Shirley Murphy - The Catswold Portal

Braden watched her as he phoned in their breakfast order. She was crying silently, trying to hide her long, quivering shudders into the pillow. What the hell happened last night? It was almost impossible not to ask questions, not to demand answers, yet common sense said to leave her alone. He wondered if someone had followed her here. A husband or lover? He lay down beside her, gathering her close, holding her close in the circle of his arms. And after a while he said softly, “Were you with someone else?”

She turned over, looking at him blankly. Her face was red and sad, and her wet lashes beaded together. “Someone else?” Then her eyes widened. “A man? Oh, no.” She touched his face. “No! It wasn’t that!” She seemed truly shocked. “It wasn’t that. Just—sick. I feel better, truly I do.” She held his face, looking deep into his eyes. “There is no one else. I could love no one else but you.”

He got up and tucked the covers around her, wondering why he couldn’t believe her. It wasn’t even that he didn’t believe her; but he couldn’t escape the things left unexplained.

When the breakfast cart came she drank and ate dutifully, then curled up again, spent, and was soon asleep. He stood looking down at her, his breakfast untouched. Then he picked up his suitcase and painting box, the folded tarp and easel, and headed for the car.

They would have to leave when she woke, go directly to the gallery, frame these six paintings and hang them. Rye would be pacing, having anxiety attacks waiting for them. They had planned to change clothes at the gallery, have a leisurely dinner. The opening wasn’t until nine, and Rye liked his artists to arrive late, liked them to come in when there was already a good crowd.

He loaded five paintings into the station wagon, and Melissa was still asleep when he went back to the room for the last one. He had started to pick it up, making sure it was dry, when something about the painting made him stop. He set the canvas down and backed off to look at it.

The pale sand made a shocking contrast to the dark, cloud-riven sky, and to the reds in Melissa’s clothes, and the faded red of the derelict boat, where her face reflected in the broken window. She was looking down, the reflections of her cheek and hair woven through the reflections of five winging gulls. This was a strong painting; why should it bother him? He kept looking, felt he was missing something, an eerie and disruptive sense, like a strange premonition; a feeling as wildly unsettling as Melissa’s fall from the rocks, or as seeing her catch the mouse in the middle of the night, or as her nervousness in the restaurant beside the caged finches.

Fairy tales chittered at him like bats in a black windstorm, as if insanity had reached to wriggle probing fingers deep inside his drowning brain. And the message that was trying to get through to his conscious mind could not be tolerated. He shoved it back deep into the dark places where he couldn’t see it—a sick nightmare message, an aberration. He turned to watch her sleeping, and in sleep she was as pure and innocent as a wild creature. He loved the way she slept curled around the pillow, totally limp. He wanted to gather her in and love her and keep on loving her. He rejected the nagging fear that made him see shadows across her face.

He felt certain there was no one else. She wasn’t a tramp or a flirt; she hadn’t glanced at another man, though nearly every man stared at her. He didn’t think any deeper than that, didn’t dare to think deeper. He gave it up at last, looked at the painting again, saw nothing strange in it. He picked it up and carried it down to the station wagon.

She was still asleep when he got back, her lashes moving in a dream. Even watching her dream made him edgy. He kept wondering what she was dreaming about. And why the hell did every damned thing set him off into wild, impossible speculations? He went back downstairs, and in Mrs. Trask’s office he called Morian.

“We’ll be late getting back. We’ll go directly to the gallery—see you there. How’s the calico?”

“Happy, Brade. Loved and spoiled and luxuriously cared for. What’s wrong? There’s something.”

“Nothing. We’re just loading up to come home.” How did she always know? How did she sense that he had called her for comforting, for reassurance? “Everything’s great.”

“You two haven’t fought?”

“Of course not. Why would we fight?”

“I see. Well, whatever it is, Brade,” she said softly, “I think you’re very lucky to have Melissa. Don’t—don’t hurt her, Brade.”

She didn’t wake until nearly noon; the depression didn’t hit her until she was fully awake. Quite suddenly she remembered her dead kit, and the hurting hit her.

The room was hot, the sun slanting in; she was sweaty, tangled in the sheet. Braden was gone. She rolled over clutching the pillow, heavy with depression.

She wished they could stay here in this little village and never go back, that she could forget the Netherworld, that they could forget everything but each other and she could forget the feline part of herself.

Deliberately she made herself think about the gallery opening. She was terrified of the evening to come, terrified someone would see the cat images in Braden’s paintings. How very clever of you, Mr. West. Phantom cats. What a droll idea, so subtle. What, exactly, is their significance?

And at the opening she would have to face Morian: a woman who knew everything about her, who had told her clearly that she knew. She wanted to run away now, but he wanted her at the opening. She would hurt him if she went away now. He said the paintings were hers, that without her they would not have happened, that without her there would be no opening and he would still be sunk in gloom.

She knew she must go, and that she must smile and meet strangers and be nice to them. She would disappear afterward. She would go back to the portal alone, and down, and would never see him again.

She rose and dressed and packed her few things. Braden returned and they went downstairs to Mrs. Trask’s office to say good-bye. The office was as bright and cheerful as the rest of the inn, white wicker furniture and potted plants, and a collection of prints that covered three walls. Some were Alice’s: an etching of winging gulls, a lithograph of swimming seals, and one of horses wheeling at the edge of the sea. Behind the desk hung an etching of a cat sculpture, the cat leaping after a bird. Her pulse quickened. She recognized it from the Cat Museum. And Braden said, “Timorell commissioned the sculpture shortly before she was killed in the earthquake. Alice thought it had some special meaning for her, that was why she did the etching, several years after Timorell’s death.”

Now her heart was thundering.

In the museum, she had examined that cat sculpture. She had found no clue that it might contain the Amulet. Now, she burned to go back and look at it again. She moved behind the desk, to study it.

The bronze cat’s fur was roughly done. One could see the globs of clay from which the casting had been made. And within the rough clay patterns, across the cat’s flank, was an oval shape unlike the other texture. A little teardrop shape so subtly different one could easily overlook it, but a shape a bit too perfect. A teardrop the same shape as the Amulet. Excited, she turned away when Braden took her hand. She said good-bye to Mrs. Trask and hugged her. The old woman felt like a rock, draped in her black mourning, but her smile was full of joy.

Chapter 60

Twenty paintings hung on the white gallery walls, each with space around it, each well lighted from spotlights recessed into the ceiling. Hung all together, the rich, abstracted studies had such power they jolted Melissa.