Inchworm (13 page)

I am the only mourner at Mr Robin’s funeral. I bury him under the beech tree, after saying a few words: ‘I only knew you a short time but I loved your voice and you brought happiness to me.’ My sad words make me cry. I sing the first verse of
All Things Bright and Beautiful.
Sparrows and a blackbird hop around at the back of the garden keeping a respectful distance; rooks in the high branches are suitably dressed in black. I place a few sprigs of hebe and a daffodil on the grave and a cross made of two twigs tied with cotton. I know he wasn’t Christian, but it makes me feel better. When I was little I used to make graves for butterflies, mice, shrews and lizards. Anything the cats half ate I would carefully place in a matchbox or wrap in tissue and bury in the garden. Now I leave the corpses for burying beetles to lay their eggs on and bury – Nature’s recyclers.

Mr Robin was different. We had a special relationship. He trusted me. Into my mind has popped a book I had when I was small –
The Wise Robin
– a Ladybird Book. He too was called Mr Robin – Bob to his wife. She wanted tinsel from a Christmas tree to decorate her nest and persuaded her husband to get it. He was trapped on the tree inside the house on Christmas Day and a child, assuming he was a toy bird, wanted him as a present. He had to sing to prove he was real and then they let him out – minus the tinsel. When the tree was thrown out after Christmas there were pieces of tinsel still on it and so Mrs Robin had her smart shiny decor after all.

It’s been too sad to learn a new word.

FORSAKE—TO DESERT; ABANDON

ANTHROPOLOGIST—SOMEONE WHO STUDIES THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN ITS WIDEST SENSE (
sounds like it should be someone who apologises for man
)

MUMMY STILL HAS
an infection and is being kept in a separate room, so still no visiting for me. Daddy goes in the afternoon for half an hour and then is back.

‘Gussie, I have to go somewhere. Will you be all right?’

No, I won’t, is what I want to say but, ‘Fine, no probs,’ comes out of my mouth. ‘How long will you be?’

‘Oh, a good couple of hours.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No, you can’t do that, no. Take your pills if I’m not back. Watch a movie. Phone Willy if you need anything. I’ve told him I have to go out. Have a meeting with…’

‘Why can’t I come with you?’ I don’t listen to his reasons. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

It’s raining too hard to go out for a walk. Didn’t go yesterday either. I walk around the flat for twenty minutes instead. I pretend the sofa is the lake with swans and ducks floating by; the side table is a block of shops, the vase of orange dahlias is the flower seller’s stall. I stop to pat a spaniel puppy (a stool) and talk to a jogger (the coat rack) who is doing up her laces.
What a lovely day. Do you come here often? Only when it rains
.

I could phone the police and shop Daddy for leaving me on my own, I’m sure it’s illegal. I’m only twelve, for goodness sake. I think you have to fourteen to be left on your own at home.

It could be worse: he could have asked the Snow Queen to look after me. I have a sulk, blowing bubbles with my spit as I did when I was little. I squeeze out a few tears, missing home, wishing Mum was here, wishing Mr Robin hadn’t been killed, wishing I hadn’t had a heart and lung transplant, wishing I was a million miles away and someone else.

Who would I like to be?

David Attenborough, I think. He spends all his time travelling to interesting natural places and learning all about insects and birds and animals. That sounds like a perfect job to me.

I start to watch some boring cartoons then give up after half an hour. Instead I make a recording of the rain. Maybe I could be a sound recordist for radio. That must be a really interesting job, listening to birds, animals, night sounds in forests, traffic sounds, sea sounds, the sounds a house makes when it is empty of people.

At home we have a catalogue from an exhibition of pictures made by the tracks that wild creatures make at dusk. The artist the animals’ scratch marks and scatterings, worm slitherings and frog jump marks – on a glass plate coated on one side with a layer of carbon. A beetle’s footprints look like tiny tank tracks. A slowworm made a pattern like someone cleaning windows, great smears and swirls of white on the blackened glass plate. There’s one picture made up of the prints of a cat and a mouse. The cat’s paw-prints look like a dinosaur’s compared with the tiny mouse prints.

