Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (32 page)

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A
purple flare of lightning was followed by a shattering of thunder, as though a great brass gong in the sky had been struck with an iron hammer. The echo went booming and pounding away through the hills, descending to even deeper notes of concussion until the final one rattled all the doors and windowpanes.

The four people in the room with the sinking child stirred uneasily. Such a storm had not been known in Inveranoch in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Trapped in the long valley of Loch Fyne, it had receded once, only to return with renewed fury.

Mrs. McKenzie sat on the edge of a chair, pale and frightened, in some formless kind of wrapper, her wispy graying hair a mass of pins and curlers. MacDhui had summoned Willie Bannock over from his quarters in the building next door, for such was the quality of the night and the tempest that it was good for no man to be alone and the animal doctor wished all those connected with him to be under one roof.

He and Lori were by the bedside of Mary Ruadh, whence they had not stirred since the storm began. A moment before, the child had been sleeping in a kind of stupor, but the horrid brassy reverberation awakened her and terror showed in her eyes. She opened her lips slightly, moving them, but no sound emerged from them. MacDhui thought how a thousand times more heartbreaking was a child who could not cry than one who could.

Another glare illuminated the room as well as the landscape without, through the rain-sluiced windows—the outline of a tortured tree and the dark shape of a mountain rising from the other side of the wind-whipped loch. The thunderclap following was deafening. Willie Bannock, fully dressed, sat immovable upon a chair in a corner, clasping his cap in his hands, his sad, benign gaze never wavering from the struggle at the bedside.

Lori whispered, “Dinna ye fear, Mary Ruadh. In the morning it will be all gone and forgotten and the sun will shine again.”

Yet all felt the presence of death in the room and that the cannonading of the thunder hurtled from mountain to mountain to end in earth-shaking thuds might be the last horror that would cause Mary Ruadh to turn her face to the wall and relinquish her hold. MacDhui glanced at his watch. It was waxing upon four in the morning, that hour of weakness when spirit and body are easiest parted. By the time the sun promised by Lori reappeared, the presence would have departed from the room and taken with it the child.

Mrs. McKenzie asked, “Shall I be sending Wullie for Dr. Strathsay?”

“No,” replied MacDhui. “He can do no more. His last prescription was—to pray.”

He saw Mrs. McKenzie move her lips and Willie Bannock lower his head and mumble, but he did not do so himself and he felt an extraordinary surge of love, warmth, and kinship toward Lori. For she who heard and listened to the voices of the angels now was ceaselessly engaged in the expending of herself by the side of the sick child, wiping the sweat from her brow with a kerchief, gently caressing the cheeks or hair; holding to the blue-veined semi-translucent hands—pouring forth love—trying to replenish the little girl’s emptying well of vitality with strength of her own.

It was no return of his old intransigence that kept MacDhui from joining in the supplications. On the contrary, it was a humbleness such as he had never experienced before. “God,” Mr. Peddie had once said to him, “is not so much a faith as a conviction.” And Mr. Peddie might have explained further that to each man the conviction occurred in a different manner, nor were any two concepts resulting therefrom exactly alike.

It seemed to MacDhui that further to call attention to himself and his single tragedy in a world so filled with pain and misery would be an arrogance far beyond any he had ever practiced. One could deny God, or curse Him, or trust Him, but not, in MacDhui’s concept, ceaselessly importune and send the loser’s whine endlessly aloft. His guilt sat upon him horribly. He was comforted nevertheless by the prayers of Mrs. McKenzie and Willie Bannock, for these were the simple, the innocent, and the unstained. A,
THE
Divinity, whatever, wherever It was, or however It made Itself felt in the hearts of man might find it not difficult to love such as these.

The housekeeper spoke aloud now and MacDhui listened to her argue with her God. She said: “Guid Lord, ye have so many bairns already; leave this one to us. Guid Lord, hearken to the plea of a lonely old woman,” and almost unconsciously found himself nodding his head, for it seemed reasonable.

