Inchworm (17 page)

VERNACULAR—BELONGING TO THE COUNTRY OF ONE’S BIRTH; A NATIVE (USUALLY APPLIED ONLY TO LANGUAGE OR IDIOM); ONE’S MOTHER TONGUE

MUM ONCE HAD
a ginger tom that lived to be twenty. He was saved from drowning at sea by Grandpop. Tiddles was one of a litter that the ship’s cook was throwing overboard in a sack. He used to walk round the block following her and Foo the dog (the cat, not Grandpop or the ship’s cook). He hated the Pekinese – and hid to pounce and attack him at every opportunity. Tiddles I mean. I giggle at the thought of Grandpop hiding and leaping out to attack the dog. I love when Mum tells me about when she was a child. It’s difficult to think of her as a little girl when I know she has grey hair and wrinkles and her body is falling apart. She hates growing old, she says – bits falling off. I resist the temptation to say that I wish I might be able to grow old. Actually I don’t really. Who would look after me?

Beelzebub runs to me as soon as I open the bedroom door and runs up my legs as if I’m a tree trunk. Her purr is getting very loud. I have bought her a toy mouse that rattles when she pats it. She was very dubious about it at first and backed away, but when I threw it to her she leapt up and caught it. Instinct. She growls at it like a dog. She was a tightrope walker in another life, I’m sure, as she doesn’t like to walk on the floor. Instead she tiptoes around on the chest of drawers, the shelves, bed, chairs, curtain rails and tops of the blinds. I take her outside into the garden to have the first touch of grass under her paws. She watches a blackbird flit in and out of the bushes, her teeth chittering in excitement. I have seen no sign of her
Mutti
. Poor thing, I hope she’s all right. Beelzebub sniffs at something fascinating on the grass and does that funny thing that cats do – lifts her top lip and wrinkles her nose as if she’s sneering. She is
flehming
.
Flehmen
is a German word for which there is no translation. Cats have an extra organ for scenting, other than their nose. It’s called a Jacobson’s organ. When they open their mouth and inhale it maximises the number of scent particles that get to the Jacob’s organ for analysis and relays the information to the very small brain. I read that in a book called
A Cat is Watching
, written by Roger A Caras, that I found in the second-hand bookshop in Flask Walk. What a clever cat – she has had a wee on the earth. ‘Yes, Bubba, it’s a large litter tray, especially for you.’ There’s a blustery wind; I am taking her in, though she spits and folds back her ears when I pick her up.

Dad is coming over and bringing food. It will be like when we all lived together.

It wasn’t. Or maybe it was. They had a row because he forgot to buy pears and the
Guardian
. More importantly, he forgot to replenish her whisky supply. She had to drink wine instead. So what? I don’t think she should be so critical when we are depending on him to look after us at the moment. We want to watch
Gone With the Wind
again but Daddy refuses, says it’s a girlie movie, so we end up watching
Bringing Up Baby
. It’s still hilarious after four viewings, but Daddy doesn’t watch it to the end. He goes back to the Snow Queen
.
Masochist! After he’s gone, we release Beelzebub from her luxury prison and she watches Baby the leopard in the movie with us. We lie together feet to feet on the three-seater sofa under a double duvet, with another underneath. Beelzebub must think she’s in Heaven, not Hell, which is where the original Beelzebub lives.

I have saved a white furry moth from probable death by kitten. It must have come in the window last night but was very well disguised as part of a muslin curtain. Daddy has blinds
and
floaty muslin curtains. I don’t think it’s an ermine moth, but it might be. It is small and plump bodied – its body lemon yellow with an orange bottom, wings white and legs and head parts hairy as if it wears a white fur coat. I am going to the library tomorrow to find more books on moths and butterflies. You can’t have too many books about insects. There’s a wonderful one in the local bookshop that has buttons on the front cover, that, when you press them, buzz like a bee or whine like a mosquito.

I’d like to buy it but I suppose it’s a bit young for me. Maybe I could buy it for Gabriel. He’d love it. I could take it home as a present to him for looking after my cats.

