Cat's Cradle Sunday, March 13 1:30 amBodie's been sick all night. I wanted to take him to the emergency room or at least call Dr Krige, but he keeps saying it'll pass and not to worry. He says it's stomach cramps from the curry we had at that new restaurant, but I think he's rationalizing. He's sleeping now and seems easier. I guess one of the good things about keeping a journal (and let's see, I've been keeping it since...Christmas of '81. Fifteen months. And I see I'm about due for a new book.) What was I saying? Oh yeh - it's good to keep a journal because it gives you the chance to work out all the negative emotions quite harmlessly.
We've been putting in a lot of time at work these days and I find I'm sort of tired of it all. Oh, not tired of being on the side of the angels, but, well, sometimes I'd rather someone else played shepherd for a while. We're due in at eight so I'd better join Bodie.
9 pm, same day Long day. Bodie's cooking supper - pepper steak. I told him he shouldn't drop anything too strong into his stomach after last night, but he says he feels fine now.
I guess he wanted some time to himself which is why he volunteered to cook tonight. There was a telegram from Bea today. Bodie's a dad. Dahout had twins last night - boy and girl. Bodie made a joke about sympathy pains, but I could tell the news had affected him. He's unusually quiet tonight.
I suppose that, in his position, I'd want some time to assimilate the news.
Oh, supper's ready.
2 am Couldn't sleep. We ate, watched a film and went to bed. Bodie's in a strange mood. I thought we were going to make love, but we ended up just cuddling instead. He asked me what it felt like when I became a woman, and I tried to explain. I was never really a woman, after all. I just had the shape of one.
He fell asleep and I lay there thinking about women and how little I really knew about them despite my ability to assume the form if not the substance.
There have been times, mostly when I'm feeling really depressed, when I've wondered if I'd chosen to love a man because I couldn't really love a woman.
Felt rotten for wondering, too, but in all honesty, my track record with the fair sex leaves something to be desired. I seem to be happier with women as friends.
I got out of bed because it seemed silly to lie there awake when I could be out here doing things.
A lot's happened in the last few years and most of it's been good. I've been happy with Bodie. I don't really suppose I love him because of some lack in myself. I think I love him because he completes me.
Funny, but for all I'm comfortable with the supernatural, any hint of it in my relationship with Bodie makes me...not uneasy so much as edgy. Maybe I don 't trust the tiny voice inside me which says there's more to us than partnership, love and passion.
Passion. God, sometimes there's so much of it I wonder if either of us will survive it. Like a storm, it is. Some days all I can do is think about his body and how it fits together with mine, and how good it is when that happens.
He's doing it to me again. Three in the morning and I'm aching for him.
But I'm not going to wake him up. He needs the rest. And I need to go off to the bog for a good wank. Then it's sleepies for me.
Wednesday, 3 pm Jeff called a little while ago. Said he's been trying since yesterday.
Wanted to invite us for the weekend.
"We're having a sort of christening for the twins," he said, and I said, "Christening?"
"Okay, a welcome to life party. Can you two make it?"
"It's up to George," I told him. I didn't say that I'd begun to wonder if we'd ever have another day off, or that Bodie might balk at the idea.
"Bea's already spoken to him. He's coming up too. Why don't you come with him? He'll be using the gates."
I told him I'd get back to him on it, and rang off.
When I told Bodie, he was thoughtful. "I don't know how to feel," he admitted. "I don't know what to think."
I expected him to talk about it, but that was all he said.
9:30 pm Took him a while, but he finally did talk a bit. "I don't feel really involved in this," he said. We were sitting in front of the telly. "Y' know, we joke about being studs..." He grinned and squeezed my hand. "But it 's an empty thing unless you can be involved."
"We don't have to go, you know."
"I want to see them. Maybe if I do I'll believe they're part of me. Do you mind, Ray?"
"I'd love to go," I insisted, but he shook his head.
"Not that. Do you mind about them? That they happened?"
I didn't want him to think there was any hesitation in my answer, but I needed time to consider my words. "I can't ever regret anything about you,"
I said, finally, and he smiled that sweet smile of his which always makes me think of sunrise.
He's having a shower right now. I have this urge to drop the book and go join him.
Thursday, 10:15 pm I did.
Bodie's packing. He's terribly methodical. I just toss things into a holdall and hope for the best. I called Bea this afternoon to ask how everyone was. She says the babies are gorgeous. Jonet, the girl, has violet eyes and black curly hair. Janicot has green eyes and reddish brown hair. I asked her where on earth Dahout got the names.
"They suit. How's Bodie?"
"Ambivalent," I admitted. "I think I'm happier about this than he is. I'm aching to hold his babies. My god, do you think I've discovered a maternal instinct in myself?"
She laughed. "I think you're in love."
"How does Jeff feel about all this?"
"He's pleased. He's not jealous, if that's what you mean. We're planning on having one of our own eventually. Soon, I hope. And before you ask, Dahout doesn't mind about us. She and I have an understanding. I've known her for almost twenty years. Ray, how's Murphy?"
I hadn't expected this. "Fair, I expect. I don't see much of him. Why?"
"He's been calling up here several times a week. Sometimes he just wants to talk and other times...He's asked me to marry him."
I suddenly felt very sorry for Murph, though I didn't say so.
"I don't know what to tell you, Bea. He's a strange bird."
"I don't want to hurt him, but...well, enough of my problems. When will we see you?"
"George told me he'll be ready to leave tomorrow afternoon, which may mean any time between noon and midnight."
Then Bodie talked to her for a while. When he was done, he ran out for about an hour and came back with two packages wrapped in white paper. One had a pink bow and one a blue.
"Don't tell me - for the babies?"
"How did you guess?"
"I've developing my psychic talents. What are they?"
"Teddies. I'm old-fashioned. Every brat should have a bear."
That's my Bodie.
Friday, 7:45 pm My Bodie's getting anxious. George is closeted with a suspect and has been since four this afternoon. He sent us to supper an hour ago which bodes ill for leaving any time soon. I keep trying to tell Bodie it's okay.
Midnight Sometimes I wonder if Bodie's talent isn't responsible for most of the serendipity in our lives lately. Suspect confessed, was booked and we were through the gates by eight-fifteen.
Everyone's here - Colette, Kev, Tal, Jamie, the three of us. It's like a holiday. Colette was cooing over Jonet when we arrived, and Kev was holding Janicot. Then they turned the babies over to me 'n' Bodie.
Bodie held his daughter as though he thought she was made of porcelain. The difference between us is I knew Janicot was breakable. They're beautiful children. I can see Bodie in both of them. Christ, he warmed up to them immediately. Carried one on each arm and showed them to everyone in the place. "Look, these are my kids."
Was different with Dahout though. I don't think he's ever got over the idea she's his half sister. She's explained to him that the blood they share isn 't subject to the same taboos as human, but I'm not sure he'll ever be entirely comfortable with the idea. Still, the babies are handsome and sound, so there's no cause for regret. He was stiff with her. She seemed sorry, but I don't really know her well enough to make any guesses as to what she's thinking or feeling.
We had coffee and cake in the kitchen, and talked about what had been happening in our lives since we were last together, at Yule. Like us, everyone's been involved in their work. Jeff sent a manuscript off to his agent, Bea had done some chamber music concerts in Edinburgh, Kev's been teaching and exhibiting his artwork, Jamie and Tal have both been working in a theatre group, Colette had been pursuing her interest in holistic and alternative medical practices, and Dahout had been making babies.
"What a terribly exciting group of people - maybe we should christen ourselves Bloomsbury Two," Jeff suggested.
When Dahout went upstairs to feed the babies, Bodie and I turned in. He dropped off immediately, but I found myself wide-awake again, so I thought I 'd catch up on this evening's events.
I like keeping a journal. It makes me feel settled, makes my life seem more significant. And it gives me the opportunity to express ideas and feelings I don't think I could express openly. It's not that Bodie wouldn't understand (or try to), but I'm not sure I'm ready to share some things, even with him.
Unfortunately I'm feeling awfully sleepy, and my handwriting is beginning to be affected. I just realized this is the first day off we've had in three weeks. And the first holiday since...Yule, though that wasn't technically a holiday, considering. I hate the idea of wating...wasting it on sleep. Shit.
Goodnight, Ray.
Saturday morning - The Green King The new sign for the inn arrived this morning and Bodie and I helped Jeff hang it. It's wonderful - a horned, green-clad man crowed with flowers.
Jeff says the artist is very simpatico. Bodie asked what being Italian has to do with it.
Colette, Bea and Dahout are planning the ceremony for tonight. From what I can gather, it's a combination of the Eostar ritual and a welcoming to the two new-born souls. Sounds nice. I wish we could all be welcomed into life by those who love us.
Bodie asked me if I thought Cowley and Colette were still an item and I said I didn't know they ever were. I didn't think the old man had it in him! He did look sort of smug over breakfast this morning. If they are, Kev doesn't seem to mind.
That got me thinking about love and such. Seems everything does these days!
I realized I'd come into this group with much more rigid attitudes than I thought - I was a little perturbed by all the bed-hopping that was going on.
But now I see their...our sexuality as something different, something less concerned with pairing and power than with affection and need and warmth.
How to explain? I know Bodie and I belong together, and I understand that my claims on his heart is the strongest. I'm satisfied. Whatever else he is to anyone else, he's my other half first.
I think I'd better think about this some more. There has to be a better way of saying it.
Later...about six I had the most amazing experience this afternoon. Over dinner we began to talk about reincarnation. Dahout was saying she felt her brother's presence very strongly in Jonet. She meant the brother who died, not Bodie.
I don't know much about the subject, though it's always seemed the most sensible alternative to me. What surprised me, though, was to hear that Bodie had always believed in it.
"Had a past life reading done once...in my misspent youth," he added with a typical Bodie smirk.
"And?" I asked.
"Well, in me last life I was a Mayfair fold-fold."
After the laughter had died down I asked, "Seriously, what did you find out?" Why it was so important to me, I didn't understand - then.
"Oh, that I've lived a lot of adventurous lives. I'm something of a daredevil by nature, I reckon. And I've done a lot of things I'm not particularly proud of...or wouldn't be if I'd done them this life."
"So have we all, laddie." There was a surprise - Cowley talking as though he believed in the subject. Then, Cowley's something of a study in contrasts. He, as Bodie puts it, punches the bible. No, he's not a bible-thumper so much as a devout man. He's a good man is George Cowley.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that George seems to be able to reconcile paganism with Christianity. Though, when I think of it, there's not much in the former to contradict the latter. Most people don't understand this.
I don't mean to reduce the difference in these two philosophical systems to a matter of semantics, but...
But I'm off the track now, and I want to get this down before the celebration.
Kev said to us, "If anyone wants to try a past life reading this afternoon, I'm game."
"Kev's very good at it," Colette told us.
Naturally I was curious, so I talked to him after we finished eating and he said he was willing to work with me.
"If you want, we can try a regression into the most recent life."
I told him I was willing to try just about anything, and he laughed and said, "Never give me carte blanche like that, boy."
He told me to go into a light trance, and took me back through this life.
There were some bad moments - the shooting, Sid's death, Beelzy's first appearance - but there were some things which were a pleasure to relive such as my first meeting with Bodie. Perhaps it was hindsight, but I could feel the sparks between us.
Back through my childhood which (surprise!) wasn't as awful as I sometimes though it had been. Memory is such a selective thing.
And then, almost with my knowing it, he had me floating free. It was frightening at first, but Kev kept saying that he was there with me. "You' re never so far down you can't come back up right away," he assured me.
"You want to go on?" I said I did.
We went into my last life in which I was a minor political official in Berlin during the war. I was a Nazi. I didn't much like the idea, but when we talked about it later Kev reminded me that everyone has things in their past which go against all their best interests in the present. He also suggested I think of this life as, perhaps, an attempt to expiate whatever negative actions I performed in the last one. I discovered my name had been Georg Hoffman, and I'd been engaged to a Jewish girl.
"Interesting," Kev said.
Apparently I didn't allow my feelings for her to interfere with my allegiance to the party. I broke off the engagement when anti-Semitic feeling began running high. She died in a camp. My life went on. I died of a stroke in Berlin before the war ended. Fairly mundane life, really.
I don't think he'd intended to take me more than one life back, but I found myself pulled backwards. I had the sense I'd find Bodie there waiting for me.
What I found was a jumble of images - Bodie and myself in different bodies, but still recognizably ourselves. I saw a scene of great love and great anger which confused me, and I saw the self I was then running through the fields on silent cat feet. So, this isn't the first time I've been a shape-shifter!
I saw myself swimming in a river - could feel the water, cold and bracing, and a handsome, arrogant figure watching from and oddly-shaped rock. I knew that place. It had some special meaning to me. Bodie, with blue snakes winding around his arms! And I was alone in a field, on a red horse, and I was weeping.
I couldn't catch hold of any of those images for more than a few seconds, not nearly long enough to make a coherent story out of any of them. I tired to force myself to focus on one thing - that rock formation beside the river - but the effort brought me back up to the present. I was still in a light trance, but I was home.
"It's so frustrating," I complained to Kev. "I couldn't hold on to anything."
"Maybe you're not ready to know," he suggested. "The mind runs from the things it can't deal with. What did you find out?"
I told him about my most recent life. "If I had to be a Nazi, couldn't I have been Goering or someone famous?"
"Hitler?"
That produced a shudder. "Rommel," I countered.
"I suppose all of us have to have a life other folks remember. Me, I'd rather live my famous life as Bach or DaVinci." He lay back on his elbows and grinned.
I began to laugh. "Nothing like reaching for the moon, is there?"
"Bodie told me you're an artist..."
"In my spare time," I hastened to add.
"Exactly. Do you think it's the first time you've used a brush?"
I thought about it for a while. "No," I admitted. "It feels too right."
"What else did you learn?"
"That Bodie and I have shared many lives."
"Does it surprise you?"
"No."
"Did you find any of us back there? The rest of this family, I mean?"
"I wasn't looking for you," I confessed, and it was Kev's turn to laugh at me.
"Next time you look for us; we'll all be there."
"Everyone?"
"Boy, you always get involved with the people you've been involved with before. It's a law of the universe or somethin'."
I thought about it. "Maybe Cowley was my mother last time."
"And I was your twin sister."
"Really?" I asked, thinking he was serious.
Kev rolled about and howled.
"Well, I am new at this." I kicked at him and he calmed down a bit.
"Hoo! You're a stitch."
"The harder I try to remember, the less I can hold on to. I really do want to understand all this."
"Give yourself time. You might try working on it in dreams."
"How do I do that?" I asked, feeling sceptical. He gave me an outline of how to do what he calls 'dreamwork', which includes keeping a journal of dreams. I'm already on that path. If I'm not too tired tonight, I'll...oh, Bodie's calling. They're ready to start.
Sunday morning...early Tonight I really can't sleep, but then Bodie's awake as well. There's a wild party going on downstairs. I came up here because I was starting to fade. I also wanted to write all this down now, before I sleep, because when I wake up...next week, probably, this will all seem like a dream.
When Bodie called I went down and found everyone in the common room. Bodie was holding one of the babies and Dahout the other. The room was filled with flowers. Bea and Jeff were playing priest and priestess. Even Jamie was there.
"This isn't going to be as flashy as Dahout or Kev," Jeff admitted.
"We'd like you to join hands in a circle," Bea told us, and we did. Bodie and Dahout put the twins in their cradles and joined us, Bodie holding my left hand and Dahout my right.
"This is the joyful time of light's return, a time of balance for all of us.
There's new life everywhere..."
I stole a look at Bodie who was smiling.
"The Sun King and Kore, the dark maiden have returned to us from the land of shadows, bringing the glory of life with them."
Bea moved around the circle handing each of us a small bunch of flowers.
"Where They step, flowers bloom, as They dance, want turns to abundance.
May our hearts bloom with the flowers - Blessed Be!"
Jeff picked up one baby and Bea the other. "Help us welcome the new life,"
he said, and they carried the children around the circle, so each of us could hold and welcome each child. They began the Kore chant.
She changes everything She touches And everything She touches, changes.
And we picked it up.
When the children came to me, I was a little overcome. I guess part of me wished they'd been ours - mine and Bodie's, impossible as it was.
We were all sitting sharing cakes and wine when the air around the cradles began to shimmer. I panicked because the last time I'd seen that happen was in the pub, the night Bodie made the bloke disappear. Dahout said: "Just wait, Ray."
The disturbance grew, and I could tell most of the others were a little perturbed by it as well. And then the air itself seemed to fracture, and people came spilling out.
"Have missed all but the wine!" one voice complained. Bodie started to laugh, and I knew, just by looking at the speaker, that I was seeing Bodie's father. He was just as amazing as Bodie had said - smallish, porcelain-perfect and so much like Bodie...a miniature Bodie, that I ached to touch him.
The odd thing was, I knew him from...somewhere.
But then Bodie stopped laughing and stood up, a funny, wistful look on his face. "Mum?" Was that Fiona? He put his arms around her and hugged her.
I could see why she'd stolen the heart of a lord of the Sidhe. She was flawlessly lovely with eyes as green as new leaves, milk-white skin with a spray of freckles across the nose and cheekbones, and a tangle of dark red curls. His face was buried in those curls. I could see the muscles straining - trying to draw her into himself and at the same time, to hold back from her, knowing she was no longer wholly his. I could feel waves of joy and pain pouring off of him.
He raised his head and his face was wet. "I never thought I'd see you again," he told her.
