Page 60 of Autumn at the Oak Leaf Café
Rescue
After the game,there was a presentation of the Sunday League Cup to Milton Road, followed by some speeches by the captains. Despite the intensity of the game, as soon as it was over everyone was laughing and joking with each other. Adam Wright even came over to apologise to Madeline for the way he had spoken to her in the hospital. With Darren looking on in the background, Madeline didn’t have the heart to tell him that it had probably worked out for the best.
Later, she repeated her offer that everyone was welcome back at the Oak Leaf Café for coffee and cake. A few players wanted to go home and change first, so they arranged a time for three o’clock. It was only just after lunchtime, so Madeline needed to get back and rush-make a couple of treacle tarts. Ruby and Darren offered to accompany her.
With the sun shining, Sycamore Park was in the full grip of a colourful autumn day. Falling leaves drifted through the air, swirling around dog walkers, joggers, couples and families out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. With the café temporarily closed, Pete was doing a roaring trade out of thRory, with a dozen people queued up. As they walked up through the park to the café, Madeline had a wide smile on her face.
Everything was rosy….
‘Madeline,’ Ruby said. ‘What’s happened to the window?’
The reflection of the sunlight wasn’t quite right, and as Madeline quickened her pace, she saw Ruby was right, there was something wrong with the window just to the left of the entrance. The lattice window, nine panes, was now missing one. Parts of it glittered from the ground below.
‘Someone’s put a rock through it,’ Darren said.
Madeline unlocked the door and went inside. A large stone lay on the floor under one of the tables, and other pieces of glass lay underneath the broken window. Luckily it was a small pane of glass that wouldn’t cost too much to fix, but still … that someone had vandalized the café made Madeline seethe with anger.
‘How dare they?’ she said, clenching her fists together. It didn’t look like anyone had tried to get in, but—‘Oh my god. Where are they?’
Ruby had gone into the kitchen while Darren waited by the door. ‘Here’s Sampson,’ Ruby said, returning with the little duck nestled in her arms. ‘But where’s Hazel?’
‘She must have got out through the hole,’ Madeline said, feeling her knees tremble. ‘Oh my god, where is she?’
Dan had already gone home, but Pete was happy to close thRory in order to join the search, along with Lizzie from the library, and a handful of other passersby who wondered who they were searching for. Starting from the café, they moved outwards, calling the little cat’s name, looking in bushes and peering up into trees. Madeline’s biggest fear was that Hazel might have run onto the road, but a search that way found nothing. She could only hope that Hazel was hiding somewhere nearby.
As the search lengthened, she slowly began to lose hope. At best, someone might have found the little cat wandering around, thought she was a friendly stray, and taken her home. At worst … Madeline didn’t want to think about it.
Then, just as they were about to give up, Lizzie, standing beneath the huge leaning trunk of Big Gerry, pointed up into the tree.
‘Look. There she is, right up there.’
Hazel had somehow managed to climb up Big Gerry’s massive trunk and out on to a bough that overhung the path. She now sat, seemingly unconcerned, three metres above their heads.
‘How are we going to get her down?’ Ruby asked.
‘Give her a poke with a stick or something,’ Pete suggested. ‘She’s a cat. She’ll be fine.’ As if to disagree, Hazel gave a sad little meow.
‘Can you tempt her down with some fish?’ Lizzie said.
It was worth a try. They placed a bowl of cat food at the base of Big Gerry’s trunk, then hooked a piece of tuna fish out of a sandwich Pete had made himself for lunch on to a paperclip, which they then taped to a bamboo pole from Angela’s little garden. Even with it waved in front of her face, however, Hazel wouldn’t move.
‘If we get a net or something, perhaps we can push her off,’ Ruby suggested, but no one had a net. Pete went to see if Tom had a ladder in his shack, but it was Tom’s day off and the shack was locked.
‘We could walk up to the hardware store on Devon Road and see if we can borrow one,’ Darren said.
‘My dad might have one in his garden,’ Madeline said. She pulled out her phone and called Jonas, but he had gone to a rugby match and could only remember having lent his ladder to someone, but couldn’t remember who.
‘My brother Gus will have one,’ Pete said. ‘I’ll have to go all the way back to Willow River to get it, though.’
This seemed like the best idea, and Pete was just about to set off, when the unthinkable happened. A sparrow landed on a branch a little further out on the bough, and Hazel, with a cheerful meow, began to climb after it, getting higher and higher, the branches beneath her feet getting thinner and thinner. At one point she slipped and nearly fell, but managed to right herself with a deft twist and scamper a little further out along the branch. As she bounced through thinner branches, yellow and brown leaves fluttered down around the group below.
‘I think we have no choice but to call in the cavalry,’ Pete said. ‘Hopefully the lads at the fire brigade are having a quiet morning.’
At that moment, the two cricket teams arrived, having car pooled to the park after doing a supermarket run for a few beers to drink with their cakes out on the grass. Some had changed out of their gear, some still wore it, their knees and elbows grass stained, their thighs marked with red smears from where they had been rubbing the cricket ball.
‘Got a cat stuck up a tree,’ Pete said by way of greeting. ‘No one’s an off-duty fireman, by any chance?’
It turned out that one of the opposition team actually was, and made a call on his mobile to a mate currently on duty. However, Brentwell’s fire service was currently dealing with a warehouse fire on the other side of town and would be unable to rescue any stuck cats for the next couple of hours.
