Tamsin

Nine

It’s a good thing Mister Cat liked Julian. I don’t think Julian could have stood it otherwise.

Mister Cat doesn’t like a lot of people. He tolerates just about everyone, but it’s not the same thing, and Julian would have known. But Mister Cat pushed his head into Julian’s face, and did his paws-around-the-neck thing, and actually let Julian drape him around his shoulders, as I’d said he would. I’ve never seen him let anyone do that—I was just saying it to make Julian shut up, and hoping he’d forget. Mister Cat shows off sometimes.

He wasn’t anything like that with Tony—polite but formal, that was about it. But what he really liked to do was sit in the doorway of Tony’s practice room and watch him dance. It didn’t matter if Tony was only doing stretches, or walking around thinking—Mister Cat was perfectly happy to sit there and watch him at it. Tony would close the door when he noticed him, but then the room would get stuffy and he’d have to open it again, and Mister Cat would be back like a shot. Absolutely, totally, utterly fascinated.

Tony wasn’t. It went almost the same way every time—he’d come marching up to me and say something like, “Jenny, is it too much to ask for you to keep that animal away from my studio?”

“He’s not doing anything,” I’d say. “He just loves the way you dance. I’d think you’d be flattered.”

“Well, I’m not. I don’t like being watched. It makes me nervous.”

I’d say, “Interesting career you’re likely to have,” and Tony would get furious and stamp away, yelling, “I mean by cats! I don’t dance for cats!” And I really would try harder to make sure Mister Cat stayed outside or in my room during the day. But I already knew it wouldn’t work. New York or Dorset, Mister Cat goes where he wants to go, and all I’ve ever been able to do is trail along after him. Which is why everything that happened happened, any way you look at it. If Mister Cat hadn’t been so captivated by Tony’s dancing, I don’t know if I’d ever have met Tamsin. Meena thinks it was fated, but I don’t know. You’ll see. Any minute now.

Mister Cat took his own time about exploring his new outdoors. Cars and construction, manholes and dogs and crazies he knew about, but he’d never seen a cow or a chicken or a hay-baler in his life, and he found out fast why foxes are different from city dogs. (Albert was no problem—Albert didn’t notice anything that wasn’t a sheep.) But unlike me, he didn’t waste one minute bitching and moaning and carrying on. I watched him prowling a little farther from the Manor every day, getting used to the whole idea of grass and dirt, sniffing everything and then sitting back and thinking about it. No hurry. He hung out in the dairy a lot, and he climbed trees after squirrels as though he’d been doing it all his life—I only had to help him get down once. The second day out, he was already peeing on things and rubbing against them, to mark them with his own smell. I should have done that.

By the time he’d been in residence a couple of months—say late April or early May—he knew everything there was to know about Stourhead Farm. He didn’t like all of it, either. He might wander all day, but he mostly stayed in at night, though I left my window open for him when the nights started getting warmer. And when he did go out, he’d always wake me up coming back, which he practically never did in New York. Not just by digging down under my blankets and getting as close in as he could, but he kept talking—that sound he makes that isn’t a meow and certainly isn’t a purr, or even that questioning prrrp? that cats do. It’s a rough, really urgent kind of sound—not loud, but specific, that’s the only word I can think of. He only makes it when he’s telling me something important that he already knows I won’t understand. I will later on, but never in time.

So. Early May, and Sally had actually gotten the piano tuned, and even turned up a couple of pupils—sisters, I remember—in Dorchester. She told me that the money wasn’t anything much, “But I need to be teaching again,just a little, just so the farm won’t swallow me up. That’s the one thing I’m afraid of.” She asked me if I felt like coming along for company. “Lydia’s not much more than a beginner, but Sarah’s going to be good. You could listen, or you could go wander and meet me at the car.”

I wandered. Dorchester’s the county seat of Dorset, but it’s still a town, not a real city. But it’s not a Merrye Englande theme park either, even with the bungalows and developments and trailer camps surrounding it. I wandered down High East Street—the main drag, where Sally dropped me off—to where it becomes High West Street and there’s a statue of Thomas Hardy, and I passed red and whitewashed brick houses and pubs, and a church that he could have walked out of yesterday. Narrow side streets, long thin windows with heavy old shutters, doors no higher than the top of my head, flowers absolutely blazing in back gardens, on windowsills. There were a bunch of people taking pictures of the Hardy statue and the County Museum—Tony calls them the Eustacia Vye groupies. They show up with the warm weather, crowding the Hardy Room in the Museum, where they’ve got everything the poor man ever owned, from his chair and his writing desk to his violin. I bought a couple of postcards for Marta and Jake there.

Then I went into a shop and bought a pasty—a little meat pie— and a ginger beer, and ate walking down to look at the River Frome. I got lost, of course, which is really hard to do in Dorchester, and by the time I found my way back to the car Sally was already there, waiting for me. In New York she’d have been scared out of her mind by now—here in Dorchester she was reading an opera score. Dorset really suited her. England suited her. It made me feel lonely suddenly, which I hadn’t felt at all, walking alone.