"How could you and I ever be parted?" She wiped his face with the edge of her scarf. "Oh, Gwyn, you've grown up so big and handsome!" He laughed again and swung her around.
I'd loved her in the past. I knew that much, though how I knew was still a mystery. And Bodie had loved her as well.
"I made them all wait until the ceremony was over, else they would have stormed in and taken over," she explained. "Put me down, Gwyn, I want to see my grandchildren." People were still spilling out of the fracture.
Gwydion's cronies, I thought, all clad in the green armour of the Sidhe.
Only Gwydion wore silver. They crouched around the cradles and dangled things over the babies and made what sounded like speeches and prophecies in some language that was only vaguely familiar. They all made way for Fiona, who picked up each child in turn. "Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again," she said to each baby. "Welcome." And she kissed them both.
Bodie nudged me. "Don't you expect Flora, Fauna and Merryweather to pop in next?" he asked.
Gwydion came over and pounded Bodie on the back. "Thee's done well, lad.
Be fine children."
"As if it was any more his doing than Dahout's," Fiona replied, returning to his side.
Gwydion looked sour for a moment, then turned sunny again. "Or mine," he added. She laughed. "Redhair, thee's unnatural quiet tonight..."
"Um," I said.
"Have not had the remembering yet?" A sly smile quirked at the corners of his mouth, and he turned to Bodie. "A's much to remember, na?"
My god, I thought, this isn't happening.
Gwydion and Fiona went off to speak to Dahout, and Bodie slumped against me.
"He wears me out," he confessed. The other warriors came up and introduced themselves - Mac Greine, dark and hawkish; Lugh, fair and smiling; Kai, Govannon, Robin, Gwyrhyr...I can't remember them all. And they brought their ladies with them, all of whom exclaimed over the children as though they'd never seen one before.
"Be under my protection," Mac Greine announced. "Shall count children before a leaves," he said to one willowy faery woman who was holding Janicot. She grimaced, but replaced the child in the cradle.
Then Gwydion's mob began vying for the favours of the humans in the room.
Govannon was pretty obviously chatting up Jamie, who found his English a bit confusing, and kept saying, 'Huh?' Tal looked annoyed.
Jeff put on a record and Fiona and Gwydion began to dance.
"She's beautiful," I observed.
"She always is," Bodie said. He looked wistful. Yes, she always is. I may not have had the remembering yet, but I knew that Fiona is always beautiful to us.
"Bodie, what do you know about blue snakes?"
He looked at me as though I'd asked him if he was keeping a comely ewe for immoral purposes. "What?"
But before I had a chance to answer, Fiona claimed him for a dance while Gwydion danced with Dahout. One of the faery women held out her hands to me and I joined the dance. "Thee's a fine dancer, Redhair."
"Thank you...ah, what's your name?"
"Blodeuwedd." (She spelled it for me." She seemed amused that I didn't remember her.
Dahout put the babies to bed and everyone danced. Even George tread a measure with Fiona, before he sat down to share a cup of two with Gwydion.
Govannon, having got nowhere with Jamie, cornered me. Now I can honestly say I've been groped by a real fairy.
We danced and drank and ate and danced some more. Bodie stuck so close to Fiona, I began to feel a bit jealous. Yet even that seemed familiar somehow, comfortable. Time seemed to stop for us tonight. There were no worries - nothing but the warmth of love.
It's late and I'm so tired I can hardly hold my head up. They're still downstairs whooping it up, except for one or two who have discreetly retired, like me, though not for the same reason. I saw Tal and Jamie go upstairs with two of the ladies. Will wonders never cease? Bodie was right. I kept expecting to see the three good fairies come flying in the window and bestowing gifs on the babies and sprinkling fairy dust on everything in sight. The whole night has had a fantastic aura, though most definitely no Walt Disneyish.
Perhaps it's a holdover from this afternoon's session with Kev, but I feel an affinity for these people - Gwydion's people, I mean. It isn't just that I've known Fiona before, but more, I've known these warriors before. We've fought side-by-side. I suppose in one sense a shared past validates my relationship with Bodie - if we've belonged to each other in the past, it's obvious we'd be drawn to each other this life. But in another sense, I'm less pleased at the thought because it means we had less choice in the matter. I like to think we made a choice to love based on the people we are now.
'Course, now I think of it, maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive after all.
I'm so tired.
I'll think about this tomorrow.
Tomorrow is another day.
Thank you, Scarlett O'Hara. (snicker)
Sunday afternoon Bodie's still sleeping. Grrr. If he hadn't stayed up so late, he might be awake now, and I could talk to him. Idiot.
Half the house is out cold.
From what I can gather, Gwydion and his mob disappeared around cockcrow, leaving a group of sodden, exhausted human being in their wake.
While they were all carousing, I was dreaming about Redhair and Gwyn - us - me and Bodie. It was a confused dream, but it had to do with a battle, and, I'm not sure I'm ready for this, King Arthur. Well, I suppose the subconscious mind can be allowed a few literary pretensions. The thing which disturbed me was Gwyn's death. Once it happened, it was as if I had to live it over and over, like a cycle. I'd come to love him and he'd die.
Finally I remember thinking, 'I don't like this dream,' and I started to come out of it.
I should be doing what Kev taught me to do - writing the dream down in detail on one page of the journal and using the other side for analysis.
But I'm not comfortable with this dream. I don't like thinking about it, much less analysing it. I don't like to think of what it means either. If that's the end of all things for us, what's the point of loving? If I lose him each time, if I lose him too soon.
What's too soon, anyway? Tomorrow? Next year? Ever? If I had my way, we' d live until we were ready to call it quits, and go at the same time.
Life isn't like that. I don't want Bodie to suffer my loss, but I don't know if I could bear to lose him.
This is becoming depressing.
Maybe I'll go and wake him very nicely.
Later... I went up and snuggled under the covers and tried to raise the dead to no avail. He just groaned and asked me to come back next week when he'd feel more in the mood. So I came back down to write out my dream because I think it might be an exorcism of sorts.
As I said, we were preparing for battle. Gwyn was with me - my partner. He said to me, 'I've seen my death, Dru', and I knew he was serious because he never called me by anything resembling my real name. 'It will come to me in the night.' I told him not to be so morbid; that men about to go into battles have fancies like this.
'It's not the battle. I've fought in as many as I have teeth, and I don't fear honest combat. I feel someone creeping up behind me. The Lord of Shadows is stalking me, Dru.' He was right, of course. That night someone came to our tent and cut his throat. I never woke up.
After that I saw him die three, no, four more times. Once he died cursing me, once he died at my hands, once he was hanged for my murder, and once we committed suicide together. We were fifteen years old in that life.
Kev said to analyse, but where do I begin? It's pretty bloody obvious that we've shared a lot of lives. And it's obvious we've had intense relationships in many of them. But why death? Why am I dreaming our deaths and not our lives? I wish I could find someone to tell me the significance of this focus.
Oh, this time, Bodie, let us die quietly, together.
Cowley came to talk to me while I was writing.
"You're feeling low, aren't you, Doyle?" he asked.
I admitted I was, and explained a little of what I was trying to work through.
"Aye, I know. You may not realize it, but I've shared a few lives with the two of you myself. I have to live with the fear that I'll see you both die before me. Of course, it's not as bad now I've begun to ease you both out of the more dangerous field work." He laughed a little. "Bodie did you a disservice in healing you so well after the shooting," he told me. "If you' d survived even slightly impaired I could have, in good conscience, taken you out of the field altogether. But I have to be thrifty with my men. I can't afford to waste one so useful to me."
What he was saying, I think, was that he loved us.
"I can't promise you'll predecease him, but I will promise not to send either of you into obvious danger without good reason. If only because I value your talents over your more physical skills..." He broke off and studied a ragged fingernail. "I shall have to find a file."
"Thank you sir."
I did feel better after that.
Ah, Bodie's awake and looking for food.
Still later... Quiet day. We spent most of the afternoon and evening with the babies.
Bodie'd made a terrific Da, I expect. He's obviously feeling more involved now that he was when he heard they'd been born. And Jeff's good with them.
I hope he and Bea will have a mob of their own soon.
Speaking of Bea, I guess Murphy called this morning. She's worried about him - talked to Cowley very seriously for quite a long time. I tried to listen but Colette came down and dragged me off for a talk.
Was nice. I hadn't talked to her in a while, though we do try to keep in touch as much as we can. My own mum...well, things haven't been right with us for too long. Oh, she and I exchange cards on all the usual occasions - Christmas, birthdays - but we never really talk. I realized that we never have. I don't really know my mother at all. It's as if she's some stranger who carried me for nine months because Colette couldn't. I wouldn't say that to Colette, of course, because she's very sensitive about the link between mother and child. But she, of all people, should understand that a blood tie is not always a guarantee of love or affection or even duty. How many children has she mothered because their own mothers have had nothing for them? Or their fathers, or...I don't know.
Jamie and Tal cooked supper which we ate picnic style in the common room.
In fact, we haven't left this room since we finished dinner. I feel surprisingly peaceful tonight. Bodie and I are sharing one of the sofas.
He's dozing, wrapped in a woollen rug. I'm writing. Dahout is lying on some cushions by the fire feeding Janicot, while Jonet sleeps on Jeff's stomach. Everyone else is lying about, sleeping or reading. Kev is playing Dahout's brother's harp. Peaceful.
This is my family. Doesn't really matter where the ties come from - the past, or our own affinities. What matters is that we are as close as anyone tied by blood. I love these people and I fancy they love me.
One of them does, anyway.
He just sneezed in his sleep.
Suddenly the whys don't matter very much.
--Eostar 1983
While the Cat's Away Being married to a cat - especially a male one - isn't the easiest life. I was fond of Ray's alter ego, so occasional appearances by Beelzy weren't any problem; in fact, I rather enjoyed them. Beelzy is an affectionate little bugger, just like Ray.
Still, after about two years of wedded (almost) bliss, I started feeling the itch again - you know, pretty girl, right mood...bang! It's the Irish in me.
Then I met Annie at our local and she made it clear she was interested. I was sorely tempted.
Ray was out of town on assignment, and would be gone, according to Cowley, for just as long as it took. (Has no sympathy for my frustration, has Cowley. I don't think he has the slightest idea that Ray and I wake up every morning just as hungry for each other as when we went to bed. Maybe I should be grateful, eh?) Anyway, Ray had been gone a week, and I was feeling lonely and itchy and the self-pity was coming on strong, so I took myself off to the pub on the corner hoping for a little uncomplicated human companionship.
Annie was there. She looked gorgeous in dark green and brown, her hair like burnished copper. Her eyes were green - funny, that. I sat down at her table and we chatted a bit.
"Where's your friend?" she asked. I must have looked startled because she began to laugh. "You never noticed me, did you? Well, I've noticed you.
You're always here with the curly-haired fellow."
"He's on a business trip."
Her mouth quirked into a smile. "I have cause to be grateful, I expect,"
she said. "I should make the most of this opportunity."
She was running her hand up and down my arm. I didn't have to ask her what she meant. I hadn't come her planning to cheat on Ray, but now all I was thinking of was making love with a beautiful woman.
I took her back to our flat because she said her flatmate was entertaining that evening. Made me uncomfortable taking her there. I almost called the whole thing off. I fixed drinks and she wandered round looking at everything.
"Do you live alone?" she asked.
"No."
"Oh?"
"I live with Ray. The curly-haired fellow."
"Oh...really?" She took the drink from me and gave me a smile that was nothing short of feral. "Have I misjudged the invitation?"
She touched a raw nerve - one I didn't know I had. I took the glass out of her hand and pushed her down on the sofa.
"No, you know what I want," I told her. I would have had her there and then, but she stopped me.
"Save your enthusiasm, I have to use the loo for a minute." She squirmed out from under me and went off.
I was feeling manipulated; my ego was demanding I prove myself to Annie. I hate that feeling. I knew I hadn't been emasculated by my relationship with Ray.
She came back wrapped in a towel. "Aren't you coming to bed?" she asked.
And then, there was the obvious attraction. She was a little raver.
"Oh, bugger it," I muttered. I followed her into the bedroom, undressing as I went.
Annie had a rip, round figure and she was good at the mechanics of sex. I thoroughly enjoyed her, and if I felt a little guilty because of it, I reminded myself that Ray and I had never made any promises of fidelity.
I dropped into a light sleep. What woke me was the sound of Annie talking to someone.
"Here kitty, kitty, kitty," she was saying.
Oh no...
I lay there, trying not to move. This was a dream, I decided, a guilt-induced nightmare.
"Here kitty, nice kitty..."
The bed dipped slightly.
"Bodie, you didn't tell me you had a cat."
Oh no...
I rolled over very carefully and saw, at the foot of the bed, a pair of green eyes gleaming in the darkness. Beelzy...grinning at me.
"What's his name?" she asked, reaching for Beelzy. She pulled him into her arms and cuddled him and he began to purr, but all the time, he watched me.
Gave me the creeps.
"Beelzebub," I told her.
"What a sweet kitty," she crooned and the purring became louder. Beelzy rubbed his face against hers and looked over at me. The expression in his eyes was one I'd seen before.
"Meowrr," he said. I was in a lot of trouble.
"How old is he? Where'd you get him?"
"He found me," I said. Beelzy wriggled free of her grip and stalked around the bed, sniffing the sheets. "What are you doing here?" I demanded of him, and Annie gave me a sidelong look, wondering whatever was wrong with Bodie, I imagine. It's bad when you start asking the cat questions.
Beelzy found the edge of the sheet and dove under, and I though, oh oh, better beat a hasty retreat. So I rolled over and started to get out of bed, but the nasty little sod was too fast for me. A paw shot out and raked my backside before I could get clear of him. To make it worse, Annie started laughing.
"It's not funny!" I yelled, watching the lump beneath the sheets move around wildly, as if he was chasing a mouse under there. I was bleeding. I went to the bog and washed the scratches, which stung like mad, and came back ready to do battle.
"All right, out!" I ordered, swatting at the bulge under the sheet. A marmalade-coloured head poked out and Beelzy growled a little.
"There, you've hurt him," Annie accused, hauling Beelzy back into her arms.
"Poor puss, do you want to come home with me?"
Little bastard started purring again.
"He likes me, Bodie," she said, triumphantly.
"Mnph," I said, noncommittally.
Beelzy meowed loudly.
"Let me put him out, Annie, or he'll be stomping on us all night," I said with deliberate malice, reaching for Beelzy who was glaring at me. Serve him right, I thought as I took him out of her arms. But before I could chuck him out on his pointy ear, he escaped and leapt back onto the bed, marched up to my pillow and sprayed it...liberally, which drove Annie out of the bed. And the two of us stood in the middle of the room and watched Beelzy march out, tail held aloft like a banner of war.
"Why did he do that?"
"He's jealous." She laughed. She didn't know the half of it.
"How about a drink before I push off?" she asked me as she pulled on her under things. I was so glad to hear she was leaving that I agreed immediately.
I put on my robe and went out to pour two drinks - double whiskey for me and vodka and lime for her - and watched Beelzy stalk around the flat, hair bristling.
"It's your own fault for not calling first," I hissed at him.
"What?" Annie asked, walking out of the bedroom, brushing her long coppery hair. Talking to the cat again - dear, dear.
"Nothing, here's your drink."
"Wwooooo," Beelzy replied.
"Is he hungry, Bodie?"
"Very probably."
"Then feed him."
"He's getting fat. I'm trying to cut down." I scowled at the monster who seemed to rule my life lately. The worst part was that I knew he had every right to be upset with me. We needed to talk, but we couldn't - not with Annie here and Ray refusing to be anything but Beelzy.
"Awww, poor puss. Tell daddy you're hungry." She urged as he rubbed against her ankles and sharpened his claws (which were already quite sharp enough, thank you) on the brand new and rather expensive sofa.
"Stop that!" I yelled. Annie giggled.
"Mrrrrrroowwp!"
He ran around the room, knocking over Ray's collection of tin soldiers, then leapt on the drapes and climbed all the way to the top and swung there, yowling.
"Help him down, Bodie," Annie ordered between fits of giggles.
"He can get down by himself," I told her.
"WWWoooooWWWWWWWW!" He didn't half sound pitiful when he tried, and loud...we 'd be having complaints from the neighbours for sure.
"Bodie!"
"All right, all right!" I got up, but before I reached the window, he'd slid down, laddering the curtains in the process. Then he arched his back, hissed at me and danced sideways - devil cat. It was a pretty good performance, really, and I started to laugh.
"Is he always like this?" she asked. She'd finished her drink and was getting ready to leave.
"On heat, I think."
"Oh yes? You should have him neutered.
"I'm considering it."
"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." Ears laid back, hair standing on end.
Finally Annie kissed me goodbye and I nearly shoved her out of the flat.
"Now, Raymond my love," I said, leaning against the door and surveying the damage, "we're going to have a little talk." He was sitting on the bar with one paw in Annie's glass, trying to flip the ice up and out, and the glass was wobbling ominously. "Growp?" he asked as it fell over splattering him with dregs of her vodka. He jumped to the floor, knocking over the bottle of limejuice which spilled all over the bar's surface.
"Stop pratting about and change back!" I yelled.
"Mrow?"
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm on about, Ray. Change back!" I grabbed for him, but he sidestepped me neatly. "Ray!"
"Prrrtt," he said from a safe distance. I had the feeling I was being laughed at.
"Look," I said, desperate, "I'm sorry, all right? But if you won't talk to me, how are we going to work this out?"
