Night of the Animals (15 page)

CUTHBERT DECIDED TO HEAD TOWARD HIS ABANDONED
IB. It was a dicey move, to hide there until night, but by now, he reckoned, the Red Watch would already have tossed his IB and departed. The IB grounds and hallways always offered one certainty: apart from the occasional mugger, rapist, or psychopath, no one cared about you.

Using one of the £5 coins from the kind wealthy woman outside the zoo, he took the No. 29 bosonicabus from Camden Town, just north of the zoo, to Finsbury Park—a district that had remained resistant to gentrification for three centuries—and from there, he walked from Finsbury Park's raucous station to the Indigent estate where he'd last lived.

A few teenage Indigent boys loitered in front of IB Building 3, the great pillar of reinforced concrete ignominy he'd once inhabited, and as usual, the boys were trading insults and venting bluster. Cuthbert felt uneasy.

One skinny-faced kid with a sharp chin, who wore a preposterously tall sky-blue speedfin on his back (such fins worked with
glider-discs, a mode of transport the boy would almost certainly never be able to afford), was hurling a hardened hurtball at his mates, over and over, aiming below the neck (yet holding back a bit on his pitches, too). In the fading light, the glowing ball marked the air in red gashes. The game, a dangerous pastime often played in stairwells and lifts, was popular among Indigents in their towering IBs. The object was to throw the pointillion-cored, steel-studded ball at one another with the full intention of causing bodily injury. One normally went for the head in hurtball, and games often devolved into out-and-out fights. Cuts and blood were commonplace, concussions never unexpected, and deaths from cranial hematomas frighteningly common.

As Cuthbert approached, he took a deep breath. He wanted to get away from the boys, and he feared they could perceive this. Just as he passed, the sharp-chinned kid fired the ball very hard, its glowing neowool rasping the air. A red blot whooshed past Cuthbert's face. The ball glanced off the back of a boy who had skin colored like burned sugar and a very round face with dark freckles.

“Just look at the cunt,” the victim said, rolling his eyes and wagging a finger at the ball-tosser, but obviously in some pain. “He couldn't hurt shite.”

“Fuck off,” said the thrower. “You're a tosser, mate.”

For a second, Cuthbert felt he was also being addressed. He wanted to seem neither too interested nor too aloof—either might irritate them. He tried to step past them fast. Even these boys probably feared causing any trouble that might bring the Red Watch down on them all.

“'Allo, boys,” he said.

There was swapped between the boys, only half-secretly, a snicker, then a girlish tittering, and a showy punch on the arm. But the moment Cuthbert started to turn around to look, the giggling stopped. He could feel his heart thumping, his chin trembling. A kid
with huge, watery eyes stepped into his way. “You're not allowed out here, now are you, fat man?” he said to Cuthbert.

Cuthbert said nothing and kept walking.

“Give us a pound.” The wet-eyed boy ran in front of Cuthbert and stood there.

Cuthbert leaned in close to the boy and reached to put a hand on each of his shoulders but stopped short. “Now beware, child. The tigers are coming, and lions and bears. They'll be all over the estate by tomorrow—you'll see.”

The boy's lips formed an oval, then he pulled back and grinned furiously. “'E's off his fucking chump!” The others laughed at the remark. “Off his fucking chump! Off it! I bet e's the one the Watch was 'round for to have a pop at. A facking scrote!”

The skinny-faced boy thrust himself in front of the other, with a trace of fear on his face, and said to Cuthbert:

“Excuse me fucking dicksplat, gent. 'E's sorry, isn't he?” The skinny-face punched the other boy in the side, who screwed up his face in agony.

Cuthbert started to tug on his own earlobes and fumble with his hands. He sidled around the boys, rubbing sweaty fingers together and trudging forward. He imagined what it would feel like to be hit on the back of the head by their hurtball. What if he found himself on his knees on the pavement, dizzy? He would kneel as placidly as a churchgoer, blinking his eyes, watching bits of light swarm like flies across the IB.

Finally, a spiral of whispers unwrapped itself behind him as he moved along, keeping his eyes closed.

“Why'd you do that?” he heard. “You stupid cunt! You stupid cunt! Why'd you do it? You want the fucking Watch here?”

He heard the sound of scampering feet, and finally silence. He opened his eyes, steadied himself, and opened the battered front door of the IB, entering the murky atrium. Voices, supple and
slippy, suddenly came into his head again:
Remeowbrooow, Cuthber-yeow.
It was otterspaeke—weird, dunked language.
Remember St. Cuthbert.
That's what it really meant. He took a deep breath. His heart was pounding. He whispered, “I hear, I do.” There was a malfunction in the lift to his flat—it did not stop at the eleventh floor. It had not for the past year, as far as he knew. A note from the parish, in a special Plexiglas wall-slot, assured residents that the conveyance was “perfectly safe.” He did not doubt this. But still, he did not like having to go to the tenth or the twelfth floor, then taking the stairs. He was, after all, a nonagenarian—and even his EverConnectors didn't change that. He could not escape a feeling that he and the other dwellers of the eleventh had been singled out for isolation.

