A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  It was a fisherman’s cat and it grew fast. One day, it left the cottage and moved into the house, where it spent its nights under the bed in the box where they kept the dirty dishes. It had odd ideas of its own even then. Sophia carried the cat back to the cottage and tried as hard as she could to ingratiate herself, but the more love she gave it, the quicker it fled back to the dish box. When the box got too full, the cat would howl and someone would have to wash the dishes. Its name was Ma Petite, but they called it Moppy.

  ‘It’s funny about love,’ Sophia said. ‘The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.’

  ‘That’s very true,’ Grandmother observed. ‘And so what do you do?’

  ‘You go on loving,’ said Sophia threateningly. ‘You love harder and harder.’

  Her grandmother sighed and said nothing.

  Moppy was carried around to all the pleasant places a cat might like, but he only glanced at them and walked away. He was flattened with hugs, endured them politely and climbed back into the dish box. He was entrusted with burning secrets and merely averted his yellow gaze. Nothing in the world seemed to interest this cat but food and sleep.

  ‘You know,’ Sophia said, ‘sometimes I think I hate Moppy. I don’t have the strength to go on loving him, but I think about him all the time!’

  Week after week, Sophia pursued the cat. She spoke softly and gave him comfort and understanding, and only a couple of times did she lose her patience and yell at him, or pull his tail. At such times Moppy would hiss and run under the house, and afterwards his appetite was better and he slept even longer than usual, curled up in unapproachable softness with one paw daintily across his nose.

  Sophia stopped playing and started having nightmares. She couldn’t think about anything but this cat who refused to be affectionate. Meanwhile Moppy grew into a lean and wild little animal, and one June night he didn’t come back to his dish box. In the morning, he walked into the house and stretched – front legs first, with his rear end up in the air – then he closed his eyes and sharpened his claws on the rocking chair, after which he jumped up on the bed and went to sleep. The cat’s whole being radiated calm superiority.

  He’s started hunting, Grandmother thought.

  She was right. The very next morning, the cat came in and placed a small dusky yellow bird on the doorstep. Its neck had been deftly broken with one bite, and some bright red drops of blood lay prettily on the shiny coat of feathers. Sophia turned pale and stared fixedly at the murdered bird. She sidled past Moppy, the murderer, with small, forced steps, and then turned and rushed out.

  Later, Grandmother remarked on the curious fact that wild animals, cats for example, cannot understand the difference between a rat and a bird.

  ‘Then they’re dumb!’ said Sophia curtly. ‘Rats are hideous and birds are nice. I don’t think I’ll talk to Moppy for three days.’ And she stopped talking to her cat.

  Every night, the cat went into the woods, and every morning it killed its prey and carried it into the house to be admired, and every morning the bird was thrown into the sea. A little while later, Sophia would appear outside the window and shout, ‘Can I come in? Have you taken out the body?’ She punished Moppy and increased her own pain by means of a terrible coarseness. ‘Have you cleaned up the blood?’ she would yell, or, ‘How many murdered today?’ And morning coffee was no longer what it had been.

  It was a great relief when Moppy finally learned to conceal his crimes. It is one thing to see a pool of blood and quite another thing only to know about it. Moppy probably grew tired of all the screaming and fussing, and perhaps he thought the family ate his birds. One morning when Grandmother was taking her first cigarette on the veranda, she dropped her holder and it rolled through a crack in the floor. She managed to raise one of the planks, and there was Moppy’s handiwork – a row of small bird skeletons, all picked clean. Of course she knew that the cat had continued to hunt, and could not have stopped, but the next time he rubbed against her leg as he passed, she drew away and whispered, ‘You sly bastard.’ The cat dish stood untouched by the steps, and attracted flies.

  ‘You know what?’ Sophia said. ‘I wish Moppy had never been born. Or else that I’d never been born. That would have been better.’

  ‘So you’re still not speaking to each other?’ Grandmother asked.

