The Knot Garden

  Silence.

  I sighed. ‘Please say something, even if it’s only goodbye. At least I’ll know where I stand. I think you owe me that much, Liddy, truly I do. Just tell me you hate me and you never want me to come here again and I’ll leave, even though it will break my heart.’

  There was a scuffling noise on the deck of the boat, and as I stared in the direction of that noise, a new smell came to me on a breath of breeze. My nose twitched. Not Liddy—

  Pale radiance filtered through the thick clouds. I saw a flicker of movement above me, then light gleaming on curved yellow teeth. It was a rat! Infuriated, all thoughts of my beloved subsumed, I leapt from towpath to deck in a single athletic surge, but the rat was quicker. As soon as it had seen my haunches bunching for the spring it was off, its long bare tail slapping along the wooden deck like a length of wet cord.

  There was a splash, and then the rhythmic sound of water displaced by determined movement. I ran to the edge of the deck, only to see the rat swim to safety on the other side of the canal.

  I stared after it, heart sinking as the implications became clear. A rat, on board Liddy’s home. No cat would allow such a thing.

  She had gone.

  A prolonged examination of the boat, of the steps to the living quarters and around the door at the end, where a cat would rub its cheek to mark its territory; the food bowl crusted with days-old food: all reinforced my fears. Liddy was gone, and by the faintness of her scent, might have been gone for some days. I had no idea of where she could be, of whether I would ever see her again.

  I sat dejectedly at the foot of the steps and thought about this for a time. Then, perversely, I felt my heart lift.

  She had gone, but it was still possible that she might not entirely hate me. It was better than nothing. It was just enough to keep me going.

  With a new impetus of energy, I ran up the steps two at a time and jumped lightly down on to the towpath.

  *

  The canal cats were by nature an undependable lot, creatures neither of solid ground nor truly of the waterways. And, just as they belonged to no one element, neither did they belong fully to themselves or to the humans on whose boats they travelled. Some of them liked to play up to this contradiction, swaggering like pirates up and down the towpath, seducing females and picking fights, secure in the knowledge that if things got too hot at this anchorage, they could just skip town on the next barge, if they could find people – an equally shiftless breed – with sufficient mental rigour to engage in the lengthy process of disconnecting their gas and water and sewage and mooring lines, and threading their assiduous way through the other craft and out into clear water, to drift slowly down to the next docking-place. Some of the narrowboats never moved from their berths from one year’s end to the next; some had likely forgotten their original function entirely and would spring a leak at the very thought of sailing open water once again; others tied up and were immediately fretful, still searching for the perfect mooring. It was an aimless, carefree existence and it made for easy acquaintance but little close friendship, as I was soon to discover when I started trying to question the cats I could find over the mystery of Liddy’s whereabouts.

  The first cat I met was a tattered, brindled specimen, who wore his facial scars like a badge. I thought I remembered him from the fight; and indeed some of the wounds looked barely healed, but when he spoke, the brindled cat – who liked to be known as Charlton (‘never Charlie,’ he instructed me fiercely) – shook his head. ‘Don’t know who you mean, mate,’ was all he would say when asked if he knew Liddy.

  ‘Liddy,’ I repeated stubbornly. ‘Lydia, she prefers. You must know her: she’s the local beauty, or so I was always told.’

  Charlton raised an eyebrow. His short white whiskers bristled. He thought for a while as if consulting a long mental address book. ‘Nah,’ he said at last. ‘No Lydias. Mind you,’ he leered, ‘they don’t always tell me their names.’

  I was persistent. ‘That boat over there. That’s where she lives. Except there’s no one there any more.’

  But the brindled cat shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate: can’t help you.’

  And off he went up the towpath, sway-backed and stumpy tail held high, and disappeared into the shadows under the bridge, a notorious place to score an old fish-head or a less-than-choosy queen.

  I walked up and down beside the dark canal for half an hour or more, but could see no sign of other cats. I could, however, feel their presence; could sense eyes watching me from covert quarters. Frustration ticking in my head, I sat down on the towpath and made myself comfortable. Clearly, there was no point in going after them: they’d just burrow down into their boats like worms down a hole; but if they got the idea I wouldn’t leave until I’d had my information, perhaps they’d come to me, if only to speed my departure.

