“I was on my way back from the vet,” said Southpaw, “when the dust storm happened and the Bigfeet opened the car door.” He didn’t feel up to explaining that they weren’t his Bigfeet, only the Sender’s Bigfeet, but Thomas asked few questions.
The peacock set a cracking pace, covering the ground at surprising speed with his claws. Southpaw wisely and instinctively kept up with Thomas’s head and body instead of getting tangled up at the back with his long, now furled feathers.
Thomas, as leader of the peacock Patrol, had enough to keep his beak full at the best of times, and he planned to hand Southpaw over to the few cats who lived on the Golf Course. “Heads up!” he said out loud, looking up into the blue sky. “Southpaw! Go left and duck, fast!”
“Wha…?” began the cat, but the peacock had already stretched a wing out and knocked him sideways. Two inches from his nose, a large white egg soared down and settled with a thwack into the turf.
“Easy, easy now,” said Thomas. “We’ve got a minute to clear the ground, what? No reason to run. Can’t stand it myself when the younger peacocks start galumphing around—galumphing is for the deer, I always tell them, not for the birds. Come on, young ’un, this way. Before the next chappies tee off, come on, then, look sharp.”
Southpaw looked up and saw another egg appearing from the far horizon, hanging high up in the sky—and following the egg was an entire band of Bigfeet. He didn’t wait to be told twice; putting his ears back, he streaked after Thomas into the shelter of a long line of trees and undergrowth. Peering out from behind the brush, he saw to his horror that the Bigfeet were brandishing weapons.
“Why are they hitting eggs?” he asked Thomas. The peacock looked aghast. “That’s a golf ball!” he said. “Don’t you know the…no, how would you, you weren’t born to the course, like the other cats. Anyway, it’s a kind of game the Bigfeet play. They tee off and what they’re trying for is a birdie or an eagle, though most of the duffers end up with bogies…”
He glanced down at Southpaw and sighed. “Never mind. It’s a noble game, and we, of course, have our part to play in it. We must present ourselves at ritual moments, and receive the homage of the cries of their priests: ancient, strange cries known only to men, but how they stir our blood, as they intone the age-old incantations of ‘Get Away!’ and the holy hymn of ‘Damn That Bird!’ ”
The peacock had a faraway look in his eye now, and his blue-and-green plumes flashed in the sunlight with even more magnificence. “There are no exceptions,” he continued. “Every Mor, for generations past, has had to face the test of the third hole, where you cannot see the white ball that might strike you down from out of the bunker, or the eighth, where you face your Bigfoot squarely, daring him to strike you amidships. It is a test of courage, old chap, a true test. But all you need to know is this: steer clear of the golf balls and the Bigfeet, and the freedom of the course is yours. Step carefully around the bandicoot burrows, there’s a good fellow. They’ve been overdoing the burrowing this year for some reason and you don’t want to feel their blasted snouts snuffling around your paws.”
Southpaw watched for a while as the Bigfeet played the game, his feline brain registering the speed and weight of the ball, and recognizing how deadly it might be to a bird—or a cat. He shuddered at the thought of deliberately facing into one of the Bigfeet’s golf shots.
“You said every peacock has to face the Bigfeet’s shots,” he said, his fur relaxed and questioning as he looked up at Thomas.
“Yes,” said the bird, “unless he wants to be called a bad egg.”
“But doesn’t it hurt if you’re hit?” asked the tom.
Thomas’s feathers rose involuntarily into a terrifying fan, and the cat shrunk deeper into the bushes.
“Yes,” he said, more hoarsely. “It hurts a great deal. It can…kill. Over there, to the right, is the ninth hole, shrine to my uncle, who stood bravely through his time of ordeal as a young feller, never knowing that the ball would strike him square on the neck. He was dead before we could reach him, and now we all honour the courage and glorious end…” his voice quavered, “of the best uncle a bird ever had.” Recovering, Thomas said, “Since his death, every peahen has brought her chicks over to the ninth hole, and told them never to forget the name of Noah Mor.”
