Catcall

by Linda Newbery

  Mum sat on Jamie’s bed. ‘Did you do it, Jamie?’ she asked, very serious. I didn’t even look round, just stared out of the window at the paper-boy’s bike leaning against a lamppost. Jamie snivelled and sniffed, didn’t answer, but he must have nodded, because Mum went, ‘Oh, Jamie! Why? Josh’s lovely book!’ When I turned, she was cuddling him–cuddling him!–and rocking him like a baby, and he was gulping and sobbing and wiping his runny nose on his pyjama sleeve.

  ‘That’s right!’ I shouted. ‘Let him get away with it, sweet little Jamiekins! What if I’d ruined something of his, done it on purpose, then what? I’m sick of this! I’m not sharing a room with him any more–I hate him!’

  In the background Jennie started to cry, and Mike brought her in to see what all the yelling was about. For a confused few minutes it seemed we were all crying, except Mike, and even he looked pretty upset. He stayed with Jamie while Mum and I went down to the garden to examine the evidence.

  ‘Oh, dear, and I thought last night went so well!’ She was shivering, cuddling herself into her dressing-gown. ‘Joshie, I know you’re upset–your beautiful book! It was an awful, awful thing for Jamie to do, and he’ll have to realise that. This thing of his about Leo and lions! I wish I understood it.’ She was talking in the sad, worried voice she used so often nowadays, the small defeated voice. ‘D’you know, I nearly said something to you last night, when I saw your front cover with the eyes on it. All those eyes staring. I was going to say perhaps you should put it away in your desk, after all this business with masks and nightmares. Only with Floss and Kevin and Dad here and the bonfire, I forgot.’

  ‘Right, so it’s my fault?’ I fired back.

  Mum tried to hug me, but I wriggled away. ‘No, no, of course not!’ she said. ‘But Jamie’s very disturbed, and we’ve all got to try to help him. I know it’s hard for you, but he needs you, Joshie. We all do. Come on, it’s cold–let’s go in and do something about breakfast. Then I’m going to phone your dad and tell him what’s happened, and I’m going to try to have a good talk with Jamie. Have you got any plans for today? Do you want to see if Brody can come round, or Noori? Or both of them?’

  I mumbled a No. I hadn’t told Mum about the fight with Brody and I didn’t want to think about that now. Whenever I was at home with nothing particular to do, I went back to my Book of Cats. Without it, I felt sick and hollow.

  We went in, and Mike came down to make porridge while Mum went up to Jennie. I didn’t want to eat breakfast with Jamie, and didn’t see how he could begin to put things right. Tears would be useless. Sorry would be useless. The only thing that wouldn’t be useless was to give me back my Book of Cats. Undo what he’d done.

  Peaceful Sunday morning, not. But that was only the beginning.

  23

  GONE

  That afternoon, Jamie disappeared.

  Slipped out of the house when none of us was looking.

  Course, we didn’t realise at first–we thought he was hiding. We called for him, we searched and searched again, we looked in every cupboard and under the beds and in the wardrobes and out in the garden and in Mike’s van.

  Mike was the first to say what we were all thinking. ‘He must have gone out.’

  ‘Out?’ shrieked Mum. ‘Out where? On his own? Without telling us?’

  She flung open the front door and ran out into the street, and stood gazing one way and then the other. Mike and I followed.

  ‘No need to panic,’ Mike told her. ‘He’ll be back in a minute. Maybe he’s gone round to Arran’s, or gone to the newsagent’s. You go in–I’ll scout round and see if I can find him. No–we can’t all go–Liz, you stay here with Jennie and Josh. Most likely he’ll turn up while I’m gone.’

  Course, it’s not as if Jamie never goes out of the house on his own–he is nine, after all. He often goes to Arran’s or round to the shops. But he was already in a state today, and–and–

  And I’d told him I hated him. Told him I’d never forgive him.

  In a hurry, I searched everywhere all over again, even in places like the washing-basket and in the big drawers under Mum and Mike’s bed where sheets and duvet covers are kept, and Mum phoned Arran’s mum to see if he’d gone round there. ‘No? Just checking. See you tomorrow, then. No, he’ll turn up right as rain, don’t worry.’

