Timba Comes Home

by Sheila Jeffries

Incensed, Angie tore the music-room door open. ‘WILL you stop that bloody singing, Graham, and come and help me. We’ve got a crisis!’

  The sight of Leroy’s small body lying on the sofa had a surprising effect on me. I did what the Spirit Lion had told me to do: I went to him with my tail up.

  ‘Here’s Timba!’ said Angie in a comforting way. She sat at the table nearby, the phone in her hand. ‘I don’t think it’s an emergency,’ she said into the phone, ‘but we do need a paramedic or a doctor to check him out.’

  ‘Timba!’ Leroy smiled for the first time, and his eyes shone. I jumped up and kissed his cold face. He was shivering, and clutching a soft blanket which Graham had put over him. Now Graham was sitting on a stool, close to Leroy, his eyes attentive with concern.

  I knew exactly how to stretch myself over Leroy’s bony chest and flex my little paws rhythmically. I wanted him to feel the warmth and strength from every part of me . . . my soft furry tummy, my paws, my tail . . . and, most important, the power of my purring. Once I got it started, it rolled through me like a song from the angels.

  ‘He loves me,’ Leroy said in a scratchy whisper, and his eyes filled with tears. ‘Did you miss me, Timba?’

  ‘It’s OK to cry,’ said Graham kindly, and I remembered how loudly Leroy had cried through those long, painful hours in his home. Now his tears ran silently over trembling cheeks. Graham extracted the folded white hanky from his top pocket and gave it to Leroy. He pushed it away. ‘I’ll make a mess of it,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what hankies are for,’ Graham said, and I noticed his aura was bright, and that Vati had crept up to lie on his shoulder and soak up the healing atmosphere.

  ‘You’ve got two kittens,’ said Leroy.

  ‘This is Vati.’

  ‘Vati! Timba’s brother. Timba and Vati.’ Leroy smiled again. I went on purring, sensing Vati’s approval, giving my whole self to the stream of healing light. Where it came from was no mystery to me. It was woven into the webs of life all over the Planet Earth. I had only to choose a strand from a gold-and-silver thread and let it flow through me. Easy.

  ‘The paramedics are on their way,’ said Angie. She sat on the floor by the sofa. ‘Aww, look at Timba! He’s giving you healing.’

  Leroy turned his frightened eyes and looked at Angie. ‘I only wanted to see Timba,’ he said. ‘But he ran indoors, so I went to see the horses.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I got on that grey to have a ride. I been on a horse before, on a roundabout, but this grey one went mad and chucked me off.’

  ‘She’s a young pony. She’s never been ridden,’ Angie explained. ‘She must have been very frightened.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, Miss . . . I didn’t think horses could be frightened.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Cos they’re big.’

  ‘I’m big,’ said Graham, ‘and I get scared.’

  ‘What are you scared of?’ Leroy asked.

  ‘Owls and spooky stuff.’

  ‘I ain’t scared of anything,’ said Leroy proudly. ‘Except my mum.’

  ‘So where is your mum?’ Angie asked. ‘She’s not answering the phone. Do you know her mobile number?’

  ‘She hasn’t got a mobile now . . . she got into debt with it.’

  ‘Where is she then, Leroy?’

  Leroy shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  Angie and Graham looked at each other, and I sensed the telepathy passing between them. Graham frowned. He shook his head ever so slightly, and the bright light drained from his aura. He was going down into a dark confining space, and trying to drag Angie with him. Angie wasn’t having it. Nothing fired her passion like negativity and resistance.

  ‘Here are the paramedics.’ She pursed her lips, squared her shoulders and went to open the door. Two men in orange came in and Graham picked up Vati and me, one in each hand, and airlifted us into the kitchen.

  When the paramedics had gone, we were allowed back in, and Leroy was sitting up looking more like himself.

  ‘I’ll take you home in the car,’ Angie said.

  ‘No.’ Leroy shook his head.

  ‘No? Why not?’ asked Angie.

  Leroy looked up at her with desolate eyes. ‘Mum’s not there.’

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He shrugged again. ‘She left home.’

  ‘What?’ Angie looked alarmed. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since . . . I dunno . . . about a week ago.’

  ‘A WEEK! Who’s looking after you, Leroy?’

  ‘No one. I got a key . . . and I got half a loaf of bread, and some cornflakes.’

