Distant Voices

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘No?’ There was a strange half-sneer on Frances’s lips. ‘Do you want me to ask her?’

  Catherine shrank back out of sight. She was very cold. Climbing unsteadily to her feet she crept back along the landing towards her bedroom door, her skin like ice beneath her thin cotton pyjamas.

  The room was very dark; she was half-way across the carpet before she remembered the cat. She glanced up at the wardrobe. The animal had gone. She could see the wall clearly. No suitcase. She frowned, distracted. Had her father moved it? Then she heard the growl.

  She found she couldn’t breathe any more. Turning slowly back towards her bed she saw the huge black shape sitting there, saw the golden almond-shaped eyes with dark diamond slits, and heard the knife-like claws unsheathed, massaging the soft pink candy stripes of the duvet. She could smell the feral warmth of its fur.

  Slowly it stood up. Arching its back with casual luxuriousness it jumped off the bed. Only a few feet from her now, it stood with its shoulder level with hers, its head raised almost at a height with her own.

  She moistened her lips nervously with her tongue, her eyes on the cat’s, and it echoed the movement revealing for a moment two hooked, white canine fangs.

  Then it moved.

  Anaesthetised by her fear Catherine stayed where she was. Only her eyes followed the cat as it padded once round the room before coming to a stop beside her and pressed its huge head against her, nuzzling her shoulder. Her small hand went cautiously to the ruff of stiff fur behind its ears and as she began to scratch it she was rewarded with a barely audible, deep vibrating purr.

  ‘Catherine! Wake up. You’ll be late for school.’

  Her mother’s voice cut through her dream like a serrated knife. For a moment Catherine lay quite still, then cautiously she opened her eyes.

  Cold sunshine flooded into the bedroom; on the top of the wardrobe the old suitcase was stacked as usual beside her grown-up brother’s empty rucksack and a broken kite.

  She turned to look at her mother. Frances’s face was pale beneath her make-up and she looked tired, but otherwise she was much as usual, bustling over to the stripped pine chest of drawers and pulling the top drawers open for clean blouse and knickers and socks. She tossed them onto the bed. ‘Five minutes. Breakfast is almost ready,’ she said and turning she went out of the room.

  Catherine sat up in bed, hugging her knees, her eyes on the suitcase. It was a dream. It had to have been a dream. All of it.

  She sat down in front of her bowl of cornflakes without enthusiasm, her eyes going to her father’s place.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘He caught the early train.’ Her mother retrieved two pieces of toast from the toaster and juggled them into the rack. ‘I’m driving you to school this morning.’ She was the same as usual, apart from the funny blurred look on her face – efficient, slightly impatient, impersonal, trying to read the headlines of the paper as she drank her instant coffee and poured Catherine’s hot milk from the saucepan.

  ‘Mummy, can we have a kitten?’ Catherine unscrewed the honey jar and stuck her knife into the grainy waxy sweetness, knowing it would call forth a cry of anger from her mother who had carefully put a long-handled spoon beside the jar.

  ‘What, darling?’ Seemingly engrossed in the paper Frances had not noticed the honey.

  ‘A kitten. I would so love to have a kitten.’

  ‘Mm.’ The noise was too non-committal to be a yes; it was a reflex action, no more, and meant her mother hadn’t heard.

  ‘Daddy says I can.’ That was chancing her arm and she knew it.

  ‘What?’ Frances looked up and threw the paper on the table. ‘Come on. You’re going to be late. Go and brush your teeth. Quickly.’ She hadn’t heard a word about the kitten. Not a word. ‘Have you got your satchel? Don’t forget your history book. It’s in the dining room still, and your ballet things are in the airing cupboard.’

  They were the things she always said. Normal, naggy, caring things. The kind of things mothers always said.

  Catherine slid from her chair, still chewing on her toast. ‘So, can I have a kitten?’

  Her mother heard. She frowned. ‘No, of course you can’t have a kitten! What a ridiculous idea.’

  ‘Daddy said –’

  ‘I don’t care what Daddy said. I say no. Now go and clean your teeth.’

