the fridge and the cupboard was a tiny kitten, with enormous frightened eyes.
‘Hello, puss,’ I said quietly. ‘Was it really you making all that noise?’ I held out my hand and twitched my fingers at it enticingly. The eyes immediately stopped looking frightened and looked instead very intelligent indeed. It put its head on one side and scampered out to me.
I picked it up. It was a stripy kitten, with a ridiculous stump of a tail and enormous green eyes; clearly not old enough to be walking lonely parapets under the sky by itself at two in the morning.
I gave it some milk and took it back to my room. After exploring thoroughly for a while it scrambled up onto my low divan bed, curled up and went to sleep. It appeared that for the time being at least I had acquired a cat.
I slept beside it, not waking till the sun crept in at the attic-window and fell full on my face. I grabbed the clock. It was after eight and I was going to be very late for work. The kitten had gone. I called it vainly as I made breakfast and dressed, but it must have climbed from my bed to the bookshelf and jumped to my windowsill. I prayed it had not slipped on the parapet and that it could find its way back to its real home.
In the busy office during the day I didn’t give the little cat another thought but at night, at home in the flat alone, I wondered where it had come from. It would have been fun to have a kitten for company in lonely London. Sally’s friends were kind and often asked me out with them, but since she had been away the phone had stayed depressingly silent. I had only been working in London for a couple of months after all. I could not expect to know many people yet and I was bound to meet people soon, but that didn’t stop me wondering and wishing as beautiful moonlit night succeeded moonlit night.
That night she, I decided she must be a she, came to see me again, about eleven this time, her tiny enquiring face all eyes, peering in through the open casement as I lay on my bed reading.
‘Hello, Tiger, have you come to keep me company again tonight?’ Pleased, I laid down my book to watch her. She jumped to the bookcase and stalked along it, her stumpy tail erect, mewing at me. She came and licked my hand with a tongue like sandpaper and then, politely, showed me where the door was. She licked her lips.
For four nights running Tiger came and had her evening milk drink with me and afterwards curled up with me to sleep. Each morning when I awoke she had disappeared.
The fifth night it poured with rain; heavy thundery rain which cascaded and bounced on the parapet and splashed into the room. Reluctantly I shut the window. Surely she would not come on a night like this. Entirely self-centred and demanding and affectionate only when it pleased her, my five square inches of visitor had a big enough personality to make up in many ways for my lack of human company in the evenings and I found I was missing her very much.
I left my windows open the next night and the next, but she didn’t come and sadly I told myself she probably wouldn’t come again.
Then one Saturday as I was cleaning the flat, my hair tied in a scarlet cotton handkerchief, she suddenly appeared at the kitchen window. Even in the short time she had not been to see me, she had grown.
I gave her some milk and let her play boxing games with my duster for a while, watching as she danced in the sunbeams on the rug. Suddenly she stopped jumping about, cocked her little head to one side and listened. Then in a minute she had leaped to the bookcase and out onto the parapet and was gone.
I went to the window and leaned out, edging forward beyond the angle of the dormer onto my elbows. To the left and right the long sunlit parapet stretched away the length of the street. I watched her trotting purposefully along, much too near the edge for my liking, till she came to another open window where she disappeared. I looked down nervously at the road, three storeys below and then began to wriggle back. As I edged back I glanced again at the window where Tiger had vanished. There was a young man leaning out, as I was, watching me. I smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
I pottered around with the duster for a while longer, but without Tiger to play with housework had lost all its appeal. So I collected my basket and my purse and ran down to go to the shops.
A few doors down from me a young man was tinkering about with an old car, his head under the bonnet. He stood up as I passed and I had a glimpse of brilliant blue eyes in a tanned face before I went on. I had the feeling he was watching me, but I didn’t turn back. It was the young man at Tiger’s window.
That night she came to me earlier than usual. I played with her and cuddled her for a long time before at last we fell asleep. Somehow I could not get the image of those blue eyes – her master’s blue eyes – out of my mind.
I saw him again next morning climbing into his car as I set off for the post office. I almost hoped he would stop and offer me a lift, but he didn’t. He glanced in his mirror though, to see me again after he had driven slowly by. The street seemed a hundred times more lonely when I got back later. The battered car was still missing and glancing up at our windows in the eaves of the high roof tops I saw that although mine were open, his were shut. Tiger would not be coming to visit me today.
His car did not return until after ten that evening, and although my windows stayed open all night Tiger never appeared. I stayed awake a long time hoping to hear her imperious voice from the windowsill, but it never came.
As I sat in the office next day leaning disconsolately on my desk I saw with sad resignation that the skies were clouding over. The heat wave, the weather forecast had said, was over. By lunch the first cold drops of rain were beginning to fall and I thought sadly of the long lonely evenings till Sally came back, my windows shut against wind and rain, my little visitor probably snug in her own basket beside someone else’s bed. His bed.
It was coming down in big heavy drops when eventually I reached home that evening after volunteering to stay at work to do some overtime. I threw open the window and leaned my elbows on the sill. The streets were smelling of wet soot and sweet earth from the garden square round the corner. It was lovely to feel the cool freshness on my face.
Tiger arrived while I was still eating my supper, her fur wet and spiky. Around her neck was a little leather collar and attached to it by a little piece of string was some paper. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My hands shook as I tried to untie it to take the paper. It was a note: ‘How about dinner on Wednesday?’ it said. That was all.
I stared at the writing, unbelieving. Was it meant for me? Putting the puzzled little cat firmly down on the carpet I went to the window and wriggled out a little way. His window was closed. He had put her out into the rain knowing she would have to come to