He stood still, dripping, turned the light off for a moment just to see what it was like and found it oddly better. Fumbling on for a while like this he clonked his head on a branch, and when he flicked the light back on and shone it round, realised he didn’t know which direction he was facing.
‘Hell-o-o-o!’ he cried. ‘Hell-o-o-o-o-o –’
*
I thought, what the fuck, is it a wild boar or something? What is it? On a night like this? I couldn’t sleep because of the storm, I was reading, then all of a sudden this awful bellowing, just vaguely audible under the ai-weeeee and ai-weeeeeeeeee… and I thought it might be a deer or a cow that was stuck, so I poked my head out of the flap to hear better, but it made no difference. It stopped and started and then came closer, and I thought, that’s a voice. Someone’s in trouble. Oh go away please, go away, but I was all dressed anyway, so I had to put my boots on and stick a tarp over my head and go out with my torch, not far. There was a light bouncing around, more powerful than mine. I went towards it and the voice roared again. Oh no, I thought, then there was a great flash far above in the sky, and a terrible rushing swept through the wood; then a sound like a monster sighing, and a detonation. Another.
Trees, falling, one so close I felt it in the earth under my feet.
The light bobbed towards me. I saw a big bewildered face staring out of a hood, a fierce kind of a stare as if someone had just said something very shocking, or a portal into the ultimate had just opened up before his eyes. The cat man.
‘This way!’ he yelled, and he grabbed my arm.
‘What?’
‘Come on!’
There was such urgency that I just went with him. He was like Lassie leading me to the injured child. But he was hopeless, blundering about like a bear, and I realised we were going deeper and deeper into the wood.
‘Where are we going?’ I shouted.
‘My house!’ he yelled.
‘Stop!’
He pulled me.
‘Stop! Stop!’
He stopped.
‘It’s that way,’ I said, and we turned round.
There was a huge roaring fire, and all these cats sitting in front of it out of the storm.
‘Sit there!’ he said, pointing to the settee.
It was as if he was telling me off for something and I didn’t know what I’d done or why I was here. ‘What?’ I said.
He got out of his wellies, scowling down. His hair was on end.
‘Stay on there,’ he said. ‘Don’t go messing about with anything.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Why am I here?’
He went out. I squeezed onto the end of the settee, leaving a safe distance between me and a big spiky tabby that didn’t look too friendly. The cat ignored me. Cat man shambled back in and tossed me a blanket. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, ‘wait out the storm. That’s no night to be out. Keep an eye on the fire. Keep the guard on.’
With that, he stomped off upstairs and turned off all the lights. A door closed.
I didn’t even hear him moving about upstairs, just silence.
I felt uneasy, scared. Of him. He was grim, unpredictable. What if he tried anything on? Stay on there? Don’t go messing about with anything? As if I just barged in on him. I was kidnapped. Doesn’t want me poking around, fair enough, but surely I’m allowed to get myself a drink of water? What’s he on about? I could just go straight back home now. But the fire and the cats – but is he OK? I mean, is he all there? The tarp had kept me pretty dry but I was freezing and it took a while to thaw out. I listened for a long time but there was no sound of movement. The coffee table had a patina of round overlapping coffee circles in every shade of brown. On it stood a dead candle without a wick, a mega box of matches, a Coney Island coaster and a lump of pitted black rock the size of a misshapen tennis ball. I gave him another half hour then sneaked over to the sparse, cold, strictly functional kitchen. I rinsed a mug from the draining board, a big brown-stained thing with a fifties-style cowboy twirling a yellow lasso on its side, tried to clean up the inside a bit but the staining was indelible. The water was tepid because I didn’t leave the tap running long enough so as not to make a noise. I’d have loved a cup of tea but I couldn’t risk the noise of that either, kettles and all and having to look for a spoon, so I stood in the hall drinking tepid water and feeling the stone cold radiators for qualms of heat. The house was freezing except for where the fire was. I wanted to have another look at the room with all the old stuff I’d seen before. I tiptoed to the back of the house, the door was ajar, and I found the light straight away. The switch clicked loudly. I froze. The big bad wolf did not stir. I opened a drawer in a sideboard and saw again the little kid gloves, the spindly gilt brooch and the old binoculars. The drawer underneath held a huge fat brown envelope full of snapshots, black and white and colour. Warily, I withdrew a handful. That woman must be his mother. My God, is that him, surely not. Children. Who? A Present From Whitby. And here, I think it’s him, something of the look of him there only all smoothed out and fresh? Not smiling, not looking at the camera, young, nice-looking,
