THE GHOST CAT by Alex Howard - Spotlight & Excerpt
A charming novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and How to Stop Time, following a cat through his nine lives in Edinburgh, moving through the ever-changing city and its inhabitants over centuries
Early morning, 1902. At 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, Eilidh the charlady tips coal into a fire grate and sets it alight. Overhearing, Grimalkin the cat ambles over to curl up against the welcome heat and lick his favorite human's hand. But this is to be his last day on earth…before he becomes the Ghost Cat.
Follow Grimalkin as he witnesses the changes of the next 120 years, prowling unseen among the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement while unearthing some startling revelations about the mystery of existence, the unstoppable march of time and the true meaning of feline companionship.
FIRST HAUNTING,
APRIL 1909
On the morning of his first haunting, Grimalkin felt supple and alive; more alive, in fact, than he’d ever felt as a sentient breathing Victorian cat.
He had landed in 1909 with a thump. Rather than having to acclimatize his senses to the eerie, misty environment of Cat-sìth’s waterfall, the transition through time felt immediate, as if he had been dropped from a huge height. Suddenly, he was just there…sitting back on a fine oak table in the bay window of 7/7 Marchmont Crescent. With one turn of the head, he could see the whole street: there were the communal gardens opposite, tucked behind filigreed iron railings and sweeping off to the right as the street disappeared into a tree smudged infinity. It was clearly springtime as the trees opposite were bursting with taut little pods of pink blossom. Glimpsed at intervals along the street, the odd horse and carriage loitered while awaiting the emergence of passengers from tenement doors, their oil-painting-like stillness disturbed only when the horses tugged against the reins or stamped on the cobbles with an irritated clop. Above, purple clouds huddled tightly, their edges yellow where the sun tried its best to pierce through. The cobbles were dark with the wetness of a recent shower. Grimalkin knew these showers well, having often bolted in from the garden when they struck, only to stare longingly out of this very window as the Edinburgh sun burst out again, making steam rise off the carriage tops below. It was a familiar and heart-warming scene; one Grimalkin could happily gaze at for hours in Victorian times, particularly if it was mating season and the pigeons were out on the sandstone sill, cooing and clucking tantalizingly close, almost within swiping distance.
Well, nothing has changed! thought Grimalkin suddenly, with a pang of disappointment. That Cat-sìth charlatan has merely returned me to Victoria’s reign! Why, I have been duped! Ah…ah, ah steady on, wait…
He turned his gaze back into the belly of the room. His eyes widened and his back fur prickled upward in shock. Here, everything was different. In place of the somber damask wallpaper of his Victorian youth, the walls had been painted a pure, apple-green. Rather than great mirrors and huge paintings, little artworks studded the walls in clusters. Most of them appeared to feature the same fairy-like woman in billowing white robes. French? Dutch? Grimalkin wasn’t sure. There was a soft hiss emanating from the room…somewhere on the wall? Somewhere above? Grimalkin’s ears twitched furiously. Yes, there! In the center of the ceiling, the chandelier had been removed. In its place there hung a little brass sconce that breathed out an orangey flame behind a smoked-glass lampshade. Above it, the formerly pristine ceiling rose had turned black with tarry soot and Grimalkin could feel the dryness of the gas-heated air rasp at his throat.
They think they’re being clever, he thought, eyeing the ceiling rose. They will struggle to beat a good coal fire for efficiency and comfort!
Fancy bow-fronted armchairs, settees and cabinets squatted about the floor, upon which books and papers were piled up into dubious little towers. On a side table, a looking glass and moustache comb rested beside an open snuff box. Apart from the flicker of the blue flame, everything was perfectly still as if frozen by some kind of spell.
Humph, apologies Cat-sìth… I see there HAS been a change…
How can so much change in just seven years? Was Eilidh still tending the fires? It made Grimalkin feel eerie looking at it all: this room where he drew his final breaths had become a lens into the future. He was suddenly struck with the sense that this whole business of time travel might turn out to be rather more taxing on his brain than he’d initially thought.
