The Cat Sanctuary: A Novel by Patrick Gale

Author:Patrick Gale [Gale, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-07-05T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty

His house was far smaller than it had seemed by moonlight. Deborah had taken the little she had made out—a low L of three or so rooms—to be but one angle of the property. She now saw it to have been the modest whole. It was not old, in fact it strongly resembled the post-war bungalow in the reading primers of her childhood. Spring being some weeks off, the climbing roses and wisteria he had trained on wires between the windows were doing little to disguise drab brick walls. Only the yellow splash of a winter jasmine lent the place an enfeebled rustic charm. Although the first frosts had eaten back all but the hardiest evergreens, there was evidence of a well-maintained nursery garden to the rear of the house, with a long seasonal greenhouse made from thick polythene laid over a tunnel of metal hoops. Lung-like, it puffed out and relaxed under the play of the wind. She knocked at the front door and stepped back to sniff at the winter jasmine grown around it before she remembered that it had no smell. She was about to knock again when she noticed a piece of wood nailed to the porch. He would seem to have used a hot poker to burn the message onto it.

IF NO REPLY TRY CARAVAN

She looked around her. No caravan. She knocked once more to be sure then walked around the side of the house, past the back door where he had emerged the other night, past a water butt and between a clump of compost bins. She rubbed her fingers in passing on what she thought was a rosemary bush only to find them smelling of curry. Perhaps he grew drugs here? Illegal ones as well as his ‘cures’? The greenhouse might conceal a multitude of nefarious cuttings. She had not seen a single policeman since her arrival, not even a village bobby on a bicycle.

The caravan was, not surprisingly, a battered affair on blocks. An electric cable stretched overhead from a hole in its roof to a hole drilled in what she took to be the kitchen wall. A bird she could not identify (it was black with a red beak) was perched on it watching her progress. It flew off, chattering, as she drew near. The caravan windows were clouded with condensation and droplets of melted frost. Standing on tip-toe, she tried to wipe one clear but succeeded only in soaking her glove. She could make out music and the light of a desklamp but the caravan appeared to be empty. It felt stupid to knock on a caravan door so she simply let herself in.

He was lying on a sofa below the window, sound asleep. His long hair was hidden beneath a closely-knitted navy-blue hat. A paper tissue had slid half-way out of a pocket of his donkey jacket and was flapping in the hot draught from an electric fan heater. A radio, tuned to an Asian music station, lay on the floor beside an empty coffee mug, its volume turned low.

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