FVK. King of Cats: Selected Excerpts

The madness came with the freezing of the loch. In the springtime, the swelling water rips the mountains’ mossy skin straight open and mars the greenness with scars of flowing white. The seething falls race into the darkness only to be violated by salt. I can hear it, can see the tide dragging it out to sea, that fresh, cursed, flowing snow, purifying it somewhere between here and Ireland. Relieved of the winter ice, the hills may court back again the older, warmer times, but I know never will again. Those times were just months ago, so I understand that they can’t be all lost, but if someone woke me right now and told me it was all a frantic nightmare—or that I had been in some freakish loop of time and ten years had passed instead of just the one—I would believe it. Somewhere along the way I have lost Jamie, so now I am alone. I am sitting on the skiff on the loch with my eyes closed and hearing the call of seabirds above and the rush of water below, feeling the coldness of the fading light. It’s not sunny here—it so rarely is—but I can still tell when the sun’s gone down even through the clouds. There’s a tangible coolness that rolls over the hills. The nighttime air always feels thicker in Scotland, imbued with more weighty substance, as if we were inhaling some thin water undulating invisibly in a primal synergy with the somber depths below. No, snarls Jamie with his now characteristic sharpness, his eyes hollow and glinting. That’s not how I would describe it. The problem is that Jamie never described anything, so I never did know how I was supposed to. But it used to be good, you see. It was so good. The flat, the letter, the wedding. How pleased I was to be invited. How the cool light made Jamie’s hair gleam penny-red, his smile anxiously bright as he smoothed his silk lapels, far overdressed for that hay-bale ceremony. Before the cat, the hunt, the quest. But that’s all gone now, and it’s getting harder and harder each day to remember the feelings of joy and freedom and goodness that enveloped us as we lay together, Jamie and I, on the speeding sleeper train from Euston, the sheets—cheap despite first class—prickling our entwined. What did Jamie look like again in January? What did he really look like, the living motion of his smile, that precise point where a speck of brown intruded on the green? Forgetting takes place on an almost daily basis. That’s my theory. I remember when Chrissy arrived for the holiday in a knee-length and a pair of Jamie’s old red wellies, how he walked about the house and he and Jamie were still light-hearted then, laughing about the old times at school, how Chrissy would come and sit here when they were small sometimes, bare thighs pressing into the fallen pine needles as they shucked corn outside, legs scratched from careening games of tag through brush and bracken, ankles always whipped by nettles with long puffy lines their vestiges of play. And Jamie and Chrissy and the others all down by the well washing the blood off their hands from a shot bird, laughing, hands slippery with snowy soap, jostling their elbows into each other’s thin ribs when off from Chrissy’s hand came his father’s golden signet ring. What happened after that? I ask Chrissy. Did you get it back? I don’t know, says Chrissy, his wispy eyebrows furling in puzzlement. I don’t remember. I don’t remember either. You see, the boys all think Jamie’s gone crazy. Crazy in that deep, dark sense, like the frenzy that seizes the mackerel up from their weedy lairs in the late summer and makes them careen out of the water in a desperate mass. Crazy the kind you don’t get over. Write it down, write it down, says Jamie, obsessive chronicler that he is. Can I read it? It was like this, says Chrissy. Yes, says Charlie. No, says he and he and he and yes that bit’s right, right there. That’s exactly right. It was just like that. Chrissy’s left for home now with Charles on his arm, their blue eyes grey in the dying light. We’ll eat apples off the churchyard tree when you come home tomorrow. Come let’s buy a house far away from Becky’s grave like you promised me yesterday.

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It was an unusually cold day when we saw it for the first time. I remember exactly what it looked like, don’t you Ells? O yes, of course. I was in that wee little —and you in your yellow — Yes, and we were driving back from Mallaig— O, I remember—but we weren’t driving, Scott was. Shush, Meggie, I told her that already. No you didn’t. Ye said we were a-drivin’ home— It doesn’t matter what I said. That’s not the point. The point is that we saw it while we were driving home from the party in Mallaig. We were just rounding a blind bend on the road when we saw a huge animal freeze in the headlights of the car. It was much bigger than the biggest dog I ever seen, and my cousin has one of them big German shepherd dogs, so I know what a big dog looks like. But it was definitely a cat, with a long tail like a panther and green eyes like plates— —like golf balls, more like— Like golf balls, yeah—could I have another one of these? Thank ye— It was frightening— It was beautiful though as well— Looked strong. For a second we thought it was going to jump towards us, but Scott banged on the horn and off it shot like an arrow from the bow— ‘Twas a lovely thing. O God we were frightened weren’t we! But o, I do wish I could have gotten a photo.

