Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

  Imogen stared at him, aware of her heartbeat all at once. There was something about him, familiar maybe, but she didn’t know what it was. She got up and stood next to him. She was much shorter, her head reaching no higher than his shoulder. She gazed at the picture and knew when she had painted it, knew exactly where it was.

  ‘Devil’s Rigg,’ she murmured.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  She looked into his face. ‘That’s Devil’s Rigg. South of here; very steep, very rugged.’

  ‘I can see.’ Connla was aware of how close she stood; he could smell the drying of her hair, the faint hint of shampoo, the heat in her skin. He looked back at the picture. ‘You paint rocks real well, you know that.’ And then he stopped and stared. He was standing all but against the door jamb of the lounge and he could see a window and curtains and he knew the loch and the hillside were beyond it, even though now they were obscured. The Indian carved in wood rested on the window sill, upright against the inner wall, just as it did in the picture, half hidden in the fold of the curtain.

  Connla felt his palms begin to tingle. His mouth was dry, despite the coffee, and he stood rooted for a moment.

  Next to him, Imogen was still; she was aware of his breathing, the proximity of his maleness. Glancing up at his face in profile, she could see he was no longer looking at the picture. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Connla twisted his head round, memories suddenly broken. ‘Nothing. Pretty room, that’s all. You’ve got good taste.’

  Imogen looked where he was looking and frowned. The twin couches before the open fireplace had been bought from charity shops and were covered with a couple of old throws. The floor was the exposed wooden boards her aunt had insisted on, and her only consideration to comfort was the Persian rug she had bought at a car-boot sale in Inverness. More of her pictures hung on the walls and Connla stepped into the lounge.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said.

  ‘Not at all.’ Imogen followed him, watching as he moved; his close-fitting jeans were frayed where they dragged at the heels of his boots. He was well shaped, without being overtly muscular, and all at once she imagined wrapping her arms about his waist from behind and holding his warmth against her. Again she felt colour rush to her cheeks and again she had to look at the floor. She was barefoot and naked beneath the towelling robe and he was a stranger in her house.

  Connla moved to the window, his gaze shifting restlessly from picture to picture. He stood side on to the glass, where the rain streamed against it. Before him, on the wall, was another picture of the stag. ‘Redynvre,’ he said. ‘This is the one they made reductions from, isn’t it?’

  Imogen moved alongside him again. ‘Yes. That’s on a peak north of here. Ciste Dhubh.’

  Connla looked sideways at her. ‘You paint when you’re out there?’

  She nodded. ‘I take fairly lengthy trips in the summertime. I have a horse, a highland pony. I keep her up on the hill overlooking the loch.’

  ‘In that stone cottage?’ Connla said. ‘I thought it looked like a stable.’

  Imogen stared at him; again there was a hint of something about him. She half screwed up her eyes. ‘Have you been up there?’

  ‘I took a drive. I went there while you were still away. That road looked interesting. I figured the views would be good.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘Yes. They were spectacular. I never knew the Isle of Skye was so close to the mainland.’

  ‘A lot of people say that. I suppose when you had to take the boat across it seemed like more of a distance.’

  Connla was looking at the Indian figure, his thumbs hooked in his pockets, sweat in his palm, heart high in his chest, though his face betrayed no emotion. Imogen was silent beside him, still looking at Redynvre. Carefully, Connla picked up the figure, and his mind raced back, tumbling over itself. He could smell pine trees and Douglas fir and the cotton-woods close to the river; he could see the trail and hear Ewan Munro yelling. He felt Imogen’s gaze. ‘This isn’t Scottish,’ he said quietly.

  She looked at the carving against the palm of his hand. Her mind stilled and she took it from him and replaced it on the window sill. ‘No, it’s just something I picked up.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  She had turned away from him, hugging herself, and moved to the fire that wasn’t there. It was chilly tonight and she wished she had built one earlier. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Connla picked it up a second time, and she turned and wanted to take it from him, but didn’t. He seemed to weigh it in his hand. ‘It’s Native American,’ he said, ‘but then I guess you figured that already. Possibly Sioux or Shoshone. Cheyenne, maybe. I’ve seen something similar once before.’ He pointed to the broken feather. ‘I think there were two of these originally; they’re eagle feathers. The Thunderbird—Wakinyan Tanka—the embodiment of the great spirit himself. This guy is a ghost dancer. Somebody carved it in memory, I’d say; in memory of what might have been.’

