Free Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

going for a walk across the mountain, and went out of the room.
    It’s like love at first sight—too perfect, too soon.
    Mrs. Love crashed in upon Katinka’s kaleidoscope of thought, smiling, friendly, gay. “Well, dear—there you are!”
    Was there or was there not, something sinister about this woman’s vulgar jollity? Tinka tore her mind from Carlyon. She said, shortly: “Where did you expect me to be?”
    “I know where you ought to be,” said Mrs. Love, eyeing her with a professional air. “And that’s having a lay down on your bed. Got a headache, dear? Ankle paining you?”
    “No, thank you, I’m quite all right.”
    “Now don’t you tell me fibs,” said Mrs. Love robustly. “You’re not all right at all, you look as white as can be, and I’m going to take you right upstairs and tuck you into your beddy-byes, that’s what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not, and pull the curtains and let you have a nice snooze till Mr. Carlyon comes back from his walk.” She advanced upon her with bright determination. “No arguments! Dai’s on his way over with your things, I’ve just seen the boat pulling across the river; and you shall roll yourself up in your own nice dressing-gown and pop under the eiderdown with a hot-water bottle, or my name’s not Marie Lloyd Love which it is, dear, and after the old girl, my mum and dad being in The Profession all their lives and why they ever let me go in for nursing. …” Garrulously gabbling, she propelled Katinka up the stairs and into her room. “Now you get your frock off, and I’ll meet Dai with your things.” She drew the heavy curtains across the window and turned on the bedside lamp in the pleasant semi-dark.
    Katinka had not got a headache; and yet at the bare suggestion, her temples throbbed and all she wanted was to get between cool sheets and lay her head on the cool, hard pillow. (“It’s like love at first sight—too perfect, too soon…”) Had he said, “there’s nothing to be done about it”—or, “there’s nothing we can do about it”? She wandered over to the window and, parting the curtains, leaned her forehead against the chilly glass, staring out across to the opposite mountain. But the rainbow was gone. Nothing to be seen but the thin shaft of sunshine across the hump of the hill, the sullen, silver river, and, at the turn of the path, two tiny specks creeping upwards towards the house. She felt suddenly glad that Dai Jones was bringing her things. It would be comforting to have something of her own about her, to sleep tonight in her own silk nightie instead of Mrs. Love’s dreadful creation of georgette and lace. Dai and the milk-woman disappeared again as the path twisted. She turned back to the bed.
    Mrs. Love came in with a bundle of her possessions and a quite unwanted hot water bottle; and went away. She lay very still in the cool semi-darkness. The little sounds of the house eddied about her, men’s voices rumbled in the room below and on the stairs she heard Mrs. Love say sharply: “Hush, Dai, hush! You’ll wake Miss Jones.”
    She gave herself up to her thoughts. Carlyon had said… But she would not think of Carlyon, she dragged her thoughts away from Carlyon and of what he had said, staring out at the rainbow that had flowered to perfection too soon. Amista, then. But the puzzle of Amista’s identity, Amista’s whereabouts was more than her mind, obsessed with Carlyon’s words, could struggle with. And so on to Tybalt, the cat, the exquisite, sleek, pale cat with the slanting sapphire eyes, the Siamese cat which would not torture its prey. … So Carlyon had said, at least. He had frowned his quick frown and said that Siamese cats killed their prey at once; that Tybalt, Good King of Cats, would not torture… Would not torture… She yawned luxuriously, trying to nestle back against the cool, hard pillow. Tybalt would not torture a mouse. … But here was a rainbow-coloured cat playing with a white