He had been staring at the window and another bolt of lightning half blinded him. Electricity and telephones had long since been put out of order by the storm, and the little room was lit by two paraffin lamps and several candles. MacDhui groped his way back to the bed and knelt beside Lori and felt the pressure of her shoulder against his, a pressure that remained hard and firm, transmitting its message of human needs. Sleeves and clothes intervened, yet the comfort remained supreme as the current flowed between them. All the words that needed to be said could or would be spoken at another time, or perhaps never. He felt the answer to his loneliness in the huddle of Lori’s body against his—replying to his own. He did not even place an arm about her. Whoever or whatever she was could not ever make a difference, for the touch had made them one, and in it, understood by both, lay the depth of their need for one another.

The child suddenly began to move and strain in the bed. Lori and MacDhui glanced at one another. The gentleness and pity still filled her face, but there was something else there, too, that MacDhui saw with a thrill of recognition. The softness was gone from the tender mouth. In its place was the defiance of the Scotswoman who had fought to his side with her burning brand, crying his name as her battle slogan.

She half took the straining child to her breast again as though to shield her from the summons of the angel of death. MacDhui could neither help nor repress the cry that burst from his lips, “Ah God! Sir! Please—” The final struggle was at hand.

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I
said to myself upon waking up, “Thomasina, old girl, you’d better nip out of here before Mrs. McKenzie catches you.” Mrs. McKenzie always was cross when she caught me lying in one of Mary Ruadh’s chests of drawers on her things. I did it to annoy her and smell the lavender. I simply
loved
the smell of lavender.

There was a bag of it right by my nose that very moment and I had been smelling it all the time in my sleep. Bliss. Still there was no point in pushing a good thing.

There was a flash of light followed by a deep rumble. At once my hair stood up and I felt uneasy and uncomfortable. I knew what that was. I had been through one once before. It was a thunderstorm. I thought, “I’d better get into Mary Ruadh’s bed. She’ll be frightened in the storm and will want to hold me. And I’ll feel better there myself—”

I jumped out of the drawer and onto the bed. A long glare of lightning lit up the room. I stared! My tail and hair stood up stiff! I arched my back with horror! Mary Ruadh wasn’t in the bed! It wasn’t Mary Ruadh’s bed. It wasn’t Mary Ruadh’s room! It was no room I had ever been in before that I could remember. I was in some strange house.

I gave way to panic for the first time in my life, I, Thomasina, born of an aristocratic family that was always noted for its calm and poise.

Where was I? How had I got there? What had happened?

I raced about the room like one possessed, leaping from bed to floor, to chair, to chest. Another lightning flash showed me a stairs. I went down them five at a time, to find myself in another unfamiliar room filled with different objects, a fireplace, a table, a basket by the hearth obviously for some cat, some chairs. I found a kitchen—not MY kitchen—with dishes tumbled about and strange smells and fled from there into another room in which there was some kind of monstrous machine which looked as though it was lurking there waiting to pounce upon me.

My fright and panic grew as I raced about the place. It was small—not half as large as our house and I was locked in. A half a dozen frantic rushes to doors and windows showed me that everything was closed, bolted, or locked from without. There was not a handle to be budged, or a loose board to be squeezed through; the floors and walls were of stone and the doors of oak. There was not so much as a hole a mouse could have got through anywhere.

I stopped still in the middle of the room, my heart beating, trying to think, trying to remember what could have happened to me, Thomasina. I said to myself, “For heaven’s sakes, keep calm. You may just be in the midst of dream. Dreams are often like this where things chase you or you can’t get out of places.” To make sure, I gave myself a couple of washes. Then it wasn’t a dream because you never wash in dreams.

There was the most fearful, crackling, blinding glare of lightning and simultaneously an appalling ear-splitting explosion of thunder, followed by a tearing and crashing, and from somewhere nearby came yelps and barks and the wails and shrieks of animals.

It was too much for my nerves. I went up the chimney.

It was horrible! I was blinded and choked with wet soot and halfway up I got stuck. The rain falling down the chimney had made the sides greasy and slippery so that I could not get a grip with my paws. My shoulder was wedged against a corner of brick sticking out in the narrow space, my legs hanging down kicking. I felt my strength oozing from me. What an awful place and way to die for a decent cat. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to go home.

