Translucent beads of dew gleam like diamonds on the bush by the river. A web, slung between skeletal twigs, glistens. A struggling fly vibrates the strands of silk so violently that a spray of droplets catches the early morning sun to form the briefest of rainbows. The spider quickly delivers a paralysing bite and, weaving a shroud around its still living prey, leaves it slowly spinning.
A breeze releases another rainbow from the web as the silk billows like a sail.
In the tree above Robbo’s sleeping form, a goldfinch’s song flows like an abundant stream – a clean, honest sound. A cat, a dark brown tabby with irregular black stripes and white chin and throat, uncurls itself from the crook of Robbo’s knees and looks up towards the song. It watches for movement among the leaves and branches.
“Oh no, what time is it? Is that the alarm?” Robbo rubs his eyes. And rubs them again. Is he still asleep? Dreaming? But he is damp and cold. He should be snug and warm if it’s a nice dream. And this is definitely a nice dream. He reaches out a hand to the cat who considers it for a second before choosing to sniff it and then rubs it vigorously with the side of its face.
“Friends?” enquires Robbo. The cat lets him tickle behind its ears by way of an answer.
Robbo kneels at the riverside and scoops water in his hands to drink. Again and again he drinks, each time less than a mouthful but more than a trickle down his throat. The cat joins him and laps at the water he spills.
“What a messy drinker,” Robbo lifts up the cat and wipes away drops of water from its chin. The cat purrs quietly and paws at his arm. He stands up and places it on his shoulder. It turns round, steps onto his other shoulder, turns round again and back onto the first shoulder where it gently claws at his shirt and settles down.
Robbo walks along the riverbank in the sunshine, cat securely perched, and sings out loud: “It’s all too beautifu-huhul, it’s all too beautifu-huhul. I feel inclined to blow my mind, get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun. They all come out to groove about, be nice and have fun in the sun.”*
He looks for gaps in the electric fence. There are none, certainly none large enough to get through. But he knows there will be one if he keeps going.
The boat is still there on the opposite bank. It looks dead. Just along from it, in a patch of grass between the path and the river, lies an empty champagne bottle. Further along, a discarded mask, dulled and soggy with dew. Nothing else seems to remain from the night before although what is in the park beyond the path and line of trees, Robbo can only guess.
He keeps his head down, focuses on the uneven ground in front of him – gnarled, exposed tree roots, tufts of dry grass, crumbly earth and miniature wave-washed beaches in the liminal space between river and shore.
There will be a ditch, a route beneath the fence. He just needs to keep going. Past the stumps where he fished, the bushes where the young man pissed and the half-remembered space where he danced. It is familiar and strange at the same time.
Past the bridge he crossed, metal gated and flower adorned. He keeps his head down, looking at the ground for the way back under the fence.
Robbo examines the ground, its slope, its crumbliness and slippiness, before he carefully steps into the ditch. He turns and crouches. The cat clings to his shoulder. He kneels and gently takes hold of it, carrying it to the ground but keeping it in his grasp.
He shuffles along the ditch, through sticky mud and withered reeds, almost touching the electric fence and reaches out beneath it, places the cat down on the other side. The cat miaows for a second, sniffs around itself. And starts to wash.
Robbo puts both hands on the ground, stretches his legs right back, and wriggles beneath the fence. The mud smells of rotting vegetation and dried fish. He stifles a sneeze.
His head pushes against the washing cat. It miaows, takes one step on and continues washing.
‘Careful, careful, go slow and careful.’
Again, as he wriggles forward, still not quite clear of the fence, Robbo’s head nudges the cat. It continues to wash, licks his hair as well as its own fur but then thinks better of it and walks away, further along the ditch, with its tail in the air.
Robbo is through. He scrambles up the side of the ditch, struggles through a tangle of bushes, brambles tugging at his damp and muddy Tweed trousers, twigs and withered leaves scratching at his arms and face, and emerges into an open field. Somewhere near Marston.
He scans the field. There’s a path off to the opposite side, alongside another dried out drainage ditch – the way he came a few days, maybe it was a week, whenever it was, ago. But there’s also a stile in the corner along the side he is on. He walks towards it, the field to one side, a row of bushes and, somewhere beneath the undergrowth, the ditch on the other.
The cat sits on a fence, next to the stile, has a quick wash and waits for him.
Robbo smiles, “hello again.” And puts the cat back on his shoulder.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. What will you do? I’d like to go there now with you. You can miss out school. Won’t that be cool. Why go to learn the words of fools? What will we do there? We’ll get high. What will we touch there? We’ll touch the sky. But why the tears there? I’ll tell you why-hy-hyhyhy-hy: it’s all too beautifu-huhul, it’s all too beautifu-huhul, it’s all too beautifu-huhul, it’s all too beautifu-huhul.”
—
Maureen sits on a bench, hunched forward, eyes scanning the park in front of her. A rusty memorial plaque hangs down, on its last remaining screw, from the flaking wooden seat back. Maureen tries to fight back a tear and continues to watch, her hands gripping the edge of the seat, refusing to wipe her wet eyes.
In the distance, a man patiently walks after a small dog that has run off chasing seagulls. The gulls circle round overhead and land where the dog started its chase from. The man calls, “Arno, Arno, here boy”, more in hope than expectation.
—
“A boy! Congratulations my friend, you have a healthy male cat!” Ali holds up the cat and grins at Robbo, who continues eating chicken salad.
