The Cat Who Wasn't a Dog Read online

  ‘We’ll stop at Hugh’s first.’ Smoothly, Evangeline continued to rearrange everyone’s life. ‘You can have your meeting with Martha then and I know Trixie will want to see the children.’

  I nodded enthusiastically before I began to wonder, What’s wrong with this picture? Then I had it. ‘And what will you be doing?’

  ‘Talking to Hugh, for one thing. He’s a dear boy, but I’m afraid it’s very much out of sight, out of mind, with him. We want to show our faces periodically to remind him that we’re still around.’

  Somehow, I doubted that he could forget it, but she had a point. It never hurt to flaunt yourselves in front of Management every once in a while.

  ‘London?’ The voice soared out from the top of the stairs. ‘You’re driving to London in the morning? Splendid. I’ll be ready. Ten thirty, you say. That will suit my arrangements perfectly. You can drop me off at Trafalgar Square.’

  We looked up in time to see Soroya disappearing along the upper landing before anyone could gainsay her.

  ‘But …’ Jocasta was still struggling to come to terms with the disruption that ensued every time she tried to do something. She looked from Evangeline to me.

  I shrugged, wondering just when Soroya had returned to the fold. Or had she been lurking in her room all this time, like a spider at the centre of a web, listening to the life of the house going on around her?

  ‘What about you?’ Jocasta turned to Evangeline desperately. ‘Are you going to let that dreadful woman get away with that?’

  ‘Do you want to be the one to tell her she can’t come with us?’ Evangeline asked innocently.

  ‘No …’ Jocasta paled at the thought.

  ‘We’ll only have to put up with her for an hour or so,’ Evangeline soothed, ‘depending on how fast you drive. And, who knows, we might learn something.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the event, we learned nothing. We must have broken the speed record – without actually breaking any laws – getting to London in the morning.

  Soroya had beaten Evangeline to the punch and was already ensconced in the front passenger seat when we went down to the car. A grim-faced Jocasta stared straight ahead, ignoring our greetings. We had barely seated ourselves when the car shot forward and aimed towards the motorway.

  All attempts at conversation had been defeated by Soroya’s brusque, ‘I can’t hear a thing.’ Jocasta did not even bother to answer.

  ‘No, no, no!’ Soroya protested, as Jocasta tried to pull over to the kerb to let her out when we reached our destination. ‘It’s not good enough! I want the other side of the Square!’

  Jocasta looked at the bumper-to-bumper traffic ahead of us and her shoulders tensed. I waited for the explosion – it was long overdue.

  Brrr-brrr … brrr-brrr … Saved by the bell. Evangeline’s mobile sounded abruptly and she fished it out of her bag.

  ‘Hello? … Yes …’ Her eyes narrowed and she handed the phone to me. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I took it meekly. She hates it when someone calls me on her phone, although, really, only one person ever does. And not very often. ‘Martha?’

  ‘Mother, I hope I’ve caught you in time. Don’t go to the house, I’m not there. I’m at your flat. I’ll wait for you here.’

  ‘Darling, why – ?’ But she’d hung up. I braced myself to break the news to Jocasta. Docklands was a long way from where she had thought she was taking us. I wondered how much out of her way it would be. Still, she had to see Martha, anyway.

  ‘Uh … Jocasta …’ I gave the phone back to Evangeline and tried for a tone that was both conciliatory and apologetic without being too much of each. ‘I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her tone was forbidding.

  ‘Martha,’ I said firmly. ‘That was Martha. She’s at the flat in Docklands. We’re to meet her there.’

  ‘Docklands?’ Soroya settled back triumphantly. ‘Then you’ll need to cross the Square, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ Martha looked almost as harried as Jocasta when she opened the door to us. ‘I’m sorry to take over your place like this – but everything is in such a mess at home!’

  ‘Darling, we’re always glad to have you here.’ I ignored Evangeline’s snort. Martha’s incipient tears were not so easy to ignore.

  ‘What’s wrong? The children …?’ Another fear shook me. Had something happened to Hugh? Had they split up? ‘Hugh …?’

