Wilfred Whitmore, who was exceptionally fond of music and taught Latin and Greek at a local school for boys, had overworked himself so much during the hot summer term that he began, about the middle of August, to suffer from odd hallucinations.
Once he believed himself, very briefly, to be Octavius Caesar and that he was eating large quantities of green figs and snails under the shade of an enormous cedar tree. Another time he was a Greek athlete, always in pursuit of other athletes or running away from them, along cruelly brilliant, stony distances.
Finally, after a too heavy lunch of sausages and mashed, fried onions and apple pie and cream, he fell asleep at his flat, in an old rocking chair, to wake suddenly under the powerful impression that his cat Susie was actually singing Schubert’s Die Forelle, The Trout, or at least that particular passage in it that starts
At first he thought that this was merely part of a waking dream but when he at last sat up and heard with amazed and fully awakened ears Susie’s unmistakable rendering of the song he was so excited that he rushed straight to the telephone without thinking there was anything absurd about the whole affair and immediately rang his fiancée, Shirley Baines, who worked as secretary to the general manager of a local paint factory.
Miss Baines, who was hard at it in the middle of an unbearably hot afternoon, typing letters and desperately longing for a stir of breeze to drive some of the acrid odour of emulsion paints from the humid air, was not particularly pleased to be interrupted.
‘But she sings, I tell you. No mistaking it. Positively sings.’
‘Who on earth are you talking about?’
‘It was just after two o’clock. I’d given her a nice lunch and suddenly she sat up and started. Clear as a bell. Just as if she’d learnt it all off by heart.’
‘For goodness’ sake can’t you tell me who you’re talking about?’
‘Susie. Didn’t I say Susie?’
‘No, you didn’t. And what’s more I don’t like being interrupted at the office. I’ve told you before—’
‘What makes it all the more exciting is that she doesn’t just sing any old piece. She’s shown taste—it’s that awfully nice thing of Schubert’s, The Trout, the bit that goes like—’
Wilfred suddenly began to hum over the telephone, in a rather uncertain tenor, the relevant passage from the song. At the end, trying to round off with a few bars of the accompaniment, he gave what seemed to be a series of hiccups, so that Miss Baines had great difficulty in restraining an impulse to ask him how long he’d been drinking. She remembered in time that Wilfred never drank and she could only suppose that the unbearable heat of the afternoon had in some way affected him. He’d been a little strange lately.
‘And it wasn’t as if she sang it just once. Then I might have been mistaken. But she sang it three times—two encores, note for note the same.’
‘In the right key too, I suppose?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Of course you’ll put her on television at once.’
Something in the tone of Miss Baines’ voice jolted his enthusiasm sadly.
‘You sound a bit peeved. Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I do. Tomorrow you’ll be telling me she plays the trombone. What’s the matter with you? You must have been sitting out in the sun. You’ve been acting a bit odd lately—’
‘I have not been sitting out in the sun.’
‘Then what’s the matter with you? It all sounds terribly fishy to me.’
In cold, level tones Wilfred said that if that was her idea of a joke he didn’t think it was a particularly good one.
‘And I can’t say I think it much of a joke to be rung up in the middle of a scorching afternoon to be told about cats singing Schubert.’
‘It is not a joke. It’s deadly serious. Don’t you realise? Susie’s a singing cat. A phenomenon. I’ve got a phenomenal, wonderful creature on my hands.’
‘Well, you haven’t got me on them, because I’ve got work to do and if I don’t do it I’ll be here all night.’
‘Very well. Will I see you tonight?’
‘I thought that was the idea.’
‘Perhaps you’ll come to the flat and hear Susie sing?’
‘If she’s still at it I will. In the meantime you’ll probably find she’s got a bone stuck in her throat or something and it’s that what’s causing it—Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ Wilfred said and then in a sudden spasm of anxiety rushed to the kitchen, half afraid that Miss Baines’ painfully jocular words might be true. But to his great relief Susie was asleep under the table, a passive ball of smooth black fur.
‘They don’t believe us, Susie,’ he said. ‘They don’t believe about you. But I’m sure Schubert would have. And so will they. I’ll make them.’
Back in the office Miss Baines tried vainly to repress the rising edges of her temper. She felt as if a hot iron had been run over her neck and she at once made several mistakes on the typewriter. Her hands felt repulsively clammy as she worked with her india-rubber to erase the misspelt words.
Finally she gave the typewriter a bang of near exquisite anger, snatched up her handbag and went first to the wash-room ro rinse her hands and make up her face and then down to the first floor canteen to get herself a drink of something cool.
‘Hullo. You look as if you’ve been having a dust-up with somebody. Robbie?’
