The Call of the Cat Basket

by James Barrie

  Miles noticed that his father’s face was the colour of gammon. He hoped he wouldn’t develop such a reddened face with age. But he did take after his father. He had the same dark brown hair and eyes. He glanced over at his ginger-haired brother, the chicken schnitzel left untouched in front of him.

  ‘Shall we have dessert?’ Maxwell said.

  Milton got up from the table. ‘I have to go out,’ he said.

  Miles looked out of the plate glass window and saw his younger brother hurry off in the direction of the Museum Gardens.

  ‘I think Milton hasn’t taken it very well,’ Maxwell said. ‘We’d better go after him.’

  That day had been the turning point in Miles’s life. It had been a day of fateful consequences.

  ◆◆◆

  Twenty-odd years later Miles gazed out of the window and wondered how lives can be decided so trivially.

  ‘Are you ready to order?’ a waitress asked.

  Miles turned. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was a million miles away.’

  ‘I can give you some more minutes if you like?’

  He looked at the waitress in her starched white apron and white long-sleeved blouse. She looked like something from an Agatha Christie television adaptation.

  He glanced down at the menu. He hadn’t even opened it; his mind had been absorbed in the past.

  ‘The chicken schnitzel,’ Miles said, ‘and a pot of Tea Room Blend.’

  The waitress scribbled in her pad and then left.

  Miles got to his feet. He picked up his rucksack and carried it with him downstairs. He needed to make some final adjustments.

  ◆◆◆

  Theodore noticed the shiny black brogues as they passed by the table he was hiding under. He crossed to the edge of the table but there were several waiters walking up and down, trying to peer under tables; they were on to him, he realised. He didn’t know where Miles was going but he was going to have to follow. He couldn’t let him get away.

  Then he saw his chance. The sweets’ trolley was being pushed between the tables, laden with Fat Rascals, chocolate tortes, frangipane, eclairs, tarts and brightly coloured macaroons. The trolley had a shelf a few inches above the floor. Transportation, Theodore thought. As the trolley passed by his table, he hopped on board.

  He heard a voice nearby say, ‘Russell. I think this wine has gone to my head…’

  ‘But you’ve only had the one glass, Barbara…’

  ‘But I’ve just seen a large grey cat riding the cake trolley!’

  ‘It must be your medication,’ Russell said, ‘mixing with the alcohol… We’d better get you back to Scarborough.’

  Death of a Dickman

  Randy Dickman had been handicapped by his unfortunate name his whole life.

  There are others with even worse names. There is a resident of Los Angeles called Russell Wankum, a Belgian politician called Luc Anus and a Arun Dikshit living in San Jose. If you are a Wilson or Smith, you should feel grateful.

  But Randy was loath to change his name as he was named after his paternal grandfather, who had been a hero during World War Two. Like many American and Canadian fighter pilots, he had been stationed outside of York and flown many missions over Germany. He had eventually got shot down one night over Cologne, his body never recovered.

  His grandson Randy was looking for Dickmen in the mirror at Bettys.

  During the war the mirror had been upstairs in Bettys Bar. This was where the American and Canadian pilots stationed in Yorkshire drank between missions. They nicknamed the bar ‘The Briefing Room’ or ‘The Dive’. Many pilots signed their names on the large mirror using the diamond-tipped pen set aside for that purpose. By the end of the war, the mirror contained 568 names, many belonging to dead pilots.

  Randy had searched every inch of the mirror but had not been able to locate a Dickman among the silvery signatures. He had read that the mirror had been damaged during an air raid. The surviving sections had been taken down and put back up downstairs in what is now the corridor outside the toilets. Randy wondered if his grandfather had written his name on one of the sections that had been destroyed, his signature blown into a thousand thin splinters of glass.

  He was examining a section of the mirror for the third time when he was jostled. He turned and saw a bulky blue rucksack heading towards the door of the gents’.

