BIG CAT: And Other Stories

by Gwyneth Jones

  Bel sighed.

  “The numinous? What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t believe in any kind of magic, so-called,” said the farmer. “But what if there are strange forces behind what’s happened to us? Does it all have to be evil and chaos? Couldn’t there be a higher power at work?”

  “I heard it was the blind greed of global capitalism, myself,” said Sage. “Tris, if you want to be a Supernaturalist Pagan that’s fine. But if someone killed a wolf, we’re worried, and for good reason.”

  “So am I,” said Tristan, avoiding the Minister’s eyes.

  They stood up. Tall Sage, blue-eyed and yellow-blond without his masks – as some Cornish are, where the Vikings left their mark – towered over Tris and Bel. But Steve Pender had used to be a gangling, antisocial and smack-addicted giant teen, when the Venning couple were already adults: tragic, maybe even noble. Their wary deference was disconcerting him. So were the lies.

  “Well, it’s a mystery. I don’t know what more to say, right now.”

  “When we found the body was gone we tried to call you, but we couldn’t get through—”

  “Tha’s okay… I’ll get onto Wolfwatch. Maybe they’re missing a wolf an’ haven’t told anyone. If not, I’ll ask them to do a quiet head-count, leaving your version out of it. We’ll be at Eval’s for now, if you want to tell me anything more. How’s he been, anyway?”

  Bel shrugged. “Not too good, not too bad; Grace sees most of him. Look, forget that hired wreck. We’ll drive you in the Land Rover.”

  “Nah, save your charge, we’re fine.”

  Fiorinda had stayed on the track with Demzel. The breeze was very cold. Red curls escaped her hood and slapped her around the face; storm-cloud taffeta skirts buffeted her freezing knees, trying to escape into the sky. Demzel, a girl of about twelve, proffered a school notebook with hearts and guitars drawn on the cover, into which she had pasted pictures of Fiorinda. “Will you sign it?”

  “Of course I will.”

  The van had no heating – and no Wolfwatch clearance, so the visitors took the long way round, with three cans of stinky highly flammable fluid sloshing at their backs (to avoid them getting stranded). Sage drove. Fiorinda buried her nose in an aged pamphlet she’d found on the bookstall at Paddington: How Radio Really Works.

  “I saw a chest freezer in the back of their old dairy, with a padlock on it. Why didn’t they stick the wolf in there?”

  “Maybe they thought you’d prefer your meat fresh… Or didn’t want to sacrifice their stash of well-aged supermarket ice cream. What d’you think of the Beast of Bodmin story?”

  “Nothing. If there were big cat traces on the moor, even a hint of a population of one, I’d never have got the wolves released. I’ve no idea why they made that up. And why call me on the Whitehall number?”

  “To be sure everything was on the record?”

  He can drive, she thought, covertly watching the tight set of the skull’s grin. He has just enough fingers. Obviously it hurts, in this damp and cold, but better say nothing. Don’t treat him like a fucking toddler.

  “I wondered. Are Tris and Bel brother and sister?”

  Long pause. “Not e’xac’ly. Different mothers, each of whom took off years ago. When their evil old bastard dad died he’d left the farm to Tris. Didn’t leave Bel a penny and she had nowhere to go. So they got married.

  “By common law, I suppose. Was that about twelve years ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does their little girl know?”

  The skull’s blunt profile, already disapproving, switched to primly affronted. “Tha’s a question I never happen to have asked.”

  “Huh,” said Fiorinda. “These Wuthering Heights types think I look so weird, but really I’d fit right in… Demzel asked me did I ever see my father. I think she was cadging for his autograph.”

  Fiorinda’s father was an evil old bastard rock god of the worst kind, and the less said about him the better.

  The sunken lanes were a high-walled labyrinth, the petrol engine hideously loud. Sage expected fuel-jackers, and wondered which giving-him-hell fist he should use if it came to violence. Why was he unarmed? Because Ax hated guns? Seen enough of them in Yorkshire? Or was it idiotic, but this is England! denial? I’m the one who’s supposed to be out of control around here, fuck it. Not the whole fucking world—

  “Why are you reading that, my brat? You hate telecoms.”

  Fiorinda’s phones had died like flies before anyone started sawing the masts down. She lost them, dropped them, they fell in the bath, they were left behind and stolen from dressing rooms; crushed by taxis.

  “Know thine enemy.”

