BIG CAT: And Other Stories

by Gwyneth Jones

  “It’s no use Fenny. Nobody lives there anymore.”

  He lay quiet in my arms. I carried him back to the schoolroom; his warm, compact, muscular little body snuggled close. As we stepped indoors, I saw something. An awful terror shook me, a sick abyss, deeper than the worst nightmare I’d ever had… Then I was kneeling on the floor, a sheet of coloured doodles in my hand: Shock and Awe on the sound system, and Fenris peacefully snoozing on an armchair; where he’d been since breakfast.

  It was the strangest feeling. I touched my cheeks; my bare arms. Not a scratch, and I was perfectly cool. I even looked at the soles of my shoes. Not a trace of leaf litter. I’d been working for hours, I hadn’t eaten since morning. A dizzy spell… I decided it was time to quit for the day.

  ∆

  The weather stayed dull and warm. I ate my meals at our old breakfast table, outside the kitchen door; I was never very hungry. Yoghurt and honey, oatcakes and coffee in the morning; a bowl of soup and some fruit in the evening. In the calm stillness of the fading light, Fenris laid a small vole at my feet, and looked up at me hopefully, ears cocked. I could see that he’d broken its back. Its front legs moved; little paws groping. Blood trickled from its mouth.

  I sipped coffee. “You want me to mend your toy? Sorry, no can do. You should have been more careful.”

  I’d have liked to put the creature out of its misery, but it’s not that simple to kill a small animal cleanly: I might make things worse, so I didn’t try. When its eyes had dimmed I thought of burying it, wrapped in soft leaves. But a dead animal wants no covering but time; no shroud but the air, so I tossed it into the long grass.

  ∆

  There were no recent papers in the pile from Eliud’s study; no evidence to prove he was “selling up”, but I soon found the ‘Hindey’ folder. I shook out the contents of a battered foolscap envelope, and studied his treasured relics. Here was the old church, St Iaad’s, with its squat, square tower, at one end of a straggle of hovels bordering what was now our lane; the familiar bulk of the Flint Barn at the other. The Schoolhouse itself in close-up, with its last generation of pupils. Girls in pinafores, boys in breeches, some barefoot, some in enormous boots; their shrunken little faces pinched with malice or hunger; or maybe just boredom. Here was a page from St Iaad’s parish register, photographed a little more recently: the entry for the birth of a boy circled in red. He was an ‘Eliud Tince’, but was he Eliud’s grandfather, or great-grandfather? I couldn’t remember, and the date was too faded to make out.

  A plan of the Schoolhouse property. The parcel of trees was labelled, in spidery copperplate: Hindey Playground… We used to say we betted it had been a miserable ‘playground’ even back then, and Eliud would scowl at us, he was proud of his tiny wood—

  I wondered why I’d been astonished when ‘Mr Raven’ called the Schoolhouse Eliud’s ancestral home. I’d always known this story. But Eluid’s plane was at the bottom of the Southern Ocean, and I was here alone. No wonder I had moments of confusion—

  In a different folder I found a modern, studio colour print: Eliud and his children. It seemed to be his birthday, but the cake (of course!) had no forest of candles. They’d signed their names in the margins: Bich, already in her sixties, the Vietnamese baby he’d adopted with his first wife; Gogo and Siaka, daughter and son of the dancer Djènèba Khady; the great love of Eliud’s life. Maria and Judit. Martίn Ventto, and of course Perseis, the baby of the gang… How happy Eliud looked! How proud he’d been of them all, and yet none of them was his biological child.

  Renton, who could be cruel, used to say the master had ‘a touch of the tar brush’ and was afraid of passing the taint on. It was true the old man had strange, tribal ideas about race. He’d once startled a famous musician by congratulating him on his ‘purely human, true Mandingo blood’. But the ‘taint’ (it came back to me) was not racial but a disease, untreatable cancer or something, that Eliud was determined not to pass on.

  Everyone forgets. Of course I had forgotten things. But my memory lapses were starting to bother me, like a fog in my skull that could be hiding monsters. What else had I erased? What bitter words, what angry scenes I would never want to recall—?

