Rose Leopard (16 page)

‘Mm. Mm, all right — stop that! — we'll do it later. As long as you help. You will help, won't you?'

I never did, the photos never made it into albums, our story was never told.

There are two things left to begin before night finally falls. The first concerns the photos. I lay as many as can fit onto the top of the desk, scan them closely, see our farmhouse in another cleaner time, then a honeymoon shot of my wife, my lover with the red-raven hair smirking from astride a log in a rainforest, then a plethora of land photos with too much sky, and beach photos with too much sea. I delve further; find child photos with porcelain figurines in the foreground, their big summer-grins and saucy-chins, chumpy hands that waved madly at the camera. The more photos I lay out, the further back our story goes, to wrinkle-pink babies concertina'd in cribs and family portraits where we are formal, stiff, erect, uncomfortable. Like Forestry Commission trees, I think, these perfectly spaced people, perpendicular, plumbline-measured.

I dip my hands into old envelopes and extract early shots, laugh at the idealistic young couple in a restaurant, skinny me with ragged beard and a silver plate of ravished oyster-shells, Kaz with fresh lips and a glittering sapphire ring. I pick up the photo, touch the ring, wonder if its image might lift from the paper and scratch me. Then another packet; groups of young skinny couples flanked by brown bottles of beer and LP covers, other people's weddings, too many of those red-eyed bourbon-fuelled shots of wild faces taken late at night.

The bottom drawer contains just one photograph, slid towards the back. I hesitate then bring it out, see Kaz again, snared the day before, in the barn, see her mobile face lifted from contemplation, her long body closed and folded as she leans down to pick up the detritus of yesteryear. I see her deep sense of satisfaction, her curls mussed by sweat, those hands, slender and elegant, close to the earth, perfect, unharmed, sculpted with a careful exactitude, and then I see the menace of the shears behind her.

This last is the photo that I hold closer to the light, the one that makes me shudder at both waste and brevity, the photo that I had developed that long-ago afternoon at the supermarket, the photo with which I will open the collection and craft the prologue to our story.

My second priority also concerns a story. After tea — proudly I present bananas with hot chocolate syrup — I herd the children into the circle of my arms, fix them with what I hope are serious but kind eyes.

‘Family meeting time.' I squeeze their shoulders.

‘But we don't …' Milo's voice trails to nothing.

‘Is this about Mum?' Otis looks uncertain, begins to squirm.

Isn't everything, I think. Isn't she everywhere, watching us with her deep worried eyes as she asks for closure but softly, gently, perhaps even knowing how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go?

And that — unusually, it is for no apparent reason — is when I have the idea. It is the beginning of the story and it strikes like a tiny bell, muted but rapid-growing.

Let the children decide.

‘Yes, it is,' I tell them firmly. ‘Now listen carefully. I want you to think of the two most beautiful things in the world. One each — and not just beautiful but the most beautiful.'

The boy stares at me for a moment then curls his fingers upwards, tugs his bottom lip absent-mindedly, just like his mother used to do.

Except this time I refuse to look away.

‘A leopard,' he says eventually. ‘That's mine. I love leopards. They're cool.'

‘Leopards are fine things,' I smile. ‘And definitely beautiful, as well as cool and fast and strong and sort of sleek. Now, Otis?'

She is grave-faced, smart enough to delay as she tacitly acknowledges the significance of her choice. I fidget; my impatience has been a lifelong curse. So, take stock, I think. Relax, my pixie, relax. Blink a little, enjoy the balmy air.

Let the children decide.

‘Um — maybe a flower?' she says. Then, more confidently: ‘Mum loved flowers.'

‘Mm, a flower is good. What kind?'

‘A pansy,' scoffs Milo quickly. ‘Go for a girly type.'

‘Shut up, Alex! It's my turn.'

My outstretched hand is both a warning and a plea for this to be taken seriously. Again she hesitates, then a lightness flits through her.

‘A … a rose?'

‘That is,' I tell her proudly, ‘without a doubt one of the two most beautiful things in the world.'

Milo presses forward impatiently.

‘I thought this was about Mum,' he insists.

‘It is.' I stand, walk towards the empty fireplace, turn and face them with renewed purpose. ‘Just be patient. If a leopard and a rose are the two most beautiful things in the world, what happens when we put them together?'

Silence. Pause for reflection.