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Here are some things that Charlie, Chrissy, and I have uncovered about Rebecca Young over the past six months. She loved the theater, sometimes going as far as Edinburgh to see performances. She once played Hamlet in a school production. Jesus. That’s a little dark for a bunch of ten-year-olds, isn’t it? I thought you said they lived in a tiny village. What does that mean? Chrissy said indignantly. Tiny villages can produce Shakespeare! It’s not just a city thing. No offense Chrissy but the rest of the country’s tiny villages aren’t like fucking Beaconsfield. Oh, come on. Anyways, it was her idea to do the play, not the rest of Corrin. That’s what it says on the bill if you’d just shut up and read it. Imagine if she had played Ophelia, comments Charlie with a wry grin as he eats chocolate chips out of the bag at Chrissy’s flat near the flower market. It’s just the three of us. Jamie’s in Scotland again. It’s his fifth time in two months. That’s horrible! I throw my pen at Charlie. D’you think we’re going a bit far with all this? Chrissy peers at his glowing laptop. We’re sitting on his sofa, a horrible mustard-colored leather thing that he inherited from a tasteless but well-meaning grandmother, and we’re reading the playbill for Rebecca’s year five play which we’ve requested from her school under the guise of me writing an article about the perils of unfenced dams. There is absolutely no logical link between our request for this particular playbill and the subject of the supposed article other than the fact that they both involved Rebecca, but the kindly man who replied to our email didn’t seem to care about that, or about my fabricated credentials as an Oxford journalist. To be fair, you did write for the Isis. Chrissy chews a nail. So it’s not really lying. One article about eggs benny in a student publication does not a journalist make. Right. Well. I tried. We could get in trouble. Not if we don’t get caught. This editor won’t give two shits. Nah. Look, we’ve got to figure it out. For Jamie’s sake. Yeah. Man, he must have been obsessed with this girl. No wonder he never dated anyone at Swithins. For our first few terms I thought he was gay actually. ‘Course you did Charlie. Shut up. Laughter. Rebecca Young was blind in one eye. Aye, the wee lassie was aye misjudgin’ perception, Jennifer told me in the kitchen as I helped her paint milk on the tops of scones all lined up on a tray. She could see ay that one eye perfectly well mind you, she added, just ta judge how fain she were from things, she was nae good at that. Well she was blind in both eyes when she decided to wear that sweater, Charlie says drily when I relayed the news, referring to a photo we had unearthed of Jamie and Rebecca together in which Rebecca’s chest displayed a remarkable velour mash of orange and purple checkers with sleeve cuffs of pilling red corduroy. Jamie had his arm around her, though he had to stretch to reach it all the way to her shoulders, and was in a small tartan and a white collared with a long dark smudge on it. He was smiling broadly but with his lips pressed tight in a way that suggested he might have been self-conscious about seeming too happy. No, I bet he had a bunch of missing teeth then and didn’t want to show them on the camera. We all know Jamie’s been vain since birth. I reckon it’s not his teeth he’s embarrassed about there. Chrissy chews on a nail. Not missing teeth, anyhow. Jamie had super crooked front ones, right? I remember him getting braces quite soon after we met. Shit you’re right. I’d forgotten about that—they’re so straight now. Yeah. He was funny-looking, with those teeth and his hair and his cheeks were so full back then. We gave him a lot of shit for it. No that was just you. You were a right bully. No it was you too! Was not. I’ve been nothing but good to Jamie. You’re so full of it— Rebecca Young was beautiful. In that one photo, the clashing colors of her outfit and her dark puerile bob would have made most other children look, well, childish, but there was something very adult about the seriousness of her gaze. The structure of her face, fine-boned with a sharp jaw and a very dimpled chin, and the proliferation of freckles that darkened her nose made her look more like some sort of high- model ethereally elevated above the rest of the world’s plainness than an eleven-year-old with a bad eye and a penchant for Irn-Bru and Tunnock’s Wafers. Rebecca Young loved adventure. This was a common thread amongst all the subtle interrogation that we performed, asking people in Corrin over whiskies and pints, never bringing up her death obviously but instead weaving it in, bit by bit, until we excavated more and more about her. Aye, she was a crazy one. Runnin’ about in the mud all ta time. The wee lassie in a family ay four soans, ay course she took on tha nature ay them. Nae proper at all, she were. She took the fenceposts right off my yard and used them to build a little hoose in her own damn yard! But a sweet bonnie child, we could ne’er stay cross at her with those bonnie dark eyes and hair. From our first meeting to Jamie’s first disappearance, I heard little of Rebecca from other than the invocation of her ghost in certain places. Aye, that’s where our old fort used to be. ‘Our’, when Teddy spoke, almost inevitably meant him, Jamie, and Rebecca. Sometimes Teddy would verify facts about her, but other times he would change the subject, leaving us unsure whether that particular piece of information was a genuine recollection or the misremembered projection of an elderly addled mind. About Rebecca from Jamie alone I got absolutely nothing. Look darling, please. I’ve spent too long getting over it. I don’t like to talk about it. It’s painful. That’s why I never do. The saddest accident. Of course not. I’m sorry. I won’t ask again, I promise. And I would take him into my arms and hold him tightly and be quietly mad that I was pushing the issue when it clearly made him upset, though he didn’t seem outwardly as moved as Teddy on that night after the wedding on the stone wall. I think that the three of us, Chrissy, Charlie, and me, were all equally uncomfortable about the revelation of Rebecca. We all made our discomfort known subtly. I think I was always being overly polite about her, calling out the boys, being the one that was always doing the sympathetic chit-chat. Charlie fell back on dark humor, and Chrissy always laughed at the jokes even though he agreed with my take on things in the end, I think. Yes, in the end the feeling of slow horror came down to our shared belief that we knew Jamie like no one else. Between the three of us we’d done everything we’d thought could be done with another person. We’d done his homework, wiped blood off his knees, bought him Christmas and birthday and end-of-term-presents, slept in his bed, held his hand, washed his clothes, comforted him through loss of love and approach of failure and even death itself. We’d gotten drunk with him for a combined total of nineteen years, done everything not involving needles, gone to church with him. We’d gone skiing and hiking and sailing, played rugby and handball, had our portraits done in the Cotswolds and gone to hundreds of dinner parties. We’d cleaned up his vomit, gotten arrested with him, prayed with him and played games of chance and partaken in countless rounds of parlor tricks. We’d dined with his family. We’d vacationed with his family. We’d spent his money, had him spend ours, defended him, embarrassed him, kissed him, punched him, made love to him. We’d even fucking flossed his teeth. We kept nothing from each other. I had honestly told the boys all the most important stories of my life: the divorce, the fateful near expulsion at the end of my undergraduate career, my subsequent arrival in England, my aspirations as first a writer and then a poet, my apparent need for validation, all of it, all the way down to the dirtiest, darkest secrets that I still hesitate to write on this page. We confessed these things easily because we loved him, trusted him like no one else, each of us in our own way, me and Charlie and Chrissy. How could we not have known about her? If he hadn’t told us about Rebecca, or Teddy even, what else was he keeping from us? We were friends absolutely. In the Manifesto, in the Philosophy, capital M, capital P, everything was up in the air but the fact that our friendship was—had been—is—deliberately and genuinely constructed to hold as many bounds as the inches between us and the bullshit heavens I spent two degrees scoffing.

