The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips Page 5

  I keep thinking I hear Tips outside, but every time I look it’s Uncle George’s ginger tomcat mewing around the yard. I just hope Tips gets along with Uncle George’s cat. Tips doesn’t much like other cats. But if I’ve got to be polite to Uncle George, then she’ll have to be polite to Uncle George’s cat, won’t she? This time tomorrow Tips will be here and everything will be just tickety-boo! That word always makes me smile, even when I’m sad. So I’ll write it again: tickety-boo, tickety-boo. The lamp’s just gone out so I suppose I’ll have to finish now.

  I still can’t find Tips. I’ve been looking for her all day. I looked in every barn, every shed. Grandfather opened up the house again for me and I went into every room, up into the attic too. I looked in all the cupboards, just in case she’d got herself shut in by mistake. Grandfather even climbed up a ladder to look in the eaves. I wandered the fields, tapping her bowl with a spoon, calling and calling, then listening for her. All I could hear were cawing crows and the sound of the wind in the trees and the rumble of a tractor engine in the distance. Once they’d driven the cows up the lane to Uncle George’s, everyone came back to help me. Mrs. Blumfeld went off to search the village on her bike, with Barry on the back. They didn’t find Tips, but they did find lots of Yanks. They were all over the place, they said, in trucks and jeeps and some of them in tanks.

  Mum still says I’m not to worry. Grandfather says that cats have nine lives, that Tips will turn up as she always does, and it’s true she always has. But I do worry. I can’t think about anything else now except Tips. She’s out there somewhere in the night, cold and wet, hungry and lost, and I’ve only got one more day to find her before they close off the farm. I’m going to get up early; Barry says he’ll come with me. We’re going to look and look until we find her, he says. I’m not coming back to Uncle George’s until I do.

  Our farm looked strange when I went back today, so empty and silent: a phantom farm, a house full of ghosts.

  Be there tomorrow, Tips. Please be there. It’s your last chance.

  I never want to live another day like this. I think I knew all along we wouldn’t find her. There were too many people out looking — I knew they would only frighten her away, and they did. If it had just been Barry and me and Mum and Grandfather maybe we’d have found her. Tips knows us.

  It wasn’t her fault. Mrs. Blumfeld was only trying to be helpful, but she’d gone and told everyone how Tips was lost and she brought practically the whole village along with her. She was there at dawn organizing the search. The Yanks came too, dozens of them, Adie and Harry telling them all the places they had to look. They combed the whole farm: every barn, every feed bin, every corner of every field, all along the stream. They went searching down in the bluebell wood, down in the abandoned quarry, and I went with them, trying to tell them all the time to go more quietly, just to look, not call out. But it was no use. I could hear them all over the farm, banging tins, trying to call her, trying to sweeten Tips in.

  All morning long it drizzled and in the afternoon a sea mist came rolling in over the fields and covered the whole farm in thick fog so you couldn’t see farther than a few feet in front of you. There was no point in even looking anymore. We listened instead, but there was nothing to hear. Even the crows were silent. I think I’ve been crying off and on all day, as the hours passed and hope faded. Barry kept on and on telling me he was sure we’d find her sooner or later and in the end I got cross and shouted at him, which I shouldn’t have done. He was only trying to cheer me up, trying to be nice. That’s the trouble with him, he’s always trying to be nice. Uncle George just said that a cat’s a cat, that there’re other cats I can have, which didn’t exactly help.

  It was nearly dark when one of the Yanks with upside-down stripes on his arm said he was sorry but they had orders to close the place off now, so we had to leave. Adie came up and gave me some chocolate. “Hershey bar,” he said. “It’ll make you feel better. And don’t you worry none, Lily. I ain’t making no promises, but if that old cat’s still living out there, we’re gonna find her, one way or the other. You can be real sure of that. So don’t you worry none, Lily, y’hear.”

