The scene: a cottage on the coast on a windy evening. Inside, a room with curtains drawn. Tea has just been made. A kettle steams.
Under a pool of yellow light, two figures face each other across a kitchen table. A man and a cat.
The story about to be related is so unusual and yet so plausible that it demands to be told in a single sitting.
The man clears his throat, and leans forward, expectant.
‘Shall we begin?’ says the cat …
Lynne Truss is an award-winning columnist, broadcaster and comedy radio dramatist, and the author of the phenomenally successful Eats, Shoots & Leaves. She recently made the unheard-of switch of allegiance from cats to dogs. This book – her first for more than ten years – is the perhaps inevitable result.
Fiction
With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed
Tennyson’s Gift
Going Loco
A Certain Age
Non Fiction
Making the Cat Laugh
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life
Get Her Off the Pitch!: How Sport Took Over My Life
Tennyson and his Circle
For Children
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!
The Girl’s Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can’t Manage Without Apostrophes!
Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts!
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Lynne Truss
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: Beside the Sea
Part Two: Home
Part Three: Correspondence
Part Four: Dorset
About Hammer
Copyright
THE FOLLOWING STORY, which is absolutely true, was brought to my attention when I was holidaying recently on the coast of North Norfolk. The month was January. I was in search of silence and tranquillity. I had rented a cottage which provided a fine view of the deserted nearby seashore, on which my small brown dog could run in safety. Having recently suffered the loss of my dear wife, I chose the location with care – isolation was precisely what I required, for I was liable to sudden bouts of uncontrollable emotion, and wished not to be the cause of distress or discomfort in others. For a week or two, I was glad to be alone there: to make the fire, cook simple meals, watch the dog running in happy circles at the far-off water’s edge, and weep freely in private whenever the need overcame me.
But I forgot that I would need mental stimulus. 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. I remember debating whether to pack my laptop. This is strange to think of now. Had I not brought it with me, perhaps the following story would never have been told. But pack it I did. 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’. I opened it gratefully, and for several hours afterwards I was transported by its contents. By turns I was confused, suspicious, impatient and even cynical. The story therein conveyed was outlandish, not to say preposterous. And yet, as I continued to study the material over the ensuing days, I felt increasingly inclined to believe it. 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. As my wife would have said (I can hear her now), you couldn’t make him up.
Naturally, I wondered on occasion what lay behind Dr Winterton’s decision to send this material to me. But being unable to make contact with him (no wi-fi here), I was bound to accept the most likely explanation. 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. 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. In former times, I would have asked Mary, of course. 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. 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. 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. For several years she was in charge of allocating the carrels in the great reading room, so perhaps it was related to that. She was the most wonderful, practical and rational woman, my dear Mary. She would never have taken this simple cottage! She would have been instantly alive to all its frustrating inconveniences. But she would have laughed with sheer pleasure to see our dog running so happily on the deserted shore. Every time he does it, I feel her loss most dreadfully.
After long consideration, I have decided to present this material exactly in the order I encountered it myself. Who is Roger? Wait and see. I hope this is not confusing, but at the same time I have come to believe that I should editorialise as little as possible. I will merely make clear, to begin with, that the ‘written’ files – including the rather pointless and silly dramatic efforts – are by the man calling himself Wiggy. Descriptions of photographs and transcripts of the audio files are by me.
ROGER NOTES (119KB)
ROGER THOUGHTS (66KB)
MORE STUFF (33KB)
ROGER DREAM (40KB)
DSC00546 (2MB)
DSC00021 (1.6MB)
DSC00768 (3.8MB)
Roger Screenplay 1 (25KB)
Roger Screenplay 2 (18KB)
ONE (48.7MB)
TWO (64MB)
The kitchen of a coastal cottage on a gusty night. Scary stuff! Windows rattle. A kettle steams, having just been boiled. There is a sense of awkwardness, reflected in the music. Under a pool of yellow light at the kitchen table, a digital audio recorder is glinting. Facing each other at the table, their backs in shadow, are WIGGY and ROGER.
Close-up on the recorder: it is recording.
Close-up on wall clock. It is 11.45. Close-up on window: it’s very dark.
WIGGY shudders. He is a handsome man in his mid-thirties; attractive and serious. ROGER stares, breathes. Music now suggestive of heartbeats. WIGGY speaks first.
WIGGY
Shall we start?
ROGER
Whenever you like.
WIGGY
Can I get you anything?
ROGER
Such as?
WIGGY
Water.
ROGER
No.
WIGGY
Tasty titbit?
ROGER
(affronted)
No.
WIGGY
(trying to lighten the tone)
Saucer of milk?
(laughs)
Ball of string?
