Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (11 page)

Nearly a head taller than she, he stood smiling down at her, mightily pleased with himself and with her as well. It would be a great “do” that afternoon, probably the best of the whole summer, one that would be remembered and spoken about by him and all his friends and companions for long after. He picked up the remains of Thomasina and flung them unceremoniously over his shoulder and, turning Mary in the direction of her home, started off with an affectionate pat on her shoulder. “Off you go now. And remember, wear your mourners and don’t be late. A funeral’s no good at all without the widow or weeping relatives. And this one is going to be quite the best ever.”

Mary Ruadh now trotted off obediently. She did not so much as turn around to give the departed and departing Thomasina another glance.
That
Thomasina, the one she had carried about with her and nursed and played with and cuddled to her at night, was “gone away” never to return, which was her understanding of death, for it had been explained that her mother had “gone away” when she was very little. Gone away, then, meant not there any more. Yet the yearning remained, and her left arm, over which Thomasina was usually draped, felt strangely unweighted. She had had no experience of knowing what to do with a love when once the object of its power and intensity of feeling was no longer there to receive it.

And then there was something else besides the death of a person, since Thomasina was in many ways more real to her and human than many of those surrounding her, and that was the death of a love, which had happened almost simultaneously and was still going on within her.

The gentle, the all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving father had “gone away” too. In his place there remained only the mountain of a man with the bristly red beard, thunderous voice, and iron arms who had set her on the other side of the door while inside his office the murder of Thomasina was taking place. As Mary Ruadh thought of the lovely word that Hughie had used and which was to become a permanent part of Thomasina’s memorial, a slight smile of satisfaction played about the corners of her otherwise innocent mouth. The grownup who had brought about the disaster of Thomasina’s departure was still to be dealt with.

8

M
r. Veterinarian Andrew MacDhui missed the funeral procession of his late victim that afternoon, for he was engaged in proceeding through another part of the town in the company of his friend, Mr. Angus Peddie, to bear good news to blind man Tammas Moffat, that, in a sense, he would “see” again.

Mr. Peddie dropped in upon the animal doctor shortly after three o’clock to learn what had happened to the Seeing Eye dog he had been instrumental in securing for Tammas, who was one of his oldest parishioners. He was a wonder, was Mr. Peddie, and known all over the town for being able to smooth-tongue a person out of a contribution when there was a need. His way was to appear to be letting you in on something, like a hot tip on a horse, or a winning pools combination; he made you a cheerful and excited co-conspirator and before you knew it, you had parted with a pound note, or ten shillings, or whatever you happened to have on you at the moment. And blessed if later on, when the results showed, you didn’t feel as though you had won something.

The minister found Mr. MacDhui looking tired but satisfied when he entered his consulting room. Peddie said, “I stopped by, Andrew, to ask whether there was any news of Tammas’s dog—good or ill—”

MacDhui savored for a moment the pleasure of the reply he had to make, before indulging in it, but the smile of gratification would not stay from his full lips; his strong teeth showed through the red bristles of beard and mustache as he replied, “Well, I have saved Tammas’s eyes for him. The dog will manage. In three weeks it will be good as new.”

Mr. Peddie said, “Ah. Oh, splendid, splendid. I knew it would be so. I was expecting it.”

MacDhui cocked his head at his friend. “Your faith, Angus, flatters me, but I might tell you—”

“Oh,” Mr. Peddie said innocently, “I wasn’t referring to you in this instance, I meant—”

MacDhui barked a savage laugh. “Hah! Your Higher Power, of course. Well, my friend, if you knew how many times the slender thread of your faith came near to being snipped. It’s almost a miracle the beast is alive—” He checked himself as he realized what he had said.

Peddie nodded cheerfully and said, “Well, yes, that’s what I asked for. In matters of faith, narrow escapes don’t count. It’s the results really that matter, isn’t it? As for what you would do, I had not the slightest doubt. Shall we go and tell the good news to Tammas? He was in a great torment of worry when I left him. It is a terrible thing to be blind and alone. The dog was his comfort as well as his guide.”

“Eh?” MacDhui asked. “What do you want me along for? You can tell him—”

“Well, actually, it was you who said it. But then you wouldn’t be the first to confuse the Power and the instrument. Come along, Andrew, it will do you good to see the old man’s joy.”