  ‘Not a word,’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t know what to do. And what if I do forgive him – what fun is that when he doesn’t even care?’ Grandmother couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Moppy turned wild and rarely came into the house. He was the same colour as the island – a light yellowish grey with striped shadings like granite, or like sunlight on a sand bottom. When he slipped across the meadow by the beach, his progress was like a stroke of wind through the grass. He would watch for hours in the thicket, a motionless silhouette, two pointed ears against the sunset, and then suddenly vanish . . . and some bird would chirp, just once. He would slink under the creeping pines, soaked by the rain and lean as a streak, and he would wash himself voluptuously when the sun came out. He was an absolutely happy cat, but he didn’t share anything with anyone. On hot days, he would roll on the smooth rock, and sometimes he would eat grass and calmly vomit his own hair the way cats do. And what he did between times no one knew.

  One Saturday, the Övergårds came for coffee. Sophia went down to look at their boat. It was big, full of bags and jerry cans and baskets, and in one of the baskets a cat was meowing. Sophia lifted the lid and the cat licked her hand. It was a big white cat with a broad face. It kept right on purring when she picked it up and carried it ashore.

  ‘So you found the cat,’ said Anna Övergård. ‘It’s a nice cat, but it’s not a mouser, so we thought we’d give it to some friends.’

  Sophia sat on the bed with the heavy cat on her lap. It never stopped purring. It was soft and warm and submissive.

  They struck a bargain easily, with a bottle of rum to close the deal. Moppy was captured and never knew what was happening until the Övergårds’ boat was on its way to town.

  The new cat’s name was Fluff. It ate fish and liked to be petted. It moved into Sophia’s cottage and slept every night in her arms, and every morning it came in to morning coffee and slept some more in the bed beside the stove. If the sun was shining, it would roll on the warm granite.

  ‘Not there!’ Sophia yelled. ‘That’s Moppy’s place!’ She carried the cat a little farther off, and it licked her on the nose and rolled obediently in the new spot.

  The summer grew prettier and prettier, a long series of calm blue summer days. Every night, Fluff slept against Sophia’s cheek.

  ‘It’s funny about me,’ Sophia said. ‘I think nice weather gets to be boring.’

  ‘Do you?’ her grandmother said. ‘Then you’re just like your grandfather, he liked storms too.’ But before she could say anything else about Grandfather, Sophia was gone.

  And gradually the wind came up, sometime during the night, and by morning there was a regular south-wester spitting foam all over the rocks.

  ‘Wake up,’ Sophia whispered. ‘Wake up, kitty, precious, there’s a storm.’

  Fluff purred and stretched warm sleepy legs in all directions. The sheet was covered with cat hair.

  ‘Get up!’ Sophia shouted. ‘It’s a storm!’ But the cat just turned over on its broad stomach. And suddenly Sophia was furious. She kicked open the door and threw the cat out in the wind and watched how it laid its ears back, and she screamed, ‘Hunt! Do something! Be like a cat!’ And then she started to cry and ran to the guest room and banged on the door.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ Grandmother said.

  ‘I want Moppy back!’ Sophia screamed.

  ‘But you know how it’ll be,’ Grandmother said.

  ‘It’ll be awful,’ said Sophia gravely. ‘But it’s Moppy I love.’

  And so they exchanged cats again.

  A CAT

  Edward Thomas

  She had a name among the chil
dren;

  But no one loved though someone owned

  Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime

  And had her kittens duly drowned.

  In Spring, nevertheless, this cat

  Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,

  And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,

  As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails.

  I loathed and hated her for this;

  One speckle on a thrush’s breast

  Was worth a million such; and yet

  She lived long, till God gave her rest.

  READING NOTES

  ‘What I like about this story,’ said a woman in a group of carers, ‘is that it shows you can’t choose who to love. You just love.’ The child in the story thinks a lot about the nature of love and people have talked about the way in which animals can teach you life lessons. Not everyone likes cats and usually for the reasons the poem and story confirm. Cats are predatory; they will kill birds and mice and if you can’t live with that then don’t keep a cat or you will have to resign yourself to live as Sophia will have to live – in between loving and hating Moppy. The poem moves back and forth in feelings of pity and disgust. What is the last line saying, and is the writer a cat lover?

