Cat Flap

by Andrew Osmond

  Chapter Nine: Friday

  “In 1968, a big cat was reported to have been shot by a Surrey farmer. No body was ever released for examination though, and the claim was never officially substantiated. The following year did see a decrease in reported instances of big cat encounters.”

  It wasn’t exactly Tasmania. Every hunt though, be it for a Hertfordshire big cat or for the glorious thylacine, must begin somewhere, Art reasoned. Cryptozoology, like charity, should begin at home.

  Cassiobury Park and Cassiobury House, when it had still been standing, had been the seat of the Earls of Essex for over three centuries. In its heyday the park had consisted of over 300 hectares of designed landscape and many famous names in the world of horticultural history had worked on its trees and shrubs, on its lawns and borders, including Charles Bridgeman and Moses Cook, George London and Humphrey Repton. Today only 77 hectares of the original park remain, much of the valuable open land having been snapped up in the early years of the twentieth century for housing developments. The remaining landscape has changed too: what would have once been an exclusive hunting park for the monied aristocracy is now free to be enjoyed by everyone, and with the arrival of the larger public so in turn have followed tarmac paths, children’s play areas, football pitches, tennis courts, a miniature train ride, and a series of paddling pools. The twentieth century has not entirely deprived the park of its wild side though. The River Gade still winds its picturesque course, flanked by bulrushes and willow trees; and herons, mallards and moorhens wade in its clear, shallow waters. The Grand Union Canal was an addition during the Industrial Revolution, but once across its dark waters, and beyond the golf course, Whippendell Woods give way to an area of relatively unurbanized land, stretching from Croxley Common Moor in the south to the villages of Chipperfield, Flaunden and Chenies to the west and north. There was wilderness out here enough to hide a solitary puma. Art had faith in this. It would be a futile task indeed, not to approach the prospect of tracking down his quarry with a degree of optimism. And belief. The evidence was scant - almost non-existent - that there was anything unusual lurking in the woods, or even if there had once been, that it was still in the vicinity, but Art knew that he had to believe in his quest, otherwise it was a lost cause to start with. And if he was unsuccessful? Well, damn it all, it was an opportunity to indulge in a bit of boyish adventure for a morning, and since he had had the responsibility of looking after little Luke he had had precious few occasions to lose himself in a spot of fantasy. The sun was shining, the sky was clear, the previous night’s winds had dropped and it was still barely past seven thirty in the morning. Art enjoyed being out-of-doors; a bit of scrabbling around in the woods would be a tonic, if nothing else.

  Art had done some research on his subject the night before. He had searched on the web for both ‘big cats’ and ‘tracking’ and had accessed several informative sites, mainly based in the States, chiefly concerned with hunting cougars. Well Cassiobury was hardly Yellowstone or Yosemite but Art thought the general principles of tracking would probably hold good whichever continent you were on. He had decided, based on the evidence of other, previously reported A.B.C. sightings from around the country that, until proven otherwise, it was sensible to assume that his quarry was a puma. Mountain lion, cougar, sometimes inaccurately panther, catamount: the books and internet sites called the animal a variety of different names, but none of the sources of information disagreed on the fact that pumas, although preferring to shun humans wherever possible, are also occasionally attracted by the offshoots of human activity: domestic livestock being the chief draw. The puma, of course, is not a native species to the United Kingdom in the same way that it is in the United States, but as an escaped, or displaced, animal it is generally accepted that in terms of climate, environment and food supply, there is nothing in Britain which facilitates against such a creature living successfully in the green and pleasant land.

  One thing that Art had discovered which he found initially depressing during his research, was that an adult puma has a hunting range of up to two hundred square miles. The mutilated Alsatian had been discovered almost a week ago now: potentially that meant that his quarry could now be almost anywhere from Bedfordshire in the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, or Buckinghamshire to the west. It was a vast area. Belief. Mustn’t stop believing. Why should it move on? There are plenty of small farms around: it has food here. There are deer in the woods and plenty of smaller animals. The trees provide a safe shelter. If it had a reason to come here in the first place, it has a reason to stay. It will still be here.