As they padded on, Southpaw found that he was enjoying himself. He walked stiff-legged every time clumps of Bigfeet emerged, but Thomas seemed to know the best routes around them, and the grass was cool and soothing under his paws. Southpaw inhaled the rich scents of the Golf Course. The wind brought him tales of mice and bandicoot families, living for generations in the hedges and ditches, dodging the pythons and the ancient rat snake tribes. As he padded along, the winds whispered the history of the three-generation feud between four Cinnamon Babbler families and the standing detente between the mynahs and the partridges. And trailing grey tendrils through all of this were the murmured tales from the cats—tales of long, lazy days spent in the sun, mouse and rat hunts, playing artful dodgers with the golfers, and of sleek mornings cadging scraps off the clubhouse tables.
Thomas kept up a comfortable slow run, his beautiful tail parallel to the ground, feathers flicking like a boat’s sail at the end, measuring his pace so that the tom could match him.
His sharp eyes spotted the cat before Southpaw scented it. “Splendid!” he said. “One of your chaps, what? Let’s get you two introduced, what say…oh. Blast. It’s him. Oh well, too late to change course, must make the best of it.”
Before Southpaw could make further inquiries, the smoky-grey cat had strolled over in their direction.
“Evening, Tommy,” said the grey, eyeing Southpaw with some distaste.
“Top of the evening to you, Dippy,” said the peacock curtly.
The grey cat’s whiskers stiffened, but he ignored the peacock, turning to Southpaw. “I’m His Excellency Billi Bunter Singhji, Esq, KCB, MBE, OBE, KCS, of the Diplomatic Cat Corps, resident of Golf Links (with lifetime access to the Golf Course). My friends call me Bunter; you may call me Mr. Diplocat. Your credentials?”
“Me?” said Southpaw, puzzled. “What’s credentials?”
Thomas nudged him with his beak. “Feller wants your name and designation, what?” he explained.
“Ah!” said Southpaw. He leaned forward to touch whiskers, but the Diplocat’s ears quivered and he stepped back ever so slightly. The tom made the best of it. “I’m Southpaw, of the, ah, roofs of Nizamuddin, second drainpipe to the left on the Sender’s stairs, currently, um…lost.”
“Thomas,” said the Diplocat, “he’s a Common Cat?”
Thomas’s feathers rustled slightly in the breeze, and the peacock raised his beak. “A very uncommon one, as you’ll discover if you ask him about his travels, Dippy,” he said. He looked as if he would have said more, but his attention was caught by a commotion towards the left, where a pride of peacocks had emerged from over the treeline.
“Sorry, old chaps, seems I’ll have to say cheerio and pip-pip, what? Looks like Any and Much need me.” He cocked his head to one side, listening on the bird network, “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, Birdbrain’s got stuck in a bunker again. That’s Bulbul, sweet feller but not the brightest beak in the nest, know what I mean? Southpaw, we shall meet at Philippi. Third hole to you. Dippy, introduce him to the others, there’s a good chap.”
“But he’s just a commoner, Thomas!” hissed the Diplocat.
The peacock’s feathers shot into a menacing fan, and the Diplocat took a hasty step backwards. “So sorry about that,” said Thomas, “glitch in the system, got to get it fixed. So you’ll take care of this little feller, what say?”
He looked at Southpaw with a kinder light in his eye. “You’ll be all right, old chap. Dippy here’ll show you around, get you some rations, won’t you, Dippy? Take care of yourself, Southpaw.” And he ran off, his claws racing lightly along the ground.
Southpaw’s whiskers tingled as he received a crackle of irritation from the
Diplocat, but when he sneaked a sideways glance, the grey fur was impassive.
“Step this way, please,” said the Diplocat, setting off at such a pace that the kitten had to break into a gallop every so often just to keep up. They moved across broad swathes of green, through a deserted monument, and over tempting expanses of sand that the kitten would have loved to have explored, except that the Diplocat refused to slow down.
By the time they reached their destination, which appeared to be a grand old banyan tree whose roots spanned the top of a hillock, Southpaw’s legs were trembling from the exertion, and the tomcat’s hunger pangs were acute. The Diplocat said, “Stay here,” tersely, and stepped stiff-legged to the back of the knoll, clearly in search of something. The cat flopped down between two large tree roots, his tongue hanging out as he panted. When he began to clean his fur, he realized he was still trembling, and he wondered whether the Diplocat would bring him something to eat. He didn’t think so; the grey cat didn’t seem very friendly.