  They closed the barbed wire behind us then, cutting us off from our home and from Tips. I promised myself as I watched them that I would go back and find her, and I will too. I gave Barry half my Hershey bar to make up for being so mean to him, and we ate it before we got back to Uncle George’s. Adie was right. It did make me feel better, but I think that was more because I gave half of it to Barry.

  I’m coughing a lot and I’m feeling hot and sweaty all over. I have been ever since we got back. Mum says I’ve caught a chill and that I have to stay in bed tomorrow or else it’ll get in my chest. I hated today, every horrible minute of it — except for Adie and the Hershey bar. The only hope I’ve got left is that maybe, just maybe, Adie and Harry might still find Tips. I’ve got this feeling they might. I don’t know why. One thing’s for sure though: If they don’t find her then I’m going to crawl in under the wire and find her for myself, no matter what they say. They can put up all the barbed wire they like. They can shoot all the shells they want. Nothing’s going to keep me out. I’m never ever going to give up on Tips. Never.

  This is the first time I’ve felt like writing in my diary for days. Mum was right, I did catch a chill that day when we all went out looking for Tips, and it did go to my chest. Mum told me I had a temperature of 104 for nearly a week, and the doctor had to be called because I became delirious. That sounds like it means I was just happy — I certainly was not. It meant I was out of my head. And I must have been because I remember very little. I only remember bits of the last few days. I remember Barry coming in after school and telling me what the new school in Kingsbridge was like and giving me get-well cards from Mrs. Blumfeld and the class. I remember waking up to see Grandfather and Mum sitting in the chair watching me, or just sitting there sleeping. And from time to time I could hear the murmur of voices downstairs and Uncle George blowing his nose like a foghorn.

  I’m much better now, but Mum says I’ve got to stay inside for at least another week. Doctor’s orders, she says, but I think they’re just her orders. She always gets very fierce and strict with me when I’m ill. She’s been feeding me soup and then sitting and watching me, just to make sure I finish it. She makes me eat stewed apples every day and I have to drink lots of warm milk with honey in it. She knows I hate milk and, now that she’s got the perfect excuse, she makes me drink it. “It’ll build up your strength, Lily,” she says. “Drink it.” And she always stays until I do.

  As for Tips, there’s still no sign of her. No one has been back to look for her, of course. But I haven’t given up. I still keep hoping she’s all right, that one day she’ll come and find us. She’s a good hunter, she can take care of herself. She knows warm places to go. I try to hope and believe Adie will find her somehow. But then when I think about it again I know he won’t. I keep thinking of her lying dead in some ditch. I try not to think like that. I try so hard. Soon as I’m better, I’m going to go looking for her. I promised myself I would, and I will.

  Mum came up today and read me a letter from Dad. It’s such a long time since I saw him I find it difficult to see his face in my head anymore. I tried to hear his voice as she was reading the letter, but I couldn’t. He says they had corned beef and tinned potatoes for Christmas dinner, and they wore paper hats made out of newspaper, sang Christmas carols, and thought of home. He sounded so sad and far away. When Mum finished reading she was sad too. I could tell she wanted to cry but she wouldn’t let herself.

  I’ve been planning it for days, working it all out and screwing up my courage to do it. And today I did it. But it didn’t work out at all like I had planned.

  I’m getting really good at telling lies. I told Mum I just wanted to go out for some fresh air, that I was fed up with being cooped up. I nagged and nagged and finally Mum gave in, but only because it was a nice, sunshiny day, she said. She wrapped me
up as if I was going out into the Arctic — gloves, hat, scarf, coat, the lot — and she told me to keep out of the wind, and I had to promise her I’d be back inside an hour. I promised … with my fingers crossed.

  It wasn’t that difficult to get through the wire. There was no one about to see me. I just wriggled my way through and made off across the field toward home, keeping behind the hedges so that I was always out of sight of Uncle George’s house. Home looked so empty and deserted when I got there: no hens scratching anywhere, no geese on the pond. I called for Tips as loudly as I dared. I looked in all the places I thought she might be hiding: the granary, the shippen, the milking barn, the piggery. Then I remembered that one of Tips’s favorite sleeping places was always up in the hay barn. I walked through the abandoned farmyard and was just climbing up the ladder into the hayloft when I heard voices outside the barn. It sounded like there were two of them, and they were American. That was when I felt a sneeze coming on, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t help myself. I don’t think I’ve ever sneezed so loudly in my life.

