The Illustrated Child

by Polly Crosby

  ‘She’s got worms, Tobias! Her nails are so long, lord knows what’s stuck under them.’

  I looked down. I had been digging in the earth by the cart shed yesterday, and my hands were a rusty brown from the soil. My fingernails were long and bendy with a line of thick black dirt underneath each one. My bottom on the stairs was painful now, and my hand inched automatically closer, desperate to scratch at it. It wasn’t such a nice feeling anymore; raw instead of tickly, making me want to scrape harder, tearing the soreness away.

  Mum carried on below.

  ‘I haven’t seen her wash her hands since I’ve been here, and when did she last have a bath? And her tooth! Does she go to the dentist ever? The poor mite, Tobias, the poor little mite.’

  There was silence now. It filled the house, drifting up the stairs like a ghostly smog, enveloping me until I thought I had become deaf.

  ‘I love her ferociously.’ Dad’s voice broke through the silent mist, quieter than I had ever heard it before, and I strained to listen. I imagined Mum, grown to a huge monster, towering over him as he shrunk to the size of a mouse.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Mum sounded angry. ‘Why didn’t you let me know?’

  I hugged Monty closer.

  ‘I wasn’t aware you were allowed out on day release from those places.’

  ‘Of course they let you out: I checked myself in, didn’t I? I can check myself out.’

  ‘You’re out for good?’ There was disbelief in his voice, and I felt my mother bristling, out of sight in the kitchen below.

  ‘Careful, Dad,’ I whispered into Monty’s fur.

  ‘I’m glad you have such strong belief in my ability to stay well,’ she said, her voice cracking, almost as if she were crying. ‘How could I stay there after I got your letter? I’ve worked so hard since then to get better.’

  ‘You’re cured then?’

  ‘Cured? What does that even mean, cured? It’s not something that’s going to go away, Tobias. But I need to be here now. To look after our daughter: what she needs now is love and care.’

  ‘She has it. I loved her enough to write to you when I… when…’ His voice faltered and died.

  I felt the silence flow in like a tide in the house, flooding past me, then receding back until the tick of the grandfather clock in the hall became audible again.

  Their voices began again, getting louder, battling against one another, and this time I imagined them as yowling cats, circling each other round the kitchen table. Dad was a battered Tom, saggy and shaggy with half an ear torn away. Mum was black and sleek like a witch’s cat, with magic in her heart and sharp, sharp claws. Dad didn’t stand a chance.

  I got up and ran down the remaining stairs, barrelling through the hallway and into the kitchen, where the cats dissolved back into my parents, and I charged at Mum, my hair flying behind me, my arms outstretched as I ran with full force into her, reaching up to scratch at her face.

  ‘Daddy needed you!’ I shouted. ‘Who cares if there’s worms in my arse and dirt and no baths? I’ve got a cat and a big bedroom and the best dad ever. And I don’t need a mum. You’re not a princess, you’re an imposter, you’re… you’re Cruella de Vil.’ And I sank my nails into her cheek, feeling with satisfaction the skin catch momentarily under the force of my swipe, before running out of the kitchen, and back up the two flights of stairs to my bedroom, where I threw myself onto the bed and burst into tears.

  I slept late the next day. I don’t know what woke me, only that I had the feeling someone had been whispering to me just before I woke up. I looked around my bedroom, blinking. Mid-morning light flooded the cavernous space. My face felt tight from the tears that had dried on my skin the night before. I sat up, the echo of the half-dreamt whisper still in my ears.

  My eyes felt scratchy. I looked around for Monty to cuddle, but he was nowhere to be seen. I could smell coffee and tea and toast, and I curled myself up in my quilt and pretended to be on an island far away from all grown-ups.

  Dad put his head round the door, and I burrowed further into my quilt. He didn’t say anything, but I felt the weight of him pinning the quilt to the bed as he sat by me. Then his hand was on my back, stroking in rough circles. If I were a cat, I thought, I’d purr. Instead I began to sob, and I pulled myself out of the quilt and wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my face in his dressing gown.

  ‘Why is she back?’

