Celia: Excerpt from "Inamorata"

25 August 1999

Listening, Celia twisted a ringlet of dripping, grey hair around her finger. "Here puss," she called softly in her throaty Louisiana accent. The sound of the cat's bell echoed through the hall. Celia grinned broadly and knelt down on the dusty wooden floor. "Come here, puss-puss." The feline's presence felt vague, ephemeral in the back of her mind.

Naked but for a pair of denim flares and a straw hat, she stretched out on her belly. The cat's feet padded along the boards and onto the threadbare rug. In the corner, the canary fluttered about its cage, made a solitary, anxious peep.

The musty smell of the carpet worked its way through Celia's lungs. "I'm watching you puss," she whispered as the cat's feet came to a standstill, eyes upon the feathered prey above. The shade became clearer as she concentrated.

"Green eyes like your aura." She could see the colours of the rug through the cat, which seemed to be a silver tabby. Water trickled down her spine. She pushed her wet hair back from her face and stretched out her hands, tapping her nails on the floorboards in a slow rhythm.

The cat took interest, watching her with two see-through slits of pupils.

"Why you haunting my hall, huh?" she asked, and kissed her lips together in a sharp, loud sound. "All alone, honey? Did they leave you here and forget about you? That why you here?"

The tabby ran towards her fingers, stopped to sniff the tapping fingers, then backed away cautiously.

Celia rolled onto her side and drew her thumb to her mouth, biting it until the skin broke. "That's right. I'm here now, puss. I can be your friend." She slid out her hand towards the cat, which came clearer with every second, its pale silver stripes virtually opaque in the light.

Blood welled up in a bead on Celia's outstretched thumb. The cat moved closer, sniffing again, licking, rubbing its cheek over her hand and smearing the blood along the side of its face. Celia felt its fur as a cool pressure against her skin. "Poor puss," she moaned, drawing it into her arms as she sat up.

The thrumming, frozen draft of the cat's breath chilled Celia's arms. Stroking it, she rose to her feet and padded across the oak panelled hall, through the dusty hangings to the ground floor landing of the great staircase. The staircase had been carved sometime after the Renaissance and dripped with swathes of wooden leaves, urns overspilling with grapes and apples and exotic attempts to guess the shape of pineapples.

She climbed to the first floor, feet cushioned on the soft scarlet carpet, hurrying past the open door of the darkly red bedroom no one would sleep in. The second floor felt warmer. The cat spat in her arms, struggling as she pushed open the door of the nursery quarters onto the hanging ghost of the coachman. She stopped. The coachman's turning body blocked the corridor, and he glared at Celia with open hostility. Celia hissed at him, and he vanished.

Celia sang to the cat, who calmed again under her hands. She turned right, up low steps, left along a tight passage that flanked the children's rooms, down again, around, and came to the bottom of a steep, narrow staircase. "It's all right puss," she crooned, cobwebs brushing her hair as she climbed. She had to crouch at the top to turn the key of the tiny door, the tabby a quivering bundle of ice against her breast.

Warm twilight winds greeted her skin as she ducked out into the open air. She walked the length of the hot lead gutter sunk between the two high points of the slate roof. Shades of children ran wild upon the eaves, and the cat pricked up its ears at the sight of them. "See, you're not alone, puss," she smiled, stroking its cold head so the hair rose along its spine.

Celia climbed the narrow gutter onto the small flat plane at the highest point of the house. Before her a flagpole jutted, behind that a stone balustrade. Celia made the high step up onto the flagpole base and leaned against the balustrade, turning to take in the view, sharp roofs careening away from the centre of the house at all angles. The faint giggles of the children disturbed the air as they climbed and played on the slates, invisible, oblivious to her presence. The cat lay cradled in her arms, secure, purring like a motor as she tickled a place below its ear.

Over the village a plane flashed against the darkening sky. Ducks slapped the water of the still, green river and in the garden the trees whispered with the wind. Leaning over the balustrade she took in the sheer drop to the paving stones and the fountain below. Then she flung her arms wide. "God-damned cats!" she screamed in delight, as the ghost of the tabby yowled on its way down.

First published in Pitch '99, Writing Magazine for NTU

Copyright © 25 August 1999

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