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Back in the church the air had grown humid and hot, painting swaths of darkness under the arms of the partygoers. Teddy had melted right into the dance, grinning away, teeth gleaming, gliding on the floor as if possessed by some Terpsichorean power. I am relieved when the bagpipe man finally packs up his bagpipe and the violin is put away and the drums go back into this -looking box and then everything is quite silent and Jamie comes over and puts his arm around me and says we are going home to Teddy’s house with a few people. We’re staying at Teddy’s house? Yeah. But just for tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to call the Stewarts and ask them if we can stay at our house—I mean, our old house, my old house, their house now—she’s away for the winter, they only summer here. It’s too fucking cold the rest of the year, they’ve swatted off to London or Dorset or something like everyone with sense. Once it’s past Christmas it’s just desperately dreary. Why do we have to go to Teddy’s. I sound a little petulant and I know it but I don’t really care. Because it’s late now and you’re drunk and Teddy and I want to drink more we’ve barely gotten to catch up at all. Yes you did. You did on the boat. Come on darling. Jamie rustles my hair. It’ll be quick don’t worry you can go to sleep if you want. And so we all close up the church and put a big old lock on the door and Jenny MacDonald and Teddy and Jamie and I and a few other of the boys who we are supposedly walking home—Go on then don’t let your da know you’ve had so much. Jaisus Anthony that’s our fucking door ye just walked on past yer absolutely pissed. Come on.—well we walk down the dark little road with its lamp-posts and the sound of the distant sea and the trees all gnarled. Were you smoking tonight? Jamie pulls his lapel closer to his freckled nose and frowns. Maybe. Izzy! Just the one. The night is frosty, and although the walk isn’t long I’m thrilled when we get back to the MacDonald farm and subsequent house, a white block with what seems like foot-thick walls and very small windows. You can observe the thickness of the walls from the smallness of the windows, as I later notice while sweeping a spider from the window-corner right next to my pillow in the little room we are in. It has bunk beds, hand-made from thick slabs of dark wood that give off a faint piney scent. The duvets are red printed with little blue ships and white airplanes and are so comically thick that it looks like Jenny’s just sewed sets of pillows together—later that night, when Jamie and I are pressed against one another in our shivering, I realize why. I suppress laughter as I out of my —it pools on the floor around my ankles—and and a sweatshirt, and as Jamie does the same. He rushes out and I pick up his shirt and put it on of the three spindly hangers in the claw-footed that presses itself against the wall. Then I go to the bathroom—the tiles are absolutely freezing against my bare feet. I regret taking off my —and splash a few palmfuls of icy water on my face, rubbing at my eyeliner until it’s off enough, and, noticing that there are no clean hand-towels, dry my face with my sweater sleeve, and sort out my dress in the bathtub. After all this is done I pad downstairs into the tiny sitting room while Jenny goes to put on some tea in their cramped kitchen—smelling faintly of bread—with its linoleum floor and counter covered in plastic made to look like veneered wood. The boys got right to the fire, loading it up with little balls taken from an egg carton—Teddy says they are firestarters. Dryer lint and candle wax. Oh do you have a dryer now? Jamie asked Teddy as he stabbed one with a sharp kindling twig. Nae mate, we just borrow the lint from the neighbors, laughs Teddy good-naturedly—and soon everything was roaring and crackling and it was vaguely cozy I’ll give it that. It wasn’t a quaint cottage, I mean, from what I had seen so far. It was just a boring, traditional small-village house, very normal, architecture old but unremarkable, as my dad would say. Cluttered. Old lamps, musty sofas with pre-war paisleys, various papers stacked everywhere, a shelf with a few P. G. Wodehouse books and a fat A. A. Milne collection that looked about a hundred years old and mismatched tea-mugs propped around, some of them holding desiccated bits of Queen Anne’s lace that looked like they might have been vestiges of summer. Low ceilings, carpeted in cream with several smaller carpets layered over, and chairs each strangely carved with different shapes on the crown of the seat. You like those chairs there? Ages in the family, they’ve bin. Jenny caught me looking and passed me a cup of tea. I took a sip and put the mug on the carpet. Mm. They’re super nice. Each one ay those circles is the sign ay a different saint. Really? Aye. Ye ken Saint Catherine’s wheel there? Bit odd that Grandda’s da put the saints right there ay all the places. Teddy and Jamie are lounging on the sofa together, Jamie’s stripey socks next to Teddy’s head and Teddy sprawled low with both his short legs out, one knee slightly bent. See there look ye can put your ass right on Saint Catherine’s face. Edward! Sorry mum. Teddy and Jamie and Jenny all begin talking, and the lilts of the MacDonalds combined with the sound of the wood snapping and crackling is utterly soporific even if I hadn’t already been exhausted. I close my eyes and lean back against the sofa—Jamie reaches down and puts his hand on my shoulder, gently drumming his fingers, and I start to drift off to the conversations about the health and wealth of the farm. Aye, this summer’s been a long one, uncommonly hot as well. The trees bore much fruit in the autumn. All the children came and collected the windfall. Tarts for miles. Oh, I’ve just been around, working on a few new projects in London. Yes, Anne’s very well, a bit lonely—Yes, he passed away three years ago. It’s alright. Yes, he’d been sick for a while. We weren’t sure what. Losing the house was difficult for him, I think. And how are the Stewarts? Aye, old Catherine’s a tough one. She hasn’t done much with the place, looks largely the same. Nae, university’s never been ta thing for me. Gonna take over the farm ah course. When mum gets tired of doing it—I never will—Dunno, we’ll start sellin’ new things soon I think. And I’m working on a new guest house, gonna rent it out. Pears and apples and cheese and hay. The thud of footsteps descending from upstairs jolted me out of my stupor. A corpulent elderly man shuddered into the room, his calves bulbous as they strained out of a pair of too-short pajama pants. He wore a heavy maroon cable-knit whose neckline was tickled with each of his words by a long and stringy white beard, and wisps of hair were neatly combed back from his polished scalp which shone cheerily from the lamps in the room. To my surprise, right behind him like a slimmer shadow crept the salt-and-pepper dancer, Teddy’s partner at the ceileidh, all in gray, his twinkling