  ‘No, no, they’re fine. Hugh sends his love.’ Evangeline snorted disbelievingly again. ‘The children have gone to the Zoo with the au pair. I couldn’t have them underfoot here. Everyone is underfoot at the house – and it’s so humiliating!’

  ‘Humiliating?’ Irritating, I could understand. Infuriating, certainly. Upsetting, yes, but … humiliating?

  ‘Terribly! You know Hugh works mostly from home. He’s been having a lot of meetings in his study lately. And I’ve been trying to test some of the recipes in the kitchen …’

  ‘I think I see.’ Light was beginning to dawn.

  ‘Well, you know what theatre people are like.’

  ‘Always hungry,’ I agreed, ‘and when good smells are drifting from the kitchen, they just follow their noses.’ We’d all been there.

  ‘Exactly! They just couldn’t keep away. Which would have been all right, if I were working from my own recipes. But you never know what’s going to result when you try someone else’s – that’s why we have to test them. Oh!’ Tears were close again. ‘I’ll never forget the look on Sir Feltham’s face when he bit into that scone and it was all raw in the middle. And he thought it was my fault!’

  ‘I’m sure he understood when you explained.’

  ‘He said he did, but I’m sure he thought I was just making excuses. He doesn’t believe I can cook! I heard him giving Hugh the telephone number of what he called a “superior domestics” agency.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’

  ‘It’s those recipes the stars are sending in! Most of them are all wrong!’ She rounded on Jocasta as though the poor girl had been personally responsible for each and every one of them. ‘None of those idiots know the first thing about cooking! They’re bluffing – making everything up!’

  ‘That’s why we’re testing everything.’ Jocasta stood her ground. ‘I know for a fact that some of them are very good cooks, but you have to be careful. When some cooks give you their special recipes, it’s a known fact that they often withhold one or two of the ingredients, so that you can’t duplicate their results. We’ll have to check and double-check everything.’

  ‘Some inspired guesses would help, too,’ I suggested. ‘They might add ingredients instead of leaving something out.’

  Evangeline wandered off, bored by all this domesticity. She was always happy to eat the end result, but she didn’t want to know the particulars of achieving it.

  The rest of us moved purposefully towards the kitchen. Martha had obviously hurled everything into shopping bags and brought them over here. Now they were strewn across the table and the half-full bags occupied every chair. The place looked as though a whirlwind had struck it and I welcomed the look. It took away the memory I was afraid was waiting for me: a gentle loving little cat who had trustingly allowed me to take her into the car and down to Brighton. We had both thought she would be coming back.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what you had here,’ Martha said, ‘so I just brought everything.’

  ‘So I see.’ I had the feeling that she had included things she would need herself at home. I would have to check on that before she left.

  ‘Scales, measuring spoons – everything is different here. Do you realize they have all these different spoons they measure with?’ Her voice rose indignantly. ‘In between the teaspoon and the tablespoon, they use something called a dessert spoon – which looks like a tablespoon to me, while their tablespoon is more like our serving spoon. And none of them hold the same amount as ours. And the scales – scales! – who ever heard of w
eighing the dry ingredients instead of measuring them? But the cups are different sizes, too. Nothing is the same! How am I ever going to make sense of all these recipes?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here to help you,’ Jocasta reminded her.

  ‘Let me make you a cup of tea, dear,’ I soothed. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort it all out.’

  ‘And as if that wasn’t bad enough,’ Martha would not be diverted, ‘they’ve gone metric. So you can get Imperial measures, metric measures and something they laughingly call American measures – which aren’t right, which makes you doubt all the other measurements.’

  The doorbell cut across her jeremiad, but she continued, ‘And there are gills and pints and millilitres and centilitres and ounces and grams and – ’

  ‘I’ll get the door,’ I told Jocasta, ‘and perhaps you’d better get her something stronger than tea …’

  ‘Ah!’ Nigel shifted from foot to foot as I opened the door. ‘I was expecting … that is, I thought …’

  ‘You want Evangeline?’ I stepped back. ‘Come in. I’ll go and get her for you.’

  ‘It’s just that I have a little something for her. For both of you, actually.’

