The Cat

by Pat Gray

  Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

  THE CAT

  Pat Gray was born in Belfast in 1953 and studied Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. His first novel, Mr Narrator was published by Dedalus in 1989. In June, 1995 he won the WoSo I wrapped him up in a sycamore leaf rld One Day Novel cup, by writing a 20,000 word novel, The Political Map of the Heart in 24 hours at the Groucho club in London’s Soho. His third novel, The Cat, was published by Dedalus in 1997. A revised and extended version of the Political Map of the Heart was published by Dedalus in 2001. His non-fiction work includes Public Policy Disasters in Western Europe (published in 1998 with Paul t’Hart).

  He works for London Metropolitan University and manages various overseas projects on their behalf.

  For my mother and father

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

  Dedication

  Chapter One The Professor Dies

  Chapter Two The Cat Sings too Loudly

  Chapter Three The Mouse Disappears

  Chapter Four Talking Radio with Mrs Digby

  Chapter Five Unrequited Love

  Chapter Six Betrayals

  Chapter Seven A New Beginning

  Chapter Eight Rest and Peace

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE PROFESSOR DIES

  ‘Night snack,’ murmured the Professor, reaching for a cherry cheesecake. The light from inside the fridge illuminated a path across a kitchen floor which was cluttered with wellington boots and discarded pages from ‘The Guardian’. The Professor’s eyes opened a little, and his stomach rumbled as his glance flicked back and forth. The noise of rain filled the kitchen, spattering against the windows, driven by the wind.

  The cheesecake seemed to glow, luminous and fantastic, as the Professor skilfully slid it off its plate and cradled it in his large hand to prevent it breaking apart as his mouth closed in upon it. A look of childish pleasure crossed the Professor’s face, then a look of guilt, then he rammed the entire cheesecake into his mouth and began to eat.

  A few moments later the Professor became aware of a noise outside the back door, a noise like a whisper, yet not a whisper, like the sighing of the wind, yet not the wind, almost a conversation, but not a conversation in any known language. Quickly he licked his lips and then the plate, and leant his head towards the noise, while his left hand, seemingly independently, reached into the fridge and seized a strawberry mousse. Then the Professor peered sleepily into the darkness outside. He could barely see the huge oaks at the bottom of the garden, marking off the point where the flowerbeds merged with the very edge of the green belt. He pressed his face lightly against the cold glass for a moment. The summit of Pilberry Hill was just visible, marked by a trail of headlamps leaving the M25, their stray beams crossing in the night sky, like searchlights. The Professor listened carefully while his other hand tore the foil lid from the mousse, found a large spoon amongst some half-completed washing up, and inserted it deep into the open carton.

  ‘You idiot Rat!’ shouted the Mouse, picking himself up off the wet concrete outside the back door, just below the Professor’s line of vision, and below the point where the cat-flap tapped gently in the wind.

  ‘It’s just too much you know, Rat, on a night like this.’ The Mouse’s voice was hoarse and his thinning grey fur was covered in mud. He shivered as he nursed a swelling bruise on one pink foot.

  ‘I’d just got up there and you had to MOVE. I’m sorry Rat, but you promised you’d hold me firmly.’

  By contrast to the Mouse, the Rat was resplendent in a complete set of oilskins, sowester and long wading boots, with a rucksack full of woollens strapped to his back. Water streamed off the Rat’s long, bristling snout, and small droplets of moisture teemed from the ends of his whiskers. His eyes glinted with a confident amusement that served only to annoy the Mouse still further.

  ‘Just shut up Mouse, will you. He’ll hear us.’

  ‘I don’t care, I really just don’t care,’ said the Mouse, trying to rub his foot and stand up at the same time, then falling down backwards, painfully, on his tail.

  ‘You’re being hysterical,’ said the Rat, leaning forwards and baring his teeth, which were rather too long and yellow to be attractive.

  ‘Stop it!’ he hissed. The Mouse fell suddenly silent.

  ‘Alright then,’ he muttered.