in the low light. ‘Tis a full house! boomed the old man, throwing his hands wide. Jenny stood up, brushes some biscuit crumbs off of her lap. Good evenin’ Angus. I thought you were wanting to sleep? Aye, I am, but I’m wanting something ta drink more! His laughter filled the entire room, making Teddy’s look like a mere whisper of wind. We’re but drinkin’ tea though now, Jenny said with an uncharacteristic primness. Nae we ain’t! Teddy slunk all the way off the sofa, landing onto the floor, and then rolled back, arched, and popped up, shaking himself dramatically and gesturing to his now-empty spot. Come Uncle Angus have yerself a seat. We’re lookin’ for a reason to bring out the good stuff! Ye don’t need any more drink. Jenny looks like she still might be irritated on the behalf of Saint Catherine. I’m always needing more, said Teddy, and he disappeared into the kitchen. The clink. And who’re you? said Angus to Jamie, peering closer. Jamie stands up. James Eve. I notice he leaves out his full name. You’re English? Sadly enough. Angus waves his hand in dismissal. Why ye here then? I’m an old friend of the MacDonald’s. Jamie drums his fingers faster. His politeness belies an increasing tension that I recognize from dinners with conservative friends of Anne’s. Not as old a friend as I am. He turns on me. And you lassie? I’m Isabella. You isney Scottish either. He gives a derisive scoff. Where’re ye fain then? New York. Angus doesn’t seem to think this deserves more of a response than a grunt. The hospitable Jenny looks around at us anxiously. The salt and pepper man—Cal, was that what Teddy had called him earlier?—places a hand on Angus’s shoulder. Come Da. We welcome everyone here. His voice is very soft as he leads Angus to the sofa. Its springs sing as he sits, and Cal drops to the carpet cross-legged. Teddy comes back holding a stack of glasses and a bottle, sits next to Cal, and starts to slosh out the whisky with liberal abandon. None for me please, says Jenny with a disapproving glance. I’m alright too, I add on, feeling freed from my drinking obligations by Jenny’s refusal. More for us, Teddy says, and knocks back his first shot. Jamie sips thoughtfully. We all sit in silence for a moment, each feeling rather dominated by the presence of Angus. I can feel the fatness of his body pressing into me as he spills towards my half of the sofa. I’m just about to speak when Angus begins to talk again, as if he had predicted my voice and deliberately planned to shut me out, his voice loud and oppressive, and as he drinks he becomes ruder and ruder, insulting America—a bunch of fat old Yanks—and England and Jamie—We dinnae have no time for you lot these days, ye tourist, he practically spits—and Cal begins to gently speak—Here now, here now—his tone calm and quiet, guiding Angus’s small tirades on farm and garden into more manageable depths. Cal is a veterinarian, according to Charlie who grew to know Cal very well of course. He also wasn’t really Teddy’s cousin, just as Angus wasn’t really Teddy’s uncle. They were just family friends, Jenny told me later in the kitchen as we rinsed the rims of whiskey from the crystal, I think as a way of excusing Angus’s terrible behavior that night, though this troubled me slightly as it was confessed during that early part of the year where I still maintained my convictions on the nature and purpose of friendship. He worked mostly for farms. For a living he birthed foals and lambs and calves, rubbing the heaving flanks, whispering in the sweating ears of laboring animals. He killed them too, when their time came, if they were sick beyond help, felt the straining muscles for the place where the needles would slip in most easily, sang to them as their hearts pumped the chemicals around, maybe even shed a tear or two as their white eyes grew dull. It was in his nature to soothe. He gave off an almost maternal aura that was so natural and genuine that it never struck me as odd coming from a man. He was measured and smooth in his walk and speech, strained to lessen strife—diffuse difficulties—wherever he happened to be. I ask Charlie to provide a summary of his character, a little epithet, so to speak. He says to give him some time. I do. The next night, while I’m at home alone writing in my diary, he calls and gives me this: Callum Black, a man born good. It is odd to recall that this was the first time I really spoke to Cal. It is odd to think that he is the son of Angus, a man whose violence grows like a vine around the walls of his anger. It is odd to think of all the events that came to pass had their twisted roots in this warm living room with its air of drunken domesticity, the fire beautiful and comforting, the shadows long but unthreatening, Jamie’s hand on my softness of neck and the plush of the throw blanket next to me. Jenny and I make a lucky break to wash a few cups, and when we return, Angus’s cheeks are russet, his lips shiny from spittle. He is ranting about Scottish independence. Teddy and Jamie, despite initially engaging in the debate, are cowed and muted, slightly intimidated but largely bored—Angus has failed to realize, in his eagerness to argue, that everyone in the room agrees with him. An engraved cuckoo clock— apparently another carved creation of a distant MacDonald relative; quite a crafty family—reveals that it’s nearly three in the morning. Teddy closes his eyes. Cal is measured and meditative when not slipping in his mediation with slightly less than his normal spirit; his hands have reached back to support his weight with his smaller fingers just a delicate inch or so away from Teddy’s sprawled hands. Jamie gives an occasional affirmative hum or comment, but is shifting in his seat in a way that I know means he’s hankering to leave but is waiting—ever the polite young gentleman—for a social cue to allow him to make his escape. If it weren’t for Jamie I would have been long gone by now. I tire of the evening. Anyway it should be our time now. Angus drains his glass zealously, droplets of liquor falling from the side of his mouth to catch in his beard like water into moss. He smacks his lips in pleasure, and pauses, waiting for us to make a comment. No one does, so he fills the silence. Silence is Angus’s hunting grond. This is excellent stuff. Wedding present. Teddy speaks with his eyes still closed. Why didn’t ye bring it to the wedding then? Teddy’s forehead twitches. We forgot it. And ye were very late comin’ home. Not wantin’ to share then were you? Well you were early leavin’. I don’t walk home in the dark night aloan these days. Scared of the dark, what? Nae you loon laddie, but there’s nae a man alive who’s not a fool who would happily skip home knowing some beast is usin’ that same darkness as a fuckin’ shield. Teddy is lain out on the floor. Jamie looks like he might have fallen asleep on the sofa. But at this comment, both stir. What are you talking about? Haven’t you heard? Heard what? Jamie props himself up on the sofa arm. Angus fills his glass again. Heard about the rumors. What