The Adventures of Miss Petitfour Read online

  It was very gusty, but definitely not a wind for marmalade; it was a wind for Mr. Clemmo’s Hardware Shop, a wind for buying doorknobs and sandpaper squares and for the distinctive hardware shop smell of nails and paint. It was a wind for eyeglasses, pinch-purses, stationery, paper clips, soccer balls and car repair. But it was most definitely not a wind for buying marmalade.

  The last cat on the line, the slender ginger named Sizzles, wasn’t so keen on circular things; he liked things that went one way at a time, long things he could eat one end to another, not things that always took you back to where you started. He liked sausages, french fries, linguine and licorice ropes. Little-but-long Sizzles did not approve of going the wrong way to get to where you want to go.

  So, as they passed the town hall, Sizzles stretched as far as he could and boldly captured the top of the clock tower, wrapping his tail around it. Miss Petitfour and all her cats suddenly twanged to a stop, midair. And there they quavered, suspended in the high wind, sixteen tails taut as a wire, stiff as a clothesline, across the town.

  Sizzles had stopped the flight!

  The wind was now quite a bit more than a gusty gust, and the line of cats, stiff as a cable, stood out against the white sky like a fuzzy streak of black marker on a white piece of paper.

  MEANWHILE (another word that opens stories like a key), below, Mrs. Carruther, who happened to be sweeping the pavement outside her grocery shop, looked up. She looked up because her sweet son Carlos Cornelius Carruther, sitting in his perambulator, had let out a shrill gurgle and was pointing eagerly—one might say, gesticulating—to the cats in the sky. The giggling baby looked proud, as babies often do. (Babies like to feel proud.)

  Mrs. Carruther took up her binoculars, which always hung by a red ribbon around her neck (she was an avid bird-watcher), and focused them on the strange arrangement in the sky. And she saw Miss Petitfour hovering above the town hall, about a block away, mouthing the word “marmalade.”

  Generous Mrs. Carruther understood the difficulty at once. She hurried into her shop and, without a thought to the expense, snatched a pot of Thick-Cut Orange Marmalade from a shelf. She ran with her baby in the perambulator to the town hall, climbed to the roof and, bravely clinging to the shingles, held out the pot. Immediately it was seized by Sizzles and passed from paw to paw, from Sizzles to Your Shyness to Captain Clothespin to Captain Catkin to Captain Captain to Clasby to Grigorovitch to Earring to Hemdela to Moutarde to Mustard to Pirate to Purrsia to Taffy to Misty to Minky, who plopped it into Miss Petitfour’s basket.

  In order to seize the pot of marmalade, however, Sizzles had to unwind his tail from the roof, and at that very same instant of snapping up the marmalade, off the cats had shot, like an arrow on the roaring wind, while they madly passed the jar up the line.

  The flight was on!

  Now, at the very edge of the village, toward which Miss Petitfour and the cats were racing at high speed, a little red sports car, with the top down, happened to be waiting at a stoplight. Who was it but the debonair, that is to say, charming (and really very shy) Mr. Coneybeare, the owner of Coneybeare’s Confetti, the king of confetti himself. Mr. Coneybeare was rather fond of Miss Petitfour and was far too timid to tell her so. In fact, at that very moment, waiting for the stoplight, he had been daydreaming, trying to think of ways he might earn her friendship.

  Now, it must be made very clear that it was not the case that Mr. Coneybeare had been aimlessly driving round the village hoping to catch a glimpse of Miss Petitfour, but truly and absolutely a wild coincidence that, JUST THEN, at the very moment he was waiting at the stoplight, there blew another particularly gusty gust that was just about to carry Miss Petitfour and her cats all the way around the world in the wrong direction. And it also must be said that, now that they had their marmalade, hungry Sizzles was more determined than ever to get home to his tea and not go the wrong way around to get there. And so, Sizzles, the last cat on the line, catching sight of his chance, cleverly—and just in time—tucked his tail around Mr. Coneybeare’s steering wheel and, with one quick tail action, captured the car! Of course, Mr. Coneybeare was delighted to be of service. With Sizzles’s tail curled neatly around Mr. Coneybeare’s steering wheel, Miss Petitfour and the cats hitched a ride against the wind, back to Miss Petitfour’s cottage, singing gleefully all the way—“Hullaba-one, hullaba-two, hullaba-loo, hullaba-MEW!”

