the chrysanthemum cat

If you saw Graham cycling along in his khaki t-shirt and John Lennon glasses with his beard and mountain boots and his long pony tail dangling down his back, you would be forgiven for thinking he was a classic hippy cliche - a hairy, dairy-free, tree hugging, dope smoking, folk singing, lentil loving devotee of everything new age and far out. And you’d be absolutely right. With Graham, what you saw was what you got.

Grahams’ frayed shorts were, in fact, a pair of cut-off military surplus trousers. And with shorter hair, he could have passed for ex-army. He was six two, broad, tanned and muscular with tattoos on each forearm. However, he was actually a pacifist, rather than a soldier.

The tattoos were of a dolphin and a Celtic hare. His muscular legs and forearms were not the result of years of regimented PT, but of soya-fuelled cycling and digging. You see, Graham was a gardener who travelled almost everywhere by mountain bike.

Graham did own a beaten up old Suzuki van, but he seldom used it. Surviving without a vehicle, would be unthinkable for most gardening firms. But it wasn’t a problem for Graham. He owned very few power tools, preferring scythes to strimmers and bow saws to chain saws. And most of the people he worked for in Fettlington and the surrounding villages had their own sheds full of sit on mowers, strimmers and spades.

They were mostly commuters or retirees, to whom he’d been recommended by neighbours or other parishioners, because he was strong and quiet and reliable and had a knack for nursing the sickest shrubs back to life. None of his customers paid particularly well, least of all the wealthy ones, but Graham didn’t mind. He liked working out in the countryside. The work was regular. And he didn’t need much to live on.

He shared a house on the edge of Fettlington with Martin, a drummer who worked on a local farm, Ian, who rode a Honda Goldwing and worked at the Seed Research Station and Gary, another biker who worked as a programmer for a food equipment distributor on the edge of Westing (when he wasn’t in hospital having his legs reconstructed with metal pins, following various accidents on the twisting lanes that led to and from the town).

Some evenings they would ride up to the Daffodil Lion for a pint, and some evenings Martin’s band would come round to the cottage to practice. Graham would chat to the women in the pub, or the girls who tagged along with the band. And every once in a while he would get off with one of them. But he wasn’t particularly bothered if he didn’t. And he certainly wasn’t looking for anyone.

Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning after a few spliffs with the boys, he would munch toast and marmite and talk about other things he could do with his life. He was an expert topiarist (a hippy Edward Scissorhands) and his friends said he could make a fortune if got some brochures done and set his sights beyond the village. He could juggle with four (and sometimes five) batons. And he’d toyed with the idea of becoming a street entertainer, in Bath, maybe. But in the summer he was always too busy to get away.

Graham also had an interest in homeopathy, and collected wild flowers, which he’d dry and concoct into herbal remedies. He gave them to a few friends, who said they seemed to work. They told him he should set up a little online shop to sell them over the Internet. During one of those late night smokes, Martin and Gary had even worked out how they’d do it - from website design to order processing. But Graham wasn’t interested. It was less hassle just to give his herbal mixtures away. He was happy with things the way they were.

Graham was happiest of all in late summer, as he cycled home through the evening's warmth. As he rode along the lanes, his nostrils filled with the heady scent of elderflowers, and the air was alive with stag beetles whose chunky black bodies whirred defiantly through the dusk. The setting sun, filtering between the leaves of sycamores and oaks, bathed Graham with such a comforting warmth it felt more as if he were lolling in a herbal bath than pedalling along. All around him hedges of hawthorn and elder were busy with swarms of birds and wild bees. Young rabbits sat calmly chewing dandelions on the verges, whilst squirrels scampered up trunks and across the canopies of the copses that covered the lanes, turning them into living corridors, tunnels of carefree fertility - winding, green wombs.

It was on one such summer evening that Graham first met Ludella. He was about two miles from home, when a small sycamore branch got caught in the spokes of his bike, and practically sent him over the handlebars. He wobbled for a few yards like a circus clown and then toppled over sideways onto an overgrown verge of nettles and buttercups, only narrowly avoiding impaling himself on the shears that he’d foolishly shoved in his rucksack.

The accident happened just next to a small cottage with a thatched roof hidden behind a tall, unruly hedge of variegated box and purple barberry. The cottage looked deserted, so Graham leaned his bike up against its gate and begun to pull away at the leaves, which had become tangled in the chain and gears. As he did so, a sleek, dark grey cat emerged from the hedge and came purring over to him.

