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“Hester,” Montagu began tentatively, his feet propped up on the desk as he sipped a cup of tea and surveyed the lease agreement that Hester had finished that morning; as she looked up at him, he set it down and affixed her with a probing stare. “Your desk appears to be… purring.”
Hester felt her cheeks turn maroon, but merely raised her eyebrows and attempted to appear unflustered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
Unfolding himself from his chair, he approached her desk with narrowed eyes, leaning over and setting his hands on it before listening carefully, his head cocked to one side. Jean stopped typing out the notes from the morning’s meeting, her attention similarly attuned to Hester’s desk, and Hester resisted the urge to squirm or invent an excuse to bolt from the room.
There was definitely a rumbling purr coming from the bottom drawer, faint but discernible. Montagu raised his eyebrows at her, then circled the desk and pulled it open to reveal…
“Why is there a cat in your desk?”
The cat in question blinked up at Montagu with enormous green eyes, apparently mortally offended by the sudden influx of light to its previously comfortable little cave. Stretching enormously, it leapt out in one fluid movement, earning a yelp of surprise from Montagu, and began to sniff at one of his expensive brogues.
“I found it,” Hester said with as much magnanimity as she could manage, as the cat began to rub against his trousers, leaving a considerable amount of fur on the material. “Outside, by the bicycle sheds. It’s been coming back for a while now; I don’t think it has an owner. It followed me back here after I gave it some potted shrimp at lunchtime, and I thought you might object to it, so it had a little nap in my desk.”
“You can’t just kidnap cats,” Montagu said, as the cat continued to nudge at his leg with a curious nose, and he reached down to scratch it behind the ears. “Or keep them in your desk.”
“It’s rather sweet. What’s it called?” Jean asked brightly, getting up from her own desk and moving to stand beside Montagu; the cat began to wind itself around her ankles, redoubling its purring. “I think it likes me.”
“I don’t know. I believe it’s a boy, but I’m not entirely sure-”
“Monty.”
“Yes?”
“No, we should call it Monty,” Jean grinned at Hester, who bit down on her lip to suppress her own smile.
“Excuse me,” Montagu told her, with enormous mock-affront. “There’s only room for one handsome chap called Montagu in this office, and it’s me.”
“If you say so,” Jean shot back, refusing to rise to the bait, and he raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Bill?”
“We are not naming the cat after a corpse,” Hester said sternly. “What about Felix?”
“Felix?”
“Latin for lucky,” Montagu considered the idea for a moment as Jean scooped the unprotesting cat into her arms and continued to stroke him. “I think that could work. What do you think, hm, little chap?”
The cat contemplated him very seriously, then let out a contented mrow.
“You’re a handsome boy, aren’t you?” Jean cooed at him, apparently unbothered by the vast quantities of cat hair he was depositing on her blouse. “And very affectionate.”
“Should’ve called him Monty,” Montagu groused under his breath, but he consented to giving him another stroke. “Still, good classical name, Felix. And might bring us luck, having him around.”
“Excellent, sir. You won’t mind him sleeping on your chair then, will you?” Jean teased, and Hester bit back a laugh at Montagu’s look of abject horror.
To Hester’s considerable surprise, Felix’s favourite person in the office rapidly became Charles. She had half-expected him to protest that he was allergic, or frightened of cats, but instead he’d returned to the office that afternoon, discovered Felix asleep on his chair – which was apparently more comfortable than Montagu’s – and instead wordlessly consented to working standing up for the remainder of the day. Since then, Felix had obviously had him down as a soft touch; Charles regularly found himself without a chair, or with his sandwiches missing from his lunchbox. Sometimes the two of them would compromise, with Felix curling up in his lap as Charles worked, the young man fussing him between the ears as enormous, rumbling purrs issued forth; it was only first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening that Felix would seek out Hester, curling up beside her and keeping watch over her as she arrived in the office or worked late.
