The Posthumous Adventures of Harry Whitaker

by Bobbie Darbyshire

  Returning up and over to the porch, I watched as this new day grew busy with human activity. Occupants of the neighbouring flats were leaving for work, and the postman came by. When I sailed in at last through the keyhole, I could almost say I was happy at the prospect of spending an eternity tied to this home that I love. What relief to have made up my mind, to be finally settled and safe.

  Today though I’m sad because these are my last hours with Henry V. Mrs Butley was on the telephone to Cat Rescue about ‘Tommy’ this morning, and I gather they’re coming to get him tomorrow. It will be heartbreaking to lose him; I’ve grown used to his company, his feline gift for solitude, his sweet personality. I hope the new occupants will bring me a cat, but no replacement will match up to Henry V.

  Tonight – by my reckoning Thursday – I’m going to stick closely by him. I’m on his shoulder now, one last time, as he negotiates the back fences, surefooted in the dark, and drops to the side street. For a while he dawdles here, sniffing at the wall and the lamppost, perhaps hoping that the woman who made a fuss of him yesterday morning will arrive. I hope so too. I should like to be clasped to her generous breasts once again, to see her painted face softened by the lamplight as she croons, ‘Best puss in all Brighton, how I wish you were mine.’

  But the street remains empty, and Henry is setting off into Kemptown. I’m cheering him on, more than content to have one last tour of this charming locality. He turns right onto St James’s Street and doubles his speed, bowling along as though on a mission, keeping close to the walls and the shop fronts. He’s not on the look-out for prey; I’ve learned that about him. He may chatter at gulls through the house windows and leap at fluttering moths, but the only mouse he’s paid attention to while I’ve been with him practically threw itself at his feet, and he wasn’t much bothered when it ran off again. He shows little interest in fish-and-chip shops either. He’s stuffed full of pet food. No, he’s scouting for human adoration and territorial rivals.

  I’m guessing it’s around ten: the café we just passed was dishing up puddings and coffees to the tables outside, and from an alley comes the inebriated chatter of drinkers milling around a bar. A woman spots Henry and starts making a fuss of him. He rolls on his back and paddles his paws in the air, but her cat-tickling skills are not up to standard and he soon loses interest and sets off again.

  Now he halts, hackles rising, sniffing the air and fine-tuning the angle of his ears. Where’s the enemy? Ah, yes, I see. From a side passageway two eyes glow like little moons. We approach inch by inch, and the other cat begins to complain: a growl that slides up the scale to a descant. Henry pauses for thought before countering with a fine alto. For a while they duet peaceably until, as Henry edges nearer, his adversary ups the ante with a yowl of such savagery and outrage that Henry concedes, retreating as warily as he came, a slow-motion film sequence run in reverse. Before heading off, he recovers his dignity by sniffing then spraying a litter bin, staking his claim.

  Forty yards further on, he slinks beneath a parked car as a gang of youths approach, shrieking and whooping. They don’t see him, they’re soon gone, and he’s off again, more slowly now, pausing to sniff at a dropped take-away, miaowing at a woman who’s putting out her wheelie bin. ‘Shoo,’ she says. ‘Scram.’

  She claps her hands and runs at him, hissing, sending him streaking to the next corner and round it into an alley that leads back to the seafront, and – dear me, what’s the matter? – all at once he is freezing and hissing and doubling in size. I can’t see it. Where’s the danger? And then, oh save me, I see it and hear it, and it isn’t a cat. A snarling fox, sideways on, fluffed up and on the tips of its toes just like Henry but double his size, advances crabwise towards us.

  Run! Run! My afterlife flashes before me: all the dangers and disasters I’ve come through. The fox displays its sharp teeth and emits an unearthly shriek. They’re circling each other, barely two feet apart, each hunch-backed with ears flattened, spitting and making their unsettling noises. Henry howls like a banshee; the fox repeats its ghoulish bark. I’m the only ghost here, and I’m the one who’s spooked. In my terror I’m jumping about all over Henry. Run, I’m telling him, run!

