Oh, but this is the real queen, I thought, dismissing Regina. Imperious, majestic — I scraped round for royal clichés. She looked up at me once when she was on the turn. I tried to explain that look to Jeremiah, much later, during one of our interminable conversations about the Sanctuary. It wasn’t a helpless look, not beseeching. Cleo never pleaded for help. And it wasn’t a malevolent look in her eyes, either. I don’t think she was ever malevolent. Not by choice.
It was a dull but fevered look, the kind of look you’d find in the eyes of someone who is seriously sleep-deprived. Someone exhausted but driven.
It was a brief appraisal. She put her head down and kept on with her trek, ceaselessly moving, slap, slap, slap, and I forgot about her eyes and concentrated on her beauty.
She was so beautiful. You’d never know if you hadn’t seen her in the flesh, but I saw her in the flesh several times a week for six months and I never tired of just looking at her, even as I found her hopeless walk more and more distressing. She was seductive, mysterious, alluring, magnificent — any adjective of that sort you care to come up with. A true beast, Jeremiah said once, lingering over the word.
And she was locked in a cage, perhaps five metres by two. I turned on my heel away from the cage and went in search of Jeremiah, propelled by a marvellous white rage. He would answer for this, I thought dramatically. I walked quickly past a long line of bird cages, flapping, diving bands of colour registering at the edge of my vision. I passed more muddy fish ponds and wooden, slatted benches. At the far end of the big section there was a small red corrugated-iron shed and a figure-eight-shaped pool with high concrete sides at the front. The otters, I supposed. Mimi and Tosca, the sign said, but I didn’t stop to look for the inhabitants. I marched straight up to the shed and banged on the door.
‘Hey,’ said Jeremiah Hook when he opened the door. He was still in his grey zoo-keeper overalls and he was holding a tiny orange monkey in his arms. ‘Sorry I’m taking so long, but this brat got up on the roof and wouldn’t come down. I told her I was in a hurry, but she wouldn’t listen.’
He smiled at me and the monkey bared her teeth in a maniacal grin.
‘It’s good to see you,’ said Jeremiah.
‘I guess you’ve had a bit of a look at the place?’ He sounded doubtful.
I opened my mouth to berate him and, incredibly, began to cry.
‘Cat doesn’t know how to cry,’ Stella said once to her friend Polly.
‘One cry-baby in the house is enough,’ I said. They were blubbing uncontrollably over some film on TV. The truth is, I almost never cried and certainly never in front of Stella: give her an inch and she’d take a mile. I cried once when I was five and lost Nan at the supermarket. I cried at my grandfather’s funeral. And I cried in front of Jeremiah Hook on our fifth meeting. String me up.
I was furious with myself. I felt flabby and girlish and uncool and, worse, unnerved at doing something so out of character. After a minute or so I was just worried about looking wretched — my lip would be grotesquely swollen, my eyes puffy and red.
‘Hey,’ said Jeremiah, very gently, ‘what’s up? Come inside. What’s the matter?’
We sat down at an old formica table. I stared at a puddle of milky coffee and spilled sugar, trying to compose myself. The monkey leapt on the table, chattering and squealing, baring its teeth at me.
‘She’s sensitive to atmosphere,’ said Jeremiah, waggling his eyebrows comically.
‘I hardly ever cry,’ I said, half crying, half laughing at them both. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Peppy Chew,’ he said. ‘She’s personality disordered but not without feeling. I was going to name her after my brother, Simeon, who’s a bit of a delinquent, but on reflection it seemed cruel.’ He was giving me time to recover, I realised. ‘She’s still young, so hopefully not irredeemable — bad family background, you understand, neglectful parents … For some reason she’s adopted me.’
He called her name and the monkey leapt off the table into his outstretched arms, squealing with excitement. ‘I think I might consider animal behavioural counselling as a very serious career option. Whaddya reckon?
‘All right Peppy, that’s enough.’ Jeremiah extricated himself from Peppy’s embrace and sat her in a chair. ‘She likes to feel she’s part of things. Shut up,’ he said to her. ‘Shut up.
‘What happened?’ he said to me softly. He waited, leaning forward in his chair, very still.