Beelzebub has struck again – this time she has made a big tear in the black mosquito net over Daddy’s bed. I caught her in the act, tangled up and scratching her way out of it. A black kitten tangled in a black net. I took a photo before I rescued her. Does that mean I’m heartless? Maybe I could be a war photographer – dispassionate behind my lens? Oh shit, can I mend it? Can I replace it? How can I hide it? In the end I have to tell Mum and she sews it together for now, ties it in a knot, and says she’ll have to see if she can find another.

‘Trust your father to have a black one – bloody poseur.’

With luck, he’ll never untie it and see the holes, or perhaps he’ll think he’s got moths. Mum has confiscated the cashmere scarf from Bubba’s box. She was quite cross about it. And the clock. So Beelzebub now shares my bed. She sits on the pillow and murmurs into my ear. I realise that Mum finds it quite difficult to be angry with me
PT
. And I find it difficult to be horrid to her
PH
(Post Hysterectomy). She is rather weepy still, but looking better than she did in hospital.

In the morning I find a piece of black thread on my pyjamas. I do what Grandma showed me – let the thread float to rest on the floor. It will fall into the shape of the first letter of the name of the boy you like best. There – it’s a ‘b’ or maybe a ‘p’. Or a mirror image of a ‘p’ or a ‘b’. How confusing. It’s only a silly game anyway.

Because it’s a sunny morning, after all my boring tests and drugs and filling in the log, I go outside with Beelzebub and while I’m not watching she disappears. I search under the bushes and peer into the trees but I think she climbed over the fence into the next garden. I call her and call her but she doesn’t come. Mum goes next door but there’s no one in and she can’t get to the back garden. I am frantic. Where is she?

‘She’ll come when she’s hungry,’ says Mum.

‘But she’ll get lost. She hasn’t been out of the garden before.’

Clouds cover the sky and it’s suddenly cold so we have to close the door. I am so worried, I telephone Willy and ask him to look out of his back window for her but he doesn’t see her. Of course, he can’t see very well, I forgot.

Daddy arrives, carries out full dustbin bags, brings shopping in. Hoovers. Cleans the bathroom and kitchen. He has lifted the heavy pots and pans down from high shelves to worktop height so Mum doesn’t have to stretch or lift them far. He is like a male au pair. I did have an au pair, once, or rather, Mum had. Kyoko, Japanese. I apparently made her life hell. She wasn’t the least bit interested in looking after me, though. All she did was bow and smile at Daddy and feed him homemade sweets. She made me fried bread with sugar on. It worked a treat: stopped me bawling. Not too good for my teeth, however. Mum got rid of her and gave up her freelance work to look after me full-time.

What if Bubba finds her way back to Daddy’s garden while he’s here? What will I do? I lurk by the patio door looking for her.

‘Didn’t you have a cleaner?’ Mum asks Daddy.

‘Yes, had to let her go.’

‘Yeah?

‘Yeah, had a thing about me. You know, unwelcome attention.’

‘What? Unwelcome? I don’t believe it. Wasn’t she pretty enough for you?’

‘Ugly as sin, as a matter of fact, but she seemed to think she was some exotic flower that I couldn’t wait to pluck. Russian girl. Shame, she was a good cleaner. Eyebrows met in the middle. Scared me shitless.’ Mum and I are rolling about laughing, while Daddy looks quite glum. ‘Haven’t had time to find another yet.’ Poor Daddy, he does have women problems.

He’s gone. I dress in my winter woollies, go out again and call my kitten but she is nowhere to be seen. I feel so guilty. I should have watched her; she’s too adventurous.

‘Beelzebub! Bubba, there you are, you naughty little kitty. Come here.’ I pick her up and take her inside.

‘What’s she got in her mouth?’ Bubba is looking smug and confused and as if she is trying not to open her mouth. Mum feels inside and brings out a tiny goldfish – no bite marks, but badly sucked. ‘Good heavens! Where on earth…? I’ll put it down the lavatory.’

‘No Mum, it might be alive.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘Let’s put it in water, just in case.’

We pour water into my bathroom washbasin and put the fish into it. After floating on its side for about a minute it suddenly quivers and starts swimming, first on its side, but eventually it recovers fully and swims the right way up.

‘Ohmygod, Mum, it worked.’

