The little hollow was Nuala’s private world. Hers and the cat’s. She had gathered twigs and leaves to make a carpet for the hollow so she would not sit on damp earth and stain her clothes. If she went into the house with mud on her clothes, someone might notice.
It was important that no one notice, she explained to the cat. Nuala had much rather be in the hollow than in the house. The house was filled with shadows and cold with tears, and although the windows were large, sunlight never seemed to reach all the way into the rooms. The windows were fitted with window boxes but the flowers in them had died years ago. They had never been replaced. Only a few sere, withered stems remained sticking up from the dry, caked soil.
WHEN NUALA FIRST SAW THE CAT slinking out of the garage one morning she had known immediately that it was a stray. It was easy to recognize a creature who had no loving family of its own. The animal was very thin and dirty, with patches of bare skin where the fur was rubbed away. The fur was lost to disease or fighting, perhaps, but it did not look like the sort of cat who got involved in fights. It was far too small and weak. Without enough fur to keep it warm, the cat shivered in the damp wind.
Nuala had two grown-up brothers and a sister, but they never came home. Not even to visit. They lived far away. Between them and herself had been the Dead Babies, who had been given names but were always just called the Dead Babies. There were so many of them, and their deaths were new and recent in the house every morning.
Since the cat had no family, Nuala began feeding it. She carried bits from her own meal outside in her pocket. She always fed the cat behind the garage, so it would not get in the habit of coming to the house and crying for food.Without anyone to love and care for it, the cat had stopped caring about itself.Nuala found an old hairbrush and started brushing the cat’s dirty fur, and in time the creature began washing itself. She watched, fascinated, as it licked its paws and rubbed them all over its face and neck, then twisted its body into marvelous positions so it could clean every part with its rough pink tongue.
Sometimes that tongue touched Nuala’s hand, and she was surprised at how rough it was. The pointed pink combed the cat’s fur and made it clean, until all the dirt was gone, and the cat was revealed as being a lovely cream color. The missing fur grew in again; the animal became fat and sleek, like the cats Nuala saw sitting in other people’s windows, looking contentedly out through the glass. Cats with loving homes and families.
Curled up in her hollow, Nuala would open her arms, and the cat would come into them. It would lie against her chest and purr, a deep rumbling that resonated through both their bodies. When the cat purred Nuala felt as if the two of them were singing together.
Sometimes the cat would twist around until it could look up into her face with eyes the color of green grapes. Words passed between them then. Not spoken words, but words Nuala could feel inside herself and understand. Trust, said the cat. Love, said the cat.
Nuala did not know what the cat did when she went off to school every day. She walked away from the house each morning very slowly, so the cat, if it was watching, would not think she was running away from it. There had been a time when she could ride to school on her blue bicycle with the little wire basket for her schoolbooks. But the bicycle had gone to pay for drink.
Once the bicycle was gone she walked everywhere. Other girls in her school, those she thought were her friends, had bicycles. But they soon tired of riding slowly enough so that she could walk beside them. They pedaled away and left her by herself. Their laughter and chatter floated back to her on the wind.
Nuala walked alone, gazing at the cottages and bungalows she passed.Wondering what it would be like to live in one of them. Here on the fringes of Dublin, the country was fighting a last stand against the sprawling city. Many homes still had traditional cottage gardens overflowing with flowers. Cats sunned themselves on stone doorsteps. Cheerful little dogs with friendly tails barked hello. Nuala heard snatches of music from a radio, or a mother calling out lovingly to her children. In fine weather when the windows were open she could smell bread baking. It was a warm, loving, tummy-rumbling smell.
When Nuala got home from school the kitchen of her house was always cold. There might be some leftover casserole in the refrigerator, gone hard and crusty, or a bit of dried cheese. Sometimes she could not find anything to feed the cat and had to wait until she was given her own meal, which might be very late. If it was dark, she must wait until no one was watching so she could sneak outside the hollow under the cedars. But the cat was always waiting for her there.
