Read 2006 - Wildcat Moon for Free Online Page A

he stole Cissie’s toy monkey and piddled all over it accidentally on purpose.
    There were four people besides Nan squashed into the bar of the Pilchard. Charlie and Freddie Payne were playing dominoes together at a table not far from where Archie stood.
    His own father was sitting up at the bar, thankfully with his back to Archie. Billy Nettles was playing darts. Archie moved on. He stopped again when he reached the house where the new man called Fleep lived alone with his parrot. Fleep’s parrot was green and red and could speak three languages. A foreign one, English. And filth.
    He’d read somewhere that parrots could live to be a hundred.
    Fleep’s house was called the Grockles and it was the only single-storeyed house in Bloater Row. It had been empty as long as Archie could remember. Fleep had turned up a few weeks back but hadn’t bothered to get to know anyone yet He was an odd sort of fellow and mostly he stayed shut up in the house but sometimes Archie had seen him walking alone on the cliff path towards Nanskelly. He kept himself to himself and hardly anyone had heard him speak. As Archie got close to the window Fleep’s parrot shrieked, “ Mange la Merde! ”
    Archie’s heart was already galloping and his breath escaped in wreaths of steam on the cold night air.
    He tried to slow his breathing down.
    A fierce gust of wind roared along Bloater Row and a tile blew off the roof of the Peapods and exploded onto the cobbles. A tin bucket hurtled past him and clattered away down Bloater Row towards the hole in the rocks that led down to Skilly Beach.
    The parrot squawked again.
    “The King Lives…Long live the King.”
    Inside the house Fleep laughed loudly and made Archie jump. It was the only sound Archie had heard him make and it echoed eerily inside the house.
    From inside the Grockles a wireless stuttered out the shipping news and a cork escaped from a bottle with an echoing pop.
    Archie moved on, made it safely to the end of Bloater Row, turned to his left and looked nervously at the wobbly chapel.
    The night was bitterly cold, the wind getting ever wilder, whistling round the chimneys of Bloater Row and making the old timbers of the chapel roof creak ominously.
    Archie was shivering violently and his legs had a life of their own; he was dancing up and down with nerves, like a puppet worked by a madman. Already his gammy leg was weakening and the chilblains on his toes were beginning to throb.
    He took the keys from his pocket and looked down at them. There was one large key and two smaller ones.
    He took a deep breath and stepped up to the door of die old chapel. He put the largest of the keys into the rusty lock hoping that it wouldn’t fit and then he could say that at least he’d tried to keep his promise.
    He groaned inwardly as the key turned slowly and the door opened with a juddering sigh.
    He removed the key and stepped breathlessly into the musty, dusty darkness of the chapel and locked the door behind him.
     
    Nan Abelson locked and bolted the door of the Pilchard Inn and raked the fire. She washed and dried up the pint pots and placed them on the shelf behind the bar. Then she made her way through to the kitchen. The wildcats growled and spat as Nan opened the back door. Then they grew quiet their eyes glowed eerily in the moonlit yard. They were better than any guard dogs. Nan threw them a handful of scraps, then bolted the back door and climbed wearily up the steep stairs.
    In the large upstairs bedroom Cissie was asleep. She lay curled up in the big bed, her thumb stuck between her damp lips, snoring softly, a ragged monkey clasped tightly to her chest.
    Nan stood looking down at the child, safe and cosy beneath the dusky pink eiderdown. She hoped that she could always keep Cissie that way, hoped that she lived long enough to see the child grown and settled. The only thing about having a child like Cissie was the worry that when Nan was dead and gone there would be no one left to love