  Catherine walked sedately out of the room and up the stairs. Going into the bathroom she reached for her pink toothbrush and then the tube of paste. Carefully she cleaned her teeth and rinsed out her mouth, then she walked back across the landing and into her bedroom. She took her blazer out of the wardrobe and then she looked up.

  ‘Mummy doesn’t like kittens,’ she said softly but clearly. ‘I don’t think Mummy likes cats either.’

  The animal was lying, head on paws, surveying her through sleepy eyes. Its tail, hanging down the side of the cupboard, twitched slightly, softly stroking the polished walnut.

  She could feel it now, the soft ruff of fur, the warmth, the coils of steel-strong muscle, relaxed and pliant beneath her fingers, the heavy head beside hers on the tear-hot pillow as she cried herself to sleep and she stared up at it unafraid. It was the first time she had seen it in daylight. It was huge; big enough to eat someone.

  She smiled as she buttoned her blazer. ‘Mummy doesn’t like me either,’ she said, her tone conversational. ‘That’s because Daddy likes me best.’

  The cat blinked with lazy interest.

  ‘Catherine!’ Her mother’s shout on the landing made her jump. ‘For goodness’ sake, hurry!’

  ‘If you’re hungry, you could probably eat her, you know.’ She said it quickly under her breath, half afraid, half defiant, a last-minute instruction as she turned towards the door. Opening it she glanced back. In a patch of early morning sunlight the suitcase on the wardrobe had changed from shadowy black to the rich chestnut of old leather.

  Sitting in her classroom Catherine glanced across her neighbour towards the window. The sun was shining brightly now and the heat was striking through the glass. The roar of traffic in the busy road outside was muted into a muffled continuous sound which with the heat of the sun falling across her desk made her feel very sleepy. It was Monday, the day her mother hung out the washing on the line in the narrow back garden, the day she would go into Catherine’s room and change the bed linen so that tonight, Catherine’s favourite night, the sheets and pillows would smell of flowers and grass and fresh country things.

  Her mother would be going into the bedroom, alone, unsuspecting, her arms full of clean pillowcases and clothes and with her back to the wardrobe she would set them all down as she always did, on the small frilled stool which stood in front of Catherine’s dressing table. She might glance up into the little mirror and catch a glance of the black face with the golden almond-shaped eyes as it sprang, she might not. She might never know what had attacked her at all.

  ‘Catherine?’

  All they would find would be a pile of clean laundry and perhaps her mother’s silver bangles, lying on the carpet near the bed.

  ‘Catherine, what is it? Are you ill?’ Miss Pitman had heard the child’s strangled gasp and seen her eyes fill with tears. She put her arm round Catherine’s shoulders and squatted down beside her chair. ‘What is it, sweetheart? What’s wrong?’

  Catherine’s face was white and she was shaking. The other children in the class looked at her with interest. ‘She’s going to be sick,’ a small voice announced from the end of the row with the certainty of long experience and with some satisfaction.

  ‘No she’s not, Edward.’ Miss Pitman put her other hand gently over Catherine’s. ‘What’s wrong, Cathie? Aren’t you feeling well?’

  Catherine shook her head. She was trembling too much to speak.

  There was a procedure in place for occasions such as these and it was set in motion without delay. While Catherine was led to the sick room the class was put on its honour to do some copying in silence and as
on all occasions before she and Miss Pitman had reached the corner of the passage the noise behind them was crescendoing out of control; but for once Miss Pitman did not storm back to fling open the door and shout, without having to even look who it was, at young Edward and his two best cronies. The child beside her was worrying her too much.

  She sat her on the bed and put a professionally cool hand on Catherine’s forehead to feel skin burning like fire. ‘What is it, Catherine? Where are you hurting?’

  Catherine shook her head, incapable of speech. Before her eyes she could see clearly her mother’s dismembered body, an arm lying near the dressing table, a foot on the bed where the cat had taken it to eat, holding it meticulously between two soft velvet paws, as it licked delicately at the toes, its eyes half shut in concentration.

  Mrs Harriman, the principal, summoned from her mathematics class, frowned thoughtfully. ‘Has something happened at home to upset you, Catherine?’ She bent down a little in front of Catherine putting a hand on each shoulder, peering through circular spectacle lenses which enlarged her eyes into startling blue-irised globes.