  “Wolves aren’t alien. They’re coming back all over Europe, of their own accord. The last wolf died in England less than three hundred years ago. Big cats haven’t been native to Britain since the Pleistocene.”

  “Now you sound like a right Green Nazi.”

  “Don’t forget the hygienic disposal of old barren ewes… The last time I was in Cornwall – ’cept when I took you and Ax to Tyller Pystri, and then I looked neither right nor left – I was slaughtering livestock for the cameras. There’s bugger all you can do for an industrial dairy cow that hasn’t been milked for days and is dying in agony, except kill her fast. And what I saw was nothing compared to other counties. Fucking hecatombs, foul huge pits heaving with dead battery chickens—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Fiorinda, eyes on her interesting pamphlet. “Heart of Darkness, Utopian Revolution Goes Straight To Shit As Usual. Mistah Kurtz, he dead… Been there. Done that, got the teeshirt. Years ago.”

  “’Course you have. Okay, I’ll stop whinging… Except my Mistah Kurtz isn’t dead yet. I’m taking you to meet him.”

  The little van fought its way up a steep hill in first gear, bucking as if it planned to fall off backwards. Sage stopped at the crest, and there was Bodmin Moor again. They got out into the wind to stare at an excrescence that had appeared in the cusp of the next hills, like an erstwhile London property developers’ poster child.

  “There it is. What d’you think?”

  “Not sure… If your friends are up to something, I don’t know what. If their alleged Big Cat incident was an anti-wolves protest, why’d they let the alleged cat meat disappear?”

  “They couldn’t really kill a wolf, they wouldn’t dare. There never was a dead wolf, trust me on that. I meant, that’s Eval’s place.”

  “Good. And now I’m driving. You can ride er, shotgun.”

  Let ’em call me gun crazy, he thought: I’m travelling armed in future.

  “I’m not arguing… Listen, d’you hear another engine?”

  “Nah,” said Fiorinda. “It’s the baying of an enormous hound.”

  “That was Dartmoor.”

  Of the Castle of the Stricken King, and What Befell There

  Eval’s place was a palace: a designer blockhouse set on high, looking south towards the Channel. The Lord of this Manor (he’d bought the title, with the land – he told Fiorinda this immediately) watched over the wastes from a Stephen Hawking-type throne, where he sprawled half-encircled by a wall of screens, including a bank dedicated to Wolfwatch, and many expensive satellite feeds. He wore his hair long, with a feathery brown beard; a Guernsey sweater and box-fresh dark blue jeans that drowned his stick-legs. His feet were soft and bare, his hands smooth and pale. He already knew about the big cat and the dead wolf: but refused to reveal his sources, and became incensed when Sage pressed the point—

  At least it gave the former bandmates a topic of conversation. Maybe Fiorinda should slip away and interrogate the womenfolk. Since Eval didn’t seem to keep any, she interrogated the hall itself. On either side of the screen array, clotted falls of silver and black velvet covered towering picture windows (she sneaked a look behind the curtains, but the rain had begun again, and the view was dismal). Two enormous Steinways stood on a dais, surrounded by keyboards of varying provenance. The inner walls were a slaug
hter of tropical hardwood; the floor a massacre of coloured marbles. The atmosphere, however, was cold, stale, and laced with domestic stinks. In a great hearth of serpentine stone heaps of bin-bags festered, oozing ichor of rot. More bags cluttered the music stage; fallen over and disgorging old newsprint.

  Décor and housekeeping both by Spinal Tap, she decided, a judgement on Eval maybe not in the best of taste. Finally she settled on a low-slung leather chair designed purely to be looked at, and hid behind her Radio pamphlet. She was hungry and thirsty, but determined not to snap first. I’ll get my crystal set going, and a posse of radio hams will come crackling to the rescue—

  Eval was watching her, the whole time.

  “Why the fuck would I have a spy camera in Smallstones yard? What d’you think I am, a Peeping Tom?”

  “I never said in their yard, Ev—”

  “But on Tris’ manor, you did. I don’t fuckin trespass.” Eval spun his wheels, turning on Fiorinda. “Hey, Rufus O’Niall’s kid. The rock and roll queen of our Counterculture. How old are you now? Still jailbait?”

  “If you don’t know,” said Fiorinda, “you can easily find out.”

  “Am I being offensive? So sorry. I’m only surprised at the boss here taking your dirty dad’s leavings.”

