IV

Broadbent paced up and down outside the drawing room. Inside lay his daughter, still weak and confused after her ordeal at the feast, attended now by the family doctor, who ministered her with salts and quantities of a dark tonic which smelled suspiciously like liquorice and brandy.

It was not that Broadbent had been ordered from the room in the name of modesty. Rather, he had sent himself out to try and cool down, since his temper was still boiling hot, and in such a state he could tolerate no one in his sight. Tom had been his groom since the boy had turned fifteen – a good five years ago – but Broadbent had dismissed him on the spot, there at the fair, without even a ride home. For all anyone knew, the ex-groom was still in Dewsbury, chuntering to himself about the cat.

Broadbent was angry. He had been so enraged, after learning what Tom had allowed to happen to his daughter, that he felt sure he would horsewhip the boy to death. He was also angry with himself, for having permitted his daughter to visit the fair with only a half-witted groom for protection. It was common knowledge that at fairgrounds virtue is rarely found but frequently lost, and Broadbent’s decision to let her go had been surprising and wholly unexpected. He, like most people who find themselves suddenly rich, had developed an excessive concern for the virtue of his children, a preoccupation with high probity which seems to have something to do with a vague notion of nobility. A similar obsession with virtue could have been seen in those nouveau-riche homes of mill owners and merchants across the land; when their sons and daughters inevitably fell from this unnatural grace, either as an act of rebellion or simply as a consequence of living, then the parents would despair, unable to explain their child’s attraction to base and unworthy things.

Broadbent’s daughter, though, had not fallen so much as been let fall, and the ignominy cut even deeper. She had been buried beneath a pile of low people, at a fairground sideshow, not two strides away from an incident of common thuggery, in the proximity of gypsies, and dangerously close to a mutant animal. She had been crushed half to death there on the wet ground, and now he felt that the family name itself had been trodden into the mud.

Tom was to blame for all this. However, Broadbent was a compassionate man, and was one of those people who knows compassion to be amongst their principal virtues. Though his mill served to shorten the lives of all who worked there, and though the wages he paid meant that his employees were forced into cramped and insanitary slum dwellings, so that their beds crawled with bugs the year round, and their children, those that didn’t die young, grew up with constant coughs and running noses, and though even in the worst stages of an illness the mean conditions of their lives denied them decent medical attention, so that they frequently died from ailments which started out as no more than head colds or tickly chests, despite this, Broadbent was a compassionate man. So as soon as it was clear that his daughter had come to no lasting physical harm, and that she would be compelled to live with only the psychological scars inflicted upon her by such a trauma, he turned his attention to the problem of Tom. He got thinking about the groom’s engagement, not more than a few months before, to a scullery maid at the workhouse. It had ended when she went suddenly mad and had to be sent to an asylum. Broadbent knew this because it was he, keen to ensure that Tom did not go the same way, who had paid for the girl’s swift removal.

Tom had not properly recovered from the loss of his fiancée, becoming nervous and withdrawn and almost a mute. Once or twice Markham had sent word that he had been hanging around the workhouse, asking people where Alice had gone, which provoked great sadness there, since they had all been terribly moved by her inexplicable descent into madness. Moreover, none of them knew where she had been taken, only that it was an asylum some distance away. So, Tom’s very presence at the workhouse had become an unwelcome reminder of the whole sorry affair, and Markham put a stop to it.

Now, as his temper cooled, Broadbent saw that Tom’s life had taken an unfortunate twist, and that a young man could be seriously harmed by such a thing. He reasoned, perhaps correctly, that if a temperamentally insecure young man were thrown out on to the street with no trade but that of groom to his name, then the likely outcome was tragedy. The problem, of course, was that the idea of Tom returning to work at the Broadbent home was out of the question. For one thing, his negligence had brought humiliation on the family; and for another, Broadbent himself could not be seen to back down from a decision already made, because there was only so much honour to play with, and the Broadbents were using theirs up rapidly. He sent for Markham.

Naturally, Markham did not welcome the suggestion that the workhouse should now offer Tom employment, however proficient his grooming skills. Broadbent, though, was an important and influential benefactor, and though the men discussed the ins and outs of the matter at hand for more than an hour, they both knew that it had already been decided: Tom would become assistant overseer at the workhouse, at the institution’s expense. And here lies a small detail worthy of attention. The workhouse functioned like any other establishment, paying a regular wage to its employees. However, its superintendent was a kind of general manager who saw to it that the place cost no more than it should, and was himself paid according to his own efficiency. In other words, a good part of Markham’s salary came in the form of a sort of inverse commission, so that if budgets were exceeded, his own earnings fell. By this mechanism the benefactors had always managed to keep the workhouse expenses under the tightest rein. Or, more accurately, Markham had always been so afraid of the monthly outgoings that he spent every last drop of his energy in making sure that not a lump of coal nor a single candle was used unnecessarily. That is, he made everyone’s life unimaginably tiresome and frugal for the sake of his own pocket. Like it or not, then, Markham would have to find the means to employ Tom. Immediately, he began to think of ways in which an assistant overseer’s wages could be shaved from the workhouse budget, which was already pulled as tight as normal logic and invention could pull it.