rumors? In the next glen—Angus pauses to take another sip—there’s been a sighting. A sighting of what? Of it. Angus turns his blindingly blue eyes—the one thing he and Cal have in common—on Jamie. Of what? See, if ye were Scottish you’d know what I’m talking about. I’m born and bred Scottish and I dinnae what ye’re talking about, says Teddy, failing to conceal his frustration. The beast! Didn’t you hear what I just said. What beast! We don’t have any beasts around here. Just cows and sheep and chickens—Teddy’s voice is slightly slurred as he thinks—and more damn sheep. A big, black beast of a thing. Angus’s eyes gleam as he leans forward only slightly, hampered by his protruding stomach. Just the other day I seen it myself climbin’ those logs that Rob MacGowan keeps out back by his farm near Skiary. It isn’t a horse, because horses can’t climb logs, and it can’t be a cow, because they can’t either, and that’s all we got around here, ye said it right yerself. A wolf, maybe. A huge, Devil’s wolf. Or the mother of all cats, come too from the Devil himself. Jamie and Teddy jerk simultaneously with a sort of visceral twitch, like some unthinking child had just yanked a string without knowing it was tied to a mortal rib. What cat? Wha about cats? Teddy and Jamie speak at once. Angus notices the change in their demeanor, and, delighted at the reaction he’s gotten, he pauses, the hairs on his eyebrows rippling with the movement of his forehead. Aye. It was a cat. Quick as the wind, with a sort of—Angus draws the words out dramatically— slowness to it, tail flickin’, long as a snake. Eyes shinin’ in the night, sleek and—he falters—ye know. Cattish. Ach, stop with these stories Angus. Jenny casts a disapproving glance in his direction. Go on! Teddy’s on his knees now. Angus’s mouth flutters, as if it were some sort of physical manifestation of the cogs of his mind turning, but even he can’t imagine details forever especially when pressed by Teddy—and its tail? and the color ay its ? was it big? how big? bigger than this table?—and eventually admits that he doesn’t know any more and that if the boys were really wanting so much more ‘infermation’—Don’t know what ye’re on aboot really now lads—they could go and ask in Inverie, for the cat was last seen in the glen to the south of Ladhar Bheinn. Jamie has gone silent and pale at the same time, a pallor caressed by a flush that blends the roots of his hair into the freckles of his forehead. I see him and start, concerned. Are you alright? He swallows hard, nods. Teddy meets his gaze, white eyebrows all furrowed up, and Jamie stares back at him for a second before tearing his eyes away and rushing out of the room, kicking over his half- full mug in his hurry. Jamie! He doesn’t turn around, and I hear him running up the stairs, the closing of the latch on our bedroom door. I reach automatically to the spreading stain on the carpet. The tea is cool and dark—Jamie likes his coffee nearly white, and his tea nearly black. Jenny tuts—A dishcloth if you’re not minding too much—and I toss it on the tea, marveling at how easy the water lifts from the cream of the rug. The next day there is still the faint and irregular outline of the spilled tea, despite my best efforts. The fire cracks, and its biggest log splits in two with a shower of sparks. Right then. Jenny sounds falsely cheerful. Everyone ta bed now, it’s late and some of us—another pointed look at Angus—must be wanting our sleep. Come Da, come now. And Callum heaves Angus off of the sofa and escorts his elephantine body to the stairwell. I wonder if they sleep together in the same bed, father and son, whether Angus’s weight tilts the mattress and sends Callum sliding back towards him even as he tries to distance himself. In what seems like a matter of seconds, it is Teddy and I alone again, and Teddy’s pretty face looks twisted in the shadows. I know I need to go find Jamie. He’ll be wondering why I haven’t come up to him yet. I’m going for a smoke. His voice is hoarse. I wait for him to invite me, but he doesn’t. As he gets up to leave, and it’s clear he’s about to just walk out, I stop him. Wait. Wha. I stand up and catch Teddy’s hand, feeling again the calluses that extend all the way to the pads of his fingers. What’s wrong? I ask. I know something’s wrong. Teddy lets my touch stand for a second. I want to yank my hand away. It’s all the chat about the cat. What cat? Angus’s supernatural demon cat? I laugh, raising an eyebrow. Come on. Don’t tell me you’re taking him seriously. He’s drunk out of his mind and just wanted to get a rise out you guys, spice up the conversation a little from his boring old rambles on early Scottish law. Teddy wrenches his hand free with a bite of real violence. Isabella. His eyes are obscured, his hair glowing on the outside, silhouetted by the fire. Yeah? I pause, taken aback by his seriousness. Becky died huntin’ a cat like that. And with that he walks to the door, takes his tobacco, and goes outside. I can see the warm flicker of the lamp outside the door breath back into life, the brief darkening as he blocks it while leaning in front to light his cigarette. Suddenly overcome with anxiety and the sort of guilt that comes from making an insensitive comment—how was I supposed to know that? what the fuck was everyone even talking about?—I think of Jamie and immediately want nothing more than to run to him and work my way under his arm and match his breathing, forget about these stupid conversations that rile us drunks up. The room is very dark. I feel my way across it until my shins hit the lower bunk, and I feel for Jamie’s body. I can tell by the tenseness that he’s not sleeping. Hey. No answer. Are you okay? I reach out in the darkness towards where I imagine Jamie’s shoulder might be. I overshoot slightly, feel the butterfly touch of a wisp of his hair. Hey Jamie. Nothing. It’s okay. Do you want to talk about it? Just shut up Isabella. I recoil, my hand freezing inches away from Jamie’s curled body. The entirety of next morning Cal spent bringing water and aspirin to Angus, who didn’t rise until noon, and when questioned by Jenny over bacon and scones—Go to the chicken coop will you now Teddy, ye lazy barra, and get the eggs for our guests—the next morning, apologized half-heartedly for his poor behavior the previous night. I dinna even remember what we were talking aboat! Angus slaps his knee, his eyes red, and shovels Teddy’s eggs into his mouth with a spoon. They grace the sides of his mouth with a yolky yellow. Jamie apologized too, kissed my fingertips, his green eyes earnest. I said everything was fine. That morning after breakfast we went for a walk and brought back branches of holly which Jenny cooed over and arranged in a white vase and stuck on a little creaky table by the heavy front door. Those who were there by my side the whole time—while my side was permitted to be there—who really witnessed, they know that the seeds wormed their way up from events long silenced. But some might say the seeds were sown that night.

