Billy Moon : A Transcendent Novel Reimagining the Life of Christopher Robin Milne (9781429948074)

by Lain, Douglas

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  Dedicated to the spirit of 1968. You reappeared briefly in 2011. I’m keeping a candle in the window for you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are two dead men who deserve acknowledgment here, although whether either would accept the association that this acknowledgment brings if they were still alive is an open question.

  The first of the two is none other than the real Christopher Robin. Christopher Robin Milne managed to grow out of being a character in his father’s books and transform himself into a character of his own. His memoirs The Enchanted Places and The Path Through the Trees tell the story of this character’s struggle to formulate an identity and life beyond the world of Pooh. For those who are interested in what Christopher Robin and A. A. Milne’s relationship might’ve “really” been like, these memoirs are the books to read. In any case, I recommend both of Christopher’s books to you, my readers, and suggest that his story is yours and mine as well.

  The second of the two dead men who deserve acknowledgment is the French radical theorist Guy Debord. Debord’s championing of the practice of détournement, a technique whereby writings and artworks are derailed or twisted in new works that misquote the originals, made my twisting of Christopher Robin Milne possible.

  There are others who must accept acknowledgment. Lisa Goldstein, whose novel The Dream Years twisted or derailed both the surrealists of the early twentieth century and the striking workers of May 1968, deserves recognition.

  And there are more still. Henri Lefebvre, Françoise Sagan, Ralph Rumney, Robert Silverberg, Jean Luc-Godard, France Gall, Brian Jones, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit all deserve a mention. Also traces of ideas from Karl Marx, Louis Althusser, Raoul Vaneigem, and Slavoj Žižek can be found here.

  Fellow travelers M. K. Hobson, Eileen Gunn, Cameron Pierce, Alyx Dellamonica, Kris O’Higgins, Jim Frenkel, and Joan Vinge (who helped me learn to write many years ago) and many others deserve some blame here as well.

  Finally, I want to acknowledge my wife, Miriam, who has patiently encouraged me to press on with this sort of thing.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Three

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29 (Probability A)

  Chapter 29 (Probability B)

  Chapter 29 (Probability C)

  Chapter 29 (Probability D)

  Chapter 29 (Probability E)

  Chapter 29 (Probability F)

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Books by Douglas Lain

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  1959–1965

  In which Christopher Robin fails to escape his stuffed animals, Gerrard goes to the police museum, and Daniel is diagnosed with autism

  1

  Christopher was thirty-eight years old and still hadn’t managed to escape his stuffed animals. Worse, the neighborhood stray, a grey British Shorthair, was scratching at the entrance of his bookshop. Chris looked up to see the cat making no headway on the glass but leaving muddy prints under the sign that was now flipped so that the CLOSED side was facing out for passersby to read. The cat’s scratching made a repetitive and grating noise that reminded Chris of a broken wristwatch.

  It was October 2, 1959, and Christopher was up early. It was his usual practice to enjoy these solitary early hours in the bookshop. He quite liked waiting for the teakettle to sound, looking out at the mist over the River Dart, and listening to the silence that seemed to radiate from the spinner racks full of paperbacks. He had the novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute open by the cash register and he was skimming it. The story had something to do with a nuclear war and a radioactive cloud, but the details weren’t getting through to him. He just had twenty minutes or so before Abby would be awake, and he decided not to waste them on another literary apocalypse.

  Chris had been getting up earlier and earlier, spending more and more time on the inventory sheets, keeping track of the invoices, and taking care of that local stray cat. Hodge—Christopher had named him Hodge—was an abandoned tabby actually, and not a British Shorthair at all. Hodge had been content to live over the bookstore and eat what Chris fed him, usually fat from a roast or bits of fish, outside on the boardwalk. At least, that had been the arrangement for nearly six months. Lately Hodge had been a little more demanding. He had, on occasion, even made his way inside the shop.

  When the kettle sounded Chris poured the hot water into a bone china pot ornamented with blue flowers, waited for his breakfast tea to steep, then poured a cup and added cream and sugar. Only after all of this did he give in to the sound at the door, but by this time, Hodge had changed his mind. Chris opened the door and the cat wandered away, across the boardwalk and into the weeds. Hodge hadn’t really wanted in at all, but maybe had just wanted Christopher’s company out in the grey mist of the morning. It was impossible to say for sure.

  He stepped back into the shop, slowly wandered down the main aisle, taking a moment here and there to note what books were still in place, which books had been on the shelf the longest, and when he reached the counter he wrote down the titles. He checked the ledger for the previous day and saw that the list of old books hadn’t changed. J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man and Colin Wilson’s The Outsider had been big sellers for several years, but perhaps Devon had run out of angst because he had three copies of each gathering dust.

