Tomato Cain and Other Stories Page 14

  “Megan,” he called. “Megan, my dear.”

  He waited again but no replay came down the dark stairs.

  On tiptoe he went up, pulling on the bannister to take the weight off his leg. There was no gas during on the landing. Their bedroom door was closed.

  He stood outside.

  “I suppose you heard, Megan. Us down there, I mean.”

  There was no answer.

  “He played the coward, Meg. I knew he would. I - I only done it because of you, Megan.” In the silence he heard a tap dripping in the bathroom along the passage.

  He turned the bathroom knob and pushed gently. The room was lit only by the low moon.

  “Megan!”. A cold draught rose in his head.

  There was no one in the room. Her coat had gone from behind the door. Drawers stood open.

  He stumped back along the passage. “Megan!” he shouted. “Where are you, Megan?”

  The boards creaked as he hurried down the back stairs. The door leading into the yard was unlatched ;so was the little gate beside the ashpit. He ran out into the moonlight shining on the potato patch across the lane. White haulms shone there like an untidy graveyard. The wind hummed in the wire fence.

  He talked to keep himself steady. “Maybe she is gone along to Mrs Hughes for the night. Or p’raps she’s walking over to the mother’s. Miles that is, though, and late now — “

  A long mechanical whistling was blown from the other side of the hill. Funny how nice it was to hear ordinary sounds when things like this were happening. That would be the last train coming in.

  His face froze as he looked up at the moon.

  The last train!

  Immediately he was crunching along the cinder path. The crooked foot slowed him by slipping sometimes or striking protruding stones, so that he staggered low, though never allowing himself to fall.

  Eyes staring, he reached the road and clatters past the dead hills of crumbled stone from the mines. His breath was tightening.

  A rat slipped across the road in front of him into the old workings. As he ran over the bridge he heard the river far below and thought at first that the sound was of blood pulsing inside his own head.

  Then his thoughts cleared. Panting up the hill, he found his brain detached, like a floating compass.

  If he looked to the left, he remembered, he would see the rough path leading up past the pines to the wild spaces of heather and bracken; where he used to walk with her before they married. Farther on he passed under the great dead tree with clutching arms. “Makes me want to run so it won’t catch me!” she had said once.

  He stumbled in a gravelly patch as he came to the red brick railway station. He nearly fell. He had done the same thing the day they ran to begin their honeymoon. “Stupid people dropping peel about!” she had said, but her face was hurt, until he laughed and threw his arm round her waist.

  His knees seemed to soften on the last few yards. He could see no lights that might belong to a train. Very slowly he ran into the entrance.

  He stood, chest aching.

  There was no train. It must have been pulling out when he heard it.

  He found old Thomas, the station-master, checking his books in the ticket office when he lowered his hot face to the grille. He stammered, “Last - last train gone?”

  The station-master nodded over his reading glasses. “Five minutes ago, Mr Evans.” But he did not turn back to his fire and books and ignore the enquirer as usual. He came slowly across, watching Evans hard, till his head was framed in the little horse shoe of light. He nodded at the floor directly beneath.

  Evans looked down. On the rough wood lay two chips.

  Old Thomas spoke gravely. “These fell out of his clothes when he went to pay for the tickets. Like confetti. She never let go his arm.”

  He gave a dry cough. “You're better rid of her,” he said, “if she would go like that.”

  Evans went stiffly to the window that looked down on the platform, arms hanging. He stared along the empty lines, shining pale blue, and his head shook slowly.

  “Megan,” he said. “Megan’s my girl.”

  END

  Chapter 19

  Tootie and the Cat Licences

  I was struck immediately by the number of cats in the village.

  It was one of the hottest afternoons of the year, and I was carrying most of my clothes, so doubtless they were equally curious about me. Every wall seemed to have a fat tabby spread over it; a gateway would show two or three. They lifted a furry eyelid, or paused to glare over a raised hind leg as I passed; if they moved at all.

  The street was almost deserted. By a shallow greenish pool that lay at the roadside, a man was working. A low, fat man, erecting with red-faced energy a narrow signboard. There was no lettering on it yet.

  I found the pub little cooler, and the beer was flat.

  The only other customer was an old man, as silent and watchful as the cats.

  Presently, we were drinking. Half-way down the glass he spoke. “The hay is comin’ on nice,” he said. “It is indeed,” I said. “The countryside looks very healthy round here.”

  I had gone too far. He looked at me coldly. “Fair. Considerin’ everythin’.”