  But she didn’t fool me. When she put the phone down, she was starting to cry, and trying to pretend she wasn’t.

  ‘Do you think he might try to get to Dad’s?’ she asked me, then answered her own question. ‘But how could he? He’s only been there once, and by car–he wouldn’t know how–still, maybe–When did he go, Josh?’ She looked wild and panicky. ‘He’s hardly been out of my sight all day. What time, exactly?’

  I worked out that he must have been gone about twenty-five minutes. Mum had been changing Jennie’s nappy, and Mike was clearing up after lunch, and I was gloomily watching TV downstairs. I’d heard Jamie come down the stairs, and he might even have come into the front room, but because I was in such a strop with him I hadn’t turned round from the screen. Now, thinking, I went cold and prickly, goose-pimples shivering all over my skin and inside as well. Jamie had asked me, hadn’t he, about running away from home? About money, and where I’d go?

  I ran up to our room and opened the smallest desk drawer, where my Christmas money was in an envelope, waiting till I got the chance to buy my binoculars.

  Where my Christmas money had been in an envelope.

  There was nothing there now.

  A shiver trickled all the way down my back, like ice melting. What did this mean? Jamie hadn’t just gone round the corner, that was for sure. He hadn’t gone to see Arran. He’d run away from home.

  I went down and told Mum. She listened, pale and still.

  ‘Right, that’s it. I’m phoning the police.’

  She dialled 999, which had always seemed to be an exciting thing to do, only now it felt like acting out some Crimewatch thing. Awful pictures started playing themselves in my head. I thought of Jamie’s photo in the newspapers, people searching through parks and waste ground. I thought of crime scenes barricaded off with police tape. I thought of other children who’d gone missing and been found dead in woods. And with a horrible lurch of dread, I remembered that man who offered me a lift at the Underground station. I knew better than to get into a car with a stranger, but Jamie was younger–what if he was lost, and alone, and frightened, and met a stranger who offered to help him?

  Mum phoned Dad as well, then she started to cry–without tears, just great sobs that heaved themselves out of her. She got up, went to the front door, came back and snatched a tissue out of her bag.

  ‘I can’t just sit here!’ she kept muttering. ‘Not while Jamie’s–Why did we let him down? How did we get it so wrong? Where would he go, Josh? To Arran’s–to some other friend? To Gran and Grandad Bryce, or to Nan’s?–I’ll phone them–no, I don’t want to worry them, not till––’

  I didn’t know what to do, so I went to Jennie for comfort, because she was the only person not involved in this. She was just starting to smile, and she kept gazing into my face and then cooing and shaking her fists in delight. Usually Mum would smile and coo back, but now she didn’t even notice. I lifted Jennie out of the crib and held her, smelled her sweet baby warmth, felt how plump and strong she was, how alive, how eager to live. How she completed our family. But now there was a Jamie-sized gap in the middle. Nothing would feel right until he was back. I’d lied when I said I hated him–I knew that. I’d lied when I said I’d never forgive him. He’s my brother, my Jamie, and without him I wouldn’t be the same Josh. It would be like having an arm or a leg cut off.

  Mum and I both jumped when we heard Mike’s key in the lock. We all sagged with disappointment–Mike because he hoped Jamie would have turned up, and us because we hoped Mike had found him. Mum told him about the money, and the police, and he said he was going to knock at all the houses in the street.

  I ran after him. I
had to do something. The police would come and start taking statements and alerting all the patrol cars like they do on TV dramas. Once all that started, I could only imagine the kinds of ending I didn’t want to think about.

  It was grey and cold and a bit drizzly, not the sort of day that would make you want to hang around outside if you didn’t have to. There was a skip in the road four houses down from ours, the kind people hire when they’re having a big clear-out, and I pulled myself up and had a good look, just in case Jamie had thought of hiding inside. Mike was talking to Mrs Al-Safadi at the next door along. Of course he was having to give a detailed explanation, and it’d take him ages if he did that at every door. Jamie wasn’t in the skip, so I went on past, trying to think what I’d do if I was him. I concentrated hard, closing my eyes, willing myself into his head. Where would I go? What would I do?

  Jamie’s head was a very muddly place to go, that was the problem. Full of eyes and shadows and flames and bad feelings. Only I couldn’t tell which bad feelings were Jamie’s and which were mine.