Carbon doesn’t hurt the animals. It’s the one element that all living things share in common. It forms the building blocks of life, and is ‘the ultimate destiny of all life.’ Perhaps I could do a sound version of that. The tiny scratching of ants marching; badgers snuffling and their long sharp claws digging for worms. That’s their main food. They must have to work hard to get enough to fill them up. When we lived on the cliff we put out peanuts and leftovers for the badgers. They ate fish and chips, chicken carcasses, curry, anything except green vegetables. They were probably the best-fed badger family in Cornwall, if not the world. Now we’re gone they’ll have to make do with worms, bugs and slugs – their usual diet.

When I play back the recording I hear what sounds like Mr Robin’s alarm call, a constant
wheep
,
wheep
, and I go to the patio door to look to see what he’s making such a fuss about, before I remember that he is dead. There’s a small bundle of sodden fluff on the step. I slide the door open. It’s a kitten, about five or six weeks old. Poor little thing, it’s shivering and half drowned. I pick him up and he spits and hisses at me, trying to look fierce but he’s frightened. I wrap him in a towel and dry him carefully. It’s a tom I think, you can’t really tell at this age – completely black. Where’s his mother? It’s raining too hard for me to go out and search. Maybe his mother is the scruffy stray that killed Mr Robin? Why didn’t she take the bird for her other babies to eat? Some mother! Or maybe she’s old and sick and can’t feed her babies properly and has had to leave each one on someone’s doorstep, hoping they will be adopted.

I find a boot box and line it with one of my
T
-shirts. How am I going to feed him? I find an eyedropper in the bathroom cabinet and try feeding the kitten with warm milk mixed with raw egg. He doesn’t like it, but licks his lips and wipes it off his chin with his paws in a very adult cat way. He is still shivering, from cold or fear. His paw pads are black and his eyes are the colour of forget-me-nots. What shall I call him? I give him a saucer of water mixed with a very little milk. His nose hits the water first and he draws back in surprise. He laps with difficulty, almost falling into it in his haste to drink. I find a tin of tuna and mash up a little. He likes that. Oh yes, he does like that.

He’s now stretched out, fat belly up on my lap, purring loudly. He’s so happy. I’ll call him Happy, or maybe Sunny. Look at the time! Daddy said two hours but it’s two and a half hours since he went out. He’ll be home any time now. Oh God, what am I to do? I take the kitten to my room and put him in his box in the wardrobe, but Daddy still has clothes there. I’ll put the box with the sleeping kitten under my bed for now and work out a plan later. I remember reading somewhere that kittens who have just left their mother are happier if they feel the pulse of a clock, like a heart beat, so I wrap up Mum’s travel alarm clock in a flannel and place it by the kitten. It would drive me potty if I had to sleep with a clock. I think he might be cold, so I fill my hot water bottle for him and wrap one of Mum’s woolly scarves around it so he doesn’t burn himself. He looks very cosy. The rain’s stopped, so I go out and look in the shed. It smells of cat. There’s a nest of old newspapers in a corner, slightly bloody. This is where my kitten was born. No sign of the rest of the litter. The mother must have moved them. They do that all the time, if they think there’s danger.

The phone rings.

‘Gussie, it’s me. How’s Daddy managing? Is he looking after you?’

‘Yes, Mum. Guess what I’ve found…’

‘Get him for me, I need to talk to him.’

‘He’s not actually here at the moment…’

‘Not there? Where the bloody hell is he? He’s supposed to be taking care of you.’

‘Don’t panic, I’m fine. He had to go out. I’m cooking supper tonight anyway – pasta and tuna.’ (I hope the kitten has left enough tuna for the sauce.) ‘Gussie, I’m so sorry this has happened.’ She’s crying.

‘Don’t be silly, you can’t help it.’ I’m crying too. In the end I don’t tell her about the kitten. I’ll save it for when she’s feeling better. She’s got enough worries.

Another phone call, very faint. Alistair still in Bulgaria, expecting a flight out tomorrow but will have to go straight back to work. He’ll try and get to see Mum before he gets on the train to Cornwall. I think that’s what he said.