Beelzy seemed to consider this for a moment, then stalked over to the couch and leapt up, and suddenly Ray was there, curled up against the arm, frowning at me.
"Well?"
"I'll think twice before I cheat on you again." I sat down beside him.
"Are you going to forgive me?"
"I'm not sure. Tell me why I should."
"Because I love you," I offered. His response was unexpected. He wiped his face with a rough swipe of his hand. I pulled him onto my lap and kissed his nose, his eyelids and his mouth very gently. "What am I going to do with you?"
"It's Beltaine," he said, as though it explained everything.
And then I remembered. It was our anniversary.
"Oh, Ray, I'm sorry. You came back to be with me and found me with Annie.
You have a right to be angry," I admitted.
"Did you have to do it here?" He was trying to pull out of my grasp, but I wouldn't let him go.
"She has a flatmate. I really am sorry. I didn't think."
"Yeh." He sagged against me. "We never made any promises, did we?"
"No, we didn't'. Am I forgiven?"
He nodded.
"Okay. Kiss and make up?" I asked. He nodded again and leaned into the kiss so eagerly I could tell he wasn't really upset any longer.
We kissed for a long time and when he finally pulled away, I couldn't see straight. He has more magic than he thinks. "You want to make promises?" I asked blearily. I was hearing wedding bells for chrissake!
"Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see." He patted my knee and went into the bedroom. "I'll change the sheet, shall I?"
"Ummm, yeah..." Bodie-mouse was rushing headlong towards the cheese. I followed him into the bedroom and found Beelzy rolling around in the crumpled linen purring and asking to be scratched.
I lay down on the bed and rubbed my face against his soft belly fur. "I love both of you," I whispered to him and he curled around my head and bit at my hair, purring like mad all the while. Then suddenly I was holding an armful of Ray, resting my head on his stomach. His cock was hard and bobbing in my face, so I did the obvious - I took it in my mouth and began to suck. He tasted wonderful. He always does. He just kept on purring and purring all the while. And when we finished, he curled around me and rubbed his face against mine, against my hair, my chest, and went on purring.
Life is never dull with Ray and Beelzy.
--Beltaine 1983
Manx Without a Past It was evening, Bodie realised as he left the market. The day, which had begun ominously with a storm, had passed too quickly, the tail end of it slipping away from him as he absorbed himself in the little domestic things that demanded his attention. The rain had begun again and the streets were slick, so he was a little more careful as he drove home. He had someone to come home to.
Just as he parked the car the skies opened up again. Rain spilled down in waves, completely obscuring his vision. "Rainin' cats 'n' dogs," he mused, silly visions of a skyful of gently drifting Beelzys filling his mind. He sat back to wait out the worst of it.
Five minutes later, his fantasy had played itself out, his patience had worn thin, and the rain was still slanting down in sheets. He decided he no longer cared about getting wet, gathered up his groceries and dashed down the street to his flat. Just as he reached the doorway the rain let up, and he cursed with real feeling. In the shadows to his left, there was movement, and he stepped back quickly, a half-formed image of a rat scurrying through his mind. His keys dropped from his hand with a dull clang. The thing moved again, detaching itself from the shadows to investigate the tangle of keys now lying in a puddle. To Bodie's vast relief it turned out to be a tiny, taffy-coloured kitten, soaked and shivering. "Where'd you come from?" he asked as he picked it up, depositing it in his jacket pocket for safe keeping. Then he retrieved his keys and carried in the groceries.
"Ray? Ray!" The flat was dark and silent, and Bodie's spirits dropped a little. He looked forward to coming home to Ray - the thought alone could brighten the dark times. "Must have gone out," he said to the kitten. "You 'll like Ray, he's your sort of people." He stripped and dropped his wet clothes in the bath, pulled on a warm towelling robe, and wrapped the wet cat in a large towel. "Not a fit night for man nor beast," he told it, rubbing it dry. Its fur stood up in brownish spikes, making it look for all the world like a child's toy gone mad. As he worked, he went round the flat turning on all the lights in an effort to banish the feeling of isolation.
"Wish Ray was here." The kitten began to purr and Bodie felt foolishly pleased, as he always did when Beelzy purred for him. He noticed that its fur had begun to dry to a distinctively orangish hue, and a horrible thought struck him. He pulled the kitten out of the towel and inspected it carefully. Couldn't be...could it?
"Ray?"
The purring grew louder.
"Ray, is that you?"
The kitten licked his nose.
"All right, stop pratting about...Ray!"
It was nonsense of course. Ray wouldn't be mad enough to stay outside in weather like this even if he had decided to play at being a kitten. But what if he'd been locked out by accident? Would have changed back, Bodie decided. But then he would've been stuck outside in the rain stark naked.
That was assuming he was stuck outside at all. Ray wasn't the type to change just anywhere. This was just a stray. He wrapped it up again and set it down on a chair. "I'll be back; you just relax."
He was in the kitchen, stacking tins, when there was a tremendous crash just behind him. He spun around to see one of the grocery sacks lying on the floor, its contents spilling out - eggs, juice, cereal - and the kitten, wide-eyed in the doorway, a blob of egg yolk on its head.
It had to be Ray.
"I ought to make you clean it up, you rotten little sod," Bodie grumbled.
"Cummon, Ray, that's enough now. Change back." The kitten began to clean its face and Bodie realised he was talking to himself. He knelt down and began to mop u0p a pool of orange juice. The kitten, having made short work of the egg yolk, attacked one of the few intact eggs lying on the linoleum, and sent it wobbling and spinning crazily across the floor. "Stop that, stop that!" Bodie yelled as he caught the egg just before it impacted against the table leg. "Do that again and I'll wallop you," he promised, though he knew he couldn't wallop a kitten. He decided to save it for Ray's reappearance.
He finished storing the groceries without any more help from the kitten, and fixed himself a cup of coffee. Then he went out to flip on the telly. The kitten was curled up on Ray's side of the sofa. He picked it up, lay down and deposited it on his chest. "You're just not going to co-operate, are you? Why are you being this way?" he asked. "Are you angry with me?" By way of reply the kitten sneezed in his face. "My God, you're sick, is that it? Oh no, not again," he groaned, remembering the last time Beelzy had got hurt and hadn't been able to change back. It'd been a nightmare of a week.
He cuddled the kitten against his chest and touched its nose, which was warm and dry. Bodie knew a moment of real panic. He unbuttoned his shirt and slipped the kitten in next to his skin. "Have to keep you warm, don't I?"
He grabbed the phone and dialled Mrs Ritter upstairs. She'd know what to do.
"Mrs R? This is Bodie. I've got a problem."
"What sort?"
"Kitten problem. Can you come down for a minute?"
"Be right there, love."
A few minutes later she was at the door, laden with tins and packets and toys. "Now, what's the problem?"
He pulled the kitten out of his shirt and handed it to her. "I think 'e's sick."
"What a little beauty you are," she cooed as she inspected the kitten. She lifted its tail. "Well, first thing is, it's not a he, Bodie. You've got a little girl here."
"You sure?"
"When you've raised as many as I have, you know. Sick, you say?"
"He...she's been sneezing and her nose is warm."
Mrs Ritter pressed the kitten's nose against her own and was rewarded by a sharp little bit and a lick. "Has she been resting?"
"Yeh."
"So it's not unusual, really. How's her appetite?"
"Dunno. I just found her half an hour ago. She was out in the rain."
"Poor little thing! Well, I brought down some food. I don't imagine you and Ray keep cat food."
"Only as a treat," Bodie mumbled.
"She's rather thin. You feed her up properly and I don't think you'll have any trouble with her. I brought some vitamin and mineral supplements as well. And a catnip toy with some extra catnip. She'll love it - I grow it myself." She opened a spice jar and offered a pinch to the kitten.
"'ere, she's eatin' it!"
"Of course, that's what they do."
Bodie picked her up, and the kitten went rigid in his grasp, then bit him with little needle-sharp teeth. Bodie nearly dropped her. Then she began to purr and rub her face against his hands.
"It's better with older cats. They go quite mad."
"You have anything like this for people?" he asked as he sniffed the herb.
Mrs Ritter chuckled. "If I had, the police'd be after me, wouldn't they?
Well, things to do. I must get home to my little family."
Bodie reflected wryly that seven fractious cats was hardly a 'little' family. "Thanks for the help," he called after her.
"Well, a little cold, eh? Is that the problem?" He put away the tins of cat food, opening one to offer to the kitten. "Here, herring. Yum!" She fell on it with gusto.
He'd just finished when there was a knock at the door. It was Mrs Ritter.
"Just me again. I forgot that you'd probably need a cat box and some litter. I have extra so it's no problem." Then she was gone.
Wonderful, Bodie thought. Now we have two of everything.
"Are we in for a long siege?" he asked the kitten who was eating greedily.
"Please," he prayed to whatever god was listening, "please don't let this take too long."
He stretched out on the sofa again, wondering if he should bother fixing some supper. He didn't have much of an appetite, unlike the kitten who had settled on his chest after demolishing her meal.
"Phew - herring breath!" She began to clean her paws. "I suppose I'll have to call the old man...Christ, he'll love this, won't he? And what am I going to call you? Can't call you Ray or Beelzy, can I? How about Pansy...that's good. Honestly Ray, sometimes you're more trouble than you're worth." He was feeling warm and sleepy, and he enjoyed having a kitten curled up on his chest. "Still, I love you. Have to put up with the little...inconveniences, don't I?"
"Who're you talking to, Bodie?"
He half sat up, clutching the kitten who kept on washing. Ray was standing in the hallway. "Ray?"
"Last time I looked. Who're you...hey, where'd you find the kitten?"
Bodie began to laugh. He laughed so hard he dislodged Pansy who went off to sit on the other chair. "Wouldn't believe..." he managed.
"What's so funny?"
"Thought...'s' Beelzy!" Bodie gasped.
"Beelzy?"
"You!" He clutched his belly which had begun to ache, and laughed even harder.
"You thought it was me? You daft thing." Then Ray began to laugh too, finally collapsing on top of Bodie. The kitten watched them disdainfully.
"I thought you couldn't change back again," Bodie explained, once he'd managed to get back some control.
"God, it must have been some hour."
"Fairly gruesome," Bodie admitted. "'s' better now."
"I should think."
"Where've you been anyway?" Bodie asked, shifting around to settle more comfortably. He wiped a few damp curls away from Ray's face. "I missed having you to come home to."
"The Cow had me run an errand before I left. Took about two hours with the traffic fouled up because of the rain. Then I arrived home to hear you tellin' someone else that you love 'em and have to put up with the little inconveniences."
Bodie began to chuckle again. "Didn't hear you come in, did I? I might have been more discreet. Gis a kiss then?"
"Don't know as I want to kiss a daft thing like you," Ray said, but he bent and nibbled at Bodie's lips. "Hungry?"
"Hunh?"
"I'm starving. Haven't had lunch. Shall I make some spaghetti?" He climbed up off the sofa, picked up Pansy and dropped her on Bodie's stomach.
"You watch the baby." He went into the bedroom.
Pansy walked all over Bodie and finally settled for his groin.
"Where'd you find her anyway?"
"Just outside in the rain. That's why I thought it was you."
"You implying I don't have the sense to come in out of the rain, Bodie?"
Ray emerged from the bedroom clad in a green silk robe that made Bodie's mouth water, with a towel draped over damp curls. "What shall we call her?"
"Something simple. I thought Pansy."
"Nah, she ought to have something regal to grow into like Prunella Phoebe Fortescue Fitz-bananafingers-Doyle-Bodie...Pansy for short."
"Don't know if anyone could grow into that. You want to keep her then?" he asked as Ray went out to the kitchen.
"Don't see why not. What kind of sauce?"
"Do the one with garlic, cheese, bacon and egg - we love it, don't we Pansy?" he cooed to the kitten.
"I have two children to take care of now," Doyle shouted back to him.
Had a habit of picking up strays, did Bodie. Ray smiled as he worked.
There was an affinity there that was endearing - the hard man and the helpless stray. Pansy might be a good thing all around. Pets helped settle people.
He cut up the salad greens and set them aside. Then he fried the bacon.
"Need any help?" Bodie called. From where he stood, Ray could see Bodie sprawled comfortably on the couch, Pansy curled up on his crotch.
"Nah, be ready in two ticks. World's greatest slap-up spaghetti."
The garlic was cooking in the pan, and the pasta was boiling, so Ray began to crush the herbs he wanted to use - oregano, a healthy handful of basil...he found an unlabelled bottle among the herbs, so he opened it and sniffed. It smelled wonderful, so he added a liberal pinch to the mortar, and ground the mixture. It gave off a heady aroma. Ray added a pinch more of the unlabelled herb, and took a pinch for himself. It tasted fabulous. "Bodie' s gonna love this," he told himself with a little chuckle. "Wonder what it is."
Bodie was almost asleep when a crash woke him. "Ray?"
There were giggles from the kitchen. "'s okay, 's okay - just dripped...dropped me spoon." Another loud bang and a burst of laughter.
"Dropped it again, didn' I?"
Bodie sat up and Pansy dug her claws into his thigh. "You all right?"
More giggles - not a Doyle-like noise. "This is primo spaghetti, Bodie."
"Almost ready?"
Silence.
"I said..."
Ray ran out of the kitchen, stark naked, and flung himself on a startled Bodie (dislodging an even more startled Pansy from her nest.
"Ohgodbodiescratchmybelly!" He rubbed his face against Bodie's and nipped his ear.
"Ow! What the 'ell..."
"Scratch my belly!"
"Ray!"
Suddenly Beelzy was rolling around on Bodie's chest, purring loudly and biting Bodie's hands. Pansy hissed a tiny kitten hiss from the safety of the top of the drapes. Beelzy took off like a shot, ran headfirst into the wall, bounced off, yowled, and began to chase his tail, knocking over a lamp and a chair as he went. The phone rang.
"Three-three-seven-nine!" Bodie yelled, trying to make himself heard over the noise.
"What's that commotion, man?" Cowley "Er, um, it's Doyle...sir."
"Howling?"
"Yessir."
"I don't suppose you'd like to explain?"
"Nosir."
"Carry on, then. Have him call me...when he's through."
"Thank you, sir," he said, and rang off.
"Let's fuck!" Doyle purred, running remarkably sharp nails down his back, under his shirt.
"What's got into you?"
"Nothing yet, but I can hope...cummon Bodie, don't be so stodgy."
A leg tangled between Bodie's and he fell in a heap with Doyle on top, tearing at his clothes, biting scratching, licking and giggling like a loony. He managed to bear the business part of Bodie, then knelt in front of him, asking to be mounted. The noise he made when he got what he wanted was incredible.
The phone rang again, Bodie ignored it.
Afterwards they lay in a damp tangle and Doyle chuckled to himself - a noise of complete satisfaction. "God, that was fantastic!"
The phone rang yet again, and Ray answered this time. "Honeymoon cottage."
Bodie prayed it wasn't the Cow. "Oh, hi, Mrs Ritter. No, the kitten is just fine. Noise? No, I didn't hear any noise. Maybe it was outside - catfight or something. I'll ask Bodie. Did you hear a terrible noise just a few minutes ago?" he asked with a straight face. Bodie could only stare at him. "No, I don't think he did. He's sort of tired. Yes, okay. G' night, Mrs Ritter." He hung up the phone. "Goodness, I'm hungry. I wonder if the pasta is overcooked."
Bodie watched him get up and go back to the kitchen where he retrieved his rob from the top of the refrigerator and went back to fixing dinner as though nothing had happened. Bodie on the other hand, felt as though he'd been run over by a steamroller.
"You're going to love this," Ray promised as he set a generous plate of spaghetti in front of Bodie. "Smells wonderful, doesn't it?" He set a little plate of pasta at the end of the table and set Pansy in front of it.
"You don't mind her having a place at the table, do you?"
"Would it make any difference if I did?"
Ray tilted his head and stared at Bodie, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth. "Do you think I ride roughshod over you, Bodie?"
"Sometimes."
Long fingers crept under Bodie's shirt, and a tongue snaked into his ear.
"Damn cat," he muttered when they were withdrawn, and Ray sat down to eat.
Pansy ate greedily for a few minutes, then began to roll around on top of the table, purring madly.
"She likes my spaghetti," Ray said, twirling his fork in a pile of pasta.
Pansy rolled off the table top.
"What the hell is the matter with you two?" Bodie asked as he suddenly found Ray in his lap, kissing his cheek and biting his hair. "What's in that spaghetti?"
"Just what you see...Bodie, take me to bed."
"I haven't got the energy. Pasta, butter, egg, bacon..."
"Garlic and herbs. Finish it then. It'll give you the energy." He stuck his tongue in Bodie's other ear and Bodie's hair stood on end. Pansy climbed up his trouser leg.
"How can I eat with your hands inside my pants?" he asked plaintively as Ray went on exploring. "Jesus, that's enough!" He put Pansy on the table and pushed Ray off his lap. "I don't know what's going on...what herbs?"
"The ones in the cabinet. Don't you ant to make love with me, Bodie?" Ray looked sulky and altogether desirable, his robe slipping off one shoulder and his curls wildly tousled.
"Was there one in an unlabelled bottle?"
"Yeh, I think so. Sure, it's the one that smelled so good."
Bodie started to laugh again. He laughed until he was sore.
"What's so sodding funny?"
"Catnip!"
"Wha?"
"Catnip...the b-b-bottle!"
"That was catnip?"