MacDhui grumbled in his throat, but he put on his old tweed jacket with the leather patches at the elbow’s and pockets, loaded a great black pipe, took up his twisted blackthorn, and said to Peddie, “Want to have a look at him first?”

He took the minister to the hospital part of the house. The dog lay on clean straw, his hindquarters encased in bandages and plaster. But his fine eyes were alert and keen, the pointed ears picked up, and he beat a rat-tat-tat on the floor of his cage with his brush at their coming, whined and scratched at the door with his forepaws.

“What a beautiful sight,” Mr. Peddie said, and feasted his eyes on it.

“Don’t pamper or spoil him,” MacDhui said to Willie Bannock, who was hovering nearby. “He’s been trained for but one man.”

Tammas Moffat lived on the other side of town, the poorer section, and as the two men walked thither chatting, the faint wind-borne skirl of pipes in lament reached the ears of Mr. Peddie for a moment and he paused, cocking an ear. “That’s strange,” he said, “I thought I heard the sound of Macintosh’s Lament. But there’s no’ any burial today I know about.”

It was the faraway mourning of the little pipes of Jamie Braid, the sergeant piper’s son, in funeral procession for Thomasina that had reached his ears. Mr. MacDhui hearkened for a moment and then said, “I hear nothing,” and they continued on.

Tammas Moffat had a room on the second floor of a two-story house of whitewashed stone and roof of gray slate in a section of such tenements, drab new council houses and the remains of several wartime Nissen huts. Several small children were playing in the dust before the house; a gray and white gull with but one leg perched on the chimney and an old woman in cap and apron was sweeping the doorstep.

“Is Tammas Moffat in?” Mr. Peddie inquired.

She paused in her sweeping long enough to say, “I have nae doot ye’ll be finding him at home. I have not heard him stirring.”

“Thank you. We’ll go up then. The veterinary here has good news for him about his dog.”

“I’m sure your news will be welcome. He was badly put out when the poor bonnie creature was hurt. I haven’t seen a sight of him since he came home.”

They entered and went up the dark, narrow stairs, Peddie leading. There was no sound in the house whatsoever, though from below they could hear the dry susurrus of the sweeping and the rumbling of the baker’s van and then the beat of the gull’s wings as it flapped off the chimney.

Mr. Peddie paused irresolutely, halfway up the stairs. He turned to look back at the veterinary. “Andrew—” he said.

“Well—?”

The minister did not continue, and the silence became oppressive. The rotund little man was much more of an instrument of communication from outside sources than his outward appearance indicated or most people suspected. He was an extraordinarily kind and sensitive man, so sensitive that at that moment he felt his soul go sick within him.

“Andrew,” he said again, but changed his mind when the looming bulk of his friend pressed him on and he merely said, “Well, we will see, then.” He proceeded to the top of the stairs and with heavy, lagging footsteps walked to the end of the landing and knocked at the closed door. He waited for a moment, with ever-waxing certainty, and when there was no reply, opened the door gently and went in, followed by MacDhui.

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Peddie softly. The blind man was sitting in an armchair facing the door. His head had not fallen forward but somehow remained in the position of listening, the strained, anxious listening for footsteps that had been his attitude when death had come to him.

Mr. Peddie bent down and looked up into the sightless eyes to see whether there was any sign of life remaining, but MacDhui hurried forward and placed his head on his chest to listen, and then took his wrist to try to find a pulse. The sere arm was still warm, but there was no heart within the body.

“He’s gone,” MacDhui said. “He cannot have been dead for more than an hour or two.”

Peddie nodded. “Yes, I know. I—knew.”

MacDhui suddenly emitted a harsh and horrid laugh that exploded through the silent house. “I saved his eyes!” he brayed. “Where is your God now?”

He shocked Mr. Angus Peddie into anger. The minister drew himself up to all of the dignity his size and form could muster, his round face flushed, lips quivering, eyes behind the spectacles hot with indignation.

“Be quiet, Andrew,” he cried, “and be damned to you for your impertinence.”

“Aye, you can damn, but you cannot answer me. What was the good of it all? What is the use of the work I have done? What kind of God do you worship who permits the dog to live and the man to die?”

“Is God your servant then, or is He God?” cried the minister, in most un-Peddie-like outrage. “Must He admire your work and flatter your vanity like a father to a child, or is He to go about His business?”

