The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  Partridge and rabbits scattered before him, but he hunted them among the fur of the Great Cat, and his pursuit was unrelenting.

  Now the First Female glints in the Great Cat’s silver eye! Fluid as water, strong as the tide, a rosy sorrel coat and pointed ears to lengthen the fine lines of her head, she leaps down. Head on this side, head on that, face as sharp as iron, delicate as a shell, she looks around. Morning! Things are good!

  Fish cascade out in front of her as bright as the brand-new light. Off she dances to fish her way down the Great Cat’s fur, down the shoulder, over the flanks, and far away.

  The First Female!

  She catches a salmon to take to him.

  He catches a hare to take to her.

  What those two did when they met is another story!

  So the torrent of life flooded down the coat of the Great Cat, and She approved of what She saw. She was as content with Her predators – Felidae without parallel or peril – as with their prey. Each kept to its own sphere; all would breed and thrive and take their proper place.

  At last, the tapetum lucidum was quiet, and light poured forth once more – warm and refulgent, cool and healing – and as the light in the world intensified, so the Great Cat’s pupils contracted and shrank. Just as it seemed they would close forever, new shapes appeared from the darkness.

  They walked on two legs; they were pale and furless. They shrank from the world outside, but they were too dissatisfied to stay where they belonged. Out they squeezed, into the light. To them, the Great Cat’s body was hill and mountain, jungle and forest, strand and ocean, while Her gold and silver eyes shone irretrievably as sun and moon. There was no dance for them. They fled down Her foreleg in terror, to shelter from the gaze that made them. At last Her paws reared above them, and there at the base they took up lodging in the deepest of caves.

  That was how human beings made their way into the World of the Cat: unbidden and out of darkness, the last things that God made. And that is how they live today, dissatisfied with one world and frightened of the other, wary and watchful of the life that surrounds them.

  3

  The Wild and the Tame

  A cat may look at a queen.

  – PROVERB

  Finding the King and Queen, Tag realized, was going to be easier said than done.

  They were cats, he supposed; but he had no idea who they were, what they looked like, or where the search should begin. He had frightened the magpie off, so there was no help there. The fox was long gone, pursuing its own foxy business. There was no clue in his recent dreams of the Majicou; and all that remained of the earlier ones was a dim cobwebby voice whispering, ‘Tintagel.’

  Well then, he thought, perhaps Tintagel is a place, and I’ll find them there.

  It would do to be going on with.

  He had a last good look at the discarded collar, to remind himself what a genuine desperado he was. Then he turned his face to the world.

  *

  The world turned out to be a maze.

  Chestnut trees and dappled wintry sunshine gave way to busy streets and rank air. He stood uncertainly at an intersection, a little light-headed from hunger, used to the stillness of the gardens; and everywhere he looked, something was going on. Lights flashed red and green, dust rose, discarded rubbish bowled along, and the huge objects the fox had called ‘cars’ went grinding to and fro, filthy with smoke. There was no rest for the eyes. The smells ran together into one thick, pulpy reek, like wet cardboard forced over his nose. The noise was extraordinary: shouts, shrieks, roars, clangs, peeps, and warbles – a cacophony of information that made his head hurt. ‘I’m not sure I like this,’ he told himself. He scampered across the pavement and into a front garden gateway; he stared out. How could any animal learn to manage this? Every time he poked his nose out, another lot of human beings clumped past inches from it, great dull heavily wrapped animals jostling and coughing angrily along on enormous feet, barely aware of one another, let alone anything that might be going on below their eye level. His heart raced and fluttered. He was afraid for his paws. He was afraid for his tail. They would tread on anything and grind it to pulp. They would never know.

  Eventually, he gave up on the street. The front gardens here were often no more than bare concrete squares rank with fumes, piled with fat black dustbin sacks, but they were safe. Tag jumped walls, ran along under windows, crouched beneath littered laurel hedges. At the end of each row of houses, the gardens ran out and he was forced to cross a side road. Cars! he remembered the fox claiming dismissively. They can’t kill you if you ‘re quick. But Tag always waited until things seemed quiet before he put his ears back and made a dash for it.

