Inchworm

by Ann Kelley

  Long discussions. Mum phones Daddy and they’ve come to a new arrangement. Claire is going home.

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you. Thanks Claire.’ Mum cries as she says goodbye.

  Claire says to me, ‘You’re a good girl, Gussie. Home soon, yeah?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘we’ll be home soon.’

  Daddy comes each morning and is being very attentive. He does the washing and dusting and sorts the laundry but draws the line at ironing my pyjamas. I don’t allow him in the bedroom as I can’t hide the kitten anywhere else really. Mum isn’t able to do much around the flat, and rests in the afternoon on the sofa. I can’t do much either, like hoovering, which is a nuisance because there are still fleas. Also, I have to rest in the afternoon too.

  I’m ploughing my way through Gone with the Wind. It’s huge, heavy to hold in bed. Having seen the movie once (one of Mum’s favourites) it’s easy to follow and I keep imagining thingy with the thin moustache as Rhett Butler and Vivienne Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. What a wonderful name! Why can’t I be called something exciting like that? Augusta Stevens – I ask you, what sort of a name is that?

  I do love reading better than anything. It’s like dreaming – an escape into another world. I can become anyone and be part of another universe, forget my own problems and reality. When I finish a book, I’m lost until I can find another to immerse myself in. I suppose because of being ill and having to stay in bed lots and not go to school very often, I enjoy the other worlds I find in the pages. A book is a magic carpet that takes me anywhere, anywhen, anyhow. I can be waiting in my hospital bed for some horrible treatment, yet I’m a million miles away in another skin, the skin of a girl with a real working heart, who has a mother and father and brothers and sisters. I can be an ace pilot; a boy who lives with animals in the jungle; a brilliant detective; an American beauty a hundred years ago; I can be anyone. If I could be anyone in any book, who would I choose? That’s difficult. Perhaps one of the family in Swallows and Amazons. Or George in the Famous Five, or Ellie, the girl narrator in the John Marsden book Tomorrow when the War Began; or Scarlett O’Hara. I love it when she tears down the green velvet curtains to make a dress.

  Probably, actors escape into the character of the part they are playing, become them for a while.

  Willy, dressed very smartly in a dark grey, double-breasted suit and with a blue tie has brought a huge bouquet of spring flowers; narcissus, daffodils and tulips, for both of his ‘Schönen Frauen’. They smell of Cornwall. The kitten jumps onto his lap.

  ‘She likes you,’ I say, but Willy is worried about his suit and the kitten soon jumps down.

  Mum is searching the bathroom cabinet. ‘Where did I put my tweezers?’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PROCEDURE—A MODE OF PROCESSING; A METHOD OF CONDUCTING BUSINESS; A COURSE OF ACTION

  SOME PEOPLE THINK that when you die your spirit or soul becomes another creature. If you have lived a good life you might become a more developed creature and if you’ve not been good you live again as a lower being – an ant or a beetle.

  But who’s to say what is higher or lower? How is a tiger, say, a higher creature than a hedgehog or a penguin? What’s wrong with life as an inchworm? Okay, you might not have long to live, but you get to spend all your time outside eating marigolds or whatever.

  Sounds pretty good to me. No pain, no anxiety, no worries about your parents not getting on or taking your pills at the right time. You simply eat and excrete – I suppose they do that, every creature does.

  I would preferably like to come back as a cat – one of ours. They have such a fine life and if I had fur like my kitten or Charlie everyone would love me. Is it fur or hair? Perhaps if I am good enough in this life I will come back as a cat.

  Not one in China, though. I saw a horrible programme on the news about how the Chinese treat some dogs and cats. They trap them, skin them alive and use their fur for clothes or even toys. Tigers are hunted or even farmed to be killed, and every part of the animal – not just the skin, but blood, bones, private parts, is sold for lots of money to be used in medicine by people who mistakenly think they are being made strong or virile. It’s all too horrible to think about – poor innocent creatures cruelly killed for money.

  I think I’ll give up eating Chinese takeaways as a protest. I must remember to tell Mum to do the same.

  Though, I suppose if you are an English Chinese restaurateur, you won’t have the same culture as a Chinese person living in China, and you are not in the habit of killing dogs and cats. So I shouldn’t punish them for the sins of the Chinese Chinese.

