Cat Flap

by Alan S. Cowell

  X.

  Before he grabbed the Range Rover keys to embark on his errand, he had decided to dip into his stash. Then, in one more wild attempt to be rid of X, he had loosened the tape holding the cat flap shut so that, were she to escape, it would seem to be a result of her own initiative. But, as he drove away, buzzing with his product, he could not be sure that he had also undertaken the necessary housekeeping to clear away the evidence. Like people who board their vacation flights fretting about whether they had left the hob alight, or the lights still burning in a tell-tale invitation to would-be burglars.

  Had he left the wrapper in full view on the kitchen work surface where he had indulged behind drawn blinds? Had he even sealed it properly? The questions taunted him, like secrets whispered on the outermost limits of hearing. It would not do for his daughters to return to the family apartment before he had obliterated the traces of misbehavior. There was no one he could call for help. The only living being at home was that damned cat.

  If the creature was still there at all.

  If it had not already sallied forth into the hostile, perilous world from which X had always been sheltered: the trucks and buses rumbling and grinding past his door; the minicabs and people-movers, whispering Uber hybrids and construction company trucks; white vans and plump bankers’ sleek Porsches; howling ambulances and wailing, blues-and-twos police cars; SUVs laden with brats; black cabs with drivers distracted by their own sagas of celebrities they had had in the back and their latest mini-cruise-break to the Med. It was not, he knew, the best of plans. Especially for the final act. If it went badly, his daughters might well arrive home to the trauma-inducing sight of terminal feline smears on the road outside the apartment, red in jaw and paw.

  X would be ex.

  If it went badly it would be curtains. No encores. No standing ovations. No delirious reviews. No invites to Hay-on-Wye or the Booker.

  The timing would be critical. But not impossible.

  sixteen

  I am powerless. X has taken charge, propelled by some sense I cannot replicate or imagine, let alone overcome. Gerald has left—who knows where? The school run? Surely too early in the cycle of naps and feedings that has come to replace my dainty gold Rolex as the indicator of time. There has been some kind of panic, some discombobulation that upsets animals accustomed to their routines and patterns. X has taken me to various observation points—the key intersections of the apartment whence bipeds can be tracked and potential escape routes left open. My husband’s behavior since I have been exposed to it through my feline eyes has amazed, shocked, perplexed me. Are we not a happy couple? Do we not trust one another? When I am not on the road, do we not enjoy a full and satisfying physical relationship; have dinner parties; go to the movies; play with the girls; spoil them; transport them; cosset them; help where we can with the homework? And think of the holidays in Port Grimaud and Connecticut, Africa for my roots, up north for his—the Lake District, the Peak District; Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumbria, or should that be Northumberland? In any event, was their way of life not the apex of contentment? Even if his writing is temporarily blocked, are they not a model family unit?

  But being a cat—being part of a cat—has initiated me into a netherworld, leaving the ground beneath our marital feet to resemble a warren with tunnels and diggings that could collapse in on themselves at any moment. Flirtation. Sex. Lycra. Since when has the great novelist owned Lycra jogging stuff? Where does he go? Why does he carry a rucksack? He is not exactly the boot-camp type. Why does he busy himself with cling film and wrappers and a set of digital scales?

  Unless.

  Not that.

  Please not that.

  X is carrying me on some enthusiastic mission I cannot pretend to understand. I am still in awe of her—our—ability to crouch and leap to enormous heights, as if on springs or fired from the barrel of a circus gun. The feline cannonball! Watch and wonder! One minute we are on the cork floor of the kitchen. The next we are on the work surface that needs so much oiling and attention that the human in me sometimes wonders why she chose it over granite or slate or Formica or anything but this fancy, dark, beautiful wood of the rain forest that shows every stain. Here we are, this time, weaving past the microwave and the coffeemaker, the olive oil bottle and the earthenware pot of implements—wooden spoons, spatulas, whisks, ladles. We teeter past the drying rack, along the rim of the Belfast sink as if we are mountaineers on a high and precarious arête.