  “I’m not offended. You’re probably overdue your happy pills, poor man. Or your potty.”

  “Drop it, Ev,” suggested the Minister. “You’re not up to her weight.”

  Eval stared at the young girl: who stared back with calm grey eyes, icily compassionate, until he gave up and spun his back to her.

  “I’ll tell you what happened. Simple: some bugger had killed a wolf, ran it down, prob’ly. Bel and Tris took it on themselves to contact you, to ward off any trouble—”

  “And then the body disappeared.”

  “Tris has decided to keep it for the pelt… Only kidding. Some other bugger found out, an’ made it disappear to keep the death quiet.”

  The queen and her knight exchanged a glance. “That sounds stupid, but plausible,” remarked Sage. “So there was a dead wolf? You saw it?”

  Eval turned his attention to a red dot that had appeared, crossing the dusk of one of his screens. Someone was coming up the drive on an electric bicycle. “That’s our dinner. I better make the tea. Don’t offer to help, girlie. He knows. I don’t let anyone help me in my kitchen.” The chair whizzed away, the doors of the hall opening silently before it. Eval’s cracked voice came back to them—

  “Sorry, I don’t keep alcohol in the house.”

  It was the local vicar who’d arrived, a youngish middle-aged woman in a dog collar; clerical black jumper and trousers under her bright red cagoule. The Green Man hung on the silver cross she wore, leaves and tendrils binding his brow, and spilling from his mouth – no surprise there. Half the Church of England seemed to have converted to some variety of Paganism recently (or else fled to the last redoubt of Rome). She’d brought pizza in a padded bag, and was setting out a meal for three in the palace kitchens. Eval sat enthroned off to the side, staring at his kitchen screen array, and sucking on a closed beaker. The vicar greeted Sage with friendly reserve, and looked on Fiorinda with great interest.

  “I’m Grace,” she said, “Grace Elderflower, Vicar of this parish, and as much of an able-companion as Eval will accept, apart from his bandmates. She offered her hand, which Fiorinda shook. “Very pleased to meet you Fiorinda. Sage and I are old friends, of course.”

  “I won’t join you,” said Eval, without looking round. “Pizza doesn’t suit my digestion. I ordered it for Mr Hands-free.”

  The room was a temple of shiny gadgets, half the size of the great hall, and overheated instead of cold; but not so smelly. Sage, Fiorinda and the vicar ate pizza and drank tea, while Eval slurped his pap and talked at his screens, saving them from the burden of conversation.

  “There’s never anything to see on fucking Wolfwatch. The pack knows where all the cams are, they’re not dumb. The techies show you a bunch of implants moving around, little green fairies on a grid, like here they all are, everything’s fine, an’ mostly that’s all you get. Load of crap. But I’d like to see them take that big cat down! I’ve set up an alert so I won’t miss it. Hope you like the pizza kiddie. Course you do, all kiddies like pizza.”

  “It’s okay. The mozzarella’s a bit strange.”

  “What d’you fucking expect, princess? This isn’t London.”

  “I do my best,” said the vicar. “But we have no buffalo milk, I’m afraid. I brought Coca Cola tonight though, the genuine article.” She produced a two litre bottle, from another padded bag. “It’s so exciting to meet you, Fiorinda. And I see another Aoxomoxoa teeshirt for me to read!” Grace smiled archly. “It’s a hobby of mine. May I ask if you truly believe women are the better form of human beings, Sage?”

  “Innately, yeah. Allowing that innate don’t always mean expressed.”

  Sage had left his fleece in the hall. The message on his current terrible teeshirt said there’s no such thing as an alpha male, with a large Greek letter, β for beta, centred above this pearl of wisdom.

  “Very true… But why would women want to be better? For our own protection, I’m sure most of us would prefer to see moral equality.”

  I could snap your neck, he thought. This minute, with my big ugly bare hands. I happen to know that for sure, because I’ve done it: recently, in Yorkshire, tho’ not to a woman. But the taint’s in us all.

  “It’s just a teeshirt. Really I’m more into gender fluidity, me.”

  Grace smiled and shook her head. “It’s not a joking matter, Sage.”

  Eval sniggered. “Oooh, yeah! Bring it on! Aoxomoxoa and Mr Cock-Sucking Holier Than Thou Ax Preston! I love it!”

  “EVAL! There is NO EXCUSE for that language! And in front of the saviours of our country!”

