Cat Out of Hell (21 page)

Wishful thinking, this. It’s just that I have dreams of Roger somehow climbing out of that well and coming to live with us. After all, unlike the Captain, he was not wearing the Great Debaser and therefore retained his powers, perhaps. What a team we would make: me, the loyal Watson and a brilliant talking cat.

5
.
How do you feel about cats now?

Love them
Indifferent
Conflicted
Hate them

Yes, no change there.

6. How do you feel, facing the future?

Happy
Relieved
Numb
Don’t ask

Not so numb, now that I’ve written my account.

7. Would you consider a holiday in Dorset in the near future?

Yes
No
Not on your life

No change there either, I’m afraid.

I no longer care much about the gaps in this story, so I hope you don’t either. I think I’ve made it clear that I asked
everybody
for enlightenment on even some of the niggling smaller details; I truly did my best. As you will have guessed, I did invent one small section of the narrative – Roger’s telepathic “emiaow” exchange with Prideaux – but I feel it is authentically what must have happened, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, so there you are.

I did finally see the clip on YouTube that Wiggy kept forgetting to send the link for. I now watch it over and over again. It’s in colour, with sound, and it’s a re-run of the rabbit experiment. It was filmed in 1964, just before Seeward killed himself. He uses the same curtain and a similar rabbit, but the cat this time is Roger. Seeward speaks to the camera – a thin, nasty voice; he pulls the curtain and Roger leaps up onto the table opposite the hapless bunny. But he doesn’t kill it. He sits beautifully, serenely, while Seeward orders him to do it. He lifts a paw and examines its underside, before putting it down again. Such nonchalance. He even reaches out and gives the rabbit’s flank a little pat. Seeward is evidently incensed, and the film ends. It’s my conclusion – and there is now no one left alive from whom I can get any collaboration, so I’m on my own with it – that Roger’s bold (and moral) refusenik attitude was the thing that broke Seeward’s cat-master spirit and caused his suicide. The photograph of the two cats in the grass is not about hedonistic animals callously lazing about in the shadow
of a corpse (as it seemed on first sight); it’s a moment of great emotional importance to Roger, as he comforts the enslaved Captain whom he will shortly leave behind, to become a cat fugitive for ever.

It has become clear to me that until he killed Prideaux on that night in Dorset, Roger had never killed anybody. The eight previous lives – including Jo’s – were all taken by Prideaux, either to prevent Roger from telling the terrible secrets of Harville, or to remind him who was boss.

Having said I must apologise, I’ve turned quite unapologetic. I suppose that’s because there
is
a good reason for the rather irresponsible way I’ve told this story – sometimes a bit flippantly, and letting my style degenerate unforgivably, and allowing events to unfold just the way they did for me living through them, rather than organising the story properly, beginning at the beginning once I was in possession of all the facts. The thing is, my dear wife Mary loved to read mysteries – hence the name Watson for our stalwart little dog. I think I have mentioned how much I miss her. Well. There’s no change there, either. This has been written for Mary, with all my love. I’m sure it’s not good enough! But if I had written it in the conventional way, she would have guessed everything from about page six, because that’s what she always did. This is not to say, however, that she wouldn’t still have been two steps ahead of me, even with the story as it stands. She would have looked up from the manuscript, removed her old reading glasses, and said to me, reprovingly, “Oh,
Bear
.”