‘Put them together,' I repeat but their brows are furrowed.

Suddenly I can sense the quiet presence of Amelia behind me, breathing support.

‘It's easy,' I explain, using my hands to shape each word. ‘Put them together and we have … a rose leopard. A rose leopard — imagine it. The most beautiful, wondrous, magical creature that ever existed!'

It is Otis who speaks first.

‘Mum?' she asks shyly.

‘Exactly,' I say. ‘Exactly right.'

‘A rose leopard?' says Milo, his mind configuring.

‘Yes.' I look out the window to the night-sky, feel that familiar sense of bewitched humility that I always get, turn back to my children.

‘Dad?'

My voice, when it comes, is surprisingly strong. ‘Tomorrow,' I tell them, ‘I'm going to tell you the story of the rose leopard. I'm going to tell you the story of the most beautiful creature in the world.'

Two

S
omehow we end up in the barn. I don't want to go there but Otis insists.

‘Why the barn?' I squint directly into the late afternoon sun, see a blinding orb of blood then the old building squatted before us, its cold heart still beating: house of straw, house of canker.

‘Mum would understand,' she says matter-of-factly, grabs my wrist, drags me past the clumps of grass and seething, powdery ant-nests, propels me through the creaking doors.

Inside the light shrinks and narrows. There is a musty animal-burrow smell emanating from an uneven dirt floor. The air is leaden, settled. The dankness makes my stomach cringe; I am reminded of churches, too much weight and sedentary, rain-rinsed England.

‘Where are we going to sit?' I ask but they are already down, bums to the ground, legs crossed, hands smoothing over calves, their lithe bodies cast in classic primary-school storytime pose.

Amelia joins them. Her manner is brisk, efficient. The air lifts and disrupts. Three pairs of eyes watch me expectantly.

No choice. Bum to the ground, make a circle, let the children decide.

‘Is this a long story?' Milo asks.

Don't know. Don't know, because it's still inside of me, churning in tight circles like one of those olden-days cheese-makers. Gradually the story will solidify, lumps will form amidst the cream, then there will be a tang and evenness before it issues forth, the clean hard shape of a fresh block, this heady new creation, a story for Kaz.

‘Let's begin,' I say to no one in particular.

Once upon a time —

‘Why do stories always start like that?' Milo asks. His fingers are fanned across his chin. ‘Every time I hear a story, it starts with once-upon-a-time.'

‘Well, I've never really thought,' I answer. ‘I suppose … it's probably like ancient pyramids, or moons. Mountains. Islands. The giant tortoises of the Galapagos archipelago. Once things have been around for a long time, it doesn't matter why they were there in the first place. They just are.'

Amelia leans her face into the circle.

‘It means sort of — any time, any place,' she says. ‘Like, the story could be here and now or it could be somewhere else in the past or somewhere else in the future, but none of that matters because it's still a story.'

‘The story's more important,' I interject quickly.

Milo stares at us with huge saucer-eyes, nods his understanding.

‘Can we please get started?' Otis, the Queen of LAA (Late Afternoon Angst), is fast becoming exasperated.

‘Sure,' I say, again to no one in particular.

O
nce upon a time, a rose leopard lived in a garden with her children. Now, this was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill, Errol and Delphine type garden. It was called … the Garden of Replenishment, which is a long and rather complicated way of saying that things grew back again. Which happens anyway and is not particularly magical — except here, everything grew back really, really quickly. And it grew back better than before — bigger, bolder and brighter. So, every Autumn morning when the cool east wind blew petals from the flowers, they would automatically replenish by nightfall. Every hot Summer afternoon the leaves from the trees turned brown and fell to the earth, then at night they stood up, dusted themselves off, climbed back up to their tree branch, had a chat about things, reattached and became green again. It was like a permanent Spring-time, dying grass suddenly lifting into a thick wavy carpet, drooping stalks stretching back upwards to the sky. And the rose leopard knew that it was a gift to live there, because as long as the sun shone and the stars sparkled at night, the incredible beauty of the Garden of Replenishment could never be lost.

But then, as you already know, the rose leopard was a special creature. As well as being heavenly beautiful — which I'll tell you about later — she had exactly the right qualities for a Keeper of the Garden of Replenishment. Keepers of the Gardens need to be gentle. They need to care about every living thing, all of the time. They need to speak softly and touch everything as if it is as delicate as the tears of a newly born moth. But most of all they need to have a certain light in their eyes. The Eternals call it the Enlightenment. If they look into the eyes of a creature and see the Enlightenment, they know that the creature is special enough to become a Keeper.

