Cat's Eyes

by Alan Scholefield

  Mrs. Leech did not reply. She stood in the middle of the floor clutching the baby. The little girl flung herself into one of the chairs and began to kick it with her heels. The baby began to cry. Seemingly without conscious thought, the woman reached into her dress, pulled out a breast, and allowed the baby to suckle. Like the rest of her, the breast was worn with too much usage.

  My God, Rachel thought, no wonder Charlie couldn’t keep his hands off other women. There was something pathetic about Mrs. Leech, equally there was no doubt that she could not cope; not with the house, not with her family. At any other time Rachel might have felt sympathetic to so obvious a loser, but now she felt repelled by the dirt and the poverty and the hostility.

  “I’ve come to say how sorry I am, and to ask if there is anything I can do for you,” she began quickly. Get it over with, she told herself. Get it over, and get out.

  Mrs. Leech stared at her, unembarrassed by the loud, sucking noises coming from the baby. What more could she say Rachel thought? She was sorry. But how do you say, I’m sorry for having killed your husband?

  Mrs. Leech spoke: “You’re sorry. Is that it?”

  “Desperately sorry.”

  “Who for? Me or you?”

  “You, of course. Why should I? — I mean, yes, I’m sorry. We’re all sorry.”

  “So you come here to get it off your chest, like. You think you can come and say, I’m sorry for killing Charlie, and that does it. That makes it better.”

  “I don’t think like that at all! Nothing I can say will make it better. I know that. But I couldn’t not come.”

  “You sure you didn’t want to come just to see, like?”

  “See what?”

  “Me.”

  “Of course that’s why I wanted to come. I wanted to see you and tell you ...”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean me. Charlie’s wife. You think I like being left behind? You think I wanted Charlie dead? You know how many kids we got? Not we any more. I got to remember that. You know how many kids I got? There’s three more at school. That’s five. What do you know about keeping five kids? You think you can come into somebody’s life and walk away when you want to. It’s always the same with you people in the big houses. You used Charlie!”

  Rachel could see anger mounting in her face, but she did not know how to reply, so she stood there, thinking it better that the other woman should have her say.

  The little girl sprang out of the chair. “Can I have a sweet?” she said.

  Her mother ignored her. “He done everything for you. He done your houses: decorating, painting, making them look nice. And look what we live in. You think I like living in a place like this? See that?” she pointed to a corner of the room where there was a large stain on the wallpaper.

  “That’s damp, that is. You come through here.”

  “Mrs. Leech ...”

  But she was beyond hearing. “Come on!”

  Rachel followed her into the kitchen. “Look at that. Go on, look!” This was an appalling room, dark and fetid. An old porcelain sink and wooden draining-board were piled high with breakfast dishes, perhaps even yesterday’s washing up as well. The table had not been cleared and there was half a packet of margarine, still in its paper, covered in raspberry jam and peanut butter where knives had scooped at it. “See?”

  Above the sink the plaster had come away, leaving another festering area of damp.

  “Do you have places like that in your house?”

  “No.” Rachel said.

  “No. Because Charlie fixed them up. But he never fixed up his own home.”

  “Mum! Mum, can I have a sweet?” The little girl tugged at her skirt and Mrs. Leech slapped aimlessly at her.

  “You shut up, you.” Then to Rachel: “Charlie never had the time for us. Sometimes he never came home in his dinner hour. Sometimes not till eight or nine or ten at night. It’s not fair.”

  “Mrs. Leech ...”

  “And now you come here! Why? You say you’re sorry. You weren’t sorry for us when he was alive. You think I don’t know? You tried to take Charlie away from me!”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You wanted Charlie for yourself. You think I didn’t know? You can’t live with a man like Charlie and not know. I could smell a woman on him!”

  “I swear to you ...”

  “Get out! I want you to get out!”

  “Mum ...”

  “Shut up! Go on! Get out of this house!” She was shrieking now, her face red. Rachel knew there was no way of making contact with her.

  So the good day became a bad day, and there were other days when the house was enshrouded in mist, when a low, dark grey curtain of cloud filled the sky, when the winds raged through the Downs, bringing rain hissing off the sea. Those days she found difficult to endure. Sophie’s crying would irritate her, and often she would go to Bill’s garden-room to escape. When she came back she would usually find Penny in Sophie’s room and the baby would be gurgling with delight. And this would irritate her, too. She found herself becoming jealous of Penny. She had told Bill she thought Sophie liked Penny more than herself. She had meant it as a joke, but there was an underlying truth. There was no doubt that Penny had a way with babies. What annoyed Rachel was that she seemed to spend more and more time with Sophie and consequently the house began to wear a neglected look. Dust accumulated on tables, the windows needed cleaning, stains began to appear in the bath.

  One day she and Penny had a row. It started innocently enough on a day that was neither one thing nor the other. It had been sunny early, then the clouds had built up. Rachel had decided to take Sophie for a walk, but by the time she had finished her chores the sky had gone dark and was threatening rain. She had been looking forward to getting out so she decided to go anyway. She woke Sophie, zipped her into her little jumpsuit and was carrying her downstairs when Penny appeared and said “It’s coming on to rain.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, but it is.” There was something about the tone, the knowing, experienced tone of the local talking to a foreigner, that irritated her, and she said sharply, “I’ll decide what we do, thank you, Penny.”

