The Calico Cat

by Amanda James

  ‘Darling! So glad you phoned. Dad and I were just saying the other day that it wasn’t a good idea to part like we did and not try to fix it. You are a good girl though. I told him you’d phone before long. You always know when you’ve made a mistake. Now, why don’t you pop round on Sunday for dinner? I could invite Helen and her son Jon. You two got on so well last time, didn’t you?’

  No. No, we didn’t. We might have done if we hadn’t been thrust into a cringeworthingly (yes, I know it isn’t a word) obvious matchmaking situation. Though thinking about it again, I don’t think I could ever get past the caterpillar moustache. It looked oddly out of place clinging to the top lip of a twenty-seven-year-old guy. It would look much more suitable on the face of a man in his fifties, possibly employed as an extra in Poirot.

  Apparently unnerved by my silence, Mother said, ‘You did like him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not especially. The thing is, Mother, I have walked out of my sensible honest to goodness teaching job…’ The next bit was as much as a surprise to me as it was to her. ‘And I’ve decided to be an artist, just like Gwendoline.’

  ‘What? You have to be kidding me.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t actually,’ I said, my head spinning from the excitement and shock of deciding to change career – just like that, in a few seconds, out of the blue. I thought about all the different blues on a paint palette, until a shriek and a tumble of choky sounding words assaulted my ears.

  ‘But that is the most… the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard…’ Next, Mother’s voice sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a well and I could tell she’d done that thing she does, clamping the phone to her chest but not covering the receiver properly. ‘Keith! Lottie’s gone and chucked her bloody career out the window!’

  I sighed and looked at a crack in the ceiling. I wished I could shove Mother in it for a while and seal it with filler, just until she’d learned to think before she opened her mouth. The crack was too small though, like my mother’s logical reasoning and imaginative powers.

  ‘You have the cheek to sigh down the phone at me after what you’ve done?’ Her choky voice narrowed to a squeak.

  ‘I haven’t killed anyone (yet), Mother, just made the decision to follow in Gwendoline’s footsteps.’

  ‘Gwendoline again? Since when did you call your gran Gwendoline? That’s you all over, trying to shock, push the boundaries. And I’ll tell you this for nothing…’

  That’s a relief. I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for anything she had to say…

  ‘You haven’t a modicum of her considerable talent. Those night school classes you’ve been going to haven’t made much impact to be honest.’

  Now that was taking the biscuit. ‘Thanks, Mother. You said you adored the seascape I did recently when you came over.’

  ‘I said it to humour you. I wouldn’t have if I’d known you were going to chuck your job in to do it!’

  I could almost see her standing by the large Victorian fireplace in their large Victorian house, with her large Victorian work ethic (gifted by her father) rattling round her tiny brain, pushing her pulse rate into overdrive. She would probably be flapping her hand and hissing at Dad to come and listen to our conversation, which would be no good whatsoever, because he’d be hidden behind the newspaper, or pretending to be deaf while watching the telly.

  ‘I really think you should learn to be more honest, Mother. You always taught me to be when I was little. You also need to stop contradicting yourself.’

  ‘Contradicting myself. What the hell are you on about now?’

  It wasn’t lost on me that she’d let the honesty bit go. She couldn’t really do otherwise, could she? ‘Well, you said last week that Gwendoline had no talent and that Granddad had to support her fanciful and ridiculous notion of being an artist. Then, just now, you said I haven’t a modicum of her considerable talent. Which is it?’

  ‘Look, I haven’t time for all this now. What I said isn’t the important thing here…’ Now that, we could agree on.

  ‘The important thing is that you cannot leave a perfectly good job that you’ve been to university for, trained for, to be some kind of… of bohemian drop out!’

  I laughed then. Not my normal, trained, polite and socially acceptable laugh that usually found its way past my vocal cords, but a raucous donkey bray of a laugh that caused my mother to use the worst word and slam the phone down. I looked at the crack in the ceiling and laughed and brayed and hee-hawed, until tears coursed down my cheeks and dampened my pillow. Then I got up, poured another glass of wine and looked out at the ocean. And do you know, all of a sudden, I felt so much better?