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Out, out, everyone get out. Jenny waves her hands in the air in impatience. I need the kitchen clear for the cooking tonight, and look! what a mess you all make. Jenny rushes furiously to the counter and begins swiping a constellation of crumbs into her palm. And to leave the knife just stickin’ up in the butter like that! Go do something useful with yourselves outside. There ain’t nothing useful to do outside mum. Aye well I can think of a couple o’ things if ye need help using that head o’ yours. Jenny shoots Teddy a sharp look. There’s the barn shelves to be cleaning, the rubbish needs taking out, and wood to be chopped too, that we really do need. She trails off, thoughtful. Teddy, Callum, Jamie and I had been having tea and eating toast and listening to the radio. Callum and I looked at each other in alarm, and attempted to assist half-heartedly, but Teddy puts his hands together in a quick clap and announces our shirking loudly. Ah no we’ll just go out for a walk if you don’t mind, I’ve just remembered I could show everyone the job Dad did on the boat. Aye, I thought you might be able to rustle up some ideas. Devil’s hands and all that. No devil’s hands here. Teddy shows his palms with earnest eyes. We’re not idling, honest. We were just listening in. Can we get anything for you mum, in town? It’s alright, dear, said Jenny, her brow slightly furrowed. Just go on and show everyone a nice time. Right then. And Teddy skipped out of the door, shouldering on his olive oilskin, which had a brown shearling collar that made his smooth face bloom out of a ruff of fur. It was an odd look, but, like a tortoise, or perhaps like some sort of meek rodent preparing to spend the dark months under the earth, Teddy seemed to be most comfortable the more layers he had on. Jamie went out with him, walking ahead, swinging his second-best cashmere turtleneck like a flag, the two of them in good spirits. I hemmed and hawed a bit and then wandered out after them, left behind to stroll beside Cal, who took very measured steps and didn’t seem like he was in very much of a rush to do anything at all. What was your name again? Cal says lightly, not taking his eyes off the road. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we ever met properly. It’s Isabella. Ah. Well. Nice to meet you. He glances at me sideways. From New York, right? Do all New Yorkers look like you? What does that mean? You look happy. He studies me. And healthy—not raised on porridge and beer like the rest of us. I laugh. Jenny cooks more than just that. Yes. Not my father though. Mine neither. We go along in silence.

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Are you sure this is safe? I ask again, annoyed at myself for asking when I promised myself I wouldn’t again. We’re far above the loch, looking down at it. It stretches like a serpent, cold and white against the land mottled green and black with ferns and cold mud. Water runs like a second skin over all the mountains, leaving my feet soaked within my . The silt seeping in is warmed by the heat of my foot only to be chilled again and again with each fresh oozing step. The heavy bracken seems to be laden with water, and the moss so thick with it that I could wring both out like a sponge. I half expect the ferns to begin to turn their thick stems out to sea with the outflowing tide, they’re so watery. Everything’s fine. Jamie hollers over his shoulder, yards ahead of me. Teddy was far out of sight at this point, and Cal made his patient way behind me. I had a feeling he was going purposely slower so that I wouldn’t feel like I had been the last one. I was becoming increasingly convinced that everyone’s actions—and position even—on the mountainside were just an exacerbation of their real personalities: Jamie higher than everyone, but not in the lead; Teddy too far to see clearly; Cal always behind you, a supporting shadow. I wasn’t in very good shape, by the way. I’ve never been one to wander in the pathless woods, so to speak. But I knew Jamie was. His butcher of a school pounded sport into him like salt into meat. It’s the mark of a man, he used to tell me crossly when I asked why he was off to play in another soccer game at some unearthly hour. I would sit fiddling with my shoelaces while he huddled with his team on the bench— team here being a fairly loose word, with it usually being just some other boys from his college—and explained some strategy. I don’t think Jamie was ever a particularly strategic man, nor did I personally ever go to him when I needed to plan something, but he had a very commanding presence which made people listen to him, and a sort of natural yet deeply inane style of leadership, which always reminded me a little bit of Louis Mountbatten. Charlie taps my manuscript with his hand. Tell me what you mean by this. Mountbatten once designed an entire unsinkable iceberg made out of a water and paper-pulp combination. He wanted it to be a floating iceberg warship. When he brought it to American investors, and shot it with a gun to prove its unbreakable qualities, the bullet ricocheted and hit one of the bankers in the thigh. Needless to say, they didn’t invest. This is the sort of leader Jamie was—spontaneous, yet devoted to his ideas once they had gestated for a sufficient amount of time for him to be convinced they were correct, and with plenty of resources to ensure their completion. We continued on. Presently the fern died down as we got higher, which I thought would have made the hike easier, as it wouldn’t be nearly as wet and slippery, but instead it simply intensified the uncertainty. Before, the ferns had smoothed over the landscape, making all the thousand little nooks and cracks just one lush slope, which now had been shaved off by the wind and the sheep and ice and whatever else was up here. I saw all the places that I could slip, and, like a horse with blinders, I soon had to block the drop with my hand as I went down, obscuring my vision to the few feet in front of me so I wouldn’t be distracted by the fact that one wrong step would send me irrevocably tumbling to my doom without even a fern to grab as I fell. I could feel the lingering little jabs of torn heather and