Solomon's Tale

by Sheila Jeffries

  Jessica stood up and transformed herself into a dragon. She arched her back, flattened her ears, blackened her eyes and lashed her tail. Her fur bristled until she was twice her usual size. She stepped towards the dog, her mouth open showing an array of ferocious little fangs, and she yowled and growled.

  ‘Mummy, look at Jessica!’ squeaked John, and we all stood like statues, watching.

  The dog stopped barking. It hesitated, then slouched up to Jessica, snuffling and snorting, its glinty eyes fixed on her. She looked so small, like a toy cat against the massive bulk of the dog. Still she inched towards it, glaring and spitting. Then she sprang forward and lashed out with a long paw. Her claws flashed in the sunshine as she caught the dog right on its sensitive nose.

  It yelped and backed away, rubbing its hurt nose with big soft paws. Not content with one slash, Jessica flew at the dog and boxed its ears. It fled, yelping and whimpering, back up the path, its tail tucked in and its ears flapping.

  John and Ellen, and even Joe cheered and clapped Jessica.

  ‘What a gutsy little cat!’

  But Jessica wasn’t interested in accolades. She sat down again and resumed washing as if nothing had happened.

  Later on, the little man with the purple aura came walking down, without the dog. Ellen gave him a mug of hot tea and he sat in the caravan slurping it and apologising.

  ‘He wasn’t meant to be out. Some idiot left the gate open,’ he explained. ‘He’s a rescue dog. Daft as a brush he is, daft as a brush. And he’s all I’ve got since my wife died.’

  I walked along the seat and stepped carefully onto his lap, looking up at him. His name was Nick, and his scratchy old coat smelt of dog, but I tried not to mind as I rubbed and purred. Nick was horrible, and so was his dog, but I could see the loneliness in his eyes. I spread myself out, stretching my long paws over his heart.

  ‘What a beautiful cat,’ Nick said. ‘He’s got a shine on him, and so friendly. Daft as a brush.’

  ‘That’s Solomon,’ explained Ellen. ‘And he’s a big softie.’

  After Nick had gone, Ellen picked me up and cuddled me.

  ‘You’ve done something really important, Solomon,’ she said. ‘Nick is the campsite owner and we’ve got to stay friends with him. Otherwise he could chuck us out.’

  I felt proud. I was a healing cat. What I did was just as important as Jessica’s moment of glory. I loved her for her courageous performance with the dog. She was a star and she’d been given a whole tin of sardines to herself.

  After that encounter, the dog, whose name was Paisley, would not come anywhere near us. When Nick took him out on the long lead, Paisley made a wide circle around our caravan, and Jessica would magically appear and sit on the steps ostentatiously washing, just to wind him up. Paisley never barked at me again, or at John. We were part of Queen Jessica’s domain.

  Pam-next-door soon became a friend. She had a dog, if you could call it a dog. It was smaller than Jessica and had legs like a fairy, and ears like wings. Pam dressed it up in tartan coats and put bows in its hair, and it travelled around in the basket of the shiny white bike she rode out on every day, pedalling vigorously.

  Pam didn’t like Joe. She would only come in if he wasn’t there, and when he talked to her she looked at him sceptically as if she knew his darkest secrets.

  Joe never did finish fitting the puss flap. It stayed under the caravan where he had chucked it, and there was just a square hole in the door. As autumn turned to winter, the wind and rain howled through the hole and it was freezing in the caravan. At night Ellen wedged a cushion against it, and Jessica and I learned to push it aside when we wanted to go out.

  On windy nights it was scary inside the caravan. It rocked and trembled, and the sycamore trees flung broken twigs and branches down onto the roof. It was so alarming that I felt the need to find a refuge somewhere outside; a dry safe hole where Jessica and I could go, even in the night. So I spent long hours exploring on my own.

  I walked up and down the lane that ran past the campsite. I made friends with people who walked along it, especially a girl with long dark hair. She told me her name was Karenza, and she always stopped to stroke me. One day she picked me up and we had a real bonding session, touching noses and rubbing each other’s faces. Sometimes I followed Karenza home and peeped at her cottage, which was a long way down the lane. She had cats. They were always on the wall or round the cottage door, or sometimes sitting in the window looking fat and contented. Lucky cats. Karenza’s cottage was top of my list of refuges.