  This was my fault, wasn’t it? How could it not be? I’d told him I hated him, told him I’d never forgive him…

  But I didn’t mean it. Really didn’t mean it.

  ‘Jamie!’ I thought, so hard that I felt all my muscles clench. ‘Come home. Please come home. I didn’t mean what I said. Everything’s all right as long as you come home.’

  I’d reached the end of Lansdowne Avenue where it joined the High Street. Although I knew I shouldn’t go on without telling Mike, so that he didn’t think I’d wandered off as well, I couldn’t resist going just a bit further. To the bus stop, then to the next corner. All the time, I was scanning both sides of the street–the shop doorways, the pub with its brightly-lit windows, an alleyway with bin-bags piled up. Then a movement caught my eye. There! In the narrow passageway–just a glimpse of something that had dodged out of sight. Had I imagined it? Or had there been a small hunched figure, a frightened face, eyes staring at me across the street?

  ‘Jamie!’ I yelled, and dashed into the road.

  Something rocketed into me and lifted me off my feet and slammed me down in the gutter. I heard a skid and screech and clash of metal. The breath was knocked out of me so hard that I heard myself wheezing for air. There was a sick, awful pain in my ankle that made me reel and gasp. I wondered if I was dead, or would be dead soon.

  A voice shouted from very far away. Hands were clutching at me, faces looming. My head was in the road and I had a beetle’s-eye view of the sky and the tall buildings and the faces that crowded over me. I seemed to be breathing, though it felt as if I’d only just learned how.

  I saw a mouth moving. ‘OK, I think he’s OK––’

  ‘No, don’t move him––’

  ‘Jamie,’ I gasped, as soon as I’d got enough air to speak. ‘My brother. He’s––’

  But I couldn’t see. A thick, clotty blackness came between me and the faces. All of me felt unbelievably limp and heavy, and I was pulled down into the darkness.

  24

  MISTER

  Things got confusing after that. I was lying on a bed, and a man was sitting by me, and my eyes seemed to have swivelled out of control.

  ‘You’re in an ambulance,’ the man said, and his face loomed towards me like a fish in a glass tank, then swam away again. ‘You’re OK. You’re being looked after. You were hit by a motor-bike, do you remember?’

  A bit later a voice in the darkness asked what my name was, and I heard myself answering.

  Then I seemed to have been asleep for a very long time. I woke up warm and comfortable and still sleepy. There was a big heaviness on my leg that stopped me from moving.

  It was nice here, so I slept some more. Next I slid into one of those dreams that seems so clear and detailed, it feels like a story–a story you’re making up for yourself by dreaming it, only it goes off in peculiar directions. This one was about Mister, dear old Mister the Magnificent. I’d often had Mister dreams before. In my Book of Cats I’d stuck a list of cat superstitions, and one of them said that if you dream about a tabby cat it means you’re going to have good luck. But if I dreamed a Mister dream, I just thought it meant I’d dreamed about Mister. And now that he was dead, I sometimes dreamed about Splodge instead.

  But this was definitely Mister. In the dream, I was running along a street, a long street of houses and dustbins and parked cars, a street that never seemed to end. I was out of breath, panting, bent double, but I had to go on. I stopped dead when I saw Mister, sitting on a low brick wall. He was looking at me, and I knew he’d been waiting. He knew I’d come that way.

  I stared into his big green eyes and they gazed back at me with all their cat wisdom. He blinked slowly, holding my eyes with his. Although he didn’t speak out loud, I heard quite clearly what he said.

  ‘Cat is cat is cat. Cat isn’t what humans make of us. Cat is cat and always cat. Cat is cat, now and for all time.’

  Then he turned and jumped down from the wall, and I knew he meant me to follow. We were in an alleyway between tall buildings, where Mister weaved between piles of bin-bags and I had to trip and stumble over them. It was dark in the alley, with no daylight getting in, but I had the sense of sunshine far ahead. At last we emerged from the tunnel and were standing on a grass plain, fields and meadows as far as I could see. I squinted into dazzling sun.

  I recognised this place. The wildlife park, and I was standing in front of the lion enclosure. There was no fence now, no glass panel, but I saw the group of lions on their grassy knoll–the male, the female, the two cubs, just like last time.