“Hello there, puss” he said. He squatted down and reached out slowly to let the cat rub its whiskers against his hand. “You’re a pretty girl aren’t you. Yes you are. Enjoying the sunshine? It’s beautiful isn’t it. Yes it is.” Graham would not normally have been so soppy. But there was no one about to hear him talk to the cat, and he was happy that neither he nor his bike had been badly damaged. As he gently stroked the back of the cat’s head with his large rough hands, he noticed that its eyes were grey and gelatinous, like dead jellyfish. “Hey girl, what’s happened to your eyes. I bet you don’t catch many birds do you hey?”

“Oh yes she does.”

Startled, and feeling rather sheepish, at hearing the female voice, Graham rose quickly to his feet. The sudden movement caused the cat to bound off down the road, and stop a few feet away, hair on end and back arched. As the cat sniffed the air with that casual caution peculiar to the species, Graham looked around for the owner of the voice.

“Hello,” he said. “Hello.”

There was no answer. He felt slightly confused. He hadn’t fallen off the bike that hard, and couldn’t possibly be suffering from concussion. So he was certain he had definitely not imagined the voice. Plus he could smell fresh smoke. And it wasn’t just Benson and Hedges.

Intrigued, he leaned over the gate and peered down the side of the cottage.

“Hello.”

“Yes?” said a voice to his right. He turned and saw a woman sitting on a swing attached to an apple tree. She was holding a mug of tea and smoking a small spliff.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to intrude. A branch got caught in the chain of my bike. I…” His voice dried up. Partly because he was shy, partly because the woman looked so disinterested, but mainly because she was one of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

She wasn’t young. He could tell that straight away by the wrinkles round her eyes and neck, which had definitely never gone under the surgeon’s knife. But she was still unnaturally pretty for a woman in her early fifties.

Her eyes were wide and deep brown, beneath long, lush lashes, and tapered smoothly, like pear drops, towards the bridge of her nose. This gave her the appearance of being ever so slightly boss eyed, but in an endearing, almost childlike, way. She reminded Graham of the mother roe deer he sometimes saw hiding in the hedgerow as he cycled along. Her face shared the same soft yet strong lines, and her gaze was at once gentle and wild, cautious but courageous, distant but sincere.

Her svelte figure and air of haughty independence, which so obviously masked some tragic loneliness, suggested she’d never been a mother. But she still exuded that maternal sense of reliability, an ability to nurture, to survive, to battle on.

Graham could sense she was not afraid of him. And as he continued to stare mesmerised into her eyes, a smile flitted across her face, acknowledging his awe. But she did not blush, seeming more amused than gratified, or even mildly flattered. And the smile soon subsided to a slight sneer, as if she had seen that look in a million men’s eyes before.

“It’s a beautiful cat. But, blind I guess?”

“Totally,” said the woman.

At this point Graham would normally have slinked shyly away, but something kept him rooted to the earth in front of the gate.

“I’ve often admired you box.“ He gestured to the hedge. “It looks like a very vigorous grower, and it’s kept all its variegation. I do a garden over in Pulbury, with a similar one, and its almost all grown out now.”

The lady’s face softened a little.

“So you’re a gardener then?”

“Yes, I do a lot of the houses around Fettlington.” Graham looked up at the hedge. “I could give it a quick trim if you like.”

The woman looked uncertain.

“I’m not touting for business or anything. I just noticed a few stems had got out of control. It wouldn’t take long.”

“I like it, just how it is,” the woman said.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the height, just a tidy up.” The grey cat had returned, and rubbed itself purring against Graham’s legs.

“She doesn’t normally like men,” said the woman.

Graham smiled.

“I like cats. Well, better than people, anyway.”

The woman took a long drag on her spliff and stared at the cat accusingly, as if she were somehow a traitor.

“Oh well, said Graham. “The bike’s OK. I better be off.” He gave a small wave. “Nice to have met you.”

He’d taken aboiut six steps when she called after him.

“OK. Just a few stems then.”

He returned to the gate, his beard barely concealing a small grin of pleasure.

“When is good for you?” he asked.

She paused, slightly flustered.

“Look,” said Graham, “I’ll be cycling past at around this time, the day after tomorrow, Thursday. I could call in then.”

“Fine,” she said. “Thursday afternoon is fine.”

“Great. I’ll sharpen my shears.” He smiled broadly, wheeled his bike onto the road, and pedalled away whistling.

Thursday was a real scorcher, up in the high twenties. Graham had spent most of the day chopping branches from an old elm, and his white vest was soaked with sweat by the time he reached the cottage.

The grey cat leapt out of the hedge and came across to greet him. He patted her gently on the head then went down the side of the house to a tiny front door. He knocked a couple of times. And the lady appeared from the other side of the house.

“I never use that door,” she said.

“Oh, sorry” said Graham.

She stared at him as if he were stupid. She was wearing shorts, revealing the long brown legs of a lady thirty years her junior. But she no longer looked beautiful, just old and posh and arrogant.

