Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (27 page)

He pulled down the lid of his roll-top desk for the night, swung his revolving chair away from it, and came face to face with the place on his carpet where the three boys had been standing, step-down, according to sizes that morning, and they came vividly to his mind, but most clear was his memory of the soiled and tear-streaked countenance of Geordie McNabb, as Hughie Stirling worked over it with his pocket handkerchief, and the child’s cry: “They beat the poor bear and its nose was a’ bluggy and it lay down on the ground and cried.” The picture then that had formed in his mind that morning, during the recital of the boys, returned to plague him, but with still another added to it.

He was seeing then, not only Geordie’s bear with the “blug squoorting from its nose,” but the agony of Lori’s badger, the expression in those tortured eyes rolling trustingly toward Lori and the courage and gallantry of the beast.

Calm and trusting, it had lain in Lori’s arms, for there was healing there. He thought of the bear, too, and how Lori would cherish it. He thought of the tenderness and the love of Lori’s arms.

He closed and locked his office and went next door to his house and Mary Ruadh’s room. Mrs. McKenzie was there reading to the child, who was regarding her with lackluster eyes.

“I came in and saw she was awake,” Mrs. McKenzie explained. “I thocht if I read tae her, she micht grow sleepy.”

It was now Mary Ruadh that Mr. MacDhui was seeing in Lori’s arms, cushioned to her breast, red hair mingled with red hair, and perhaps a smile on the face of the child. His own heart felt as heavy as though it would fall out of his body. “Aye,” he said. “Bide here with her. There is somewhere I must go.” At the door he turned to the housekeeper and said, “I shall be at the gypsy encampment—there is some mischief afoot there—should I be needed.”

“I’ll nae stir,” said Mrs. McKenzie. She wished there were some way to comfort him and help him in his distress, for she felt sorry for him now.

Though darkness came late in the summertime in the northlands, MacDhui needed the headlights of his jeep to thread his way through the murk caused by the heavy low-hanging cloud that shrouded the mountains and filled the valley. The hot wind that had soughed up the loch the week past had promised the relief of a rare Highland thunderstorm, but heavy and oppressive though it was, the animal doctor did not think that it would break that night.

It was fully dark by the time he reached the encampment, signaled by the horseshoe of wagons set about in the field from whence issued the stench of frying oil and garlic and the pungent, squalor reek of a primitive people. The wagons were of wood with crooked iron stovepipe chimneys emerging from the roof, or canvas-covered.

MacDhui drove slowly. At the end of the horseshoe and opposite from the road he noted two smaller vehicles divided into narrow cages, and marked their position. His headlights picked up some horses grazing, rib-thin, with dark patches on flank and hindquarters that could have been sores.

Booths had been set up for palm reading and fortunetelling and the sale of articles of gypsy handicraft as well as dubious cakes and sweetmeats. These were illumined by petrol torches that gave off a flickering yellow light and much black smoke. A kind of course had been set out on the turf, marked by such torches set into the ground, at the end of this were a few rows of makeshift seats, planks set across some boxes and barrels. A dozen or so visitors were seated in this section.

MacDhui heard a sound like a pistol shot, followed by the scream of a horse. He stopped his jeep in time to see a horse rear, and in the smoky yellow light a tall, booted fellow in a black shirt and broad, nail-studded black leather belt raise his arm and beat the animal. The veterinary gazed somberly for a moment until the rearing beast was brought under control. Then he parked his vehicle near the entrance and got out. His palms were sweating and he was damp beneath the eyes. His skin was prickling and in his mouth was the bitter taste of antagonism.

Andrew MacDhui was not the man for intuitions, or atmospheres, but for the first time he found himself regretting that he had not brought so much as a walking stick or whip or any kind of weapon. For no sooner had he approached and entered the enclosure than he felt himself almost overwhelmed by the malevolence, cynicism, and hostility that pervaded the place.

A crone, a bundle of old and dirty clothes with a greasy black leather purse hanging from her waist, sat at a rickety table by the entrance. A placard read “Admission one shilling.” MacDhui dropped a ten shilling note onto the table. The crone dipped a claw into the purse and spread out change in shillings and sixpences, and waved him in impatiently, croaking, “Hurry, hurry, the performance has already begun.”

