I always knew I had lived before. I only found out tonight why and what I had lived like…and it seems strange to see what I was like back then, in contrast with what I am now.
You’re not meant to be able to remember, but I guess the ninth return in Jellicle form is always special. Even if it did take me twenty-odd years to remember my last life. My pitiful last life.
I know what you must be thinking. Twenty years is old for a cat…but that’s what makes my ninth life even more special. I didn’t come back as a Jellicle. I came back as a human. A real live human!
By some crazy twist of fate in the Heaviside Layer, I was destined to become this woman and it was only tonight that I found out exactly why this woman had been chosen for me.
Let me explain about my last life. I left my Jellicle Tribe when I was young and beautiful, against all the wishes of the tribe and the leaders. A Jellicle wasn’t meant to stray from the tribe, but I wanted to see the world, instead of being stuck in the confines of the junkyard.I wanted to find new and better things. I wanted to find fame and immortality with it.
I told the leader, dear Old Deuteronomy, that I was leaving, that I didn’t need anyone, that I could go out and explore the world on my own, with or without his permission. As always, he was full of wise words, but I was young and impetuous and foolish. I can admit it now. Everything I did was just plain stupidity.
I ignored him and left. On my own. I roamed around all the places that I’d never even imagined. I knew I should be really happy that I had seen all this, but I was lonely. Very Lonely, to be honest. I missed the fun and friendship of the tribe, but I couldn’t go back and let them win and prove me wrong.
So I stayed lonely…I got older and lonelier and I started to lose the only thing that had kept me going all those years. I was once called Grizabella, the Glamour Cat…but I was no longer worthy of that title. I was so alone I had gone past caring how I looked…I had no one who cared anymore. There didn’t seem any point to anything anymore.
I haunted the grimy road of Tottenham Court and flitted around the no-man’s land, from the Rising Sun to The Friend at Hand, not knowing or caring if anyone saw me or not. I must have looked pretty pathetic, actually, but I was wallowing in my self-pity and didn’t want to make the effort.
The break thorough came, when I had a startling reunion with my son… Macavity. I bet you never knew that. He was shunned and hated because I had abandoned the tribe, or that’s how the tribe saw it. Since I had rejected them, they rejected anyone who was linked to me.
My tom died shortly after being turned out on the streets with our son, but Macavity was a fighter. He always had been a very hyperactive kitten, always up to mischief and completely uncontrollable, in a naughty little way, which drove me crazy. I punished him far too harshly, but it didn’t stop him. He still got into as much trouble as ever, hiding behind the massive figure of his father whenever I found out.
I was very young when I had him, which was one of my biggest mistakes. If I have to be totally honest, I should never have had him. It’s not that I didn’t want him. I did want a kitten, but not the responsibility that came with him. I didn’t want the burden of motherhood, when I saw myself as too young and good-looking to be tied down.
After I abandoned them, his father had tried as hard as he could to raise him, on his own, giving him all his love and care but Macavity had been so young when his father died. He had got into a bad group of cats…the strays. A hard-bitten bunch of savages, who saw that he could have a promising future with them.
When we ran into one another, I was certain he would kill me for what I had done. Even though I hadn’t seen him since kittenhood, I recognised him instantly…my baby. He looked so like his strong father. The father that he had idolised. His father, my tom and the most wonderful Jellicle to ever walk this earth. I had shattered both their lives and I deserved to die for that, but no…what happened was so unexpected, I still can’t get over it.
He started to cry! My big, strong, savage lout of a son threw his arms around me and wept! I asked him why, because I knew what a bad mother I had been to him and his simple reply was “You’re still my mum.”
I was stunned! I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even see myself as his mother anymore. I had always thought he would have forgotten me, but no. He remembered me – the worst mother in the world, who beat him for being a kitten and abandoned him and his father – and he still loved me!
Instead of rejecting me and sending me away, he insisted that I go home with him. Home. The place where he was the leader of all the strays, where he was the great mystery cat, the Napoleon of crime.
Despite finding him, though, I couldn’t erase all those sad and lonely years that had passed. All I wanted was for everything to be over. He had a new family now. He didn’t need me, no matter how much he loved me. I’d only get in the way and ruin his reputation. I didn’t want him to be laughed at or rejected as I had so often been in the past. He said he didn’t want to lose me, now that he had just found me, but he could see how sad and worn-out I was. We both knew it was better this way.
Finally, we came up with what seemed to be a fool-proof scheme, to get me re-accepted into my old Tribe and that would get me picked as the one to be sent to the Heaviside Layer, for the Jellicle Choice.