  She was aware of hurt on the big, moon face but she did not care. She put Sophie in the pram and walked down the drive. By the time they reached the gate the first spots of rain began to fall and she knew that if she went on they would both be drenched. Angrily she turned, and as she did so she saw the body of the little statuette half-hidden under the hedge.

  She had managed to put the headless cherub out of her mind. After she had first seen it, it had formed part of her dream. Sometimes she would see its head without the body, at others the severed neck on its little shoulders, like some Greek statue mutilated by centuries of passing time. “Kids!” she said to herself. She saw in her mind’s eye the placard: ‘Welcome home — you bitch.’ “Goddamn kids,” she said again.

  The rain was coming down hard and she hurried up the drive. Penny met her at the door.

  “I’ll take Sophie,” she said. Her face was guileless. There was no satisfaction about being right, but Rachel’s anger, mixed with the shock of readmitting something unpleasant to her conscious mind that had been relegated to her subconscious, caused her to flare up.

  “For Christ’s sake, get on with your work!” she said.

  “I’ve finished.”

  “Finished?” Rachel’s voice rose. “You’ve hardly started. What about my bathroom?”

  “I’ve done it.”

  “That’s a lie. It wasn’t done before I left with Sophie and you haven’t had time.”

  A confused look came over the girl’s face. “I thought ...”

  “You’re always lying! You say you’ve done things and you haven’t. You say you’ll do them and you never do.”

  Penny burst into tears and ran into the back of the house, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Rachel took Sophie upstairs and put her in her cot. When she came down again Penny had he
r coat on. “Where are you going?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Aren’t you feeling well?” A chill came over Rachel. “You mean you don’t want to work here any more?”

  The eyes were puffy and tears still shone on the round, doughy cheeks. “You don’t want me here.”

  Rachel had a picture of the house empty by day as well as by night and she felt panic rise. “Why do you think that?”

  “The way you spoke to me.”

  “Look, let’s go and have a cup of coffee.” She put her arm through Penny’s. “I’m sorry. Don’t take any notice of me. I get like this. I guess it’s being on my own for the first time.”

  They went into the kitchen and she made them a cup of coffee and induced Penny to take her coat off and put her apron back on. By the time they had finished the coffee they were smiling at each other and a new understanding of their needs had become apparent: Rachel needed Penny just as much as Penny needed Sophie.

  “All forgotten?” Rachel said. She was talking as she would have talked to a child.

  Penny nodded, smiling through eyes that still glistened.

  “Don’t take any notice of me when I talk like that, because I don’t mean it,” Rachel said. “Now, are we friends again?”

  “Yes. Except — ”

  “Except what?”

  “What you said about me fibbing and all. Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I can’t help it. Sometimes I — I forget.”

  “We all do.”

  The dog began to bark and she looked out of the window. It was the postman. Franco ran down the drive to meet him and then lay at his feet and rolled over. The postman bent down and tickled his stomach. So much for the great guard-dog, Rachel thought as she fetched the mail. There was another letter from Bill.

  She went to his room to savour it in isolation, but it did not cheer her as she had hoped. The screen-play was going slower than he had expected. He and Talini were living comfortably enough in their cabin surrounded by great redwoods, their only communication with the outside world being visits from the occasional tradesman. But Talini was proving a difficult collaborator and scene after scene had to be reworked. “So it looks now as though we will be here another month at least,” he had written. “By that time the damn thing should either be finished or we’ll be at each other’s throats.”

  6

  As the days shortened and winter tightened its grip on the old kingdom of the South Saxons, and light snow powdered the tops of the Downs where once only the iron-workers and the charcoal-burners had lived their fearful lives, her fears began to be concentrated on one particular time: when she switched off the light and tried to compose herself to sleep. She was able to get through the days and even the early evenings. The house then was full of the noise of Sophie and radio and television and, even though it was isolated in its forest clearing, she had an impression of people and bustle and things happening around her. Sometimes she watched television until the Epilogue before facing the staircase and the still rooms upstairs.

  For two and three nights together she would go to sleep quickly, her book falling on to her chest, perhaps even with the light still on, and wake the following morning after a dreamless night. On others she would find it difficult to sleep at all and, once having dropped off, would wake at three or four in the morning, her mind filled with the just-out-of-reach horrors of dreams she could not recall. She would lie awake listening to the night noises, the creakings and groanings of the house, and she would tell herself that they were all explicable, that they were caused by the contraction of timbers in the roof. Sometimes she would hear the shriek of an owl or the bark of a fox or the scream of a wild animal dying violently, and she would tell herself that these, too, were natural. But there were other noises close to the house: scrapings and scratchings for which she had no explanation. They could not be caused by Franco because he was in his basket. They sounded like claws on wire or someone rubbing a hedgehog against fine mesh. She knew of no circumstances which could cause such noises — but all the time, in the back of her mind, she was remembering the cat.