  Imogen looked from his eyes to his hand and back again. ‘What d’you mean, in memory?’

  ‘After the event. Looking back with too much hurt, maybe, to reflect on.’ He paused and pushed out his lips. ‘In the late 1880s, at Walker Lake, Nevada, a Paiute Indian called Wovoka had a vision of the messiah. The vision was of a reunion with the dead, where all was as it had been. With the first new grass of spring the dead would rise up and the white oppressor would fall away, the buffalo would return and the sacred way of living would be restored to the red man. Warriors came from all over the west; literally thousands of them, from all the different tribes, converged on Walker Lake. They wanted to hear the message from the Wanekia—that means ‘one who makes live’. They met with Wovoka and he instructed them in the steps of the ghost dance, which he had learned in his vision. The dance would issue in the new beginning. It was passive insurrection. No more farming, no more labouring, just dancing day and night till the hoop of the nation was whole once again. In the dance, they would meet with dead relatives and cement the return to the old ways. Wovoka gave each leader two eagle feathers and some sacred red paint for their faces. Later, Black Elk of the Sioux made ghost shirts at Pine Ridge, close to where I live.’ He stopped talking and set the little figure down again. ‘It all ended in tragedy.’

  ‘What tragedy?’

  He looked round and could see the disturbance in her eyes. His tongue was suddenly tied; there were things he wanted to say but could not. He looked away. ‘In 1890 the Sioux had been dancing under Black Elk’s direction and the authorities were getting nervous. The Indians would not work. Sitting Bull was arrested and then killed, and still the people danced. None of the whites could understand it and their ignorance bred fear. In the end, the remnants of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry massacred three hundred and forty women and children at a place called Wounded Knee. The dance went on at other reservations but, symbolically, that’s when it ended.’

  Imogen watched him, and all at once she felt her space had been invaded; there was a stranger in her house. That hadn’t happened in a long time.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m taking up your time,’ Connla said.

  Imogen half smiled. ‘I have to dry my hair.’

  ‘Look, I’ll go. I should never have come out so late anyhow. Insensitive of me.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ But she was weary all at once. ‘They should have told you, I don’t sell my originals.’

  Connla picked up his coat from the back of the kitchen door, working the collar between his fingers. ‘Listen, thank you very much,’ he said and turned. ‘Oh, by the way, they did tell me. About the pictures, I mean.’ He smiled then and stepped out into the night.

  He sat in the truck for a few moments, trying to gather his emotions. Everything seemed messy. He hated to lie. But right now lies were his only protection. Imogen Munro after thirty years. The little girl from Wyoming, whose brother had drowned in the east fork of the Salmon. The thoughts dribbled away, but Imogen’s face fi
lled his mind: the sheen of her hair, the clarity of her skin and the sharpness in her eyes. Her nose was fine and straight, her lips full and red. He could smell the bath on her even now and imagined her naked, as he was certain she must have been, under that robe. He widened his eyes at himself in the rear-view mirror and started up the diesel.

  Imogen leaned with her back against the door and heard the engine turn over. There was quite a pause before it did, as if he was sitting there with the rain pressing him into his seat and nowhere for his thoughts to flee. She sensed the thought in him, the great depth of it. She didn’t know why. She had never met him before, and she had sensed nothing vaguely like it in any of the men up here. So why now? And what was it exactly that she thought or felt or sensed? Green eyes and that fire in his hair; it was all she could see as she stared blankly in front of her. She thought about the contours of his movement: the slight swing of his arms as he walked, the way his jaw worked when he spoke, the way he had bunched his eyes while gazing at Redynvre. She shook herself physically and told herself not to be so stupid. Then she went back through to the lounge, paused a moment and stared at the broken feathers held by the Indian on the window sill. So now she knew what it was, after all these years. She stood by the sill and remembered, and the rain beat against the window.

