Sanctuary

by Kate de Goldi

  I looked blankly at Miriam Wilkie, breathing, breathing, waiting for her to speak.

  ‘Let’s try another metaphor,’ she said. ‘When did things begin to crumble? When did this careful structure you’d set up begin to teeter?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it,’ I said in a small voice, the sweat trickling down my back.

  ‘Hey, Cat,’ she said, ‘you told me you were interested in the truth. Like a good detective. Remember?’

  I nodded, concentrating on my breathing.

  ‘Come at it sideways,’ she said helpfully.

  ‘Um, um,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Um … Studio 57, no, no, the Garrison — no …’ I tried to calm down, order this next bit in my head.

  ‘Take slow deep breaths,’ said Miriam.

  ‘What the hell do you think I’m doing?’

  I thought of Cleo, breathing shallowly, chuffing at me as I went past her cage with the hose, her breath opaque too, despite the winter sun.

  ‘The Sanctuary,’ I said. ‘The Sanctuary in winter.’

  It was so cold. Walking to school in the mornings I made footprints on the frosted grass, remembering my five-year-old self doing the same; remembering Tiggie, stepping deliberately, exclaiming over her small impressions.

  At the Sanctuary the parakeets slept too close to the netting and the frost glued their wings hard to the wire. Sometimes on chilly Saturday mornings I found single wing feathers decorating the wire, yanked from the parakeets’ coats as they pulled away on waking. I collected them, peeling them carefully from the cage, storing them in an old tobacco tin in the shed, thinking I’d make something with them, a necklace, an earring, a bead and feather amulet.

  The blue-tongued skinks, Julian and Caroline, and their brood of five stayed motionless in their sloping glassed-in home for days on end, darting down the polystyrene grass mat only when a spear of watery sunlight touched their backs. Jem and I stood in front of the glass, knocking softly, waggling our tongues like maniacs, trying to make them blink, to show a sign of life.

  ‘I guess they’re hibernating,’ said Jem.

  ‘They don’t have to work for their living,’ I said, ‘they’ve got nothing to wake up for.’

  ‘They’re nothing but lounge lizards,’ said Jem, pulling me behind the shed, kissing me slowly, deeply.

  ‘Can I come round tonight?’ he whispered into my neck.

  ‘Stella leaves at nine,’ I said, feeling my knees tremble. I felt almost sick with longing for him. I kissed him back, closing my eyes, thinking of his hands stroking my bare back, my arms, my thighs; his breath brushing my neck, his lithe, slender body rising above me, his beautiful smile, his long, long kiss as he sank into me. ‘But I almost can’t wait until then,’ I whispered, blushing at myself. Stella still didn’t know anything, but Jem had been coming to our house several nights a week for about a month now. My caution had caved in under an onslaught of desire.

  ‘Thank God, too,’ said Penny. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were normal.’

  ‘I’m not normal,’ I said, crushing my pillow against me, moaning. We were stretched out on my bed, talking about sex. ‘I’m not normal. I want to do it all the time. I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t want to go to school, I can’t be bothered reading, can’t be bothered with anything, except being in bed with Jem.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Penny. She and Stefan had broken up at Easter.

  ‘But is it normal?’ I said.

  ‘Who cares about normal,’ said Penny. ‘Safe is the name of the game.’

  ‘Oh safe,’ I said. ‘Stella gave me an arsenal of contraceptives years ago. She’s been expecting this day since for ever. She thinks I’m retarded.’

  ‘Just a late developer. Late developers always fall long and hard,’ said Penny, the voice of experience.

  She was right about falling long. I felt as though I was Alice, falling endlessly through the rabbit hole, my stomach pitching and leaping with love. Sometimes, after a day floating through school, conducting a dozen conversations with Jem in my head, storing up items to tell him, I would arrive at the Sanctuary, breathy and speechless, able only to stare at him, drink in his loveliness, watch him joking with Angus, tending one of the animals; my eyes would fill with tears; relief, gratefulness for his concrete self would flood through me and I would have to lean against a cage to recover.