  It was a good plan. Evidently rattled by my patient repose, a pair of young scruffs braved a nearby companionway. They lacked the bluster of such brigands as Charlton, being both young and smaller, and far less bitten about the head and ears. Nervously, they jostled one another at the rail.

  ‘You ask him.’

  ‘No, you.’

  ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘You’re older than me.’

  ‘Only by twelve minutes.’

  After some further bickering and head-butting the older of the pair cleared its throat as if loosening a hairball.

  ‘Excuse me – sir.’

  I opened a lazy eye a little wider. ‘Me?’

  ‘Er, yes, sir.’

  I sat up and flexed my claws. There was a further flurry of activity on the houseboat, and a lot of whispering in which I thought I caught the words ‘battle’ and ‘champion’, then the second cat piped up: ‘You won’t hurt us, will you, sir?’

  The older cat cuffed its brother round the ear. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course he won’t hurt us.’ He raised his voice as if to convince himself. ‘After all, we’ve done nothing to him: we were only spectators.’

  I grinned to myself. They were only kittens.

  ‘Get down here,’ I said sternly. It felt strange addressing other cats in such a patriarchal tone. I wasn’t that much older than them myself; but I rather liked it.

  The twins, each an indeterminate russet colour, almost fell on to the towpath in their eagerness to comply. They would probably turn out to be burly little cats in their time, but for now they still had their fair share of kitten-fat and puffball fur.

  ‘Nutmeg,’ said one.

  Whatever did he mean?

  ‘Cinnamon,’ said the other at once. They started to giggle anxiously. ‘Our owner bakes a lot of cakes—’ Nutmeg started, but I cut in hurriedly: ‘I’m looking for a friend. She lives on that boat over there.’

  The kittens followed my gaze, took in the dark shape of the houseboat, and stared at each other. They looked up and down the canal, at the blank spaces of empty moorings. They trod the dusty earth of the towpath with neurotic paws. They milled, muttering, around each other in tight little circles until I lost track of which of them was which.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said one at last.

  ‘A lot of cats have gone recently,’ said the other.

  I stared at them. ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘Been taken.’

  ‘Oh, Nutmeg!’

  ‘Ssssh. They have. They were taken—’

  ‘We don’t know—’

  ‘—by the Basket Beast.’

  ‘The what?’ I was incredulous.

  Nutmeg looked defensive. ‘Well, that’s what I call it. It’s got a basket.’

  ‘It’s a stupid name—’

  ‘No, it’s not—’

  ‘You say!’

  Nutmeg bit Cinnamon and Cinnamon promptly retaliated and I had to separate them. ‘Calm down. Tell me properly: what did you see?’

  Cats had been disappearing from up and down the towpath for the past few days, they told me. And not just any cats, either: only young ones; only fe
males; no neuters. Nutmeg and Cinnamon had lain out under the deck tarpaulin one night to see who came along. They were very frightened. Most of the humans they recognised: the young couple from the prettily decorated narrowboat near the head of the dock, reeling back from the pub as usual; an elderly lady painter who lived by herself with the smelliest, raggediest tomcat of them all; the fat man who didn’t like cats at all and would throw water on any who sang near his boat; the tall man from Liddy’s boat.

  I sat up straighter. ‘What about his cat?’ I asked quickly. ‘You must have seen her: she’s very—’ I paused ‘—attractive.’

  The twins shuffled embarrassedly. ‘Oh, her,’ said Cinnamon.

  Nutmeg snickered. ‘We saw you get into that fight over her,’ he said.

  The kittens elbowed one another delightedly. When they looked up again, my face must have fallen still and urgent.

  ‘What about her? Where is she?’

  The twins conferred wordlessly. Then Cinnamon hunched his shoulders as if to receive a blow. ‘She was the last,’ he said. ‘The Basket Beast took her last of all.’

  I questioned the youngsters long and hard, but was unable to glean any more useful information other than that it had been a human who had taken Liddy: that the figure had been tall, and had come by night.