Dawn Edwards, who changed the colour of her hair twice a month, sometimes to a deep-sea blue or to a shade rather like that of an under-ripe tomato, sat at a plastic-topped table sipping at a glass of cold milk. Robbie was Mr. Robertson, the general manager. Miss Edwards was secretary to a Mr. Watt-Forbes, whom she called Old What-not, in accountancy. Today Miss Edwards’ hair was a strange shade of gold-green, rather like that seen in certain mosses after a dry summer.
‘Robbie’s gone swimming, lucky devil. I’d give something to be in that water.’
‘I wish Old What-not would take a dive. He never lets up. Who were you fighting with?’
Miss Baines, who was now sipping cold orange juice, explained that she’d been fighting with Wilfred, over the telephone. It had made her very cross too.
‘Not like you two, is it? You don’t often have dust-ups.’
‘No. But this was plain ridiculous.’
Miss Edwards thought for a moment, staring at Miss Baines’ hair, which was a pleasant natural shade of dark brown, and then said she thought it mightn’t be a bad idea if she tinted it for a change—say red or cocoa. It was wonderful what a change of colour did to men. They started to look at you in quite a different way.
‘He’s gone completely barmy about a cat. Completely off his rocker.’
‘In what way?’
‘It sings.’
Dawn Edwards started laughing, rather shrilly.
‘Oh! they all do that. I hear them all night long on the roof next to ours. You want to throw cold water on them.’
‘This one’s different. It sings Schubert.’
‘Oh! classical. No rock ’n roll?’
‘Nothing so common. And he made such a God-Almighty fuss about it too. I never heard of anything so ridiculous.’
Miss Edwards pondered again, staring hard at Shirley’s hair. A nice shade of light cocoa would do a lot for it, she thought.
‘I don’t know that it’s so ridiculous. After all they get dogs to count. I saw one once on television.’
‘There’s a big difference between barking a few times and singing Schubert’s The Trout in the right key.’
‘Yes, but they get elephants to dance in circuses and all that. That must be difficult. And what about those porpoises or whatever they’re called? They’re almost human.’
Miss Baines suddenly drained her orange juice and said she must get back to the grindstone, or she’d be there till the cows came home.
‘The thing that made me feel so mad was that you’d think the wretched animal was far more important than I was.’
Dawn Edwards laughed again and said that a situation like that called for something drastic. She urged Shirley once again to do something for her hair: say a nice cocoa or squirrel red or milk chocolate or something of that sort.
Two hours later, when Miss Edwards left the office, sharp on five, she was surprised to see Wilfred Whitmore standing outside the paint factory gates, waiting for Shirley Baines. Wilfred was very thin and tall and rather fragile of appearance. She thought he looked tired. His skin looked rather like greasy parchment and his longish blonde eyebrows were so pale as to seem almost as if dipped in salt.
‘Oh! Wilfred, I’ve been hearing about your marvellous cat.’
‘You have?’
‘I think it’s terrific. No wonder you’re excited.’
‘You mean you actually think Susie can sing? You don’t think it’s a joke?’
‘Of course I don’t. As I said to Shirley they get dogs to count numbers and all that. And you see elephants dancing to tunes. And bears. And you can get budgerigars to say anything.’
Wilfred said he could quite see that at first sight it seemed a little far-fetched that a cat should suddenly start singing, and Schubert at that, but when you thought about it a bit it really wasn’t. After all there’d long been a theory that cats were in some way the reincarnation of human beings—it was what made them so close to man and so sagacious—and who could say whether Susie wasn’t in fact a reincarnation of someone who had lived in Vienna in Schubert’s time? Perhaps a person of some eminence, above the common rut; perhaps one of Schubert’s friends?
Miss Edwards’ eyes, which were a sort of golden toffee colour, seemed almost to melt as she listened to this theory and she could think of nothing to say except:
‘And of course she could always have heard it on a record.’
‘Yes, of course. Why not? I’d never thought of that.’
At this moment some instinct made Miss Edwards turn her head, just in time to see Shirley Baines leaving the front door of the office. With the lightest of fingers she touched the side of her mossy hair and gave Wilfred Whitmore a final gaze with her buttery golden eyes, saying:
‘Anyway I’d love to hear her some time.’
‘You honestly would? Really?’
‘Of course. I’d adore it. It would be marvellous.’ She smiled with sudden beatific warmth, so that Wilfred was momentarily embalmed in a daze. ‘Whenever it’s convenient, I mean. Well, I must rush now.’
‘I’ll let you know. I’ll let you know.’