“I’ve got some step ladders round the back,” she said.

“Great,” said Graham. He removed his rucksack from his back, and took out his secateurs and his hedge clippers.

“How much are you going to charge me for this?” she said brusquely as he followed her round to the back.

“It’s OK,” he said.

“You’re not a charity,” she said. “So don’t play games.”

Graham shrugged.

“I wasn’t,” he said, “but fifteen should cover it.”

She nodded.

Normally, he would have charged ten at the most. But the tone of her voice had irritated him. He was beginning to wish he’d never bothered offering to do the hedge. But he was there now, so he might as well finish what he’d started.

As Graham stood on the top of the wooden step ladders, trimming away at the box, and the barberry that tangled into it, he glanced down at the cat. She was lying in the dust beneath a white budlhea, staring straight ahead, sniffing at red admirals and painted ladies as they fluttered past. Maybe it could hear them he thought, or even smell them. Cats were very sensitive like that.

As Graham watched, the cat suddenly leapt into the air to its right and grabbed a red admiral between both paws. Then it chewed away at the butterfly’s papery wings, like a granny with loose dentures trying to eat popadoms, and sat purring, her nose and whiskers covered in a fine dust of coloured scales.

What a fluke thought Graham. He took the step ladders out of the gate and onto the road side to complete his trimming. When he returned to the garden twenty minutes later the cat had gone, and there wasn’t a butterfly to be seen.

Graham carried the step ladders round to the back of the house. The cat was lying among a bed of huge chrysanthemums, growling with a small bird in its mouth. It must be a dead one she’d found, thought Graham. Probably hit by the windshield of one of the cars that charged up and down the lane.

The lady came out of the house carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade, two glasses, an ash tray and a small red purse.

“Do you want to come and see?” asked Graham.

“I’m sure you’ve done a very good job,” she said. “I thought you might be thirsty. It’s homemade.”

She set the tray down on a small wooden bench with built in seats. Graham perched on the edge of one bench. She sat the same way on the other side of the table.

He sipped the lemonade. It was delicious.

“Wow,” he said. “This tastes really nice.”

“Thanks,” she said and lit up a cigarette.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything to eat. I don’t really have biscuits.”

“Watching the figure,” said Graham, laughing.

She looked offended.

“Hey I don’t mean you’d need to,” said Graham. “You look stunning. Do you work out?”

“Swimming,” she said, “At Grovelands.”

“I know, that leisure centre place up the hill.”

“It’s a club, actually,” she said, slightly snootily.

Graham sipped his lemonade.

She took the red purse from the tray and pulled out a crisp twenty pound note.

“Thanks,” said Graham, taking the note from her and shoving it into the pocket of his shorts. He scrambled with his fingers to retrieve a dirty and torn fiver as change, and handed it to her. She took it gingerly between thumb and forefinger and slipped it beneath the red purse, without a flicker of ackowledgment.

“Do you know, I don’t think I’ve actually introduced myself properly.” He offered his hand across the table. “I’m Graham.”

She shook his hand politely.

“Ludella,” she said.

“That’s quite an unusual name.”

“It’s an Anglo Saxon name meaning pixie maid. My stage name.”

“Oh you’re an actress then?”

“Many years ago.”

“So were you in plays and things?”

“Films mainly.”

“Really?” said Graham. ”Cool. I thought you looked kind of familiar.”

“I doubt you’ve seen any of my films,” she said. “They were mostly in French.”

“But you’re not French are you?”

”No, but I lived there for many years. My father was the British Ambassador, but we came back to Britain when the trouble started in 1969.”

“I guess it was a bit dangerous. They had riots in Paris didn’t they?”

“Yes. I was in most of them.” She dragged on her cigarette. “That’s why he wanted to take me away.”

”Cool, so did you continue your acting career in England?”

“They didn’t make the same kind of films.”

“No, I guess not. Still,” Graham gazed around, “it’s a lovely cottage. I guess you must have made some money from the movies.”

She laughed and looked at him as if he were stupid.

“Inherited,” she said. “Do you hate me for that?”

“Oh no,” said Graham. “I take people as they are.”

“Well you shouldn’t,” she said. “I’m a dreadful hypocrite.” She lit up another cigarette.

“You’re not,” said Graham. “You have a lovely cottage, and you seem like a nice person, you know, on the inside. That’s what counts.”

“You’re very kind,” she said.

“I’m not being kind. I know I don’t even know you, but you sense something about people when you meet them - invisible signals that they give off. To be honest, I thought you were slightly off with me today, at first. And I didn’t really want you to give me the money. But now that I’ve tasted your lemonade…” He grinned.

She smiled too, and it was as if all the beauty had suddenly flooded back into her face.