But something else was different—Grimalkin himself. As he stood on the table, his paws perfectly centered, he became suddenly aware of a complete absence of pain. The arthritic throb in his back and legs had vanished. His left rear leg and flank, always a focus of curiosity to Marchmont Crescent’s visitors owing to its bright marmalade hue, had lost its oily aged texture and become velveteen again, like a fox cub’s tail. Down at the point where his paw hinged from the base of his leg, the little bald patch that had so long been the recreation ground for a particularly stubborn army of fleas, was now smooth and itch-free.
Could it be that my ghosting role has rid me of the pestilence? If so, praise be!
Grimalkin rewarded the discovery with a wash. Gazing at the windowpane, he was shocked to discover he couldn’t see his reflection. However, as he rose and arched his back with ease, and felt the springiness of his ears as they pinged up each time he sent a damp paw across them, and glimpsed his perfectly pink toe pads, he could tell he had become young again. He couldn’t see his eyes, but were he able to, he would have guessed that they were no longer rheumy and grayish and that his whiskers were sharp and unjagged again. And he would have been right.
My word, I’m veritably juvenile! he thought, stretching up his tail like a broom handle. A potent, virile pride washed across him: he was a looker again, an Adonis of cats…a youthful, muscular mouser whose iron claw had once commanded the envy and respect of all the cats in the neighborhood. He rose to his paws and turned a large vainglorious circle on the table, his ears pricked up into sharp triangles. He leaped onto the back of an armchair, his supernatural paws making no noise whatsoever as they landed on the polished oak. He felt positively ageless, neither kitten nor adult…with all the vim and energy of the former but with the latter’s acuity of mind.
I feel in the most capital of moods! May I be a spirit-puss FOREVER MORE!
Suddenly a noise. From over his shoulder there came the familiar creak of the living room door lock turning. Grimalkin spun around. A short, narrow-shouldered man entered the room in a silver-swirled Jacquard waistcoat. The man strode over to the bay window as if about to pull open the sashes, before turning back and making a sudden stop in the middle of the room, as if he’d been halted by a police constable. He then proceeded to bounce on the balls of his feet, his hands clenching and unclenching, and his eyes darting around the room frantically. At one point, he appeared to look directly in Grimalkin’s direction, though could see nothing of him of course. What caught Grimalkin’s feline attention most of all, however, was the perfect little mustache that crossed the man’s top lip, its ends waxed up into points, like a mouse’s tail. It seemed to jiggle in perfect time with the man’s nervous energy as he bounced up and down on the spot. Stiffly, the man flopped down on the settee, placing one leg over the other with a dandy-like flourish, the fingers on his right hand patting a little ditty on the settee cushion, in an ongoing attempt to calm himself.
The man of the house? mused Grimalkin, for the man moved with the ease of a gentleman who knows he is unobserved in his own space; a rich man; an entitled man who has the wealth and means to live, by and large, as he pleases…
The man closed his eyes and let out a big sigh through lips circled into an O-shape.
There was a jumpiness to the way he moved around, which, along with his scruffy waistcoat, misaligned collar and limp bow tie, made up the sort of human that would put any cat ill at ease. His fingers were continually tap-tap-tapping, and Grimalkin was convinced he was the type who went about their business far too quickly as if there was a fire around every corner, or a bear careening up the stairwell, or a marauding army of Jacobites about to scale the tenement walls. This behavior was at odds with Grimalkin’s, who, like all Victorian cats, knew a thing or two about taking his time and tending to his appearance properly. It was like being around a jack-in-the-box… an awful spring-loaded human who could leap and surprise at any moment and positively ruin a good slumber.
I wish he’d bally-well SLOW DOWN. Such unrestful behavior!
It didn’t help matters that there appeared to be something on the man’s mind. Something important.
A thought occurred to Grimalkin. He cannot see me, but I wonder if he can hear me? With that, he opened his mouth and let out a gentle, but concerted purr-mew.
Prrrrrp? Prrrrrrrrrrrrrr—woaw?
But the man did not respond.
Silence briefly filled the space between cat and man as the gentleman took a pipe from his breast pocket. Drumming his fingers, he plucked a tin from a little adjacent table from which he extracted a healthy amount of stringy tobacco and a box of matches. Striking one of the matches, he guided the flame to the two gas lamps that curled out from the mantelpiece like the necks of swans. Blue-yellow flames leaped out from the sconces as the lit match approached, spurting like fiery dragon breath, and reflecting for a moment on the man’s forehead.