  Often, lying in the big hard bed, she would long for Sophie to wake and cry so that she could pick her up and talk to her and comfort her. But Sophie did all her crying during the day and slept at night like the dead. There was one simple way, Rachel knew, to overcome her dread of the night, and that was to take two sleeping-pills and anaesthetise herself until dawn. But it was the one thing she could not do, for she also knew, from the infrequent times she had taken pills before, that she became totally unconscious and would never hear her child if she was in distress.

  And so she tried the only other method: physical exhaustion during the day, followed by alcohol in the evening. She would help Penny in the house, she would go for walks whenever the weather was good enough. She even began to use Bill’s exercise bike, which he had bought when he thought his weight was going up; anything, as long as it made her tired. In the evening she would have a couple of whiskies and a glass of wine or two with her supper, and a whisky before she went to bed, which often sent her to sleep quickly. But at other times it had the effect of waking her with a full bladder in the early hours of the morning, thereby defeating its purpose.

  It was on one of her walks that she went to see Alec Webb. She had been feeling guilty about him, but his cottage lay at the end of a narrow, muddy track closed to cars and on which it was impossible to wheel the pram. On a day of light drizzle she left the baby with Penny and went through the woods to the cottage. She found it in darkness. For a moment she thought he might be out, then she noticed that the front door was open. It was more isolated than her own house, a small thatched cottage built at the end of the eighteenth century to house labourers, which in the twentieth century had become ‘period’ and expensive. It was beautifully kept, the garden was neat, the climbing roses still had a few flowers and despite the fact that it was winter the lawn in front looked as though it had been newly cut.

  She banged on the knocker. “Are you there, Alec? It’s me, Rachel.”

  He came to the door, looking pleased. “Come away in, as my madam would have said.” She gave her cheek to be kissed, remembering that Alec’s wife, Mary, had been Scottish. He led her into the sitting-room, switched on the lights and drew the curtains. “That’s better,” he said. “Bloody day, isn’t it? Now, what’s it going to be, tea or a glass of wine? I’ve just been bottling some rather good rose. First-growth Lexton.”

  “That’s no contest,” she said. “I’ll have the wine.”

  “Good. Been looking for an excuse to get stuck into it myself.” He bustled out on his short, jockey’s legs. The room was spotless. It was chintzy, with old beams, some good pieces of furniture and a few horse-brasses on the sides of the fireplace.

  He came back with a bottle and two glasses. “Tastes rather peach-flavoured. What was it Thurber said? ‘A naive domestic burgundy?’ Well, this is a naive domestic rose and you will certainly be surprised by its presumption because I reckon it’s stronger than normal wines.”

  He held the wine up to the light, swirled it in the glass and said, “It’s got a good colour. I’ve often regretted that I didn’t discover wine-making when my madam was alive. I think she would have enjoyed making the hedgerow wines.” The light struck his patchwork face and his rigid glass eye and again Rachel experienced the slight shock of his appearance.

  “What’s the news?” he said, sitting in an armchair opposite her. They talked about the weather and Bill and village topics for some minutes while he fidgeted with the fire, which was smouldering, and which he finally blew into life with a pair of bellows. He said, “I hear you’ve got young Penny Mason working for you. I know her from Addiscombe. They’re a good family. Now, how’s the leg?”

  “So-so.” Then she said: “Alec, do you know anything about cats?”

  He laughed, his good eye crinkling up, the glass one staring fixedly at her. “Vets are supposed to know something about cats.”
>
  “You remember I told you the accident happened because I swerved for a cat?”

  “Yes, it was that feral cat, wasn’t it? Curious thing is, I’ve never seen it.”

  “You couldn’t miss it. It’s bigger than an ordinary cat. And it has a wide face with marks on its forehead. Sort of battered looking. Very dark fur, almost black, but not quite. You can see darker rings on its tail.”

  The intensity with which she spoke removed the smile from his face. “What about it?” he said.

  “All sorts of things. I think the car hit it, Alec. I think I’ve damaged it in some way. It’s limping.”

  “That’s possible. Is that what’s worrying you?”

  “Not only that. It’s just that it seems to be haunting me. I saw it the day I came back from hospital. And it’s been around the house two or three times. Celia James has seen it in the drive. She didn’t know what cat it was, of course, but I did. It’s been after the trash. And it’s been killing things on the lawn. I’ve found bones and fur.”

  “We used to have cats when Mary was alive,” he said. “And a couple of dogs. But now ...” He waved a dismissive hand. “Odd creatures, cats. Did some research on them at one time. I was going to write a paper, but I never got around to it. They have a very highly-developed brain. Strangely enough, it’s basically the same as ours. The only really big difference is that we have larger frontal lobes, memory areas and the part that controls speech: the parts in what’s called the neocortex. Don’t let the word scare you — it means the part of the brain that has developed more recently. But the old part, the more primitive part, is practically the same in cats and in humans. For instance, the area that controls movement and posture and balance. The really odd thing is that the limbic area, which is the centre for emotions and sensations like sex and rage and pain, pleasure and hunger and fear and so on, is practically identical. So when people talk about anthropomorphism — you know what that is?”

  She nodded. “Giving animals human attributes.”