  It was the most tiring way to travel. By noon, he had managed perhaps a mile. The sun went in, and it began to rain. He hadn’t eaten since the night before. Huddled between some dustbins in a side passage, he fell into a light doze. When he woke, it was dark. He waited until the gabble of voices and the roar of machinery had died down, then began to walk again.

  *

  Over the next few days he made his way across the city, in a series of random curves and excursions. He tried to dream of Ma-jicou, but his sleep was untroubled. He kept an eye open for fox and magpie; he never saw them. Every time he came across another cat, he inquired, ‘Tintagel? Do you know Tintagel – ?’

  Few replied. They had lives to live. Like the cats he had known – or, rather, avoided – when he lived in the gardens, most of them were shy and furtive. The rest were toms; hard-favored and spectacularly muscled, scarred about the face from their Olympian turf wars and sexual encounters, they were proud, high-profiled, and short-lived. All he could expect as he navigated their richly scented territorial map was a steady glare, a snarl, and a contemptuous, ‘Get out of here, mate.’

  ‘Or the King and die Queen?’

  ‘I’m the king, mate. Get out of it while you can still walk.’

  So he took the hint and walked. Days and nights went past. It rained, and then rain changed to soft wet flakes of snow that melted as soon as they touched the ground. The partly familiar terrain – houses and gardens, neutral zones, and tribal turfs – gave way to bleak hinterlands of concrete, lighted at night by glaring greenish lamps that seemed to hang in the air without visible support. Buildings towered up; roads grew wider and wider. The danger here came not from patrolling toms, but from the great articulated machines that roared and rumbled all night long behind tall chain-link fences. He stopped and watched. He saw how human beings climbed up into them and forced them to go. He wondered if the fox knew that. They jerked and hissed impatiently as they were maneuvered to and fro; then, once out on the roads, thundered past, dwarfing cars and cats alike, spraying up filthy water as if to mark their territories.

  His feet were sore. He was always hungry. If the main roads were untenable, even the lesser streets made him feel exposed. His shadow, thrown against a billboard, grew huge; but he felt smaller than ever. He learned to creep along the top of a wall; remain still for a long time in the shadow of a hedge.

  Animal highways ran everywhere – down an empty alley here, around a secret sunny corner there, across wasteland choked with elder and bramble – everywhere that was private or hidden. But Tag remembered his last attempt to use one and how only the fox’s kind heart had saved him. He couldn’t count on the same help twice. So though he sometimes stood on the edge of one and watched for ten minutes or so – rocking back and forth between his desire to join the flow and his fear of the consequences – he never used them. He stuck to gardens whenever he could. This rule meant he could dine off scraps thrown out for the birds, half a saucer of food someone had left on the doorstep for a pet, and the inevitable snails. On the other hand, he found the toms there aggressive and hard to avoid. And the going tended to be slow – the houses were often small and crammed together, which meant more garden fences to climb. The gardens themselves were nothing much. Bleak turf and broken bicycles. One wet night, pausing between two met
al bollards at the mouth of a rain-polished alley, Tag watched a dozen feral cats rip open a bin bag. They pulled its contents savagely about in the raw orange light.

  Bacon rinds! thought Tag.

  Then, seeing how they fought in the long black shadows, ‘Never.’ He promised himself, ‘Never that.’

  By now, he looked like a cat who had been on the run for days. His eyes, huge in his dirty face, were needy and no longer quite so optimistic. His fur was unkempt, always damp. He was emaciated. He slept in holes and under piles of things, and he never got warm. He felt strange without the collar. He would forget for an hour or two that he had got rid of it, then shiver delightedly, feeling elated and free. Or with a sense of utter terror realize he had lost everything worth having in life. Care. Comfort. Above all a home.

  *

  It was a big city. Tag made his way through one district after another. He learned all about cars – or thought he did. He grew used to the noise, the constant change, the constant fear. Finally he fetched up at the Caribbean Road – which he crossed by means of a seeping, tiled underpass – and Mayflower Docks. And that was where, toward the end of one dismal, soaking-wet day, he found himself on a busy street, crouched out of the way of human shoes, gazing across at a cardboard box someone had thrown carelessly into a doorway. He knew there was another cat living in it. For that reason alone he would find it hard to approach. In addition, he was afraid to cross the road, which was packed tight with cars and other vehicles. But it had been a bad afternoon. There had been snow in the rain again. Two children had first cooed at him, then tried to cram him into a plastic bag. Now he was sick with hunger and so wet he was frightened of what might happen to him if he didn’t find shelter.

