Anna Maconochie

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The Man Who Had a Tail

 

Whenever I’m at one of my husband’s work do’s, which I find so terribly boring, I sometimes mention that my previous husband had a tail. A real fur-covered tail at the end of his spine.
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Naturally, people don’t buy it. Imagine in this situation there’s a doctor or someone who has studied primates – this person will assume I mean a slightly prominent coccyx or distorted lower spine. No, I explain, this was a four foot tail. Sometimes, they ask him, the second husband, if I’m for real, as if I might have a bit of a problem. Oh, it was real alright, he’ll say.
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Then people really let loose. What sort of fur? Patterned or monochrome? Did he show it to you on Date One? Was the rest of him furry? Did his parents have tails?
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If they’ve had a few too many drinks they ask if the tail ended the marriage somehow. I laugh at that. They don’t know what’s coming.
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So, the tail. It was about as thick as a leopard’s tail and had plush cat-like fur. The individual hairs were slightly longer than those of a typical short-haired cat. It’s hard to describe the pattern but it was more or less a stripey black-and-tan design. The tail had the complete flexibility you’d expect but my first husband never moved it unless he had to. He certainly never wagged it. There was no other unusual or matching hair or fur on his body and his family members had no tails. We met via a dating website and no, he didn’t reveal it until we were a couple of dates in. He kept it tucked down his left trouser leg – that was where it stayed whenever he went out in public. He was clever with layers and coats too.
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How do you live with a tail? That is the question I enjoy answering when it comes up. If you can ask that, you are open to possibilities. As far as I know, the tail itself didn’t need any specific care such as shampooing or brushing. It’s the people gawping at it you need to take care of. Firstly, you need accepting parents who don’t just reach for a knife at birth. Secondly those parents must not make a circus freak of you before you can consent.
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At school you hide it religiously with trousers for all seasons and only reveal it to the most understanding friends and their families. Fortunately, when rumour circulates, many people simply won’t believe it. Disbelief is a great asset. But when the bullying gets too much, when the snarlings of ‘Here, Kitty!’ and the yanking down of trousers become too frequent, you finish your education with home-schooling and tutors. And yes, you audition for the circus as The Incredible Boy Born with a Tail and you find that the money is worth the humiliation, as you prance and twirl, making it ripple like a gymnast’s ribbon or use it to lift a cup of tea to your lips.
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Next come the scientists, followed by the media. By the time he was twenty, my husband would charge people a handsome sum just to examine it for a few minutes. Many of these people weren’t even scientists. Eventually he tired of circus fame. The touring was relentless and he missed his family, especially when he was abroad for months. The art scene found him and he became a performance artist and fringe theatre performer for over a decade. Then he decided he’d had enough. He had money in the bank and he yearned for a quieter life with a wife and a family. It was around that time that he met me.
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I was eight years younger and fresh out of university, straight on to an accountancy graduate scheme and while I enjoyed theatre trips occasionally, I knew nothing about performance art circles or alternative theatre so I hadn’t heard of him. Relationships were another thing I knew little of. I had kept my head down at university as I was from the sort of family that counts on good exam results and career security and I saw no reason to rebel. I hadn’t really met anyone artistic before, although he always denied that he had artistic talent. I suppose he was right. If people want to pay money to watch you juggle apples with your two hands and one tail, talent doesn’t matter – it’s skill that you need.
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Something immediately clicked between us and quite quickly we became a serious couple. And, you know, I really was OK with the tail. It was part of the man I loved, not to mention it had made him money and while my parents were struck dumb when they first saw the tail, they couldn’t argue with the three-bedroom house in Finsbury Park he had bought outright.
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We had a comfortable, at times, even luxurious existence. Pretty soon after we were married, we started a family and had two daughters, both without tails (that’s always another question people ask). I worked for a big accounting firm at this point and they expected me to adapt to whatever hours they chose so my husband took care of cooking and cleaning and school pick-ups. He was immaculate at running our home and it was a relief for him to have these two little beings that, at first, didn’t question a world where a man had a tail. Still, like a little splinter nagging away, I grew to realise something wasn’t right with the seemingly smooth mechanics of our life. While he was content, safe in the cocoon of people who knew him, he wanted more from life. And desperately craved more normality, even though I felt sure I and the children had given it to him. At first, I didn’t want to face this.
