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Monday 6 February 2012

The World's End

The shabby tavern seemed the most lonely dwelling the cats had ever encountered, stark against a darkening sky, on the very edge of a blighted wilderness.   Or were they influenced by the despairing, fur tingling  gull cry of the whelk-monger whose barrow huddled in a far corner of the car park?
With some trepidation the pair approached the pub door.   Potkin pushed it open and Josie followed him through, staying very close.   The heat from within pressed pathetically against their advance and the thick pall of tobacco smoke that had been languishing beneath the low ceiling made a rush for the open portal.
Before them a stone flagged room brimmed with peripatetic humanity.   Travellers, traders and tinkers jostled at the bar.   Gypsies, students and hawkers huddled in noisy groups at long, sturdy oak tables, clinking and clattering pewter or horn tankards, leather jugs of bitter ale with frothing heads.   Lone wanderers and preachers perched at the ends of the benches, cradling pots of dark, densely headed porter.    Three shepherds stood leaning on their market crooks close by an inglenook fire at the far end of the room.   A singular, scarred and weathered mercenary soldier in black leathers fingered the pommel of his workmanlike dagger as he weighed up a chattering troupe of itinerant entertainers.    He doubted they owned anything worth mugging them for.    In one corner a group of oil stained bikers had made a pyramid of their helmets.   From beneath one of the tables a grey and shaggy lurcher eyed the two cats suspiciously, whilst a large and heavily built man in a soiled apron emerged from behind the bar and approached them purposefully.
“What have we here?”
He scraped some scraps of mutton from an abandoned trencher of stew onto a cracked, ironstone plate and placed it on the floor.
“Are you two hungry?”
Potkin had been feeling for some time that one more shrimp paste sandwich might seriously damage his taste buds and was very fond of lamb.   He ate quickly.   Josie was watching the grizzled lurcher, which had left its place under the table and was strolling towards them.   It took a piece of meat from close to Potkin and chewed casually.   Potkin growled uncertainly, but Josie felt a friendlier approach might work.   They could always flee for their lives if it failed.
“Hello.   My, aren’t you a big dog?” he tried, though it came out a bit squeaky.
“Don’t you want any of this?” Potkin asked of Josie without looking up, “Shall I finish it?”
“I’ll have a sandwich later.” replied Josie in a hoarse whisper, “You do know we’ve attracted the attention of a D O G?”
Potkin finished eating and looked up.
“What are you two wastrels after?” asked the dog in a gruff, laconic woof, “I suppose you expect a bed for the night.”
“We are...” said Potkin, “...seeking accommodation and this is a hostelry.”
“Come over by the fire.   My name’s Spike, by the way.”
A collie was sprawled across the front of the fireplace and eyed the approaching group as if it required herding.   One of the shepherds removed a corn-cob pipe slowly from the corner of his mouth,
“Ambrose, let them be!”
Ambrose moved over and the four animals sat in a row on the edge of the hearth staring into the glowing logs.   Spike threw a glance round the crowded room.
“These misfits will drink all night and I personally wouldn’t trust any of them whilst I slept.   It’s not safe to stay here.”
Josie looked worried. The warmth from the fire was making him drowsy.
“We must find somewhere to spend the night.” said Potkin.
“There I can help.   If you follow the footpath down the hill,” advised Spike “You will come to an old water-mill.   The miller runs a guest house and if you don’t dawdle you’ll reach it before dark.”
“And they’ll put us up?”   Josie just wanted to be sure they were not being led astray.
Spike appeared sincere, “Everyone is made welcome there.”
“In that case” said Josie, “I’ll just have one of my sandwiches before we set off.   Is there a litter tray I can use?”
“Out the back.” indicated Spike.
After Josie had eaten, and whilst he was away relieving himself, Potkin collected their things together. After several minutes of scratching and scraping from Josie they were both ready.   Potkin said, “We’ll be off then. It’s been interesting meeting you.”
“Remember, the path down the hill.” reiterated Spike, “And keep your wits about you.   When you leave here you pass beyond the pale!”
Potkin looked at the sand filled zinc bucket by the door and marvelled that a domestic receptacle should be imbued with such awful mystery.   As their tails disappeared through the doorway Ambrose looked at Spike and a wry smile lit his bearded face.
“Well they’re in for a surprise tonight.”
“Experience is the spice of life.” laughed Spike.