The cats miaows loudly and wriggles in Ali’s hands, “correction. A healthy but hungry male cat. Good thing I’ve still got some more chicken in the fridge.”
Robbo grunts, mouth full, and gesticulates for more food for him as well as the cat.
“You can have as much salad and bread as you like, my friend, but your cat needs meat and meat he shall have.”
Ali takes the last slice of chicken out of the plastic tray, folds it once and puts it on a saucer on the floor, next to his sink. The cat gobbles it down in a few seconds, sniffs around the saucer, licks it and, turning to look up at Ali, miaows for more.
“You have him?” suggests Robbo.
“Oh no, no, no. Goodness me, no. You keep him old friend. He’ll do you good. Companionship. Responsibility. These are things a man needs in his life. I have my shop to keep me busy, my customers, some of them, and my friends at the mosque to keep me sane. But you, my friend, need more of these things.”
“Okay,” shrugs Robbo, “and Hank is okay too? Sure?”
“He will be as okay as he was before. I asked your friend Tudor and he assured me as such. For once I believe him. Hank will be okay, I’m as sure of that as I am of standing here before you and that your cat would like me to fill his saucer with milk.”
Robbo sits back on Ali’s settee. He feels in the pocket of the Tweed trousers. Empty.
“No phone, no money, no keys,” he complains, “hate these trousers. Fucking weird posh boys!”
“Well, to be honest my friend, posh boys do worse things than give away their trousers. And I can give you a loan…”
“Sell you the trousers…”
“And you go home in your pants?”
“Sell trousers to pay Rumbelowe. Lend me some trackies?”
“I’m sorry, Robbo. Those won’t fit me. You’re a skinny guy. I am not.”
“They’re loose,” Robbo pulls at the waistband, “see, the belt’s keeping them up.”
“Not loose enough, my friend, not loose enough,” laughs Ali, patting his belly.
Ali goes through to his bedroom, pulls out a metal box from beneath his bed and unlocks it. He takes out a stash of twenty pound notes and locks the box again.
“Two hundred enough?” he asks, walking back through to the living room.
“Yeah, just til jobs rearranged. Should’ve been working. Not on a boat.”
“Alright, here you go,” Ali licks his finger and counts out ten notes, “you sure that’s enough? Cat food’s not as cheap as it used to be.”
“Yeah, thanks. Just need to get a phone. And a key.”
“Okay then,” Ali sighs and shakes his head at Robbo, “here’s another forty. You need to feed yourself as well, my friend.”
—
Two figures approach from the main road. Maureen can tell, from his shuffling gait, that one of them is Hank. His head is bowed. The other man, in a plain blue shirt and pale chinos, keeps talking to him. Hank seems to be ignoring him, trying to get away from him.
Maureen stands up, waves, calls, “Hank! Hank!”
Hank continues to shuffle up the sloping park, his feet kicking up a layer of dust from the dry, brown grass. The other man strides ahead of him, “are you Maureen?”
“Yes, and yourself?”
“Acquaintance of Tudor’s. He asked me to bring Hank here.”
“And how is himself?”
“Tudor?”
“No, you fool, Hank!”
“See for yourself, lady. He’s all yours now.”
The man walks away in the opposite direction. Maureen steps, nervous but determined, down the slope to meet Hank. She puts one arm around his waist, and reaches her other arm across herself to hold his hand and lead him back to the bench. She tries to break into a skip but Hank, his feet dragging through the dirt, can’t keep up and stumbles.
“Caught you,” her voice both exultant and strained as she stops him from falling, “where’ve you been, you dafty?”
Hank looks at her and then looks at the ground. He doesn’t speak but lets her guide him onwards.
—
Robbo walks up Cowley Road, cat on shoulder, cash in pocket.
A man drags a reluctant Staffordshire Bull Terrier past them. The cat snarls at the dog, digging her claws into Robbo’s shoulder, “ow! Watch it boy.”
Robbo is hungry. Salad is all very well, and Ali might be right about eating healthily, but hungry is hungry. He goes into a dimly lit shop, ‘When-in-Cowley Convenience’, grabs a packet of biscuits and a bar of chocolate off a shelf and a can of Irn Bru from the fridge, and heads to the counter, twenty pound note in hand.
“Nice cat, bet he brings you good luck,” smiles the woman behind the till, “scratchcard?”
“Oh, er,” Robbo feels the note flapping in his hand, “um, er, yeah. Please.”
“Which?”
“Er, number three.”
“How many?”
“Er, three.”
“Right, so three threes?”
“Yeah.”
She scans the cards and hands them to Robbo, “okay so that’s twenty pounds ninety-eight in total, thank you.”
“Oh, er, okay,” he gives her the note in his hand and pulls another from the bundle in his pocket.
“Ooh,” the woman coos, “someone’s in the money!”
“Yeah, yeah, just got paid.”
“Sure you don’t want more than three. Or a bigger card? The higher the number, the higher the prize.”
“Yeah but cost more,” Robbo explains as he hands over the second note and starts to scratch at a card with his thumbnail, “gotta keep money better.”
“Okay, fair enough. Here’s your change,” she counts out three five pound notes, four pound coins and a twopence piece, “what you got?”
“Nah,” shrugs Robbo, “none of ‘em.”
“Never mind, maybe not a lucky cat after all.”
Robbo leaves the used scratchcards on the counter and walks out of the shop, unwrapping his chocolate bar. The cat starts purring as soon as he steps back into the sunlight.