The Go-between

Bridie took a step back. “Oh,” she said.

She had not expected her neighbour’s door to be opened by a ginger cat baring its teeth, unmistakably unfriendly. 

“Sorry about that,” said the tall figure behind the cat. “Charlie’s not keen on strangers.”

By the tone of his voice, neither was he.

“That’s fine,” Bridie said. “I moved in yesterday as you probably saw. Was just being neighbourly. I’m Bridie Murphy by the way. I’m an accountant, so out all day and shan’t be bothering you much.”

“Right. I’m Seb Hathaway and I work at home. Web designing.”

Charlie had turned away, tail lashing, and Seb was already closing the door.

Bridie’s Irish sense of hospitality and intrinsic interest in her fellow humans was outraged. True she had been forewarned by the garrulous girl behind the bar of the Red Lion on her earlier visits to view the property.

“That neighbour of yours is a real weirdo. Not surprising perhaps. His fiancêe was killed by a motorbike a week before the wedding. The ginger cat was hers. It was a mean kitten then and has grown into a meaner cat.” Bridie felt an immediate quiver of sympathy. Three years ago she had lost Bill, her husband of six months in a sailing accident. For ages she had expected him to show up suddenly round a corner, at the next table in a restaurant, at the end of the phone. Perhaps she’d get a cat, though truthfully she wasn’t keen on cats. Perhaps a puppy. She grinned, visualising Seb’s and Charlie’s reactions if she turned up with a Rotweiler pup. Probably Charlie would come off best.

In fact they saw little of each other. A strip of garden separated the two cottages. Seb’s was a labour-saving stretch of lawn and a lot of shrubs. Bridie’s was a wilderness. She liked gardening and spent her spare time trying to tame it while Charles sat on a nearby post, sneering. When her brother Patrick came to stay for a few days they made huge inroads on the wilderness. He tried to make friends with Charlie who merely spat at him and disappeared.

“What a revolting creature,” Patrick said.

Bridie rang Seb and asked him if he would like to come over for a drink and meet her brother.

“I’m rather busy,” he said.

“Like owner like cat,” suggested Patrick.

She missed him when he went, but life was all right. The job was OK, she loved the cottage, and the first ideas were beginning to wander about her mind for the children’s book she had always told Bill she wanted to write. After his death, she lost all incentive, but now the ideas came almost unbidden. It would have been nice if she had had a more congenial relationship with her neighbour, but she had always been fairly self sufficient and could cope with that. Occasionally she glimpsed Seb returning from the village shop, head bowed. If he had carried a poster saying “Keep away,” it could not have been clearer. In contrast, Charlie was becoming distinctly friendlier. When she was gardening, he would sit not too far away, licking his paws. Sometimes when she was at her laptop by the north-facing window, she would look up and see him sitting on the gatepost watching her.

It was one morning, after she had cleared away the breakfast things and filled the washing machine, and was settling down at her laptop that she became aware of an urgent scrabbling. Rats? Pray not. Mice? Mice had their own way of getting into houses. Finally curiosity got the better of her. Opening the back door a fraction, she found Charlie sitting on the doormat looking …. good heavens ….. appealing.

He slipped in through the narrow gap, wound round her legs, meowing. It was not an attractive sound. On the other hand when he was not baring his teeth, he was quite a handsome creature.

“What do you want Charlie?”

He slipped out of the door again and looked back at her. After they had repeated this scene a couple more times, she hazarded

“Am I supposed to follow you?”

“Meouw,” said Charlie.

She followed him across the garden to the back door of Seb’s cottage, where he promptly disappeared through a cat flap. The next moment he was on the windowsill of the kitchen trying to tell her something.

“Don’t silly, Charlie. I can’t get through there.”

He went on trying to tell her something, came back through the cat flap and returned to the window sill. In the end she tried the back door. It was open. In the living room looking extremely uncomfortable and in pain, Seb lay on the sofa, his left foot at a strange angle. His eyes were closed. In repose his face was rather pleasant. Bridie cleared her throat to indicate her presence.

“Oh,” Seb said.

“It was Charlie’s idea I came over. His concern for you seems to have overcome his dislike for me. I’ll make you a cup of tea.” It seemed better to tell him than to ask him. “Then I’ll drive you over to the health centre.”

Seb grunted.

“Could you make it coffee?”

Over coffee he explained what had happened. He’d heard a noise in the night. Probably a fox. When he went to investigate he fell over a wheelbarrow. His ankle was devilishly painful.

“You could have rung me.” Bridie grinned at his expression. “Sorry, silly me. Anyway I’m here now. Perhaps I’d better ring the health centre first.”

The health centre suggested a visit to the local hospital for an X-ray.

“I can’t put you to all that trouble.”

“It’s OK. I’m in thinking mode. I can think as well while I drive as staring into space.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“A children’s book.”