  There was a silence. Leroy looked at the floor for a long time. When he raised his eyes they were even more desolate. ‘I didn’t tell no one, Miss. I don’t want to go into care. Can I live with you, Miss? Please . . . I won’t be no trouble.’

  Angie stared at him. ‘Why me?’

  ‘I don’t like anyone else.’ Leroy’s voice was painfully husky. ‘Only you . . . and Timba. Please, Miss.’ He shuffled towards Angie and gave her a hug.

  ‘Oh Leroy! You poor kid.’ She hugged him back, and Graham stood with his arms folded, shaking his head and mouthing ‘NO’ at Angie.

  The carefree atmosphere in our home changed from that day, and it was all about Leroy. Angie and Graham talked far into the night, one each end of the sofa, Vati and I blissfully asleep between them. Vati wasn’t bothered about what the humans were talking about, but I was. Pretending to be asleep, I listened to snatches of the conversation and felt sure that Angie was winning. I was gunning for her, being her lucky black cat. She talked fast, waving her hands around, and Graham was grunting and sighing. I kept opening one eye to peep at Angie and let her know I was on her side. If only she knew what I knew about Graham . . . the secrets he’d often confided to me when he came in late and Angie was in bed.

  ‘I’m glad you can’t talk, Timba,’ and then he’d tell me about a woman called Lisa and how he couldn’t help falling in love with her, and wanted to be with her. ‘But Angie must never know. I don’t want to lose Angie, or hurt her, Timba. It’s our secret, isn’t it?’ Each time he said that, I’d look still deeper into his soul with my clear golden eyes, and see how his ‘secret’ was troubling him, and how tightly he was clutching all the threads of his life. I couldn’t make him let go. I couldn’t change him. All I could do was love him. It’s what cats do.

  ‘That was my mother’s clock,’ he said now, as the clock chimed midnight. ‘And she had a big heart . . . a heart of gold . . . like you, Angie.’ He reached across the back of the sofa and touched her hair, moving a curl away from her cheek. ‘If Mum was here, she’d want me to say yes.’

  I looked at the blaze of light by his left shoulder, and saw within it a lovely old lady, with a face like Graham’s, a coil of silver hair, and a smile that warmed the air in a circle around him and Angie. She looked at me kindly, and I gave her a cat smile. Then she waved, and vanished, leaving a glow around us all.

  ‘So . . . yes . . . OK. Let’s give it a go,’ Graham said heavily.

  Angie leapt to her feet and flung her arms around him. ‘I knew you would! Bless you, Graham. It’s right. I know it’s right.’ And she danced round the sofa. ‘The Universe has sent us a child!’

  Graham smiled, reluctantly, as if his face was out of control. ‘Don’t get too euphoric,’ he warned. ‘It won’t be easy with young Leroy.’

  ‘I can put up with the cats,’ Graham said heavily. ‘In fact I quite like them. But I can only tolerate THAT BOY in small doses.’

  I knew he meant Leroy. Vati and I sat together in our basket, dozing, our eyes half closed, listening to the apparently endless discussions about Leroy. Graham only ever said that to Angie in private. When the ‘social workers’ came with their sheaves of paper and laptops, and serious faces, Graham pretended to be busy. Or he would shrug and be dismissive. ‘Angie and I are not married,’ he said now. ‘As far as I’m concerned she’s free to do
whatever she wants. If she wants to foster Leroy, that’s fine, but she, not me, is responsible for him.’

  ‘But will you welcome him into your home?’

  ‘I am prepared to,’ Graham said. ‘I realise Leroy hasn’t had a male role model, and I’ll do my best. But Angie is the foster parent, not me.’

  ‘He’s brilliant with him actually,’ Angie said.

  ‘But is your relationship strong?’

  Angie and Graham looked at each other.

  ‘Totally,’ said Angie, with fire in her eyes. ‘We are soulmates.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Graham maintained an uncomfortable silence, and obviously the social workers didn’t ‘do’ soulmates.

  I gave Vati a shove with my nose. The humans were getting too serious. We jumped out of the basket and confronted each other, making terrible fish faces and pretending we were deadly enemies. Vati arched his back, leaped sideways and embarked on a wild, rug-crunching challenge with me trying to catch him, then hiding and trying to head him off. When I pounced out at him, we collided in mid-air with our paws wide open like flowers.