“So long as you like the lemonade,” she said.

The cat had finished toying with the bird and came out of the Chrysanthemums, its mouth covered in blood and small feathers.

“Oh Petula,” said Ludella. “You haven’t caught another one?” She picked the cat up and it lolled over her shoulder his paws dangling lazily down her back. “She’s frightful,” she said. “I’ve tried to put a bell round her neck, but she absolutely hates it. Don’t you baby. Keeps scratching her neck. So, I’m afraid I just have to let her get on with it.”

“So she has some sight then?”

“Oh no. She’s totally blind.”

“Well, how does she catch the birds then?”

Ludella dragged on her cigarette.

”It’s a mystery,” she said. “A total mystery. “

“I guess she hasn’t always been blind.”

“No, she just came in one day with oil on her head, and as I was washing it off I noticed her eyes were very cloudy. And when I put her down on the ground she walked into the cupboard. The vet thought she had probably been hit by a car in the lane and somehow damaged her optic nerve. But he was mystified too. The vet thought that the sight might return a little, but it never has. At first she was forever falling off tables and walking into walls. It was pitiful. But gradually she learned to find her way around. And now she’s fine.”

“Catching birds.”

“Yes, that is the astonishing thing. Before the blindness she was never much good at catching anything. I tried to encourage her – as lots of mice and rats come over from the fields and the woods. I’d give her a ball of wool or a cotton reel to play with- but she was never interested, not even as a kitten.

Then, after the accident, she suddenly started bringing in birds. I thought she had found a nest of fledglings. But these were adult birds; thrushes, chaffinches, a crow even. I’d hung a feeder from the trees with nuts in. Then one morning, I caught her leaping from the tree and she plucked a blue tit right off the feeder. I was convinced her sight had come back. I took her back to the vet, and of course he thought I was mad. He told me Petula was still completely blind. He waved a pen in front of her face and she just lay there purring. I invited him to come round and see Petula catching the birds. But he just thought I was crazy.”

She paused to light up a fresh cigarette.

“She’s caught so many she’s bored of it now. She brings them to me when they‘re still alive, half-chewed. It’s heart-breaking. I have a little box in the shed with straw, and I put the barbecue grill over the top with a large stone to stop Petula getting in there, but they never recover. Never.“

“Hmmm,” said Graham. “Lots of animals have this sixth sense. Nothing supernatural, it’s a kind of magnetism. They have sensors in their brain which act rather like an inbuilt compass and allow them to navigate via the earth's magnetic field.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Ludella.

“I think some scientists discovered it in Canada or somewhere like that. And there’s lots of animals that have similar senses. Certain species of fish even create their own electric fields, rather like radar systems, which enable them to locate prey or predators and possibly even to communicate with each other. And bats use a kind of echo location system, so it’s not impossible that other mammals have evolved similar systems that enable them to sense their surroundings in unusual ways.“

Ludella laughed.

“Goodness. You seem to know a lot about this subject. Do you have a PhD in zoology or something.”

”Naa,” Graham shrugged. “I’m just interested in animals. Anyway it wouldn’t be too far fetched to think that cats have some similar kind of mechanism, even if it’s only vestigial. You always hear there stories of how people have moved five hundred miles away, and then the cat has got lost, and three years later it turns up at their old home. No one knows exactly how they do it. They think maybe the cats use the position of the sun or the moon to go in the right direction until they smell a familiar scent. But from five hundred miles away there must be some other sense in play, to get them exactly back to where they started from. I suppose that’s why they’ve always been regarded as magical ceatures.”

“It’s a very interesting idea,” said Ludella.

“Well, I just thought maybe if cats and birds have these extra senses, maybe somehow, from a short distance away, they could kind of interact.”

“Like a kind of magnetic telepathy?” said Ludella.

“Why not?” said Graham.

“It’s a good theory,” said Ludella.

“Well, anything is possible,“ said Graham. “The planet's been evolving for millions of years.”

“Yes God has created a wonderous world,” said Ludella.

For the first time, Graham noticed the large crucifix hanging round her slender brown neck.

Graham nodded and quickly finished his lemonade.

“Oh well, I better go home and have a shower. Thanks for the lemonade. It was very nice.” He pulled a card from his pocket. “Nice to meet you again, and Peter. If you ever have anything that needs doing…”

She took the card and held it tenderly between her hands, smiling.

“OK Graham. I’ll know who to call.”

He left and cycled away, her long brown legs and breathtaking eyes, mingling in his head with diagrams of cats and birds brains connected by a net of dashed lines.

He didn’t expect Ludella to call again. But the next week, she did. And during August he called at her house a couple of times a week.

