Why there is no Beckfoot cat and how the Amazons became Ruthless
A/N Arthur Ransome wrote with sympathy of dogs, cats and rats. So why was there no Beckfoot cat?
In this story, based on true fact, this author will probably lose all her friends. As ever, Mr Ransome's characters belong to himself, and although I might base certain aspects the behaviour of some characters on things I've heard or seen people do, any characters I create are original creations, not people I know in disguise.
Malta: summer 1949
"Was that fighting the Germans?" Julia asked.
"Was what?" Nancy bent over, uncomfortably, to peer at the spot where her daughter was pointing. She could scarcely even see the faint, pale scars against her sunburnt skin. But then three year-old Julia's eye-line was not much above the hem of her mother's shorts.
"That – no. That was much earlier. I don't suppose I was a great deal older than Jane when that happened. Maybe seven or eight, perhaps nine. I can't remember really. "
"What happened?" Julie asked. Jane stopped drawing and listened.
"I suppose you won't believe me if I tell you it was a fight with a tiger." Nancy said.
"It must have been a little one, or it would have munched you up." Jane pointed out.
"Did Daddy help you fight it?" Julia asked.
"This was years before I met Daddy."
"Was it a real tiger?" Julia asked. "Might Granny Molly get eaten by a tiger where she lives?"
"Well it certainly had stripes, and it was quite fierce and it twitched its tail and… " But Julia's lip was wobbling slightly. However splendid the idea of Mummy fighting a tiger in the dim and distant past was, the idea of tigers prowling about Beckfoot, and Bad Things happening to her Granny was too horrifying for Julia to face.
"It definitely was NOT a tiger." Julia's mother explained hastily." And it died a very long time ago and there aren't any tigers in the Lake District. Granny is quite safe."
"It was a cat, wasn't it?" Jane asked, watching her mother carefully. "A stripy one, but quite big for a cat, because it reached quite far up your legs. "
"Well done, Jane, it was. Although I was a lot smaller in those days, so perhaps it was only an ordinary sized cat. And it turns out that it was called Tiger."
"And you fought it and you won?" Julia asked.
Nancy grinned ruefully. "It went for me and I didn't even think of fighting back. Cat 12, Mummy 0, I'm afraid."
"Because of not hitting anyone smaller?" Julia asked.
"Possibly." Nancy said.
"I think," Jane said, very carefully, "That it is not very fair when a littler person hits a bigger person when she knows the bigger person is not allowed to hit back."
"Hitting sisters is wrong, whatever size they are." Nancy said firmly. "Now, it's probably cool enough to go for a bit of a walk. By the time I count to ten everyone must find their shoes."
Beckfoot: 1923
Uncle Jim had come home for a visit. He had taught Ruth long division and long multiplication, taught Peggy long multiplication, given them a copy of "Treasure Island" and a bicycle, both second-hand, organised the repairs for the boathouse and then gone to Bulgaria. He had left a new book behind too, despite Peggy reminding him.
"Oh, that, too much of a fag to pack it now, chap named Bungo will probably want to borrow it."
And Ruth had been only a third of the way through the book, and was quite enjoying the nautical adventures of the writer, the Cook and the Ancient Mariner when the improbably named and equally improbably dressed Bungo came to collect the book.
"He's wearing spats." Peggy reported in a whisper, peering through the gap between the dining room door and the door frame.
"Well so does the king." Ruth said.
"Only when he's being king. I bet he doesn't when he's just borrowing books."
"Expect the king just buys his own."
Mother had asked Bungo, who turned out to be called Mr Grafton-Jones, to stay to afternoon tea, which he did.
"We're far too crumpled and darned to be produced for drawing room tea." Ruth pointed out when Mother came back into the dining room to find them with their heads dutifully bent over their arithmetic books. Perhaps a little too dutifully. "Can we use the bicycle on the lawn? It must be dry enough now. And it will be being seen and not heard, really."
Mother sighed, and smiled ruefully. "There's no danger of being run over or causing an accident on the lawn I suppose, but I want those sums done first."
"Ruth's finished."
"So she has, but you must too. And Ruth! No doing Peggy's sums for her!"
"Hurry up, Pegs." Ruth was too impatient even to sit back down on her chair.
"Stop fidgeting at me, Ruth. I'm trying to get these done."
"You're taking forever. Look here, Mother said that I couldn't do the sums for you but here."