  Jamie was standing next to me. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting ages.’

  We stood together as the male lion paced towards us. I felt Jamie tremble, but neither of us could move, and anyway there was nowhere to hide. Mister stayed next to us, completely still. I hadn’t noticed till now, but he’d grown and grown to the size of a lion, so that without bending down I stood with my hand on his back, buried in his thick warm fur. The lion walked slackly on padded paws, his tail slung low, his mane dense and rough. I could smell the hot wildness of him, see the sun reflected in his eyes.

  A few metres away, he stopped. Lifted his head. Stared.

  Mister didn’t move. None of us did. They stood gazing at each other, cat to cat.

  Then the lion gave a sighing sound, and lay down on the grass. He curled one front paw round and began licking it, like Mister did when he washed himself.

  ‘See, Jamie,’ I said, or maybe it was Mister who spoke. ‘He’s not evil or vicious. He’s a cat, doing cat things. He eats and he sleeps, he washes himself and he thinks his cat thoughts. Come on, let’s go home now.’

  ‘Can we?’ said Jamie. ‘I’m tired.’

  We turned to walk away, but found ourselves instead on the top deck of a bus with no roof. Bright lights shone into my face. I seemed to be lying in bed, but I was on wheels and there was a ceiling above me and walls each side and I had to grab the sides of the bed or I’d fall off.

  ‘You’re all right, Josh,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘We’re taking you to the ward.’

  Ward? What ward? Where was I?

  ‘Jamie!’ I said. ‘I’ve lost him again––’ But it felt like trying to talk underwater. My words came out all slurred and burbled, so I gave up. We were going round corners, through swing doors, coming to a stop. I don’t think I woke up properly till I’d been unloaded on to a proper bed and wedged into a sitting-up position, with lots of pillows. My eyes snapped open when I saw all the people sitting or standing round me. Mum. Dad. Mike, with Jennie.

  And Jamie. Jamie, looking pale, eyes round and frightened, but definitely Jamie.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked blearily.

  ‘If you were a cat,’ Dad said, ‘you’d have used up one of your nine lives.’

  25

  JOSH’S BOOK

  Considering I’d dived off the pavement in front of a motor-bike, I was lucky
. I was concussed and bruised all over. I’d chipped the bone in my leg just above the ankle, and my leg would be in plaster for six weeks. They were keeping me in hospital for a couple of nights. The motor-cyclist had swerved drastically and almost wrapped his bike round a lamppost, but had no worse injury than a few scratches to his metalwork and a bad shock.

  ‘Honestly, Josh,’ Mum said, ‘all the worrying I did about Jamie crossing roads without looking, and it was you who ran out in front of a bike!’

  ‘I saw Jamie,’ I remembered. ‘Jamie, in an alleyway.’

  ‘No, it couldn’t have been. Jamie wasn’t there.’

  But Jamie was back, and that was the important thing. Police had been looking for him, and a WPC had come to our house to say I’d been carted off in an ambulance–‘I don’t want another day like that, ever,’ Mum said with a shudder.

  Through that evening, we had bits and scraps of conversation. I seemed to dip in and out of it, floating to the surface for a quick snatch, then drifting under again. Most of the time Mum was there, and sometimes Mike, and sometimes Dad, and even Kevin. And Jamie.

  Finally, when everyone in the ward was settling down for sleep and the lights turned dim, I was wide awake. Dad was still with me, but visiting hours were officially over and the nurses were about to shoo him away.

  ‘When did Jamie come back?’ I asked him blearily.

  ‘Must have been about the time you were in the ambulance. The odd thing was,’ Dad told me, ‘it was Kevin who guessed.’

  ‘Guessed?’

  ‘Where Jamie was most likely to go.’

  Dad explained that when Mum had phoned, he was over at Kim’s house doing some plastering. Kevin was there, and wanted to come with him. Two police were in our kitchen by then, and everyone sat round the table trying to think where Jamie was most likely to go. Gran and Grandad Bryce’s, Dad thought. Nan’s, at Woodford, was Mum’s idea. ‘A friend’s house, from school?’ the woman policeman asked, and wrote down names. Then Kevin came out with, ‘I bet he’s gone to that zoo place. That place you went to at New Year.’