  At the outset of the day, it was easy to be optimistic. Art walked briskly downhill, along the broad avenue of trees that led down to the river and the canal beyond. He paused briefly on the wooden bridge over the River Gade and leant on the rail, peering into the waters beneath. In his youth he remembered glimpsing fish swimming in the fast-running shallows, but it was rare that he saw any these days: it was probably just one of those false memories of halcyon childhood, like warmer summers, deep snow in winter, and bigger Mars Bars. He had seen a grass snake, not so long ago, its small head barely visible above the surface of the water, weaving its unnerving, serpentine passage through the wind-blown ripples, until it reached the camouflage of the thick rushes and was lost to sight on the far bank beyond. Art shivered. Despite the sun it was still cold, and he was reminded that he needed to keep moving. He had a tight schedule.

  He followed the wide path which led to the second bridge, this time over the canal, and there, where the tarmac petered out, doglegged off to the right, avoiding the towpath, instead opting for a distinct dirt track, muddy and full of puddles from the recent rain, which followed a route parallel to the canal, but some distance further up the hillside. This was the beginnings of the woods, although with the canal still visible through the trees on his left and the golf course only a short distance away to his right, Art knew that he still had some amount of walking ahead of him before he came upon any area private enough to play temporary home to his objective.

  The purity of the early morning air, the absence of other human sounds, and the pleasure he derived from the unconscious activity of walking allowed Art’s thoughts to wander. Initially he had been considering the puma, his elusive adversary as he had begun to think of it, and also about the rewards - both monetary and otherwise - should he, by some miracle, prove to be successful in his search. He could help out John, lend him some money to get him out of the hole he was in at the moment; he could also pay Helen a proper wage for all the time and help she was giving him with Luke - she could always use the money. And there was Luke too, of course. Art smiled as he thought of his infant son, picturing him bouncing up and down happily on the mattress in his cot, holding on to the side rails, a big, chubby grin on his face. He hoped he was okay with his sister. Of course, he was: Helen loved him like her own and spoiled him terribly. He had nothing to worry about there. It felt odd, not having the buggy to push, though. Art had become accustomed to walking along, hunched over the colourful conveyance, and the freedom of his current activity seemed an indulgence indeed, although, at the same time, there was always that nagging feeling with him as though something were missing, something that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, like when you leave your umbrella on the bus, or haven’t put on your watch in the morning. His mind was wandering, he knew it. It was an habitual problem with him, and if there was one thing above all others that he had gleaned from the tracking websites that he had visited the previous evening, it was the importance of keeping focused.

  The track widened out to form a broad, straight path, rising up as if to form a short cut directly to the heavens, the pale blue morning sky filling Art’s entire field of vision ahead.  On either side of Art, lime trees, denuded of their own summer foliage but instead bedecked in vibrant green ivy, stood to attention like soldiers flanking the entrance of their leader. No red carpet perhaps, but t
he ground was less muddy here, and the crunch of Art’s boots upon the loose stones combined with the twittering birdsong to form the only sound.  The manicured green and wide fairway of one of the holes on the golf course interrupted the broad avenue of trees.  A sign warned, ‘Beware Golfers, Look Left’.  They were Art’s sentiments exactly: he thought that all golfers should come with a public health warning attached - sartorial hazard - and that golf course designers were even more pernicious, their crimes against nature including deforestation, soil erosion, the creation of unsustainable ecosystems, and the introduction of vast amounts of artificial chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides into often fragile natural environments, whilst their creations were a spreading blight on the face of the English countryside under the excuse of sport.

