1977 words Red Mountain Lion.
“Alec, wake up- It's only a dream, A dream!.....There. Goodness, what was that about?”
“Oh.” he sat upright, sweating. ”I dont know. Ugh, -sorry, going to have to have a shower... what's the time?”
“It's ten to three. Do you want a drink? I'll get you one for when you come out and you can tell me all about it.”
Alec glanced at Lucy over his shoulder.
“No thanks, I dont think I'll start drinking this early in the morning.”
“ I meant something comforting. Ovaltine maybe, or Horlicks.”
“No, I'll get some water. You go back to sleep.”
He shut the bathroom door and turned on the shower. Lucy sighed and pulled the bed clothes up tautly under her chin. Alec'd had some nightmare for months now and not told her what it was. She shivered. The curtains and windows were open and the icy air seemed to crackle. The walls and ceiling, papered deep blue and patterned with stars above the white duvet mimicked the snowy night. Alec didn't like the star design which was random and not set out in proper constellations.
At breakfast Alec held the marmalade jar up to the window.
“What a lovely colour everything is in the sunshine.” He looked out at the country spreading for miles, the tawny mountain rearing in the distance, shadowed with pines. “The snow's going! Thank God.”
“You're bored, Alec. Why dont you-”
“-Why dont I get a hobby, start burning designs in wood with the poker, take up a sport. Yes, why dont I?”
“Well, no- I wondered if you'd care to get the decorations down and bring a tree in? The family are coming on Friday...”
Later, Lucy watched him from her studio at the top of the house. He was walking purposefully towards the village and had remembered his hat and scarf. Good. She turned back to her work and allowed herself to forget Alec's accident and subsequent illness and the enforced retirement.
She had recently painted three round discs in amber, gold and lemon yellow on a heavenly blue green base, so thick the paint threatened never to dry.
“Hello Mr Grufydd. Still enjoying your retirement?”
Alec looked at the woman and passed on without speaking. He would walk up to the Wenlock Ark. It had only been open a few months and he'd never got round to taking a look. He quickened his step, kicking the slushy snow aside.
“They open at ten, you're in good time!” the woman called after him, not minding his brusqueness. She bent to pick up after her dog and watched Alec striding away as she tied the mess up in a perfumed bag.
Watched. He could feel her eyes on his back as he had felt Lucy's from the high window earlier. People watching him, making a fuss. He wriggled his shoulders as if trying to shrug them off. Movement to his right... he glimpsed Red deer, silent in the forest.
The Ark was a pleasant enough, log cabin styled building, huge though. Alec went into reception, liking the tall windows with pines pressing close to the glass, showing their red brown undersides. The chap who designed it, what was his name...Post modern revivalist school. Not really Alec's style. They'd spent a lot of money on it, that was the sponsor of course. Lord something, Alec had met him once. He lived in a Penthouse overlooking Tower Bridge. Alec grinned to himself at the memory. Nothing Post modern there! His troup of pussy cats had scratched the furniture, lovely Sheraton stuff it had once been.
“Good Morning!”
A girl was there by a desk smiling at him. Dark pink hair. Nice face.
“Are you looking for a dog or cat sir?”
“Good God no!”
She waited for an explanation, none came.
“Would you like to see the animals though?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
She kept smiling.
“All right. Show me then.”
They walked up and down the corridors full of howling dogs and yowling cats. All had runs with views over the snowy fields and forest to the hills of Wales. Alec thought, why not?
“I'll take that one.”
He pointed to a flame coloured cat with it's back to them. Looking out towards the Mountain. It was the only one that was not either asleep or rubbing up against the glass.
“Well, we have to do a home visit first. Do you want him before Christmas?”
They went back in to an office overlooking the compounds. There was a computer on a desk and a Christmas tree up where the animals could see it, the girl said. Alec looked around the room as she tapped away. The tree was carelessly decorated, he noticed. The girl went away to get an information pack and Alec felt for a handkerchief. At the bottom of his pocket was an old Christmas bauble, it had been loose on top of the decorations box when he'd found it in the outhouse. He held it at arms length to read the writing scrolling around it. 'The playing of the merrie organ, sweet singing in the choir.' H'm. Merry eh? He stood up and hung it on the tree over a bare patch. It swung slowly too and fro, glinting in the filtered sunlight. On the way back he saw one of the red deer threading through the pines ahead. He was able to watch it running in front of him, almost all the way home. The nightmare! He remembered waking up gasping for breath and sweating. He stopped to think.
A feeling of fear and loss. Walking in the dark, the worsening sense of dread, a crash. That was the accident, he supposed. Flashbacks.