  ‘Hey!’ he called after the disappearing figure.

  The person with the rucksack didn’t even turn to acknowledge him. The toilet door closed silently behind the man.

  Randy then made a split second decision that would cost him his life. He followed the man with the rucksack into the gents’.

  ◆◆◆

  Milton passed by the large window of Bettys. He halted at the corner and stared in through the rain-flecked glass. There in front of him was a table set for one. An untouched plate of chicken schnitzel, pommes allumettes, salad and roasted cherry tomatoes had been placed on the table along with a pot of tea for one. It was as though the place had been set for him. His stomach growled with hunger and his mind raced back to that Sunday when he had lunched with Miles and his father Maxwell for the last time; he had not entered Bettys since that eventful day.

  He remembered looking down at his untouched plate of food while Miles and his father decided what they would have for dessert. He felt sick. He felt like he was actually going to throw up. Dessert… His father was deserting them.

  He had always suspected that his father favoured Miles. Miles was like his father. He was more like his mother. His thoughts turned to his mother. She had probably been drinking since Maxwell had called round for them that morning. When they returned, she would be passed out on the chaise longue in the conservatory. ‘Just having a nap,’ she would slur. Then she would get up and fix herself another gin and tonic. It was so predictable.

  That day, some twenty-odd years ago, he had left the tea rooms, his eyes blurred by tears, and made his way to the Museum Gardens. He needed to be by himself.

  He walked through the gates and passed between two strutting peacocks, their feathers fanned out behind them. Fortunately the gardens were almost empty of people. He found a bench by the museum that looked down over the gardens towards the Ouse. Thoughts raced around his head. His father and brother were no doubt tucking into their desserts back in Bettys. Then his father would get the train back to London and carry on with his life down there. He realised that nobody cared about him. He closed his eyes and hugged himself. In the distance he saw the dark water of the River Ouse. He might as well throw himself in. His life was over before it had even started, he realised. He closed his eyes and wished he was already dead.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, young sir?’ a man said. Milton opened his eyes. A tramp had joined him on the bench. He looked like what you would expect a tramp to look like. Red veined bulbous nose, large grey straggly beard, yellowed eyes. But his voice was more that of a gentleman.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ the tramp said, leaning towards Milton. ‘I can be a good listener.’

  Milton shook his head.

  ‘Well, I’m just going to sit here and enjoy the view. Don’t mind me.’

  The tramp reached into a carrier bag by his feet and took out a can of Special Brew. He cracked it open and took a large swig.

  Milton looked at the man. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world. He would probably just roll under a bush that evening and sleep beneath the stars. He glanced from the tramp’s contented face, to the can of beer he held and then back to the tramp’s face.

  The tramp turned to face him. ‘You want a can?’

  Milton nodded.

  His drinking up to that point had been largely confined to finishing off bottles of wine that his mother left out; she never seemed to realise. He had tried the gin and tonic she always had in the house but he hated the taste.

  ‘You got any money,’ the tramp said.

  Milton reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. He ha
nded his new companion a crumpled five pound note. The tramp smiled and handed Milton a can of Special Brew.

  After Milton had had a few sips, he began to tell his new friend his troubles. By the end of the first can, he felt his troubles receding into the distance; in fact, he struggled to remember why he had been so upset. By the end of the second can, he was having a good time. His troubles were gone and he was riding a wave of drunkenness, laughing at the absurdities of life. By the end of the third can, he was throwing up in the bushes, his new friend gone.

  He staggered out of the Museum Gardens and into Museum Street, straight in front of the No.1 bus. What happened next was a blur.

  He heard his father shout his name.

  Then his father was lying beneath the driver’s side front wheel, pinned to the road.

  People were shouting. A child screamed. A crowd gathered. His brother Miles swore at him.

  They tried to lift the bus off his father.

  Milton looked on helplessly.

  His father looked at him, the bus wheel on his chest. Then he said his surprising dying words: ‘Sylvia…,’ he said. Then: ‘Please forgive me.’ Then he died.