  ∆

  Later than time lag demanded, because I didn’t want to meet Mr Raven again, I walked up to the Flint Barn and talked to Maria. “It’s a good atmosphere,” she said, gallantly. “We’re looking out for each other.” She was no longer at the airport. She was back at her gorgeous waterfront house with a couple from Singapore, whose son and little granddaughter had been on the flight, and a young NZ woman who had lost her mother. There was still no news. Nothing had been found, not a scrap of debris.

  “It’s so hot,” said Maria. “More like Christmas than August. They’re saying weird atmospheric pressure might have screwed-up the plane’s instruments. Might be screwing the search data too… There are empty islands, down south. The pilot could have made a safe ocean landing, and some of them could be safe: but unable to make contact…?”

  I hesitated too long. “I saw that story. Yes, it sounded hopeful.”

  Maria sighed. “How are you doing? Have you found a will?”

  “It’ll be with his lawyers,” I said. “I’ll find nothing like that. Eliud kept the house up, it’s in good repair, but he hasn’t lived here for years. What I’m sorting is archive stuff.”

  “Oh. I see. I didn’t realise—”

  I heard her unspoken question, so why are you doing this?

  Maria had her imaginary island, I had Eliud’s papers. I could tell from her voice that she’d accepted the loss of the old man, but was trying, irrationally, to hang onto the others, her family and friends. I was the other way round. I just couldn’t let go of Eliud.

  ∆

  In the jumble of documents and souvenirs I ran into a CD of NASA’s Music Of The Planets – emissions captured on space probe flybys, converted into sound. I put it on. I hadn’t forgotten this. Eliud had called the confection ‘poppycock’ and ‘fake’, but he’d been fascinated. The Dark Matter Suite was full of shameless quotes… The sighs of Jupiter did nothing much for me, but Mercury’s eerie crackles conjured pictures in my mind, evil little crustaceans that crept over blood red rocks.

  I wondered if there was a connection with the drawings. Weren’t Eliud’s annotations littered with references to ‘aliens’ and ‘other worlds’? I looked back over my notes.

  Alien intelligence can be perceived in certain conditions without resorting to data from so-called outer space, AND THEY ARE LISTENING!

  Our universe is an illusion. Worlds on worlds interpenetrate ours. There is no “out there” Everything is in reach. Auditory and Visual Alternatives occupy space in precisely interleaved layers

  But my curiosity vanished, overwhelmed by an immense nostalgia for the past; for the days when I took Eliud’s semi-scientific pronouncements absolutely seriously. And a great sadness: knowing that I would never see the old man again.

  I worked all night, forgetting to eat but finishing a bottle of wine. At dawn I woke from a cat-nap, curled on the rug in the midst of my boxes. I took a quick shower, whistled for Fenris and we walked out into a cool bright day: up the lane, over a stile and around the back of Eliud’s parcel of trees. The little black dog scampered ahead: burrowing under the fence and popping out again joyously, at my feet. I watched a pair of goshawks, hunting the trees’ high margin: scissoring the pale sky with their razor cuts until it seemed as if Eliud’s other worlds might come falling through. A roebuck leapt from a hollow in the stubble and rocketed away.

  When we reached the back way into the wood Fenris immediately wriggled under the gate and vanished. I was left behind, struggling to climb over: the gate, never an obstacle before, had been lashed shut with barbed wire. I caught up with him, having lost fabric and gained some bloody scratches, in the bonfire glade. I saw the ring of pale stones at once and stared at them, astonished. So my ‘dizzy spell’ didn’t happen? So I really did run out here? And th
at sinister moment: when I came in from the wood, and saw myself inside out, was real? I picked up the little dog and hugged him. “Why were you barking like that?” I asked him. “Why did you drag me out here? They’re only stones.”

  Fenris licked my nose.

  This time I noticed that the circle had a centre. I put Fenris down and kicked at the litter until I’d uncovered the whole of a larger plaque. What did the array mean? A radiating star, a sun surrounded by planets? A playground game? The sky above the glade was bright, the ‘markings’ were easier to make out than before. I saw the stick-limbed figures, the traces of colour, and knew I’d found the originals of Eliud’s drawings.