There was nothing important she wanted him to do in the garden. She just liked him to be there for an hour or two, digging or weeding or lopping off branches. And when he had finished, she would bring out the lemonade and they would chat and flirt a little in a trivial way. And he told he didn’t really have a serious girlfriend. And she told him that a few years earlier she had split up with a man because he wanted to marry her and she didn’t want to. And now he was married to someone else, and sometimes she wished she had said yes. But she was happy now anyway and was always busy with the church and the house and her friends. And he said that it was good to be free and independent. And then they sipped lemonade and shared an unspoken loneliness, until she paid him fifteen pounds from her red purse, and he cycled slowly away.

Then, in the first week of September she called him again. It was an Indian summer, still very warm. When he arrived she was wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of pink bikini bottoms. He could see her nipples poking out against the soft cotton, the slightly wrinkled flesh of her tanned bottom spilling out beneath loose elastic.

He’d been weeding shirtless for a few minutes, watched by Peter the cat, when Ludella called from the doorway. She asked if he would help her bring a case down from the attic. He took off his muddy hiking boots and followed her into the kitchen, which smelled of catfood cigarettes and furniture spray. It was cool and dark and looked like something from a home interiors magazine. To the right was a top of the range Aga, and on the far wall was a Welsh dresser piled with expensive plates and jugs, and Beatrix Potter figurines - the complete set by the looks of it. Copper pots and ladles dangled from the ceiling above a big oak table. And in the middle of the table was a red and amber Poole Pottery vase with a dozen pink chrysanthemums.

A wooden stairway led up from the kitchen, each step piled with old paperbacks. As Graham followed her up the stairs , they passed a poster for a film called Florence. The poster featured a large head and shoulders shot of what he thought at first was a young Bridget Bardot. He paused to look at the credits at the bottom of the poster. ‘Candy Hunt as you’ve never seen her before,’ said the strapline. But he could tell the photo was of Ludella.

“Did you make Italian films, as well?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“I just noticed the poster.”

”Florence was the character’s’s name.”

“You looked beautiful.”

“It was a long time ago.”

She stopped on a landing of closed wooden doors. It smelled of wood rot, cigarettes and flowery shower gel. Opposite the top of the stairs was a Victorian oil painting of a horse in an ornate frame, all mahogany and gold leaf. On the narrow wall to the right of the horse was a panoramic photograph of Paris shot in black and white from the top of the Eiffel tower. In the foreground was a laughing woman in a head scarfe, who may or may not have been Ludella. Beneath the photo was a laundry basket, the kind that looks as if it might conceal a snake charmer’s cobra. To the right of the photo was a window made up of four panes of distorted glass, each framed by peeling white paint, defined by a rim of black mould.

Ludella gestured up to a hatch on the ceiling.

“I keep my winter clothes in the attic,” she said. “The wardrobe is too small.”

Graham nodded.

“Do you want me to nip up and get them?”

“No I’m quite OK to get up there,” she snapped. “It’s just easier if there is someone to hand them to, if you can manage that?”

“Of course,” said Graham, politely. “No problem.”

Ludella picked up a short wooden pole with a hook on the top, which was leaning against a small radiator beneath the window, and used it to hook the attic hatch open.

As the hatch swung open, a gust of warm air passed over Graham’s chest, like lover’s breath.

Ludella used the hook to pull down the loft ladder, which crashed to the floor, making him jump. Ludella didn’t flinch.

As she climbed the ladder he politely looked to his right at the panorama of Paris, but he needn’t have bothered.

After clattering around above him for a couple of minutes (as if at any moment she might crash through the ceiling), she reappeared at the top of the ladder. As Graham looked up, she sat on a rafter and braced her legs one on each side of the hatch so that her thighs were spread wide open, one side of her labia spilling out of her frayed pink bikini bottoms.

“You’re no good down there,” she said. “You’ll have to come up and get it.”

Setting one foot on the bottom of the ladder he reached up with his naked arms. It was hot day, and through a haze of floral deodorant, he could smell her middle-aged sweat and the perfumed acid of her cunt, tainted by a slight whiff of shit like a weak fart.

Ludella manouvered a battered, patterned suitcase to the edge of the hatch.

“It’s heavy,” she said.

“I’ll be OK,” said Graham.

“Be careful,” she said, and leaned over further so that her T-shirt dangled forward, and he could see her tanned breasts swinging briefly beneath it.

This is ridiculous he thought to himself. But he grabbed the edges of the case and carefully eased it to the ground. Graham was used to lifting logs and branches, so the suitcase didn’t cause him too much difficulty. But it was heavier than he’d thought.

“Blimey, what have you got in there bricks?” he asked.

Ludella didn’t answer, but gave him a told-you-so look. She retrieved a second suitcase and they repeated the procedure, and again Graham got an eyeful as she spread her legs and then leaned forward to hand the case to him.