  X is only partly navigating by visual means. She is sniffing and snuffling along. Her nostrils have become her dominant guidance system. Only vaguely—at first—do I become aware of what is drawing her along to some tantalizing, new, chemical odor. Then I realize.

  * * *

  Rosemary Saunders was not one of those women who drove a nonsensically large 4 × 4 on the school run although she sometimes felt that she would be able to fill a medium-sized truck with her habitual cargo of daughters, their friends, mountains of homework, hockey sticks, swimming togs, cellos, gym kit, laptops and all the other accoutrements of a modern, if privileged, upbringing. Indeed, there were some who thought she, above all women, fit the SUV/soccer-mom demographic.

  She was in her late thirties, impeccably turned out in a slightly House and Garden–cum–Hermès scarf–cum–Barbour coat sort of way that recalled her roots in the county set, familiar with ponies, gymkhanas, riding to hounds and, of course, real 4 × 4 vehicles with dented panels and mud-spattered flanks to tow the horse-box between events. She had been raised in a culture of helpfulness, of filling the days with amusement for herself and good works to the benefit of others. Her husband, Freddy, a decade her senior, was a stalwart of a venerable brokerage that survived bear markets and cataclysmic financial crashes with ineffable grace and a gift for clearing out just in time before the fire sales began. A nod here. A wink there. A business web of old chums who knew which way the wind blew. Who were not above starting a fire sale themselves. And fanning the flames.

  As a partner and spouse, Freddy shared many of her values, particularly the assumption that people like them were somehow immune to and aloof from the shenanigans that dragged the inner workings of so many other marriages into the unwelcome public glare of the divorce courts.

  Both of them took a dim view of the behemoths that clogged the no-parking zones around the school when the first wave of pupils left to be transported through snarled London traffic that seemed to ease only in the term-end vacations when parents and offspring whose families boasted a certain stature and status decamped to ski resorts in the Alps or second homes in Gloucestershire or beach houses on the Côte d’Azur. (Others, she had read somewhere, decamped to weekend breaks and package deals on the Costa del Sol or the Turkish Aegean coast. And still others went nowhere at all, not even to the Gospel Oak Lido or the beaches of Kent and Essex.)

  Rosemary believed that her own vehicle—an E-Class Mercedes station wagon with netting along the backseat to keep her matching chocolate Labradors, Oscar and Lucinda, in their muddy place—was perfectly equipped for the job. This morning’s itinerary, however, had been arranged at very short notice. The dishy Gerald Tremayne had called during breakfast to ask a favor and she was hardly likely to turn down a request from the famous and dashing author who doubled as househusband in his wife’s frequent and possibly ill-considered absences. She could hardly refuse. Any hint of hesitation might be interpreted in some quarters as a display of reluctance to transport children of color and that would never do: she would not want any malicious tongues casting gossipy doubts on her credentials as a fair-minded, almost liberal sort of person.

  Still, it was a big ask, so close to the end of term when parents might be preoccupied with finagling upgrades on Caribbean flights, or pre-renting ski gear, or checking out Mediterranean yacht charters. So many things to do. So little time to look after second-home villas in the Dordogne or Tuscany, book convertible Mustangs for the Route 66 pilgrimage, tailor the dates around the salmon
season and the grouse shoots. Not to mention the Serengeti migrations.

  Never let it be said that I did not do my bit in the interests of social harmony, Rosemary was thinking. Never let it be said that I did not put my shoulder to the wheel.

