‘What have we here?’
‘That’s Aileen’s office,’ I told her and she strolled in.
‘Ah!’
She took a tour of the book-lined shelves, the two desks and the hi-tech equipment. She sat on the arm of the recliner chair and had a practice lay on the hearth rug.
‘Now I could work here.’
She sat on the fax machine and examined the view from the window, then admired the tidiness of the out-tray and the emptiness of the in-tray before gliding back into the hall.
‘What else?’
I showed her the rest of the floor. She only poked her nose round the kitchen door – kitchens were where other people worked and had nothing to do with her.
‘Thank you for your time.’
Her fur was a fusion of glossy black and startling white and cinnamon. Well it certainly wasn’t ginger – this cat would rather be found dead in the gutter than be caught wearing ginger. It was the colour of autumn – like Aileen’s hair.
‘I’ll be going now.’
I opened the back door and let her out. She paused on the balcony and examined her nails.
‘I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you for calling.’
‘My pleasure.’
Thermal and Aileen tumbled out of bed about an hour later. They came downstairs together and then split in the hall, the kitten shambling sleepily towards the kitchen and his breakfast, the woman peeling off towards her office – she has her breakfast delivered.
I fed them both. Thermal stood in the middle of his bowl and ate all around him, then he lifted his rear-end slightly and ate underneath him. I took my coffee and joined Aileen – her conversation at this time in the morning wouldn’t be any better, but her table manners would be a distinct improvement.
I read the Independent on the floor and Aileen stared into space. This is what they call togetherness and it lasted for about ten minutes until she switched on the radio. I can’t take the excitement of radio early in the morning, I need to be bored gently into the rhythm of the day – which is why I take the Independent.
Thermal was nowhere to be seen which wasn’t surprising. He has a series of windows that he likes to look out of first thing in the morning – he takes them in a specific order and doesn’t like his routine upset. He would be in my office at about quarter past.
I opened the fridge door to put the butter away and it was then that I noticed. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed before. The handle was sticky and the door was covered in blood.
The floor was sticky as well. Whatever this was it was running down the door in rivulets and dripping on to the kitchen carpet. But slowly, like – well just like blood.
‘Aileen, come and look at this.’
She came but she didn’t look. She felt with her fingertips.
‘What do you think it is?’
She put her fingertips to her mouth and tasted.
‘It tastes sweet – it’s very nice actually.’
I couldn’t do that. I could see it and it looked like blood, but I sniffed and it smelt like nothing I had ever smelt.
‘Where can it be from?’
‘Don’t know.’
I trod on something about the size of a gull’s egg and since I don’t come across gulls’ eggs on the kitchen carpet all that often I bent down and picked it up. It was a cork from a wine bottle – a red-stained cork.
Well a nod’s as good as a wink to me and I turned to the wine rack. The bottles are stacked horizontally, just tilted slightly towards the business end and pointed straight at the fridge door.
Now hot on the trail I held an impromptu identity parade. Although the bottles looked very much alike from that angle, it wasn’t long before I was able to pinpoint the guilty party. It was cowering on the bottom rack with its mouth wide open, blood still dripping from its fangs. I pulled it, kicking and screaming, out of the line-up and arrested it. It was a damson 1986 – the most violent of all the homemade wines.
I remembered this bottle. I had taken part in an outside broadcast in Derby a couple of weeks earlier. The audience were lovely and afterwards one of their number had come forward and said some very nice things about me. He also gave me a bottle of wine and told me that his name was Derrick Ayre. How nice of him I thought. What a warm and wonderful person.
‘It’s pretty strong,’ he said, ‘be careful with it.’
I wished I had him there with me now. I had the cork in one hand and if I had had Derrick Ayre in the other there would be no prizes for guessing what I would have done with the cork.
I cleaned up the mess and made to throw the bottle away. There was about an inch of wine left in the bottom and I poured it into a glass. Aileen tried it first and licked her lips.
‘It was very good of him really.’
I tasted the wine and it was very pleasant. I began to wish I had licked the fridge door and the carpet.
‘Yes it was.’
We drank a toast to him. He wasn’t to know that they were exploding damsons, unless of course he was a member of the IRA and was planning to claim responsibility afterwards.
I worked all morning, re-reading the pages I had written yesterday. I hadn’t slept very well the night before for worrying about them and now I could see why. They didn’t work, and so I took a deep breath, pressed the cut key on the Amstrad, and they disappeared from my life for ever.
I read back even further and scrapped another three pages. I was now back to where I had started out last Wednesday morning. They say that the ability to be so ruthless is the mark of the true professional – it could also denote a singular lack of talent.
Aileen had been on the phone all morning, talking to her agent, her publishers, the gas board and practically everybody in West Yorkshire. She loves the phone. She isn’t blind when she’s on one end of a telephone line, it’s a great equalizer. It’s more than that – she has the advantage, because she can read your voice as effectively as a graphologist will read your handwriting.