  When I hurl myself at his whiskers, he shakes his head, distracted, mewing, trying to throw me off – and then the world is a blur. The fox lunges for his throat, misses, but sinks its teeth into a back leg and hangs on. Henry screams and lashes out, until at last the fox lets go, and we’re streaking away at astonishing speed, faster than the bicycle ride. I look back – the fox is hot on our heels – Henry is out between the buildings onto Marine Parade, and—

  Wham! what happened? I’m hurtling along towards the pier because – Jesus! – Henry is on a car bonnet, sliding up to the windscreen, and I’m looking into the horrified eyes of the driver. Amid a squeal of brakes and tyre rubber, the car comes to a halt. Henry slithers back down the bonnet, hits the tarmac and lies still.

  Oh no! Sweet cat! What have I done? Don’t be dead, I implore him, bombarding his whiskers, jumping up and down on his nose.

  He shows no sign of life. His hind leg is bloody, ripped by the fox. He must have a smashed skull or internal injuries.

  I look wildly around me, horrified for myself as well as for Henry. Far away to one side of us is sea, far away to the other white-stuccoed facades – and yes! there, just across the road, is my beautiful house, and I stretch out for it, but it’s no use.

  ‘Christ!’ The driver is out of the car, peering at Henry. ‘Lunatic cat,’ he says. ‘Sorry, mate, looks like you’re a goner.’

  He straightens up for a moment, peering across the road at the houses. Then he slides his hands beneath the limp body, lifts it at arm’s length and carries it to the pavement.

  No, I beseech him. The other way. Please.

  It’s useless. He’s laying Henry down against the green seafront railing. He’s sliding back into his car. He’s driving away.

  More cars zip by. Through the railings I can see people on the beach far below, bunched around the glow and smoke of barbecue fires. Others stroll in clusters along Madeira Drive, but no one walks after dark on this no-man’s-land pavement high above them. Poor Henry can’t help me, not any longer. Maybe his spirit is here, silent, invisible, but it’s useless to me. I’m tethered to road kill, stranded midway between the home that I love and the sea that I love, unable to transfer to either.

  As if on cue, my porch leaps into focus in LED light. A curly-headed young man leans carelessly against one of my pillars, a hand in his pocket. With the other he gestures at my front door, while smiling to camera and chatting into a microphone held by a woman with implausibly long, shapely legs. On a parked white van I can make out the lurid purple-and-orange eye of The Reality Channel.

  They are speaking about me, making a programme about me. Oh please, young man, young woman, cameraman, turn your heads and look over here. This is Harold Whittaker’s cat. This is Henry V. Help me, please help me.

  Richard

  ‘I don’t imagine the fuss about Quentin will last,’ Lily said. ‘Reality stars are like Christmas lights. A whole lot of ooh-ah – then the plug’s pulled and they’re back in their boxes.’

  Richard nodded. ‘You’re probably right. My friend Joe says pretty much the same thing.’

  Actually, he was past caring about Quentin. The pub smelled of sweat and suntan oil, and it seemed a long time since he’d had sex. He watched Lily’s mouth move and her fingers play with the beer-mat. It was hard not to imagine her body under the sundress. Slow down, he told himself. Don’t blurt out how you feel. She saw him half as a brother, half-spoken for by Claire.

  They had managed to find a small table in the tiny, crowded bar and were now on their third round of real ale. He was drinking too fast, the pub only served bar snacks, they ought to move on to a restaurant. She’d switched to halves after the first pint and this last time had asked for a shandy.

  Her mouth moved. Her eyes smiled at him. The right one smil
ed more, but the left one, above the birthmark, was more perfectly shaped – very beautiful and solemn and kind.

  ‘The Harry nostalgia will blow over too,’ she was saying. ‘He’ll soon be a has-been, one of those twentieth-century pin-ups that no one mentions much and the teenagers haven’t heard of. Head down, grit your teeth, you’ll get through it. Just think, ten, fifteen years from now, your baby will be proud to have vaguely famous relations.’

  He wished she would stop mentioning the baby. He tried to focus and say something sensible. ‘You must be relieved though – to be out of the limelight yourself.’