  Catherine nodded between hiccuping sobs.

  ‘You must calm down and tell me so I can help. What’s happened? What has upset you so much?’

  ‘I’ve done something,’ Catherine’s words were all but inaudible, ‘terrible.’

  ‘You’ve done something terrible?’

  She nodded miserably, hiccuping in earnest now, her eyes swollen and red.

  ‘What have you done, Catherine?’

  The quiet authority in the headmistress’s voice was beginning to calm her. Catherine took a deep shuddering breath. Her hot hands kneaded the front of her pleated school skirt into a damp crushed rag. ‘Mummy’s dead.’ The words were so quiet, so indistinct, at first, that neither woman thought she had heard aright.

  Mrs Harriman collected herself visibly. ‘Did you say there was something wrong with your Mummy, Catherine? But I saw her this morning when she brought you to school. She looked fine.’

  ‘I’ve killed her.’ The words were clearer this time, almost defiant. ‘I killed her,’ she repeated. ‘Because she doesn’t love me.’

  Miss Pitman turned away from Catherine to the table near the window. Picking up a box of tissues, she pulled out a wad and put it into Catherine’s hand. ‘Blow your nose, sweetheart, and stop crying,’ she said in her most bracing voice. ‘Of course your mother loves you. How silly.’ She raised an eyebrow in the direction of her superior. ‘Do you think we’d better ring home?’

  Mrs Harriman nodded. ‘Give her a drink. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  It was a long minute. A mug of cocoa and two digestive biscuits later, with reinforcements sent to quell the two teacherless classrooms, Miss Pitman and Catherine were sitting side by side on the sick room bed and slowly the story was emerging.

  Miss Pitman hid a smile. ‘So, you told this panther or whatever it is, which lives on the wardrobe, that it could eat your mother, because your mother doesn’t love you any more?’.

  Catherine nodded.

  ‘And because you didn’t love your mother any more either?’

  Catherine nodded again.

  ‘And you wanted to punish her?’

  The nod was so small it was hardly visible.

  ‘And now you’re sorry you told the cat it could hurt her because you really love her very much.’

  The nod this time, eyes huge, fixed desperately hopeful on Miss Pitman’s face, was unmistakable.

  Miss Pitman smiled. ‘Catherine, the cat won’t have attacked your mother! I’m sure you’ll find she’s safe and sound. It knows you really love her, just as it knows she really loves you. You know,’ she stopped, wondering how far she dared go in reassuring the child on the subject of parental rows, ‘grown ups do sometimes say things they don’t mean at all when they are cross and it sounds to me as if your mummy and daddy were a bit cross with each other, doesn’t it. I don’t think they meant you to hear their quarrel. I think your mummy would be very upset indeed if she knew you heard her say something she didn’t mean about you.’

  ‘Does the cat know?’

  Miss Pitman smiled again. ‘Oh yes, the cat knows. The cat knows everything, because I think some of the time that silly old cat is just a story inside your head.’

  Catherine surveyed her solemnly. Surely something inside her head could not scratch the wardrobe with its sharp claws; tear at her duvet cover the way it had.

  ‘Anyway –’ Miss Pitman reached once more for the biscuit packet and passed it to her. ‘You’ll soon see your mummy is all right.’

  She glanced up as the door opened. Sarah Harriman’s face was white as she beckoned Miss Pitman out of the room. In the hall she pulled Miss Pitman away from the door and began to talk in an urgent whisper. ‘There was no reply from the house so I rang the father at his office. They told me there he had been called to the hospital. His wife has had an accident.’ She glanced over her colleague’s shoulder towards the closed door of the sick room and lowered her voice even further. ‘They think she was attacked by some kind of animal.’

  The women stared at each other for a moment in silence as her words sank in and the shock registered on Miss Pitman’s face. The word which she finally chose to relieve her feelings was not one usually heard even in the playground.

  ‘Quite.’ Sarah endorsed it without the flicker of an eyelash.

  ‘So, what do we do?’

  ‘Is she badly hurt, do they know?’

  ‘All they know is that Freddie Carter dropped everything and raced off to be at her bedside.’

