Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

Henry found this daily or rather nightly ejection of Ginger very painful; but it was inevitable, for with age he had lost whatever house-training he ever had, and misbehaved accordingly. It fell to Bill’s lot to deal with these misdemeanours, which always happened in a certain place, on some stone flags by the cellar-door. Perhaps Ginger thought that his oblations would be more acceptable there than anywhere else; and as someone said, ‘it is impossible to make a cat understand that it should do what you want it to do.’

When bed-time approached, Henry picked Ginger up and carried him towards the garden-door, the fatal exit. Then Ginger would purr ingratiatingly, as though to say, ‘You can’t have the heart to do this.’ Sometimes, in rebellious moods, he would struggle and claw and scratch: but the end was always the same; he made a desperate dash to get back into the house. Often the hateful process had to be repeated more than once and Henry peering through the glass door (which he couldn’t resist doing) would see Ginger’s amber eyes fixed on him with a look of heart-rending reproach.

Henry knew what the correct solution was: he should clean up the mess that Ginger made, and not leave it to Bill. But how tempting it is to flog the willing horse! And if ever he yielded to Ginger’s protests, whether in the form of purr or scratch, and let him stay indoors, he refrained from asking Bill what had happened outside the cellar-door.

Not that Bill ever complained. When Henry surreptitiously went down to the cellar-door and saw and smelt the unmistakeable traces (however carefully cleaned up) of Ginger’s nightly defecations, not a word was said between them.

But as time passed, and the pension-supported Henry came to rely more and more on his daily routine of living, with nothing to jerk him out of it, the problem of pleasure and pain, as exemplified by Bill’s whisky elevenses in the morning, and Ginger’s compulsory expulsions at night, began to assume undue importance. Henry simply did not want his septuagenarian happiness to depend on these two absurd poles of emotional comfort and discomfort.

What could he do? Human beings were (so it was generally thought), more valuable and more important than dumb animals (a ridiculous expression, for many animals including Ginger were far from dumb). Certainly Bill was much more valuable to him than Ginger was: Bill was an asset of the highest order whereas Ginger (except for Henry’s affection for him) was merely a debit. He was very greedy; he did nothing to earn his keep; he could not, and did not try, to catch the most unsophisticated mouse; he was just a liability and a parasite.

Bill, though such a mild-mannered man, must in his time have been a tough character, and used to dealing with tough characters, criminals, murderers and such, as policeman have to be.

‘I wish I knew what to do about Ginger,’ Henry said. ‘He makes such a fuss when I turn him out at night. But you know better than I do, I’m sorry to say,’ (and Henry was genuinely sorry) ‘what happens when he stays indoors. It’s not his fault, he doesn’t mean it, he can’t help it, but well, there it is.’

‘I know what you refer to, sir,’ said the ex-policeman with an instinctive delicacy of utterance, ‘and I think I know the solution. Indeed, I have been turning it over in my mind for some time. It’s really quite simple.’

‘You mean it would be simple to have Ginger put down?’

‘Oh no, sir,’ said Bill, horrified. ‘Nothing as drastic as that. Ginger is a good old cat, he wouldn’t hurt a mouse.’ (This was only too true.) ‘I am attached to him, just as you are, and when I said the solution is quite simple, it is quite simple, if you know what I mean.’

‘I’m not sure that I do. What is the solution?’

‘Just this, sir. Give him a box with sawdust in it, and put it where he usually—where he usually does his business, if you know what I mean—and I’ll show it to him and then if he doesn’t understand at once —but he will , all cats do. I’ll put his paw in it, and he will soon know what it’s for—and, and act accordingly.’

‘What an excellent idea,’ said Henry, a little patronisingly. ‘I wonder that I never thought of it. There is an empty seed-box in the greenhouse, I think, that would be just right for the purpose. And sawdust I suppose is quite easy to get hold of.’

‘Well, not all that easy, sir,’ said Bill. ‘But having in mind the ash-tree that fell down, which I am cutting up for firewood, it shouldn’t be difficult, in fact I’ve got nearly enough already.’

‘Thank you very much, Bill.’

Ginger was duly introduced to the box, and his paw gently embedded in the sawdust. This he took very well, purring all the time; but when the ceremony of initiation was over, he did not use the box for its intended cloacal purpose, but settled down in it, with his fore-paws tucked under him, and his tail neatly curled round his flank, and went to sleep.

Next day he was discovered still asleep in the sawdust box, but alas, only a few inches away were the extremely malodorous vestiges of Ginger’s digestion or indigestion, which the box had been intended to absorb.

‘Never mind,’ said Bill, ‘he’ll learn in time.’

But Ginger didn’t learn. He spent many hours, sometimes all day, slumbering on his sawdust mattress, purring to himself, no doubt, instead of sitting in front of Henry’s comfortable fireplace purring to him .

‘I’m afraid Ginger isn’t going to learn, Bill,’ said Henry.

‘It looks like not,’ said Bill. ‘You can’t teach an old cat new tricks.’ He laughed at this sally. ‘But we can give him a few days’ grace.’

The few days passed, but Ginger did not learn. He still regarded the sawdust box as his bed; and like a well-conducted person, he did not wish to pollute it. It was woundingly evident that he still preferred it to Henry’s fireside and that his adjacent loo was very convenient to him.

Henry knew that he himself ought to undo what Ginger had done; but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to. ‘I am over seventy,’ he reasoned, ‘and why should I sacrifice myself to the selfish whims of a cat, especially when it has been given every opportunity to satisfy the needs of Nature in other ways?’ All the same, he didn’t relish the nightly ordeal of turning Ginger out.

‘I’m afraid our experiment with Ginger hasn’t been successful,’ he said to Bill. ‘He goes on making a nuisance of himself. I wonder if you would mind putting him out at night? He doesn’t like it, he claws and clutches at me, but I dare say that with you he would be more—more sensible. Would you mind?’

‘Of course not, Mr. Kitson,’ replied Bill, who when he remembered, preferred to call Henry ‘Mr. Kitson’ rather than ‘sir’.

Days passed; Henry saw little of Ginger, so content was he on his sawdust bed that he didn’t bother to visit Henry in the sittingroom. Henry caught fleeting glimpses of him in the garden, tail-twitching, intent on birds which he was far too old to catch. ‘Blast him!’ thought Henry. ‘Ungrateful beast!’

One day there was a knock at his study door. ‘Come in!’ said Henry, who had always asked people not to knock. ‘Come in! Who is it?’

‘Oh, Bill !’ he exclaimed, instantly welcoming. ‘What can I do for you?’

He hadn’t noticed how upset and how unlike himself Bill looked.

‘It’s like this, sir,’ Bill began and stopped.

‘Like what, Bill?’ asked Henry, and his heart turned over with a presage of disaster.

‘It’s like this,’ Bill paused, and repeated more slowly and with a note of authority in his voice that reminded Henry that he had once been a policeman, ‘It’s like this.’