Seven subterranean cats
The bus exhaled from its brakes and settled on its haunches like a tired draught horse. I stepped onto the slick concrete of the station, coat collar already soaked through from an evening of uninterrupted freezing February rain. The terminus — a halfhearted attempt at seventies brutalism — was virtually deserted. A strip of yellow LEDs flickered overhead, illuminating greasy stainless-steel benches and puddles the colour of dishwater. On Saturday nights in years past, the place would thrum with kebab-waving revellers hunting minicabs or night buses to after-hours clubs.
Tonight, only a single bench was occupied by a couple in their early twenties; each engrossed in a separate smartphone reality, thumbs flicking, faces ghost-lit and expressionless. The only other sign of life was a vending machine flashing a “contactless payment error”. It was unlikely to matter — the contents hadn’t been restocked since well before Christmas.
I pulled my jacket tighter, remembering the gig I had just returned from — the guitarist wringing cathedral feedback from a battered Jazzmaster, the crowd surprisingly animated for goths — and decided the night deserved one last chapter. A final pint might smudge the edges of the evening into a shape that felt almost celebratory. My local, The Anchor, would be shut by now, but the chain pub at the top of the hill kept the lights on until well after midnight.
From outside, the former Edwardian department store looked like a shabby remake of Hopper’s Nighthawks: vast plate-glass windows throwing hard rectangles onto wet pavement, the interior a liminal sea of varnished tables, cheap carpet and actinic lighting. Inside, the room felt bigger than necessary, as if someone had removed half the furniture and added an echo.
At one end, three men, all in their mid sixties, huddled over near-empty pints. I recognised two of them as refugees from the Anchor: Ronnie, a local carpenter, tall and broad-shouldered, with curly salt-and-pepper hair. His permanent mischievous grin suggested he might sell you a bridge just to see if you’d pay the toll. Beside him sat John, an old biker who was all angles and shadows. He wore a leather waistcoat over a hoodie, baseball cap pulled low and a glass eye that caught the light like a stray coin at the bottom of a fountain. John’s missing eye was the legacy of a childhood accident involving his best mate and a misfired catapult — a story everyone in town knew but no one mentioned directly. The third man was unfamiliar to me: Nigel, a former Londoner with long hair, Lennon spectacles perched on his nose, and a worn corduroy jacket dusted with a hint of plaster.
They looked up as I approached. Ronnie’s grin widened. “Evening, Alex,” he said. “You missed the excitement — some lad tried to pay for a tray of shots with a Tesco Clubcard.”
I bought a round (four pints here cheaper than two at the local) and joined their table. The only customers under thirty — three tottering lads in designer trainers — were arguing about whose turn it was to pay for a taxi; their voices ricocheted off the ceiling before the door swallowed them into the rain. At another table, a quartet of off-duty ferry workers contemplated their refills with monastic gravity.
Ronnie launched into a story about fitting bespoke bookshelves for a reclusive novelist who paid entirely in pre-decimal coinage “because he doesn’t trust modern alloys”. His eyebrows danced as he spoke, daring us to doubt him. John punctuated the tale with soft hmms in his broad local accent, the sound landing somewhere between approval and disbelief. Every time Ronnie swore he had photographic evidence, John’s glass eye seemed to flash conspiratorially.
When the laughter subsided, Ronnie clapped Nigel on the shoulder. “Tell ’im about the cats.”
Nigel leaned in, palms flat on the sticky table. “Right, so I’m redoing the basement in this old house I bought up on Trafalgar Street — place is a labyrinth, must’ve been three different cellars knocked together over the years. First week I’m down there, break through a brick partition, what do I find? Cat skeleton. Perfect. Little chap curled up like he nodded off.” He paused for effect and sipped his pint. “Thought, fair enough — Victorians bricked animals in for luck, didn’t they? Next day: another one buried under the dirt floor. Day after: two more. I’m up to seven now. It’s like a bloody feline graveyard down there.”
“Lucky number seven,” John murmured as he stroked his beard.
Nigel shook his head, half-amused, half-appalled. “Neighbour reckons the previous owner was a massive lady who never left the house. Hoarder, apparently. Maybe the cats got buried under the junk, the poor sods. Anyway, I’ve started lining them up on the workbench — like a little bony carnival parade. Makes sanding floorboards feel positively normal.”
Ronnie wagged a finger. “Sell ’em to that museum. Call it a folk-horror installation.”
I laughed harder than the joke deserved; the absurdity washed the bus station gloom clean from my thoughts. For another half hour or so, the pub felt less like a terminal ward and more like a cosy den of co-conspirators.
We drained our glasses in anticipation of the staff calling time. Outside, the heavy rain still quarrelled with the orange street lamps. Unperturbed, Ronnie and John ambled up the high street, still ribbing each other about whose round it should have been. Nigel set off the opposite way under an umbrella, humming a prog-rock riff I couldn’t place — perhaps rehearsing background music for his next archaeological dig.
I walked the short distance home, with the echo of pub laughter clinging like the rain to my soaked clothes. Even a deserted town can surprise you, I thought; sometimes all it takes is three old rogues, a round of cheap beer, and the mystery of seven subterranean cats to remind you that the night still has stories left to tell.