‘It wasn’t what I expected,’ I said. ‘I mean, the cages are so bare, the animals seem so … disaffected or nasty. It’s … it’s, I mean—’ I looked up and found him staring, his face expressionless. ‘It’s an awful place,’ I said, feeling a long way from the delicate promise of our other times together. ‘I can’t understand how it’s allowed.’
He didn’t say anything, just kept on looking at me.
‘But it was the panther, really,’ I went on, wishing he would speak. ‘Cleopatra. I just couldn’t stand to see her pacing like that, on and on, she seemed so unhappy.’
There was a long silence, then he sighed and slumped a little in his chair.
‘You’re right of course,’ he said, his chin pressed into the zip of his overalls. ‘It’s all true.’
I waited for him to say more, but he stayed there, slumped, staring off. I felt the familiar dive in the region of my stomach just looking at him, at his long body, his hands crossed, resting on his chest. There were tiny black hairs on the backs of his fingers.
‘How do you work here?’ I said.
‘Ah. That,’ he started slowly, wrenching himself away from a train of thought. ‘That’s no mystery.’ He jumped up suddenly and banged the table. ‘I’ll show you. Come on, Peppy.’
The monkey stood up in the chair, hopped on the table, then leapt about a metre to his shoulders where she settled, her hands tight about his forehead.
Outside, Jeremiah paused at the otter pool and bent over the side.
‘Old Man Salter catches flies here four times a day to feed to the seahorses. Rain, hail or shine.’ He flicked the water with his fingers and in a second the two otters broke the surface. They slithered and dived and jumped expectantly. ‘Sorry girls,’ he said, ‘not now, just showing you off.’
They had pert, twitching faces and long whiskers. The water slid off their fur each time they surfaced. It was a very smelly pool.
‘Hard on the nose,’ said Jeremiah, ‘but they’re surprisingly friendly. They eat fish twice daily. The Old Man goes eeling most weekends — it’s their favourite. Donkeys through here,’ he continued, walking through a hedge opening. ‘Min lost a foal last year — the Old Man hand-fed it every four hours for a week before it died.’
Min stood close to her mate Henry in a small fenced compound within the farmyard section. They snickered and nuzzled at each other like an old married couple.
‘Did you know donkeys are highly intelligent?’ said Jeremiah. ‘Smarter than horses and dogs. Contrary to popular myth.’
We had wound back to the white picket gate.
‘What are you saying?’ I asked.
‘Could you hold Peppy?’ he said, handing the monkey down to me.
Peppy and I looked doubtfully at each other. She positioned herself on my hip and I grasped her round the back, feeling her coarse wiry hair and the bony body beneath. She smelt of aftershave.
‘Come and meet the Salters,’ said Jeremiah, wrenching the latch.
‘Actually, I’ve met them,’ I said. Peppy had lifted my hair and was sniffing behind my ear, down my neck.
‘Come and see their house,’ he said. ‘She’s just checking you out,’ he added.
‘Just in time for a cup of tea, dear,’ said Mrs Salter, opening the back door. ‘Angus is letting Charlie out for a bit of sun.’
‘This is Catriona,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Jeannie Salter,’ she said, beaming at me. ‘Glad you’re getting to know Peppy. She needs friends. Catriona.’ She pronounced the name correctly. ‘Your fo
lks from the Old Country, dear?’
‘My father was,’ I said faintly, very aware of Peppy’s hands investigating under my tee-shirt.
‘My dad, too,’ said Mrs Salter, ‘and Angus’s dad and mum. We gave all the bairns good Scottish names.’ She bustled between the small bench and cupboards, spooning tea, cutting bread, arranging pieces of shortbread on a plate.
‘That’s enough, Peppy!’ said Jeremiah, as the monkey tried to put her head up my tee-shirt.
‘We’ll eat in the nook,’ said Mrs Salter, nudging me with a tray. ‘Angus’ll be in soon.’
The nook was a small dining area crowded with furniture, ornaments, plants, books and magazines, photos and memorabilia. Sun poured in through the windows. The ledges were lined with pots of cacti, smooth green plants with hardly a prickle, furry plants, red and pink and orange flowering ones, dagger-shaped ones with fierce needles. Standing in the corner of the room was a massive spike-studded plant with bulging outgrowths winding heavily to the floor.