"Mrs Ritter brought it for Pansy." Bodie wiped his eyes on his napkin. "I asked her if she had anything like it for people."
Ray sat down and chuckled. "I just had a wonderful thought, Bodie."
"Which is?" He had ambivalent feelings about the plate of pasta in front of him, but he began to eat anyway.
"We ought to have Murph over for supper some night..." Ray couldn't finish the thought. He buried his face in his napkin and howled with laughter.
Bodie choked on a mouthful of spaghetti. "Let's go to bed," he suggested.
"I wish you could feel the way I feel, Bodie." Ray was rolling around on the bed, rubbing his face against the pillows, stretching and yawning. He looked as though he was having a wonderful time, and Bodie began to wish the same.
"Ah, but I'm immune. I'm not a cat."
"Aren't you? You're a leopard." Ray held out his arms and Bodie slipped into them. "You're a big cat, a hunter." Ray's breath smelled sweetly of herbs as Bodie kissed him. "I wish you could feel the way I do," he repeated.
"I want what you want," Bodie whispered, and used his power consciously, to please himself. He felt strange...not quite in control, not quite out. He felt utterly sensual - the feel of cool sheets, warm flesh, soft body hair, all unbearably arousing. He felt wild and completely free. Their mating was like nothing he'd ever known before.
Bodie woke in a demolished bed. The lights were still burning. Ray was curled up against the headboard, snoring softly. His bladder was uncomfortably full, but when he tried to get u he fell in a tangle of damp sheet. He managed to untangle himself and stumble off to the loo where he lifted the seat, shut his eyes, and waited.
It'd been incredible, he thought. He was scratched and bitten and utterly satisfied, and though it wasn't something he'd want every time they made love, it made a nice change.
Something not quite...he opened his eyes and looked down to see a little taffy-coloured paw reaching out from between his legs towards the family jewels. "Pansy, stop that!" He tried to grab for her, but couldn't without making a mess. "Get down, get down!" Something very cold and wet pressed against his balls and he yelped. A soft paw patted his cock. "Ray!"
There was a thud, a muffled curse and the sound of Ray stumbling towards the loo. "Whasup?"
"Get the cat...please!"
Pansy's head was nudging his balls as she watched him pee, fascinated by the stream of water. A paw reached out...
"Ray!"
"I have to get a picture of this."
"Goddammit!" Bodie gritted his teeth and tried to finish, but his bladder was taking it's own time. Pansy began to slap at the water. "Pansy, cut that out." He tried to sound stern, but by now he was seeing the funny side of the situation. He trapped her between his thighs while he finished, then grabbed her and gave her a shake. "You're as bad as Ray is," he grumbled, nuzzling her soft fur.
Ray ran back in. "Aw, you stopped."
"How long did you think I could go on?" He turned on the tap and stuck Pansy's paws under the water.
"What're you doing to that cat?"
"We're washing our paws, thank you. We need it." He washed and dried his own hands as well, then carried Pansy out to the bedroom. "Now we are going back to sleep, puss. You may sleep with us if you promise to be good."
Ray was straightening the bedclothes. "You think that'll do any good?"
"Works with you, doesn't it?"
"Does it?"
"Sometimes," Bodie admitted.
They crawled under the duvet, and Bodie deposited Pansy on top of it where she spent the next five minutes walking up and down all over them, trying to find just the right spot in which to sleep. She finally settled between Ray 's knees.
"Know what this feels like?" Ray asked, just as Bodie was falling into sleep.
"Wha?"
"A family."
"At last," Bodie sighed as he draped his arm across Ray's chest. "Took us long enough."
--Litha 1983
It's Only a Beautiful Persian Cowley was in a fine temper when I entered his office, and I wondered just what it was I'd done to get up his nose like this.
Then I saw Murph, and I knew it wasn't me 'ad the old man's back up.
Relieved as I was, I couldn't help feeling sorry for poor old Murph.
"Sit down, Doyle."
I slipped into the chair next to Murphy's.
"You know, I expect, that agent Murphy's talent is the same as yours. You may know also that he has had some problem learning control."
He's not wasting any time on preliminaries is he, I thought.
"I speak of the use and abuse - " here he directed a hard look at Murphy, - of said talent and not the control you had to learn recently. I don't doubt some of the same lack spills over into other facets of his life."
The sarcasm was deadly. Murphy was squirming.
"I've been as patient as my situation would allow - more perhaps because I appreciate the difficulties involved in dealing with power - but Murphy has placed me in an impossible position to which I can find no acceptable solution. My initial inclination was to terminate his employment, but I rejected this because I can ill-afford to lose a fully-trained and experienced operative, and I balk at turning him loose on the British public."
He was going for the jugular, and I wondered what the point of this exercise was. Usually he chewed you out privately, or fired you...or put you on some sort of duty that made you wish you were dead. He rarely aired anyone's dirty linen in front of another agent.
"In his zeal to make a water-tight case against Frank Ambrose, he took it upon himself to become Ambrose during the commission of a crime."
"Murph broke the law?" I choked.
"Not precisely." Cowley was wearing his prissy expression which gave one the impression something nearby had begun to go bad. "We had information that an arms shipment might be hijacked yesterday on its way north. While Military Intelligence was in charge of the operation, I was able to send 6.2 and 4.7 along because of the internal security angle. 6.2, on recognizing members of the hijack team as Ambrose's men, became Ambrose and implicated himself in the actual hijacking. He then, naturally, disappeared to return to his own form. A number of witnesses identified what they thought was Ambrose, and Ambrose's fingerprints were found on the scene..."
Privately, I was impressed - Ambrose right down to the prints? Amazing.
"When Ambrose was brought in, he denied everything and threatened to sue, saying he'd been set up, which, in essence, he had bee. The weight of the evidence is against him, of course. I consider it fortunate some of the hijackers have signed statements to the effect he was the brains behind the job. However, the chances were good that some of them would have done so in any case."
Murph muttered something I couldn't make out, and Cowley pretended he hadn't heard anything.
"6.2 put himself in considerable danger, risked the operation and took it upon himself to implicate a man on the basis of a hunch."
"You know he..." Murphy began.
"I knew nothing at..."
"You know he planned it!" Murphy shouted. "The others have admitted it!"
"But at the time you did not know, not did I. And you will please remain silent while I speak to Doyle."
I examined a non-existent hangnail. This was uncomfortable at best. I could empathise with the urge to cut through all the red tape; it had come on me often enough in my career. Yet I knew what he'd done was wrong; it violated every ethical standard I could think of. It violated the ethics of our kind - those who must live by a strong code. To me this last was the most damning - the betrayal of the thing we worked so hard to uphold.
"If I was able to disclose the truth, I'd throw him to the wolves," Cowley said quietly. Then he sat down and shut his eyes as though he was trying to calm himself. "Doyle, I want you to work with him. Knock some sense into him."
"If I can't?"
"Then I'll ask Dahout to deal with the problem."
Made me go all cold, that did. What he meant was that he'd ask her to take the power from Murphy; take it away like a diseased limb or organ. It was a crippling process.
"I'm willing if Murph'll help me," I told them. Truth was, I hated the idea. Murphy and I have never got on really well. Partly jealousy, I expect, and partly something I'd never bothered to wonder about.
Murphy was staring past Cowley. He nodded stiffly in agreement.
"You have a fortnight. Dismissed."
Murphy followed me out of the office and down the hall. What the hell was I going to do with him? Christ, I was still learning myself; hardly the one to be teaching Murphy.
"Look," I said, "I'll level with you. I don't know where to start."
"Why don't you start with the 'I believes'," he snapped. "Tell me how to be a good little boy so God will love me...or Cowley which is much more important, innit?"
So much anger.
"We have to work together for two weeks," I shouted to his retreating back.
"We ought to have a little respect for each other!"
"Sod you!" he shouted back without turning around.
I called Bea as soon as I got home. She was still up in Scotland with Jeff and Dahout and the babies. "Can you help?" I asked, after explaining the problem.
"I've never been able to do more than control Murphy's more foolish urges,"
she admitted, "but I'd dearly love to help him deal with this. I've made some notes on the subject - I'll bring them along, shall I?"
"You're a saint, Bea," I said with a laugh.
"Heaven forbid. I'll come tomorrow evening: can I use the gate at your headquarters?"
I told her I didn't think Cowley would mind.
"I suggest you call Colette and see if she can help. She's handled harder cases. Is Bodie going to be working with us?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. Why?"
"Oh, just something I wanted to discuss with him. Perhaps I can talk to him before we begin." Then she rang off and I called Colette.
"Help!" I said as soon as I heard her voice.
"What help do you need, my baby?"
"Tell me in twenty-five words or less how to tame a wild shape-shifter."
"In two: don't even try."
I explained the situation yet again, and to my surprise she began to chuckle.
"What's so sodding funny?" I demanded, feeling put out.
"Now you know how I've felt with some of my babies. It's the first step on the road to being a good teacher, Ray. You have to know the fear of not being able to help."
"Can't you give me a few pointers...anything?" I massaged my temples hoping to chase away what promised to become a whacking great headache. "I only have a fortnight and I don't even know where to begin. Bea's going to help, but she can't do what needs to be done, or it'd be done already. I don't know..."
"Bea's coming down?" She sounded startled.
"Yeah...why shouldn't she?"
"Well...no reason, really, I suppose."
"Colette!"
"Where do you think you should start, Ray? You were a good student; I expect you'll be a good teacher if you put your mind to it."
"Colette, how will I know if I succeed or not? If he's a good actor, he could fool all of us..."
"Not all. Bea would know, George, Dahout..."
"You?"
"Yes, I probably would know, too." She laughed. "But I can do better than give you some pointers. How'd you like to come out for a visit? Bring Murphy along, I'd like to meet him. Bea, too. Sometimes it's easier if you take your student out of their environment - makes them more vulnerable and dependant on you."
"Don't know if Cowley'd agree," I said, privately thinking that he might if this didn't cost him anything.
"You leave George to me, sweetheart."
"Then yes, yes, yes, we'll come. When?"
"Tomorrow night? I'll have to come get you since Bea can't work the gates for so many people. Let me call George now. You go get packed."
I was elated at the thought of seeing her again. But while we were saying our goodbyes, Bodie came home and my spirits plummeted. How could I leave him to go off to San Francisco even for a couple of weeks? I must have broadcast my dismay because he came over and cuddled me. He's a sweet lover.
"I have something important to tell you," I said.
"We're preggers?"
The bastard always makes me laugh when I feel least inclined.
"You berk, this is serious. The Cow's given me a special assignment to be Murphy's teacher."
"And what are you supposed to be teaching him?"
"Cat magic."
He detached himself from me and went over to pour a drink. "He's already quite good at that, isn't he?" he asked stiffly. His relationship with Murph had never quite recovered after the unpleasantness at The Green King last June.
"On all the practical bits, I suppose he is," I admitted. "He does have some problems with his ethical standards, though."
"Tell me something new."
Pansy minced out and began to rub against his leg, and he picked her up and cuddled her for a moment before he handed me my drink. "Why you?" he asked.
"Because Cowley says so. Christ, I don't know. I don't want to do this.
Murphy and I don't even like each other much."
"Colette could do it, couldn't she?"
"She's going to help, but I'm not sure she's the right person for the job.
Anyway, Cowley asked me and..."
"And Bob's yer uncle, eh? Well, good luck and how long will this take, do you think?" he was becoming stroppy for no good reason and it got up me nose a bit.
"A fortnight, give or take. I plan to spend part of the time with Colette and Bea in San Francisco." The minute I said it I wanted to bite my tongue.
Bodie stiffened, turned and smiled a brittle smile. "Well, then, a bon voyage," he said, lifting his glass in salute. "And will you be leaving immediately or are you dining in?"
"Bodie, I'm sorry. Don't be so..." But he left the room without another word.
I was about to go after him when Cowley called, so I growled at him for a few minutes while he informed me that the plans to stay with Colette were approved. "Bodie doesn't like this idea, does he?" he asked.
"Is it quite ethical to read minds?" I asked, rather sarky.
"I never have to with you - you broadcast everything. It doesn't take a genius to realize it's Bodie problems making you difficult."
"He's not happy about any of this, and I can't say I am either...with the exception of seeing Colette," I amended. "I don't suppose he could..."
"Right again, Doyle. I need him here. Och, you two are grown men, aren't you? You're not joined at the damn hip!"
"Not at the moment sir," I replied, fighting the urge to laugh.
"Your sense of humour is sophomoric at best, my lad. I'll contact Murphy and have him here tomorrow evening between six and seven. Be there."
"Yessir," I said, and he rang off. God, how I resented Murphy for putting my personal life in jeopardy, and for fouling up my professional one as well. It was not a good beginning to the project.
I started supper, and while I was tossing the salad Bodie came into the kitchen. He was wearing a bathrobe and the kitten. His hair was damp and curled endearingly despite obvious efforts to torture it into its usual style. I couldn't resist mussing it, but to my surprise he didn't grumble about it. "Ought to wear it a bit longer. Curls suit you."
"Ray, I'm sorry for being such a shit."
"My fault too. I had no right to throw my plans at you like that. I knew they'd make you unhappy. Pax?"
"Yeah. You leaving tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow evening. I asked Cowley if you could come along and he said he needed you just now. Something big?"
Bodie shrugged and took a slice of tomato out of the salad. "Could be. He doesn't always confide in me, but I think it has to do with meting Medved on Tuesday." He began to lay the table while I finished the potatoes. "You know they're setting up a trade - Litvak for one of our lads. I think he wants me along to make sure everything stays on the up and up. All very murky though."
We sat down to eat, but I didn't have much of an appetite. "Be careful, Bodie." The idea of letting him go into a potentially dangerous situation without me to guard his back was putting me off my food. I suppose it was foolish to worry since Cowley had been ultra careful with Bodie since his power had begun to develop into something useful. Bodie was too precious to lose...to both of us.
"Why aren't you eating?"
"Hmm? Oh, just wool-gathering." I ate, but I didn't taste much. "I hate the idea of leaving you," I admitted.
We did the washing up, and Bodie wanted to watch the match, so I went off to bed to read. But I found myself thinking about Murphy, and how I was going to deal with something I didn't entirely understand. Bea had said she had notes on him which made me think I might do well to do the same. I thought about using my journal, but decided not to mix business with...navel contemplation? Whatever. I found a little notebook and a pen and began to jot down some ideas and questions I'd thought of since the interview this afternoon.
1) I don't want to be doing this.
2) I resent being forced to do this.
With that committed to paper I relaxed a bit.
3) What exactly is Murphy's problem? Cowley as much as said it had something to do with a lack of self-control. Is it that he has control of the technical side of his talent, but not of the emotions it raises?
4) Am I the best person to be helping him with this? I'm hardly out of the student phase myself. Do I have any right to tell him what is and is not ethical when I've caught myself using my own power for reasons that don' t always bear careful investigation?
And then I thought: does it matter, really? So I wrote it down.
5) Does it matter, really? Somebody has to do it. At least I accept that there are standards to be followed. Murphy doesn't seem willing to acknowledge even that much.
6) How long has Murphy been an active shape-shifter?
7) Who taught him how to use the talent? Why didn't this person teach him all the rest of it?
I was scratching away on this last bit when Bodie came in and flopped down beside me. "Writin' me a love letter, sunshine?"
"Might be." I put the notebook down and rolled over to face him. "Won't send it until I get to the States though - be too mushy to deliver in person."
"Didn't think sloppy emotions were your style." His hair had dried all mussed, and he looked rather waiflike. "You never send me flowers," he pouted.
"Who won?"
"Dunno. I fell asleep.
"Feed Pansy before you came to bed?"
"Mmm."
I switched off the light and cuddled up beside him. "Christ, but I'm going to miss this," I muttered as we managed to wriggle into the most comfortable position, somewhere between close and entwined. I felt Pansy hop up on the bed and step onto my bum. "I thing she sharpens her claws before she walks on me. God, I don't want to do this."
"Shall I wish Murphy into a toad? Ribbit, ribbit..."
I started to laugh and Pansy squeaked her disapproval and stepped onto Bodie 's hip.
"Ouch! How can such a little cat weigh so much? Never mind, Ray, go to sleep. Things'll look better tomorrow, I promise. They always do, don't they?"
I had to admit he was right, and since I was feeling so sleepy and content, I had no real objection to his suggestion. Just before I fell asleep I thought of number eight.
8) How the hell does Murph do fingerprints?
Bodie was gone by the time I woke up, and I rather wished he'd woken me so we could have had time for a proper goodbye. I lay about for a few minutes, savouring the luxury of not having to get up and bounce into work even though I was on assignment - technically. Pansy was curled up in the crook of my elbow, washing herself with a vast indifference to my problems that was comforting. "Pansy, he still loves me, doesn't he?" I asked her, and she yawned in my face, which made me think we should feed her less fish.
There was a note in the kitchen: "I love you and will you go shopping before you leave today?" And a list of things we needed.
"Unromantic, that's 'is problem," I told Pansy, who wisely stayed out of it.
Cats are born diplomats...except for Beelzy.
But I did the shopping anyway, and laid in a few things I knew he'd enjoy - little treats. I guess you could say Bodie brings out my maternal instincts.
He called while I was having lunch with Pansy in front of the telly.
"'lo, Ray, the Cow wants you here a bit early tonight."
"Who is this speaking?" I asked loftily.
"Bodie...what's wrong?"
"Oh, Bodie...yes, I remember. You're the bloke who lives here, aren't you?