  ‘It’s a sorry thing, this love,’ I said to Cleo, sitting a safe distance from her cage. I sat with her sometimes, thinking a bit of sedentary company might stay her restless walking, but she hardly ever paused. Once I counted her steps over the space of a minute and worked out that in an average sixteen-hour day of pacing she took about 60,000 steps.

  ‘Is that counting all four paws, or should you halve it?’ asked Jem.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘It’s sick. She’s sick. She’s sick in her soul.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Soul sick and heart sick,’ I said to Cleo. I talked to her, trying to get her to stop for a second, make eye contact, communicate. Sometimes she rolled her head and gave an extra loud chuff, but usually she ignored me, keeping to her well-worn path.

  ‘Done that since Day One,’ said the Old Man. ‘St Vitus’s dance, eh? Healthy, though. Vet’s checked her six-monthly since she came; she’s had all her inoculations — never had a cold, far as I remember, in eight years.’

  Eight years of pacing. I couldn’t bear to do the sums.

  She had come from Vietnam, the Old Man told me, where there was quite a supply of wild cats, something to do with the Americans there during the war keeping them as pets.

  ‘She was fully grown, but still a young thing, thin, too. We fed her up, but she’s never grown fat — all the walking, I suppose.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Doesn’t it worry you?’ I asked, as neutrally as possible.

  ‘Just a quirk, isn’t it?’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘They’ve all got their quirks, h’ant they? Like humans. All you can do is talk to them, be gentle. Love ’em, I suppose.’

  It was as simple as that to the Old Man and Jeannie. They loved the animals and that was enough.

  ‘It’s not on, is it, Cleo?’ I said to her. ‘You shouldn’t be here, should you? You should be in the jungles and veldts. Or on the savannah.’ I was a bit hazy about where panthers actually hung out; Africa somewhere, I supposed. ‘Not in a goddamn cage, eh Cleo?’ She chuffed vigorously.

  I loved to watch her body as she walked, her lissom trunk and legs, the skin rippling subtly. Her head and face were just like a cat’s but heavier, more sullen.

  ‘She has a noble face,’ I said to Jem as we snuggled together in my bed. It was midnight, and Jem would get out of bed in a minute, dress, let himself out the front door and walk a block away to the North Parade dairy where he parked his bike.

  ‘She’s a noble savage beast, then,’ he said, nibbling at my cheek.

  ‘Damn right,’ I said, ‘and I can’t bear her being there, Jem. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘What the hell can we do?’ he said, sighing, stroking my arm.

  ‘I have this fantasy that we help her escape,’ I said. ‘We go in one night and get her out. Like in Turtle Diary. Except they had the zoo keeper’s help.’

  ‘Yeah, and they had some sea to take the bloody turtles to, as well,’ said Jem. We had watched the film together. ‘Not much savannah round here.’

  ‘Only the whole of the Canterbury Plains,’ I said.

  ‘But, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was hopeless, I knew.

  I kissed Jem goodbye. We had long, long goodbyes, not wanting to let go, not wanting to move from the warm cocoon. When Jem was gone I lay, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep which seemed to take a long time coming these nights. Often, I heard Stella coming in, around 1 a.m. When I did sleep it was a cold, broken sleep, filled with disturbing dreams: black cats and boys with silky black hair, the shiny gr
ey-black shells of giant turtles walking along the sand at Brighton, the soft downy black hair on Tiggie’s back, the blackened friable timber of a ruined house.

  In June, Studio 57 had a mid-winter cabaret featuring, starring, Stella Coles. She was doing a Sondheim bracket, Kurt Weill and ‘stacks of torch’.

  ‘I’ll do “Stormy Weather” just for you,’ she said.

  ‘Very appropriate considering the current climate,’ I said. It was a horrible winter: southerly gales, snow in the city, torrential rain every other week.

  The animals at the Sanctuary had gone doggo, as the Old Man put it, refusing to come out of their covered shelters, squawking and braying and hooting and barking pathetically. The whole place was dank and dismal. If Cleo’s water bowl was not iced over in the mornings, it was full of debris from wind and rain gusts. Willow branches, ripped from trees around the river near our house, floated carcass-like in the water or were flung into the road, their sodden, exposed wood ugly and sad, like gaping sores.