  So he waited another minute, then, before he could argue with himself any further, dodged out into the greasy road. Around the back of one machine, between the wheels of another. Straight in front of the next. They can’t kill you if you’re quick! – But this one was bearing down on him with incredible speed and violence! Tag dithered. Could he go back? Too late! He was already inside its envelope of hot reeking air. He couldn’t think what to do –

  The car shrieked and stopped.

  Tag stopped.

  Cat and driver stared helplessly at one another. Then horns blared, lights flickered, and Tag was off again. White faces, blurred screens, wipers bang-banging, engines racing. Tag’s heart raced too. His back legs skidded and pumped like a hare’s in the half dark. Fumes choked him. He streaked across the glassy pavement. He was so stuffed with panic and madness he had sprung into the cardboard box before he knew it.

  ‘Look,’ he panted. ‘I won’t hurt you if you won’t hurt me.’

  The occupant of the box stared at him. It blinked. Its eyes were so milky with age it could barely tell he was another cat. ‘Doubt if I could harm a kitten at present,’ it admitted thoughtfully. ‘So you might as well come in.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tag.

  The old cat had once been a fine tabby male, with neat little white paws and a broad black central stripe that whirled down his sides into complex, glossy patterns. Now great patches of his fur were missing. The bare skin revealed was creased, dirty, and patched with eczema. Two marks like the tracks of tears ran down the side of his nose. He shivered and sneezed, and huddled away from Tag in the driest corner of the box. He smelled, quite strongly. Every so often he said something like, ‘Wet old day, then.’

  To which Tag could reply only, ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘Wet old day.’

  They sat like that for twenty minutes or so. Then – smell or no smell – Tag found himself edging closer. The cardboard box wasn’t quite as dry as it seemed, especially toward the front where rain had been splashing in all afternoon. He was freezing cold, and he felt as if he would never be dry again. The winter had worked its way through to his skin and settled in there to leech all the warmth and joy out of him. He missed his collar now. He missed the dulls, about whom his memory was confused. He missed their food, which he remembered with a distinctness bordering on the hallucinatory.

  ‘Ever eaten crumpets?’ he asked the old cat. ‘You have them with butter.’ Then he suggested, ‘We’d be wanner if we curled up together.’

  ‘It’s all the same to me. You’re soaked and I’m bald. Bugger all warmth to be had out of that.’ After delivering himself of this wisdom, the old tabby was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘Trumpets I know nothing about. But butter. Well that’s another thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Butter’s another thing altogether.’

  Tag spent the night in the cardboard box. A hundred yards up the road there was an enormous rectangular hole with an illuminated sign above it and railed steps leading down into some echoing, brightly lit subterranean interior. Human beings trudged endlessly up and down the steps, bumping into one another, looking weary and annoyed. Every so often, something massive shifted in the hole and made the ground rumble. A faint, eerie vibration filled the cardboard box, traveling up through Tag’s bones and into his skull, where it displaced every thought he had. He tried to take his cue from the old cat. He watched him anxiously – should they abandon the box? – but he seemed unperturbed. Things were easier once night had fallen, and human activity subsided. He licked himself for an hour until he felt cleaner, if not dry. He tried to keep up a conversation with the old cat. He was asleep or drowsing most of the time, farting uncomfortably to himself, his paws tucked up in the sticky fur of his chest. Tag talked anyway. He told the old cat about the cloth mouse he had once owned. He gave him a broad picture of his dulls and their house. He described at length the meals they had served him. At this the old cat showed some interest, and would often repeat in a ruminative way the things Tag said.

  ‘Mashed sardines, eh?’ Or, ‘Pilchards, now. Seen a few of those in my time. Be lying if I said I hadn’t. Pilchards, eh? Oh yes.’