  If I’m honest, before speaking to Mother, there had been a little frowny faced figure of worry, singing and dancing not too far away at the back of my mind. The song lyrics implied I had been rash, stupid and childish to just walk out on my job like that, and the dance steps thumped so loudly I thought I might be getting a headache. The reaction of Mother had swept the little figure out into the ether and reassured me that I had done the right thing. If she hated what I’d done, it had to be good.

  3

  Today – Nearly Afternoon

  So, I guess you’re still interested, because otherwise you wouldn’t still be reading this, would you? I’ll assume that you’re with me from this point forward. Okay, so this morning I got up and looked at the new white canvas on my new easel, next to my new acrylic paints by the picture window, and worried that the canvas would remain virgin white, blank, untouched for all eternity.

  In the last few days or so – okay, it might be ten if you include today – I seem to be having a bit of trouble picking up a brush and applying it to the canvas. Not physically, there isn’t anything wrong with my hand or anything, but I have chosen to paint the Atlantic Ocean right there in front of me. The trouble is, it keeps moving, as oceans are wont to do, and the light keeps changing when clouds chase each other across the face of the sun, and now and then a variety of sea birds swoop in and out of the scene, like they’re doing it on purpose, to unnerve me.

  This kind of thing is expected, and it normally doesn’t bother me – has no impact on my artistic ability – but since I’d had my second turning point, I’d been in trouble with the school and the education department. Although expected, that kind of thing does tend to bother me, but I wish it didn’t.

  The morning after, I of course had remained absent from school. The head teacher phoned and asked if I could confirm that I had walked out on Year Ten at two fifteen yesterday afternoon. I answered in the affirmative. He then asked if I wanted to be referred to Occupational Health in order to get counselling, or did I just want to come in for a chat? I said I wanted neither, thank you very much and would just like to be left alone.

  Then Mr Kershaw (please call me Tom) did that thing he does when he’s unsure (not very often) and cleared his throat once or twice to give himself thinking time. He said he wouldn’t be doing his job properly if he just left me alone, and was very concerned about me, and did I know that counselling is nothing to be scared or ashamed of? As I probably knew, some members of staff in Humanities had availed themselves of it, had taken a little time away whilst having it, and come back renewed and inspired teachers again.

  I thought about the ones he meant and wanted to say he was kidding himself. I’d recently found Brenda Stacey hiding in the Geography store room with the lights off, her back to the wall, hugging her knees with one arm and a vodka bottle with the other. She looked neither renewed nor inspired. I promised her I wouldn’t tell and volunteered to do her detention duty, so she could go home early. I’m nice like that sometimes.

  Anyway, I didn’t say he was kidding himself. Instead I replied that counselling wasn’t new to me as I’d been made to have it when I was a teenager, and it had done far more harm than good. I walked to the window while I listened to Tom clear his throat a few times, his discomfort palpable across the line as I watched the waves. I felt like they were dragg
ing me under, so I looked away. Tom was warbling on about the best thing I could do, and the first and foremosts, so I put the phone down. It rang again almost immediately. I unplugged it.

  Then of course I’ve had to contend with letters from the education department talking about pensions and loss of earnings. Tom had sent letters too, because every time he’d phoned afterwards I’d put the phone down. I had to fill in a form to confirm I had no intention of returning to work and send off lots of other bits of paper that I can’t even remember what they were about now. It has all meant that my stomach is upset, has been upset for about a week, and the damned canvas is still blank because of it all.

  I think the main thing that unsettled me about Tom’s call was all that talk about counselling. It brought lots of unwelcome memories stomping into my brain like an army of stormtroopers. Not the ones from Star Wars, they don’t stomp really, do they? They tend to just charge about corridors in ill-fitting masks firing weapons. No, I mean the Nazi ones. They did the goose-stepping stomping and looked much fiercer than the ones from Star Wars. Probably because you could see their faces and they were real live people who did horrific and despicable things, not made-up characters in a film.