  Something to Say

  TREES CAN SPEAK

  Alan Marshall

  I heard footsteps and I looked up. A man carrying a prospector’s dish was clambering down the bank.

  ‘This man never speaks,’ the store-keeper in the town three miles away had told me. ‘A few people have heard him say one word like “Hullo” or something. He makes himself understood by shaking or nodding his head.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with him?’ I asked.

  ‘No. He can talk if he wants to. Silent Joe, they call him.’

  When the man reached a spot where the creek widened into a pool he squatted on his heels and scooped some water into the dish. He stood up and, bending over the dish, began to wash the dirt it contained by swinging it in a circular motion.

  I lifted my crutches from the ground and hopped along the pebbles till I stood opposite him across the pool.

  ‘Good day,’ I said. ‘Great day.’

  He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were grey, the greenish grey of the bush. There was no hostility in his look, just a searching.

  They suddenly changed their expression and said, as plainly as if he had spoken, ‘Yes.’

  I sat down and watched him. He poured the muddy water into the clear pool.

  It rolled along the sandy bottom, twisting and turning in whorls and convolutions until it faded into a faint cloud, moving swiftly with the current.

  He washed the residue many times.

  I crossed over above the pool and walked down to him.

  ‘Get anything?’

  He held the dish towards me and pointed to three specks of gold resting on the outer edge of a layer of sand.

  ‘So that’s gold,’ I said. ‘Three specks, eh! Half the troubles of this world come from collections of specks like those.’

  He smiled. It took a long time to develop. It moved over his face slowly and somehow I thought of an egret in flight, as if wings had come and gone.

  He looked at me with kindliness and, for a moment, I saw the bush, not remote and pitying, but beckoning like a friend. He was akin to trees and they spoke through him.

  If I could only understand him I would understand the bush, I thought.

  But he turned away and like the gums, was remote again, removed from contact by his silence which was not the silence of absent speech, but the eloquent silence of trees.

  ‘I am coming with you,’ I said.

  We walked side by side. He studied the track for my benefit. He kicked limbs aside, broke the branches of wattles drooping over the path that skirted the foot of the hill.

  We moved into thicker timber. The sun pierced the canopy of branches and spangled our shoulders with leaf patterns. A cool, leaf-mould breath of earth rose from the foot-printed moss. The track dipped sharply down into a gully and ended in a small clearing.

  Thin grass, spent with seeding, quivered hopelessly in a circle of trees.

  In the centre of the clearing a mound of yellow clay rose from around the brink of a shaft. A windlass, erected on the top of the mound, spanned the opening.

  A heavy iron bucket dangled from the roller.

  ‘So this is your mine!’ I said.

  He nodded, looking at it with a pleased expression.

  I climbed to the top of the mound and peered down into darkness. A movement of air, dank with the moisture from buried rocks and clay, welled up and broke coldly on my face. I pushed a small stone over the edge. It flashed silently from sight, speeding through a narrow darkness for a tense gap of time, then rang an ending from somewhere deep down in the earth.

  ‘Cripes, that’s deep!’ I exclaimed.

  He was standing beside me, pleased that I was impressed.

  ‘Do you go down that ladder?’ I asked. I pointed to a ladder of lashed saplings that was wired to a facing of timber.

  He nodded.

  ‘I can climb ladders,’ I murmured, wondering how I could get down, ‘but not that one.’

  He looked at me questioningly, a sympathetic concern shading his face.

  ‘Infantile paralysis,’ I explained. ‘It’s a nuisance sometimes. Do you think you could lower me down in that bucket? I want to see the reef where you get the gold.’

  I expected him to demur. It would be the natural reaction. I expected him to shake his head in an expressive communication of the danger involved.