Daddy takes me for my check-up and biopsy. He’s attentive and solemn. ‘You’re a brave girl, Guss, I’m proud of you,’ he says, and I feel warm inside. The nurses are all agog – what a silly word! They think he’s handsome. Well, he is: as handsome as a film star. Maybe I should take this opportunity, when he’s feeling positive about me, to tell him about the kitten? But he’s flirting with Soo Yong, the pretty cardiac nurse; the moment passes. Anyway, I know he won’t want to keep it, what with his cream furnishings and hectic life.

Precious is here today, also having tests. He doesn’t look too happy.

When we are alone – Daddy has gone for a coffee – I tell him about the kitten. He isn’t listening.

‘What’s up, Presh? Is something wrong?’

‘Yes, Gussie. My father and sisters cannot get out of the country. There are too many problems.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He looks so sad and I feel useless. I put out my hand and touch his. It’s cold and smooth. ‘Would you like to visit us?’

‘In London?’

‘Yes. We’re staying at my father’s flat in Southend Green, it’s near the Heath. You could see my kitten.’

‘I would like that.’ His smile is huge. I remove my hand. I think of Brett, who took my hand to help me when we stepped out of a boat in the dark in the Scillies.

We swap telephone numbers and addresses. Everything is fine with my tests. No more rejection – touch wood. Mum is making me superstitious. She’s always touching wood. I never used to but now I do. It can’t hurt. I also throw spilt salt over my shoulder. In fact I use my left hand to throw it over my right shoulder, then my right hand to throw some over my left shoulder, just in case.

‘Can we stop at the chemist’s on the way home for a new hot water bottle?’

‘What’s wrong with the old one?’

‘Perished.’ I’m such a good liar. Must watch that.

There’s a new robin in the garden. He isn’t so brilliantly scarlet-breasted as the late Mr Robin, but he sings beautifully. I’ve put out crumbs for him, no mealworms. I better not tempt him to get too friendly in case the stray gets him. I would love to be able to tame the stray, but I haven’t seen her since I found the kitten. Perhaps she’s lying low, or she’s gone travelling, on the hunt for another mate. I wonder what happened to her other kittens?

Daddy and I go to see Mum. She’s in an ordinary ward now, sharing with three other women. One of them keeps sitting up and shouting, ‘Jesus loves you!’ An elderly man with red-rimmed eyes keeps wandering by wearing a backless hospital gown and wheeling his drip stand. I try not to look at his skinny bare bum.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
or what? Mum looks worse than she did before, I think, though Daddy doesn’t seem to notice. Alistair has visited and got the train back to Cornwall.

‘I can’t stay much longer with Gussie, Lara. I have to go away in a week’s time.’

‘But I thought you said…’

‘Something’s come up.’

‘Oh, God, Jackson, can’t you ever think of anyone except yourself?’ People are staring at us. I leave them to it. I’m no good at trying to keep the peace. The old lady sits up and points at me: ‘Jesus loves you!’

I have made the kitten a litter tray from a stainless steel baking dish lined with paper and earth. I haven’t seen Daddy do much cooking in his glossy kitchen apart from opening tins and microwaving things so I don’t think he’ll miss it. I keep my door closed with a notice blue-tacked on –
PRIVATE, NO ENTRY
– if he wants to come in for something, I just hope the kitten is out of the way. Mother cats don’t recognise their kittens after they’ve been missing for a couple of days, so there’s no point in trying to find her and reintroduce Sunny into the litter.

Sunny is less frightened of me now, though he still hisses when I go to pick him up. He looks so funny, fur on end, black whiskers twitching, cornflower eyes glaring at me. His little claws are very sharp. He is so black when his eyes are closed I can’t tell which end is which, even with my specs on. When I put him in the tray, after each meal, he tries to eat the earth, licking at it, or tumbles over on his nose, his little tail stuck up straight like a quivering coiled wire.

When Daddy goes out I take the kitten on a tour of the flat. We sit on the sofa and watch
Bambi
but I start crying even before the bit where Bambi’s mother dies, so I turn off. I feed him some tinned sardines and he eats far too much and is sozzled, round-tummied and completely out of it. What am I going to do with him? I’m sure Daddy would love him if he gave him a chance. Perhaps not, though.