Thomasina. Paul Gallico

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Geordie continued: “Another man, a little one wearing a waistcoat and hat, came up and he pushed the man with the belt away and said that they were grateful and would not give any trouble, but would just try to earn a few honest pennies. Then Mr MacQuarrie asked what they meant to do with the animals in cages.”

      “Oh!” exclaimed Hughie, even more interested, and by now so was Mary Ruadh, and so was I. “What animals, in what cages?”

      Geordie reflected before he replied – “Well, they had a bear and an eagle and a mountain lion and some monkeys and dogs and an elephant and horses, and—”

      “Poooh!” remonstrated Hughie. “Gipsies never have elephants.”

      Geordie looked as though he was sorry he had said it. “Well, maybe they didn’t really have an elephant, but they DID have a bear and an eagle and a mountain lion and monkeys and they said they were going to let people look at them for a shilling.”

      “I say,” Hughie burst out with enthusiasm, “if I can wheedle a couple of shillings out of Mummy, we must go.”

      Geordie had not yet finished his account – he continued: “Mr MacQuarrie said he supposed that was all right as long as they did not ill-treat the animals, or give a performance.”

      Mary Ruadh asked: “What’s a performance?”

      Hughie replied: “Standing on their heads and doing tricks, I suppose. I’ll bet they’re going to when the police aren’t looking.”

      Geordie concluded: “The man with the belt started to laugh again, but the other gipsy with the hat and the waistcoat went over and pushed him with his shoulder and Mr MacQuarrie went away. I tried to look under the cover of one of the wagons to see what the animals were like, but a big boy came and chased me. He had a whip.”

      All this, Mary Ruadh recounted to her father that night, during the time he gave her her evening bath, and he listened to every word she said as though she were as grown up as he, which, I must say, astonished me, for grown-ups have a way of talking to children – yes, and to us too – that is most patronising, irritating and humiliating. But Mr MacDhui just nodded and grumbled and grunted seriously, as he listened, all the time soaping the back of her neck and ears with the flannel. “Well, little pink frog,” he said finally, “just see that you keep well away from those gipsies whatever they mean to do, for they were always a filthy, thieving folk and you cannot tell me they have reformed their ways in the last generation just because the police are willing to condone their presence, eh?”

      I think that Mrs McKenzie was shocked at the idea of Mr MacDhui giving Mary Ruadh her bath, but much as I dislike the man, I, who have been a mother, can testify that no kitten ever received a more painstaking and thorough washing than she at the hands of her father when he came home at night, for this was the moment in the day that he seemed to enjoy the most, and therefore was most pleasant – though, of course, not to me, for I was not allowed to come into the bathroom, but sat outside in the hall and looked in.

      He sang to Mary Ruadh, can you imagine, in his loud and most disgusting voice, the silliest words ever. I remember them. They were:

      There dwelt a Puddy in a well,

      Cuddy alane, cuddy alane,

      There dwelt a Puddy in a well,

      Cuddy alane and I

      There was a Puddy in a well,

      AN a mousie in a mill;

      Kickmaleerie, cowden doon,

      Cuddy alane and I.

      Now, I ask you, where was the sense in that? But somehow, Mary Ruadh seemed to understand, and when her father bellowed “Kickmaleerie, cowden doon!” she screamed and shouted and splashed with her bath toys until the water shot all the way out into the hallway where I was sitting.

      Then Mr MacDhui picked her out of the tub and gave her a tousle and a rub-down until her whole body was red when he would say – “How now, little pink Puddy! Now this fine blue towel really becomes you. What shall we have for tea? Kickmaleerie Mary Ruadh!”

      But me, he never so much deigned to notice.

      After they had their supper in the dining room, with Mary Ruadh sitting on a pile of cushions so that she would be higher, they would go into her room across the hall where he played with her, or sometimes told her some ridiculous kind of story, or she would climb into his lap, and laugh and gurgle ridiculously and play with his bristly face and pull his fur and tease him, or sometimes they would even join hands and dance around the room together, and if you think THAT is any way to bring up a child or a kitten, you won’t get me to agree with you.

      That night, Mary Ruadh became so excited that she would not calm down to say her prayers that Mr MacDhui always insisted upon. These were kind of a petition and rhyme that she had to say every night before she went to sleep, and sometimes having to do it made her very wilful and naughty. Well, I know, for one thing, how I am when I am made to do something.

      Then Mr MacDhui changed quite suddenly from being kind and gay to becoming most stern and ugly. He pushed out his great red beard at his daughter and growled: “That will be all and enough of that, Mary Ruadh. You have had plenty of play. Now say your prayers at once or I shall have to punish you.”

      Mary Ruadh asked: “Daddy, WHY do I have to say my prayers?”

      If she asked this once, she asked it at least four times in the week. I had to smile inside to myself for, of course, I knew it was just to keep putting it off, just as when we are ordered to do something we suddenly discover that we have a most important bit of washing to do.

      His answer would always be the same: “Because your mother would have wished it; that is why. She said her prayers every night.”

      Mary Ruadh then asked: “Can I hold Thomasina while I say them?”

      I had to turn away to conceal the smile on my face because I knew the explosion that was coming from Mr MacDhui.

      “No, NO, NO. You cannot. Kneel now and say your prayers properly this minute.”

      Mary Ruadh asked that same question every night, not, I think, to make her father angry, but rather as a kind of routine in case some day he changed his mind and said yes.

      It always succeeded in making him quite furious, and whereas at other times he simply ignored me as though I did not exist, I am sure at that moment he hated me.

      He then stood beside her bed while she knelt, folded her hands together in the manner that was prescribed for her, and began her petition:

      “God bless Mummy in Heaven and Daddy – and Thomasina –”

      I always waited to make sure that my name was mentioned well up in the list that included such odd bods as Mr Dobbie, the grocer, and Willie Bannock and Mr Bridie, the dustman, of whom she seemed to be fond, and then I went over and rubbed against Mr MacDhui’s legs, purring and putting hairs on his trousers, because I was well aware that it infuriated him, but he didn’t dare shout, or kick, or swear, or do anything about it, because by that time, Mary Ruadh was in the middle of her rhyme which went:

      Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

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