‘I’ve been cultivating cacti ever since we moved here,’ said Mrs Salter, following my gaze. ‘Thirty-five years. Collected them from all over — we’ve got the collecting habit, Angus and I. Drove the children mad — they said the house was stuffed and the garden was overcrowded and there was no room for them.’
‘Come and look at these, Catriona,’ said Jeremiah. He was pulling armfuls of photo albums from a low bookcase and stacking them on the table, fifteen or so, all identical, modern, plastic-leaved with ugly brown vinyl covers.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Mrs Salter, pouring tea into pottery mugs. ‘You’re not going to persecute Catriona with the albums are you, Jem? We had great cartons full of snaps,’ she said to me, ‘all of the Sanctuary and then I broke my leg two years ago — slipped on ice around the fish ponds — couldn’t move, so Angus bought a job lot of albums from Whitcoulls and I sat here by the fire for six weeks and put in all the snaps. Shed a few tears, I can tell you. We’ve had generations of animals here, dear, and it was most affecting remembering those that had passed on. Milk and sugar, dear?’
I nodded and sat down at the table, thinking about the way she called him Jem, how fond it seemed, thinking how distant the pacing panther was from this cosy living room. I felt suddenly tired in the face of everything Jeremiah was showing me.
I leafed slowly through the first three albums, listening to Jeremiah’s commentary, aware of him watching me carefully. They were a faithful, devoted chronicle of the Sanctuary’s history. Everything was documented, from the arrival of the first monkey, through the construction of the concrete shelters, to the pruning of the hedges and the cleaning of the cages. Mr Salter, young and smoother-faced, mixed cement, slapped it on with his trowel. Mrs Salter fed a lamb or a baby monkey, coloured in a stencilled sign with black felt pen. There was portrait after portrait of animals, their names on stickers beneath the photo: Jim, Colonel, Coco, Bertha, Gilda, Luisa, Norma, Butterfly.
‘Who’s the opera fan?’ I asked, suddenly recognising some names, remembering Mimi and Tosca.
‘That’s Angus, mostly. I prefer the lighter stage.’ Mrs Salter sat opposite us, watching, sipping tea, pointing to pictures, offering explanations. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she said, as Mr Salter came through the kitchen door. ‘Tea and sandwiches, dear? Jem brought his young lady in, so I made another pot.’
‘The one who wasn’t visiting,’ said Mr Salter, sitting heavily.
‘Catriona,’ said Jeremiah. ‘Just showing her the family history.’
‘Captain,’ said Mr Salter gravely, ‘surely you have better things to do with the lass on a fine afternoon.’
‘Gunner—’ said Jeremiah.
‘—my rank when I was demobbed,’ said Mr Salter, winking at me.
‘Gunner, the day is young.’
‘Charlie’s in a grump,’ said the old man. ‘Won’t go out for a sun.’
‘He’ll come right,’ said Mrs Salter.
‘So what do you think of the family?’ Mr Salter asked me.
Ridiculously, I thought of Stella’s old joke about Noel Coward backstage after a performance he didn’t like, showering kisses on the actors. ‘Darling,’ he would say, ‘marvellous was not the word.’ Luckily the old man didn’t wait for an answer.
‘Started with Jim,’ he said, ‘almost by accident, and then, like Topsy, she just grew. Lucky we had a big section, really, room to expand — and I’ve turned a deaf ear to the blandishments of real-estate agents over the years, though believe me they’ve tried. Jeannie’ll tell you — a steady stream of them wanting me to sell, subdivision possible, in-fill, et cetera, et cetera. Just couldn’t bear to pack the kids off,’ he said, more to himself.
‘Quite, dear,’ said Mrs Salter, passing him a tomato sandwich.
‘Catriona,’ said Mr Salter, as if he were practising the sound. ‘You’ve got a great head of hair. My grandmother had hair like that. A good dose of the Celt, eh?’
‘Her father, dear,’ said Mrs Salter, putting out her hand for his. ‘Now, Jem, my boy. What have you got planned for your young lady? You’re never taking her on that great machine, are you?’