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Still, who could blame him? On holidays, he couldn’t enter the sea without a swarm of phones building up like flies, shamelessly snapping away. He became tired of sitting on the beach watching us jumping in the waves. There was no respite in normal life either – with time, all the children (and parents) at our kids’ school cottoned on and the usual questions would eventually be asked. The constant low-level harassment he suffered was making me feel like I was married to a miserable celebrity. I knew as well that he envied me my world of work and the skill I brought to it, even though I sometimes came home worn out by the ceaseless office politics. While he had done well in the performing world, it had never fulfilled him. He knew that he wouldn’t have entered it without the golden ticket of his tail and for several of the longer-running performances he had just been in situ doing nothing, like a waxwork. A fact rather than a human being. While he was glad to have given that life up, his lack of purpose was a dead weight sitting on his soul and over time he became a quiet, tearful shadow of himself. For no apparent reason he had been given this tail and it had presented him with challenges but now he had a cushy life and he wanted to contribute to society. Only then, it seemed, his depression would lift. Maybe he could train as a teacher or as a mentor to children who were physically challenged, he said. I told him to go for it but we both knew my words were hollow. Hiding the tail always led to questions and remarks in the end, such as querying why he wore trousers in high summer or joking that he was carrying a weapon. It was either tolerate all that or reveal it in plain sight.
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One night, after hours of circular discussion and far too much alcohol, he said the word I both wanted and dreaded to hear. Surgery. It’s the only way forward, he said. We can’t go on like this.
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As luck would have it, the doctor we chose, a top Harley Street cosmetic surgeon, was available to see my husband immediately. Once the operation was over, the skin graft was so fine it was as if the tail had never existed. There was a scar, of course, but when you touched the area, there was no hollow where the tail base had been. The surgeon was thrilled. We still had the tail, carefully preserved and wrapped. We spent hours discussing what to do with it, knowing we had to make a decision quickly. You don’t exactly throw something like that in the medical waste bin. ‘Taxi-der-meee!’ our eldest daughter shouted one night at dinner. She had heard the word in the school playground from another child and my husband congratulated her, saying that was the answer. And then, I don’t know what came over me, but out came the words frame and sell. My husband looked at me like he’d been silently electrocuted and for a second I panicked but I saw in his eyes that it was going to happen.
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We took the tail to the best taxidermist we could find, a woman who thankfully didn’t ask too many questions, and then we commissioned an artist to make a beautiful gilt-edged glass case to frame it. The artist also managed to make it hang in mid-air in the case with invisible strings like it was still attached to an invisible body, on the verge of giving a big swish. My husband resurrected his performance contacts for the sale and, even though he hadn’t taken his story to the media, word quickly got around about what he’d done. A bidding war ensued and he was able to sell the tail for nearly a six-figure sum. The buyer, a former tech CEO with a vast art collection, was quiet and strange. He was utterly polite but inwardly he gave me the jitters. I couldn’t believe we were handing over a part of my husband’s body to a stranger. Now that it was quite literally ‘disembodied’ in a case, it looked like it had once belonged to a wild predatory beast.
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Our initial rush of relief at completing the surgery and selling the tail gave way to real contentment. Sure, we had challenges like any parents raising kids in a big city but my husband did retrain in the end and found a new lease of life as a primary school teaching assistant. In fact, he loved it even more than he expected. Sometimes I think he would have made a great head teacher. He had less time at home but both our girls were now at school and with an additional salary and the lump sum from the tail sale, we were truly solvent. We hired a cleaner and an au pair and anyone else we needed to make us less time-poor. We even bought a holiday cottage in Norfolk. With time, the tail came up less and less in conversation, like a country we had emigrated from a long time ago, never to return.
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Then one night he woke with a sharp pain in his ‘tail’ area. There had been some discomfort after the surgery, as expected – the surgeon had warned him that any amputation can lead to ‘phantom limb syndrome’ – but it soon faded. This pain was different. That first night when I found him, his face was pale and grey and he had sweated through his pyjamas. No painkiller would touch it. In the days and weeks that followed, it came and went but soon it was constant – and almost completely debilitating. He took time off work and saw a neurologist, then a psychotherapist. The neurologist was convinced that the pain was due to permanent nerve damage at the spine base but the surgeon refuted it. How could sudden pain come out of nowhere, years after the surgery? The psychotherapist didn’t believe my husband had ever had a tail and wondered what ‘this tail business was really about’, even when he showed her the scar and the sale documentation.
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A few months later, his pain slowly lessened to something much more tolerable. We were hugely relieved and grateful but it had been a shock and our contentment, like a little hamlet hit by a freak storm, took time to rebuild. We decided to spend the whole summer in Norfolk and tune out for a while. Our youngest daughter had switched schools and the stress had led to nightmares and bedwetting almost every night so we wanted to give her a proper change of scene. I asked for a three-month sabbatical from work.
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Once we were in Norfolk, the days were so relaxing and similar it was like they were one long summer day. The children ran around constantly with the kids from a handful of other local families we knew and my husband finally found the energy to fix things round the cottage, such as a cat flap for the local stray we found ourselves charmed into adopting. I took Tuppence to the vet and spent a lot of money on her but then she was ours, chipped and collared. And I was relieved to see my husband returning to something like normal. He was smiling without forcing it, he was sleeping so much better. We hadn’t had sex in a long time and late one night we found ourselves beckoning each other down that road once again. It was exciting to feel that I still found him sexy and I wondered if this could be the beginning of a more intimate life together, something regular, if not quite as exciting as when we’d first met. I loved him so much.