  Then Hodge was at the side window. The cat was sitting on a waste bin under the store’s green-and-white awning and was scratching away again, leaving more muddy paw prints.

  Chris stepped outside again, onto the boardwalk, and walked around the corner of the shop to the waste bin. He reached down, hooked his hand around the cat’s midriff, and carried him like that, with his legs and paws dangling, into the shop.

  “I’ll make up your mind for you,” Chris said.

  There was no point in trying to discipline a cat. You could try scolding, even give the animal a good wallop, but all that would accomplish would be a reaction, maybe get you scratched. The cat might scurry of
f between the bookshelves, look at you indignantly, perhaps even feign indifference, but the cat would never behave differently. Cats merely did what they did.

  There was a stack of boxes behind the counter, a new shipment of children’s books, but Chris hesitated to open them. For a moment, before opening the first one, Christopher remembered how the shop, his Harbour Bookshop, had looked before the first shipment of books arrived. When the shelves were bare they’d reflected the light coming in and the shop had seemed positively sunny. There was nothing in the bookstore but light, shadow, and the smell of sea salt.

  Christopher opened the box of books and then felt a familiar anger welling up in him.

  “Abby, you bloody well know that we don’t sell Winnie-the-Pooh,” he shouted into the stacks. His wife was upstairs, either still in bed or in the lavatory. She was spending a great deal of time on the toilet, even more than he’d originally expected when she’d told him she was pregnant. Wherever she was she surely couldn’t hear him shout, but he was tempted to shout again, only louder. He let out a long sigh instead.

  Christopher made his way up the stairs and called out again.

  “Shall we ask the Slesingers and Disney to become partners in our bookstore? Shall we sell dolls and toys and records, all the Pooh paraphernalia? We could probably forgo selling any other books at all. Shall I dress up in plus fours for the tourists? Do you want to start calling me Billy?”

  Nobody called Chris “Billy” or “Billy Moon” anymore. It was a relic, a variation on the name his father had given him when, as a very young boy, Chris had been unable to properly pronounce their surname, and had declared the whole family to be Moons. Over the years all of Chris’s childhood nicknames—Billy, CR, and Robin—had fallen to the side. He’d volunteered for service during World War 2, and he’d shaken loose of his childhood, or so he’d hoped.

  “Did you let that cat in again?” Abby stood at the top of the stairs in her nightgown with her fingers up to her nose. She was holding back a sneeze.

  Was her belly getting bigger? Christopher thought he could just see a difference, a slight curve underneath her billowy silk gown.

  “I found the Pooh books,” Christopher said.

  “You think our customers shouldn’t find any part of your father’s work in our store?”

  “I’m not interested in selling that bear.”

  “You and your mother have a lot in common.” Abby turned away, disappeared around the corner, and Chris returned to the stacks and put three copies of The House at Pooh Corner on the shelf. Then he taped up the rest in the box they’d arrived in and wrote out the address for his distributor on a sticky label. He’d send these back.

  Christopher opened another box of books and found Dr. Seuss inside. He ran his finger along the spines as he placed the books on the handcart, and then he looked again at The Cat in the Hat. He looked at the red-and-white striped top hat, at the umbrella the cat was holding, and the precariously placed fishbowl, and remembered or realized the truth about the stray cat he’d been feeding and the truth felt odd to him, something like déjà vu.

  Hodge was neither a British Shorthair nor a tabby, but a stuffed toy. Abby had purchased a black cat with synthetic fur and straw inside for the nursery, for the boy they were expecting. Hodge was made by Merrythought and Christopher picked him up from the bookshelf where he’d left him.

  Chris felt he’d slipped between the cracks. The moment seemed to hold itself up to him for his inspection. Abby had been sneezing, threatening to sneeze, because of this toy?

  Christopher looked from the cash register to the front door, examined the spot where Hodge had been scratching, at the muddy paw prints there, and then went to fetch a wet rag. After he’d washed the glass on the door and taken care of the shop’s side window he washed out the rag in the kitchen sink, wrung it thoroughly, and hung it on the rack under the sink to dry.

  He approached the door again, turned the sign around so that it now read OPEN to passersby.

  Hodge was waiting for him by the register. He picked the cat up and turned him over in order to look at the label.

  MERRYTHOUGHT, HYGIENIC TOYS, MADE IN ENGLAND.

  Chris took the toy cat with him when he made his way upstairs to ask Abby what she’d meant. He tucked the toy under his arm and started up, taking the first two steps in one go, jumping, and then stopping to get a hold of himself. He would just ask her what she’d meant about the cat, ask what cat she’d been referring to, and that was all, no need to panic.

