by Nick Green
But the track straightened. The carriages parted on his side, freeing him enough to climb. Scraping paintwork with his Mau claws he dragged himself, gasping, to the train’s curved roof. The noise stunned him. He had thought tube trains were loud inside, but out here, hemmed in by echoing walls, it was like being in the throat of a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex.
The tunnel’s brick roof would shear off his scalp if he rose out of a crouch. He crawled along the top of the carriage, into the wind. Wheels rasped on rails and it was hard to hear himself think. Why had he come up here? Because. . . because he hoped to do something so stupidly dangerous that even the polecats would think twice about it.
All his life Finsbury Park had been his local station. Nobody knew their back garden better. It served two lines, the Piccadilly (great for getting to the cinemas at Leicester Square) and this one, the Victoria. To switch from one to the other you had to walk across the platforms, for the two lines ran through separate tunnels. There was only one point where those tunnels joined.
Knowing he shouldn’t, Ben looked back. A spark from the electric track whitened the walls, and he saw Kevin’s red hair, the flash of Jeep’s bared teeth. They were clambering onto the carriage roof behind him. Kevin shouted something, lost in the roar. Ben ducked his head and kept crawling. Thirty seconds more was all he needed. Thirty seconds and luck.
Something zinged off the bodywork near his hand. Flying gravel? He looked round again. His pursuers were closer. Jeep held something in his outstretched hand. A T-shaped thing. With a lurch of dread Ben recognised the mini-crossbow. Kevin was still bawling as if someone had pressed his mute button. Stop. Stay there. Ben clung on as the train rattled and bounced. This was it – this was the place. But the thing he had banked on was not happening. His plan collapsed. What a mad gamble it had been. He’d trusted his life to London Transport.
And then it appeared.
For a magical moment it seemed as if the tunnel was walled with mirrors. A second tube train, all lit up, was cruising alongside. In this short stretch of tunnel, where the two lines briefly merged, he’d often stared out of the window to see this synchronised train, bound on a slightly different course. A different course that he now had the power to take.
Jeep rose to one knee. He levelled the crossbow, squinting along the shaft. Kevin yelled inaudibly. Ben caught the gleam of amazement in his eyes. Maybe he couldn’t quite believe it, but Kevin had guessed.
On rushed the trains to the fork where the track began to pull apart like a giant zip. Ben leaped. Parda, the strength catra, burst golden in his mind, catapulting him across the widening gap. He crashed onto the roof of the parallel carriage and pinned himself to it with his claws. In the same instant the trains dived into their separate tunnels, carrying Ben to one side of Finsbury Park and the polecats to the other.
His train pulled into the platform, just one of dozens every day. Passengers spilled out. Ben peered down on the tops of their heads. The doors stayed open an agonisingly long time. He knew that his last-second leap had only bought him breathing space. Should he make a dash for it through the station, or stay put? Running seemed too risky. Staying on this tube line would take him farther away from the Hermitage, and right now that was all he cared about.
The train moved off. Ben crawled to a gap between the cars and let himself in through the door he wasn’t supposed to use. He found a seat and let a station go by, getting off at the next, Turnpike Lane. There weren’t many people around. Ben headed for the escalators. Any of the buses that went down Green Lanes might get him home in time for lunch with Dad. He could say he’d changed his mind –
‘One more step,’ hissed a voice behind him, ‘and it’s a bolt in your back. I’ll do it.’
Ben stood as still as he knew how.
‘Turn around.’
He obeyed. Jeep stood half-hidden in an archway, the arrow of his crossbow pointing at Ben’s heart.
‘Yeah,’ said Ben. ‘I know you would.’
Slow handclaps rang off the tiles. Kevin stepped from another arch.
‘Nice one. That was class.’ He closed until he and Ben were face to face. ‘Really, you’re one slippery guy. A shame you can’t outwit me. Especially not on the Tube.’
Ben took deep breaths, trying to calm his Mau body down. There was a real danger that the wildcat inside him would make him do some dumb cat thing, like trying to fight his way out.
‘Kev, you’re in my firing line,’ said Jeep.
‘And you’re in my slapping line. Gimme that stupid bow before you poke someone’s eye out.’ Kevin peered at Ben. ‘Okay, jumping Jack Flash. Who taught you that stuff?’