burrs into my ankles, bits that my socks had grabbed from the passing plants. It was at the crest of the hill, when you are looking down at Kinloch Hourn on the one side and Glen Barrisdale on the other, when you can see beyond onto the real mountains, looking very cold and lonely with their perfect snowcaps, not the vestige of dustings that Jamie’s mountains still held onto, and when I still was feeling the pain of the decline in my knees, that we found the dead deer. Although I believe Ted was ahead at this point, it was Jamie who saw the deer first. He let out a strangled and womanish shriek of disgust. I think he had almost put his foot in part of the entrails that were further away, alerted only by the sudden change in texture of the ground, from hard stone to squeamish softness. We all bounded over to stare at the carcass. The deer’s legs were bent unnaturally; its neck was bent unnaturally; its chest had collapsed away unnaturally from its ribs while leaving the ribs still intact, with the stretched skin still on them, but its back was missing, so you could see into the chest cavity where there was nothing but empty space with the vital organs melting into the mud beneath it. Mary mother ay God, says Teddy with a whistle. My , Jamie says with a shudder of revulsion. What do you think happened to it? Did it fall? Trip on the way down, like I was about to? A short laugh. I would have caught you, darling. Maybe it died of hunger. Not with all the ferns around. Deer don’t eat ferns. What, like you’d know. I grew up here! I went to Oxford! Maybe it got eaten by something? I venture. There aren’t any natural predators around here, Cal says reassuringly. In fact, none in the British Isles at all. Not unless they’ve been introduced artificially. Is that really true? I say with interest, pondering the fate of the deer. O God. The words ring out in the air like a blunt prayer. What? O God, it was the cat! Jamie runs his fingers through his copper curls with horror. The cat Angus was talking about! It’s out here! Right now! Really? D’you think? Don’t be silly. Callum glances at Jamie. It is! It must be. I’ve never seen a dead deer here in my whole life. There’s something just wrong about it! Well you haven’t exactly been around either, offers Ted drily. Well have you? Ted looks taken aback. Er. I suppose not. Don’t be silly, Callum repeats in that firm voice of his. Firstly, there are no big cats in this part of Scotland. The closest thing is the Scottish wildcat. It’s quite small, and, as such, it eats mostly small prey. Rats. Voles. That type of thing. So no deer then? There’s absolutely no chance. It would be like a wolf eating an elephant. That deer was murdered, Jesus Christ! Jamie looks manic. And even if there were, Callum continues, it would have gone for the throat. Look. See. There’s nothing. You’re just riled from last night. I pat Jamie reassuringly. Calm down, baby. Leaning my head on his shoulder, I feel the damp softness of the cashmere, and see the pulse of his neck as the veins strain. I’m sure it just fell. Yeah? And where’d the other—half—of it go then? Jamie gesticulates wildly at the broken legs, the sagging cave of bones. I honestly don’t know, and my pause seems to prove to Jamie his own point. That cat came, killed it from behind, and dragged its body away to eat it! I bet if we keep looking around—Jamie scans the hill with an industrious fervor, his face flushing the color of his hair—we can find the rest of it, track the footprints, here, help me look Iz— Come on Jamie. I eye the body distastefully. Don’t be dramatic. It wasn’t killed by anything. Callum is adamant. And he would know, he’s a vet, remember. I know he’s a bloody vet, but I know a thing or two about big cats. This was news to me. I didn’t see how Jamie, who routinely confused the most common of animals—dove for pigeon, frog for toad, shark for whale—could have the slightest knowledge of cats. He was allergic to them, in fact, along with a plethora of other things, and hated to get too close to most four- legged creatures, unless they were on his plate, preferably at a chic restaurant in a cream sauce. Don’t tell me how to feel. Jamie whips around. Look at it! Look at its throat! It’s all—he pauses for the right word—twisted. Look, Cal already told you. The only thing twisted ‘round here is your mind, mate. Teddy looks back at me for confirmation of the pun. I offer up a half-smile, which Jamie sees, and which I instantly regret. Well you sickos can stick around and make your little jokes. Jamie’s voice is like hearthstone, hard and heated. I can’t stay here one fucking second longer I’m going to be sick. It’s vile. The whole thing. I don’t know how you people can sit here and keep looking at the bloody thing. And Jamie spits and strides off, his hands jammed deep into his pockets. Teddy raises his eyebrows and makes a prissy gesture, imitating Jamie’s attitude, before tromping along after him with a long sigh, kicking stones along the way. Oh dear. Cal seems bewildered, clearly used to his soothing words producing a different, less violent effect. Out of a sick sense of curiosity, I lingered by the deer as the other three walked onward. I edged closer and closer to it, never having been so close to a rotting body before. However, the body, almost desiccated despite the abundance of water, curiously did not smell of carrion. It did not smell of anything. It was just bones and skin and a blank, sad face and skeletal legs that were never meant to point upwards the way they did. It was a mummy of a deer, partially entombed in the earth. I felt deeply sorry for it. I always thought deer would go somewhere special to die, like the cats in Istanbul, or my first dog, a snappy Australian shepherd named Cola. I guess they don’t. They just die where they fall. We found the deer because we were on a hike, and we were on a hike because we were going to Jamie’s old home, and Jamie’s old home was near Glen Barrisdale, just one hop down the valley by land, or one short boat ride across the loch from Corrin, had we decided to do the sensible thing. Not doing the sensible thing was a pattern very early on, had I stopped to recognize such things. But stopping was not in our nature, neither mine nor James’s.