  The bed was still unmade and Abby was at her vanity, she had one of her oversized maternity bras half on, draped over her shoulder but unclasped, and was brushing her auburn hair. When he stepped up to the table and put the toy cat down next to a canister of facial powder, she put the brush down and started tying her hair back into a bun.

  “Did you ask after Hodge?”

  “Hodge?” she asked.

  “Did you ask me if I was feeding the stray cat?”

  “Were you?”

  This wasn’t very helpful so Chris turned Abby to him, away from the mirror, and made her listen to him as he asked it again.

  “Did you ask me if I was feeding the cat?”

  “Yes. Did you feed him?”

  Chris picked the Merrythought toy up from the vanity and held it to her, watched her eyes as she looked it over, checked to see if he might catch some sort of comprehension there.

  “This cat?” he asked.

  Abby took the toy from him, turned it over in her hands, and then put it down on the vanity and returned to tying back her hair. He waited for a moment, giving her time.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “Is there a cat? I mean, is that the cat?”

  This was the question Chris wanted to answer, but now that she’d asked aloud the answer seemed further from him. If there was a cat named Hodge how had he come to mistake this toy for him, and if the toy was Hodge then what animal had been eating the table scraps he’d left out? Chris tried to explain the problem to her, he retraced his steps since he’d gotten up, but she was as mystified as he was and suggested that there was nothing for it but to have breakfast.

  They had fried eggs, fried mushrooms, potatoes, and more tea. Christopher put jam on wheat toast, but afterwards he couldn’t help but bring it up again. It was still relatively early; perhaps they could close for a bit and take a walk? Maybe they could track down the real cat? They might take the trouble to find Hodge and put it to rest.

  * * *

  They took the toy cat with them when they went out. Chris wanted to show the toy around while they looked for Hodge, but the boardwalk along the embankment was still empty. The Butterwalk building was closed but Christopher saw that there were lights on inside and so he went ahead and called “kitty, kitty, kitty” under the fascia. He walked along the line of granite columns, looking behind them and around them hopefully, but he didn’t find a real cat there either.

  They looked in the windows of the Cherub Pub and Inn. Chris had the impression that the owner, an older man named William Mullett whose family had run the pub for generations, had also taken pity on Hodge over the last few months. He’d seen William feeding Hodge raw halibut from the inn’s kitchen, and he wondered why the cat ever ventured over to the Harbour Bookshop given how he made out at the Cherub. They were open for breakfast, so he and Abby ventured in and found William sitting at reception.

  “Morning, Christopher,” William said. He was a bald and round man who’d been in the first war but otherwise hadn’t seen much outside of Dartmouth. “Morning, Abby. What brings you two round this morning? How are the books?”

  “Morning, William,” Christopher said. He looked at Abby and then back at William and wondered what he wanted to say or ask.

  “We’ve come to ask after a cat,” Abby said. “Christopher has had some difficulty with a tabby.”

  “An English Shorthair,” Chris said.

  William nodded. “I’ve been meaning to stop by your sh
op. There might be a new hardcover I’d be interested in.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, what brings us in this morning is this stray cat I’ve seen you feeding. He might be a tabby or an English Shorthair. I called him Hodge.”

  William considered this. “Ah.”

  “The question is whether you’ve seen him. I mean, am I right? Have you been feeding him?”

  “That cat?” William asked. He pointed to the toy Chris was still carrying and Chris held the thing up.

  “Did you just point to this cat? This one I’m carrying?”

  “That’s Hodge, isn’t it? Yeah?”

  “You think this is Hodge?”

  William shrugged and then turned to fiddling with a few papers on his desk. He looked down at the list of guests, touched the service bell, and then looked up at them again and nodded. “Yeah, that’s Hodge?”

  Christopher put the toy down gently in front of William and then turned it over for him so he could see the tag. He leaned over toward the innkeeper and asked him again.

  “Are you saying that this toy cat is Hodge? This is the cat you’ve been feeding?”

  William picked the black cat up, turned it over a few times, and then put it back down again. He took a letter opener out of his top drawer and cut the seam in the cat’s belly. William pulled out straw.

  “No. This can’t be him,” he said.

  Christopher told William that he’d had the same misperception this morning, that he was wondering if there had ever been a cat, and then asked William why he’d cut the toy open.

  “Just thought I’d see,” William said. “But you’re right, Christopher. That’s not the cat we know. Did you get that one for the baby?”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon Chris wore his Mackintosh raincoat and his Wellington boots when he left the Harbour Bookshop just to go for a walk. It was around three o’clock in the afternoon, and since there hadn’t been a customer since lunch he decided to close the shop early and see where the narrow streets and paths in Dartmouth would take him. He needed to get out into the world, get away from the stale air inside his shop. He’d been confused was all, but a walk would fix that. He would go for a walk and know that what he was seeing in his head matched up with the world outside.