  So anyway, these memories are now living with me and will not go away. No matter how much I try to squash them, lock them away in rooms of my brain I don’t visit much, they still manage to pick the lock and goose step across the view of the ocean and leave dirty but invisible footprints on the canvas.

  I close my eyes and try the deep-breathing exercise that I saw on telly yesterday. A woman in a pink and yellow leotard said it helped you to get in touch with who you were and allowed a sense of peace to wash away troubles. I am not sure who I am, really (who is?), but after a few deep in-through-the-nose and out-through-the-mouth breaths, I must admit I do feel calmer. Whether that is the same as having your troubles washed away with peace, I have no clue.

  One of the deep breaths has brought with it the salt ocean air from the open window, and another, the ghost of a cinnamon and lemon candle I had burning last night. Yes. I am definitely feeling calmer. My determination levels are being replenished too – I can feel them rising up like mercury in a thermometer, until a sudden rush pushes the stormtroopers into a vacant room and barricades them inside.

  I exhale and decide that there will be paint on the canvas this afternoon. I get up off my sorry arse, walk over to the easel, and there’s a flurry of excitement in my chest. It might not be the best work I will ever do, but I will bloody do it. Even if I just sketch in the background, it will be better than the white square that has glared at me accusingly for the past ten days.

  I pick up the brushes, select a ‘sketching in the background’ type one, and then the doorbell rings. Shit. If this is Mother I will just refuse her access. If I allow her inside I know she will destroy this new mood with a few words. Even watching her mouth forming those words will ruin everything.

  I look through the spy hole in the door and see Caleb, a colleague from school. What the hell does he want? And is he carrying a bunch of flowers? I’m not a sodding invalid for God’s sake.

  ‘Caleb?’ I say, opening the door a fraction of a centimetre.

  ‘Charlotte, how are you?’

  I open the door a little more and look at his sympathetic eyes (bluer than forget-me-nots according to Anna, also a work colleague and friend of sorts. Anna tends to read too many sickly romance novels), his windswept dark curly hair, a half smile on his face as if he is unsure whether or not to allow the other side of his mouth to go the whole hog. Perhaps he wonders if a full smile will detract from the overall sympathetic look he’s trying for.

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’ I don’t allow either side of my mouth to smile.

  We both look at the flowers in his hand, a mixture of white lilies, red tulips and something yellow that I don’t recognise, and he thrusts them towards me. ‘Sorry they’re a bit battered, it’s windy out.’

  I don’t take the flowers. ‘People always say that, don’t they? Windy out. It would hardly be windy in, now would it?’ Sometimes what I mean to say and what comes out are poles apart. In fact, more than sometimes. The thing is, those flowers are annoying me. Caleb’s whole sympathetic, sheepish, apologetic stance is annoying me. Why the fuck is he actually here?

  ‘Yes, unless you had a window open,’ he says and tries a full smile.

  I stare at him and he shifts from one foot to the other, his cheeks get pink, he stops smiling and lowers the flowers. ‘So why did you come round?’ I say, deciding to just play it straight. ‘And how did you know where I live?’

  He raises an eyebrow and then opens his arms expansively, scattering petals along the corridor. ‘I wanted to come and see you, have a chat after… after… You know, like friends do? And Anna gave me your address.’

  Anna had no bloody right, and friends, are we? I’d call us acquaintances. Yes, he’s a nice enough bloke, we chat at lunchtimes and stuff, but friends? Not really. Friends go out for drinks and to each other’s houses. I only have a few friends and I don’t see them too often because they get on my nerves after a while.

  ‘You said you wanted to come and see me after. After what?’ I ask, fold my arms and watch his face intently. I’m good at detecting bullshit.

  ‘You leaving teaching…’ he shrugs, and his mouth makes a series of shapes as if it’s searching for the right words… ‘in that way.’