It had quickly spread through the War Office that Montagu’s team now had a cat. No one seemed to mind much; Felix kept the mice down, and conscientiously ate the ones he killed outside (although there had been one near-miss with a tiny corpse left beside Jean’s desk, which Hester had dealt with before anyone else could see it). He acquired a smart collar from Montagu bearing a small silver circle with his name on, and a dish from which to eat his food; even Colonel Bevan brought in an old, slightly worn velvet cushion for Felix to snooze on in the corner of Conference Room Three, after he started trailing the team in there to supervise them during meetings.
It was strange to see such a small animal having such a profound effect on the team. If they were struck by a particularly complex problem to solve or needed moral support, Felix would invariably leap upon a nearby desk and demand attention; it was a welcome distraction, and some of their best ideas had occurred as they rubbed his stomach and he rolled around atop blotters and scribbled notes. Occasionally, he would squirm so much that he tumbled off a desktop entirely, knocking pens and paper and telephones asunder, and Hester or Jean would have to scrabble around and attempt to tidy up after him while he watched, haughty and embarrassed, from a corner, as though supervising his very own staff.
“You know,” Jean said one evening, as she stood at the sink beside Hester, scrubbing out Montagu’s mug. Felix had taken a long drink from it five minutes previously; she wasn’t entirely sure if cats were supposed to drink tea, but he still seemed perky enough. “I think Felix is raising morale.”
“I think you might be right, Jean,” Hester noted, tipping a tin of pilchards into Felix’s bowl as he wound his way around her ankles, mewing expectantly. “Yes, alright, I know you’re hungry.”
She set the bowl down for him and he fell upon the food at once, purring like a Lancaster bomber as he ate.
“You’d think he’d never been fed in his life,” Jean said fondly, watching as he took enormous mouthfuls of fish, barely stopping to chew. “Bless him.”
“He’s certainly living the high life. Didn’t Montagu say he was going to order him some food from Fortnum and Mason?”
“He did. I don’t know if he’s done it yet; I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
Hester looked down at the contented cat at her feet. “Well. From bicycle sheds to department store food. What a life, hm?”
Montagu was asleep on his desk.
That was the first thing that struck Hester as she flicked the lights on and then stood frozen in the doorway, blinking at the strange scene before her.
Charles was slumped over in his desk chair; he was wearing his tie, but had a second one wrapped around his head, and his braces had slipped off his shoulders. His head was resting atop a confidential file, his glasses beside him on the desk, and he was snoring faintly. Montagu was sprawled on his back on his own desk, his tie missing – it took Hester a moment to realise that it was being sported as headwear by Charles – and his shirt undone by several buttons. Bizarrely, an empty champagne glass was resting by his left hand, and atop his chest was curled…
Felix blinked at Hester, then yawned and stretched, digging his claws into Montagu and beginning to knead at his jacket. It was this, rather than the sudden glare of electric light, that finally seemed to rouse Montagu, who let out a soft sound of confusion and then sat bolt upright, which had the unfortunate side effect of dislodging the cat, who let his affront be known with his claws. The ensuing shout of pain woke Charles, who leapt to his feet with a cry of alarm and fear, squinting around myopically as Felix streaked away from Montagu with a yowl, leaping nimbly across desks to Charles and sitting haughtily down atop his glasses.
“Good morning,” Hester told them both, fighting to maintain her composure as Montagu swore under his breath and began examining his shirt front. “Pleasant evening, I take it?”
Both men just blinked at her, and Hester approached Charles’s desk, dislodging Felix enough to retrieve his spectacles and handing them to him.
“I’ll go and pop the kettle on, shall I?” she said tactfully. “Mr Montagu, cold water will get the blood out of your shirt, or you could ask Reggie if you could borrow one of his in the meantime.”
“Monty… how…” Charles looked from Montagu to Felix and back again; Montagu was now dabbing at a long laceration on his collarbone with a handkerchief. “Ah.”
“Entirely my fault,” Montagu boomed with surprising good humour, given that his shirt must have cost more than Hester’s monthly wage. “Poor Felix must’ve had quite the shock; thought he’d found a comfortable bed.”