So easy to forget."
There was a moment of silence, then: "I thought you should sleep. Are you really upset?"
"No, I think it was the note: 'I-love-you-do-the-shopping-before-you-go.'"
He began to laugh. "Did you do it?"
"Of course I bloody did it!" I yelled. "At lest you said 'I love you,' I suppose one should be grateful for small mercies, eh? You going to be there this afternoon?" I asked, feeling a little wistful.
"Might...might not. Can you offer some inducement?"
"My body?"
He pretended to consider it. "I suppose it's enough."
"You bastard. Christ, how much earlier does Cowley want me to come in?" I asked, wondering if it'd be best just to leave now.
"He doesn't. I was laying a trap for you, my succulent little pigeon. I wanted you to come in early so I could ravish you under the desk."
"Pigeon?"
"It's the way you walk, Ray, I've told you and told you..."
"More comfortable here, you know. Can't you leave a bit early?"
"Wellllllll...I might be able to make some arrangements. See you about four?"
"It's a date...my little pigeon."
It was almost four-thirty when he arrived looking harassed. "Bloody Cowley kept sending down reports for me to look over. He'd still be doing it if Lee hadn't brought in a suspect in that French embassy kidnapping." He sighed with real feeling and flopped down on the bed. "I'm knackered," he groaned.
"From a day of reading reports? No stamina, mate, that's your problem," I told him as I began to strip off his clothes. "Think I'll trade you in for a new model, or maybe I'll send you off to Macklin for a weekend."
"No use, I couldn't fancy him." He began to laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"I was just thinking - seems sort of silly, doesn't it? I mean, two grown men; two of this country's real tough guys planning a dirty afternoon away from the office just because they can't stand the idea of being parted for a few weeks. Like a couple of spotty teenagers, we are." He lifted his hips so I could pull of his trousers.
"You speak for your own spots, sunshine. Me, I'm protectin' my interests.
When I'm through with you, you won't have the energy to be unfaithful."
And then I jumped him.
I'd set the clock for half past five, just in case, and when it went off, Bodie groaned and pulled the sheet over his face. "I can't move," he complained.
I tried to hop out of bed, real spritely-like, but gave up the idea before my feet hit the floor. "One thing you can say, sport, no spotty teenager ever had half so much fun."
"Or was half as sore afterwards. Was that a particularly good one, or am I just getting old?"
We thought about that one for a moment. "Both," we decided in unison.
So Bodie helped me pack and drove me to HQ, and hung about looking deserted until Cowley showed up and took pity on him.
"Never mind, laddie, he'll be back before you know it. Come and have supper with me tonight, why don't you?"
After he left, Bodie nudged me in the ribs. "Hear that?"
"Pity, that's all it is. You didn't hear him offering to buy, did you?
Probably stick you with the tab."
"'as designs on my body," he said confidentially.
That made me laugh.
A few minutes later Bea arrived and I was surprised to see she looked quite ill. Her skin was chalky and her hair dull and dry-looking. She looked haggard.
"Before you ask, I'm not sick, I'm pregnant."
"You could have fooled us," Bodie observed as he steered her onto the sofa.
"When's it due?"
"Around Candlemas next year. I'm just shy of three months gone. It's a Beltaine baby," she said with a reminiscent smile. "I'm having a rather difficult pregnancy," she said rather unnecessarily. "It's my first." Her hand curled protectively over her abdomen. "And as I'm thirty-four, likely to be my only one. Jeff's been so understanding - I'd like us to have one healthy baby, at least."
"Christ, you should be travelling," Bodie told her, slipping an arm around her shoulders.
"I know," she said, "but, well, I had ulterior motives. Bodie, I know it's wrong to ask this, but I...oh!" Her eyes widened.
"You all right?" I asked, feeling completely lost in the realm of women's things.
"Fine...perfect, I think." She glanced at Bodie who looked vaguely embarrassed. "Did you just..."
"Sometimes I still anticipate," he admitted. "I apologize for doing it before you asked. I assume that you were going to ask."
I had to admit the change in Bea was amazing; the colour had come back into her cheeks and her hair looked softer and shinier. Even her eyes seemed brighter. It was a fairly dramatic example of just what Bodie could do when he wanted to.
"Would you like something to eat?" Bodie asked her. "I can fetch something from the canteen."
"Yes I would. Thank you." She looked a little dazed too, and I couldn't blame her. "I'm suddenly very hungry."
"It's the good London air. Ray, make some tea?"
After he left, she turned to me. "I had no idea he could do it just like that."
I set the kettle on the hotplate. "Bea, why didn't Dahout help you?"
"She couldn't'." Bea sighed. "Since that babies were born things have been different for all of us. Dahout is different; you'd hardly know her. It seems that all the power has gone out of her."
"Why?"
"We don't know. She doesn't seem to miss it, and normally, we wouldn't either. But it came at a bad time. This has been a difficult year for us, what with two new babies, and one on the way, and not being able to depend on Dahout for all the things she used to do before the twins were born."
Just then Cowley returned with Colette. "My word," he exclaimed when he noticed the change in Bea.
"Bodie," she and I said in unison.
"Good lord."
"Tea, sir?"
"Yes, thank you. I think I need a cup." He sat down and frankly stared at Bea who by now had begun to look more like her old self. I was more than a little startled by the change as well.
Colette embraced us both, then settled down on the sofa beside Bea. "It's about time that boy began to earn his keep," she joked. "I was apprehensive," she said to Bea. "I thought it was foolish for you to volunteer for this."
"It was the only chance, really. I had no intention of leaving London without asking, even though I was hesitant."
Bodie reappeared then with a try full of food. "I thought the cake looked good, so I got enough for all of us." He moved a little table over in front of Bea and set a plate of steaming stew in front of her. "It's Irish stew.
You have to eat it all before you can have your cake."
To his vast surprise and evident discomfort, she burst into tears.
"What did I say?"
Colette began to laugh. "I imagine it's hormones," she said, at which Bea nodded and blew her nose on the napkin he'd given her. "Sometimes pregnancy does funny things to us."
"It's terrible," Bea agreed as she began to shovel the stew down even while she was wiping the tears away. "I cry at the strangest moments."
Funny, I thought, I used to think of her as being the ultimate in glamorous and mysterious women, and here she is eating like a trencherman and crying into her stew. Her eyes are puffy and her skin is blotchy from the tears, and she's still one of the loveliest women I've ever met.
"Women are strange," Bodie observed, "but they're bloody marvellous, aren't they?"
Cowley and I both nodded as we watched her devour the meal Bodie'd brought.
"That was delicious!" Bea said as she wiped up the last of the gravy with a slice of bread. "May I have my cake now, please, Bodie?"
"May I have mine?" Colette asked rather pointedly, and I realized that the kettle was boiling and Cowley, Bodie and I had been standing transfixed watching Bea eat.
I fixed the tea and we all settled down to talk. Bodie gave Bea his cake as well. I split my piece with him. Greater love hath no man, and all that.
Colette flirted with George the whole time, and I was surprised to see that he seemed to enjoy it, giving as good as he got. It was a very relaxed and happy group that Murphy walked into.
"How cosy," he said coldly as he took in the scene. "I see I'm too late for tea."
"You're late, period. I told you to be here an hour ago," Cowley snapped, all business once again. "Colette, lovely to see you again. Please don't be such a stranger in the future. Bea, I'm happy for you. Bodie, it's time for us to go."
Bodie pulled a face, but realized there was no point in arguing. He kissed me goodbye and slouched off with the Cow.
"Murph, I don't think you know Colette Caroll, my teacher. Colette, this is Kieran Murphy, the new Bad Boy of CI5."
He scowled at me, but acknowledged the introduction and went to sit beside Bea. "You all right?" he asked her, taking her hand.
"I'll tell you about it later, I promise."
"You coming along?"
"Yes."
It might have been my imagination, but Murphy looked relieved.
"I guess there's no choice, is there?" he asked. "Well, when do we start, and where? The Cow told me we were going to the States. I quite fancy a free vacation."
Our passage through the gates was new for me and for Murph. I found it a little hard to believe we could walk through a door at HQ and arrive in San Francisco a few seconds later. But Colette stood in the doorway and motioned each of us through. Bea went first, holding Murphy's hand, and I followed them. It was a strange sensation - I felt disorientated for a moment, the single step through the door seemed to take several minutes, during which I was nowhere at all. Then, suddenly, I stepped into a pool of sunshine. We came through a strange-looking piece of sculpture on a large, well-manicured lawn.
"The owner is one of us," Colette said as we gaped at an enormous and obviously expensive house. "Nothing says a pagan can't have buck, does it?
Leo's a good guy. Maybe someday I'll introduce you. Now I just want to go home."
The first thing I noticed when we arrived at Colette's was how much her home reflected her personality. It was a comfortable place, full of old furniture, books, plants, and animals. It was just the sort of home I expected her to have. Colette took Bea upstairs and put her to bed, despite Bea's protests that she felt fine.
"God, morning again," Murphy muttered as he stared out the big bay window into the sun-washed street. "We'll have to live this day all over again.
Depressing, innit?"
I didn't know what to say to him, where to begin.
"Was it necessary to bring me so far just to shake your beads and rattles at me?"
"Was Colette's idea," I told him. "She's my teacher and I trust her instincts."
"Well, that's nice for you."
"Murph, listen..."
"Don't have much choice, do I?"
"I'm not crazy about this either. Let's just get it over with."
"That's the first sensible thing I've heard all day. What do you want me to do?"
"Talk. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your power."
He sat down in a threadbare brown wing chair and stared up at the ceiling.
"I'm the same age as Bodie, I have all my teeth, and I've been..." Here he faltered. "I've been a freak for two and a half years now. What else do you need to know?"
Colette entered the room and Murphy scowled at her.
"Can you stand the company of another freak, or shall I make my self scarce?" she asked him.
"Whatever you want," he said, ungraciously.
"Then I'll stay. Ray could do with a bit of moral support, I think."
I rolled my eyes and wondered why I'd agreed to this. It was all very well to say I'd been forced, but I hadn't really. I was doing it because there was no one else who could...or would. I was doing it for Murph. Because of this, his condescension rankled.
"Are there other shape-shifters in your family?"
"I don't have a family, unless you count Father McWilliams who raised me when my aunt died. I was four. I don't remember much of Aunt Mary and nothing of my family. Do you suppose it's likely they were freaks too?"
I was about to snap at him, when Colette took over.
"Possible, certainly," she told him. "What we're concerned with is the reason it took so many years to manifest itself. Bea tells me you're very talented."
Murphy snorted derisively, but he seemed uncomfortable.
"She says you've been good since the first. Is that true?"
"What's your criteria? Not being able to remember who you are? Lying in bed at night and not being sure you're even human?"
"No, that's what happens when you cannot or will not deal with the facts of your own life. What I want to know if the changes are physically easy for you to achieve."
"Too easy," he admitted.
"You can do fingerprints," I added and it came out sounding like an accusation. Colette narrowed her eyes at me and I shut my mouth.
"Can't you?" he asked me.
"Of course he can," Colette told him. "He just never bothered to check."
I caught myself looking at the pads of my fingers and Murphy laughed at me - a sound of genuine amusement that made me smile too. "I told you I was still learning."
"This came on you with no warning about two and a half years ago?"
Murph nodded.
"How did it begin?"
"Dreams. I would dream of animals, or people I knew. I'd dream I was an animal, or someone else. They were incredibly vivid dreams.
Disturbing...anyway, so long as they were dreams I didn't worry too much. It was when I began to daydream...I mean, like at night only during the day. I 'd be sitting, watching the television or reading, always something passive, and my mind would pop off somewhere else. By that time it was almost always into a forest, and I'd dream about being a bear. I could hear the forest sounds, smell the trees and the plants and scents of other animals. It was mad; I don't even like bears much," he said inanely.
"Then one morning, after a particularly vivid dream, I began to feel my mind drift off while I was trying to dress. I kept trying to shake off the urge to slip into one of the daydreams, but while I was shaving, the pressure became too strong. I felt almost the way you'd feel if you'd been drugged and couldn't fight it any longer. I just drifted off into one of my bear dreams. Only this time when I looked around, I wasn't in a forest, but in my flat, in the loo, paws on the basin. The face in the mirror was mine - bear-like...no, it was a bear. It was me." He paused for a moment, lost in the memory, no doubt. That first time is always with you. "After that I just knew what it is I could do. Someone else knew too."
"George," Colette said.
"Yeh. He talked to me about it; gave me to Bea. I..." He frowned. "You all seem to think I have a choice."
"You seem to think you have none," Colette replied.
"Do I?" he growled. "Short of suicide?"
"That's why you're here. I think..."
At that moment we all heard the front door open, and Murphy froze. A small, slender young woman burst into the room.
"Colette, I don't have time...oh! Forgive me, I didn't realise."
"Liar," Colette snapped, but she said it with affection. The girl was pretty, in an exotic way, dressed in jeans and a hot pink sweatshirt.
"True. I wanted to meet our guests."
"This is Jem. She lives here. Jem, this is Ray Doyle."
"The famous Ray Doyle? How nice." She shook my hand and winked at me.
"And this is Kieran Murphy."
"What a nice name. Do you answer to Kier?"
"Never."
"Pity, it suits you. Hello." She extended her hand and he ignored it.
"Charming manners. Well, I'll just grab some yoghurt and be off. I'll be home for supper." She disappeared into the kitchen.
"Another lame duck?" I asked.
"Not so lame. This one adopted me. She seems to think that Mama Colette needs a mother. Tal brought her home."
"I'm going now." Jem returned, holding a yoghurt carton and plastic spoon.
"See you later, Colette, Ray. See you at supper, Kier, you crabby thing."
She dashed off, leaving me with the impression of something fey and insubstantial.
"I'm hungry," Murphy announced.
Colette stood up and stretched, cat-like and sensual. "I'll fix lunch. You two get settled."
Once upstairs, I found I was terribly tired. I lay down on the bed, intending only to rest for a few minutes, but when I opened my eyes again, the room was shadowy though the sky was still light. The sun must have moved to the other side of the house. I checked my watch and it said one.
I was still on London time...how many hours difference? They hadn't called me to lunch which was just as well.
I got up, washed my face, and found a little clock on the dresser. Five p.m. Before I went back downstairs I decided to take a few minutes to set down some more impressions in my notebook.
9) No family background. This is frustrating. I was hoping for some sort of handle. On the other hand, it explains why Murph is so ignorant of this sort of thing. No one to teach him.
10) What brought this on? Why did he lead a normal life for so many years before this talent came on him with a vengeance?
I expect Murphy asked himself that all the time.
11) What's Murphy's real attitude towards his talent? If I have to spend the next month sifting through his defenses, I'll never accomplish anything.
How do I get through?
12) Do I tell him about myself? Would he care? Would it help? Can I do it?
That last bit, it bothered me. Colette knew, and Bodie, but I hated talking about that period of my life because the fear was still too fresh, too real.
I could taste it sometimes when I woke from a dream (yes, like the ones Murphy described. That took me back.) Or thought about my adolescence.
Telling Murph about the early years with Beelzy might open some old wounds.
13) Put yourself in his place. Would it help you?
I was going to have to tell him. Not right away though. Not just yet.
Bea came down for supper. She looked sleepy and beautiful, and I felt a momentary regret that she and I couldn't ever be more than friends now.
Momentary. She gave me the stack of notes she'd promised, and Murphy looked curious, but said nothing.
Jem was there too and kept the conversation going. "Colette's been telling me all about you, Ray," she said as she helped herself to seconds on everything. For a small girl she could really put the food away. "I've been longing to meet you. She said you're one of her more successful lame ducks."
"Well, thanks, Colette," I muttered while Murphy snickered.
"If there's anything I can do to help, just give me a call," Jem continued.
"Not that there's much I can do. I haven't got any manifest talent to speak of. I just plan to have babies."
"What?"
"Babies...like Bea. Colette's my partner. I'm going to have them and she and I are going to raise them, right mom?"
Colette grinned. "Right you are, my baby. I'm gonna be a mother at last...eventually. Jem has to finish school first, though. That's the deal.
She's studying stage design at the college where Jeff teaches."
"I'll be finished in December. I could start a baby tonight and still graduate."
"Jemima!"
"Jemima?" Murphy stifled a laugh.
"That's my real name, too weird for words, isn't it? Like Aunt Jemima. My mother didn't know. She was half Chinese and half Swedish and she thought Jemima was a nice American name. It would have okay if my dad hadn't been black. I'm entirely too nappy to be comfortable with the name. Still it's sorta funny."
"Who's Aunt Jemima?" Murphy asked.
"You'll find out at breakfast," Colette told him, leaving him as much in the dark as I was.
"And Jem has a nice lush sound to it, doesn't it? So I decided to keep the name."
I was just as glad Jem had a lot to say since I didn't feel much like talking. This afternoon's conversation, brief as it had been, had made me feel woefully inadequate to the task ahead of me. I didn't even know the right questions to ask! And when Colette suggested that we begin after supper, I observed that I was still very tired and that Murphy must be as well, and suggested we wait until morning so we could start fresh. Murphy's smile told me he thought I was a coward.
And so to bed, I thought a few hours later as I settled in under the covers and began to read Bea's notes. Research. Well, you can postpone the inevitable but you can't escape it.
The notes made interesting reading. Much of what she'd set down was a chronicle of Murphy's abilities. On such-and-such a date he became a cat to avoid rail-fare up to Scotland. (Oh yes, I remembered that date.) On another occasion he pretended to be Robert Redford in order to pull a bird.