  Angie laughed, but no matter what we kittens did, Graham’s mouth just twitched, the social workers stayed po-faced, and the talking droned relentlessly on.

  Eventually I jumped onto Angie’s lap and tried to calm her down. She was trying too hard, and I sensed it. To me she seemed like the only person in the room who was truly alive. Her passionate words were beating against a wall of resistance, and finally she lost her temper.

  ‘We are talking about an abandoned child,’ she stormed, and I felt the heat from her aura and the drumbeat of her heart under my fur. ‘Why make it so complicated? Leroy’s mother has abandoned him. He needs a home . . . NOW . . . not in six months’ time . . . and he wants to be with me. He’s made that perfectly clear. I’ve made my offer to be his foster mum . . . and it’s a good offer, so let’s stop nit-picking and make a decision for the sake of this child’s emotional well-being.’

  Vati climbed the bookshelves and sat up there disapprovingly, like he always did if there was a row. He told me he was getting clear of the bad energy, sitting close to the ceiling.

  I stayed with Angie. Her fire had never hurt me, and it didn’t now. ‘Bless you, Timba,’ she whispered into my fur, as the social worker snapped her laptop closed and stood up.

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, Angie,’ she said with infuriating calm. ‘We will make an assessment and let you know. Until then, Leroy can spend Saturdays with you. We’ll bring him out.’

  When they had gone, Angie marched around, imitating the social workers. ‘Make an assessment!’ she raged. ‘Meanwhile that boy is desperate. Ooh, I wish I could KIDNAP him.’

  Chapter Nine

  THE STRUGGLE

  Vati spent most of his quiet time with Graham, who seemed bewitched by the attention from the elegant little cat. Vati waited until Graham was sprawled in a chair, and then walked gracefully up his arms, round his neck and shoulders, nibbling his ears and kissing his face. He usually ended up spreadeagled across Graham’s vast chest, being rocked gently by his breathing. Once Vati followed him into the music room with his tail up, and got away with walking along the keyboard. But then he sharpened his claws on the furniture and Graham shouted at him. ‘Stop that, Vati. NO.’ But Vati coolly went on doing it until he was satisfied. Graham tried to chase him, but Vati just sat there and looked up at him beguilingly, and in the end Graham picked him up, sighing. ‘We’ll have to find a way of stopping you doing that,’ he said.

  Vati didn’t like Leroy, and when the boy came in on Saturday morning, and tried to pick him up, Vati used those sharp claws to scratch his hands.

  ‘Ow!’ Leroy looked at the beads of blood emerging from his skin, and Vati sat washing himself as if to cleanse all trace of Leroy from his fur.

  ‘He’s different from Timba,’ Angie said as she rubbed some cream on Leroy’s scratches. ‘Timba is tolerant. Vati is a hypersensitive cat. If you want to pick him up, you must ask permission.’

  ‘But how do you know whether he says yes or no?’ Leroy asked, frowning.

  ‘Well, he said NO very clearly, by scratching you,’ said Angie. ‘But it doesn’t have to come to that. A cat wouldn’t come over and scratch you for nothing, Leroy. So you have to approach him gently, and sense if he wants contact with you . . . and if he doesn’t, then you leave him alone.’

  Leroy didn’t look convinced.

  ‘You wouldn’t like some giant to come and grab you and lift you up into the air, would you?’ said Angie.

  ‘I’d fight him.’ Leroy raised his fists. ‘Wham!’

  ‘Well that’s what Vati did. He’s teaching you.’

  ‘He’s not a teacher! He’s a cat.’

  ‘Cats are great teachers . . . and so are horses.’ Angie had a way of making her eyes sparkle with excitement when she was telling children something. Her eyes held Leroy mesmerised.

  ‘But they can’t talk,’ he said. ‘Teachers have to talk, don’t they?’

  Angie shut her mouth and shook her head. Still looking at him, she picked up a rope from the pile of horse harnesses that was lying in the kitchen, and tried to give Leroy a silent demonstration of how to tie a knot. He ended up giggling, and so did she.

  I loved to hear humans laughing. It fired me up like nothing else. I charged across the floor and pounced on a horse harness, getting it in a tangle, and making Vati leap in the air like a grasshopper. The house rang with laughter.

