The Glaring Page 5

  Lionel went quiet for a moment and Bob feared for a second that he’d been too hard on him and too dismissive. He didn’t want to hurt his friend’s feelings, but he was worried about what seemed like incipient paranoia getting hold of Lionel.

  “I suppose you’re right, Bob. It’s being on my own, I guess… and so suddenly too, and without any warning.

  Bob made a sympathetic noise at that, whilst furiously thinking of how to change the subject, but Lionel, surprisingly, did it for him.

  “I don’t know… that is, I didn’t know what to call them… in numbers, Bob. Does anyone?”

  You’re on about cats again, I take it?”

  “Yes, but only in a literary sense, don’t worry… Look, I know very many collective nouns, including uncommon ones like a ‘parliament of owls’, an ‘exaltation of larks’ - my favourite that one - and a ‘mischief of rats’. But cats? Apart from the rare occasion when some lonely person adopts hundreds of the things, no-one usually sees the buggers massing together anywhere… or at least we used not to… No wonder I had to look it up.”

  “Well, then… what is it?”

  “A clowder… a clowder of cats. Though I have also come across a clutter or a cluster of cats, but I think they might be regional variations on clowder, myself – or maybe it’s the other way around. I also came across the word ‘pounce’ as well, and an ‘intrigue’ of kittens, but they look like deliberate literary inventions, if you ask me, by cat-lovers… However, I don’t think any of them really do justice to the phenomenon myself: the decidedly surreal and skin-crawling quality of dozens and dozens of cats en masse…”

  Both men went quiet for a minute

  “Anyway, I pursued the matter a bit deeper, Bob, and guess what else I found? Quite a rarity this one?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A glare… or a glaring of cats. Now wouldn’t you say that that was much nearer the mark? The way some of them look at you sometimes, the way they seem to see things we can’t see… it fair gives me the creeps.”

  “A glaring of cats,” his friend mused out loud. “Yeah, that’s certainly how I’ll be thinking of them from now on… I like it, actually; it’s so apt… Look, there’s a section in my local newspaper over here about words, their origins and their meaning. Do you mind if I send them an e-mail about that? It sounds like the sort of thing the editor would be interested in. I might even get a fiver or a tenner for my pains.”

  “Feel free… it’s public property after all. But if you do, Bob, don’t forget to add the collective noun for feral cats as well.”

  “Why, what’s that when it’s at home?”

  “A destruction… no word of a lie!”

  **

  (ix)

  The country was experiencing a late ‘Indian summer’ with unseasonably hot and gloriously sunny days. Thankfully, the nights were much cooler, far cooler certainly than the unbearable humidity of the summer proper, and early morning mists and fogs often heralded the start of the day during this unusual early autumnal weather. So therapeutic was this almost unremitting daily sunshine that Lionel was in very good spirits indeed, especially as the caterwauling had suddenly and inexplicably ceased – as abruptly as it had begun. He was, in general, in a genial mood with all and sundry. The only cloud on the horizon, for Lionel, was the realisation that – hot weather or no – Christmas would soon be upon him and that he would be spending it on his own for the very first time.

  These inchoate thoughts of Christmas made his mind run on to one thing and another, including cards and compiling a list of people to send them to, and then he realised with a jolt that he had not been in contact with some of Ailish’s acquaintances since her demise, particularly the ‘needy’ ones (as he called them). He had been very remiss.

  He hadn’t been to see Mrs Gattini, for example, one of Ailish’s old ladies that she used to call upon regularly to bring her some company and to see how she was faring. Dear God, he hadn’t even told her in person that Ailish was dead!

  She wasn’t ill this Mrs Gattini, she still did her own shopping, she didn’t need any caring as such; she was just old and cantankerous with very few friends and with no family to speak of close by. She was also beginning to lose much of her English as she got older (which is why Ailish had had that smattering of self-taught Italian, he now remembered).

  He’d been with Ailish to Mrs Gattini’s house – just the once – but though it was very neat and tidy it smelled of old ladies and cats, and he’d never been back there again. He resolved to visit her at once, Ailish would have wanted that.

  *

  There were very few people about, as was generally the case on a Sunday afternoon. The morning sky had been clear of clouds after the early mist had dissipated but by midday clouds were beginning to appear – singly at first, then in small packs – and by late afternoon it was positively crowded with clouds. It was somewhat oppressive underneath, and Lionel mused that there might be thunder before the day was out. Wasn’t that the forecast? Ailish and he used to watch the weather bulletins avidly, like real enthusiasts – as if it really mattered.

  The old lady didn’t live all that far away, considering; on the other side of town. In half an hour he came to the house, number 27, and knocked the door – no answer. She could be out of course, but Lionel considered it unlikely, not with the weather likely to change.

  He sighed, waited a little while and knocked again, only harder this time. But still there was no answer. Time was, he thought, when the tell-tale sign of piled-up milk deliveries would have given the game away – if she was unwell, say, or worse.