Now I have two creatures to hide from Dad. Where can I keep a fish? What do they eat? How am I going to explain how a live goldfish got here? Will he believe that a fish eagle escaped from the zoo and flew over his garden and dropped it? Or a heron, yes a heron would be more believable, or I won it at a fair on the Heath. Daddy won’t have noticed that there isn’t a fair there at the moment.

‘It must have come from a garden pond,’ says Mum.

‘I suppose. Couldn’t we keep it for Daddy?’

‘No, and don’t you touch it, either. Remember in the cardiac transplant leaflet? Fish carry disease and you have to wear gloves to handle them.’

‘Gloves?’ I imagine woolly gloves.

‘Rubber gloves, silly.’

Mum says she’ll ask the neighbours if they’ve lost a fish. It’s too cold now for me to go banging on doors and, anyway, she says, she has no idea what maniacs might be living in the street. She puts the fish into a plastic bowl and sets off. Ten minutes later, she’s back, triumphant. ‘It was two doors away, a pond in the back garden. Lovely woman called Lily. She’s lost ten this year.’

‘Ponds?’

‘Goldfish, stupid.’

‘Maybe Beelzebub’s mother took the rest?’ I say. ‘And she’s inherited a taste for them.’ I give her a generous ration of pilchards in tomato sauce for her tea. She purrs in appreciation. ‘What a clever naughty wicked thief you are Bubba.’

I have another read of the cardiac transplant leaflet to see if Mum’s right about fish. She is. Also, it says to beware of cats and dogs because of animal-carried diseases and to have animals checked by a vet before you go home to them. Oh bloody hell, there’s all these new problems come with my new organs. I’ll let Mum worry about them. I’ve got enough worries. No way am I giving up cats.

Now that Bubba’s back I can go to the library. In
Eyewitness Insects
I’ve found an interesting item on moths in Australia. I wonder if Brett knows about it?

In the Bogong mountains of New South Wales, moths are collected from rock crevices and cooked in hot sand. The aborigines remove the heads, grind the bodies into a paste and bake them as cakes. Then they have a feast. The moths provide valuable fat to their diet.

Another fascinating fact: the Indian moon moth has the most acute sense of smell of any insect. It can detect the pheremones of a mate from a distance of eleven kilometres. I must remember to tell people that. I think it’s interesting but it could be a great conversation stopper. I’m not very good at conversation.

I haven’t had much practice as I only seem to hang around with Mum or other old people these days. I don’t really know how to communicate with people my own age. I get the feeling that Summer thinks I’m like… I don’t know… an alien or something. When I go back to school things will change, I hope.

I’ll take note of the language, the argot, the slang. I think kids still say ‘cool’ anyway.

Willy, Mum and I walk together on the Heath or up to Hampstead most days, to the second-hand bookshop when it’s not pouring with rain and to his allotment sometimes for tea and biscuits. I’ve bought him three china mugs with smiley faces on. We’re an odd looking trio. Very English eccentric – except that Willy is German. We walk into a flock of pigeons feeding on breadcrumbs. They rise in a tumult of applause around our heads. Mum says it reminds her of sheets cracking in the wind on our washing line in St Ives, and she can almost smell them – her favourite sound and smell. My favourite sounds are of waves shifting sand and gulls wailing. My favourite smell is of seaweed and Charlie’s fur. I ask Willy what his favourite smell is and his favourite sound.

‘A single malt whisky poured into a cut-glass tumbler. It sounds and smells like the epitome of Bliss.’

‘Ah, yes,’ says Mum, ‘I go along with that.’

Before my transplant, I saw everything as if for the last time. I drank life greedily, wanting to gulp at every sensation, every experience. I was packing it all in, like speed-reading. Now, what’s the difference? I see things as they are, but they are brighter, more vivid, because they are mine for a little longer. Precious but sad. I can gaze on a tree full of rooks and see how they are tattered coats, folded umbrellas, hunched witches, and love them because they are a gift to my senses. I have had a reprieve, like someone on death row. I have been moved to another cell, further away from the electric chair, where I can see daylight for the first time. I can take a little more time to savour the sounds, smells, tastes and sights of everyday life, knowing I have a limited time to enjoy them. It’s not sad, exactly, but poignant.