It would have been funny had they been isolated incidents in a long and relatively clean history of his power. But the pages and pages of notes were filled with nothing but wilful misuse of his talent. It was as if Murphy was trying to be as unethical as possible. It was as if...
Bea had heard the cry for help, but had been unable to answer it. She'd contented herself with drawing him away from the worst misuses, but beyond that could find no cure, no answer to Murphy's needs.
There was a soft click and the door opened slightly. Bea.
"May I come in?" she asked. "I've been wanting to talk to you."
"Of course. How are you feeling?"
"Much better, thank you. Have you read those?" she asked, gesturing at the pile of notes.
"There's a lot to read," I admitted, gathering them into a pile. "I've skimmed most of them. I think I have my work cut out for me."
She nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You know, Ray, you and I have some unfinished business." Her hand closed over mine and I had a moment of utter panic.
And then, comprehension.
"No, not Bea and I."
"What?"
"Bea and I have achieved the balance. It's you and I that I worry about."
After a moment, Murphy was sitting on the bed. "How did you know?"
"Sloppy thinking, Murph. Of all the women in the house, she's the last who would come to my bed. Or did you want me to guess?"
"Maybe." He stood up and began to wonder around the room, inspecting everything. "Or perhaps I just think beyond what I know about you."
"Which is?" I asked with some trepidation.
"That you've always wanted Bea to yourself."
"Not entirely accurate, but I'll let it stand. I'm more interested in your motives."
He shrugged. "Thoroughly impure. I wanted to finish what you started at The Green King."
"You can do better than that," I told him, tucking the notes into the drawer of the bedside table.
"Don't suppose you'd let me read those?"
"You'll have to ask Bea. Try again."
"You're enjoying this," he accused.
I was about to protest, to tell him that on a scale of one to ten this ranked only slightly above being chewed out by Cowley, and somewhat below a flesh wound. The look in his eyes stopped me. "Enjoy might be too strong a word. I'm intrigued," I confessed.
For a moment I thought he was going to snap at me, but his mouth twisted into a smile that conveyed only a touch of humour. "Intrigued? Why?"
"Because your experience is so different from my own. Colette and I were born into it, and I thought you'd been as well. It came on both of us at puberty."
He sat on the edge of the bed. "So why...look, Ray, I know you're here to help, but all I want is to be rid of this. I can't feel any gratitude.
This is killing me."
He stood abruptly and left the room before I could think of anything to say.
In the silence that followed, I sat and thought about what he'd said. I began to write: 14) He says he wants to be rid of his talent, and perhaps it would be for the best. Dahout could do it, but Bea tells me that Dahout has lost...or misplaced her power. Could Bodie do it? Would he? And what would it do to him?
I knew I couldn't ask it of him. I didn't sleep well that night. I had the strangest dream.
I was in a little room with Madame Ojuka and everything was white - the walls, the chairs we were sitting on, her clothes, mine - everything. She said to me: "I thought, at first, that my life had been lived to no purpose, but now I see what I have done was beyond my estimation. I leave it to you to finish it."
Then I saw Jem. She was dressed like a gypsy with red and blue ribbons in her black hair and a warm glow to her caf au lait skin. She looked beautiful and desirable and she said: "You owe me service, Red-hair. You owe me a life."
Where, I asked myself, did that come from?
Finally I was standing beside a tree - an old oak, I think it was - and a very old woman, clad in pale lavender, approached me. "It is not I who bound you," she told me before she walked off towards the setting sun.
Colette woke me before she left for work. "There's breakfast food in the fridge and the coffee is ready to go. Just press the 'on' button. I'm taking Bea with me today; I want her to see a specialist I know just to make sure everything is okay. We'll be home about six. Kev and the boys are bringing supper so you're on your own until then, 'kay?"
"Help?"
"You'll do just fine, sweetheart. Murphy's still asleep. Feed the cats, will you?"
As I dressed I found myself wondering what it all meant - the dream, that is. It was so strange - so unexpected.
I knew I should wake Murphy, but decided to postpone the inevitable long enough to have a cup of coffee and plan my course of attack. I had to make Murphy want to control his talent. I was beginning to realise that being a successful teacher was a positive use of power. I think I needed to feel that shapeshifting was more than a freakish curse, or a sort of occult toy to be used as a diversion - or a weapon. Perhaps I looked at Murph, and some part of me recognised 'there but for the grace of God' and all that.
While I was drinking my coffee and thinking, Murph stumbled down and sat opposite me. "I slept like the dead," he told me. "Is there any more coffee?"
I poured him a cup and he muttered "Thank you."
"You said you were raised by a priest?" I asked. He nodded. "You a practicing Catholic?"
"Not really...why?"
"I was wondering if you were having any problems in that area?"
"Probably. I don't know," he confessed. "I try not to think about God.
What about you?"
"The gods I believe in..."
"Gods?" He snorted. "Is this going to be a theology lesson?"
"Only if you want it to be. You did ask," I reminded him, feeling a little put out. "Forget I said anything."
"No, tell me."
"I'm not sure you're ready for it." I wasn't sure I was ready to explain.
Putting into words what you believe is never easy, unless you're the type to take what you're taught as, literally, gospel. "Do you know anything about the old religion? Paganism?"
"Saints preserve us," he drawled, sounding as though he was just off the boat from Belfast. "A pagan, is he? And will you be sacrificing infants on a stone altar?"
"Let's just skip it." I got up and started fixing breakfast. "Eggs and bacon all right with you?"
"I'm sorry."
"Right."
"Really."
"Do you want any breakfast?" I demanded.
"They will be fine, thank you."
The silence was deadly, and I knew I'd made a mistake with him already.
There was no point in being oversensitive with Murphy, when he found it so easy to insult people.
"It's Bodie, isn't it?" The question was so unexpected, all I could do was gape.
"What?"
"It's Bodie. That's part of what's wrong between us, isn't it? That's why we antagonize each other so much."
I didn't answer him right away, though I thought seriously about the question while I cooked.
"I suppose you're right," I admitted at last. "I know what you want and it eats at me. We've always had him between us."
"And if I had my way, you'd be out on your shapely arse in a split second.
Believe me, Ray, if I thought there was a chance for me, I'd take it."
"Why?"
He looked blank for a moment and I thought, "Good, I've startled you, you bastard.' "Because I want him," he said.
I filled his plate with bacon and eggs and toast. "No law says you have to tell me the truth," I observed. Then I served myself and sat down to eat.
When I looked up he was staring at me.
"Because he's like a flame," Murphy whispered. "He burns brighter than anyone I've ever known. I need him."
And I knew this to be the truth because I'd felt the flame too. But after that there didn't seem much more to say, so we ate in silence.
"What is it you pagans do?" Murphy asked while we washed up.
"We believe in magic, we reverence nature, we try to lead good lives."
"That last bit sounds a little suspect to me. Are you sure you aren't Christian sheep in wolf's clothing?"
I couldn't help but smile. "There's nothing in paganism to deny Christianity in its pure form. You know, all the great teachers said pretty much the same thing."
"Love one another? Nice words."
"As an ideal, Murph."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. So where does that leave me? I was raised to be a good catholic boy. Father McWilliams would be spinning in his grave...if he was dead."
"Look, the only reason I brought it up in the first place was to explain how it was that I learned to deal with the emotional problems inherent in having a talent like this. Belief in this sort of thing is part of my background,"
I told him as I put away the last plate and folded the towel. "When I first started to change, I couldn't control it - literally, Murph, I became a cat eight times a year no matter what. I had no say in the matter." There, it was out.
"You mean you couldn't not change?"
"Exactly."
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen. It was traumatic," I told him, with a wry appreciation for my own understatement.
"And Colette?"
"She told me she underwent a sort of ritual at puberty that made her receptive to whatever talent she was born with. She never told me much about it, though. I just know that she was prepared to deal with whatever it was."
He dried his hands and wandered out of the kitchen. I followed.
"You people..." he began. "You pagans are used to this sort of thing? Then why couldn't you control it at first?"
I debated with myself about telling him the story of my life, and honesty won. I took a deep breath.
"It was a family curse. All right, laugh if you want to," I told him when I saw his face twist up into a grimace at the word 'curse.' "But it killed my aunt. My mother knew about it and never prepared me for it. To please my father she became a catholic after I was born."
"Well, and we both know they take a dim view of people turning into animals on any regular basis, don't we?"
I smiled. "Very dim. Didn't stop me, though. Nothing did until I met Colette and she began to teach me. The story of my life in a nutshell," I said as I opened the window.
"My God, but it's hot in here this time of year, innit? Couldn't you have found a teacher in a pleasanter part of the country?" He sat down and stretched out. "I can change when I want to - no problem. What is it you think you can teach me?"
"How to change only if you need to."
"When's that?" This was a direct challenge; I could feel it.
"Maybe once a year. It keeps the beast at bay, as Colette puts it." He frowned, but said nothing, so I bashed on. "She says she find it easier to get away from everything about once a year and give her totem animal a day in which to run wild. It helps keep the balance."
"Totem animal? Balance? This sounds like some crackpot cult already. I don't know..." He sighed and shut his eyes.
I was doing this badly; I wasn't making any progress. "When do you think you need to change?" I asked him.
"Whenever I forget who I am. Whenever I see the bear in the mirror.
Whenever Murphy isn't enough anymore...all the time. I'm lost, Ray. I don't want this. Can't you take it from me?"
I shook my head. "I don't have that power."
"Colette then, or Cowley?"
"Murph, listen..." But before I could reach out to him, he changed into Bodie. "Stop that!"
"Stop what? Ray, I miss you," he whispered.
"Murphy, don't do this!"
He advanced on me, still looking like Bodie. "I could make you happy, couldn't I?" he asked. "You'd like to try, to see how I compare. You're fascinated by what I can do, aren't you?"
"I'm appalled at what you're willing to do! Get away from me, you make my skin crawl."
"You don't like the freak show?" Murphy was back suddenly. "Neither do I."
He stalked away and went back upstairs. Damn, blast and bloody hell! I'd blown it already.
I thought about the problem for several hours. There was something I was missing, I thought, some angle that would give me the edge I needed when dealing with Murphy.
When he deigned to come back downstairs sometime later, he seemed subdued.
"I suppose I ought to apologise for that last bit," he told me, "but I don't really feel sorry for having done it. I don't feel sorry for reading your journal either." He produced the book and the stack of notes. "I must say, you two have rather interesting opinions of me."
I was beyond anger at this point. Nothing he did surprised me.
"Your book said Dahout could take this away from me. You also said you thought Bodie could - would he?"
"I don't know. I've never asked him. Murph, let me make a deal with you.
You cooperate with me for two weeks, and if you still feel the same, I'll talk to Dahout on your behalf."
"Twice nothing is still nothing. She's lost her power - you said so in here." He waved the journal at me. "You ask Bodie."
"I can't do that to him."
"Can't? Won't, more like."
"Think what it would do to someone like Bodie...Murph, think what it could do to that bright flame."
"I'm worried about me now!" he shouted. "To hell with the two of you; when have you ever had time for me?"
What I wanted most at that moment was to force him to see himself as I was seeing him - spoiled, petulant and tiresome.
There it was, right in front of me - my angle.
"All the time you need," I said as I changed, very slowly and deliberately, into Murphy.
"Don't do that."
"Why not?"
"I don't like it."
"Tough."
"I'll change into Bodie again," he threatened.
"I can do that too, want to see?"
"No!"
But I did anyway. I changed into Bodie and began to come onto him. He backed away from me, pure loathing on his face.
"Stop that."
"Don't you like it? It's what you wanted, you said so."
"It's not the same thing, Ray."
"I could make you think it was, couldn't I? You'd love to find out, you'd settle for Ray in a Bodie suit, wouldn't you?"
"No!"
"You'd settle for anybody in a Bodie suit." I change back into Murphy. "I don't care about anyone but myself. I want instant gratification of all my desires. I do what I do because I can do it - it's a toy, a weapon...but sometimes I get lost in here and I forget who I ma and why I'm doing this and I'm afraid." Suddenly it had become too easy to be Murphy. I did find myself forgetting who I was, and I became caught up in his emotions. From the look on his face, I could tell that everything I was saying was hitting home. "I don't want to forget who I am, but sometimes I think I never really knew."
A tear rolled down his face and I could feel that my own face was wet as well. We were like mirror images suddenly.
"I never did know who I was," he admitted. "I never knew my family."
"I never really knew any family but Father McWilliams," I added. I wasn't sure where I was getting all this from, but I knew it was the truth. It was if I was sharing Murphy's memories. "He wouldn't tell me anything about my family."
"He told me he didn't know anything," Murphy said. "I knew he was lying, but I never knew why."
"They were different," I said. "He didn't know how to deal with that, so he ignored it. He kept it from me."
We were spiralling downwards now, going back into the memories, into the past. I was remembering with him.
"'You need a little extra help, Kier,' he used to tell me, 'so you pray extra hard for guidance, will you? And I'll be doing the same for you in my prayers.' He never told me why I needed that extra help, though. I used to think it was because I was a particularly bad person, though he never scolded me - he was never angry with me. Later I decided it must have been some family scandal that he wouldn't repeat. When I first began to change, I wanted to go to him and tell him about it, but I was afraid to."
I don't which of us said the words. I know I felt each one of them like a physical blow. Suddenly Father McWilliams was sitting in front of me.
"What have you become?" he demanded. "What are you, Kier? What sort of monster are you?"
"It's not my fault."
"I told you to pray for guidance, I taught you to lead a good and Christian life and you turned your back on it."
"You lied to me," I accused. "You told me you never knew my parents. You knew them and you knew what they were. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I knew what they were..."
The moment seemed to drag on forever.
"Because I knew they were godless and pagan...and because they were part of me and I loved them both dearly, and loved their son as though he was my own.
Kier, I didn't know how to tell you. I prayed you would never be what my sister and her husband were and that you'd never pay the price they paid.
They died because of it. They were killed by people who didn't understand."
I began to cry.
When the pain ebbed, I felt the real me, Ray Doyle, struggling to reassert himself. I went with it, and changed back into my true form. What I'd just been through was entirely beyond my experience, and I couldn't help but wonder who was responsible. I needed to talk to Colette.
Murphy was back to being Murphy. He was sitting, glassy-eyed, on the floor opposite me. "What have you done?" he whispered, and I wasn't sure if he was speaking to me or himself.
The phone began to ring, saving me from having to comment on a situation I didn't entirely understand. It was Bodie.
"How goes it?" he asked.
"Don't ask."
"Ah, I see. Well, far be it from me to disturb you, but I have a wire here from your mother and I thought you might be interested in knowing what it says."
"Yeh, read it to me then." There was the sound of an envelope being torn open.
"She says, 'The old woman is dead.' That's it?"
"Yeh, that's it. That's just like my mother, too. She means the last member of the family that cursed my family is dead, so the curse should be dead too."
"Then it's good news?"
"Should be, but it doesn't really affect me anymore. I'll never have kids to pass it on to. I feel sort of sorry that my family's happiness should depend on some old lady dying. How's things at home?"
"Pansy's well and so am I, but we miss you. I'm on Cowley's list after today."
"What happened?" I asked, imagining all sorts of horrible possibilities.
"Well..." he sounded sheepish. "You remember I was supposed to go along with him when he worked out the trade for Litvak? I was supposed to make sure Medved was telling the whole truth."
"Did you?"
"Yeh. Only Cowley began to tell the whole truth as well."
"Oh no!" I began to laugh.
"There they were, spilling their guts to each other in this seedy little pub they'd chosen, telling each other about their personal problems..."
"What'd you do?"
"First I panicked, then I fixed it so nothing that was said would be remembered. Unfortunately that meant Cowley forgot all the details as well.
So we had to begin again and since I was the only one who could recall anything of what was said, he spent most of the afternoon debriefing me. I didn't remember much, and he's furious with me."
"I can imagine. Will we be looking for new jobs soon?"
"Nah, he'll forgive me."
"Why'd it happen?"
"I dunno. I'll have to think on that one. How's it going...oh, I already asked that, didn't I? And you said not to ask. That bad?"
"Not good," I confessed. "And very strange. I wish you were here."
"So do I, and not just for the obvious reason. However, I'd better ring off now, or we'll have to work for the rest of the year just to pay for this call. I love you," he said.
"I love you too." There was a click and the line went dead.
I found Murphy in the kitchen, hunting through the refrigerator. "How is he?" he asked.
"Fine."
"You hungry?"
"Yes, very."
"Do you want to cook or shall I?"
"You go ahead." I sat down and watched him move around the room. He was moving like an old man - very stiff.
"You feel all right?" I asked him.
"I feel old, Ray."
I waited a few moments but he didn't seem to want to elaborate. "What happened between us...has that ever happened to you before?"
"All the time. It's what I've been trying to tell you. Doesn't it happen to you?" He began to tear up a head of lettuce. "It's always like that - as if I'm someone else."
I had to admit that this sort of thing had never happened to me, except in the early years when I couldn't prevent Beelzy from emerging. Then I thought it was part of the curse to lose my own personality in Beelzy's.
And when I learned to control the changes, I also learned to control the personality. It was always Ray Doyle inside whatever body I was wearing now...until this morning when I had lost myself in Murphy's personality. It was a frightening thing.
Murphy set a plate of salad in front of me. "There's soup if you want it."
He indicated a small pot on the stove, but I declined. "Bothers you, doesn' t it?"