She drove us out of Dorchester a different way than we’d come in, to show me the chestnut trees flowering along the Walks, and on the way home she took a detour around a hill and a couple of farms to look at pear trees and apple blossoms. That got me, too— she knew detours, she knew shortcuts, she’d been learning all kinds of things I didn’t know anything about. She’d been becoming less my mother and more Sally every minute since we’d been here, and I hadn’t even realized it. I’m not sure if that made me feel more lonely or not. Just more confused, probably.

I do remember that she asked me, not working up to it the way she usually does, but right out, “Jenny, is it better for you? Being here, I mean?”

This is another one of the hard spots to write. It was getting some better, and I knew it—not just because of Mister Cat, but because of Meena and Julian, and Mrs. Abbott, our Form Tutor, and because my room was starting to look the way I wanted it, and maybe the English climate really was doing something for my skin. And because I could think better, lying on my back on the downland, watching the butterflies. Everything was always clearer on the downs.

But I couldn’t tell Sally. I couldn’t, and it’s no good blaming her, whoever I was then. It was me, all right, and damned if I was going to give up the least little advantage of having my mother feel guilty about me being miserable. Because things might be all right just then, but who knew when I might need that edge again? The way I saw it, Sally was the only one ever likely to care what I thought of her, and I wasn’t letting her all the way off the hook until I had to. Meena’s going to be so ashamed of me, but there, I’ve got it down. That’s how it was.

I said, “I’m managing all right.” Flat, no expression, one way or the other—God, I can hear myself right now! But Sally knows me, I always forget how well. She said, “And exactly what does that mean?”

“It means I’m managing. It means I’m okay, don’t worry about me, I’m doing just fine. Okay?”

“Not okay,” Sally said, which she’d never have done back home. “Jenny, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but I almost like it better when you’re throwing fits, bouncing off the walls. Now you’re biding your time about something, and I want you to understand that whatever it is, it’s not going to happen. However things turn out with the farm, we are not going back to New York. Get it out of your head, baby. This is it, this is our home and our family, and if you’re not happy about it, I’m very sorry. Me, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I think you could be, too.” She grinned at me suddenly, a real sidelong flasher that I’d seen on Marta, but never on my own mother. “I’ll tell you, I think you even are at times—happy—when I’m not looking. Am I right?”

I didn’t answer, and I didn’t say a word the rest of the way back to Stourhead Farm. When we got home, I boiled out of the car and went to find Mister Cat, because I wanted to sit outside with him somewhere and do some major brooding. But he wasn’t in the dairy or asleep in my room, so I headed for the east wing and Tony’s studio. I was afraid that had to be it, and it was, and I got there just in time to scoop him up as Tony slung him out the door. I yelled, and Tony yelled back, “Well, I told you what I’d do, I told you, Jenny!” And he banged the door shut, and Mister Cat wriggled out of my arms—I thought the door slam had scared him, because he scratched me hard with a back foot, which he never does. He was down and gone before I even opened my mouth to call.

I caught up with him at the foot of the old stairway. He was just sliding between a couple of loose boards—and ahead of him, through the gap, I saw something flashing up the stairs. It looked gray in the dim light, or maybe gray-blue, and it ran on four feet, not making a sound, and it wasn’t a rat or a mouse or any animal like that, I could tell that much. Whatever it was, I didn’t want Mister Cat going after it, not for a minute. I grabbed, but you might as well grab rain as Mister Cat. He was gone, he was right behind the gray-blue thing, and it halfway turned to meet him, and then I couldn’t see them anymore. I thought I heard Mister Cat make that prrrp? sound once—after that, nothing.

For one wild moment I was tugging and yanking at those boards, to widen the space so I could get through. Then I stopped, because I wasn’t Mister Cat, and I was not going up those dark stairs by myself. With Meena or Tony, okay—even with Julian, I might have done it. Not alone.

For a while I sat there waiting for him, but that got old, so I gave up and started walking away, looking back every ten seconds or so to see if he was following me. He usually does, once he realizes I’m really going, pouncing and darting ahead of me to make it look like his own idea. Not this time. I waited in my room until Evan called me to help Tony set the table for dinner, but Mister Cat didn’t show; and he wasn’t around for the rest of the evening, either. I wasn’t going to worry about him—in New York he’d have been out all night with the Siamese Hussy—so I cleaned up in the kitchen by myself, and I helped Julian with his geography homework, and he helped me with my maths—he is a whiz, just like he told me when we met—and I talked to Meena on the phone for a little, and went to bed early.