  ‘Too right. I’d have hated it. I was telling myself to be brave. It was going to happen – I couldn’t avoid it. Fame was just people, nothing I’m not already used to. I’d begun to wonder if it might work in my favour – help strangers to see past the state of my face. I might even have developed a taste for it.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  ‘Nuh-uh.’ She laughed. ‘I was dreading it, but it shouldn’t be too bad for you. Or not for long anyway. Just be the straightforward, normal person you are, and my guess is they’ll soon lose interest. That Quentin bloke’s brother, that actor bloke’s son – there’ll be no story unless you give them one. People will forget why they recognise you – they’ll think they saw you in a supermarket queue.’

  He swallowed more beer, feeling slow-witted. Drink made her articulate, while his own mouth refused to move. Perhaps briefly she had found him attractive, but the easiness was gone, the sense of brother and sister was evaporating and nothing would come in its place. ‘You’re a straightforward, normal person’ was probably code for ‘Don’t even think about it’.

  He scoured his brain for a new topic. She was smiling at the antics of a bunch of students at the next table, but he felt overwhelmed by their noise. He’d told her already how Harry was using his millions to put his name on a theatre, and there was no more to be said about Quentin.

  She seemed stuck too, tipped back on her stool, looking round at the pub decor. Yellowed newspaper clippings in place of wallpaper, a Victorian penny-slot machine, snipped-off neckties hanging from a beam, and in the midst of it Lily, out of his league, out of his reach.

  They both started speaking.

  ‘Your eyes...’

  ‘Maybe your café could...’

  They stalled.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He was saved by his phone going off. ‘Sorry.’ He pulled it from his pocket. Unknown caller. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Richard Lawton?’

  He knew at once who it was. He was back, slumped on his sofa, necking a can of strong lager, gazing in mesmerised horror at his television screen. ‘Quentin,’ he heard himself say.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Lily.

  ‘Pearl Allen gave me your number because, blimey, we’re brothers. Ain’t that something?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  ‘Can’t get my head round it. Can’t wait to meet you. I meant to ring earlier – been one thing after another. Only just made it to Harry’s solicitors before they closed, then more interviews and nonsense for the show, but long story short, I’m in Brighton, so I was wondering, any chance of a meet up?’

  ‘Well,’ Richard said, ‘I don’t know. You see—’

  ‘Sorry to call so late. I would say tomorrow, but they’ve got me doing a whole heap of stuff in London first thing. Fuck knows when I can next get away. I have wheels tonight, so it’s no problem that you’re over in Worthing.’

  ‘No, yes, I’m...’ He hunched over the phone and lowered his voice. ‘The thing is I’m with someone.’

  Nicely vague, should put him off, and yes, it was working.

  ‘Whoops. Shit. Sorry. Hope I’m not interrupting.’

  Lily’s voice in his other ear. ‘It’s fine. I’d love to meet him. That’s if you don’t mind? I was so nearly part of the story.’

  He could see no way to refuse her. ‘Still, can’t be helped,’ Quentin was saying. ‘Give me a call when you’re—’

  ‘No, let’s do it now.’ Richard stared helplessly up at the line of snipped neckties. Tried to make his voice jolly. ‘Because actually she knows all about it, and we’re in Brighton ourselves.’

  ‘That’s great! Are you sure? Don’t want to intru—’

  ‘Really, it’s fine. Whereabouts are you?’

  ‘At our illustrious father’s front door, just across from the seafront. What a brilliant house, eh? So, shall I come to you?’

  ‘Okay. It’s no distance. Cut inland to St James’s Street, turn right and keep going a few hundred yards. It’s a corner pub called The Hand in Hand.’

  ‘Wicked. I’ll find it. Don’t go away.’

  ‘Well I never,’ Lily said as Richard ended the call. ‘How exciting. Does he sound nice? When he’s not on the telly, I mean?’

  He nodded dumbly, staring at her shining eyes. The best and most beautiful eyes in the world. Yes, Quentin sounded nice. Very nice. Nice enough to see past the birthmark quite probably. A charismatic, nice heart-throb with half-a-million-quid’s-worth of reality-show prize money burning a hole in his pocket was about to stand side by side with a straightforward, normal bloke with a café in Worthing and a baby on the way, and no prizes for guessing which brother Lily would fall for.

  Harry

  Henry V is breathing. Barely perceptibly his flank rises and falls. I rise and fall anxiously with it, as if I were capable of pushing air into him and drawing it out again. Oh please, cat, stay with me. I’ve had more than I can take of death and decay.