  ‘Because she loves you.’

  ‘And because she loves you?’

  ‘We… need looking after.’

  ‘Will she stay this time?’

  Dad didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled a bottle out of his dressing-gown pocket and unscrewed it, tipping the contents into a spoon and holding it in front of my mouth.

  ‘She went out early this morning and got you this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Worm medicine.’

  ‘Is it made of worms?’

  ‘No, it gets rid of them. Open up.’

  I opened my mouth and he tipped it in, the cold metal of the spoon singing against my teeth. The medicine tasted chalky and sour and I swallowed, accepting a sip of Dad’s sweet coffee afterwards to take the taste away.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re allowed coffee now too?’ My mother’s smiling face poked up from the stairs below, the scratch on her cheek red against her pale skin. I pulled the quilt back over my head, embarrassed by my behaviour the day before. It was quite hard to breathe under there.

  ‘I want Monty,’ I said, deliberately sounding babyish so they wouldn’t tell me off for what I had done.

  ‘We’ll go and look for him,’ Meg said, and the bed creaked as Dad got up too. I listened to their departing footsteps, quickly pulling the quilt off my head and sucking in huge gulps of air.

  ‘Monty,’ Dad shouted, from far off at the front of the house. We were all looking now.

  ‘Monty!’ I called. I was wearing my pyjamas still, my feet stuffed into wellies.

  ‘Monty,’ my mother sang. I stopped at the edge of the moat. A thick bubble popped gloopily on its surface, as if something were breathing far down below. Was it the gargoyle, awake from a deep slumber, or my Monty-cat, racing through the last of his nine lives? I remembered my mother’s battered case of catskins, and for a moment everything shivered as I teetered on the edge of the moat.

  ‘Whoa there,’ my mum caught me and pulled me away, her hand gripping my arm.

  And then we heard it, from far away, a high-pitched cry.

  ‘Monty,’ I whispered, and I was off.

  I raced towards the sound, through the garden, past the willow, towards the meadow. Monty’s cry was louder here, and I stopped at the meadow’s entrance, trying to see him between the mobiles and the hummocks of long grass. It was a hot, sultry day, and the mobiles were still. I followed the sound, close now, a keening cry I’d never heard him make before. I lifted my foot to take another step.

  ‘Stop!’ My mother’s voice, breathless behind me. It had lost all its singsong lilt. It was commanding, and I did as she said, one foot in mid-air.

  ‘Look, just ahead of you. Careful, Romilly.’

  I looked. Just in front of me, hidden by a mound of grass, was Monty. My tiny half-kitten half-cat, lying awkwardly, one of his front paws raised as if he were waving. The sound he made was terrifying. He was so still I had almost stepped on him. Then he began thrashing about, his tongue out, panting, his little body convulsing.

  And then I saw the wire. Almost invisible, it ran from his leg to a stick that had been pushed into the ground, and it was taut, pulling tighter around his leg each time he moved. His pure white leg wore a ring of red as if he had dressed up in a ruby bracelet.

  ‘Monty?’ I asked, not understanding. I dropped down by his head and stroked him carefully, and still he wailed. It was a pitiful sound, full of pain, and I couldn’t think above it. I slammed my hands over my ears and shut my eyes, listening instead to the catching of mucus in my nose.

  I sens
ed somebody crouching next to me and opened my eyes just a crack. My mother was there, lifting Monty gently. He didn’t struggle, lying limply in her hands as she placed him closer to the stick so that the taut wire relaxed, though it was still pulled tight around his leg. His mouth opened wider as he cried, silent to my blocked ears. The sound of my panicked breathing got louder in my head.

  My mother gently pulled my hands from my ears, and the full horror of the sound he was making penetrated deep into my head and down into my ribs. She drew my face away from him so that I was looking at her.

  ‘Romilly. Look at me. I need your help. Focus on me.’ Her face was serious and full of concerned love, and I knew in that moment that I could trust her. I did as she said, trying not to turn and look at my poor mutilated kitten. Her face was pale, with freckles on the nose and cheeks, just like mine. Just like me.