It did not reach for the food first, however. The cat had good manners. It rubbed against Nuala’s ankles and told her it was glad to see her, then held up its head so she could scratch under its chin. When formal greetings had been exchanged it ate very daintily, no matter how hungry it was. In the morning she brought out part of her own breakfast, bread and a rasher or some of her egg, if she had one. She always fed the cat before she went to school. She never forgot. There was a tap behind the garage, and she had found and washed an old bowl, so she could give the cat fresh water every morning before she left. She always kept the garage door open just a little bit so the cat could go inside if it rained. No one would look in the garage. The car had been gone for a long time. Gone as the bicycle had gone, Nuala explained to the cat.
She did not like to go into the garage. It was as full of ghosts as the house. Car, bicycle, lawn mower, ladder, tools.Without them the garage was very empty.
When Nuala hid beneath the cedars with the cat there were no ghosts. They sang the purring song together, and she talked about her day at school, and the cat watched her face with its big green-grape eyes. Nuala spoke in a very soft voice, so soft that her teacher at school was always telling her to speak up. But the cat could hear her. It liked a soft voice. Loud noises hurt its ears.
Loud noises hurt Nuala’s ears, too. Sometimes when there had been too much drink taken, there was shouting in the house. Then Nuala wished she could hide under the bed like a cat. The shouting beat against the walls and made her afraid. Sometimes blows were struck. Sometimes things got broken. The house was not a safe place.
Nuala explained that to the cat. She did not want it to think she was keeping it outside to be mean, when it might have been warm and cosy inside, curled into a fat ball in front of the fire. The cat understood what she said and never tried to follow her all the way to the house. Nuala loved the cat for listening to her and understanding.
She was surprised how little it took to make the cat happy. A little food, and it did not even need to be hot or well cooked.A dry place to sleep. Enough fur to keep itself warm. Nuala’s company. With only these riches the cat was content.
Nuala’s own unhappiness swelled up inside her like a balloon. She thought about all the things she wanted, like another bicycle, and a First Communion dress hanging in her wardrobe like a memory of beauty, and hot sticky buns waiting on a plate when she came home from school, and a house with geraniums in the window boxes. Sometimes she thought it would take all of those things at once to make her happy, to make her throat stop aching with unshed tears.
But she knew she would never have all those things at once. She would never have any of them. She would just get older and taller and have less and less. Someday there might not be a house at all, even one with shadows and ghosts. Nuala heard the word “redundant” mentioned many times, and there was more drink and more shouting.
She ran outside to the cat.When she was curled up in the hollow under the cedars the rest of the world went away. She could not see the house or the hungry cold sky. She could see only the spiky bush with the yellow blossoms, and the rough bark of the cedar trunks, and the green-grape eyes of the cat. Safe in their sanctuary, she and the cat shared their own world. Together they counted their other possessions. A shred of meat and a boiled potato in her pocket. Clothes for her and fur for the cat. A place that was their own, where no one ever shouted. “This is all the world there is,�
�Nuala whispered to the cat. “Really. This is all the world there is. The rest is just a nightmare. Someday I’ll wake up. And when I do, you’ll be with me.”
Curling itself into a neat ball, the cat began to purr.
Nuala stayed in the safe hollow until the evening shadows gathered. There was a brief spatter of rain, but not enough to cut through the sheltering branches of the cedars.When the rain passed, the setting sun came out and filled the sky with glory.
“God is looking for us,” Nuala told the cat. “He’s hung red lanterns in the sky.”
Scrambling out from under the cedars, she stood up and brushed bits of leaf and twig from her clothes. The cat followed her, looking up into her face. It did not seem interested in the flaming beauty of the sky.
Nuala picked up the cat and turned its head toward the sunset. “Look,” she insisted. The sky was even lovelier than a happy house with geraniums in the window boxes. Nuala needed to share that beauty.