And Ruth reached over to the bookcase, swivelling perilously on one leg of her chair and pulled out a thin blue exercise book with squared paper. She flipped through several pages. The first few were in her mother's neat digits. The ones near the end were less tidy and in written in ink that looked somehow strange. Ruth wondered if her uncle had last filled his pen in whichever parts of abroad he had been visiting that time.
"Mother made me promise not to copy the answers when she saw I'd found it." Ruth said, "But she didn't say that you couldn't. Buck up and get on with it. I hope I can remember exactly how it goes back."
…
"There's that cat again." Peggy said as they fetched the bicycle from its place in the stable. "The ginger and black one."
They had offered it fragment of ham and beef roll when it had appeared on previous occasions over the last fortnight, but with Cook preparing a hasty afternoon tea in the kitchen, there would be no chance of snaffling anything from the larder this time.
"We can give it some water anyway." said Peggy, filling in the same saucer they had used last time with fresh cold water from the newly installed stable yard tap.
"It looks pretty well fed." said Ruth, with a considerable amount of truth. "It isn't as if it actually needs extra food. This is just like going to the village and being bought ices for a cat probably."
"Only it happens more often. I wouldn't mind it if we got ices twice a week." Peggy agreed.
"I wish we jolly well did." Ruth wheeled the bicycle round the corner of the house to the lawn.
….
It was just as well that Ruth had let Peggy have first go on the bicycle, because Nurse had decided that Ruth's last year's summer frocks would need turning up before being worn by Peggy.
"Although there's none of them without a darn or tear."
Ruth tucked her skirt in her knicker legs with an air of conscious carefulness, although it was surely too short to reach the oily chain and had already developed a fresh grass stain. She had got the knack of balancing and steering, if she freewheeled down the lawn. She could pedal and balance in a straight-line too, which after all was what cyclist probably spent most of their time doing. It would surely only need a bit more practice before she could pedal in a circle around the lawn. She would see whether she could master that today. Then surely Mother would let her practice on the road. Ruth set herself to the steady concentration that she hardly ever showed with her lesson books in front of her.
And then, a few falls later, she could manage it. After the first accident free circuit she carried on. The third circuit was easier still. After the sixth Ruth forgot to count, but it was not very long after that when a sharp pain in her calf caused her to look down to see the stripy cat crouched, tail twitching, ready for another pounce.
No matter how good you are on a bicycle, stopping suddenly had its inevitable effect. Ruth toppled off sideways and the cat pounced again. This was no mere patting with sheathed claws. Ruth's head had barely come into contact with the springy grass, somewhat overdue for its next mowing, when the cat sprang again, raking claws against her cheekbone. Ruth scrunched her eyes tightly closed and started to scramble to her feet, but found she had to open her eyes to disentangle her legs. Perhaps she could frighten it away by yelling. Her very loudest shout had no effect. Her sock was caught in the bit the chain went round. She tugged at it in haste, but the yarn was too strong and then cat's claws tore at the back of her hand. Ruth wrenched her foot out of shoe and sock together and turned to run for the house. She had scarcely gone a yard when she was caught up by unfamiliar arms and carried rapidly towards the house in a fireman's lift.
"Are you alright?" Mother's voice sounded anxious, but Ruth could see little but grass and fine suiting.
Hell's Bells, of course I am apart from the bleeding" said Ruth, ignoring her own tears. She had thought the phrase which she had heard Uncle Jim use was a particularly fine one and had been waiting for a chance to use it.
"The cat skiddadled anyway, once we all came out. " Peggy reported.
"There'll be stitches needed." came Nurse's voice. "Peggy, you run ahead like a good lass and ask Cook to ring the doctor. Happen she'll catch him before he finishes his surgery and goes out on his rounds."
…..
To Ruth's mild disgust, she was put to bed after being stitched and bandaged. Peggy, fascinated, has insisted on watching the stitching and this had been allowed on the strict understanding that she would not chatter while the doctor was trying to concentrate.
"You're lucky." The doctor said to Ruth as he was packing away his instruments. "A few more inches and it would have had your eye. As it is, that scratch doesn't even need stitches. I don't expect you'll have a scar even."
"I wouldn't care if I did."
"You might later." The doctor said.
"You could have had an eyepatch, like a pirate." said Peggy.
"I still could." Ruth pointed out.
"You'd find it hard to judge distances." The doctor warned her.
"Well, we can be pirates without." Ruth said. "Or only put on eye-patches when we feel like it."
"And say yo-ho-ho a lot." Peggy added.
