And I did pull the covers up and wrap the pillow around my head and fall asleep again, with a ghost-cat on my bed, and my own cat fussing over her to make a complete fool of himself. I think I was more disgusted with him than I was scared of her. Mister Cat in love is not a pretty sight.
She was gone when I woke, and Mister Cat was snuggled under my arm, just as though he hadn’t spent the night doing God knows what with God knows what. When he saw I was awake, he started running through his usual cool-cat-in-the-morning routine: the long stretch, the tongue-curling yawn, the serious scratch, the careful touch-up wash, and then, finally, it’s the big bright eyes and what’s for breakfast? I just looked at him, the way he looks at me sometimes. I said, “It’s no good, give it up. I know everything.”
But I didn’t, and he knew I didn’t. He came over and bumped his head against my hand, once only, and I said, “All right, but don’t think I’m forgetting,” and we went to see about breakfast.
Ten
I haven’t worked on this for a few days now. Tony’s dance company made it as far west as Salisbury for once, so we all spent the weekend there and caught every performance, even though he only danced in a couple of numbers. And then he came home with us and stayed until Sally and Evan took him back to London, leaving Julian and me in charge of each other. Julian wants to see what I’ve written in the worst way, and I keep moving it around, hiding it from him, stashing it at Meena’s sometimes. Even Meena’s just seen a few pages, because it’s not ready. I’m stuck between who I think I was and who I think I am, between what happened to me and what I think really happened. All I wanted was to get it all down and done with, and now I don’t know. Maybe I’m the one who’s not ready.
Trying to write about seeing the ghost of a Persian cat doesn’t exactly clear the mind, either. As I’ve already said, if ghosts were possible, maybe it was all possible, everything—boggarts, Hedley Kows, UFOs, alligators in the sewers. Mrs. Chari, Meena’s mother, was in an earthquake once, and she said it felt as though the ground under her feet had all turned into water. That was how I felt after Mister Cat brought his new girlfriend around. I didn’t tell Meena after all, or Sally, or anybody. Not because I thought about whether they’d believe me or not. I just did not want to deal with it. I didn’t want to tell myself, even.
But I did come within that much of telling Tony. A few days after all this happened, he found me in a back pasture getting a cricket lesson from Julian. I can hit—I don’t see how you could not hit, with a flat bat—but I can’t pitch worth a damn. Bowl, I mean. Julian was showing me how to turn my wrist so the ball bounces away from the batter, when I looked around and saw Tony watching us. That made me nervous, but he wasn’t interested in making fun of me. He waited until Julian asked him if he wanted to play, and then he said, “Not right now, but I’d like to borrow Jenny for a bit. I’m trying to work something out, and I need a partner. Just for a few minutes, I promise.”
“I can’t dance,” I said. My heart started pounding, and I was running with sweat, that fast—not because of Tony, but because of the whole idea of dancing. “Take Julian, take Wilf—take Albert. You don’t want me, believe me.”
Both of them ignored me. Julian said, “You can have her, but only if I get to watch. I want to see Jenny dance.”
“Not a chance,” I said, just as Tony said, “Done, it’s a deal. But you have to be quiet.”
They were still arguing about whether it would be all right for Julian to giggle if he didn’t actually say anything, while I was being hustled off to Tony’s studio. I didn’t put up much of a fight, mainly because I was curious about what Tony actually did when he was pacing around in front of all his mirrors, mumbling to himself and slamming doors. And there was one stupid little part of me that kept wondering if maybe I could dance—if maybe panicking twice on the gym floor at Gaynor and running to the girls’ john both times to have dry heaves and cry in Marta’s lap didn’t mean I couldn’t learn a few moves. Maybe I wasn’t born to boogie, but to float; maybe the moment Tony took my hand I’d know. I wondered if he’d try to lift me, and that was scarier than ghosts or the third floor.
It didn’t work that way, of course. He just needed a body, something to take up space in his imagination while he paced and mumbled. All I did was stand in one place, and Tony moved me or moved around me, depending. Julian would have done just as well, only Julian got bored early on and went to practice his googlies. Tony didn’t notice. Every once in a while he’d spin away from me, or he’d suddenly leap straight up and turn in the air, and come shivering down like a butterfly, and you could see the whole shiny floor turning into some kind of flower for him to land on. Then he’d be Tony again, shaking his head, really mad at himself for some reason I couldn’t imagine. It took a lot longer than a few minutes, and he hardly said one word to me, but I didn’t mind. I liked him like this.
Once, when he was either taking a break or trying to work something out—anyway, he was just sitting and staring—I asked him, more or less the way Sally had asked me, “Is it better for you here?” He blinked at me. “Better than London, I mean. Would you still rather be living in London?”
Tony can look at you sometimes as though he hadn’t quite realized just how stupid you were until right now. “For God’s sake, I could be studying in London. Studying with real dancers, watching real groups every night. Meeting people—learning all the things I’m never going to learn here.” He stalked away from me across the room, and then he turned around and came back to stand really close. “Of course, I’d never have a room like this in London, so whatever I learned wouldn’t do me a bloody bit of good, because I couldn’t take it home and practice. So it’s six of one, half a dozen of another, I suppose. Why do you want to know?”
“No special reason.” I took a deep breath. “About the Manor—I was wondering, just out of curiosity—” God, I’d make a terrible spy. “Do you ever hear any noises at night? I mean, you know—noises?”
Tony practically smiled, which he was not doing a lot of in those days. “The Manor’s a very old house. They make noises.”
“I don’t mean those,” I said. “I mean… I mean feet, damn it! Giggles.”
I was expecting him to laugh at me, but all he did was sit down on the floor and start doing stretching exercises. He said, “When I knew we were positively coming here, no way out of it, I went to the library and got out a lot of books on Dorset. History, agriculture, folklore, the lot. Do you know that there are two whole books on Dorset ghosts alone? The county’s up to its neck in hauntings, revenants—everybody who’s anybody has a Phantom Monk, or a screaming skull, or a White Lady. Noises? I think if this house doesn’t have a ghost, Dad ought to sue the Lovells for breach of contract. Or something like that.”
It was the most he’d ever said to me since we’d been at Stourhead, except for when he was throwing Mister Cat out of the studio. He realized it at the same time I did, and went back to stretching. I was getting up to leave quietly when he added, “A lot of them date from 1685, the Dorset ghosts. Because of the Bloody Assizes, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” I said. “What’s an Assizes, and why were these so bloody?”
Tony sighed. “They really don’t teach you anything in those American schools, do they? I thought it was just British chauvinism. You wouldn’t know about Monmouth’s Rebellion, then?” I just shook my head. “Okay. Charles Stuart—that’s King Charles II—had an illegitimate son named James. No big deal, as you’d say—quite common with kings, especially Charles. He acknowledges him, brings him to court, makes him the Duke of Monmouth, all very civil. Not that he’s got a chance of succeeding to the throne—that’s for Charles’s brother, the Duke of York, also named James. You are following this so far?”