But the cat would not look at the sky. Its eyes were made for seeing things closer to itself, for seeing mice and birds and dogs and Nuala. The cat was made for the small world of the cedar hollow and the circle of Nuala’s arms. It purred and rubbed the top of its head against her chin, assuring her that it had everything a small animal needed.
Gently, she put the cat down. Slowly, one foot at a time, she walked toward the house.Walked through air dyed rose by the light of the setting sun.
When she reached the door,Nuala looked back. She could just see a small part of the cat, sitting almost hidden by the corner of the garage. The light stained its creamy fur pink, so it looked like a magic cat.
“I’ll come back to you tomorrow,” Nuala promised, shaping the words silently with her lips.
Then she went into the house. The rosy light glowed in through the windows, but no one had noticed. There was shouting and there was crying, and Nuala ate a cold meal by herself and curled up in her bed, wishing she was in the hollow under the cedars.
Next day there was no school. That was just as well, because the weather was dreadful. A hard rain rattled the windows and pounded on the roof.
“You must stay inside,” Nuala was told. “Find something to do and leave me alone. I have a headache.”
The little girl wandered from room to room—trying not to look into the corners, where the ghosts lurked—seeking something to occupy her time.
There was a television set, but it was broken. Otherwise, it would have gone the way of the bicycle. There were a few books, but Nuala already had read them. She had carried them out to the cedar hollow during the summer and read aloud to the cat, who had sat and listened though it was no more interested in books than it was in sunsets. But because it loved Nuala, the little animal had listened.
Now the cat was outside during a cold rain, and she was inside, hoping the cat had gone into the dry garage rather than waiting for her under the cedars. The wind began to blow very hard.When Nuala looked out the window she saw something very strange, something she had never seen before. The rain was going sideways instead of falling straight down. Dying leaves skittered frantically across the lawn. Dying branches broke off from the trees and pursued them, clawing the grass with giant fingers.
From moment to moment, the voice of the wind increased until it became the roar of lions seeking prey; the roar of a train rushing through a tunnel. Something was approaching at a terrifying speed. Nuala peered through the curtains of rain, trying to see.
Then she heard a sound like cloth ripping. As she watched in disbelief, part of the garage roof lifted up and blew away.
The cat would be terrified!
She ran out of the house. “Come back here!” someone yelled at her, but Nuala did not go back. The door slammed with a bang behind her. Thinking only of the cat, she plunged into the storm.
The wind hit her like a fist. She could barely stand up; she had to walk sideways, leaning against the gale. She could hardly breathe because the greedy wind tore the breath from her lungs to add to its own mighty voice.
When she reached the garage she could see that the door had been blown off its rusted hinges. Inside, in the dark shadows, two green-grape eyes glowed. A frightened voice said,“Miaowl!”
Nuala ran forward to pick up the cat. When she lifted the little animal she felt its frightened back claws briefly rake her chest. At that moment the wind hit the garage with all its strength. The tired old timbers gave up the struggle to stand bravely erect.Wood splintered, nails screeched. A great weight fell on Nuala, driving her to her knees. Choking dust billowed all around her. She could not see anything in the sudden darkness. Somehow she kept her arms around the cat, so that the animal was safely pressed against her heart when the rest of the roof collapsed upon them.
SOMEONE WAS CALLING her name from far, far away. She tried to answer, but it was too much of an effort. She was very tired. A pale greyish light was swirling around her, making her dizzy. The voice of the storm was still roaring in her ears.
There should not be a storm after a red sunset,Nuala told herself. What was that saying? “Red sky at night.” She tried to think clearly but she was so tired. It was easier just to drift into the greyish light and spin around and around, letting everything drift away. Darkness, blackness. Black velvet replaced the grey.
Someone was calling her name again. Not shouting this time, but sobbing, the way Mammy had sobbed year after year for the Dead Babies. And someone was holding her hand, not to slap it but to stroke it. She could never remember her father stroking her hand.
