ABANDONED

THE campers had gone. Slyly and silently they had stolen away in the night.

They had arrived in September and taken possession of the bit of flat ground near the pond. It was thought that they came from the West Country, but no one knew anything about them for certain. They were what rural folk called diddakois - people who led a wandering life but were not true gypsies.

Their caravan was towed by a shabby old car. For additional accommodation they pitched a tent along­side it. The two boys slept in the tent. The little girl slept in the caravan with her parents.

The man appeared to have neither craft nor trade but to rely on casual work. He had been taken on at Halsey's farm up the road, and it was by Mr. Halsey's permission that he occupied the site near the pond. For it was a time when extra help was welcome. After harvest and threshing were over he was put to digging a drainage ditch across one of the pastures. This took him until the end of November, for the land was heavy and he was single-handed. When it was done the farmer paid him off. There was no other casual work to be had in the neighbourhood so after a few days the family moved on. Their going caused little comment and no regret. The woman was slatternly and her children were not encouraged to play with those of the cottage people.

It was at Halsey's farm that the man had found the striped kitten. It was one of a population of cats that lived in the yards and sheds and granaries, and it was about three months old when the man picked it up and asked if he could take it home to his child­ren. Permission was readily given. There were too many cats about the place.

The kitten took gladly to its new life, which was a big improvement on the precarious existence from which it had come. The campers were kind to it and entertained by its antics. It was much fondled and amply fed. In the bright autumn days it played around the camp, chased leaves and followed the children when they gathered mushrooms or late blackberries. In the evenings it sat under the table while the family were at supper and at night it slept in the bunk bed beside the little girl.

As the days shortened it spent less time outdoors and more in the caravan, discovering the delicious luxury of warmth. With the lamp lit and the paraffin stove hissing under the cooking pots the caravan was a cozy place. The harsh days of the farmyard receded from the kitten's memory, only to be recalled at times by certain sights and smells - the rumble and stink of a tractor, cow dung on the hill tracks, hens squabbling and scratching.

The summer had been good that year and was followed by a mild, dry autumn. The weather did not harden till the first week of December. Frost came with the turn of the moon, on the night when the caravan family pulled out. At dusk they were seen through the uncurtained window eating their meal as usual and afterwards going about their accustomed tasks - washing up in a chipped enamel basin, emptying slops, shaking out bedding. Next morning they were gone, leaving behind them on the trampled grass a straw mattress, a heap of empty tins and other rubbish, a debt of over two pounds for eggs and vegetables from Mr. Trim - and the striped kitten.

Mrs. Mostyn and Mrs. Reece, emerging from the terrace of grey stone cottages, which overlooked the pond for an after-breakfast chat over the wall, watched the kitten wandering and mewing over the campsite the other side of the pond.

'They seemed so fond of it,' Mrs. Mostyn said, rest­ing her large bosom on the coping. 'The little girl specially. Whatever come over them to go off like that and leave it?'

Mrs. Reece detached her gaze from the distant view of her children ambling up the lane to meet the school bus at the crossroads.

'Too mean to feed it, I dare say, now it's half grown.'

'Can't be more'n four or five months.'

'Six, I'd guess.'

'Anyway, 'twouldn't eat much.'

'An extry mouth takes filling, even if 'tis only a cat's,' Mrs. Reece stated with authority. `And casual work's not easy come by in the winter.'

'Why don't he get a regular job then?' 'Goodness knows.'

The two women stared into the morning haze and pondered the mysterious ways of vagrants and the litter, which stained the green of the campsite. 'Nice mess they've left for someone to clear up,' said Mrs. Mostyn. 'Won't be me, that's certain.'

'An object lesson, that's what it is. Give 'em an inch they take a yard.'

'That's right.'

'And what's more, she took my best apron, or I'm a liar. Anyway it's not been seen since our line blew down. She swore she never, but I reckon that's where it went to all right.'

'Oh yes, I should reckon so. .Can't keep their hands off anything, that kind can't. Ted's missing his ham­mer and he swears there's half a gallon of paraffin gone from the drum in our shed.'

'It were the apron our Jinny made for me in school, with the pansies on the border,' Mrs. Reece was musing.

'The one she got the certificate for?' 'Ah, that's right.'

'What a shame!'

'Lovely, them pansies was. Every little stitch so neat and clean. Always been clever with her fingers, has our Jinny.'

But Mrs Mostyn's attention had strayed. Her gaze was fixed again on the abandoned kitten. Its unusual marking - black tabby rings on a dun ground, white nose and feet - made it conspicuous even from a distance.

''Tis a pretty little thing. I'd be tempted to take it in me-self if it wasn't for the old dog. He'd never abide it, not at his age.' Her eyes swiveled inquiringly to Mrs. Reece, but Mrs. Reece vehemently shook her head.

'No use looking to me,' she said. 'There's no room in our house for pets, nor food neither.'

'It could make do on scraps.'

'Not in our house it couldn't. With four growing kids and a man that eats enough for a horse we don't have no scraps. A cockroach 'ud starve to death in my kitchen. It's not as if there was rabbits, you see,' she added more kindly. 'Time was when a cat could live for a week off a snared rabbit. But them days is gone, more's the pity.'

'Ah, there's many as miss the conies. I used to like to watch 'em running races up and down the hill.'

'They do say as four rabbits eat as much grass as a sheep.'

'Yes, and they say "less rabbits more corn, more corn cheaper bread". And bread's bin going up reg'lar every year since the rabbits went. So I don't take much account of sayings.'

They fell silent, while the fiery rim of the sun began to penetrate the mist.

'Frost last night,' said Mrs. Reece.

'Ah. And more to come, I shouldn't wonder.'

'Be nice though, when the sun gets through.'

Already the sky was stained pink over the hill. Mrs. Mostyn tucked her chilly hands in the cuffs of her cardigan.

From a cranny in the wall close beside her, a wren suddenly uttered a string of notes so piercing that they made her jump.

'Noisy little scallywag,' she said fondly as she went in doors to make up the fire. 'I'll fetch him a bit of jam tart. He's that fond of pastry you wouldn't believe.'

The kitten, still mewing in bewilderment, had now extended its search to the clump of alders overhang­ing the pond, in whose branches the caravan children had built a platform. From here they had fished for minnows with a wire sieve suspended on a string. The pond, nearly always muddy, was a catchment for the springs and runnels of the hills. It was also the receptacle of awkward objects unwanted by the cottage dwellers. In a wet season when the level was high such deposits were hidden. In a dry one such as the present they stuck out, lending an aspect of fantasy to the scene. Two old motor tires next to a length of bent pipe simulated the looped coils and snaky head of a sea monster. In the rushes that fringed the farther side lay the rusty remains of a lawn mower, its handles presented like the tusks of a lurking elephant.

The kitten climbed up to the platform which, exposed in the bare branches, was seen to be composed of rotten planks so precariously lodged that only a miracle could have held them together long enough to save the children from a ducking. There was nothing left here to comfort the searcher, no relic of their presence but a jam jar and a shred of blue ribbon. After carefully sniffing it over, the kitten clambered down from the platform and made for the old straw mattress, now rimmed with frost, which smelled of the boys who had slept on it. Here it settled down, curled up in the middle with its chin on its paws, to await their return.

UNWANTED !