  ‘Let’s try the fireman’s lift,’ said the Rat, offering two paws to the Mouse, clasped together, so as to lever his friend up to the level of the catflap, which continued banging to and fro, sending small showers of raindrops over the toes of the Professor’s tartan slippers inside. The Mouse placed a pink paw on Rat’s shoulder and hoisted himself up, heart pounding inside his chest, such as it was. Then with some difficulty the Mouse jammed the flap ajar with the stub end of an HB pencil. Silence fell, except for the noise of the wind, and the sound of the Professor’s spoon scraping the last of the strawberry mousse from the bottom of the carton. The Mouse could even see the pattern on the Professor’s tartan slippers quite clearly, and the lino with a blob of cheesecake splattered in the middle and the Professor’s shoulders hunching as he ate. Then the Professor reached again for the fridge. The Mouse held his breath.

  ‘He’s going for the chocolate eclairs, Rat,’ squealed the Mouse, excitedly. The Rat tried to lean forwards and upwards so that he could see through the gap in the cat-flap too. The Mouse’s feet dug into his shoulders and his tail obstructed his vision.

  ‘Stand still, can’t you,’ snapped the Mouse, feeling Rat’s shoulders move beneath him. But then the Professor seemed to lurch suddenly to the left. The Mouse gasped as the packet of eclairs fell to the ground, spreading a delicious, tantalising melange of fresh cream and chocolate across the lino.

  ‘Rat!’ shouted the Mouse urgently. ‘Rat! Something’s wrong!’ The Professor’s hand swept along the counter beside the stove, dislodging jars of marmalade, loaves of bread, the coffee percolator. The Professor’s bulk, like a huge and extraordinary statue of liberty clutching what was left of a chocolate eclair (held high in the air) seemed to teeter above the Mouse, with his face frozen in a look of surprise and agony. Then the whole thing crashed suddenly to the ground with a terrible thud, like the noise the Mouse remembered when the Dog had been hit by a car.

  ‘Oh Rat!’ said the Mouse again, disturbed by the sight of the Professor’s face now lying on its side on the lino, with the whipped cream spread all up one side and into the Professor’s left eye. The other eye stared out glassily at him. The Professor’s lips moved and it seemed to the Mouse that he breathed one word, and the word was ‘Mouse’.

  ‘What’s going on Mouse. Get on with it!’ shouted the Rat from below, easing from foot to foot. ‘What was that noise?’

  ‘The Professor’s dropped,’ said the Mouse.

  ‘Dropped?’ The Rat jumped up to the cat-flap. The Mouse fell backwards into the darkness. The Rat peered in.

  ‘He’s had a coronary,’ he said.

  ‘I know that,’ said the Mouse, struggling to his feet and wiping mud from his tail.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said the Rat, before the Mouse could say anything else. ‘And he’s forgotten to shut the fridge!’

  The Rat swung up into the well lit interior in one practised leap.

  ‘Cornucopia!’ he breathed, trailing a hand through the top of a raspberry gateau, before breaking loose a corner from a slab of cheddar and tossing it down to the waiting Mouse below.

  ‘Get into that one Mousey!’ he shouted, and sniffed his paws expertly.

  But the Mouse was stranded far below on the open expanse of floral lino, his two pink front feet pressed against the bottom of the fridge. The professor’s leg — large and white an
d hairless from the abrasive effects of a lifetime in corduroy – seemed to the Mouse the only available means of gaining the higher ground. The leg lay against the fridge door, with one foot, now slipperless, against the morning milk on the lowest rack inside, a tempting if unsavoury ladder to better things. The Mouse hesitated, unsure of the decency of scrambling over the dead. Looking up, he could see the interior of the fridge towering above him, gleaming like a city at night, humming with life, and silhouetted, as if by a spotlight, the figure of Rat now in Arctic clothing, a halo of icy breath crackling around him. And then a large piece of cheese hit Mouse on the head.

  ‘Try some of that Mouse! That’ll put hairs on your chest,’ boomed the Rat’s voice. Then the Mouse’s mind went blank, and pleasantly yellow all over, suffused with a sense of nameless promise.

  ‘Cheddar!’ moaned the Mouse, and scampered straight over the Professor’s leg and up into the cool white interior of the fridge.

  Above, the Rat shovelled some fish out of an open sardine can, chewed a few, and put the rest back. He skidded around in the butter, and nibbled the ends of an unopened packet of diet spaghetti bolognese. Then he opened a can of beer. He put his nose in the can, and took it out again, feeling curiously elevated. He tried to pull the can towards the light, but only succeeded in rolling it over. Beer frothed from the opening, and the Rat plunged his tongue in and drank deeply.