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One night we were in bed together, cuddling and talking post-sex and suddenly I saw a small figure standing in our doorway. Our youngest daughter. I was worried we’d woken her, even though we had tried to be quiet during our lovemaking. My husband switched on the bedside lamp. Her eyes were open but she appeared to be staring at a void. ‘Sweetheart!’ I said. ‘What happened?’
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‘I had a nightmare.’
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‘Tell Mummy.’
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‘I can’t.’
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‘Then come here and tell Daddy,’ my husband said.
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But our daughter didn’t move from her spot. Her eyes still looked very strange. She seemed to be digging deep for words, which was unusual. Normally she was a chatterbox.
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‘I saw it.’
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‘What did you see, darling?’ There was an edge of worry now in my husband’s voice.
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‘I thought I was dreaming, but I opened my eyes and it was in front of me. In the air.’
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‘What was in the air?’ This was starting to frustrate me.
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‘The tail.’
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‘Daddy’s tail?’
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‘Yes.’
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‘Come here,’ my husband said.
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She still wouldn’t move so he climbed out of bed and went to her. Now she was looking at him like he was a stranger. He knelt down to her level, bringing his face close to hers.
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‘Sweetie, it was just a dream.’
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‘No. I saw it.’
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‘You probably saw Tuppence’s tail. She must have snuck through your door and woken you.’
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‘No,’ our daughter said, shaking her head slowly. ‘It was too big to be her tail.’
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My husband lifted her up and carried her back to her room. It was a long time until he came back. He had to change her sheets and then sit by her and stroke her hair until she fell asleep.
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The next day was gloriously sunny and we took a picnic to the beach. I had almost forgotten our daughter’s bad dream. Until her older sister started teasing her about wetting the bed.
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‘Cut it out!’ I said.
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‘I can’t believe she thought the tail had come back. She’s so stupid.’
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‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘Stop being mean or there’ll be no dessert.’
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But our eldest daughter wouldn’t let up. ‘I explained to her, the tail is in a glass case hundreds of miles away. It can’t escape. And just sup-po-sing it could. How would it enter the house? Daddy always locks the door.’
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‘Cat flap,’ our youngest said in a small, scared voice. I could see tears forming in her eyes.
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‘What? Talk properly!’ said our oldest.
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‘Cat flap. You can’t lock the cat flap. It flaps.’
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‘I know it flaps! I’m not thick.’
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‘Sweetie, I’ll tape the flap shut if you like,’ my husband said. He was starting to look a bit anxious himself.
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‘What about Tuppence?’ Our youngest was sobbing properly now. ‘She’ll get stuck outside! It will strangle her!’
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‘Calm down, darling,’ I said, taking her in my arms, letting her wet little face bury itself in my hair. ‘What’s all this talk of strangling on such a nice day? You just had a bad night. You’ll be fine tonight.’ And with a pointed look at my husband, I announced we would not be taping the cat flap.
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‘Can we still have dessert?’ he asked, winking at me.
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Glad of the subject change, I cut up slices of cheesecake and watched everyone dig in. Our youngest daughter’s mood instantly lightened at the sight of cake. But our eldest wouldn’t let things go. That’s how she is.
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‘So, if it really did visit, what do you think the tail wants?’ she asked her sister.
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‘It wants to kill Daddy.’
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‘Why?’
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They both sounded rational as detectives.
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‘Because Daddy cut it off. It wants revenge.’
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‘Now that really is the stupidest thing I ever heard.’
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I looked to my husband, beseeching him with my eyes to take command. He got my cue and took hold of a hand belonging to each child.
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‘Girls,’ he began, ‘I had to cut my tail off. Life has been so much better since I did it, right? I have a job now that I enjoy and we have our lovely cottage. I’m sure the tail understands. But it’s not alive anymore. Like when you lose a tooth and the tooth fairy takes it. The tooth dies and doesn’t want to come back.’
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‘And that’s all there is to say,’ I said in my best executive accountant voice.
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The girls nodded at us in unison. They looked so serious we laughed and then they broke into laughter themselves.
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A week later, we began packing to return to London. It was almost September and I wanted to get the girls settled back at home before school restarted. I would be restarting work myself. Thankfully our youngest hadn’t had any more bad dreams and both children were more or less sleeping through the night but I had been struggling with sleep myself that week and was growing tired of the creaks and squeaks the cottage made and the abrupt noise Tuppence sometimes made when using the cat flap. I was certain my husband hadn’t installed it correctly. But what do I know? I’m not really a cat person.