  One moonlit night I climbed over the hedge and into the sycamore copse. I wanted to explore the deep dark holes I’d seen, and find out who lived in them. First I climbed several different trees, some of them quite high, and established comfortable perches – places I could run to quickly if necessary. I had a mad half hour there on my own and practised some high-speed manoeuvres up and down my chosen trees, my paws dashing through the dry sycamore leaves with a spectacular rustling.

  Then I heard something moving, sensed it, smelled it. From the safety of my tree, I watched black and white creatures come shuffling out of the holes. They had pointed faces with a white stripe that shone in the moonlight. They were quiet, snuffly animals with wise black eyes and a cloud of fur like thistledown. Badgers.

  Carefully I slid down from the tree. I wanted to meet a badger. I wanted to see inside one of those big holes. I wanted to know if a cat like me would be welcome to shelter there in an emergency.

  At first the badgers were snorty and aggressive with me and I had to keep jumping into trees to get out of their way. It took weeks of patient hanging around, purring and pretending to be asleep before I gained the privilege of a nose-to-nose hello with the oldest and wisest badger. I wasn’t allowed into their holes, but one night the old badger led me along the base of the stone hedge and showed me a hole which they had made and abandoned. It was perfect. Lined with moss and cosy dry grass, facing south, and big enough for two cats to curl up and sleep.

  That winter night I was glad I’d found a refuge. As I trotted home through the sycamore copse I heard an old familiar sound coming from the caravan.

  Shouting and screaming.

  GOING TO THE VET

  The caravan door crashed open and Jessica came flying out. Ellen was screaming at Joe.

  ‘Don’t hurt Jessica! If you touch her I’ll …’

  ‘You’ll what?’

  Joe loomed in the doorway like a thunderstorm, his car keys jingling in his hand. Jessica had dived into the hedge, a huge chicken leg in her mouth. A plate came whizzing out after her, with peas and potatoes bouncing onto the grass. I loved roast potatoes, so I made a note of where they landed as I watched from one of my safe perches.

  ‘If you’d come in for your supper when I called you, it wouldn’t have happened, Joe,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s natural for a cat to want to grab food they like the look of. And you should know that. I’m not cooking for you if you’re too busy drinking to turn up.’

  ‘Lecture, lecture, lecture!’ Joe mocked. ‘That’s all you ever do now.’

  ‘And look how you’ve wasted that food, Joe. We can’t AFFORD decent food very often.’ Ellen couldn’t seem to stop yelling. She was close to tears. ‘Chucking good food away is an abuse of the whole of creation.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s why you sat there and let the cat nick my supper. Or is that my fault as well? Blame Joe. That’s what you always do. I’m going to the pub to get a pasty, where I’m going to sit and eat it without some cow nagging me.’

  ‘But you can’t drive, Joe. You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Just watch me.’ Joe got in the car and revved it. A cloud of stinking smoke came out of the exhaust. ‘And who cares if I don’t come back? Some home this is.’

  ‘It’s your fault we lost our lovely house,’ cried Ellen and she bent over, clutching her stomach as Joe drove off. ‘That place was special to me. It was my mum’s home. She planted the cherry tree and I played under it wh
en I was a child. I miss it all so much.’ Then she crept into the caravan as if the pain of her words was breaking her in half.

  I waited until Joe’s car had gone squealing out of the campsite. I listened, and I could hear Jessica rustling and growling as she ate her stolen dinner under the hedge. From the caravan came the sound of Ellen trying to comfort John, and the clink of plates being stacked. I was anxious. I wanted to go straight in there and do my job with the healing stars and the purring, but I was finding it increasingly difficult to go into the caravan. It was cramped and smelly now. John’s toys were everywhere, and my sunny windowsill was often covered in damp washing, so there was nowhere for me to sit.

  It was nearly dark and the sky was an ominous glassy purple. A storm was brewing and I didn’t want to be inside that shuddering caravan. I felt guilty too. My job as a cat was to look after Ellen, and I wasn’t doing it. Nothing was the same.