Ben counted his remaining options. Just the one, it seemed. Fortunately it was the one Geoff had prepared him for. Time to go back to the script.
‘I learned it from a guy I used to know,’ said Ben. ‘But he went off and left me.’
‘He left you? What was his name?’
This was it. The magic words. ‘He called himself the White Cat.’
Kevin and Jeep blinked.
‘No way,’ said Jeep. ‘That’s the guy who taught–’
‘Not Geoff White?’ said Kevin.
‘Might have been.’ Ben shrugged. ‘I ain’t seen him for months and I don’t want to.’
Kevin took him by the elbow with a firm but not unfriendly grip.
‘There’s someone you really have to meet,’ he said.
THE WEASEL DANCE
‘Your mum and I have been having a talk,’ said Peter Maine. Tiffany paused with her sardines on toast half-chewed. That phrase could mean a divorce or simply that her room needed hoovering.
Mum started laying two places for dinner. ‘We’ve discussed that Paris trip, and we think it’ll be good for you to go.’
‘You what?’ Tiffany spat crumbs. ‘Duh! It’s no use saying yes now. They did the bookings ages ago.’
‘I phoned Mr Devereux on Friday,’ said Mum. ‘There’s a spare place. One of your classmates had to cancel.’
Of course. Jason Wilks had busted his ankle playing rugby.
‘So, I can go to Paris now?’
Dad took a lamb joint out of the fridge. ‘Mais oui!’
Tiffany felt peculiar. Happy, of course, yet in a distant way. School trips, Easter holidays, these seemed alien things at the moment. She remembered to smile back and look tres heureux, but inside she was stewing.
For starters, she was furious with Ben. She was furious with everyone, herself included. All the Cat Kin had known about the plan except her.
‘How could you?’ she yelled at Geoff, as soon as she arrived at the chapel that evening. Geoff didn’t even take Sundays off, and now held Cat Kin meetings whenever anyone could make it. Tiffany had told her parents she was round at Cecile’s to watch a DVD – well and truly scraping her barrel of excuses. ‘How dare you send him back there?’
‘Send him? You can’t send Ben out for a pint of milk.’ Geoff looked tired, his stubble scraggier. ‘This is something he wants to do. For him the Hermitage is unfinished business. He has to go back. And I have to find out what Fisher is up to.’
‘Mrs Powell never sent us into danger on our own,’ Tiffany retorted. ‘She’d have handled it herself.’
‘No doubt.’ Geoff stretched towards the chapel ceiling. ‘But then, Mrs Powell wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. Mrs Powell would never mess up the way I did. Mrs Powell is perfect, isn’t she, Tiffany?’ He dropped his arms with a hiss of spent air. ‘But I’m not. So cut me some slack.’
Tiffany smarted from his words until Cecile caught her at the end of the class.
‘Sometimes,’ said Cecile, ‘you can be a clot.’
‘’Scuse me?’
‘Around Geoff. He misses her too. Maybe more than you do. Don’t you see?’
Yes, she did. Geoff slouched in the corner, trying to unknot a lank of his hair, scratching inside one ear. Had she passed such a man on the street, Tiffany might have given him her loose cha
nge.
‘He’s sore talking about her. It’s obvious,’ said Cecile. ‘And you keep picking at it.’
‘Tell him I’m sorry, then. It doesn’t change the facts. Think, Cecile, where is Ben? What’s happening to him right now?’
Kevin led him along the platform, through the Hermitage’s cardboard dormitory. Wind ruffled Ben’s hair and he heard a roar.
‘Train passing Platform 1,’ said Kevin. ‘They still go through that bit of tunnel. We sleep here on Platform 2, where it’s quieter. This’ll be your bed. It’s just become free.’
Ben looked down at a nest of split grocery boxes.
‘Why has it just become free?’
‘Because no-one else needs it anymore.’ Kevin scratched a spot on his chin. ‘No blanket. Get one before bedtime. We dim the lights at eleven-thirty. After that, no talking. Routine is important.’
Where would he find a blanket? It gave him an excuse to explore. Wandering the Hermitage, Ben found himself thinking of a crab he’d seen on a beach in Spain. Instead of a shell it had a Fanta can. Funny – of course, that would have been a hermit crab. Yet it wasn’t the name that struck a chord. It was the way these kids had managed to make a home out of something so wrong for it.