  Kentish Town, it was true, lay outside her comfort zone and familiar navigational coordinates. Normally, she would have preferred to see the Tremayne girls home and safe, rather than deposit them in a neighborhood that appeared to be populated by people whose lives had been far less fortunate than hers. Many of the people on the sidewalks gave every appearance of having been crushed by misfortune, collateral damage in the scramble for riches that deposited the Saunders of this world in comfortable, leafy neighborhoods with private schools and late-model cars and lolloping Labradors. But given the afternoon schedule—an away netball game for her youngest and an extra maths tutorial for her eldest—she had little choice but to concur with Gerald’s arrangements. Waiting for the girls to arrive, she switched the interior car-door-locking system onto automatic and scanned a dog-eared A-to-Z to work out a route. Always plan ahead, she had been taught. Surprises are not good. Unless they arrived in a pale blue box marked “Tiffany” on your birthday. She was not worried about herself, of course. In preparation for the walk with the dogs—and in light of reports in the local paper of muggers on motor scooters abroad in her neighborhood—she had switched her antique Rolex for a nylon-strapped Timex. She had left her Gucci wallet with its sheaf of debit and credit and store cards in a locked drawer on the marble-topped island across from the Aga cooker in her cavernous kitchen. Given the time pressures, it had not been possible to rearrange the dog-walking schedule, so she was still wearing her knee-length Dubarry boots and waxed cotton coat when she pulled up outside the school.

  Yet, despite the possibly illusory protection offered by her retrievers, she felt a lingering unease about her expedition to Kentish Town. Oscar and Lucinda would be no match for the pit bulls and Rottweilers she assumed would be the dominant breed.

  seventeen

  Miles above the city, the sky is cluttered with hurtling, jet-propelled tubes of aluminum and highly flammable fluids, packed with hominids of all inclinations and identities, each seized with mounting, unspoken tension in anticipation of the bumpy descent: the screech of landing and the lurch of reverse thrust; the moment when the seat belt signs are extinguished and the unseemly scramble begins to retrieve the contents of the overhead baggage locker; the push and shove to escape the claustrophobia of the grounded craft, now so ungainly in earthbound mode compared to its avian elegance aloft; the race along moving belts and neon-lit corridors to cross the finishing line of passport control, baggage recovery, customs, scrummages for cabs, ill-tempered lines for onward transportation by train; the frantic scanning of name boards held by sad men in sad suits who drive tired Fords and Toyotas and sometimes Mercedes-Benzes back and forth between airports and offices as if bound to the tick-tock wand of a metronome. All part of a single competition to be first for reasons that none of the contestants could easily define except by saying that it is part of the human condition to hustle and bustle and get ahead and leave others behind in the daily marathon that, ultimately, ends in the same dark place for all us, with no winners or losers in the processes of decay.

  Dust to dust.

  X knows nothing of all this. The sky is too distant, beyond the transparent walls of her cell, where winged objects hurtle in and out of her field of vision, like gloves tossed in challenges to a duel from which, as a flat-cat, she is eternally barred and shielded. On this day, snuffling along the work surface, she knows even less. Her immediate quest for knowledge is limited to an urgent desire to identify the white powder that, initially, causes a feline sneeze and then—heavens above, Dolores is thinking—finds its way through the membrane of her nasal passages and into her bloodstream and her dainty cat’s brain, boosting the supply of chemicals that bring a sense of pleasure and well-being, confidence and a yearning to finally shake off the shackles of her condition as a creature of the indoors.

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, a voice inside her is saying. But she cannot hear it, and would ignore it if she could.

  On board the airborne aluminum tubes—on base leg, downwind and final approach, flaps extending, engines slowing, altimeter spinning counterclockwise, radios crackling with encoded gibberish in alpha-zulu-runway-five-ah-zero-roger-over-and-out-speak, transponders pinging, computers locked onto beacons—there are gradations of pain and comfort corresponding to the classes that separate passengers by wealth or connection or frequent flier points. Only two of those passengers concern us today.

  They are both female. They are landing at different airports, flying in from two different destinations. There are some similarities. Both are wearing houndstooth suits in black and white check, initially made famous by a well-known Parisian couturier. Both have expensive, well-used hand luggage in the overhead locker.

  Both have the look of people used to a degree of deference and respect. Unbeknown to one another, both are contemplating imminent reunion with Gerald Tremayne.

  But there the similarities end.