Squirrels flashed up the trunk of the tree, darting blurs of grey and silver, chittering as they eyed Southpaw and made their way to higher branches for safety’s sake. The tom’s tiredness lifted a little in the cool shade of the banyan, and his whiskers started to whisper to him of the whereabouts of prey.
The Golf Course was rich in small animals, and Southpaw’s mouth watered as a field mouse darted out, its black nose whiffling when it scented cat. He took a peek around, but the Diplocat was nowhere to be seen.
Cat etiquette required that he ask the Diplocat’s permission before hunting on his turf, and Southpaw refrained from climbing up into the tree to see if he might find bird’s eggs in a nest. It took some effort to rein in his instincts when two field mice darted across the roots, one chasing the other, but the cat held back. There were woodlice marching up a dry branch, and guiltily, he ate them, reasoning that it wasn’t hunting really, just snacking.
The woodlice made his belly rumble, and instead of taking the edge off his appetite, they made him realize how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten since long before the visit to the vet’s office, and his mouth watered at the signs and scents of so many mice and shrews. The tom shifted his position, pressing his belly down on the tree root in an attempt to stifle the rumbles.
The Diplocat stalked back across the tree roots, making no attempt to hide his annoyance. “Can’t find the other cats,” he said briefly. “The chaps are usually here, can’t think what’s happened to them.”
Southpaw raised his whiskers. “Dipp—Mr. Diplocat? Might I have permission to hunt?”
The grey cat took a step back. “Permission to hunt?”
The tom wondered whether the cat rules were different here on the Golf Course and if he’d said something wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said meekly. “It’s just that I’ve been sick and haven’t eaten much over the last few days, and there seemed to be a lot of mice here—but I wouldn’t dream of trespassing on your territory, or poaching on your preserves.”
The grey cat’s tail was waving wildly from side to side. “Hunt! He thinks…You think I would eat a common or garden mouse? How dare you! I’ve never eaten anything in my entire life that hasn’t come out of a tin or a packet! Norwegian sardines! Danish ham! English pilchards! And you insinuate that I would lower myself and eat this…this…common food, hunting for myself like any cat from the gutter? I don’t know what Thomas was thinking, bringing you to me. Oh go on, eat as many mice as you like. Kill as much vermin as you please. Just leave me out of it. Hunt! He thought I would actually hunt the damn things! My paws and whiskers!”
Southpaw felt sorry that he’d hurt the Diplocat’s feelings, but just as he was about to offer an apology, the dry leaves rustled, and a fat, young, juicy rat ran out from behind a branch. The tom’s instincts kicked in, and in a flash, he was on the rat, slamming it out of the air with a wickedly fast paw. In two blows, it was dead, and the tom tore into his kill with a ferocity born of his extreme hunger.
It was the best meal he had ever tasted. Fresh, juicy, singing with the flavours of grass and rare herbs, tender enough to satisfy the most demanding of cats. Southpaw had finished well over half of the kill before he recalled his manners.
“The prey in your part of the world tastes of sunlight,” he said, using the formal speech Miao had whacked into his head when she taught him the etiquette of hunting. “Shall I save a haunch for you? I know you would rather have cat food, but the lore says I should…”
His whiskers stung as the Diplocat crackled with indignation. The grey cat’s back was arched and his tail rigid.
“I think,” he said, “that I might be sick. That is the most disgusting proposition anyone has put to me, much less a common cat from the gutter. Tell Thomas I did what I could for you, but this is too much. Good day to you. Pray continue with your meal. Ugh.”
And the Diplocat stalked off, his tail held high, his whiskers radiating disapproval.
—
IT WAS SOME TIME later, with his stomach pleasantly full, that Southpaw began to consider what he should do next. He washed his paws, and his whiskers, and his tail, and watched the butterflies darting from one blade of grass to another while he turned the matter over.