“Where do you want these?” he asked.

“Leave them,” she said.

Ludella came down the ladder backwards, and this time Graham saw no reason not to have a good gawk at her bum. She responded with the look of a Mother Superior who’s just discovered a novice nun secretly leafing through a ligerie magazine.

Graham raised his hand to his brow and wiped away a trickle of sweat.

Ludella picked up the smaller case.

“Bring the other one,” she said. “Be careful with the door.”

He followed her through a doorway to a bedroom scattered with clothes and magazines and towels and tissues, dominated by a large double bed covered in blankets. She put the smaller case down next to an oak chest of drawers and a cheap white vanity unit, smeared with red lipstick and coated in face powder, cigarette ash and cat hairs. It looked like a crime scene. She pushed an open magazine off the blankets onto the floor.

“Lift it onto the bed please.”

Graham did as he was told and paused for a moment. She looked him up and down for a couple of seconds, with a slight smirk on her face, the said.

“That’s all, thank you, Graham.”

Then she waved him away as if shooing off the cat.

Graham shook his head as he made his way down the stairs. He put his hiking boots back on and went out to dead head roses, as Petula lay purring in the dry earth by his feet. When he’d finished, there was no sign of Ludella. He poked his head through the kitchen door and shouted out.

“I’m all finished for now, unless there’s anything else you want doing.”

“OK,” she shouted down.

He waited by the door for her to appear, and pay him his fifteen quid and offer him a glass of lemonade. Petula had followed him to the house, and he picked the cat up and stroked it for a couple of minutes. There was still no sign of Ludella.

He poked his head back round the door.

“I’ll be off then,” he said.

There was no reply.

“See you then,” he repeated.

He thought he heard a slight creaking on the landing, but she still didn’t answer. He paused for a minute, wondering whether to go back upstairs. But he remembered that look she’d given him.

‘Sod it’ he thought, went out to his bike and cycled away.

In the days that followed she didn’t call.

Some days his work schedule took him past the cottage, and a couple of times he paused outside (once on his bike and once in the van). He thought about knocking on her door to collect his fifteen quid. But he didn’t really care about the money, and he didn’t want it to appear as if he did. So, when there was no sign of her in the garden, he just went on his way.

It was the first week of October, and as Graham cycled home down the lane that led past Ludella’s cottage he shivered and wished he'd worn his coat. It had been a strange day for weather. That morning it had been quite sunny and still when he'd gone over to Pilbury to clean out a pond for the Martins. It was actually more like a small lake and the job had taken most of the day. In the morning, he’d worked in his T-shirt tidying up the plants; dividing the irises, thinning out the reeds and water lilies, which had gone rampant in the summer, and putting a net across to stop leaves clogging the water.

At lunchtime, a stiff breeze swept across the Martins’ long sloping lawns, making Graham pull his sweatshirt back on. By the time he’d finished his soya ‘cheese‘ and humus sandwiches, perched on the edge of the pond like a hippy gnome, the sky was completely grey. Occasionally, during the afternoon, as Graham used rocks and birch to strengthen the edge of the stream that fed the pond, the wind did die down for a while and the sun could be seen shifting behind the clouds, like a burning ghost bound in raw wool. But by dusk, as Graham pedalled home, the pale greyness of the sky had turned black, and the breeze was turning into a full-blown gale.

For the previous few days, Graham had taken a detour to avoid Ludella’s home, but as he left the Martins’ place, he felt spots of rain on his hands and face, and decided to go past the cottage after all. As he neared the cottage, the rain began to fall faster and he leaned forward over the handle bars and shifted up a gear. But suddenly his attention was caught by a crumpled shape lying on the verge. He squealed to a halt thinking it might be a badger and, despite the worsening wind, strolled across the road to take a closer look.

As Graham got closer to the dark-furred body, he saw that it was a cat and it was definitely dead. How strange he thought, what on earth was a cat doing this far from civilisation. He was sure he had never seen any wild ones in the woods. Maybe it was an unwanted pet, dumped from a passing car or some farm cat with a fatal wanderlust. It never once occurred to him that it might be Petula. Even when he reached the cat and bent down and noticed it's clouded over eyes and distinctive grey fur, it was several seconds before the sickening truth set in. He felt like standing-up and calling out the cat’s name as loud as he could. But he didn't. Instead he reached down and gingerly touched the cat’s limp back with the tips of his fingers.

Despite the cold wind and rain, the body was still ever so slightly warm, but already the joints were starting to stiffen. He lifted Petula’s back legs to look for the pale patch of fur on her tummy (a kind of pubic triangle like a furry white bikini, which he'd always observed with amusement when she'd rolled on her back in the flowerbed). And, of course, there it was.