  There was a long pause.

  At last he spoke again. “The turnips now, though, isn’t what ye might - ”

  The door opened.

  It was the man I had seen working by the duckpond. He seemed annoyed. Close behind him followed a tall lean person with an expressionless face and hair like string. He was arguing: “You know what ye said to me. You promised - ”

  “Yes, I know!” The little fat man certainly was annoyed. He turned to the bar. “Ye’d better give this character a pint, too,” he said, and drinks were put before both. He paid, drank his off without enjoyment, nodded briefly round the room and went out.

  “Well!” said the old man. “Well!” Ye’d think he hadn’t time to be civil. What ye been doin’ to him, Tootie?”

  The blank-faced man swung around. After a moment he smiled like a sheep. “I dunno,” he said; “I dunno,” and reached for his glass again.

  “How’s the cat licenses, Tootie?” called the old man.

  Tootie turned from his glass so quickly that beer ran down his chin, and swallowed. “Eh? Aw, we - we’re leavin’ that.” He sniggered. “Cats!” he said, and sniggered again. Catching my foreign eye, he blinked and was quiet.

  As soon as he went, a few minutes later, I ordered more drinks for myself and the old man. “I noticed you have a - a number of cats in the village,” I suggested.

  But there was no need to make openings. As I caught his eye, I saw it had unfrozen.

  “That fella that just went out,” he said, “they call him Tootie Taggart.” He pointed to his forehead. “A touch clicky is poor Tootie. Poor fella! An’ th’ other fella was Dicky-Dan Watterson.” His manner became slightly furtive. “This is a kind of a private story. Ye’ll not let on about it?”

  “No,” I said. (I have changed the names, anyway.)

  “I believe I saw - Dicky-Dan at work down the street a little while ago. Putting up a notice.”

  “Was he? Aw, he - he’s a terrible responsible fella is Dicky-Dan. Always worryin’ about the village here, an’ puttin’ things straight. But he’s not so bad as he was. Little notices an’ things doesn’t bother anybody, now; but some while back - a year ago, maybe - Dicky-Dan made a tremendous splutter in the village, in a way. Mind you, he was in the right of it.

  “It begun here in this very room.

  “There was a big fella they called Gob Kelly to, a big squash-ear Irishman, with an ugly snarl on him, an’ the marks of a dozen kinds of fights. It was just as well for the police that there is none of thim hereabouts: he would bust in here when he was passin’ through, an’ commit all the kinds of wickedness he could screw his mind round to. Insultin’ an’ fightin’ an’ desthroyin’. The women wasn’ safe either. Fayle’s daughter - but that one is fit to say anythin’
: no matter. The thing was: decent men were in dread to come for a single drink at all, in case they would find him choppin’ at their throats with half a green bottle. Fearful it was.”

  “So one night here, when th’ Irish fella was gone off screechin’ drunk an’ they was clearin’ up the broken glass, Dicky-Dan Watterson held a meetin’. Fellas was beginnin’ for to come back, one by one, peepin’ about.

  “‘Now listen here,’ says Dicky-Dan, as big as bull-beef now the coast was clear, ‘somethin’s got to be done about this village. It’s a disgrace to th’Isle of Man,’ he says. ‘Two things - this drunken fella and the cats - is the worst of all. Now, let’s take the first —’

  “Well, talkin’ bold about big Kelly was soon gettin’ Dicky-Dan a whole lot of agreement in principle, as they say, but nobody was terribly eager to actually do anythin’.

  “‘All right then,’ he says, ‘we’ll make a start with the cats!’ Now, that’s the way he is, is Dicky-Dan, scramblin’ from one feed to another like Parr’s pig. Augh, an’ terrible vague with it. Terrible vague!

  “’But the women likes cats,’ says some backslider, ‘an’ another thing: who else would have the knack to catch the mice?’ ‘Aw, there’s too many altogether!’ says Dicky-Dan, louder. ‘The craythurs is runnin’ savage. Oul’ Craine’s widder has upward of two dozen slitherin’ abut the house! An’ the squeals at night is fearful!

  “So, they got to considerin’ how to get shut o’ some o’ the cats. Drownin’ would be slow, for fully-grown fellas, an’ the cruelty man might get wind of it. At last Dicky-Dan had a big idea. ‘Go an’ fetch Tootie Taggart,’ he says.

  “They found poor oul’ Tootie at some caper like fishin’ without bait, an’ brought him along.

