Cathryn the Magnificent
A piece of flash fiction By Brighham Whitmore
There are two things in this life which I hold in the highest possible esteem, and I am not ashamed to say so.
The first is a rasher or three of good English bacon, properly attended to in a cast-iron pan, with a spoonful of kimchi alongside, and here I must pause for the benefit of any reader who has not yet made the acquaintance of kimchi, which is nothing more sinister than fermented cabbage, though I grant you it sounds alarming, the whole business served atop a generous mound of creamy mashed potato. I would eat that particular combination at any hour of the day or night, in any county in England, regardless of weather, occasion, or the opinions of others.
The second is this: in the depths of winter, after one has been out pounding the country lanes for a solid hour, to lower oneself, with appropriate reverence, into a bath of near-scalding water. There are no words in the English language adequate to the occasion. I have looked.
It was, in fact, during precisely such a moment of supreme civilised contentment that I became aware of something deeply irregular happening on the other side of the bathroom door.
A sound. Not an easy sound to categorise. Something between the ruminations of a large horse, the impatience of a prize bull, and the general disposition of a rhinoceros that has not had a satisfying morning. There was also, now that I applied myself to the question, a smell. I could not immediately identify it, though I formed a provisional opinion that it was not lavender.
My first hope, the hope of an optimist, which I have always considered myself, was that it was my imagination, and that the thing would resolve itself in short order and leave me in peace. It did not. My second hope, slightly more desperate, was that it might be some variety of ghost come to try its luck in the premises, on the reasoning that spirits, being of a delicate and heavenly constitution, tend not to linger long when they find a chap in his bath. This hope also proved unfounded. Whatever was stationed on the far side of that door was not delicate and heavenly. It was, if anything, the precise opposite of delicate and heavenly. It snuffled. It wheezed. It shifted its considerable weight with a sound like furniture being rearranged on the deck of a ship. And it showed absolutely no sign of going away.
I faced facts.
Half-submerged, warm, and profoundly unwilling to move, I nonetheless grasped that the situation demanded action. Any man who has climbed out of a hot bath in January knows that it ranks among life's grimmer experiences. But there it was. I towelled off with the speed of a man escaping a creditor and opened the door.
My heart, I believe, stopped for a measurable period.
Standing before me was a pig.
Now, had it been an ordinary pig, the sort of modest, apologetic pig one might encounter trotting across a farmyard and think nothing much of, I should have administered a gentle nudge with the foot and considered the matter settled. But this was not that pig. This pig had clearly been on a rather liberal diet for some considerable time. Pizza, I thought. Possibly beer. She was pink, she was vast, she occupied the entire door frame from one side to the other with the unself-conscious authority of a person who has never once in her life questioned her right to be exactly where she was. I am not exaggerating for literary effect. She was a very large animal indeed. The last detail I registered before slamming the door with all the force I could muster was a red collar decorated with small embroidered flowers. I did not wait to admire the floristry.
I leaned against the door. She leaned against the door. She leaned harder. I braced my feet against the base of the bath and deployed my full eleven stone, which the pig appeared to find no more troubling than a light breeze.
The bathroom floor, I should mention, is tiled. Tiles, when wet, are not one's allies. My feet went one way, I went another, and by a combination of scrambling and determination I managed to seize my mobile telephone from the little table by the towel rail and place my first call to Reginald.
With my friend not picking up, I rang Lily.
"Georgie," she said, with that particular tone she reserves for moments when she suspects I have done something inadvisable, "why on earth are you panting like that?"
"Lily, my dear," I said, keeping my voice as steady as circumstances permitted, "I need you to come round immediately with a carrot. Possibly a cabbage. Something of that general nature."
"Are you hungry?"
"Not for me!"
There was a pause.
"George Bernard Adley," she said, in a different tone entirely. It was slower, more deliberate, the tone of a woman composing her thoughts before delivering a verdict. "I never thought I should see the day. You've gone and acquired a girlfriend who's a vegetarian, and you have the absolute brass neck to telephone me and ask me to bring round the provisions. You've sunk to a new low, Georgie. A new and remarkable low."
"Lily, I have not acquired a girlfriend. I am being held hostage in my own bathroom by a pig. Would you kindly stop talking nonsense and bring some greenery?"
A brief silence.
"Is she pink?"
"Resoundingly."
"And rather large?"
"The word 'large' does not do justice to the situation. Try 'monumental.' Try 'geological.'"
"Red collar? Little flowers on it?"
"The very same. You are clearly familiar with the creature."
"Oh, that's all right then. She only wants to say hello."
"Lily. I am crouched on a wet bathroom floor in a towel, holding a door shut with my back. This is not the context in which I wish to make new acquaintances."
"She's Mrs Paddison's pet. She's been going up and down the lane all morning asking if anyone's seen her Cathryn. Apparently she's quite beside herself."
"I am beside myself. Inform Mrs Paddison that unless she retrieves her considerable darling within minutes, I shall begin to view it as a good old bacon-loaded breakfast."
I cannot entirely account for what followed, but Mrs Paddison, a small, determined woman in a waxed jacket, arrived within a quarter of an hour and managed, by means and persuasions I cannot fully explain, to coax Cathryn the Magnificent back out of the flat and into the lane without meaningful structural damage to either party.
Cathryn the Magnificent, it transpired, was something of a refined and well-travelled sow, the sort who had absorbed, over the years, a quiet but unshakeable sense of her own importance.
What I chose not to share with Lily was this: in the brief glimpse I caught of Mrs Paddison as she led her charge away down the lane, it struck me rather forcefully that the two of them had, over the years, arrived at a remarkably similar relationship with the dinner table.