  Connla drove slowly back to the hotel, a cigarette burning between his fingers. So many thoughts, so many emotions, old and new and clashing like waves under the bridge. Rain still pounded the windscreen and the wipers worked furiously. He parked the truck outside the hotel and sat for a long time just thinking about what had happened. It was hard to take in after thirty long years—Imogen Munro grown into a beautiful woman and that little ghost dancer on her window sill. Outside, the wind howled and the rain rattled the bodywork of the truck. Connla shivered where he sat and stared into the blanket of night. Was that it? he wondered. Come up here, see her and go? Was that enough after all these years? He had no answer and the chill seeped into his bones. He climbed out of the truck and ducked into the bar.

  McKewan the fisherman was there, seemingly a permanent fixture, and also the man with the shaggy hair whom he had seen up at Imogen’s field. Connla nodded to both of them and felt the cold stare of a third older man, with a Sherlock Holmes hat on his head. He slid onto a vacant stool and ordered a pint of Guinness.

  ‘Wild night, so it is,’ the barman said.

  ‘You’re not kidding.’ Connla watched as he poured the dark beer into a straight glass.

  ‘Did you find her, then?’ Andy McKewan’s bulk was all at once at his shoulder. Connla glanced at him and caught both the man from the hillside and the older man watching him. He frowned to himself. It was like being in the Slaughtered Lamb. All he needed now was a pentangle on the wall. ‘Yes, thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Any good?’

  Connla squinted, his mind wandering elsewhere. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The pictures. Were there any good ones?’

  ‘Lots. I don’t think she’s going to sell any, though.’

  ‘I told you she wouldn’t.’ The man with the shaggy hair spoke from further down the bar. McKewan, leaning on his forearms, swivelled to stare at him. ‘And what would you know about it, Mr Patterson?’

  Patterson seemed taken aback, either by his own interjection or the sharp retort from McKewan. Connla sipped his Guinness and watched.

  ‘I work with Imogen, Andy. I know all about her painting.’

  McKewan laughed then, loud and raucous, and glanced at his crew for favour. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but you’d like to.’ He cackled again. Patterson reddened and Connla caught the older man’s eye across the bar. Something vaguely resembling a smile itched away at his lips.

  It was only then that Connla noticed there were no women in the place. He took another cigarette from his pack. He must be flustered, nerves frayed out; he only smoked like this when his nerves were shot to pieces. McKewan snapped a zippo under his nose and Connla cupped his hand to the flame.

  ‘So what’re you going to do now, Mr Brady?’ McKewan asked. ‘Now that wee Imogen won’t sell you a picture. Are you going on back to America?’

  Connla hunched back on the stool, his hands resting in his lap. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Straightaway?’ Patterson was too eager again.

  Connla glanced at him. ‘No, I’ve got some stuff to do over here first.’

  ‘So you’ll be around then?’ The older man spoke for the first time from across the bar, where he nursed a tumbler of pale whisky.

  ‘For a coupla days maybe. Figured I’d go over to Skye.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d been.’ Patterson again.

  Connla was beginning to enjoy this. They were like a band of nomadic lions stalking the only female in season. ‘I might go again,’ he said.

  McKewan rubbed his meaty palms together. ‘We could take you fishing, show you some real Scottish weather.’

  ‘You know what?’ Connla said, nodding to the rain that spread like a sheet on the window. ‘I think I’ve seen it already.’

  McKewan laughed and clapped him on the back, nearly knocking him off the stool.

  ‘Get this man a dram,’ he said. ‘Make it a good one, Billy.’

  The barman took a tumbler and spun it in his palm before lifting it to the optics.

  Connla watched as he poured a measure of malt whisky, then McKewan tapped the bar with a blackened fingernail. ‘On ye go,’ he said, and the barman shot in another.

  ‘Ice? Water?’ McKewan said to Connla.

  ‘Straight.’