  ‘That way. You mean the walking out of class in the middle of a lesson with not so much as a by your leave and never going back kind of way?’ One side of my mouth turns up of its own accord.

  Caleb laughs and looks more relaxed and less like a sheepish sheep. Then his words come out in a rush. ‘Yes, I guess. Look if you’re busy or rather I didn’t come in, I quite understand. Just take the flowers and I’ll pop off.’

  Do I want him to ‘pop off’, whatever that means? My imagination presents Caleb as a bottle of fizzy water, his head the screw top. Then it shakes him, and his head pops off. I expect that you might think that’s a very odd thought. You and me both.

  I should want him to leave really – I’m busy, or about to be busy with my painting. But I think that would be impolite and he is being quite kind, isn’t he? I stand to one side and wave him through. As he passes, I catch a whiff of flowers and fresh sea air on clean skin.

  Caleb puts the flowers on my table and turns in a circle looking everywhere at once. ‘Oh, my goodness, what a fantastic place you have,’ he says and walks to the picture window. ‘And this view is to die for.’

  I have never understood that phrase. If you were dead, how could you enjoy whatever it was that you’d died for – in this case a view? To be polite, I say, ‘Thanks, it is stunning. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ He points at the canvas. ‘I didn’t know you were an artist.’

  I want to say that, as he could see, I hadn’t yet managed it. But my new determination levels said I shouldn’t. ‘I’ve been dabbling for a few months, and that’s what I’ve decided to do as my new career. My grandma was a successful artist and I am following in her footsteps.’

  Caleb’s face is lit by a huge smile. ‘That’s fantastic! The flowers were to say congratulations for being brave and just walking out like you did, but a new career on top of that. My hat is off.’ He takes off an imaginary hat and bows.

  ‘Congratulatory flowers, eh?’ I feel my spirits rise higher than my determination levels. ‘It’s amazing how a person can misinterpret “saying it with flowers”. I thought you’d brought them to say, “Oh dear, it’s a shame you lost your marbles and have become insane.”’

  Caleb shakes his head so vigorously that I worry that it might pop off. ‘No way! I’ve always admired the way you speak your mind when everyone else doesn’t, and you’re unafraid to be completely different to anyone else, even when it’s easier to run with the pack.’

  He looks at me and his eyes are shining with pass
ion. He runs both hands though his hair and begins to pace. ‘When I heard that you’d walked out I knew you were okay, that you’d just followed your heart, even though others were saying you’d had a breakdown or something.’ Caleb stops pacing and looks at me intently. ‘Remember that time you told me that sometimes you felt trapped, like a tiny cog in a very big machine?’

  ‘I can’t say as I do, though I have said that kind of thing often’

  ‘And then you said that one day you’d just walk out and keep walking.’

  ‘Did I?’ This was news to me. I had often thought it but wasn’t aware that I’d actually spoken it out loud – and not to Caleb.

  ‘Yes. You also said we only had one life and we should live it before it’s too late.’

  ‘Oh yes, I do say that quite often too—’

  ‘Well I think you’re bloody marvellous, and brave, and—’ he does that shaping thing with his mouth again ‘—and different.’ He throws his hands in the air and laughs, a little self-consciously I think.

  The main thing I take from his little speech isn’t that, though. The main thing is the fact that he has said I’m different. As you might have gathered, I have trying to be different since I was eleven, and Caleb has seen my difference and appears to admire it. Most people actively try to bury their differences and become like everyone else for fear of ridicule. They want to belong. They want to ‘fit in’. They don’t like to be singled out, have their differences scrutinised, put on microscope slides or in Petri dishes and poked by society. I on the other hand, rejoice in it. I don’t want to belong if it means having to wrestle your individuality into a small space, paint it grey and make it… normal.

  Caleb is grinning at me like the dog I saw on the beach yesterday. A big wide unselfconscious happy grin that stretches his face, a smile that invites the lips of others to copy it even though they might not want to. I realised mine are no exception.