The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym Page B

symphony was being played and as Phoebe lay watching the cat she had the fancy that its spreading body was like a great empty wineskin or bladder being filled with Mendelssohn. She began to think of a poem she would write for James.
    It was a pity he couldn’t tell Leonora about the cat filled with music, James felt, as he smiled over the poem Phoebe had sent him. That was the only bit he really understood and it might have been appropriate for this afternoon when he had promised to take Leonora to a cat show, where Liz was exhibiting some Siamese kittens. Although he didn’t particularly want to go – there were many pleasanter ways of spending an afternoon, he felt – it seemed a good opportunity to appease his conscience for the lie he had told Leonora about having come straight back from the sale and spent the evening with one of his useful old school friends.
    ‘Just kittens and neuter cats,’ said Leonora, reading from the programme, ‘that sounds so cosy, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Shall I be the only grown-up male thing there, then?’ James asked, not altogether joking.
    ‘Probably, darling – though one doesn’t think of you as male, exactly. Not all tweedy and pipe-smoking and doing carpentry at weekends.’
    ‘No …’ James could appreciate the accuracy of her distinction but there were other, more attractive, aspects of maleness, he felt, that Leonora might have mentioned.
    The hall where the show was being held was hot, crowded and noisy. James looked around him with dismay at the prospect of having to spend the afternoon there. It is a truth now universally acknowledged that owners grow to look like their pets, and it was certainly impressed upon him as he and Leonora pushed their way through the crowds surrounding the cages in their search for Liz and her brood of Siamese.
    ‘There you are, Liz darling!’ Leonora proffered her cheek to the little dark woman who stood before them with a tray of cat litter in her hands. ‘I’ve brought James, as you see.’
    She might have put it the other way round, James felt, seeing that he had brought her in his car. He was conscious of Liz’s critical eyes on him and wondered, as always, what she was thinking. He always felt a little uneasy in her presence, perhaps because, as a divorced woman, she was known to have a great contempt and dislike for men. But if, as he remembered, he was not to be thought of as male he need have no fear.
    ‘Lovely to see you, James,’ she said, ‘and what do you think of my babies?’
    Two litters of kittens, making ten in all, were sleeping in the cage, twined and curled up into a great clot of cream and brown, with a blue eye studding it here and there like a jewel.
    ‘Very pretty,’ said James. ‘Have the judges been round yet?’
    ‘They’re on their way.’ Liz indicated two stout women in white coats followed by a girl acolyte bearing a yellow plastic bowl of milky-looking disinfectant. ‘I’m pretty confident of this lot. Wouldn’t you like to buy one?’
    ‘Yes, James, you ought to have a cat,’ Leonora urged.
    ‘I don’t think I could cope,’ said James weakly, imagining the malevolent creature ruling his life that the kitten might become. ‘Besides, I’m going away soon.’
    ‘James is going on a tour of Spain and Portugal,’ Leonora explained, as if he were a child. ‘Humphrey thought it would be a good thing for him to have a look at the Continental stuff.’
    ‘Oh, that reminds me,’ said Liz, ‘Joan Murray’s here. You know how she dotes on cats. She got Dickie to bring her but he didn’t stay.’
    Rather sensible of Dickie, James felt, wondering if he should mention having met the Murrays at the country sale. It might be easier to say something before Joan did.
    ‘Leonora! How heavenly to see you – and James too!’Joan Murray was upon them before he could get out his carefully casual sentence. ‘Don’t tell me Humphrey’s here? No – men must work, obviously – Dickie just dropped