  Stella and I had our own variable emotional climate. Storms blew up out of nowhere. Doors banged. The house shook. Most of the time we maintained a suspicious peace. Sometimes I looked at Stella, sitting reading or practicing songs, smoking a cigarette in the thin afternoon sun, and wondered what she was thinking. Sometimes I caught her looking at me, her mouth half open as if she might speak. We sidled past each other, old hands at this game, everything left unsaid.

  The cabaret was at Queen’s Birthday, by coincidence the very weekend the Salters had decided to visit their son in Blenheim. Jem had finally persuaded them to take a holiday — their first in fifteen years — on the basis that he would run the Sanctuary.

  ‘Only problem,’ Jem said to me, after we’d catalogued the thousand and one things we’d do when we played house, ‘only problem is I won’t be able to come to the cabaret. Better not leave the animals.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said, secretly relieved. ‘I’ll take Pen.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I’d really like to hear your mother sing.’

  ‘It is a bit of a pity,’ I agreed. ‘It’s one of the things she does really well.’

  ‘But you’re glad he can’t come, aren’t you?’ said Penny, as we dressed to kill, the night of the cabaret. ‘You can put off telling Stella yet again.’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ I said, pulling in my belt one more notch. ‘I think I’m losing weight.’

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ said Pen. ‘You’ve got a gorgeous boyfriend and you’re totally smitten. I can’t understand why you don’t broadcast it.’

  ‘I must say,’ I said, ‘my appetite hasn’t been its usual gargantuan self lately.’

  ‘Ca-aat.’

  ‘Pe-een,’ I said back. ‘We’ve done this number.’

  ‘You have lost weight,’ she said. ‘Must be lerv.’

  Like mother, like daughter, I thought, feeling slightly sick. I stared at myself.

  ‘Hey,’ said Penny, giving me a shake, ‘hey, you, anyone home?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ I said, refocusing, turning away from the mirror. I pulled on a pair of Stella’s boots, laced and buckled them.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s put on a pile of make-up.’

  The Studio was dim and smoky by the time we arrived at 9 p.m.

  ‘Any time before ten is deeply uncool,’ Penny complained, but I insisted we be on time for Stella’s first bracket. She was opening with a song of Toni’s, ‘Put It About’.

  ‘What a mass of dash!’ said Nan, kissing me soundly, holding me at arm’s length.

  ‘I always look good,’ Penny had said matter-of-factly, before we left the house, ‘but this is one of those times when good is boring and you leave me for dust. You look totally stunning, Cat. It’s all terrible that Jem can’t see you.’

  ‘We’ll take a photo at the Studio,’ I said, secretly rather pleased with my glamour. I had on a short, dark green silk skirt with black tights and Stella’s high boots. On top was a black gauzy tunic with wide trailing sleeves — Stella’s also. My hair was nearly at waist level now and hung about me like an extra piece of warm clothing. My eye make-up was heavy and the lipstick dark. The whole effect was pleasingly exotic.

  ‘The night suits you,’ said Penny, a little enviously. ‘Perhaps you should be a singer, too. Ooops, forgot about the voice.’

  ‘Bitch,’ I said, thumping her arm. ‘I’ll be a streetwalker, undercover cop. Vice squad.’

  ‘My advice,’ said Pen, handing me Stella’s leather jacket, ‘is to stay away from the cops. They’ll make you cut your hair, for sure.’

  ‘Darling, your hair,’ said Nan, stroking my hair at the Studio. ‘It’s glorious. I can hardly believe this is my granddaughter. I feel old.’

  ‘You don’t look a day over sixty,’ I said, feeling like a film star, witty and noticeable. Nan was only fifty-eight.

  ‘But darling,’ said Nan, as she poured Penny and me some wine, ‘you’re getting too thin. Don’t be like your silly old mother, eh?’

  No chance, I thought, grabbing some bread, knocking back a stuffed olive.

  ‘I love your family,’ Penny whispered to me later.

  I loved them too, I thought, as I watched Toni and William holding hands, my Nan, pink-faced and excited. When Stella came on, breathtaking in a sheer midnight-blue sheath, her bobbed hair a subtle bronze shade, her big eyes flashing, I had such a rush of pride I decided I probably loved her as well.