  Lionel pushed open the letter box and looked in. The hallway was clear, so he breathed a sigh of relief: no half-expected body lying on the runner. Everything seemed completely normal and as one would expect, except there was a faint smell, a sweet and sickly smell that Lionel did not like. He backed away from the letter box remembering she had a couple of cats. Perhaps the smell was something to do with them, like cat-food gone off maybe. Still, his doubts remained.

  ‘I hope this is going to turn into one of those awful stories about some old, lonely person found dead by a neighbour.’

  “Bugger it,” he said out loud, his courage deserting him, “I don’t need this.”

  And Lionel turned away, walking a dozen or so yards before he sensed – in himself – Ailish’s strong disapproval.

  He returned to number 27 and stood staring at it for a while. Casting a glance sideways at the unoccupied semi-detached next door, he spied a ‘For Sale’ sign thrown down among the slightly over-grown and modest front garden. No help there then. Besides, hadn’t Ailish told him that the two neighbours hated each other for some reason. Plucking up his courage, he went around the front of Mrs Gattini’s house, looking-in through the small bay window as he did so, but he saw nothing untoward – partly because of the room’s almost completely pulled curtains. He should have come earlier, he told himself; the light was already dimming because of the time of year and the greying clouds overhead. It was too early, yet, for the crepuscular shades of twilight, but they wouldn’t be that far behind either.

  The curtains of the back room – side and rear – were, again, almost fully drawn, which heightened his fears considerably; he was increasingly certain that something was amiss.

  A cursory examination of the relatively small back garden – all lawn and shrubbery – produced no scenes of horror, however, no withered white legs protruding from under the laurel bushes or anything like that. So he steeled himself to gain entry to the house. He looked up. Not a window was open, anywhere.

  “She must have gone away,” he said out loud, the relief self-evident in his voice.

  ‘I’m trespassing in that case,’ the thought flashed through his mind… ‘I’d better get away from here before somebody reports a prowler.’

  He turned to go, but then he heard it – a cat wailing from somewhere inside the house.

  “Sod it!” he exclaimed, his languag
e getting more expressive, not to say demotic now that Ailish had gone.

  “She’ll not have gone away without putting those cats of hers in a cattery… she must be at home in that case… perhaps she’s poorly!”

  He tried the back door leading into the kitchen, it opened and he went in – to find it empty.

  “Mrs Gattini”, he cooed, but got no answer.

  “Ciao”, he ventured, but he got no reply to that friendly overture either.

  The light outside faded dramatically and did nothing to relieve the tenebrous character of the house. Inexplicably, Lionel did not try the lights, but blundered on into the house.

  The ground floor rooms were soon examined, including the downstairs loo, but there was no sign of the occupant of the house. Her outdoor coat was in the hall though and some scarves, which convinced him that he was going to find her unwell, upstairs.

  ‘Why hasn’t that cat come down though… it must have heard me by now?’

  Halfway up the stairs he could hear a scratching noise coming from somewhere.

  ‘Only the one cat, by the sound of it… shouldn’t have any problems with that!’

  But just then the storm that had been brewing all afternoon, with ever-darkening skies, broke suddenly, and Lionel nearly jumped out of his skin when lightning flashed and the thunder clapped overhead, almost simultaneously.

  A cat cried somewhere in the house and, unaccountably, Lionel immediately thought of the line ‘a wildcat did growl’ from Bob Dylan’s All along the watchtowers. He tittered nervously. Staid librarian or ex-librarian he might appear now, but he’d loved Dylan and Hendrix and Cream in his earlier days.

  At the top of the stairs he looked to left and right – all the doors were closed, whatever they were – and he decided upon the one directly opposite him: the back bedroom, her bedroom at a guess.

  His heart was beating furiously; he was drenched in sweat, and not just because of the humidity. He stepped up to the door and opened it.

  A cat shot out between his legs and he nearly fainted on the spot. He sniffed, involuntarily; the sickly sweet smell of putrefaction was stronger than ever.

  ‘Ah, she had two cats, didn’t she… perhaps the other one is dead… and that’s what I’m smelling.’

  He tip-toed into the room, for some reason, and slowly came up to the bed. There was cat mess everywhere and he was careful as to where he trod.

  As he stood there looking around, his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the mirrored wardrobe door, which was open. And, at that very moment – like a clichéd Hollywood B Movie – the lightning flashed and he saw Mrs Gattini lying full length on the floor the other side of the bed, her slippered feet pointing towards the mirror.

  Bile rose in his throat and he wanted to be sick; it was what he’d half expected deep down, of course, even though he’d tried to think of every other possibility. He forced himself to walk forward to get a closer look at her body, and promptly threw up all over her feet.

  Her nightie was ripped and torn and a bloody hole, an eviscerated purple hole was where her tummy used to be. Her face was worse though – she didn’t have one!

  Something moved under the bed.

  Another cat?

  Lionel did not wait to find out!