  A loud anguished wail from the kitchen startled us. Nigel looked in that direction and began backing away.

  ‘Ah … it appears to be an inopportune moment. Perhaps another time …’

  ‘I’m afraid Martha is in the midst of a culinary crisis,’ I explained. ‘Come along and provide some distraction. It might help.’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ He sidled forward reluctantly. Not, I was sure, because he cared about being helpful, but because he had just seen Evangeline emerge from her room and head towards the kitchen to find out what was going on.

  ‘And now this one is in Australian measures!’ Martha was sitting upright at the table, tense and white-faced, one hand curled around a glass. ‘I never should have agreed to do it,’ she moaned. ‘I had no idea what was involved. We’ll never make that deadline.’

  ‘I wanted to give her a glass of white wine,’ Jocasta apologized, ‘but all I could find was more of that awful brandy.’

  Evangeline sniffed. Her private supply had been raided and was now being insulted. She was not best pleased.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ I soothed impartially. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it all sorted out.’

  ‘Hmmmph!’ Evangeline snorted. ‘Next thing, you’ll say it’s always darkest just before the dawn!’

  ‘Well, it is. Usually.’ I watched Jocasta tidying the jumbled heap from Martha’s kitchen into neat little piles. Round tubs of spices, bottles of flavourings, a long thin cylinder of vanilla pods, another of saffron, squeeze tubes of chili, garlic and anchovy pastes, various herbs, a peppermill, a cheese grater …

  ‘Umm, do you really think you need all these things, dear?’ I ventured. ‘I mean, aren’t you supposed to be doing recipes for people on the road, going from one engagement to another, never staying long in one place? They won’t be carrying a whole kitchen cabinet along with them. They’re actors, not professional cooks.’

  ‘Good point,’ Evangeline approved. ‘One or two little luxury items could be slipped into a suitcase – but not all these.’

  ‘Believe it or not,’ Martha said coldly, ‘every single one of these ingredients has turned up in one recipe or another. I’ve had to buy a lot of them especially because of that.’

  ‘Some of the recipes they’ve donated have been very ambitious,’ Jocasta said. Perhaps too much so, her tone implied. ‘Adventurous, even.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing,’ Martha was beginning to recover, ‘for the occasional recipe to call upon them to stretch themselves. We don’t want to be too ordinary.’

  ‘Ah!’ Nigel stepped forward. ‘Perhaps I might make a contribution. I just happen to have brought you a little present …’ He wriggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Evangeline in a way that would have done credit to Groucho Marx. ‘I think you might be able to do something very exciting with it.’

  ‘Oh?’ United by sudden mistrust, we all stared mesmerized at the parcel he held out to us.

  ‘Why, Nigel, how sweet of you.’ It was as phoney a reading of a line as Evangeline had ever given. She even simpered as she accepted the parcel – had a small oblong slip of paper passed between them at that moment? – and began unwrapping it.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. I didn’t think I was going to like the answer.

  ‘Ostrich steaks!’ Nigel said triumphantly. ‘The Food of the Future!’

  I was right, I didn’t like it. And I wasn’t alone. Martha drew in her breath sharply; Jocasta simply goggled at Nigel.

  ‘Well!’ Evangeline stared down at what she had uncovered. ‘It looks very … interesting.’

  I went over to carry out my own inspection. The meat bore a faint resemblance to chicken, but had a darker colour and a coarser grain.

  ‘And just how are we supposed to cook that?’ Martha demanded. ‘Do you have a recipe for it?’

  ‘Ah, no. Pretty much like chicken, I suppose. Same family, just a lot bigger. Do you know, just one ostrich egg will make an omelette big enough for ten or eleven – ’

  ‘You didn’t bring eggs, too?’ Martha’s voice rose perilously.