After a bare, brief hullo to each other Wilfred Whitmore and Miss Baines walked away from the paint factory, silently. The white pavements seemed to dance with heat. Miss Baines felt herself longing for an ice-cream as big as a clock tower and for somewhere cool to swim.
‘You didn’t say you were coming to meet me out.’
‘No, but I wanted to go to the fishmonger’s for Susie and I thought I’d do the two things together.’
A burst of fury rushed through Miss Baines. Her words were drops of strychnine.
‘Of course you’ve bought her trout.’
Wilfred felt himself bounce off the pavement. For fully half a minute he seemed to soar somewhere far away from Miss Baines, floating in an icy sky. At the same time he suddenly recalled Dawn Edwards, her warm enthusiasm for Susie and the friendliness, almost the fondness, of her buttery golden eyes.
‘Look, I know you’re sceptical about all this. I know you don’t believe me. All I ask is that you should come back to the flat and hear Susie for yourself. She’s sung the same passage five times again already this afternoon.’
‘Thanks. There’s only two things I want at the moment. A good long cold drink or an ice and somewhere to swim.’
‘I’ve got plenty of drink and plenty of ice at the flat and you can have a shower.’
‘All right. Let’s get it over with. Don’t let’s keep the prima donna waiting.’
At the flat Miss Baines declined the offer of a shower and merely sat in the living room with an air of martyred discomfort, in the rocking chair, sipping a large gin-and-tonic from a frosty glass. Susie was still in the kitchen.
‘I won’t bring her in till she’s finished her supper. She seems to do it better after food.’
‘Unlike most other singers.’
‘Oh! and by the way I rang up the vet and told him all about it. He says he’s never heard of a phenomenon like it and he’s coming round first thing tomorrow to have a good look at her vocal cords.’
‘Oh! ridiculous. It’s probably croup or some sort of disease.’
‘Well, it may be. We don’t know. After all tenor-singing is a sort of disease.’
‘Oh! is it? I never heard.’
Five minutes later, after charging Miss Baines’ glass, Wilfred went into the kitchen and brought back Susie, who seemed dazed, even dopy, from too much food.
Miss Baines applauded the entrance pertly.
‘Oh! don’t do that. You’ll put her off.’
‘It’s the usual thing to applaud the artist, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but not this one. Just let her alone. Let her take her time. She’ll do it in her own good time.’
Miss Baines laughed shortly, in rather a gritty sort of way.
‘I suppose she isn’t expecting kittens or anything? Then we could have a choir.’
Wilfred could find no answer to this and sat in deeply repressed silence, watching Susie, who was now sitting on a sofa and licking her paws and reflectively washing her face with them. In impatience Miss Baines tinkled the ice sharply against the side of her glass, disturbing Susie, so that she looked quickly up.
‘Sssh! Don’t move. She’s going to start.’
Suddenly Susie began to make strange sounds, at first sotto voce, then more loudly, on a rising, piercing scale. The inharmonious nature of the notes seemed utterly to fascinate Wilfred Whitmore, who sat enthralled, open-mouthed, eyebrows seemingly bristled with excitement, his two hands gently beating enthusiastic time.
‘There it is. That’s it. That’s the Schubert bit.’ His voice was the merest thistledown of a whisper. ‘Dah!—dah!—dah dah!—hear it? That’s The Trout.’
To Miss Baines the sounds were like the unbottled echoes of distant caterwaulings on cold moonlight nights. She longed to hurl the contents of her glass at Susie, who seemed to be in mortal pain. Instead she drained the contents of the glass herself, slammed the glass down on the top of Wilfred Whitmore’s upright piano and got up.
‘I’ve just about had enough of this nonsense. I’m off. You’re heading for a nervous breakdown.’
‘Now don’t go. Don’t rush off. Give her a chance. She’s only just started. That was just a sort of dummy run.’
‘Dummy, my foot. You’ll be telling me next she knows the difference between a diminished fifth and a cork leg—’
‘Look, I’m convinced the root of all this lies in some sort of reincarnation.’
‘Oh! you are? Well, I’ll tell you what. You get the vet to look at you in the morning. Not her.’
‘Now please. Don’t rush off like that. Will I see you tomorrow?’
Miss Baines abruptly left without an answer. The door of the flat slammed with a cold rattle—a sound that Wilfred Whitmore felt he could still hear as he paced up and down outside the gates of the paint factory at lunch-time next day.
‘Oh! it’s you, Mr. Whitmore. I thought for a moment it couldn’t possibly be. We don’t often see you at lunch-time.’
He turned to see Dawn Edwards, who had been wondering most of the morning what colour she should dye her hair next. She was getting rather tired of the golden-green.
