Reserved for the Cat

Madame nodded with approval and attention moved on to the new playbill at the Alhambra music hall, which seemed, from what Ninette could gather, to be pretty much like the old playbill. The comedian was said to be a little funnier, the magician not so good as the last. There were ragtime singers from America in place of Rose and Violet and Three Young Men. There were jugglers instead of acrobats, and dogs instead of the sketch comic. The young ladies voiced their discontent.

Ninette concentrated on her dinner. But it occurred to her at that moment that she might, just might, be able to leverage her cachet as a French dancer into a position at one of these music halls. Respectable shop girls and respectable boarding house owners went to these performances; while not the Paris Opera in terms of artistic quality, these places were at least attracting something other than the bohemians, the grisettes, the whores and apaches. They might even have their own versions of the old men in fur coats, who liked to make the lives of little ballet girls more comfortable.

She could not continue to live here, of course. She was rather sure that the salary of a dancer would not extend to a place like this, and even if it would, she doubted that Madame would permit someone like a dancer to live among her shop girls. But perhaps the cat could find her a place that catered to entertainers.

Not an impossible idea. . . .

Dinner ended with something that Madame called “treacle pudding,” which Ninette regarded with a dubious expression, and which was rather more sticky sweet than she was used to. Still, it was a luxury. The last day had been full of luxuries. She had actually had enough to eat for the first time in ... well, certainly since Maman had died. She had sat in a railway carriage and then in a ferry, she had slept in a bed between sheets that were not tearing apart with age and gray with washings, beneath warm, whole blankets. It was like a miracle.

But it was not, thank le bon Dieu, perfection. She would have suspected perfection immediately. Perfection would have meant that she was lying delirious in a ditch somewhere, or mad, or even dead or at least dying. But no, this was reality. The cassoulet was just a bit scorched on the bottom, the mutton and pork in it were thrifty re-use of leftovers, for she tasted a memory of mint on the mutton and of rosemary on the pork. The treacle pudding was something she had never tasted or even heard of before, and surely she could not have invented anything like it in her own mind.

So once again this was brought home to her: she was in England, and a talking cat had brought her here. She had paid for lodgings for a week. So, for a week at least, she would live like a decently paid shop girl.

At the moment, that was more than enough.

The other girls began to push away from the table, thanking Madame, as the little maidservant came to clear away the last of the plates. Some went into the drawing room; pleading the long journey, Ninette excused herself and went back up to her room. When she entered the room, it was empty. When she turned back from closing the door behind herself, the cat was on her bed.

Turn out the purse, he said, imperiously. The English one, not the French one.

Obediently, she did so. The cat delicately separated the coins into neat little piles.