#Cat in the kettle weird al code#
‘Orfling Two calling Orfling One’ – that’s our code to each other – well, that’s been our code since Ma died and left us on our own when I was still at school. I handed the phone back to Alice, and made my entrance through the French doors – just in time, I might add.Īnyway, after the curtain, I called the cottage, like the decent chap I am, but no luck. And my big sister is calling me at work to talk about looking after a cat? ‘Jo, I’ll have to call you later,’ I said. Well, I was a bit distracted! We’re building up to the bit where Jeff says, ‘Sergeant, arrest most of these vicars!’ and it’s important to concentrate. You’ve got to help me take care of him.’ Or something like that, but I can’t be exactly sure. Just going on in the second half of the matinee of See How They Run. I mean, where the hell is she? You can’t just disappear! There I was, Coventry, Belgrade Theatre. Where to start? The crazy thing, or Jo? Well, Jo. Behind is a flint and brick cottage – the name shingle cottage visible on the lintel. At her feet is a small brown terrier of attractive appearance whose tongue is hanging out. He is lying in the arms of a tall, striking woman in a grubby artist’s smock, her long brown hair lifted by a sea breeze. The picture shows an unremarkable moggy-type cat – tabby and white. Formatting quite professional-looking, though. Difficult to get the proper distance on this when you’ve got so used to it. Remember it’s quite unusual that a cat is talking. Note to self: Do this again still not working. Outside, the garden gate creaks and bangs in the wind. Wiggy, sighing, switches off the recorder. Roger pushes through the cat-flap and leaves. Roger looks round and makes a loud – and very pointed – miaow.
Every time he does it, I feel her loss most dreadfully. But she would have laughed with sheer pleasure to see our dog running so happily on the deserted shore. She would never have taken this simple cottage! She would have been instantly alive to all its frustrating inconveniences. She was the most wonderful, practical and rational woman, my dear Mary. For several years she was in charge of allocating the carrels in the great reading room, so perhaps it was related to that. I believe she did once mention Winterton to me in particular, but she would be unsurprised to learn that I could now recollect nothing of the circumstances of her dealings with him. I remember how she would, on occasion, attempt to discuss the members with me at dinner, and grow incredulous (but amused) when I was able to call to mind not one of the persons concerned. She had been my colleague at the library for the past twenty years even though her position was part-time, she had paid lively attention to the members in a way that I would sometimes find bewildering. In former times, I would have asked Mary, of course. Though I often tried to picture Dr Winterton, I found that I could capture only, in my mind’s eye, a fleeting impression of a snaggle tooth and a hollow, unshaven cheek, and possibly (oddly) the smell of cloves. I had rented a lonely cottage at the seaside Winterton had somehow heard tell of it he knew that this story unfolded in a similarly lonely cottage beside the sea. But being unable to make contact with him (no wi-fi here), I was bound to accept the most likely explanation. Naturally, I wondered on occasion what lay behind Dr Winterton’s decision to send this material to me.
As my wife would have said (I can hear her now), you couldn’t make him up. Sad to say, I think what finally convinced me of the files’ veracity was the staggering stupidity of the man named throughout as ‘Wiggy’, through whose pitifully inadequate understanding these events are mainly delivered to us. And yet, as I continued to study the material over the ensuing days, I felt increasingly inclined to believe it.
The story therein conveyed was outlandish, not to say preposterous. By turns I was confused, suspicious, impatient and even cynical. I opened it gratefully, and for several hours afterwards I was transported by its contents.
And one stormy evening, when the wind was moaning in the chimney and I was craving intellectual occupation, I remembered that, around the close of the year, a library member of small acquaintance had sent to me by email the following folder of documents and other files, under the general title ‘Roger’. Had I not brought it with me, perhaps the following story would never have been told. I remember debating whether to pack my laptop. At the end of Michaelmas term I had bid farewell to my position at the library in Cambridge with few real regrets the work had been mechanical for quite some time, and I had assumed I would not miss it. Article contentīut I forgot that I would need mental stimulus. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.