Cat's Eyes

by Alan Scholefield

  They waited in the dark. Once the boiler started up and once the freezer switched itself on. Those were the only noises. They seemed isolated, bound to each other in this, the oldest part of the house. There was something primeval about the situation and about the house itself, crouching at the edge of the Great Forest.

  And then the telephone rang. She started to her feet and looked at her watch. It was showing nearly midnight and she wondered who could be telephoning her at this hour.

  She ran up the stairs and felt her knee protest. It could only be Bill. It was morning in California. It must be Bill. She took it in his study. “Hullo?” she said. “Hullo?”

  There was no reply.

  Then she heard a ticking as though someone was holding the receiver near a clock. Tick ... tick ... tick ... tick. And silence as the line went dead.

  Her knuckles showed white where she was gripping the receiver. Slowly she replaced it in its cradle. This was the third unexplained call in two days.

  She switched off the study light and, as she did so, realised she had forgotten to close the curtains. Snow brightened the darkness outside. The study windows looked over the garden. About an inch of snow had fallen, covering trees and bushes, obliterating the lawn and drive. There was not a mark on it, it was pristine. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement. A black shape was crossing the snow. It stopped by the rhododendron bush. She stared at it for a few seconds, hardly daring to breathe, and then she ran back to the head of the cellar steps.

  “Alec!” she hissed. “The cat’s in the garden.”

  She heard his chair scrape back and then he bumped into something which fell with a clatter.

  “Sorry about that,” he whispered as he came up the steps. “Where is it?”

  “I’ll show you. You can see it through Bill’s window.” They crept into the study. “Over by the bushes. It’s in the shadow.”

  “I can’t see a thing. Have you got the torch.”

  “Here.”

  “Open the window.”

  “I can’t. It’s got a burglarproof lock.”

  They went to the front door and she opened it as silently as she could. There was a click as Alec moved the safety-catch on the gun. “Come close to me,” he said. “Remember I have to shoot along the torch beam.”

  Her hands were shaking.

  “Now!”

  She switched on the torch and he fired a second later. The noise in her ears was enormous and there was a harsh smell of cordite. She played the powerful beam on the base of the bush, but could see nothing.

  “Are you sure it was there?”

  “It was when I called you.”

  “It may have heard me in the cellar I’ll go out and take a look anyway.”

  She watched him out in the snow kneeling by the bush, moving the torch backwards and forwards. He came back nearly frozen. “It was there all right. You can see its tracks coming over the snow, but it may have gone by the time I fired.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We can’t do much more tonight. Not after the noise we’ve made.”

  He slept in the spare room and though it gave her confidence to have someone in the house she no longer felt the same about Alec. Everyone had described him and his wife as a devoted couple, but the thought of the affair he’d had with Penny’s mother had reduced him in her eyes.

  *

  The cat had been watching the house from the shadow of the rhododendron bush when it had heard the noise of Alec knocking over Rachel’s chair in the cellar, which had sent it into the very heart of the bush itself. When Alec had fired, the pellets had spattered harmlessly over the snowy lawn.

  The past week had seen a deterioration in the animal. The infection had extended up its leg, withering the big thigh muscle and entering its body. The leg had stiffened and could not be held clear of the ground so now, wherever it went, the leg dragged behind. Had Alec’s eyes been better, he might have seen the little furrow drawn through the snow by the useless paw.

  The cat was very thin and had lost several pounds in weight. Its hip bones stuck out like knuckles and its flanks were hollow. Its face seemed to have narrowed to a thin jaw, big staring eyes and cheeks that had sunk on to the teeth.

  It lived precariously, its food supply coming more by good luck than its own design. As winter closed its fist on the land, and squirrels and rabbits went to their holes and warrens, the carnage on the roads came to a halt and it was unable to find carrion. Perforce, it had to live closer to humans. So it had given up the den — in any case, it was water-logged — and had taken up residence under the rhododendron bush. The nearest house to the Chaters, a small cottage, was owned by a London couple who came down only at weekends. At these times there would be scraps of food and perhaps the good fortune of a dustbin knocked over by scavenging dogs.

  During one of the storms of the past ten days a telephone linesman had come out with his mate to repair a flooded junction box.

  They had brought their sandwiches and had sat in the yellow van eating their midday meal. But the linesman had had a heavy night and was hung-over; he had no stomach for dried-out bread and scraps of ham and cheese. So he had thrown the packet of sandwiches into the nearest hedgerow. The cat had found them. That had been the first good meal it had had for four days.

  Then the snow had come. It had fallen off and on for several days, the skies clearing at night and a hard frost setting in. This meant that the bird population had difficulty in finding food and, as usual in bitter winter weather, the sparrows and robins attacked the milk bottles standing on early-morning doorsteps. They would peck the foil tops to try and get at the milk. This helped the cat. It smelled the milk and on one doorstep tried to lick it from the holes made by the birds. In doing so, it knocked the bottle over. It smashed and the cat was able to lap up the entire pint.

  There was a terrible irony about its life now: to find food enough on which to maintain life, it had to be in constant motion, searching for carrion, for discarded rubbish; but movement weakened it and drove the poison of the infection further and further into its viscera and it moved in a cocoon of pain.

