Cromwell's Cat Read online

  CRUMB

  “For you, Tomkins, not for me. I’ve just got the one and I mean to make the most of it – now more than ever.”

  KAREN

  “Then is it you, Tomkins, who’s pressing for an early exit – back to Ely?”

  TOMKINS

  “It’s what I live for. Well, you know that.”

  CRUMB

  “In your dreams.”

  TOMKINS

  “No harm dreaming, Crumb. It’s what we cats do: – get a dream, pass it on and make sure we don’t lose it. That way, one day, it may just come true. So, ninth life, yes – but the dream of being back home with Kitty F, the Tomkins clan – and you Crumb – very much alive.”

  KAREN

  “Pass the dream on? How do you do that?”

  TOMKINS

  “How d’you think? The old rub-a-dub.”

  KAREN

  “The what?”

  TOMKINS

  “The rub-a-dub. We rub you up – the right way – the cat way.”

  KAREN

  “I thought that was just taking our scent?”

  TOMKINS

  “Are you serious?”

  KAREN

  “Absolutely.”

  TOMKINS

  “Well, sorry to disappoint you but you’re wrong – nose-twitchingly, fur-curlingly wrong – as only humans can be. Why a cat, who takes pride in his appearance and is near obsessive about personal hygeine, would want to take the scent of a pongy, putrid, foul-smelling human…”

  CRUMB

  “Oh, that’s a bit strong.”

  TOMKINS

  “As is your whiff, Crumb, believe me – as I’ve already had occasion to observe. A cat taking pleasure in that would be almost as low-life as a dog finding a load of horse-poo and rolling in it – and there’s not a lot gets much lower-life than that. We cats, in case you hadn’t observed – and you clearly haven’t – are superior creatures and our nuzzling and rubbing is to bring you up to our level, not us down to yours: it’s to share the dream – nothing more.”

  KAREN

  “And the proof?”

  TOMKINS

  “…is in the dream. You know mine. Crumb, tell them yours.”

  CRUMB

  “Must I? You know and I know it. Nobody else believes it. I doubt this lot will be any different.”

  TOMKINS

  “All the same, tell them…Go on…Here, I’ll give you a start – the parliament having just endorsed your continuing as Lord Protector…”

  MAJ

  “By a wafer-thin majority in a half-empty house…”

  TOMKINS

  “Thankyou, Maj – good to see someone’s been listening.”

  MAJ

  “…with an ill grace and no little muttering along the lines of ‘making the best of a bad job’. Hardly the ringing endorsement of the Lord’s settlement that you were looking for, LP.”

  CRUMB

  “Granted, Majesty, but an endorsement none-the-less and such a one as you would have been happy to have had.”

  MAJ

  “True enough.”

  CRUMB

  “I told them during the consutations – I did not hide it from them: I had accepted this office, when it was first offered four years ago, as a temporary measure to supply an emergency; and I would agree to its renewal only on the same understanding.”

  TOMKINS

  “The dream, Crumb, the dream.”

  CRUMB

  “I’m coming to that. Don’t get me wrong – any of you: government by a single person and parliament – that is forever. Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector is temporary – a means to an end – and if – and it all hangs on this – if this government now gives the nation the settlement we seek – I would know why I may not hand over to some other sooner rather than later? After all the new government gives me the power to name my own successor. The nation being settled, may I not do so and retire as Cincinnatus did, when Rome was threatened by invaders and he was called on to save the city? Then, the state once saved, he handed back the power and returned home to his farm: for which he is much admired. May I not do likewise: retire to Ely and take up my old life with you Tomkins and the satisfaction of having given England the chance that’s been promised and prophesied? Laugh if you like but that is my dream”

  TOMKINS

  “And not so different from mine, I think you’ll all agree. That’s the rub of the dream – and dreams don’t lie.”

  CRUMB

  “And so, Karen, to go back to where we started, I mean to make what haste I can, not to be gone but to get on. That’s what you should have said. Getting gone comes later.”

  KAREN

  “That makes sense, but how?”

  CRUMB

  “What?”

  KAREN

  “How will you ‘get on’?”

  CRUMB

  “By doing nothing. That’s the beauty of it.”

  TOMKINS

  “Easier said than done in your case, Crumb.”

  KAREN

  “You do have form, LP.”

  MAJ

  “I hate to remind you, but – my trial & execution. Not exactly a silent witness there, were you?”

  TOMKINS

  “I was going to mention that, Maj…and the dissolution of the Rump – and the last parliament. What is it they say of you? ‘Lordy P, the man who never knowingly held his hand – except to sharpen the axe’. Just about sums you up. I can’t count the times I’ve said ‘Crumb, think: do you really want to do that’ And your answer has always been – always…”

  CRUMB

  “‘No, but I must’. I know. But with this new government the case is altered.”

  TOMKINS

  “How?”

  CRUMB

  “Because in the past we were always conflicted: the army wanted the best things but (as we’ve seen) could not deliver them; while the parliament which could, wouldn’t – not under pressure from the army. And that goes way back – all of ten years to Harry’s ‘Heads of the Proposals’. Remember them, Majesty?”

  MAJ

  “Only too well. Might have saved us all a lot of time…”

  TOMKINS

  “And you, your head.”

  MAJ

  “…that too, that too…had I found my way to take them seriously”

  RHODRI

  “But you were too busy
playing politics.”