  ‘Pilsner!’ he cried, but by then the Mouse had found the French cheese, and was oblivious to all interruption.

  The Rat seated himself on the edge of the uppermost rack of the fridge, and looked down. Below, the Professsor seemed to have broken his back, and was lying over at an odd angle, like a battleship which had been bombed. It was sad and odd, thought the Rat, and drank more beer, until at length it did not seem so odd that the Professor was no longer moving.

  ‘Hey Mouse, y’know what your problem has always been?’ asked the Rat, who had now slipped over and was lying flat on his back in the butter dish with his tail (curled at the end with pleasure), trailing down through the rack to the level below.

  ‘No. Tell me.’ The Mouse’s voice echoed curiously from inside a large blue stilton.

  ‘You’re not assertive enough. You’re always being told what to do rather than telling.’

  ‘I’m sorry Rat, I know I’m no good,’ said the Mouse. The Brie mixed with the cheddar seemed to have brought on a deep depression. The Mouse felt appallingly guilty.

  ‘But what can I do about it, Rat?’ asked the Mouse. ‘I’m just a useless being Rat. I mean, look at me.’ The Mouse climbed from inside the stilton, smeared from head to toe with blue veined soft British cheese, stumbled and fell. ‘What a pathetic creature I am. No self-control. Absolutely disgusting Rat, come on, you can tell me. Tell me I’m disgusting.’

  ‘You should be proud Mouse, you know. Proud of what you are,’ said the Rat. And then, rather unkindly, ‘Everyone can contribute something to something, no matter how small or useless it is.’ There was a short silence, during which the Mouse appeared to sob or perhaps merely sniff to clear his nose of cheese. The Rat heard him struggle to his feet, and looking down, saw the cheese-sodden Mouse looking up, his tiny black eyes wet, his nose twitching appealingly.

  ‘You really think so, Rat? You really think I can contribute?’ asked the Mouse. The Rat (who hated all forms of sentiment), lying, said ‘Yes’.

  A grey, unnatural dawn broke over the half-timbered opulence of ‘Chez Maupassant’, like the drawing off of a veil, at around 7.30 the next morning. The sky was dull and heavy with rain and soot blown out from the city. The wind faintly carried the noise of cars, and barking dogs and garage doors, and the smell of wet countryside as the lights came on in the upstairs bedroom and the Professor’s wife began her descent to the kitchen.

  ‘Peter!’ she called. A few seconds later, the light came on in the living room downstairs, and the kitchen door opened. ‘Peter,’ cried the voice again, in a different tone. And then there was the sound of running feet and the distant noise of hasty telephoning.

  The Cat stirred at the sound of her voice, his whiskers silently adjusting to the vibrations, the atmosphere, the ambience in the pile carpeted living room, even before he was awake, sending sudden, anxious messages to his brain. The Cat responded to the messages by appearing to remain absolutely as he had been, eyes closed, immobile, sprawled the full length of the old rug in front of the fire in a pose of total and complete relaxation.

  ‘What the devil’s going on,’ thought the Cat, and opened one eye, very slightly, revealing half a corner of a sliver of liquid yellow, and then rolled nonchalantly over on his back and over again, a full 360 degrees so that the eye swept the entire room from floor to ceiling and back, taking in the upside-down image of Mrs Professor hunched in her nightdress, shivering by the black telephone. The Cat jumped up, and landed upright, full square on all fours, yawned and sidled over towards her, stretching.

  ‘Brrrrrrrrrrreakfast,’ he purred. ‘Brrrrrrreakfast,’ and grinned invisibly and ingratiatingly, before jumping into her lap. The only response from Mrs Professor however was to stroke his ear absentmindedly. The Cat sank his claws into her leg and she shoved him off onto the floor.

  ‘Bitch!’ thought the Cat, and stalked to the window, aloof and austere. Outside he could see the Rat supervising the storage of the goods he had stolen from the Professor’s fridge.

  ‘Rat!’ hissed the Cat to himself, and executed a few swift turns to and fro in front of the closed French windows, driven by a surge of anger. ‘Just look at him! What a dog’s breakfast!’