  *

  He got a mention in the local paper and a commendation for his neighbourliness. And an editorial waxed lyrically about the sad number of these cases, both locally and nationwide, plus the need for greater community awareness as to the vulnerability of lonely old people. It also cautioned against the elderly-infirm keeping pets, especially if the animals had no chance of escape when a lonely death came to their owner. Such a case as Lionel had encountered, of starving animals – cats and dogs – turning to their only source of food, was not that unheard of, sadly.

  It wasn’t the cats’ fault, obviously – everyone who commented upon the case agreed upon that. They were stuck in a house without much food - soon exhausted - which was hermetically sealed-up (not even a cat-flap) by its somewhat eccentric owner. Lionel knew that there was a totally rational explanation for the horror he’d come upon, with no other explanation really necessary; however, it did not endear him any further towards cats, despite the almost universal appeal of kittens and his still fond memories of Prump.

  There was one thing bothering him though, as he unburdened himself of the experience to his closest friend, on the telephone soon after.

  “It doesn’t matter how much people anthropomorphise the things, Bob – giving them human names and posting cute pictures of them in bonnets or trousers-suits on the internet – they are animals, pure and simple, and only a short step from being wild again.”

  His friend could do little more than sympathetically agree.

  “But there was more to it, in this case, than simple starvation, I think… though that’s the official and one might say ‘comforting’ explanation and the one I quite naturally assumed at first. … I went back into the house with the police, after I’d called them, and I noticed something, or at least I think I did, something that had not registered with me before.”

  “What was that?” his friend enquired, his curiosity aroused.

  “Well, I thought I saw a small window slightly ajar… in the scullery or larder… a small storage place off the kitchen.”

  “So the cats could have got out, you mean?”

  “Yes… only, it wasn’t… ajar, I mean… not when I looked again; that is, after I was taken back outside to give a statement to one of the policemen.

  “What?” Bob expostulated, somewhat incredulously. “You think somebody closed it in the interim… on purpose?”

  “I don’t know… all I know is that I couldn’t swear to it after that… I wasn’t completely sure anymore that I had seen it ajar, so I did not mention it to anyone…” he ended, lamely.

  There was silence between them for a moment.

  “Look, Lionel… you’d been traumatised.”

  “Still am, Bob… I keep getting flash-backs of what had once been old Mrs Gattini… and that appalling image of her non-existent face.”

  Bob’s voice was calm and re-assuring.

  “I would say that your traumatised mind was playing you tricks… especially so soon after your gruesome discovery… and that the only rational explanation is the official one. What else, sweet Jesus, could it be?”

  The silence was so prolonged this time that Bob had to call Lionel’s name a couple of times.

  “Yes indeed, what else could it be? Only a deliberate, sustained and vicious attack on the old woman by animals driven by something other than starvation!”

  His friend groaned audibly.

  “Not that again, Lionel… surely?”

  **

  (x)

  Shortly after the Gattini episode Lionel took up walking on his own, four to five miles each and every day; he preferred his own company on such occasions he’d finally decided. He had three main routes from his home: one took him down river to a tiny church in a hamlet a few miles away; the second was an up-river walk around the perimeter of one of the largest pieces of common land left in the country; the third – when he was feeling particularly venturesome – was a longer walk up to and around a local authority owned country park just outside the town limits. He usually went in the morning.

  This day, the weather was just as he liked it: sunny but with plenty of light cloud cover to prevent it from being too hot and with bursts of sudden radiance to make him feel good. He was equipped with stout walking boots, proper walking trousers and a light-weight windcheater (against any possible rain) wrapped around his waist. He had some humbugs in one of the many pockets set about his trousers and a Swiss Army penknife for ‘emergencies’ and he was completely alone, no-one else about and just as he liked it. Today, he decided, soon after he left the concrete, brick and tarmac behind him and attained the great swathe of common land called The Holme, today was definitely a ‘two-magpie’ sort of a day… and he rehearsed the old saw o
ut loud to himself and because no-one else was about.

  “One for sorrow, two for joy… three for a girl, four for a boy… five for silver, six for gold… um, seven for a secret never to be told… Yes, but what comes next? Blast it, I can’t remember… but I bet Ailish could.”[3]

  And he sighed a great sigh of sadness, the morning having instantly lost its lustre with a sudden and self-imposed mood change.

  ‘This won’t do’, he told himself savagely and, immediately picking himself up, he declared out loud to his immediate environs…

  “Let me see… the Eurasian magpie of the genus Pica pica… of the Corvidae family… other corvid being rooks, crows and ravens… er, jackdaws and choughs… and, ah, yes, jays, of course.”

  He couldn’t stop himself, his old librarian instincts reasserting themselves plus his life-long obsession with amateur ornithology.

  And, right on cue, he saw one in an adjoining field, and then another and two more.

  ‘Four then’, he told himself, ‘a boy’, and promptly set to musing over what name they might have called a son if they’d been blessed with one. Patrick, he finally decided after much deliberation; Ailish would have liked that, he was sure. Mind games and odd strains of thought like this were the usual accompaniment to one of his walks and Lionel let his mind go where it will, thinking the most bizarre and often unconnected of things: some happy, some less so.