Why Nelson was called Nelson when Grandpa Pete was in the air force is just another of those odd things, but it’s certainly true that Nelson was with Grandpa Pete, in all senses, right to the very end. Even beyond. Since, as you know, when poor Pete Hook dropped dead one crisp January morning in the middle of his regular walk, Nelson was not only with him at the time, but stayed with him patiently and dutifully for some time afterwards, till his body was found, perhaps under the impression that your grandfather would soon get up and they’d continue on their way.
It’s a cruel irony, perhaps, that Grandpa Pete should have been struck down by a heart attack in such healthy circumstances and on a such a sparkling morning. On the other hand, if you’re going to drop dead suddenly, there are worse ways of doing it. And a faithful dog remaining at your side, panting steadily into the frosty air, only completes the picture. It’s the same as with that grave, among the other Hooks, in that archetypal churchyard, you could scarcely have ordered it better.
And maybe the irony isn’t cruel at all. Once, when he was only twenty and only recently married, Grandpa Pete had had to jump into the night sky from a burning plane and must have thought he was more than likely going to die. There was no one to tell him he was wrong. No one to tell him that he’d die one day a retired businessman, walking his dog on the South Downs. Not even Grannie Helen could have guessed it.
Both of you always liked Nelson. You used to call him “Nellie,” Kate, but it was very affectionately meant. All the same, I think you were cat children, and you’re cat people.
A dog has all that trainable, loyal, best-friend stuff, which can sometimes even induce a tear. There’s no record, is there, of a cat sitting staunchly by its dead master? Nonetheless, I think there’s something servile, doltish even, about all that doggy doggedness (I’m sorry, Nelson, it’s nothing personal). Sit. Heel. Stay. A cat knows better, a cat retains its animal integrity and comes and goes as it pleases. A cat will curl up in your lap, all kitten-softness, then do something you could never predict. A cat has a life you never see. But Otis shared our life — and rather more.
The secret nub of the matter (I promised I’d be frank): Otis was a party not just to our reaffirmed coupledom, but to our very coupling. We’ve never needed much spurring into action. And since that day when Doctor Chivers made his pronouncement we could abandon all precaution. We were free now any time. Look, no sperm. Sadness comes in sadder forms. Enough of that self-punishment and back-turning.
And Otis, if nothing more, was our witness.
This is how it would work. Stop listening, if you prefer. Otis had his basket and an old cushion, his designated sleeping quarters, down in a corner of the kitchen, but he frequently — usually — ignored them. We put a cat flap in the back door. He’d slip out at night, into his cat life, then, a little before dawn, he’d slip back in. Just occasionally he’d go for his basket, but more often than not he’d make his way straight upstairs to our bedroom (where the door was left always thoughtfully ajar) and, with a little soft leap, a delicious sudden tautening of the bedclothes and a switching-on of his purr, to top volume, declare himself to be with us.
By tradition, we’d groan and sigh, annoyed, half-awake. Must he? So early? Not again…
Of course, it was all an act, we loved it. The simple and undisguisable fact is that he got us going. It was an undeniable erotic addition, to have him sometimes furrily getting in the way, sometimes simply watching, sphinx-like and voyeuristically — neutered as he was. Don’t neutered cats still have their inklings? It was as if his little gravelly purr, chugging into life like a miniature cement mixer, was actually saying: Come on, you two, do your stuff.
A catalyst. The untold story of cat ownership, perhaps. Dogs, they’re about duty and service and the nobler virtues, but cats…No need, perhaps, to go into the nuances of fur, black and glossy in Otis’s case, against naked skin. And take a look at Titian’s Uffizi Venus, that most gloriously flagrant of nudes. Curled up on the bed, on the ruffled sheets, is a little lapdog, but it should have been a cat, it even looks more like a cat, and Titian must have put it there for a reason.
I think your father was a cat person even when he was principally a snail person. Close your ears if you wish, but once upon a time, when I was still working at Christie’s, your dad used to phone me sometimes, from Imperial, just to say that he was thinking about me, he was thinking about me intensely. His mind wasn’t on his snails. He was thinking about me so much, in fact, that would it be all right if he came round straight away, on the Mike-bike? And could Christie’s meanwhile quickly find us some little niche, some cupboard somewhere, a space in one of the store rooms, among the artworks, where we could have immediate and urgent sexual congress?
I shan’t tell you how these conversations continued, I’ve said too much already. But while I’m on this general theme, let me tell you that the early mornings have always been our favourite time for it. I mean, at home, in bed, not in store rooms, in the properly appointed parental or, as it once was, non-parental bedroom. Any time can be good, and once it used to be pretty well any place, including, as you now know, sand dunes. But, certainly since those days of Otis, we’ve always specially favoured — as if his ghost gets active around that time — the first pale hour of dawn when the light creeps in and the birds, even with a cat around, start to sing.
The very hour which is approaching now. But this rain perhaps (as if it knows) will hold it off a little longer, and delay and dampen all those little songs. It will eke out this fragile summer darkness. And I don’t suppose we’ll be making love this morning.
Life at Davenport Road. The two of us and a cat. Was it quite what Mrs. Lambert had intended? “You’re looking well, you two, this morning.” Had we been looking unwell? “You’re looking full of the joys.” Once we’d been students at Sussex University in the heady and joyous 1960s. Now look at us, this steady, settled married couple in their thirties, in their terraced house in Herne Hill. They even have a cat…
But all houses, perhaps, all couples, all families have a life you never see.
Sometimes, during or after our grey-lit lovemaking, we’d hear outside, a little like Otis’s purr, the whirr of a milk float and that oddly satisfying and calming sound, the chink of a milk bottle being placed on the porch. How strange — and mystifying for you — to consider that the peace of those early mornings would one day be shattered (I’m not in the least complaining, I’m not in the least reproaching you) by your squallings and clamourings. You used to make me think, though you were several decibels louder, of those seagulls in Brighton. That was when you let me have a moment to think.
Or we’d hear, around the same time, that brisker, rougher but also pacifying sound, of the morning paper being thrust through the letter box. All’s well with the world really, those two sounds seem to say, no matter what that newspaper actually has to tell you. Just count your blessings, just be thankful.
And all this went on for several years, until one black day Otis disappeared.
17
IT NEVER RAINS but it pours, they say. My father died in February, 1978. I call him your Grandpa Dougie, but he wasn’t your grandfather when he died and I sometimes wonder, if he had been, if he’d ever have formed that ceremonious and masochistic notion of being buried at Invercullen. The dead, I suppose, can’t be masochists. They can make it hard on the living.
I never saw my father in a kilt, the very idea would have made me giggle. But then I saw him that time in his red robes and wig, which was no laughing matter, and it seems that what counted for him at the end was the green, black and blue tartan of the Campbells. Black and blue, certainly. You never knew your Grandpa Dougie, but at least you were spared his funeral. Grandpa Pete’s last year was an easy ride, in some ways, in comparison.