  ‘Wow,’ breathed Penny.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Stella huskily into the mike. ‘Welcome.’

  She began to sing immediately, unaccompanied, her big, nasal voice reaching right to the end of the long room, I was sure, though the opening lines were delivered softly.

  Sandy doesn’t know yet

  FeeFee hasn’t heard

  I told Tracy yesterday

  But she hasn’t breathed a woooorrd …

  I sangg every note with Stella. The room was utterly quiet, listening hard, watching Stella, who bent slightly, her lips almost touching the microphone, enunciating every word with care, breathing imperceptibly. The bass and Graeme the pianist — one hand only — joined her in the second verse, the volume increasing slightly. In the third verse the saxophone came in and the piano became two-handed. By the time Stella reached the first refrain her voice was full-blooded and the four instrumentalists were all playing — forte.

  Tell me I’m not craaazy, Sheila

  Haven’t lost my heeead

  I’ve found myself a gorgeous man

  And I waaant him in my beeeed

  Tooo-night.

  It was a great song and Stella was born to sing it. The audience clapped like crazy, Stella widened her eyes, and I knew then the evening was going to be a big success.

  ‘Wow,’ said Penny again, blown away.

  I watched as Stella acknowledged the applause, remembering how she used to sing ‘Put It About’ to Freddy on the anniversary of their meeting. He had heard her sing it at a friend’s wedding party and had fallen instantly in love with her. So they’d told me every year until the end. Now it made me think of Jem, our own painful pleasure.

  Someday he’ll come along, Stella sang, the man I love,

  And he’ll be big and strong, the man I love.

  Then the oddest thing happened. Watching Stella and thinking cynically about the most recent men she’d loved, I was seized by a feeling that she was a complete stranger. Everything about her seemed unfamiliar, as if I was seeing her for the first time. This is Stella, Stella, Stella, I said to myself, feeling my heart beat faster, my skin creep. My mother, my mother, my mother. The strange, glamorous singer receded and diminished. I blinked and shook my head, panic rising: I’m Catriona, that’s Stella, I said to myself, over and over for the rest of the song. I had the strongest feeling that if I didn’t say this I would forget who I was and stand up and begin shouting wildly.

  At the end of the song I clapped automatically, and this ordinary action, the feel of my han
ds hitting each other, the tangible skin, made me feel a bit less weird. I stole a look at the singer, inclining her head, accepting the applause stylishly. Stella, I thought with relief, recognising her sexy half smile.

  My mother.

  By the end of the first bracket I felt completely normal again, normal enough to shout in Penny’s ear as we clapped, ‘I just had this weird feeling that I didn’t know who Stella was, that she wasn’t my mother or something.’

  ‘I wish she was mine,’ said Penny, weak with admiration.

  ‘You must be Cat,’ said a voice at my back. I turned around to see a guy in a leather jacket and expensive loafers crouching at my chair. ‘I recognised the hair from Stella’s descriptions. I’m Paul Hewitt,’ he said, a second after I realised he must be the new bloke. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’ He held out his hand. I ignored it.

  ‘This is my grandmother, Mrs Coles,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Mrs Coles! Darling! Only the kids at school call me that. Call me Viv,’ she said to Stella’s Paul, shaking his suspended hand.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, standing up, ‘toilet stop.’

  ‘Hope to see you again,’ said Paul Hewitt, not the least put out by my rudeness.

  ‘Not if I see you first,’ I said softly to Penny as we made our way to the Women’s.

  ‘Cat,’ said Penny, incredulously. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘That’s the latest squeeze,’ I said, checking my make-up in the mirror. ‘Someone’s got to discourage them.’

  ‘But he looked nice,’ she said.

  ‘They always look nice,’ I said.

  In the Sondheim bracket the jazz quartet were joined by strings and a flute and clarinet. Toni had arranged the songs.

  ‘This is great stuff,’ I told Penny. ‘Especially, “The Ladies Who Lunch”.’ Giving the fingers to the fashion-plates of Merivale, Stella called it. ‘Not that Sondheim ever met them,’ she said, ‘but, you know, the New York variety.’