  ‘Good man.’ Again McKewan clapped him on the back. Connla took the glass, toasted them and knocked it back in one. The others gawped at him. ‘Mr Brady,’ McKewan said, ‘we sip our whisky in Scotland.’

  ‘Mr McKewan,’ Connla rested an elbow on his shoulder, ‘we slam it in South Dakota.’

  Seventeen

  IMOGEN WOKE LATE, SOMETHING she never did in the summer vacation: there was always too much she wanted to do. But this morning she slept in, and when she woke up she wasn’t refreshed but weary, as if weights were attached to her limbs. The rain was gone and sunshine stretched across the loch, and she lay there in the silence listening to fragments of birdsong which carried from the trees on the hillside. Last night she had dreamed of her brother up to his neck in water. She could see him now: head jerking this way and that, as if unseen limbs were frantically trying to keep him afloat. Imogen could feel the tightness of her skin about the eyes and she knew she had been crying in the dream. Slowly, lethargically, she eased herself out of bed. She got as far as the edge and stopped, a great cloud of depression moving in on her. She had a sudden desire to speak to her mother and contemplated telephoning her. But then her phone started ringing and, grabbing a robe, she went down to the kitchen to answer it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Imogen. It’s me.’

  Imogen sat down on a stool, pushing a hand through her hair. ‘Oh, hi, Jean.’

  ‘Are you only just up?’

  Imogen yawned, weariness in her face. ‘Yes. What time is it?’

  ‘After ten.’

  ‘Och, I must’ve been tired.’

  ‘Well?’ Jean said in her ear. ‘Did he come?’

  ‘Who? Oh, the American. Yes, he came.’ The previous night flooded back to her: his face, his voice, the way he looked at her pictures. ‘Jean, I can’t talk on the phone this morning. My head’s not in gear.’

  ‘Make some tea. I’ll come round.’

  Imogen was not at all sure she wanted company, but she put the phone down and the kettle on to boil, then she went to let the chickens out. Jean had wasted no time and was pulling up in her car as she got back to the kitchen. The kettle was singing and the room gradually filled with steam. Absently, she dropped a couple of teabags into cups and carried the whole lot over to the table. Jean let herself in without knocking, her face red, eyes bright and inquisitive. Imogen felt anything but enthusiastic, Ewan’s face haunting her every move. />
  Jean saw the state she was in and clicked her tongue. ‘Sit yourself down, lass. Let me do this.’ She poured tea, then made some toast, buttered it and set a plate in front of her. ‘You’re not all there today, are you.’

  Imogen took her hand and squeezed it; tears broke against her eyes and she blinked them back. Jean looked suddenly shocked. She sat down next to her and took her in her arms like the big sister Imogen had never had.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, gently. ‘What’s the matter? He couldn’t have been that bad.’

  Imogen wiped away the few tears that had dribbled onto her cheeks, sat up straighter and exhaled harshly. Jean stirred her tea and passed it to her. She gripped the cup in both hands, the warmth of the enamel feeding into her skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It must be my hormones. I don’t know what’s the matter with me this morning.’

  Jean laughed. ‘That’s OK. We don’t have to talk.’

  And then Imogen smiled. ‘All you want to do is talk,’ she said. ‘You want to find out what happened. Me with a man in my house.’ She could feel the clouds lifting. Laughter: the best antidote for anything. That was something her aunt had always taught her.

  ‘Oh, go on then,’ Jean said with a coy smile. ‘What was he like? Big and fat with a wallet to match?’

  ‘No, actually.’ Imogen stared out of the window. ‘He was tall and slim and good-looking in a characterful sort of way.’

  ‘Characterful?’

  ‘Yes. You know, strong features—nose, chin, hair. Not a pretty boy, deeper than that.’

  ‘What colour eyes has he got?’

  ‘Green.’

  ‘Hair?’

  ‘Auburn, I guess. Very dark. It looked like it was burned.’

  Jean made a face. ‘Are we talking James Lawton?’

  ‘No. God!’ Imogen said. ‘He was a customer, Jean.’

  ‘No he wasn’t, dearie. You never sell your pictures. You knew that before he came.’