  “’Tootie,’ says Dicky-Dan, comin’ all over serious. ‘Y’re just the man t’ help me.’ Tootie just stands dribblin’ an’ lookin’ seventeen diff’rent ways. ‘Ye know how dogs has got t’ have dog licences on their collars?’ says Dicky-Dan. Tootie thinks a bit, an’ nods. ‘Well,’ says Dicky, lookin’dreadful innocent, ‘now they’re puttin’ out a law for cats to have licences too. They’ve made me th’ inspector for this district, an’ I want you for t’ help me, good man.’ He goes over to oul’ Tootie, that hadn’t the smell of a notion what it was all about, an’ gives him a little card he had wrote: ‘Licence Inspector Taggart,’ or some nonsense. ‘Don’t show this to a livin’ soul,’ he says. ‘It’s secret work. Now this is what ye’ve got to do: scout round at night with a big sack, an’ any cat that hasn’t got a collar an’ a licence on it, shove him inside.’

  “The first thing Tootie says, of course, when he gets it straight is, ‘How much wages?’ Dicky-Dan was up to that one. ‘Well, we’re not exactly on a wage,’ he says. ‘It’s an honorary - I mean, ye do it because it makes y’important. Look, I - I’ll treat ye to a drink now an’ then for th’ help ye’ll give me - that’s a promise! Will it do ye?’

  “Tootie cheered up to hear that, for he never has a halfpenny. Then he says, ‘All right. What’ll we do with th’oul cats?’ Now - Dicky-Dan had never thought as far as that; I tould ye how he is. All he had clear and certain was to chuck the cat-stealin’ on to Tootie Taggart. ‘Oh!’ he says, ‘for the Lord’s sake don’t distract me! We’ll - take thim off some place, set thim adrift on the hills; or sell the skins - just try y’r hand in first, Tootie an’ don’t distract me! We’ll - take thim off some place, set thim adrift on the hills; or sell the skins - just try y’r hand in first, and don’t fuss! Has anybody got a sack?’”

  The old man set his fist to another glass of warm beer. “Y’r health!” he said.

  He wiped his moustache. “Well, by this time Dicky-Dan was in his element. He was feelin’ dreadful wise. ‘We’ll plan against that Kelly fella now,’ he says. ‘I’ve got it all clear in me head. Listen now, all of youse: to-morrow’s pay-night: he’ll be in here an’ raisin’ twenty divils out of every pint - crazy drunk before a man could draw breath. Now one or two of us has got to look in for the sake of things seemin’ usual, but for the rest —’ An’ he began to sort out his big plan.

  “About a quarter of a mile up the road ye’ll have seen a dark turn in a little patch of trees? The last few nights Gob Kelly’d headed up through there to sleep it off in the fields. So it was yonder spot that Dicky-Dan Watterson picked on, the next night. He laid a rope across the road with th’ other end fast to a tree. An’ there was eight or a dozen other fellas, with handkerchiefs hidin’ their faces. I was there meself - just to watch the fun. Dicky-Dan was postin’ thim like a gen’ral. He had men in every bush, an’ two in the branches above.

  “Well, for a long time we heard nothin’ but cats carryin’ on down by the houses. Once a fella on a bike came by, an’ rid over the rope; he must’ve scented mischief, ‘cos he went strainin’ up the hill full git, fit to do himself an injury.

  “At last there was a madhouse din down there beyond. Gob Kelly makin’ to sing. An’ a splatter of glass when he’d of put his fist through somethin’. Then all was like the tomb again. ‘Augh, he’s gone th’other way,’ whispers somebody after a bit.

  “’Hould y’r hush!’ says Dicky-Dan, ‘an’ listen!’ “So we did. There come a tiny indigestible rumblin’ kind of a noise, an’ it went on and got louder; an’ it was big Kelly singin’ gentle to himself. Everybody got excited. The bushes were fair quiverin’.

  “At last we seen him, ramblin’ an’ sthaagerin’. Every now an’ then he would clutch out at the hedge an’ the singin’ would go down the wrong way. Sometimes he cussed at the things his feet was doin’. But he kept on.

  “All of a slap Dicky-Dan hauled on the rope. Big Kelly let out a roar an’ hit the road a dreadful shudder. “‘Laid him stretched!’ shouts Dicky-Dan. ‘Go for him, boys!’

