telephone table with her head scarf, quite ineffectually, said, ‘Well, you know how it is with these sales, sir. And Mrs Tomlinson is with her.’
*
Margaret sometimes talked to Grace about moving to the country after Mr Stone retired. She had no intention of doing so—she never spoke of it to Mr Stone—but she felt that such talk was suitable. It also enabled her to indicate to Grace her helpless awareness that the street was no longer what it was. For some time, in fact, and even before Margaret came to it, the street had been changing. Once the habitation mainly of the old and the settled, it was now being invaded by the married young. More prams were pushed about the street. Houses were being turned into flats. Bright ‘To Let’ and ‘For Sale’ notices in red, white and black appeared with growing frequency amid the green of hedges, and were almost fixtures in the gardens of some houses which continually changed hands: petty speculators had moved in. Eddie and Charley—E. Beeching and C. Bryant, Builders and Decorators—cheerful red faces between grey caps and white overalls, popped up regularly in the street, now painting this wall, now mending that roof, now visible through uncurtained windows in some stripped front room. A Jamaican family of ferocious respectability (they received no negro callers, accepted no negro lodgers for the room they let, and they kept a budgerigar) moved into one of the houses, which Eddie and Charley promptly repainted, inside and out: its gleaming black-pointed red brick was like a reproach to the rest of the street.
In this ferment the people next door decided to move. So Margaret reported. The house, she said, was too big for the Midgeleys. She had found out their name, and was quoting Mrs Midgeley, with whom, in spite of the black cat, the rank garden and the ruined fence, she appeared to be on cordial terms. They were moving to a new town, where, Margaret said, sticking up for the street, they would be ‘more comfortable’.
To Mr Stone the Midgeleys were still newcomers—he slightly resented learning their name—and he did not realize the importance of Margaret’s news until the following morning, when he saw the cat sitting in the gap in the fence, its back expressive of boredom, waiting for those early arrivals among the young girls who, with the warmer weather, now drifted up to this end of the school grounds.
At breakfast he said, ‘Well, I imagine we’ll soon be seeing the last of that cat.’
‘They’re having it destroyed,’ Margaret said. ‘Mrs Midgeley was telling me.’
He went on spooning out his egg.
‘The children liked him when he was a kitten. But they don’t care for him now. Mrs Midgeley was telling me. My dear’—she seemed to be echoing Mrs Midgeley’s tone, which was oddly touched with pride—‘they say he is an absolute terror among the lady-cats of the street.’
His morning play with the cat acquired a new quality. Every morning the animal awakened in sunshine, all its grace intact, all its instincts correct, and all awaiting extinction. He wished to see these instincts exercised, to reassure himself that they had not begun to wither, to wonder at their continuing perfection. He tapped; the cat was instantly alert. He studied its body, followed its sure-footed walk, gazed into its bright eyes. He felt anger and pity. The anger was vague and diffused, only occasionally and by an effort of will focusing on the Midgeleys and their dreadful children. The pity was like love, a desire to rescue and protect and cause to continue. But at the same time there was a great lassitude, an unwillingness to act. And his impulse of love never survived the bathroom.
He observed the cats of the street more closely, seeking the lady-cats among which the black cat had done such damage. Perhaps they were those creatures that sat so sedately on the window-ledges of front rooms, on the tops of fence-posts, on steps, the very creatures that in back gardens became so frivolous and unrestrained, for these animals, as he now saw, had one set of manners for the street and another for back gardens. He sought, too, for possible offspring. One he thought he did see, prowling about in the school grounds, a creature like its sire, black, but furrier and more restless.
Taking over Mrs Midgeley’s pride, he saw, at the centre of all the cat activity of the street, his own black cat, which every morning waited for him