“Precisely,” Hester raised her eyebrows. “Now, I think this might be a morning for coffee, gentlemen…”
“I don’t know,” Charles said quietly; Hester frowned, pausing just outside the office with her tray of tea things and listening hard. For a moment, she wondered who he could be speaking to, and then there was a soft meow and she understood. “Have we done a bad thing, Felix? Is it bad if it wins us the war?”
There was another meow, more drawn out this time; it was as if Felix understood Charles, and was providing the reassurance he needed.
“I can’t help but wonder,” Charles confessed in an undertone. “It’s all so… much. And the others seem so confident. I wish I was a cat; you’ve got a perfect life, haven’t you? Everyone thinks you’re adorable; you can sleep wherever you like, hunt mice, eat the best food. You don’t have to keep proving yourself. And no one calls you ridiculous nicknames.”
“Not true,” Hester said, deciding to stop hovering awkwardly outside; Charles jumped and Felix surveyed her with interest, perhaps wondering if the cups and teapot might be accompanied by a saucer of milk. “Just yesterday Jean called him a ‘handsome fuzzy little gentleman.’”
“That’s nicer than Bug Boy.”
“Colonel Bevan calls him ‘that bloody cat.’”
“Yes, while smuggling him bits of ham.”
“Charles, you’re a very competent and clever man. I think that matters more than bits of ham, literal or metaphorical.”
“Can you not?” Colonel Bevan said with exasperation, and Hester had to bite down on her pen to keep herself from laughing. Felix was sat on the table beside Bevan, staring down at a map of Europe with such determination and concentration that it was almost as if he understood cartography. Bevan was moving small figures across the map and making notes in a pad, and Felix had taken it upon himself to assist; he was currently batting at a small model of a warship, sliding it across the Mediterranean and up into Greece. “That’s land, you can’t sail a warship over land!”
“I’m not sure the cat can read maps, sir.”
Felix looked over at her, and pushed the warship off the edge of the table and onto the floor with disdain, as though affronted to have been insulted.
“Hester, this cat of yours…” Bevan pinched the bridge of his nose as Felix began nudging a model Spitfire with his nose, apparently determined to send it the same way as the ship. “I hope he’s not an omen.”
“Ready, steady…” Jean flicked a ball of paper across the floor, and Felix leapt after it, grabbing it with his front paws and biting at it with single-minded determination; under his careful ministrations, he shredded it in under ten seconds. “Good boy!”
“Jean, I hope you’re not using confidential memos to play with the cat,” Hester said sternly. “That wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Of course not, ma’am,” Jean looked up at her with an angelic expression. “But also, he can’t read.”
“Very good point,” Hester noted. “Although he must be picking up all kinds of secrets from us.”
“Perhaps he’s the latest German spy.”
“I’m not sure even the Germans could train a cat,” she grinned wryly at Jean and handed her a stack of discarded notes from Colonel Bevan’s meeting that more, including some unflattering doodles of Masterman. “Here, try these. The paper is thicker… Felix might not tear them up quite so easily.”
In the weeks after the mission’s success, Felix began to trot around the office after Hester like a dog, although sometimes he would disappear for a few hours and come back looking contentedly well-fed or sleepy, and she wondered where he was vanishing to. She wasn’t worried about him, just curious; he would set off with such determination, and she wondered where he might be going and who he might be passing the time with.
One afternoon, as he slunk away during a particularly dull hour, Hester got to her feet and set off after him; he headed up two flights of stairs and then pushed open the ajar door to Conference Room Three with his nose. Inside, Hester caught a glimpse of Charles and Montagu, who were sat at opposite ends of a long table of colleagues, both looking bored; Jean was in a corner making notes as Bevan spoke rapidly from the front of the room, gesticulating at something pinned to the wall.
Felix padded to Montagu first, headbutting his shins and enjoying a tickle under the chin, before passing Jean and earning a gentle stroke from ears to tail, and finally heading towards Charles, whose lap he nimbly leapt into and curled up in.
Smiling to herself, Hester turned and headed back to her own desk, content that Felix was in safe hands.