  The one place the cat had found in which it had been dry and warm and in which there had been a stock of food which it could have without great effort, had been the Chaters’ cellar. It was waiting for its chance to return.

  *

  Rachel was dreaming. Anyone standing in the bedroom watching her would have seen her body twisting and her eyelids fluttering, her hands clenching and unclenching. She moved from side to side and sometimes her body would jerk as though her dream had startled her. A faint dew of sweat stood on her forehead.

  She woke, suddenly and harshly, shuddering with fright. Sunlight was streaming into the bedroom in huge, square blocks of orange. For a moment she was totally disorientated. She thought she was in Santa Monica. She thought she could hear the sea. For a brief second she wondered whether Michael had left for the studios. Then the present reasserted itself. She was in her own room, it was a winter’s morning and Bill was away. She knew she had been dreaming, but she could not remember the dream. It stayed with her as an after-taste, a feeling of unease, of things that had not been made known to her: miasmic horrors, creatures form the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch.

  She lay fighting its after-effects until her mind took her into other channels and she recalled the night before: Alec in the cellar; the shotgun’s blast through the front door; the telephone ringing, and the ticking. She looked at her watch; it was almost noon. She had slept badly during the night, even though Alec was in the spare room. She had taken him back to his own cottage on her way to fetch Penny, had come back exhausted, returned to bed and fallen asleep.

  The day had been misty early on but now it was a blazing, clear winter’s day. She looked out of the window. It was like magic. The snow had gone, the trees were brown, the grass was green, the sun shone and when she opened the window she felt a mild breeze from the south. It was more like an early au
tumn day. Everything was shining with melted water.

  She went into Sophie’s room. The cot was empty.

  “Penny!” she shouted. “Penny!” She ran to the stairs.

  Penny appeared from the kitchen.

  “Where’s Sophie?”

  “I thought you’d gone out. I thought I heard the car.”

  “Where’s Sophie?”

  Rachel went down the stairs, ignoring the jarring of her knee.

  “She’s outside,” Penny said. “It’s such a lovely day. I put her in her pram.

  She should have felt a flood of relief but the dream had left her mind defenceless. “Where did you put her?”

  “Out by the pool.”

  Ever since Rachel had seen Sunset Boulevard and William Holden’s body hanging suspended in the swimming-pool, she had nursed a secret dread that one day she would look out of a window and see the same thing. She felt the terror rush in on her: was it to be Sophie’s body?

  She flung open the side door and went out on to the paved terrace in the corner made by the L-shape of the house. The pool sparkled in the sunshine, making arabesques of golden light on the side of the house. The only things in the water were a few dead leaves. With a feeling of relief she went forward to the pram. She could not see Sophie’s head. The child was almost invisible. The pillow was over her face. Rachel wrenched it off. Sophie’s little face had a bluish tinge.

  All the fears she had ever had as a mother crystallised in that one moment. For a second she stood rigid, then she grabbed the baby and ran into the house, shouting at Penny to phone the doctor. She put Sophie down on the kitchen table and unzipped her jump-suit. She could feel a faint fluttering of the heart but the small body did not seem to be breathing. She had seen pictures of what to do in such a case, but she had never paid much attention to them. All she knew was that she should put her lips on the victim’s mouth and breathe. She put her mouth over Sophie’s and breathed in and out, trying to force air into her lungs, being one with her like a breathing-machine acting for them both. She heard Penny at the telephone and heard her return.

  “The doctor’s having his surgery. Do you want to speak to him?” Penny said.

  She shook her head, frightened to take her mouth from Sophie’s. She went on sucking and blowing until finally there was a response. She felt breath come into her own mouth and when she pulled away and looked down the blue tinge was disappearing, and the flesh of Sophie’s face was turning to its normal pink. She gathered her up and ran to the car.

  “But how could it have happened?” She was sitting in Dr. Williams’ surgery and Sophie was on her knee.

  He played with his half-lens glasses, then settled them on his nose. “This is your first child, isn’t it, Mrs. Chater? I think what happened should tell you something.” He scratched his short, grey-black hair. “Anything can happen where babies are concerned.”

  Sophie reached for a bail-point pen which was lying on his desk. Automatically, Rachel moved it.

  “I’ve read about cot deaths,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Whatever you’ve read, believe me, what happened — or what nearly happened — to your baby has nothing to do with what we know as a cot death. We still don’t know much about them, but we think they are probably caused by massive viral infections. Your baby somehow got her pillow over her face and was nearly smothered.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand. I just don’t understand how it could have happened.”

  “She’s all right now, anyway. I’d let her do without a pillow for a while if I were you.”

  “I’ll make sure of it — and she won’t be out of my sight.”

  “I don’t recommend that. Babies have to take their chance in life like everyone else. Treat her normally. Don’t let this get you down or you may have worse trouble.”

  It was when she was giving Sophie her bottle an hour later that she noticed the scratch on her neck.