  ‘Ah, no … but I could get some for you – ’

  ‘No, no, this is quite enough,’ Jocasta intervened hastily. ‘Actually, I seem to recall that one of the supermarket chains tried to launch ostrich meat not so long ago. The instructions on the packet were to cook it very quickly or it might get a bit tough. And I think a sauce was recommended, as it was rather dry.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember that!’ In fact, it came back to me vividly. A few flagship stores had tried to popularize a whole range of the more exotic meats. The aisle in front of the chill cabinet had been crowded with bemused – not to say stunned – customers staring unbelievingly at the packets labelled Ostrich, Emu, Crocodile, Alligator, Kangaroo, Bear, and the relatively mundane Wild Boar and Venison. Occasionally, one of the braver souls had picked up a package and squinted at the cooking instructions, before carefully replacing it and retreating to the safety of a pound of hamburger. I never saw anyone buy any of it and, presumably, neither did the supermarket, as that particular chill cabinet soon reverted to a display of cold cuts and pates.

  ‘That experiment folded faster than an avant-garde production of Charlie’s Aunt with everyone in masks and speaking in rhymed couplets.’

  ‘We needn’t go into that,’ Evangeline said repressively and, too late, I remembered that she had been inveigled into a production not a million miles away from the one I had so carelessly cited.

  ‘Ah! Well!’ Nigel was suddenly shifty-eyed and anxious to get away. ‘The world has moved on from that point. Everyone is much more aware of the global market these days … the Green Party … conserving resources … ozone layer … global warming …’ His voice faded as he backed into the hallway and made his escape.

  Leaving Evangeline holding the ostrich steaks. We looked at each other and then at her.

  ‘Right!’ She thrust them at Jocasta. ‘You’re the expert. Do something with these!’

  For a long moment, I thought Jocasta was going to refuse. For a hopeful split-second, I thought she was going to take the package and hurl it at Evangeline’s head.

  A sudden commotion in the hallway outside distracted us. Raised, apologetic voices, one Nigel’s, the other not quite so familiar. The front door slammed and footsteps continued down the hall towards us.

  Jocasta accepted the package absently and we all watched the doorway. I’m not sure what we expected, but it was something of an anticlimax when Jasper, our landlord, appeared in the doorway and looked around, blinking.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize you had guests.’

  ‘It’s just Martha,’ I said. ‘You remember Martha. And Jocasta, who’s helping her with her cookbook.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He nodded to Martha a
nd, more uncertainly, to Jocasta. ‘It’s just … I was hoping for a quick word … alone.’

  ‘Come into the drawing room.’ I led the way. Evangeline crossed to stand framed by the glass wall with the panorama of the fast-flowing Thames and the old warehouses converted into luxury flats on the other side of the river as her background.

  ‘Now, then,’ she demanded, ‘what’s this all about?’

  ‘Oh, er, nothing, really ‘I, er, was just wondering … Everything all right?’

  ‘Just fine – ’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ Evangeline and I spoke simultaneously. As I watched Jasper’s face, I realized that Evangeline’s response was the pertinent one. Something was up, he looked nearly as shifty as Nigel.

  ‘Oh. Oh, no reason. I just thought I’d stop by and make sure everything was satisfactory. You’re quite happy here? All things considered?’

  ‘What things?’ Evangeline’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Not getting too noisy here, or anything? We’ve sold almost all the flats now. Business picking up. New people moving in. They’re not disturbing you?’

  ‘We’ve been too busy to notice,’ I assured him. It did not seem to be an entirely satisfactory reply.

  ‘Good, good,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘Er … I was wondering. Since you’re so happy here, you wouldn’t like to buy the flat, would you?’

  Evangeline and I looked at each other. Such a thing had never occurred to us.

  ‘Prime location,’ he urged. ‘Luxury penthouse suite … River views … Value going up by the minute …’ He made the mistake of meeting Evangeline’s glacial gaze and faltered. ‘Er, perhaps you’d like a bit of time to think it over.’

  ‘Unquestionably, we would,’ Evangeline said.

  ‘Right! Naturally! Thing is … people have been asking about this place. You know … Luxury penthouse suite …’

  ‘You said that!’ Evangeline cut in sharply.

  ‘Er … yes … right …’ What was there about us today that was making men shuffle backwards? ‘Er … I’ll leave you to talk it over then … give you a good price, of course … Er … well, goodbye.’ He fled from the room.