He hit “12.” There was a delay before the poorly lit compartment lurched up. There were 144 IBs in Building 3. Most of the other floors' main hallways appeared worse than his, yet all were sunless shafts that stank of mammalian urine and cigarettes. The floors were littered with an excreta of Wimpy Burger papers and KFC
hwa
boxes, flattened milk cartons, shattered bottles. He frequently thought about how the dirt of the place would have been unbearable to his mother, who had considered filth and religion low-class, despite her own soiled and fey peasant pedigree. Cuthbert had once dragged his fingernail along a wall for a few feet, just to see what would happen; it came back furred with a brown gluey grime, and he did not mind it. It was a new kind of English soil. On walks through the building he discovered other Indigent wanderers. There was an old man from the north who liked to tell nasty jokes and who suffered fainting spells. There was another, round-cheeked man who always wanted Cuthbert to come into his flat for a curry. He encountered people who did not appear to see him.

On Friday nights, many young Muslim Indigent men laughed
and talked in their long, moon-white prayer shirts in the hallways after service at the venerable nearby North London Central Mosque, now managed by a group of Aga Khanian Fatimids called The Life, or Al-Haya. The mosque, its radicalism long softened yet under close scrutiny for decades, remained open under King Henry's reign only as a cynical exhibit of Windsor tolerance. The Privy Council felt it had its royal plate full with English republicans and suicide cultists, and it couldn't be bothered to persecute a harmless religious minority.

Cuthbert often saw children, of course, chasing each other, kicking hurtballs and flying on speedfins down the sticky floor tiles. Some were the offspring of refugees; some came from poor, ignorant locals who distrusted foreigners, who were vulnerable to hatred. They all lived together and, somehow, muddled on.

A gaggle of older women and young children were walking down the hall, about to go past him, carrying baskets of flowers.

One of the girls carried a tiny black and brown Chihuahua closely in her arms. The dog looked used to cuddling.

It gazed at Cuthbert and said, in a docile voice:
We are waiting for you, St. Cuthbert.

“We?” he said aloud.

The animals
, the dog said, sounding slightly weary.
Listen for us
.

Another Indigent girl, who was missing an eye, thrust a spray of pink and purple campanula flowers into his hand. He felt dizzy with shock. He took the campanulas, and held them to his nose, but there was no smell.

“Take,” said the girl, tugging his sleeve.

The old women stopped in the hallway and grinned at him. Between Buildings 3 and 4, several older Indigent women—English, Chinese, Pakistani—had cultivated a small flower and herb garden in a disused sandbox. Hyacinth and gold whisper blooms grew in tall, proud stalks.

“I've hardly any money,” he said. He pointed at the Chihuahua. “Your little dog. She speaks.”

“Yes,” one of the youngest of the old women said. “You are so funny.” With her black hair and Middle Eastern features—and her poverty—he guessed she was Kurdish. “It's a he. His name is Osman.”

“Osman,” he said. “'E's a good dog, I can tell. What can I give you for the flowers?”

“We don't take money!” the woman said, still smiling. “Keep money.”

“Isn't there something?” he asked.

“Just be careful,” the woman said. “The Watch is around.”

She's right
, said Osman.
Be careful, St. Cuthbert.

Why do you call me that? he asked the dog. Why?

Because you have almost reached the bottom, and it has almost reached you. Do you not acknowledge your own sins against the animal world? You must, or the Otter Prince will not come.

IN THE DISORDERED, UNHOLY TIMES IMMEDIATELY
before and forever after Granny died of a stroke, in 1974, the Handley household's last ties to the Wyre and its folkways—and the Wonderments—dissolved. His father's beatings and punch-ups had long moved from the vaguely disciplinary, but they lacked the pure, chaotic malice of Cuthbert's last year at home. At grammar school, three or four boys saw the bruises, but no one said a thing to anyone.

A few months before she died, Winefride had started setting food out for a brindled mog named Sally who lived in their neighborhood. She was always feeding local cats, but she especially loved this mog, and eventually, Sally grew enormous. Soon, Winefride found a clowder of kittens with Sally in the back garden, behind a plastic bucket. Winefride seemed especially captivated by the lot, but she warned Cuthbert to stay away from them and let Sally tend to them and, above all, not allow her son-in-law to find out about them.

When Henry Handley finally did find out about the kittens, they and Sally disappeared.

Almost anything could set Henry off, but petty acts of rebellion or inattention—slamming a door too hard, loudly slurping at tea, kicking a football into the kitchen—seemed especially to goad him.

A few weeks later, this time on Sunday, after the pub's afternoon closing, Cuthbert's gran was plastering the leg of a new tuxedo moggy kitten she'd found limping in the garden. She expertly wrapped its paw onto an ice-lolly stick that still smelled of black currant.

Cuthbert watched closely for a while, but he grew bored, and just as his father stumbled into the kitchen, drunk, Cuthbert flicked another lolly stick across the kitchen table.

“What the fock is that then? 'Oos brought this dirty thing into the kitchen, and why did yow throw that stick?”