  Phew! That means I can go on eating take away. Except for king prawn and other shellfish, of course.

  I’m very lucky that most of the people I know are humane to each other and animals. Thinking about reincarnation: some people do believe in it – Hindus, I think. If a person has done bad things in one existence he returns after death as a lesser creature – a warthog or a wallaby, maybe. But how does a wallaby lead a good life in order to be reincarnated as a higher being? And is there a progression of higher and lower creatures? Who can tell if a cockroach is more worthy than a chicken? I read somewhere that cockroaches can live a week without a head. I think chickens can run around without a head too, but only for a few seconds. And what difference does the life of a chicken make to the world? At least while we are human we have the opportunity to make a difference, do something meaningful, even if it’s only to have a child who will grow up to be someone who will make a difference, like Nelson Mandela or Mozart or Charles Darwin. Of course, one might have a child who becomes the next Adolf Hitler or Robert Mugabe, so each of us has to make the effort to do something worthwhile in our one life, like help orphans or make a beautiful piece of work, a painting or a poem or a novel that lasts forever.

  Poem about reincarnation to send to Brett:

  I wannabe

  A wallaby.

  Will you be

  One too?

  It’s great not to have to hide the kitten from Mum, though she has suggested we keep her secret from Daddy for now. Beelzebub seems to have been the cause of rather a lot of destruction. Mum still hasn’t decided what to do about her, whereas Beelzebub knows exactly what she wants – a warm soft bed, lots of strokes and petting, grooming each day, and plenty of Greek yoghurt and pilchards in tomato sauce. Daddy cancelled the hire car when Mum was in hospital but Claire found a corner shop that delivers. The driver is a young square-jawed Armenian, dishy, according to Mum, and he carries the groceries into the kitchen for her. We unpack together. I notice she has ordered plenty of kitten food so she can’t be thinking of disposing of Beelzebub just yet.

  ‘When are we going home, Mum?’

  ‘We have to wait for your last biopsy and my six week check-up, but I see no reason why I can’t travel on the train soon,’ she says. ‘Except that I can’t carry luggage, and you certainly can’t. I think the car might be more comfortable, if Alistair can take time off to collect us.’

  ‘Couldn’t Daddy take us back in his car?’

  I have fantasies of Daddy arriving at our house and staying overnight and then falling in love with Mum all over again and staying forever. He could get a job as a film studies teacher at Falmouth University Art College.

  ‘It might be fast, Gussie, but comfortable in the back seat? I don’t think so. It’s basically a two-seater, and then there’s our luggage.’

  And Beelzebub, I think.

  ‘Anyway, he’s got to go away again soon.’

  ‘When? Who’s going to drive me to hospital?’

  ‘We’ll get a bus or a cab, don’t worry.’

  My biopsies are uncomfortable procedures. They insert a catheter into a vein in my neck to go down into my heart and into the right ventricular myocardium. They do an x-ray so they can see the area where they are slicing off a piece of heart tissue. Afterwards, when the local anaesthetic wears off, I feel sore.

  I hope we do get
a cab.

  A postcard from Mrs Thomas, with a picture of the harbour:

  Dear Gussie,

  Sad news. Shandy has passed away. He was 15 years old – a good age for a cat, but I miss him terribly. He has been my constant companion since my late husband passed away. My eye is settling down nicely. Give my best wishes to your mother and I hope you are both recovering from your operations as I am from mine.

  Love to you both,

  Mrs Thomas.

  Our bodies are so fragile. We aren’t well designed, us humans. Our skin breaks and bones crack and split and things go wrong so easily. Our cells don’t do what they are supposed to do and become diseased. We are attacked by viruses.

  Mum says it’s amazing that so many babies are born with nothing wrong. But even if they are perfect, so many diseases and accidents can happen.

  Some of the people waiting for transplants were born with heart problems, like me, and some were healthy to start with but at some point caught a virus that damaged their organs, like Precious.

  As Mrs Thomas says – you never know what’s around the corner in life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DUBIOUS—DOUBTFUL; CAUSING DOUBT; UNCERTAIN; AROUSING SUSPICION OR DISAPPROVAL

  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 goo
d 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.’