  Only Graham was silent, skulking behind a crackly newspaper which was covered in gloom. The soles of his feet twitched as if he was annoyed by the fun rampaging through his house . . . and it was his house, not Angie’s house, as he frequently reminded us.

  The long hot summer was a happy time for Vati and me. We were young cats now, almost fully grown. Everyone admired me, and that helped me to become loving and confident. I loved it when Graham looked at me and said, ‘That cat is really chocolate box.’

  Angie spent a lot of time patiently teaching Leroy how to talk to me, how to hold me kindly, and how to tune in to my needs. He seemed like a different boy, the boy he wanted to be. On his weekly visits I never heard him cry, and all the time his eyes were wide open with wonder at the new things he was discovering.

  Graham refused to take much interest in Leroy, until one wet Saturday when Leroy sidled up to him with a book in his hand. ‘Will you read me a story?’ he asked.

  ‘Ask Angie,’ Graham said.

  ‘She’s getting lunch,’ said Leroy, and stood looking at Graham beguilingly. ‘Please.’

  I decided to get in on the act and jumped onto Graham’s lap to soften the hard shell he was trying to maintain. A stare from my golden eyes and a silent meow soon had him sighing and reluctantly taking the book. ‘Aren’t you a bit old to have stories read to you?’

  Leroy looked disappointed. ‘But I like your voice,’ he said. ‘It makes the story come real and Timba wants a story too, don’t you, Timba?’

  Graham gave in and started to read with Leroy sitting on the arm of the chair, his eyes wide and inquisitive, and me purring on his lap. It soon became obvious that Graham was enjoying it as much as Leroy. Even Vati wanted to be part of it, and he draped himself over Graham’s shoulder from where he could see the pictures in the book and feel the rumble of Graham’s voice.

  I sensed the angels, and basked in the warm, smooth glow they were building around us, binding us together, wanting us to be a family. But Graham was still harbouring that secret in his eyes, and when I stared into them it was a shadow dancing, waiting for its time.

  On another Saturday, Vati and I were sitting in the sun on the hot stony slabs beside the pond. Vati was completely absorbed by something. Now and again he twitched his tail and stretched his neck, as if whatever he was watching had moved.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I asked.

  Vati ignored me. He was too intent. So I moved round and peeped at his eyes. They glinted green with a my
stic sparkle which I loved to see. Vati seemed to be twice as alive as me.

  ‘I’m witnessing a struggle,’ he said. Following his gaze I saw an ugly, crusty-looking creature clinging to a reed. It seemed to be stuck with its head in some kind of tight casing, its sectioned body arched, straining to free itself. It had a rhythm of struggling and resting, struggling and resting, and nothing much changed. I got bored watching it, but Vati didn’t. ‘I’m tuning in to this being,’ he said. ‘It’s desperate to fly free before the sun goes down. I think it’s going to be beautiful, and I want to give it to Graham to show how much I love him.’

  ‘What you looking at, Timba?’ Leroy sat himself down next to us. He’d learned from Angie and the horses that he had to approach animals quietly, not at full throttle, so when he arrived, neither of us moved. I did grant him a muted purr-meow and a sidelong cat smile.

  His self-control vanished when he saw the creature heave and twitch to escape from its shell. Leroy jumped to his feet and pounded towards the house. ‘Angie! ANGIE . . . quick, there’s a THING in the pond,’ he shouted.

  ‘It won’t be there much longer if you shout like that,’ Angie said as she emerged, drying her hands on her jeans.

  ‘Quick . . . quick! It might be an ALIEN,’ whispered Leroy, and the garden rang with Angie’s laughter.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ she said firmly.

  I sensed that Angie was stressed, despite the laughter. Earlier, she and Graham had been arguing about why he was always home late. As soon as the car turned in and Leroy’s ‘social worker’ brought him to the door, the argument had stopped and hung in the air like a hostile rain cloud. Nothing had been resolved, and I’d done my best, walking to and fro between them, trying to coax a spark of forgiveness. When Leroy came, Graham spoke to him briefly, then took his laptop to the music room. Angie pasted on a smile and pretended she was happy.

  We cats see it all.

  The four of us sat watching ‘the thing’ still struggling on the reed. A beam of sunlight touched the curve of its scaly body with a glint of brightest blue. It heaved, then stopped and kept still.