Twenty-six
I felt that I was in a dream running down a slope that was becoming steeper and steeper so that I was unable to stop. There was nothing in the street that I recognized not the stunted tree with a broken branch flapping down, not the huge wooden buttresses propping up one ramshackle stretch of houses. There was just a smell about it. I had the impression of footsteps sounding ahead of me. Jo's. My own. If I moved more quickly, I would catch them.
I'd written Arnold Slater's number on the back of my hand. Twelve. The far end of this insalubrious street. But I was going to the house of an old man in a wheelchair. He couldn't be the one. I wouldn't have stopped anyway, now that I was almost scraping at Jo's heels. I thought of her walking along this street, impatient. Could it be so difficult to get a bloody cat? The street was the familiar mixture of the restored, the abandoned and the neglected. Number twelve wasn't so bad. It must have been owned by the council because quite elaborate work had been done to enable a wheelchair to get to the front door. There was a concrete ramp and some heavy-duty handrails. I rang the bell.
Arnold Slater wasn't in his wheelchair. I could see it folded up in the hall behind him. But he was no kind of threat to anyone who could move faster than a tortoise. He was an old man in an outdoor coat, blinking at the daylight and holding the door handle as if for support. He looked at me with a frown. I was trying to remember him. Was he trying to remember me?
"Hello," I said brightly. "Are you Arnold Slater? I've heard that you might have a cat for sale."
"Bloody hell," he said.
"Sorry," I said. "Don't you have cats?"
He shuffled aside to leave a space. "A few," he said, with a throaty chuckle. "Come in."
I looked at his thin, sinewy wrists protruding from his raincoat. I assured myself once more that this man couldn't do me any harm and stepped inside.
"I've got cats," he said. "There's Merry. And Poppy. And Cassie and, look, there's Prospero."
A mustard-coloured shape darted down the hallway and disappeared into the gloom. I suddenly had an image of a secret society, a freemasonry, of cat nuts dotted around London, linked by their obsession like the secret rivers that run beneath London.
"Nice names," I said.
"Cats have their own names," he said. "You've just got to recognize them."
I was in a fever. His words seemed to come from a long way away and take a long time to reach me. I was like someone who was drunk and trying not to show it. I was doing my best possible impersonation of a cheerful young woman who was terribly eager to have a discussion about cats. "Like children, I guess."
He looked offended. "They're not like children. Not like my children. These ones can look after themselves."
My head was buzzing and I was moving from one foot to another in impatience. "I was sent by the people in the church. They said you had cats for sale."
Another scratchy laugh, like he had something stuck in his throat. "I don't have cats for sale. Why would I want to sell a cat? Why do people keep thinking that?"
"That's part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you had other people coming here wanting to buy cats from you?"
"They're mad. I've taken the odd cat off their hands and then they send people on to me as if I was a pet shop."
"What sort of people?"
"Stupid women wanting a cat."
I forced myself to laugh. "You mean women have been pitching up here trying to buy a cat? How many?"
"A couple of them. I told them both that they weren't for sale."
"That's funny," I said, as casually as I could manage, 'because I think a friend of mine may have been one of the people who was sent to you. Could this be her?" I had been fingering the photograph of Jo in my jacket pocket. Now I took it out-and showed it to Arnold.
Immediately he looked puzzled and suspicious. "What's this? What do you want to know for?"
"I was wondering if she was one of the women who came here looking for a cat."
"What do you want to know for? I thought you wanted a cat. What's all this about? You some sort of police or something?"
My thoughts were scattered all over, I could almost hear my brain humming inside my head. I felt in a rush, escaping something and chasing something both at the same time, and now I had to think of some half-way plausible explanation of what on earth I was up to.
"I'm looking for a cat as well," I said. "I just wanted to make sure I'd come to the same place she had."
"Why don't you ask her?"
I wanted to scream and howl. What did it matter? This wasn't a checkpoint on the Iraqi border. It was a house in Hackney with four mangy cats. I just needed to move on to the next square in the ridiculous game I was playing and he was the only one who could help me. I tried to think. It was so hard. Poor Jo hadn't got her cat here, that was obvious enough.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Slater," I said. "Arnold. I just have this need to get a cat."
"That's what they all say."
"Who?"
"That woman in the picture."
"Thank God," I said to myself.
They've all got to have a cat and they've got to have it today. Can't wait until tomorrow."
"I know the feeling. You get the idea of something in your head, like a hamburger, and you've just got to have one. You won't rest."
"A hamburger?"
"Now, Mr. Slater, if I was to come to you and ask you for a cat, which in fact I have done, and you were to say that yours aren't for sale, as they aren't, what would you recommend? Where would you steer me?" Arnold Slater's attention was still on Jo's photograph. I put it back in my pocket. "Arnold," I said, more quietly and urgently, 'where did you send her?"
"Who was the other one?"
He was looking at me with a keener expression. He may have been starting to remember me. I paused but it was no good. I couldn't think of any possible way of telling him anything like the truth.
"It doesn't matter. It's not a big deal, Arnold. It's only a cat. I just want to know where you sent them."
"There's pet shops," he said. "Ads in the paper. That's the best way."
"Oh," I said. Was this it? The blind alley.
"I just sent them round the corner."
I bit my lip and tried to stay calm as if it was all terribly unimportant. "That sounds good," I said. "Did you hear back from her?"
"I just sent her on."
"So she probably got her cat, then."
"I dunno. I didn't hear back."
"So it sounds like the place for me," I said. "Sounds like a good place for cats."
"I dunno about that," he said. "It's just a place round the corner. They sell all different stuff. Christmas trees at Christmas. I bought logs there for my fire. He dropped them round. He had some kittens. I didn't know if they'd gone."
"What's its name, Arnold?"
"Hasn't got a name. It was a greengrocer's and then they put up the rent and then it was different shops, and then it was Vic Murphy."
"Vic Murphy," I said.
"That's right. I sent them to Vic. But the shop still says Greengrocer's on the sign. Well, not Greengrocer's. Buckley's Fruit and Vegetables."
"How do I get there?"
"It's just a couple of minutes' walk."
But it took more than a couple of minutes for Arnold to explain the route to me and then I left him there with his cats and his baffled expression. He must have still been thinking about the photograph and wondering what on earth I was up to. I glanced at my watch. It was just after six thirty. I wouldn't do anything reckless. I would just go and have a look from a safe distance. I looked like a different person. It would be fine. Still, I found it difficult to breathe. My chest felt tight.
To get there, I had to walk up a long, dull street, full of houses that had been boarded up. I knew the street. At first I thought a part of my lost memory was returning, but then I saw the street sign. Tilbury Road. It was from here that my car had been towed away. I walked in a daze of dread and unreality.