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Jamie’s house was a mansion of tremendous proportions, not that I was particularly surprised. He had an almost unconscious habit of dropping little lines about it all the time, although, as I believe I’ve already mentioned, he always shied away from talking about most of his childhood if directly asked. O, I think it might be in the Rose Bedroom, he would say on the phone to Anne if she was there collecting some old boxes from the basement. Or, I used to play on the family property. I remember him using that word often, property, where other kids would have used yard or lawn. It was a cold word. His domestic vocabulary bristled with endless terms that before him I would have thought nearly synonymous: kitchen, pantry, scullery, buttery, bar. Each of these occupied an entirely different space to him, and had its own separate purpose. I would tell you but I just don’t want you to feel bad about it all, he once told me on one of our earlier dates when I asked about the house. I think he was trying to be kind with this comment, but it came off as rather self-centered if not offensive. Our first date had been at a sushi restaurant, oddly out of place in the small and very British academic city we lived in, where he had famously baited me with the far more attractive Chrissy, whom we all agreed had a face somewhere between genuine Hollywood starlet, when we were being nice, and a ten-thousand-buck escort, when we weren’t. This date, the one where Jamie first divulged some information about his upbringing, I remember as being a tremendously fun one. He had rented a car and taken me driving, an activity which I had always associated with celebrities from many decades ago, an entirely outdated and romantic pastime, probably because I was raised in Manhattan, where driving was something most people avoided with an almost religious zeal. At best, it was you speeding along some dull highway dotted with chain supermarkets and greasy little hospitality inlets, maybe with a pretty landmark or two along the way at which of course you were never allowed to stop because your mother had business to attend to and you had already made her late with your whining at over the hotel pancakes, and at worst it was a gridlocked hell where you, strapped in the backseat of your father’s Maserati and driven by his driver, had to accept as you cast your envious gaze onto the bikers that weaved magically through the frozen cars, sometimes pushing off one for momentum or safety and leaving a smeared handprint on the tinted window, that you were once again going to be late for school even though you had been ready an hour before because the car needed one more going over with polish. If you were late to school, you had to come to school forty-five minutes early the next day. Dad polished the car each day before he let anyone see it outside. It was entirely absurd. He had a real thing for polishing objects, which at times included me. I could never tell whether this obsession was an actual disorder, or him faking said disorder to seem more interesting, a sort of pretentious quirk, or some other trait that defied logical explanation. What I meant to say is that with Jamie, I saw for the first time how fun driving could be. We were still at university then, so there was a very fine and distinguishable line that divided civilization from the heathen wastelands, as Charles used to joke that the handsome man with whom I was talking, who seemed, with his slim golden watch and his crisp blue collar. When I saw that house for the first time, its foundations pouncing on the hill like some sort of gargoyle, half-consuming the crest, I remember thinking that it looked like a house with secrets.

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I can assure you this is the truth of the matter. I’ve got eyes like an eagle, and I know a cat when I see one—I’ve got three of them at home. What did you say your name was again? Isabella? Well, let me tell you what I saw. My cousin has one of those farms up near Invergarry, you know the ones with the little pens where they keep the lambs for the city children to come play with—it’s great money up here for tourism if you do it right. And he has a good number of sheep, and a lot of lambs too, and they kept on disappearing, one after the other. So he calls in this other friend, Brian, and then Brian and John— And who’s John? That’s my cousin, see— Right, okay. And then? Well I was just about to explain, John and Brian and me, we sit out in the pens all night, dead quiet, with our shotguns in hand. Brian’s a proper shooter, and he promised us that we wouldn’t have anything grabbing the family sheep. And we stayed out there all night, until the crack of dawn, and then when the light came back we could see two silhouettes lying there all in the middle of the sheep, who had clustered together in the cold, mind you. And there were two dead sheep just lyin’ there! Their tongues lolling out— and their feet covered in the mud as if they’d been pawing away trying to escape. But the strangest thing is that I’ve got ears like an eagle, you see, and neither me nor John nor Brian heard a single sound come from those sheep, not a single damn baa that would have told us that something was in there. Those sheep are cowardly things. They make noise as surely as a wind-chime when the air’s all stirred. Here, sheepies! Here! Look, see them all go baa? I’m telling you, on that night there was nothing but silence and the wind in the trees and the occasional rush of the cars going past on the ____. So what do you think happened? I think there’s a bloody ghost roaming around, strangling the life out of this countryside. I think it’s one of ‘em silent ghost cats. It’s a ghost. Don’t write that part down, though. I don’t need anyone else thinking I’ve gone mad. You think I’m lying, don’t you? Let me see that book of yours.

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All I can say is that Mr. van Even ain’t been back very much this season to the estate. The deer’re all gone. And have you seen any of the deer? Well, there’s the ones that come to the salt-licks by the sea. But those aren’t where we stalk. And those deer? Aye, I seen a few o’ them. Little Jane, the daughter o’ the man who brings the post, she’s always feeding them bits of old corn and carrots and the like. Makes them stick around the house like nothing else. And what else have you seen? I’ve seen nothin’ else round here.