MacDhui left the change lying on the table and snarled down at her, “Come along, mother. Put up the other shilling. That is too old a game—”

She became shrill and voluble at once, cursing him and crying out. A man came striding menacingly out of the darkness, a strapping black-haired fellow. MacDhui saw it was he of the boots and wide, nail-studded black leather belt. He carried a horsewhip with a heavily loaded stock.

“What are you trying to do?” he shouted. “Rob this poor old woman? We are poor people here.”

The veterinary thrust his beard within an inch of the gypsy’s face and said, “Try a new one, Romany! I gave her a ten-shilling note. Count the change yourself.”

The man did not even bother but made a sign to the woman, who produced another shilling. MacDhui pocketed the change and went inside through a lane of rope. The man with the whip walked alongside him a few paces, grinning at him impudently, then laughed and swaggered away.

Not far from the seats was a square wooden platform on which sat three musicians, two men and a woman, the former playing fiddle and accordion, while the latter thumped and rattled a tambourine. An exhibition of horsemanship was on, gypsy lads riding down the lane of torches. MacDhui watched for a moment and spat at the contemptuous cynicism of the display. There was nothing that any Highland farm boy of ten could not do.

He waited until a rider who had just performed returned to the starting point. Again he heard the scream of a horse and noted that the gypsy band played up to cover the noise, the woman jangling her tambour and shouting. No one was paying any attention to him. He slipped around the rows of seats out of the light, crossed the field quickly, and made his way through the darkness by memory to the place where he had noted the wagons with the cages from the road.

The stench was appalling. Out of the shadows came faint rustlings, moans and whimperings, and the sound of a woman sobbing, yet he could see no one. MacDhui listened for another moment, then drawing in his breath sharply, extracted his pipe lighter and flicked on the flame, shielding it with his hand.

“Lori!”

“Andrew!”

He was too disturbed at finding her there to note that for the first time she had used his Christian name. He had not seen her for the darkness of her cloak and the cowl that hid her bright hair, and for the fact that she was kneeling before a cage, the door to which she had opened. She was holding a wizened, half-dead monkey in her arms. The monkey was sucking at her finger and weeping.

MacDhui whispered, “Be very quiet, Lori.” He did not question how she came to be kneeling in the midst of this pit of horror. It was enough that she was there. He was not even surprised.

Carefully guarding the lighter flame with his hand so that it could not be seen from the other wagons, he passed down the row of cages. There was not a beast on its feet. They lay gasping and panting on their sides or miserably huddled together. There was a stoat, a pair of foxes, a squirrel and a polecat or pine marten. Another cage housed a disheveled eagle drooping in a corner, an unhappy mass of feathers, and, adjoining, three more miserable monkeys. The cages were small and in a state of unspeakable filth. A brown hare lay stretched in a corner. From its attitude and the smell MacDhui judged that no one had been near it for days and that it was dead.

He extinguished his light. When his eyes had become accustomed to the shadow and he could see again by the rays of the farthest torches, he returned to the woman huddled on the ground.

He could see her pale face now and the liquid eyes. She whispered, “Andrew—what is it? They’re dying—”

Curtly he replied, “Starvation.” He reached into the pocket that was his larder, produced a piece of carrot, and offered it to the monkey Lori was holding. It snatched at it and devoured it hysterically. The tears it shed were now tears of joy. Above them, three pairs of spidery, black arms stretched through the bars pleadingly. MacDhui emptied his pockets of every shred of food.

From the far end of the field came a burst of music, shouts, and a pattering of applause. “Come,” MacDhui said, bending down and raising Lori up, “there is nothing more for us here.”

She whispered, “What shall I do with him?” The monkey was huddled to her, both arms wrapped about her neck.

“Put it back.” He disengaged it gently and replaced it in its cage, where it chittered frantically. “There’ll be no more of this when I’m done with them. Come.”

They walked close pressed together through the evil night. The air was thick with cruelty and beastliness. MacDhui was grateful for the presence of the woman at his side and breathed in the fragrance of her hair and skin as an antidote.