‘I’ve brought a spare helmet,’ said Jeremiah, smiling, ‘but it’s up to Catriona.’ He looked at me. ‘I suppose we should be going.’
‘I guess,’ I said, closing the album.
‘You can look at the rest of those next time,’ said Mr Salter. ‘There’s a story and more behind every picture, every damn beast.’
‘Thank you very much for the tea and biscuits,’ I said to Mrs Salter.
‘The first of many, my dear,’ she said, taking my hand in both of hers. ‘Come again soon.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Salter, standing up and holding out his hand. ‘Come back and I’ll give you a guided tour. And you can stay for dinner with the Captain — he’s here most nights, can’t get rid of him.’
I shook his big, rough hand. ‘It’s been lovely meeting you,’ I said, sincerely.
‘See you Monday,’ said Jeremiah. He grinned at the old man, gave a mock salute. ‘See you, too, Peppy.’ Peppy grizzled, puckered her lips in a kiss.
‘Church tomorrow?’ barked Mr Salter.
‘Doubt it,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Well, he’s consistent, anyway,’ said Mr Salter to me.
‘We’ll check out Charlie before we go,’ said Jeremiah, ‘see if we can cheer him up.’
‘Jolly good.’
‘Goodbye, dears,’ said Mrs Salter, from around the back of her husband, her little powdered face working. ‘Ride carefully.’
We walked side by side, silently, towards the aquarium which was opposite the house, through a covered walkway.
It was dark and stuffy inside the aquarium, and the sound of bubbling water came from all around. The room was long and narrow, with elevated tanks on each side. At one end was a display case of exotic shells and coral; at the other, the grumpy crocodile.
‘What’s the problem, Charlie?’ Jeremiah called through the glass, tapping gently on it. ‘Lovely day outside.’ Charlie seemed to be asleep. His body was immersed in a small shallow pool, the crusty, scaled tail overhanging. His long, disconsolate face rested on the pool’s brick surround, just centimetres from the glass. His eyes were closed, but a fat tear bubbled and hung, unshed, just outside his heavy eyelid.
‘Probably weeping with despair at being in the same place for thirty years,’ said Jeremiah. He sat down with a thud on the bench beneath the crocodile’s tank, his face as glum as Charlie’s.
I sat beside him, listening to the bubbles and the hum of the fluorescent lights. Please do not touch the sides of the tank, read a large sign, it can kill us.
‘I understand what you were saying,’ I said slowly, looking down the room at the coral. ‘They love the animals, they love them to bits. I can see that.’
‘Their children,’ said Jeremiah. ‘Their life.’
‘They’re very sweet people,’ I said.
Behind us Charlie dozed, sulky and unco
-operative. All around us the fish winked and darted in their tanks. I tried to think of something to say, wondering how the day could be rescued. Jeremiah’s mood seemed beyond revival.
‘Which one’s the seahorses?’ I said, getting up. ‘I love seahorses. They’re so delicate, so fairytale. They make me believe in dragons.’
He walked over to a corner tank. We stood watching the miraculous animals bobbing and gliding. I loved their luminous, transparent skin, their feminine necks, shapely and elegant. They were other-worldly, fabulous.
I smiled at Jeremiah. ‘Aren’t they lovely?’
‘You’re lovely,’ he said quietly, putting his hand up to my face, touching my cheek softly with his long fingers. My stomach turned over agonisingly and I couldn’t smile any more.
‘Catriona,’ he whispered. ‘Cat, Cat.’
‘Yes.’ I whispered, too, and then I raised myself up a little and kissed him on the lips, carefully, shyly.
He wasn’t shy — he was probably very experienced, I thought later, but I didn’t care. He kissed me back fervently, then put his arms right around me and hugged me hard. We stood that way in front of the beautiful, balletic seahorses, prickles of happiness and desire passing between us.
‘Ohhhhhhhhh,’ groaned Jeremiah, after a long time, his breath warm and damp on my neck.
I untangled myself and stood back slightly, the delicious smell of his mingled sweat and aftershave receding. We grinned happily at each other.
‘Can I call you Jem?’ I said.
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