‘I've got a question,' says Milo.

‘Me too.' Otis waves her hand importantly.

‘I was first.' Her brother scrunches his face as he searches for the word, then asks: ‘These — Eternals. Who are they?'

‘Keepers of the Universe,' I tell him after a moment's consideration. ‘Kind of like the big bosses. Then they have other Keepers beneath them — Keepers of the Gardens and the Seas, even Keepers of the Seasons'

He nods, seemingly satisfied.

‘Otis?'

‘I don't understand the light thing,' she says, very serious, very intense. ‘In the rose leopard's eyes. What does it look like?'

Hard question. I stretch out, shake an ache from my shoulders.

‘I know you won't remember this,' I say carefully, ‘but the very first time your Mum held you in her hands, when you were the tiniest of babies, when you were all bunched-up and glowing pink and miaowing like a kitten, at that moment she had the Enlightenment in her eyes.'

So, the Eternals held a huge ceremony and the rose leopard was appointed Keeper of the Garden of Replenishment. She was given a magic cloak made of love, lace and sunshine; whenever she wore her cloak she could travel the Bright Universe and communicate with anything, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. But most of the time she stayed in the Garden, watching over the flowers and the trees, raising her own children to understand how to care for all living things, how to speak softly and touch delicately.

Now, there was at this time another different Universe, further to the right, through a tunnel or two and up some stairs made of stone and misery. There were no Gardens in this Gloomy Universe, and everything there was blanketed beneath a shroud of darkness. There were huge cold oceans full of wild waves and sharp-teethed cannibal-fish, planets made of rock and shadow, a mysterious black ice that oozed like lava, unlit stars floating aimlessly around and bumping into each other. The Gloomy Universe was a horrible place and no one wanted to live there — except for the Swicks. The Swicks loved darkness. They were strange beings — they had no faces and no bodies but you could still hear them at night-time, swishing and whipping and screeching mad things at each other. Sometimes you could feel their presence near you because they were so cold and clammy and they made you shiver. Sometimes they left a thin smoke-coloured vapour trail that smelled of sulphur (like rotten eggs) and quickly evaporated. Sometimes their squealing, whistling voices penetrated your mind, interrupted your thoughts and left you feeling strangely unhappy. They were malignant, like a seeping, creeping mix of poisonous gases … and because of the way they had been created, they were jealous of whole-bodied, living things like people and plants and animals. They preferred … um, Death over Life, and they were also really ambitious. Having spent a few millennia exploring and destroying their own Universe, the Swicks got bored: they wanted more, and quickly. So they decided there was only one thing to do.

‘They'll attack the Eternals,' suggests Milo. ‘Try to take over their Universe.'

‘And destroy the Garden,' adds Otis decisively. ‘They'd hate a nice place like that.'

‘Right, both of you.' I glance at my watch. ‘And it's nearly bath-time. You want to continue this later?'

There is a rapid-fire exchange of looks, the instant telepathy of siblings.

‘Now,' says Milo, the eldest.

‘Now,' agrees his sister.

What I haven't told you yet is why the rose leopard was so heavenly beautiful. You see, on the day she was born and the Eternals sought and found the Enlightenment in her eyes, they knew that she was going to be special. They also knew that the day would come when those nasty, marauding Swicks would invade their home, the Bright Universe, and they wanted to make sure that there was a leader, a creature who was pure enough to resist the Swick darkness. So they blessed the rose leopard with the greatest, most refined beauty ever known — because, as everyone knows, Swicks detest beauty almost as much as they detest light. The Eternals hoped that one day the rose leopard would become the saviour of the Bright Universe.

Anyway, their suspicions were right — the Swicks did come. At first no one really knew they were there, just the nights seemed a little colder, the sun shone a little paler. That's how Swicks operate, of course — they're sneaky. If a breeze is blowing off the water then a Swick will drop into it, make the air go snappy, push the breeze that little bit harder so it stings people's eyes and makes their ears go frosty. If there's a summer thunderstorm then a Swick will hover about, wrap itself around a lightning-bolt like a scarf and divert the lightning onto someone's house or TV aerial. If sleeping children leave their window open then a Swick will creep into their dreams, twist them all about and turn them into black, horrible nightmares. In fact, if the Swicks hadn't got so greedy, no one would have known for centuries that they were even invading the Bright Universe.

