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cats everywhere, especially when it rained. They crouched under the shuttered railway arches among the sodden fish and chip papers off which they had already licked all the fat. They stood indecisively on the wet pavement outside the Plaza at night. They slept runny-eyed but patient in shop doorways and among the piles of plastic milk crates. Everyone in London had one, dancing embarrassedly on its hind legs in the front room to snatch at a bit of tuna fish; sitting on a television staring into space. One Saturday morning I saw half a dozen old people leaning over the railings of a basement area in Pratt Street, where a cat had somehow got itself shut in the coal cellar. They had heard it clearly, they explained, but none of them could see it or get down to it: there were no steps, and no one would let them into the house.
    ‘There it is. There it is again!’
    ‘Oh yes, there it is again, poor thing.’
    ‘ – the poor thing!’
    They tilted their heads, to encourage me to listen.
    ‘It might be hurt, you see, or anything.’
    ‘ – hurt or anything!’
    A diagonal shadow had been inching its way over the worn flagstones all morning and now divided the area in half. The cellar door, with its broken frosted-glass panels, was in the dark half.
    Once you got over the railings, I thought, the drop would be no more than ten feet: if you stepped over, bent down facing the street, and then lowered yourself to the full length of your arms, you would be all right. I touched the railings. They were warm and rusty. I could imagine myself swinging over them, and this made me feel vaguely excited, as if I had already done it.
    ‘I’ll just go down and see,’ I said.
    Down in the area it was cool. A mysterious vitality had caused its walls of greyish London brick to grow damp moss, and in one place small clumps of willow herb and bright yellow ragwort. If I looked back up I could see the agitated expectant heads of the old people, sweating gently in the Camden sun. I began to wonder what I would do with the cat if I caught it, and how I would get out of the area myself. Indistinct noises came from the cellar.
    ‘Come on then, puss!’ I called. ‘Puss?’
    All at once it shot out into the daylight blinking and hissing, and streaked up the wall sending down little fragments of rotten mortar.
    On the pavement among the feet of the old people, trapped again, it turned and turned on itself, making a sort of bubbling angry whine and rocking back and forth on its haunches, while they backed away from it with nervous skips and jumps.
    As soon as it saw a gap it ran off up Pratt Street and round a corner. It was tabby and white, quite large.
    ‘Oh well!’ I said. ‘Not much wrong with him!’
    This fetched a laugh.
    ‘Now,’ I said.
    Chipped or missing bricks encouraged me to scramble up a foot or two then hang from my left while I reached out with the other for the base of the railings. I couldn’t quite touch them, and I found that in this position I was pivoting away from the wall. A man kept sticking his arm through for me to catch.
    ‘Here! Here! Let me—’ he said.
    He took off his coat excitedly and knelt on the pavement.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    I got down and started from the bottom again, extending my whole body this time instead of only my arm, so that I felt as if one long straight line could be drawn, up from the ball of my left foot to the fingertips of my right hand. I pushed down with my left hand and, as I began to swing away from the wall, got hold of the railings easily and tugged hard. ‘Here!’ shouted the man who had stuck his arm through. He fussed over me as I stepped back over on to the pavement, patting my sleeves and dusting my shoulders.
    ‘
There
you come!’ he said, looking around as if he’d pulled me up after all.
    I was wheeling a trolley round one of the supermarkets in Camden High Street when an old lady came up to me very determinedly and stood in my way. ‘I think it was a wonderful thing