“Tosh! Is this then your great design that we are supposed to worship and believe in and give thanks for?”

Ruffled and angry, they faced one another across the unheeding form of the old man, who sat like one in quiet judgment upon their folly and the humanity of it.

MacDhui shouted, “What has he to be thankful for?” his beard thrust out toward the top of Peddie’s head.

The minister was the first to recover. He said, looking at the dead man, “He was an old man; he died peacefully; he died with hope in his heart.” He looked up at MacDhui and said, with such contrition in his mild eyes that MacDhui was similarly moved, “I should not have lost my temper, Andrew, I am sorry.”

MacDhui said, “Well, nor am I proud of shouting at you over this poor fellow. I am sorry I was impertinent to you—”

“Oh, you weren’t to ME,” Peddie said. “That wasn’t what I meant. It has unstrung us both, except I knew as we climbed the steps that it would be so.” With the greatest gentleness, he closed the eyes of the blind man.

He paused momentarily in the middle of this act as he was struck by a thought that seemed unrelated at the time and which yet he knew somehow was not. He said, “Mary Ruadh was in your waiting room this morning. She told me her cat was ill. Whatever became of it?”

To MacDhui, the morning’s scene sprang to life again with painfully vivid clarity. He saw and heard again the hurt and moaning dog upon the table, with Willie Bannock sponging its tongue and muzzle, and his daughter standing outside the door with the dying cat in her arms. For, he told himself again, it had been dying and no doubt of that, and mentally his tongue formed the exact long medical term for the nature of its illness. No one knew whether it was communicable or not, and there had been Anne, his wife. He smelled again the sweetish scent of the chloroform rag as Willie Bannock had carried out his orders and destroyed the animal, and in his ears once more was the helpless drumming of Mary Ruadh’s fists upon the panels of the door and her fearful cries. He wished he could get the sound of the thrumming of those tiny hands upon the door from out his ears.

He replied, “I had the animal put away. I suspected a meningeal infection. Better safe than sorry. Besides, I was attending the dog and couldn’t take the time. I have no doubt the beast was better off dead.”

A frown clouded the serene face of Mr. Peddie, and he pulled at his lower lip with his fingers, a trick he had when he was greatly worried. “Oh dear,” he said. “Oh dear!” For he seemed to be feeling into the future again; sometimes he wondered whether he was not in some manner related to the Norms the way occasionally for him the carpet of tragedy seemed to unroll, long before those came along who were to tread it. The cat was dead then, and the child would be desolate and there would be far-reaching consequences.

“Oh dear me,” he said again, and, still fingering his lip, walked out of the room and down the stairs, with Andrew MacDhui following him, uncomprehending.

9

T
he procession led by Jamie Braid, the sergeant piper’s son, wound its way through the town by way of Rob Roy’s Square and across the quay northward, skirting the shore where, guided by Wolf Cub Geordie McNabb, it crossed the river by the old saddleback bridge and then turned westward into the mouth of Glen Ardrath, passing on the way the gypsy encampment in the valley, with its many caravans whisping smoke out of crooked pipe chimneys.

Jamie was a thin boy and so tall for his age of eleven that he seemed to be proceeding on stilts, though they were actually the long shanks of his legs striving to reach into his body. His face, too, was thin so that when he puffed out his cheeks to inflate the tartaned bag beneath his arm he appeared to have a crab apple stored in each one, while his eyes threatened to bulge from their sockets. But he had a fine head of thick, wavy brown hair and his Glengarry was cocked bravely upon it at the angle proper to his father’s late regiment. There were streamers attached to it and streamers and ribbons, too, from his pipes, and his kilts rose and fell as he walked the slow piper’s tread he had learned from his father.

Behind him, bearing the sacred pennant of their Wolf Cub troop, marched Geordie McNabb with several of his fellows in uniform, lending the military touch. Next came the hearse itself, drawn by four of the younger girls of the first class of the Inveranoch elementary school, hitched tandem fashion in pairs. This was a fine bit of improvisation on the part of Hughie Stirling in the brief time between luncheon and the appointed hour for the cortege to form. Having to compromise between a caisson and a cart, the casket containing the mortal remains of Thomasina reposed on the body of an old toy express wagon he had routed out of one of the potting sheds.