ROGER gives him a pained look. He is a cat, of course. In fact, I probably should have mentioned this at the top of the scene – NB: Remember to go back and do that. ROGER is a cat. Otherwise, if not clear ROGER is a talking cat, the scene might be somewhat less interesting.
WIGGY
(abashed)
Sorry.
WIGGY attempts an encouraging smile, but ROGER is stone-faced. As well as being a cat, he is a bit of a bastard, to say the least. NB: Is this the right place to start the story? Yes, surely. Or possibly no. Oh God, I have no idea.
ROGER
Can I just check? You’re not going
to write this up like a screenplay?
I mean, in a screenplay format?
WIGGY
(lying)
No, I’m not. Why?
ROGER
I’ve read your other screenplays, don’t forget. You used to send them to Jo. We laughed like drains. You go in for very self-indulgent stage directions.
WIGGY rises above this, superhumanly. But what a nerve.
WIGGY
So, Roger. Here you are.
ROGER
(not really paying attention, bored)
Yes.
WIGGY
A talking cat!
Note to self: Remember to make this clear at the top.
ROGER
Yes.
WIGGY
Would you like to tell me –
(he falters, understandably)
– something about that?
ROGER has been thinking about something else. Close-up on ROGER.
ROGER
(thoughtfully)
What do you say to Daniel Craig?
No one will believe this. But it did really happen.
WIGGY
(confused)
What do you mean: what do I say to him?
I’ve never met him.
ROGER
If this becomes a film.
WIGGY
I’m sorry?
ROGER
You can be very dense sometimes, Wiggy. What do you say to getting Daniel Craig to do my voice in the film, if there’s a film?
WIGGY
Well, I hadn’t really thought—
ROGER
(interrupting)
He’s very understated.
WIGGY
Yes. Yes, he is. Famously.
ROGER
He’s classless. I like that.
WIGGY
Yes.
This is exactly how the conversation went.
ROGER
Masculine.
WIGGY
Absolutely.
ROGER
Emotionally reticent.
WIGGY
Yes, but—
ROGER
He’d be perfect.
WIGGY
(laughs)
Except that you sound nothing like Daniel Craig, Roger. You sound like Vincent Price!
ROGER jumps off the table, landing softly on the stone-flag floor, tail raised high. What a prima donna. He just can’t stand it when WIGGY gets the last word on anything.
WIGGY
(calling)
Roger! Oh come on.
ROGER looks round and makes a loud – and very pointed – miaow.
WIGGY
You’ve got a great voice, Roger!
ROGER pushes through the cat-flap and leaves. Music climax.
WIGGY, sighing, switches off the recorder. Windows rattle.
Outside, the garden gate creaks and bangs in the wind. Beyond is the cry of the sea.
Note to self: Do this again; still not working. Remember it’s quite unusual that a cat is talking. Difficult to get the proper distance on this when you’ve got so used to it. Formatting quite professional-looking, though. So that’s encouraging, at least.
The picture shows an unremarkable moggy-type cat – tabby and white. White face and bib. White paws. Tabby back, tail and ears. Slightly hefty. Harmless-looking. 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. She is smiling. At her feet is a small brown terrier of attractive appearance whose tongue is hanging out. Behind is a flint and brick cottage – the name SHINGLE COTTAGE visible on the lintel.
Where to start? The crazy thing, or Jo? Well, Jo. Obviously, Jo. I mean, where the hell is she? You can’t just disappear! There I was, Coventry, Belgrade Theatre. God. Four o’clock-ish. Thursday afternoon. Just going on in the second half of the matinee of See How They Run. ‘Call for you,’ they said. Alice, the ASM. I didn’t have to take it, but I did. Thank God I did. It’s Jo, sounding weird. ‘Wiggy,’ she says. ‘Wiggy, please come. It’s Roger. You’ve got to help me take care of him.’ Or something like that, but I can’t be exactly sure. 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. 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. I handed the phone back to Alice, and made my entrance through the French doors – just in time, I might add.
Anyway, after the curtain, I called the cottage, like the decent chap I am, but no luck. It kept going to voicemail. Ditto the mobile. I left a couple of messages. ‘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. Jo’s Orfling One, of course. And I’m Orfling Two. But she didn’t call back. Alice said afterwards that she’d tried to ask Jo what the problem was – they met when Jo loyally visited the show when we came to Worthing (the cottage isn’t far from there) – but she said it was hard to make out anything distinct from the phone because of all the laughter in the theatre – some of which, I’m pleased to say, was generated by yours truly. What did the Coventry Bugle say? Well, thank you for asking. I believe it was, ‘Will Caton-Pines manages to make the thankless part of Clive, the husband, almost believable.’