  Down the road they sped, Miss Petitfour and her tablecloth like a paisley balloon, attached to the little red sports car by a furry string.

  Miss Petitfour believed firmly that every adventure past her doorstep—even just a jaunt to the grocery shop—must end with a tea party, and the dashing Mr. Coneybeare was invited. In the middle of the table, in a silver bowl, was placed the precious marmalade, which glowed like gold in its shining dish. Before Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Clasby and Your Shyness, who all loved round things, Miss Petitfour placed huge bowls of frothed milk. And before Pirate, Grigorovitch, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Clothespin and Sizzles, who all liked long things, she placed especially lengthy chocolate eclairs crammed with whipping cream, which they gobbled up with great cat smiles from the beginning to THE END.

  It was a lovely spring day, with the taste of licorice on the breeze, and little green shoots shooting all about, and tender tendrils all alive with leaf, and Miss Petitfour decided it was time to give her wee cottage a proper clean-out.

  Sometimes, opening one’s closet is as much of an adventure as an expedition into the wilderness. Especially in the spring, and especially Miss Petitfour’s closet, because all winter every bit of string, every particularly attractive sweet wrapper, every yo-yo with chipped paint, every sock with a hole in the toe, every unusually bumpy rock found in the playground, every twig shaped like a Y, every bent colander, every tweezer that no longer tweezes, every broken gizmo was thrown in, and the closet door quickly slammed behind it.

  To assist her in her spring cleaning, Miss Petitfour asked her young friend Pleasant Patel, the baker’s daughter who lived with her family above Mr. Patel’s Bakery, to come and open the closet with her. Pleasant was a nowadays girl, always up-to-the-minute with good modern ideas, which Miss Petitfour considered a Pleasant change. She knew about cling-free dusting mitts and tornado vacuums, for example, and all the latest cleaning tools.

  While the cats appreciated the importance of a good spring cleaning as much as anyone, they had been rather looking forward instead to spending the morning outside, especially Mustard and Moutarde and Hemdela and Earring, who loved any sort of game that involved madly running around the back garden. And so the cats were not there to witness the crucial moment, when Pleasant—with Miss Petitfour hiding behind the sofa—pulled open the closet door.

  I’m sure you can imagine the assortment of items that came hurtling out of the closet when Pleasant opened the door, so I shall only take time to mention a few things: a typewriter, a bicycle with a wicker basket, seashells, a bag of single socks and about a hundred of those small plastic toys that are born out of chocolate eggs, which flew out of the closet and pinged every which way. Pleasant had wisely thought to wear her bicycle helmet and goggles, so she was not afraid of flying plastic bits ricocheting off the walls.

  Certain words are like twists of crumpled paper jammed into the hole in the bottom of a leaky pail, to keep the story from spilling out too quickly. Words like MEANWHILE, BY THE WAY, IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE and THAT REMINDS ME OF. Adults use these words all the time when they are afraid things are getting too exciting.

  MEANWHILE, on the village green, most of the villagers were busily setting up the Great Spring Jumble Sale. Every five years or so, there was a really massive jumble, a sale of such proportion that it could only be held outside. Out of their cottages the villagers streamed, carrying armloads of rummage—it was almost impossible to believe such quantities could come from such tiny houses. Wagonloads, barrows-full, birdcages-full, hats-full, with pockets bu
lging, everyone transported their treasures to the green.

  Because there was so much to sell, the jumble sale was organized alphabetically. This was the brilliant idea of Mrs. Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane, who had been born in France and liked to tidy things, and who had volunteered to supervise the massive sale. She firmly believed that the alphabet would keep everything in its place: alarm clocks, bow ties, calculators, collars (dog collars, fur collars, shirt collars) and coriander. Galoshes, gauntlets, goblets. Irons—curling irons, golf irons, waffle irons. Sponges, sponge cake, sponge toffee. Teapots, terrible jokes, tinsel. There were always mistakes made—what were the bunnies doing amid the footballs, frying pans and furbelows, for example? Mrs. Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane was splendid at sorting out these alphabetical catastrophes, for she was very good at the alphabet and never got flustered in the face of jam tarts amid umbrellas, or umbrellas amid jam tarts. Or fossils and fountain pens mixed up with salad bowls and sugar cubes, for that matter.