  I couldn’t think what else to do. I lay down in the hayloft and pulled the hay over me so I was completely covered, and tried to stop myself from breathing. I heard them coming into the barn, heard them as they came up the ladder. Then there was silence for a few moments. I was thinking I might just have got away with it, when suddenly I was grabbed by my boots and yanked out. There were Adie and Harry staring down at me.

  “Lily! Well, I’ll be!” Adie said, pushing back his helmet. “Look what we got ourselves here, Harry. Now, if I ain’t mistook, Lily, you come looking for your cat, that right?” I nodded. “What you wanna do that for? Didn’t I tell you we’d find her? Didn’t I? Didn’t I? Ain’t you got no faith?” His whole face suddenly became very serious. “You got to promise me something,” he said. “You got to promise you won’t never come near this place again. You do what I say, Lily, or you gonna get yourself in real trouble. You gonna get yourself hurt bad, real bad, you hear me? Ain’t worth it, not for no cat, it ain’t. Soon enough this here’s gonna be a mighty dangerous place to be. You gotta stay outta here. You promise me, now.” He was really angry with me. So I promised. They helped me down the ladder and together we ran through the farmyard, past the farmhouse, and out over the fields to the perimeter wire, Adie holding my hand the whole way. I squeezed through. “Don’t you never come inside the wire again,” Adie said. “You just stay where you is, Lily. And don’t you go worrying yourself. We’ll find that old cat for you, and that’s a faithful promise, ain’t it, Harry?”

  “Faithful promise,” said Harry.

  Then they walked away and I watched them go until I couldn’t see them anymore.

  Mum met me at the door. She had her coat on. She was just coming out to look for me. “Look at the state of you,” she said, and began brushing all the hay off my coat. “Where’ve you been?”

  “In the barn,” I told her. And that wasn’t a lie, was it?

  I’ve had such a supreme day, even though I didn’t find Tips. I should be sad, but I’m not. I keep living it all again and again in my head, every exciting moment of it. I won’t sleep tonight. I know I won’t.

  Back at school. Everyone else had been back for a long time of course and so they all knew one another and I didn’t. All my friends from the village school already had lots of new friends from Kingsbridge School who I’d never seen before, and no one seemed that pleased to see me. I would have felt a bit out of it if Barry hadn’t stuck by me like he did. He showed me around too, showed me where to line up, where to hang my coat. It felt a bit strange, a townie showing me around. But I don’t think of Barry as a townie anymore, not really. He kept telling everyone about Tips, and about how I’d been ill, so as a result everyone was very nice to me in the end. I’m going to make a promise to myself. From now on I’m never to be nasty to Barry again, even when I get irritated. He was really kind today. In recess someone mistook him for my brother and I didn’t mind at all. In fact I quite liked it, so I didn’t say he wasn’t.

  I’m in Mrs. Blumfeld’s class, which is supreme. We had a lesson about America, about all the states, which are the stars on the flag, and she told us they’ve got a president instead of a king. She says it’s this huge place, miles bigger than England, with great big lakes, as big as England, with great high mountains called the Rockies, and they’ve got prairies and deserts, and canyons too. She didn’t say what canyons were. She told us they play baseball, not cricket, and how lots of different kinds of people live there from all over the world, how they all went there to find a place to live, to find freedom and to make a new kind of country, and how now they’ve come all the way back across the Atlantic to help us win the war against Hitler. I’d like to go there one day. I’m going to ask Adie more about it when I see him again. I’ll ask him what a canyon is too.