“It's just a kitten, Daddy.”

“We're almost done here,” said his gran sternly. “This kit will be gone soon enough.”

“Why did yow throw that focking stick?”

“You're drunk as a mop,” said Gran. “Let us be. Please, Hank.”

“I day mean to, Daddy.”

“Yow useless focking yam-yam
^*
!” he screamed. He started kicking at his son, then unhitched his belt and began whipping him. “Yow're focking off your focking chump!”

His grandmother set the kitten aside and tried, pathetically, to soothe her son-in-law, as a diversion, placing her fat hands on his shoulders, but Henry simply stepped around her and continued.

It was, of course, perfectly legal for a father to whip his children. Before the Children Act of 1989, abusers more easily slipped detection. Winefride had rung the police seven times, and each time was
told no crime had occurred, but if someone was injured she should call back.

“I'm calling the police again,” she said. She did, once again, but this time the authorities sent a very young social worker who wore a brown suit and a white shirt with a stained collar. That Monday afternoon, he talked to Henry for about twenty minutes. Henry, badly hungover, made a show of apologizing to everyone. But nothing seemed likely to change soon, partly because Cuthbert was too terrified to tell the truth. And he even defended Henry.

“My dad's alroight,” he said to the man from the council. “And I ain't the best.”

The next night, on a Tuesday, Winefride Wenlock died in her sleep of a massive ruptured aneurysm.

THE MOST EVIL
beatings came after his gran died, in the years before Cuthbert left home for uni. He endured criminal abuse. (The timing of everything had become unclear as Cuthbert aged, and at age ninety with a brain half-pickled, what he remembered most was his own shame and self-hatred—and his undying worship of his dead brother.)

Cuthbert became just as spiteful as all the Black Country boys he knew. His worst injuries, of course, weren't visible; but his mind was gradually being thrashed into the early stages of a dark syndrome that had no name.

He grew to loathe himself and the world and everything in it, and an almost continual guilt assaulted his heart. Eventually, the guilt turned outward. In agony, he would throw stones at old men and smack small children who supported the Baggies or Wolves.
^*
(Cuthbert supported Aston Villa.) He once threw a baby gerbil into
a goldfish bowl and watched it drown. He helped a small gang of boys kill a stray spaniel under a canal bridge he came to call Otter Bridge. He and the boys buried the animal under a blanket of gorse yanked from the canalside.

When he was twelve, he put his hand into one of these boys' pants, and he invited him to put his mouth on his thing, but the boy only punched him in the stomach and began laughing at him. “I don't want your ugly cock,” he said, squealing. Once, Cuthbert tore an electric blanket apart in his bedroom and spread the curly, cotton-stuck wires over his bedroom floor, trying to work out a system to electrocute himself. But he got scared. It seemed too industrial a way to top yourself. It would be like getting snagged on his father's metal lathe and spun to death. Later, there was a phase of vexed strolling near an old iron bridge along the Birmingham Canal near Rotten Park, a sad walk up from his parents' neighborhood, and toward the heart of the Black Country. He would spit on the bridge's walkway and attempt to summon the icy will to kick one leg, then another, over the rails. The wrought handrails groaned and screeched and cars shoomed past. In the distance, grassy fields and lawns were still broken here and there with the black patches of scoria, which used to cover the region. Emptied of its natural resources, the land was still recovering. He could look down into the dark water and dream of death. However, even in this most deserving place, he could not kill himself.

Like so many abused children, his fundamental frame of mind was one of ghastly shame and self-contempt. At one point, he gave the canal beneath this bridge of his failed suicides a new name, the Otter River. Trying to work up the nerve to kill himself became compulsive; he would also try, when he remembered, to “beg forgiveness” from a Christ of Otters. He forced himself to picture this robed messiah of all murdered animals, a gimlet-eyed and long-whiskered Jesus with a long pearly claw upon each soft finger. He
made himself say, “My sin has offended you.” Once, praying the words
Christ forgive me,
over and over without stop, he had walked far up the canal walks, away from West Brom, out toward Dudley, then beyond, eventually reaching branches of the disused canal system he had never seen. Once beyond the brownfields and blighted elm trees and ruined foundries near West Brom, the dark motor-oil water of the canal became more and more green, bright as grass and greener still. As he had walked, Cuthbert kept thinking that if he prayed hard enough and long enough, he would see another otter, as he had seen at the Wyre Forest after he and Drystan went into Dowles Brook. This otter would uncurl itself from the mossy water, turn a few spirals, and, with St. Cuthbert's blessing, save him from drowning, this time from despair.

He remembered this as he made his way through the clattering hallways of his old IB. When he was younger, it had simply been too early for him to learn the language of animals—and too early in Britain's national life, since it hadn't yet hit its prophesied bottom. And not until Dr. Bajwa had sent him to the London Zoo had he begun, really, to know that something new was afoot, and to believe he would find Drystan again, and to act, despite great peril, to welcome the Christ of Otters.

“Christ, forgive me,” whispered Cuthbert. “I've my own heart of a demon.”

But we take you back
, he could hear the dog Osman say.
Without condition.