“You have children?”

“No Bill was killed six months after we married. We’d decided to postpone kids for a while. Sailing accident. Took months to find his body.”

“That’s terrible.” He was silent a while, sipping his coffee. “At least with Fiona I knew straight away. “

“I don’t suppose it made it any easier. Computers wouldn’t help either.”

“What have they got to do with it?”

“Computer people lose track of how to communicate. Hadn’t you noticed? Come on let’s get you to the hospital.”

The hospital pronounced a hairline fracture. The current treatment was to let it knit naturally, but there must be no pressure and a lot of rest.

“I can do your shopping and make the odd meal.”

“I can’t possibly expect you to do that.”

“You’re not. I’m offering. Unless there’s someone else you can think of.”

He looked sheepish.

“As you said, computer people aren’t too good at communicating.”

The arrangement worked surprisingly well. A girl from the village came round to clean a couple of times a week. Menus were planned ahead, Bridie did the shopping on her way back from work, had a day cooking for the freezer. She took to bringing scribbling pads of paper over, and her laptop. It seemed easier to leave them there than trail them back and forth. The book was beginning to take shape. It was about the adventures of a young cat who got left behind when his family moved and became quite wild, and his gradual rehabilitation with the children of the family who had moved in. She soon realised she would need some illustrations. While she scribbled at one table, Seb would brood over his computer at another. After supper and clearing up, she always went home early, either watching some TV film or documentary or reading. Charlie had taken to following her home, eventually curling up on her bed but at some point before morning disappearing again.

One evening she returned from work to find Seb had prepared a casserole supper.

“Is it a good idea standing on that ankle so long?”

“Saw the doc this morning. He recommended it.”

A couple of mouthfuls in, she said,

“This is really good.”

“You needn’t sound so surprised.”

“You’ll soon be able to manage without me,” She found the idea quite depressing and added “but I’ll carry on doing the shopping for a while.”

Before long that became unnecessary too. It took a while to get used to being back in her own routine. Quite soon after she had moved back, Seb came to the back door and handed her a sheaf of papers. They proved to be a series of delightful drawings of a cat pursuing a series of activities which exactly matched those in the draft of her book.

“A small thanks,” he said. “I couldn’t resist looking at what you had been doing. Charming. Made a welcome change from computer programming.”

“Perhaps you should change your career.”

“I was wondering about that. But you’d have to write a lot more books.”

“Yes, well don’t give up the day job yet.”

A few days later she told him “I’ve been on to one of those self-publishing firms. It’s not expensive nowadays, using the print-on-demand system. We could set up a small publishing outfit and invite in one or two other writers. If you think Charlie could stand so much collaboration. Or you, come to that.”

It was soon after that that Bridie got a secondment to the head office of her firm back in Ireland. She left the key to the cottage with Seb and asked him to check the answering machine and forward any important-looking mail. It was good to be back home, see the family, pick up the old familiar ways, but she was also aware of two big holes in her life, one cat-shaped, the other tall and loose-limbed.

She arrived back at the cottage on an April afternoon, the sort of spring afternoon when the tulips glow deep red and the forsythia covered the bush by her front door in sunbursts. She noticed that Seb’s garden had changed, too. There was a wild bit at the back near the boundary bordering a field showing the first signs of young corn; and in the front a birch sapling, and a small pond. She found a note on the doormat.

“Dinner will be served at seven.” At six Charlie came to call her.

“You’re too early, Charlie,” she said, but let him weave round her legs while she unpacked and changed.

“You look gorgeous,” Seb said, when he opened the door to her.

“And you look well.” He did, too. Clearly he had spent some time in the open air and acquired a light tan.

“I’ve started going to the gym.”

“And gardening?”

“Mm. Come in.”

They had a drink while Bridie told him about her time in Ireland, and he told her about the series of calls he had with a printer about the self-publication of her book. A national newspaper was showing interest and would ring the following week about a special offer deal for their readers. From time to time Seb disappeared into the kitchen. The meal smelled great and, when he produced it, looked great. It also tasted a great.

After a while Seb said, “Please don’t do that again.”

“Do what?”

“Disappear for three months. Charlie was thoroughly upset.”

Bridie put her knife and fork down.

“I’m afraid it won’t be three months next time. They’re closing the local office and want me to go and run a new department in Ireland.”

“In which case,” Seb said, “there is no way I can be subtle about this.” He put his knife and fork down, too, and looked at her steadily. “Charlie wants me to marry you.”

“And what do you want?”

“I usually want what Charlie wants. But he sometimes knows it before I do.”

Bridie returned Seb’s look. His expression managed to look both smiling and anxious. She said, “It needs a bit of thought, but I’d hate to upset Charlie.”

From an armchair Charlie looked one to the other. “Miaow,” he said.

- THE END -