  I went out just before I came up to bed, because Uncle George came in stomping his boots and said it was snowing outside. It still is. Great heavy flakes that landed on my face and made me close my eyes when I looked up. I caught them on my tongue and let them melt. Then I thought of Tips out there in the cold and the dark and I started crying — I couldn’t help myself. I called and called for her until Mum heard me and fetched me in. She was angry with me for going out, until she saw I’d been crying, then she was nice again. She put me in a nice bath to warm me through, which was lovely, and made me drink a glass of hot milk with honey, which was not lovely at all. It was disgusting. Why can’t cows make something nice instead? Like lemonade, for instance.

  I’ve thought of something. If the snow keeps falling like it is, if it doesn’t melt, then there’ll be footprints, won’t there? Maybe tomorrow I could find Tips’s paw prints and if I did, I could follow them and find her.

  PS I’ve just woken up. Mum’s got up and gone milking already. I’m looking out of the window as I write. It’s early morning and still quite dark, only it’s white all around because of the snow. It looks new and fresh like the world’s just been made. I can see Mum walking toward the milking barn, leaving her footprints behind her across the farmyard. She’s blowing on her hands; I can see her breath in the air. I’ve thought of something else: If Tips leaves her prints in the snow, then I’ll leave mine, won’t I? And if I leave mine, then someone could find them going through the wire and follow me. No good. I’ll have to think of some other way. Back to sleep. I’m tired.

  PPS I’ve woken up again. I just had this dream about Tips, and what’s more it was a dream that came true in a way. I want to write it down now before I forget it. I dreamed she came looking for us through the snow, that she found her way in through the kitchen window, ran up the stairs, pushed open the door and jumped on the bed, and was purring in my ear. When I woke up just now I was so happy because my dream had come true. I could feel her warmth against my face. She was back, she was purring in my ear! But then I woke up properly, and it wasn’t her at all. It was Uncle George’s tomcat. He’s still here and he’s looking up at me out of his wide yellow eyes. I wish they were Tips’s eyes. Uncle George’s cat wants me to love him. But I can’t.

  Maybe Tips isn’t ever going to come back. For the first time I’m beginning to think that perhaps she has gone forever. I mustn’t think like that. I mustn’t. Once the snow’s gone I’m going to go and look again and again until I find her. She’s got to be alive, she’s just got to be. If she is alive she’ll be looking for food, won’t she? Stupid! Stupid! I should have thought of it before. I’ll pinch some food from the pantry, leftovers. No one will notice, not if I don’t take much, not if I’m careful. I’ll put it out for her in the hay barn back home. Then I’ll watch and wait for her. She’ll be hungry. She’ll come. She’s got to come.

  I must have been in and out through the wire looking for Tips half a dozen times or more now. I never found her. She never came for the food I put down for her. But no one ever saw me, until today.

  Today the very worst happened. I went off
as usual after dinner, when everyone else was feeding the animals. No one was about. As usual the food I put out in the hay barn yesterday was gone. So I put down some more and then waited up in the hayloft, hoping and hoping this time she’d come while I was there. That was when the dog came running into the barn, a huge Alsatian, as big as a wolf. He went straight to the food and snuffled it up. He knew exactly where it was. It was him who’d been taking it all along. Maybe I moved. Maybe he smelled me. I don’t know. All I know is that he looked up and began barking at me, teeth bared, his hackles up, his whole body shaking.

  Then there were sounds of voices and running feet, and the American soldiers came. They were looking up at me and pointing their rifles and shouting at me to come down. They couldn’t see me, but they knew I was up there, all right. They kept shouting and saying they were going to shoot unless I came down. So I did. I was hoping Adie would be there, or Harry, but it wasn’t them. All their faces were white. The dog looked as if it was going to eat me, so I waited halfway up the ladder till they caught him and held him. One of them said, “Holy cow! It’s a kid!” And then they walked me outside and bundled me into the back of a jeep. I kept telling them I was a friend of Adie’s, but that didn’t seem to make them any kinder toward me. They weren’t rough with me, but they weren’t exactly nice to me either. They said they were taking me to see the captain, that I was in real trouble.