  But Mrs. Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane did have one particular weakness: she always thought people were calling her name. No one could understand why this was so. It would be perfectly understandable if one’s name were Mrs. Gustavo-Wentworth Worthington Donquist Torresdale Blindon Perstancion-Withers or Mrs. Randolfo-Blunt Merritonk Goodland Czerny Attenblock Cardsall-Tentwood, but surely not a name like Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane. And that is why, while she remained calm in the face of alphabetical chaos, she was also unfortunately prone to nervous fits at jumble sales. Perhaps it was the large crowd, or all that jumble, or her sense of duty that made her think everyone was shouting her name—whatever the reason, she always rushed about, certain she was being called for. But Mrs. Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane was such a jolly sort, and always so generous with the fruit gums in her cardigan pocket, that no one felt grumpy about this small eccentricity.

  (An eccentricity is something everyone has—but everyone has a different one. An eccentricity is a quirky thing we like to do just because. Perhaps you always like to put on your right shoe first. Or perhaps you like to count by twos when you’re bored. Or perhaps you only like to eat popcorn on Tuesdays. Or perhaps you like to count digressions and keep a record of them at the back of every book you read.)

  MEANWHILE AGAIN, Miss Petitfour—who all this time had been sitting among the contents of her closet, which had shot out when Pleasant opened the door—suddenly remembered the jumble sale. She had almost forgotten, though the date had been marked in her calendar for the past five years. Thinking she might offer for sale her navy-blue peacoat (with buttons with anchors on them) which was years too short for her, she extracted it from the pile. But along with the coat, inextricably entangled with the wire coat hanger, came another wire coat hanger and another and another, each more tangled than the next, until a great wire ball, a twisty, jangly jamboree of metal gibberish, twanged its way out of the closet. Pleasant Patel felt sure that this tangled, twangled ball would be a welcome item at the sale and dragged it across Miss Petitfour’s plush living room carpet into the garden. Miss Petitfour and Pleasant gazed with admiration at this collection of jittery metal glinting in the sunlight.

  Now, Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Pirate, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Grigorovitch, Clasby, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Clothespin, Your Shyness and Sizzles were in the garden enjoying a leisurely game of badminton when Miss Petitfour and Pleasant brought out the coat hangers. Immediately, the cats slinked over to inspect the display on the lawn and decided it was a wonderful jungle gym upon which to play.

  While the cats were cavorting and climbing, Miss Petitfour and Pleasant, wanting to give the cats a bit of fun, decided to give the coat hangers a good shake. Well, do you think this was wise? To take a ball of gnarly, nervous, knotted wire coat hangers and shake it in the frisky spring breeze? Indeed, no, it was not. What had been simply jangly now became forevermore, eternally, and no-doubts-about-it complicated, snagged and securely snarled.

  JUST THEN, with the cats capering among the coat hangers, the breeze turned gusty and the wire tangle began to shiver. The shivering grew deeper and deeper until the whole coat hanger contraption began to shudder as if it would explode. With great presence of mind, Miss Petitfour tied one end of a length of string (she always kept string in her apron pocket in case of emergency) to the nearest coat hanger and tied the other end to her apron. She then grabbed the nearest tablecloth (green gingham for spring) and Pleasant’s eager hand, just as the wind picked up.

  Off they all sailed!

  The cats loved every single one of their flights with Miss Petitfour, but this was perhaps their most exhilarating flight yet. The coat hangers collided and crashed, hummed and thundered, clattered and rumbled. Coat hanger cacophony! With the fresh spring wind rushing through their fur, the cats leaped and swung, hurtling headlong—sixteen cat acrobats on a thrilling coat hanger trapeze.

  Luckily, the wind was in the direction of the jumble sale, and along they flew, over Mrs. Carruther’s Grocery Shop and Mr. Clemmo’s Hardware Shop, all the way to the village green. From a distance, it looked as if Miss Petitfour and Pleasant were hanging by a furry, metallic cloud. In fact, the villagers on the green began to panic, thinking that the great rumbling noise they were hearing was thunder. A thunderstorm on the day of the Great Spring Jumble Sale! Disaster!