  ‘You’d better ring the hospital.’ Miss Pitman bit her lip. ‘I’ll go back to Catherine.’ She hesitated. ‘She says it was a cat; a cat to which she made the suggestion that it eat her mother.’ There was another short pause. ‘I suppose it could be a real cat – some moggy she’s enticed into her bedroom?’

  Her headmistress narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean it could be a real cat? What else could it be?’ They held each other’s gaze for a moment and both looked away simultaneously. ‘Look, go back to the child. Stuff her with biscuits. Take her back into class if she’s calmed down enough. Tell her her mummy is out shopping and can’t come and get her for a while – anything. Anything. I’ll see what I can find out.’

  Freddie came to collect his small daughter two hours later. Before he was allowed to see her, Sarah Harriman showed him into her study.

  ‘How is your wife?’ She studied his face, noting that though he was tired and obviously under some strain he was equally obviously not prostrate with grief. Inwardly she sighed with relief even before he spoke.

  ‘She’s okay. They’re keeping her in over night. She’s got one or two deep scratches but most are superficial. She’s very shocked, though.’

  ‘What was it, do you know?’

  Sitting behind her desk, she was playing nervously with her pen.

  ‘The police think a stray cat must have got into the house but there was no sign of it when we went back to look.’

  ‘A stray cat.’ Sarah nodded slowly.

  She looked down at her blotter. ‘I see.’ She glanced up again and took a deep breath. ‘I think it’s possible Catherine may have enticed it in. She has been telling us a little about it this morning, but she’s obviously been very upset.’

  In the car going home Freddie glanced at his daughter’s face. It was still a little puffy from her earlier storm of crying when he had told her what had happened to her mother, and he noticed not for the first time how heartbreakingly like Frances she was.

  ‘We’ll go home and have tea, then later we’ll go to the hospital to see Mummy, okay?’ He smiled at her, changing down as they reached the corner of their road, wondering yet again just how such a little girl was going to live with the trauma of her guilt and her pain, if as Mrs Harriman seemed to think, Catherine knew about the cat.

  Catherine nodded. She had grown more and more quiet as they approached the hou
se.

  ‘What is it, sweetheart? There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Drawing up outside he reached for her hands. ‘The police have searched every corner of the house and the animal has gone.’ So had the blood. He had cleaned it up himself before setting out to fetch Catherine. He looked at her hard for a minute and then he turned away to gaze out of the windscreen. He hadn’t reached for the door-handle. ‘It must have sneaked in when Mummy was hanging out the washing, or,’ he hesitated, ‘did you let it in, Cathie? Had you been giving it some milk or something?’ The police had found the black hairs on his daughter’s duvet and noted the deep jumping scratches on the top of the wardrobe from which the creature had leapt onto Frances’s back. The lacerations across her shoulders had been ferociously deep.

  The puzzle had been where the cat had gone. Frances had not seen it at all. Flinging the clinging creature from her back with a scream she had run from the room, half fallen down the stairs and locked herself, shaking and hysterical, in the kitchen. From there she had phoned a neighbour before she collapsed, and the neighbour taking one look at her unconscious friend and her blood-soaked sweater had called an ambulance and then the police. No door had been forced, no window was open more than a crack, yet the cat was undoubtedly gone.

  ‘No one is cross, sweetheart. You couldn’t have known it had a vicious streak. I’m just relieved it didn’t hurt you as well.’ He put his arm round her and she snuggled against him, comforted. ‘That was it, wasn’t it? You let it in.’

  Catherine shook her head.

  ‘You didn’t?’ He looked down at her with a frown.

  She shook her head again. ‘It’s always lived here. In my room.’ She waited for her father to say something and when he didn’t she took a deep breath and she began to speak.

  At the end of her story he was sitting staring sightlessly out of the windscreen. For a long time he said nothing and at last, timidly, she touched his hand.

  ‘Daddy?’ She was very afraid.

  He turned to her and the sorrow on his face was so great she had to look away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Darling, it’s me who should be sorry. Mummy and me. We had no idea you were there listening. No idea at all.’ He bit his lip, still making no move to get out of the car. It was as if he were afraid to go into the house.