  I had the glimmering of an amazing idea.

  I took photos. I made sketches, carefully as I could, in my pocket notebook, and hurried back to the house.

  The photos weren’t a success, but my sketches matched the drawings so closely that Eliud’s figures, with their round heads and stick limbs, just had to be derived from the stones in the wood. They weren’t copies. His ovoids, triangles and squares were more formal, and very differently organised: on scaffolds, in rows, in layered chords; in tiny clusters of grace notes. Intensely excited, I knew my insight was correct; it had to be. This was musical notation.

  I spread the sheets on the floor and stared at them. I took out my cello; the first time I’d touched it since I arrived. My old playing chair was by the piano, where it had been waiting for me, all these years. I pulled it out and sat for a while, the instrument between my knees; the bow in my hand. It was a meditation, a reverence; a commitment to the new work (that I couldn’t begin to study yet!).

  I tuned my strings. I played a few scales, and then the challenging arpeggio passage from Shock And Awe: without a slip, which seemed a good omen. I looked down at the drawings. Notation, definitely, but how the hell was it supposed to be played? Eliud hadn’t left me a single clue.

  Sideways, I thought, and in another flash of insight, I remembered that in what seemed one of the most significant annotations, Eliud referred to a superposition. Many alternatives occupying one auditory space. A superposition of alternate worlds, collapsed by sound… That sounded like a multi-layered recording! And it was probably still here, in the Schoolhouse!

  I abandoned my cello and plunged into the digital material that I hadn’t yet touched. The PC’s hard drive; memory cards; datasticks: CDs and disks; the vintage electronic orchestra. Nothing remotely matched my search and I was in despair. Even if the drawings could be translated into the musical values Eliud had intended, by some process I couldn’t imagine, they were discontinuous scraps. It would be impossible to reconstruct the work. Finally, my head spinning and ringing, I took the house agent’s keys and went outdoors.

  I’d have searched the Studio first, just to cross it off my list: except that I didn’t want to see what I knew I’d see, and so I came to it last. The key turned: but ivy tendrils had laced the door shut, and it was silted deep in leaf litter. I wrestled my way in, and saw what I had dreaded: mouldering relics of a cobwebbed sorrow. My bed, my nest among the recording desks, was gone, of course. So was the equipment. Sound-proofing baffles hung festering from the ceiling and the walls.

  As I dragged the door shut, wondering why I’d been so afraid of my poor old home… something fell, inside. I shoved the door open again: a dusty cardboard tube, the length of my arm, lay on the floor. It was labelled Aiode. Something inside rattled. I unwound withered sticky tape, and pulled off the cap at one end. I peered inside, and my heart began to beat like thunder—

  But Fenris was barking and barking.

  He’d gone back to the Caravan. He was on his hind legs, pawing at the door, yapping and yapping. I grabbed him, I shouted: I was so keyed up, and the little dog was so infuriating. I hauled him out through the stinging tangles; the little dog fighting all the way. As soon as I slackened my grip he tried to bolt for the Caravan again. “Oh no you don’t!” I yelled. I twisted his collar, I shook him, I slapped him—

  “What’s he done then, poor little dog?”

  Mr Raven was stooping by my car. “The gate was open,” he said. “I thought I’d drop in, see how you’re doing. Sorry if it’s inconvenient.”

  One fist locked round Fenris’s collar, embarrassed that I’d been caught beating the little dog, I glared at him, trying to shove the hair out of my eyes. The gate had not been open.

  “Doing with what?”

  “With the cleaning,” said Mr Raven, unperturbed. “You’re clearing the old place out, aren’t you? Isn’t that what Eliud sent you here for?”

  “My work’s going well. Close the gate on your way out.”

  I carried Fenris indoors. He was quiet now, and trembling. I was so ashamed. I told him I was sorry. I hugged him, I kissed his rough head, I combed the burrs from his coat, and then shut him in the kitchen eating tinned tuna for a treat. It would drive me crazy if he ran away again.

  ∆

  The cardboard roll was on the piano, where I’d left it. A datastick dropped out when I upended it: I eased-out the scroll of paper that remained, very carefully. Both stick and scroll were firmly labelled: Hindey Playground. So now I had a recording, and a score. A detailed, pictogram score, several metres long; left hidden by Eliud, for me.