The path was thankfully easy to follow even in the gathering gloom.   It was somewhat overgrown, but straight and mostly tarmaced.   As they launched out on their travels once more, the retreating sunlight seemed to suffuse their surroundings with an other-worldly air.   In a field to one side of the path a rectangle of water reflected the sky.   Chipped and scarred stone flags edged the plunge pool and there was a surrounding colonnade of mostly tumbled, classical, fluted pillars topped with carved foliage.  Marble, limbless nudes stared dead-eyed from niches in a partial flint and red tile wall.   The ruin of a barrel-vaulted roof hung insecurely above the edifice, worn stone steps and outbuildings crumbled amongst the wild flowers in the surrounding meadow.   Two smaller pools glinted through the grass.   It was a surrealist scene, in near darkness, under a sky that still held onto the failing light.
“The outlands are peopled with the ghosts of past generations.” uttered Josie profoundly, wondering how such an observation had sprung unaided into his conscious brain.
 As Josie and Potkin descended the hill, aged and intermittent iron railings allowed a view of a many storied, skeletal Victorian building.   Cast iron balconies with various shades of faded green paint peeling away from encrusted dark brown rust scars lined the southern, glazed brick façade and the last light of the sun, reflecting red off the undersides of clouds shone through empty windows with the intensity of shell-shocked eyes.   Above the empty doorway a legend in contrasting brick read FEVER HOSPITAL.   They watched a form materialise into the gaping entrance, silhouetted against the dying sun.   It stepped, or swept forward, a figure in soiled white with tangled silver hair and parchment skin, scrawny arms outstretched towards them as the hag gathered speed.   She opened her mouth as if to entreat, or maybe just howl, but there was no sound.   The mouth grew and the unheard scream shuddered the earth.
Invisible lifeforms rustled nearby and a small black creature squeaked as it swooped and fluttered low overhead.   The two cats broke into a mad helter-skelter, tumbling and crashing into each other, looking neither up nor back until they were sure that they were far from the apparition.   After a particularly dramatic rolling fall they were both flat on their stomachs gasping for air.   As they steadied they could hear running water, glimpse, through a group of trees, the pale glint of a still, expansive pond and beyond, the soft amber glow of artificial light through unshuttered windows.   They had found the mill.

A looming wooden wheel clunked and creaked as it turned slowly under a  stream of water that emerged, splashing from a brick arched tunnel below the mill-pond.   The mill rose storey upon storey in brick and timber, a jumble of extensions and additions grown up over the centuries, roofed at a craze of unlikely angles, without style or logic.    Dormer windows peeped shyly from under shingle, slate and thatch.   Pots of every shape topped an assortment of chimneys.
Round the front of the building a crimson glow cut into the darkness from a warp framed window of small paned, thick, blown glass, that pierced the frontage to the side of a low Georgian doorway.    Within they could see an art deco table lamp with a red handkerchief thrown over it.   Perhaps the hanky was being dried, pondered Potkin.
They knocked at the unlatched door and stepped in.   A wooden staircase stretched upward before them, as tall narrow and rickety as the building itself.   To their right was a desk with a bell and a man sitting half asleep, a newspaper dropped into his lap.   Before they could ding the bell, much to Josie's disappointment, the man spoke, whilst a wildly gyrating cigarette, lodged in the corner of his mouth, shed ash onto the threadbare oriental carpet.
“Straight up the stairs to the top.   If you want anything just call.   I’m Dusty Miller.”
“Not Windy?” enquired Josie.
“It’s a water mill."
The miller cum concierge turned his attention back to the newspaper.
Josie and Potkin started to ascend. Every step groaned, the banisters wobbled. At each landing the stairs turned and long, dark, wood panelled corridors stretched away past countless secretive doorways.   The patchy illumination from low wattage bare bulbs hid more than it revealed.
After the fifth floor the stairs became narrower and steeper, Josie began to wheeze.   One last flight and from the landing above a row of bright young faces looked down with pointed ears and neatly preened whiskers.   as the pair reached the top landing at least half a dozen cats rushed them, giggling.
“I’m Frufru. This is Justine. That’s Lulu. She’s Fluffybum...”
“How long are you staying?"
“What’s your name?”
“My, oh my!”
“Calm down, girls and give them some room.”   The instructions came from a portly, middle-aged, colour-point Siamese with tattoos on her fore arms and buttocks.
“Can we help, boys?”
“We need somewhere to spend the night.” said Potkin.
“We normally rent by the hour,” replied the tattooed cat, “but I’m sure we can accommodate you.”
“I’m very tired.”  This from Josie, “We’ve had quite a busy day.”
“Fifi, Justine, Claudette, fix him a room... and make sure he gets anything he wants.”
She turned back to Potkin, “You come and have a slug or two with me and then Fluffybum can put you to bed.”
They sipped turkish tumblers of clouded absinthe and talked long into the night about Potkin and Josie’s adventure and why anyone should want a butterfly tattooed on their bottom.
Soon after he had turned in there came a tap, tap at Potkin’s bedroom door.