‘You’ve no idea when Shirley might be coming out to lunch, I suppose?’
‘She’s taking lunch late today. Mr. Robertson’s dictating letters till two o’clock. He wants to get away early for the weekend.’
Wilfred Whitmore’s face seemed sad, even depressed, at the news.
‘You look rather down in the dumps. It isn’t your cat, is it? How is she today?’
‘Oh! she’s very well, thank you.’
‘Still singing?’
‘As a matter of fact I think she’s singing better than ever.’
‘In really good voice, eh? How wonderful. I’d love to hear her. You did say I could some time.’
‘Of course. By the way, I had the vet to her this morning.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘I don’t think he’s very musical. He didn’t strike me as having much taste.’
‘Oh! you never know with those fellows. They look at everything so scientifically.’
Miss Edwards’ eyes seemed to melt as she said this. A sympathetic glow seemed to spread across her face, prompting Wilfred Whitmore to say:
‘I don’t know how you’re fixed for time. I don’t want to upset your lunch hour but it wouldn’t take five minutes if you wanted to hear Susie now.’
‘Oh! goodness, I’d love to.’
At the flat Wilfred Whitmore set Susie on a yellow cushion, in the middle of the sofa, and again she gently washed her face with her paws before suddenly beginning to make the strange sotto voce sounds, rising to a piercing crescendo, that had seemed to Shirley Baines like nothing more than the unbottled echoes of distant caterwaulings on cold moonlight nights.
This is exactly what they seemed like to Dawn Edwards too. She thought the noise too ghastly for words but she merely transfixed the black, crying figure of Susie with her melting buttery eyes and said:
‘But it’s beautiful. She’s a soprano too.’
‘You recognise the Schubert? You know the song?’
‘Of course. I used to play it a bit at one time.’
‘You did? You don’t sing as well, I suppose?’
‘I used to. I was in the school choir and then later—’
‘If I played would you sing the Schubert? The Trout, I mean. It would be rather nice.’
‘I couldn’t today. I haven’t got the time today.’
‘What about tomorrow?’
‘I’ve got to have my hair done tomorrow. It takes hours.’
‘Well, Sunday then?’
Before answering him Dawn Edwards leaned down and began to stroke Susie’s black soft fur with the back of one hand. Against the bright yellow cushion the blackness of the fur seemed of unusual depth and brilliance and she said:
‘Do you like black? I mean not just in cats. I mean does it sort of do something to you?’
How could she possibly know? he thought. He would never have guessed she was a girl of such perception. She didn’t look the type and he was delighted when she said:
‘All right, Sunday then. If you’re sure that’s all right? I mean what about Shirley?’
‘We haven’t arranged anything for Sunday. And even if we had—’
‘All right, let’s make it Sunday. Make it the evening, shall we? About six.’
‘About six. And I’m thrilled you’ve heard Susie. I’m thrilled you like her.’
‘Like her?’ Again the melting buttery eyes spread their warmth. ‘If I sing it half as well I’ll be satisfied.’
When she arrived back at the flat on Sunday evening, thirty-five minutes late, Wilfred Whitmore found it for some moments hard to recognise her. The head of mossy golden hair, lightly shot with green, had disappeared. The sensational glowing black mane that had replaced it had a passionate depth in it and a strange light that smouldered at the edges with a touch of midnight blue. It seemed even richer and softer than Susie’s fur.
Throughout the evening Dawn Edwards alternately drank gin-and-tonic and sang, in a very light soprano, brief snatches of Schubert. Wilfred Whitmore caressed the notes of the piano with vibrant hands. The evening grew dark and finally, as he and Dawn Edwards sat on the sofa together, he found himself caught up in yet another momentary hallucination. It was that Susie was ever so gently caressing his face with her fur. It was some time before he discovered, with an explosive jolt of excitement, that it was really Dawn Edwards’ black, sensational hair.
Dawn Edwards is now Mrs. Whitmore. Miss Baines continues to work at the paint factory. There is a certain brittleness in her manner and a certain aloofness, almost hauteur, in her bearing. She becomes increasingly irritated by Mr. Robertson and he, in turn, by her. In order to sleep at night she takes increasing doses of phenobarbitone which in turn, as time goes on, have a diminishing effect on her.
Sleeplessly she lies and thinks of Wilfred Whitmore, Susie and Susie’s strange cold discords. There frequently runs through her mind the whole of Die Forelle, The Trout—of which she now has a gramophone record—and particularly that beautiful passage in it that starts
And over and over again, as she hears it and sees in imagination the trout turning in its rippling waters, she wonders why cats are so popular.
More especially those who sing.