When Nuala tried to open her eyes she discovered that material was fastened over them. Her whole head was covered in material, with holes left for her mouth and her nose. Her nose smelled strange, bitter smells she did not like. The cat would run away from such smells.
The cat!
Nuala tried to sit up. At once hands were pushing her down onto the bed again. It was not her bed, she sensed, but a hard, narrow one. When she tried to pull away from the hands she discovered a metal railing holding her in.
There was a fresh buzzing in her ears and the greyness closed around her again. Her last thoughts were of the cat. She had to ask how it was, where it was. But how could she speak of the cat? No one knew it existed. It did not even have a name, she could not say, “What happened to Fluffy, or Snowball, or Creamy.”
The next time Nuala woke up some of the covering had been removed from her head. She could open her eyes, though at first the light was so bright it hurt. She closed her eyelids almost all the way and peeped through her lashes.
She found herself in a long, narrow room with a number of beds. Some of the beds had screens around them. Nursing sisters moved between beds, bending over, murmuring softly, doing things for the people in the beds.
Beside Nuala’s bed was a straight-backed chair. Mammy was sitting in it with her eyes closed. Behind the chair stood Nuala’s father, and Mammy was leaning her head against him. With one hand on her shoulder, he was staring across the room. There was no smell of drink coming from him, but he was very pale. There was dark stubble on his cheeks. The hand on Mammy’s shoulder appeared to be trembling, but that might have been just Nuala’s dizziness.
She made a small sound that was supposed to be a word, but it would not come up through her throat. Her parents turned their faces toward her at once. She could not remember when they had looked at her so eagerly. Love, their eyes said.
“Don’t try to talk,” Mammy told her gently. “You’ve had a bad time, but you’re going to be all right. There’s no damage done that won’t mend, the doctor says. You just have to lie still and rest.”
Nuala could not understand why her voice would not work. When she tried to ask about the cat, her throat closed up. At last she did manage to make an awful croaking sound that appalled her, but at least it was a word. A sort of word.
Her parents responded with tears of relief in their eyes.
“If we had lost you, too . . .” Mammy began. Then she put her knuckles in he
r mouth and turned away. But she said nothing about the Dead Babies, though once she had spoken of nothing else.
Her parents stayed with Nuala until she fell back into the greyness. Her last thought was to wonder if seeing them together like that had been a dream.
It was no dream.Mammy was there when she next woke up, and Nuala’s father came to the hospital every day. He never smelled of drink. His hands shook and his mouth trembled, and sometimes there was an expression in his eyes that she recognized. But then he would smile at her in her bandages, and she knew he would not go out to the pub when he left the hospital.
The sight of his daughter’s living face meant more to him than drink.
Bit by bit, Nuala learned what had happened. The garage had been blown down on top of her.A piece of planking had hit her head, which was why it hurt so. The storm had done much worse damage elsewhere. A tree had fallen across a car and killed a young man. Nuala had been very lucky, everyone said so.
In the house, the big window where she had been sitting had blown in moments after she ran outside. Shards of glass had sliced across the room like knives. If she had stayed where she was, she would have been cut to pieces.
“What on earth made you go outside just then?” Mammy kept asking. But when Nuala tried to explain her throat closed up, and she could not answer.
Her father was looking at his wife as he said, “I’m beginning to realize how much we have to be thankful for, if we don’t let it slip away. And how little it takes to make us happy after all. Like knowing you’re alive.” He turned and smiled down at Nuala.
“My cat!”Nuala cried out at last. Her parents looked startled. She bit her lip, then plunged ahead in a funny rusty voice she hardly recognized.
“The cat I take care of. It was in the garage with me when the roof blew off. I went outside to save it.” Her words began tumbling over one another in their eagerness to be said. “Where is it? Is it all right? You have to find the cat, it will be so frightened and hungry!”
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