  Take that, Mr Raven. I am not some skivvy.

  It was late when I got up to the Barn, and Maria wasn’t answering her phone. She’d sent me a text: sounding more resigned; more hopeless, and very tired. I didn’t mention the new work in my reply. I ran my news checks on the lost flight (for form’s sake: there was no change), and headed back, still thinking, fast and furiously, about Eliud’s notation—

  The moon, which had been brighter and brighter since I’d arrived in Norfolk, was full tonight, and the sky was as clear as the dust would let it be. I took to the prairie, and climbed that hateful barbed-wire gate again: impelled by an idea that wouldn’t wait. It was dark on the path between the trees, but the glade was full of moonlight.

  Eliud had used the drawings on these stones – perhaps traces of a children’s game; probably more than a hundred years’ old – for his pictogram notation. I had poor photos, and better sketches of the originals, but no image of the configuration and the configuration must be crucial. I’d brought my good camera out with me. I found footholds in the grey, squirming grooves of the chestnut stump – so well placed that I had the weird idea I’d carved them myself, and forgotten doing it; except they were weathered and old. Maybe Eliud had carved them. Or the children, long ago. I climbed as high as I could, and the moonlit, radiating star was directly below—

  I had no idea what any of this “meant”, of course. I didn’t need to know. I didn’t have to understand Eliud’s strange ideas about the cosmos, or his childhood memories of Hindey, (memories of his grandfather’s stories?) All I needed to know was how he wanted me to play; and I was still lost without him, but I had all the pieces of the puzzle now.

  ∆

  I uploaded the moonlit pictures, printed them on photo paper, and compared them minutely with several diagrammatic annotations on the score. I prepared the vintage instruments, carefully following Eliud’s instructions. (I’m probably the only cello soloist in the world who also knows how to tamper with antique sound channel cards). I unrolled the first part of the score and laid it at my feet, with the radiating star images set above and below – and played my best guess at the opening phrases over and over, until I could match Eliud’s exacting directions, not well; but at least note by note; term by term.

  The preparation took a long time. But I still felt alert – though hazy about when I’d last slept or eaten – when I was finally, roughly satisfied, and I didn’t feel like waiting. My rendition would be drastically imperfect, but at least I could make a start. I corrected recording levels, set timings for the electronics and sat down to play, the pictogram at my feet, and Eliud’s machines around me.

  When I set my bow to the strings I almost started to cry, because the old ma
n wasn’t here. He wasn’t here, and he would never know. It passed. Soon I was calm; and engrossed.

  I can’t say I liked the music I was making. Actually I didn’t like it at all, at this first pass: but it was certainly compelling – and extremely challenging, technically, in ways I found irresistible. I fell into the trance-like, flow-state of concentration that Eliud’s difficulties demanded, and as my body played, as my mind worked; as I stopped everything, unrolled the score to the next passage, started everything again and returned to my chair: some part of my sleep-starved self fell into a dream.

  A mighty city took shape, rising impossibly from the Schoolroom floor; extending for miles in height; in depth. I knew this vision; or so it seemed to me. Unless my mind was now inventing dreams I’d never had, instead of destroying memories, this city (triggered by something I’d read, about how Antarctica might rise, released from the humungous pressure of the ice sheets) had been haunting my nights since Eliud’s flight vanished; or longer. But tonight it seemed created directly by the music. At first it was a toy, a coloured game; then it filled the room, and then it was huge, unutterably vast. I left my mind and body playing, and walked in its streets.

  The walls were tall and black as basalt, or the black-green of very deep water. They glistened like polished ice. The streets were wide and deeply grooved; they had decorated, raised sidewalks. I had no clue how tall I was, whether I was an ant or a giant, until I reached a wide stone ramp, leading in a spiral to the doors of a huge building. The doors were the same dark red as the rocks of Mercury. The crustaceans that crept on those rocks were carved here, glinting and chittering. They were much bigger than I had imagined. I watched them; feeling that I was being watched myself, but with indifference: I could do no harm.