previous cat, Floyd, deep inside his ear. After Floyd was killed by a car in the autumn of the latter year, Casper began a new love affair with George, a ginger and white stray I had rescued from the mean lanes of Devon then donated to my parents. Casper and George, who bears a startling resemblance to the Belgian international midfielder Kevin De Bruyne, sleep with their limbs entwined at least once every day and gambol about my mum and dad’s garden, playwrestling and chasing one another up trees. Both of them have been neutered, but my mum has walked into upstairs rooms on several occasions to find George taking Casper roughly from behind. Casper is the heavier cat, but it is George who plays the dominant role in their relationship. Casper knows how to be assertive too, though. Before he started asking to be let in by throwing the wooden head at the door he had already worked out how to bang the brass knocker on the door with his paw.
It wasn’t until the beginning of summer that I next visited my mum and dad. The wooden head was on the flagstones near the porch’s entrance when I arrived, its mean, furrowed face staring up at a heavy sky. I took my shoes off but chose not to leave them in the porch beneath the head’s perch. I entered the living room and found Casper sitting upright on the sofa, not unlike a small human. Missing only a remote control and a can of Tennent’s Extra, his pose was one that brought to mind the term ‘catspreading’. He gave me the most casual of glances then continued to watch rolling news. Not finding any sign of my parents in the house, I put my shoes back on and wandered down to their new wildlife pond, which had come on in leaps and bounds since last year. Broad-bodied chaser dragonflies flitted about above the water’s shiny surface, and a little egret belted by overhead. ‘I’M GOING TO GET A SWAN FOR IT,’ my dad had announced when drawing up plans for the pond. ‘Where from?’ I’d asked. ‘I BET YOU CAN GET THEM OFF THE INTERNET,’ he’d replied. He had abandoned this plan, but moorhens, ducks, water beetles, frogs and newts had already arrived on or around the water, of their own volition. My parents had worked tirelessly to transform the space from the remains of an old pigsty into what it was now, my mum referring to their efforts as ‘pondering’. I noticed too that the plants my dad had appropriated from my own pond were thriving.
My pond is a fraction of the size of my mum and dad’s but was full of life in the summers of 2014 and 2015. At the start of this particular spring, the following year, it had become somewhat weed-choked and I’d begun to de-weed it but not got all that far by the time my mum and dad last visited me in March: the one time I’d seen them between now and our Christmas outing to Dawlish. My dad had dipped an arm in to take some specimens for his pond then got a little carried away for the next fifteen minutes. I’d left him to it, said bye and gone off for a walk on Dartmoor. Two hours later a photo popped through onto my phone from my mum, showing my dad in the middle of my pond, topless, up to his waist in water. I returned home to find the pond entirely clear of weed and algae. Tired and keen to relax and refresh myself with a hot bath after my long walk, I thought about what a kind gesture this had been from my dad. The feeling of gratitude lasted all the way to the bathroom, which, upon entering, I discovered now boasted much of the former contents of my pond, and subsequently took me over an hour to clean.
Despite visiting a couple of nearby large bodies of water with a jam jar in an attempt to restock it, my pond had been a bit bland and sleepy since then, so I was excited to see all the buzzing activity in my mum and dad’s. Casper and George had now joined me to watch the hubbub. As they began to do cat kung fu on the water’s edge, I tiptoed out onto a small rocky promontory in an attempt to see a water beetle.
‘DON’T FALL IN!’ said my dad, arriving behind me and almost causing me to fall in.
We walked back up to the house, past a bed full of thriving spinach, a riot of stoned-looking bees on a giant scabious, the stump of the fateful eucalyptus and the wooden head. In the kitchen my dad picked up a piece of rock from on top of the plate cupboard. ‘KNOW WHAT THIS IS?’ he asked.
My dad greeting me after several weeks apart by showing me an obscure object he’d found in the ground near the house was nothing new. Objects he’d found in the ground near the house before included some ancient dog teeth, a sheep skull, a sea of writhing, unusually colourful worms and an extremely bendy courgette. ‘Is it some kind of old-fashioned brick?’ I said, evaluating his latest find.
‘GOOD GUESS. I’M GOING TO TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT IT IS LATER ON, AND I WANT YOU TO LISTEN. I’VE JUST HAD A BATH AND SWALLOWED A BIG LOAD OF RADOX BUBBLE BATH BY MISTAKE.’
‘Can you not just tell me now?’
‘NO. DO AS YOU’RE TOLD, YOU BIG STREAK OF PISS. I NEED YOU TO SIT DOWN AND I NEED YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION.’
My mum arrived in the kitchen and gave me a hello hug. She seemed a little flustered and explained that she’d lost her ticket to a literary event organised by her book group.
‘IT’S BECAUSE OF YOUR CRAZY LIFESTYLE,’ said my dad. ‘YOU’RE WORSE THAN LINDSAY LOHAN.’
Later we sat down for dinner and I talked to my mum about the wooden head. I’d recently found a new home for the Devil-headed letter opener she bought for me – with my friend Jo, who had drained its dark power by keeping it in a pot on her desk alongside several brightly coloured plushies. Now some of the wooden head’s occult strength had been compromised by Casper, I wondered if my mum might finally feel confident about giving it away. She said she’d rather not and that the head still troubled her. I agreed. At this point she turned to my dad, who was wearing a stained orange T-shirt. ‘Mick,’ she asked. ‘Did you know that you’re wearing one of my painting rags?’
We watched the extended Brexit edition of Channel 4 News, and my dad pointed out some politicians he thought were fucking bastards and some other politicians he’d previously thought were just bastards but now thought were fucking bastards too. Then we went into the other room and my dad picked up the piece of stone again. ‘NOW THEN,’ he said. ‘SIT NEXT TO ME. AND LISTEN.’
‘I need to nip to the loo first,’ I said.
‘IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME,’ said my dad. ‘PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS LEAVING ME.’
‘I’ve already been holding it for half an hour just to be polite.’
‘DON’T WEE IN THE TOILET. GO OUTSIDE AND DO IT IN THE BUCKET IN THE SHED. I NEED IT FOR MY COMPOST.’
My dad had found the piece of stone while he was doing what he calls fossicking. This is when, after very heavy rainfall, he walks down to the river to find good firewood that has been washed down it by the flood waters. After picking the stone out of the shallows, he had taken it to the swimming pool to show Pat, whose experience as a mining geologist, my dad thought, might enable him to identify it.
‘You took it to the actual swimming pool?’
‘NO, JUST TO THE CHANGING ROOMS. I FORGOT MY TRUNKS THAT DAY AND HAD TO BORROW SOMEONE’S SPARE ONES. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT I TOLD THE HAIRDRESSER THE OTHER DAY. I TOLD HER I SWAM NAKED BUT JUST KEPT MY LEGS REALLY TIGHT TOGETHER THE WHOLE TIME.’
‘And what did Pat say about the rock?’
‘HE SAID, “It’s just a bit of limestone, Mick.” BUT I WASN’T SATISFIED WITH THAT. SO I SHOWED IT TO MY FRIEND PHILIP. HE USED TO BE AN ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURER. HE KNOWS ALL SORTS OF THINGS. HE’S SIX FOOT FOUR AND USED TO LIVE IN A THIRTY-TWO-ROOM HOUSE. HE LOOKED AT IT AND TOLD ME IT’S A BIT OF MASONRY THAT WAS MEANT TO BE ON A MEDIEVAL HOUSE. THIS BIT HERE WAS A JAMB, AND THIS BIT WAS MEANT TO GO IN