He'd been hit by a falling piece of scaffolding during a dockland site inspection, very late one winter afternoon. One of the feral cats had been running ahead of him. A big old ginger Tom. If he'd followed him instead of turning to the left the metal pole would have landed harmlessly. Still, he had been told he was lucky to be alive at all.
But at the end of the nightmare a wild animal, yes, in the dream he knew it was a red mountain lion always ran before him in a dark forest. That was the bit when he was allowed to wake up. But the Parkinsons Disease couldn't be woken up from.
“You said we'd have a cat?”
“Yes, that's all right isn't it? The girl's coming round to inspect later on.”
Lucy thought of a cat. It would be small and fairly self reliant, she hoped.
Alec sat and looked at his hands shaking while Lucy cooked. She wanted to get back to her painting, he could tell. There was something he was supposed to do. He looked out of the window.
“ 'I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence will come my aid.' ”
“What?”
“ Psalms. Remember that one. ”
He remembered now three things, like the three buses that come at once. Do the tree; family coming Friday; pink haired girl about the cat at three o clock. He heaved himself up and set to work, finding the decorations he'd dug out earlier and potting up a spruce from the edge of the wood.
“These baubles have all got lines from 'The holly and the Ivy' on them,“ he read some of them out. There were only five, the sixth was up at the Ark. He told her he'd put it on the animals tree.
Lucy looked pleased.
“Come and eat now, Alec.”
“Is this it now then? Eating meals you dont want to cook, because if I wasn't here you'd stay upstairs with a cup soup. A walk, watch the mountain waiting in the distance. Count the stars on the ceiling?”
“You can cook if you like. Be a first!” She was tired of his self pity, but tried to be patient.
“Wouldn't know where to start now. I'll have cup soup as well. I dont care. “
“Do you remember buying the set of baubles for our first Chrismas in the flat? ”
“Cant remember a flat. Where was it? I remember London though.”
“It was in Shrewsbury. About twenty miles away. Before you qualified and we moved to London. Then we bought this place ten years ago and came back at weekends. Until you had to retire.”
Alec looked blank, but again, as he stared out at the mountain another burst of thoughts came in. Accident, head injury, intermittent memory loss. Waiting, watching for more symptoms.
The girl came, did her inspection and talked about the cat. It had been abandoned by an Air Force family. Then she sat and looked out of the window.
“Wow, what a view! I'd be happy if I could sit here every day and just look!”
“Happy, would you? Not if you had no choice.”
“Well, maybe not. But there are worse places to sit and look from.”
That was very true, he realised.
It was arranged. The cat would be collected tomorrow. Alec felt his concentration slipping like snow melting in sunshine, quite unpreventable. Lucy talked to the girl. They needed more volunteers apparently. Maybe in the New Year, she said.
On Friday the family arrived for Christmas. Alec heard them talking about him in the study.
His moods, grumpy, depressed, sometimes quite blank. Worrying. Under-occupied. Burned himself on the toaster. Going out without a coat. Was it too much for Lucy? Should she get help?
Alec sat still in the window seat. They thought he was sleeping, Saint-Saens playing on Radio Three. His fingers were numb today and he couldn't feel his toes. The sunlit illusion of warmth outside disappeared as the clock struck four, leaving the mountain faint and grey behind a shaggy wreath of cloud. The cat sat on his knee with its back to him, quite at ease. It was as if it had lived there for years.
The weather forecast came on the radio. Sunshine and Ice for the Midlands and Marches for the next few days. He flexed his fingers and grimaced. Better get his mouth into smiling mode. He hummed, 'The rising of the sun and the running of the deer.' The cat jumped clumsily down and stretched. No nightmares in the four days since he followed the deer home. Didn't follow the ginger cat as you should have, but you got your own now, so that's all right, he told himself. The sun would still rise and shine, even on him. Tomorrow the mountain would be tawny, like a resting lion again. Time he made an effort. Alec got up to join the family and the cat walked on before him, perfectly pleased to lead the way.
The end.
Dice square writing group story set 21st March 11, from the writers circle magazine.
My subjects:
TWO CHARACTERS
Newly retired spouse and teenaged girl; Alec, who had been an architect, (married to Lucy) and Girl working in an animal rescue centre
CONFLICT
having a premonition; dream in this case, nightmare of the accident at work causing Alec's illness , retirement and subsequent unhappiness,which begins to be resolved in this story.
WEATHER
Ice; cold wintery weather reflective of Alec's mood and behaviour generally. Contrasts with fire/sunlight in the house and on the inspirational Long Mynd mountain that Alec can see from the house.
PLACE
animal rescue centre; 'The Wenlock Ark' (fictional) Set in Shropshire.
SPECIAL OBJECT
old christmas decoration, one of a set decorated with lines from “The holly and the Ivy”
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