  The vanishings were not the only disturbances, either, they said. Even before the female cats were taken, everyone had been experiencing nightmares – both boat-owners and felines; even the few dogs that lived on the canal had not been immune, so it must be bad, for everyone knew dogs only ever had dreams about food and running. I scowled. ‘I know all about those,’ I said grimly. ‘They’ve kept me very busy lately.’

  People, they said, had become strangely agitated. They sat up late into the night with books and magazines and strained their eyes by the soft light of the gas mantles; anything, it seemed, to put off the bad dreams. That was why some of the houseboats had moved on: the humans were saying they didn’t feel comfortable at Ashmore any longer; they couldn’t relax; and what was the point of being happy wanderers if they weren’t happy where they were? That, announced Cinnamon, was what their old lady had been saying to her husband: they should weigh anchor and go on up the canal to Winchfield. He’d moaned about the whole palaver of it, but eventually he agreed to move on: only this morning he’d said he felt positively hagridden, Nutmeg declared, stumbling over this odd phrase.

  I left the twins and carried on down the towpath towards the bend in the canal where the moorings petered out; but everywhere was dark and silent and no one else came out to speak to me.

  Dejected, and with my skin crawling with anxiety, I turned for home. Where was Liddy? Who had taken her, and where was the tall man, her owner? Perhaps, I thought, in an attempt to calm my worst fears, they’d just moved up into the village for a while, to have what humans call ‘a holiday’. People did inexplicable things like that: abandoned one perfectly good place to spend time in another. Head down in thought, I entered one of the paths that led back to the common, stepping neatly over bramble runners and exposed roots.

  But what about all the others?

  And why had only young, unneutered females disappeared?

  Was it a coincidence? Or was it something far more sinister?

  *

  Millie regarded Vita despairingly. ‘You’re quite sure this is what you want to do?’

  The little tabby cat nodded emphatically. ‘It’s time,’ she declared. ‘I’ll never be truly grown up till I’ve experienced the world: even Dellifer said so. And it was only after Orlando went with grandfather on to the wild roads that he became so insufferably adult.’ She jiggled her head to feel the silver ring brush the soft fur on the inside of her ear. Then she said. ‘You like my brother, don’t you?’

  Millie stared at her. She could think of nothing to say that was not an outright lie.

  Vita watched her with a curious expression, which seemed to consist in equal measure of astonishment – at having hit the mark with what had been, in fairness, something of a random shot – and gratification.

  ‘How can you tell?’ Millie asked eventually. ‘For all you know, I might never have met him.’

  ‘I watched you at his food bowl,’ Vita said gleefully. ‘You almost fainted. Your eyes went all fluttery—’ She mimicked an impassioned swoon.

  ‘I was hungry, that’s all,’ Millie’s voice had a dangerous edge to it.

  Vita, too naïve to know when she was on the edge of a precipice, laughed. ‘Even so, if you don’t take me on the highways. I’ll tell him you love him,’ she said, and had to dance swiftly out of the way of Millie’s raking claws.

  The long-legged cat, furious with embarrassment, was not to be evaded. She caught up with Vita and cuffed her till her ears rang. ‘If I take you on the highways, I do so because I choose to do it,’ she said severely. ‘I do it because even at this age you are still a stupid kitten and you need to learn a lesson: so if it’s experience you’re after, I can promise you will soon acquire some. But I warn you now: you may not like it.’

  Vita looked mulish. She drew herself up. ‘You can say what you like.’ I’m not a baby, and I’m going to prove it to everyone – to you, and my snotty brother, and to nagging old Dellifer. I’m fed up with being treated like some pathetic little orphan who can’t be trusted to fend for herself. I’m the same age as Orlando, and probably not much younger than you, so there’s no need for you to be so overbearing. Just take me to the entrance. You don’t even have to come in with me if you don’t want,’ she finished. By now, her chin was jutting belligerently and a liquid shine in her eye threatened a temper tantrum of considerable proportions.

  Millie knew when she was beaten. ‘OK,’ she shrugged. ‘But I’m coming in with you, like it or not.’

  She led Vita through back gardens full of silent shadow and silvered foliage, over and under fences, through holes in hedges and around trees. Vita followed the taller cat closely, her eyes wide open and as empty as the night.