  One of the women is of darker skin than the other and seems out of place aboard the budget airline plane carrying her from Munich to Gatwick Airport south of London. She bought her seat late and was unable to secure a place near the front exit. She has just spent almost two hours jammed between fellow passengers as miserable as she was at the restricted leg room, the indifferent-to-nonexistent service, the sound of whining babies and cantankerous Arsenal fans returning from an unsuccessful joust with Bayern Munich. Ahead of her is the trudge through dank corridors, obstructed by lines at immigration and at the vending machines selling tickets on the Gatwick Express. This must be endured stoically. The only upside to the discomfort is that it has distracted her marginally from asking herself, over and over, two questions: what did the bizarre email from her daughter’s account mean? And, who will be the scapegoat for the emissions imbroglio that, she has an awful feeling, will balloon into something catastrophic once it is discovered that her company played a central part in the development of fraudulent software. It is quite probable that her bosses even now, like people cheating at that game where you pin a tail on a cardboard donkey—but without wearing the blindfold that is the whole point of it—are conspiring to dump the blame on her and others in her team who were sent out to peddle the duplicitous codes. Outsourcer’s remorse. Easily overcome by deceit.

  The other woman has had an easier journey, surrounded by purring cabin staff responsive to her very few needs on the first-class run from New York, stretched out high above the Atlantic, remote from worldly concerns. As landing approaches she knows there will be no hustle and bustle and sharp elbows. She will be eased gently from the airplane, albeit into the cruder realities of Heathrow. She has access to a privileged line at passport control. She will not need to buy a train ticket because a handsome novelist will be awaiting her with a smile and the anticipation of intimate moments.

  She has not yet decided on the precise moment to break the news to him that it is all over. The jig is up. The love-nest lease agreement rescinded in a way that will make him liable for outstanding payments. She has diverted herself by considering her options. Will she tell him before they arrive at their eyrie or later, when he has been permitted, unwittingly, his valedictory trot around the paddock of their shared passions? In her carry-on bag, she has packed excruciatingly tight jeans, monstrous platform shoes, a ragged T-shirt that advertises her sculpted bosom and a black leather jacket. En route to the immigration formalities she plans to change out of her business suit and into these other clothes. Jekyll and Hyde bis. In truth, she has an unaccustomed soft spot for this plumber-cum-writer who, like her, wrestles with origins that dictate so many of his responses. But she lives in a world of hard choices and ruthless decisions that will determine her future comfort and prosperity. Wherever she came from, she understood where she wanted to be next, and how to get t
here.

  Late the previous night she departed JFK as the newest trophy of an eminent, if gullible and infatuated Wall Street figure whose role, she had decided, is to replace her onetime diplomat husband as her guardian, sponsor, spouse, and source of infinite credit. In her heart she knows she has not resolved the central question of where true north lies on the compass of her dreams. She requires no financial support, since her coffers have filled amply over the years through her activities on behalf of the family businesses and through the judicious deployment of lawyers versed in the twin arts of the prenup and the postnup. Yet, she cannot escape the visceral pull of perilous adventure, defying gravity itself on the high-wire of risk. In her new life-to-be she will again be the glittery hostess at homes on Park Avenue and in the Hamptons, just as she once ruled the salons of diplomacy. But potent currents still propel her into tangled, inexplicable liaisons. She will never know for sure when the call to the dark side will summon her, as it did to the unexpected intrusion of Gerald Tremayne in London. And so, for now, she has resolved that it is time to fortify her defenses. After her last-fling stopover with Gerald Tremayne she will fly on to Paris to meet with her new American beau, who is already there on a business trip, awaiting her in a suite at the George V just off the Champs-Élysées.

  On final approach, she reaches her decision.

  In the arrivals area of Terminal 5, Mathilde de Villeneuve will, for the last time, strut her stuff in her night-owl colors. Thereafter, she will never see Gerald again. That, at least, is her plan and, as we all know, even the best-laid stratagems may go awry.

  She commandeers a cubicle in the restrooms on the way to immigration and opens her carry-on to change.