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One night, around 2am, the night before we were due to leave, I was half-awake, failing to get back to sleep and heard Tuppence coming loudly through the flap once more. I sighed with irritation. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, she gave a yowl loud enough for a horror film before it was cut oddly short, like she knew she might wake us. In my half-dream state, I speculated she might have made a mating cry and then I remembered the small fortune we’d spent on getting her neutered.
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‘Is that bloody cat going to shriek like that when we’re stuck in a car with her tomorrow morning?’ my husband said blearily, realising we were both awake.
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‘I’ll go and check on her,’ I said.
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‘And the kids, please. They can’t have missed that.’
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I slipped my dressing gown on and went down the stairs which creaked like it was all they desired in life. It was pitch black but I didn’t want to switch any lights on. I had read online that it disturbs your circadian rhythms to flood your senses with light in the middle of the night and I wanted to preserve some possibility of sleep for the impending drive to London. I was starting to make out faint outlines anyway despite my haze. A blob next to the cat flap looked unfamiliar, but at second glance I could see it was probably a just a sweater that had fallen off a broken coat hook. I felt something furry pass me on the stairs, and heard a thump at the top stair where I had just been. It seemed Tuppence was fine.
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Next, I made my way to the children’s rooms. Our cottage had a strange layout – there were two bedrooms on the ground floor next to the kitchen, rather than the living room which was upstairs next to the master bedroom. Oddly, both girls’ doors were closed and I didn’t want to open them. It would just be simpler, I thought, if I pretended to my husband that I’d checked on both of them rather than risk noise from the squeaky doorknobs on each door. Still, I couldn’t resist being thorough so I opened each door as quietly as I could – and each time heard the regular breathing of a sleeping child.
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Our eldest kept her bedroom fully dark but our youngest had her nightlight on and it made her face glow lilac, like she had supernatural powers we couldn’t know of. Satisfied, I stumbled exhaustedly back to the staircase. And stepped in something soft and mulchy. I switched the hallway light on and looked down. There was Tuppence, limbs splayed, semi- disembowelled, her face frozen in what had been her death-shriek.
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I let out a small cry. And just as quickly put a hand over my mouth to stop myself making any further noise. She’d made it through the flap but some violent animal had got her. And that animal was inside too – that had to be what I’d felt swish by me on the stairs. Perhaps it was another cat. Or something bigger. A fox? A mad dog? My thoughts were scrambling over one another. The girls couldn’t know. That was the most important thing. Bag up the poor cat, clean up the blood, chase out the intruder. I wanted to shout to my husband but I couldn’t risk waking the girls. I mounted the stairs, aware that my blood-stained foot was printing all the way up. I called his name softly at the top. No answer. Bad timing – he must have gone for a pee. Yet there was no light on in the bathroom and when I got there, hopping almost, trying not to make more marks on the floor, it was empty. I switched on the light and washed my foot clean in the basin. Already I was thinking how to break the news to our daughters the next day. Just then I heard a delicate moan and a little cough from our bedroom. I headed there, blinking hard at the fuzzy violet-black darkness I found myself in now my eyes were out of the light.
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He was lying in the bed. How could he be back in bed already?
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‘Honey,’ I said, taking his hand. ‘Something really bad has happened. Tuppence is dead. You need to help me clean up.’
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My husband said nothing. He just made a little choked-sounding gasp and his hand juddered in mine in a strange mechanical way, like it was a pre-programmed movement, not freely chosen. I could make out a bit more of his form now in the dark. He had something round his neck like a scarf. I turned on the bedside light.
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At first, I thought it was a snake, the way the thing round his neck moved, unwrapping itself, slithering up into the air, floating and undulating like some strange furry eel. Once I knew what it was I was powerless to anything but stare. It gave a little waggle goodbye with its dark tip where the hairs had always been a little longer, as if to say, my work here is done and it glided out of the room into the darkness. Our youngest daughter was right. The tail had returned to wreak revenge on the body that had excommunicated it. I was still holding my husband’s hand but now I noticed it was cold. When I looked back at his face, his eyes didn’t blink and his mouth didn’t close.
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Look, I don’t usually take it all the way to the death part, especially when I’m out for dinner or at a work do. Or rather my current husband’s work do. But, like I said, I do get a little bored at these things, so that’s the story of the man who had a tail.

 

Anna Maconochie was born and raised in London, where she still lives. After several years in the film industry and the BBC she began writing short stories that touched on these settings as well as her home city. Her first stories appeared in the Erotic Review and then in several other print and online magazines, including the Dublin Review and the Bitter Oleander. She has also had a story in Desire: 100 of Literature’s Sexiest Stories, compiled by Mariella Frostrup. Her first published short story collection is Only the Visible Can Vanish, with Cultured Llama Publishing.