  Just as they reached the far side of the green, the wind suddenly dropped and down Miss Petitfour and Pleasant and the cats clattered—landing like a coat hanger meteorite—right in the middle of the jumble sale. The cats were delighted! In an instant, Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Pirate, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Grigorovitch, Clasby, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Clothespin, Your Shyness and Sizzles were darting with great glee amongst the postage stamps, packets of erasers, moccasins, swimming fins, paint pots and whistles. They ran in and out of the clothes—loose, drab, flouncy, silky, frilly dresses; jackets with zippers, clasps, snaps and toggles; trousers that were old-fashioned, new-fangled, shiny, teensy, plain, plaid, too long and too short; hats with feathers, buckles, ribbons and flowers. Cat costume heaven!

  The jumble was in an uproar. Everyone was rushing about looking for umbrellas, still thinking it was going to pour rain any minute, or trying to capture the runaway tumbleweed of coat hangers that was rolling through the piles of rummage, collecting things as it went—everything seemed to be in danger of becoming entangled in its wiry grasp. Poor Mrs. Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane was in such a flap; she thought everyone was calling her name at once and ran about not knowing what to do first.

  IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE that Miss Petitfour was still attached to the coat hangers by her apron string, and so she too was running about, hoping to control the haywire menace and perhaps tackle it to a stop.

  Working at the jumble sale was poor Colonel By, who had been helping his wife sort through a table full of birdcages, when the coat hangers crashed. Everyone thought of him as poor Colonel By because his wife, Mrs. Colonel Adria Slope-Nethertop Ashbridge Terrance Poswensky-By, was always giving him a quick wallop with her handbag. Mrs. Colonel Adria Slope-Nethertop Ashbridge Terrance Poswensky-By was very sensitive to teasing and always thought her husband was teasing her (though he wasn’t). Sometimes she walloped him simply out of affection or when she wanted to get his attention. Some people have habits such as this—they giggle when they’re nervous, or they shout when they have nothing to say. Well, the Colonel’s wife was a walloper. (I believe we may count this as a digression.) In any case, Colonel By and his wife had both been alarmed by the clanging jangle when the coat hangers landed and they can be forgiven for thinking it was raining paper clips. Everyone at the jumble sale was in a muddle, thinking the sky was raining down all sorts of crashing, clashing metal things—nuts and bolts, hubcaps and bottle caps, garbage can lids and roller skates.

  And to top it off,
the most outrageous thing of all was that the items at the jumble were now out of alphabetical order! A tuba had smashed into the Frisbees, a camera had plunked into the tray of false mustaches—everything had become alphabet soup. Mrs. Bois-Brioche des Fontana Harridale Quesloe-Brisbane, realizing this, began squealing with distress and chasing after eight hundred marbles as they hurtled toward forty-two rolled-up carpets. Without alphabetical order, who would ever find the soup spoons and the neckties and the false eyelashes and the broken typewriter? The p’s had flipped over into the q’s, the b’s were in the d’s and the w’s had toppled into the m’s!

  The jumble sale was in a jumble!

  Now, standing in the midst of this bubbling flubdub hubbub, with her hands on her hips, and looking very intelligent, was brave young Pleasant Patel. She was not standing idly by. Oh no, indeed. Pleasant was staring hard at the table full of birdcages. What miraculous thing, she wondered, could a person do with fifty empty birdcages? Then Pleasant looked across the green and saw two things: the wire ball careening wildly toward her, and all sixteen cats madly waving their tails at her as if they were throwing sixteen footballs. And in a flash, Pleasant had a plan.

  When a huge ball is hurtling in your direction at high speed, what do you do? You build a net to catch the goal! Pleasant leaped into action, piling the birdcages one on top of the other. Colonel By—standing by—quickly understood what Pleasant was up to, and he rushed to join in. And just as they finished stacking the very last birdcage at the very tip of the top, the massive coat hanger ball slammed into the goal. “Score!” shouted Colonel By. “Goal!” cheered Pleasant, waving her arms excitedly, while the cats all caterwauled, “One to nothing!”