  I battle to calm myself, to empty my mind of all but the slow sound of the waves far below us. Music and voices drift up from the beach, the tipsy shriek of a woman. A supermarket lorry thunders by, trailing hip-hop from the wound-down cab window.

  It’s no use, I can’t meditate; my situation is too awful. Henry is dying and no one will find him. He’ll be swept up as refuse and carted off for incineration or landfill, and I along with him, when meanwhile, in full, poignant view across the road stands my heaven and haven, the house I could spend eternity in, if only, if only. Please glance over here, TV crew. Please rescue my cat. Come on, Henry V, wake up and drag yourself home.

  There is nothing and no one to pray to. Call on old comforts. Recite soliloquies to keep the anguish at bay. Hamlet was right – to be or not to be doesn’t even begin to scratch at the question. And the poor, wretched Scottish king, he soon found out that the afterlife, too, is a tale told by an idiot. My several renderings of Lear while I lived were phenomenal, but I would surpass them all now if I could only be heard. Then let fall your horrible pleasure, laws of the universe. Here I am, tethered, your slave, a poor, invisible, weak, and despised old man!

  ‘What’s with the grand talk?’ says Scotty.

  I look up, and there he sits, emanating radiance, on the sea-railing above me, the breeze ruffling his golden curls. To understand everything is to forgive everything says his T-shirt. ‘Oh forgive me,’ I cry.

  ‘This really won’t do,’ he says. ‘Everything was going so well, and now look at you.’

  ‘Don’t gloat.’

  ‘I’m not gloating. You were my success story. I’ve been trying to explain to my unimaginative, stuck-in-the-mud supervisor how spirit aftercare needs more resources, a bit more discretion and empathy, and—’

  ‘So please, you must help me.’

  He looks at me, shaking his head.

  ‘After all that I’ve been through.’

  He draws his knees to his chin, rotates on the railing, lowers his feet again and stares out towards the barbecue fires and the sea. ‘My powers are so limited.’

  ‘What are they, though?’ I remonstrate with the pinstriped seat of his pants. ‘Discretion, you said. You must have some – what is it? Look, look – I think he’s still breathing. Can you keep him alive?’

  ‘Sadly not.’ Scotty scissors his legs back over the railing, drops to the pavement and bends over Henry and me. ‘
A beautiful cat. I much prefer them to dogs. I always—’

  ‘Or help me detach from him. Waft me back to the house with a wave of your angelic hand. A few yards, that’s all, I’m begging you. No one will know. I won’t tell tales, I promise.’

  ‘I can’t do that either.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘I would if I could.’ His face is so close. His golden skin glows; his eyes shine with compassion. ‘I care about you,’ he says. ‘I don’t think you deserve this. I’d like to see you okay.’

  Gratitude and self-pity rob me of speech. He settles himself, cross-legged, on the pavement, glances around him and lowers his voice. ‘There is a power that I have. I’m supposed to put in for permission to use it, but that can take weeks.’

  ‘Please, what is it?’

  ‘They would probably deny the request anyway.’ He leans back on his hands and contemplates the night sky. I follow his gaze, but there’s nothing to see except the stars that the two of us celebrated on the rooftop, was it only last night? ‘Time clearly is of the essence,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, yes it is.’ Is he going to help me?

  ‘That putative son of yours. The young man on the bicycle.’

  ‘What about him?

  ‘Does he know the cat?’

  My mind whirls, then remembers. ‘Yes, I think so. He came to the house with his mother, but—’

  Scotty jumps up. ‘He would be able to carry it!’

  ‘What?’ For a moment I’m stunned, then I explode with impatience. ‘Brilliant. Now why didn’t I think of that? Such a pity he isn’t here.’

  ‘There’s no call for sarcasm.’

  I fling myself at him. ‘You’re as much use as a snorkel in a tsunami. You talk about aftercare, but what have you ever done, actually done, to—’

  ‘Shut up and listen to me. What’s your son’s name?’

  ‘Richard... Richard Lawton, but what the hell does it—’

  ‘Enough! Are you listening? I saw him that day on the bicycle. I would know him again. I could try to find him now and do what I can. Risk myself for you, is what I’m saying – an unauthorised use of my power. That’s if you haven’t just blown it and made me decide you’re not worth it.’