The men’s conversation at this point took an unusual turn. Tom’s destiny having been settled, they moved on to a more general discussion of the boy. Gradually, events at the fairground were described by Broadbent in more and more detail until the cat, despite being in Broadbent’s eyes a far less significant element in the whole fracas than the brawling gypsies and other low types, made its inevitable entry into the narrative. Markham felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle at the first mention of the animal, and the thought that it might still be alive sent a cold shiver around his body. Then, with Broadbent’s eloquent description of Dewsbury Feast fresh in his thoughts, Markham suffered what could only be described as a flash of genius; an idea that came from nowhere, fully formed and perfectly balanced, an idea so brilliant that he excused himself as soon as politeness allowed and rushed back home to begin making plans.

Meanwhile, the trap was sent all the way back to Dewsbury in search of Tom, together with a brief note from Broadbent explaining the new arrangement with the workhouse. For his part, Tom had not left the fairground. He had fallen in with some of the fairmen who had helped to clear up the remains of the Cat-Icarus tent. Now, three or four hours later, they sat around inside another, larger tent and drank bottled beer which Tom sent out for by the crateload until, after several crates had been brought in and consumed, he had no money left for more. The men caroused in an idle way, without much animation or joy; or perhaps the events of the afternoon had provoked in them a kind of thoughtfulness, for it was certainly true that that kind of thing did not happen often, even at a fairground.

The tent where they now drank was a large one, with a sawdust floor and a raised boxing ring in the middle. From time to time Tom would climb up on to the dais, muddling his way through the thick ropes which hung around its four sides, and challenge Pedro Rocca to a fight. Pedro ‘the Rock’ Rocca was a professional boxer, though he fought only amateurs; all day long he would prowl around outside his tent, grizzling more or less menacingly, hoping in that way to lure someone into the ring, any spirited man who fancied his chances against the bald and somewhat ridiculous-looking Pedro, who was not only dressed in a yellow silken robe, but was bald and easily fifty-five years old. He was, in fact, exactly the right age for the job, because many a young man, with a girl on his arm and bunch of rowdy friends behind him, would reckon such an old-timer to be easy pickings. And sometimes Rocca did get hit. Now and then an enthusiastic youngster would land a punch. Just one, usually a glancing blow which obliged him to take his opponent more seriously and mount a proper defence. Excitement would rise around the tent, and more paying customers would pour in through the doors, the word having spread instantly that another victim was ready for the slaughter, the new crowd keen for blood and glory or, if not both, then at least the blood. Rocca would play with the newly emboldened victim, drawing him in, ducking his ridiculously predictable punches, and pulling all his own so that it appeared that a real fight was taking place. After a few minutes, when no one else came through the tent doors, he would wallop the lad square on the temple just hard enough that his legs gave way beneath him and he found himself instantly on the canvas. No one ever chose to try and beat the count after that, so Rocca was saved the need to apply any further persuasion.

Now, as Rocca relaxed for the evening, he was being taunted by Tom, who had of course bought the beer, so a little tolerance was called for. However, the alcohol seemed to render Tom dangerously short of judgement, since the more he drank the more earnest were his invitations for Rocca to fight. The others did their best to ignore him, thinking that he must be suffering some form of nervous reaction to the Cat-Icarus incident. Perhaps it had been the fearful sight of the cat itself, they thought, not without a certain jealousy, since if the cat really was such hot stuff then Petronella and her two partners had been in possession of a living, flying fortune.

From the ring Tom now went too far. He called Rocca a coward and a crybaby, and possibly also made reference to the boxer’s mother, though no one heard this clearly enough to confirm what had been said. The bald man staggered up off the floor, stood his bottle carefully on the ground, and walked over to the ring, where Tom was jigging about with both fists held up at face height as if in readiness. When Rocca got to the stage, instead of springing up onto the dais he simply reached under the bottom rope and, with one arm, swiped the boy’s legs from under him. Tom fell without a sound but with an expression of great surprise on his face. Rocca then pulled him off the canvas by his feet, heaved him on to his shoulder, and carried him out of the tent, dumping him on the wet grass outside. Then he returned to his bottle of beer. No one said anything, and in a minute or two they had forgotten who Tom was.

Catty must have got a very good opinion of policemen. Not every cat can say that, perhaps. But for three weeks at Dewsbury Central Police Station, food and affection were in limitless supply.

Each morning a mountain of breakfast scraps was put down for the new visitor, and throughout the day there was a never-ending series of meals and snacks and elevenses and tea breaks. The Dewsbury Constabulary, it seemed, marched on its stomach, and there were some substantial ones. Hardly an hour passed without the laying down of newspapers and pencils for a fresh round of gorging, always washed down with sweet tea, and always a saucer of it put down for the cat. The poor thing had no choice but to leave whole plates of titbits untouched, and this eventually served as a gentle hint that a cat’s needs are really quite modest in comparison to a policeman’s.

As far as affection was concerned, the cat was overburdened with it. The constables there must have been recruited according to their sentimental tendencies, for though hardly a crime was detected or solved in those three weeks, even the toughest amongst them would turn to gibbering fools when petting the winged cat. Perhaps policemen have some special, urgent need to express their feelings, because they cooed and babbled, down on their hands and knees, as if it were their own first-born child.

After three weeks, though, the cat was taken away.