  It was not a big scratch and it was hidden by a fold of skin, only becoming visible when the baby turned her head away from the feeding-bottle. Rachel stretched the skin between her fingers. She stared at the red line and another scratch came before her inner eye: the one on Franco’s muzzle, through which he had bled to death. She bit her lip until she winced with pain. Stop it, she said to herself, stop it! The scratch could have been made in any of a dozen ways.

  When she had finished feeding Sophie she went to look at the pram. She picked up the offending pillow. Underneath it were some crumbs and a single black hair. And then, on the side of the pram, she saw marks that looked as though they might have been made with a knife.

  Alec came around the corner of the house. “Isn’t it a lovely day?” he said. “We sometimes get ’em in an English winter. Makes up for all the rest.”

  “Alec, I want you to see something,” she said, as calmly as she could.

  “Seeing isn’t exactly my strong suit,” he said, smiling.

  Even in her preoccupation she noticed that he was looking pale and tired, the patchwork marks on his face were more obvious than usual. But she had no inclination, at the moment, to waste time worrying about Alec.

  “What do these look like?” She pointed to the marks on the pram.

  “Scratches.” He touched them with the tips of his fingers.

  “And what’s that?”

  “A black hair.”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  She took him upstairs to Sophie’s room. The baby was lying on her back, gurgling.

  Alec gave her his finger. “My word, you’ve got a grip!”

  Rachel pulled down the zip of the child’s jump-suit and revealed the scratch. “What about that?”

  “It’s a scratch.”

  “Yes. Come and have a drink.”

  “It’s a little early, isn’t it?”

  “I need one.”

  “All right. I’ll have a beer.”

  She gave him one and poured a whisky for herself. “Sit down. I want to tell you something.”

  She described what had happened that morning, from the time she awoke to the time she had seen Sophie almost dead in her pram, to the struggle she’d had bringing life back into the child, to her visit to the doctor.

  “Good God, what a dreadful thing to have happened!” he said. “I see why you need the drink.”

  “That’s not the whole reason.”

  “No?”

  “Haven’t you put it together?”

  “Put what together?”

  “The scratches. There were scratches on the pram. A scratch on Sophie’s neck.”

  “Christ! You don’t believe ... ?”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve become obsessed by that damned cat! If the house burned down you’d say you saw it running around with matches.”

  “That’s not very funny.”

  “It’s not meant to be. One minute you’re accusing the cat of luring a dog up to a farm and feeding it on Warfarin, then scratching it, which, apart from anything else, implies that the cat knew that Warfarin is an anti-coagulant. I mean, I’ve never heard anything so preposterous in my life. Now you accuse it of an attempt to murder Sophie. That’s what it boils down to. What you’re saying is that it jumped up into the pram, put the pillow over her face and in doing so scratched her on the neck. Good God, Rachel!”

  As they stared at each other, Penny came into the room. “The soap powder’s run out,” she said.

  “I’ll get some later,” Rachel said. “Penny, when you put Sophie down this morning, did you notice any scratches on the side of the pram?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, so you put her down?” Alec said.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t see the cat anywhere around, did you?”

  “What cat?”

  “The one that’s gone wild. The one that upset your dustbin.”

  “No. I just put her out there and give her a rusk and ...”

  “You what?” Rachel said.
/>   “I give her a rusk.” Anxiety crossed her face at the thought that she might have done something wrong.

  “And you left her eating the rusk?”

  “Yes.”

  When she had gone Alec said, “Have I got it right? Penny put her down and gave her a rusk?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Well, now, the cat may have gone after that, I grant you. If it was starving or as hungry as we think, it might have taken the rusk away from Sophie. Those could be its claw marks on the pram. And the scratch on her neck just might have been made at the same time. But all this is a long shot. I mean, I’m being the Devil’s Advocate. The cat might have jumped up; might have taken her rusk; might have scratched her in doing so. But the cat certainly didn’t put a pillow over her face.”

  There was a long moment of silence as the words penetrated her consciousness.

  Even her obsessive horror of the animal could not deny their truth. But if she was right, and Alec was right, what had caused the pillow to move from under Sophie’s head and nearly smother her?”

  12

  Her dream took a different turn after that. Gone was the face at the window, the trickle of blood, the car slithering off the road; now it was always the cat, the dark, furry shape. Sometimes she saw it stalking the pram, sometimes scrabbling up the side, its back legs seeking purchase, sometimes crouching over Sophie.

  Rachel would wake, shuddering, and hurry out of bed to the baby’s cot. Despite the doctor’s warning, she carried Sophie wherever she went in the house, left her only when Penny promised not to take her eyes off her. She no longer left her outside in her pram and at night she moved the cot into her own room.

  She and Alec kept vigil in the cellar for two consecutive nights, but their presence must have signalled itself in scent or noises, for the cat did not come.

  Before she drove him home on the third morning, he said, “This is hopeless, Rachel. It won’t come while we’re sitting down there. I’ve had an idea. With your permission, I’m going to fix a booby-trap.”

  “Anything, if you think it will work.”

  First he borrowed two wood clamps from Bill’s workshop and clamped the gun to a beam, its barrel pointing at the hole in the wire mesh on the window. Then he found a ball of thin kitchen string and covered a length of it in black shoe polish.