Although it was quite obvious the cat was Petula, there was still something in him that denied her death, some infinitesimal hope that this might just be a sick coincidence and any moment Petula might come leaping out from behind the hedge to purr and rub against his legs.

Having lost all vivacity, the body seemed too large and too heavy to be hers. Her normally sleek face had swollen up and one grey eye bulged from the socket like a peeled chestnut. Her neat paws, with which she'd balanced so miraculously on the narrow window ledges, had become clumsy, clawed lumps. And her proudly swishing tail, now lay stiff as a bottle brush in the bloodflecked grass. It was then that he noticed her collar in the road. It was unmistakable, a garish blue glittery thing that Ludella had bought after he’d convinced her of the dangers of the organophosphate flea collar Petula had previously worn.

The collar was the only kind they'd had in the village store and had come resplendent with a little bell and a metal-effect plastic tube, which Graham had removed with the tip of his secateurs.

With any last doubt erased from his mind - he glumly pocketed the collar. Then, leaving his bike in the ditch, he lifted the body up and carried it down the road on outstretched palms as if it were some ritualistic offering. He pushed the gate open with his foot and went round to the back of the house.

As he reached the back door, Ludella opened it with a quizzical look, a smile quivering on her face. He tried to manage a grin, but then his face dissolved into spasms of grief. She looked down at the stiff body he held, and she dropped her cigarette her face contorted like that of an astronaut hurtling back to earth. Dan was unable to speak, his eyes blurred with tears. He did not see her step towards him, but felt her arms wrap around him, and he smelled freshly chopped herbs on her hands. Their embrace tightened, and he felt the warmth of her breasts mix cruelly with the cold stiffness of the corpse, as she reached up to stroke the side of his head, as if he were the cat, whose blood dripped between them.

They stood without moving or speaking until the rain began to fall harder, and he pulled gently away from her.

“Shall I bury her?”

Ludella nodded and went back into the kitchen.

He retrieved his bike from the road and propped it beneath the apple tree, then fetched a spade from the shed and started to dig a hole in the centre of the Chrysanthemums, bashing against the wet stems as the rain rushed down and thunder rumbled closer.

As he dug, lightening forked against the black sky and Ludella called out from the doorway, “Come in Graham.”

But he just kept on digging, and she went back inside.

As he was laying Petula’s body into the bottom of the hole, he saw a dead thrush lying on the far side of the flowerbed. He dropped it in on top of the cat’s body.

“Something to chase in heaven,” he whispered, and went to the kitchen door.

”I’m so sorry,” he said. “It’s done now, anyhow. She’s good and deep in the middle of the Chrysanthemum’s, her favourite place. She’ll be safe there. I guess it was a car. It would have been over in an instant.”

Ludella nodded

“Thank you,” she said.

“I better get going now.” He wiped strands of wet hair from his face.

“Don’t be ridiculous,”

“I’ll be OK.”

“You’ll catch pneumonia.”

“Honestly, I’m used to it.”

“Don’t be silly. You must get out of those things. You’re drenched.”

As if on cue, the heavens opened again, and he followed her inside dripping onto the stone floor.

When he returned downstairs, wrapped in an old pink towling bathrobe, she was in the lounge. The room was full of candles He wasn’t sure if they were meant to be a mass for the dead cat, or to create a romantic atmosphere.

She’d made him tomato soup.

”It’s only tinned, I’m afraid, but it will warm you up,” she said.

”I’m really sorry, but I can’t drink this. It’s got cream in it. “

“Oh, I’m sorry. How foolish of me. I’ll get some more. “

”You don’t need to.”

”It’s not a problem.”

”No, really,” his voice rose.

“I insist.”

”It’s OK.”

He grabbed her wrist

She looked down at his hand.

“Let go Graham,” she said in a tiny voice.

Suddenly something snapped inside him. And he pulled her to him, letting the bath robe fall open and kissed her savagely on the lips, pushing his body against her, consuming her violently in his powerful arms.She let him kiss her for a few seconds, then pulled away, the colour drained from her face.

He felt a sudden pang of fear. He had never done anything like that before. He thought she was going to run off screaming or call the police. But she just looked deep into his eyes, reached out to gently touch his arm, and murmured, “Just do something, Graham…please.”

She reached down, to cup his balls, then took his semi-erect penis in her hand, and with a small groan, started to stroke it gently up and down. He could feel the wrinkles on her palm, but felt himself stiffen and lowered his head down to kiss her, reaching up inside her jumper to feel her breasts. He pulled her jumper up over her head, and gently eased her bra straps from her shoulders, and lowered his head to suck at her nipples.