  ‘You need to hold him still. I can help him, but he must stay still. Do you understand? If he goes running off after I release him, we may never see him again. Can you help me?’ She was looking at me with such ferocious intensity that I nodded my head vigorously, desperate to show her I could help. I reached down to Monty and held his body securely, the sound of his pain filling my head until even my thoughts disappeared and the whole world shrunk down to my shaking hands clutching at the white fur.

  My mother was whispering to him, her voice like a lullaby as she looked closely at his leg. His tiny broken paw twitched involuntarily, shaking droplets of blood onto the grass.

  Then she took a pin from her hair and eased it gently under the wire around his leg and Monty screamed. But then I saw that the wire was loosening, and Monty was trying to scramble up, pulling his mangled leg free of the noose. I held on tight amid a flurry of white hair. His eyes were bigger than I had ever seen them. He clung to my jumper with his one good front paw, his claws knitting themselves into me so hard that it hurt, but it was a good hurt and I didn’t complain, I scooped him to me and dropped kisses on his head, his nose, and his cold, cold ears, my pyjamas painted with his blood so that we both were dressed in trembling rubies.

  The stitches were huge, puncturing his shaved skin like wiry teeth.

  ‘But he might not be here at all if your mother hadn’t thought so quickly,’ Dad said, sharing a quick glance with her as he tried to strap Monty into the wheelchair he had built for him. It was an ugly contraption made out of wood and leather, using the wheels from my old toy pram. The strap was meant to secure around his chest, supporting the front of his body and stopping him from tipping over on his one remaining front leg. As Dad tried to pin him down, Monty twisted away and staggered across the room. His new three-legged walk was clumsy, like a drunken hare, and he came to a stop at the other end of the room, staring warily at the strange invention in Dad’s hands.

  We were in the drawing room, watching him to make sure he didn’t over-exercise. Dad and I rarely used this room. It was full of a mishmash of furniture that had come with the house, pieces that Dad called eclectic and my mother called junk, but there was a twinkle in her eye when she said it.

  Monty kamikaze-rolled towards us across the parquet floor, forgetting he was missing a leg, and somehow managing to pounce on a spider in the process. I watched with pleasure as he chewed it, the legs poking out of his mouth.

  ‘Who do you think set the trap?’ I said, wincing as I remembered the wire squeezing his leg so hard that the skin parted like butter.

  ‘I don’t know.’ My mum was examining the little posy of dusky pink roses I had picked to say thank you for saving Monty. They were the exact rosy blush of her cheeks, and they were almost as pretty as she was. I hoped she would put them in a vase by her bed.

  ‘I expect whoever it was didn’t mean to catch a cat,’ she said, ‘they were probably after a rabbit. My grandfather used to catch them like that all the time.’

  ‘Whoever they are, they’re mean. I hope they get their leg caught in a trap.’ Maybe Dad could make one. A human-sized one with sharp, bitey teeth and an electric saw to cut through the bone.

  Monty was trying to climb the velvet curtains now. The movement caused a flurry of moths to take off like papery snowflakes. The claws of his one front paw attached themselves to the material, and he hung there, unable to unhook himself. He stared at us silently. Mum got up to help him, leaving the roses abandoned on the floor.

  ‘He’s healing well, your Captain Montgomery,’ she said. ‘He was very brave. We should give him a promotion.’ She placed him in my lap and dropped a kiss onto my head at the same time.

  ‘What’s higher than a captain?’ I asked, feeling a blush of affection for my mother. I ducked my flaming face on the pretence of checking his stitches. They felt bumpy under my fingers. The shaved skin was puckered, like the frill of a snail’s body.

  ‘Hmm, I think it’s a major.’

  ‘Major Montgomery of the Second Regiment,’ I whispered, trying it out for size.

  ‘Romilly my girl,’ Dad said, putting his hand in his pocket, ‘I almost forgot, this is for you.’ He pulled out something small and brown, swinging from his hand, and dropped it into my palm. It felt soft, nestling in my hand like a little mouse. A keyring loop hung from its top. I turned it over. It was an animal’s paw, the little pink pads hardened and shiny.