I admitted that it did.
He sat down and picked up a fork, then set it down again. "It scares the hell out of me," he said quietly. "One day I'm going to forget who I am altogether."
"Then why do you keep changing?"
"Maybe..." He considered the question. "Maybe because I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. I was happy until this came on me. I knew who and what I was, and was content. Don't you understand why I want to be rid of this?"
"Of course I do."
"So tell me, oh wise one, what do I do?"
"I don't know," I admitted.
"Defeat?"
I couldn't answer.
It seemed an unspoken agreement between us that we didn't speak about the problem while we ate, or while we cleaned up the kitchen afterwards. For my own part, I was stymied. Having never encountered this aspect to our power before, I was at a loss as to how to deal with it. Perhaps the best thing would be to admit defeat right away and allow someone else to take over. I found my journal and began to write.
15) I feel so lost suddenly. Nothing I've encountered has prepared me for what I'm dealing with here. For me, control of my consciousness came with control of the curse - one with the other. I can't seem to divide the two in my own mind which is exactly what I have to do if I'm going to help Murphy. But perhaps there is something vital that I'm not seeing. Perhaps the answer is right in front of me and I'm just not able to reach out and hold on to it. I'd hate to quit before I was sure.
Murphy came out and sat beside me on the sofa. "Tell me about your gods,"
he asked. "I promise not to make fun."
"Why?"
"I need something to think about that isn't me. Bea tried to tell me about them but I wouldn't listen. I guess I wasn't ready to. Please, Ray. Are they real?"
"I don't honestly know. Sometimes I think they're only symbols and sometimes I swear they're as real as I am. They wear different faces.
Bodie says he's seen them both - the Lord and the Lady - but I never have; not outside of dreams. But then, he's more fey than I am."
"What do they look like to you?"
"I've never seen the face of the God. Perhaps He's Bodie to me, I don't know for sure."
"Isn't that blasphemy?"
"There's no blasphemy with these gods. The Goddess, oh, She's worn different faces. For Bodie She's Dahout, for me, She's been Colette and Jem and some woman I've never seen before...and, figure this one, Madame Ojuka."
"What?" He was ramrod stiff, and he had a strange look on his face.
"Madame Ojuka...at least I think that's what the dream was all about. I had a dream last night and three aspects of the Goddess appeared to me. That's what it seems like, anyway. There was Jem who said I owed her a service, and an old woman who told me that she was not the one who bound me, and Madame Ojuka who said something about her life being lived to some purpose.
I don't really understand any of it, though I expect that if it had some meaning, I'll find out Jem's part in it soon enough. What's wrong? You look as though you've just bitten into something unpleasant."
"I don't know. I dream about her too - often."
"Madame Ojuka? Why?"
"I wish I knew." He sighed and slouched against the arm of the sofa.
"Since she died, she's been talking to me in my dreams. You do know she's dead?"
"I suspected as much."
"He had her executed, beheaded, like Anne Boleyn."
One more puzzle piece and no clue as to how they fit together.
"Why do you believe in them - your gods, I mean?"
"I suppose because they're a part of me or because I'm part of them. They' re nature gods, Murph, and they represent everything there is to life - birth, death, love...chaste and otherwise," I added with a reminiscent grin.
"The turn of the seasons, winter to summer to winter, infancy to old age and rebirth. When we come together to worship we do it with every part of ourselves, heart, soul, mind, body. We are our gods and they are us."
Suddenly I could almost smell the woodsmoke and roses. The corn-king was dying; it was his time of year. A door swung open in my mind.
"Ray?"
"I believe in them because I can feel them all around me in everyone I meet, in everyone I touch. I can feel them in you, even if you can't." I reached out to him and stroked his hair, and the feel of it was like silk under my fingers. "Be me, Murph, and understand," I begged.
I was holding myself suddenly; looking at myself looking back at me. "It doesn't matter where you wander," I told him, "because I'll be there to help you back."
"I can see them," he breathed. Then he was silent as he searched through my mind, sifting memories; here my mother telling me about the curse, and there the dreams I had while I was in hospital. He relived my learning with Colette and absorbed it all with terrifying speed. Why couldn't I have done this? He lived those memories and I relived them.
"Murph, Murph?"
"I'm back, it's okay. I was just thinking."
We were lying on the floor side by side. I felt dizzy each time I tried to sit up, so I lay still.
"He was there the whole time."
"Who?"
"Bodie. Don't you know? You're carrying around a bit of him inside you."
I suppose I knew, but had never thought about it. It was one of those things I take for granted. "Did you learn anything?"
"You'd be surprised," he said cryptically. "I need a drink." He got up, went to the kitchen, and brought back a bottle of whisky. "Bourbon. Sounds reasonable." He poured a bit for each of us.
"To...what shall we drink to?"
"Your Lord and Lady?"
"That might be nice. All right then, to the Lord and the Lady."
We touched glasses and drank. The whisky lit little fires all the way down to my stomach where it flared nicely. "'s nice," I observed as he poured again.
"Are you feeling all right?" he asked. "You look..."
"Just tired is all. This is new to me too." We drank and he poured once again. I remember thinking I should stop or I'd get drunk, but it didn't seem too important.
We finished half the bottle.
"I'm drunk, are you drunk?" he asked.
"I think so. I feel sort of...drunk."
"Didn't drink that much!"
"'s this magic business - takes a lot out of you," I said, trying to sound older and wiser. Not easy to do when you're lying on your back with whisky dripping down your cheek.
We both began to giggle.
"Shouldn't ever drink after magic."
"One more for t'road?" he asked.
"Yeh, and I have a toast - to magic."
"To magic," he echoed, "and all those who sail in her."
"Too bloody right," I agreed and we nearly touched glasses.
Then Murph leaned forward and kissed my cheek. "Thanks," he said.
"For what?"
"Everything." He kissed my other cheek, and licked off the trail of bourbon. "An' that's for everything else. An' this is because I want to."
He kissed me on the mouth.
It was very nice.
I went with it.
I remember thinking I was being an awful hypocrite, letting Murphy make love to me like this after making such a fuss about that girl Bodie slept with a few months ago. Didn't stop me though. I kept thinking, 'I'm sorry, Bodie, I can't help it.' I needn't have worried. Neither of us were capable.
"Need a kip," Murphy muttered. He got up and walked away, just like that, dragging his clothes with him. Somehow I managed to make it back to my bedroom too, and slept like the dead until Colette woke me.
"Ray, it's after six. Are you okay?"
"Hungh?" I was not feeling very together.
"Oh, phew, you've been drinking, haven't you?"
"Ugh," I said.
"What went on here today?"
"Nahgh, oh god, I need some water."
She poured me a glass from the pitcher beside the bed and I think I swallowed it in one gulp. "That's better. I hurt all over. Is Murphy up yet?"
"He's downstairs working a crossword puzzle. What happened Ray? Why'd you get drunk?"
"Didn't mean to. We didn't drink that much, really - half a bottle between us - but it hit hard. We made some good magic today, Mama."
"Did you?"
"Colette, when you become someone else, someone specific - say me or Jem - do you really become them or are you always Colette in someone else's body?"
"You mean in my mind?" She thought about it for a while. "I get flashes of them, Ray. If I was you, say, I'd have flashes of what it was to be Ray Doyle. Is that what you mean?"
"Yeah, but this is actually touching someone else's consciousness...this is getting lost in there sometimes."
"No, never that far. It sounds terrifying. It also sounds fascinating."
"It's what Murph can do. He's always been able to, and when I'm with him, I can too."
"Dear Lord, no wonder he's been having problems with it." She stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "Can you help?"
"I did what I could today. I let him have all the memories I'm carrying around. I don't know how to give anything more. Colette, I'm not a teacher. I know that now."
"Maybe it was enough. Get yourself together now. The boys should be here any minute." She kissed my cheek and winked at me. "I have this feeling everything will turn out all right."
By the time I'd washed and changed, Kev, Tal and Jamie had arrived. Tal and Jem were whispering to each other, which was strange enough, but when I entered the room, Jem pointed to me and they giggled. I checked to see that nothing was unfastened.
"He started talking a couple of months ago." Jamie was carrying a big paper sack which he set on the table. "No particular reason for it. I asked him why and he said that it seemed like a good idea. Hello, Ray."
"Hi Jamie. How's life?"
"Better, thanks. Now that I've figured out there's no easy answers, I'm not angry all the time. How's Bodie?"
I had a moment of annoyance that I managed to stifle. "He's very well thank you." Why did people fall in love with Bodie all the time? "I wish he was here now."
Someone grabbed me from behind and hugged me very hard. "Don't shoot me, boy, it's just Kev."
"God, it's good to see you," I told him while we hugged and pounded each other on the back.
"And this time you're gonna let me paint you, aren't you? Bea promised to sit for me, didn't you, beautiful?"
"If I don't I'll never hear the end of it, will I? Ray, do you mind?
Working without me, I mean," she added in a low voice.
"Not really. I'll talk to you about it after supper. Kev, you've met Murphy, haven't you?" I asked.
"Not as I recall, hello Murphy."
They shook hands and I introduced Murph to the others.
"You're like Ray, aren't you?" Tal asked. He had a soft, pleasant voice.
"Yeh, we work together..."
"I meant you're a shape-shifter too, aren't you?"
"How did you know?" we both asked.
"I can smell it," he explained with a mysterious smile.
"Tal is a good guesser," Jem said, and was rewarded by a good hard pinch.
"Come and eat, come and eat," Colette announced. "And don't you children be horsing around, you'll get food all over my good company tablecloth."
"Tonight is Japanese carry-out," Kev explained as he and Jamie emptied the sacks. There were half a dozen beautiful three-tiered lacquerwork boxes, and a number of smaller wood and lacquer containers, all filled with the most beautiful food I'd ever seen. Everything tasted as good as it looked.
"I'm sorry Bodie couldn't be here as well. You know he promised to let me draw him next time we were together," Kev said.
"Knowing Bodie, that may mean you'll never see him again."
"Is this raw fish?" Murph asked, holding up a suspicious-looking morsel.
"Raw tuna. Try it with some of the green paste and some soy sauce. Not too much of the paste, though," Colette warned. "Would you rather have something cooked?"
"No, I just wanted to know, is all. Always meant to try this." He popped it into his mouth and everyone watched him chew. "It's good, I like it, all right?"
"I was afraid we'd have to go out and deep fry all the sashimi," Jamie observed.
"And serve it with chips," Tal added.
"Did Kev tell you he's putting together a show?" asked Jem.
"No."
"We're all helping," Jamie said. "It's going to be wonderful."
We discussed the show for most of the meal, and I was grateful because it gave me an opportunity to think about what had happened that afternoon.
Murphy seemed easier than he had yesterday. He was talking and joking with the others as though he'd known them forever. The hostility was gone, and I realised for the last year, that hostility had been the dominant aspect of his personality. Surely this was a good sign. I allowed myself to relax a little.
Jem and Jamie cleared the table while the rest of us took our tea into the living room. Kev sat on the floor, with a big white cat on his lap, and sketched each of us while we talked. Murphy sat beside Bea and put his arms around her.
"You have to come and see the show before you leave," Kev told us. "My ego cannot deal with rejection, you see." He held up a drawing of Bea and Murph. "Well?"
It was wonderful. He'd captured what I saw as the essence of Bea - her exotic beauty, earthy good humour and a touch of vulnerability. The drawing gave her a Madonna-like air.
And Murphy...Kev saw more than I ever had. There was a tension in the body, a sense of protectiveness in the way his arms were wrapped around Bea, and in his face there was such sadness - a sort of loneliness that ate at me when I looked at the picture.
Bea took it from me. "It's good, Kev. It's us. May I have it?"
"For you, my lady, anything. But that leaves Murphy pictureless. Would you like on, Murph?"
"One of Bea...just Bea," he said, and Kev went to work again, producing a picture of Bea that was just this side of impish "Ah, that's what I love most about her," Murphy observed. "Thanks, Kev."
"Now, I've had a request from several anonymous admirers for a sketch of you, Raymondo, so you'll have to sit very still while I draw you about half a dozen times."
"What?"
"No talking; spoils that delicious mouth."
"Kev, tell us a story while you work, will you?" Bea asked. "It's been so long since I've heard you spin a yarn."
"Let Tal tell one lady. I want to concentrate on this face."
Tal stood up and made a little bow. "If you will accept my poor talents in place of those of my illustrious teacher..."
"Get on with it, boy, don't play Henry James," Kev admonished.
Tal proceeded to launch into a long and rambling story about two moonshiners, a giant alligator and a girl in a bright red dress. He played all the parts beautifully and had us laughing helplessly long before he reached the end.
Then Kev displayed his sketches of me - four of them, all very different.
There was one that looked childlike, and I wondered if I ever looked that way. Colette claimed that one. There was one of me laughing which Tal took and a thoughtful one which Bea asked for. The one I took was the strangest of the lot. It was me and yet not, with long tangled curls and just the hint of a pointed ear emerging from them. It was all slanting eyes and hard mouth; half warrior and half wanton. If the one Colette claimed was out of character, this was pure fantasy.
Bodie's love it.
Finally he did a group portrait, or rather, a caricature, adding Bodie and Jeff and Dahout and Cowley. "This one's for me," he announced as he showed it off. "This is the way I want to remember you all."
He'd drawn himself with Colette sitting on his lap. To their right were Jamie and Tal, their arms around each other, Jamie's chin on top of Tal's head. In the centre, between the two couples, was Jem, pregnant and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. To the left of Kev and Colette were Jeff, Dahout and Bea. Jeff was seated and Dahout and Bea stood behind him. Each woman had one hand on his shoulder and a pitchfork in the other.
"That's American Gothic revisited," Kev assured us.
Bodie, Murphy and I were to the right of Jamie and Tal and all three of us were robed like choirboys and holding hands. Above us was a smiling Cowley leaning on a cloud, blessing us.
"He never smiles," Murph observed. "Apart from that it's all on target."
"George is god," I remarked. "At least he seems to be."
Murph passed the picture back to Kev. "Tell me about your gods," he asked, and I felt myself tense. If Murph was going to be difficult about religion, Kev was not the person to be difficult with.
"What do you want to know?"
Murphy frowned. "I'm not entirely sure. I'd like to feel comfortable with them. I was taught that witches...that is what you are, isn't it?"
There was a general murmur of agreement.
"Well, I was told that witches worship the devil and..."
This time there was a strong sound of disagreement, but Kev held up a hand for silence. "Let him finish what he's saying - that's the rule."
It might have been my imagination, but Murphy looked quite uncomfortable.
"I was told you do a black mass..." His voice trailed away. "Only, that's what I was taught. Wrong, eh?"
"Entirely," Kev said, not unkindly. "But popular imagination prefers the image of an ugly old woman riding a broom and worshipping the devil at all night sex orgies."
"That last part sounds interesting," Tal remarked. He was sitting on Jamie's lap and had one hand inside Jamie's sweater.
"The truth is something else. Witches worship a creative force just as all other religions do...it'd be stupid to worship a destructive force, wouldn't it? Anyway, Christians use God the father, son and Holy Ghost as symbols of that force, but witches use the Lord and the Lady. The faces change even as the seasons, but some things remain the same - our god is a horned god, a forest lord, the king stag. Stop me if I sound too pedantic," he added.
"Murphy, this religion is older than Christianity, no matter what you've been told. It's the oldest religion there is, and the most basic. When Christianity began sweeping through the world, the church fathers found that paganism was a threat to their control of the people - I mean, imagine being told by the Christians that there's only one life, and for most people it's miserably hard and short. And imagine them saying to you God wants you to suffer in this life so you can spend eternity in heaven praising his name.
Then the pagans tell you no, there are hundreds, even thousands of lives and in some you'll be unhappy, but in others you'll be on top of the heap...who would you listen to? Then the pagans tell you that eating and drinking and making love are all forms of worship and that you should have fun - it's what life is for...well, I can't see much reason to go to mass and feel guilty for going out to dance around the Beltaine fires, and loving whoever I want to love, can you? So the church fathers thought about it and they said, well, we have to scare them into coming to our church, don't we? So they started an advertising campaign about what happened to people who worshipped other gods - they went to hell and were burnt to crisps and writhed around in agony for the same eternity they would have spent singing 'alleluia' at God's feet. And they said to the people 'The pagans are trying to send you to hell. They worship a devil, don't they? Look at him, he looks like an animal with those horns and cloven hoofs. If you worship him, you're worshipping Satan and it's the roasting pan for you after you die. Q.E.D.' Well, they did convince a lot of folks who decided the best way to get rid of the devil is to get rid of his worshippers. So they began burning witches. Then they burned people they didn't like - people who were old or ugly of folks who talked to themselves because they were lonely or a little bit crazy. They burned women who were too beautiful or too proud, or men who had too much property. They burned folks who were inconvenient. And over the years, most folks forgot that it was the Christians who called our Horned God the devil in the fist place. Have you ever found a description of the devil in the bible?"
Murphy shook his head. "If that's what He's not, what is He?"
"Father, brother, lover and son to the Goddess, and to all of us. He is all of us - a symbol of the maleness in everyone."
"And your goddess is the femaleness in everyone?"
"This boy learns fast," Kev said.
"So if there is no devil and no hell, and when you die you come back again, what keeps you from doing just what you want to do? What keeps you from killing or stealing or...anything that according to Christian ethics is wrong?"