They sank onto the carpet in front of the fire, and he reached down to unzip her jeans. As she reached round to massage his muscular arse, he slipped his thick fingers down the front of her knickers and parted her lips. She squirmed beneath him as he slipped a finger in and out of her rubbing his palm against her clit.

She gripped his hair with both hands and dragged his face from her breasts and kissed him deeply. She slipped the dressing gown from his shoulders and he reached down to pull her trousers and knickers off.

“Don’t look,” she said, as he lowered his head. “I don’t want you to look.”

“I’m sure it looks beautiful,” he said. He kissed her belly and made as if to move down lower, pulling her legs apart with his powerful arms. “No please don’t,” she said, struggling against him.

He released his grip on her knees and moved up to kiss her breasts, guiding the head of his cock to her opening. As his stiff shaft sunk into her, he was surprised at how tight she was, and he winced with pleasure as their bodies thrust together. Sucking more fiercely at her breasts, he reached down to finger her clit as he continued to slide in and out of her. He felt her cunt get wetter and wetter, and she bucked beneath him until she came and came again, her fingers gripping the back of his neck, her back arching with each fresh orgasm. He started to pump her harder, but she asked him to stop.

“It’s a little sore,” she said. “It’s been a while…”

He lay on his back beside her and she started to gently stroke him. Then she took his hand and wrapped it around his cock. “You do it.”

He was slightly embarrassed, but he was desperate to come and started to wank himself off, slowly at first and then more roughly. She laid her head on his chest just looking down. She was hardly breathing, and her body was so ridgid with excitement, he though she was about to have a heart attack.

“Are you OK with this?” he panted.

“Go on,” she urged. And she started to stroke his nipples and squeeze his swollen balls.

Unable to contain himself he started to rub himself faster feeling his come welling up inside him, until he exploded, every muscle in his body flexing with wave after wave of violent delight, as she held onto him, like she was clinging to a ship’s wreckage, as the storm raged violently outside..

“Oh God,” she said, “Oh my God.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she began to quietly sob. Graham pulled the discarded dressing gown half over her, then lay and stared at the flickering candles. He wondered if the cat had been watching. Then he remembered Petula was buried in the garden, and he wondered why they had just made love. Some kind of mutual consolation he guessed, a subconscious animal reaction; our baby has died, let us make another one. The fire had also died, and he shivered and shifted uneasily on the carpet, a trickle of semen running down between his ribs. He stopped it with the side of his hand before it reached the carpet, then extricated himself from Ludella’s arms and walked naked up to the bathroom, and washed his hands in the sink.

His face in the soap encrusted mirror looked like that of a tramp, his hair still wet and wild. He looked round the bathroom. It was filthy - all pubes and floss, spilled shampoo and limescale - as if five male students were living there, rather than one middle-aged woman. He felt unclean, as if he had fallen in pig slurry. Back downstairs, Ludella sat on the sofa wearing the pink dressing gown, hunched up, smoking a cigarette. He smiled. She nodded and stared stonily at the embers of the fire.

“I’ll see if my things are dry,” he said, and walked naked back into the kitchen, where his clothes were draped on a wooden rack in front of the solid fuel stove. The side nearest the warmth was half-dry, the other side still dripping slowly onto the stone floor. He stood close to the stove and pulled on the wet clothes. He rubbed his hands through his hair and walked back through to the lounge. He sat down on an armchair at right angles to the fire. Ludella offered him the pack of Marlboro Lights. He didn’t normally smoke cigarettes, only joints, but this was not a normal moment, so he took one.

Ludella proffered her lighter. He lit up, and they quietly smoked together. Only two of the candles were still lit, and although the rain had stopped, it was pitch black outside. After a few minutes, Ludella flipped on the standard lamp beside her. It only had a 60 watt bulb, but the light seemed to flood the room, as if she had just switched the real world back on, drowning their shared dream.

“The rain’s stopped,” said Graham. “I should probably be heading home.” He reached out to touch her arm. “Will you be all right?”

She gripped his hand with her own and kissed him on the cheek, her breath smelling of tobacco.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded and got up.

She followed him into the kitchen.

She picked up her red purse from the counter.

“I never paid you that fifteen pounds…”

Tears sprang to his eyes and he walked out to the apple tree so that she would not see them. He wiped the back of his hands, sniffed and wheeled his bike to the kitchen door, where she was stood in her pink dressing grown, her arms folded tightly around her chest. Mascara ran down her cheeks like a melting clown.

“I’ll see you then,” he said.

She smiled and nodded, as he turned away. But when he looked back her face was like death. He thought about returning, to hug her again and not let go, but she had already gone back inside, so he pedalled away down the lane, slowly slicing through puddles, sending up spray that sparkled in his light like fake diamonds.

All fiction on this site is © Copyright Roger Frederick 2005 All Rights Reserved