  The path was obviously not the sort of environment where he was going to make any startling discoveries, but it formed the swiftest means of conveying him to the farmland on the far side of the woods that had been the scene of the big cat’s only confirmed show, and Art had decided that his best plan of action would be to scour around the immediate scene of crime, and then work slowly backwards through the trees from there. His backpack was already weighing heavy on his shoulders and he began to regret bringing along his camera: it was an old fashioned, heavy model, and the chances of actually capturing the animal on film were very remote. Much more likely, and the sort of evidence that he was hoping to find would be a footprint, possibly some distinctive scratch marks on the trunk of a tree, maybe even some hairs or a scat if he was lucky. Something that would stand up to scientific examination and persuade the authorities to conduct a full-scale organized search; something that would provide himself with a bit of political leverage to gain inclusion on any such investigation. There were a lot of ifs and buts about the whole scenario. He was a rank amateur; all that he could count as a positive on his side was his knowledge of the locality. Positive. He must keep a positive frame of mind. Local knowledge, it would be enough. And who knows, if he was successful here, it could lead to greater things: invitations to join other expeditions; the chance to mount an organized thylacine hunt. That would be the ultimate prize. Except, there was Luke to think about, he couldn’t leave him with Helen for so long, wouldn’t want to, and yet he couldn’t very well bring him along, the Tasmanian forests were no place for a young baby... He was day-dreaming again. Snap out of it, Art. Keep focused.

  The path forked off in five directions, a handy sign at the junction indicating the various ways to Newland’s Spring, Harrocks, Lees and Merlin’s Woods, plus the car park in Grove Mill Lane. The trail that Art took led straight ahead, down a steep incline, into a great depression in the centre of the woods. The ground underfoot was still muddy, but was cushioned by a carpet of brown and rotting pine needles. The deep imprint of horse tracks were visible in the mud, and Art side-stepped to avoid treading in a large pile of recent droppings. There were numerous footprints too, although Art did not have the expertise to distinguish trainer from walking boot, court shoe from plimsoll. Bike tracks criss-crossed the whole area too, further evidence that the current state of peace and quiet belied the fact that the woodland path was, at times, a well used thoroughfare. Art could never walk these trails without imagining back to an earlier age, to an England as described by Hardy, when these footpaths would have been more widely used as a means of moving from one rural community to the next. He knew that he romanticized this period, and that Hardy’s simple peasant folk would have probably given their eye teeth for a means of motorized transport rather than have to trudge the same old dreary tracks again, but he couldn’t help but think the modern byways and motorways had a lot to answer for. John always joked that he was a New Victorian. Art never took it as an insult.

  A colourful fungus caught Art’s attention and he stopped to examine it. Bright orange, it clung to the trunk of a tree in concentric bands, like the rings of gas and matter encircling the planet Saturn. Off the path, under the shelter of the trees, there was a smell of dampness and decay. The occasional drop of moisture still fell from the high branches, dislodged by the slightest cat’s paw of a breeze. Art wiped away one large drop which had fallen onto his forehead and had begun to run down his face, making its icy progress towards the warmth of the collar of his coat. He glanced at his watch. Shit! Time was getting on and he had done nothing. He didn’t know it then but it could have been the mantra for the whole morning.

  Three hours later was to find Art back in the same spot, this time hurrying in the opposite direction. Twenty past eleven. He would really have to rush if he was going to get back to his sister’s house for twelve o’clock. It had been a vain pursuit after all. There was nothing to find. Not even in the travellers’ field where the Alsatian’s body had been discovered. Now that all of their caravans had moved on, flattened grass and the black embers of an old fire the only evidence that the convoy had ever been parked there, and the police cordon had been lifted, Art had hoped that he might chance upon some clue that would hint at the killer’s feline identity, but there was nothing. Still, it was important, in circumstances such as these, to remember the cryptozoology maxim: absence of evidence does not necessarily mean evidence of absence. After all, what had he really expected? Had he really imagined that one man alone in the space of a few hours would be able to solve a mystery that had had legions of enthusiasts speculating over decades of research? Actually yes, he had supposed that he had. Is there a Cassiobury A.B.C.? A tougher one that: he was not a jot nearer to having an answer. Why did he set himself these ridiculous challenges? He could have just enjoyed a morning’s pleasant break in the fresh air, instead he felt frustrated at his lack of success, powerless at his inability to do anything differently, and slightly bruised where he had stubbed his toe on a protruding tree root and had fallen and grazed his hands. Perhaps it is part of human nature, the need to strive for success, the desperate, child-like clamoring to be noticed. Except for some people recognition seemed to come so easily. Art had always considered himself something of a Stoic, not perhaps entirely oblivious to pleasure, but generally philosophical in his acceptance of pain. If he was ever going to discover any evidence of a big cat, he had resigned himself to the fact that that evidence would not be handed to him on a plate. He was going to have to suffer for his ambitions. Other people would have classed him as a loser; Art preferred the politically correct variation, that he was achievement challenged.

