Metropolitan Lines Issue 2 - Brunel University

Hodge
by Jo Hurst
During the daylight hours I am
a respectful returner. I don’t
rampage as the menagerie up at
Newstead Abbey do. I am quiet and
creep around the rooms that I once
had full run of.
That we only appear at night is
untrue. That we choose to appear
more frequently after darkness,
when we are alone, when our home
returns to us, is more the truth;
though coming back often fills me
with melancholy.
It saddens me to think that our
house has become an institution.
It used to live and breathe with
us, around us, through us. Now it
is a just a space, orchestrated to
offer visitors authenticity of times
passed.
To this end, the interloping
custodians have employed a cat;
to maximise the potency of the
recreation. To recreate me, no less.
To meander and muse her way
around the parlour furniture, while
strangers exhume memories of and
pontificate on, my Master and His
world. My Master and His Work.
That they have chosen a feminine
feline confuses; though I feel it is
because they believe everything they
hear or read on us. Therefore let me
put straight, any distortions
immediately. When the Master,
while I entwined myself around his
leg, said to his very excellent friend,
Boswell, those many years ago now,
‘I have had better cats,’ you believed
that he loved me less? That I wasn’t
the favourite? That those who
graced his presence be they male or
female, before or after me were held
in higher esteem?
To those who say such things,
utter such mutterings, I say this.
Whose bronze statue adorns the
entrance here? Who was there
when the real writing was done?
When history was made. Whose
name do they remember now?
Together, my Master and I made
something out of not much indeed
and there wasn’t a multitude of us
like there was in France. There was
just the Master and His quill, and I.
Hearsay can become heresy if
attention is not paid. So take heed.
Take all that you hear or read with a
pinch of salt and a dollop of vinegar,
the way I used to take my fish down
at the Wharf. Pay attention to the
unreliability of scribes historical and
‘He is a very fine cat,’ my
Master said.
And He was a very sensible
Man.
certain memorists with perforated
remembrances.
And as you weren’t there I shall
repeat the actual words spoken of
me.
‘He is a very fine cat,’ my Master
said.
And He was a very sensible
Man.
As was Poet Stockdale who
wrote on me in his Elegy on the
Death of Dr Johnson’s Favourite
Cat. So what further proof do you
need of my beloved status?
Of course two such intelligences
living under the same thatch can
often bait each other’s
imperturbability. And that my
Master some time later broke a little
piece of my small beating leonine
heart when I uncovered my entry in
the Dictionary, I have put behind
me. And I lay it bare, the exact
words here for all to see, to show my
10
postgraduate fiction
spirit has left all base worldly upsets
in the physical sphere.
‘A domestick animal that catches
mice, commonly reckoned by
naturalists the lowest order of the
leonine species.’
For I can assure you I was my
Master’s cat and I did much more
than catch mice.
For our achievements were
mountainous; that the strangers
whom I see here and chose to like
not, have made mere curiosities of
us, goads me. They do disservice
our memories. Though I am not
allowed to voice my disapproval. I
am reminded that my memory is
short and in the days before we’d
gone to the Gods, we welcomed
waifs and strays, strangers all.
And this is true enough.
‘Hodge,’ He says, to remind,
‘We kept our door ajar so that they
could share tea and brandy with
me and milk and oysters with you.
So that they could find welcome at
whatever hour.’
I hadn’t forgotten. I am my
Master’s cat. But a stranger once
talked to is a stranger no more.
What do I have in common with
these people who haunt our home
now? They are not the loose
moggies and prostitutes, the
vagabonds and wayward tabbies
and ally cat beggars that frequented
our home in those days, who were
all welcome. Not just welcomed,
needed. We did indeed keep our
door ajar for the misfortunates,
because we ourselves were
misfortunates. They kept us sane
and although we enjoyed the
company of respected human and
feline folk, the melancholia we
shared, my Master and I, sat well
with them.
These unfortunates suffered too
our illnesses, tics and complaints
Metropolitan Lines Summer 2008