  Sylvia was the name of Maxwell’s estranged wife and Miles and Milton’s mother.

  ‘Look what you’ve gone and done,’ Miles said, under his breath.

  Milton turned to his brother.

  Miles shook his head. He said, ‘You’ve gone and killed dad.’

  Tears streamed down Milton’s cheeks.

  The crowd backed away leaving the two brothers standing by their dead dad.

  Then a peacock approached from the entrance of the Museum Gardens. It strutted into the empty circle in front of the bus. It looked at the dead man under the bus wheel. Then it screamed, ‘Bu-kirk!’

  A quarter of a century later, Milton stared through the eyeholes in his Guy Fawkes mask at the untouched plate of food on the table in Bettys. He had to find Miles and stop him. Whatever foul plot his brother had come up with, there was only Milton who could stand in his way.

  So, with a knot of hunger and misery in his stomach, he turned and followed the crowd towards the Museum Gardens.

  ◆◆◆

  Theodore was downstairs, in a wood-panelled corridor lined with doors on one side and a mirror on the other. He located the gents’. He pushed against the door but it did not open. He heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw two waiters, a man and a woman, coming towards him. He flattened himself into the door recess.

  Then the door swung inwards. Theodore was inside the gents’. Before the door could close behind him, he saw Miles, rucksack on his back leaving. In the seconds before the door closed, Theodore heard the rucksack tick three times in three seconds. A ticking bag, he thought. There must be an alarm clock in it.

  He looked at the closed door. He knew he had no means to open it from the inside. From the other side of the door, footsteps grew nearer.

  Then there was a knock on the door and a voice called, ‘Are we all right to come in? Hello? Hello?’

  When nobody answered, the door swung open.

  Theodore fled into one of the toilet cubicles. There was a partition separating his cubicle from the next. There was a gap below the partition about four inches high. From the next cubicle, a pool of blood had spread.

  Then there were footsteps in front of the cubicle door. As the door was pushed open, Theodore ducked under the partition and into the next cubicle.

  A silver-haired man lay slumped on the floor, his throat cut.

  Theodore padded across the toilet floor, his paws dabbing at the pool of warm blood.

  There was a rapping at this cubicle door.

  ‘Please open the door!’ a man called.

  Theodore noticed that the door was locked from the inside. How the man had been murdered was a locked toilet cubicle mystery, but Theodore did not have time to try and figure it out.

  Outside, someone was hammering on the door. ‘I’m going to have to kick in this door,’ the man said, ‘if you don’t open it now.’

  Theodore didn’t have long. He inspected his surroundings.

  Behind the corpse, there was some boxing covering pipework. The boxing had a hatch in the corner for access. Theodore pushed at the hatch but it did not give. He realised that it must lift up and outwards. He then noticed a slot at the bottom, where someone could slot in a screwdriver and lift the hatch out.

  Theodore went to work with his claws. He managed to prise out the hatch and lift it an inch but it fell back into place before he could get his head below it. The second time he managed to get his nose below it. There was more hammering on the door behind him. He pushed himself through and up into the boxing. He managed to pull his tail through behind him just as the cubicle door was kicked in from the outside.

  There were some pipes running along the wall and a gap above them. He squeezed himself into this gap and crawled along. He turned a corner and the gap became wider and higher. He began to trot along the pipes.

  But then the pipes plunged downwards and Theodore fell into darkness.

  Subterranean York

  Beneath York there is a network of underground tunnels built by the Romans some 1,600 years ago. This culverted drainage system is still operational in part today.

  During the siege of York in the seventeenth century, legend tells that people were smuggled into and out of the city through this subterranean network of tunnels. Only a certain blind man knew his way about the unlit passageways. As he walked through the tunnels, he played a violin so that people could follow him in the dark.

