by Nick Green
Then it was strange. He fancied he was still in his seat on the Tube. The carriage was empty apart from him. He stared through the dark window. They were stuck in a tunnel. The lights had gone out. He was delayed. It bothered him. By now he should be walking back to Dad’s flat, on his way h–
‘Home,’ croaked Ben. His voice sounded different. It was pitch dark. He felt as if he had woken from sleep. Time was missing. His head and neck ached and he was cold.
He was sitting on hard ground. Trying to get up he found his arms would not move. A light flared, hurting his head.
‘Told you he was alive.’ It was a deep voice, but a boy’s, not a man’s. ‘You’re a worry-weasel, Hannah.’
The light bobbed farther away, tracing the outline of a rangy boy holding a small torch. Beyond him crouched two smaller figures. Crouched where, though? This didn’t feel like the tunnel anymore. More like a poky room. Again he tried to move.
‘Your arms are tied,’ said the tall boy.
Ben opened his mouth. The boy mockingly said it for him.
‘Where am I? You’re in the Hermitage, and you’re trespassing. Next question. What are you going to do to me? Dunno. That’s up to him.’
‘Him?’ Ben strained at the cords that chafed his wrists. ‘Who’s him?’
The boy bent close, angling the torch into his own face. Red hair burned above the black cloth of his mask.
‘Mad Ferret,’ he whispered.
The torch went out, leaving Ben in a smouldering dark that no effort of his eyes could penetrate.
HERDING CATS
A young dancer, wearing black, kneeling on the floor of the bleak church hall. That was how she would look to anyone who walked in. But Tiffany Maine was alone in the building. She knew that because hers was the only breath she could hear.
She sat on her heels, fingertips resting on the herringbone pattern of wooden tiles, her arms parallel pillars. She repressed a shiver.
‘I heed no words nor walls.’
Her voice rang off the grubby plaster walls, which were papered with crayon pictures. The Sunday School also used this place, thankfully never at the same time. Tiffany tried to concentrate.
‘Through darkness. . . I walk in day.’
The only light in here came from neighbouring street lamps that turned the arched windows orange. Sour smells troubled the air. Perhaps one of the Sunday School kiddies had had a little accident. A drawing of a hippo flapped in a draught and she forgot the last line of the chant. And I. . . I do not fear. . .
Tiffany liked to get here early. Just ten minutes to change into her pashki kit and prepare for the lesson. They were her lessons now, and she wanted them to be right. Also, it was her only chance to snatch a moment alone. Even though such moments tended to dredge up her most dreadful memories, she was learning to be glad of this too. Better to face them, stare the terrors down, than to leave them lurking in the depths of her mind, where they could leap on her without warning. She drew a steady breath.
‘And I do not fear the tyrant–’
‘Hi, hi, hi!’ The door crashed shut on its weak hinge. ‘Hiya, Tiffany!’
The main lights flicked on, hiding the shadows. Tiffany twisted round to wave at Susie Liu. ‘You made it, then.’
‘Yes. I am sorry about last week.’ Susie dug sportswear out of a holdall. ‘Sometimes my gymnastics coach can only do Fridays. I’m sure I packed my kit. Uh-oh. Mother can’t have left my swimming towel in here, since Tuesday. . .’ From the dank towel Susie untangled a black unitard emblazoned with cat whiskers. Wrinkling her nose she vanished behind the hessian noticeboard they used as a changing cubicle.
Tiffany said nothing. Susie had started gymnastics a few months ago, excited to think that the skills she learned at pashki would make her a champion. In reality it wasn’t so simple. Astonished by her vault and beam displays, the thrilled coach had bustled her onto the asymmetric bars, where she nearly snapped both elbows. There were lots of problems like that. Human and feline gymnastics were too different, and you mixed them at your peril. Annoying Tiffany was perilous too. Susie had now missed two Cat Kin meetings in a row.
She wasn’t the only regular absentee. Yusuf made excuses about football practice now he was on the school A-team. He came about once a fortnight. Then of course there was Olly.
Susie reappeared, reeking of chlorine, and they warmed up with the Chasing the Bird stretch-and-lunge. Daniel arrived ahead of Cecile, with another crash of the door that made Tiffany wince. She carried on with the warm-up, leading them through the basic stretches, Long Reach, Scratching Tree, Arch on Guard. Now and again she glanced at the door. Ben was never this late.
