Twilight…
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Last night, at about 11, B called me to the kitchen door.
“I think there’s a badger out there!”
I came to the doorstep and peered out. Sure enough, in the middle of the field outside, there was a dark animal shape moving about.
At this time of year, this far North, it never gets really dark at night. We just get a few hours of twilight, with the northern part of the sky brightly lit as if the Sun were about to rise there. Our first June here, that sight really unsettled me. All my life, it was the horizon to the East that had brightened before sunrise; looking North at 1am and seeing what appeared to be the first rays of sunlight there made me feel as if the Earth had slipped around on its axis and nobody but me had noticed it.
So, it was quite light enough to see the animal as it roamed and sniffed in the rough grass. It was around twenty yards away. It was hard to see what it was. I doubted that it was a badger; we have plenty of wildlife around here – deer, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, even otters. But I’d never heard of badgers in this part of Scotland.
“It’s probably a fox.”
“Too small. And it moves like a badger.”
“So where’s the white stripes? Should be able to see them in this light.”
“Could be a cat.”
“Too big.”
“Hard to tell – can’t see much of it through the grass.”
I stepped very slowly across the drive to the fence, careful not to make a sound. The light night-time breeze was in my direction, so I knew that the animal couldn’t pick up my scent. The creature, continued moving around randomly for a few minutes as we watched, then swung what was presumably its head in our direction and started towards us. I thought I caught the briefest reflective flash of green eyes.
“It’s a cat!”
“No it’s not…..”
I did a soft ‘hallo friend’ greeting in Cat, and got a ‘mew’ in return; in a matter of seconds, one of Carol’s cats – the old grey-coated, green-eyed matriarch – had climbed throught the fence and was undulating around my legs.
“OK, it’s a cat….”
From an open window somewhere, a telephone started chirruping, making me jump.
“It’s not for us. Come inside, it’s bedtime…”
This morning Carol came round and told us that Molly was dead. An old friend from our time in Lancashire, she was amongst the group that eventually coalesced into Oakleaf Circle; she threw the pot that we turned into the Oakleaf Luck.
A craftswoman, artist, fiery, impossible, spirited, brilliant. She passed peacefully, with her children and partner around her.
Shine on, Molly.
V, I came along here today to let you know that I said hello to the Oakleaf Luck during halfterm. It’s looking good, and says hello back. Arrived here to read your post.
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