The Bigfeet’s cars had scrambled his sense of direction; his whiskers felt as though they had been whirled around and returned crinkled at the ends after one of his trips to the vet. It was the way they rushed around the place, going so fast that his whiskers couldn’t keep up with the scent trails. Overpasses were the worst; going over them made his head throb and his stomach ache. He had been too sick on his first few visits to the vet to notice or care, but when he was back to his normal self, he wondered how the Sender could stand it. He had asked Mara, imagining that it would be much worse for her, with those long Sender’s whiskers. She was guarding him, watching the Bigfeet bandage his paw. When they’d finished and left the room, she licked the fur around the edge of the bandages so that it lay flat and didn’t tickle him too much.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” she said sympathetically. “I used to get the worst hairballs because the speed turned my stomach, but then I discovered that if I sang very loudly and yowled at the top of my lungs, my whiskers didn’t vibrate so much. That helps.”
The tom’s paws kneaded the grass as he thought of the Sender, and of Nizamuddin. He unfurled his whiskers, but it was as he had feared—the distance was too great to allow him to link. But he kept his whiskers unfurled, letting their tips question the winds, and slowly, his ears flicked towards the east, and his nostrils flared, as though he might be able to pick up the scents of the dargah, the canal, the colony. He was too far off for that, but he felt the silent pull in the whiskers over his eyes, the light but insistent tug that told him home was towards the east—a long distance away, but at least he had an idea of the direction. Perhaps he could ask Thomas, the tom thought. But he would have to find the peacock, and as he let his whiskers explore the territory, he began to understand how vast the Golf Course was.
The Bigfeet appeared to have left as the light faded; he could hear their voices in the distance, but this side of the Golf Course had emptied out. Southpaw assimilated his surroundings. There was an abundance of prey, acres of space, and provided one kept out of range of the Bigfeet and other predators, he thought he’d be safe enough.
A butterfly hovered in the air by his nose and Southpaw swatted it away. Two more fluttered by, tempting in their rainbow coats. The cat gave into temptation, chasing the Angled Castors as they bobbed above the daisies and the wild weeds. He made small darting pounces at the butterflies, glad of the chance to stretch his paws after the meal. He had once caught a Yellow Orange Tip, and had no wish to repeat the experience—its wings had fluttered in his mouth, leaving a thoroughly unpleasant powdery taste. But chasing and pouncing and catching were three completely different things, and Southpaw enjoyed the exercise, until the sun slipped below the horizon, and the sound of a hundred and more birds calling from the trees annou
nced the end of the day.
He stopped in a sand bunker to do his business, reflecting that it was very kind of the Bigfeet to provide so many places for the Golf Course cats to use as litter trays. As he hopped out of the bunker, he noticed a Bigfoot in the distance. It was running towards him, uttering one of the strange incantations Thomas had mentioned. The tom wondered if he should stay to chat, but on reflection—the Bigfoot was gesticulating with some urgency—he decided to take cover behind the wide roots of a banyan tree.
—
THE SCRATCHING WOKE HIM out of what had been a remarkably peaceful nap. The squirrels and snakes had left him alone; they were either wary of the stranger, or more polite than Ao and Jao back in Nizamuddin, who could seldom resist tickling the ears of the sleeping cats with plumes. The space between the thick, gnarled roots was so comfortable, the earth under him cool and soft, like the best of beds.
Southpaw stretched to his full length, feeling the strength come back into his injured paw. To his surprise, the brisk walk with Thomas Mor had done it some good; he could feel the muscles respond. The moon peered down at him through the tops of the chamror tree, as white as the flowers that bloomed among its dark, glossy leaves.
His eyes liked the dark better than the sunlight, perhaps because he had learned how to hunt at night. Without the distractions of glare, the white light of day, the Bigfeet’s constant noise, even if they weren’t physically present, Southpaw could turn all of his mind to the intricacies of stalking and hunting. Even the tips of his whiskers felt sharper, more alive, after sundown.
The scratching came from all around him, as though the roots of the banyan and the chamror had entwined to form an island in the middle of the activity. Southpaw stared into the darkness, and his fur stood up, slowly, as if it had been touched by the last of the icy winter winds. He felt his tail fluff, his heartbeat speed up as it did when he and Hulo sometimes stumbled on a larger predator than they had expected on a hunt night.
The Hundred Names of Darkness Page 21