They came to where the spectators were located, but themselves remained withdrawn in the shadows on the far side, unnoticed. The musicians had left the platform but remained close by. Four men headed by an obese, swarthy gypsy wearing a red-frogged uniform coat and battered kepi appeared, dragging a cage into the torchlight. It was no bigger than a doghouse and barred. The sneering boy with the black belt reappeared and after a chord of music, introduced the uniformed one as the great Darvas Urgchin, the world’s greatest wild-animal trainer. The door to the cage was opened and a small black bear dragged out at the end of a chain.

Lori sighed, “The bear. The poor wee bear he wrote about—”

MacDhui looked at her in amazement. “Who wrote about?”

Lori replied, “A note was left. It was signed ‘Geordie.’ He once brought me a frog.”

“Ah, ah!” breathed Mr. MacDhui, “the little devil,” and understood Lori’s presence now.

“What will they do to it?” Lori whispered.

“We must wait and see.”

The fat trainer, who was drunk, was keeping the bear turned so that his left side remained hidden from the sparse audience, but MacDhui’s quick diagnostic eye had already caught sight of the huge open sore on the hindquarter and the fact that the bear dragged the leg painfully as he was pulled onto the platform.

He saw, too, the incrustations on the sensitive nose of the animal, hardly healed of the last brutality. Andrew MacDhui, who was used to surgery and blood and animal suffering, thought that if so much as a single drop of blood oozed from that poor nose, he would not be able to endure it.

Shivering, Lori whispered, “Andrew—Andrew—” and pressed even closer to his side, holding tightly to his arm.

The musicians struck up a czardas as the fat, drunken trainer jerked the bear onto its hind legs by means of the chain. At the side hovered the powerful, belted gypsy with the whip, prodding and flicking the animal.

The trainer began to shout, “Hui” and “Hop,” jerking on the chain and dancing himself. The bear, which could hardly walk on four legs, much less two, kept falling to the platform on all fours. In the torchlight its eyes gleamed miserable and fear-stricken and once it huddled and bared its lips from blunted broken teeth. It could not have bitten a child.

Quivering, MacDhui stood there watching. A climax was approaching, but what shape it would take or where it would lead he could not foresee. He knew only that he was looking upon this suffering not only through his own eyes, but through those of Lori, and the tears of a small boy as well. Emaciated as the bear was, his hindquarters had the baggy shapelessness of a tramp clown and MacDhui thought he had never before seen anything so sad—

Then all was violence!

As the animal collapsed once more and was jerked to its feet, the gypsy with the loaded whip struck the bear upon the nose with the heavy stock and something which, in the flickering halflight of the smoking torches, looked black, spurted forth.

MacDhui heard Lori’s sob. He did not remember freeing himself from her grip and moving to the wooden platform, but he could recall the power and satisfaction behind the blow he struck at the face of the big gypsy. It might have killed him had it struck his temple. Instead it smashed his nose flat and sent him tumbling backward off the platform.

The animal doctor thereupon tore the heavy whip from the hands of the prone man and, turning upon the trainer, whipped his fat buttocks, bellowing, “Dance, you fat swine! Dance now!” There was turmoil in the rows of spectators, cries of “Bravo! Well done! He had it coming to him!” to more timorous reactions—“We’d best be out of here!” Their ranks began to thin as shouts were heard from the encampment at the far end and a half dozen or so men came galloping down on their horses. The belted gypsy still lay half stunned on the ground, fingering his smashed face. The drunken trainer had fled. The bear lay grotesquely flat on its belly and tried to lick its injured nose.

MacDhui held the platform as the gypsies advanced. “Where is your leader?” he cried. “I mean to take him to the police and charge him.”

The man on the ground, the surprise and the cold rage of the red-bearded man upon the platform, confused the gypsies momentarily and kept them from the attack. One of them replied, “King Targu is back there in his wagon. If you want him, go and get him.”

MacDhui shouted to the few remaining spectators: “Go home. There will be no further performance tonight.” He went to Lori, who had knelt on the platform, taken the bear’s head in her lap, and was trying to staunch the bleeding with a kerchief. Bending over her he said, “Go home, Lori. It is all over. But there may be—some trouble. I beg of you go home.”

She stood up at his side but made no move to leave. MacDhui said, “Where is this Targu? I wish to see him at once.”