  MAJ

  “Not playing, Rhodri – not playing: anything but. Trying rather to save my kingdom and the church on which it depended”

  RHODRI

  “By stirring the party pot: parliament against army and both against the Scots. As I said ‘playing politics’.”

  CRUMB

  “The point remains, Majesty, we were conflicted then and have continued so ever since. And each time it has fallen to me to resolve the conflict. So yes, I wielded the axe, because I had to. Now I don’t. Now there is no conflict. In this new government the parliament has finally shown that it wants the best things and it has delivered them. All that remains is for us to stand back and let the nation enjoy them – and I am sure – learn in time to love this Protectorate. I am persuaded of it.”

  MAJ

  “The nation, perhaps. Itch-arse – not.”

  CRUMB

  “No, Majesty, there we are agreed. The inevitable Itch-arse: yesterday’s man hoping yet to be born again tomorrow. Well, he’s going to be disappointed.”

  MAJ

  “Can you be sure?”

  CRUMB

  “As I can of anything – because tomorrow is here. It’s just that he can’t see it.”

  MAJ

  “And it’s not the one he wanted?”

  CRUMB

  “Exactly. If he thinks the nation would rather go back five years, resurrect the Rump, re-ignite the conflict with the army, and start over again – and all because he can’t stomach the protectorate – or me at any price. Well…”

  ALAN

  “Itch-arse logistics: Problems with an unwanted protectorate? A quick call to Itch-arse, and your problem’s history!”

  KAREN

  “The future’s bright. The future’s Itch-arse.”

  MAJ

  “Except, Karen, it isn’t, nor is it like to be, which should be a comfort to us all. Sorry, LP, you were saying?”

  CRUMB

  “What he can’t see is that tomorrow is here – in this new government. The parliament has drafted the constitution, which I – with a few amendments – have accepted. The army has submitted and accepted parliamentary authority. John Lambert has been relieved of his command and retired to Wimbledon to tend his tulips. Peace has broken out in England and with it at last real hope that the army, and its cost to the public – their greatest concern – will soon be reduced. Itch-arse and his irreconcilables apart, who in the nation would not settle for that rather than a re-run of the parliament-army battles that have plagued us these ten years past. So yes, I can be sure he will be disappointed.”

  MAJ

  “And will not hide his disappointment.”

  CRUMB

  “Oh no, that would be more than we could hope for, and I shall deal with that when it manifests itself, but in the meantime I intend offering him a seat in the Other House.”

  KAREN

  “The ‘Not-the-House of Lords’?”

  ALAN

  “…to go with the king of the same ilk.”

  CRUMB

  “Something like that.”

  MAJ

  “An offer he will of course decline.”

  CRUMB

  “Of course, as I expect will some of the peers, whom I also intend inviting. Only they, I hope, will come round when they see the government and the nation truly settled. Of Itch-arse my best hope is that he will in time find himself out of friends and bow to the inevitable.”

  MAJ

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  CRUMB

  “As I said: I’ll deal with it. For the present I must nominate the ‘Other House’. That’s what I must now get on with.”

  CATRIONA

  “In treating with the parliament about the matter you insisted the choice be yours?”

  CRUMB

  “I did, Catriona.”

  CATRIONA

  “Why?”

  CRUMB

  “Because I would not have my fingers burnt a second time.”

  CATRIONA

  “A second time? When was the first?”

  CRUMB

  “The Nominated Parliament, remember – the ‘edge of the promises and prophecies’ – when I was at such pains to leave the choice to my officers so the world would see it as the Lord’s work and not mine, but which then unravelled when Lambert and his friends withdrew their support. And so I had my disappointment and the parliament, of which I had such hopes, had to be dissolved before it could do more damage. This time I intend making sure the Other House will be such as will do the business and so I insisted that the choice should be mine alone.”

  TOMKINS

  “Even so, it might yet fail.”

  CRUMB

  “It might, if that is the Lord’s will.”

  TOMKINS

  “But?”

  CRUMB

  “I mean to see all interests are represented – army and peers included – and some seats left unfilled wherewith (the choice being mine) I may correct any imbalance that might appear… for whatever reason. That way, I have good hope they will aid rather than impede settlement and in time open my way to retirement and Ely.”

  TOMKINS

  “While in Westminster your successor as Lord Protector…”

  MAJ

  “Who is?”

  TOMKINS

  “Yet to be named, Maj – tiny fly in the ointment.”

  CRUMB

  “Thankyou, Tomkins, I can speak for myself. I always thought, Majesty, the Lord meant it to be John Lambert. Even during my consultations with the parliament’s commissioners I clung to that thought. Now it appears not.”

  TOMKINS

  “How so?”

  CRUMB

  “Because if this government is, as I believe, the one He looks for, then (when I am gone) it will require a Protector He also approves. It was for that very reason I tried so hard to persuade Lambert to take his seat on the council. I reminded him that in its provisions: a national church with liberty for tender consciences, separation of powers between legislative and executive, the avoidance of arbitrariness and the people free to enjoy their lives and estates – in all this it owed much to him. And as you saw in the previous chapter I dug my heels in over the title – partly, as I said, because I see myself as temporary and expendable, but in part also with him in mind. And, had he been able to swallow his disappointment at this change of government as I had to when he stage-managed the previous one, I should have had no doubt that he was the man. But he scrupled at it. The Lord’s providence, it seems, no longer includes John Lambert.”

 
; TOMKINS

  “If not him, then who?”