  The Cat pressed his nose to the glass, the hot breath from his nostrils steaming the windowpane, his yellow eyes expressionless. The voice of Rat, high pitched, came faintly through the window.

  ‘No, no, no, the other way!’

  ‘Which way? Make yourself clear!’

  ‘If you’d just listen Mouse …’

  ‘Pathetic,’ sniffed the Cat, and took to throwing himself at the closed kitchen door, until the arrival of the Doctor distracted him.

  ‘Why hullo Sir!’ bellowed the Cat, following the Doctor’s highly polished shoes across the floor. ‘What about some food, eh?’ The kitchen door opened, then slammed shut so fast that the Cat had barely time to jump aside. The Cat’s movements became more and more jerky, and the top end of his tail twitched like a metronome. They had slammed the door on him, and there was something in there. Maybe there had been a side of ham in the kitchen, or a chicken with its giblets in a paper bag in the bin, or perhaps a mackerel with its head still on and its eyes saying ‘Eat me!’, thought the Cat. Just as the door had slammed, he had caught a glimpse of something big on the floor, though he could not be sure that whatever it was could be eaten.

  ‘What a lovely cat,’ said the Doctor, emerging from the kitchen and folding away his stethoscope and locking it with a loud and final click in his medical bag. ‘He’s got lovely eyes, hasn’t he?’

  The Professor’s widow looked down at the Cat.

  The Cat responded by rubbing himself around Mrs Professor’s long, stockinged legs, until his tail stood up rigid in the air.

  ‘He’s not at all shy, is he?’ said the Doctor, slipping the death certificate gently onto the polished dining room table. The Professor’s widow stroked the Cat distractedly, and the Cat rolled over on his back.

  ‘Show her my belly. The women like a good tabby belly,’ thought the Cat. ‘Tickle me. Come on! Get on with it!’ he purred, and tried to attract her attention with his paws, but Mrs Professor kicked him away and the Cat, stung, skulked off behind the sofa. Once there however, he felt oddly empty, and stood up on his hind legs, tearing at the upholstery out of spite.

  ‘Well, I think that should just about do it,’ said the Doctor, hesitating, seeking some reasonable words of comfort.

  ‘The Professor didn’t keep himself in shape,’ said Mrs Professor suddenly, as if relieved of a vow of silence.

  ‘Fat old slob!’ echoed the Cat
.

  ‘He had an unhealthy diet. I kept telling him to eat more sensibly, to eat more Muesli, more whole-meal, and lay off the beer and ice cream, but he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t think about the future. Like a child. He’d just eat and eat and go on eating. Even at night I’d catch him at it.’ Mrs Professor paused, struck by the venom with which she had denounced her dead husband.

  ‘That’s right. Had it coming. Didn’t keep himself fit. Didn’t do any excercise,’ echoed the Cat, leaping onto the back of the sofa and accelerating away, his muscles rippling, to jump free and clear across the living room, onto the armchair, and then to the window-ledge.

  Later, much to the Cat’s disgust, the undertaker’s men came and removed something rather sizeable from the larder. After that there was breakfast for the Cat. He ate at a furious pace, hurling chunks of catfood around the kitchen floor, trying not to growl with the pleasure of it.

  That evening the Mouse and the Rat sat on top of the bin by the kitchen door, the gentle heat from the decomposing contents warming them, and pleasant odours drifting from below. It was a clear night and the air was still with the expectation of Autumn. In the distance they could hear a dog barking, chasing ghostly rabbits in the meadow by the M25.

  The Mouse’s narrow features however were marred by a heavy frown, which piled layer upon layer of grey skin together across his forehead, quite obliterating his eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t do that Mouse, it makes you look so peculiar,’ said the Rat, who had often thought the Mouse could be quite handsome, were he not to have been a mouse, or had he been substantially larger, or taken more care of his appearance.

  ‘Its weird,’ said the Mouse cryptically, to no-one in particular. The Rat ignored him, unwilling to encourage the Mouse in reflection, which – he knew from long experience – would inevitably be gloomy.

  ‘Listen to dog out there. I mean are we going to end up like that, Rat?’ The Mouse spoke. The noise of the dog could be heard, barking excitedly in the long wet grass.