So that was it. He wasn’t coming. She pushed her calf muscles to the point of pain as she recalled their quarrel on Wednesday evening. Yes, she’d said some hurtful things, but then so had he. How dare he be sulking? She’d had an apology all ready.
It would be wrong to blame her parents. After those awful few days last year, they could hardly behave otherwise. Mum and Dad had given her up for lost. They had pleaded on television for her safe return, while in their imaginations she had been murdered a hundred times. When Tiffany was returned to them, apparently unhurt, they were bound to go completely crackers.
At first this was lovely, a fairytale. Tiffany felt like Cinderella and Aladdin rolled into one. She was treated as a princess, granted breakfast in bed, pampered to within an inch of her life. Every day brought gifts, outings, makeovers, designer-label clothes. It took time to notice that she had something in common with Rapunzel too, and it wasn’t her celebrity-salon hair.
Mum and Dad had locked her in a tower. Sort of. If she wanted to go out, even to Avril’s house two streets away, they drove her. When she was at school, at a friend’s, or seeing a film, her parents would phone, supposedly to check she was enjoying herself. She was under orders never to turn her mobile off, not even in cinemas. Once she left it behind and Mum had actually, honestly, rung the police. After the first six weeks of this, Tiffany felt six years younger. Dad tried to hold her hand when they crossed the road. Soon Mum would be checking her food for small bones.
Still, since anything beat being ignored, she tried to enjoy it. Which was why the oddest, saddest and most unfair thing took her quite by surprise. Ben noticed it first.
‘Is your home phone on the blink?’ he had asked her, way back in November. He’d left a few messages that she never got. Soon afterwards he remarked, ‘I suppose your school is still burying you with homework,’ which puzzled her because she’d had it easy leading up to Christmas. It emerged that Ben had stopped by her house, only to be told that she was studying. Then there was the time Ben said ‘Hi!’ to her father in the supermarket. Peter Maine veered off into the frozen section.
‘You’re imagining things,’ Tiffany protested. ‘My mum and dad think you’re a hero. Why would they start treating you funny?’ Why indeed. Yes, in their first rush of joy at having her back, they had hailed Ben as her rescuer. He was the bright lad who placed a vital call to a helpline (they didn’t know he had done rather more than that). And there was the problem. Every time they looked at him, they relived those hellish hours. And surely they wondered. Tiffany’s made-up story of her kidnapping had never quite hung together. Was there more that they didn’t know? Could this boy have been somehow at fault? Might their daughter have been safer if she had never known Ben Gallagher? Annoyingly: yes.
Soon it was as obvious as a tiger at the table. On Wednesday evening Tiffany came downstairs to find Mum on the doorstep, telling Ben she wasn’t in. Ben glared at them both and stalked off into the mist. Tiffany caught him up in Crusoe Crescent.
‘I can take a hint,’ said Ben.
‘She didn’t mean it,’ said Tiffany.
‘You don’t want me to come round any more?’
‘Yes! I mean, no! I mean–’
‘Any idea why they hate me so much?’
‘They don’t–’ It went on like this for a while. Presently
Tiffany saw Mum skulking nearby.
‘Huh.’ Ben had noticed too. ‘I’m glad my parents aren’t like yours.’
‘They just worry a lot. They care.’
‘You’re fifty metres from your front door.’ He lowered his voice. ‘On Christmas Eve you climbed with me up the church steeple to look down on all the lights. When the midnight bells rang we nearly fell off. I’ll go and tell your mum about that.’
‘Don’t you dare.’
‘Tiffany, I can’t believe you’d let them do this.’
Nor could she. Every day she felt a part of her soul pining, staring out as if through a locked cat-flap. But then, she wasn’t her parents’ cat. ‘I’m their daughter,’ said Tiffany.
‘After all the trouble I went through to save you from that cage,’ Ben hissed, ‘you’re letting mummy and daddy keep you in another one.’ His face flushed – he had visibly bitten his tongue. And Tiffany was spitting mad.