  ‘Oh, Tobias, no,’ Meg said, and with a shiver I realised it was Monty’s hurt foot. It dangled from my hand, gently twirling.

  ‘What?’ Dad said, shrugging. ‘The vet would have thrown it away. Look.’ He bent down and touched the silky fur, his finger nearly as big as the whole paw. ‘I soaked it in salt water so it’s preserved. You can just see the edge of his leg bone poking out of the skin there.’

  I stared at it with fascinated revulsion, marvelling at Dad’s tiny stitches holding the crisp skin closed. I held it out to Monty, who sniffed it, burying his nose deep into the crevices of the pads as he caught his own scent. I wondered if he knew what it was.

  ‘Romilly, you don’t have to keep it.’

  ‘Monty likes it. And if he likes it, it must be OK. Besides, I’m eleven now, that’s plenty old enough for something like this. Mum, how can a part of him be dead, but part of him still be alive?’

  Monty was rubbing his cheek against the paw now, purring loudly. He tried to bat at it, forgetting he only had one front leg and rolling over onto the rug again.

  Mum was silent. I looked up.

  ‘You called me Mum,’ she said.

  Ten

  The day after Monty came home from the vet’s, I bent down underneath the water butt, looking for the nail varnish I had hidden there two summers ago.

  Mum’s long nails were one of the only things I remembered about her from before: the sharp, pleasant-painful feel of them as she held tightly onto my hand. This morning, I had tried to cut the end of my own nails into sharp points, but Mum caught me and made me cut them straight, so now they were short and blunt. They would look much better with varnish on them, I thought. Much more grown up.

  The grass had grown since I’d hidden the bottle, but it was still there, the bleached white shoots twisting around its lid. I pulled them off and gazed at the bright, viscous liquid within, considering whether it was too old and gloopy to work.

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ The voice startled me. I stuffed the nail varnish behind my back and turned around.

  It was Stacey. She was dressed in her customary shorts and T-shirt. She looked cleaner than I had seen her before, as if her mum had managed to dunk her in a bath, though I thought it more likely she had just gone for a swim in the river.

  ‘Have you been at your gran’s again?’ I said brightly, knowing deep down that it was the publication of the new book that had put her off coming to see me. I always felt slightly embarrassed when we looked at the books together, as if I should feel guilty that I was famous and she was not.

  ‘I’ve been around,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages either. You never go out to play anymore.’

  I had thought
I was getting a bit too old for playing. Stacey was the kind of girl that would continue to play all of her life, without caring who laughed at her. I reluctantly pulled the nail varnish out from behind my back to show her. I was reminded of the first time I had met her, when I had been standing right here, having just hidden the same bottle under the water butt.

  ‘That’s a bit of a girlie colour,’ she said, her nose turning up at the end.

  ‘I am a girl,’ I said, looking down to check the pink decoration was still stitched into my jeans, and seeing as I did so my reflection in the water butt. The surface was oily and syrupy-black, and for a second the sightless face of the shadowy woman reared up at me.

  ‘You all right?’ Stacey said, looking at me curiously. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  I looked at the water again, but it was only my own reflection. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Your hair’s different,’ I added.

  ‘Cut it myself. But it’s hard to reach the back of your own head.’ She patted a few straggly bits on her neck.

  ‘Why didn’t your mum do it?’

  ‘Too busy I s’pose.’

  She stepped closer and peered into the water butt. Her nose wrinkled at the smell. It had rained throughout the end of the summer, and the tank was nearly full of water again. With lightning speed she dipped her hand in and pulled out a snail that was attached to the side.

  ‘Guess what?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw a ghost in your garden earlier.’ She was rolling the snail between her palms, smoothing it like a ball of plasticine.

  I glanced at her, trying to work out if she was telling the truth. She looked serious. ‘What did it look like?’

  ‘It was a lady. Baggy jeans and a sort of smock top. Big wooden earrings that looked like parrots.’

  ‘That’s not a ghost. It’s my mum.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen your mum in years.’