Anyway, back with Jo, I kept trying to call her for the next couple of days. At the end of the week, I just drove down here. Orflings must stick together, and anyway it was the end of the run. And of course there’s no sign of her – or even of mad dog Jeremy, who’s normally so glad to see me. I say ‘of course’ there’s no sign of Jo – but why do I say that? There’s no ‘of course’ about it! Where is she? Even as I drove up the muddy lane from that bloody village it felt all wrong. Her car sitting on the soggy grass across from the house. Big gate open. Back door unlocked. Handbag in the hall. Jeremy’s collar and lead hanging from the peg, next to the one where she usually keeps the spare keys for the next-door neighbour. Mobile phone plugged into the charger in the kitchen. Heating on. ‘To do’ list on a chalk board – do this, get that, take care of whatever. It felt like she’d just popped out. It still feels like she’s just popped out – and I’ve been here four days. Don’t know what to do, apart from write this.
I did ring the police yesterday, and a detective called Sergeant Duggan came and took a statement. I showed him all round the house, the shed, studio, little cellar with historical smuggling connections and whatnot. Took him down to see the beach. Pointed out the fine view along the coast to Littlehampton. We knocked next door, but that chap’s always away – lives mainly in France. Jo’s only met him once since she’s been here. I explained how the two cottages used to be one house, built around 1750, and how Ivor Novello used to visit the one next door in the 1930s, when it belonged to a star of the musical theatre. I suppose I got a bit carried away telling him about next door – all the parties and whatnot. I shouldn’t have bothered! You can always tell with police when you’re giving them ‘too much information’, because they stop writing it down. My big mistake was asking him in a jocular way whether anyone had ever said to him, ‘Sergeant, arrest most of these vicars!’ He didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
I explained that Jo had called me at the theatre to say ‘Look after the cat’ – and he was quite cross with me then, because what she said suggested she was intending to go away. But she hasn’t gone away. What it feels like – I didn’t say this to Sergeant Duggan – but what it feels like is that she’s been taken by aliens. And it also feels like the abduction happened within the last half-hour. I keep expecting the J-Dog to come trotting past, asking for a pat. I keep expecting chairs to be still warm when I sit down – and sometimes I get a real start when they are warm, Roger having just hopped down when he heard me coming. A really perverse cat, Roger. Since I first got here, there’s been this sort of scratching noise from the wall with the fireplace in it, and you’d think – as a cat – he’d be desperate to investigate. But he’s lain there calmly in Jo’s high-backed armchair, just a couple of feet away from the source of this suspicious noise, swinging his tail and ignoring it absolutely.
The policeman asked if he could look at Jo’s mobile – and of course, that was clever of him, so I said yes. But although it was still plugged into the charger, it turned out to have sort of died. And when he picked it up, he said ‘Agh!’ and dropped it (it was all sticky, he said). Anyway, he reckoned I should take it into Worthing to see what could be retrieved from the ‘SIM card’ (God, I hate all that kind of stuff), and he helped me use rubber gloves to put it in a plastic bag.
I have to admit it: he was much more observant than me; I suppose it’s the training. In Jo’s studio upstairs, he found a half-finished watercolour of Roger, and heaps of sketches for it all over the floor. I hadn’t noticed. He also asked about a pair of binoculars and a notebook, with times noted down in it, right by the window next to an old, cold mug of tea. ‘Tuesday, 10.05. Next-door garden. Partial.’ That kind of thing. Jo being a birdwatcher was news to me. But the big window in the studio would have been a good place to do it. Lovely view across to the English Channel and the horizon. He asked if anything significant had changed in Jo’s life recently, and I said, ‘Well, yes. Roger,’ and he seemed quite annoyed with me again for not saying anything about Roger earlier. He made a note of the name and drew a circle round it and asked for a surname – which was when I realised he thought Roger was a lover or murder suspect, so I quickly explained that Roger was a cat, and he crossed it out. So I didn’t explain she’d only had Roger a few months – took him on when her old Chelsea Arts Club chum Michael died in Lincolnshire, falling downstairs. Likewise, I didn’t draw attention to the way Roger had definitely made himself at home here. He was sitting in the lane as I approached in the car; when he saw me coming, he just stood up, stretched, and trotted indoors.
Now this is the crazy bit. Woo-hoo. Right. I mean it, this is absolutely crazy. Maybe I shouldn’t even write it down. But all right, I was sitting at the kitchen table last night, drinking some of Jo’s impressive stock of cheap pink plonk – which is disgusting, a bit like drinking melted lollies, but I was bloody desperate – and Roger was clawing at the back door, wanting me to open it for him. And I suppose I was in a bit of a trance. I mean, it’s very unsettling not knowing where Jo is! I keep testing the phone line; I’ve been in touch with everyone I can think of; I’ve checked her computer and her diary, which felt really awful, really wrong. But I have to do these things, don’t I? I don’t know where she is! I didn’t say this to the plod, for obvious reasons, but I’ve also checked all the grass in the area for tell-tale scorch marks, because in my opinion alien abduction is emerging as by far the most likely explanation. So anyway, I’m ignoring Roger, like I said, and he’s saying, ‘Miaow, miaow, miaow,’ at the door.
Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I did. But what happens is this. He suddenly jumps up on the table, sits down in front of me, puts a paw over my glass and says, distinctly, ‘Let me out.’ I look at him. I feel a tingling in my head. I look at the paw. He doesn’t move it. We look into each other’s eyes for about ten seconds. And then he jumps back down on the floor and claws at the door again, saying, ‘Miaow, let miaow, miaow, miaow, LET ME OUT.’
‘In your own time,’ says Wiggy. He sounds quite upper-class. I can’t imagine why this is a surprise, but it is. I picture Wiggy as a feckless type, of course. An actor, in silly farces, in provincial theatres. He went to a good school. Floppy hair, I shouldn’t wonder. Mustard-coloured corduroys at weekends. From internal evidence, this recording must date from at least a week after Wiggy’s first so-called ‘thoughts’ about Roger – but there is no dating whatever on these documents; as files, they were all saved on the same date in December when Dr Winterton sent them to me, which is quite unhelpful. As soon as I can, I will check when See How They Run was last playing at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Thus far, it is my only clue.
The quality of this recording is not of the best. Background noises sometimes obtrude. And when there is any sudden sound, such as Wiggy coughing (of course, he smokes!), the recorder reacts, and Roger’s words are rendered temporarily less audible. Also, Roger sometimes swallows his words in a miaow – possibly deliberately. As King George VI says in that highly successful film The King’s Speech, a couple of stammers ‘thrown in’ serves to remind the British people – to whom he broadcasts – that it’s really him. I have no doubt Roger operates on the same intelligent and witty principle with his occasional miaows. As you will see, Roger is an astonishing individual. But I said I would refrain from editorialising. I genuinely intend to do my best.
The following is a faithful transcription of what can be clearly heard in the file marked ‘Audio One’. If it is helpful to know this, Roger does sound a bit like Vincent Price. Essentially, it is Roger’s life story, told in his own words. I have long since ceased to care that every aspect of this monologue – the teller; the telling; and above all, what is told – is technically utterly impossible.
‘This is like Interview with the Vampire,’ says Roger.
‘Really? I never saw it,’ says Wiggy.
‘Shame,’ says Roger. (He says ‘Sha-a-a-me’ in a striking feline sing-song.) ‘The parallels are so amusing.’ (‘A-mewwsing’, ditto.)
Wiggy says (without thinking): ‘Oh God. You’re not a vampire, are you?’
A long sigh from Roger. One sympathises with his problem here. ‘No, not a vampire,’ he says, quietly. And then he begins.
‘I was born in 1927 in the East End of London, and before you tell me that’s impossible, Wiggy’ – you can almost hear the tiny mechanism in Wiggy’s brain doing the mental arithmetic – ‘may I remind you that a cat talking into this recording device is impossible enough, but I think you will agree that it is nevertheless definitely occurring.
‘So. I repeat, I was born in 1927 in the East End of London, close to the Roman Road market. My mother was very beautiful, and very young. I never knew my father, but that’s pretty standard for cats so please don’t bother trying to read much into it, although I have to admit that a sort of father-fixation – with its associated rejection issues – has arguably been a theme of my whole life. Have you read much Freud, Wiggy?’
‘Er, no,’ Wiggy says. He sounds a bit startled by the question, and you can’t really blame him. In any case, Roger clearly isn’t interested in discussion.
‘My brothers and I learned to scavenge and hunt,’ he goes on. ‘We played at fighting, as all kittens do; we made adequate progress. There were four of us all born together – Alf, Arthur, me and little Bill – but we were reduced to three when my brother Bill was killed by a carthorse when we were six months old.’
There is a pause. Wiggy starts to ask, ‘Are you all right?’ but Roger resumes.
‘I must say,’ he says reflectively, ‘I thought Mother would be more affected by the loss of little Bill.’
You can hear how shocked he was by this; how hurt by extension, of course, at how little his mother would have grieved for any of her offspring, including him.
‘I was just a year old when I met the Captain. In the intervening six months I had often visited the spot where little Bill had met his end, and I had sometimes been aware of a large black cat watching me there. I assumed that one day this cat would expect me to fight, and although I wasn’t looking forward to it, I was big enough, so it was bound to happen. In the cat world you don’t really choose who you fight, you see. But although we met each other in the conventional way – backs arched, tails erect, teeth bared, circling with our claws digging into the dust – he disarmed me by saying, “You miss him, don’t you?” In my surprise, my back dropped down, my tail flopped. No one had ever said anything like this to me before. I was confused. “Your little brother,” he said. “It was a senseless way to go.”