‘After all you went through?’ she cried. ‘You have no idea–’ She saw Mum hurrying their way and froze her with a look. ‘Ben, you can’t imagine what it was like in there. What it’s like for me still. Do you ever faint at school? Do you have to sleep with the ear of your old teddy bear stuffed in your mouth, to stop the noise when you wake in the night? No. Because it’s all about you, isn’t it? It’s what you suffered. Well, I hope for your sake you never suffer like that.’
In rushed Mum, the referee.
‘Enough now. Sweetheart, you’re making yourself upset.’ She pulled Tiffany by the arm. Ben might have been invisible.
‘So,’ Ben spluttered, ‘so tell me. Tell me what it was like. I’m about the only person you can!’
‘Ben,’ said Tiffany’s mother, ‘goodbye.’
As she was led away, Tiffany wheeled round.
‘And you’d better hope it never does happen to you,’ she sobbed. ‘Because if it does, you – you won’t get any help from me.’
She had a foreboding, at the time, that these were the last words she would ever say to him. Which of course was silly.
‘Picture the row of tall posts in your mind. You are standing on the first.’
Kneeling in the Sitting Cat pose, Tiffany watched the others tiptoe with closed eyes around the hall. They should all have been experts at Eth-walking by now. It worried her that most of them seemed to have got worse.
‘You must step precisely on the top.’ The more she strove to sound commanding, the more Daniel’s face creased with locked-in laughter. Without Ben here they didn’t seem to take her so seriously. ‘When I tell you, step to the next imaginary post!’
The door of the church hall crashed. Cecile bumped Susie and they fell in a heap of giggles.
‘Hey, fellow freaks!’ Olly burst in, damp hair plastered across his forehead.
Tiffany folded her arms. In the silence Susie muttered, ‘Watch out, Sanders.’
‘What?’ Olly slung down a kitbag. ‘I’m not late again?’
‘A bit,’ said Daniel.
Half an hour, actually. Tiffany decided to let it pass.
‘Sorry,’ said Olly. ‘Time completely lost track of me.’
Tiffany leapt to her feet.
‘Oh, so it’s time’s fault, is it?’ she cried. ‘Silly old Father Time, did he forget to wind your brain up this morning?’
‘Oooh!’ said Susie. ‘Easy, tiger.’
‘I’m just making a point.’
‘He did say sorry,’ Daniel put in.
‘Yeah.’ Cecile frowned. ‘You’re starting to sound like Mrs Powell. And not in a good way.’
Tiffany opened her mouth, then shut it again. When she mumbled, ‘Okay, join in when you’re ready, Olly,’ she heard her own, duller voice.
Under the tick of the plastic wall-clock she took them through some easy routines. So far this lesson had barely brushed the cobwebs from her bones. Privately she noted that Susie’s movements, though elegant, had grown decidedly un-catlike, and that Olly was cheating with bent knees. Something else was wrong, too. She was the only one here who had bothered to print her face with cat markings. Under the tabby paint, she blushed.
Their hour was almost done. In a last-ditch effort to liven things up, she got them doing Ten Hooks. This was the side of pashki that was most like a martial art. To watch two skilled opponents was to see a ballet of battle, like a cross between capoeira and an alley-cat fight. Daniel at least was keen. A bit too keen.
‘You kicked my head!’ Olly yelped. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you it’s pretend?’
‘It’s not pretend,’ Daniel corrected. ‘It’s non-contact.’
‘Which means you don’t kick my head.’
‘Sorry.’ Daniel sucked his teeth. ‘But that would have been nifty in a real fight. What’s the move called again?’
‘Jafri zafri,’ said Tiffany. ‘Arabic or something. It’s too difficult, I don’t think even I do it right. It was one of the Ten Hooks attacks I found on the web.’
‘The web? You mean someone else out there knows pashki too?’
‘I suppose.’ The sadness, never far away, pricked her again.
Susie waved, already changed. ‘Same time next week, hopefully!’
‘Money,’ said Tiffany. ‘Remember?’
She had not asked her parents to hire the hall. It was enough that they let her out one evening a week. Daniel and Cecile dropped three pounds apiece into her shortbread tin.
‘Er.’ Olly grinned helplessly. ‘Six pounds next time?’
Susie turned her purse inside-out. ‘I’ll pay you at school, I swear.’