  The pocket of his coat was torn where he had snagged it on a branch and the lower half of his trousers were damp from his fall, and still muddy despite his best efforts to remove the worst of the grime. He glanced at his watch again. He should just get back in time, he was over the two bridges now, and back into the open expanse of the main park: five minutes up the hill, five more to reach the main road, and then it was only a few more streets to his sister’s house. It would be tight but as long as he kept walking briskly and didn’t bump into anyone...

  “Hello.”

  So preoccupied had he been with the time, Art had almost walked into the young woman - the young woman - not having noticed her coming towards him along the path. Suddenly, all that he could think of was the way he must look to her, his disheveled clothing, his wild hair, of all the times... of all the people... “Umm,” he mouthed, incoherently.

  “No buggy?”  She mimed the act of pushing the pram, her hands extended in front of her as she continued to approach.

  Encouraged by the friendly smile on the woman’s face, Art had managed to regain some of his composure. He looked around in mock horror as if he had only just realized that the pram was not still with him, throwing up his hands in imitation of surprise and panic. The young woman’s smile widened. She was now level with Art, although still walking in the opposite direction, and showing no apparent intention of either stopping or slowing down. Another second and their two ships would have passed. Acting the clown was not enough, he had to say something. Now.
<
br />   “No dog?”

  It was not a great line, but it had the effect of making the woman turn back towards him, although not managing to halt her perambulation. She pointed back the way she had come and where a large, golden retriever could just been seen, some distance away, emerging from behind the cover afforded by the broad trunk of a large oak tree.

  “Chasing squirrels,” she explained.

  Art nodded knowingly, “Of course.” This time it was Art who was imitating the motion of pushing a buggy, adding, “I’ve got a day off.”

  Now it was the woman who was nodding, saying jokingly as a parting comment, as she moved too far away to carry on a sensible conversation, “We should take it in turns. You take my dog for a walk with you one day. I’ll take your baby with me the next.”

  “Yes,” agreed Art enthusiastically, “Yes...” But he was talking to her retreating back. The moment was gone.

  He continued on slowly up the hill, glancing back several times, hopeful that the woman might be retracing her steps, noticing instead that she had taken the path which forked off to the left at the bottom of the incline, and which ran along parallel to the river. Her dog had joined her now and was walking along obediently at her side. What had he said to her? He tried to recall the exact words of their exchange. Had he said anything stupid? Oh, he was bound to have done. What he should have said was... But then what had she said? Art reviewed her words. We should take it in turns. That was almost an invitation, wasn’t it? Of course, what he should have said then was... Was? Art knew that he was not quick at repartee. He liked to have time to think and to consider his words. That was one of the reasons why he generally preferred the written communication over the spoken one, there was more time to work out precisely the most witty reply or most apt comment. How many times had he said something - or, more often than not, nothing - only to think of the perfect response several minutes - hours or days even - later. Of course, this time, what he should have said was...?

  What he should have said was, “Instead of taking it in turns, why don’t we do it together.” Art began to warm to the idea, “My baby, your dog. Why don’t we all go out walking together.” Perfect. Not too creepy. Not too desperate. After all, it had been almost her own words; her own sentiments. If he could just rewind the clock... The clock! Shit! Art remembered the time. Five to twelve. He was going to be late. He looked across again to where the young woman was still just in sight, the path that she was following bending slightly back upon itself, ending at the car park at the Metropolitan Station side of the park. Perhaps it was not too late after all.

  If he cut across the grass, he would possibly still have time to reach the far end of the path that she was on, and contrive to bump into her again before she reached the car park. What could be more natural, than that he had walked a large circuit and innocently met her again coming in the opposite direction? Of course, this time he would be prepared. He had his reply. Better late than never. Late? He thought of Helen again, and of little Luke; Helen would be anxiously looking at her own watch, cursing him for not being there. She would be missing her lunch date. It was now or never. She wouldn’t mind, not when she knew what he had been late doing.