“Heavens Archie, man, pull yourself together!” blurted the gentleman to himself, tossing his tobacco box back on the side table. “You’re a publisher, for God’s sake. He should fear you if anything. Just be civil. J. M. Barrie. Humph! So, he’s started doing well for himself. Well, who hasn’t in this day and age? The whole world’s on the make what with motorcars and electric lights and God knows what else! J. M. Barrie? Why, he’s just like everybody else! And I need not fear him; you hear that Archie, ol’ bean? You need not fear him.” The man fell silent for a moment. Grimalkin scrutinized his brow to see if any secrets of his character lurked there.
“Prrrrrpppppppp…” said Grimalkin, this time a little louder. No, he cannot hear me. For three he stays, for three he strays, for three he plays. I am only meant to observe in this age…with no poltergeist capabilities, and perhaps no power to roam beyond this flat either. This gentleman and I shall have to get better acquainted.
Unseen observation felt exciting to Grimalkin: the thrill of the gaze, unthreatened, with the only prospect of pain being that which is emotional, rather than physical…the chance to witness the unvarnished truth of the ages! He wanted to find out what happened and who this J. M. Barrie character was. Evidently, he was a writer of some sort, though not one Grimalkin had ever heard of during Queen Victoria’s reign. There had been piles of books he’d slept on and, occasionally, perused, back in the 19th century; but they had all been written by a certain Robert Louis Stevenson who was preoccupied with lighthouses, or Elizabeth Gaskell, who was obsessed with wizened old clerks and long descriptions of dirty mills that, frankly, made Grimalkin’s whiskers droop.
With a moody burst of energy, the man procured a walking cane from underneath the settee which he used to jab a wooden button, mounted just to the right of the fireplace. On pushing this, a bell chimed down the hall. There followed a padding of feet. And from those feet alone, Grimalkin could tell who was approaching…the mere dance of that noise into his ears made him slowblink in fondness. Eilidh.
The doorknob turned, and in came Eilidh herself, the same boar-bristle brush in her hand, and the same flushed face, like a little rosy moon, under the same white headdress. Unchanged. She smiled and turned to the master.
“Yes, sir? Can I help ye?”
A delicious scent came with her into the room: one of her famous pies was in the oven, known throughout Edinburgh for its exquisite taste. She breathed heavily. It was then Grimalkin noticed the first signs of age: she was a little wider about the shoulders and her eyes, though still sparkling, had lost their youthful, girlish twinkle. The pompadour hairstyle had gone; instead, her hair was pulled back in a matronly style that Grimalkin suspected offered maximum practicality for her work and nothing else. Her skin had become thicker, too, and those once perfectly pink cheeks had lost some of their porcelain tautness. But Eilidh’s hands were perhaps the biggest change—the skin was cracking about the knuckles, which had clearly become arthritic, and the undersides were so red that Grimalkin suspected they must bleed often. Despite this, her fingernails remained scrupulously clean, the progress of years clearly doing nothing to her habit of scrubbing them free of coal dust after each shift. Oh, Eilidh! The same sweet maid who found Grimalkin in Thirlestane Lane stables, and tended to him throughout his young life, right up to his dying day in 1902!
Excerpted from The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard, Copyright © 2024 by Alex Howard. Published by Hanover Press.
Alex is an author and tutor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. His first book Library Cat (Black & White Publishing) arose out of a viral Facebook weblog, and has since gone on to sell rights to Korea (Woongjin), France (Bragelonne) and Italy (Garzanti), where it is an Elefanti Bestseller. In 2017, it earned him the Beryl Bainbridge Award at the People’s Book Prize.
Alex’s fiction and poetry has appeared widely in journals such as The London Magazine, Aesthetica and Gutter. It has also earned him shortlistings for the Melita Hume Prize, the Jane Martin Prize and a winning place in the Charles Causley International Poetry Prize, judged by Sir Andrew Motion. He has been invited to perform his work at multiple events and festivals, including Rally & Broad, the Hidden Door Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Alex also holds a PhD on Philip Larkin’s poetics of place, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He reads for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and has recently completed a new Young Adult novel.
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