She shouted to me and I went to see what she wanted – we have a certain pecking order in our house and I know my place.
‘Have you seen Thermal?’
‘No – not since breakfast.’
This was serious. His stomach has a built-in alarm system and it never fails.
‘See if you can find him.’
I didn’t have to look. At that moment he staggered into the study sideways and banged his head on the door frame. His eyes revolved as he leaned uncertainly against the skirting-board and he shook his head as though it didn’t belong to him.
And it didn’t look as though it belonged to him. He had turned into a pale pink kitten from top to toe and he was stoned right out of his mind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thermal jammed his hip up against the wall to steady himself while he tried to get his bearings. Then somebody moved the skirting-board and he was off, lurching across the carpet towards the hearth rug.
‘It’s all right, Aileen – he’s back.’
‘Oh good.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’
He wasn’t going to make it to the hearth rug. He took the pretty route round by the wastepaper basket – turn left at the coffee table, under the desk, run smack into the video and then ask.
He swayed slightly and then began to back out of a cul-de-sac by the filing cabinet. Viewed head-on he was now a pretty, if somewhat streaky, pastel pink – but the rear-end that emerged from under the desk was painted in such a vivid scarlet that it would have had those monkeys at the zoo going green with envy.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s here, by my foot.’
Two eyes looked up at me and tried desperately to focus. He must have read my mind because he sat down, stuck his leg up in the air and tried to lick his bottom. It didn’t work and he fell over in a heap, his head on my foot.
‘Help.’
Aileen stood up and came over, trying not to tread on him in the process.
‘He’s just a bit off colour, that’s all.’
She picked him up and plonked him on her shoulder where she could see him.
‘He’s all sticky.’
‘It’s the damson wine. He must have been standing by the fridge when it exploded.’
He had conquered his fear of the fridge and now spent a large proportion of his day staring at it and wondering why there wasn’t a cat-flap in the door.
‘His bottom’s very sticky.’
‘He hasn’t got round to that yet.’
She took him over to the window where she could see him better and peered closely at his head.
‘Is he pink?’
‘Yes – you should see the other end.’
‘It’s stuck to my sleeve.’
We peeled him off and laid him on the hearth rug. I spread a sheet of newspaper underneath him but he didn’t know much about it – he was out to the wide.
‘Do you think this happens to other cats?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
He woke up five hours later with a hangover and tottered into my office with the middle pages of the Independent stuck to his side like a billboard.
‘What happened?’
‘It’s a long story.’
I sat him in the sink and washed him down with Fairy Liquid. It’s supposed to be kind to the hands and I hoped it would be just as kind to paws and whiskers and bums. He struggled but he wasn’t really up to it.
‘Mind my eyes.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I beg your pardon ?’
‘It’ll go in your mouth.’
‘Yuk.’
‘See – I told you.’
Aileen wasn’t too happy about him being washed. People don’t wash cats, she said.
I could remember saying exactly the same thing to my mother the first time I watched her scrub Whisky in the sink.
‘My mother used to say she was just dipping him – like they do sheep.’
‘It doesn’t seem right somehow.’
‘Listen to the woman.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Lots of hot coffee and walk him round the yard?’
‘Take no notice of her.’
The water was a dull plum colour when I lifted him out, but he still looked like a raspberry ripple. I dried him off and the towel came out in sympathy.
‘I will take him outside for a minute – give him some fresh air.’
Unfortunately for Thermal we had an audience and, much worse than that, it happened to be a large tom-cat called Denton.
Denton is the school bully. He’s built like a bullock and fancies himself as a villain from the old cowboy days. He dresses completely in black from head to paw.
I have often thought of introducing Denton to some of man’s recent innovations such as the machine-gun or the air-to-ground missile. Somebody must love him, though for the life of me I can’t understand why – he has the personality of a hyena but none of the charm.
In stark contrast Thermal looked like a designer-kitten as he hopped down the steps to the courtyard. There was just the faintest touch of a Busby Berkeley musical about the scene, as the pale winter sun picked out the pale-pink kitten tripping lightly down the staircase, and only a moron would have failed to appreciate it.
Denton wouldn’t have appreciated it as he lay in ambush under the hydrangeas – he was more of Rugby League man himself.
Thermal sat down on a paving stone, closed his eyes and wondered why his head hadn’t come down the steps with him. Should he go and fetch it? No, he was better off without it.
I watched from the balcony as he weaved his way towards his favourite burial ground where the soil was soft and you could do things in private.
He was just about to squat in the shade of a long-suffering azalea when he saw the dark shape of Denton lurking not more than a couple of yards away, and his battered little brain went into overdrive.
‘That must be a cat – my mother told me about them.’
He had probably only ever seen half a dozen cats in the whole of his short life. There was his sainted mother, of course, and his unmarried sister in Brighouse. His father was apparently on active service in the Persian Gulf and Thermal had yet to be introduced. His brother Gordon was away at boarding school. Then there were the three dustbin loungers I had pointed out to him from an upstairs window, but that must have seemed like a lifetime ago.