  Anxious not to be seen, Art hared across the sloping grass expanse, surprising himself how quickly he arrived at his objective. The river path weaved a tortuous course and he was able to rejoin it at the far end and still have time to assume a nonchalant step several minutes before his quarry came back into view.

  “Hello again,” he hailed, while the woman was still some yards away.

  “Hello. Hey! Here boy.” The last words were directed at her dog, the energetic retriever having swiftly bridged the distance between herself and Art, and was attempting to leap up at the would-be suitor. Art looked slightly apprehensive, but was reassured that “He must like you.”

  She was smiling again as she caught hold of the collar of the hound and pulled him off Art, “I’m sorry about that. Has he made you very dirty?”

  Art looked down at his already muddy clothes, saying, “Don’t worry.  It’s nothing.”

  There was an awkward silence before Art, realizing that he was actually physically blocking the young woman's path, added, “Oh, um sorry.  What it is is, I was thinking...”

  “Yes?”

  “About what you said...”

  “Yes?”

  “About taking it in turns...”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I wondered...”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean, you've got a baby and I've got a dog... No, what I mean is, I've got a baby and you've...”

  “Would you like to walk together sometime?” The young woman finished his sentence for him.

  They both smiled, relieved that lucidity had been achieved without too much embarrassment on either side, and that the substance of their thoughts had been communicated without any margin for misinterpretation.  Art even managed to rediscover something resembling the power of coherent speech in order to reply, “Yes.  Yes, I would, very much.”

  “Monday, eleven o'clock.  Shall I meet you by the bridge?”

  “Monday at eleven.  See you then.  I look forward to it.  See you then.” Being late for Helen, John’s financial problems, the stinging pain in his grazed hands, the Alien Big Cat, the whole cryptozoology thing: at that moment none of it mattered one jot.

  •••

  “Most escapees are recaptured within the first twenty four hours.  It’s been over a week.  Of course I am angry.  I want to know exactly what is going on?”

  Detective Inspector Phil Bacon was not a patient man.  His wife said so. His friends said so.  His colleagues said so, although rarely to his face. Detective Sergeant James Leigh decided - correctly - that this was probably not the moment for him to air his own thoughts on this subject.  Instead he said, “Yes, sir.  Of course, sir.”

  The inspector said nothing, but his whole demeanour indicated that he was not going to be satisfied by platitudes.  Leigh was not strong enough, in the face of such obdurate taciturnity, to maintain his own silence for very long.  He might have had plenty of practice in his career of extracting information from suspects in similar interview situations, but he knew that he would quickly crumble if he should ever find himself on the other side of an interrogation.  He looked closely at his boss’s face, aware that the assumed expression of catatonia would quickly change to explosive animation if he were to say the wrong thing now.  There was no point hiding the facts, though.  After all, this was not a “what would you like first, the good news or the bad news?” type situation.  There was no good news.  He hadn’t even been able to nail that waster Michael Jones on any minor charge, let alone turn up any concrete information on the whereabouts of the missing David Sherry.  At the current moment in time he had no friends to fall back upon; the truth was all that was available to him.

  “We have widened the search beyond our initially designated area. Neighbouring forces are, of course, aware of the escape too; details of the fugitive have been widely circulated.  Of course, he could be miles away by now, not on our patch at all.” Leigh added, hopefully.

  “And not our problem, you mean?”

  “Well, it would make things easier,” Leigh conceded.

  “Life is not easy.”  The volume control on Bacon’s voice had been cranked up several notches.  He suddenly changed the subject, a new thought occurring to him.  “Where was it that you were based before you transferred here?”

  “Luton.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  “I would have had you down as a Surrey boy.  Berkshire perhaps.”

  “The accent?”

  “Something like that.  Luton, eh.  Pretty rough up there.”  Bacon’s voice had softened slightly.  “Were you stationed there while the taxi wars were going on?”