Or I will swear, thought Tiffany. ‘You never forgot the money when Mrs Powell was collecting it.’
‘That was different,’ said Susie.
‘How, pray?’
‘There she goes again,’ said Olly. ‘It’s getting a leetle bit spooky.’
Tiffany watched the Cat Kin leave. Had Mrs Powell felt like this at the end of lessons? Suddenly alone and empty? Many times Tiffany had meant to stay after class, to get to know her pashki teacher better. There was so much they had never talked about. Probably Mrs Powell would have been glad of the company, for she had lived all alone except for Jim, her gorgeous silver cat. The thought that she might be lonely had never occurred to Tiffany. Not until it was too late.
Tiffany blinked and found she was the only person left. And the Sunday School’s chairs still needed putting back. Huffing and puffing she got them into crooked rows before the car rolled up outside. Tiffany scrubbed off her face-print with wet wipes, locked the hall and prepared a smile for Dad. He settled her into the back seat and checked her safety belt. Ugh. Would Mum later tuck her in bed with a mug of warm milk?
At home she found Rufus curled upon her pillow, whiskers still damp from his saucer of milk. He gave his greeting-call and she crumpled his ginger ears. Slippers dragged on the landing carpet.
‘Hello, stranger.’ Stuart leaned on the door jamb. ‘Still fooling them, then?’
She stiffened. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’
Her little brother smirked and walked stiffly into her room. From his knees to his ankles he wore the outlandish supporting braces that his doctors called KAFOs but which he referred to as his cyberman legs. His chubby face looked pale today, his dark brown hair unbrushed.
‘How are you feeling?’ Tiffany asked.
Stuart shrugged. The effort seemed to drain him and he flopped onto her mattress, where he lay chuckling weakly. ‘Great. Now I can’t sit up. Help me.’
‘You should be in bed.’ Tiffany propped him upright. ‘And don’t say you are already.’
He gave his withering look. Probably he had been lying down most of the day. Most of his life, come to that. For a kid with muscular dystrophy, visiting his sister’s room counted as an outing. She pulled her black velvet beanbag alongside.
‘Do you want to play cards for a bit?’
‘No.’ Stuart looked sly. ‘I want to know what’s so special about your exercise class.’
‘Nothing. It’s just that.’
‘You hate exercise!’
‘I hate school sports,’ she corrected. ‘This is more like yoga.’
‘How much like it?’
Her beanbag rustled. ‘It’s something I do.’
‘It’s all you do.’ Stuart leaned forward. ‘Ever since. . . I mean, you’ll give up anything else if Mum and Dad tell you to. Except that. Why? Oww-ow-oo!’
‘Someone needs to mind where he puts this, I think,’ Tiffany said before releasing his nose.
‘Only making conversation.’ He sniffed, then brightened. ‘Hey. I’ve got some more heavy lifting for you.’
‘Of course.’ Smiling, she helped him walk back to his room. His bedspread was covered with cut-up scraps of newspaper. ‘All these?’
‘It’s two weeks’ worth. This is the best one.’ He waved one cutting. It was a headline from a local paper: PARTY-GOERS REPORT ALIENS IN DALSTON.
Tiffany took the scraps from him one by one, pinning them onto his cork notice board. Stuart lacked the strength to push in a drawing pin. The board was already a patchwork of articles on UFOs, mingled with snapshots of blurred saucer-shapes.
‘You’re really getting into this stuff.’
‘The truth is out there,’ said Stuart. ‘One day planet Earth will accept that we are not alone.’
‘Don’t I know it.’ She took another cutting from him and ironed it between her palms. Then, all at once, she did feel alone, very alone. That pashki class had been awful. No-one was taking it seriously anymore. And why couldn’t Ben have come? Then at least they could have said sorry to each other. The thought of him sulking at home made her angry. Angry and sad. She had thought he was bigger than that.
THE GREY CAT
Ben was woken by his triceps cramping. With his arms held behind his back, fixed to something immovable, he could only writhe like half a worm until the sweat was wrung out of him. The pain ebbed, leaving traces of memory. Hours hunched in darkness on a numbing floor. Silent shadows, watching. A headache. Then either passing out or falling asleep. A red glow through his eyelids made him open them.