  But he didn’t hesitate. He reached out across the shaft and drew the bucket to the edge. I placed my crutches on the ground and straddled it so that my legs hung down the sides and the handle lay between my knees. I grasped the rope and said, ‘Righto,’ then added, ‘You’re coming down the ladder, aren’t you?’

  He nodded and caught hold of the bucket handle. He lifted and I was swung out over the shaft. The bucket slowly revolved, then stopped and began a reversing movement. He grasped the windlass, removed a chock. I saw him brace himself against the strain. His powerful arms worked slowly like crank-shafts. I sank into the cold air that smelt of frogs.

  ‘What the hell did I come down here for?’ I thought. ‘This is a damn silly thing to do.’

  The bucket twisted slowly. A spiralling succession of jutting rock and layers of clay passed my eyes. I suddenly bumped the side. The shaft took a turn and continued down at an angle so that the opening was eclipsed and I was alone.

  I pushed against the side to save my legs from being scraped against the rocks. The bucket grated downwards, sending a cascade of clay slithering before it, then stopped.

  A heavy darkness pressed against me. I reached down and touched the floor of the shaft. I slid off the bucket and sat down on the ground beside it.

  In a little while I heard the creak of a ladder. Gravel and small stones pattered beside me. I was conscious of someone near me in the dark, then a match flared and he lit a candle. A yellow stiletto of flame rose towards his face, then shrank back to the drooping wick. He sheltered it with his hand till the wax melted and the shadows moved away to a tunnel that branched from the foot of the shaft.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ I said. ‘I didn’t bring my crutches.’

  He looked at me speculatively while candle shadows fluttered upon his face like moths. His expression changed to one of decision and I answered the unspoken intention as if it had been conveyed to me in words.

  ‘Thanks very much. I’m not heavy.’

  He bent down and lifted me onto his back. Beneath his faded blue shirt I could feel his shoulder muscles bunch then slip into movement.

  He crouched low as he walked so that my head would not strike the rocks projecting from the roof of the tunnel. I rose and fell to each firm step.

  The light from the candle moved ahead of us, cleansing the tunnel of darkness.

  At the end of
the drive he stopped and lowered me gently to the ground.

  He held the candle close to the face and pointed a heavy finger at the narrow reef which formed a diagonal scar across the rock.

  ‘So that’s it!’ I exclaimed.

  I tried to break a piece out with my fingers. He lifted a small bar from the ground and drove it into the vein. I picked up some shattered pieces and searched them in the light of the candle. He bent his head near mine and watched the stone I was turning in my fingers. He suddenly reached out his hand and took it away. He licked it then smiled and held it towards me. With his thumb he indicated a speck of gold adhering to the surface.

  I was excited at the find. I asked him many questions. He sat with his hands clasped around his drawn-up knees and answered with eloquent expressions and shakes of the head.

  The candle flame began to flutter in a scooped stub of wax.

  ‘I think it’s time we left,’ I said.

  He rose and carried me back to the foot of the shaft, I tied my knees together with string and placed my legs in the bucket this time. I had no control over the right leg, which fell helplessly to one side if not bound to its stronger neighbour. I sat on the edge of the bucket clasping the windlass rope and waited. The candle welled into sudden brightness then fluttered and died. I could hear the creaks of the tortured ladder, then silence.

  In all the world only I was alive. The darkness had texture and weight like a blanket of black. The silence had no expectancy. I sat brooding sombrely, drained of all sunlight and song. The world of birds and trees and laughter was as remote as a star.

  Without reason, seemingly without object, I suddenly began to rise like a bubble. I swung in emptiness; I moved in a void, governed by planetary laws over which I had no control.

  Then I crashed against the side and the lip of the bucket tipped as it caught in projecting tongues of stone. The bottom moved up and out then slumped heavily downwards as the edge broke free.

  I scraped and bounced upwards till I emerged from a sediment of darkness into a growing light. Above my head the mouth of the shaft increased in size.