‘What happened?' Otis shouts. ‘How did they find out?'

‘Sssh!' Amelia taps her on the knee.

It was the oldest, most experienced Eternal who first worked it out. Her name was Sibyl and she had been an Eternal of the Bright Universe ever since it first happened. She was wise and magnificent; everybody respected her views when she spoke at Council. They had been discussing the need to get an extra Keeper for the Mighty Mountains, because the original Keeper was becoming too old and frail to tend the snow-covered peaks, when suddenly Sibyl banged her staff on the ground in a bid for silence. All of the Eternals were immediately quiet.

‘The Swicks are here,' she told them in her slow, powerful way.

No one spoke until eventually Dragmir, one of the younger and more aggressive Eternals, turned to her.

‘How can you know that?' he asked.

Sibyl stared at him a while before answering. Thousands of years as an Eternal, putting up with brattish behaviour from young know-it-all whipper-snappers like Dragmir, were beginning to tire her.

‘Open your eyes and clear your mind,' she commanded him. ‘And when you have done that, look out upon the Farthest Reach of the Bright Universe and count the stars.'

Silly old coot, thought Dragmir — she belongs to the distant past. But, to humour her, he did as he was asked. He knew that there would be exactly thirteen million and twenty-eight stars in the Farthest Reach, as there always had been. Eternals are blessed with an extraordinary number genius: they can scan a whole library in a nanosecond and tell you how many books are on the shelves. Counting stars was a cinch.

‘No,' thought Dragmir suddenly. ‘That can't be right.'

He closed his eyes, shook away all thoughts and memories from his cluttered mind, and counted again.

‘Well?' Sibyl was at his shoulder. The remainder of the Council had stayed silent, expectant.

‘I need to count one more time,' he squeaked, not daring to meet her piercing gaze.

Once again he closed his eyes, shook away all thoughts and memories from his cluttered mind, and counted.

Sibyl permitted herself a dry, hoarse laugh before turning to the hushed Council.

‘No doubt Dragmir will confirm my mathematics,' she rasped. ‘As we speak, there are twelve million nine hundred and forty-two thousand, seven hundred and eighty stars in the Farthest Reach. No doubt if we count again in a few minutes, there will be less. I repeat, the Swicks are here.'

All eyes turned to Dragmir who dropped his head, grimaced, then offered a tiny nod of agreement.

Of course there was great consternation at this. Everyone had heard stories about how Swicks could surround a star, wrap themselves tighter and tighter around it — with the strength of a thousand boa-constrictors — and squeeze the light from the star until it was nothing more than a hollow, an empty lightless space. But to have this actually happen in their wondrous Bright Universe; some of the younger Eternals began to chatter nervously, to race about and show signs of panic.

‘What can we do?' they fussed. ‘How can we stop them?'

Once again, it was Sibyl who stepped forward and banged her staff.

‘For many years,' she intoned, ‘we have been suspicious of the possibility of a Swick invasion. Accordingly, there are plans in place. We can guess that the Swicks will soon become bored with the Farthest Reach, leave it alone and come for the Mother Star. Once they extinguish Her, and thereby all of Her subsidiary stars, they may well feel that their job is done. They may feel that the Bright Universe is no more, leave us in their tainted darkness, search for another place and time for their devastating havoc to be wreaked.'

Another ancient Eternal, Charyb, hobbled forward.

‘There is, as you should remember, only one amongst us who can ensure the eternity of the Bright Universe. Only one such creature is so heavenly blessed.'

They stood and listened, then nodded as one.

Charyb turned to a Minion waiting expectantly on a nearby cloud.

‘Fetch the Keeper of the Garden of Replenishment,' she commanded. ‘Immediately. Go. Fetch the rose leopard.'

There will be more of our story tomorrow. For now, the house is asleep (with all windows closed to the Swicks) and I am alone, wandering, pondering, stalling what I must do. I pad around the lounge, go into the kitchen for a glass of water, drink it in nervous sips, pass through the TV room, walk down the panelled hallway, palms out to let my fingers touch the pictures and photographs, return eventually to that final place which, I realise, I have been both afraid of and compelled to see again.