‘I’ll go and have a chat with him – make myself known.’
He strolled, quite casually, over to the hydrangeas and smiled broadly at the accident that was about to happen. It was then that I spotted Denton as he shifted slightly and licked his lips. I shouted a warning.
‘No!’
The kitten stopped in his tracks, then turned and looked up at me.
‘I’m not going to hurt him.’
He didn’t stand a chance. By the time my feet hit the courtyard, Denton had finished with him and Thermal lay in a crumpled heap on the paving stones. His ear was bleeding and his fur had been rearranged.
But it was his innocence that had taken the cruellest beating. He hadn’t tried to run away. He couldn’t believe that this was happening to him, that anyone would want to do this to him. And so he just lay there, wide eyed on the stone slab, and tried to understand.
Denton sat on the high wall and slipped his claws back in their holster. That had taught the kid a thing or two – shown him who was boss. Pink kittens indeed – this gay-bashing certainly gave you an appetite.
He looked so damn pleased with himself that I threw a piece of mortar at him, but he didn’t even bother moving. Just eased his head to one side and watched it sail past.
‘One day I’ll have you.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’
It hadn’t been a good day for Thermal – it had been the sort of day you could do without. But at least he had the pleasure of telling Aileen all about it.
‘There were three of them – weren’t there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Enormous they were’
‘Huge.’
‘Especially the black one.’
‘He was the worst.’
‘I showed him though – didn’t I?’
‘You did that.’
Then the tortoiseshell cat walked into the study and Thermal panicked and hid behind the wastepaper basket.
She was just as beautiful as I remembered and I introduced her to Aileen. They got on famously and set off on a tour of the bedrooms. A head peeped out from under the desk.
‘Is it safe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was that?’
‘I don’t know – she calls in occasionally.’
*
This time she stayed longer. She was surprised to see Thermal.
‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’
‘Yes – this is Thermal.’
He was too shy to say anything. He just sat there with a stupid grin on his face and simpered. She took the initiative – she was that sort of cat. She glided over to him and they touched noses. Her eyes watered.
‘Does he drink?’
‘It was an accident.’
She made herself at home and stretched out on the hearth rug. Thermal didn’t know what to make of it. His unmarried sister in Brighouse, by all accounts, is a much plainer woman and he’d never seen anything quite like this before.
He stumped around for a while, pretending he had a limp, and then when that didn’t bring him the sort of attention he was after he went all silly and did his funny walk on the mantelpiece.
When he fell off it made his ear bleed again but Aileen made a fuss of him and so, with his ego charged a little, he felt confident enough to go and lie down beside his new friend on the hearth rug.
Not right beside her you understand – at a bit of an angle and slightly to the rear, so that if he was snubbed he could brush it off lightly.
&n
bsp; We watched a cassette of Victoria Wood’s one-woman show. She’s Thermal’s favourite and she cheered him up enormously. The battle with Denton had done him no good at all and it obviously hurt him when he laughed. So he just smiled his thin little smile every now and then. All the same, I’m sure it did him a world of good.
We wound the video back and played the song about the hostess trolley once more, he loves that, and then Aileen zapped the television with her remote control. She’s lethal with it.
‘I think she ought to go home now.’
‘I don’t know where she lives.’
‘She does.’
I couldn’t argue with that, we shouldn’t be encouraging her to stay. I showed her to the door.
‘Thank you for having me.’
Her manners were impeccable – so different from those of our own dear Thermal. She slipped quietly down the steps, across the courtyard, and into the lane.
On impulse I followed her. I wanted to know where she came from, and she made it easy for me. She didn’t skulk in the dark shadows by the wall. She walked right down the middle of the narrow lane as though she were leading a parade.
I didn’t want to alarm her, so I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. I was brought up on the films of the fifties and I knew exactly how a private detective would go about it.
I could have done with a trench coat and a hat-brim to pull down, but we private dicks have to improvise. So I stuck my hands deep in my pockets and kicked aimlessly at pebbles as I walked along.
Just to make doubly sure, I perfected a tuneless whistle and kept my eyes firmly on the ground. I was just another ordinary guy on these mean city streets.
It worked beautifully. She had no idea she was being followed. She stopped a couple of times and so did I, pretending to examine the privet hedge for any trace of Dutch elm disease – just a trick of the trade.
She was getting too far ahead of me now, and then suddenly she turned into an open gateway – I didn’t know which one. I sprinted after her and she was waiting for me on the wall.
‘Come on – we haven’t got all night.’
She wriggled through the bars of the rickety gate and made her way up the garden path to an old stone cottage. I leaned on the wall and watched as she settled down on the back step. It seemed out of character – I would almost have bet money on her having her own key.
The Cat Who Came In From The Cold Page 9