  Before we moved into the caravan, the rows between Joe and Ellen had been stormy but brief. Joe had usually come back sorry and ashamed with a bunch of flowers or a box of cream cakes. He’d sit on the sofa with Ellen cuddled up to him and they’d talk far into the night. Joe did most of the talking, trying to explain how guilty he felt and why he lost his temper, and Ellen always forgave him. Jessica and I used to bask in the healing atmosphere, both of us purring, happy cats on the warm sofa where there was plenty of room for all of us. Two cats on two laps, and John falling asleep nestled in between his mum and dad.

  But now the rows went on and on, and there were no apologies, no flowers and no cream cakes. Joe resented living in the caravan, and that night when he came back from the pub, instead of sitting up with Ellen, he stomped off to bed and slammed the door. Ellen popped outside to call Jessica who was out there somewhere in the cold, too frightened to come in. Then she sat with us on her lap, and I could feel the sadness in her heart.

  ‘I had a cat just like you, Solomon,’ she told me as I stretched my paws over her thin shoulders, and Jessica lay there playfully patting the wispy ends of Ellen’s hair. ‘When I was a child. He was called Solomon too, and he used to run down the road to meet me from school. I read him stories and played him music on the piano.’ Her voice broke into a sob. ‘Oh I wish we still had my piano. I miss it so much. And Joe is so angry.’

  That night she slept on the long caravan seat with a rug over her, and we snuggled in there with her. I stayed awake, worrying about what Joe was going to do in the morning.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked my angel, and she went into one of her silences.

  ‘He’s in prison,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Prison?’ I knew what prison was. A cat cage for humans.

  ‘It’s a prison made of anger,’ said my angel. ‘He’s made it himself and he’s keeping the door locked. No one has sent him there.’

  I pondered on these words while rain pounded on the roof. I remembered the badgers out in the copse and wondered what it would be like to be wild. Just before dawn, the rain stopped and orange sunshine filtered through wet branches. Ellen and John got up quietly. No one wanted to wake Joe. The row they’d had was still alive, a grumpy troll lurking under a bridge, like the one in John’s favourite story. It was called Billy Goats Gruff, and I’d heard it lots of times. Now I felt we were all tiptoeing over that scary bridge, and the tiniest creak would rouse the sleeping troll.

  After such a rough night, Jessica and I were glad to stretch out side by side on the sunny windowsill, and I drifted into a deep sleep until mid-morning. A loud thump woke me, and the caravan shuddered. A cup fell off the table and rolled across the floor. I heard Ellen shouting.

  ‘You’re not having the car keys, Joe. You’re drunk.’

  There was a chilling sound of glass smashing and peppering down like hailstones, and John started to cry. Then the caravan shook again. Thump, thump, thump. The troll was awake.

  We two cats sprang to life and bolted outside, straight under the hedge. Those first weeks had taught us that the caravan was not a safe place. The only haven for us was outside in one of our hiding places. We crouched under the bracken next to one another and Jessica suddenly did something very sweet. She stretched her cute little face to me and touched noses. I kissed her back and our white whiskers brushed together.

  It made me feel a whole lot better.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ she said. ‘Let them get on with it. We’ve got each other haven’t we?’

  I gave her a special purr-meow.

  Then we huddled together and listened.

  ‘What is the matter with you, Joe? You never used to be like this.’ Ellen was clutching the car keys in her hand. ‘And how did this car window get smashed? Tell me.’

  Joe was leaning on the car, with one hand pushed into his ginger hair. His eyes were tightly shut, and clenched in his other hand was a hammer.

  ‘Go to your room, John and stay there please,’ said Ellen, steering John up the steps and into the caravan. ‘Please sweetheart. Mummy will sort this out.’

  ‘Daddy kicked the caravan.’ John wailed. ‘It’s not safe in there, Mummy. Daddy was going to knock it over.’

  ‘No he wasn’t. Just go to your room, John.’

  ‘NO!’

  John ran round behind the caravan and lay on the ground sobbing.

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ roared Joe, and in a few angry strides he had grabbed John, pushed him inside the caravan and shut the door. Joe leaned against it, breathing hard and looking at Ellen with pain in his eyes. ‘Don’t go running after him. Let him cry for once. It’s ME you should start caring about.’

  ‘I do care about you, Joe,’ said Ellen. ‘But you’re getting worse and worse. I can’t cope with you being so angry.’