  At last, on the edge of Ashmore Common, Millie stopped. She sniffed the ground. She interrogated the dead and sodden bracken with her paws. She pushed her face against something Vita could not quite see; and suddenly she had no head.

  Vita stared and stared.

  Then, just as abruptly, Millie retracted herself from the highway and her head popped back into view.

  ‘It doesn’t smell right,’ she said.

  Vita glared. ‘I’ll go in alone, then.’ She approached the invisible doorway. As Millie had done, she sniffed at the wet grass and the trodden earth; she observed the bracken. Other cats had been here: that much she could tell, and one of the scents seemed familiar, though the melange was too confusing for her to separate out a single strand. Experimentally, she pressed her face where Millie’s had been. For a few seconds, nothing: just cold air and the smell of wet leaves and mould; then a slight resistance as if somehow the air had taken on substance, become thicker and grown a skin. Resolutely she pushed.

  ‘Wait!’

  Millie grabbed Vita’s tail and hauled her unceremoniously backwards.

  ‘Look,’ Millie said through gritted teeth, ‘something’s wrong in there. I can just tell, all right? So if you’re determined to get yourself into trouble, then you’ll have to take me with you. So. First things first.’ Her tone brooked no dissent. ‘You will hang on to my tail at all times,’ – she stuffed the tip into Vita’s protesting mouth – ‘which will have the benefit of keeping you both safe and quiet. You will go at my speed, you will neither pull nor let go; and you will not bite it in childish excitement. Right?’

  Vita nodded grudgingly.

  ‘Wild roads are wild places. Do not be surprised to see some strange sights there. And,’ she fixed Vita with an uncompromising stare, ‘you will experience a change when you enter the highways. There’s no call to be alarmed by the transformation: it’s a mark of the Great Cat’s for us, that She releases the greatness in all of us when we enter Her roads. So
, accept the change that overtakes you, no matter how peculiar it feels. Be humble and grateful for such blessing, and do exactly as I say. And if I start running, then you’d better pray your little legs can keep up with me. Let’s go.’

  *

  By the time I returned to the cottage, the thick blanket of clouds had parted and the moon was shining through overhead, the Great Cat’s silver eye beaming like a searchlight across her domain, as perplexed as I was by the mystery of it all. It illuminated the garden so that sharp shadows jutted from the flowerbeds and made monsters of the terracotta pots. As I wove amongst the rose-stumps, there was a high keening cry from behind me. I spun around, senses balanced precariously between the urge to fight or run, and found an apparition staring at me from the top of the shed. Its eyes were as round and as sheeny as puddles, and of such a lambent silver it was as though there was nothing in its skull but moonlight struggling to be released back into the night.

  I gazed at it in shock before recognition struck me. ‘Dellifer – what is it?’

  The older cat regarded me uncomprehending, its opaque white inner eyelids shuttering back and forth like some overdriven mechanism. At last they sprang apart, and the pupils dilated to take full measure of the light until at last they were able to focus on the marmalade of my coat. ‘Orlando, Orlando! Thank creation you’re here. The most terrible dream—’ She shook her head as though to jar it loose.

  More bad dreams. I shuddered.

  ‘Vita, Vita... oh!’

  ‘What’s happened to Vita?’

  ‘I don’t—’ her voice wavered on the edge of hysteria ‘—I don’t knooooowww!’ Her wail of anguish cut through the night with appalling clarity. In the elm tree next door, pigeons shifted uncomfortably on their roosts.

  I leapt up off the peeling boards in one fluid movement. I stared at my foster mother. I didn’t know what to do. It was so unlike Dellifer to overreact to anything. She was always relentlessly sensible: she was our touchstone, our security blanket, the closest thing to a parent we had... I butted my head against her cheek, then with sudden decision began to groom her. Some way through this process I was ambushed by the realisation of how much smaller than me she seemed to have become: I had to bow my neck in order to reach her. In turn, Dellifer raised her head meekly to my attentions. Roles reversed, we sat thus, while the shudders of aftershock running through the old cat’s muscles began to subside and her breathing became slow and even.