That’s the reason I wandered in and out of the Junkyard so many times, on the night of the famed Jellicle Ball. I had to tell him what was going on and things were looking so bad that he actually kidnapped Old Deuteronomy. I took a hairy fit and toyed with the idea of running away again, but it worked! I was chosen and sent to the Heaviside Layer.
I don’t know how long I was there for. It could have been days or it could have been years. It all seems like some kind of crazy dream now, but if I did work it out right it must have been at least three decades, because T.S. Eliot hadn’t even had his poetry published before I went Heaviside up.
I remember seeing him once, when he was in London. Not many twenty-something year old actresses can say that in the much latter half of the twentieth century. Maybe I inspired him…maybe not. Who’s to know? But he still came up with many Jellicle names that were startlingly accurate.
Either way, I was born into a whole new world, just before the dawn of the fantastic era that was so aptly named ‘The Sixties’. A bouncing baby girl, that’s what I was. With no memories of my past lives at all.
I loved music. That was my passion. Whatever the time of day – or night, as the case sometimes was – I would sing and dance as much as I could. All I wanted to do was sing and dance…and luckily, I had a good voice, or so I was told.
My second passion was musicals. I was desperate to appear on the stage, on sing and dance. It seemed so much more exciting and fun than Opera and plain acting in theatres. I decided that was what I wanted to do, but I had no idea how I was gong to break into the restricted little world, without the contacts, but I was determined.
One of my first major breaks was getting into the chorus of a brand new musical by a couple of chaps barely older than myself. From that, in 1978, I got the guts to audition for their very next musical too.
To everyone’s surprise – especially mine – I got the lead role. Even back then, I can now see traces of my last life starting to peek through. Although I was no raving beauty, I gave all I had to get that role and I became very close to the lyricist of the show-writing duo. A married man.
That was a hint of the old Grizabella coming through. I was a bitch of a cat and, unfortunately, that uncaring side of me kicked in then. I didn’t care that he was married with a child, I just wanted to have him for myself. I don’t know if it really was love, but the composer was not amused in the slightest. Not that we cared what he thought.
Somehow, I felt secure in doing exactly what I wanted to do. Ignoring sound advice. Breaking all the rules. It felt like I was meant to do that…it felt right. Part of me knew it was wrong, but deep down, I wanted it. Deep down, I somehow knew this was what I always had been like. It was part of my nature that couldn’t be held back forever.
We should have listened though. Isn’t that always the case? Not only did I shatter his marriage, but I doubt our relationship will last. Even so, I had made it into the musicals circuit. I didn’t know why I had chosen musicals, particularly by this duo, but I was starting to have a successful career, so I was content. My name was becoming a household one, but I was simply enjoying myself.
If I thought all I was meant to do was perform in the musicals of those two men together, I was gravely mistaken. Their partnership ended soon after and both moved in opposite directions, leaving me at a loss. Both were geniuses in their own fields, but I didn’t know what I would do if they fell into a rivalry.
As it happened, I was still dithering over what to do, when I got offered a part in the composer’s new musical, because the originally selected actress had injured her leg during rehearsals. I thought that it was just a freak accident, but as I got into rehearsals, I started to wonder. Maybe something, some spiritual force, wanted me to do this for some reason. Maybe this was to be the role that I would be remembered for. Maybe I was going crazy.
Donning my costume and long, grey-haired wig, I stared at myself in the mirror. There was something familiar in the reflection…something in those mascara-lined eyes. I felt like I was at last seeing myself, the true me, for the very first time.
But, still, it wasn’t until I got onto the stage tonight, for the first night, that everything flooded back to me: my past life, my family, my memories. Even though I knew it wasn’t my reality, I felt my eyes welling with tears, as I moved to the front of the stage.
I had done it. I hadn’t meant it to happen this way, but there I was! I had achieved immortality for my life as Grizabella. That sorry figure that gave up her happiness on a failed search for fame…on a shattered dream and shattered life…and all because of how bad her…my life had been, I’d got the fame I’d longed for. It had all been for this. This was the only reason that everything had happened the way it did. My past lives were to make way for my present life. Suddenly it all made sense.
Taking a deep breath, I blink back the tears of joy. I will never forget this night, I vow softly, this night…May the 11th 1981.
Gazing out at the audience - or the darkness where I can hear the audience rustling papers and shifting impatiently in their velvet-covered seats and clearing their throats – I start trembling as I fulfil my lives-long destiny and open my mouth to sing.
The audience fall into a stony silence and I know that this is my time. My place. Right here, right now. I start to sing the song that is my song forever now. My song and the song that eternalizes me. The song that reminded me of who I was. I won’t forget or be forgotten now. “Midnight, not a sound from the pavement, has the moon lost her mem’ry…”