  Joe picked up the hammer from where he had dropped it. ‘This is what damaged your precious car. I bloody smashed it. And why? ’Cause YOU refused to give me the keys. So I smashed the window. How else was I supposed to get in?’

  ‘You’re upsetting John,’ said Ellen. ‘And me. And the cats. If you don’t stop it we’ll get thrown off this campsite, Joe.’

  ‘See this?’ Joe held up the hammer, and Ellen went pale. ‘This is what you’ll get if you don’t SHUT UP nagging me every five minutes. Stop drinking Joe. Get a job Joe. That’s all you ever say to me now. I’m sick, sick, SICK of it, woman!’

  He began to pace to and fro, brandishing the hammer. It glinted in the sun and so did his eyes. Ellen pressed her back against the caravan, her aura flaming with fear and anger. She tried to say something and Joe immediately went into a new frenzy.

  ‘You say two words and I’ll put this hammer straight through that windscreen.’

  Sitting under the hedge, Jessica and I peered out through the bracken fronds. ‘Don’t let him hurt my Ellen,’ I was praying. I hoped Ellen would keep quiet and let Joe calm down, and she did. ‘Please send an angel. Please,’ I prayed, and at that moment the door of Pam’s caravan opened, and Pam came bustling over.

  ‘Nosy old crow,’ muttered Joe, and he flung the hammer under the caravan.

  Goodness knows what might have happened if Pam hadn’t come. She had her shoulders square and her chin in the air, and she was smiling!

  ‘Hello Joe. Doing some DIY are you?’ she quipped. ‘Eee – how did that car window get smashed? What a shame. Have to mend it now won’t you? Expensive aren’t they, cars? I’m glad I’ve only got me bike. Now, how would you like to come and have a coffee, Ellen? Bring John. I’ve just made some gingerbread. Do you want to come, Joe?’

  Joe glared at Pam. ‘No thanks.’ He turned and walked off, his hands in his pockets, and we watched him turn out of the gate and head up the road. Pam had done a better job than any angel, I thought.

  Nothing was easy and fun like it had been in our lovely house. I longed to go back there, and often I sat gazing at the distant road curving around the hill. That was the road home. But every time I did this, my angel told me I had to stay here.

  She arrived in a blaze of stars a
couple of days later as I crouched on the wide mossy branch of a tree.

  ‘Wait, Solomon,’ she said. ‘Don’t go into the caravan just yet.’

  So I sat patiently in the tree, listening to the first gusts of autumn wind scattering the dry leaves. My angel’s voice was easy to hear, like the twang of a bell in my head, but when I tried to see her in detail she was screened by a shining mist. Mostly I sensed her energy ruffling my fur, and her voice clearing my mind. I appreciated this, as it needed clearing out. My mind was full of homesickness and anxiety. Even anger was in there sometimes, and my angel would sweep it all out as if she had a brush made of stardust. I always felt better once it had been swept away.

  Someone in a billowing raincoat was walking towards the caravan in the twilight, a small torchlight bobbing in her hand. It was Pam. But looking closer, I sat up in amazement. Floating beside her was a lady in a glistening, shimmering robe, a lady with a radiant smile and loving eyes. Ellen’s mum. Now I knew why the angel had told me to wait.

  Overjoyed to see the visitor from the spirit world, I meowed, leapt down from the tree and dashed across the grass. For the first time that day, my tail was up straight as I ran to her. Ellen’s mum was guiding Pam-next-door towards the caravan, but she paused to whisper some loving words to me.

  ‘Hello Solomon. You are a darling cat. You’re doing a wonderful, wonderful job. Thank you.’

  She brushed her warm hands over my fur and suddenly I felt better. Her praise encouraged me and I flexed my back and purred, rubbing against Pam’s legs. She bent down and picked me up.

  ‘Eee, you’re a lovely cat you are.’

  Cuddling me with one arm, Pam knocked on the caravan window. I realised that Pam couldn’t see Ellen’s mum, who quickly disappeared when Ellen opened the door.

  Settling on Ellen’s lap, I could still feel the love of her mum’s smile, and my purring was deep and soothing. Ellen stroked me with one hand and John’s hair with the other as he leaned against her on the long caravan seat, his face still dirty from crying.