  ‘Well, my dulls were always pretty generous with stuff like that,’ Tag boasted. Then, ‘I’m looking for the King and Queen of Cats. Do you know them?’

  A variety of indecipherable expressions passed across the old vagrant’s face. Then he sat upright, cocked one leg in the air, and began to lick quite energetically at his scabby bottom. ‘Oh yes,’ he wheezed at last.

  Tag waited expectantly.

  ‘Know ‘em well. Lovely they are, gold collars and all. Fat as butter. The meals I’ve had with that pair! Pilchards? Nothing to the food I’ve et round their place. King and Queen of Cats? Oh yes. You name it, they’ll have it warmed up and served to you. Lovely.’ And he licked his cracked old lips in reminiscence.

  Tag was delighted. ‘Where can I find them?’ he asked. ‘It’s so important – !’

  ‘Be round shortly, I’d say. Often hang out with Manky Jack here.’ The old cat gave a raffish wink. ‘Manky Jack: that’s what she calls me. And where’ll you find the King and Queen of Cats?’ he asked him. ‘Why, up your own arse, most like.’ He snorted. ‘You must be on one, laddie. Do I look as if I’d know any Royals?’ He paused for a moment, seeking the perfect phrase. ‘Laddie,’ he condemned him finally, ‘you’re still wet behind the ears.’ He nodded with satisfaction, closed his eyes, and crouched down on bony haunches. ‘King and Queen of Cats?’ he added gently. ‘Be sensible.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tag.

  He allowed a few minutes for this information to seep into his brain like cold sleet through a fur coat. ‘How about Tin-tagel?’ he said, examining the scarred old face and watery eyes for a further outbreak of irony.

  None was forthcoming. Instead, at the word Tintagel, the old cat’s ears pricked up, and a great alertness came over him. ‘That’s Tintagel Court, laddie,’ he said, in his faded, papery voice. He thought for a moment. ‘Tintagel Court?’ he asked himself. ‘Oh, I know Tintagel Court all right!’ He gave a cheerful laugh. ‘Had many a good time there until I got too old. Oh yes. That’s a fine place for a young cat that can turn over a dustbin, Tintagel Court.’

  Dustbin?
thought Tag.

  In his dreams Tintagel was clearly associated with waves breaking at the foot of steep cliffs, a blustery wind, a headland above the sea. There had been no dustbins.

  ‘I don’t think that can be right.’

  ‘Which of us has been there, laddie?’ the old cat demanded angrily. ‘Tell me that!’

  Tag couldn’t argue with him.

  ‘Is it close? And can you tell me how to get there?’

  The old cat could. ‘You’ll find some dustbins around there!’ he promised. He laughed again. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you come with me!’ suggested Tag.

  But the old cat only stared at him emptily. ‘I don’t think so, laddie,’ he said.

  After that. Tag slept a little. Soon, it was dawn. The rain had eased. Tag woke from a light as whispery as the old cat’s voice, revealing the walls of the cardboard box heavy and soft with water. The streets and buildings eased out of darkness, a yellowish-gray color, slicked with freezing rain. Even the air was a yellowish gray. Tag saw that if he had walked a little way farther, he would have been able to sleep in the dry, under the arches of a bridge. He turned to tell the old cat this. But he had slipped away while Tag was asleep, and the box was empty.

  *

  The old cat’s directions had amounted in the end to little more than ‘You follow your nose, laddie.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Follow your nose. That’s what cats do.’

  And when Tag had asked, ‘You couldn’t be more specific?’ he had only sneezed, turned his head away, and accused, ‘Which of us has been there, laddie? Eh? Tell me that!’

  *

  Tintagel Court – an extensive low-rise development that had once enclosed half an acre of lawns – lay stunned between the Caribbean Road and the river. Built out of dull brown brick, it was no more than fifteen years old and already abandoned. Confused and directionless, a human family or two still huddled behind the intact windows. The rest of the flats were boarded up. Mornings, the courtyard seemed to echo faintly the groan and thud of distant traffic. The rest of the day it kept a strange rainy silence. It was entered by a wide single arch from Tintagel Street. The lawns had long been trodden to hard black earth. Three tall Norway maples remained, and around their scarred trunks the real life of the court now went on.