Woo had not been with me long when Lizzie said, “Mrs Pinker is coming to town. She wants to stay at your house, but she hates monkeys.”
“Too bad for Mrs Pinker!”
“Are you going to let a monkey ruin your business?”
“Love me, love my monk.”
Mrs Pinker came.
“I hear there is a monkey in the house! I don’t like monkeys—disgusting, smelly! Saw enough of them in that hotel in Madeira! Impossible! . . . The loathsome creature owned by Lady Melville, the Duchess of Whitewater’s horrible ‘ringtail’!”
“How came the management to allow it?”
“Titles and tips, my dear.”
Mrs Pinker liked my house. She enjoyed the big studio’s great window, open fire, dogs, cats, parrots.
Sometimes I said, “Why sit in that straight, hard chair, Mrs Pinker?”
“The little people” (meaning dogs and cats) “have the ‘easies’,” she replied.
“Nonsense! Creatures readjust themselves easily,” and I would tap the beasts onto the hearth rug; Mrs Pinker thought me cruel.
During Mrs Pinker’s visit I kept Woo below. Her Ginger Pop was in the basement to keep her company.
“Where is this monkey?” asked Mrs Pinker peevishly.
“In the basement with Ginger Pop.”
“I won’t have the creature banished because of me! Bring her up.”
“Woo is all right down there.”
“Bring her up!”
Woo dashed into the studio, took her favourite place by the fire. When she saw a stranger, she made a face and let out a squeal immediately, conscious of Mrs Pinker’s antipathy.
“So!” said the old lady. “You do not like me, eh, Woo?”
Woo spied Mrs Pinker’s ball of knitting wool and made a grab.
“No! No!” protested Mrs Pinker.
Woo hugged the wool ball and gibbered.
“Drop it, Woo.”
The monkey grinned at me and threw the wool down. Mrs Pinker stooped to pick it up. Woo gave her hand a stinging slap. The old lady rubbed her hand thoughtfully. She began to knit.
I chained Woo in her corner. Ginger Pop went to sit beside her. Soon they were scuffling in play like two kittens. Mrs Pinker put aside her knitting. Tears of laughter ran down her cheeks as she watched the two fool each other. I had never heard Mrs Pinker laugh so hard as when Woo, stealing my handkerchief, polished Ginger’s nose with it.
Mrs Pinker requested that Woo be brought up each day.
“But you hate monkeys, Mrs Pinker.”
“Well, I like to laugh.”
Next thing I knew, Mrs Pinker was knitting a diminutive woollen sweater.
“It would be best for you to do the measuring and fitting, my dear,” she said. “I wish it were not so sombre a colour . . . very good wool—same that I made a sweater for my son of. It will be cosy for Woo’s winter walks.”
After the sweater was finished Woo went walking with the dogs and me. Mrs Pinker was dissatisfied. She went to town and returned with bright scarlet wool.
“Far more becoming,” she said, holding it against Woo’s green-grey fur. So Woo got two sweaters.
I went sketching in the Park. I took Woo in her scarlet sweater and chained her to a tree while I worked. When I came to loose her a tiny scarlet sweater hung empty on the tree-top. Woo lay flat along a willow bow almost the exact colour of her own fur. I never told Mrs Pinker. (I am convinced that, especially in strange environments, monkeys select a background as near to their own colour as possible.)
Mrs Pinker was ill. The doctor came. As he passed through the studio, he saw Woo.
“Oh, a little monkey! I shall make her acquaintance on my way out.”
The monkey jumped to the doctor’s knee, interested in the shiny clasp of his bag. He showed her his torch, spent a half-hour trying to teach her how to turn it on. Woo was stupid, would not learn, was furious when he took it away, opening her mouth, staring him in the eye, jerking her head this way and that, slapping at him.
“Woo,” said the doctor, “if all patients would open their mouths to that extent, it would put the X-ray out of business.”
“What was the doctor doing so long in the Studio?” asked Mrs Pinker.
“Playing with the monkey.”
Mrs Pinker was peeved. “Ten minutes for the old lady, half an hour for Miss Woo! . . . Huh!” She twitched the bedclothes over her shoulder, turned her face to the wall.
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