"According to some Christian ethics, everything is wrong...but I'm not gonna get into that. Thing is, it's not guilt or fear that keeps us from doing any of those things. You tell me - you're a Catholic, aren't you?"
"Not any more."
"Well, you were, though. You've killed. How do you feel about it?"
The atmosphere in the room became tense.
"How do you suppose I feel about it? I don't like it."
"But you do it."
"When I have to, yes. Are you going to tell me it's right or wrong?"
"I'm going to tell you that it's your choice to live a life where you have to make those decisions. What we believe is that what you do comes back on you. Violence begets violence. Lies engender lies. Anger causes anger.
Accept that and you can make an informed decision about your life. Choose to kill and you run the risk of having violence done to you. In your case you see it as a necessary evil, or as a sort of justice - that's valid...for you. You're the only one you have to answer to. If you make karma you have to burn it too. And if you think anyone in this room is going to tell you how to live your life, you're going to be disappointed."
"I didn't say I did," Murphy protested.
"No," Kev agreed. "You didn't say that. Well, did somebody want a story?"
He told an American Indian tale about Grandmother Toad and her 'little mysteries', about the place of the Dreaming Thunder. After his finished, Colette told him he and the boys should stay the night.
"It's awful late to e traipsing back home," she said. I checked my watch and was surprised to find it was gone two.
Bea walked upstairs with me. "How are you two getting on?" she asked.
"Better. I think we've reached an understanding at least. We had a good session today - he's beginning to open up to some new ideas."
"I felt guilty about leaving you alone to bash it out with him," she confessed. "But Colette insisted on taking me to see a doctor-friend of hers. He confirmed what I already knew - I'm having a perfectly normal pregnancy...now. It's amazing, Ray. He told me that from what he could tell, I'd probably have as many more as I wanted to. Whatever Bodie did to me, he did it well. I'm awfully grateful."
I hugged her. "At least he managed to fix you with making a balls-up of it.
He's Ben having trouble at work with his power. Seems it works on everyone."
"What d'you mean?"
I walked her to her bedroom. "Well, if he wanted to...change Cowley into a white rabbit, say, he could do it, but he'd end up in a whole room full of white rabbits."
She began to giggle. "Broad spectrum spells, is that it?"
"Essentially, yes."
"Goodness, you'd better have yourself checked when you go home."
"Why?"
"You might be pregnant as well. Good night, Ray darling." She kissed me and slipped into her bedroom.
It was a sobering thought.
Sometime in the night, someone came into my room. I woke to an uneasy feeling of being watched.
"Who's there?"
"One of your anonymous admirers." It was Jem.
"You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?" I reached out to turn on the light, but she stopped me.
"Don't. I need the dark, Redhair."
I could feel my skin crawling. "What did you call me?"
"You owe me a service, Redhair. You owe me a life."
She slipped into bed beside me and I could feel her skin warm and silky against mine.
"Jem, I..."
"You know who We are. Will you give Us our due? We wish one of your blood to survive."
I knew what she was asking and I couldn't do it. "I'm not able...I'm sterile."
"No longer."
At first it made no sense, but then I remembered what Bea had said. Damn you Bodie, I thought...then I couldn't think any longer.
When I woke I was alone. It was almost morning; the air was grey and still.
Had it been a dream, Jem coming to me in the middle of the night?
No, no dream. But like my dream in which she said to me: 'You owe me a service, Redhair. You owe me a life.' Funny how I'd feared that, never understanding it was a new life She was asking for.
Had She got it? I wondered. It was something new to me, something I'd never considered before - me, a father?
I shook my head. No, it must have been part dream at least. Why me?
Dozens of other men had as much to offer to the gene pool.
Not that I hadn't enjoyed it. In fact I felt a little guilty because I'd enjoyed it so much. I'd missed the feel of a woman, the smell of one.
Maybe that was why I'd been so angry with Bodie over the woman he'd brought home while I was away. I was jealous of him, having something I'd done without. Well, we weren't either of us creatures of overwhelming fidelity.
I decided I wasn't going to go back to sleep, so I got up and took a shower.
It was something we'd have to discuss when we were together again, I thought as I leaned into the warm spray. I love water. I love Bodie in water; the image makes me want to purr.
Then as I was drying myself, I thought about the rest of my dream. If Jem's part in it had come to pass, couldn't the other two as well? And if so, what exactly would happen? What had they meant?
When I was dressed, I went downstairs and found Colette sitting at the table, reading the paper.
"Good morning, baby. Did you sleep well?"
For a moment I was completely at a loss. Should I tell her about Jem? If I didn't, and she found out later, she might be more upset than I thought.
But she told me. "Jem was with you last night, wasn't she?"
I nodded.
"It's okay, you don't have to worry about getting me upset. She's an adult."
"You said you wanted her to finish school..."
"Good God, if everyone waited for graduation before they had sex, there'd be no population problem. I just don't want her burdened with a baby before she's ready. You were careful, weren't you?"
"I...don't know."
"Ray!"
"Well..." I told her what had happened, told her about the dream and Bodie's problems with 'broad spectrum spells.' "I'm just not sure what to tell you, Colette. I wouldn't have done it on purpose." I felt like a teenager again, trying to explain some lapse to my mother who, I was sure, wouldn't understand.
She usually did, though, and so did Colette. To my surprise and overwhelming relief, she began to laugh.
"Poor Ray, you must have had a bad night. Well, if we have kittens around here in nine months, I'll know who's to blame. Now stop worrying about it and have some coffee."
"Isn't just that that worries me," I confessed. Then I told her about the rest of the dream. "Madame Ojuka may have some link to Murphy," I said.
"He told me he dreams about her quite often. And the old woman...I've never seen her before. I don't know what she means when she says she wasn't the one who bound me."
"What sort of link could this woman have had to Murphy? How close were they?"
"As close as we ever are to the people we deal with in the course of our job. He interrogated her as I recall. Otherwise I don't think they had any real contact. It's been a few years since the case in any even, and she's been executed. What link could they have now?"
"Let me think on it," she told me as she rinsed out her coffee cup. "I have a pet theory about Murphy, but I'm not quite ready to trot it out yet."
"Any coffee left?" Kev shuffled out, rubbing his eyes. "Morning, Ray.
Morning, beautiful," he said to Colette. She handed him an empty cup and he pinched her arse. "This is a real woman, Ray, not one of them spiky little things with no hips and no tits."
"Will you stop?" Colette snapped, but she was grinning.
"No, now let me educate this boy."
"I think he's doing very well without your help, old man."
"I have a whole room full of erotic drawings of her," he said as he sat down at the table. Colette pitched a towel at his head.
"You're feeling perky this morning, aren't you?" I observed.
"I'm always like this after a good night."
"It's the rest of us who suffer," Colette added, rolling her eyes.
We chatted for a while, and were joined by Jamie who looked as beautiful rumpled and sleepy-eyed as he did at any other time. Hard on the ego, that.
"Morning." He fell into a chair and yawned.
"Where's your other half?"
"Sound asleep. He could sleep through a war. May I have some coffee, Mama?"
"Somethin' wrong with your feet, boy?" she asked.
"They're asleep."
She grinned and stood up. "Like my brain. All right, but don't get used to being waited on." She poured him a cup and set it in front of him.
"I'll do the same for you when you're old and grey. Was nice last night, wasn't it?" When we all began to laugh, he looked indignant. "I meant the stories, and the drawings and everything. You people are worse than teenagers about sex," he grumbled.
Kev tried to stifle his amusement, but Colette was snorting with laughter.
"Pay no attention to them," I told him. "They have it on the brain." I noticed he was wearing the silver pentacle Tal had given him on his birthday. "Have you come 'round to believing all this?" I asked him.
He put his hand around the silver circle. "Not entirely; not the way you all do, but I'm not afraid of it any more. I used to hate all gods..."
"What changed?"
"I don't know. Maybe realising that I have control over my life. When Tal started talking, one of the first things he said to me was that he finally felt he had enough control of his life to be himself for a change. He didn' t have to hide anymore. I guess I realised then that I'd been hiding for a long time, too. Now we keep each other from running away again."
I glanced at Colette and she looked proud. Jamie was special to her in a way many of the others had never been. She'd said once that she'd always felt guilty because she loved Jamie so much more than her other children.
Bodie'd cared for him too, but now the thought didn't bring the sharp pang of jealousy I'd come to associate with Jamie. Instead, I was pleased to think Bodie might have helped Jamie reach this understanding.
After that, we talked about mundane matters. Kev promised to take us all to supper at Fisherman's Wharf over the weekend. He cooked breakfast for everyone - pancakes and bacon - and Murphy and I finally understood who Aunt Jemima was.
Jem came down last, and I didn't have time to talk to her alone. She did wink at me across the breakfast table, though, and asked me how I slept.
"Hardly at all, thank you," I replied.
"Me neither. Colette, I'm spending the night at Fran's house tonight, so don't wait up."
Seduced and abandoned!
"What are we going to do today?" Murphy asked as we finished the washing up.
We were alone again - Bea had gone with Kev and the boys and Colette and Jem were at work.
"Whatever needs doing, I expect. How have you been feeling since yesterday?"
"Better, really. It's helped. I learned..." He thought for a minute. "More than I expected to."
I put away the last stack of plates. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I learned a lot about you."
"Occupational hazard."
"And about you and Bodie."
I wasn't sure how to take that so I let it alone.
"I never realised how special your relationship is. I always thought it was convenient."
"Give us credit for more than that," I admonished.
"Well, you know what I mean."
"Hmmmm."
"Anyway, I learned how linked you are - you didn't know, did you? You're carrying around a piece of him inside you and you didn't know. Was it always there, I wonder, or did he put it there?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I told him, but Strewth, I had an uneasy feeling about it. I knew he was right. "Look, we're not here to discuss me and Bodie. Why don't we talk about you - did you find something to help? The key to the mechanism?"
"I think so. It's a matter of how much you open up. Maybe it has to do with the need to hide. You never felt you had to. I envy you that."
Hiding. What was it Jamie had said earlier? How many of us had mechanisms for hiding from other people? "And you did?"
"I still do. You can't just change that, Ray."
He walked out into the living room and sat on the floor. "I'd like you to be here while I practice. I trust you to be able to call me back if I lose myself in someone - yes?"
"Yes," I said, sitting in a chair nearby.
I watched.
He shut his eyes. A second later Kev was sitting in front of me. We chatted for a few minutes, and then he said: "Am I doing all right?"
"Depends, how do you feel?"
He thought about it for a moment. "I feel odd - as though someone is standing outside the door trying to come in."
"And?"
"And I just have to lock the door and ignore them." Suddenly Colette was there. "I have to think of myself in my own flat, with the door locked against someone who wants to get in and kidnap me."
"You might be wiser to think of it as locking the door against a door-to-door salesman. Less threatening image."
He smiled...or rather, Colette did. It was a strange feeling to look at her and think 'Murph'.
Then I was staring at myself. "This is harder," he said, "because I know you better. You're fair bashing at the door."
"Don't let me in," I warned.
Bodie was next. I knew he would be.
Murphy was silent for a while. "He's less insistent," he said at last, "but more insidious. I want to lose myself in this one. He's what I'd like to be sometimes."
He was wearing the wistful expression I always find hard to resist. "You make a good Bodie," I told him, "though I prefer the original."
A moment later Bea was sitting in front of me. "This is hardest of all," he said, in what was barely more than a whisper. "You know I'm in love with her, don't you?"
"Yes, I thought so."
He shut his eyes and Murphy was back. "I just thought of something - I've never changed into anyone I didn't know. I've never made up a face, have you?"
"Yeh, any number of times."
"Maybe that's part of it, do you think?"
I'd never considered it one way or another. "It's possible, of course.
Would you like to try to make up a face?"
"I don't know if I can."
The results were...unusual. I'd forgotten how difficult it is to construct a mental picture of a face you've never seen. For an artist it's not so bad, but for Murph the process was obviously a trial. The initial results were hilarious. He began with the face of a woman on his own body. The face itself was blunt and lopsided, with one eye noticeably larger than the other, a too-long nose and a tiny mouth perched above an impossible jawline.
Then he tried to fix it and managed to even out the eyes and enlarge the mouth, but this time one of the eyes was made-up and the mouth was too wide.
He went back to being Murphy.
"This is harder than I thought it would be."
"Try making the picture before you change, not as you change."
"Right."
Greta Garbo sat in front of me. "She just popped into my mind," he said sheepishly. "Let me try again."
The next transformation was more successful in that each of the features was approximately in proportion to each of the others, and the face was, as a whole, not one I'd seen before. But when I examined him more closely, I recognised my own eyes, Bodie's mouth, Cowley's nose...
"Too eclectic?" he asked when he noticed my expression.
"I could wish for less variety," I admitted. "Sorry to be such a stickler."
"Half a mo'." He frowned, concentrating very hard, and suddenly a total stranger was sitting in front of me. "Is it all right?"
"It's good," I told him. I inspected the face. "It's very good. How'd you manage it?"
"I thought about a face I knew well, and changed a bit here and there."
"Very good. And you've done the body too. By George, I think he's got it!"
Murphy smiled up at me. "I feel wonderful."
He spent most of the day practicing, and I wrote to Bodie, stopping to admire this creation or that one. The only time I lost patience was when he changed into a demure little white cat and Colette's monster tried to jump its bones.
Colette came home about six and we told her about Murphy's progress. "I think this calls for a celebration. Let's order a pizza for the three of us."
I thought it was a wonderful idea and so did Murph. We ordered two pizzas, some bar-b-qued ribs, garlic bread, fried shrimp, mostaccioli, and antipasto and three stuffed artichokes. There was enough food to kill all of us, but we made a good dent in it.
"I love a good pig-out once in a while," Colette said. Murphy belched and I reached for the last rib. "Save some for breakfast. Nothin' better than cold pizza and Coke in the morning. Breakfast of champions."
"Gaah! How can you eat that way first thing in the morning?" I asked.
"Is it any worse than fried eggs, fried bacon, fried tomatoes, fried bread and beans first thing in the morning?"
"You forgot a plate of chips," Murphy added. "Lovely things, chips. Is there any more garlic bread?"
"You'll burst," I told him.
"It's for you," he said, handing me the last slice. "Garlic is only good when it's shared."
We spent the rest of the evening watching films on her video machine and vegetating.
Later that night I was brushing my teeth when I heard my bedroom door open.
"Whassa?" It was Murph.
"I brushed mine too," he said.
I rinsed. "What a relief for your dentist."
"You know why I'm here, don't you?"
And for a moment I wanted to lie, to send him away believing he'd read me wrong, but after what we'd gone through together I couldn't do it. "Yes, I do." I turned out the light and went over to the bed.
"This has been hovering over us for a long time," he whispered.
The bed dipped and I felt him lying beside me. He was bigger than Bodie - taller and heavier, and I had a moment of hesitation. Two men together can be a difficult thing.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "I'm not into that sort of sex."
"I know." Then I kissed him to let him know I wasn't going to back out. It 'd been a long time since I'd been with any man but Bodie.
It wasn't what I expected from him - I thought, 'Here's a rough and ready bloke', and was prepared for good, hard, active sex. Was good, too, but it was surprisingly tender. He was...is a gentle man. His hands could convey affection, or uncertainty, could express his pleasure in touching me, or the need to be touched.
He's a sensual man too who enjoyed the feel of skin on skin, the taste of kisses, the scent of arousal, and was not shy of saying so. When our long and affectionate foreplay gave way to more urgent demands, we settled for an expression of sexual equality, mouth to each other's cock, easing into orgasm not with cries of pleasure but with sighs of contentment. And after, we were spooned together, me wrapped in his arms and he asked me if I was going to tell Bodie.
"I don't know. I might," I said. I thought he would understand.
"He hates me for what happened at The Green King. I didn't know how he felt about her..."
"He doesn't hate you, Murph, but you made him very unhappy. You played with something important to him."
"Of course I regret it. I regretted it while it was happening."
Then we were silent for a while. Finally I heard him breathing softly, regularly. His grip loosened and he rolled onto his back. I lay there trying to sleep for almost half an hour without success.
Have to do something, I thought, so I sat up and found my notebook. When I turned on the bedside lamp, Murphy muttered and rolled away from the light.
16) Whatever else happens now, at least I could help him with his problem. I couldn't bear to see him destroying himself - I must have cared more about him than I knew when I started. Now it's in Murphy's hands.
I need to see Bodie again soon. I didn't realise I'd miss him so much. And I have to talk to him. I know very well I'm going to tell him about Murphy and Jem. It's something we have to clear between us. Besides, he'd know if I was keeping something like this from him, wouldn't he? He can read my mind most of the time.
Thing is, I don't think he's going to be upset. He knows me fairly well, doesn't he? He probably saw something like this coming.
One thing is certain, I'm not cut out to be a teacher - not like Colette. I 'm happy to have had the experience, though.
Then I put out the light and fell asleep immediately. Sometime in the night, I dreamed about Bodie. He was sitting on a rock next to a river.
"Hullo," I said, coming to sit beside him.
"I was just thinking of you," he told me. "I've been missing you."
"I'll be home soon. I've missed you too."
"Do you remember the times we spent here?" he asked. "Lots of lives ago.
We began here and we'll probably end here. It's a good place to be. Ray, it's me who's bound you."
I thought about it. "Yes, I see that now."
"Shall we finish the play, then? And begin another?"
I agreed.
You can't lose a piece of your soul.
--Lughnasad 1983
...Continued in Part 4...
< Previous
Next >
Archive Home