He climbed the stairs between the unfinished escalators and found what would have been the ticket hall. It reminded him of the one at Seven Sisters. The floor space formed a wonky crescent with the stairways at one end and a tunnel at the other, blocked with concrete. There were two other exits, similarly sealed. Ivy-wreathes of electric wires wove along the skirts of the walls, feeding the forest of brightly burning household lamps. Probably they drew power from the train tracks below. Here was a kind of leisure area, with a TV, stereo system, pool table, even a pinball machine (for a moment he was tempted, then moved away with a shudder). He found a ticket office that was serving as a sort of kitchen, piled high with grocery boxes, a microwave and a fridge.
Another office had been turned into a wardrobe, or rather a mineshaft through a mountain of clothes, exposing seasons of fashions stacked in geological layers. A small blonde girl was working to sort mounds of shopping bags into piles. Ben learned her name was Lisa. She unearthed some Calvin Klein pyjamas, still in their wrapper.
‘We’re out of bedding,’ she said, after more digging. ‘Use this.’
The angora shawls, silk shirts and fake fur coat that she gave him would have paid Mum’s housekeeping for months. Ben said an awkward thank-you over the bundle and took it down to line his cardboard cot. The shirts would pass for sheets and the bundled up shawls could be a pillow. He had almost finished making his bed (another first for him) when he sensed a presence behind him.
‘You’re wanted,’ said Kevin. ‘On the training ground.’
The training ground proved to be the escalator hall. Most of the polecats were already assembled, among them Dean, Gary, Alec and the lad with the big nose whose name turned out to be Ritchie. They had lined up in loose ranks, looking very much like the Cat Kin preparing for a pashki session. Except that these kids didn’t do pashki, did they? They learned mustel-id. Unsure of where to go, Ben hovered at the end of the back row, next to Antonia. Kevin, up at the front where Geoff or Mrs Powell would have stood, put him straight.
‘Not you. You watch. Over there.’
He went to sit at the hall’s edge, his back to a wall of locked wooden doors, utility cupboards perhaps. Something troubled him about the group. He realised he was looking in vain for two familiar faces. Thomas and Hannah weren’t here. He hadn’t seen them since he arrived, nor had anyone mentioned their names. Maybe there was an innocent explanation.
Kevin got the session going and Ben almost relaxed – it was so familiar. Those bends and balances, the stretches that made his calves ache in sympathy. Ritchie and Lisa were the wobbliest ones but Dean was gifted, he could tell, and so was the spindly Alec. Jeep was one of the best.
As the lesson progressed he noticed subtle differences. A stretch like pashki’s Scratching Tree became even more extravagant, so that the wave of reaching bodies swelled even higher. Coiled feline poises were replaced by looser, shiftier stances, and Eth walking had transformed into a frantic bounce. Most strikingly, no-one ever stood still, so that instead of pashki’s weightless grace the polecats gave off a feverish giddiness. Mustel-id was like pashki, yet unlike. One was the flow of a gliding stream, the other, a water-tap turned full on.
Ben’s interest became fascination. He knew he had a nagging worry, something about two children who weren’t here, but couldn’t quite place it now. He saw Kevin make a gesture like the AOK sign, but with the thumb to the middle finger, palm out. The straight fingers formed a W.
The crowd began to move as a single body. They swayed first one way, then another, resembling dancing cobras, though the only music was the shuffle of their feet on the concrete. Keeping track of any individual was too hard. Now he would see them on the hall’s far side, then he would feel their draught as they passed close. He couldn’t tell if the swaying forms were near or far, or both at the same time. The surrounding walls melted into darkness to leave only the figures writhing before him.
And a shadow.
That thought came from nowhere. He did not see it but he sensed it: another presence, bigger and bulkier than the rest, yet even harder to pinpoint. . . an extra figure gliding in and out of the crowd. It wasn’t Kevin. At the same time there came a stir in the patterns of the dance, like the flurry through the pigeons of Trafalgar Square when a pest-controlling falcon crossed the sky. In sudden fear he tried to stand and found himself glued to the floor. There was something else here in the hall, something frightful, and he couldn’t move.