  Theodore opened his eyes. He could make out sandstone blocks on either side of him. Beneath him there was soft silt. At least he had had a soft landing. He peered upwards. There was a grey circle of light. There was no way he could scale the stone shaft and make his way back to the surface.

  He was lying on a raised platform. Beside him there was a channel in which water trickled. He knew that all water flowed to the sea. If he followed the flow of the water, he would come out at the river. Theodore decided to go the other way. One dip in the Ouse was enough for him.

  He got to his paws and began to make his way along the culvert. Side passages led off to the left and right, some of them were vaulted, others had flat slabs of Millstone Grit for a roof. In places, he had to wade through ancient silts, at other times he had to make way for rats that used the drainage system like an underground road network.

  Smaller channels extended off this passage, many of them filled with dry soil. In one of them he spied a pile of bones. They were the remains of a slave child, sent down into the network of tunnels to clean them out, only to get lost and never find his way out again. Theodore plodded on, against the trickle of water.

  Then he stopped. He looked up at the vaulted arch over his head. Emily was there, ten feet above his head. He couldn’t see her, hear her or smell her; he just knew she was there; call it cat sense, if you like.

  Theodore miaowed as loudly as he could.

  A drop of cold water fell from the roof of the channel and landed on his head.

  ◆◆◆

  Emily stopped. She looked around her.

  ‘He’s here,’ she said to Jonathan. ‘I just know it.’

  Jonathan had returned to the city centre to help look for Theodore. He looked around him but the streets were crowded and he knew that the chances of finding him, if he was in the middle of York, were small. A cat would undoubtedly find a quiet place, out of sight, and lay low until things died down. Any ordinary cat would not be in the middle of York on Bonfire Night of all nights. But Jonathan knew that Theodore was far from ordinary.

  As they walked past Lendal Post Office, he said, ‘Let’s try the Museum Gardens. He might be hiding there.’

  Emily agreed. ‘Yes. Theodore’s like me. Doesn’t like crowds…’

  There were many others heading towards the gardens. Many of them wore masks or horror make up. Among the many Guy Fawkes, there were zombies, witches, ghos
ts and ghouls, and others dressed up as cows and badgers. The odd local caught up in the melee wore a determined expression, wanting to be home before the Million Mask March started. The demonstration was scheduled to begin at six o’clock and converge on the Minster at nine o’clock.

  As the crowd marched, they began to chant, ‘One solution: revolution.’

  ‘Let’s hope there’s no trouble,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Emily said. ‘It’s supposed to be a peaceful protest. They just want a fairer world. I think they are right about a lot of things. We need to think about what sort of world we are going to leave behind for our children, don’t we?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jonathan said, ‘but there’s always a few who ruin it for the majority. A handful that will have come just to make trouble.’

  ‘Let’s hope nothing happens,’ Emily said. ‘I just want to find Theo and get home.’

  ‘Isn’t that your dad’s car?’ Jonathan said, as they approached the gates to the Museum Gardens. ‘I thought they’d gone back to Acaster Mildew.’

  ‘I did too,’ Emily said, and pushed the pram across the road to the Range Rover.

  It was Emily’s mum Trish who wound down the window.

  ‘What are you doing back in town?’ Emily asked. ‘I thought you’d gone back to Acaster Mildew.’

  ‘Oliver relapsed,’ Trish said, a tone of ‘told-you-so’ in her voice. ‘He demanded to be brought back to York. No doubt to buy cheap bottles of cider and pass out under a tree.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Emily said, but she did not care too much about Oliver. He had used her cat to profiteer from begging.

  ‘Your dad has had a few glasses of wine so I thought I’d better bring him back.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Your dad said he could use the Acaster Mildew community bicycle to get back, but I said I wouldn’t want a guest of ours to be seen riding the village bike. Who knows who’s been on that saddle!

  ‘And your dad said Oliver is no longer a guest of ours. He is a disappointment. He said he didn’t care if he caught something fatal from the village bike.