I woke up right before Mister Cat came into my room. I’d left the door a little way open, besides the window, so maybe there was a draft moving something. I sat up fast, groping around for my bedside lamp, thinking boggarts and pookas and Hedley Kows. But when I felt Mister Cat in my room, I didn’t bother with the light, not then. I said, “You rotten, miserable cat, you scared the hell out of me! You get your butt on up here right now!”

I slapped the bed hard, and a moment later I felt him landing, heavy and light at the same time, down by my ankles. But instead of walking up to me, the way he always does, he went prrrp?, and in another moment something else landed on the bed. And I can’t describe this properly, because there wasn’t any weight to it—not a thump, not a rustle, not the smallest stir of the blankets. But there was something beside Mister Cat on my bed, and I almost knocked the lamp over turning it on. And the only reason I didn’t scream the whole damn Manor down was that I couldn’t get my breath. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get my breath again.

It was another cat. A long-haired, short-legged, blue-gray cat with deep-green eyes and a wide, pushed-in sort of face—a Persian, for God’s sake. I don’t like Persian cats much, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I could see through it.

Okay, not quite through—it wasn’t really transparent, but almost. Its outlines were a little fuzzy, but Persians look like that anyway. It looked darker beside Mister Cat, lighter when it moved and had my blanket behind it; and when it sat down for a moment to scratch, I lost it altogether in the moonlight shining on the white wall. When Mister Cat nudged it with his shoulder, it opened its mouth and this tiny, tiny, faraway meow came out. Not a real meow. More like an old yellowing memory of a meow.

I was cold. I was so cold that I could feel it in my fingernails. Mister Cat kept prodding that thing toward me, and I kept scooting away, till I was as flat up against those fancy brass spindles as I could get. But it came on, making that little distant cry that didn’t get any louder close to. It had really pretty eyes, but I couldn’t see the lamplight in them, or me, or anything but deep, deep green.

It was a female—anybody could tell that watching Mister Cat fussing and nudging and carrying on around her. I didn’t stop being scared, not with the way her shape wouldn’t stay quite in focus, and the way her… her texture kept shifting, so you couldn’t ever get a real fix on just what color she really was. But I was starting to get curious at the same time I was scared. I didn’t try to touch her, even though she was solid enough for Mister Cat to rub up against. I didn’t want to know what she felt like.

When I finally got my voice, I said to her, “So it was you, huh? You’re the one he chased all over the east wing and up the stairway. Well, you sure must have shown him a good time, that’s all I can say.” She looked straight back at me, and if the rest of her was a little undecided, those eyes weren’t. I didn’t doubt for a minute that she understood what I was saying—better than Mister Cat, even. You tend to think like that when you’ve just been waked up in the middle of the night by two cats, and one of them’s a ghost.

Because that’s what she was, that green-eyed Persian—I never doubted that, either, though I hadn’t ever seen a ghost, or believed in them, or even thought about believing in them. Or thought about cats having ghosts. But it was the only thing she could be—it’s like Sherlock Holmes saying that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left has to be the answer, no matter how weird it is. I almost forgot to be scared, I was so anxious for it to be morning, so I could tell Meena.

Ghost or no ghost, Mister Cat obviously thought his new girlfriend was the greatest thing since the can-opener. He was showing her off to me, purring and crooning like an idiot, waltzing around her on the bed, practically turning somersaults. She seemed to be enjoying it, but I didn’t like seeing him that way—it reminded me too much of the changes in Sally. I said, “Okay, okay, I get the picture, settle down already. I just hope the Siamese Hussy never hears about this, that’s all.”

The Persian came up close to me then, without any prompting from Mister Cat, and she looked right into my eyes. Mister Cat does that all the time, but this was different. Those green eyes were like those stairs to the third floor, but without the boards blocking the way. You could feel yourself leaning, tilting toward them, beginning to climb… only I didn’t want to. No temptation, no hesitation. I shook my head, and I said, “Forget it. I’m tired and I’m going back to sleep. You can stay if you want, I don’t care. Just be quiet, don’t mess around. We’ll talk in the morning, whenever.”

And I did pull the covers up and wrap the pillow around my head and fall asleep again, with a ghost-cat on my bed, and my own cat fussing over her to make a complete fool of himself. I think I was more disgusted with him than I was scared of her. Mister Cat in love is not a pretty sight.

She was gone when I woke, and Mister Cat was snuggled under my arm, just as though he hadn’t spent the night doing God knows what with God knows what. When he saw I was awake, he started running through his usual cool-cat-in-the-morning routine: the long stretch, the tongue-curling yawn, the serious scratch, the careful touch-up wash, and then, finally, it’s the big bright eyes and what’s for breakfast? I just looked at him, the way he looks at me sometimes. I said, “It’s no good, give it up. I know everything.”

But I didn’t, and he knew I didn’t. He came over and bumped his head against my hand, once only, and I said, “All right, but don’t think I’m forgetting,” and we went to see about breakfast.