Even as the dread ate him up, one corner of his mind held firm. It understood. This was no mere exercise. This was for him. He had read about how weasels danced to mesmerise their prey, muddle their wits and break their will to escape. This must be how the polecats subdued their new recruits. Now it was hard to blink, hard to think. He saw the dance, the dance, only the dance. He stared, helpless as a rabbit.
No. His inner cat seethed indignantly. I am no rabbit.
His eyes finally got a grip on the tangle of bodies. They picked the vision apart with catty disdain, until the hypnotic patterns unravelled to become just a lot of clowns prancing about.
‘Stop.’
The polecats froze at a shout. He saw the new figure among them. It was tall, taller than Kevin, and oddly drained of light, so that at first he mistook it for someone’s elongated shadow. Then he knew what it reminded him of. Mum’s best friend Lorelei had once kept a statuette in her living room, a man-shape twisted out of bronze wire. It had frightened him so much when he was little that he wouldn’t be left alone with it. Now here it was, life-sized and alive.
The man’s arms were cables of muscle. Cropped hair, light brown, revealed the roundness of his skull. He turned into the light, but the shadow clung to his features. Was this some kind of ghost? No. The face was tattooed with spectacled markings, so that it appeared to be wearing a hangman’s mask or weeping huge dark tears. The figure’s clothes, a sleeveless tunic and trousers, were rags of fur stitched together.
Ben thought of a dark stinking shed, a starving child chained in the corner. He was looking at Martin Fisher.
The polecats shrank back as if from a fire. Fisher turned, his eyes sweeping over them, coming to rest on Ben. Fisher walked towards him. With every step he appeared to grow until the lofty roof seemed too low to hold him. Leaning over Ben he cocked his head to one side.
‘Hello. How are you?’
‘Er,’ said Ben. ‘Okay.’
‘My name is Martin Fisher. What’s yours?’
‘Ben,’ said Ben.
‘I am very well, thank you,’ said Fisher. He frowned suddenly, as if someone had corrected him. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’
Ben’s skin wanted to crawl away and hide. He had the feeling that a puppet was speaking, not a person at all.
&n
bsp; ‘Make yourself at home,’ said Fisher. ‘The Hermitage has everything you want. Kevin has looked after you well.’
Was that a question? ‘Yes. . . he has.’
‘Kevin has looked after you well?’ Fisher repeated. ‘Yes, he has.’ He nodded thoughtfully. Then, in a single movement, he stooped and lifted Ben to his feet. He was as strong as a machine.
‘Kevin is my friend,’ said Fisher. ‘He told me about you. You are the cat child.’
Ben was too afraid to nod.
‘You are the White Cat’s child,’ said Fisher.
Ben steeled himself. Geoff had rigorously coached him on how to play this. He hoped Geoff was right.
‘He used to teach me pashki,’ said Ben. ‘Then one day he disappeared. That was last Christmas. I haven’t seen him since.’
‘Haven’t seen him since,’ said Fisher.
He circled away. Ben stared at the fur of his tunic, fearing to see tabby, calico, tortoiseshell. No, it was the warm, brown beige of mink. Mad Ferret wore the skins of his cousins. He reappeared suddenly on Ben’s blind side.
‘I am very well, thank you.’ Again that frown, a facial tick. Then: ‘I am very unhappy.’
The air was as still as an exam hall. Ben could no longer hear the polecats breathing. The silence ruptured as a train passed Platform 1. Martin Fisher’s face twisted.
‘I am sorry about the noise. People are noisy. They go by in their trains. They trample everywhere. The streets. The tunnels. Their breath gets in my mouth. There is no hiding from them. Not even here. Not even here.’ His voice rasped like a wheel on a rail. ‘Not even here.’
They were back in exam silence. Kevin coughed and Fisher snapped out of his trance.
‘Welcome, Ben.’ His mouth stretched in a smile. ‘Welcome to the Hermitage. The Hermitage has everything you want. Kevin has looked after you–’ The tilt of the head, the frown. He dropped to one knee and took Ben’s hand in a painful grip. When he spoke next, the puppet-like manner was gone. It seemed for the first time that Fisher’s words came from a living person inside.