  “I was just a beat officer back then.  Still quite a bit of r
acial tension up there now though.  It’s a difficult community to police, needs a delicate hand.”

  “I know, we get them down here for the football.  Or used to, before they got relegated, at any rate.  Been a few years since we saw the Hatters’ mob.  Be a few more years too, with any luck.  It wasn’t a delicate hand that was needed against that bunch of thugs.”

  “It’s not the Asians that come down for the football though?”

  “No, they’re fine.  No problems there.”

  The two fell silent and Leigh wondered if he had managed to temporarily escape having to account for his lack of progress in tracking down the escaped convict, but in this he was out of luck, his superior officer’s digression proving to be only a temporary one.  “So, about Sherry?”

  “We now know for positive that the break-in at the small-holding was down to him.  Sherry’s finger prints were found on the back door and in the kitchen by the S.O.C. team.  I’m sure the owner Jones knows more than he’s letting on.  We’re still keeping tabs on him.”

  “What about existing family members?  Remind me, what did it say in the files?  He had a brother living here, or something.  That was why we were alerted in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s correct, sir.  But he vanished back in the late eighties.”

  “Vanished?”

  “From the county records.  We know that his house was repossessed in 1989, after that nothing.  He disappears from the official records.  It wasn’t unusual at that time, of course.”

  “Poll tax dodging.”

  “That accounts for most of them.”

  “No employment records?  Nothing?”

  “Nothing.  We’re still looking, of course.”

  “Any other family?”

  “No.  The mother is long dead.  The father, you know about, of course. That seems to be it.  If it weren’t for the prints at the farmhouse, I would think that we were looking in the wrong place.  It seems a very tenuous link to think that he would come back here just on the off-chance of seeing a brother who apparently moved on more than a decade ago.”

  “Would he have known that?”

  “Possibly not.  He didn’t appear to receive much mail while he was inside.”

  “And you've got surveillance on the brother’s old property?”

  “Yes, we warned the current tenants and they agreed to move out for a few days so that we could be in situ if there was any show.  Nothing so far and we can’t continue indefinitely.”

  “The over-time payments?”

  “Just the available officers, sir.”

  “Well give it another couple of days.  If you have still drawn a blank after the weekend, we’ll think again.  What about his old school?  Could he still have any friends from that far back?”

  “We’ve got a class list, but it is slow trying to trace people.  It’s been over forty years.”  James Leigh studied the face of his boss.  It was not a particularly pleasant countenance he concluded: fat, but rather too fleshy to ever be described as jovial; red, but rather too beetroot to ever be described as healthy.  He was not getting the total rollicking that he had prepared himself for, though.  He must have caught the old man on a good day.  James was suddenly aware that he was being dismissed.

  “Okay, that’s all.”  Bacon’s complexion turned a slightly more over-cooked colour as he realized that his sergeant was not listening.  “What are you still standing here for?” he bellowed, “Haven’t you got a convict to catch.”

  •••

  Being late for Helen suddenly seemed very much more important. It was almost a quarter to one before Art was finally opening the gate, leading to his sister’s house. Helen was standing at the downstairs window, holding Luke in her arms, looking out for him. She had the front door open before Art could ring on the bell.

  “Where have you been? I was expecting you an hour ago.”

  “I know, I’m really sorry...”

  “You knew that I had to go out. This is the very last time that I do you any favours.” Helen’s gaze suddenly took in Art’s disheveled appearance and her tone changed to one of anxious enquiry, “What have you been doing? Are you all right?”

  Art instinctively brushed his hands down the front of his trouser legs where the damp stains and mud showed up most noticeably, “Yes, I’m fine. It’s nothing. I just slipped over. I really am sorry, Helen. I was trying to get back, only... How’s Luke?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “He’s fine. Here have him.” Helen handed the small child into the arms of his father. Luke laughed, wriggled and snuggled his head into the warm collar of Art’s coat, squirming happily. “You’d better come inside for a minute,” Helen added.

  Luke’s buggy was parked in the porch, just inside the front door, and Art placed his son in the seat and fastened the straps around him to hold him securely in place. “Have you got his coat?” he asked Helen, “We’ll get going straight away and let you go out. Thanks so much for looking after him and I’m really sorry to have held you up.”