Home! Home! Home! Hanging there in the darkness I was filled with the thoughts of home and Mary Ruadh. It seemed that I could see every familiar corner of my house in Argyll Lane, the bedroom, the kitchen, the place where my saucer was kept, my favorite chair, the color of the blankets and quilt on Mary Ruadh’s bed, and above all, that plain-looking, snub-nosed, red-haired child in her pinafore, holding me dangling over one arm.

And do you know, there in the dark and slime and soot of that fearful chimney flue there came to me the memory of the smell of Mary Ruadh. It was as though she were there, hugging me to her. It was all her own, and was compounded of the odor of freshly ironed cotton or flannel, silken ribbons, soap, bread and butter and jam, mouthwash, warm skin and hair. It was her night smell.

How I HATED to be held and dragged about by her like a stuffed doll, and yet at that moment when I thought I was about to be suffocated and die in a strange chimney and the memory scent filled my nostrils I became filled with such love and desire to be carried by her but once more that I thought my heart would burst from sadness, and I gathered myself for one last despairing effort.

Another lightning flash showed me the opening at the top of the chimney, so near and yet so far, and the booming of the thunder shook it so that more soot and pieces of brick and mortar came tumbling down upon my head.

But my frantically kicking legs caught something solid for an instant and pushed. Above, where a piece of brick had been shaken loose, was a rough, dry surface. I reached with my claws, caught it, and pulled hard.

Kick and pull! And then I was free!

Free, free! I was out of the narrow and fearful chimney and onto the roof in the wind and the rain, clinging to the slates for dear life.

The purple lightning showed me that a tree nearby had been struck and split in two and one of its branches had come to rest upon the roof, like a stairway. Instantly I leaped upon it and the next moment was safe upon the ground.

My first thought was to find some shelter from the howling wind, and the pouring rain, the thunder and the lightning. Some cats don’t mind rain, but I do. My second was to get cleaned up, for the chimney must have left me filthy and above all I am a clean cat and always have been.

The thick-piled branches of the fallen tree made almost a kind of a cave. I crept beneath them where it was nearly dry. I did not know where I was, but no matter. I was no longer locked in, and THAT was what mattered. When we are locked in and want to get out it makes us frantic. When daylight came it would soon enough show me where I was and then I could think of the next thing to do.

I set about washing. Paws first; then backs of paws; then head and face and behind the ears.

“Go home, Thomasina!”

Did someone speak? It seemed as though I heard someone say something to me. Now flank and shoulders, followed by—

“Go home, Thomasina!”

“Who, me? In this weather? I don’t even know which way home is!”

“What do you care about the weather, Thomasina? You’re wet through already anyway. Have you so soon forgotten the Mary Ruadh scent that came to you in the chimney? Go home, silly cat.”

“Ah, no—I haven’t forgotten. And the warm saucers of milk, the sweet porridge in the morning, the watchings by the mouse-holes, and the taste of the salt tears when I licked Mary Ruadh’s cheeks when she cried in the night. I seem to have been lost for a long time— Indeed I want to go home. I—”

Why, it was me that had been speaking all of the time. There weren’t any voices. It all came from inside of me. I ceased my washing and listened. A peal of thunder died away.

“Go home! Go home, Thomasina!”

“But I’m afraid of the storm.”

“Go home!”

I came out from underneath the branches. The rain dashed into my face. “Well,” I said, “it will finish the washing job anyway.” We were always philosophical in our family. I raised the antennae of my whiskers to see whether I could pick up direction. The next lightning flash came close to singeing them. But it also showed me a path, and when the thunder had quieted again I heard, for the first time over the beating of the rain, the roar of a swollen burn somewhere nearby. Burns flow down into rivers that flow into the sea. It was by a sea loch that my home lay. I trotted off.

Had I known how long, how far, how hard the road, how cold and wet the rain, how wicked the wind, how terrifying the storm, I should not have gone; I should not have continued.

My pads were worn and sore, my very bones chilled, my senses stunned by the thunder, and I was filled with fear and often despair. A hundred times I gave up and found shelter for my soaked and aching body, and a hundred times the voice from within me drove me on; “Go home, Thomasina.”