  “There was a terrible commotion. Legs flyin’ an’ screetches, an’ bodies crunchin’ on the road. Even in the state he was in, Kelly was a terror. He took all the bitin’-teeth out of young Kinley; an’ lamed Gell the Slaughter; an’ Corteen’s wife was kept washin’ blood out of his clothes for days after. It was a wonder of a fight. But they clang on like dogs.

  “’Tie his hands tighter,’ says Dicky-Dan, makin’ his voice squeaky, for disguise, ‘an’ stuff his gob!’ Gaggin’ the big fella nearly lost Thomas Gawne two fingers.

  “They larruped him a bit more, for the pleasure of it, an’ then little Alfie Mylrea says, ‘What’ll we do with him now?’

  “It was a queer thing then.

  “One by one they went quiet, till they were all glarin’ at Dicky-Dan. ‘It’s the same as y’r big cat idea,’ says Alfie. ‘Ye never have any finish to thim!’”

  “There they stood in a bunch, colloguin’ low so Kelly couldn’t hear who they were, an’ himself trussed an’ wrigglin’ on the crown of the road. They hadn’t a ha’porth o’ notion what to do with the fella. ‘Turn him loose anywhere at all, an’ he’ll come back at us,’ says one. ‘It wouldn’t do to throw him in a quarry?’ says another. ‘The police wouldn’t thank ye for the gift of a wild fella like this!’

  “They were carryin’ on somethin’ shockin’ at poor oul’ Dicky-Dan when all of a sudden a little low grey thing went whiskin’ through thim. Under Alfie’s Legs.

  “’Begod, what was that!’ he says. “A figure come runnin’ up the road. It was Tootie Taggart, pantin’ like a long dog. In his hands was a big sack, houldin’ it before him at th’ end of his hands like a child’s sweetie-bag. An’ at every jump Tootie made, there was a kind of a grizzy squawk out of it.

  “When he seen us he nearly dropped dead. ‘Shh! An’ come here!’ says Dicky-Dan.

  “’I’m just chasin’ an oul’ - an oul’ tom-cat,’ says Tootie, when he got over the fright. ‘He hadn’ any collar on, Dicky-Dan. I havn’ foun’ any that has got collars, Dicky-Dan.’

  “‘Less o’ the Dicky-Dan!’ says Watterson, with one eye on th’ Irishman. ‘Show me what ye got in the bag.’

  “Tootie held on tight. �
��They’ll jump out!’ he says. ‘There’s two grey fellas, an’ a black one, an’ some more that hasn’ got any tails. The no-tail fellas is awful hard to catch —’”

  “’It’ll do!’ says Dicky-Dan. ‘An inspiration’s come!’ His eyes was shinin’ somethin’ shockin’ in the light of the moon. ‘Come on, boys, shove his head in the sack!’

  “They had to turn th’ Irishman bottomside-up an’ edge him in bit by bit, squirmin’ like sin. Then they got the sack pulled along an’ tied it round his chest, an’ stood him up. A wonderful funny creation he looked. With a huge big head, that was bulgin’ seventeen diff’rent ways from the commotion of the cats.

  “‘Go on now,’ squeaks out Dicky-Dan. ‘Out of it, the whole bad bunch of ye!’ An’ fetches th’ ugly fella a thump to set him on the right road. He went careerin’ away somethin’ desperate, trippin’ and clamberin’. Not a word out of him, of course, with the gag all over his face. But there was no gags on the cats. An’ they was cussin’ him loud an’ clear.

  “The fellas laughed till they had to lean on trees!”

  The old man smiled.

  “Would it surprise ye to know he never come back? Would it now? Well, ‘tread on the divil’s tail an’ he’ll eat ye: laugh at his horns an’ he’ll cry,’ as the man said before now.

  “He showed up in one o’ the towns with a face like a junction of the railways. The cats had cleaned most of the red hair off him, too. He wasn’t a quarter of the lady-killer that he’d been. Aw, we’ll see no more of him.

  “But by an’ by an’ there was a splutter among the women over the cats that’d gone missin’ - though Tootie stole no more, not havin’ any sack. Then one or two of the craythurs began to find their way home.

  “An’ I think a foolish dread started to come over Dicky-Dan, now all the glory was gone cold; that the big Irish fella might get wind of who started it all, an’ come howlin’ for his blood.

  “None of us ever let on, of course. But the fly in th’ ointment is oul’ Tootie. These clicky fellas sees as far through a brick wall as anybody. Once Dicky caught him on the way to the dog-licence office with a box of kittens. ‘Leave off that now,’ he says mighty quick. ‘They’re changin’ the law about cats.’