  The invalid subsided, blushing crimson. “Sorry, vicar.”

  “It’s the language of hate. I know you don’t mean it. But speak the words of hate, and you’ll have hate in your heart!”

  Eval hid his eyes. “I’m tired.” He was suddenly, visibly trembling.

  On the Wolfwatch cams, in papery infra-red twilight, the breeze stirred only shadows. “Let’s clear out,” suggested Fiorinda. “I’ll help.”

  The Reverend Grace knew her way around. She rinsed the tea things, opened a cupboard that held the bins, and briskly cleaned and sorted what she found: transferring food scraps to a compost box. “Sage will put Eval to bed… they all do that when they come down, to give Eval a break from the professionals. He’s a competent nurse, despite his hands, and the violence he claims is his essential nature. Please don’t blame Eval for the little outburst, by the way. He tires easily, and he’s often in pain. Will you help me take the recycling out? We have to carry it to the lane; he won’t let the truck through his gates. He goes into fits if I try to clear the great hall, I don’t know how he lives with the smell in there.”

  “What the fuck’s gonna become of me? Eval propped his head in his hands and wept. “When the money’s worth nothing an’ the supplies run out? I’ll be a crawling legless beggar.”

  “You’re worn out. Let’s get you into bed.”

  It was Eval Jackson who’d introduced young Steve Pender and his girlfriend to street-drug heroin, long ago. Now Sage was clean, Mary the ex-girlfriend (presumably) was clean, and medical morphine was Eval’s inseparable best friend. You’ll never be a legless beggar, Ev, he thought. You need health and strength for that life, poor bastard.

  His hands had recovered from the cold driving, they were obedient again. He dealt with a sloppy bowel movement (would he have been so keen to take over the band, if he’d known he’d be literally handling the man’s shit for years after—?): laid out the bedtime dose, without which Eval would have no rest, and stooped over his former colleague, using his height and muscle with intent. “By the way, say another word to Fiorinda about her dad, and you will get hurt. So help me.”

  “F
uck off. Why’d you bring her here? You know what I’m like.”

  “I’ve got reasons.” Sage gently sponged slack, pale flesh, deftly switching warm towels around, and applied the night cream.

  “Yeah. Like taking lovely kiddie-tits off our good king Axis.”

  “Nothen of the sort.”

  “Like hell. This is embarrassing, but did you know you’ve come in your pants, when I mentioned her tits? You’re dripping all over me.”

  “You underestimate your own charms, Eval.”

  Die-hard, first generation Heads fans were convinced that Eval had long since recovered from his injuries. They’d taken the death of Luke Moy, Ev’s replacement, who’d succumbed to viral pneumonia, as proof that the lost leader was about to return, and restore the true kingdom… Not so. The reality was this faintly stinking, hot-house room, and this wasted, failing body: prepared for the night, with infinite precaution.

  “Yer stupid mask never fools me,” gibbered the manikin. “I seen you looking! Ax better watch out, hadn’t he? Because as I should know, what Steve Pender wants, he takes.”

  Arranging the supports that would keep blood-pooling and chafing at bay, Sage wondered why Ev tried so hard to annoy (it always happened) the most volatile of his big strong amateur carers. He clung so feebly and tenaciously to life, why take the risk of an inadvertent assisted suicide?

  “What I want is for you to get a good night’s sleep, mate. But since we’re talking, d’you mind telling me where and when you saw the dead wolf? If you haven’t had a cam installed at Tris and Bel’s?”

  “It’s in Recluse Wood,” said Eval, closing his eyes and extending his pallid arm. “I want to go, but they won’t take me. Have a look.”

  A free gift, always suspect. Sage applied the popper gently, and Eval flew off to dreamland. Goodnight, me old hellraiser.

  He went down to the great hall, found his fleece and checked the pockets. The analogue film roll was gone. Of course.

  The palace guest rooms were small, cold, and expensively but meanly furnished. Fiorinda and her tapestry bag possessed a cupboard-sized fancy bathroom, a water bed with faux-fur trappings and silk sheets; a screen array she couldn’t control, automated windows she couldn’t open, curtains she couldn’t close, and a wall of sliding door closets that she couldn’t work out how to slide. The naked windows pleased her for a while – the sky was black and starry – but this entertainment palled. She could see the other occupied guest room, marked on a house plan screen, so she went to visit Sage.