"And "shiver my timbers.""
"Well, the phrase I don't want to hear again from you, Ruth, or from either of you come to that, is the one I heard from you in the garden, Ruth."
"Uncle Jim said it."
"I thought you had picked it up from him." Mother said. "But it isn't something suitable for you to say."
"Really not suitable?" Peggy asked, "or just Aunt Maria sort of not suitable?"
"Really not suitable." Mother said firmly.
"But sometimes I just want to say words that are…I don't know the word for it." Ruth said.
"Rather emphatic?" the doctor suggested, fastening his bag.
"What's emphatic?" Peggy asked. Ruth was rather glad she didn't have to let on that she didn't know either.
"With emphasis." the doctor said. "So I could say "You must not let this cat put you off riding a bicycle." like that, or I could say "You must NOT let this cat stop you riding a bicycle.""
"I wasn't going to." Ruth assured him cheerfully. "But it's just as well you said so, because Aunt Maria is coming next week, and if she tries to stop us bicycling, we can say that it's on medical advice."
"Better to let your mother tell her that." the doctor said, "And you'll just have to make up your own emphatic words if you really want to use them. What day is Miss Turner arriving, Mrs Blackett?"
"Tuesday."
"I'd better come and take these stitches out on Wednesday then." The doctor said. "Miss Turner usually wants me to see her, and there's no point coming on two successive days.
…..
Drawing room tea with the great aunt, who was always a very-bread-and-butter-first-person and believed that small girls should eat dainty portions, was bad enough. Drawing room tea with the great aunt and Miss Thornton from Crag Gill was worse. They both sat straight-backed in their respective chairs as if they were holding court. They didn't so much converse, as make a series of statements for the agreement of others.
"And Mother's the only other grown up." Ruth thought. "It's like a game of tennis really, with poor Mother as the ball."
"And what, pray, has happened to cover little Ruth in so many scratches?"
Peggy, predictably, completely forgot about seen-and-not-heard and poured forth the entire story. Well, nearly the entire story. Ruth was quite glad that Peggy had missed out the bit about Hell's Bells and the bit about being lifted up by Mr Bungo. (Ruth had already forgotten his real name and probably so had Peggy, because she didn't mention him at all.)
"And it was completely unfair of the cat, which we found out later was called Tiger and belongs to those people who have taken the cottage by the lake for the summer, because Nurse asked Sammy, and Sammy found out, but it's not a dog so the cat's people aren't in trouble." Peggy concluded, "Because it's not as if Ruth went anywhere near it at all; it came up to her, and we'd put out a dish of water for it earlier in case it was thirsty. And the last time it came we even gave it some bits of ham we'd st…err, found in the larder that didn't seem wanted. "
Catching her mother's eye, Peggy ended her narrative abruptly. There would probably have to be an explanation about the ham later, but Mother would never say anything about things like that in front of visitors.
"Cats," proclaimed Miss Thornton, "are very sensitive creatures. I have one myself. I'm sure it was entirely Ruth's fault for provoking the poor thing. It must have been very much upset."
"She wasn't provoking it. She was just pedalling around the garden. Ruth didn't even know it was still in our garden. And no-one even touched the cat." Peggy said.
"A cat's natural instinct is to pounce on a moving object. Your sister should have known this and avoided provoking it. I see no reason why she should have been using a bicycle in any case. "
"Bicycle exercise is very healthy for children in their growing years, the doctor tells me." the great aunt pronounced, fixing Miss Thornton with her most awful glare. Not, Ruth thought, that it seemed to be having much effect on Miss Thornton. Jolly good of the Doctor though. And for once the row seemed to be happening without her taking an active part. Ruth settled herself to watch. "It improves the deportment and prevents undue fatigue in later life. I am indeed pleased to find my niece taking such care of her daughters' health."
…
"Mary" the great aunt said as Miss Thornton settled herself into her car with a certain amount of ceremony, "I want you to promise me you will never bring a cat to Beckfoot."
"I would never dream of doing so." Molly said, trying very hard not to remember the doctor's comment about Ruth's eye. It hadn't happened. Ruth had been lucky. Those were the things to remember.
….
Jim Turner to his nieces
" ….I'm glad it was no worse. I don't see why you shouldn't be pirates if you want to. It's can't be any less worthwhile than prospecting. I daresay I'll be home before this letter, if only for a brief visit. But if you're going to be pirates, Ruth will have to change her name. Pirates are meant to be ruthless."