  “It’s okay,” said Helen, more pacified now, “Sylvia rang up a bit earlier. She couldn’t make it today, anyway.”

  Now it was Art’s turn to sound aggrieved, “So...”

  “So nothing,” Helen interrupted, “You weren’t to know, were you? You were still late.” Seeing Art preparing the buggy to go, she added, “Why don’t you stay for a bit of lunch, or are you doing something else? I’ve got plenty of food here for Luke too.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. You can tell me all about what you did this morning, and I’ll tell you about Luke’s new trick.”

  •••

  The orange mush dribbled down his chin and onto the collar of his vest, it felt warm and sticky where it touched his skin. He had more of the mush in his mouth. He didn’t particularly like the taste, but he felt somehow compelled to continue eating it. The survival instinct had been strong in him from day one. The nice woman he thought of as ‘ela’, the one that he saw every other day was laughing. She had been laughing for what seemed like a long time, it made Luke want to laugh too, although he did not know what was funny so he only laughed nervously, looking anxiously back and forth from ‘dada’ to ‘ela’, trying to ascertain what was the reason for the merriment. ‘Dada’ was not laughing, which confused Luke even more. He was wiping at his face and looking at himself in the window on the wall. Luke opened his mouth wide, waiting, expectant, like a baby bird in the nest. He was bored trying to work out what was so funny. Feed me, feed me, feed me.

  •••

  “Oh, why didn’t you tell me that I had mud all over my face?” Art was looking in the mirror on the wall of Helen’s lounge, licking his fingers and rubbing away at his nose and forehead vigorously, trying to remove the offending grime. “I look an absolute idiot. What must she have thought?”

  “She?” Helen stopped laughing and arched her eyebrows, looking inquisitive. “She who?”

  •••

  “Indian?”

  “That’s just what Helen said.”

  “Does she wear one of those...?”

  “Saris? That’s what Helen said too. No. Well, she hasn’t each time I’ve seen her so far.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “But she’s Indian?”

  “Well Asian, Indian subcontinent, I’m not sure where precisely.”

  “You never told me that before.”

  “You never asked.”

  John sounded exasperated, joking, “How many times do I have to tell you, I have to have details. Your sketchy descriptions are no longer satisfying my appetite. I may have to consider joining a different sex chat-line. This one is not proving value for money.”

  Art exchanged the telephone receiver to his other hand, at the same time taking up a pen and doodling absentmindedly on the small pad in front of him. What had started out as a quick call
to his friend had turned into a major interrogation as soon as John had discovered that he secured himself a date.

  “So Indian, eh. So, what do you reckon your chances are?”

  “Chances?”

  “Of doing her.”

  “John!” Art sounded scandalized, although he was secretly enjoying sharing his moment of romantic achievement. “Is Jessica listening?”

  “No, she’s in the kitchen. So?”

  “It’s not like that. It’s just a walk in the park. A mutually convenient arrangement.”

  “That sounds like a very modern term for it.”

  “I’m still a married man, remember.”

  “And what exactly is your Amanda doing at this moment? Tell me that. Meeting her so-called ‘friends’ in the... where did you say, the Rockies?”

  “The Appalachians actually.”

  “And what do you think she is doing? Just walking in the park?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Art, get real. Look, I’m not having a go, I’m just saying you should seize the moment. Don’t let Amanda stop you from having some fun. She hasn’t exactly put any restraints on herself, has she?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Okay, have it your way, only... Hang on a moment, that’s Jessica calling. I’m going to have to go, it sounds like dinner is ready.”

  “No problem. I just rang to see how you were... you know...”

  “Financially?”

  “No. Well...”

  “It’s not a problem, really. Hey, when are you working next? I can never remember your days.”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Friend at Hand at one o’clock? You can buy me a beer and I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You can tell me how you get on, on Monday, too.”

  “Monday?”

  “With Pocahontos,” John prompted, knowing he was provoking a reaction.

  “She’s not...”

  “I know,” John laughed, “Just remember. Have fun.”